What is it about feminism that invites so many different opinions on what ‘counts’ and what doesn’t? People from vastly different cultural situations variously categorise feminist practices as extreme, radical, reactionary, unbalanced, co-opted, revolutionary, elite, exclusive, progressive, passé, and hysterical. The desire of both feminists and anti-feminists to control feminism emerges as the limiting of what feminism is, whom it is for, and where it is going. The urge to limit feminism seems, in some cases, to overtake the urge to spread the word and celebrate feminism’s successes. And it is not just anti-feminists who attempt to limit feminism – even feminists spend an inordinate amount of time defining certain practices out of the feminist spectrum. In this thesis, I document and analyse the way we limit feminism – its participants, meaning, practices, language, history, and future. I explore the reasons why we need to contain feminism in this way, looking in particular at those who have an investment in keeping feminism comfortably small. I invite back into the realm of feminism a wide range of activities and theories we generally invalidate as feminism, including the words of several ‘unofficial’ feminists I interviewed for this project. In essence, this project goes towards the rethinking of the term ‘feminism’ by examining the widely differing and often contradictory definitions of ‘what counts.’

Submitted by Cristhiane Guerra (cristhiane.guerra@gmail.com) on 2017-01-04T16:37:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2297251 bytes, checksum: e752e47b2d148793523fad82bb596ab8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-04T16:37:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2297251 bytes, checksum: e752e47b2d148793523fad82bb596ab8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The feminist movement has generated feminist and gender studies undertaken by academic women in the universities of the western world from the decade of 1970. The objective of this research is to analyze, through the life stories of three academic, the relationship between "the personal" and "the institutional" in their narratives, highlighting their contributions to the institutionalization of gender studies. Narrative interviews were conducted (autobiographical) with three lecturer of the Federal University of Maranhão and built their biographies. They were used as analysis categories: Institution (Cornelius Castoriadis), feminist identity based on ManuelCastells, narrative (Sandra Jovchelovitch and Martin Bauer) and gender (Ana Coling). The analysis shows that even though they have won recognition from the academic community and society, the issue still remains in the ghetto in UFMA although institutionalized in the research groups. / O movimento feminista gerou os estudos feministas e de gênero empreendidos por mulheres acadêmicas, nas universidades do mundo ocidental a partir da década de 1970. O objetivo desta pesquisa consiste em analisar, através das histórias de vida de três acadêmicas, a articulação entre “o pessoal” e “o institucional” em suas narrativas, destacando suas contribuições para a institucionalização dos estudos de gênero. Foram realizadas entrevistas narrativas (auto-biográficas) com três professoras da Universidade Federal do Maranhão e construídas suas biografias. Utilizaram-se como categorias de análise: Instituição (Cornelius Castoriadis), identidade feminista com base em Manuel Castells, narrativa (Sandra Jovchelovitch e Martin Bauer) e gênero (Ana Coling). A análise evidencia que ainda que elas tenham conquistado reconhecimento da comunidade acadêmica e da sociedade, a temática ainda permanece no gueto na UFMA, embora institucionalizada nos grupos de pesquisa.