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Week Two: Contemporary Feminist Debate - Bringing Feminist Theory Home

Ahmed, Sara. (2017) Chapter 1: Introduction: Bringing Feminist Theory Home, in Living a Feminist Life, Duke University Press, Durham, pp.135-160

"To live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable." p.2

"A movement is not just or only a movement; there is something that needs to be kept still, given a
place, if we are moved to transform what is." p. 3

"Feminism is wherever feminism needs to be. Feminism is everywhere" p.4

"It might be assumed that feminism travels from West to East. It might be assumed that feminism is
what the West gives to the East. That assumption is a travelling assumption, one that tells a feminist
story in a certain way... a history of how feminism acquired utility as an imperial gift." p.4

"Feminism as a collective movement is made out of how we are moved to become feminists in
dialogue with others" p.5

 "Feminism is necessary because of what has not ended: sexism, sexual exploitation, and sexual
oppression." p.5

 "When you become a feminist, you find out very quickly: what you aim to bring to an end some
do not recognize as existing." p.6

 "Feminist housework aims to transform the house, to rebuild the master's residence." p.7

 "the more difficult questions, the harder questions, are posed by those feminists concerned with
explaining violence, inequality, injustice." p.9

 "how we learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us." p.10

 "A feminist instruction: if we start with our experiences of becoming feminists, not only might
we have another way of generating feminist ideas, but we might generate new ideas about
feminism." p.12

 "A sweaty concept: another way of being pulled out from a shattering experience." p.12

 "a sweaty concept is one that comes out of a description of a body that is not at home in the
world. By this I mean description as angle or point of view" p.13

 "A feminist project is to find ways in which women can exist in relation to women" p.14

 "Citations can be feminist bricks: they are the materials through which, from which, we create our
dwellings." p.15
















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