But the empress has no clothes!

TLDR

The ownership and definition of feminist theory are questioned. The study aims to stimulate debate on feminist theory’s form, promote feminist metatheory, and call for an autocritique to transform its fundamental categories. The authors find that feminist theory has not evolved like its epistemological counterparts, remains parallel to mainstream theory, and requires autocritique to transform its fundamental categories.

Abstract

Who owns feminist theory? and just what is meant by the idea of ‘theory’? We explore these fundamental questions as part of interrogating some emergent orthodoxies about feminist theory, proposing that there is a ‘missing revolution’ in feminist thinking, for while ideas about feminist epistemology, methodology and ethics have been fundamentally reworked, those concerning feminist theory have not. Our purpose is to stimulate a debate about the form of feminist theory, rather than the more usual controversies about its content; and thus our concern is with promoting the development of feminist metatheory. We argue that the now-dominant version of feminist theory is a parallel project to that of mainstream/malestream social theory, and that a feminist autocritique of this and related developments is needed, with the aim of achieving a transformation of the fundamental categories of feminist theory.