women's history discussion

56 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Science & Society, Vol. 69, No. 1, January 2005, 56–91 56 The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave* SUSAN ARCHER MANN DOUGLAS J. HUFFMAN ABSTRACT: Third wave feminism is a new discourse for under- standing and framing gender relations that arose out of a critique of the second wave. Four major perspectives that share a common focus on difference, deconstruction and decentering contributed to this new discourse: intersectionality theory; postmodernism/ poststructuralism; feminist postcolonial theory; and the agenda of young feminists. A Marxist–feminist perspective grounds this new perspective in social and historical conditions and makes possible a materialist analysis of the rise of the third wave. R ECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN SOCIAL THOUGHT have heightened our awareness of how theories of emancipation can be blind to their own dominating, exclusive and restric- tive tendencies and how feminism is not innocent of such tenden- cies (Foucault, 1984; Grimshaw, 1993). Indeed, within movements for emancipation, resistance can take the form of counter discourses that produce new knowledges, speak new truths, and constitute new powers. We argue that this process has occurred in the United States over the last few decades, as witnessed by the decentering of second wave feminism by the rise of a new discourse on gender relations:

third wave feminism.

Our analysis of the third wave is quite different from the prevail- ing view that it refers to a new generation of young feminists who came * The authors thank Jeanne Cashen, Linda Coleman, Sara Crawley, Martha Gimenez, and Lise Vogel for their comments and suggestions for revising earlier drafts of this manuscript. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 57 of adult age in the 1980s and 1990s and who introduced a number of novel interests, concerns and strategies for political action. Rather, we argue that the phenomenon of third wave feminism should be viewed as a more profound development: the rise of a new discourse or paradigm for framing and understanding gender relations that grew out of a critique of the inadequacies of the second wave. Our analysis here is more akin to those scholars who view third wave femi- nism as the visions and voices of feminists who positioned themselves “against,” rather than necessarily “after,” the second wave (Koyama, 2002). This new discourse did not seek to undermine the feminist movement, but rather to refigure and enhance it so as to make it more diverse and inclusive.

We use the term discourse to refer to historically variable ways of specifying knowledge and truth that both constrain and enable writing, speaking and thinking. Like the second wave, the third wave is not a uniform perspective, but rather includes a number of diverse and analytically distinct approaches to feminism; these approaches share general properties that have fundamentally transformed our understanding of gender today. Common threads running through the diverse feminisms of the third wave are their foci on difference, deconstruction, and decentering. To date, four major perspectives have contributed the most to this new discourse of third wave femi- nism: intersectionality theory as developed by women of color and ethnicity; postmodernist and poststructuralist feminist approaches; feminist postcolonial theory, often referred to as global feminism; and the agenda of the new generation of younger feminists.

The purpose of this article is to critically examine some of the major contributions of each of these strands of third wave feminism.

We will highlight features of this new discourse that are compatible with a Marxist–feminist critical theory, as well as areas that remain contested terrain. We also ground this new discourse in changing social, economic, and political conditions to provide a materialist analysis of factors that influenced the rise of the third wave. This analysis is historically specific to the United States and we do not mean to suggest or portend that developments in feminist thought will occur in the same way in other locales.

Before we begin, we would be remiss not to acknowledge that serious critiques have been leveled against wave approaches to under- standing the history of feminism (Ruth, 1998; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; 58 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Springer, 2002). We recognize, for example, that wave approaches too often downplay the importance of individual and small-scale collective actions, as well as indirect and covert acts. We also agree that there is a tendency for attention to be drawn to the common themes that unify each wave, and this often obscures the diversity of the competing feminisms that actually exist. This tendency is particu- larly likely to obscure the contributions made by more radical camps and by more marginalized members in each wave.

