In love and struggle : letters in contemporary feminism
"During the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s, feminists in the United States and Britain reinvented the image of the woman letter writer. Symbolically tearing up the love letter to an absent man, they wrote passionate letters to one another, exploring questions of sexuality, separatism, and strategy. These texts speak of the new interest women began to feel in one another and the new demands - and disappointments - these relationships would create." "Margaretta Jolly provides the first cultural study of these letters, charting the evolution of feminist political consciousness from the height of the women's movement to today's e-mail networks. Jolly uncovers the passionate, contradictory emotions of both politics and letter writing and sets out the theory behind them as a fragile yet persistent ideal of care ethics, women's love, and epistolary art. She follows several compelling feminist relationships sustained through writing and confronts the mixed messages of the "open letter," which complicated political relations between women (such as Audre Lorde's "Open Letter to Mary Daly," which called out white feminists for their implicit racism)." "Jolly recovers the unsung literature of lesbianism and feminist romance, examines the ambivalent feelings within mother-daughter correspondences, and considers letter-writing campaigns during the peace movement. She concludes with a discussion of the ethical dilemma surrounding care versus autonomy and the meaning behind the burning of saving of letters."--BOOK JACKET
Criticism, interpretation, etc
ix, 315 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780231137928, 9780231510752, 9780231137935, 0231137923, 0231510756, 0231137931
156845815
Introduction: The feminist world of love and ritual
Love letters to a new me
Feminist epistolary romance
Velvet boxing gloves
Theorizing feminist letters
Mothers and daughters in correspondence
Writing the web : letters from the women's peace movement
Do webs work? : letters and the clash of communities
Care versus autonomy : the problem of (loving) men
The paradox of care as a right
How different is e-mail?
Care ethics online
On burning and saving letters
Stealing letters : the ethics of epistolary research
Conclusion
books.google.com Additional Information at Google Books