Abstract; This chapter reconceptualizes feminist political theory as a living tradition by reading Iris Marion Young’s “House and Home” through the lens of improvisatory jazz. Distinguishing tradition from canon, it argues that feminist theory should not aspire to sacralized preservation of the past but to dynamic transmission into the future—transmission that is at once reverent and irreverent, loyal yet transformative. The chapter illustrates this approach through a close reading of Young’s essay, contending that Young theorizes like a jazz musician: she riffs on Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, and Simone de Beauvoir among others; borrows conceptual “licks”; inserts a striking autobiographical interlude; and refuses to harmonize her various sources into a single cohesive voice. Engaging with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment and Paul F. Berliner’s account of improvisational practice in jazz musicianship, the chapter theorizes improvisation as an embodied practice of creativity grounded in deep familiarity with inherited forms. Improvisation thus becomes a model for scholarly transmission understood as living tradition. In conclusion, the chapter argues that feminist political theory, like jazz, is a practice sustained through citation, critique, and transformation. To preserve it through worshipful canonization is to kill it. It survives as a living tradition only if it is played and played with.
