Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Feminisms

Fashion Emergency!

Feminist theory has recently faced accusations of trendiness, but Marianne Janack and Michelle LaRocque leap to its defence.

As with any political movement, feminism has had a fraught relationship with theory. On the one hand, feminists have recognized the value of a sound theoretical basis for the effectiveness of political action; on the other, they have decried the way abstract theorizing has sometimes taken the place of political action in other progressive social movements. Feminist philosophy in general, and feminist epistemology – theory of knowledge – in particular, have suffered from this strained marriage between theory and action. What, one might ask, do abstract questions about knowledge and rationality have to do with securing greater freedoms for women? While feminist epistemologists have suffered from the accusation of irrelevance from those frustrated with theory and its perceived elitism, they have also been accused of following ‘fashionable’ trends in scholarship by both feminists and non-feminists within the academy. Some feminists fear that following intellectual fashions will lead feminist thinkers farther and farther away from the very real, everyday concerns of non-academic women.

…