Transnational feminism in the United States: knowledge ethics and power
by Leela Fernandes
The acceleration of economic globalization and the rapid global flows of people, cultural goods, and information have intensified the importance of developing transnational understandings of contemporary issues. Transnational feminist perspectives have provided a unique outlook on women’s lives and have deepened our understanding of the gendered nature of global processes. Transnational Feminism in the United States examines how transnational perspectives shape the ways in which we produce, consume, and disseminate knowledge about the world within the United States, and how the paradigm of transnational feminism is affected in nuanced ways by national narratives and public discourses within the country itself.
An innovative theoretical project that is both deconstructive and constructive, this bookinterrogates the limits of feminist thought, primarily through case studies that illustrate its power to create entirely new fields of research out of traditionally interdisciplinary lines of inquiry. Leela Fernandes discusses ways to approach, analyze, and capture processes that exceed and unsettle the nation-state within the transnational feminist paradigm. Examining the links between power and knowledge that bind interdisciplinary theory and research, she shines new light on issues such as human rights and the United States war on terror as well as academic debates about transnational feminist perspectives on global issues. A commanding and thought-provoking analysis, Transnational Feminism in the United States powerfully contributes to central debates in the field of Women’s Studies and related cross-disciplinary scholarship on feminist theory and gender from a global perspective.
