Third Wave Feminism Also by the editors Stacy Gillis (ed.), The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded Stacy Gillis (ed. with Philippa Gates), The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film Stacy Gillis & Rebecca Munford, Feminism and Popular Culture: Explorations in Post- Feminism Gillian Howie, Deleuze and Spinoza: Aura of Expressionism Gillian Howie (ed. with Ashley Tauchert), Gender, Teaching and Research in Higher Education Gillian Howie (ed. with Andrew Shail), Menstruation: A Cultural History Rebecca Munford (ed.), Re-visiting Angela Carter: Texts, Context, Intertexts Third Wave Feminism A Critical Exploration Expanded Second Edition Edited by Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie and Rebecca Munford Editorial matter and selection © Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie and Rebecca Munford 2007; all remaining material © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. 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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Contents Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors ix Foreword – Imelda Whelehan xv Introduction – Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie and Rebecca Munford xxi Part I Generations and Genealogies 1 ‘Feminists Love a Utopia’: Collaboration, Conflict and the Futures of Feminism 3 Lise Shapiro Sanders 2 On the Genealogy of Women: A Defence of Anti-Essentialism 16 Alison Stone 3 Kristeva and the Trans-Missions of the Intertext: Signs, Mothers and Speaking in Tongues 30 Mary Orr 4 Feminist Dissonance: The Logic of Late Feminism 46 Gillian Howie and Ashley Tauchert 5 Transgender Feminism: Queering the Woman Question 59 Susan Stryker 6 Theorising the Intermezzo: The Contributions of Postfeminism and Third Wave Feminism 71 Amanda D. Lotz 7 ‘You’re Not One of Those Boring Masculinists, Are You?’: The Question of Male-Embodied Feminism 86 Andrew Shail v vi Contents Part II Locales and Locations 8 Wa(i)ving It All Away: Producing Subject and Knowledge in Feminisms of Colours 101 Mridula Nath Chakraborty 9 ‘It’s All About the Benjamins’: Economic Determinants of Third Wave Feminism in the United States 114 Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake 10 Imagining Feminist Futures: The Third Wave, Postfeminism and Eco/feminism 125 Niamh Moore 11 A Different Chronology: Reflections on Feminism in Contemporary Poland 142 Agnieszka Graff 12 Global Feminisms, Transnational Political Economies, Third World Cultural Production 156 Winifred Woodhull 13 Neither Cyborg Nor Goddess: The (Im)Possibilities of Cyberfeminism 168 Stacy Gillis Part III Politics and Popular Culture 14 Contests for the Meaning of Third Wave Feminism: Feminism and Popular Consciousness 185 Ednie Kaeh Garrison 15 ‘Also I Wanted So Much To Leave for the West’: Postcolonial Feminism Rides the Third Wave 198 Anastasia Valassopoulos 16 (Un)fashionable Feminists: The Media and Ally McBeal 212 Kristyn Gorton 17 ‘Kicking Ass Is Comfort Food’: Buffy as Third Wave Feminist Icon 224 Patricia Pender 18 ‘My Guns Are in The Fendi!’: The Postfeminist Female Action Hero 237 Cristina Lucia Stasia Contents vii 19 Sexing It Up?: Women, Pornography and Third Wave Feminism 250 Melanie Waters 20 ‘Wake Up and Smell the Lipgloss’: Gender, Generation and the (A)politics of Girl Power 266 Rebecca Munford In Dialogue 21 Interview with Luce Irigaray 283 Gillian Howie 22 Interview with Elaine Showalter 292 Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford Afterword: Feminist Waves 298 Jane Spencer Index 304 Acknowledgements Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration originally emerged from a conference held at the University of Exeter in 2002. Our thanks go to all those who participated in the event, making it a joyful, fruitful and rewarding conference. We would like to thank those who contributed to the organisation of the event, making it an enjoyable and trouble-free experience: Susie Evans, Anna Hunt, Nina Kelly, Laura Perrett and Becky Stacey. We would also like to thank the School of English and the School of Modern Languages at the University of Exeter for providing financial support. This revised edition contains some new pieces in place of some from the first edition. We would like to thank the contributors to both editions for their hard work and commitment to the project. Stacy and Becky would like to thank feminist friends, past and present. Particular thanks are owed to Ashley Tauchert, who first suggested organising the conference, and to Andrew Shail, because he always steps up to the mark. Gillian would like to thank Isobel Armstrong, John Dupre, Regenia Gagnier and Helen Taylor for providing invaluable and generous encouragement for the Institute of Feminist Theory and Research. Bob Stoate assisted with the editorial work and was a great help. Many thanks to the Journal of International Women’s Studies for allow- ing us to publish revised versions of Agnieszka Graff’s and Winifred Woodhull’s chapters, which originally appeared in a special issue on Third Wave Feminism and Women’s Studies 4.2 (April 2003), edited by Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford. We would also like to acknowledge Figure 15.1 from Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh, copyright © 2004 by Anjali Singh. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. viii Notes on Contributors Mridula Nath Chakraborty completed her PhD at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is trained in literary criticism and postcolonial methodologies of reading the world. Her most recent work explores the role and presence of Third World feminists in the Anglo-American acad- emy in addressing issues of experience, embodiment and essentialism. Her areas of research and publication include postcolonial literatures, diaspora and transnational studies, culinary cultures, translation theory and practice, regional Indian writing in bhasha traditions as well as in global English, and popular Bombay cinema. Jennifer Drake is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Indianapolis in the U.S. She is the co-editor of Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (1997), and has published essays on women writers and visual artists. Her current book project is entitled The Misfits of Women’s Lit. Ednie Kaeh Garrison is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Penn State University in the U.S. She completed her PhD in American Studies at Washington State University in the U.S. She has published on third wave feminism and U.S. Riot Grrrls, and is currently designing a study of the global circulation of the name-object ‘third wave feminism.’ Stacy Gillis is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University, U.K. She has published widely on third wave fem- inism, (post)feminism, cyberpunk and cybertheory, and popular fiction. The editor of The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded (2005), she and Rebecca Munford are the authors of Feminism and Popular Culture: Explorations in Post-feminism (2007). Forthcoming work includes The Edinburgh Critical Guide to Crime Fiction (2008) and a collection on the cultural afterlife of the First World War. Kristyn Gorton is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Popular Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K. She completed her PhD in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. She has published on feminist theory, television studies and Marguerite Duras. Forthcoming work includes Critical Scenes of Desire in Twentieth-Century Fiction, Theorising Desire: From Freud to Feminism to Film and Media Audience: Television, Meaning and Emotion. ix x Notes on Contributors Agnieszka Graff is an Assistant Professor at the American Studies Center, Warsaw University, Poland. Since the mid-1990s she has been active in the Polish women’s movement, focusing on reproductive rights and gay/lesbian rights in the context of Poland’s EU accession, and is a founding member of the Women’s 8th of March Alliance. She has written for Poland’s major newspapers and is the author of Swiat bez kobiet [World without Women] (2001[2004]), a collection of essays on gen- der in Polish public life. Her current research project concerns rhetorical strategies of feminism in the U.S., but she continues to write on the intersection between gender politics and nationalism in Poland. Leslie Heywood is a Professor of English and Cultural Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at the State University of New York, Binghamton in the U.S. Her publications include Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon (2003), Pretty Good for a Girl: An Athlete’s Story (2000) and Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women’s Bodybuilding (1998).