ralentina reviewed Feminism for The 99% by Nancy Fraser
too high-brow to be widely accessible, too simplistic to be high-brow?
3 stars
The gist of the book is clear: to be better than the patriarchy it wants to dismantle, feminism must be anticapitalist. The framing of the problem is simple, perhaps deceivingly so: there is the feminism of social movements, and liberal feminism, and we need to take side, supporting the first and disowning the latter. Woman emancipation must be the emancipation of all women, not the diversification of elites. Throughout, there are good examples of 'good' feminist initiatives and of the selling out of feminism at the hands of liberal economic elites.
It is a manifesto, so it is clear that bold ideas are necessary, and that it must be interpreted as a provocative call to action, rather than a sociological treaty. But it grates on me to divide the world into two camps, because the camps are never two, and are never so clearly divided: between the radical feminist movements …
The gist of the book is clear: to be better than the patriarchy it wants to dismantle, feminism must be anticapitalist. The framing of the problem is simple, perhaps deceivingly so: there is the feminism of social movements, and liberal feminism, and we need to take side, supporting the first and disowning the latter. Woman emancipation must be the emancipation of all women, not the diversification of elites. Throughout, there are good examples of 'good' feminist initiatives and of the selling out of feminism at the hands of liberal economic elites.
It is a manifesto, so it is clear that bold ideas are necessary, and that it must be interpreted as a provocative call to action, rather than a sociological treaty. But it grates on me to divide the world into two camps, because the camps are never two, and are never so clearly divided: between the radical feminist movements and Sheryl Sandberg are millions of women who would not support all of the theses proposed here, but call themselves feminist. Purging is so 1930s; and Nancy Fraser is such a fine thinker that I was expecting more.
