‘Feminists Love a Utopia’: Collaboration, Conflict, and the Futures of Feminism

Abstract

What is the historical relationship between feminism and utopia? And what relevance does utopia have for feminism today? Despite the pragmatism that has consistently been associated with feminist efforts to redress discrimination against women, the discourse of utopia has deeply informed feminism. In her critique of the place of utopia in American feminist theory, Sally Kitch contends that utopianism — as a thought process and a strategy for envisioning social change — cannot ‘accommodate the complexities of feminist concerns — gender difference, differences among women, or the intersection of sex, race, and class with various social domains’ (2–3). In her view, 1970s slogans like ‘Sisterhood is Global!’ and ‘Let a Woman Do It!’ signal the essentialist, binary, and idealizing aspects of feminism’s past. To advance her argument for a move beyond utopia, Kitch distinguishes between utopianism, which rejects the past in favour of a vision of future perfection, and realism, which in its pragmatic self-reflexivity emphasizes the value of contingency and change. This distinction leads her to conclude that ‘[i]f utopianism maps uncharted territory, then realism functions mostly in the known, pluralistic, confusing, and inevitably imperfect world. It is immersed in history’ (9).