Shulamith Firestone Leaves A Lucid and Trenchant Legacy

We note, with sadness, the passing of Semiotext(e) author, Shulamith Firestone, who passed away of natural causes, though at a date that has not yet been determined. Firestone was a major voice in the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States that also included such figures as Germaine Greer and Kate Millet; her 1970 book, The Dialectic of Sex, offered a brilliant and radical analysis of biological reproduction and the role of women in society that remains as relevant today as it had been over forty years ago when it first came out (particularly with the rekindled political debates over reproductive rights that have arisen over the last year).

 Her only other book, Airless Spaces, was a more personal account of lives experienced in the margins and ensnared by the institutions of psychiatry and medication. The New York Times concludes its obituary with an extract from this collection of stories: a passage that communicates the devastating personal struggles Firestone had to undergo in her own life. We take comfort in her having left us with an intellectual legacy that remains as lucid and trenchant as ever.