From: ALBANY::INGRAHAM 4-OCT-1994 09:03:36.32
To: INGRAHAM
CC:
Subj:
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are seeking submissions to MATERIALIST FEMINISM: A READER, an antholog
y of writings by materialist feminists from
1975-1995.
Materialist feminist work is distinguished by the claim that the critic
al perspective of historical materialism is historically
necessary and empowering for feminism's oppositional political project. Materia
list feminism calls for a consideration of the ways divisions
of labor, state power, as well as gendered, racial, national and sexual subjecti
vities, bodies, and knowledges are all crucial to social
production. While materialist feminists have made use of postmodern critiques o
f empiricism to develop analyses of the role of ideology in
women's oppression, they have also insisted that ideology is only one facet of s
ocial life. This systemic view--the argument that the
materiality of the social consists of divisions of labor, state power, and ideol
ogy--is one of the distinguishing features of materialist feminist
analysis.
During the 1980s identity politics--often formulated by academics in term
s of social constructionism or the more popular
multiculturalism--has increasingly suppressed systemic analysis, and postmodern
cultural materialism is rapidly replacing more radical social
theories. Materialist Feminism: A Reader will argue against this retreat to id
entity and cultural politics for the ways it keeps invisible the
material links among the explosion of meaning-making practices, the exploitation
of women's labor, and the appropriation of women's
bodies that continue to undergird the scramble for profits and state power in la
te capitalism.
At the same time the Reader will offer trenchant materialist analysis, it
is also primarily feminist. Efforts to address the
relationship between patriarchy and capitalism have persistently characterized m
aterialist feminist critique even as the monolithic
perspectives of many of these explorations have been challenged and rethought.
Recent work speaks to the complex intersection of social
structures like patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and hetero
sexuality and extends our understanding of their historically
specific and differentiated effects on women's and men's everyday lives. We hop
e the essays in the reader will exemplify a range of
positions on how to address these social totalities as well as nuanced analyses
of their articulated effects in specific social formations.
The first section of the Reader will provide an archive of essays that de
lineate the debates out of which materialist feminism
emerged as well as some of the pressing issues of the eighties. The second part
will consist of previously unpublished writing.
We invite contributions to Part II of the Reader from those who situate t
heir work within the parameters outlined above. Send
proposals, finished papers (20-30 pp.) or inquiries to Rosemary Hennessy Depart
ment of English, The University at Albany, Albany,
NY 12222 [log in to unmask] or Chrys Ingraham Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice, Russell Sage College,
Troy, NY 12180 [log in to unmask] by December 1, 1994.
|