Complicity in Contemporary Feminist Discourse Giuliana Monteverde
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Complicity in Contemporary Feminist Discourse Giuliana Monteverde BA (Hons) English Literature with Spanish, Faculty of Arts, Ulster University MRes, Complicity in Contemporary Feminist Discourse, Faculty of Arts, Ulster University Faculty of Arts, Ulster University Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2018 I confirm that the word count of this thesis is less than 100,000 words excluding the title page, contents acknowledgements, summary or abstract, abbreviations, footnotes, diagrams, maps, illustrations, tables, appendices, and references or bibliography. Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract ii Declaration iii Images iv INTRODUCTION: ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ 1 0.1 Complicit with what? 3 0.2 Exploring Complicity: Literature Review 10 0.3 The Personal is Political: Complicity in the Women’s Liberation Movement 14 0.4 Moving away from a Complicit Feminist Subject: Research Trajectory 17 0.5 Defining Feminisms, Grappling with Power: Theoretical Framework 22 0.6 Methodological Flights of Fancy, and Case-Studies as Dramatization 30 0.7 What’s New? Original Contribution 38 0.8 Chapter Breakdown 40 CHAPTER 1: ‘Is woman smart to do sex work? Can college student prostitute? Is hooker businessperson?’: Navigating Feminist Histories and Contemporary Culture 42 1.1 ‘All men keep all women in a state of fear’: Previous Feminisms, Essentialism, and Complicity 42 1.2 ‘Women are Strong’/‘No To Feminism’: Contemporary Feminisms, Postfeminist Neoliberalism, and Complicity 51 1.3 ‘We must all make a conscious break with the system’: Feminist Discourses of Complicities 60 1.4 Negative Difference and Decolonized Feminism: Feminist Language and Complicity 68 1.5 Quvenzhané Wallis at the Oscars 74 1.6 Conclusion 84 CHAPTER 2: Internalizing the Revolution: Sheryl Sandberg, Neoliberal Feminism and Complicity 87 2.1 ‘I’m a Pom-Pom Girl for Feminism: Introducing Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In 88 2.2 Sandberg as Sexual Decoy: Essentialism & The Everywoman 92 2.3 ‘A woman needs to combine niceness with insistence’: Strategic Complicity in Lean In 98 2.4 ‘When women fulfil their potential, everyone benefits’: Liberalism and Liberal Feminism 107 2.5 Spawning a New Feminist Subject: Neoliberalism and Neoliberal Feminism 115 2.6 The Dominant Language of the Tribe: Lean In and the Neoliberal Workplace 118 2.7 “Our Collective Performance Would Improve”: Managerial Language in Lean In 130 2.8 “Far from blaming the victim”: Disclaimers in Lean In 134 2.9 Conclusion 143 CHAPTER 3: ‘We can’t stop, and we won’t stop’: Complicity, Cultural Appropriation, and White Celebrity 147 3.1 What Does It Mean To Be White? Individualism, Colour-blindness and White Celebrity 154 3.2 ‘I'm not, like, making fun of a culture’: Cultural Appropriation and Complicity 162 3.3 ‘It’s our party we can say what we want’: Miley, Lily, Iggy and Feminism 167 3.4 ‘It’s our party we can do what we want’: Miley, Lily, Iggy and Racism 175 3.5 ‘I don’t give a shit. I’m not Disney’: Miley Cyrus’s Response to Accusations of Racism 191 3.6 ‘I'm not going to apologise because I think that would imply that I’m guilty of something’: Lily Allen’s Response to Accusations of Racism 196 3.7 ‘I’m pro-people. Period!’: Iggy Azalea’s Response to Accusations of Racism 199 3.8 ‘Why is it such a big deal?’: Vulnerability, Ignorance and Oppression 206 3.9 Conclusion 212 CHAPTER 4: Kardashian Komplicity: Performing Postfeminist Beauty 220 4.1 ‘They represent everything that is wrong with the Western world”: Keeping Up With the Kardashians 222 4.2 ‘I will don all the glamour, the glitter, that I want’: Feminisms, Beauty and Complicity 225 4.3 The Kardashians as Kommodity: Celebrity and Konsumption 236 4.4 ‘You are responsible for your own happiness’: Class and Race in Postfeminist Neoliberalism 241 4.5 The Kardashian Curse: Hyperfemininity, Femmephobia, and Gendered Hierarchies 248 4.6 ‘The lips, they changed her life’: Lip Service 256 4.7 Conclusion 267 CHAPTER 5: Complicity, Class and The Contemporary Domestic 270 5.1 ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home’: Second-wave Conceptions of the Domestic 273 5.2 Consumerism, Austerity, and Time-Crises 276 5.3 Kirstie and Jack: Class, Fertility, and Media Complicity 280 5.4 Kate and Nadiya: Racialized Femininities and Patriotism 293 5.5 Conclusion 313 CONCLUSION: ‘I don’t know what it means to be… complicit’ 316 6.1 Small Capitulations and Quotidian Compromises 319 6.2 What’s New? Original Contribution Revisited 326 6.3 Limitations and Looking Forward 326 6.4 Conclusion 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 331 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without a scholarship from the Department of Employment and Learning, Ulster University, and my supervisors Dr Katherine Byrne