{"id":1271,"date":"2021-05-25T15:26:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T22:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/devuwcps\/course\/english-555-feminist-theories\/"},"modified":"2021-05-25T15:26:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T22:26:06","slug":"english-555-feminist-theories","status":"publish","type":"course","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/course\/english-555-feminist-theories\/","title":{"rendered":"English 555 &#8211; Feminist Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This course is neither a survey of something called \u201cFeminist Theory,\u201d nor does it focus on any one orientation or topos within feminist theory (on a feminist theory, in other words). Rather, it seeks to lay out and explore a problematic: the articulations of theory with politics. To be sure, every practice (political or other) entails a theory (whether explicit or not), just as every theory is irreducibly political. Yet theory and politics are not simply convertible, insofar as politics &#8212; the capacity both to operate within and contest relations of power \u2013 depends (for example) on the self-determination of subjects, and their capacity for deliberative action, that theory calls persistently into question. This is not to invoke the old quarrel between post-structuralism and identity knowledges (just when the historically oppressed emerge as the subjects of knowledge within the academy, the argument went, the elite purveyors of post-structuralist theory proclaim the death of the subject) \u2013 precisely because antagonists on both sides of that debate were typically interested in managing or resolving the incommensurability of theory and politics. In general, participants in that debate sought either to place theory in service to urgent political projects on the Left, or to insist that we subordinate the scope of political work (and imaginings) to the insights of theory. In this course, I propose to explore the non-identity of theory and politics as necessarily and productively irresolvable. Simply put, theory (in both its structuralist and post-structuralist forms) insists on the splitting of the subject and the limits of our (individual and collective) self-mastery &#8212; on a critical orientation to agency and opposition that politics must ultimately suspend. The course is organized around materials and debates that invite us to approach the articulation of theory with politics as a valuable and ongoing (unfinished) labor in the pursuit of an always receding horizon.<br \/>\nOur reading will be organized into three sections. An initial section on \u201cEconomy\u201d will consider some of the key feminist explorations of the material and symbolic economies in which subjects, objects, and abject embodiment are (re)produced. This section will include Gayle Rubin\u2019s \u201cThe Traffic in Women,\u201d Laura Mulvey on \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d Julia Kristeva\u2019s Powers of Horror, Judith Butler\u2019s Antigone\u2019s Claim, Hortense Spillers\u2019 \u201cMama\u2019s Baby, Papa\u2019s Maybe.,\u201d selections from Donna Haraway\u2019s Primate Visions, as well as Karen Joy Fowler\u2019s short novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. In a second section on \u201cEpistemology,\u201d we will engage a few important meditations on the subjects of feminism and its objects of study, including Nancy Hartsock\u2019s and Chela Sandoval\u2019s differing visions of feminist standpoint, Kimberle Crenshaw\u2019s germinal essay on intersectionality, Robyn Wiegman\u2019s reflection on intersectionality in \u201cCritical Kinship,\u201d Gayatri\u2019s Spivak\u2019s \u201cCan the Subaltern Speak?\u201d alongside her more recent reflections in \u201cThe New Subaltern,\u201d Rey Chow\u2019s \u201cThe Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism,\u201d selections from Saba Mahmood\u2019s The Politics of Piety, and (and in relation to) Our Sister Killjoy, a novel by Ama Ata Aidoo. A third section, \u201cPleasure and Danger (or, Complicity),\u201d will explore the implications of the theoretical prospects, practices, and aporias opened in the first two sections with specific reference to the politics of identification and desire in and in the wake of the (so-called) \u201csex wars.\u201d Materials for this section will likely include Laura Kipnis\u2019s experimental video Ecstasy Unlimited, Liz Grosz\u2019s \u201cLesbian Fetishsim?,\u201d Kobena\u2019s Mercer\u2019s \u201cReading Racial Fetishism,\u201d Carla Freccero\u2019s \u201cNotes of a Post-Sex Wars Theorizer,\u201d Gayle Rubin\u2019s \u201cThinking Sex,\u201d and Octavia\u2019s Butler\u2019s final novel, Fledgling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[47],"class_list":["post-1271","course","type-course","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive-courses"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-16 00:38:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/course"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}