Feminism(s) and the law. Old legacies and new challenges

In the ongoing debate on the health of feminism, some authors accuse “second wave” feminists, especially European “feminists of difference”, of having weakened fem¬inist claims by abandoning the emancipatory inspiration of “first wave” feminism. “Sec¬ond wave” feminists are also accused of overlooking the importance of the law. If we delve deeper, however, their perspective on law appears to represent one of their most important legacies. Abandoning it in favor of an acritical enthusiasm for liberal gender mainstreaming or a gendered “politics of identity” would be a mistake. Today’s femi¬nists should instead work to adapt this legacy to contemporary challenges.En el debate en curso sobre la “salud” del feminismo, algunos autores acusan a las(os) feministas de la “segunda ola”, especialmente a las(os) “feministas de la diferencia”, de haber debilitado los reclamos feministas al abandonar la inspiración emancipadora de la “primera ola”. Las(os) feministas de la “segunda ola” también son acusadas(os) de ig¬norar la importancia del derecho. Sin embargo, si se profundiza en ello, su perspectiva sobre el derecho parece representar uno de sus más importantes legados. Abandonarlo en favor de un entusiasmo acrítico por la corriente principal liberal de género o una “política de identidad” de género sería un error. Las(os) feministas de hoy en día debe¬rían trabajar para adaptar este legado a los desafíos contemporáneos

A call to loyalty: women’s bodies, playgrounds and battlefields

Este artículo muestra cómo los argumentos feministas utilizados por discursos de derecha populistas y xenofóbicos contribuyen a la neutralización del feminismo en el discurso público europeo, la libertad de la mujer se invoca para fines que tienen poco que ver con ellas mismas. El cuerpo de la mujer se queda exterior y ajeno a la esfera moderna de la autonomía y sigue siendo una posesión: poseído, reapropiado, cubierto y expuesto, se convierte en campo de batalla para los conflictos identitarios de la mo¬dernidad tardía. Por otro lado, la aspiración a la autonomía, transformada en deseo de consumo, causa que se convierta en un espectáculo y en una mercancía, es decir, en un patio de recreo del orden neoliberal. Ciertas tendencias en el feminismo contemporá¬neo reflejan esta versión mimética de la libertad, haciendo al feminismo vulnerable al nuevo espíritu del capitalismo (Fraser, 2009) y a los discursos populistas y xenófobos de la derecha.The article aims at analysing how the use of “feminist” arguments by xenophobic, right –wing and populist discourses– constitutes a specific form of neutralisation of feminism. In European public discourse, women’s freedom is becoming a pawn in a political game that has nothing to do with women themselves. Women’s bodies –posses¬sed, re-appropriated, impregnated, covered and uncovered– become battlefields for the “identity conflicts” of late modernity. On the other hand, the aspiration to autonomy, re-narrated in late capitalism in terms of freedom to consume, causes women bodies, exposed, spectacularised, commodified, to become the playgrounds of neo-liberal order (Fraser, 2009). Some trends in contemporary feminism reflect this mimetic version of freedom, thus contributing to make feminist critique suitable to the spirit of new capi¬talism and easily manipulated by xenophobic, right-wing populist discourses

White Feminist Gaslighting

Structural gaslighting arises when conceptual work functions to obscure the non-accidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm they produce and license. This paper examines the role that structural gaslighting plays in white feminist methodology and epistemology using Fricker’s (2007) discussion of hermeneutical injustice as an illustration. Fricker’s work produces structural gaslighting through several methods: i) the outright denial of the role that structural oppression plays in producing interpretive harm, ii) the use of single-axis conceptual resources to understand intersectional oppression, and iii) the failure to recognize the legacy of women of color’s epistemic resistance work surrounding the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. I argue that Fricker’s whitewashed discussion of epistemic resistance to sexual harassment in the United States is a form of structural gaslighting that fails to treat women of color as knowers and exemplifies the strategic forgetting that is a central methodological tactic of white feminism

