## 1. Characteristics of Continental Feminism



Continental feminists share with other Continental thinkers an
interest in close reading that uses careful exegesis to unpack the
deep meanings of texts through attention to their linguistic and
historical specificity. However, to utilize a philosophical tradition
that has largely presumed rather than explored the impacts of sex and
gender on material life, continental feminists often read irreverently
to focus on concerns that traditional philosophy might push to the
side. While all feminist theorizing deals with questions of power,
subjectivity, and culture, Continental feminist approaches to these
issues are often *critical* in the sense that they explore how
external power dynamics affect the constitution of inner experiences,
and in turn how embodied and subjective re-articulations of power can
and should transform the world in the pursuit of justice. This
frequently involves taking lived experience as a crucial component of
critical philosophy; as Gail Weiss puts it,



> 
> 
> only by interrogating the "ordinary" dimensions of
> experience is it possible to arrive at an understanding of the dynamic
> forces that give meaning to individual lives and that are both the
> obstacle and the vehicle to achieving lasting social change. (Weiss
> 2008: 5)
> 
> 
> 



To present a broad sketch of characteristics of continental feminism
throughout its history, this section focuses on methods that
Continental feminists use to engage embodied experience in their
projects. The gendered critique of the traditional Western
philosophical tendency to dichotomize the body that feels and the mind
that thinks is an ongoing theme in continental feminism (see entry on
 feminist perspectives on the body).
 The account presented here is not at all complete, as the specific
aims and methods of such feminist projects differ widely, most
importantly in terms of how an analysis of sex and gender is impacted
by other aspects of embodied experience such as race, sexuality, and
ability. This section first addresses some ways that continental
feminists trouble a mind-body distinction by engaging affect and
emotion in their work. Next, it explores two examples of how
continental traditions, psychoanalysis and phenomenology, are made
into critical resources in Continental feminist projects. Finally, it
presents work that engages an ongoing critique of culture and everyday
experience as an important aspect of feminist theorizing.



Many Continental feminists focus on the overlaying of mental and
physical experience via the concepts of affect, emotion, and feeling.
Affect is described by Teresa Brennan as "the physiological
shift accompanying a judgment" (Brennan 2004: 5). The
"transmission of affect" describes the way that one can
catch the mood of another; this experience is "social in origin
but biological and physical in effect" (Brennan 2004: 3).
Brennan describes *transmission* as when the "emotions or
affects of one person, and the enhancing or depressing energies these
affects entail" pass from one person to another (Brennan 2004:
3). Affect is thus one way to describe how social experience impacts
the corporeal life of subjects through the transference of energy. In
Brennan's case, affective states are *directional*; they
are not neutral but push or press on subjects. At the same time, terms
like affect and feeling might be distinguished based on the extent to
which one considers affect to be already coded with or influenced by
social significance for a subject (see Ahmed 2010: 230-231,
Seigworth & Gregg 2010, esp. 5-8).



Continental feminist projects on emotion often analyze historically
contextualized experiences. Ann Cvetkovich engages with trauma in a
way that



> 
> 
> focuses on the everyday and the insidious...and situates it in a
> social and cultural frame rather than a medical one. (Cvetkovich 2007:
> 464)
> 
> 
> 



She then presents a political account of depression that
depathologizes such negatively-connotated emotional experiences so
that they can become more visible in public and thus create a
potential foundation for community (Cvetkovich 2007: 460). In *The
Cultural Politics of Emotion*, Sara Ahmed argues that emotion is
generated when meaning is produced across social-political
interaction; these feelings create the boundaries of affinity groups
and impact self-understanding. In this analysis, emotions help
constitute what a person understands as their objective condition, and
thus



> 
> 
> emotions are not "in" either the individual or the social,
> but produce the very surfaces and boundaries that allow all kinds of
> objects to be delineated. (Ahmed 2004 [2014: 10])
> 
> 
> 



Because feeling is often ambivalent and multi-faceted, rather than in
spite of this complexity, social critics who attend to how affects are
employed and manipulated in both textual and social-political
argumentation can produce readings that trouble an easy dichotomy
between what is a "good" and what a "bad"
experience.



Psychoanalytically-informed projects use concepts such as trauma,
mourning, melancholia, and abjection to analyze embodied experience
(Irigaray 1974 [1985]; Spillers 1996; Butler 1997; Felman 2002; Oliver
2004; entry on
 psychoanalytic feminism).
 They frequently engage aesthetics as an aspect of social critique
(Chanter 2008; Kristeva 1980 [1982]; Miller 2014). This allows a
symptomatic reading of feeling to be interpreted back against the
social order, as is seen in Judith Butler's *Frames of
War*. In this text, Butler analyzes what makes a life grievable
and argues that the questions of who appears as a human, whose life
should be protected, and who does not are all figured in advance of
any particular political decision through a pre-reflexive manipulation
of affect (Butler 2009 [2016: 64]). Supplementing democratic theory
with Continental feminist interpretations, Noelle McAfee deploys
Kristeva and the resources in her thought, as well as psychoanalysis,
specifically on the issues of affect and the notion of the
"political unconscious" (McAfee 2000 and 2008).



Critical phenomenologists draw on the methods of phenomenology to
demonstrate "the multiple ways in which power moves through our
bodies and our lives" (Introduction, Weiss, Murphy, &
Salamon 2020: xiv). Lisa Guenther understands critical phenomenology
as both a way of doing philosophy and a way of approaching political
activism (Guenther 2020: 15). Most characteristically, Guenther argues
that critical phenomenology employs reworked versions of



> 
> 
> Merleau-Ponty's concept of the body schema to account for
> gendered and sexual schemas (Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young,
> Talia Mae Bettcher, Gayle Salamon), racialized schemas (Frantz Fanon,
> Lewis Gordon, Sara Ahmed, George Yancy, Alia Al-Saji), disability
> schemas (Kay Toombs, Lisa Diedrich, Havi Carel), and other aspects of
> lived experience. (Guenther 2020: 13-14)
> 
> 
> 



A recent volume edited by Gail Weiss, Ann V, Murphy, and Gayle
Salamon, entitled *50 Concepts for a Critical\* Phenomenology*
(2020), shows that many of the central concepts of critical
phenomenology intersect with Continental feminism.