While we are sensitive to these issues, we think a wave approach has merit when it is used to describe the existence of mass-based femi- nist movements. This does not mean that there were no feminists or feminist activism before or even after these waves, but simply that their ideas and actions did not materialize into a mass-based, social move- ment. Indeed, we think the wave metaphor only makes sense when it is used to describe mass-based movements that ebb and flow, rise and decline, and crest in some concrete, historical accomplishments or defeats. Thus, we are not suggesting that the waves of feminism are equivalent with the history of feminism. Rather, waves are simply those historical eras when feminism had a mass base.

For the entire period we are examining in this article, a mass- based feminist movement existed in the United States since the third wave arose from within the second wave, as opposed to after it. Chro- nologically, we argue that the initial challenges to second wave femi- nism shared a focus on difference, but resulted in two opposing political camps: one that embraced identity politics as the key to lib- eration; and a second that saw freedom in resistance to identity. The former is best illustrated by feminists of color and ethnicity, whose identity politics and intersectionality theory critiqued the second wave for its alleged essentialism, white solipsism, and failure to adequately address the simultaneous and multiple oppressions they experienced.

The latter is exemplified by postmodernist and post-structuralist femi- nists who critically questioned the notion of coherent identities and viewed freedom as resistance to categorization or identity.

We first examine these two initial challenges to the second wave to highlight their common ground, as well as the crossroads that led them down divergent paths in their politics of gender. Later, we show how the other major perspectives that contributed to third wave dis- course — feminist postcolonial theory and the agenda of the new SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 59 generation — grew out of syntheses of these earlier challenges posed by intersectionality theory and postmodernism/poststructuralism. THE EARLY THIRD WAVE: INTERSECTIONALITY AND POSTMODERNISM/POST-STRUCTURALISM Contributions by Women of Colar and Ethnicity While women of color and ethnicity had been notable activists and writers throughout both the first and second waves, they were truly the pioneers of the third wave in that they were the first to pro- vide an extensive critique of second wave feminism from within the feminist movement. They were also the first to use the term “third wave” (Springer, 2002, 1063).

The crux of this new direction in feminism was a critique of the “essentialist woman” of the second wave, which they claimed ignored or downplayed differences among women (Spelman, 1988). Audre Lorde captures the essence of this critique in the following quote: By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual prefer- ence, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist. (2000, 289.) Hence, while the essentialist “we” or “sisterhood” of the second wave was ostensibly meant to unify the women’s movement, instead it proved to be a painful source of factionalization — what Elizabeth Spelman called the “Trojan horse of feminist ethnocentrism” (1988, x).

A related critique by feminists of color and ethnicity centered on the issue of how the second wave dealt with “multiple and simultaneous oppressions” (Smith, 1983, xxxii). Here two tendencies within the sec- ond wave were most frequently attacked. The first treated multiple oppressions as separate and distinct or what these critics called a pop bead or additive approach to multiple oppressions (Spelman, 1988; King, 1988). The second hierarchized oppressions or treated one form as more fundamental than another. Neither of these approaches ade- quately conceptualized multiple oppressions as simultaneous, insepa- rable, and interlocking. 60 SCIENCE & SOCIETY One of the earliest pieces to articulate the simultaneous and non- hierarchical nature of oppressions was the Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement,” published in 1978. This was followed in the 1980s by such classics as All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave (Hull, Bell-Scott and Smith, 1982); This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color (Moraga and Anzaldua, 1983); Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Smith, 1983); and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (hooks, 1984). Viewing them- selves as “outsiders” within the feminist movement, these pioneers of the third wave created a feminism of their own (Lorde, 2000).

Importantly, their new feminism highlighted the need for femi- nists not only to address external forms of oppression, but also to examine forms of oppression and discrimination that they themselves had internalized. This required all feminists to pay more serious at- tention to the difficult process of building a movement connected by difference, and to critically examine how the politics of the past suffered from “the loss of each other” (Breines, 2002, 1127).

