Susan Faludi's Backlash, first published in 1991, offers a compelling account of feminism being forced to repeat itself in an era hostile to its transformative potentials and ambitions. Twenty years on, this paper offers a philosophical reading of Faludi's text, unpacking the model of social and historical change that underlies the “backlash” thesis. It focuses specifically on the tension between Faludi's ideal model of social change as a movement of linear, step-by-step, continuous progress, and her depiction of feminist history in (...) terms of endless repetition. If we uphold a linear, teleological ideal of social change, I argue, repetition can only be thought of in negative terms—as a step backwards or a waste of time—which in turn has a negative and demoralizing impact within feminism itself. To explore an alternative model of historical time and change, I turn to the work of feminist philosopher Christine Battersby, who rethinks repetition through the Kierkegaardian mode of “recollecting forwards,” and the Nietzschean notion of “untimeliness.” I suggest that Battersby's philosophical reconceptualization of historical repetition, as a potentially creative, productive phenomenon, can be of great utility to feminists as we enact and negotiate the dynamics of backlash politics. (shrink)

This article takes the rupturing of normative, linear, reproductive time that occurs in the event of miscarriage as a potentially generative philosophical moment—a catalyst to rethink pregnancy aside from the expectation of child-production. Pregnant time is usually imagined as a linear passage toward birth. Accordingly, the one who “miscarries” appears as suspended within an arrested journey that never arrived at its destination, or indeed, as ejected from pregnant time altogether. But here I propose to rethink both pregnancy and miscarriage through (...) the lens of “suspended time”—a theoretical move that shifts the accent from the future as the dominating frame of reference to the lived present. Drawing on work by Kathryn Bond Stockton, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Baraitser, and others, the article explores overlooked temporalities of pregnancy and miscarriage that operate not in the mode of futural projection or futural loss, but rather through present-oriented forms of adjustment and sensing, attachment and intimacy, maintenance and care. By “suspending the future,” then, we can resist the oppositional framing of pregnancy and miscarriage, because if pregnant time is not represented in exclusively future-oriented terms as being-toward-birth, then miscarriage need not be understood as pregnancy's undoing. (shrink)

Over three decades, Gillian Howie wrote at the forefront of philosophy and critical theory, before her untimely death in 2013. This interdisciplinary collection uses her writings to explore the productive, yet often resistant, interrelationship between feminism and critical theory, examining the potential of Howie's particular form of materialism. The contributors also bring to this debate a serious engagement with Howie's late turn towards philosophies of mortality, therapy and 'living with dying'. The volume considers how differently embodied subjects are positioned within (...) public institutions, discourses and spaces, and the role of philosophy, art, film, photography, and literature, in facing situations such as sexual oppression and life-limiting illness. (shrink)