Importing Feminist Criticism
Arlindo s essay illustrates the fact that hving in a peripheral country does
not necessarily condemn BraziEan intellectuals to merely copying or uprooting
foreign ideas from their socio-historical base, thus emptying them of any social
meaning. He manages to use WiBis s materialist feminist reading creatively to
help explain a local manifestation of a more general phenomenon: he
demonstrates how one dominated group can learn from the struggle of another
dominated group, can ‘translate’ the real specificity of each struggle into its more
general aspect thus opening up the road to an awareness of the necessity of more
fundamental change.
If teaching and learning from one’s students that feminist criticism is one
of the many necessary ways to change, to moving from the world of women and
men as we found it to the world as we want it to be, then I am very glad I can
consider myself a feminist.
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