Deeply troubled by the failure to build a unified feminist move- ment, a number of white, second wave feminists delved deeper into our past history, seeking reasons for this failure. They knew that the second wave had not ignored differences among women, even though this view was widespread. Indeed, many second wave feminists were acutely aware of issues of race, class and imperialism, having cut their political teeth through their involvement in the Civil Rights Move- ment, the New Left, and the anti–Vietnam War movement before joining the feminist movement. Lise Vogel, for example, challenged the consensus that had developed by the 1990s that race and class were not of interest to feminists until the 1980s. She admonished those who had simplified the complicated history of the second wave and seriously questioned how participants in the second wave could have forgotten the saliency of issues like race and class, which were an integral part of the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s (Vogel, 1991).

Another second wave activist, Wini Breines, recently provided an interesting answer to this question. Based on documents by and in- terviews with socialist feminists who were active during the 1960s and 1970s, she argues that “an abstract anti-racism characterized much of the theorizing and politics of white feminism” (2002, 1122). That is, while many white, second wave feminists wrote about and analyzed differences by race and class, they seldom interacted socially with SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 61 Black women. Their abstract theoretical and analytical comprehen- sion of racism proved insufficient. Breines writes: “Without knowing one another, they could not make a movement together” (2002, 1123). She concludes that feminists need both a political understand- ing of racism and a personal–political understanding of how racism affects our everyday lives. This link between personal interaction and political action suggests that the second wave’s notion that the per- sonal is political has even more implications for feminist practice than was initially understood.

Yet, the politics derived from this new feminist discourse by women of color and ethnicity made the process of building connections based on difference difficult. This politics is often referred to as identity politics because it rooted politics in group identities or social loca- tions. As Linda Alcoff puts it: “The idea here is that one’s identity is taken (and defined) as a political point of departure, as a motivation for action, and as a delineation of one’s politics” (1988, 412). Given the multiplicity and diversity of oppressed groups, coalition building is the major means for fostering effective political action (Combahee River Collective, 1978). However, since identities placed exclusive boundaries on group membership, these politics also embodied the negative potential to revert to fragmentation or “tribalism” (Touraine, 1998, 131).

Identity politics not only affected political practice; it also affected the way feminist theoretical perspectives came to be defined or dis- tinguished. In the 1980s, it was common to see the perspective delin- eated above called by various names such as Africana feminism, Black feminist thought, or the women of color and ethnicity perspective.

This shift from feminist perspectives distinguished by their politics (such as Marxist feminism or liberal feminism) to designations based on identity was, itself, essentialist and misleading, since it lumped together women of color or ethnicity, ignoring their own diversity of political persuasions. Yet most feminists ignored this change, as men- tion of it was rare (Jaggar and Rothenberg, 1993, xxii–xiv).

During the 1990s, this theory of simultaneous and multiple op- pressions was rearticulated, largely as a result of the theoretical writ- ings of Patricia Hill Collins. Collins moved from first calling this perspective Black feminist thought (1990) to renaming it inter- sectionality theory (Andersen and Collins, 1994; Collins, 1998) — a designation that enabled its theoretical and political assumptions to 62 SCIENCE & SOCIETY prevail over standpoint or identity. Collins also created a new femi- nist epistemology that has had a profound effect on feminist thought.

Here she developed a social constructionist view of knowledge that linked identities, standpoints and social locations in a matrix of domi- nation. She writes:

The overarching matrix of domination houses multiple groups, each with varying experiences with penalty and privilege that produce corresponding partial perspectives [and] situated knowledges. . . . No one group has a clear angle of vision. No one group possesses the theory or methodology that allows it to discover the absolute “truth” or, worse yet, proclaim its theories and methodologies as the universal norm evaluating other groups’ experi- ences. (1990, 234–235.) This new epistemology shared with postmodernism/poststruc- turalism certain key assumptions that had significant implications for the third wave’s analyses of power and knowledge. However, as the quote above suggests, the politics embraced by intersectionality theory focused on groups exploiting other groups and maintained an analy- sis of oppression that was relational, oppositional and structural, despite its multiplicity. In contrast, the critique of second wave femi- nism leveled by postmodernists and poststructuralists used difference to deconstruct all group categories and to reject oppositional think- ing, as we discuss below. Contributions of Feminist Postmodernists and Post-Structuralists This challenge to the second wave was led by feminists who based their analyses on the works of French social thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, who argued that all group categories could and should be deconstructed as essentialist.

