Two Feminisms

In this paper I unpack a suspicion that much feminist thought about politics flows out of a misconception about the nature of the problems that women face, ultimately about the nature of politics and the public sphere. I suspect that the more conventional feminist approaches have a rather flat or narrow conception of politics: as primarily a one-way transmission of power, flowing from those who oppress to those oppressed. In this view, little if anything is done to conceptualize or problematize the media through which this supposed transmission passes; the media disappear from view and all that is left are actors with either sinister or innocent intentions.