Abolitionist Socialist Feminism:
Radicalizing the Next Revolution
160 pp, $20 paper, ISBN 978-1-58367-763-6
By Zillah Eisenstein
Interviewed by Adrienne
Recently the host of the podcast Feminist Hotdog interview Zillah Eisenstein about her book Abolitionist Socialist Feminism and began by asking why feminism is still relevant. Without hesitation, Eisenstein answered in outrage at the very question. When asked how feminism is connected to abolitionism, Eisenstein spoke about the ways white women have been used to reinforce white supremacist structures of oppression — see, a thousand one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable Emmett Tills — and the counter-potential they have as co-architects of an abolitionist society. Regarding the question of the centering of white women, Eisenstein clarifies: “When I say let’s focus on white women, in the struggle against racism…. If you don’t understand how white women have been used to support racism, in the history of lynching, in the language and demands around rape…” Meanwhile, she says, “the patriarchal lens is always centered…I’ll de-center them every chance I get.”
Eisenstein goes on to ask, “Why is it that when people are talking about democracy…(there’s a) lack of recognition of the way that misogyny smothers the globe?” Clearly, democracy can take very misogynistic dimensions, she adds. Eisenstein makes the key observation that even critiques of capitalism reproduce that same erasure. The real question is, “how we are made so absent in so many of (these) conversations…people ask over and over again, why doesn’t socialism work? Well maybe it doesn’t work because you haven’t really gotten rid of the foundation of misogyny and racism…”
Listen to the whole interview at Feminist Hotdog
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