Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism?
ON THE USES OF THE ‘THIRD WAVE’ IN BRITISH FEMINIST POLITICS
JONATHAN DEAN
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article addresses some issues related to the question of the ‘third wave’ within
contemporary British feminism, situating British debates within an international
context. My argument is that existing accounts of third wave feminism treat it either
in terms of what the term means to the author, or it is treated as a coherent and
easily recognizable movement or set of positions within contemporary feminism. By
contrast, I adopt an approach drawn from poststructuralist discourse theory which
emphasizes the diverse and overlapping ways in which the notion of a ‘third wave’ is
appropriated by academics and activists alike. From this theoretical base, I trace two
different conceptions of the ‘third wave’ – one referring to a poststructuralist and postcolonial
critique of the second wave – and another referring to a specific generational
cohort of young feminists. I argue that the latter conception has become dominant in
the contemporary British context and to a lesser extent elsewhere. The second half of
the article develops a critique of the ‘generational paradigm’ of third wave feminism,
drawing on interviews with activists and postcolonial academic perspectives.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywords
activism, discourse, generation, third wave, UK
Few concepts and debates within feminist theory and practice have caused
more unease than the characterization of post-1900 Euro-American feminist
history as a series of three discrete ‘waves’. Indeed, much recent feminist
theory has been devoted to unravelling the constituent elements of the
‘third wave’. However, this article contends that there is something troubling
about the way debates about the ‘third wave’ have been formulated. For one,
there are surprisingly few literatures that have as their referent substantive
empirical instances of ‘third wave’ feminism in action, in contrast to a
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11:3 September 2009, 334–352
ISSN 1461-6742 print=ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis
http:==www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/14616740903017711
general outline of what the ‘third wave’ means to the author(s). Also, there is
something problematic about the way authors typically approach the ‘third
wave’ as if it were a discreet, clearly identifiable entity that can be described
in a simple referential fashion. By contrast, the key theme running through
this article is that the ‘third wave’ is an essentially contestable signifier that
may be taken up and used by feminist academics and activists in a plurality
of different ways. Running throughout this article, therefore, is the notion
of contested meanings of the ‘third wave’. I do this primarily via an empirical
analysis of the multiple ways the concept has been used by activists in the
contemporary British context. Given the dearth of research on either contemporary
British feminism in general, and uses of the ‘third wave’ in particular,
such an endeavour has an intrinsic interest. However, by situating British
debates in an international context, my aim is to trace the development of
dominant understandings of the term ‘third wave’ and offer some critical
insights into the notion of a ‘third wave’ and the wave periodization more
generally.
Drawing on general literature largely from the USA, and an empirical analysis
of the ‘third wave’ in the UK, as well as critiques of the ‘wave’ periodization
from multiple sources, I argue that the ‘third wave’ can at times inject renewed
vigour and critical vibrancy into a feminist project. In theoretical terms, I
argue that in this context it makes sense to liken it to an ‘empty signifier’ in
the work of post-structuralist thinker Ernesto Laclau (1990, 1996, 2005).
However, my claim is that these potentially radical and threatening dimensions
of the ‘third wave’ have come to be largely undermined by the tendency
to think of ‘the third wave’ as referring in relatively simple terms to a clearly
delineated generational cohort of feminists. Such an approach is, I argue,
problematic in that it domesticates feminism’s capacity to be a dynamic and
disturbing political force, it risks reinscribing a specifically Euro-American
feminist historiography as hegemonic, risks imposing artificial and divisive
cleavages between feminists, and may also lead to a complicity with certain
hegemonic post/anti-feminist discourses. I shall flesh out these claims by providing
a short overview of existing affirmations and disputations of the ‘third
wave’ in the literature, while the bulk of the article will detail findings from an
empirical analysis of the use of the signifier ‘third wave’ in the British context,
before concluding with some critical assessments of current dominant uses of
the term.
I acknowledge that in pitching the argument in these terms, one encounters
two specific problems. First, in treating the ‘third wave’ as a discursive resource
rather than a substantive entity one runs the risk of casting it as so insubstantial
as to be impossible to analyse. However, as I shall make clear, while there is
confusion and a lack of clarity about what the ‘third wave’ refers to, uses of
the term do nonetheless cluster together in such a way as to identify several
dominant tendencies within the ‘third wave’ lexicon. However, perhaps more
problematic is the way in which, in critically analysing uses of the third
wave by activists, one may argue that this article presupposes that academics
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 335
can and will ‘dictate’ language use to feminist activists. While acknowledging
that this is a danger, in many respects I seek to problematize a simple
academic/activist divide. While essentially my intention is to make a contribution
to academic knowledge of feminist activism, I also intend to open up
a more reflexive and critical exchange about potential limitations of the
‘third wave’ discourse, without presupposing any sort of power relation
between academics and activists. Indeed, in the British context at least, the activist
community is cognizant of, and makes active contributions to, academic
debates in such a way that it is difficult to draw a clean separation between
academic and activist communities.
