Chris Weedon Livres

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germany produced a wealth of writing on gender difference. Much of this is still relevant today. This book examines how progressive women’s fiction, conduct books, and feminist texts negotiated and challenged scientific, philosophical, and religious definitions of woman. It looks at how class affected debates and at the role of fiction in reproducing and challenging ideas of gender difference. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book will be of interest to general readers and those working in gender studies, German cultural history, German literature, women’s writing, and comparative literature.

Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon look at the role of culture in reproducing and contesting social relations of class, gender and race. They focus on relationships between culture, subjectivity, and power, in what is the first comprehensive introduction to contemporary cultural politics. * Whose culture shall be the official one and whose shall be subordinated? * What cultures shall be regarded as worthy of display and which shall be hidden? * Whose history shall be remembered and whose forgotten? * What images of social life shall be projected and which shall be marginalized? * What voices shall be heard and which shall be silenced? * Who is representing whom and on what basis? * How can marginalized and oppressed people be empowered to change their social position? * What is cultural democracy and how can it be achieved? These key questions are among the radical issues Cultural Politics addresses, through case studies from Britain, North America, Eastern Europe and Australia.

What do the theories of poststructuralism have to offer contemporary feminism? In a discussion which assumes no prior knowledge of these complex theoretical issues, Chris Weedon argues that feminism is a politics which depends for its effectiveness on an alliance of theory and practice. Making the case that poststructuralism is the theory with the most explanatory and practical relevance to feminism, she examines the possibilities for a feminist practice. In Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory she suggests that patriarchal power is structural: it exists in institutions and social practices and not merely in individual intentions. It is, therefore, not a part of immutable nature but open to effective theoretical analysis and practical change. To develop this view, she mobilizes recent poststructuralist developments in the theory of language, subjectivity and power to develop a sophisticated feminist politics that takes into account not only questions of language and gender but also of class and race. Her argument, finally, is that it is through poststructuralist theory that an adequate feminist practice may emerge.

The postwar years radically altered the position of women in the German Democratic Republic. Women have questioned the ways in which men and women relate to one another in the home and at work. This book offers an introduction to the key role played by such issues in women's writing in the GDR.