Overview

Why Stories Matter is a powerful critique of the stories that feminists tell about the past four decades of Western feminist theory. Clare Hemmings examines the narratives that make up feminist accounts of recent feminist history, highlights the ethical and political dilemmas raised by these narratives, and offers innovative strategies for transforming them. Drawing on her in-depth analysis of feminist journals, such as Signs, Feminist Review, and Feminist Theory, Hemmings argues that feminists portray the development of Western feminism through narratives of progress, loss, and return. Whether celebrating the move beyond unity or identity, lamenting the demise of a feminist political agenda, or proposing a return to a feminist vision from the past, by advancing these narratives feminists construct a mobile ""political grammar"" too easily adapted for postfeminist agendas. Hemmings insists that it is not enough for feminist theorists to lament what is most often perceived as the co-optation of feminism in global arenas. They must pay attention to the amenability of their own stories, narrative constructs, and grammatical forms to broader discursive uses of gender and feminism if history is not simply to repeat itself. Since citation practices and the mobilization of affect are central to how the narratives of progress, loss, and return persuade readers to suspend disbelief, they are also potential keys to telling the story of feminism's past, present, and future differently.

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9780822349167

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Reviews

“Whatever happens to Anglo-European feminist theory and politics in the future, the way we look at its past will never be the same again. This extraordinary book identifies the revolutionary elements of a truly global feminist sensibility so urgently required in the present: accountability, reflexivity, and an ability to grasp the intersections between different forms of inequality and power.”—Vron Ware, co-author of Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture

Whatever happens to Anglo-European feminist theory and politics in the future, the way we look at its past will never be the same again. This extraordinary book identifies the revolutionary elements of a truly global feminist sensibility so urgently required in the present: accountability, reflexivity, and an ability to grasp the intersections between different forms of inequality and power. Vron Ware, co-author of Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture Why Stories Matter is an exciting and impressive book, one that cannot fail to have an impact on the feminist academic community. Clare Hemmings contributes to radical new understandings of feminist theory by brilliantly synthesizing the debates that currently animate the field, and then intervening in ways that force the rethinking of accepted wisdom. Rosi Braidotti, Director, Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University

Author Information

Clare Hemmings is Reader in Feminist Theory and Director of the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Gender and Sexuality, co-author of Practising Interdisciplinarity in Gender Studies, and a member of the Feminist Review Collective.

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