CONTESTED MEANINGS OF THE ‘THIRD WAVE’ IN AMERICAN
FEMINISM AND ELSEWHERE
With these provisos out of the way, we may now proceed with an initial
mapping of dominant notions of the ‘third wave’ within the literature. The discussion
is grounded in a conception of politics – including feminist politics –
as entailing the discursive construction of issues and identities, rather than
seeing political activities and events as grounded in fundamental laws or
mechanisms governing the constitution of society (Laclau 1990; Laclau and
Mouffe 2001). From this perspective, the signifier ‘third wave feminism’ (as
with all signifiers) is taken to be ontologically open to having its meanings
contested, shifted and reconstituted.
The notion of a ‘third wave’ within feminist theory originally gained currency
in the late 1980s at a time when poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques
of hegemonic feminist conceptions of womanhood and subjectivity
were becoming increasingly prevalent. These theoretical developments also
coincided with, and to a large extent overlapped with, critiques from black,
‘third world’ and postcolonial feminist perspectives of the parochialism of
dominant conceptions of feminist politics and subjectivity (Dicker and
Peipmeier 2003: 14; Gillis et al. 2007: xxiii). While in the past few decades
the relationship between poststructuralism and postcolonial feminism has
been by no means untroubled, there is a perception that they share(d) a
certain commitment to openness, diversity and plurality that was perceived
to be lacking in many dominant strands of second-wave feminism (Bulbeck
1998: 14; Mohanty 2003 [1991]). In this context, the ‘third wave’, rather
than signifying a specific generational cohort, is instead used to refer to a
specific theoretical position that emphasizes a commitment to a problematization
of monolithic or ‘essentialist’ conceptions of female/feminist subjectivity.
Despite, as I shall outline, there having been a strong move towards thinking
the ‘third wave’ from a specifically generational paradigm, the notion of a
‘third wave’ as indicating a theoretical position that opens up a space for a
relativizing of white Euro-American feminist perspectives remains attractive
to a diversity of feminists. While a number of recent contributions to edited
336 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
volumes on third wave feminism contain pieces critical of the ‘third wave’
from a postcolonial perspective, works by Darraj (2003) and Chakraborty
(2007) highlight the potentiality of a ‘third wave’ to open up a space for
broader transnational dialogue among feminist movements. While both are
critical of the de facto tendency towards parochialism in some dominant
strands of third wave feminism (addressed further below), there is nonetheless
a continuing fidelity to the third wave commitment to challenging the
universalizing tendencies that are arguably latent in certain strands of EuroAmerican
feminist theory and practice.
However, the past ten to fifteen years seem to have witnessed a gradual shift
away from a postcolonial/postructuralist conception of the ‘third wave’
towards a stronger sedimenting of what we might call the ‘generational paradigm’
(Eisenhauer 2004: 82). This is typified by Baumgardner and Richards’
(2000) classic third wave text Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and
the Future, for which third wave feminism is closely tied into the ways in
which certain feminist precepts have a popular purchase which was perceived
to be lacking for previous generations. They contend that ‘for anyone born
after the early 1960s, the presence of feminism in our lives is taken for
granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice
that we have it – it’s simply in the water’ (Baumgardner and Richards 2000:
17–18). For authors such as Baumgardner and Richards, therefore, the generational
(as opposed to substantive) element of third wave feminism is what gives
it its distinctiveness from the second wave.
Despite this, there have been a number of recent attempts by young American
feminists to distance themselves from a simplistic generational reading
of the relation between second and third waves. Lise Shapiro Sanders, for one,
seeks to distance herself from a reading of the ‘third wave’ as a conservative,
anti-second-wave ‘post feminism’, promulgating a conception of the ‘third
wave’ as ‘founded on second-wave principles’, but with certain cultural
and political differences (Sanders 2007: 5; see also Dicker and Peipmeier
2003: 5). While these works seek to move beyond a conception of a third
wave position as one that is in opposition to the second wave, they nonetheless
remain within the wave-based periodization of post-1900 feminist
historiography which, as I shall argue shortly, yields a number of problems.
One must however remain alert to the fact that these two modes of thinking
the ‘third wave’ need not necessarily be radically in opposition to one
another. Indeed, several existing ‘third wave’ literatures do, at some level,
fit into both paradigms by situating themselves within a narrative of a
shift from a universalizing, parochial second wave to an internationalist,
open and diverse ‘third wave’ (Gamble 2001: 52; Dicker and Peipmeier
2003: 13).
While interesting, these works lack a more dynamic account of the different
ways in which the lexicon of the ‘third wave’ can be taken up and used politically
by feminist activists. To redress this imbalance, the following section
shall shed further light on the multiple ways in which contemporary feminist
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 337
activists in the British context – who are literate in theoretical debates within
feminism – have appropriated and contested the notion of a ‘third wave’ of
feminism.