As Judith Grant noted, groups based on difference — such as the working class or women of color — have no single voice or vision of reality, but rather are made up of people with heterogeneous expe- riences (Grant,1993, 94). Hence, while the advocates of identity poli- tics had called into question the unitary category of women as having common or essential experiences, a similar critique could be leveled against their own group concepts based on race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. Clearly, when taking the postmodernist turn, the focus on difference proved to be a slippery slope that led from a SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 63 politics based on identity to its negation — a politics based on non- identity (Mann, 2000).

This deconstruction of group categories ushered in a full-scale critique of binary or dualistic thinking that undermined oppositional analyses of oppression. The central idea is that identity is simply a construct of language, discourse, and cultural practices. The goal is to dismantle these fictions and, thereby, to undermine hegemonic regimes of discourse. To affirm identities, as identity politics does, merely reproduces and sustains dominant discourses and regulatory power (Foucault, 1984). To break out of these oppositional structures and subvert them was to assert total difference.

A number of feminist theorists embraced these ideas. Rather than viewing affirmations of identity as liberating, they refigured them as disciplinary, restrictive and regulatory. Today, such an approach is characteristic of performance theorists like Judith Butler (1992; 1993) and queer theorists like Eve Sedgwick (1990). As one noted queer theorist states: “If queer theory speaks to a serious epistemic shift, I think it is to this refigured conceptual scheme. . . . I take as central to queer theory its challenge to what has been the dominant founda- tional concept of both homophobic and affirmative homosexual theory: the assumption of a homosexual subject or identity” (Seid- man, 2000, 440). Similarly, Butler argues that the rifts and resistance to group identities ought to be “safeguarded and prized” as emanci- pation from restrictive ontologies and as sites of “permanent open- ness” to multiple significations (1992, 15–16). Viewing identities as multiple, fluid and unstable was seen as presenting more possibili- ties for the surfacing of differences. Here, freedom is resistance to categorization; it consists in “the happy limbo of nonidentity” (Fou- cault, quoted in Grant, 1993, 131).

Linda Alcoff has called this “the identity crisis in feminist theory” (1988, 403). Indeed, in academic circles, the term “postfeminism” re- ferred not to the smug media claims that feminism was no longer nec- essary, but rather to a series of debates about whether feminism could withstand the deconstructive critiques mounted by postmodernism and post-structuralism (Siegel, 1997, 53). While integrally involving iden- tities, the underlying issue was how feminists could retain collective categories and simultaneously avoid essentialism. Because collective categories are integral to structural and relational analyses of power, they also affect how power and oppression are conceptualized. 64 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Postmodernists and poststructuralists tend to reject structural views of oppression and treat power as more ephemeral and ubiquitous. This latter view is exemplified in the following quote from Foucault:

Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere. . . . Power comes from below; that is there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between ruler and ruled at the root of power relations and serving as a general matrix — no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the social body. (Quoted in McHoul and Grace, 1993, 39.) A number of feminists have attacked such conceptions of power as “robbing the terms of oppression of their critical and oppositional importance” (Collins, 1998,136) or as the “resuscitation of an offi- cial pluralism which ultimately denies the hierarchies associated with difference” (Vogel, 1991, 97). With this conceptual shift, hierarchy was “recast as flattened geographies of centers and margins” (Collins, 1998, 129), and power relations increasingly became analyzed at the local, individual level, rather than at the level of large-scale, social structures (Fraser and Nicholson, 1997; Gimenez, 2001).

