DOCSLIB.ORG

Passing on Feminism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Passing on Feminism Passing on Feminism From Consciousness to Reflexivity? Lisa Adkins UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER ABSTRACT As has been widely observed, histories of feminism have often been conceived via notions of generation where feminism is positioned as a kind of familial property, a form of inheritance and legacy which is transmitted through generations. Thus feminism and its history have been imagined as following a familial mode of social reproduction. Despite the dominance of this model, it has nonetheless been subject to critique, not least because of its reliance on teleologi- cal and progressive notions of history. Judith Roof, for example, has called for new conceptualizations of temporality in an attempt to decouple histories of feminism from a generational model. This need to move away from a generational model is also underscored by what commentators such as Angela McRobbie have identified as a dispersal of feminism – a broad-scale circulation of feminist values in popular culture – as well as by the emergence of a certain kind of reflexivity whereby past and current feminist practices are increasingly subject to critique. For McRobbie such developments are understood as part of the articulation of a post-feminism in which feminism can no longer be passed on as it is positioned as having already passed away. However, in this article via an exploration of recent accounts of the passing of feminism it is suggested that what allows for a declar- ation of this passing is an attachment to feminism as a particular way of knowing as well as to a particular arrangement of the social. Indeed, it will be suggested that recent histories of feminism and commentaries on the state of contemporary feminism are driven not only by generational logics but also by these attachments – attachments which lose and fix both feminism and women in time. KEY WORDS feminism ◆ gender ◆ history ◆ knowledge ◆ the social INTRODUCTION In addressing the issue of the passing on of feminism one is immediately confronted by issues of temporality and historicity – both of which are increasingly contested, more open and contingent. So while say 20 years European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), 1350-5068 Vol. 11(4): 427–444; DOI: 10.1177/1350506804046813 428 European Journal of Women’s Studies 11(4) ago it would not have been inconceivable for feminists to confidently map a history of the women’s movement or a history of feminist thought, more recently such projects have come under scrutiny for their reliance on a range of problematic narratives, including those of enlightenment, truth and progress. Histories of feminism have, for example, been called into question for their reliance on reproductive narratives whereby a linear chronological time is assumed. Here feminist consciousness is imagined as passed on through time, a sequencing of events which is made possible via a cause and effect logic whereby elements which come first are positioned as causing the elements that come later. As Judith Roof (1995, 1997) has argued, this results in a very reproductive and almost auto- matically familial understanding of change through time, whereby the past reproduces the future and the present and the future are positioned as being in constant debt to the past. Indeed this logic casts the past as legacy – almost a form of familial property – which may (or may not) be endowed on the next generation. A look at recent accounts of and commentaries on the state of contem- porary feminism serves to shore up the salience of Roof’s observations regarding the reliance on such a reproductive model in the writing of the histories of feminism. What have been loosely termed post-feminist writings are, for instance, currently being disciplined by their feminist foremothers for a variety of sins, including misunderstandings and mis- appropriations of the feminist/familial legacy, dubious political credentials, political and historical amnesia, and worse still, making available feminist ideas to the service of neoliberal imperatives. Such accusations have, for example, been voiced by Lynne Segal in a series of recent publications assessing the condition of contemporary feminism (Segal, 2000, 2003a, 2003b).1 Here Segal declares that by the 1990s the radical spirit of feminist politics had long since waned. According to Segal, the 1990s were marked by the rise of a new breed of feminists who ‘were able to launch themselves and court media attention via scathing attacks on other feminists’ (Segal, 2003a: 152). Segal also argues that the 1990s witnessed the rise of what she terms a type of bland ‘new feminism’ exemplified (as she sees it) by Natasha Walter’s (1999) The New Feminism. This new feminism, Segal claims, is characterized by, on the one hand, confident aspirational striving and, on the other, a chastisement of feminism for failing to eliminate inequality in women’s lives. It is this kind of feminism which Segal argues works in the service of neoliberal values. It is ‘appropriated by a managerial elite, eager to roll back welfare for workfare, holding every individual accountable for their own fate’ (Segal, 2003a: 152). Tellingly, Segal comments that what characterizes these new feminisms even further is a kind of historical amnesia vis-a-vis earlier forms, a kind of cultural forget- ting of the intellectual legacies of feminism even as ‘its more radical residue lingers for those who wish to find it’ (Segal, 2003a: 152; emphasis added). Adkins: Passing on Feminism 429 What interests me here is not so much the issue of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ such new forms of feminism are but rather the framing and diagnosis of them. For clearly, and following Roof’s assessment of the narratives at play in histories of feminism, Segal’s account is one in which a genera- tional logic is at issue. Specifically, such new forms of feminism are found wanting precisely because it is assumed that current and future forms of feminism must somehow be connected to past forms, indeed must fully acknowledge and be structured by such legacies. Thus, as in Roof’s exegesis of the reproductive narrative, in Segal’s account there is an assumption of causality: that the past should both determine the present and the future and that this causality gives feminism and feminist history a dynamic and force. What is interesting about Segal’s account, however, is that it is not one of the passing on of feminism, but one of a failed repro- duction whereby a new generation of self-proclaimed feminists are forget- ting their feminist legacies, and in effect not allowing feminist political consciousness to be passed on. Segal therefore implicitly declares a kind of passing of feminism, witnessed in her (empirical) claim that there is a ‘frank rejection of feminism by many young women’ (Segal, 2000: 19). Yet while this passing of feminism is said to have an empirical ‘out there’ validity, this claim is in fact a product of a generational logic – because the present and the future are not being shaped by the past, feminism must (and can only) be declared as passed away. However, Segal is by no means the only commentator who is declaring a passing of feminism. In a recent analysis of popular culture, Angela McRobbie (2003) has discussed the emergence of what she terms post- feminist popular cultural narratives, which ironically and reflexively cast feminism into a ‘spectral, shadowy, almost hated existence’ (McRobbie, 2003: 135). To explore the specificity of these contemporary narratives, McRobbie remembers her own early work, and especially her work carried out in the 1970s on girls’ magazines and how a teenage girl in such maga- zines was ‘imagined week in and week out as . in search of a boy [who] could never relax until she had trapped a “fella” and had a ring on her finger’ (McRobbie, 2003: 134). McRobbie comments that these stories and especially a femininity characterized by a desperate always on the look out search for Mr Right ‘were so much the subject of feminist critique that they came to sum up pre-feminist femininity’ (McRobbie, 2003: 134; emphasis added). While the 1980s witnessed the decline of this form of femininity, nonetheless McRobbie argues that the 1990s saw its return – but with a twist. Specifically, unlike her ‘pre-feminist’ counterpart the femininity at issue in post-feminist popular culture ironically and self-consciously references feminist critiques of such forms of femininity. But such referencing is far from celebratory – on the contrary in post- feminist popular culture feminism is cast as a ‘psychic policewoman’ (McRobbie, 2003: 135) whereby the fantasies and pleasures of women and 430 European Journal of Women’s Studies 11(4) girls are cast as curtailed and thwarted by feminism. In the film Bridget Jones, for example (which McRobbie views as exemplifying post-feminist popular culture), the central character ends up getting her man, but exces- sive narrative references to feminism mean this is no traditional romance. To get her man woman must now overcome not social or other kinds of barriers, but feminism itself. Indeed, McRobbie claims that what character- izes post-feminist popular culture is a taking into account of feminism, a taking into account which can only take place if feminism is already understood to have passed away (McRobbie, 2003: 136). Thus, in the Bridget Jones film, feminism is figured as a historical figure, whose time has now passed. It seems then that it is not only new histories of feminism that are declaring a passing of feminism, but the field of popular culture more generally. However, a closer look at McRobbie’s diagnosis of post-feminist popular culture reveals that again a reproductive familial narrative is at issue. In her closing comments regarding the Bridget Jones film, McRobbie notes that while Bridget Jones now stands as a representative of contem- porary femininity ‘only the hard-hearted, the too-serious, the earnest, humourless and generationally specific “feminist” could object .