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DOI: 10.1177/1350506812443620
2012 19: 315European Journal of Women's Studies
Jonathan Dean
activism in the UK
On the march or on the margins? Affirmations and erasures of feminist
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On the march or on the
margins? Affirmations and
erasures of feminist activism
in the UK
Jonathan Dean
University of Leeds, UK
Abstract
In the UK, many have argued that the past five years or so have seen an increase in the
radicalism and visibility of feminist activism, jarring somewhat with the strong emphasis
on loss in much recent scholarship – as well as media commentary – on feminist politics.
Against this backdrop, this article asks how, and to what extent, this resurgence of
feminist activism has unsettled the centrality of loss within the affective economies
of contemporary British feminism, by examining a range of recent texts produced
within (pro-feminist) academic, activist, publishing and media spheres. After arguing that
attachments to loss remain remarkably intransigent, the latter part of the article draws
on Sara Ahmed’s account of ‘sticky affects’ to provide a theoretical account of why
notions such as ‘young women are not feminist’ and ‘feminist activism is a thing of the
past’ continue to yield such force despite empirical evidence to the contrary.
Keywords
Activism, affect, feminism, generations, loss, resurgence, UK
Introduction
Loss, writes Srila Roy (2009: 341), ‘seems to inform a greater part of the affective economy
of feminism today’. Although writing about contemporary Indian feminism, her
reflections resonate strongly with the current UK context, in which narratives of women’s
movement decline and young women’s distaste for feminism circulate widely in
academic and non-academic spheres. In such a context, it might seem odd to claim that
contemporary British feminism is in the ascendancy. However, one now frequently hears
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Dean, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Email: ipijde@leeds.ac.uk
443620EJW
Article
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316	 European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(3)
that feminists are dusting off their placards, remobilizing and spearheading an increasingly
visible movement for the transformation of gender relations in the UK. While initially
such declarations of a resurgent feminism were largely internal to the feminist activist
community, this increased movement visibility – alongside the publication of a series of
non-academic books in 2009–2011 discussing contemporary feminism – has generated a
burgeoning interest in feminism within the mainstream British media. Consequently,
the belief that the present is marked by a resurgent feminism has now penetrated
beyond the boundaries of feminist activism and into mainstream public discourse as
well. Against this backdrop, this article asks how, and to what extent, this resurgence
of feminist activism has unsettled the centrality of loss within the affective economies of
contemporary British feminism.1
In tackling these questions, the analysis presented here focuses less on the concrete
practices of feminist activists in the UK, and more on how these practices are represented
in academic, activist and media discourse. The specific discourses I am analysing are all
the work of feminists, or people sympathetic to feminism, even though some of their
claims could be seen as problematic from particular feminist perspectives. In analysing
these (pro) feminist discourses, I would argue that the period from around 2008 onwards
has witnessed an intensification of discourse about feminism in the British public sphere.
Some of these discourses are characterized by optimistic and affirmative declarations of
a renewed visibility and confidence in feminist activism, while others consist of pessimistic
claims that these new feminisms are in some way not properly feminist, or not the
right kind of feminism.
My main line of critique highlights how narratives of the loss of feminism – often
expressed through claims that young women are not feminist, or that contemporary feminism
lacks visibility and vitality – are so entrenched in the feminist imagination that they
remain largely untroubled even by empirical counter-examples (such as instances of
young women becoming politicized). However, my argument is not directed at loss and
pessimism per se. After all, such affective dispositions can act as key motivational factors
for renewed political action. Rather, my claim is that specific attachments to narratives of
loss, in the current UK context, often serve to erase important forms of feminist mobilization
from view. Not only is such a situation problematic when one is trying to analyse
aspects of the current feminist movement, but it can also lead to a politics marked by
moralism, defeatism and conservatism. After fleshing out these ideas in more detail, I
conclude with an attempt to make sense theoretically of the persistence of attachments to
narratives of loss in current feminist discourse. I suggest that existing work on feminist
generational conflict has some resonance with the debates analysed, but that a reading of
Sara Ahmed’s account of affective economies (alongside Christina Scharff’s work on
young women’s disidentification with feminism) provides a richer theoretical lens through
which to make sense of current debates about UK feminist activism.
