Politics of Difference

Politics of Differences explores how white activists in autonomous feminist movements in Vienna have been shaping their relationship to other women i.e. migrants, Muslim or Black women and Women of Color since the 1980s. The publication analyses how these activists have been talking about other women, what (miss-)representations they created, how they tried to form alliances and which implicit assumptions impeded these coalitions, but also which anti-racist strategies white activists developed. Another issue is activists theorizing on racism and anti-Semitism. The study builds on an extensive analysis of five Austrian feminist magazines, interviews and participant observations. Its four main chapters cover a broad range of topics. First, the author shows how feminist internationalism in the 1980s shaped the discovery of the so-called guest workers by white feminists and critically explores the analogies that have been drawn between colonialism and the subordination of women. Second, feminist debates on Austrias National Socialist past (which have been fragmentary to say the least) are analysed alongside the avoidance of the issue of anti-Semitism in feminist activism. The study shows how activists need to assure themselves of their political identity shape their perspective on the past. Third, at the beginning of the 1990s a time marked by deadly racist violence as well as renewed criticism by migrant womens movements heated debates on the relationship between sexism and racism started. Anti- racism and the (im)possibility of coalitions across differences became feminist issues that remain relevant until today. Last, the fourth chapter deals with developments since the 2000s including the queer challenge to feminist certainties and the import of theoretical developments from the US. The current tendency in public as well as feminist debates to focus exclusively on Islam is also analysed in this chapter, which makes it highly relevant for understanding the usage of womens rights in todays racist campaigns. The concluding chapter revisits these empirical results and rearranges them along the three broad topics of sameness vs. difference, politics of representation and agency, which bridge the whole time-span. At the very end of the book the author identifies what academic feminist theorizing might gain from the analysis of activism and reflects on how she (necessarily) fell short of her own (self-)critical claims. This detailed analysis of activities of autonomous feminist movements in Vienna in relation to migration, racism and anti-Semitism is the first academic work on these issues. Politics of Differences is therefore not only relevant for academic purposes but also closes a gap in feminist historiography. In its analytically focussed chapters the study goes far beyond a mere description and develops ideas for current activist as well as academic feminisms.