A Feminist Politics of Ambivalence: Reading with Emma Goldman

Abstract

Feminist theory worldwide is confronting – perhaps as it always has done – a series of
deep challenges. On the one hand, awareness of gender and sexual inequalities seems high; on the other, co-optation of feminism for nationalist or other right-wing agendas is rife. On the one hand, feminist social movements are in ascendancy, on the other there is a continued dominance of single issue feminism and a resistance to intersectional, non-binary interventions. If we add in the collapse of the Left in the face of radical movements such as those underpinning Brexit and Trump (and the frequent blaming of feminism for fragmentation of that Left) then it is hard to know what to argue, to whom, and for what ends. In the face of such claims it is tempting to respond with a dogmatic or singular feminism, or to insist that what we need is a shared, clear, certain platform. I want to argue instead – with Emma Goldman (anarchist activist who died in 1940) as my guide – that it can be politically productive to embrace and theorise uncertainty, or even ambivalence, about gender equality and feminism.