Contextualizing UK feminist activism
The discussion that follows is entirely UK-based (with a bias towards London and southeast
England), and reflects the various quirks and specificities of its context, although
many non-UK readers will no doubt identify with the themes of resistance, subjectivity
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Dean	 317
and generational conflict that it touches on. The UK has historically been a hegemonic
power within feminism, particularly in academic circles. While the legacy of this disproportionate
influence is, to say the least, ambivalent, it has at least resulted in a rich and
expanding array of scholarly and biographical work on the history of British feminist
politics. This literature cannot be adequately summarized, but it will suffice to point out
that the British Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) – which started to emerge in the
late 1960s – was, for a time at least, extremely lively and vibrant, and had close yet contested
ties with socialism and the left (Lovenduski and Randall, 1993; Rowbotham et al.,
1979). However, in contrast to the broadly affirmative scholarship on the early British
WLM, literature on the contemporary feminist movement has been fairly consistent in
putting forward a gloomy diagnosis of the post-1970s feminist scene, framed largely
by notions such as loss, decline, institutionalization, fragmentation or depoliticization
(Bagguley, 2002; Byrne, 1996; Gelb, 1989; Lovenduski and Randall, 1993; McRobbie,
2009; Nash, 2002; Squires, 2007). The general picture painted by these accounts depicts,
as Lynne Segal (2000: 19) puts it, a ‘declining passion for politics’ alongside a ‘frank
rejection of feminism by many young women’. Indeed, the kinds of loss narratives
described by Clare Hemmings (2011) that posit a transition from an activist, politicized
feminist past to a professionalized, apolitical feminist present typify the kinds of narratives
one finds in scholarly and biographical accounts of the WLM in Britain (Dean,
2010a). As Angela McRobbie puts it, if feminism is to be found anywhere, it is in ‘a
retirement home in an unfashionable rundown holiday resort’ (2004: 512).
But despite the rather gloomy picture painted above, there is substantial evidence to
suggest that since around 2006, feminist mobilizations in the UK have increased in visibility
and influence (Dean, 2010a; Redfern and Aune, 2010). To give a few examples:
groups such as the London Feminist Network have helped spearhead a huge proliferation
of Reclaim the Night marches against violence against women across the country;
Object - an increasingly influential human rights organization - have received substantial
media attention for their high profile campaigning against the objectification of
women in media and popular culture; grassroots socialist feminist group Feminist
Fightback and the established campaigning organization the Fawcett Society have both
mobilized against the gendered impacts of the UK government’s deficit-reduction
measures; and the group UK Feminista was formed in 2010 to provide UK-wide coordination
between feminist activists. This apparent feminist resurgence has been boosted
by, and helped give rise to, ongoing forms of activism concerning the intersections of
feminism with (among others) anti-racism, anti-homophobia and ‘no border’ campaigns,
while the substantial feminist presence in the recent student mobilizations in the
UK and across Europe raises further questions about the intersections of feminism and
leftist politics more broadly.
In contrast to narratives of loss, these new forms of feminist mobilization have led to
a proliferation of often celebratory narratives of feminism’s return, but have also given
rise to modes of critique, dismissal or outright erasure. Much of this discussion has taken
place within the activist blogosphere, but the key public forum for debate about the current
state of British feminism is arguably the liberal broadsheet press (particularly The
Guardian),2 which in turn arguably both generates and reflects a range of class and racial
biases in the (actual or intended) audience for these discussions. To give some examples
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typical of these more celebratory narratives: early in 2010 Bidisha – occasional presenter
of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour – announced a ‘mass awakening’ of women (Bidisha,
2010); Guardian women’s editor Kira Cochrane (2010a) noted that ‘after years of derision,
feminism is finding its voice again’; a 2009 article by Susie Mesure in The Independent
was framed by the claim that the hitherto apolitical ‘Topshop generation . . . [have now]
had enough’ (Mesure, 2009b). Equally affirmative stances can be found in the claim – in
the context of a profile of author and activist Kat Banyard – that the UK women’s
movement is ‘bursting with energy’ (Cochrane, 2010b), while beyond the pages of the
broadsheet press BBC Radio 4’s flagship daily news programme Today contained a news
item on 31 July 2010 exploring the idea that the present is an ‘exciting time’ for British
feminism. Furthermore, the same period saw a spate of popular, non-academic books
addressing the state of contemporary British feminism. This included some lighter, more
populist titles (Levinson, 2009; Moran, 2011) and some that were more serious and
overtly politicized in their approach (Banyard, 2010; Walter, 2010). Taken together,
these developments tap into a pervasive sense that, to borrow a line from a rousing
speech given by Finn Mackay (of the London Feminist Network) at the London 2009
Reclaim the Night rally, the women’s movement is ‘on the march once again’.