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Stuart Hall and Feminism: Revisiting Relations Stuart Hall E Feminismo: Revisitando Relações
    61 Stuart Hall and Feminism: revisiting relations Stuart Hall e feminismo: revisitando relações ANA CAROLINA D. ESCOSTEGUY* Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Graduate Program in Communications. Porto Alegre – RS, Brazil ABSTRACT This article firstly addresses Stuart Hall’s account of the contributions of feminism to * PhD in Communication Sciences from the the formation of cultural studies. Secondly, it deals with the development of feminist University of São Paulo, criticism in the context of cultural studies, especially in England. Following this line, Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio it retrieves Hall’s ideas on the problematic of identity(ies). This dimension of his work Grande do Sul and CNPq is the third approach to be explored, a subject also relevant in feminist theoretical pro- Researcher. Author of Cartografias dos estudos duction. The paper additionally points out matches and mismatches of such develop- culturais: uma versão ments in the Brazilian context. Finally, it concludes that the theme deserves in-depth latino-americana (Belo Horizonte: analysis, especially as the topic of identity plays a central role in current political prac- Autêntica, 2002). tice and feminist theory. Orcid: http://orcid. org/0000-0002-0361-6404 Keywords: Estudos culturais, Stuart Hall, feminismo, identidade E-mail: [email protected] RESUMO Este artigo aborda, em primeiro lugar, a narrativa de Stuart Hall sobre as contribuições do feminismo para a formação dos estudos culturais. Em segundo, trata do desen- volvimento da crítica feminista no âmbito dos estudos culturais, sobretudo ingleses. Nessa trajetória, resgata as ideias de Hall sobre a problemática da(s) identidade(s).
    [Show full text]
  • Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: a New Feminist Generation?
    China Perspectives 2018/3 | 2018 Twenty Years After: Hong Kong's Changes and Challenges under China's Rule Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: A New Feminist Generation? Qi Wang Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/8165 ISSN: 1996-4617 Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine Printed version Date of publication: 1 September 2018 Number of pages: 59-68 ISSN: 2070-3449 Electronic reference Qi Wang, « Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: A New Feminist Generation? », China Perspectives [Online], 2018/3 | 2018, Online since 01 September 2019, connection on 28 October 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/8165 © All rights reserved Articles China perspectives Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China A New Feminist Generation? QI WANG ABSTRACT: This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of gene- ration—generation as an age cohort, generation as a historical cohort, and “political generation”—to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a “po- litical generation” emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age. KEYWORDS:
    [Show full text]
  • Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Neofeminism
    University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2013 Neofeminism Aya Gruber University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Family Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Gender Commons, and the Law and Race Commons Citation Information Aya Gruber, Neofeminism, 50 HOUS. L. REV. 1325 (2013), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/ articles/439. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 50 Hous. L. Rev. 1325 2012-2013 Provided by: William A. Wise Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Mon May 1 11:29:39 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information ARTICLE NEOFEMINISM Aya Gruber* ABSTRACT Today it is prosaic to say that "feminism is dead." Far from being moribund, feminist legal theory is breaking from its somewhat dogmatic past and forging ahead with new vigor.
