Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (RLE Feminist Theory) / Edition 1

by Rosemary Hennessy

Overview

Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse confronts the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking ‘woman’ as a discursively constructed subject. The book looks at the problem of examining critically the social dimensions on which theories of discourse are premised: how such theories understand ‘materiality’; the relation between ‘women’s experience’ and feminist politics, and that between history and discourse. Rosemary Hennessy considers the work of Kristeva, Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe, and argues for a materialist feminist re-articulation of discourse as ideology. Concerns over identity and difference are incorporated into a rewriting of materialist feminism's analysis of women's oppression across capitalist and patriarchal structures. In adapting postmodernist theories in this way, Hennessy develops a project of social change, where feminism, while maintaining its specificity, is necessarily aligned with other emancipatory movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415635714
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/11/2012
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: Feminist Theory
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Materialist Feminism in the Postmodern Academy: Toward a Global Social Analytic 2. The Materiality of Discourse: Feminism and Post-Marxism 3. The Feminist Standpoint, Discourse and Authority: From Women’s Lives to Ideology Critique 4. New Woman, New History. Notes. Bibliography. Index.