Abstract

This article aims to develop a theoretical model of the evolution of Israeli feminist scholarship in the last three decades. This model focuses on critical disciplinary discourses that deconstruct existing institutional and academic frameworks in the interest of social and cultural change. I insist here on feminist critical inquiry, the critique of the nation, and the critique of knowledge as emerging consistent concerns in all three phases of its evolution. These phases are liberal criticism (1970s–80s), radical criticism (1990s), and postmodern criticism (2000s). Documenting the manifestations of inequality in the workplace, the army, and the family was the central theme in much feminist writing of the 1980s. The focus of scholarly inquiry in literature, sociology, and anthropology is gender rather than sexual difference, and the basic problem is diagnosed as oppression rather than discrimination; power and discourse are the terms of reference. This radical approach no longer sought reform, inclusion, and accommodation, but rather social and cultural transformation.

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