Introducing Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity.
(Collection Introduction)
Original book: Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Editors of the original book: Susan Archer Mann (University of New Orleans); Ashly Suzanne Patterson (Southeastern Louisiana University).
About the book: Introductions + selections from original works; relatively up-to-date and wide-ranging coverage.
About the Chinese translators: The Internet Philosophers’ Neighbors Club (网哲邻人部) presents its 2022 tour de force: Neon Genesis Feminist: The Movie—A True Heart for You / まごころを、君に—3rd Impact.1 Tired of identifying with roles in our separate “island universes”—“I’m from a Double First-Class university, you’re an ‘elite’ Chinese student abroad, they’re a pretty, literary-minded girl”2—we are moving toward a free association for audacious labor driven by our interests: work with an endpoint. Perhaps we have our limitations—“otaku / bourgeois / bound to die.” Yet “if friends and kin in Luoyang ask after me: a heart clear as ice in a vessel of jade.”3 That ice-clear heart lies not in the interiority of “I truly yearn for XX! Believe me!” but in the historical ruins of what we have done.
A superfluous remark: We translators will make this theatrical–performative declaration by way of provocation:4 although there are disagreements among the constellations of feminist theory, there is almost no conflict in principle over completely abolishing such remnants of feudal patriarchal kinship as bride price / dowry—unleash the Smash-the-Four-Olds Fire Punch against capitalist patriarchy’s monsters and demons!5 If you doubt that, why not read the book through? We believe this book will contribute to the great unity and great emancipation of working people the world over, including women and men.
First published by the Internet Philosophers’ Neighbors Club; republished with permission by Lab on Roof.
(Serve it up, then.)
From the anthology’s Introduction, p. xxi:
Toward a history of the vanishing present . . .
—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 1999
Constructing feminist theory is a social practice and a form of labor. Just as textile workers weave yarn and thread to create fabrics, feminist theorists weave concepts and ideas to better understand the gendered fabric of social life. Although all knowledge is socially constructed, doing feminist theory is a critical social practice directed toward better understanding and improving the position of women in diverse social locations.
Like any social theory anthology, the readings in this text ask big questions: “What is going on just now? What is happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise moment in which we are living?” (Foucault quoted in Best and Kellner, 2001: 5). To answer these questions, readers are provided with a diverse array of readings that attempt to understand and to analyze the social world and how it came to be. Because this is a feminist theory anthology, attention centers on what these various social transformations mean for gender relations and for women of different classes, races, sexualities, and global locations. These different social locations present a multiplicity of lenses for viewing the world and each theorist provides insights into her or his own “vanishing present” that helps us to better understand our own (Spivak, [1999] 2006).6
The links below lead to the Chinese translation project’s readings.
General Introduction & Glossary
Chapter 2: Liberal Feminism—Introduction
Chapter 3: Radical Feminism—Introduction
Chapter 4: Socialist Feminism—Introduction
Chapter 5: Intersectionality Theory
Chapter 6: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Queer and Transgender Theory
Chapter 7: Third-Wave Feminism
Chapter 8: Feminism and Imperialism in Early Modernity