    [Show full text]
  • Everyday Feminism in the Digital Era: Gender, the Fourth Wave, and Social Media Affordances
    EVERYDAY FEMINISM IN THE DIGITAL ERA: GENDER, THE FOURTH WAVE, AND SOCIAL MEDIA AFFORDANCES A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Urszula M. Pruchniewska May 2019 Examining Committee Members: Carolyn Kitch, Advisory Chair, Media and Communication Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Media and Communication Adrienne Shaw, Media and Communication Rebecca Alpert, Religion ABSTRACT The last decade has seen a pronounced increase in feminist activism and sentiment in the public sphere, which scholars, activists, and journalists have dubbed the “fourth wave” of feminism. A key feature of the fourth wave is the use of digital technologies and the internet for feminist activism and discussion. This dissertation aims to broadly understand what is “new” about fourth wave feminism and specifically to understand how social media intersect with everyday feminist practices in the digital era. This project is made up of three case studies –Bumble the “feminist” dating app, private Facebook groups for women professionals, and the #MeToo movement on Twitter— and uses an affordance theory lens, examining the possibilities for (and constraints of) use embedded in the materiality of each digital platform. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups with users, alongside a structural discourse analysis of each platform, the findings show how social media are used strategically as tools for feminist purposes during mundane online activities such as dating and connecting with colleagues. Overall, this research highlights the feminist potential of everyday social media use, while considering the limits of digital technologies for everyday feminism. This work also reasserts the continued need for feminist activism in the fourth wave, by showing that the material realities of gender inequality persist, often obscured by an illusion of empowerment.
    [Show full text]
  • Feminism 2.0 Tammy Bruce
    FEMINISM 2.0 TAMMY BRUCE I want to talk to you about a new feminism for the 21st century. There are three pillars to this new feminism: Dignity. The word “no.” And men. That’s right, men. But before I expound on these three ideas, you need to know something about me. I was very involved in the feminist movement, including being on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women. For this I feel much pride and some guilt. Pride because feminism has pushed forward some very important and needed changes; and guilt because it has also done a lot of damage. My work now is to reverse that damage. So in that spirit, let’s talk about the first pillar of this new feminism: dignity. Dignity is at the core of what feminism should always be about. Dignity means that a woman should be able to freely choose her own path in life. That’s what feminism once held. But does it still? Ask almost any female college student today what she aspires to be and she’ll list any number of career choices. The one she won’t list is wife and mother. In fact any time someone has the temerity to suggest that a woman might want to look for a husband while in college, as a very successful Princeton grad recently did in a letter to the school’s newspaper, feminists go nuts. A new feminism will value and respect all responsible choices. And while we’re talking about dignity, I can’t think of anything less dignified for women than the feminist belief that in the sexual arena, women are like, and therefore ought to act like, men.
    [Show full text]
  • How Sexism in American Politics Sparked Off the New Feminist Renaissance
    The Lessons We Have Learnt: How Sexism in American Politics Sparked Off the New Feminist Renaissance Anna Misiak Falmouth University Trump and Feminist Erasures In the introduction to their edited collection Feminist Erasures: Challenging Backlash Culture (2015), Kumarini Silva and Kaitlynn Mendes discuss popular and academic understandings of feminism to consider their impact on women’s equality, activism and representations in the western culture. Having sampled both political and media discourses in the English language, the authors conclude that at the time of writing advocacy for women’s rights was often belittled or pronounced as too radical and outmoded. By no means was it a recent development. The anti-feminist discourse had been present in the western culture for a while. Most visibly, it gathered momentum in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan’s right-wing politics found its fantasy reflection in popular action blockbusters where hard, white male figures dominated the screen, applauded for their uncompromising confidence and physical strength. Although there has been a significant shift in gender politics since Reagan's era, the cultural myth of the 1980s' action hero proved hard to die. And today, some of Donald Trump's sexist discourse seems to resonate with a similar ruthless admiration for the virile white man. As Sharon Willis argued, the male heroes of big budget films such as, among others, Die Hard (1988), Lethal Weapon (1987) and Terminator 2 (1991) did not appear in a cultural vacuum. They were intrinsically tied to the rise of white masculine identity and its impact on social and cultural hierarchies, as well as gender debates.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Waves of Feminism
    01-Krolokke-4666.qxd 6/10/2005 2:21 PM Page 1 1 Three Waves of Feminism From Suffragettes to Grrls e now ask our readers to join us in an exploration of the history of W feminism or, rather, feminisms: How have they evolved in time and space? How have they framed feminist communication scholarship in terms of what we see as a significant interplay between theory and politics? And how have they raised questions of gender, power, and communication? We shall focus our journey on the modern feminist waves from the 19th to the 21st century and underscore continuities as well as disruptions. Our starting point is what most feminist scholars consider the “first wave.” First-wave feminism arose in the context of industrial society and liberal politics but is connected to both the liberal women’s rights movement and early socialist feminism in the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States and Europe. Concerned with access and equal opportunities for women, the first wave continued to influence feminism in both Western and Eastern societies throughout the 20th century. We then move on to the sec- ond wave of feminism, which emerged in the 1960s to 1970s in postwar Western welfare societies, when other “oppressed” groups such as Blacks and homosexuals were being defined and the New Left was on the rise. Second-wave feminism is closely linked to the radical voices of women’s empowerment and differential rights and, during the 1980s to 1990s, also to a crucial differentiation of second-wave feminism itself, initiated by women of color and third-world women.
