Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice

by H. Gunkel (Editor), C. Nigianni (Editor), F. Soderback (Editor)

Overview

This exciting collection offers a range of perspectives from some of the most prominent feminist voices of our time, including Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Claire Colebrook, Elizabeth Grosz, and Jack Halberstam. Employing experimental modes of thinking and writing, the contributors remain faithful to the feminist tradition of subversion and resistance, while refusing to submit to its political tradition of a loving sisterhood or dutiful daughterhood. Through productive disagreement and cognitive dissonance, the essays presented here reflect the specific circumstances of our present, and attempt to dream and envision possible alternatives for the future. The volume thus invites us to think of the becoming of feminism itself, and the possibilities of future feminisms-to-come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230118317
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	08/16/2012
Series:	Breaking Feminist Waves
Edition description:	2012
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Chrysanthi Nigianni is a Visiting Scholar at City University of New York, GLAGS.

Table of Contents

I. NEW CONCEPTS Introduction: A Politics of Polyphony; Fanny Söderbäck 1. The Future of Feminist Theory: Dreams for New Knowledges; Elizabeth Grosz 2. The Need for the New in Feminist Activist Discourse: Notes Towards a Scene of Anachronism; Red Chidgey 3. The Interruptive Feminine: Aleatory Time and Feminist Politics; Emanuela Bianchi 4. Écriture Futuriste; M. F. Simone Roberts II. NEW BODIES AND ETHICS Introduction: A Politics of Displeasure; Chrysanthi Nigianni 5. Feminist Extinction; Claire Colebrook 6. Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water; Astrida Neimanis 7. The Breathing Body in Movement; Davina Quinlivan 8. Incubators, Pumps, and Other Hard-Breasted Bodies; Katie Lloyd Thomas III. NEW SUBJECTIVITIES Introduction: A Politics of Visibility; Henriette Gunkel 9. Rethinking Sexual Difference and Kinship in Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism; Judith Butler 10. Transgenres and the Plane of Gender Imperceptibility; Jami Weinstein 11. Primal Scenes, Forbidden Words, and Reclaimed Spaces:Voice, Body and Poetic Form in Recent South African Writing; Gabeba Baderoon 12. Going Gaga: Dissent, Refusal, and Feminism; Jack Halberstam 13. (Un)naming the Third Sex After Beauvoir: Towards a Third Dimensional Feminism; Kyoo Lee

Editorial Reviews

"This book offers radically new ideas circulating alongside neologisms: fluid bodies that live in aleatory and disruptive times, beyond and within the organism, in contact with the ecosystem and with life itself, while motherhood takes the place of advanced technologies and vice versa. Contributions are budding in creations that are at once aesthetic, philosophical, and political: dissidence, anarchism, humor, but also solidarity, vitality, and subversive resistance. The voices of these 'undutiful daughters' do not advocate a new system of values they do not belong to any cult of identity that would lock them up in some commonplace universe. The alternative that is proposed in their hymn to singularity and creativity is a 'multiverse' (to adopt a term from modern cosmology). A utopia? Our future." -Julia Kristeva, University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot, France

"A polyphony of singular feminist voices tuned on the 'third wave' critical rhythm, this book is relevant to both mapping the multiple threads of feminist theory and providing new conceptual sounds, in order to revitalize the unruly spirit that has been an essential feature of feminism. It succeeds in cracking the surface of a seemingly stagnating present and provides unforeseen political and speculative routes for feminisms-to-come." - Adriana Cavarero, University of Verona, Italy

"This wonderful collection challenges practices and tropes of loyalty, transmission and generational fidelity by suggesting the affirmative and generative, rather than reproductive, potentiality of feminist theorization. Arguing for unfaithfulness as a form of critical disobedience, the contributors articulate forms of feminist theory that are not beholden to the genuflection to foremothers but are rather always complex in its temporal affiliations and divergences with histories and identities. A must-read for those invested in the multiple futures of feminist theory." - Jasbir Puar, Rutgers, United States

From the Publisher