Living a Feminist Life

Living a Feminist Life PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373378
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

Living a Feminist Life

Living a Feminist Life PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373378
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

The Conversation Begins

The Conversation Begins PDF Author: Christina Looper Baker
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 9780553375244
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The first book to take an honest, in-depth look at the difficulties and rewards of being a feminist mother and to ask prominent feminist daughters whether their mother's vision was successfully or unsuccessfully transmitted to them while growing up. Sisterhood, not motherhood, has been the focus of American feminism for the past twenty-five years. In fact, during the 70s many feminists viewed motherhood as a hindrance to women's progress toward equality, an attitude that alienated legions of potentially feminist women by ignoring--even disparaging--the needs and concerns of those who were mothers. Nevertheless, many of those women had daughters who now have come of age and are reshaping the women's movement to suit their needs. The passing of the torch has not been entirely smooth, however. As young women define an agenda of their own, they also find themselves having to assess the legacy of their foremothers--for better and for worse. In "The Conversation Begins, Christina Looper Baker and her daughter, Christina Baker Kline, draw on talks with a diverse range of over sixty women of both generations, asking provocative, often painful questions in an attempt to bridge the gap between them. Revealing first-person narratives based on interviews with twenty-two sets of feminist mothers and daughters--including Paula Gunn Allen, Letty Pogrebin, Naomi Wolf, Barbara Ehrenreich, Marilyn French, Tillie Olsen, Joy Harjo, and many others--comprise the heart of this magnificent testament to the strength of American feminism and the bond between feminist mothers and daughters.

Feminism Unmodified

Feminism Unmodified PDF Author: Catharine A. MacKinnon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674298743
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"Catharine A. MacKinnon, noted feminist and legal scholar, explores and develops her original theories and practical proposals on sexual politics and law. These discourses, originally delivered as speeches, have been brilliantly woven into a book that retains all the spontaneity and accessibility of a live presentation. Through these engaged works on issues such as rape, abortion, athletics, sexual harassment, and pornography, MacKinnon seeks feminism on its own terms, unconstrained by the limits of prior traditions. She argues that viewing gender as a matter of sameness and difference--as virtually all existing theory and law have done--covers up the reality of gender, which is a system of social hierarchy, an imposed inequality of power"--Back cover.

Willful Subjects

Willful Subjects PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376105
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In Willful Subjects Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.

Telling to Live

Telling to Live PDF Author: Latina Feminist Group,
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822383284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories. The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures. This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower. Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma Alarcón, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. Cantú, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria Holguín Cuádraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, Inés Hernández-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia López, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

The Promise of Happiness

The Promise of Happiness PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082239278X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.

Cultural Politics of Emotion

Cultural Politics of Emotion PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748691146
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics. Ahmed considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to areas such as feminist and queer politics. Debates on international terrorism, asylum and migration, as well as reconciliation and reparation, are explored through topical case studies. In this book the difficult issues are confronted head on. The Cultural Politics of Emotion is in dialogue with recent literature on emotions within gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Throughout the book, Ahmed develops a theory of how emotions work, and the effects they have on our day-to-day lives. New for this editionA substantial 15,000-word Afterword on 'Emotions and Their Objects' which provides an original contribution to the burgeoning field of affect studiesA revised BibliographyUpdated throughout.

Prolife Feminism

Prolife Feminism PDF Author: Linda Naranjo-Huebl
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477173056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
"We need a new way of seeing!" --Jennifer Ferguson, South African musician & Former MP, African National Congress Is abortion on "demand" a woman's right, or a wrong inflicted on women? Is it a mark of liberation, or a sign that women are not yet free? From Anglo-Irish writer Mary Wollstonecraft to Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, many eighteenth- through twenty-first-century feminists have opposed it as violence against fetal lives arising from violence against female lives. This more inclusive, surprisingly old-but-new vision of reproductive choice is called prolife feminism. This book's original edition in 1995 offered brilliant essays on abortion and related social justice issues by the likes of suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. A decade of activism and research since has made this second, greatly expanded second edition necessary. It not only documents the continuing evolution of prolife feminism worldwide, but more accurately represents the rich diversity of past and present women--and men--who have stood up for both mother and child. It thus is a vital, unique resource for peacemaking in the increasingly globalized abortion war.

Nasty women talk back

Nasty women talk back PDF Author: Joy Watson
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 0639963617
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Women, womyn & womxn: Are they really nasty? This collection contains humour and pathos; it an easy read, despite being academically grounded and completely relevant. Wonderful doodles at the start of each essay soften the page. This is a want-to-read book on an extremely important topic. In South Africa the Fallist movement became an extremely important platform to discuss gender, while #metoo has become a global phenomenon. Ashanti Kunene, a Fallist-leader, is one of the contributors. Other essays include “Pussies are not for grabbing” (Joy Watson), “My arms are tired of holding this sign” (Amanda Gouws), “Oh, no you can’t go to heaven in a broke down car” (Anastasia Slamat), “I’m with her” (Zama Khanyile), “To Womb it may concern” (Christi van der Westhuizen), “Womb with a (very strong) view” (Helen Moffet) and “Diary of an Indian woman” (Aarti Narse); but there are many more – twenty eight in total. The idea for the collection was born, cradled and nurtured between friends who wanted to create a space for writing and thinking about the marches. The group of feminists who contributed to this collection used the marches and the posters inspired by the marches as a vehicle which galvanised women into action to put pen to paper and show fervour for ongoing feminist activism. The nexus of this beautifully written and evocatively illustrated collection is telling narratives that link very personal stories with deeply political issues. These are the stories told by nasty women who are making the personal political, who are seeking to live their lives in ways that resist and challenge patriarchy. Through their very intimate nature these are stories that speak to the creation of a different kind of social order, one based on equity, the promotion of human rights and social justice. The presidential campaign in the USA grabbed the global imagination. It also grabbed the feminist imagination, presenting the hope that if a woman could become the president of the USA, women throughout the world would finally break through the reinforced glass ceiling. However, when it didn’t happen, the lost opportunity became the metaphorical kick in the feminist gut on a global scale. Through the subsequent misogyny, vulgarity, lewd comments, the pussy grabbing video, and the threats of the erosion of feminist activism in the trenches, worldwide a deep mourning arose from the feminist community. It was the name calling of “nasty women” that really smarted. Initial feelings of anger gave rise to empowerment of women — those who talk back to patriarchy — to embrace the label of “nasty women”.

Hood Feminism

Hood Feminism PDF Author: Mikki Kendall
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560556
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, in The Atlantic “One of the most important books of the current moment.”—Time “A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone.”—Gabrielle Union, author of We’re Going to Need More Wine A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.