Passion and politics in women's studies in the nineties

Abstract

This article first summarizes the origins and aims of Women's Studies—its “Idea Power” — which led to the impressive worldwide expansion of Women's Studies in the last twenty years as the educational arm of the Women's Liberation Movement. Then it discusses the “Woman Power” in Women's Studies and its promise of diversity followed by its subject matter, which is equally diverse and is conceptualized from revisionary to visionary and revisionary/visionary standpoints. Next are mentioned some obstacles to feminist vision and sisterhood, such as the libertarian ideology informing the theory and praxis of Gender Studies and post-structuralist discourse/deconstructionist epistemology. I contend that whilst there is much cause for celebrating the achievements of Women's Studies, there is also cause for concern with this latest resurgence of fragmented and disconnected theory, which mirrors similar developments in reproductive and genetic engineering. The article ends with some strategies of how Women's Studies might avoid colluding with compartmentalized frameworks and move “passionately forward” into the nineties and beyond.