Feminism Without Feminism

Taking a critical perspective on the question of feminism’s situation, this essay urges feminists to consider the benefits, both theoretical and political, of doing feminism without feminism. Contrary to how this may sound, this is not to recommend the wholesale abandonment of feminism, or less, a break. Rather, it is to recognize how feminism has always been defined by underlying normativities and politics that are analytically separate and distinct from feminism itself. It is also to suggest that these normativities and politics have been the field of feminism’s greatness and the source of its theorizing’s deepest and most enduring strengths. With these suggestions in hand, the essay sketches possible agendas from different feminist perspectives, the idea being to point out how feminism’s present and its future—a future without feminism but not without everything feminists have fought for and cared about—can be as bright a promise and sign of hope as it ever was in the high points of feminism’s past.