Feminist Imagination: Genealogies in Feminist Theory / Edition 1

by Vikki Bell

Overview

Reading feminist theory as a complex imaginative achievement, Feminist Imagination considers feminist commitment through the interrogation of its philosophical, political and affective connections with the past, and especially with the ‘race' trials of the twentieth century. The book looks at: the 'directionlessness' of contemporary feminist thought; the question of essentialism and embodiment; the racial tensions in the work of Simone de Beauvoir; the totalitarian character in Hannah Arendt; the 'mimetic Jew' and the concept of mimesis in the work of Judith Butler.

Vikki Bell provides a compelling rethinking of feminist theory as bound up with attempts to understand oppression outside a focus on 'women'. She affirms femini

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803979710
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/28/2000
Series:	Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Vikki Bell lectures in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, university of London.

Table of Contents

Affirming Feminism
Phantastic Communities and Dangerous Thinking
Feminist Political Imagination
Suffering
Thinking Politics with Simone de Beauvoir and Richard Wright
Appearance
Thinking Difference in the Political Realm with Hannah Arendt
Mimesis as Cultural Survival
Judith Butler and Anti-Semitism
Essentialism and Embodiment
The Politics Behind the Paranoia
Conclusion
Trauma and Temporality in Genealogical Feminist Critique

Editorial Reviews

'Vikki Bell's book is both philosophically erudite and politically acute. She is an excellent reader of philosophy and literature alike, uncovering the most crucial cultural presumptions in contemporary political discourse. She moves with great skill through Simone de Beavoir, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Wright, making us rethink some of the most basic philosophical notions that inform our ordinary understanding of politics. Her emphasis on temporality and fantasy will provoke us all to think more radically about where we are and where we think we are going' - Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor, University of California at Berkeley

From the Publisher