While we concur with these critiques, we find other features of Foucault’s analysis of power to be compelling — especially his focus on subjection and how we internalize oppressions. In his analysis of subjection, he exposes how the rise of democratic republics with their new conceptions of political liberty were accompanied by a darker side:

the emergence of a new and unprecedented discipline directed against the body. These new “surveillance” societies used more subtle disci- plinary and regulatory practices, such as self-policing, that replaced the need for more obvious, external forms of social control (Foucault, 1977, 217). Such insights fostered greater understanding of women’s collu- sion in their own subordination and meshed well with feminist views of bodies as battlefields (Ramazanoglu, 1993, 6). Feminists who applied Foucault’s insights to an analysis of body politics have contributed immensely to rapidly growing new areas of inquiry, such as the anthro- pology and sociology of bodies (Bordo, 1993; Bartky, 1990). Common Epistemological Ground Despite much contested terrain, intersectionality theory shares common ground with postmodernism and poststructuralism, not only SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 65 in their use of difference to deconstruct essentialism and to decenter dominant discourses, but also in their new epistemological ap- proaches. Both embrace the view that knowledge is socially con- structed and socially situated, such that every knowledge producer not only shapes knowledge, but also has a partial or limited vantage point. No one view is inherently superior to another and any claim to having a clearer view of the truth is simply a masternarrative — a partial perspective that assumes dominance and privilege. In place of such masternarratives, they call for polyvocality and more local- ized mini-narratives to give voice to the multiple realities that arise from diverse social locations.

This epistemological approach helps to recover and elevate the importance of marginalized voices that had been buried or muted by dominant groups. Accordingly, it moves these subjugated voices from the margins to the center, thus decentering dominant dis- courses. It also elevates types of knowledge that previously had been treated as inadequate or lesser, such as the socially lived knowledge of everyday life. Conversely, it demotes the privilege formerly given to theory and science as more relativist views of truth prevail. By the 1990s, many feminist texts treated theory and empirical science with more hesitancy and suspicion, often viewing them as masternarratives (Jaggar and Rothenberg, 1993; Ruth, 1998; Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2001). Such epistemological assumptions led the third wave onto more idealist terrain as discourse received ontological primacy and reality became multiple and subjective. LATER CHALLENGES TO THE SECOND WAVE In this section, we argue that feminist postcolonial theory, as well as the agenda of the new generation of younger feminists, grew out of syntheses of the earlier challenges to the second wave posed by inter- sectionality theory and postmodernism/post-structuralism. By saying that these later challenges are synthetic derivations, we are not sug- gesting that they lack originality. Rather, it is the complex and, at times, curious features of these theoretical syntheses that make them novel.

These new syntheses differ from each other in several distinct ways. While the feminist postcolonial perspectives we are examining draw from postmodernism/poststructuralism, they are more akin to 66 SCIENCE & SOCIETY the intersectionality theory created by women of color and ethnicity in the United States, in that they often embrace a macro-structural and relational analysis of oppression. This common thread is not surprising, given that these sister perspectives both arose out of his- tories of colonialism and imperialism (Lewis and Mills, 2003, 2–6).

In contrast, the new generation focuses more heavily on micro-level concerns, exposing how both external and internalized oppressions place restrictions on their lives. This, coupled with their resistance to categorization and identity, more closely mirrors the ideas of post- modernism/post-structuralism.

Contributions of Feminist Postcolonial Theory In the 1980s, a new category of feminist thought — global femi- nism — was becoming a regular feature of feminist discourse in the United States. Initially, this rather dubious category encompassed both theories and purely descriptive accounts of how relations be- tween local and global processes affect women in different social locations across the globe. While these writings were worthy endeav- ors, insufficient attention was given either to the range of political perspectives included or to what exactly was meant by global femi- nism. Over time, this perspective was given more theoretical coher- ency and political potency by the influence of feminist postcolonial theory (Minh-ha, 1989; Spivak, 1990; Lewis and Mills, 2003).