Finally, considering the social and political import of inner states
and the centering of quotidian experiences of power enable Continental
feminists to explore culture as it develops. For instance, Shannon
Sullivan's *Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class
Anti-Racism* focuses on "the personal side of whiteness and
white privilege" with attention to the embodied experience of
race (S. Sullivan 2014: 19) to critique the ways through which white
liberals set themselves up as altruistic, "good" white
people through, e.g., hypocritical modes of tolerance that maintain
white domination (S. Sullivan 2014: 4). Robin James'
*Resilience & Melancholy* explores pop music as a way to
analyze the impact of neoliberal biopolitics; she combines music
theory with psychoanalytic and Foucauldian philosophies to critique
complicity with multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy and argues
that music, e.g., Rihanna's, offer strategies for countering
this oppressive power (R. James 2015). In *Irony in the Age of
Empire: Comic Perspectives on Philosophy and Freedom*, Cynthia
Willett engages film and stand-up comedy to articulate a libidinal
understanding of freedom that can counter the liberal paradigms of
individuality with a sense of freedom defined "in terms of
equality and solidarity" (Willett 2008: 14). Erin Tarver
analyzes practices of sports fans, with particular attention to
football, baseball, and basketball fans in the American South, to
better understand how individual and group identities are maintained
to "...shore up, reproduce, and very occasionally, subvert
racial, sexual and gender hierarchies" (Tarver 2017: 3). This
work is often interdisciplinary, and some of these projects work at
the intersection between continental and pragmatist feminisms (see
entry on
 intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism).



Simultaneously reading carefully and irreverently, continental
feminists deepen the philosophical account of experience by
integrating historically contextualized feeling into their projects,
using and transmuting philosophical traditions and traditional
figures, and interrogating everyday experiences in their embodied and
cultural specificity. This work insists that meaning and social order
function through unrecognized cooptation, subordination or exclusion
in various intersectional constellations. In general, continental
feminisms are less concerned with changing a woman's place in a
symbolic or social system, and more focused on upending such systems,
as will be explored in more detail in the following sections.


## 2. Continental Feminism and Black Feminist Thought



This section on the convergences between Black and Continental
feminist thought begins with a discussion about the history of Black
feminist scholarship utilizing existential/phenomenological,
psychoanalytic, critical, and hermeneutic approaches. It then
introduces intersectionality as the major heuristic for Black feminist
theorizing, and concludes by highlighting emerging areas and
intersections between Black studies and Black feminist Continental
thought.



Black women have long been contributors to the Continental
philosophical tradition. One may argue that their contributions to
professional philosophy started after the graduation of the first
Black woman to earn the PhD in philosophy, Joyce Mitchell Cook, who
completed the degree in 1965 from Princeton University. Even prior to
this date, however, Black women engaged in projects that we can
recognize as Continental feminist projects. Importantly,



> 
> 
> many Black intellectuals in the United States going back (at least) to
> the nineteenth century offered what are now described as existential,
> phenomenological, and/or genealogical analyses of race and racism.
> (Belle 2012, 329 fn. 1)
> 
> 
> 



These contributions did not always occur in the form of traditional
philosophical discussions, nor are they always created by those who
have professional degrees in philosophy, which is certainly true of
the nineteenth and early twentieth century thinkers, Sojourner Truth,
Maria W. Stewart, and
 Anna Julia Cooper.



Black feminists' contributions to Continental philosophy
demonstrate the ways in which their voices are crucial to both shaping
and expanding the discipline. Kathryn Sophia Belle, Donna-Dale
Marcano, and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson edited *Convergences:
Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy* (del Guadalupe et al.
2010), the only text at the publication of this entry that addresses
both these topics simultaneously. For the editors, the concept of
convergence is demonstrated by the natural, historical, and necessary
engagement of Black women with Continental philosophy. Belle
writes,



> 
> 
> Black feminist and womanist thinkers inevitably address the very same
> issues of agency, identity, alienation, power, and so on that are
> raised in much recent Continental philosophy. Likewise, from Immanuel
> Kant to the feminist thinkers of the present, Continental philosophy
> has engaged, to some extent, with issues of race and gender. (2010:
> 5)
> 
> 
> 



The Black feminist tradition in Continental philosophy demonstrates
that Black women are not strangers nor enemies of Continental
philosophy; rather, their unique theoretical positioning affords them
the opportunity to utilize, challenge, and expand the tradition.



Black feminist thinkers contribute to Continental feminist thought in
at least two ways. First, they engage directly with Continental
figures and theories. For example, Lorraine Hansberry comments that
Simone de Beauvoir's *The Second Sex* (1949, translated
in 1953) was arguably the "most important work of this
century" (1957 [1995: 129 and 133]), and Antillean thinker
Paulette Nardal draws on both features of the Harlem Renaissance and
existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre to provide a
phenomenological and genealogical account of how the Black race, and
Antilleans in particular, have come to understand their own notion of
race consciousness in "The Awakening of Race
Consciousness" (1932). More recently, they engage with canonical
figures and ideologies of Continental philosophy, as in the work of
Kathryn Sophia Belle on Hannah Arendt (2014) or Kris Sealey on
Emmanuel Levinas (2014). Second, regardless of their professional
Philosophy degrees or lack thereof, Black feminist thinkers utilize
the tools of the Continental tradition as part of their
interdisciplinary approaches, as in the use of Foucault in the work of
Sylvia Wynter (2003) and the use of Freud, Lacan, and psychoanalysis
in the work of Hortense Spillers (1996).



Black feminist thinkers have frequently used intersectionality as an
effective entry-point into conversations with the Continental
tradition. Intersectionality is a Black feminist theory that describes
the oppression that Black women experience as a result of lying at the
nexus of simultaneously impactful identities, such as that of race,
gender, class, and sexuality. As such, intersectionality can be used
as a phenomenological tool to describe Black women's lived
experience of oppression. While legal theorist Kimberle
Crenshaw coined the term in 1989, the theory has been articulated at
least since the mid-nineteenth century in Sojourner Truth's
proclamation, "Ain't I a Woman?" (1851). In the
speech, Truth highlights that Black women are treated with less
respect than white women while bearing the same burdens of racism as
Black men. Anna Julia Cooper wrote that Black women are



> 
> 
> confronted by a both a woman question and a race problem and is as yet
> an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both. (1892 [1988: 134])
> 
> 
> 



In their collective statement from April 1977, The Combahee River
Collective argues that



> 
> 
> Black feminism [is] the logical political movement to combat the
> manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face
> 
> 
> 



and that



> 
> 
> [t]here is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black feminism, that
> is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal
> experiences of individual Black women's lives. (Taylor 2017: 15
> and 17)
> 
> 
> 



Intersectionality is thus a hallmark of Black feminist thought because
it prioritizes the lived experiences of Black women. In doing so, it
supplies the tools to think about the extent to which one's
consciousness the world is informed by experiences of racism, sexism,
classism, and homophobia.



