Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism

The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism

Mitra, Durba

Hardcover

General Asian HistoryGeneral Political ScienceWomen's Studies

ISBN10: 0691233608
ISBN13: 9780691233604
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Mar 17 2026
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

How Third World women seized the means of knowledge production to fight against rising authoritarianism and imagine a future freer than our present

Beginning in the 1970s, women of the decolonizing world offered new visions of liberation that centered the ideas and lives of women. Galvanized by International Women's Year in 1975 and the UN's Decade of Women, Third World women developed novel ideas of equality and self-determination, building a new internationalism in opposition to neocolonialism and postcolonial authoritarianism. In The Future That Was, feminist historian Durba Mitra offers a pathbreaking account of how these women wrote Third World feminism into being, catalyzing a momentous expansion of knowledge about women, gender, and sexuality that transformed emancipatory politics across the globe.

Mitra shows how women from former colonies in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond envisioned a radically just world--and did so by insisting that research on the world's women lay at the heart of debates about global inequality, development, and human rights. Women gathered at international conferences, wrote reports on the dangers facing women, and took to the streets in protest, building a world of knowledge that contested the devastating effects of patriarchy and colonialism. Yet, despite hundreds of laws, institutions, and publications created through the efforts of these women, the future they imagined was never fully realized. The Future That Was transforms the story of decolonization and its aftermath through the history and ideas of women. By excavating these vital pasts, Mitra shows how we might envision a future of our own that is freer than the present.

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