Rich sensitivities: An analysis of conflict among women in feminist memoir

Abstract

While the North American women's movement is most known for its efforts to transform social relations between women and men, its adherents have also focused on remaking relations among women. Using an innovative data source, social movement memoir, this paper indicates the depth of disappointment feminists cause one another.Memoirists dispute notions found in the movement and mainstream that women are socially capable. The paper offers the concept "relational ideation'' to describe the way feminist memoirists critically examine taken for granted understandings of women's sociality and amplify their desires for a new social ethic among them. © 2009 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.