‘The Revolution will be Led by a 12-Year-Old Girl’: Girl Power and Global Biopolitics

Abstract

This paper explores the changing feminine subject of feminism by investigating women's sexual daydreams. Described by Rosi Braidotti following Luce Irigaray as the 'virtual feminine', and by Teresa de Lauretis as the 'space-off', the feminist subject is a mutating configuration embodying that which is not colonised from phallogocentric representations. Following Frigga Haug's work on daydreams, the paper is informed by a study that draws on responses from nineteen women in a university setting to an anonymous online survey that asked them to write a daydream about how they would like to express their sexualities in an ideal world. The data reveal that these women of the new millennium imagine spaces of gender/sexual equity, characterised by a spirit of sexual adventure and ethical and emotionally intimate sex. I argue that these sexual imaginings are more progressive than earlier ones, filling in some of the details omitted from contemporary hegemonic representations of feminine sexuality. Arguably providing a snapshot of the feminist subject in its ongoing historical metamorphosis, the paper considers the meaning of these transformations. keywords women's sexuality; the feminist subject; daydreams; new millennium feminist review 105 2013 (65-82) © 2013 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/13 www.feminist-review.com

Girl power and ‘selfie humanitarianism’

“…We seek to understand this 'turn to the girl' in the context of two broad sets of changes: the corporatisation, depoliticisation and neoliberalisation of humanitarianism, and the mainstreaming of postfeminist discourses of 'girl power'. We argue that together these are leading to the distinctive 'girl powering' of development and humanitarianism (Koffman& Gill, 2013). We further suggest that this process is increasingly intertwined with what we call 'selfie humanitarianism' in which helping others is intimately connected to entrepreneurial projects of the self.…”

“…It is in the context of this corrective effort that the empowered girl has emerged as a celebrated figure. As several scholars have observed, many prominent humanitarian campaigns depict girls as imbued with economic and educational capability and highlight the role they play in improving their countries' economic prospects (Moeller 2013;Hayhurst 2011;Murphy 2012, Shain 2013, Koffman & Gill 2013). …”

“…On the one hand, southern girls continue to be depicted as victims of patriarchal 'cultural practices' through the familiar colonial gaze. Studies show how despite decades of postcolonial critique, these depictions repeatedly re-cite the notion of the oppressed 'Third World Woman' (Mohanty, 2003), now encompassing the highly visible figure of the girl (Bent 2013, Hayhurst 2011, Koffman& Gill 2013, Sensoy and Marshall, 2010, Shain, 2013, Wilson, 2011. Furthermore, as Emily Bent (2013) argues, the neo-colonial trope of the Third World woman/girl is reinvigorated through the construction of Western and Third World girlhood as oppositional.…”

For Western Girls Only?

“…A number of feminist scholars have begun to consider how such old tropes and figurations are being reworked in neoliberal, postfeminist times (e.g. Gonick et al 2009;Sensoy and Marshall 2010;Wilson 2011Wilson , 2012Koffman and Gill 2013;Switzer 2013). They variously find and problematize the fact that with, through, indeed buttressing the contention that the work of feminism is achieved in the West is the discursive displacement of its continued need to the non-West.…”

“…Via a new positioning of girls and women of the global South as ideal beneficiaries of development programming and intervention, such rhetorics are being operationalized by states, the neoliberal development industry and global corporate agendas (Gonick et al 2009;Sensoy and Marshall 2010;Wilson 2011Wilson , 2012Koffman and Gill 2013;Switzer 2013). Switzer characterizes this as a "(post)feminist development fable" about "young female exceptionalism" that takes gender equality and women's (2009,(88)(89).…”