MANIFESTOS, HISTORIES, and POST-FEMINISMS by Bo-Myung
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Spatiotemporal Politics of Postwar U.S. "Feminist History": Manifestos, Histories, and Post-Feminisms Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Kim, Bomyung Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 26/09/2021 01:03:01 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621868 SPATIOTEMPORAL POLITICS OF POSTWAR U.S. “FEMINIST HISTORY” : MANIFESTOS, HISTORIES, AND POST-FEMINISMS by Bo-Myung Kim __________________________ Copyright © Bo-Myung Kim 2016 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF GENDER AND WOMEN’S STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2016 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Bo-Myung Kim, titled Spatiotemporal Politics of Postwar U.S. “Feminist History”: Manifestos, Histories and Post-Feminisms and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________________________________Date: (August 10, 2016) Sandra Soto ______________________________________________________ Date: (August 10, 2016) Miranda Joseph _______________________________________________________ Date: (August 10, 2016) Monica Casper Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: (August 10, 2016) Dissertation Director: Sandra Soto 2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Bo-Myung Kim 3 ACKNOWELDGMENTS I thank Sandy Soto for her endless supply of encouragements and inspirations. Without her help and patience, this dissertation would not have been done. Miranda Joseph and Monica Casper both generously shared their time and thoughts. Thank you. I also want to thank Liz Verklan and Brooke Lorber who generously spent hours reading and commenting on the numerous drafts I have supplied during the graduate writing group sessions. A significant portion of my argument in this dissertation in effect belong to them. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for their love and trust. Thank you. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 Chapter.1 Theoretical Backgrounds------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Chapter.2 Manifestos of Postwar U.S. Women’s Movements ------------------------------------ 35 Chapter.3 Histories of Postwar U.S. Women’s Movements --------------------------------------- 73 Chapter.4 Post-Feminisms and the Crisis of Feminist Futurity----------------------------------- 109 Conclusion ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 143 Works Cited -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 151 5 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines postwar U.S. feminist narrative practices of “making,” writing, and sustaining “feminist history” and their spatiotemporal figuration of the subject of “women of color.” In so doing, I attend to three discursive genres of postwar U.S. “feminist history”: manifestos of postwar U.S. women’s movements, histories of postwar U.S. women’s movements, and the discourse of “post-feminism.” The term “feminist history,” in this sense, relates to the various ways that postwar U.S. feminists theorized women’s liberation (manifestos), historicized the past of postwar U.S. women’s movements (histories), and countered the putative “end” of postwar U.S. feminism (post-feminism). First, I argue that manifestos and histories of postwar U.S. women’s movements as well as the discourse of “post-feminism” commonly utilized narrative form of discourse within which spatiotemporal imagination of “feminist history” articulate. Second, I point to the spatiotemporal figuration of racial others within these postwar U.S. feminist narratives of “feminist history.” Third, I question the political implication of the spatial mobility of “women of color” which is increasingly seized by the late-modern spatiotemporal politics of multiculturalism. 6 Introduction Introduction This dissertation examines postwar U.S. feminist narrative practices of “making,” writing, and sustaining feminist history via a close and critical reading of three distinctive yet interrelated discursive sites: feminist movement literatures produced from the 1960s to the 1970s, histories of postwar U.S. women’s movements published from the mid-1970s to the 2010s, and the discourse of post-feminisms which initiates from the mid-1970s and culminates in the 2000s. These three discursive sites of feminist history entail both narrative composition of feminist history and spatiotemporal figuration of racial differences (i.e. “black women,” “women of color,” “multiculturalism”) in their narrative constructions of “women” and “feminism.” It is my argument that the narrative form of thinking and writing of feminist history entails various spatiotemporal logics of figuring racial differences in various terms (e.g. analogous, metaphorical, and coalitional terms; narrative placing; multicultural synthesis; spatiotemporal mobility). Such narrative figurations of racial differences, it should be added, do not necessarily compose a coherent scheme. Rather, they are contingent to the specific historical contexts of postwar U.S. feminist narrative practices of “making,” writing, and sustaining feminist history. To be more specific, this dissertation attends to a set of questions: 1) Do postwar U.S. feminists utilize narrative forms of thinking and writing in their construction and invocation of feminist history? 2) If so, how does racial difference figure in these narratives of postwar U.S. feminist history? and, most importantly, 3) Do these narrative figurations of racial difference entail spatiotemporal logics of writing racial others into the narrative of postwar U.S. feminist history? This set of questions point us to the difficulty of registering “women of color” feminist 7 history within the hegemonic narratives of postwar U.S. feminism. As many “women of color” feminist historians including Paula Giddings, Kimberley Springer, Benita Roth and Becky Thompson have commonly remarked, hegemonic narratives of postwar U.S. feminism fail to account for the different politics of “women of color” feminism, and in so doing, these narratives locate “women of color” feminist histories on the narrative margins of postwar U.S. feminism. While the subject of “women of color” has been excluded from and rendered invisible to the historical narrative of postwar U.S. feminism, the history of “women of color” feminism registers alternative sites of feminist consciousness, practices, and agencies. Whereas both the hegemonic narratives of postwar U.S. feminism and “women of color” feminist criticism focus on stories of exclusion and alterity, which I argue reproduce binary opposition between hegemonic feminism and “women of color,” I draw attention to constitutive role of racial difference within the postwar U.S. feminist narrative practices of composing feminist history. Throughout the dissertation, I first chart feminist narrative practices of “making,” writing, and sustaining feminist history. A close reading of manifestos and histories of postwar U.S. women’s movements, and narrative understanding of the discourse of post-feminisms, I argue, point us to the presence of narrative composition of feminist history which is invoked both in futuristic and retrospective terms. Second, I point to the narrative figuration of racial differences within these narratives of feminist history. Postwar U.S. feminist narratives of feminist history, I argue, also entailed spatiotemporal figuration of racial differences within these narratives of “making,” writing, and sustaining feminist history. A critical examination of postwar U.S. feminist narrative practices of “making,” writing, and sustaining feminist history leads us to a 8 question about “when and where” of the “women of color” subject.1 The spatiotemporal location