Reconsidering Radical Feminism

What’s the right way to be a feminist? Reconsidering Radical Feminism is not only a clear, precise summary of late-twentieth-century feminist debates about the politics of heterosexuality. It’s also an examination of how we become invested in arguments that position us as particular kinds of feminists – and as gendered subjects. Through the lens of poststructuralism, queer theory, and affect theory, Jessica Joy Cameron investigates the legacy of the passionate dispute between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism. In doing so, she reveals the timeliness of her subject as contemporary policies about sexual assault, consent, and safe spaces come under scrutiny.

What’s the right way to be a feminist? Reconsidering Radical Feminism is not only a clear, precise summary of late-twentieth-century feminist debates about the politics of heterosexuality. It’s also an examination of how we become invested in arguments that position us as particular kinds of feminists – and as gendered subjects. Through the lens of poststructuralism, queer theory, and affect theory, Jessica Joy Cameron investigates the legacy of the passionate dispute between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism. In doing so, she reveals the timeliness of her subject as contemporary policies about sexual assault, consent, and safe spaces come under scrutiny.

Crow (women's studies, U. of Calgary) attempts to retrieve the lost history of North American radical feminists (a group to be distinguished from mainstream feminism by their critique of the entire structure of society (in spite of anti-feminist attempts to label all feminists "radical"). She presents a collection of essays, manifestos, position papers, and newsletters drawn mainly from the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the Redstockings Archives, and the Barnard College Special Collections (thus limiting the material to the East Coast), covering the years 1967 to 1975. Most of the documents are organized topically under the headings lesbianism, heterosexuality, children, race, and class. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Radical Feminism Today offers a timely and engaging account of exactly what feminism is, and what it is not. Author Denise Thompson questions much of what has come to be taken for granted as `feminism' and points to the limitations of implicitly defining feminism in terms of `women', `gender', `difference' or `race//gender//class'. She challenges some of the most widely accepted ideas about feminism and in doing so opens up a number of hitheto closed debates, allowing for the possibility of moving those debates further.

This book redefines ethos--classically thought of as character or credibility--as ecological and feminist, negotiated and renegotiated, and implicated in shifting power dynamics. Building on previous feminist and rhetorical scholarship, it discusses the unique methods by which women's ethos is constructed and transformed.

How has feminist thinking shaped what we know? Emerging from the lecture series "Feminist Knowledge Reconsidered: Feminism and the Academy," held at York University in 2009, Reconsidering Knowledge examines current ideas about feminism in relation to knowledge, education and society, and the future potential for feminist research and teaching in the university context. Connecting early stories of women who defied their exclusion from knowledge creation to contemporary challenges for feminism in universities, this collection assesses how feminist knowledge has influenced domi- nant thinking and transformed teaching and learning. It also focuses on the challenges for feminism as corporatization redefines the role of universities in a global world. The essays reflect on both historical and contemporary themes from a diversity of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, but are united in their exploration of how feminism's continuing contribution to knowledge remains significant, even fundamental, to the transformation of knowledge in the academy and in our world.