Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Next Wave: New Directions in Womens Studies) by Clare Hemmings

Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Next Wave: New Directions in Womens Studies) Reviews

• 
  Tia

  Edit: Rereading this in 2023 was a delight and I pretty much disagree with all of my earlier criticisms. It’s rich, giving, elegantly constructed, and deeply reflexive in ways that I think are brave and insightful and challenging. My only quibble now would be when queer theory and critical race theory get too divorced from each other, overlooking the vibrant role of queer of colour critique, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, the presence of which might dissolve some of the tensions she has identified (though maybe not yet considered integral enough to feminism??)
  
  Old review (2021):
  
  I really enjoyed and learned a great deal from Hemming’s arguments here, and am particularly impressed by the ways in which she asks big, difficult questions of herself and others, questions that most scholars probably entertain only in the backs of their minds but might feel compromised by actually attempting to address. I definitely see this as a text to which I will return and cite from.
  
  That said, structurally, it was a bit off for me. At times, I felt that the 250+ page book could have just as easily been a journal article, or at least the first handful of chapters on narrative types. The arguments are at their most convincing when emphasizing the specific, such as the chapter on how Judith Butler has been historicised. Otherwise, it was hard to stay interested in, or to see the broad applicability of, some of the early chapters, which could frankly have each been dealt with in a matter of a few pages. The final chapter on affect is really insightful, but feels a bit like a separate project at times.
  
  The last thing to know is that this text is very much about feminist theory, period…. I had thought that it would be more about the story of feminism(s), or of feminist criticism, and would name and evaluate more significant figures and moments, but as reflected above, it is essentially a critique of critiques of academic feminist theory, most of which come from short anonymized extracts from journals. It does not attempt to tell its own history of feminist theory nor provide any kind of macro-look at the narratives of others outside of brief quotations. I imagine that despite its usefulness to scholars, it would be a difficult text to teach, which is unfortunate.
• 
  Heather Montes Ireland

  This is a brilliant, original book that has provided a language for the ways we describe (and "tell stories about") Western feminist history--and why it's problematic. This work is so multi-layered and fascinating, both in its methodologies and its conclusions, I will likely return to it again and again.
• 
  Elena

  didn't finished it, just couldn't stand it after trying to not fall asleep while reading a few chapters.
• 
  Maryam AlHajri

  I found the second part of the book more interesting than the first; where she starts engaging with feminist debates around poststructuralism and materiality of “representation”.
• 
  Duke Press

  “Hemmings offers a helpful summary of the different, complimentary, and sometimes contradictory ways feminists discuss their collective history, and aims to situate that summary as a gateway toward more politically viable alternatives. . . . Theoretically-minded readers will appreciate its engagement with historiography and epistemology and its refusal to replace one flawed narrative approach with another.”--On Campus with Women
  
  “This excellent, original book identifies and critiques the stories feminists tell about feminism. . . . Hemmings’s practice of detaching scholars’ names from their writing is inspired, because it moves away from praising or vilifying individual authors in favor of looking at prevailing narrative patterns. . . . Highly recommended. All readers.”--R. R. Warhol, Choice
  
  “Hemmings’ interventions do more than constitute a meta-critique of Western feminism; they historicize and provincialize Western feminism with implications on how gender, sexuality and feminism are understood and taken up in a variety of trans/national contexts. This book is compulsory reading for anyone interested in feminism today; not just in Anglo-American feminism or in feminist theory, however, demarcated.”--Srila Roy, Feminist Review
  
  “Clare Hemmings’s Why Stories Matter is poised to prompt a major rethinking of feminist theory, and more importantly, of how we construct our histories of this field – and what this says about feminists’ intellectual investments and our futures. This is an engagingly written and highly original close reading of theoretical debates in the pages of top feminist journals. . . . The result is a stimulating book, one that has the power to interrogate the reader’s theoretical commitments, the stories she tells herself about her field, and the stories she tells others, including, if she teaches, her students.”--Ilya Parkins, Reviews in Cultural Theory
  
• 
  Mentai

  Hemmings appraises the discursive currents in inter-disciplinary feminisms over the past decades characterising narratives in terms of either 'progress', 'loss', or 'return'. A very useful resource when surfing the minefields that debates in feminist journals are, and a reminder that what is framed and what is cut out in these discursive narratives has political and ethical implications. Hemmings' work also shows an innovative approach to discursive research, with space for imagination, for feminist 'futures', alongside critique. This is important because often critique or discursive framing is cast aside "in favour of generative or more positive approaches" (see Barrett & Bolt 2013), however, one may not necessarily exclude the other. Social transformation begins when both critique and generative approaches are considered together or in resonance and also, conflict.