Dolores Hayden: The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (1981)

20 June 2018, dusan

“Long before Betty Friedan wrote about ‘the problem that had no name’ in The Feminine Mystique, a group of American feminists whose leaders included Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Livermore, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman campaigned against women’s isolation in the home and confinement to domestic life as the basic cause of their unequal position in society.

The Grand Domestic Revolution reveals the innovative plans and visionary strategies of these persistent women, who developed the theory and practice of what Hayden calls ‘material feminism’ in pursuit of economic independence and social equality. The material feminists’ ambitious goals of socialized housework and child care meant revolutionizing the American home and creating community services. They raised fundamental questions about the relationship of men, women, and children in industrial society.

In reevaluating these early feminist plans for the environmental and economic transformation of American society and in recording the vigorous and many-sided arguments that evolved around the issues they raised, Hayden brings to light basic economic and spacial contradictions which outdated forms of housing and inadequate community services still create for American women and for their families.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1981
ISBN 0262081083, 9780262081085
367 pages
via Dubravka

Reviews: Paul Goldberger (New York Times, 1981), Eugenie L. Birch (J Society of Architectural Historians, 1982), Ellen Carol DuBois (Signs, 1982), Nancy F. Cott (NY Review of Books, 1983), André Levesque (Urban History Review, 1983), Daniel Garr (American Historical Review, 1983), Deborah Altus (Behavior and Social Issues, 1995).

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (13 MB)

Helen Hester: Xenofeminism (2018–) [EN, ES]

8 May 2018, dusan

“In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?

These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.

Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.”

Publisher Polity Press, 2018
Theory Redux series
ISBN 1509520627, 9781509520626
v+169 pages
via calamitousannunciation

Reviews: Emma Rees (Times Higher Education, 2018), Rhian E. Jones (New Humanist, 2018), Mareile Pfannebecker (LSE Review of Books, 2018), Peter Heft (The Mantle, 2018), Diana Young (Kontradikce, 2019), Dharmender Dhillon (Philosophy Now, 2020), Alison MacKenzie (Postdigital Science and Education, 2021).

Publisher
WorldCat

English: HTML (added on 2018-6-1), PDF (4 MB)
Spanish: PDF (trans. Hugo Salas, 2018, added on 2021-1-22)

Judy Wajcman: TechnoFeminism (2004–) [EN, ES]

25 April 2018, dusan

“This timely and engaging book argues that technoscientific advances are radically transforming the woman-machine relationship. However, it is feminist politics rather than the technologies themselves that make the difference. TechnoFeminism fuses the visionary insights of cyberfeminism with a materialist analysis of the sexual politics of technology.”

Publisher Polity Press, 2004
ISBN 9780745630441, 0745630448
viii+148 pages

Reviews: Martha McCaughey (American Journal of Sociology, 2006), Lucy Suchman (Social Studies of Science, 2006), Rosalind Gill (Science as Culture, 2005), Sarah M. Brown (NWSA Journal, 2007), Eva Patricia Gil (UOC Papers, 2007, Spanish), Isabel Clúa (n.d., Spanish).

Wikipedia (EN)
Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

TechnoFeminism (English, 30 MB)
El tecnofeminismo (Spanish, trans. Magalí Martínez Solimán, 2006, via)

See also Wajcman’s Feminism Confronts Technology, 1991.