Traveling from Feminism to Mainstream Sociology and Back: One Woman's Tale of Tenure and the Politics of Backlash

Within disciplines, the 1980s were an especially heady intellectual time for feminist graduate students. Not only did second wave scholarship prove to be inspirational for dissertation projects, but new books and articles published by women of color, lesbian feminists, postcolonial theorists and poststructuralists posed serious challenges to the ethnocentric assumptions of white, middle-class and Western feminism. Yet, despite over a decade of social movement activism and the creation of feminist institutions and organizations, this generation of feminist scholars worked against a cultural backdrop marked by a dramatic move to the political right. My personal narrative begins in this historical moment charting my political and intellectual trajectory from graduate school to the present. My positioning as a queer feminist between the second and third waves of feminist scholarship carried with it a rewarding intellectual legacy as well as a number of painful contradictions.¹ Further, I argue that these contradictions arose as a consequence of the uneven diffusion and reception of feminist scholarship, particularly the politics of backlash, within institutions and academic departments across the country from the 1980s to the present.     

INTERFACING FEMINISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES IN HONG KONG: A CASE OF EVERYDAY LIFE POLITICS

Cultural studies, as a cultural and political re-articulation of common sense, knowledge and community practices, aims at opening up new cultural space for criticisms, reflections and action. Originating from the women' movement and later flourishing in the academy as well, feminism espouses similar aims to cultural studies. Both cultural studies and feminist/gender studies have a strong sense of intervening into everyday life politics. This paper is an attempt to discuss how feminism and cultural studies interface with each other, largely based on examples of gender-related everyday life politics taken from the feminist movement in Hong Kong. It will examine issues concerning the conflict of consumption and female subjectivities, the reconceptualization of home and housewives, and the representation of everyday life for women and history writing. It is argued that by blurring, negotiating or deconstructing the boundary or division between positions, identities and domains–such as subject and object, housewives and workers, private and public, personal and political, consumption and production–the re-articulation of knowledge about ‘victim’, ‘exploitation’, ‘home’ and ‘history’ in the feminist movement will not only provide the movement with new impetus and insight to reconsider its strategies in fighting for more cultural, social and economic space for women and other marginal groups at large in Hong Kong, but will also ‘metabolize’ the newly developed discipline of cultural studies in Hong Kong by providing a platform to strengthen the dynamic arm of cultural studies education and research. Based on her feminist and teaching experiences in Hong Kong, the author has highlighted activism and pedagogy as the two important dimensions of feminism and cultural studies in this paper.     

Economies of visibility as a moderator of feminism: ‘Never mind Brexit. Who won Legs‐it!’

This article utilizes economies of visibility to interpret how two UK women political leaders’ bodies are constructed in the press, online and by audience responses across several media platforms via a multimodal analysis. We contribute politicizing economies of visibility, lying at the intersection of politics of visibility and economies of visibility, as a possible new modality of feminist politics. We suggest this offers a space where feminism can be progressed. Analysis illustrates how economies of visibility moderate feminism and tie women leaders in various ways to their bodies; commodities constantly scrutinized. The study surfaces how media insist upon femininity through appearance from women leaders, serving to moderate power and feminist potential. We consider complexities attached to public consumption of powerful women's constructions, set up in opposition, where sexism is visible and visceral. This simultaneously fortifies moderate feminism and provokes feminism. The insistence on femininity nevertheless disrupts, through an arousal of audible and commanding feminist voices, to reconnect with the political project of women's equality.     

The Social Imaginaries of Women's Peace Activism in Northern Uganda

The metanarrative of global feminism is often constructed as a progressive and emancipatory movement emanating from the West and fostering radical politics elsewhere in the world. Such a view is not only ethnocentric but, critically, it fails to engage with the complex ways in which feminist politics travel and are evinced in specific localities. In this article, I seek to understand how marginalized women in the “Global South” – particularly in Africa – interpret, experience and negotiate feminist ideas to wield political power within the context of their social and moral worlds. I focus on women's organized resistance to violence and armed conflict, known as “women's peace activism.” Using a case study of a women's peace movement in Uganda mediated by an international feminist organization called Isis Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with a wide range of activists in the organization and in its network in postconflict areas in Northern Uganda. I argue that the feminist peace discourse is most meaningful when its universal values of equity and securing the dignity of women are appropriated and re-signified through the cultural institutions and the collective memory of activists in their local settings.     

Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis

This article explores the possibilities and constraints for feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and its influence over policy making and public debate in the context of austerity and neoliberal governance. By analysing the process in which a group of Finnish academic feminists used their expert position to influence government policy in 2015–2017, the article illustrates the strategies they adopted to engage in political debates and how they negotiated the new political landscape. The research material was derived from two years of action research and participant observation and is considered through the theoretical lens of governance feminism. The article makes a distinctive contribution to extant theories of governance feminism, by drawing upon theories of affects and ambivalence as a complement to governance feminism's focus on discourses and co‐optation. We coin the term affective virtuosity to highlight the importance of affect in feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and in shaping the various perspectives available to feminist scholars in encounters with politicians and policymakers.     

