PROPITIOUS MULTIPLICITY OR SPLIT AND CONFRONTATION? TWO RADICAL FEMINIST READINGS OF THE STORM BY MCKNIGHT MALMAR

Whether Looked at as a heaven-sent privilege bestowed on feminism as multiplicity, or a many-headed monster within, that incarnates as a widening gap that wastes feminists’ enormous energies in confronting each other, diversity and difference appear as an indispensable element deeply rooted in feminism. The long standing titles as liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism, Psychoanalytic feminism, echo-feminism and Postfeminism, to mention only some out of a longer list, can attest to the diversity. It Permeates the feminist space so inclusively that it leaves almost no recess intact, splitting, among others, postfeminism into postmodern and third-wave feminisms, and radical feminism into the hardly reconcilable offshoots” of radical-Libertarian feminism and radical-cultural feminism. Focusing on two antithetical readings of the storm, this article attempts to show how radical-libertarian and radical cultural feminisms diverge in their encounter with a wide range of phenomena covering from sex and gender through family to literary criticism.