The analysis that follows bears the hallmarks of the context in which it was carried
out, in at least three ways. First, this article contains a number of thoughts that began
to circulate during conversations with academics and activists, in both social and professional
settings, about themes of optimism/pessimism, hope and despair in commentary
on contemporary UK feminism. Such conversations also prompted me to reflect
on how ideas and affective investments move unpredictably across the porous boundaries
of academia, activism and popular discourse. Second, the argument presented in
this article is heavily influenced by the responses I received to my previous research
(Dean, 2010a), which argued that we were witnessing what appeared to be an increasing
appetite for feminist politics in the UK and that this should give us cause for hope,
perhaps even optimism, at a time when the received wisdom was that feminism was
unfashionable and had lost its political dynamism. Although many people who engaged
with my research expressed interest, surprise and enthusiasm for emergent forms of
feminist activism, this often did not translate into a more affirmative or hopeful affective
orientation towards the feminist present. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect people
to change their worldview on the strength of a single encounter with a colleague’s
research, but it did nonetheless prompt me to reflect not only on the character of attachments
to a feminism that had (allegedly) been lost, but also on attachments to the idea
that feminism had lost its fervour, radicalism and impact.
Third, this article was originally written during a period of significant political
upheaval in British universities, coinciding with the wave of student protests and occupations
that took place during winter 2010–2011. While writing the first draft of this
article, I participated in a number of staff/student protests in and around my university
(Leeds), and made several visits to a lecture hall that had been occupied by a sizeable
group of students, and which played host to a number of lively debates about (among
other things) the connections between feminism and the burgeoning student movement.
None of this is to suggest that these various political goings on were wholly unproblematic
(particularly from a feminist perspective), but it did mean that I felt bemused, and at
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Dean	 319
times frustrated, by the continued peddling of narratives of declining enthusiasm for
radical politics, despite evidence to the contrary all around.
What happened to the sisterhood? Examining
techniques of erasure
In light of this, the rest of the article asks to what extent these new forms of feminist
mobilization – and the affirmative responses they often provoke – displace attachments
to loss within the affective economies of contemporary feminism? The short answer is a
little, but perhaps not as much as one might expect. Despite the recent resurgence
of feminist activism in the UK, narratives of loss continue to circulate widely. But, crucially,
these new feminist activisms produce a shift in the character of attachments to
loss. Previously, attachments to loss took the form of nostalgia, a melancholic longing
for a now lost radical activism. Now, we sometimes encounter a more active form of
erasure and/or dismissal, whereby these newly visible feminist activisms are ignored,
cast out or deemed not appropriately feminist.
These modalities of erasure are manifest in a number of sites, and circulate within
and across the boundaries of academia, media and (slightly less so) activism. While the
broadsheet press has seen numerous affirmations of the new feminisms in recent years,
a dominant discourse remains grounded in loss, or disappointment. A common narrative
here is that feminism has become swallowed up by a hedonistic popular culture, and/or
that young feminists have got their political priorities wrong. A 2009 article in The
Independent by Susie Mesure (2009a) (prior to her conversion to a more optimistic
stance – see above) condenses both of these themes, berating British feminists (who are
‘too busy picking personal fights over assaults on our personal image’) for their alleged
lack of activism around the Lubna al-Hussein case in Sudan.3 Similarly dismissive sentiment
towards young feminists and indeed young women in general pervades Cassandra
Jardine’s lament in The Daily Telegraph in 2010 that feminism has ‘sunk into mindless
hedonism’ by virtue of the ways in which ‘a generation of young girls is interpreting
liberation as the right to behave like top-shelf models’ and for whom – she alleges –
‘STDs are almost a badge of honour’ (Jardine, 2010). Jardine writes this in the context
of a discussion of the work of British feminist writer Natasha Walter, but her discourse
in effect erases contemporary feminism by problematically and unreflectively conflating
feminism with specific forms of public displays of sexuality by young women.
‘Perhaps it is time for the third wave of feminism’ (Jardine, 2010), she concludes.
Needless to say, third wave feminism has been around for a long time.
A similar set of troubling conflations of feminism and femininity pervade Janice
Turner’s 2009 Times article, which argues that ‘feminism has never had it so bad’
(Turner, 2009). The article displays an affective disposition of despair and infuriation
towards young women’s alleged complicity with an increasingly sexist popular culture.
‘Is it only me, Ms Ranty-Pants and my generation who care? Why do women seem
largely oblivious?’ she asks rhetorically. After several paragraphs in which feminism is
conflated with the public display of female sexuality for heterosexual male enjoyment,
Turner again asks ‘where are the young women questioning the orthodoxy here?’ and
claims that ‘feminism has slumbered for too long: it is high time it woke up’ (Turner,
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2009). Turner’s article taps into a broader sense of despair and disappointment with
young women’s alleged lack of mobilization against problematic constructions of
female sexuality in popular culture. However, while she acknowledges the inroads
made by the campaigning group Object, her discourse relies on strong investments in
loss and disappointment, precluding acknowledgement of the existence of diverse forms
of activism, and erasing the possibility of a more hopeful affective orientation towards
the feminist present.
