Continental feminism denotes an approach to feminist issues in philosophy and the world both via figures and methods of what is called the “Continental” tradition in philosophy and via critical interventions into this tradition. Continental tradition in philosophy today refers to a set of nineteenth and twentieth century figures and theoretical traditions from mainland Europe, arising as a way for English-speaking philosophers in the United States to distinguish their approach to philosophical questions from that of the analytic tradition. By utilizing one or more of the signature schemas of the Continental tradition, Continental feminists contribute to problem areas ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Continental feminism thus refers to a body and style of work consisting of feminist interpretations of mainstream Continental figures (largely from what is called “Continental Europe”, such as Hegel, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault); feminist uses of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, deconstruction, genealogy, and critical theory; and of interpretations of European feminists and figures such as de Beauvoir, Irigaray, Arendt, and Kristeva. Note, however, that Europe is not and has never been a continent, and in this sense, Continental feminism, like Continental philosophy, is more of an imagined community of approaches, figures, and traditions, or an umbrella concept, rather than a precise term.
Elaine Miller points out that the term “Continental feminism” came into circulation in the United States in 2007 (Miller 2017); as she defines it, Continental feminism
involves a commitment to the historicity of philosophical concepts, including the sometimes-uncomfortable contexts of their production, a belief that it is through the examination of texts that the genealogy of ideas can be traced and resources for critically responding to them can be formulated, and that the “canon” is subject to constant re-interrogation and reconfiguration. (Miller 2017: 154)
In Allison Stone’s terms,
describing the world as it really is—not as an aggregate of static items but as an ever-shifting web of relations—calls for unfamiliar, difficult language. (Stone 2015: 4)
A distinguishing feature of Continental feminism, Miller and Stone agree, is that it
embodies a refusal to prima facie privilege clarity and succinctness of argument over acknowledging through language the complexity, difficulty, and problematic nature of the issues being addressed. (Miller 2017: 154; Stone 2015: 2)
As a way of beginning to address the Euro- and U.S.-centric biases of continental philosophy, a transContinental turn in Continental feminism proposed by Kyoo Lee and Alyson Cole aims to incorporate a global view of feminist issues and theories, where
“trans” serves as a marker for the constant geo-cultural flows of ideas in transit, as in “transatlantic”, “transpacific”, “transoceanic”, etc., as well as for cutting-edge works, conversations, and debates in trans-critical, cultural, disciplinary, human, gender, genic, lingual, medial, national fields, etc., and as trans*feminist discourses. (Cole and Lee 2019: iv)
Accordingly, this entry will take Continental feminism to include the following distinct yet related set of issues and areas: (1) the feminist use of figures, traditions, and approaches of phenomenology/existentialism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism (deconstruction and genealogy), and critical theory; (2) critical interventions into the assumptions about sex, gender, class, race, ability, religion, and age endemic to European philosophy; and (3) interpretations of hitherto underrepresented figures and methods of feminism from a transContinental and transAtlantic perspective that establish new, abandoned, or previously delegitimated genealogies for feminist thought.
It is important to note that not all Continental feminists are philosophers or work in Philosophy departments; thus, Continental feminism is interdisciplinary and its practitioners come from various fields. As this subfield developed in the early 2000s, there were already disciplinary, intra-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary projects that explored feminist issues by utilizing phenomenological, psychoanalytic, deconstructive, and critical theoretical approaches. Rather than organizing this entry around the signature schemas of the Continental tradition and subsuming ongoing work that uses these approaches under them, this entry will locate crucial genealogies for Continental feminism in the work of Black feminists, post- and decolonial feminists, women of color feminists, Asian American feminists, trans feminists, and queer feminists. We take these genealogies as central to the past, present, and future of Continental feminism, and accordingly this entry is organized topically, in order to outline the ways that Continental feminisms have developed in conversation and in tension with these interdisciplinary projects. These projects have been unearthing the cissexist, sexist/misogynistic, racist, heterosexist, classist, ageist, ableist, colonial commitments of philosophy as a discipline and a professional field as they are simultaneously expanding, transforming, and pushing the concerns and methods of Continental thought in interdisciplinary iterations. Indeed, what distinguishes Continental feminism clearly from Analytic feminism are its call for interdisciplinarity and its belief that feminist omissions themselves can become sites from which new projects are launched, as will be highlighted throughout this entry. As such, Continental feminism starts with the premise that European or Anglo-American norms and categories of thought can be interpreted, critiqued, and re-envisioned or abandoned for feminist purposes.