Feminism at the end of the twentieth century is itself an interdisciplinary theory. It c uts across all previously marked territories to interrogate both time-tested theoretical constructs and emergent models that purport to further our understanding of human realities. In its various guises, it constitutes a philosophy, a method, and a practice. Further, it offers organizing principles by which individuals and groups orient themselves to their own perceptions and experiences, to other human beings, to the immediate environment, and to their overall place in the universe. Feminism r eaches beyond theory and method to become a worldview.

What does feminism offer to the study of folklore? The question is better addressed if we ask how it has already irrevocably expanded the subjects (and objects) we think about and change d the ways in which we go about our work.

Liberal feminism advanced the still radical notion that women are human beings and the understanding that this truth will only be effectively realized when political and economic power is equally d istributed among males and females. In its more "radical" forms, feminism critiqued the meanings of sex and gender, thereby contributing new perspectives on the literal and analogical reproduction of culture and exploding assumptions generated by oppr essive hetersexual and hierarchical paradigms which have historically prescribed normative human relations. Marxist and Socialist feminisms focused on the value of labor and the meaning of capital in non-egalitarian societies, and so brought us nuanc ed descriptions of the ways in which individual and social economic realities intersect with traditional ideals. Existentialist and Psychoanalytic feminisms dug deeply into broad questions of what it means to be human in patriarchy and worked to under mine misconceptions that have< provided the bases for so much cultural "knowledge."

It was in large part feminist theory and its practical applications that gave us discourse analysis, the repositioning of subjectivity, reflexivity, meanin gful collaboration, and much that underpins what we call multiculturalism. Where would we be without them? Since the rise of modern liberal feminism in the 1970's, it has been impossible (without raising highly critical eyebrows) for any folkl orist to lay claim to understanding any society's lore while simultaneously ignoring its female folk. No folklorist today would seriously suggest that one can understand any groups' expressive or ideational culture by investigating half of it. The fa ct that feminism conceives of multiple foci for the humanities, sciences, and social sciences indexes an inherent strength in feminist philosophy for Folklore: The polyphonic choir of actual human experience is more compelling for us than will ever be the monologic voice of any single theory.