A major contribution of these writings was to transform the macro-unit of analysis from a societal to a global level. In contrast, many second wave feminists treated the nation–state or society as their macro-unit of analysis. Clearly, in a world where our everyday lives are increasingly affected by a global economy, the rapid growth of transnational economic and political units, and an unprecedented flow of people and information across international borders, our levels of analyses must reflect these new realities. In turn, feminist postcolonial theory used difference, deconstruction and decentering to provide a number of new insights into these global developments (Spivak, 1987; Mohanty, 2000; Narayan, 1997).

Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s critique of colonial discourses (first published in 1991) provides a fine example of how a new theoretical perspective that draws from postmodernism, post-structuralism and intersectionality theory transcends dilemmas encountered in these SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 67 earlier perspectives. Like her predecessors, Mohanty begins by using difference to deconstruct essentialism. She points to how women in the third world often have been essentialized in Western feminist thought:

The application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to women in the third world colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women in social class and eth- nic frameworks; in doing so it ultimately robs them of their historical and political agency. (2000, 349.) Like the proponents of intersectionality theory, Mohanty de- mands recognition of the heterogeneity of women in the third world in terms of their multiple and diverse social locations to undermine essentialism. She also discusses how the problem of essentialism arises: Thus, the discursively consensual homogeneity of “women” as a group is mistaken for the historically specific material reality of groups of women.

This results in an assumption of women as an always already constituted group, one which has been labeled “powerless,” “exploited,” “sexually harassed,” etc., by feminist scientific, economic, legal, and sociological discourses. (346.) Similarly, Uma Narayan argues that the “colonial encounter” resulted in “problematic pictures” or “totalizations” of both Western and non-Western cultures that concealed their diversity and made them appear as natural givens rather than as inventions or construc- tions (1997, 14–15). Gayatri Spivak puts it slightly differently, refer- ring to the tendency to confuse essentialism with empiricism (1987, 68–69). To combat such discursive essentialism, these feminists call for historical specificity, making clear that “these arguments are not against generalization as much as they are for careful, historically specific generalizations responsive to complex realities” (Mohanty, 2000, 349). By highlighting the potency of historical specificity, these postcolonial theorists simultaneously rescue collective categories and avoid essentialism.

Spivak also focuses attention on the issue of how ontological commitments to historical agents, such as working-class or third-world women, must be seen as structurally negotiable. There is nothing essential about such categories or collectivities. People in these 68 SCIENCE & SOCIETY categories must recognize themselves as agents of change rather than simply as victims, and there is no historical necessity to the rise of such consciousness or political action (Spivak,1987, 65). Thus, historical specificity can also provide a more accurate analysis of political agency.

Using one of the more progressive features of postmodernism, Mohanty draws out the implications of interrogating “alterity” or otherness (Agger, 1998, 57). This critical inquiry reveals how binary thinking implicitly entails “secret hierarchies” — a dominant group and a marginalized group, where the latter is viewed not only as other, but as lesser (Agger, 1998, 57). Examples of this include such dichoto- mies as male/female; heterosexual/homosexual; or white/black.

Mohanty shows how women in the third world are often portrayed not only as a singular or essentialized other, but also implicitly as lesser — as ignorant, tradition-bound, and victimized. This portrayal is contrasted with an equally singular representation of Western women as educated, modern and having control of their bodies and lives (Mohanty, 2000, 346). While such criticism is not new to feminism (Cooper, 1892; de Beauvoir, 1952), Mohanty’s use of these ideas to deconstruct colonial discourses offers constructive critiques of west- ern analyses of colonialism and imperialism.

Although she demonstrates the value of postmodernist insights, Mohanty does not call for an end to oppositional or relational analy- ses of oppression. Rather, she is quite explicit that “colonization al- most invariably implies a relation of structural domination” (1991, 345). Hence, a macro-structural and oppositional analysis of oppres- sion is retained, along with the use of historically specific, collective categories to highlight political agency. In contrast, the agenda of the new generation of younger feminists entails a far greater focus on micro-politics, as well as a stronger resistance to collective catego- ries, as we discuss below.

