The article focuses on feminism’s political failure and the struggle of contemporary feminist discourse with “academic feminism.” It is maintained that tensions between knowing and doing are at the core of critiques of academic feminism as a deeply conflicted arena by contemporary feminists Wendy Brown and Martha Nussbaum. They claim Judith Butler’s work interrupts feminism’s historical continuity by theorizing at the expense of practical politics, and call for a return to “old-style feminism,” that focuses on transforming laws and institutions. The process of formulating a body of feminist knowledge from its social movement foundations is explored, noting the emergence of contradictions between criticizing the state and intervening in state institutions. It is contended that Ann Douglas’s classic, The Feminization of American Culture (1977), is propelled by the “specter of failure that haunts contemporary feminism.” Although she resists political guarantees for feminism’s future, Douglas, Nussbaum, and Brown share the suspicion that “feminism is itself the victim of processes of feminization” in their respective analyses of women’s relation to the domestic, critical theory, and identity production.
