Concepts, devices and practices have proliferated considerably since the signifier 'feminist' was first attached to 'method' and 'methodology', most prominently in the 1980s. Early discussions suggested that feminist research and knowledge-making demanded a distinct approach to empirical inquiry: one that recognised and overturned systemic gender disparities, validated women's 'experience', rejected hierarchies between the researcher and research participant, and had emancipation and social change as its purpose. Some of these early defining aspirations have been used to experiment with method and continue to incite lively debate about the politics of knowledge production and even what might be the best feminist method (Wilkinson, 1999). Others have been recast by new technologies and the greater attention given to non-human modes of relating in areas such as science and technology studies, epigenomics and climatology. Yet, a commitment to make feminism mean something in the doing of research, cultural analysis, teaching, artistic practice and in activism, has continued to complicate and supplement the idea of a distinct feminist methodological imperative.It was from this point of enduring attachment, 'returns' as 'products of repetition, of coming back to persistent troublings' (Hughes and Lury, 2013, p. 787), and curiosity that our call for papers for this themed issue asked: 'Where are we with feminist methods?' 'Where?' as it turns out is an apt question. For method at its European root is all about terrain, emplacement and venturing forth. In the modern Western tradition Ulmer (1994, p. 30) reminds us-'beginning with Plato and his Academy'-geometry was a morality, 'everything in its right place, related to the doctrine of the route as a right way to proceed'. The word method comes from the Greek meta (higher, beyond) and hodus (route); with 'route' connoting a highly prescribed and gendered mode of travel and expedition. By way of illustration, Ulmer draws from Eugene Victor Walter's Placeways:To go the right way, one made a journey to a proper destination, and after the journey out, sought a return (nostros) or homecoming. The traveller followed instructions, looked for tidings of the route, and depended upon escorts, guides, and hosts to help him on his way. Advancing upon the route, he was said to 'accomplish' the journey, which was understood as a round-trip back to his proper place. The opposite of going the right way was to wander or to go astray. (Walter, 1988, p. 186) feminist review 115 2017(1-12) Ó 2017 The Feminist Review Collective.

This article aims to contribute to the developing area of feminist scholarship on women and political violence, through a study of women in one of Europe's oldest illegal armed movements, the radical Basque nationalist organization ETA. By tracing the changing patterns of women's participation in ETA over the past four decades, the article highlights the historical factors that help explain the choice of a small number of Basque women to participate directly in political violence, and shows how these factors have differed from those for men. While the gender politics of radical nationalism are intricately linked to cross-cultural associations of militarism with certain forms of masculinity, the article also stresses the importance of understanding women's activism in ETA in the context of the organization's characteristic as an ethnic nationalist movement, as well as the wider historical circumstances of the movement's development, including the modernization of Spanish and Basque society over the past four decades. Although comparisons with women in other armed movements are possible, such historical specificities undermine any attempt to construct a universal theory of women and ‘terrorism’, such as Robin Morgan's ‘couple terrorism’ thesis. Finally, the article examines the changing representations of female ETA activists in the Spanish and Basque media. Although women ETA activists are now regarded as ‘normal’, popular representations continue to link women's armed activism with deviant sexuality and the transgression of their natural destiny as mothers. The different treatment of women is evident as well in claims of sexual torture made by some detainees. The article concludes that although the participation of women in political violence poses disquieting questions for the largely anti-militarist women's movement, case studies of women in armed organizations, as well as their place in the wider practices of conflict, are an important contribution both to feminist debates about violence and to wider studies of political violence.

Since the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, activist and writer Carol J. Adams (2000 [1990) has put forth a feminist defence of veganism based on the argument that meat consumption and violence against animals are structurally related to violence against women, and especially to pornography and prostitution. Adams' work has been influential in the growing fields of animal studies and posthumanism, where her research is frequently cited as the prime example of vegan feminism. However, her particular radical feminist framework, including her anti-pornography and anti-prostitution arguments, are rarely acknowledged or critiqued. This article challenges the premises of Adams' argument, demonstrating that her version of vegan feminism is based upon an unsubstantiated comparison between violence against women and violence against other-than-human animals, and on the silencing and exclusion of sex workers as subjects. The article contests the limited reading of Adams, and of feminism, offered in some key works in animal studies and posthumanism, at the same time that it recognises the need to challenge the anthropocentrism evident in much feminist theory. By way of alternative approaches to the sexual politics of veganism, the article highlights the interventions of artist and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, proposing that her situated and embodied commitment to animal rights brings sex worker agency into the story, while resisting simple comparisons among different forms of violence. The concerns raised by Ross overlap in compelling ways with recent research in performance studies and labour history, bringing the question of work and workers, animal and human, to the fore. These studies point towards a potentially more useful framework than that of Adams for understanding the human violence suffered by different species, including those destined to be eaten by people.

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