In addition to its utility in explaining Black women's lived
experience, intersectionality also provides tools for Black feminists
to critique the presumed whiteness and bourgeois-class status of
feminism and to combat various forms of oppression and violence. Thus,
intersectionality is also key to critiquing phenomenological analysis,
that is, analysis of lived experiences and feminist movements through
the lens of sociopolitical identities such as race, sex, and class.
Angela Davis's text *Women, Race, & Class* (1981) is
an early model of this approach; it details the history of U.S.
women's movements and their consideration, or lack thereof, of
the class-based and racial dimensions of womanhood. Texts such as
Patricia Hill-Collins's *Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,
Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment* (1990 [2015]) underscore
the ways in which Black women create their own epistemological
standpoint as a result of their lived experiences. In the 1970s to
90s, when Black women's contributions to academia reached its
zenith, Black feminist scholars such as Barbara Christian in
"The Race for Theory" (1988), Toni Morrison in *Playing
in the Dark* (1992), and Audre Lorde in "The Master's
Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House" (1984a) and
"Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference"
(1984b) exemplified Black women's critiques of theoretical
approaches that adopt a "neutral" stance toward feminist
movements where neutral meant presuming all women to be white,
middle-class, young or middle-aged, and heterosexual (see also Hull,
Bell-Scott, & Smith 1982).



Current Black feminist work centers Black epistemologies,
practices, and concepts. The burgeoning scholarship of Black women
philosophers continue to push the boundaries of Continental feminism,
as in the work of Lindsey Stewart's work on Black feminist
practices of freedom (2017), Camisha Russell's work on the
issues of race and gender in assisted reproduction (2018), and Axelle
Karera's work, which focuses on the Anthropocene and
antiBlackness (2019). In addition to engaging with the canonical
figures of the Continental tradition, Black thinkers harvest
philosophy from their own perspective and experience of the world as
well as their theoretical archives. Much of this more recent work
intersects with Black Studies. The work of Black thinkers from
disciplines other than philosophy are intersecting with Continental
philosophical and feminist approaches, as seen in the works of such as
Saidiya Hartman (1997, 2007, and 2019), Christina Sharpe (2016),
Rizvana Bradley (2014 and 2018), Jennifer Nash (2019), Denise Ferreira
da Silva (2007, 2014, and 2018), Riley Snorton (2017), Selamawit
Terrefe (2020), and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (2020).


## 3. Continental Feminism and Post- and Decolonial Thought



Continental feminist approaches to questions on colonialism revolve
around two main sets of investigations: on the one hand, the
interrogation of the hegemony of the West as an abstract category that
is deployed strategically to exclude and inferiorize communities
deemed Non-Western (Spivak 1999; Narayan 1997; Mohanty 1984), and on
the other hand, the question of coloniality, which focuses on the
political and epistemic ordering of the globe starting with the
colonization of the Americas (Lugones 2003; Wynter 1995; Ortega 2016).
To this end, these approaches both use schemas of the Continental
tradition (such as phenomenology, psychoanalysis, genealogy,
deconstruction, and poststructuralism) and call into question the
geographic and racial assumptions that underlie Continental
philosophy. For both of these approaches, an analysis of colonialism
is inseparable from the political aim of challenging and undoing the
colonial world. This challenge entails deconstructing the categories
of the colonially determined globe (such as East-West,
Western-Non-Western, Developed-Underdeveloped, First World-Third
World, North-South) through focusing on the concrete lived experiences
of individuals and communities. This section focuses on the general
characteristics of these two Continental feminist approaches taken up
under the rough categories of postcolonial and decolonial feminisms,
with the former focusing on the Western-Non-western divide that marks
colonial relations, and the latter on the North-South dialogues that
emerge within the relations of coloniality. It concludes by
highlighting coalitional thinking, a fundamental aspect of both post-
and decolonial feminist approaches.



Postcolonial feminist approaches maintain that in order to interrogate
the hegemony of the West, it is necessary to deconstruct the ways in
which it is deployed to exclude the non-Western subject. Furthermore,
such deployment is always a strategic one, insofar as the
"West" is not a concrete geographical category, and the
paradigm of Western subjectivity is continuously built by demarcating
those who do not fit in it. Postcolonial feminisms are
interdisciplinary and not limited to the field of philosophy, and they
challenge the inscription of the gender, racial, and geographic
categories that underlie the hegemony of the Western subject. In doing
so, Continental feminist approaches engage with figures from
poststructuralism and critical theory (such as Foucault, Derrida,
Deleuze and Adorno), and they deploy methods such as genealogy and
deconstruction (Spivak 1988; Mohanty 1984), in order to question the
underlying geographic and gendered assumptions of these methods. In
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" for example, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak engages with French poststructuralism and questions
the paradigms of speech/reason that deny the very possibility of
capacities such as resistance for those that do not fit within the
geographic, racialized, and gendered boundaries of Western
Subjectivity (Spivak 1988). In doing so, she highlights the ways in
which poststructuralism relies upon the very categories (of speech,
reason, or universal subjectivity) that it ostensibly critiques.



The tension highlighted by Spivak, in which the Western Subject
constitutes both the dominant subject and the only subject capable of
resistance, underlies postcolonial feminisms' critique of the
alignment of the West with modernity and progress (McClintock 1995;
Stoler 1995). Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in "Under Western
Eyes", criticizes the hegemony of Western approaches in defining
the scope and goals of feminist struggles. Issues such as the veil
debate, in this sense, point to the political and phenomenological
racialization of the Non-Western woman (Al-Saji 2010; Sheth 2006). At
the same time, Uma Narayan draws attention to the risks of fetishizing
the category of the Non-Western and highlights how such a
fetishization remains within colonially determined divisions (Narayan
1997; Narayan & Harding 2000). Namita Goswami, in *Subjects
That Matter*, develops heterogeneity as a kind of conceptual
continuity between feminism, philosophy, and postcolonial studies,
which allows for an understanding of difference beyond oppositional
and antagonistic terms (Goswami 2019).



