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Becoming Street Smart. Reflections on Solidarity and Knowledge

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Author

  • Tiina Rosenberg

Editor

  • Mia Liinason
  • Sabine Grenz
  • Kerstin Alnebratt
  • Berit Larsson

Summary, in English

This chapter discusses the term solidarity in relation to knowledge, and the existing tension between a vital women’s movement on the one hand, and a feminist academic theory on the other. The raise of a highly capitalist and neoliberal notion of feminism, a sort of “free market feminism” is restricting and limiting the space for solidarity in feminist politics and theory. Jodi Dean’s term reflexive solidarity defines solidarity in terms of mutuality, responsibility and a need of recognizing common interests as the presumption for communication and relations between different communities. She shifts focus from a general and interpellated oppression to collectives that have chosen to work and fight together. This paper argues that feminist, antiracist and queer communities create new and different knowledge through collective acts and activism. Political Scientist Jane Mansbridge calls this kind of knowledge street theory in contrast to theories produced within the academy. Street theory is created in and by communities. Sometimes these ideas are picked up by academic scholarship, rearticulated, redefined and often ending up meaning something else they once meant in their street period. It is problematic that historians who chronicle political movements rarely address parallel developments in academic writing, and academic theorists are none-too-consistent about acknowledging the influence of direct-action politics on their scholarship.

Publishing year

2009

Language

English

Pages

187-196

Publication/Series

Friendship in Feminist Conversation.Festschrift for Ulla Holm

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis

Topic

  • Gender Studies

Keywords

  • feminism
  • knowledge
  • postmodernity
  • solidarity
  • poststructuralism

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 978-7346-672-1