Robin Truth Goodman

Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory offers a thought-provoking introduction to a range of concepts that have influenced feminist thinking. Breaking down and exploring complex themes and debates, it starts discussions rather than offering conclusions, providing the building blocks for readers to explore new directions in feminist thought. The book is arranged by “keywords” with each chapter featuring a term or a set of terms which feminist theory has invested with multiple perspectives, conversations, and controversies, bridging between different feminist phases, events, orientations, disciplines and concerns. Each chapter presents broad overviews of why a particular term is relevant to feminist theory, as well deeper engagement with integral texts. While not meant to be taken as firm definitions, the keywords in this book are gateways to stories which describe the goals and histories of feminist theory. Robin Truth Goodman treats feminist theory as a living theory developing from a reckoning with messy and unpredictable politics. Goodman argues that the tools for social transformation have been prepared by writers and thinkers who came before, but that language, like gender, is something that cannot be fixed in place because its ability to reference things in the world is unstable and uncertain. If the terms that feminism has traditionally claimed in its self-descriptions are flawed or inadequate, our responsibility lies in transforming them, reanimating them in line with today’s political needs, and creating through them new languages and narratives to generate different realities. Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory provides an informed foundation for those new to the subject. It is an invaluable resource for undergraduates and postgraduates of literary and cultural Studies, gender and sexuality studies, social justice curricula, and sociology.

Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory offers a thought-provoking introduction to a range of concepts that have influenced feminist thinking. Breaking down and exploring complex themes and debates, it starts discussions rather than offering conclusions, providing the building blocks for readers to explore new directions in feminist thought. The book is arranged by “keywords” with each chapter featuring a term or a set of terms which feminist theory has invested with multiple perspectives, conversations, and controversies, bridging between different feminist phases, events, orientations, disciplines and concerns. Each chapter presents broad overviews of why a particular term is relevant to feminist theory, as well deeper engagement with integral texts. While not meant to be taken as firm definitions, the keywords in this book are gateways to stories which describe the goals and histories of feminist theory. Robin Truth Goodman treats feminist theory as a living theory developing from a reckoning with messy and unpredictable politics. Goodman argues that the tools for social transformation have been prepared by writers and thinkers who came before, but that language, like gender, is something that cannot be fixed in place because its ability to reference things in the world is unstable and uncertain. If the terms that feminism has traditionally claimed in its self-descriptions are flawed or inadequate, our responsibility lies in transforming them, reanimating them in line with today’s political needs, and creating through them new languages and narratives to generate different realities. Milestones in Critical Feminist Theory provides an informed foundation for those new to the subject. It is an invaluable resource for undergraduates and postgraduates of literary and cultural Studies, gender and sexuality studies, social justice curricula, and sociology.

Highlighting the importance of Third Cinema on twenty-first-century political filmmaking, this book examines films that have adopted Third Cinema’s experimental film techniques for the purpose of political intervention. The text explores the legacy of Third Cinema on more traditional cinema, and Robin Truth Goodman examines how Third Cinema’s cinematic reinvention of the image as a political springboard is still being utilized by contemporary filmmakers. In exploring the relationship between political subjectivity and cinematic practice through a variety of contemporary case studies, Goodman also looks at topics not previously examined by Third Cinema. The book focuses on the multiple internationalisms of borders and cities and treats gender as a vector through which different directions in a political field can be imagined. Finally, while linking a mid-twentieth-century tradition of filmmaking to contemporary problems of the political, the book considers the politics of representation through the representation of politics, reflecting on what makes an image political and what inspires us to identify with it. A compelling read for students and scholars interested in Third Cinema, Cinema and Politics, and Cinema and Subversion and anyone interested in exploring the connections between Third Cinema and contemporary political filmmaking.

Highlighting the importance of Third Cinema on twenty-first-century political filmmaking, this book examines films that have adopted Third Cinema’s experimental film techniques for the purpose of political intervention. The text explores the legacy of Third Cinema on more traditional cinema, and Robin Truth Goodman examines how Third Cinema’s cinematic reinvention of the image as a political springboard is still being utilized by contemporary filmmakers. In exploring the relationship between political subjectivity and cinematic practice through a variety of contemporary case studies, Goodman also looks at topics not previously examined by Third Cinema. The book focuses on the multiple internationalisms of borders and cities and treats gender as a vector through which different directions in a political field can be imagined. Finally, while linking a mid-twentieth-century tradition of filmmaking to contemporary problems of the political, the book considers the politics of representation through the representation of politics, reflecting on what makes an image political and what inspires us to identify with it. A compelling read for students and scholars interested in Third Cinema, Cinema and Politics, and Cinema and Subversion and anyone interested in exploring the connections between Third Cinema and contemporary political filmmaking.