Decolonial feminisms emerge primarily from the U.S. Latina and Latinx
contexts and have a different genealogy, insofar as they are in
dialogue with Latin American Philosophy, Continental Philosophy,
Anglo-American Thought, and especially U.S. Women of Color feminisms.
Focusing on North-South dialogues, Latin American and Latina Feminist
philosophers such as Ofelia Schutte engage with the work of figures
such as Nietzsche, Kristeva, and Irigaray while developing Latin
American philosophy as a field in U.S. academic philosophy (Schutte
1984; 1993; for more, see the entry on
 Latin American feminism).
 Linda Martin Alcoff, for example, brings Latin American
Philosophy (particularly the work of Enrique Dussel) in dialogue with
existentialism and poststructuralism in order to develop the framework
for Latinx feminisms (Alcoff 2006, 2015).



One of the major frameworks of decolonial feminisms is "the
coloniality of power", a term first introduced by Anibal
Quijano, and defined as "the social classification of the
world's population around the idea of race" (Quijano 2000:
1). In this sense, the colonization of the Americas is not only a
historical moment, but also the emergence of race and the subsequent
reorganization of the globe in accordance with what Walter Mignolo
calls "the colonial difference", denoting the abstract
positioning of Europe as the global hegemonic power (Mignolo 2002).
Decolonial feminisms take an intersectional approach to the
coloniality of power and investigate, as Maria Lugones says,
"the emergence of hegemonic gender arrangements along
'racial' lines" starting with the colonization of
the Americas (Lugones 2007: 190). Decolonial feminists such as Lugones
and Wynter bring poststructuralist critique in dialogue with Latin
American philosophy and argue that dominant gender arrangements
themselves are colonial; these arrangements, such as patriarchy,
heterosexualism, or gender dimorphism mark concrete historical
processes of the racial inscription of gender norms, starting from and
with the coloniality of power (Lugones 2008; Oyewumi
2007; Wynter 2006).



Decolonial feminisms' emphasis on historical critique is
inseparable from a concern with the concrete lived experiences of
women of color (Moraga and Anzaldua 1981 [2015]; Perez
1999; Lugones 2007, Sandoval 2000). Gloria Anzaldua, in
*Borderlands/La Frontera*, emphasizes bordered thinking as the
underlying logic of contemporary systems of oppression, and she
formulates the resistances of hybrid identities that emerge both out
of and in response to such bordered thinking (Anzaldua 1987).
Mariana Ortega develops Latina feminist phenomenology in emphasizing
both the lived experience of borderlands and exile, and the
possibilities of resistance by developing "home-tactics"
in and through these experiences (Ortega 2016).



Coalitional thinking is a fundamental aspect of both post- and
decolonial feminist approaches. Mohanty calls for coalitions across
borders in thinking through the concrete lived experiences and
emphasizes the importance of situated and local struggles in
understanding hegemonic power relations. Moraga and Anzaldua,
in their coedited collection *This Bridge Called My Back*, call
for concrete and sustained coalitions that are based on an
intersectional understanding of women's lives, rather than
abstract calls for sisterhood. Decolonial feminists such as Lugones,
Chela Sandoval, Ortega, and Emma Perez, maintain that
coalitional thinking cannot be an afterthought for any anti- or
decolonial struggles (Perez 1999; Sandoval 2000).



As Continental feminism expands, it involves further conversations
with and in-between these approaches. The questions around the
"continent" of Continental feminism, as well as how such a
continent is situated within the colonial geographic boundaries of the
West and the Global North, continue to be challenged. As spaces for
such a flow of ideas open up, further conversations on the possibility
of coalition, as well as on challenging the limits of colonial thought
continue to reshape the face of Continental feminism.


## 4. Continental Feminism and Queer Theory/Queer of Color Critique



The relationship between Continental feminism and queer theory is
simultaneously productive and fraught. While far from exhaustive, this
entry will first highlight some of the overlapping figures and
approaches between the two fields, including examples of scholarship
at their intersections. It will then briefly introduce one account of
the tension between them. Finally, it will close with some reflections
on the shared problems across these fields, including their
historically white and Anglo-Eurocentric approaches, as well as how
recent work in queer of color critique aligns with and points to new
directions in Continental feminism.



In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, "queer" emerged as
a reclamation of a homophobic slur and a rallying cry for a coalition
of the marginalized against the tyranny of the normal (Barker &
Scheele 2016; D. Hall & Jagose 2012; Warner 1993; Sedgwick 1993;
Anzaldua 1991 [2009]). Formed in the crucible of the AIDS
crisis, which sharpened the need to understand the violence
experienced by people excluded by norms related to gender and
sexuality, "queer" was meant to bring attention to the
range of sexual/gender practices deemed outside the purview of the
normal. In one genealogy of queer theory, the field develops this
early activist reclamation of the term queer into a wide-reaching
critique of how norms operate in and through dominant
conceptualizations of identity. Given this motivating impulse of
deconstruction, or of denaturalizing categories such as sexuality, it
is perhaps of no surprise that queer theory has historically been a
field well-populated with figures (e.g., Lacan, Foucault, Derrida) and
methodological approaches (poststructuralism, psychoanalysis,
phenomenology) that have been associated with Continental philosophy,
especially twentieth century European philosophy.



Queer theory frequently draws on, critiques, and expands the ideas of
many figures and approaches that are seen as early progenitors of
Continental feminism (e.g., Beauvoir, Irigaray, Kristeva, feminist
phenomenology, feminist poststructuralism, critical theory,
psychoanalytic theory). As Jagose (2009) points out, however, the
critique of normative identity categories was not invented by queer
theory, given that feminist scholarship has a rich history of
radically disrupting the category of women along lines of race and
sexuality. Moreover, the lines between feminism and queer theory are
historically blurred. For example, Judith Butler--who is often
cited as an originator of queer theory--explicitly marks her
early work as occurring in the intersection of these fields (as well
as a number of other critical discourses) (1997). In *Gender
Trouble* (1990) and *Bodies that Matter* (1993), Butler
draws on Continental feminist figures such as Irigaray, Beauvoir, and
Kristeva, and methods ranging from psychoanalysis to poststructuralism
and phenomenology to develop a simultaneously queer and feminist
theoretical lens focused on understanding the relationship between
gender and sexuality, as well as the operation of norms and identity
categories more broadly (Salih 2002).



