Transformation Now!: Toward a Post‐Oppositional Politics of ChangeAnaLouiseKeating. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

Abstract

Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change AnaLouise Keating. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.In Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change AnaLouise Keating calls for a restructuring of approaches to social movements that currently use thinking reliant upon binaries, leaving space for neither nuanced discussion nor compromise. This oppositional consciousness represents a binary either/or epistemology and praxis that structures our perceptions, politics, and actions through a resistant energy-a reaction against that which we seek to (2). She works to show reader that these practices are too limited to bring about long-term transformation we need. Oppositional politics and thinking have not enabled us to radically transform society (3). The book works to push readers to consider new theoretical, thematic, and methodological approaches to social justice movements (4). Keating works to enact po stopp ositio nal stances in her own writing in an attempt to offer viable additions and alternatives to forms of consciousness and politics that currently drive social-justice theorizing, activism, and academic disciplines (5). In her own writing that slips away from tradition of academic rhetorical stance and in using slippery punctuation (such as a reliance on parentheses to complicate her own arguments), Keating offers a manual that outlines theory and praxis of a movement she feels necessary to bring about sustained social change.Her main audience is feminist scholars who work on issues of gender studies, women's studies, and intersectionality. A key component of change she asks this audience to do is work on the centering of woman-of-color texts, specifically by those writing within Americas such as Gloria Anzaldda, with whom Keating collaborated in past (4). Her call to incorporate what she calls threshold theories in classrooms and theoretical conversations asks that scholars and students recognize their radical interconnectedness and foster nonoppositional politics (11).After a clear introduction that explains concepts of and po stopp ositio nal resistance, Keating offers six chapters that outline texts and approaches to transformation in social justice movements. Each chapter has a specific sphere of scholarship that she wishes to transform-feminist scholarship, women's and gender studies, and queer theory (Chapter 1); canonical definitions of 'American' selfhood. …