Power, Feminisms, and Coalitional Agency: Inviting and Enacting Difficult Dialogues
| Autor: | Cindy L. Griffin, Karma R. Chávez |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Women's Studies in Communication. 32:1-11 |
| ISSN: | 2152-999X 0749-1409 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/07491409.2009.10162378 |
| Popis: | Discussions of "post" or "power" feminism have populated the pages of media journals for some time now as voices of feminism's Third Wave, as well as some from the Second, have proclaimed that feminism is no longer needed; at the very least, women should stop talking about oppression and engage their own power. With Hillary Clinton's near miss as the democratic presidential nominee, and Sarah Palin's unexpected GOP vice presidential nomination, surely those voices seem rational. Yet, as New York Times columnist, Judith Warner writes, "Is it a coincidence that the bubbling idiocy of "Sex and the City," the movie, exploded upon the cultural scene at the exact same time that Hillary Clinton's candidacy imploded?" (1) Warner goes on to argue that, while the likes of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda garner championing as post-feminist archetypes, woman-hating such as the kind Clinton experienced for the year of her campaign, continues unchallenged. To the skeptic of the continued existence of misogyny, the Sex and the City women, the Real Housewives of New York, Atlanta, Orange County, and any number of other post-feminist characters in U.S. media provide apparently convincing evidence. Hillary Clinton, skeptics argue, brought her own demise, and the "real" women (housewives or not) living a life of "sex and the city" are evidence that feminism has done its job. However, we are reminded of 1988, when a small group of feminists in communication studies hosted a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication. These scholars asked questions and posed thoughts about the nature and state of feminist communication scholarship. Although these feminists may not have represented the diversity of feminist scholarship in communication at the time, there is little doubt that that issue, along with collections such as Lana Rakow's Women Making Meaning (2) helped to characterize the direction that feminist communication scholarship would take for the next several years. Considering the conservative political and cultural milieu that existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the considerable feminist backlash of the time, the necessity of such work is easily seen. In many ways, we are at a similar place some twenty years later. Yet, recent discussions over feminism in communication studies reflect tensions and dichotomies that leave many feminists uneasy or misunderstood, others silenced, and no small measure of us uncertain about whether we can have productive conversations about our differences. We believe, however, that conversations about what our feminisms are, how we define them, and how they move us forward in the world are among the most important feminist conversations that we could have. Knowing at our cores, that the personal remains profoundly political, we have a personal interest in the myriad material impacts that power feminism has on feminisms and feminists in communication and also on the world outside of academia. Though we both come from very different social locations, we share similar feminist standpoints in that we are passionate about making a space for difficult conversations about feminisms, that power feminism does not feel like feminism to either one of us, but that those who find a home there are due respect and space to articulate that position. Moreover, due to the prevalence of power and post feminist ways of thinking in popular culture as well as many academic circles, we desired a forum to consider the many sides of contemporary power feminist debates and to demonstrate what we consider the high stakes they possess for progressive politics and theory. As versions of post and power feminism are advocated and embraced in mainstream media, as well as in public and academic conversations, we find ourselves reflecting on Helene A. Shugart, Catherine Egley Waggoner, and D. Lynn OBrien Hallstein's 2001 work on appropriation. (3) Is feminism, we wonder, when sifted through a power feminist lens, being "appropriated, commodified, reinscribed, and 'sold back'" to us? … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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