Living a Feminist Life
Ratings5
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings5
Average rating4.5
In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critiqueoften by naming and calling attention to problemsand how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutionssuch as forming support systemsto survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it. -- Provided by publisher.
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Sara Ahmed illuminates the work of feminism with wordplay. For example, in talking about leaving the life she was expected to live (heterosexuality), she says, “When I was wearing it, I found it wearing” (p. 48). This is one way that someone can become a feminist: by coming to understand that the world around you wants you to live a life that you don't want.
This is in some ways an academic book, but its mode of discourse is not typical academic language. She uses the different senses of words, takes advantage of the difference in meaning when a word is a noun as opposed to a verb, constructs sentences around puns, and other playful tactics to express some of the difficulties or intricacies of becoming and being a feminist. Sometimes this style conveys meaning viscerally and sometimes more meaning comes from spending time with her sentences and letting them percolate. This was not a quick book to read, but it was rewarding.
