Three Women Writing/Riding Feminism's Third Wave
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P1: GMX Qualitative Sociology [quso] ph203-quas-466798 May 15, 2003 19:10 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002 Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 3, Fall 2003 (C 2003) Three Women Writing/Riding Feminism’s Third Wave Hokulani Aikau, Karla Erickson, and Wendy Leo Moore1 In this article the authors compare their own stories of developing a feminist consciousness in order to demonstrate how the distinction between feminist waves and feminist generations can be a productive one. They argue that the metaphor of waves must be delineated from the family metaphor of generation in order to maintain the fluidity that exists within a generational cohort of feminist scholars. Their narrative begins where they all meet, at the University of Minnesota in 2001, and interweaves stories of how they eventually come together in the same institution as feminist scholars. Their stories illustrate that although they each identify as feminists, and each fall into the category often referred to as “third wave,”their pursuit of a feminist agenda has followed different trajectories. Taken together, their personal narratives unpack and explore the wave metaphor for describing individuals, provide a critique of feminist generations, and illustrate the multiplicity of third wave feminism. KEY WORDS: waves; feminism; generations; intersectionality; personal narrative; intellectual training. THE POWER OF THREE: THIRD WAVE FEMINISM How long [the wave] will live, how far it will travel, to what manner of end it will come are all determined, in large measure, by the conditions it meets in its progression across the face of the sea. Rachel L. Carson 1989, p. 116 On a humid afternoon in July, the three of us met beside the glistening waters of the Mississippi to share stories about feminism, graduate training, the paths we 1Correspondence should be directed to Karla Erickson, Department of American Studies, 104 Scott Hall, 72 Pleasant St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, e-mail: [email protected]. 397 C 2003 Human Sciences Press, Inc. P1: GMX Qualitative Sociology [quso] ph203-quas-466798 May 15, 2003 19:10 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002 398 Aikau, Erickson, and Leo Moore pursue and the people, ideas and places—both institutional and geographic—that have pushed or pulled to get us here along our way. At this moment, summer 2002, and in this place, Minneapolis, Minnesota, we each tell our story of how we came to ride the third wave of feminism. As the introductory quote suggests, the duration and eventual outcome of this wave is still unknown, but one thing is certain: what each of us has encountered along the academic paths we have taken will inform the direction we go next. What strikes us almost immediately is that although we all consider ourselves third wave feminists, what this title means to us individually is slightly different. The difference comes from the distinct paths we took to get to a shared understanding that academic feminism must struggle with the intersectionality of power and privilege in order to keep the momentum of earlier waves flowing onto academic shores. Although we have traveled different paths to reach this place, our professional training intersects in two ways: first, we all consider ourselves feminist scholars, and second, we conduct our research with the support of a dissertation group led by our advisor, Jennifer Pierce. On this particular day, we have gathered to interrogate what it means to call ourselves feminists and, more particularly, to examine and re-articulate the wave metaphor so often used to describe feminism over time. Our interrogation of the wave metaphor began when Hokulani was conducting research in Hawai’i. As she sat on the beach reading the literature on third wave feminism, she listened to and watched the waves roll onto shore and wondered about the materiality of the wave metaphor. Where do waves come from? How do they operate? When she sat and watched wave after wave roll onto shore she wondered, how can we tell when one wave begins and another ends? According to surfers, waves come in at least three sets of three with the third wave being the ideal one to catch and ride to shore. The first two waves allow the surfer to read the size and speed of the waves that will follow. The surfer does not worry if she does not catch the third wave or if the set fades out before reaching shore because she knows that more will be coming on the horizon. Surfers turn their back to the shore and look to the horizon in eager anticipation of the next set of waves. Our interrogation of the wave as a metaphor for the movements of feminism allows us to keep in motion the fluidity and variation that exists within a single feminist generational cohort.2 This essay maps the diverse routes each of us has taken to academic feminism. As third wave feminists, we look to the horizon with eagerness and a sense of expectation as we watch for the next set of waves that will take us to different academic shores. 