Telling feminist stories

Bibliographic Data

ID4367198
AuthorsClare Hemmings (0000-0003-1253-4547, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume6
Issue2
Pages115-139
Publication date2005-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700105053690
OpenAlexW2082378495
LanguageEN
Citations received139
References cited54

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as 'the first' to challenge the category 'woman' as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it

Aesthetics · Critical theory · Epistemology · Feminism · Feminist philosophy · Feminist theory · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Philosophy

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