Decolonizing Feminism

What does it mean to decolonize transnational feminist theory in the context of globalization? As a project concerned with multiple power structures, feminist theory must address the historical legacies of colonialism, postcolonialism, and more recently, decoloniality. This book offers essays organized around a coherent set of research questions about how to conceptualize an inclusive feminist politics. This has been, and continues to be, a central project in feminist theory, particularly in light of neoliberal globalization.International and interdisciplinary in scope, this book introduces the key issues in, and addresses the most significant challenges for, contemporary transnational feminist politics. In the context of rapid globalization, it explores the theoretical frameworks for thinking through significant concepts in feminist theory and activism: rights, citizenship and immigration, feminist solidarity, decolonizing methodologies and practices, and freedom. From diverse socio-political locations and multiple and interdisciplinary perspectives authors propose new ways of thinking about feminist knowledges, methodologies, and practices. Ideal for students and scholars in Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminism and Feminist Theory more broadly, the volume contributes to the ongoing project of advocating a decolonizing feminist approach to pressing social issues.

This innovative book  takes on the urgent task of reflecting politically on the meaning of decolonizing feminism in neoliberal times.  Questioning the limits of the hegemonic feminist mode of thinking by exposing the power relations that underlie it and assuming the perspective of those marginalized, it aims at opening up and subverting feminist philosophy in order to incorporate debates  about the production of knowledge, human rights, citizenship and immigration, and the quest for justice and freedom. These provocative analyses renew and potentialize feminism as they offer new tools and concepts to interpret our present in its multiplicity., Decolonizing Feminism offers original, nuanced, and visionary feminist analysis that crosses epistemological, and disciplinary borders, and provides conceptual tools to decolonize hegemonic feminisms and fracture the transnational as a normativizing gesture.

Margaret A. McLaren teaches at Rollins College where she holds the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Chair of Philosophy. She is the author of Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity (2002).