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THREE WAVES OF UNDERGROUND FEMINISM IN ÂÂ"SOFTÂÂ" CONSCIOUS-RAISING NOVELS
Title
THREE WAVES OF UNDERGROUND FEMINISM IN ÂÂ"SOFTÂÂ" CONSCIOUS-RAISING NOVELS.
Creator
Perez, Jeannina, Jones, Anna, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
In the chapters of my thesis, I explore how ÂÂ"softÂÂ" consciousness-raising novels of the first, second and third-waves of feminism practice underground feminism by covertly exposing womenÂÂ's socio-political issues outside of the confines of feminist rhetoric. In moving away from the negative connotations of political language, the authors enable the education of female audiences otherwise out of reach. Working from and extending...
Show moreIn the chapters of my thesis, I explore how ÂÂ"softÂÂ" consciousness-raising novels of the first, second and third-waves of feminism practice underground feminism by covertly exposing womenÂÂ's socio-political issues outside of the confines of feminist rhetoric. In moving away from the negative connotations of political language, the authors enable the education of female audiences otherwise out of reach. Working from and extending on various theorists, I construct a theoretical model for what I term underground feminism. Running on the principal of conducting feminist activism without using feminist rhetoric, underground feminism challenges the notion that ÂÂ"subtleÂÂ" feminism means weak feminism. In illustrating how underground feminism works in novels and in physical activism, I hope to encourage the recognition of the political utility of womenÂÂ's writings that do not fit the strict archetypes of feminist authorship. Analyzing the effectiveness of covert feminist conversion narratives, I discuss one soft consciousness-raising novel for each wave. The novelsÂÂ--Sarah GrandÂÂ's The Heavenly Twins (1893), Dorothy BryantÂÂ's Ella PriceÂÂ's Journal (1972), and Helen FieldingÂÂ's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996)ÂÂ--accused by scholars of employing weak feminist politics, are investigated as feminist literature that disidentifies with the feminist label with the possibility of facilitating a wide spread conversion process in ÂÂ"would beÂÂ" feminists. After analyzing how the novels place womenÂÂ's issues at the center of discourse by discussing female education, womenÂÂ's voice, and narrative control, I consider how the underground feminism implicit in the texts extends to activism outside of literature. I also end by arguing that these novels enable a more intricate conversation about womenÂÂ's issues in which the voices of both self-identified and non-identified feminists are recognized.
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Date Issued
2010
Identifier
CFE0003329, ucf:48456
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003329
BEYOND POSTMODERN MARGINS: THEORIZING POSTFEMINIST CONSEQUENCES THROUGH POPULAR FEMALE REPRESENTATION
Title
BEYOND POSTMODERN MARGINS: THEORIZING POSTFEMINIST CONSEQUENCES THROUGH POPULAR FEMALE REPRESENTATION.
Creator
Mosher, Victoria, Campbell, James, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
In 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might...
Show moreIn 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might help feminist theorists overcome these epistemological impediments. A "postmodern feminism," Nicholson and Fraser claim, would become "the theoretical counterpart of a broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity, the sort of solidarity which is essential for overcoming the oppression of women" (35). Interpreting "Social Criticism" through a feminist cultural studies model in which texts are understood to be simultaneously constituted by and reflective of their own sociopolitical spaces, I argue that the construction of Nicholson and Fraser's "postmodern feminism" is, first and foremost, neither a postmodernist critique nor a means of overcoming the pitfalls of essentialism and foundationalism. Instead, the construction of this theoretical paradigm can be shown to be complicit with postfeminist discourses, wherein an implicitly patriarchal discourse of postmodernism is called upon to repair the deficiencies of feminisms, deficiencies that postmodernisms, in some ways, helped to bring into view. To provide a conceptual backing for these claims, I move toward an examination of mass culture, surveying the similarities between "Social Criticism" and the film What Women Want. Such a comparison, I suggest, facilitates a better understanding of how "Social Criticism" can be shown to be imbedded in a postfeminist narrative structure in which feminisms are relegated to a discursively subordinate gendered position in relation to postmodernisms. Finally, in what I find to be the most important aspect of this thesis' inquiry, I ask what it means to build a "broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity" by disavowing second wave feminisms in favor of postmodernisms. I conclude that, in using postmodernisms as a panacea for feminist theories, Nicholson and Fraser curtail what might have been a rigorous interrogation of and direct engagement with second wave feminist theories that would also attend to the phallogocentric underpinnings of postmodern theories. To underline the potential consequences, I turn to a set of televisual and filmic texts including Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Devil Wears Prada to gauge what their "postmodern feminism" might represent in practice rather than what it entails as philosophy. This juxtaposition of these two differently defined and yet overwhelmingly similar postmodern feminisms, I propose, underscores the potential that Nicholson and Fraser may have instituted a postmodern feminist methodology in which it is possible that feminisms might emerge not as discourses essential for "overcoming the oppression of women" but rather as discourses that can be critiqued into oblivion.
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Date Issued
2008
Identifier
CFE0002141, ucf:47518
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002141