Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality)

258 Pages·2010·2.27 MB·English

by  Nina Lykke

Feminist Studies
Routledge Advances in Feminist
Studies and Intersectionality
Core editorial group: Dr. KATHY DAVIS (Utrecht University, The Netherlands),
Professor JEFF HEARN (managing editor; Linköping University, Sweden; Hanken
School of Economics, Finland; University of Huddersfi eld, UK), Professor ANNA G.
JÓNASDÓTTIR (Örebro University, Sweden), Professor NINA LYKKE (managing editor;
Linköping University, Sweden), Professor CHANDRA TALPADE MOHANTY (Syracuse
University, USA), Professor ELŻBIETA H. OLEKSY (University of Łódź, Poland), Dr.
ANDREA PETÖ (Central European University, Hungary), Professor ANN PHOENIX
(University of London, UK)
Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality is committed to the
development of new feminist and profeminist perspectives on changing gender
relations, with special attention to:
(cid:129) Intersections between gender and power differentials based on age, class, dis/abilities,
ethnicity, nationality, racialisation, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions.
(cid:129) Intersections of societal dimensions and processes of continuity and change: culture,
economy, generativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology.
(cid:129) Embodiment: Intersections of discourse and materiality, and of sex and gender.
(cid:129) Transdisciplinarity: intersections of humanities, social sciences, medical, technical and
natural sciences.
(cid:129) Intersections of different branches of feminist theorizing, including: historical materialist
feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference
feminisms, queerfeminisms, cyberfeminisms, posthuman feminisms, critical studies on
men and masculinities.
(cid:129) A critical analysis of the travelling of ideas, theories and concepts.
(cid:129) A politics of location, refl exivity and transnational contextualizing that refl ects the basis
of the Series framed within European diversity and transnational power relations.
1. Feminist Studies
A Guide to Intersectional Theory,
Methodology and Writing
Nina Lykke
Feminist Studies
A Guide to Intersectional Theory,
Methodology and Writing
Nina Lykke

New York London
First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data .
Lykke, Nina.
Feminist studies : a guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing / by Nina .
Lykke.
p. cm.—(Routledge advances in feminist studies and intersectionality ;
1) Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Women’s studies. 2. Feminist theory—Study and teaching (Higher) I. Title.
HQ1180.L95 2010
305.4201—dc22
2009043461

ISBN 0-203-85277-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-87484-X (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-85277-X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-87484-7 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-85277-4 (ebk)
. . . to Zak, Sofus, Asker, Jobbe, Carl, Eigil, Dorthe, Uffe,
Rikke, Naja
– and to you, Mette!

Contents
List of Figures ix
Editors’ Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
PART I
What Is Feminist Studies?
1 A Guide’s Introduction 3
2 A Postdisciplinary Discipline 14
3 Undoing Proper Research Objects 31
PART II
To Theorize Intersectional Gender/Sex
4 Intersectional Gender/Sex: A Confl ictual and Power-Laden
Issue 49
5 Theorizing Intersectionalities: Genealogies and Blind Spots 67

6 Genealogies of Doing 87
7 Making Corporealities Matter: Intersections of Gender and Sex
Revisited 106
PART III
To Re-Tool the Thinking Technologies
8 Rethinking Epistemologies 125
viii Contents
9 Methodologies, Methods and Ethics 144
10 Shifting Boundaries between Academic and Creative Writing
Practices 163
PART IV
To Use a Feminist Hermeneutics
11 Doing and Undoing the God-Trick: Analytical Examples 187
Notes 201
Glossary 203
References 213
Index 227
Figures
6.1 Two toilet doors, identical except for the naming
‘WOMEN’ and ‘MEN’ (computer-graphics). 98
10.1 ‘Messy text’. Reprint of a page in Patti Lather and
Chris Smithies: Troubling the Angels: Women Living
with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press
1997, 5. Published with the permission of Westview
Press, Perseus Books. 172