However, two particularly troubling examples of the cultural erasure of feminist
activism can be found in two recent BBC documentaries, one on TV and one on radio.
The BBC4 programme Activists (first broadcast on 22 March 2010) was an overview of
new forms of activism by predominantly younger feminists, focusing on the build-up to
the 2008 London Reclaim the Night march. The programme contains interviews with a
number of activists, often fixating on the question of whether those interviewed have an
‘angry’ personality disposition. Particularly problematic is a depiction of the young
activist Sophia Morrell. The film makes it clear that Morrell comes from a privileged
class background, and repeatedly draws attention to the presumed disjuncture between
her feminist politics and her feminine dress and physical appearance. Interspersed with
footage of her attending a boxing class, the interviewer repeatedly asks her if she is an
angry person (‘not really, only feminism and commuting make me angry’, she replies),
but the interviewer persists, making her visibly uncomfortable. The film then cuts to an
interview with her bemused parents, who struggle to answer director Vanessa Eagle’s
question about the sources of Sophia’s ‘rage’.
The portrayal of Morrell in the documentary is deeply problematic: it implies that
her privileged class background and her physical appearance are such that her radical
politics cannot be read as authentic or primary, but as derivative of some pre-political
or psychological disposition. The possibility that her radicalism is an understandable
and authentic response to existing social and political conditions goes largely unacknowledged.
In this sense, even though the subject being interviewed is clearly a
young feminist, the programme draws on a range of discursive techniques to deflect
the possible challenge that Morrell poses to the truism that young women are not
feminists.
The truism that young women reject feminism (and that young feminists in some
senses do not really exist) provides the key anchoring point for a recent edition of BBC
Radio 4’s Analysis entitled ‘Whatever Happened to the Sisterhood?’ The programme
does acknowledge the existence of new forms of feminist politics, and indeed contains
interviews with high profile feminist activists such as Catherine Redfern, but remains
wedded to the idea that young women are refusing to identify as feminist, and are largely
complicit with their own subordination. As the title implies, the programme is structured
around a binary opposition between an upsurge of feminist radicalism in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, and a depoliticized, complicitous present. This is given further symbolic
weight by the programme coinciding with the release of Made in Dagenham, Nigel
Cole’s dramatization of the 1968 strike by women workers at the Ford plant in Dagenham
in Essex (just to the east of London). The movie, presenter Jo Fidgen says, ‘evokes a time
when women fought alongside each other, noisily, often joyously’, and she contrasts the
‘boisterous activism of the second-wave’ with the ‘beleaguered, low-key feminism of
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Dean	 321
today’. The programme goes on to affirm the belief that contemporary feminism is on the
back foot, drawing on contributions from feminist political theorist Anne Phillips, cultural
theorist Angela McRobbie and sociologist Jessica Ringrose. While contemporary
feminism is acknowledged, it is critiqued on the grounds that it primarily takes place
online and is too cerebral to generate widespread appeal. Phillips’ observation that ‘I
don’t think there is an enormous emphasis on fighting for gender equality’ prompts Jo
Fidgen to remark, ‘perhaps the complacency that Professor Phillips detects is the reason
why there are no banner-waving women descending on Parliament Square’. Similarly,
while acknowledging that membership of the Fawcett Society has risen, Fidgen qualifies
this by saying, ‘there haven’t been protests, Dagenham-style’. She then goes on to point
out that ‘some second-wave feminists look at younger women and say this is not what we
were fighting for. They think they are sexually liberated. In fact they’re colluding in their
own oppression.’ In the conclusion we hear some reflections from Angela McRobbie on
the status of feminism in mainstream culture, before Fidgen signs off by remarking that
maybe it will take ‘feminists of Professor McRobbie’s generation to come out of activist
retirement, dust off their banners, and lead the younger generation out of internet forums
and into the mainstream’.
‘Whatever Happened to the Sisterhood?’ is of course right to raise questions about
the state of contemporary feminism, but its insistent reinstating of attachments to a
now lost feminist activism is arguably symptomatic of the broader centrality of notions
of loss, decline and disappointment within both academic and media representations of
contemporary feminism. Crucially, the programme shows that even an acknowledgement
of the existence of new forms of feminist activism need not complicate narratives
of decline or attachments to loss. Indeed, ‘Whatever Happened to the Sisterhood?’
deploys an impressive repertoire of techniques of erasure. These include: (1) framing
‘Dagenham-era’ feminism as an idealized and unreachable benchmark against which
contemporary feminism is compared; (2) constructing protest and ‘banner-waving’ as
hallmarks of authentic feminism (in contrast to the inauthentic or unsatisfactory realm
of online activism); and (3) conflating feminism and femininity by presuming that
feminists consent to problematic constructions of female sexuality that circulate within
consumer culture.
