Third World feminist social criticism as feminism

Abstract

In the real world, inequalities are exploited by those better positioned in social, familial, political, and economic hierarchies such that the views of the less powerful go unheard. At the beginning of this book, I promised to present a Third World feminist theoretical and practical account of social criticism that resolves a problem in deliberative democratic theory, that meets and exceeds critical theory's standard of theory, that respects both sides of the relativist–essentialist schism in feminist theory, and that situates Third World feminism as the heir of feminism because Third World feminists listen to the otherwise silent sources in a given society and are critical of the inequalities that silence them. Third World feminist social criticism is critical where other theories are not.