Be Here Now

Feminist Futures as Present

Bibliographic Data

ID3945840
AuthorsClaire Timperley (0000-0003-4725-2558, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume136
Issue1
Pages26-42
Publication date2024-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/01417789231221130
OpenAlexW4394607003
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited37

Responding to bell hooks' call to 'Be Here Now', I argue that paying close attention to the present enables us to render visible the ways in which we are implicated in systemic injustices. I explore how refusal is a promising frame through which to enact worlds that feminists want to live in, showing how everyday acts of refusal have the potential to bring alternative worlds into being. To make this argument, I identify four distinct modes of refusal that might serve to positively construct feminist futures in the now: 1) social and affiliative refusal, 2) embodied refusal, 3) slow refusal and 4) imaginative refusal. While these four forms are not an exhaustive account of the different forms of refusal, they are each powerful in the context of feminist futures, drawing on central concepts of feminist thought: care and relationships, situated knowledge and bodies, time as a feminist concern and the importance and value of wonder as central to feminist thought. I argue that in the context of patriarchal, capitalist and colonial systems, systems that serve the interests of few and dominate the majority, these modes of refusal serve to puncture the settled status quo, simultaneously offering a glimpse into feminist futures while enacting them in the present. I conclude by reiterating that feminist futures benefit from being closely attuned to our present, and that a politics of refusal might enable us to penetrate colonial, patriarchal and capitalist systems by reimagining and acting on alternative visions in the now

Economics · Feminism · Futures contract · Human sexuality · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

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