This dissertation aims to rethink how contemporary feminism might grapple with complicity, cooptation, and the concomitant failure of feminist successes through a frame other than paradox. Arguing that the paradox frame locks us into a set of “dead ends,” I shift to an orientation toward spaces between. Through sustained engagement with the work of Patricia Williams, Hannah Arendt, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gayatri Spivak, and Gloria Anzaldúa, I elaborate a series of related but distinct between spaces that open up new ways to think about the problem of feminist success. I then use that frame to draw out practices of telling, storytelling, and writing from these authors’ work as political practices that bridge and transform the spaces between. Finally, I take up this theoretical apparatus to analyze the case of violence against women and hashtag activism, ultimately gesturing toward what sorts of transformation might be possible in this particular space.

Creator

• Bowers, Malia

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-e749-b668

Subject

• Women's studies
• Gender studies
• Political science

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_928676
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16250

Keyword

• Feminist Theory
• Political Theory
• Feminism

Date created

• 2022-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright