unsettling
noun1
The weakening of some previously established system or norm.
- A farmer in Hampshire was sorely distressed by the unsettling of his barn. However straightly over-night he laid his sheaves on the threshing-floor for the application of the morning's flail, when morning came, all was topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, though the door remained locked, and there was no sign whatever of irregular entry.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 305:
- But reconstructing theory has proved more problematic than feminists might have hoped, even as their efforts played an important if sometimes overlooked part in post-modern unsettlings of theories in the West.2013, Krishna Sen, Maila Stivens, Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, page 19: