Much international research haspointed out that farm women in a Westernagricultural context have not identified withthe ideas and politics of feminism. This issuehas troubled feminist scholars in the field,since much research has documented thesubordinate position of farm women. However,concerning the question of why farm women have notadopted feminism, assumptions ofprogress can be read: gender equality and emancipationof women will eventually take place once theagricultural sector has reached a higher stageof development; concerning universalism: thereexists a common women's identity and experienceof male (...) oppression that forms the basis foridentity politics. The question may beidentified as a researcher question embeddedwithin the assumptions of the feminist researchcommunity, which struggles with establishing asubject-subject relationship between theresearcher and the researched. As such, it is thebasis for the production of partial, situatedknowledge and must be recognized as such. (shrink)

After #MeToo, academics have become increasingly focused on the liberal concept of consent. Either problematized as a means of distinguishing between sex and rape, or vaunted as a tool for having better sex, consent remains central to discussions of sexual violence. Returning to Andrea Dworkin’s thought, this article argues that contemporary feminists must move beyond consent and recenter the problem of violence to theorize rape. Dworkin, alongside Catharine MacKinnon and Carole Pateman, critiques consent for disguising the violence of rape, sex, (...) and pornography. By defining violence as a process of objectification, Dworkin exposes rape, pornography, and most controversially, consensual heterosexual intercourse as “a new kind of death.” She, in turn, calls for the feminist exercise of violence as a tactic of disclosure that promises to make visible patriarchal violence hidden by consent and sexualization. Moving beyond consent to recenter the problem of violence, I conclude, opens up new avenues for feminist action and brings into view the seemingly unthinkable possibility of a world without rape. (shrink)

Who owns feminist theory? and just what is meant by the idea of ‘theory’? We explore these fundamental questions as part of interrogating some emergent orthodoxies about feminist theory, proposing that there is a ‘missing revolution’ in feminist thinking, for while ideas about feminist epistemology, methodology and ethics have been fundamentally reworked, those concerning feminist theory have not. Our purpose is to stimulate a debate about the form of feminist theory, rather than the more usual controversies about its content; and (...) thus our concern is with promoting the development of feminist metatheory. We argue that the now-dominant version of feminist theory is a parallel project to that of mainstream/malestream social theory, and that a feminist autocritique of this and related developments is needed, with the aim of achieving a transformation of the fundamental categories of feminist theory. (shrink)