CONTESTED MEANINGS OF THE ‘THIRD WAVE’ IN THE BRITISH
ACTIVIST CONTEXT
This section hopes to redress the lack of empirical work on the use of ‘third
wave’ discourse by reporting findings from a qualitative study of a number
of different feminist civil society groups in the UK. While my analysis is by
no means exhaustive, it is noteworthy given that the notion of a ‘third
wave’ is a key structuring point within the discourse of feminist activists in
the UK, and as such merits critical attention. My study draws upon in-depth
textual analysis and semi-structured interviews with people active within
what are arguably the two largest and most significant feminist civil society
groups within the current British context. These are, first, the Fawcett
Society, a well-established campaigning organization with semi-formalized
connections to various institutions of the local and national state and,
second, the F-word website, which acts as a hub for news and comment
among predominantly younger feminists in the UK.1
Thus, while these two
groups differ markedly in terms of their function and structure, they nonetheless
share a commitment to a notion of a ‘third wave’ as a means of providing
some semblance of discursive coherence to their diverse agendas. The Fawcett
Society recently underwent a re-branding exercise in which it explicitly foregrounded
its commitment to a ‘third wave’ of feminism, while during a 2006
colloquium on the ‘third wave’ in the UK, Catherine Redfern, the then editor of
the F-word, opened her presentation by saying that ‘we (at the F-word) are the
third wave, there is no more discussion about it’.
However, there are a number of different ways in which the lexicon of the
‘third wave’ is deployed. Within the F-word, and indeed its affiliated activist
offshoot, the London Thirdwave Feminists, the term is invoked in a manner
that, like some of the American texts alluded to above, is largely generational,
in such a way that a ‘third wave’ openness and diversity is contrasted with a
‘second wave’ parochialism. Witness these accounts of what is understood
by ‘third-wave feminism’ by users of the F-word:
I think it’s a very useful rallying point for young women and a way to stress feminism’s
relevance for their own lives. It recognises that younger women’s lives are
different from those of their foremothers.
(e-mail from F-word contributor)
Basically, it must define a generation of women who have grown up under the
gains made by those 2nd wavers in the 60s/70s. This isn’t to say all the work
has been done, it isn’t to deny the existence of a backlash, and it isn’t to say
338 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
that 3rd wavers have it all right but nevertheless, we grew up in a different world
to that of our mothers – with different expectations, entitlements and oppressions,
and I think this term acknowledges that.
(e-mail from F-word contributor)
Second wave theories never sat comfortably with my own brand of radical,
leftist, feminist, queer activism. Third Wave is much more open to the challenge
of overlapping and interlinking concerns.
(e-mail from F-word contributor)
While the Thirdwave is built upon the radical blocks of the second it also involves
greater attention to diversity, deconstruction and overlapping positions.
(comment posted on the F-word, May 2006)
Thus, the picture we are offered is one in which the third wave is presented as
signalling a generational shift, and also as indicating the emergence of a new
and inclusive feminist agenda, with the implication that the ‘old’ feminism was
perhaps less inclusive. Indeed, a palpable disaffection with certain aspects of
second wave feminism is evident in an F-word contributor’s assertion that:
I have had experiences of being patronised because of my age . . . I think there
was a sense of young feminists having to ‘serve their time’ in exactly the same
way that patriarchal structures use that apprenticeship model which felt uncomfortable
and denied a voice to me (and others).
(e-mail from F-word contributor)
At one level, therefore, as with the work of some American third-wavers such
as Baumgardner and Richards, the term appears to refer solely to a generational
shift without specifying any particular content to the concerns of the new generation
of feminists. However, there is a sense that these generational divisions
yield certain key cultural and political differences. Indeed, in the present British
context, we can identify two key substantive dimensions of third wave feminism
(see Redfern 2001a, 2002). First, the notion of a ‘third wave’ has come to have
strong associations with a specific form of youth subculture (sometimes
called the ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement) with its roots in a pro-feminist punk ethos,
and associated with particular styles of music and clothing.2
It has also come
to be associated with specific viewpoints that may differ from established
‘second wave’ perspectives. For instance, third-wavers are more likely to
engage with issues related to popular culture, are less likely to be ‘anti-porn’
and are (generally) more open to bringing men into a pro-feminist agenda
(see, for example, Forrest 2002a, 2002b; Smith 2003; Bateman 2007).
However, for the most part, these substantive differentiations from the
‘second wave’ are often presented as somehow secondary to, or reducible to,
the overriding question of generational difference. Indeed, within the current
British context, discussion of the ‘third wave’ seems largely overdetermined
by a generational paradigm. This has arisen from the fact that the F-word
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 339
website – which has served, to some degree, to inject renewed vigour and
energy into feminist activism in the UK – was set up specifically to provide a
voice for younger feminists who felt alienated from both popular (mis)representations
of feminism and also the perceived hegemony of an older generation
within established feminism (Redfern 2001b, n.d.). This has the clear beneficial
consequence of opening up a discursive space for younger feminists to become
active and engage politically, but has the arguably less beneficial consequence
of rendering contemporary UK feminism overdetermined by a generational
paradigm.
