Despite its familiar caricature, feminist essentialism is not a unitary system of thought. Marshall (1994:104) maintains that three types of essentialist thinking can be identified, ‘each resting on different sorts of argument about how biological difference is transformed into subjective difference-biological essentialism,4 philosophical essentialism and historical reification.’ Biological essentialism is usually associated with the work […]

The issues of subjectivity and identity within feminist theorising are closely related to issues of epistemology within feminist theoretical analysis and the relationship between feminist knowledge and women’s experience. Feminist debates in the 1990s are more reflective of the ongoing debates around feminist epistemology and theory both from within and outside feminism (see Chapter 2). […]

Postmodernism and poststructuralism, with their emphasis on ‘deconstruction’ and difference, reinforced critiques that had already been directed at the ‘essentialism’, ethnocentrism and ‘ahistoricism’ of branches of feminist theory. The problematic nature of terms such as ‘patriarchy’, ‘women’ and ‘oppression’ was for those ‘at the margins’ of feminism further highlighted in the debates within the feminist […]

Feminism has always engaged with the ‘master’ discourses with which it has found itself allied, whether they are the discourses of modernity or postmodernity. It cannot be denied that the theoretical frameworks and principles of operation which have characterised feminism have been the result of feminism’s intersection with these discourses, either the ‘metanarratives’ of modernity, […]

Issues of diversity and ‘difference’ infeminist theorising INTRODUCTION This first chapter investigates feminism’s location at the intersection of modernity and postmodernity, and examines some of the debates which have been leading feminism towards a possible paradigm shift. As it confronts critiques from within and outside its own discourses, contemporary feminism is reassessing its epistemological foundations […]

The use of the concept of postfeminism is problematic for two reasons, which need to be clarified: first, the widespread ‘popular’ conception of postfeminism as a result of the appropriation of the term by the media; and second, the uneven development of postfeminism as a movement expressing change, and the resulting chronological and geographical distinctions […]

The relationship between postfeminism, postmodernism and post-colonialism is an important one when understanding some of the central issues considered in the debates outlined in the following chapters. The concept of ‘post:’ common to all three discourses can be the subject of misconception in the popular interpretation of the terms. Postfeminism as in the case of […]

Postfeminism, as an expression of a stage in the constant evolutionary movement of feminism, has gained greater currency in recent years. Once seen, somewhat crudely, as ‘anti-feminist’, the term is now understood as a useful conceptual frame of reference encompassing the intersection of feminism with a number of other anti-foundationalist movements including postmodernism, post-structuralism and […]

Once seen as synonymous with ‘anti-feminist’ postfeminism is now understood as the theoretical meeting ground between feminism and anti-foundationalist movements such as postmodernism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism. In this clear exposition of some of the major debates, theorists and practitioners, Ann Brooks shows how feminism has moved away from its foundations in the liberal humanist models […]