2Anthropologist Katherine Newman (1989) employed the concept of generational culture to explain the differences between experiences of divorced women who where born during the Depression of the 1930s and those born in the 1960s. She contextualizes their responses to divorce and subsequent life choices within larger cultural forces and ideas at the time of their upbringing. We borrow her term and designate ourselves a generational cohort which we view as a smaller subset of a generational culture who are being trained academically at the same university, at the same time, and in the same dissertation group. P1: GMX Qualitative Sociology [quso] ph203-quas-466798 May 15, 2003 19:10 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002 Riding Feminism’s Third Wave 399 The wave metaphor has been used in the immigration literature to describe the increase in the number of people who move from one place to another during a particular historical period (Foner 2000; Hathaway 1999). “Wave,” in this case, refers to the displacement and relocation of people from place to place and the resulting effect on the “coast” or “island” upon which they land. Not just the shores or points of destination are altered, but also the individuals that make the journey. In the case of feminism, waves seem to be a metaphor for the displacement and relocation not just of people, but also of theories, methods and ways of knowing. Just as waves are influenced by winds and currents in the fluid seascape of the ocean, we look broadly at structural forces in order to place the wave metaphor and our individual stories within larger contexts. Where feminist geographers have taken up the task of unpacking the link between the metaphor and materiality of geographic concepts (Pratt 1998; Bammer et al. 1998), we explore the usefulness of the wave metaphor to describe the variety of experiences, politics and forms of feminism that exist within one feminist generation. Drawing on our three stories, we argue that the wave metaphor provides third wave feminists with a concept that both recognizes our similar epistemological positions and acknowledges the distinct routes that brought us to these positions. Laying our personal narratives side by side, we hope to demonstrate what feminist waves actually look like. Despite being of the same generation and labeled the same “wave” of feminists in the academy, the choices we made along the way and the ways we used the intellectual and personal resources at hand not only shaped our journey, but position us as very different scholars and professors as we prepare to leave Minnesota for other institutions as faculty members. Our stories illustrate that although we each identify as feminists, our pursuit of a feminist agenda in the academy has different trajectories. Our differences demonstrate what we mean by waves. For example, Wendy did not embrace feminism until she became a graduate student, while Hokulani and Karla embraced feminism as undergraduates. Hokulani came to feminism as a women’s studies major, while Karla had to develop a major in women’s studies from the limited course offerings at the liberal arts college she attended. Our different personal histories, and the different institutional spaces in which we became scholars, are indicative of our differences but they do not overshadow the political, personal and professional visions that we share. Attention to the ways our stories intersect and diverge reflects our faith in the importance of telling one’s own story, which feminists have long identified as the key to empowerment. Our personal narratives frame our life histories and entry into feminism; as such they provide an illustration of the multiplicity of third wave feminism and a critique of the idea of a feminist generation. In the current literature by and about third wave feminists, the historical and institutional specificity of this position vis-`a-vis second wave feminists remains unclear (Evangelisti et al. 1995; Fraiman 1999; Gubar 1998, 1999; Heywood and P1: GMX Qualitative Sociology [quso] ph203-quas-466798 May 15, 2003 19:10 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002 400 Aikau, Erickson, and Leo Moore Drake 1997; Holeland 2001; Looser and Kaplan 1997; Walker 1994; Wiegman 1999; Zita 1997). Generations and waves are used interchangeably in the litera- ture. Here we use personal narratives to argue that generational and wave metaphors should not be interchangeable but in fact offer two different vantage points from which to view feminist legacies and trajectories. The generational metaphor relies on time as a distinguishing characteristic; specifically, feminist generations are defined by birth year and the years of training in graduate school. We argue that taken alone, a generational metaphor fails to fully describe the complex interplay of forces that affect when an individual encounters feminism, how one receives feminist ideas and politics, and the style and form of feminist politics one sub- sequently advances.