Gender has become a commodity. Today’s economy trades in symbols and narratives as much as in objects. As such, gender can be bought and sold, produced as an object, and demands constant work. What makes the commodity object seem alien, mysterious, and even threatening, Marx tells us, is that the worker’s social relations - his subjectivity - are taken away from him and stamped into the object which then appears to have a life of its own, disassociated and threatening. Gender Commodity argues that gender is a social relation made into such an alienated object. In today’s situation of radical insecurity, people are reaching out and identifying with objects - including symbolic ones - that promise quite falsely that they grant stability, duration, and fulfillment, and gender has been made into one of those. Gender Commodity is an interdisciplinary study that brings literary studies into dialogue with the surrounding mediascape around issues of gender, culture, and economy. It also asks how the symbolic production of gender commodity at home informs an imagination of gender policy as it reaches out globally. As it criticizes gender-affirmative feminism for participating in the culture of the commodity, Gender Commodity also looks to feminism to imagine gender otherwise.

Gender has become a commodity. Today’s economy trades in symbols and narratives as much as in objects. As such, gender can be bought and sold, produced as an object, and demands constant work. What makes the commodity object seem alien, mysterious, and even threatening, Marx tells us, is that the worker’s social relations - his subjectivity - are taken away from him and stamped into the object which then appears to have a life of its own, disassociated and threatening. Gender Commodity argues that gender is a social relation made into such an alienated object. In today’s situation of radical insecurity, people are reaching out and identifying with objects - including symbolic ones - that promise quite falsely that they grant stability, duration, and fulfillment, and gender has been made into one of those. Gender Commodity is an interdisciplinary study that brings literary studies into dialogue with the surrounding mediascape around issues of gender, culture, and economy. It also asks how the symbolic production of gender commodity at home informs an imagination of gender policy as it reaches out globally. As it criticizes gender-affirmative feminism for participating in the culture of the commodity, Gender Commodity also looks to feminism to imagine gender otherwise.

There is no doubt that the beginning of the twenty-first century was marked by crises of debt. Less well known is that literature played a historical role in defining and teaching debt to the public. Promissory Notes: On the Literary Conditions of Debt addresses how neoliberal finance has depended upon a historical linking of geopolitical inequality and financial representation that positions the so-called “Third World” as negative value, or debt. Starting with an analysis of Anthony Trollope’s novel, The Eustace Diamonds, Goodman shows how colonized spaces came to inhabit this negative value. Promissory Notes argues that the twentieth-century continues to apply literary innovations in character, subjectivity, temporal and spatial representation to construct debt as the negative creation of value not only in reference to objects, but also houses, credit cards, students, and, in particular, “Third World” geographies, often leading to crisis. Yet, late twentieth century and early twenty-first literary texts, such as Soyinka’s The Road and Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow, address the negative space of the indebted world also as a critique of the financial take-over of the postcolonial developmental state. Looking to situations like the Puerto Rican debt crisis, Goodman demonstrates how financial discourse is articulated through social inequalities and how literature can both expose and contest the imposition of a morality of debt as a mode of anti-democratic control.

Gender for the Warfare State is the first scholarly investigation into the written works of U. S. women combat veterans in twenty-first century wars. Most recent studies quantify military participation, showing how many women participate in armed services and what their experiences are in a traditionally “male institution.” Many of these treatments regard women as victims solely of enemy fire, even as they are also often victims of their own military apparatus and of their own involvement in global aggression. By applying literary analysis to a sociological question, Gender for the Warfare State views women’s experiences through story and literary traditions that carry meaning into present practices. Goodman shows that women in combat are not just entering and being victimized in “male institutions,” but are also actively changing the story of gender and thus the structure of power that is constructed through gender. Moreover, this book unveils a new narrative of care that affects economic relations more broadly and the contemporary politics of the liberal social contract. Women’s participation in combat is not just a U. S. event but global and therefore has a deeper historical range than current sociological accounts imply. The book compares the political contexts of women’s entry into war now with their prior, twentieth-century contributions to wars in other cultural settings and then uses this comparison to show a variety of meanings at play in the gender of war.

