Introduction

Abstract

Feminist attitudes toward tradition are typically suspicious and subversive. Yet, as feminism itself has become a political tradition, significant questions have emerged for feminists to address. How can feminism draw productively on its own history, without passively conforming to expectations of the past, or elevating the past as a nostalgic ideal against which to measure and compare the present? Conversely, how can we usher in new ideas and approaches without simply “burying” feminisms of the past? And how can we speak of “feminist history” without instating or reproducing a singular master narrative? This book considers such questions through investigating the concept of “historical time,” and the ways in which feminists conceptualize and produce the temporalities of feminism.