Are Feminism and Gender Studies Really Growing Old? Reassessments of a Discourse

In the last ten years, a surprisingly large number of publications have focused on feminism and its historic evolution. These publications examine the past in order to determine where feminism and gender theory stand today. All too often they present a narrative of origin, in which feminism falls by the wayside as being in the past and its political claim is undercut. This essay investigates these teleological narrations and questions if the feminism debate of the past ten years has to be understood as an indicator that points to issues other than feminism and gender theories. Refusing a logic of causality, the essay poses the question: How do I, as feminist subject, position myself in relation to feminism’s historiography and the question of new directions.