Feminist theory inevitably entails a politics, a politics which may seem self-evident since feminism implies a political critique of gender hierarchy. In practice, however, just as there is no singular feminist theory, it follows that there is no univocal feminist politics. This book traces the political implications of major strands of contemporary feminist theory, primarily in the Anglo-American context, but including French feminist thought and international theorizations of feminism, for theorists in an interdisciplinary framework. Addressing a range of feminist discourses, from poststructuralism and psychoanalytic feminism, to materialism, feminist literary criticism, and cultural feminist movements, Wicke argues that in each case a model of absolute difference, a "mistaken identity", results in a turn to an identity politics, because identity is used to bridge the gap between the sexual and the political.
Feminist theory has become conscious of the overreliance on the cdoncept of identity, and this has given rise to the anti-essentialist position and to debates over identity politics - the familiar gender, race, and class triad - in the last decade; what this book claims is that a deeper paradigm of identity often grounds even those theories which seem on the surface to evade or deplore feminist critical debate. By insisting that gender identity is not political per se, this book asks that feminism be seen as a political activity with specific historical and material dimensions, ultimately situating itself as a Western political phenomenon in a global political context. From that vantage point Wicke sympathetically reassesses the impasses and insights of the major arenas of feminist inquiry - the gender division of labour, representation and canonicity, sexual difference and psychoanalysis, sexual objectification and pornography.
The Politics of Feminist Theory asserts that feminist theory needs to embrace its status as a provisional and a critical theory, acknowledge the places from which it speaks, and install the global as its horizon line, in order to find a feminist politics beyond identity.
- ISBN10 0631184473
- ISBN13 9780631184478
- Publish Date 10 September 1992
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 7 September 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
- Imprint Blackwell Publishers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 200
- Language English