This tendency became particularly apparent during two specific events. The
first relates to the heated debate that ensued on the F-word over the relationship
between the website and older feminists. When the site was initially set up
in 2001, it was subtitled ‘young UK feminism’. However, in 2003 this was –
after considerable debate – changed to ‘contemporary UK feminism’. The
name change was prompted by a complaint from an older reader that the
focus on younger women was discriminatory against older feminists. The
term ‘contemporary’ was chosen in order to maintain its links with youth
but also in order to make it seem less off-putting to older readers (see
Redfern 2003). At some level, the actual process of discussion opened up
space for critical exchange. However, rather than seeing these critical
exchanges – which brought about a sharp increase in the liveliness of the
site – as possessing an inherent value, they were cast as part of a teleological
move towards a final discursive closure concerning the generational cohort
that the site wishes to speak to (or for).
This issue resurfaced during the summer of 2006 following the publication
of an article by Fawcett Society director Katherine Rake calling for a third
wave of feminism (discussed below). Rake’s article provoked a somewhat
defensive response in some quarters, on the grounds that Rake was perceived
to have ignored the fact that a ‘third wave’ already existed. Furthermore, one
contributor wrote, in response to Rake, ‘I find the idea that young women need
older women to spearhead the third wave decidedly suspect’ (e-mail to London
Thirdwave yahoo group). Also, the current editor of the F-word wrote, in
response to Rake:
While this is a laudable attempt to swell the ranks, Rake is calling for a third wave
of feminism. If anything, she should be calling for a fourth wave. I hate to sound
pernickety . . . but seriously, do we really need to re-invent the wheel yet again?
(McCabe 2006)
This seems to cast contemporary feminism as fundamentally a site of intergenerational
conflict, almost to the point where the ‘third wave’ is presented
as the preserve of a specific, generationally defined empirical group of
women. While those on the F-word and London Thirdwave are undoubtedly
correct to criticize Rake for having an insufficient awareness of the recent
history of contemporary feminism, the level of defensiveness implies a sense
340 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
of ownership of the term ‘third wave’, such that the latter is seen as a subject
position with a necessary relation to a specific group of women.
By contrast, within the recent political discourse of the Fawcett Society –
arguably the most influential feminist campaigning organization in the UK
at present – the term is used in a looser, but more radical and confrontational
manner than the ‘generational paradigm’ which predominates in the examples
described above. For the Fawcett Society, the signifier ‘third wave’ refers not to
any one specific interpretation of feminism or aspect of a feminist agenda, but
instead is used to provide a degree of coherence to a diversity of feminist political
demands which, to some extent, is brought into existence at the moment
of naming it as ‘third wave’. Crucial here is that Fawcett underwent a largescale
re-branding in 2005, which brought about significant changes in the
overall thrust of the organization. Prior to 2005, Fawcett typically framed
their demands in terms of a ‘gender equality’ agenda, emphasizing, through
the production of meticulously researched reports, points of convergence
between Fawcett’s demands and the Government’s declared policy commitments
and priorities. While these aspects have remained crucial to Fawcett,
since 2005 it has taken an altogether bolder and more confrontational
stance, embodied in a renewed willingness to frame their agenda as specifically
feminist, and in doing so broadening its remit beyond just the campaign
for legislative change, through, for instance: participation at the FEM conferences
in Sheffield; organizing panel discussions on feminist issues at the 2006
and 2008 annual conferences of left-of-centre pressure group Compass; mass
producing a T-shirt humorously bearing the slogan ‘this is what a feminist
looks like’ and setting up a Myspace page.
In engaging more explicitly with these new modes of feminist activism in
the UK, Fawcett director Katherine Rake has repeatedly emphasized that
Fawcett is seeking to spearhead a ‘third wave’ of feminism. Crucial to this
‘third wave’ of feminism, says Rake (2006: 9), is that it ‘must include those
who feminism has failed to reach in the past, such as men, many ethnic
minority women, and young women’. She claims that it is not intended to
denigrate the first or second wave, but, instead, refers to how:
A lot of them [issues being discussed by contemporary feminists] are old issues
but they have emerged anew, I think what we’re hearing about is, I think a lot
of younger women are into issues around personal safety, around body image,
around the saturation of pornography in society, which are all actually old
issues but I think that they have got a special urgency given what’s happening,
given the Internet, media and all the rest of that that gives it a special push at the
moment.