    [Show full text]
  • The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change By
    Book Review The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and * Social Change 1 By Angela McRobbie Chaesung Chun Seoul National University, Korea Angela McRobbie, a British scholar who has produced a series of enlightening works on feminism, cultural theories, global media, and the culture of young people, such as Zoot Suits and Second-hand Dress (1989), Feminism and Youth Culture (1991), Postmodernism and Popular Culture (1994), British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? (1998), and In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion and Popular Music (1999), has recently written an inspiring book, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. Focusing on the British situation of post-feminism since the early 1990s, McRobbie has tried to provide theoretical fraemworks to analyze the phenomenon of post-feminism, relate them to the empirical study on British cases in terms of academic institutional and popular culture, and suggest the concept of "affirmative feminism" to cure the current situation. Sociological theorists in the line of poststructuralism and especially feminist theories have been sources of theorietical insights for the author, and, based on these, she analyzes more concrete cases such as movies and books that show the trend of post-feminism (Bridget Jones in chapter 1), the UK government's "new sexual contract" to young women, popular TV makeover programmes, and the "illegible rage" underlying contemporary femininities. This book, as the author illustrates, is an attempt to make an intervention which crosses the borders of a range of academic disciplines, gender studies, sociology, cultural, and media studies, with the aim of 1 Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2008.
    [Show full text]
  • The Strange Case of French Feminism. Blurring the Line of Feminist Epistemology: a Materialist Questioning of the Sex/Gender System
    The strange case of French feminism. Blurring the line of feminist epistemology: a materialist questioning of the sex/gender system. Grazia Dicanio Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Gender Studies Centre for Gender Studies University of Oslo Blindern, Norway May 2019 Abstract This study originates from the urgency to reflect on theory and epistemology in the light of a divide between academia and political movements. The study was thought out as an attempt to interrupt the chrono-logic cycle of old theory vs. new theory or theory vs. post-theory and possibly re-constructing a bridge to re-establish a contact with a stigmatized past in feminist genealogy and epistemology identified with the 1970s. My analysis revolves around French feminism as a theory by looking at how it was received, appropriated and, as some would say, invented. What makes a theoretical strand? Is there a French feminist genealogy we did not know of? What kind of epistemological stance does this genealogy advocate for? And what are the consequences of an appropriation? To try and answer these questions I take into account three of the most important French materialist theorists and delineate a theoretical path in French feminism that is almost totally unknown or misconstrued in our institutionalized feminist epistemology. A constant question I have in the back of my mind while writing is: who has and has had the primacy to establish a mainstream genealogy in feminist studies? And what has this done with our, personal and political, knowledge of the sex/gender system form different points of view? Acknowledgements Thanks to STK and Helene Aarseth for giving me the opportunity to do this research.