and Dr James Ward. Many thanks for talking through my ideas with me, the many annotations and suggestions you made, and for convincing me that this was doable. Thanks also to my examiners – Dr Meredith Jones for her helpful comments, and Dr Robert Porter for his ongoing trust and support, and the opportunity to teach various modules so I could pay my rent in these final months. Thanks also to the staff and students at Brighton University - particularly Michael Neu - for inviting me to speak to staff and students several times. These opportunities contributed hugely to my confidence as an academic, and are fond – if frightening – memories. Attending feminist conferences has been one of the greatest pleasures of this experience, and the many women I have met from across the world have been continually encouraging. I can’t wait to see where we all end up. I couldn’t have survived this process without the incredible women in my life. Thanks to Dr Victoria McCollum for cheerleading me, treating me like an academic superhero, and giving me faith for positive collaborations in academia. I can’t wait to work on our book together, and then get started on the next one. Thanks to Nieve Carberry for always unthinkingly supporting me, and for talking through innumerable political and pop-culture dilemmas with me over tea and rum. I have learnt more from Daisy Lennon than from anyone else I’ve met in my life. You have taught me to be compassionate and insightful, and to treat others with respect and thoughtfulness. I hope I continue to be more like you. Thank you for feeding me, for making me tea, for letting me lodge in your house, for engaging me in prolonged theoretical meta-chats about Come Dine with Me and the Kardashians, and for making me feel truly understood. Context! Thanks to my Mum for buying me a book every day, for encouraging me to work hard, and for showing me what a successful female leader looks like. To my Dad – thank you for never being a patriarch, for never telling me what to wear or what to do, for loving me regardless of how many tattoos I plaster on my body, and for passing on your curiosity. Te amo. Thanks to my beautiful siblings Sara and Katie; you make me so grateful for sisters, and I miss you both every day. I’m so impressed and proud of you both – you are incredible, talented, independent Queens and you make my life better. Lastly, all my love and infinite thanks go to Qussei, who appeared in my life and immediately made it better. You have been so supportive, encouraging and unyielding in your belief that I know what I’m talking about. Thank you for making me feel known and loved. I can’t believe how lucky I am to know you. Abstract Feminism is no longer considered to be pro-woman on the basis of a homogenous female identity or experience. Where previous feminisms relied upon notions of sisterhood based on shared struggle, contemporary feminisms acknowledge the multiple subjectivities of a neoliberal postfeminist society. There have been various shifts across feminist discourse that necessitate research on complicity. Firstly, the continual move from various types of essentialism in feminism, to a broader understanding and incorporation of intersectionality, opens up space for the existence and articulation of a range of subject positions beyond ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Secondly, the pervasiveness of postfeminist and neoliberal discourses and representations across contemporary culture require a nuanced unpicking of what various practices and incarnations of ‘feminism’ mean, or could mean. I suggest that paying attention to complicity – including our own – enables this. This work poses the question, ‘Complicit with what?’ and looks at a range of pop-culture case-studies in order to apply complicity as a theoretical tool - or way of seeing. Covering subjects like corporate feminism, cultural appropriation, beauty practices, and domesticity, this research considers our ‘foldedness’ with one another, and how we can lessen complicity by acknowledging its existence. Declaration I hereby declare that with effect from the date on which the thesis is deposited in Research Student Administration of Ulster University, I permit: 1. The Librarian of the University to allow the thesis to be copied in whole or in part without reference to me on the understanding that such authority applies to the provision of single copies made for study purposes or for inclusion within the stock of another library. 2. Thethesis to be made available through the Ulster Institutional Repository and/or ETHOS under the terms of the Ulster eTheses Deposit Agreement which I have signed. IT IS A CONDITION OF USE OF THIS THESIS THAT ANYONE WHO CONSULTS IT MUST RECOGNISE THAT THE COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH THE AUTHOR AND THAT NO QUOTATION FROM THE THESIS AND NO INFORMATION DERIVED FROM IT MAY BE PUBLISHED UNLESS THE SOURCE IS PROPERLY ACKNOWLEDGED.