(Katherine Rake, unpublished interview)
Thus, while Rake is perhaps a little vague in terms of the precise content of
the term, in some respects it could be argued that this is necessary if it is to
maintain its capacity as an umbrella term for a set of diverse feminist
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 341
demands. Indeed, in this respect, Fawcett’s attempt to articulate its own agenda
into a broader chain of equivalence3
with feminist concerns emanating from
more autonomous, less institutionalized spaces (such as the F-word) is, for
Rake, a crucial task for Fawcett. Here, she believes Fawcett can act as a national
co-ordinator through which to group together the concerns of various feminist
groups, serving to create a more explicit debate and create a broader ‘feminist
consciousness’ (Rake, unpublished interview). Here, the invocation of a ‘third
wave’ appears not to refer to a specific generationally defined group of feminists,
although it maintains a degree of metaphorical resonance in suggesting
the evolutionary development towards a more diverse and inclusive vision
of feminism. Crucial here, though, is that the appeal to the signifier ‘third
wave’ has, in this case, injected a liveliness and critical vibrancy into Fawcett’s
feminist agenda that was previously lacking. Indeed, the re-branding exercise
in 2005 had the palpable consequence of injecting a renewed energy and commitment
into the organization, made visible by the more energized atmosphere
at the 2006 AGM (in contrast to the 2005 AGM which was rather more procedural)
and the more lively appearance and design of its recently revamped
magazine.
To summarize the issue in rather more theoretical terms, one could say that
there are two different yet overlapping modes in which the ‘third wave’ is
articulated within the current British activist context. In some stances –
particularly within the Fawcett Society but also to a degree within the
F-word and London Thirdwave – it becomes helpful to conceptualize the
notion of a ‘third wave’ as an ‘empty signifier’ (following the poststructuralist
discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau) through which its various political
demands and projects are articulated. In this context, empty signifiers refer
to particular, privileged signifiers within emergent political agendas which
become detached from their original meaning to assume a broader function
of signifying a diversity of political demands (Laclau 1996: 38–9).4
Empty
signifiers thus name and performatively bring into existence political
agendas and identities that only existed rather tenuously prior to the
moment of naming. When the generational dimension of the ‘third wave’ is
underplayed, it may be helpful to conceptualize the term as an ‘empty signifier’
in the sense that it acts as something of an umbrella term, bringing about
a modicum of unity and coherence to an otherwise diverse set of feminist
issues, while at the same time maintaining a degree of openness providing
room for critical exchanges among feminists. Using the signifier ‘third
wave’ in this capacity thus helps inject a renewed vigour into feminist
activism, opening up discursive space for new counter-hegemonic demands
and identities to emerge.
The second tendency is to think the ‘third wave’ as a ‘subject question’,
following the Arendtian feminist theory of Linda Zerilli. The subject question,
according to Zerilli (2005: 9), refers to the continuing attachment within
both feminist theory and substantive politics to agency conceived in terms
of sovereignty and the singular will, with a bracketing out of plurality and
342 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
contingency. It presupposes a notion of politics as entailing clarity and
mastery over one’s actions. More substantively, this has the consequence
that feminists risk becoming preoccupied with the question of sorting out
politically and theoretically the grounds of the feminist subject prior to the
moment of political engagement. In this context, I want to argue that some
third wave feminists seem captured by the fantasy of the ‘third wave’ signifying
a unified feminist subject without remainder. This is manifest in a
general concern within the F-word and London Thirdwave – and to a slightly
lesser extent the Fawcett Society – with establishing exactly who the groups
are for, and to which feminist demographics they intend to address. Unlike
the uses described above, in which the appeal to a ‘third wave’ performatively
opens up space for a new feminist agenda with no necessary relation to any
specific demand, issue or group of people, thinking the ‘third wave’ as a
subject question entails a drive towards a discursive closure concerning
what the term ‘third wave’ is intended to signify. Thus, I think it is helpful
to view the generational paradigm of third wave feminism as a species of
what Zerilli calls ‘the subject question’, which may yield a number of possibly
unforeseen deleterious consequences for feminism, as detailed in the following
section.
CRITIQUES AND DISPUTATIONS OF THE ‘THIRD WAVE’ IN BRITISH
FEMINISM AND ELSEWHERE
In this section, I want to raise a number of critical comments relating to the
tendency to think of the third wave as a subject question related to a specific
generational demographic, drawing on both academic literature and concerns
expressed by activists. It should be noted that there are a number of wellestablished
critiques of the third wave. These include claims that it is insufficiently
politically aware, is guilty of an insufficiently critical relation to
hegemonic modes of popular culture and is essentially a feminism formed
from the perspective of economically and racially privileged women (Greer
1999; Viner 1999; Taft 2004; Garrison 2007). These critiques are targeted at
‘third wave feminism’ as a discrete and identifiable set of ‘positions’ within
feminism. However, the criticisms advanced here are based on analyses of
context-specific instances of the use of the term ‘third wave’. As such, the
following critiques pertain not to a general critique of third wave feminism
in toto, but to the tendency to think the ‘third wave’ from a somewhat simplistic
and divisive generational paradigm. While acknowledging that they overlap to
a considerable degree, I shall, for the purposes of expediency, deal with four
specific problems with thinking the ‘third wave’ from the generational paradigm,
which I shall deal with in turn. While the critiques are analytically separable,
they all speak to the notion that the generational paradigm of third wave
feminism serves, in a variety of ways, to undermine, domesticate and restrict
the potential radicalism and vibrancy of contemporary feminist politics. As
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 343
with sections above, the four problems discussed below are derived primarily
from a qualitative analysis of the British feminist context, augmented with
literature from elsewhere.
