On the notion of the political in feminist theory

• Authors: Ľubica Kobová
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The turn of the 1990s saw the emergence of “the political” in feminist theory. Despite there being a number of publications devoted to the theme, the concept itself has remained rather undertheorized. Instead of producing a thoroughly developed concept, it served to create an epistemic community devoted to the (supposedly dead, modernist) political aim of women’s emancipation. In the article, I argue that it would be beneficent for feminist theory to adopt an affirmative stance towards the contingency of politics. This of course poses a challenge to feminist politics, which still operates mainly within the framework of the politics of representation. Nevertheless, Linda Zerilli’s approach, which interprets contingency in an Arendtian vein as the condition of the world-creating and world-building power of feminism as a practice of freedom may prove to be a productive way of approaching the challenging issue of contingency in feminist theory

Keywords

EN

the political; political difference; contingency; feminist theory; world-building

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 164-172

Dates

published

2015-04-01

online

2015-04-07

Contributors

author

Ľubica Kobová

• Department of Gender Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, José Martího 31, 162 52 Praha 6, Czech Republic

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/humaff-2015-0015