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Questions for Feminism
Playing the State: Australian Feminist Interventions
In recent times, feminists globally have been securing more influence in national and local governments, pioneering the first 'femocracy'. This has sparked a significant discussion about the guidelines and feminist principles of interacting with the state. Australia, where feminists have held relative bureaucratic power since the mid-seventies, offers a prime chance to assess this dialogue's progress. The collection centers around questions such What concessions must be made in politics, and what advancements are feasible? How can a femocracy connect with grassroots feminisms, and to what extent does its power stem from them?
243 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1990
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April 11, 2016
I didn't read this entire text, reading only selective essays that were focused moreso on conceptual and theoretical questions about statehood and political organization.
The first essay in the collection "Does Feminism Need a Theory of the State" by Judith Allen is the best of the bunch. Allen concisely covers the marxist-feminist/marxist/feminist debate over the centrality of state power and questions of patriarchal and/or class oppression and domination. The essay concludes by claiming that feminism does not need a theory of the state, but should instead make central categories and concerns that have the most explicit impact on the lives and bodies and desires of women. This strikes me as a misguided attempt to ignore the intimate ways in which state building and legislative processes (as well as the behaviors of non-state actors) are involved in the sedimentation of the oppression and domination of women.
The other particularly interesting essay: "Femocrats, Official Feminism and the Uses of Power" by Hester Eisenstein, carefully observes differences in American and Australian feminist theory, organizing and activism. She does so to the end of showing how and in what ways state power coopts or takes up strands of feminist theory and practice--not always to feminist ends.
Overall, the theory and references of the text seem dated (probably because they were written in the late 1980s) but oddly relevant to the question of the limits and horizons of a contemporary feminist political philosophy.
The first essay in the collection "Does Feminism Need a Theory of the State" by Judith Allen is the best of the bunch. Allen concisely covers the marxist-feminist/marxist/feminist debate over the centrality of state power and questions of patriarchal and/or class oppression and domination. The essay concludes by claiming that feminism does not need a theory of the state, but should instead make central categories and concerns that have the most explicit impact on the lives and bodies and desires of women. This strikes me as a misguided attempt to ignore the intimate ways in which state building and legislative processes (as well as the behaviors of non-state actors) are involved in the sedimentation of the oppression and domination of women.
The other particularly interesting essay: "Femocrats, Official Feminism and the Uses of Power" by Hester Eisenstein, carefully observes differences in American and Australian feminist theory, organizing and activism. She does so to the end of showing how and in what ways state power coopts or takes up strands of feminist theory and practice--not always to feminist ends.
Overall, the theory and references of the text seem dated (probably because they were written in the late 1980s) but oddly relevant to the question of the limits and horizons of a contemporary feminist political philosophy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review