Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T23:33:37.894Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Late Modern Feminist Subversions: Sex, Subjectivity, and Embodiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2019

Peter E. Gordon
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Warren Breckman
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

The story of late modern feminist thought is not a story of waves or turns that succeed one another. Feminist thought does not follow a simple linear temporality, even if we often tend to tell the story that way. Building on intellectual feminist traditions as well as engaging with their historical moment, feminist thinkers follow a more complicated periodization. As the incarnation of a long feminist tradition, post-1968 feminism holds an especially important place in the story of late modern Europe and its intellectual and political revolutions, though that place is often seen to be historically past, even antiquated. It has been conventionally named as belonging to the “second wave,” making claims to demands beyond the right to vote. A more fruitful framework, however, would be to think of late-twentieth-century feminist thought emerging out of overlaps, echoes, and legacies that often coexisted in the same moment. It both reflected and subverted the conventions and norms of its time, while maintaining its transgressive and utopian orientation. At the heart of feminist projects lay the imperative to theorize and wrestle with the category of “woman” and how it had been given meaning through time and in culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×