Full Description
At a time when women are being exhorted to ""lean in"" and work harder to get ahead, Letting Go: Feminist and Social Justice Insight and Activism encourages both women and men to ""let go"" instead. The book explores alternatives to the belief that individual achievement, accumulation, and attention-seeking are the road to happiness and satisfaction in life. Letting go demands a radical recognition that the values, relationships, and structures of our neoliberal (competitive, striving, accumulating, consuming, exploiting, oppressive) society are harmful both on a personal level and, especially important, on a social and environmental level.
There is a huge difference between letting go and ""chilling out."" In a lean-in society, self-care is promoted as something women and men should do to learn how to ""relax"" and find a comfortable work-life balance. By contrast, a feminist letting-go and its attendant self-care have the potential to be a radical act of awakening to social and environmental injustice and a call to activism.
Contents
Introduction | Letting Go Feminism: Reconnecting Self-Care and Social Justice
Catherine (Kay) G. Valentine
Part One: Theoretical Perspectives
1. Toward a Feminist Theory of Letting Go
Donna King
2. On the Interdependence of Personal and Social Transformation
David R. Loy
3. Leaning In and Letting Go: Feminist Tools for Valuing Nonwork
Jennifer Randles
4. Letting Go of Normal when "Normal" Is Pathological, or Why Feminism Is a Gift to Men
Robert Jensen
Part Two: Personal Essays
5. When "Straight-Acting" Lost Its Luster: Letting Go of Masculine Privilege
Anthony C. Ocampo
6. The Gold Pen
Deborah J. Cohan
7. Whether Willing or Unwilling: The Personal, the Professional, and Two Years of Too Much
Meghan M. Sweeney
8. Letting Go: How Does a Feminist Retire?
Diane E. Levy
9. When Enough Is Enough: African American Women Reclaiming Themselves
Shirley A. Jackson
Part Three: Ethnographies
10. What to Let Go: Insights from Online Cervical Cancer Narratives
Tracy B. Citeroni
11. Stay-at-Home Fathers: Are Domestic Men Bucking Hegemonic Masculinity?
Steven Farough
12. From Retail Banking to Credit Counseling: Opting Out and Tuning In
Kevin J. Delaney
13. Keeping Up Appearances: Working Class Feminists Speak Out about the Success Model in Academia
Roxanne Gerbrandt and Liza Kurtz
14. Letting Go and Having Fun: Redefining Aging in America
Deana A. Rohlinger and Haley Gentile
Part Four: Ecological Perspectives
15. Letting Go and Getting Real: Applying Buddhist Principles to Address Environmental Crisis
Janine Schipper
16. Consuming Violence: Oil and Food in Everyday Life 201
Patricia Widener
17. Growing Food, Growing Justice: Letting Go by Holding On to the Feminine Principle
Leontina Hormel and Ryanne Pilgeram
Part Five: Visionary Feminism
18. Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In
bell hooks
Contributors
Index
