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Equality and Diversity Radical Feminism and the Quest for Fundamentals

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Abstract

The era commonly referred to as ‘modernity’, ‘modernisation’, or ‘modernism’ (despite the different implications and nuances of each of these terms), is marked by the changing socio-economic and discursive conditions in the status of all minorities, especially women. For a number of reasons that I have analysed elsewhere1, the emancipation of women and their integration into not only the labour force, but also intellectual and political life, has become a pressing necessity in the western world. The first paradox to explore in a discussion between modernity and the feminist quest is therefore that of a historical period that needs to integrate women socially, economically and politically, thus reversing what had become the traditional patterns of exclusion and oppression of women.

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Notes

  1. Rosi Braidotti: Patterns of Dissonance/Beelden van de Leegte,Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991/Kampen, Kok Agora, 1991.

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  2. I borrow the notion of ‘discourse’ from Michel Foucault: L ’Ordre du Discours, Paris, Minuit, 1977.

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  3. Rosi Braidotti, `Re-figuring the subject’ in: H. Kunnemann & H. de Vries (eds.), Enlightenments. Encounters between Critical Theory and Contemporary French Thought,Amsterdam: Kok Agora, 1993, pp. 319–341.

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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Braidotti, R. (1995). Equality and Diversity Radical Feminism and the Quest for Fundamentals. In: van Vucht Tijssen, L., Berting, J., Lechner, F. (eds) The Search for Fundamentals. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8500-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8500-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4568-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8500-2

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