Taking Feminist Violence Seriously in Feminist International Relations

In this article we explore questions about feminism and violence to constructively complicate understandings about this relationship. Feminism is conventionally positioned as oppositional to direct and structural violences, importantly so, as this has been seen key to feminism's viability as a constructive knowledge project. Yet there are increasingly persistent concerns about epistemic, juridical and other violences circulating around feminism, which render feminism's role in the production of oppositional knowledge and politics suspect. This is especially the case where western feminist ideas have been problematically taken up in neoliberal global policy making and for militarized human rights interventions. As feminist international relations scholars troubled by such associations, we investigate – via an exploration of three provocative feminist texts – how feminism is perceived to be both violated and violating by its contemporary imbrication in the violences of neoliberalism and global governance. We further suggest that metaphors of feminized corporeality, which infuse representations of feminism in these texts (especially in its western homogenized governance form), inhibit the destabilizing potential of feminism through its harmful associations with the ‘failing’ female body. This bodily shaping of feminism, which we examine by following a ‘trail of blood’, tells us something important about the relationship between feminism and violence, about recurring discursive and theoretical closures around feminism and about the possibilities for reinventions of feminism to unsettle the violent degradations, which feminists insistently reveal and decry.     

Why the personal remained political: comparing second and third wave perspectives on everyday feminism

Everyday feminist practices are located in the personal lives of feminists, therefore, third wave feminists frequently use the slogan the personal is political to emphasise the political value of such practices. Often, second wave feminists do not agree with this interpretation of the famous feminist catchphrase, which initially meant to call for collective political responses to personal experiences of gender inequalities. This article investigates this dispute that is symbolic of the broader relationship between second and third wave feminism. It compares both perspectives on everyday feminism by relating arguments for and against the political value of everyday feminism to empirical findings of a qualitative study. Based on 40 interviews with second and third wave feminists in New Zealand, I argue that the dispute is based on a number of misunderstandings between the opposing perspectives. Disentangling those misunderstandings, I conclude that although everyday feminism as a manifestation of ‘the personal’ works towards ‘small’ political aims, it is a political practice.     

Women Who Work: The limits of the neoliberal feminist paradigm

This article examines Ivanka Trump's Women Who Work, arguing that it represents the newest permutation of the neoliberal feminist subject. After providing an overview of the recent emergence of neoliberal feminism, I explain why the book should be considered part of the wider cultural landscape in which this variant of feminism has increasingly become commonsensical. I then turn to demonstrate how Women Who Work construes the ideal female subject not only as generic human capital but also incites her to invest in herself constantly, where activities ranging from professional workshops through hobbies to friendships are understood as practices that appreciate the value of the self. The conversion of women into generic rather than gendered human capital remains, however, incomplete, since the ideal of a happy work–family balance continues to serve as a push back to the wholesale erasure of traditional notions of sexual difference. Finally, I highlight that neoliberal feminism is erasing other long‐standing divisions and political differences. Not only does the private–public divide collapse, but so, too, does the distinction between one's private self and one's public enterprise as the self itself becomes an enterprise. This dual process of collapse and reconfiguration shapes the newest neoliberal feminist subject, the main protagonist of Trump's Women Who Work.     

From manstream measuring to multispecies sustainability? A gendered reading of bee‐ing sustainable

This article draws on an ethnography of bee‐work to explore how androcentrism is enacted and disrupted in environmental organizing practices. We first situate the study in recent debates surrounding sustainability, viewing this as one organizing project that informs the recent ‘Save the Bees’ discourse and initiatives proliferating the global North. Theoretically inspired by ideas from political ecology and feminist materialism, we suggest that dominant ‘bee‐saving’ practices are enacted through masculinist conceptions of ‘manstream’ measuring. Focusing on biosecurity inspections during one significant pollination event, we draw on three motifs to explore both the enactment and disruption of sanitized, linear and falsely bounded distinctions that often re/produce practices which have outcomes counter to their intended objectives. Reflecting on three field‐based moments — Pests, Protection and Pace — we consider the possibilities for an alternative modality of multispecies sustainability that is inspired by a new materialism agenda. This not only serves to dismantle inherent binaries through paying attention to the ontological muddling of species, but also helps to consider the productive relations that may emerge when we depart from masculinist modes of sustainable thinking in organizational and institutional settings.     

Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s

The purpose of this profile is to address the Spanish 15M movement from a gender perspective, focusing, on the one hand, on the role played by feminist demands within it and, on the other, on how feminism may have contributed to the 15M, its internal debate and its further developments unfolding in the current Spanish political context. In order to do that, we first explore how feminist demands were initially received in the camps and the reactions they raised among the media and citizenship. Second, we tackle how this case of overlap between a larger group and feminist groups is different from previous collaborations and confrontations. Finally, we focus on how the 15M movement has transformed (or not) as a result of feminism and the implications of this process towards rethinking the role of feminism within contemporary Spanish politics.     

Gendering Global Governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance.     