Gender for the Warfare State is the first scholarly investigation into the written works of U. S. women combat veterans in twenty-first century wars. Most recent studies quantify military participation, showing how many women participate in armed services and what their experiences are in a traditionally “male institution.” Many of these treatments regard women as victims solely of enemy fire, even as they are also often victims of their own military apparatus and of their own involvement in global aggression. By applying literary analysis to a sociological question, Gender for the Warfare State views women’s experiences through story and literary traditions that carry meaning into present practices. Goodman shows that women in combat are not just entering and being victimized in “male institutions,” but are also actively changing the story of gender and thus the structure of power that is constructed through gender. Moreover, this book unveils a new narrative of care that affects economic relations more broadly and the contemporary politics of the liberal social contract. Women’s participation in combat is not just a U. S. event but global and therefore has a deeper historical range than current sociological accounts imply. The book compares the political contexts of women’s entry into war now with their prior, twentieth-century contributions to wars in other cultural settings and then uses this comparison to show a variety of meanings at play in the gender of war.

Examines the recent "War on Terror" and the increasing privatization of international policing through the lens of detective fiction and security and espionage narratives. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, world politics have increasingly mirrored plots of detective novels, with high-profile criminal investigations that cross multiple borders and the internationalized law enforcement practices associated with the "War on Terror." Policing Narratives and the State of Terror examines the relationship between domestic policing and international policy through an analysis of contemporary popular detective fiction, police procedurals, police autobiography, security reports, and chronicles of domestic spying. Robin Truth Goodman connects these accounts of policing to the changing shape of the contemporary nation-state, marked by the denationalization of labor; commercial and criminal laws that jump borders more quickly than civil law protections; and the replacement of legal precedent by unrepeatable, exceptional executive decisions. Working at the intersection of literature, international law, and globalized commerce, Goodman astutely pinpoints how policing has become an increasingly troublesome instrument of empire, particularly in terms of national sovereignty and the growing numbers of mercenary private security forces.

World, Class, Women begins the extraordinarily important task of bringing a postcolonial, feminist voice to critical pedagogy and, by extension explores how current debates about education could make a contribution to feminist thought. Robin Truth Goodman deftly weaves together the disciplines of literature, postcolonialism, feminism, and education in order to theorize how the shrinking of the public sphere and the rise of globalization influence access to learning, what counts as knowledge, and the possibilities of a radical feminism.

World, Class, Women begins the extraordinarily important task of bringing a postcolonial, feminist voice to critical pedagogy and, by extension explores how current debates about education could make a contribution to feminist thought. Robin Truth Goodman deftly weaves together the disciplines of literature, postcolonialism, feminism, and education in order to theorize how the shrinking of the public sphere and the rise of globalization influence access to learning, what counts as knowledge, and the possibilities of a radical feminism.

As Junk Bond felon Michael Milken attempts to transform public education on the model of the HMO, he is hailed in the mainstream press as having "done more to help mankind than Mother Theresa." Even as BP Amoco, a notorious U. S. polluter, is charged with funding and arming paramilitaries in Colombia, it freely distributes science curricula that portrays itself as a loving protector of citizens from a dangerous and 'out of control' nature. These as well as many other examples abound as Professors Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman take on the corporate educators, media monopolies, and oil companies in their new book Strange Love: How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market. Saltman and Goodman show how corporate-produced curricula, films, and corporate-promoted books often use depictions of family love, childhood innocence, and compassion in order to sell the public on policies that ironically put the profit of multinational corporations over the well-being of people. In doing so Goodman and Saltman reveal the extent to which globalization depends upon education and also show how battles over culture, language, and the control of information are matters of life, death, and democracy.

An original analysis of the role of female reproduction in the project of empire. In today’s global market, ideas about family, femininity, and reproduction are traded on as actively as any currency or stock. The connection has a history, one rooted in a conception of feminine identities invented through a science interwoven with the pursuit of empire, the accumulation of goods, and the furtherance of power. It is this history that Robin Truth Goodman exposes in her provocative analysis of literary and political representations of female infertility from the mid-nineteenth century to our day. Goodman takes Darwin’s studies on sterility between species as her starting point, exploring evolutionary science as the intersection of a colonial worldview based on class struggle and the pathologizing of female identities that fall outside reproductive normalcy. She then examines how Joseph Conrad constructs a vision of feminism as a product of miscegenation, how Alejo Carpentier and Mario Vargas Llosa deploy female figures of miscegenation to recast Latin American literature as "difference," and how ecological devastation in the Brazilian Amazon is envisioned through failures in Indian marriage. Locating points of conjunction between queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories, Infertilities points to the role of lesbian representation and reproductive politics in ongoing critiques of globalism.