Climate justice, commons, and degrowth

Economic inequality reduces the political space for addressing climate change, by producing fear-based populism. Only when the safety, social status, and livelihoods of all members of society are assured will voluntary, democratic decisions be possible to reverse climate change and fairly mitigate its effects. Socio-environmental and climate justice, commoning, and decolonization are pre-conditions for participatory, responsible governance that both signals and assists the development of equitable socio-political systems. Degrowth movements, when they explicitly prioritize equity, can help to focus activism for climate justice and sustainable livelihoods. This paper overviews the theoretical grounding for these arguments, drawing from the work of ecofeminist and Indigenous writers. Indigenous (and also ecofeminist) praxis is grounded in activists' leadership for commoning and resistance to extraction, the fossil fuel economy, and commodified property rights. These movements are building a politics of decolonization, respect, solidarity, and hope rather than xenophobia and despair.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Biologies: Gender and the Promises of Biotechnology

Three decades of work in the feminist studies of science and technology have shaped our evolving understandings of the relationships between sex, gender, and biotechnology. Sex, and gender are most often reduced to binary categories, severely limiting our conceptions not only of human diversity, but those of science and technology. Using two case study set in India, transnational surrogacy and the Indian Genome Variation Project, this paper explores how popular positions around biotechnology are reduced to binary positions promoting and opposing biotechnology as the solution for the economic and social development of India. By locating surrogacy and genomics within the larger geopolitical, historical, economic and cultural transformations of postcolonial India, the paper argues that both technologies are far more complex in their impact on women and gender. Why does technology become the major site of hope for the future? Why does genomics become the site for the promises of good health? Why has India become a site for reproductive tourism, and transnational surrogacy in particular? Drawing on the social studies of science, the paper argues that technology and human bodies are never neutral but always prefigured with a gender, race, caste and sexuality. Surrogacy and genomics should be understood within these colonial and postcolonial histories of science and technology

What is to be done with curriculum and educational foundations\u27 critical knowledges? Toward critical and decolonizing education sciences

As editors of the special issue in Teaching Education titled What Is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers, our purpose with this conceptual essay is twofold. First, we historicize and characterize the critical knowledges deployed in this special issue as a broad array of criticalities. Second, we provide a reading of these criticalities that together we tentatively call critical and decolonizing education sciences. In our discussion and conclusion, we focus on the dual challenges of developing work in critical and decolonizing education sciences: (a) better historicizing academic work and (b) clearly responding to demands of institutional praxis

Rethinking 'Current Crisis' Arguments: Gouldner and the Legacy of Critical Sociology

Proclamations of \'current crisis\' in sociology are long-standing and have recently resurfaced in British and North America. This article explores the response of Alvin Gouldner to an earlier 1970s perceived \'current crisis\'. It then discusses some of the key dimensions ascribed to the current \'current crisis\' – fragmentation, the decline of the intellectual, the need for a higher profile for public and professional sociology - to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Gouldner\'s ideas for analysing the situation of contemporary sociology. It concludes that Gouldner\'s critical sociology provides a useful basis for understanding current debates about fragmentation and public sociology, but less so in explaining the decline of intellectuals. In addition, neither Gouldner nor contemporary thinking about sociology\'s present-day \'current crisis\' give much attention to the vastly increased regulation and bureaucratisation of the university system accompanying the expended remit of regulatory government, something we think underlies the discipline\'s successive perceptions of crisis. The contemporary version of critical sociology, with which this article aligns itself, provides a more structural and less voluntaristic rethinking of \'current crisis\' arguments.Critical Sociology, Gouldner, Crisis, Intellectuals, Reflexivity, Social Change, Mobilities

The Taslima Nasrin Controversy And Feminism In Bangladesh: A Geo-Political And Transnational Perspective

Taslima Nasrin, a Bangladeshi writer, attracted international attention in 1994 when an obscure religious fundamentalist group issued a fatwa sentencing her to death and demanding her trial on charges of blasphemy. This paper discusses the Nasrin controversy in the context of post-colonial religious fundamentalism, communalism, and feminist issues in South Asia.Talima Nasrin, une écrivaine bangladaise, a attiré l'attention du monde entier en 1994 lorsqu'un groupe fondamentaliste d'une religion obscure avait lancé un fatwa la condamnant à mort et demandant son procès pour blasphème. Cet article discute de la controverse Nasrin dans le contexte religieux fondamentaliste post-colonial, l'esprit communautaire, et les questions féministes dans l'Asie du Sud