A second major figure in the relationship between Continental feminism
and queer theory is Michel Foucault, who has been extensively used in
both queer and Continental (and specifically poststructuralist)
feminist theory, but who (as opposed to Butler) did not explicitly use
the terms queer and feminist. While a larger account of the connection
between Foucault and queer theory is beyond the scope of this entry,
the relationship is a rich one. In the late 1980s, Foucault's
*The* *History of Sexuality, Volume One* was read
heavily by activists and scholars questioning dominant narratives
around sexuality and identity (Halperin 1995); Foucault's work
was also influential not only for Judith Butler's *Gender
Trouble* (1990) but also for another text often cited as
foundational for queer theory, Eve Sedgwick's *Epistemology
of the Closet* (1990 [2008]).

 

Foucault's genealogical approach to identity, including his
exploration of the histories and models of power at work in modern
conceptions of sexuality, has been important for a number of
contemporary scholars working at the intersections of feminism and
queer theory (Huffer 2010 and 2020; Russell 2010; Sawicki 2005;
Schotten 2018; Winnubst 2006). For example, Ladelle McWhorter (1999)
takes up Foucault's account of ethics as a practice of the self,
or how we work on ourselves to become particular kinds of people,
through a queer framework that resists expected developmental
trajectories and normative timelines of a life (e.g., heterosexual
coupling resulting in marriage and children). And in a different vein,
Jasbir Puar (2007) has drawn on Foucault's theories of power (as
well as a wide range of interdisciplinary theory including
postcolonial feminist theory) to analyze the relationship between
contemporary biopower and homonationalism, or how certain
"good" gay and lesbian subjects, by aligning themselves
with U.S. imperialism, are welcomed into the nation-state.



Figures associated with Continental feminism who do not necessarily
mark themselves or their work as queer have also been used in queer
theoretical projects, just as feminists have historically done with
any number of non-feminist philosophers. For example, queer studies
scholars have explored the relative absence of Irigaray in queer
theory, argued for the queer resources of her thinking (Huffer 2013;
Winnubst 2006), called attention to the potential use of
Irigaray's disruption of binaries for queer analyses of identity
(Butler 1993: 36-39; Grosz 1989), and used Irigarayan concepts
to develop queer analyses of longstanding feminist issues, such as the
experience of breast feeding (R. Lee 2018).



Phenomenological methods can also track this traffic between
Continental feminism and queer theory. For example, Sara Ahmed's
*Queer Phenomenology* (2006) explores the use of phenomenology
in queer studies by asking, among other questions, how to understand
the "orientation" of sexual orientation as the way bodies
are directed towards particular objects and away from others. In
developing this queer use of phenomenology, Ahmed acknowledges her
debt to feminist philosophers of the body such as Sandra Bartky, Iris
Marion Young, Rosalyn Diprose, and Gail Weiss, as well as early
phenomenologists such as de Beauvoir and phenomenologists of race
including Linda Alcoff, Frantz Fanon, and Lewis Gordon.



Given these examples of the overlap of figures and approaches in
Continental feminism and queer theory, it is worth asking what
distinguishes the approaches. One may be tempted to say that feminism
focuses more on gender (historically, within continental feminism,
this may be more commonly discussed as sexual difference) and queer
theory focuses more on sexuality (including questions of pleasure,
desire, and eroticism). Yet many working within Continental feminism,
especially as inflected with French theory, also focus on questions
related to sexuality such as pleasure, desire, and eroticism. And
there are also reasons to be suspicious of how the gender-sexuality
split is narrated as a feminist-queer split. While some have argued
that there are good reasons to draw distinctions between these fields
in order to do justice to their distinct concerns (G. Rubin 2011;
Halley 2006), there have also been many challenges to overly
programmatic forms of this separation (Huffer 2013) and accounts of
how this narrative can overlook the field's mutual interest in
understanding the complex relationship between gender and sexuality,
as well as the possibility of a queer feminism (Jagose 2009).
Nevertheless, despite the overlaps in figures and archives, as well as
the wealth of resources in queer theory on topics that Continental
feminist philosophers hold dear (temporality, embodiment, identity,
and desire, to name only a few), the relatively slow uptake of texts
marked explicitly as queer theory has been noticeable (Winnubst 2010).
This is not to erase the important work done at the intersections of
these fields but to acknowledge that the relationship is not a
seamless one. In their introductory comments to a "Roundtable on
Continental Feminism", Lynne Huffer and Shannon Winnubst (2017)
note the relative lack of engagement with queer theory among the
contributions, and they ask whether Continental feminism is capacious
enough to embrace queer theory, a question that has also been posed to
philosophy more broadly (Ahmed 2016b; Salamon 2009; Winnubst
2010).



Finally, both Continental feminism and queer theory have also been
extensively critiqued for the whiteness and Anglo-Eurocentric nature
of their archives. In one particularly well-known rendition of this
critique, Cathy Cohen asks whether queer theory has lived up to its
anti-identitarian promise of creating coalitions across difference
(2005). As a way to intervene in the whiteness of queer theory
(Johnson and Henderson 2005), Roderick Ferguson (2004) coined the
term "queer of color critique" to describe how various
intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class operate in
nationalistic discourses of identity and belonging; it is, in
Ferguson's words,



> 
> 
> a heterogenous enterprise made up of women of color feminism,
> materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique.
> (Ferguson 2004: 149)
> 
> 
> 



Other notable and early contributors to this sub-field include
Jose Munoz, E. Patrick Johnson, Chandan Reddy, and
Gayatri Gopinath. Although the topics at work in queer of color
critique concerning identity, embodiment, temporality, and affect have
also been topics of central interests to Continental feminists, the
uptake of queer of color critique, as with queer theory, has been slow
in Continental feminism. However, as Continental feminism
expands--as shown through this entry-- the resources of
queer theory and queer of color critique are waiting in the wings as
crucial, if at times under acknowledged, interlocutors.



Like Continental feminism, queer theory and queer of color critique
continue the longstanding feminist tradition of sending texts and
ideas in directions they were perhaps never intended to travel. Recent
trajectories at the crossroads of Continental feminism and queer
studies include attention to neoliberal capitalism (Winnubst 2015;
McWhorter 2012), sex and gender in ancient Greek metaphysics (Bianchi
2014); critical disability theory (Puar 2017; K. Hall 2014; Yergeau
2018; and Gallop 2019), Latina feminism and existential phenomenology
(Ortega 2016), affect and temporality (Ahmed 2019; Amin 2017; Freeman
2019), and materialism and concepts of agency (Chen 2012). As explored
in the next section, another important interlocutor with both
Continental feminism and queer theory is transgender studies.