Unsurprisingly, a number of younger feminists have reacted with frustration and dismay
towards the widespread erasure of younger feminists’ political activism. Several
contributions to UK feminist website The F-word have discussed tendencies in mainstream
media and society to ignore, or express disappointment with, new feminist activisms
(Livesey, 2008). Indeed, Catherine Redfern (founder and former editor of The
F-word) asked ‘when will we be good enough – and should we stop caring?’ (Redfern,
2009) after attending an event organized by long-running left-of-centre organization the
Fabian Society at which discussion bemoaned the absence of effective and exciting
activism by contemporary feminists. She wonders ‘for those who are sceptical about
today’s feminism, what exactly would count as a “proper” or valid feminist movement?’
(Redfern, 2009) and asks ‘why is it that time after time when conferences [that] aren’t
predominantly feminist-focussed have a panel on feminism it’s all framed around the
question of whether “a new feminism” is needed, as if feminism is dormant or dead’
(Redfern, 2009). In response to Redfern’s article, current F-word editor Jess McCabe
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322	 European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(3)
highlights the core of the problem when noting that ‘often it seems to me the truth is not
“there’s no feminist activism happening”, but that it’s just not happening within the field
of vision of the people who make that complaint’ (McCabe, in Redfern, 2009). Not only
that, in response to the aforementioned articles by Susie Mesure and Janice Turner proclaiming
the absence or shortcomings of contemporary feminism, F-word contributor
Laura Woodhouse was driven to announce that she was ‘frantically waving the feminist
flag, jumping up and down, blowing a whistle, tearing my hair out’ (Woodhouse, 2009).
The F-word contributors’frustrations are of course grounded in the fact that the forms
of erasure exhibited in ‘Whatever Happened to the Sisterhood?’ and elsewhere provide a
deeply selective reading of the empirical aspects of what has actually been happening in
British feminism in recent years (see Dean, 2010a; Redfern and Aune, 2010). But perhaps
even more troubling are the strategies of argumentation they employ. There is little
engagement with the content or demands of these new forms of activism by younger
feminists, because they are typically framed as unable to ‘count’ as properly feminist or
properly political in the first place. Here, I think there is a crucial distinction to be made
between erasure and critique. Partly in line with Pereira’s (2011) cartographical account
of the exercise of epistemic status in the discipline of gender studies, I use critique, in this
context, to refer to practices of judgement and evaluation of specific instances of feminism,
but whereby that judgement presumes that the instance of feminism being judged
deserves to be ‘counted’as a candidate for feminist judgement. Thus, I may, for instance,
take issue with a particular tactic or practice enacted by, say, Object or the European
Women’s Lobby, but critique implies that I acknowledge their existence as legitimate
objects for feminist judgement. Erasure, by contrast – e.g. saying that young women’s
activism is not properly feminist – does not really perform a critical judgement because
it prevents specific practices from even emerging as candidates for critical judgement in
the first place. Strategies of erasure serve instead to cast certain practices and ideas out
to the margins of the symbolic field within which discussions of contemporary feminism
operate, severely damaging prospects for what we might call, following Chantal Mouffe
(2000), an ‘agonistic pluralism’ of views about contemporary feminism.4
Erasure and loss:Theoretical considerations
However, this still does not directly address the question of why, despite an apparent
resurgence of diverse forms of feminist activism in Britain, do techniques of erasure
and narratives of loss continue to inform so much reflection on contemporary gender
politics? To frame things in a more Foucaultian vein, the question to ask is not, as most
do, ‘why is there so little feminist resistance?’ and/or ‘why do young women refuse to
embrace feminism?’ but, rather, why do people insist so much that young women are
not feminist and that there is no feminist resistance?
To answer this question, one might be tempted to turn to models of generational
conflict between different ‘waves’ of feminism, which has been a feature of recent
scholarship on feminist identity, particularly in Anglo-American contexts. Such work
typically seeks to analyse the processes by which ‘third wave’ feminism comes into
being, often by exploring the structure and effects of third wave feminism’s disidentification
with the figure of the second wave feminist mother, who is often portrayed
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Dean	 323
as resentful, puritanical and doctrinaire (Dean, 2009; Henry, 2003; Siegel, 2007;
Snyder, 2008). And there is no doubt that there are traces of feminist generational
conflict and disidentification in the material discussed here. For instance, the frustrations
expressed on The F-word resonate strongly with the irritation and exasperation
with older feminists that characterize much ‘third wave’ discourse (Baumgardner and
Richards, 2000). But there are several crucial dimensions of the problems and debates
discussed here that resist subsumption into existing models of generational conflict.
