Book presentation: Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East–West Frontier

Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East–West Frontier. Routledge, Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko (eds.)

Challenging persistent geopolitical asymmetries in feminist knowledge production, this collection depicts collisions between concepts and lived experiences, between academic feminism and political activism, between the West as generalizable and the East as the concrete Other. Rather than dwelling on the East–West dichotomy, this book dislocates it and shifts the epistemic landscape, launching a critical analytical perspective of Europe as borderland.

"This theoretically provocative volume explores to what extent a post-colonial perspective can be a vitalizing means to examining the role of post-East feminisms within a new global configuration along with a fresh revision of one’s own Marxist heritage and its potential." - Biljana Kašic, Feminist Theorist, Universityof Zadar/Centre for Women’s Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

A brilliant and challenging critique of hegemonic East/West, North/South, and three-world narrative cartographies of feminist theory from the positionality and epistemic lens of the Eastern European borderlands and post-state socialism. A book that belongs on the bookshelves of all radical scholar–activists engaged in struggles for gender and economic justice globally. - Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University.

This is a stunning and important critique. It brings a new perspective to the history of post-state socialism, thus "provincializing" the story Western academic feminism has long told about itself. The introduction provides a
compelling reassessment of the terms of (Western) feminist theory, exposing its debt to Cold War epistemologies. - Joan Wallach Scott, Professor emerita at the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University.