## 5. Continental Feminism and Trans Studies



A number of scholars have noted the complex interplay of shared and
distinct concerns between trans, feminist, and queer frameworks
(Namaste 1996 and 2009; Prosser 1998; Heyes 2003; Salamon 2010a;
Stryker 2004). Emerging in the 1990s as a distinct field of academic
inquiry, trans studies shares many of the intellectual roots of queer
theory yet also departs from queer studies through its explicit focus
on trans experience, including both non-monolithic nature of that
experience and the importance of trans people speaking for themselves
about their own lives. Likewise, while many of the theoretical
frameworks and figures at the heart of Continental feminism are
present in trans studies (e.g., post-structuralism, phenomenology,
Foucauldian genealogy, materialism), there have also been important
critiques of how Continental feminist approaches can ignore or
sideline trans experience. Significantly, many of the philosophers
working in Continental feminism and trans studies cited in this entry
cross inter- and intra-disciplinary boundaries.



In exploring the relationship between Continental feminist and trans
studies, it is crucial to acknowledge the forms that transphobia and
trans-exclusionary gestures can assume in feminist discourse more
generally. For an extended overview of this history, see the entry on
 feminist perspectives on trans issues.
 The entry explains points of terminology (trans, transgender, trans\*,
transsexual), as well as the historical emergence of transgender
studies and the broader (i.e., non-Continental specific) relationship
between feminist and trans issues.



In one widely recognized form of feminist transphobia (found in the
work of trans-exclusionary radical feminists such as Janice Raymond),
trans women are portrayed as not "real" women and as
threats to feminist movements (Bettcher 2006, 2007; McKinnon 2018).
However, there is another strand of feminist theory that has a
distinct relationship to trans issues, and (importantly for present
purposes) it is a lineage of feminism that draws heavily on
Continental figures such as Butler. While there is no doubt that
Butler's work has been foundational in trans studies as well as
in queer theory (Gerdes 2014; Salah 2007), it is also the case that
her work has been critiqued for its selective use of trans experience
(Prosser 1998; Namaste 1996; H. Rubin 1998). Critics point out that
trans identity tends be affirmed in Butlerian queer feminist discourse
when it can be used to demonstrate the actual constructedness of
gender, or its lack of ontological necessity, but also that some trans
identity is portrayed as problematically essentialist when accompanied
by claims to "really be" a man or a woman and/or demands
for medical transition (Valentine 2012). While Prosser and Rubin both
critique this rejection of claims to gender realness from a
phenomenological perspective (and Prosser (1998) from a psychoanalytic
framework as well), Namaste (1996) focuses on the institutional
reality of gender that is often sidelined in these debates. In
response, Jack Halberstam has argued that, while Prosser's
frustration with a selective use of trans identity in queer and
feminist theory is understandable, there are still significant
problems with the normativity inherent in the idea of gendered
realness (2005).



Notably, the proliferation of non-trans feminist writers working on
trans issues in the 1990s led to Jacob Hale's "Suggested
Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality,
Transsexualism, or Trans" (1997
 [Other Internet Resources]).
 Significant non-trans feminist analyses, following Hale and the
emergence of transgender studies, include work by Cressida Heyes
(2003) and Naomi Scheman (1996, 2016), both of whom articulate
theoretical bases for solidarity between cis and trans feminists.
There are also important instances of cis feminist theorists bringing
trans issues directly into their own work as serious interlocutors,
rather than as thought experiments (Ahmed 2016b; Colebrook 2015;
Shotwell & Sangrey 2008) and collaborating with trans theorists
(Heyes & Latham 2018). The term "cis" itself has also
received more scholarly attention in the last two decades (Aultman
2014). While the original intention behind the term was to
denaturalize non-trans subject positions, not all scholars agree that
the term successfully destabilizes gender norms, particularly insofar
as such norms are racialized (Enke 2012b).



More recently, there have been many new trajectories established at
the crossroads of Continental and trans approaches to gender. A number
of philosophers have written at the intersections of phenomenology and
trans studies, particularly in critical phenomenology, which
emphasizes questions of oppression and power in examining how things
appear to us in the world (Weiss, Murphy, & Salamon 2020). Ephraim
Das Janssen uses phenomenology, including the work of Martin
Heidegger, to examine what transgender experience tells us about
gender (2017). Megan Burke (2019) takes up Beauvoirian concepts to
explore androgyny, trans identity, and agender experience. Gayle
Salamon draws on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to develop a
phenomenology of transphobia in *The Life and Death of Latisha
King* (2018a). Salamon merges a tradition of earlier work in
phenomenology and trans studies (H. Rubin 1998; Prosser 1998) with
critical phenomenology. Tamsin Kimoto (2018) has also used both
Merleau-Ponty and Frantz Fanon to explore hormonal transition and
transphobia.



Along similar lines, new work in psychoanalysis and trans studies is
also revising longstanding psychoanalytic approaches to sex and
gender, including coercive and pathologizing theories of trans
subjectivity (Elliot 2014), and is using resources in psychoanalysis
to theorize trans experiences from a less pathologizing perspective
(Breslow 2017; Carlson 2010; Coffman 2017; Cavanagh 2010). For
example, Amy Ray Stewart uses Julia Kristeva's concept of
"intimate revolt" to illuminate trans and queer
experiences of psychic life (2017). Patricia Gherovici (2017) has
written about trans phenomena and the need to revise psychoanalytic
concepts using Lacanian theory and her own clinical experience working
with trans people. Relying on both psychoanalytic and phenomenological
frameworks, Salamon (2010a) has also defended Butler's account
of gender against the aforementioned critiques of its treatment of
trans experience and developed her own psychoanalytic and
phenomenological account of a dissonance between a felt sense of
gender and an external appearance of a body that is attuned to trans
experience.