One is that few, if any, of the discourses studied are explicitly framed by wave-based
generational metaphors: indeed, they almost never refer to ‘third wave’ feminism,
which in turn reflects a broader turning away from wave-based generational identities
within UK feminist activism, and a greater emphasis on cross-generational alliances
(Dean, 2010a: 162). Second, the idea that ‘young women are not feminist’ circulates
in and across specific communities of scholars, activists and commentators, without
being confined to specific age-cohorts. For instance, it can also assume the form of
young people bemoaning the alleged lack of enthusiasm for radical politics among
their own age group.
The kinds of wave-based generational conflict described by critics such as Siegel
(2007) and Henry (2003) are much more easily applicable to Anglo-American feminist
temporalities than elsewhere (Graff, 2003), but even in the UK and the US the story of a
passage from ‘second’ to ‘third’ wave is a highly selective narrative (Dean, 2009). Thus,
even though wave-based models of generational conflict do adequately characterize
some recent disputes within British feminism, the specific situation discussed here is
fluid and complex, and not reducible to the retrenchment of simplistic generational differences
that typically mark cleavages between second and third wave feminisms.
Consequently, I would argue that we need to adopt an alternative set theoretical tools if
we are to make sense of the context under discussion.
But let us reiterate what it is we are trying to explain. As stated, loss continues to
inform much of the affective economy of contemporary feminism. Ostensibly, this arises
from an investment in an object (feminist activism) which has been lost. This suggests
that affects centred upon loss might be alleviated by the return of the lost object. However,
the above analysis suggests that a more fundamental, perhaps more intransigent set of
attachments are in place, as a typical response to a particular instance of new feminism
is either to ignore it or to say ‘no, that’s not it! That’s not the right kind of (returning) lost
object!’ This in turn suggests that for some the possibility of a return of the lost object
(feminist activism) might be experienced as troublesome, even traumatic.
Indeed, the fact that narratives of loss remain in place even when the lost object – or
some approximation of it – returns might be read as meaning that the investment is not
in a (now lost) feminism, but in a prior object which the loss of feminism perhaps in
some way stands in for. Some strands of queer theory might link this lost object to the
losses incurred through submission to the demands of the heterosexual matrix (Butler,
1990), while some psychoanalytic perspectives might link it to the loss incurred through
oedipalization (Jones, 1999). Meanwhile Lisa Adkins (2004) has suggested that feminist
loss narratives betray a prior investment in a specific kind of socioeconomic formation
that characterized earlier stages of modernity. In recent psychoanalytic theory, the category
of melancholia – conceived as an inability to mourn an unavowed loss – has proved
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324	 European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(3)
attractive to many seeking to make sense of the psychosocial dimensions of narratives of
the loss of feminism, and indeed emancipatory politics more broadly (Brown, 2000;
Butler, 1995). The deployments of the category of melancholia in specific contexts by
Roy (2009) and Özselçuk (2006)5 are illuminating and persuasive, but as with wavebased
models of generational conflict I worry that a strong conception of melancholia
might struggle to adequately explain the diversity and contextuality of narratives of loss
(and the different forms of erasure that sometimes arise). Furthermore, to posit the claim
that the loss of feminism stands in for a more fundamental loss necessarily requires a
somewhat speculative hermeneutics of suspicion to identify the lost object which remains
unavowed.
In view of this, I want to draw on Sara Ahmed’s (2004) account of the ‘stickiness’
of affects to advance the arguably simpler – and more ‘historicized’ – explanation that
the reluctance to affirm these newly visible feminist activisms is an effect of the constant
repetition of narratives of loss. Ahmed argues that affects are not inherent properties
of specific objects, but rather become attached to objects through repetition.
