Series Preface
by Teresa Brennan

Feminist theory is the most innovative and truly living theory
in today's academies, but the struggle between the living
and the dead extends beyond feminism and far beyond
institutions.  'Opening Out' will apply the living insights of
feminist critical theory to analyse the historical and cultural
genealogies that shaped those contexts.

While feminist insights on modernity and postmodernity
have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also
become more distant from the 'realpolitik' that made
feminism a force in the first instance.  This distance is
apparent in three growing divisions.  One is an evident
division between feminist theory and feminist popular
culture and politics.  Another division is that between
feminism and other social movements.   Of course this
second division is not new, but it has been exacerbated
by the issue of whether the theoretical insights of feminism
can be used to analyse current conflicts that extend beyond
feminism's "proper field".  In the postmodern theory he has
helped to build, the white male middle-class universal subject
has had to relinquish his right to speak for all.  By the same
theoretical logic, he has also taken out a philosophical
insurance policy against any voice uniting the different
movements that oppose him, which means his power
persists 'de facto', if not 'de jure'.  Currently, there are no
theoretical means, except, for fine sentiments and good will,
that enable feminism to ally itself with other social movements
that oppose the power networks that sustain the white, masculine
subject.  'Opening Out' aims at finding those means.
(Cont.)