Contemporary Feminist Utopianism

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism
Author: Lucy Sargisson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113476765X

A new and challenging entry into the debates between feminism and postmodernism, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism challenges some basic preconceptions about the role of political theory today. Sargisson explores current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction. Utopian thinking is offered as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. This book provides an exploration of, and exercise in, utopian thought.

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism
Author: Lucy Sargisson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134767668

A new and challenging entry into the debates between feminism and postmodernism, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism challenges some basic preconceptions about the role of political theory today. Sargisson explores current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction. Utopian thinking is offered as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. This book provides an exploration of, and exercise in, utopian thought.

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism
Author: Lucy Sargisson
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780415141758

Contemporary Feminist Utopianismis a stimulating, original and accessible survey of some of the more complex strands of contemporary thought. Exploring current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction, Lucy Sargisson argues for utopianism as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. The author rejects approaches to utopianism which insist upon utopia as a perfect blueprint for the future. Instead, she identifies a new transgressive utopianism which destroys old certainties in favor of a new and more unsettling vision of a feminist future. This utopianism stresses process over product and is informed by contemporary poststructuralist theories of language. Such a utopianism resists closure, negating and destroying the dualistic system of thought she argues underpins the western tradition.

The Feminist Utopia Project

The Feminist Utopia Project
Author: Alexandra Brodsky
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2015-09-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1558619011

This “incredible addition to the feminist canon” brings together the most inspiring, creative, and courageous voices concerning modern women’s issues (Jessica Valenti, editor of Yes Means Yes). In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge feminist writers—including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie—invite us to imagine a world of freedom and equality in which: An abortion provider reinvents birth control . . . The economy values domestic work . . . A teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music . . . The Constitution is re-written with women’s rights at the fore . . . The standard for good sex is raised with a woman’s pleasure in mind . . . The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given, “offering playful, earnest, challenging, and hopeful versions of our collective future in the form of creative nonfiction, fiction, visual art, poetry, and more” (Library Journal).

Postmodern Utopias and Feminist Fictions

Postmodern Utopias and Feminist Fictions
Author: Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107038359

Covering a range of texts from prominent feminist writers, this book examines notions of utopia in twenty-first-century speculative literature.

Feminist Utopianism & Education

Feminist Utopianism & Education
Author: Christine Forde
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9087903227

This book looks to feminist utopian thinking to seek alternative conceptualisations of the issue of gender and education.

Notes on Nowhere

Notes on Nowhere
Author: Jennifer Burwell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 237
Release: 1997
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816626380

Looks at feminist science fiction in the context of utopian thought. The term utopia implies both "good place" and "nowhere". Since Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models of society have sought to understand the implications of these somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, Jennifer Burwell uses contemporary feminist science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of utopian writing and thought. Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction of five feminist writers -- Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig -- and poses questions central to utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by exposing contradiction and struggle as central aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for emancipatory political uses? Notes on Nowhere makes an original, significant, and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the political and literary dimensions of the utopian impulse in literature and social theory.

Partial Visions

Partial Visions
Author: Angelika Bammer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134980108

Positing that a radical utopianism is one of the most vital impulses of feminist politics, Partial Visions traces the articulation of this impulse in the work of Euro-American, French and German women writers of the 1970s. It argues that this feminist utopianism both continued and reconceptualized a critical dimension of Left politics, yet concludes that feminist utopianism is not just visionary, but myopic - time and culture bound - as well.

Utopian and Science Fiction by Women

Utopian and Science Fiction by Women
Author: Jane L. Donawerth
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1994-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780815626206

This collection speaks to common themes and strategies in women's writing about their different worlds, from Margaret Cavendish's seventeenth-century Blazing World of the North Pole to the "men-less" islands of the French writer Scudery to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utopias of Shelley and Gaskell, and science fiction pulps, finishing with the more contemporary feminist fictions of Le Guin, Wittig, Piercy, and Michison. It shows that these fictions historically speak to each other and together amount to a literary tradition of women's writing about a better place.

Into the Forest

Into the Forest
Author: Jean Hegland
Publisher: Dial Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2009-12-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307573567

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home. Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other. Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America. Praise for Into the Forest “[A] beautifully written and often profoundly moving novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A work of extraordinary power, insight and lyricism, Into the Forest is both an urgent warning and a passionate celebration of life and love.”—Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade “From the first page, the sense of crisis and the lucid, honest voice of the . . . narrator pull the reader in. . . . A truly admirable addition to a genre defined by the very high standards of George Orwell's 1984.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Beautifully written.”—Kirkus Reviews “This beautifully written story captures the essential nature of the sister bond: the fierce struggle to be true to one’s own self, only to learn that true strength comes from what they are able to share together.”—Carol Saline, co-author of Sisters “Jean Hegland’s sense of character is firm, warm, and wise. . . . [A] fine first novel.”—John Keeble, author of Yellowfish