Uneasy passages between neoliberalism and feminism: Social inclusion and financialization in Israel's empowerment microfinance

This article focuses on feminist non‐governmental organizations advocating for economic empowerment of women (EEW) through microfinance, using Israel as a case study. Through fieldwork, interviews and documents, we investigate the institutional practices, cultural discourses and struggles that EEWs develop in order to expose the particular ways in which feminist organizations interact with the world of finance and state institutions. Our analysis points to the complex power dynamics of mediation, suggesting that there are ‘uneasy passages' between neoliberalism and feminism, ones that help re‐signify the meaning of financial discourses while re‐politicizing women's social and economic exclusions. Simultaneously, however, this relation induces a series of compromises, whereby EEWs adopt neoliberal modes of governance. Rejecting the notion that contemporary feminism has simply been co‐opted by neoliberalism or the perception of EEW microfinance as a mere expansion of neoliberal rationalities, we reveal new sites and ways in which feminism both colludes and collides with neoliberalism.     

Choices and life chances: feminism and the politics of generational change

The perception that young women are disengaged from feminist politics has provoked a great deal of tension between feminist generations. Recent feminist research into generational change has largely avoided this tension by focusing on the shifting meanings of feminism and the discrepancy between young women's reluctance to identify as “feminists” and their general acceptance of feminist attitudes toward gender issues. Nevertheless, in an era when gender equity goals seem to be if not slipping backwards then lacking urgency, young women are less likely to identify with a collective feminist politics than are older women. Underpinned by the findings of a major study of the attitudes toward work, family, and retirement of three generations of Australian women, this paper develops an approach that helps explain this reluctance. Drawing on the work of Karl Mannheim, the paper suggests that the cultural currents shaping the consciousness of different generations of women impact significantly on gender identity. The implications of this cultural shift are considered in the context of feminist politics and the contemporary “culture wars.”     

Dilemmas of Difference:

This paper examines the contemporary intersection of postmodernism and feminist theories of gender difference. Three strategic forms for posing the relationship between western feminism and the Enlightenment legacy of humanistic rationalism are examined: feminist rationalism, feminine antirationalism, and feminist postrationalism, and feminist postrationalism. It is argued that the theoretical rigor of postrationalism. It is argued that the theoretical rigor of postrationalism is obtained at the cost of a deracinated politics, while themore tangible political appeals of rationalism and antirationalism reproduce mirrored naive accounts of the relationship between women and modern western culture. The aim of this paper isto open up, rather than to resolve, questions concerning the relationship between feminism, modernity, and postmodern theory.     

When Feminists Don't Fit The Case of Pauline Hanson

The rise of the Far Right is a global phenomenon traditionally viewed as antithetical to feminism. However, in Australia from 1996–2001 Far Right politics was dominated by a woman, Pauline Hanson, thus calling into question the dynamics between organized feminism and the Far Right. A significant problem for Australian feminists trying to understand Hanson is that her ideology, activities and life-style are internally contradictory. This article draws on American analyses of similar women and examines the contradictions in Hanson's political philosophy and activism with a view to challenging current Australian feminist analysis of this controversial political woman.     

Insider-allies: The precarious politics of men in identity-fluid feminism

Academic and activist conversations about the position of men in feminism often operate under the assumption that women are the movement's key beneficiaries and men are privileged outsiders lending their support. I use 59 interviews from a broader project on feminist and LGBTQ+ activism in the United States to illustrate how men's orientation to feminism is shaped by whether social movement organizations adopt what I call woman-centered or identity-fluid politics. While woman-centered politics treat men as allies whose intentions must be vetted by women, identity-fluid feminism imagines men as insiders with their own independent investment in the movement. I argue that the tension between these two models of identity politics gives men a liminal “insider-ally” position within feminism. Although feminist men are given a tentative authority to speak for the movement, the persistence of woman-centered understandings of feminism means men's insider status is contested, especially when they dominate feminist spaces, compromise women's sense of safety, and seek leadership.     

Borderlands Studies and Border Theory: Linking Activism and Scholarship for Social Justice

This article traces contemporary trends in borderlands studies and border theory and argues for a feminist revisioning of border studies as a mode of praxis, linking activism, and scholarship. I trace the trends from early borderland studies and Gloria Anzaldúa’s analysis of la frontera to the institutionalization of border theory in the academy. Scholars influenced by Anzaldúa’s work view borderlands as sites that can enable those dwelling there to negotiate the contradictions and tensions found in diverse cultural, class, and other settings. Critical perspectives of this view include concerns that there is ‘the tendency to construct the border crosser or the hybrid … into a new privileged subject of history’ (Vila 2003. Ethnography at the Border, University of Minnesota Press). I examine tension between social science based borderlands studies and cultural studies-oriented border theory, address the limits and possibilities of an interdisciplinary border studies, and discuss the dilemmas associated with academic institutionalization and interdisciplinarity. I illustrate the feminist revisioning I recommend with three case examples chosen from contemporary feminist and queer border studies that link local struggles with cross-border organizing against violence against women, labor rights, and sexual citizenship.