Undermining the Complexity of Post-1900 Feminist History
There is nothing intrinsic to the ‘wave’ metaphor that dictates that it is of
necessity simplistic and divisive. As Howie and Tauchet point out, the wave
metaphor is potentially an effective way of capturing the fluid and unpredictable
character of feminist history, given that waves are complex phenomena
implying disturbance and sudden movement. As they put it, ‘to perceive a
wave at all, we artificially arrest the movement by which it is constituted,
and separate out one of myriad manifestations of that movement,’ such that
the wave metaphor ‘runs the risk of simplifying the tradition it is called
upon to describe’ (Howie and Tauchet 2007: 46, emphasis in original).
However, the tendency to use the ‘third wave’ as signifying a specific generational
cohort, one can argue, does violence to the unpredictable, diverse and
‘disturbing’ qualities to feminist politics. By imputing a somewhat simplistic
generational progression onto late twentieth-century feminist history, one
inevitably domesticates the diversity of feminism during these periods.
Indeed, variations on this critical theme have emerged repeatedly among
British feminist activists uncomfortable with the implications of the way the
lexicon of the ‘third wave’ is used. One F-word contributor, in an e-mail
exchange, highlighted how the use of the ‘wave’ metaphor may run the risk
of complicity with mainstream society’s readings of feminist history, on the
grounds that each ‘wave’ refers simply to periods when mainstream society
has afforded greater attention to feminism. Similarly, one contributor to the
London Thirdwave mailing list who was active during the ‘second wave’
pointed out how the ‘wave’ metaphor – with its implication that feminist divisions
take place across time, undermines the diversity of political standpoints
among feminists at any given point (interview with London Thirdwave contributor).
Indeed, the concern that the ‘wave’ metaphor undermines the vibrancy
of feminist history is spelt out with particular verve by one contributor to the
F-word who wrote that:
The problems with conceptualising feminist movements in ‘waves’ is that it
serves to obscure our histories and political agendas. The ‘first wave’ is
thought synonymous with suffrage, and thus ‘early feminism’ becomes a
‘single issue’ – the right to vote. But, our feminist heritage is far more complicated
than this – to talk of waves, not only ignores the continuous stream of
women’s activism and antagonism across the ages, it also places a conceptual/
discursive gag on inter-generational politics. Are older women, by default,
excluded from the workings and actions of the ‘third wave’? Do we, as feminists,
have an expiry date?
(comment posted on the F-word, n.d.)
344 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These comments from research participants draw attention to the way in which
an uncritical acceptance of the ‘third wave’ within its specifically generational
mode may have a number of unintended effects that serve to undermine the
very complexity, diversity and problematizations that the invocation of a
‘third wave’ was initially supposed to open up.
Reinscribing the Hegemony of a Euro-American Reading of Feminist
History
While the critiques above allude to a simplification of feminist history in terms
of temporality, the overdetermination of feminist history by the ‘wave’ metaphor
also runs the risk of ossifying a spatially specific (and arguably inaccurate!)
feminist history as feminist history in toto. This comes to light from the
way in which a number of activists and academics have highlighted the spatial
specificity of the ‘wave’ metaphor and the various dangers associated with this.
From within the British context, it has been claimed by activists that the ‘third
wave’ is essentially an American import which has been adopted uncritically in
the British context, despite the existence of potential problems relating to the
transferability of concepts between the American and British contexts. Furthermore,
one activist pointed out that ‘it ignores the continuous stream of
women’s activism and antagonism across the ages, and indeed across the
globe (it’s quite telling that ‘waves’ more readily refers to contemporary
Western feminisms)’ (comment posted on the F-word, n.d.).
