Feminist Time against Nation Time

Gender, Politics, and the Nation-State in an Age of Permanent War

Edited by Victoria Hesford and Lisa Diedrich - Contributions by Elizabeth Grosz; Dana Heller; E Ann Kaplan; Julia Kristeva; Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo

Feminist Time Against Nation Time offers a series of essays that explore the complex and oftentimes contradictory relationship between feminism and nationalism through a problematization of temporality. Although there has been much recent discussion in the U.S. of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the "War on Terror" as signaling a new period of "permanent war," feminist voices have not been at all prominent in this discussion. This collection considers not only the ways in which public spaces for dissent are limited, but also the ways in which the time for such dissent is cut short. Feminist Time Against Nation Time combines philosophical examinations of Women's Time by Julia Kristeva and The Time of Thought by Elizabeth Grosz, with essays offering case studies of particular events, including Kelly Oliver's essay on the media coverage of the U.S. wars on terror and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Betty Joseph's on the anti-colonial uses of "women's time" in the creation of nineteenth-century Indian nationalism. Feminist Time Against Nation Time juxtaposes feminist time against nation time in order to consider temporalities that are at once contrary to, but also drawing toward each other. Yet Hesford and Diedrich also argue that because, as an untimely project, feminism necessarily operates in a different temporality from that of the nation, "againstness" is also used to provoke a rupture, a momentary opening up of a disjuncture between the two that will allow us to explore the possibilities of creating a space and time for feminists to think against the current of the present moment.

Lexington Books

Pages: 218 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-0-7391-1123-9 • Hardback • February 2008 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-0-7391-4428-2 • Paperback • December 2009 • $57.99 • (£45.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Social, Political Science / Political Ideologies / Nationalism & Patriotism, Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory

Feminist Time against Nation Time

Gender, Politics, and the Nation-State in an Age of Permanent War

Hardback

Paperback

Summary

Feminist Time Against Nation Time offers a series of essays that explore the complex and oftentimes contradictory relationship between feminism and nationalism through a problematization of temporality. Although there has been much recent discussion in the U.S. of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the "War on Terror" as signaling a new period of "permanent war," feminist voices have not been at all prominent in this discussion. This collection considers not only the ways in which public spaces for dissent are limited, but also the ways in which the time for such dissent is cut short. Feminist Time Against Nation Time combines philosophical examinations of Women's Time by Julia Kristeva and The Time of Thought by Elizabeth Grosz, with essays offering case studies of particular events, including Kelly Oliver's essay on the media coverage of the U.S. wars on terror and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Betty Joseph's on the anti-colonial uses of "women's time" in the creation of nineteenth-century Indian nationalism. Feminist Time Against Nation Time juxtaposes feminist time against nation time in order to consider temporalities that are at once contrary to, but also drawing toward each other. Yet Hesford and Diedrich also argue that because, as an untimely project, feminism necessarily operates in a different temporality from that of the nation, "againstness" is also used to provoke a rupture, a momentary opening up of a disjuncture between the two that will allow us to explore the possibilities of creating a space and time for feminists to think against the current of the present moment.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 218 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-0-7391-1123-9 • Hardback • February 2008 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-0-7391-4428-2 • Paperback • December 2009 • $57.99 • (£45.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Social, Political Science / Political Ideologies / Nationalism & Patriotism, Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory

Author

Victoria Hesford and Lisa Diedrich are assistant professors of women's studies at Stony Brook University, New York.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction: Thinking Feminism in a Time of War
Part 2 Feminist Time Then and Now
Chapter 3 Women's Time
Chapter 4 The Time of Thought
Part 5 Feminist Time and Texts
Chapter 6 Politics, Psyche and Feminine Time: Nancy Meckler'sSister, My Sister and Pratibha Parmar's Memsahib Rita
Chapter 7 In the Time of Julia Alvarez: Reversing Matricidal Temporalities
Part 8 Feminist Time and Nations
Chapter 9 Women's Time, Historical Discourse, and a Text of Indian Nationalism
Chapter 10 Visions of Politics, Time, and Nation: Arundhati Roy's Challenge to the Experts
Part 11 Feminist Time and Politics
Chapter 12 Shooting Solanas: Radical Feminist History and the Technology of Failure
Chapter 13 Securing a Future: Feminist Futures in a Time of War
Chapter 14 Perpetual War
Part 15 Notes on Contributors
Part 16 Index

Reviews

Feminist Time Against Nation Time arrives not a moment too soon for those of us who seek to understand the urgent context of war. Situating feminist conversations in relation to national politics and texts, Feminist Time Against Nation Time bridges critical practices across time and space. Never losing sight of the cultural stakes in political contestations, the essays in this valuable and timely collection examine diverse instances of subjectivity and cultural memory that challenge the temporality of war and nationalism. In a time of 'perpetual war,' Feminist Time Against Nation Time intervenes in the representation of the past to propose engaged feminist futures.
— Caren Kaplan, University of California at Davis

The interrogative reflexivity of feminist thinking simply makes this remarkable collection of essays an invaluable pedagogical resource.
— Rey Chow, Brown University