There is also a body of work emerging that puts foundational figures
in Continental feminism into conversation with trans studies. Marie
Draz (2018) has placed feminist philosophical uses of Nietzsche, such
as in the work of Butler (1990) and Rosalyn Diprose (2002), into
conversation with trans scholarship on the institutionalization of
gender categories, while Tim Johnston (2015) has argued that although
scholars of gender and sexuality have used Irigarayan resources for
discussing trans and queer issues, Irigaray's own claim that
ontology is sexed and that there is an impassable limit between the
sexes conveys an unsalvageable cissexism, or privileging of non-trans
experience. In a similar vein, Oli Stephano (2019) critiques Elizabeth
Grosz's emphasis on the irreducibility of sexual difference,
showing that her ontology invalidates trans embodiment and
subjectivities. This critique of Grosz follows earlier work by Eva
Hayward (2017) on the transphobic implications of some of
Grosz's feminist materialist arguments. Gayle Salamon also
critically examines the way that sexual difference operates as a limit
to the reimagining of embodiment and materiality in the work of both
Irigaray and Grosz (Salamon 2010a). Maria Lugones is another
figure of widespread use in Continental feminism who has been
regularly cited in scholarship on trans issues (Bettcher 2014b;
DiPietro 2019; Draz 2017a; Malatino 2019). Finally, like Butler, the
use of Foucault in trans studies has also changed dramatically over
the last several decades. For example, Foucault's work on types
of modern power has been used (alongside women of color feminism,
indigenous scholarship, and numerous other sources) to examine the
violence caused by how state institutions administer legal gender
categories in sex-segregated institutions and identity documents
(Spade 2011 [2015]). Foucauldian feminist accounts of prison and
punishment have also been put into conversation with scholarship
rooted in trans and gender non-conforming experience (Dilts 2017;
Vitulli 2018; Zurn 2016, 2019).



Trans studies continues, in different veins, many of the foundational
questions of Continental feminism by bringing the tools of Continental
philosophy to bear on questions of sex, gender, and sexuality, and
vice versa, and it continually orients these conversations in new
directions. Much of this work is informed by other areas of critical
theory (e.g., critical race theory and decolonial theory) and pushes
the traditional boundaries of Continental feminism. Recent scholarship
on blackness and trans history, for example, has articulated the
importance of developing frameworks capable of understanding the
dimensions of racialized gender historically and today (Snorton 2017)
and work on migration and Latinx trans people has highlighted the need
to attend to both the limits of our political theory and the
productive capacities of trans people of color for generating new
worlds (Pitts 2018). Current conversations about the relationship
between Continental feminism and trans studies must also involve
attention to the material conditions of the academy itself, as the
growing attention to trans experience in philosophy more broadly has
not resulted in more trans voices and trans academics (Bettcher 2018
(Other Internet Resources); Marvin 2019, 2020). Future directions in
Continental feminism and trans studies will need to be attentive not
only to the intriguing philosophical questions occurring in these
conversations, but also to the specific contours of the material
conditions that allow trans scholarship to flourish.


## 6. Continental Feminism and Asian American Feminist Thought



This section explores the relationship between Continental feminism
and Asian American feminist thought, both the tensions between the two
as well as new directions that this relation brings to Continental
feminism. A major point of convergence between the two fields is the
focus on lived experience of Asian American women. This section begins
by discussing the hypervisibility that Asian American women experience
due to the specific forms of oppression that they face, namely,
orientalization and the Model Minority myth. It then highlights the
paradoxical form of invisibility that Asian American feminist
phenomenologist trace in their body of work. Next, this section
considers the historical position of Asian American women in
coalitional feminist projects, especially focusing on the ways in
which Asian American women have been relegated to a
"tag-along" group. Finally, this section will highlight
recent scholarship in Continental feminism that engages with Asian
American feminist theory and draws upon both Eastern and Western
traditions.



It must be noted from the outset that "Asian" is an
exceptionally broad term, and the peoples that are considered
Asian/Asian American have often changed throughout history. In
accordance with anthologies by Asian American women that respond to
this very issue, this section addresses the identities of women who
trace their roots back to East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian
subcontinent (Asian Women United of California 1989; The Women of
South Asian Descent Collective 1993).



In *This Bridge Called My Back* (Moraga & Anzaldua
1981 [2015]), Asian American thinkers such as Genny Lim, Merle Woo, Nellie
Wong, and Mitsuye Yamada established their positions in feminist
theorizing by exploring their own perspectives on topics surrounding
gendered identity, sexuality, silencing, the feeling of not-belonging,
and living against stereotypes of Asian American women as docile,
quiet, agreeable, and submissive. Similarly, in *This Bridge We
Call Home* (Anzaldua & Keating 2002), Minh-ha T. Pham,
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, and Jid Lee theorize from the specific
experiences that they face as Asian American immigrant women, such as
exploring a connection to an Asian mother who emigrated to the United
States, navigating the cultural connection they still hold to a land
that they may have never visited, and living in the face of the Model
Minority myth while also subverting the stereotype. Writings that
center the perspective of the Asian American and diasporic Asian woman
are essential for Asian American feminist theorizing, for, as Sonia
Shah emphasized,



> 
> 
> [a]n Asian American feminist movement is *the only movement*
> that will consistently represent Asian American women's
> interests. (1998: xix)
> 
> 
> 



Two early anthologies were very important for the formation of Asian
American feminism: *Making Waves* (Asian Women United of
California [AWUC] 1989) and *The Forbidden Stitch* (Lim &
Tsutakawa 1989); they both include writings from different ethnic and
national backgrounds, specifically Chinese, Japanese, Filipino,
Korean, Vietnamese, and Indian (Hill-Collins & Bilge 2016: 73). In
a recent volume entitled *Asian American Feminisms and Women of
Color Politics*, editors Lynn Fujiwara and Shireen Roshanravan
present a series of articles emerging at the intersection of Asian
American feminist engagement with Women of Color coalition politics,
organizing around concepts, methods, and epistemic principles central
to Women of Color feminist scholarship (Fujiwara & Roshanravan
2018)



Hypervisibility of Asian American women is a central issue in most
Asian American feminist projects. Some Asian American feminist
theorists, such as Robin Zheng, argue that Asian American women are
hypervisible because they are hypersexualized, orientalized, and
exoticized. Robin Zheng (2016) discusses the complexities of
hypervisibility "Why Yellow Fever Isn't Flattering: A Case
Against Racial Fetishes". Zheng argues that there is little
difference between what is known as "yellow fever", the
racial fetishization and preference of Asian women and men, and what
she calls the "Mere Preference Argument", which attempts
to claim that there is nothing morally wrong with preferring certain
racialized phenotypic traits; as she shows, despite the origin of a
racialized fetish, both yellow fever and other racialized fetishes
"depersonalize and otherize" their subjects (2016: 412).
Zheng shows that these fetishes are not just harmless personal
preferences, but a set of practices and thought patterns that result
in negative social impacts for Asian American women. Relatedly, Asian
American women are also hypervisible due to the "Model Minority
myth", that is, the myth that asserts that Asian Americans are
uniquely hard-working and thus, the ideal "model"
minority, especially in contrast with other minority groups. This myth
makes Asian American women hypervisible by making them a part of a
group of people who are defined by their ability to achieve upward
class mobility (K. Lee 2014).



