Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The most compelling question for feminism is this: what are the concepts that are necessary now in the struggle for social justice? This may seem like an odd claim, perhaps even an outrageous one. But pause to consider it for a minute. Often the enterprise of feminist theory has been dismissed as the work of ‘elite academics’ – abstract, obscure or, even worse, irrelevant to the pressing concerns of women and men. While it may be that some – even most – feminist theory is not even read by many of the world's women, this is not to say that the work of thinking about what and how we know does not matter. Quite the contrary. Although they are rarely made visible, theories inform the ways of making sense on which organizing, education and all forms of action and ‘activism’ invariably depend. Theories – or explanations of how and what we know and live – rely on concepts that are embedded in them. These concepts are like the scaffolding for building social movement or, to use another metaphor, they are the directionals for charting any course of action. Often invisible as guides, concepts undergird our ways of making sense, from the profound and visionary perspective to the most mundane and obvious. When we ask ‘what are the concepts feminism needs now?’ we are indeed asking a ‘philosophical’ question that is also and necessarily a practical one as it is a question that speaks to a very ... log in or subscribe to read full text