“What ever happened to feminism?” I asked her. I meant the question, though of course at some level I know very well what happened to it: much of its energy went into gender and queer theory.
All to the good, I'll add, since the transformation of women's studies into gender studies allowed the field to establish as the ground of its scholarly legitimacy the social experience and articulation of gender in general (ergo: feminism: not just for women anymore), and the move into queer studies gave the field a set of new objects and political premises, not to mention the possibility of universalizing its radical edge in the pursuit of a queerness not exclusively the function of sexual choice.
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But I asked this scholar what happened to feminism because the other day in my graduate class I realized that none of my students had ever really read any feminist theory, and that they'd never heard of the French feminism of the 1970s and early 80s that was so influential on the American scene. French feminism's limitations are, to be sure, far clearer now than they were in the heady moments of Irigaray's Ce sexe qui n'est pas un or Cixous's Laugh of the Medusa, but still, there was something very strange about realizing that for my students these works and others had simply been completely forgotten.
What else happened to feminism? Much of its energy today seems to focus on what used to be called the Third World; under the names “women of color feminism” and “transnational feminism” the work of what was, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an important but not dominant part of “feminism” in general is now really the only place in academia where you see the word “feminism” seriously used. (This was the anthology that put those questions on the map.)
It's not, of course, that transnational feminism or queer theory aren't feminist, or aren't feminism; there's no point, really, in lamenting the march of intellectual progress. And in many ways the disappearance of “white” feminism is the mark of the victories it gained for the women who were its major constituency — middle and upper class, mostly white, located mostly in the global North, these women now are far closer to achieving political, economic, and labor parity than they were before the feminism's second wave got rolling in the 1970s. A friend the other day told me that average hours spent on housework in the United States have gone from something like 20 per week for women and 4 for men, to 17 for women and 13 for men. Still some way to go, but my god, what a change. (And let's note: 30 total hours of housework compared to 24: our houses are cleaner and our children more entertained!!).
It's for that reason that the Hillary Clinton campaign has been interesting. If you have any time at all this week you should read Amanda Fortini's excellent article in New York, which covers both the political scope and immediate history of the campaign's startling calling to arms of the forces of sexism (and the counterforces of feminist critique, of which that article is such an excellent example). It's possible, of course, to have a non-sexist critique of Clinton's politics or her candidacy, but it's not possible to seriously believe that latent and explicit sexism have nothing to do with the way she has been covered in the media or with the preferences of some voters for “anyone but Hillary.”
Years ago I owned a bumper sticker that read, “If you feel attacked by feminism, it's probably a counterattack.” Clinton's campaign clarifies this logic once more, since the vitriol and anger behind so many attacks on Clinton can only be explained as themselves the justified products of a sense of woundedness that comes from being “attacked” (now in scare quotes) by the possibility that a woman might be president (or might, as Rush Limbaugh noted with some terror, age while in office).
There's much more to be said on this subject, and I may try again next week, this time to think about how the academic context might respond. For now I really recommend that you read the Fortini piece.
Your alarm is interesting to me. I was curious if you could address the ways in which feminist knowledge production has been assumed, some might say commandeered, by the academy. You partially gesture to this in your discussion of gender studies and queer theory. However, I'm wondering if your students' ignorance might have something to do with the retreat of leftist politics from the public sphere (in the 1980s, for example).
Well, Guy,
A couple things:
1) I suppose my question was, indeed, “what happened to academic feminism,” or, perhaps more specifically, what happened to specifically feminist knowledge production that *labels* itself feminist, and that teaches under that name?
And the quick answer is that it's been replaced by gender and queer theory. And while I think of that move — and have thought of that move — in general as an advance, it occurred to me as I witnessed my students' ignorance that there were disadvantages that I hadn't noticed. Namely that the project of feminism itself, still a vital and unfinished one (considered, if one can do this, apart from the project of gender or queer theory), has effectively “disappeared” from view for these students (though they may well agree that women deserve equal work for equal pay, etc.).
2) I don't know exactly how this might relate to the retreat of leftist politics from the public sphere, though your question makes me think that we could say many of the things I've said here about Marxism. Despite all the tensions between Marxism and feminism your question prompts me to wonder whether their “disappearance” (which is not really a disappearance) is connected.
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