ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

section Section I|18 pages

Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces

part 1|41 pages

Mid-twentieth Century Foundations

chapter 2|6 pages

Women’s Liberation

Seeing the Revolution Clearly

chapter 3|6 pages

Lost Visions of Equality

The Labor Origins of the Next Women’s Movement

chapter 4|7 pages

Globalization of the Local/Localization of the Global

Mapping Transnational Women’s Movements

chapter 5|6 pages

A Black Feminist Statement

chapter 6|3 pages

La Chicana

chapter 7|6 pages

Lesbianism

An Act of Resistance

chapter 8|6 pages

Bargaining with Patriarchy

part 2|28 pages

Moving Beyond Binaries and Borders

chapter 9|8 pages

Lost (and Found?) in Translation

Feminisms in Hemispheric Dialogue

chapter 11|6 pages

Understanding Reproductive Justice

chapter 12|8 pages

The Transfeminist Manifesto

section Section II|14 pages

Theorizing Intersectionality and Difference

part 1|23 pages

Intersectionality

chapter 14|9 pages

Critical Thinking About Inequality

An Emerging Lens

chapter 15|7 pages

Re-Thinking Intersectionality

chapter 16|7 pages

From Patriarchy to Intersectionality

A Transnational Feminist Assessment of How Far We’ve Really Come

part 2|70 pages

Configurations of Difference

chapter 17|10 pages

The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism

Towards a More Progressive Union

chapter 18|7 pages

Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy

Rethinking Women of Color Organizing

chapter 20|14 pages

Gender and Nation

chapter 21|12 pages

Decolonizing Feminism

Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy

part 3|52 pages

Boundaries and Belongings

chapter 24|3 pages

The Bridge Poem

chapter 25|7 pages

Report from the Bahamas

chapter 26|5 pages

Identity

Skin, Blood, Heart

chapter 27|4 pages

I Am Your Sister

Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities

chapter 28|8 pages

Well Founded Fear

Political Asylum and the Boundaries of Sexual Identity in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

chapter 30|9 pages

The Veil Debate—Again

chapter 31|5 pages

Captured in Translation

Africa and Feminisms in the Age of Globalization

chapter 32|6 pages

Settler Xicana

Postcolonial and Decolonial Reflections on Incommensurability

section Section III|14 pages

Theorizing Feminist Knowledge and Agency

part 1|64 pages

Standpoints and Situated Knowledges

chapter 33|11 pages

The Feminist Standpoint

Toward a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism

chapter 35|12 pages

“Under Western Eyes” Revisited

Feminist Solidarity Through Anticapitalist Struggles

chapter 36|8 pages

Situated Knowledges

The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

chapter 37|13 pages

Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens

The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?

chapter 38|5 pages

Standpoint Theories

Productively Controversial

chapter 39|2 pages

The Welder

part 2|31 pages

Subject Formation and Performativity

chapter 40|11 pages

Multiple Mediations

Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception

chapter 42|9 pages

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution

An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory

part 3|35 pages

Embodied and Affective Knowledge

chapter 43|12 pages

Love and Knowledge

Emotion in Feminist Epistemology

chapter 45|11 pages

Reclaiming Women’s Bodies

Colonialist Trope or Critical Epistemology?

section Section IV|8 pages

Imagine Otherwise/Solidarity Reconsidered

part |37 pages

Part 1: Imagine Otherwise

chapter 47|11 pages

“I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess”

Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory

chapter 48|11 pages

Undoing Theory

The “Transgender Question” and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory

chapter 49|7 pages

“I’m a Citizen of the Universe”

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change

chapter 50|8 pages

The Color of   Violence

Reflecting on Gender, Race, and Disability in Wartime

part |36 pages

Part 2: Solidarity Reconsidered

chapter 51|10 pages

Transnational Feminisms in Question

chapter 52|8 pages

The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women”

Navigating Between Nationalism and Feminism

chapter 53|10 pages

Eco/Feminism and Rewriting the Ending of Feminism

From the Chipko Movement to Clayoquot Sound

chapter 55|2 pages

Out of Now—Here