p 215-241 Hemmings.pmd - SciELO

CONTANDO ESTÓRIAS FEMINISTAS
Telling Feminist Stories
Abstract: This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the
development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production
of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence
on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I
am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless
march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western
feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and
erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as
the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western
feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured,
despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns,
discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative,
I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with
their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and
our place within it.
Key Words: Loss; Postmodernism; Progress; The Seventies; Western Feminism.
Tradução: Ramayana Lira
Revisão: Claudia de Lima Costa
Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis, 17(1): 215-241, janeiro-abril/2009 241