Feminist Theory

Transforming the Known World

Bibliographic Data

ID19981293
AuthorsLisa Disch (0000-0003-1445-4428, University of Michigan), Mary Hawkesworth (0000-0002-4582-3399, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey)
Year2015
Pages1-15
Publication date2015-09-10
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.1
OpenAlexW4233589838
ISBN9780199328581
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited11

This chapter introduces readers to feminist theory as a multifaceted and multi-sited project, not a bounded field. Grounded in the political struggles for women’s empowerment that have emerged in all regions of the world and convinced of the arbitrariness of exclusion based on sexual difference, feminist theory has flourished as a mode of critical theory that illuminates the limitations of popular assumptions about sex, race, sexuality, and gender. This introduction identifies three common characteristics of feminist theory projects in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries: (1) efforts to denaturalize that which passes for difference, (2) efforts to challenge the aspiration to produce universal and impartial knowledge, and (3) efforts to engage the complexity of power relations through intersectional analysis. It sets the stage for the principal aim of this Handbook: to demonstrate how feminist theory is crucial to grasping the power dynamics operating in contemporary life

Arbitrariness · Critical race theory · Empowerment · Epistemology · Feminism · Feminist philosophy · Feminist theory · Human sexuality · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

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