Critical Poetics of Feminist Refusals: Voicing Dissent Across Differences

Critical Poetics of Feminist Refusals renders a vivid portrait of the intergenerational and intersectional dialogue between influential feminist writers on how to say no to the conditions of oppression, exclusion, and exploitation imposed by patriarchal and systemically racist capitalist societies. The book provides today’s readers and writers access to the powerful inventory of concepts and techniques that two generations of feminists have assembled for refusing domination and constituting fugitive forms of sociability and writing. Drawing on examples from feminist thinkers, Audre Lorde, Carla Lonzi, Hélène Cixous, Hortense Spillers, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Anne Boyer and Simone White, the book focuses on how the power dynamics of recognition tie the uses of language to the material conditions of discrimination in everyday life.

Federica Bueti is writer, editor, independent scholar and is a Writing Tutor of the MFA at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, NL.