What is and why Critique? On Possibilities and Limitations of Feminist Critique today

Starting with a critical rereading of a passage in Virginia Woolf's essay three Guineas on the "premature burial of feminism" (M. Hawkesworth) this essay discusses possibilities and limitations of feminist critical thought today. That is to say in a context in which post-2nd-wave and anti-feminist forces alike work to both desarticulate 2nd-wave-feminism and rearticulate it as a heteronormatively grounded solipsistic project of a female elite. It argues for a critical analysis of the politics of narration of feminism as well as for a new ethos of feminist knowledge production, i.e. a practice in which we ask by what norms and rationalities feminist theory wants to be governed and how feminist theory wants to govern itself. Following Michel Foucault and Judith Butler the essay consequently suggests to understand critique as a practice in which we pose the question of the limits of our most secure ways of knowing, i.e. a practice that questions the nexus of power, knowledge and ontology.