    [Show full text]
  • Third Wave Feminist History and the Politics of Being Visible and Being Real
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses Studies 6-12-2006 Third Wave Feminist History and the Politics of Being Visible and Being Real Robbin Hillary VanNewkirk Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation VanNewkirk, Robbin Hillary, "Third Wave Feminist History and the Politics of Being Visible and Being Real." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2006. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/1 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THIRD WAVE FEMINIST HISTORY AND THE POLITICS OF BEING VISIBLE AND BEING REAL by ROBBIN VANNEWKIRK Under the Direction of Peter Lindsay ABSTRACT This project works to illuminate some of the main theoretical claims that writers of the third wave make in order to understand these claims as rhetorical devices used to make themselves visible and real. Being visible is a common theme in third wave texts and realness is a site that is both contested and embraced. Being Visible and being real work together to situate third wave actors in a U.S. feminist continuum that is sprinkled with contradiction and ambiguity. This thesis will examine the contextual development of third wave feminism, and then using examples of realness and visibility in the three third wave anthologies, Being Real, Third Wave Agenda, and Catching a Wave, this thesis will interrogate at the rhetorical significance of those themes.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction 1. Critics Such As Angela Mcrobbie and Andrea Stuart Have
    Notes Introduction 1. Critics such as Angela McRobbie and Andrea Stuart have observed that feminist theoretical trajectories shifted in the early 1990s as fem- inism split with “professional feminism” retreating to the academy, while “popular feminism” “comes at most of us through the media” (Stuart 30). However, what this split means is still hotly contested. Gill explains that critics have variously interpreted the emergence of “popular feminism,” or what has come to be known as “postfemi- nism,” as an “epistemological break” (250), a “historical shift” (251), or a backlash to feminism (253). Throughout this book, I follow Gill, who argues that postfeminism “is best understood not as an episte- mological perspective, nor as a historical shift, and not (simply) as a backlash” but rather as a “sensibility” with “recurring and relatively stable themes, tropes and constructions that characterize gender rep- resentations in the media in the early twenty- first century” (254– 55). 2. Judith Williamson refers to this genre of programming as “retro- sexist.” 3. As Sady Doyle explains, Game of Thrones features “old- timey, misog- ynist knights and kings,” while Mad Men focuses on old- timey, misogynist admen. 4. Andi Zeisler notes that “with every season of Game of Thrones, one question has become more insistent among in the blogosphere: ‘Is Game of Thrones feminist?’” The same is also true for Mad Men. Primarily, the debates about these programs have occurred online, in blogs and online magazines, though several scholarly collections focused on Mad Men have been published as well. Although it is beyond the scope of this introduction to list all the articles devoted to this debate, a few of the most widely cited articles are listed here.
    [Show full text]
  • American Electra Feminism’S Ritual Matricide by Susan Faludi
    ESS A Y American electrA Feminism’s ritual matricide By Susan Faludi o one who has been engaged in feminist last presidential election that young women were politicsN and thought for any length of time can recoiling from Hillary Clinton because she “re-­ be oblivious to an abiding aspect of the modern minds me of my mother”? Why does so much of women’s movement “new” feminist activ-­ in America—that so ism and scholarship often, and despite its spurn the work and many victories, it ideas of the genera-­ seems to falter along tion that came before? a “mother-­daughter” As ungracious as these divide. A generation-­ attitudes may seem, al breakdown under-­ they are grounded in lies so many of the a sad reality: while pathologies that have American feminism long disturbed Amer-­ has long, and produc-­ ican feminism—its tively, concentrated fleeting mobilizations on getting men to give followed by long hi-­ women some of the bernations; its bitter power they used to divisions over sex; give only to their sons, and its reflexive re-­ it hasn’t figured out nunciation of its prior incarnations, its progeni-­ how to pass power down from woman to woman, tors, even its very name. The contemporary to bequeath authority to its progeny. Its inability women’s movement seems fated to fight a war on to conceive of a succession has crippled women’s two fronts: alongside the battle of the sexes rages progress not just within the women’s movement the battle of the ages. but in every venue of American public life.
    [Show full text]