Feminist Studies Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality Core editorial group: Dr. KATHY DAVIS (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Professor JEFF HEARN (managing editor; Linköping University, Sweden; Hanken School of Economics, Finland; University of Huddersfi eld, UK), Professor ANNA G. JÓNASDÓTTIR (Örebro University, Sweden), Professor NINA LYKKE (managing editor; Linköping University, Sweden), Professor CHANDRA TALPADE MOHANTY (Syracuse University, USA), Professor ELŻBIETA H. OLEKSY (University of Łódź, Poland), Dr. ANDREA PETÖ (Central European University, Hungary), Professor ANN PHOENIX (University of London, UK) Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality is committed to the development of new feminist and profeminist perspectives on changing gender relations, with special attention to: • Intersections between gender and power differentials based on age, class, dis/abilities, ethnicity, nationality, racialisation, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions. • Intersections of societal dimensions and processes of continuity and change: culture, economy, generativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology. • Embodiment: Intersections of discourse and materiality, and of sex and gender. • Transdisciplinarity: intersections of humanities, social sciences, medical, technical and natural sciences. • Intersections of different branches of feminist theorizing, including: historical materialist feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference feminisms, queerfeminisms, cyberfeminisms, posthuman feminisms, critical studies on men and masculinities. • A critical analysis of the travelling of ideas, theories and concepts. • A politics of location, refl exivity and transnational contextualizing that refl ects the basis of the Series framed within European diversity and transnational power relations. 1. Feminist Studies A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing Nina Lykke Feminist Studies A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing Nina Lykke New York London First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade- marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data . Lykke, Nina. Feminist studies : a guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing / by Nina . Lykke. p. cm.—(Routledge advances in feminist studies and intersectionality ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women’s studies. 2. Feminist theory—Study and teaching (Higher) I. Title. HQ1180.L95 2010 305.4201—dc22 2009043461 ISBN 0-203-85277-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-87484-X (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-85277-X (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-87484-7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-85277-4 (ebk) . to Zak, Sofus, Asker, Jobbe, Carl, Eigil, Dorthe, Uffe, Rikke, Naja – and to you, Mette! Contents List of Figures ix Editors’ Foreword xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xv PART I What Is Feminist Studies? 1 A Guide’s Introduction 3 2 A Postdisciplinary Discipline 14 3 Undoing Proper Research Objects 31 PART II To Theorize Intersectional Gender/Sex 4 Intersectional Gender/Sex: A Confl ictual and Power-Laden Issue 49 5 Theorizing Intersectionalities: Genealogies and Blind Spots 67 6 Genealogies of Doing 87 7 Making Corporealities Matter: Intersections of Gender and Sex Revisited 106 PART III To Re-Tool the Thinking Technologies 8 Rethinking Epistemologies 125 viii Contents 9 Methodologies, Methods and Ethics 144 10 Shifting Boundaries between Academic and Creative Writing Practices 163 PART IV To Use a Feminist Hermeneutics 11 Doing and Undoing the God-Trick: Analytical Examples 187 Notes 201 Glossary 203 References 213 Index 227 Figures 6.1 Two toilet doors, identical except for the naming ‘WOMEN’ and ‘MEN’ (computer-graphics). 98 10.1 ‘Messy text’. Reprint of a page in Patti Lather and Chris Smithies: Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press 1997, 5. Published with the permission of Westview Press, Perseus Books. 172 Editors’ Foreword WELCOME TO ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN FEMINIST STUDIES AND INTERSECTIONALITY! Feminist studies is a vibrant and developing transnational phenomenon and web of activity. Feminist theories and practices have shown that gender is a major structuring force and principle in and across societies and cultures, both globally and locally. Gender relations are both subject to change and resistance to change, within what can only be seen as a turbulent historical period. Moreover, at the same time that gender and gender relations have become more fully recognized and analyzed in research, scholarship, inter- vention, politics and activism, the notion of gender has also become com- plex and perhaps even less certain. One major source of these complications is the presence of multiple intersections in and around gender, gender relations and gender powers. These include intersections between gender and power differentials based on age, class, dis/abilities, ethnicity, nationality, racialization, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions. Further broad intersections continue and change, societally and transsocietally, between culture, economy, gen- erativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology. A third, and crucial, form of intersections is between different branches of feminist theoriz- ing, including: historical materialist feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference feminisms, queerfemi- nisms, cyberfeminisms, posthuman feminisms, and critical studies on men and masculinities. These present differential understandings of and inter- sections between discourse, embodiment and materiality, and sex and gen- der. Together, these various intersections feed into and draw from a fourth set of intersections of the humanities, the social sciences, and the medical, technical and natural sciences. As such, this series is committed to a pro- cess of intense transdisciplinarity. We see these complex and changing formations as the product of and contributing to the travelling of feminist ideas, theories and concepts, as well as their critical analysis. Thus, the series is set within a politics of loca- tion. More specifi cally, this refl exivity and transnational contextualizing xii Editors’ Foreword refl ects the basis of the series framed within European diversity and trans- national power relations. It is within these contexts that this series, Routledge Advances in Femi- nist Studies and Intersectionality, is committed to the development of new feminist and profeminist perspectives on changing gender relations. More specifi cally, the series arises initially from an extensive collabora- tive network of transnational scholarship and intervention based at and linked to the Centre of Gender Excellence (GEXcel), based at the Universi- ties of Linköping and Örebro, Sweden, but extending through Europe and beyond. This includes scholars from many different parts of the world. The present volume—the fi rst in the series—is written as an advanced textbook. It balances cutting-edge refl ections with introductory overviews. It addresses scholars and professionals in the fi eld and functions as a guide for students and other newcomers to the area working between and inside of existing disciplines. Within the framework of the series, the book offers interpretations and refl ections on its theoretical key issues: Feminist Studies and Intersection- alities. Interpreting Feminist Studies as a postdisciplinary discipline, the book highlights current issues in feminist theorizing of intersectional gen- der/sex and debates on epistemologies, methodologies, ethics, and academic writing styles. In particular focuses are on feminist theories of gender/sex in intersections with other sociocultural categorizations (race, ethnicity, class, sexuality etc.). The genealogies of current theoretical approaches to gender/sex as a form of doing are also explored, as well as feminist theories on intersections of sex and gender, bodily materiality, embodiment and subjectivity. Different feminist stances on epistemology are presented from standpoint, empiricist and poststructuralist feminisms to postconstruc- tionist feminist moves into and beyond postmodern philosophy. Based on the assumption that writing and researching goes hand in hand, the book highlights feminist renegotiations of academic writing styles. In line with the transversal ambitions of the series, FEMINIST STUDIES encourages cross-cutting dialogues across all academic disciplines and across different branches of feminist theorizing. It is with great pleasure that we open the book series with this volume which we hope will