Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-14T23:37:55.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“I Am Not a Feminist, But…”: How Feminism Became the F-Word

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Toril Moi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If PMIA invites us to reflect on the state of feminist theory today, it must be because there is a problem. Is feminist theory thought to be in trouble because feminism is languishing? Or because there is a problem with theory? Or—as it seems to me—both? Theory is a word usually used about work done in the poststructuralist tradition. (Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault are “theory” Simone de Beauvoir and Ludwig Wittgenstein are not.) The poststructuralist paradigm is now exhausted. We are living through an era of “crisis,” as Thomas Kuhn would call it, an era in which the old is dying and the new has not yet been born (74–75). The fundamental assumptions of feminist theory in its various current guises (queer theory, postcolonial feminist theory, transnational feminist theory, psychoanalytic feminist theory, and so on) are still informed by some version of poststructuralism. No wonder, then, that so much feminist work today produces only tediously predictable lines of argument.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 1735 - 1741
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

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.)

References

Works Cited

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1989. Trans. of Le deuxième sexe. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.Google Scholar
Rosalind, Coward. Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium? “London: Harper, 1999.Google Scholar
Susan, Faludi. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: Morrow, 1999.Google Scholar
R., Janes M. “On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Carol Poston. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1988. 297–307.Google Scholar
Michiko, Kakutani. “What Has Happened to Men? An Author Tries to Answer.” Rev. of Stiffed, by Susan Faludi. New York Times 28 Sept. 1991: B1+.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.10.7208/chicago/9780226458106.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rush, Limbaugh. The Way Things Ought to Be. New York: Pocket, 1992.Google Scholar
Toril, Moi. Sex, Gender and the Body: The Student Edition of What Is a Woman? Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Camille, Paglia. Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays. New York: Vintage, 1992.Google Scholar
Camille, Paglia. Vamps and Tramps: New Essays. New York: Vintage, 1994.Google Scholar
Daphne, Patai. Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. Lanham: Rowman, 1998.Google Scholar
Katie, Roiphe. The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism. Boston: Little, 1994.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Maralee, and Kenneth, J. Cooper. “Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked.” Washington Post 23 Aug. 1992: A15.Google Scholar
Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. New York: Simon, 1994.Google Scholar
Stephanie, Theobald. “Lesbians on Horseback.” On the Move: Feminism for a New Generation. Ed. Walter, Natasha. London: Virago, 1999. 85–103.Google Scholar
Natasha, Walter. The New Feminism. 1998. London: Virago, 1999.Google Scholar
Naomi, Wolf. Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993.Google Scholar
Cathy, Young. Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality. New York: Free, 1999.Google Scholar