Paradoxically, Asian American women are also rendered invisible in
various feminist movements and discourses. Asian American feminist
discussions on invisibility differ from other discussions within
Continental feminism on visibility and feminine erasure due to their
dual existence as both invisible subjects and hypervisible
representations of stereotypes. Poet and activist Mitsuye Yamada
states that Asian American women are "the visible minority that
is invisible" (1981b). Yamada means this claim in two ways:
first, in regard to how Asian American women are rendered invisible in
conversations surrounding women of color oppressions; and second, in
regard to how the oppressions experienced by Asian American women are
often invisible to themselves. In order to carve out a space for
themselves in feminist theorizing, Asian American women in this book
shared their stories that demonstrate the struggle of becoming visible
to oneself while existing in a world that constantly demands
one's invisibility. Yamada's explains how she was
invisible to herself because she practiced passive resistance while
believing that others did not see her as the stereotype of an Asian
American women. In order to become visible to herself and others, she
realized that she must act in ways, such as displaying anger in
response to sexist and racist acts, that an oppressive gaze would
claim was "uncharacteristic" of her as an Asian American
woman (1981b: 40). At the same time, the Model Minority myth can also
paradoxically render Asian American women invisible by making them
hypervisible as successful paradigms that are perceived as lacking
experiences of oppression and violence and thus have no credibility to
speak to these lived experiences.



As a result of this specific form of invisibility, Asian American
feminists proposed new methods of political organization in order to
include the voices of Asian American women in feminist coalitions. The
similarities between writings that span nearly two decades gesture to
one of the many issues faced by Asian American feminism: Asian
American feminists have often been seen, and arguably still are seen,
as a group in the background that is simply, as Yamada described,
"tagging along" in feminist theorization against
oppressions (1981b: 40). In other words, Asian American women are
often seen as individuals who do not often experience oppressions that
are specific to their own identities and, therefore, have no place in
fighting oppression. In response to this, we can see activists such as
Grace Lee Boggs, who have worked closely with other people of color in
the fight against different oppressions (Boggs & Boggs 1974; 1998
[2016]; Boggs & Kurashige 2011); Lisa Lowe's essay on
heterogeneity, hybridity, and multipolicy of Asian American
women's experiences (Lowe 1991); and more recent Asian American
feminist projects that include Asian Americans women in liberatory
projects in a manner that does not simply relegate them to tag-along
positions (Shah 1998; Fujiwara & Roshanravan, 2018).



A growing number of recent works in Asian American feminism engage
with figures and themes in Continental feminism through the framework
Eastern philosophy and the Asian American women's perspective
and as such they provide new directions for a genuinely
transContinental feminism. For example, building on the discussions
concerning gender in Continental feminisms, thinkers such as Kyoo Lee
(2014) and Robin Wang (2016) have explored different ways that the
gendered body has been discussed. Engaging with the concept of the
"dark female animal" (*xuapin*) in
*Daodejing*, Kyoo Lee explores the revolutionary potential of
*xuapin*, which she claims possesses a gender-bending power.
Lee argues that *xuapin* demonstrates



> 
> 
> in a sense, superiority of femaleness and femininity -as
> *the* norm, albeit invisible and inaudible
> 
> 
> 



and that it is



> 
> 
> gender-bending: female and not female at once, heterosexualized and
> not at once. (K. Lee 2014: 59)
> 
> 
> 



Wang investigates yin-yang gender dynamics through a variety of both
Eastern and Western sources in order to answer whether yin-yang gender
construction allows for gender equality. Alluding to Continental
feminists who wrote on gender such as Simone de Beauvoir, Judith
Butler, and Luce Irigaray, Wang discusses an exploration of gender
through a Chinese framework (the yin-yang) that does not make a clear
distinction between sex and gender. Wang argues that yin-yang gender
construction offers a dynamic and fluid description of gender
relationships (Wang 2016: 224).


## 7. Conclusion and New Directions in Continental Feminism



This entry has listed a number of ways in which Continental approaches
and figures are used to address feminist issues; we have attempted
both to describe some of the ongoing research areas in Continental
feminism and to point out new directions it has been taking over the
past decades. However, this list remains incomplete as we have been
unable to account for all of the important work underway. A more
complete entry would need to include projects on the intersection
between Continental feminism and critical disability studies,
indigenous feminisms, and new materialisms and humanisms. Furthermore,
we do not mean to suggest that there is no overlap or intersection
between the topics or figures grouped under each section heading here.
Lastly, there is certainly ongoing work of which we are not aware that
is already making an impact on the present and future of feminist
scholarship. We thus conclude here not with a summative statement
defining Continental feminism but rather by reflecting on the material
conditions of Continental feminism.



When Linda Martin Alcoff addressed the Eastern American
Philosophical Association in 2012, she reflected on the tension and
issues within disciplinary philosophy and urged philosophers to
"apply our diagnostic impulses to ourselves" (Alcoff 2013:
43). A necessary aspect of such praxis for Continental feminists in
light of the genealogies considered here is exemplified by Audre Lorde
who, speaking on the "Personal is Political Panel" at the
Second Sex Conference in 1979, stated



> 
> 
> I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of
> knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any
> difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. (Lorde 1984a:
> 101)
> 
> 
> 



Lorde calls feminists to enact a humble and frank confrontation with
their own embodied lives and senses of self in the context of each
person's differential implication in racist, sexist,
heterosexist, classist and ableist power. Rather than imagining that
one puts on one's thinking hat and reflects "as a
theorist" and then take it off and acts "as a regular
person", Continental feminisms suggest that the subject who
theorizes is themself always an embodied subject: Kris Sealey reminds
us that "Continental methods oftentimes refract differently
across race and gender axes" and that for this reason,
Continental feminists ought "to be intentional about the
relationship they occupy, quite simultaneously, to racial and gender
liberation" (Sealey 2017: 166). As this entry has shown, the
diversity of Continental feminist thought has been developed through
the thoughtful negotiation of many different struggles. For the
imagined community of Continental feminism to continue to grow and
support these projects, space must continually be made for new
practitioners. Since, as we put above, Continental feminism is less
concerned with changing a woman's place in a symbolic or social
system, and more on upending that system itself, members of this
academic community must continue to do the work that will make it
possible to learn from each other. Only in this way Continental
feminism can be opened up fully to its interdisciplinary
potential.