ABSTRACT
With resurgent feminist social movements across the globe and an assertive gender activism at work in architecture, it is timely to revisit an era when architectural feminism was intensely invested in the ‘problem’ of architectural theory’s contribution to the women’s movement. During the 1990s, key architectural feminists shone a spotlight on theory’s own identity. Using the informal archive of the open shelf library, this paper reprises the 1990s criticisms of theory’s relationship to language, social agency and sites of transformative politics. One feminist described the question as the ‘limits of architectural discourse in expression of sociocultural and political critique’ (Coleman, 1996). This paper does not endorse many of the charges against post structuralist philosophy but it does argue that a number of valid criticisms were raised and continue to be worthy of address. I contend that we should have a contemporary debate about spheres of action for feminist theory, as we ponder: what can a feminist theorist do?
