What happens when elite women get what they want? Mary Harrington’s Feminism against Progress is in part a tale of a dream fulfilled: a feminism of pure freedom, driven by the ideals of progress, achieving its goal of unfettered self-actualization. However, viewed up close, the promised utopia is not as Edenic as it seems. In fact, it’s an anti-Eden: a rootless, borderless realm of liquidated social bonds, populated by atomized, disembodied selves, and the only deity walking amidst them is the devouring Spirit of the Market.
Harrington, erstwhile citizen of this anti-Eden, takes on the role of Virgil, a prophetic guide through our purgatorial present, regaling us, her readers, with an account of where feminism went wrong, and what can be done about it. The book unfolds in three parts, which can loosely be described as a glance backward at where we’ve come from, a hard look around at where we are now, and a glimpse of where we might go from here.
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