Patriarchy In Eclipse

There can be little doubt that after the American Civil War, a significant number of largely urban American women’s relationships with men began to change. This transition was brought about through many changing conditions in American society that were predicated by socio-economic considerations such as female education, large scale immigration from Europe which challenged traditional American values, the onset of large scale consumerism, and the erosion of the narrow religious moralism which previously restricted the female role in a burgeoning urban landscape. This book examines one particular manifestation of upheaval in American society: the appearance in literature and art of two distinct types of women who challenged the dominant patriarchal culture from the Civil War to just after the conclusion of World War One. The book looks primarily at the literary depiction of the femme fatale and the New Woman, and also dedicates chapters to their influences in fine art and music. The question as to why these two female types precipitated so much intellectual and artistic angst in their educated male readers is further considered. The book traces these two distinct categories of heroines as they make inroads into the preserve of male domination, and examines the various defenses male writers and artists used to slow down the pace of female emancipation both sexually and socially. Along the way, the book looks at the way in which the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago unexpectedly encouraged further female advancement, how Wagner’s operas gave women greater confidence toward self-fulfillment, and how Otto Weininger’s outrageous teachings managed to stem the tide of American female emancipation for a short time. The book surveys how the appearance of the Gibson Girl, the bicycle, and even the advent of bloomers were depicted in literature and supported the advent of this New Woman until she was grudgingly accepted despite philosophical warnings that the female agenda included a plan to destroy masculinity and make men subservient to the female rule. The book concludes with a discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned where the reader observes the complete destruction of the decadent-inclined Anthony Patch by a siren with no heart or introspection.

How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we create a feminism that doesn't turn into yet another tool for oppression? It has become commonplace to argue that, in order to fight the subjugation of women, we have to unpack the ways different forms of oppression intersect with one another: class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and ecology, to name only a few. By arguing that there is no single factor, or arche, explaining the oppression of women, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims: that there is something specific to the oppression of women, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. Anarchism needs feminism to address the continued subordination of all femina, but feminism needs anarchism if it does not want to become the privilege of a few. Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial position and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this new revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation for all living creatures from both capitalist exploitation and an androcentric politics of domination. Either all or none of us will be free.

This volume explores the intersections of diaspora and gender within the diasporic and Indian imagination. It investigates the ways in which race, class, caste, gender, and sexuality intersect with concepts of home, belonging, displacement and the reinvention of the nation and of self. Positioning itself as a companion to Kala Pani Crossings: Revisiting 19th century Migrations from India’s Perspective (Routledge, 2021), the present book examines whether indentureship and diasporic locations marginalised women and men or empowered them; how negotiations or resistances have been determined by race, class, caste, or ethnicity; how traditional standards of Indianness and gender relations have been reshaped; how ideas of home, self and the nation have been impacted in the diaspora and in India after the 19th and early 20th century indentureship migration; and what 21st century Indians stand to gain by theorizing the legacy of 19th century indenture through a gender framework. To understand how fiction and non-fiction writers have negotiated the legacy of indentureship to create spaces where normative practices can be interrogated and challenged, the book gives pride of place to interviews with writers such as Cyril Dabydeen, Ananda Devi, Ramabai Espinet, Davina Ittoo, Brij Lal, Peggy Mohan, Shani Mootoo, and Khal Torabully. Thus rooted in critical analyses but also in subjective and creative perspectives, this volume is a major intervention in understanding Indian indenture and its legacy in the diaspora and in India. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature, history, Indian Ocean studies, migration and South Asian studies.

Susan K. Besse broadens our understanding of the political by establishing the relevance of gender for the construction of state hegemony in Brazil after World War I. Restructuring Patriarchy demonstrates that the consolidation and legitimization of power by President Getulio Vargas's Estado Novo depended to a large extent on the reorganization of social relations in the private sphere. New expectations and patterns of behavior for women emerged in postwar Brazil from heated debates between men and women, housewives and career women, feminists and antifeminists, reformist professionals and conservative clerics, and industrialists and bureaucrats. But as urban middle- and upper-class women challenged patriarchal authority at home and assumed new roles in public, prominent intellectuals, professionals, and politicians defined and imposed new 'hygienic,' rational, and scientific gender norms. Thus, modernization of the gender system within Brazil's rising urban-industrial society accommodated new necessities and opportunities for women without fundamentally changing the gender inequality that underlay the larger structure of social inequality in Brazil.

The fifth edition of the Feminist Theory Reader assembles readings that present key aspects of the conversations within intersectional US and transnational feminisms and continues to challenge readers to rethink the ways in which gender and its multiple intersections are configured by complex, overlapping, and asymmetrical global–local configurations of power. The feminist theoretical debates in this anthology are anchored by five foundational concepts—gender, difference, women’s experiences, the personal is political, and especially intersectionality—which are integral to contemporary feminist critiques. The anthology continues to center the voices of transnational feminist scholars with new essays giving it a sharper focus on the materiality of gender injustices, racisms, ableisms, colonialisms, and especially global capitalisms. Theoretical discussions of translation politics, cross-border solidarity building, ecofeminism, reproductive justice, #MeToo, indigenous feminisms, and disability studies have been incorporated throughout the volume. With the new essays and the addition of a new editor, the Feminist Theory Reader has been brought fully up to date and will continue to be a touchstone for women’s and gender studies students, as well as academics in the field, for many years to come.

The fourth edition of the Feminist Theory Reader continues to challenge readers to rethink the complex meanings of difference outside of contemporary Western feminist contexts. This new edition contains a new subsection on intersectionality. New readings turn readers’ attention to current debates about violence against women, sex work, care work, transfeminisms, and postfeminism. The fourth edition also continues to expand the diverse voices of transnational feminist scholars throughout, with particular attention to questions of class. Introductory essays at the beginning of each section bring the readings together, provide historical and intellectual context, and point to critical additional readings. Five core theoretical concepts—gender, difference, women’s experiences, the personal is political, and intersectionality—anchor the anthology’s organizational framework. New to this edition, text boxes in the introductory essays add excerpts from the writings of foundational theorists that help define important theoretical concepts, and content by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Cathy Cohen, Emi Koyama, Na Young Lee, Angela McRobbie, Viviane Namaste, Vrushali Patil, and Jasbir Puar.

Despite rhythm and blues culture’s undeniable role in molding, reflecting, and reshaping black cultural production, consciousness, and politics, it has yet to receive the serious scholarly examination it deserves. Destructive Desires corrects this omission by analyzing how post-Civil Rights era rhythm and blues culture articulates competing and conflicting political, social, familial, and economic desires within and for African American communities. As an important form of black cultural production, rhythm and blues music helps us to understand black political and cultural desires and longings in light of neo-liberalism’s increased codification in America’s racial politics and policies since the 1970s. Robert J. Patterson provides a thorough analysis of four artists—Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Adina Howard, Whitney Houston, and Toni Braxton—to examine black cultural longings by demonstrating how our reading of specific moments in their lives, careers, and performances serve as metacommentaries for broader issues in black culture and politics.

"Schools and Societies" provides a synthesis of key issues in the sociology of education, focusing on American schools while offering a global, comparative context.