Wherewith Feminism?

Abstract

Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia: The Wake of Women's Liberation, London: Routledge, 1997, £40.00 (£12.99 paperback), xiv+200 pp. (ISBN 0-415-148073)Mary Evans, Introducing Contemporary Feminist Thought, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, £39.50 (£11.95 paperback), 170 pp. (ISBN 07-456-14760)Heidi Safia Mirza (ed.), Black British Feminism: A Reader, London: Routledge, 1997, £45.00 (£15.99 paperback), xiv+306 pp. (ISBN 0-415-152895)All three books attempt, in different ways, to re-evaluate the feminist enterprise, reflecting on contemporary developments within feminism. Heidi Mirza's collection of essays represents developments in what she terms ‘Black British Feminism’. Jean Curthoys, on the other hand, criticises contemporary feminism, arguing that the ‘true spirit’ (sic) of feminism has been subverted by later developments in the academy. Mary Evans has written a history of the development of Western feminist thought in the academy. The two latter books focus on post-1970 developments in Western feminism, arriving, however, at opposite conclusions. Where Evans sees the 1970s as an important building block for contemporary feminist thought, Curthoys argues that the important insights of the 1970s have been abandoned. Both of these books, in one way or the other, acknowledge the multiplicity of voices within feminism today, and the need to pay attention to ‘difference’. However, neither of these books fully attends to contemporary debates within anti-racism and the critiques made by black and Third World feminists. Mirza's book, by contrast, claims to be the ‘first to be entirely dedicated to the writings of black women in a British context’.