Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. This article contributes to debates about the value and utility of the notion of postfeminism for a seemingly "new" moment marked by a resurgence of interest in feminism in the media and among young women. The paper reviews current understandings of postfeminism and criticisms of the term's failure to speak to or connect with contemporary feminism. It offers a defence of the continued importance of a critical notion of postfeminism, used as an analytical category to capture a distinctive contradictory-but-patterned sensibility intimately connected to neoliberalism. The paper raises questions about the meaning of the apparent new visibility of feminism and highlights the multiplicity of different feminisms currently circulating in mainstream media culture -which exist in tension with each other. I argue for the importance of being able to "think together" the rise of popular feminism alongside and in tandem with intensified misogyny. I further show how a postfeminist sensibility informs even those media productions that ostensibly celebrate the new feminism. Ultimately, the paper argues that claims that we have moved "beyond" postfeminism are (sadly) premature, and the notion still has much to offer feminist cultural critics. Permanent repository link:

The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: A postfeminist sensibility 10 years on

“…I have attempted to capture a sense of a postfeminist sensibility -understood in terms of gendered neoliberalism -as increasingly hegemonic and taken for granted, despite -and in some ways operating through -its coexistence with a revitalized feminism (see also Gill, 2016). Most of the elements of the sensibility that I -and many other scholars -discuss remain present in force, often in intensified form; postfeminism maintains a strong grip across culture and media to be sure.…”

“…This is seen vividly in the way that postfeminist logics currently operate through a celebration of (a certain kind of) feminism, rather than its repudiation. Indeed, as argued elsewhere (Gill and Orgad, in press;Gill, 2016), many of the current celebrations of feminism circulating in media culture have a distinctively postfeminist and neoliberal tenor (see also Rottenberg, 2014).…”

“…Elsewhere (Gill, 2016), I have discussed this in detail, putting forward a defence of the term, and arguing that we are far from being post-postfeminism. I have suggested (Gill, 2016) that there is a need to make distinctions between different kinds of mediated feminism, arguing that mainstream corporate or neoliberal feminism (of, say, Sheryl Sandberg COO of Facebook and author of the bestseller Lean In) may have little in common with activist feminisms concerned with protesting budget cuts or deportations, and these, in turn, may be remote from media constructions of feminism as a youthful, stylish (celebrity) identity. Feminist visibilities are, in short, uneven.…”

“…It is, thus, crucial that we think together the rise of popular feminism in tandem with rapidly intensifying misogyny. It is also crucial that we develop notions of postfeminism that can theorize both continuity and change, and that do not understand transformation in terms of simple displacement -as if the coming to prominence of one set of ideas automatically displaces another (see Gill, 2016).…”

“…This has not been my experience: on the contrary, contemporary culture appears to be intensely complex and to be rapidly changing. As a social and cultural analyst, I struggle -like many others -to read the current moment to produce an analysis of the extraordinarily contradictory yet patterned dynamics of power in cultural life (Gill, 2016). Postfeminism is one term in a critical toolkit designed to make sense of this.…”