ABSTRACT
What can Western feminism hope to learn from women whose feminisms were originally shaped by experiences behind the ‘Iron Curtain’? In the first instance, an acute sensitivity to the importance of a politics that is responsive to needs. In its social democratic heyday, Western feminism embraced a politics of contested need interpretation. Now, though, a neoliberal version has converted feminism into an attitudinal resource for the individual woman who is bent upon success. The takeover was made easy by the poor self-understanding of social democratic feminism. My chapter will compare Ágnes Heller’s theory of ‘radical needs’ and Maria Márkus’s account of the ‘politicization of needs’ and apply both to the normative clarification of endangered feminist agendas. We look to the Budapest School women for more than just a way of conceptualising the political radicalism of modern feminism as a social movement. Women need heroes too, and a reflection upon the dignified and admirable lives of Heller and Márkus has much to contribute to an ongoing search for a feminist ethic of the self.
