1st Edition
Knowing Victims Feminism, agency and victim politics in neoliberal times
Introduction: Feminism and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times 1. Victims Left, Right and Centre: Constructing ‘Victim Feminism’ 2. Vulnerability After Wounding: Feminism, Rape Law and the Differend 3. Injury Incorporated? Feminism and the Politics of Ressentiment 4. Rethinking Ressentiment: Nietzsche and the Victim Subject in Neoliberal Times Conclusion: Feminism After Neoliberal Victim Theory
Biography
Rebecca Stringer is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
‘Rebecca Stringer’s Knowing Victims masterfully untangles the complexities of victim talk, drawing from popular and scholarly feminist texts, Nietzsche and Lyotard, and examples of activism. (…) Knowing Victims offers a progressive’s guide – a road map, if you will – to contemporary discussions of the victim. Working through the contradictions is a complex job, and Stringer succeeds admirably.’ – Chris Brickell, Journal of the Sociological Association of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Volume 29, Issue 2, 2014
'This is a brilliant, startlingly original book. The author takes several threads of debate, each highly significant in its own right, and brings them together in a deft, decisive, and supremely cogent analysis. The inquiry addresses a number of urgent issues in the contemporary women’s movement and prises apart their connected meanings and effects. Knowing Victims presents insightful, compelling, and rigorous arguments for re-thinking what resentment, power, and justice for women might mean in neo-liberal times.' – Heather Brook, School of Social & Policy Studies, Flinders University, Australia
'Rebecca Stringer’s Knowing Victims offers a nuanced and spirited challenge to the prevailing discourses in which victimisation and victimhood are delegitimised. Most importantly, the roles of both neoliberals and the progressive left in promoting the victim-bad/agency-good construction are interrogated, as are the ways in which some strands of feminism are implicated in anti-victim talk.' – Joanne Baker, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook University, Australia
'Social work professionals and scholars who appreciate a critical approach will find much to appreciate in this work. It offers a significant contribution to our scholarship, practice, and teaching. For my part, the book helped explain my vague discomfort with the popular term, ‘‘resilience.’’ Knowing Victims helped me see how this construct diverts attention from the social causes of suffering by offering the tantalizing suggestion that individuals might somehow be inoculated fromtheir ill effects.' – Amanda Barusch, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA for the Journal of Women and Social Work
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