Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, and writes the blog Infinite ThØught. She discusses her new book, One-Dimensional Woman ( Zero Books), a critique of the kind of contemporary feminism that poses women as thriving in consumer capitalism.
Where have all the interesting women gone? If the contemporary portrayal of womankind were to be believed, contemporary female achievement would culminate in the ownership of expensive handbags, a vibrator, a job, a flat and a man. How has it come to this? That the height of supposed female emancipation coincides so perfectly with consumerism is a miserable index of a politically desolate time. Much contemporary feminism, particularly in its American formulation, doesn’t seem too concerned about this coincidence.
This short book is partly an attack on the apparent abdication of any systematic political thought on the part of today’s positive, up-beat feminists. It suggests alternative ways of thinking about transformations in work, sexuality and culture that, while seemingly far-fetched in the current ideological climate, may provide more serious material for future feminism.
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The book has already generated a lot of blogular commentary, see e.g. this, this, this and this.
–Ann Bartow