In a similar vein, a number of recent edited collections relating to the viability
of third wave feminism have, from a variety of perspectives, highlighted
the spatial specificity of the generational ‘wave’ narrative. In an interesting
essay detailing aspects of contemporary Polish feminism, Agnieszka Graff
described how from a Polish perspective, the second/third wave narrative
simply does not apply in the Polish context by virtue of an absence of a recognizable
women’s movement prior to the demise of communism. Furthermore,
Graff writes how the coexistence in Poland of what, from an Anglo-American
perspective, might be seen as ‘third wave’ strategies to achieve ‘second wave’
goals calls into question the applicability of a temporal move from a second to
a third wave to non Anglo-American contexts (Graff 2007). In a piece in the
same volume, but speaking in more general terms, Winifred Woodhall
(2007: 156–8) draws attention to how, during times of increasing movement
of people, goods and information across national borders, third wave feminism
must shake off its parochialism – rooted as it is in the global north – and
embrace the ‘internationalism’ which she cites as having characterized the
‘second wave’. All these critiques allude to the way in which the ‘third
wave’ – which was initially intended to signify partly the postcolonial critique
of the second wave – has, paradoxically, ended up becoming guilty of the very
thing it was intended to critique, by adopting an insufficiently critical awareness
of the spatial specificity of the first/second/third/wave narrative.
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 345
A Drift towards Divisiveness between Feminists and a Complicity
with Hegemonic Gender Discourses
An excessively strong generational reading of the ‘third wave’ may lead to a
perhaps unintentional drift towards divisiveness between different generational
cohorts of feminists. As previously noted, the F-word was initially set
up to pursue the commendable aim of giving younger feminists a voice.
However, as we saw, the constitution of that voice as specifically ‘third
wave’ has led to a somewhat excessive defensiveness and sense of ownership
over the use of the ‘third wave’ term such that, when the Fawcett Society began
appropriating it, there was a sense among some F-word contributors that
Fawcett was stealing ‘their’ feminism. This, however, has the consequence of
leading to a preoccupation with feminist subjectivity at the expense of
opening space for critical exchanges about the substance of British feminist
politics. As one contributor to the F-word pointed out,
I feel a bit nervous that some of the posts declaiming Rake’s article as ignoring
the 3rd wave are veering towards driving a wedge between feminists . . . The
vision that Rake outlined in her article was clear and I think it is one we can
all sign up to.
(e-mail to London Thirdwave yahoo group)
A further way in which thinking the ‘third wave’ in generational terms is
problematic is that, normatively and historically, it might suggest that the
second wave is redundant and needs to be replaced with a qualitatively distinct
mode of feminism. Indeed, one contributor to the F-word and London Thirdwave,
named Finn MacKay, herself a prominent feminist activist and founder
of the London Feminist Network,5
has strongly argued for a reaffirmation of
second wave values and priorities. In an email exchange, she commented:
I have always had a personal problem with the term third wave, because I don’t
think the second wave is over yet. We are still living in a defensive time of strong
backlash against the gains made by the second wave women’s liberation movement.
What we are doing is still defending those gains and trying to advance the
very same goals spelt out then, the seven demands, which we still have not
achieved, the extent of the backlash and the force of it is an indication of the
threat posed by second wave feminism so I think we should carry on and
finish the job.
(Finn MacKay, e-mail, 9 February 2007)
These critiques point towards the danger of closing down debate, discussion
and possibilities for feminist politics by invoking a notion of a historical
shift from a second to a third wave that perpetuates divisive distinctions
between groups of feminists. The charge that the ‘third wave’ has caused
unnecessary generational divisiveness is well established within feminist
theory (Henry 2003; McRobbie 2009: 156–9). However, the consequences of
346 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
this generational division often remain unexplored. Here, I want to argue that
the tendency to think of the third wave as specifically referring to young
women, indeed sometimes even a particular group of young women is such
that it may have further detrimental consequences relating to the relationship
between feminism and hegemonic gender discourses.
This arises from the fact that, within the generational paradigm of third
wave feminism, there is, of course, some sort of an identification with
second wave feminism, whereas on another level the very identity of the
‘third wave’ is predicated on its distancing from second wave feminism. As
Astrid Henry (2003: 215) points out, third-wave feminists’ ‘simultaneous
identification with and rejection of second-wave feminism is what grants
them an identity to call their own’. She writes: ‘paradoxically, many of these
third-wave writers attempt to recreate the exhilaration and freedom of the
feminist past by breaking away from feminism’ (2003: 220).
Henry argues that third wave feminists cast themselves in a relation of
‘disidentification’ with second wave feminism. Henry’s use of the term is
drawn from Judith Butler’s work on processes of repudiation in the formation
ofgenderedsubjectivities,andisusedtodescribea processbywhichsubjectsdistance
themselves from an identification which one fears to make ‘only because
one has already made it’ (Butler 1993: 112, emphasis added). My contention is
that this same logic is at work in the third wave feminist (non-)identity with
second wave feminism. Perhaps more significantly, I want to contend that this
same logic of disidentification with second wave feminism is prevalent within
hegemonic discourses on contemporary feminine subjectivity.
These issues are most cogently spelt out in the recent work of Angela
McRobbie, who argues that the dominant relationship between young
women and feminism is one of disidentification. She highlights how feminism
has been mainstreamed into a wide variety of institutions throughout civil
society, such that feminism is ‘taken into account’ across a wide variety of
domains. However, this very ‘taken into accountness’ occasions the undoing
of feminism by invoking it as something no longer relevant and necessary.
