Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory

Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory offers a thought-provoking introduction to a range of concepts that have influenced feminist thinking. Breaking down and exploring complex themes and debates, it starts discussions rather than offering conclusions, providing the building blocks for readers to explore new directions in feminist thought.

The book is arranged by “keywords” with each chapter featuring a term or a set of terms which feminist theory has invested with multiple perspectives, conversations, and controversies, bridging between different feminist phases, events, orientations, disciplines, and concerns. Each chapter presents broad overviews of why a particular term is relevant to feminist theory, as well deeper engagement with integral texts. While not meant to be taken as firm definitions, the keywords in this book are gateways to stories that describe the goals and histories of feminist theory. Robin Truth Goodman treats feminist theory as a living theory developing from a reckoning with messy and unpredictable politics. Goodman argues that the tools for social transformation have been prepared by writers and thinkers who came before, but that language, like gender, is something that cannot be fixed in place because its ability to reference things in the world is unstable and uncertain. If the terms that feminism has traditionally claimed in its self-descriptions are flawed or inadequate, our responsibility lies in transforming them, reanimating them in line with today’s political needs, and creating through them new languages and narratives to generate different realities.

Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory provides an informed foundation for those new to the subject. It is an invaluable resource for undergraduates and postgraduates of literary and cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, social justice curricula, and sociology.