Abstract

My dissertation argues for a reconstructed radical feminism that critically thinks back to ideals that were central to the U.S. women's liberation movement but have been de-valued as "outmoded" in the process of feminism's institutionalization. Radical feminism remains significant for its critique of gender as a category of hierarchy and its projection of social formations beyond systemic male dominance. As critical scrutiny of what-is and vision of what ought-to-be, radical feminism is distinguished by its moral imagination, namely, its particular dialectic of opposition and utopianism. The concept of moral imagination provides a frame for my internal critique of radical feminism and for my assessment of a retreat from radical feminism in contemporary feminism. I examine current feminist debates that expose a dilemma: how to maintain opposition without sliding into a victim discourse and/or how to sustain utopian insight without lapsing into philosophical idealism. Contemporary feminist intellectual culture in its disavowal of radical feminism and particularly as influenced by the U.S. import of European poststructuralism, shows signs of a retreat from utopian and oppositional thought. My analysis shows how some intellectuals, representing what I refer to as a poststructuralist perspective, invoke poststructuralist categories to neutralize the normative force of feminist theory--its force of critique and vision. I criticize this perspective because it reduces the moral imagination to moralism and refuses vision as impracticable. As an alternative to opposition, this poststructuralist postfeminism can only offer semiotic play. In this sense, postfeminist intellectuals reverse Antonio Gramsci's formula for political thought showing an "optimism of the intellect" and a "pessimism of the will." However, an absolutist opposition and/or utopianism in radical feminism projects feminism altogether outside of social power and thus cannot account for how it might articulate with other political struggles. The answer, I argue, is in a materialist radical feminism; drawing on the work of Colette Guillaumin, Carole Pateman and others, I argue for the necessity of a materialist critique of patriarchal power as it intersects with other institutions and that grounds a feminist utopian imagination in political praxis