Sometimes, Ahmed argues, these repetitions can intensify to such an extent that particular
kinds of affect come to be seen as inherent to – rather than contingently associated
with – particular kinds of bodies and/or objects. Christina Scharff (2010) takes up
Ahmed’s account of the ‘stickiness’of affect in her analysis of young women’s (largely
negative) views of feminism. Scharff notes that in the eyes of her interviewees, various
negative affects have, through repetition, become intractably stuck to the signifier
‘feminism’. As she puts it:
Through repetition, unfemininity, man-hating, and lesbianism are attached to feminism:
feminism becomes a ‘sticky sign’ that therefore evokes a chain of associations which have
become intrinsic to the sign through reiteration. The stereotype of the ugly, man-bashing,
lesbian feminist comes into existence through repeated reiterations and produces that which it
seeks to designate every time it is named. (Scharff, 2010: 839)
Interestingly, Scharff also makes the crucial point that when asked, her respondents
were invariably unable to name a specific example of a man-hating, ugly feminist: ‘the
trope of the feminist’, she writes, ‘connected to unfemininity, man-hating, and lesbianism,
figures prominently in the research participants’accounts but continually disappears
from sight when related to actual experiences’ (Scharff, 2010: 837). The crucial point
here, then, is that the affective orientations towards feminism remain unchallenged by
their lack of correspondence with the empirical world. But I wonder if one could perhaps
turn Scharff’s argument around: while associations of old-age, lesbianism and ugliness
stick to feminism, perhaps it is just as much the case that notions of anti-feminism stick
to young women. Consequently, the strategies of erasure described above arise because
associations of vitriolic anti-feminism come to ‘stick’ to young women. The notion that
‘young women are not feminist’ thus becomes a truism through constant repetition such
that, in the minds of many feminist critics in both academic and media circles, antifeminism
becomes constitutive of young womanhood. Ahmed notes that affects are not
fully owned by, or manifest in, particular individuals, but circulate across the social field.
This, it seems to me, reflects the character of affects of annoyance and disappointment
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towards young women’s alleged lack of politicization: such attitudes are often manifest
in casual comments at academic conferences, or are fleetingly invoked in magazine articles.
In these spaces, it seems that the trope ‘young women are not feminist’ circulates
largely independent of any empirical referent, just as ‘feminists are ugly, man-hating
lesbians’ circulates in popular imaginings of the feminist.
The key point is that these tropes often become repeated to such an extent that they
become unquestioned, and take the form not of falsifiable empirical statements but key
underpinnings of the affective economies of contemporary feminism, remaining largely
untroubled by evidence of the widespread existence of, say, attractive heterosexual feminists
(in Scharff’s case) or young feminists in general (in the case discussed here).6 As
with more overtly psychoanalytic accounts, Ahmed and Scharff’s analyses of the performativity
of affects acknowledge that affective attachments are constitutive of the self,
and as such the possibility of a different set of orientations may be difficult, even traumatic.
But they also emphasize how the intransigence of certain affective orientations is
linked to specific historical circumstances and, unlike some more psychoanalytically
inflected accounts, the analyst does not need to mobilize a hermeneutics of suspicion.
Seeing young women as (potentially) feminist
So far, I have drawn attention to the ways in which the entrenchment of ideas such as
‘young women are not feminist’ and ‘feminism as a social movement is dead’ in fact
serves to denigrate, erase and marginalize the efforts of numerous young feminists across
the country and across the world. The task, therefore, is to develop an ethos that can
foster critical thinking about different kinds of feminist theory and practice, but not in
such a way that certain feminist practices are denied entrance to the symbolic field of
feminist politics in the first place. One way of framing the problem would be to pitch it
in Wittgensteinian terms: what we are suffering from is a form of ‘aspect blindness’ in
which we lack the capacity to see young women as potentially feminist (see Norval,
2007: 169–170). To paraphrase Wittgenstein (1958: § 115), pictures of an anti-feminist
present, and of a pervasive hostility towards feminism on the part of young women, hold
us captive because they are repeated to us inexorably. There are, I would suggest, fruitful
resonances between this Wittgensteinian framing of things, and the attempts by feminist
economic geographers JK Gibson-Graham to problematize what they call ‘capitalocentrism’.
That is, the tendency to subsume a broad range of economic practices under the
conceptual monolith of ‘capitalism’, rather than seeing the economy as diverse and differentiated
(Gibson-Graham, 2006b: 6).7 Capitalism, they argue, has colonized our
minds and our ways of seeing more than it has our economic space. One of JK GibsonGraham’s
key intellectual endeavours, then, is the self-consciously hopeful project of
constructing what they call a ‘language of economic diversity’ (2006a: 53–78), so as to
generate alternative ways of seeing the economy beyond the aspect-blind confines of
capitalocentrism.
While Gibson-Graham are talking primarily about issues related to economy and
class, we would do well to embrace their unflinching attempts to foster affective dispositions
other than despair and moralistic attachment to marginality. Notably, they describe
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326	 European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(3)
how they encountered significant resistance to their project of opening up more positive
affective dispositions towards the present, by virtue of their interlocutors’ attachments to
a pessimistic economic analysis that positioned capitalism as all encompassing.Although
not expressed in quite these terms, their problem is not so much an empirical one (of
capitalism really being completely dominant), but that we lack the kinds of affective
dispositions and ways of seeing necessary to see certain practices as heterogeneous to
capitalism. A similar task presents itself here in relation to contemporary feminism.
