Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to feminist critical thought: A new conception of emancipatory politics

This dissertation is concerned with the relationship between the ideas and life of Rosa Luxemburg and feminism. Although Luxemburg was not a feminist and did not have an analysis of family or patriarchy, her very life and writings stood in opposition to patriarchy. However, despite the similarities between Luxemburg's ideas and the feminist discourse, Luxemburg's name is quite absent from the feminist literature of the last three decades. The realization of Luxemburg's absence from the feminist literature and a conviction that she contributes significantly to a vision that can include women's standpoint in our understanding of knowledge, constituted the initial impetus for this dissertation.;This work explores and establishes the similarities between Luxemburg's ideas and a critical feminist analysis of society. At root is their common challenge of Marxist orthodoxy for converting people from subjects to objects of social change, and their trust that knowledge is arrived at, guided by practical involvement and that action of self determining individuals is the only means to liberation. People's experiences and sensuous activity, rather than constituting an obstacle to "objective" knowledge, are seen as a source of reliable knowledge. To the extent that the feminist critical analysis relates to Critical Theory, placing the subject at the center of the debate and recognizing multiple relations of domination, this dissertation explores Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to Critical Theory. Luxemburg's early contribution to this influential school of thought has been ignored in the socialist literature.;This dissertation argues that the rift between feminism and the Left which is generally thought to have started in the 1960s was actually evident as early as at the turn of the century in the tensions between Rosa Luxemburg and the Marxism of the Second International, and is embedded in the Marxist rejection of "soft tissue" such as agency, spontaneity and feelings in revolution, the core of Rosa Luxemburg's work.