McRobbie (2004: 7) argues that within the context of a widespread acceptance
and disavowal of feminism, to ‘count’ as a girl today requires, she argues, a
‘ritualistic denunciation’ of feminism. This dialectic between ‘taken into
accountness’ and disavowal can be usefully captured in the term ‘post-feminist
disidentification’.6
In post-feminist discourse, therefore, the fear of the feminist arises from the
fact that, at some level, an identification with the feminist has in fact already
been made. Thus, the tendency to think of third wave feminism as a specifically
young feminism separate from the second wave could be seen as tying
in with a logic of disidentification with second wave feminism which is in
fact complicit with dominant post/anti-feminist discourses. In this sense, the
characterization of second wave feminism as domineering, prescriptive and
constraining invokes the very same mythical figure of the (hairy, dungareeclad)
feminist invoked in post/anti-feminist discourse.
----------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Dean=Who’s Afraid of Third Wave Feminism? 347
CONCLUSION: WHO’S AFRAID OF THE THIRD WAVE?
Overall, therefore, my sense is that we require a much more sustained critical
engagement with the ‘generational paradigm’ of third wave feminism.
Paradoxically, a term that was initially – and indeed still is – invoked to
signify a shift away from the perceived parochialism of second wave feminism,
has itself perhaps become guilty of undermining both the radicalism
and the openness that it is called upon to open up. While there is perhaps
nothing intrinsic to suggest that to think in terms of waves implies conflict,
in the present context there is a strong tendency when using the wave
metaphor to cast contemporary feminism as fundamentally a site of intergenerational
conflict. Thus, the attachment to a third wave subjectivity risks
undermining the threatening and radical dimensions of feminism by
casting it in terms that are complicit with hegemonic heteronormative
models of conflict between women. This risks rendering feminism unthreatening,
indeed perhaps even comical, from the point of view of an antifeminist
onlooker.
Thus, the notion of a ‘third wave’ which was originally called upon to inject
a degree of openness, diversity and internationalism into feminism, risks –
when used within the generational paradigm – reinscribing the hegemony
of a specifically Anglo-American reading of feminist history, which, as we
have seen, may have limited applicability to other contexts. However, more
problematic still is the way in which the generational wave paradigm
perhaps undoes that which is most radical and threatening about feminism:
by imposing a simplistic evolutionary history onto feminism one may argue
that it domesticates feminism’s radical potential as an irruptive, disturbing
and unpredictable political force.
To avoid any confusion, the purpose of this article is not to dictate that
feminists should abandon any usage of the wave metaphor. Rather, it is
simply a plea for a more open debate about the potential usefulness and potential
costs of invoking a notion of a ‘third wave’, in opposition to the generally
rather lazy and unreflexive appropriations of the term that tend to predominate.
While I concede that the notion of a ‘third wave’ may be useful under
specific circumstances, I would conclude by echoing Ednie Kaeh Garrison’s
(2007: 195–6) sentiments that ‘if the generational consensus has solidified
around third wave feminism as just a nifty moniker for a specific age
cohort, then I am not one. I refuse to walk such an easy, superficial road’.
Jonathan Dean
ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow Gender Institute
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE, UK
E-mail: J.M.Dean@lse.ac.uk
348 International Feminist Journal of Politics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1 For a more detailed analysis of the current practices of the F-word and the Fawcett
Society, see Dean (2010).
2 For a comprehensive account of the Riot Grrrl movement, see Blase (2004a, 2004b,
2005a, 2005b).
3 A chain of equivalence comes about when a series of disparate elements are articulated
together into an equivalential chain which derives its unity from its being in
opposition to a further element (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 128). In this context, the
‘chain of equivalence’ refers to the creation of a relatively unified feminist agenda,
consisting of a variety of demands, under the banner – the empty signifier – of a
‘third wave’ of feminism. In this case, the opposing element is generally not clearly
spelled out, but seems to be the hegemonic assumption that feminism is outmoded
and unpopular.
4 A classic example of this is the Solidarity movement in Poland. Whereas at the
outset the signifier ‘Solidarnos´c´’ referred only to the specific demands made by
the striking shipyard workers in Gdansk, the term became gradually emptied as it
assumed an umbrella function as a signifier that brought together a series of disparate
demands against the Polish establishment (Laclau 2005: 226).
5 The London Feminist Network (LFN) organizes various types of feminist activism,
most notably the now annual Reclaim the Night marches, which have proved to
be very successful. The LFN is much more explicit than London Thirdwave in its
identification with second wave feminism and is also an unambiguously womenonly
organization.
6 For more empirical analyses of processes of disidentification with feminism (though
not necessarily pitched in those terms), see Tibballs (2000), Howard and Tibballs
(2003), Griffin (2004), Jowett (2004) and Aapola et al. (2004). For an account of
different modes of post-feminist disidentification, see McRobbie (2007).
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