Crucially, while pictures may indeed hold us captive, both Wittgenstein and GibsonGraham
affirm the possibilities for aspect change, or the cultivation of new ways of seeing.
The more optimistic accounts of feminist resurgence can help us do that, but, for me,
what is required is not so much an onslaught of optimism to counter the pessimists.
Rather, what we require is a critical ethos that foregrounds what Linda Zerilli (2009)
calls political (as opposed to subsumptive or determinative) judgement. In our case, this
would mean fostering a judging practice that avoided subsuming particular cases under
rules (e.g. by saying ‘she is a young woman, young women are not feminist, ergo she is
not a feminist’), but involved critical analysis of specific instances of feminist politics.
Conclusion
To avoid being misunderstood, the above observations are not by any means intended
to suggest that current actions by young feminists are to be welcomed uncritically.
Indeed, the exploratory analysis advanced here gives rise to a broad range of potentially
troubling questions. For one, there is undoubtedly a sense that, at present, the debates
discussed here emerge from, and are addressed to, a community of scholars and activists
that is predominantly white, middle-class, university educated and secular, which in
turn throws up a host of questions concerning how intersectionality and axes of difference
undercut the symbolic space of contemporary British feminism. Even though such
questions lie well beyond the scope of this article, I would argue that the kinds of attachments,
erasures and dismissals analysed here may well obstruct such an undertaking.
For it is only once we acknowledge existing and potential sites of feminist politicization
that such a conversation about these tricky issues can begin.
To go about doing this, I would argue that rather than naively celebrating all forms of
contemporary British feminism, we should affirm the much more minimal claim that
contemporary forms of politicization by young women merit entry into the symbolic
field as candidates for feminist judgement, rather than being erased and marginalized
before such a conversation can begin to take place. As indicated earlier, this critical ethos
has resonances with Chantal Mouffe’s (2000) account of agonistic pluralism, characterized
by agonistic respect for competing opinions, rather than antagonistic desires to annihilate
opposing positions.8 We should, therefore, be vigilant of the ways in which our
affective investments and our assumptions about recent feminist history might inadvertently
narrow the possibilities for such a feminist agonistic pluralism to emerge.
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to Kaitlynn Mendes, Kristin Aune, Christina Scharff and (especially)
Maria do Mar Pereira for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Dean	 327
Earlier versions of the article were presented to the Leeds Political Theory Research Group in
December 2010 and at the European Conference on Gender and Politics in Budapest in January
2011. I would like to thank attendees at both events, who asked insightful and probing
questions.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1.	 My understanding of the term ‘affective economy’ is informed by Sara Ahmed’s (2004)
account of the circulation of affect, stressing the processes by which particular affects and
emotions come to be aligned with particular objects. For Ahmed, the use of the term ‘economic’
captures the fact that affects do not reside in signs or objects, but circulate across a
social field, and are thus both context dependent, and subject to contestation and realignment.
I find her emphasis on the contextuality and performativity of affects more theoretically persuasive
and more amenable to use within empirical research than notions of affect drawn from
Spinoza or Deleuze, for whom affect is that which escapes or resists analysis and explanation
(Clough, 2007; Massumi, 2002).
2.	 See Dean (2010b) for a more detailed analysis of representations of feminism in The Guardian.
3.	 Lubna al-Hussein is a Sudanese media worker who in 2009 was arrested and subsequently
prosecuted for wearing trousers.
4.	 Mary Hawkesworth’s (2004) descriptions of the ‘premature burial’ of feminism resonate
strongly with the kinds of erasure under investigation here.
5.	 Roy describes a highly affectively charged scenario in which the shift towards a more ‘NGOized’
model of political practice in the Indian women’s movement has become a source of
considerable anxiety, unease and resentment. Her work – along with Özselçuk’s account of a
post-socialist melancholia characterized by ‘a righteous pride in its powerlessness’ (Özselçuk,
2006: 227) – certainly has strong resonances with the moralistic attachments to marginality
sometimes encountered in dismissals of new feminisms.
6.	 As Linda Zerilli (1998) argues, the citing of empirical counter-examples is rarely sufficient to
disturb settled frames of reference and regimes of thought if it is unaccompanied by attempts
to imaginatively reconstitute how we see and interpret the object or issue concerned.
7.	 For instance, gift-giving, volunteer work, time banking, cooperative exchanges, alternative
currencies and domestic labour are just some of many non-capitalist (or at least, not-overtlycapitalist)
economic practices they mention in their taxonomy of the ‘diverse economy’
(Gibson-Graham, 2006a: 70–71).
8.	 Less academically, such a view is sympathetic to Libby Brooks’ (2009) call in The Guardian
for a ‘good scrap’ over the meaning of feminism.
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