Contributions of the Younger Generation’s Third Wave Agenda We point in this section to key features of what has been called the younger generation’s “third wave agenda” (Heywood and Drake, 1997). However, we do not mean to suggest that all young feminists share a singular or uniform perspective. Rather, as we discuss below, there are many areas of disagreement among these young feminists. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 69 Moreover, clearly demarcating who is included in this new gen- eration is not without problems. These young feminists have been referred to in various ways, from using specific dates of birth to using more collective imagery, such as “Generation X” or a “mother–daugh- ter trope” to depict the relationship between the second and third waves (Heywood and Drake, 1997, 47; Quinn, 1997). We prefer to use what various writers have called a “political generation,” which is not merely a product of chronological age and may include even more than one chronological generation (Whittier, 1995, 15). The key to such political generations is that they reflect the life experiences of a particular historical moment (Henry, 2003). Hence, when we use the term new generation, we are referring to feminists who came to adult- hood during or after the last decades of the 20th century in an era that many social theorists today describe as postmodernity or late capitalism (Featherstone, 1991; Giddens, 1990; Agger, 1998).

While other members of this generation have been decried as “the most politically disengaged generation in American history” (Halstead, 1999, 33), these young feminists have been immensely active. Their Third Wave Foundation is a strong national organiza- tion with over 5,000 members. Their conferences, teach-ins and skills- sharing workshops have cropped up across the nation, and they have created hundreds of feminist zines, webzines, and magazines. For example, within its first five years, Bust magazine’s distribution in- creased from 1,000 to 32,000 — quite a feat for a publication whose first issue was xeroxed and stapled (Karp and Stoller, 1999, xiv). Young feminists also have significantly influenced diverse areas of music culture, from Punk to Rock ’n’ Roll to Rap and Hip Hop (Cashen, 2002; Morgan, 1999).

While they often express their indebtedness to their predeces- sors (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, 3–9; Henry, 2003), rather ubiquitous in their writings is a view of the second wave as too judg- mental and restrictive. For example, in Listen Up: Voices of the Next Generation (1995), Barbara Findlen describes how young women often think that “if something or someone is appealing, fun or popular, it or she can’t be feminist” (1995, xiv). In the anthology, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995), Gina Dent uses religious metaphors to argue that the second wave was characterized by an austere “missionary feminism” that entailed 70 SCIENCE & SOCIETY self-policing, confession through consciousness-raising groups, and salvation through political action (Dent, 1995, 64). As such, it “puts forth its program so stridently, guards its borders so closely, and leg- islates its behavior so fervently that many are afraid to declare its name”(Dent, 1995, 64).

While the new generation has produced a number of question- able stereotypes of the second wave, we do not think their disciplin- ary view of second wave feminism is simply an imagined feminist status quo, as others have claimed (Davis, in Walker, 1995, 281). The sec- ond wave’s notion that the personal is political was a double-edged sword that highlighted not only how personal issues were political, but also how personal lifestyle choices should not undermine femi- nist politics. Hence, it was both disciplinary and transformative in that it required that social change was part of one’s everyday life. By con- trast, the new generation, in its attempt to open up and broaden femi- nism, introduced a number of less restrictive ideas, strategies and ways of conceptualizing feminism that sparked condescension, controversy and rather hostile critiques from their second wave sisters (Kaminer, 1995; Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, 224–234).

It is precisely such feelings of condescension and exclusion, ex- perienced by women of color and ethnicity here and abroad, and now felt by a new generation, that fostered the decentering of the second wave. Perhaps this is why, when younger feminists discuss the works of their elders, the writings by global feminists and by women of color and ethnicity are the works they most admire (Heywood and Drake, 1997, 9; Brooks, quoted in Hernandez and Rehman, 2002, 117). Yet, while this new generation clearly embraces the focus on difference and multiculturalism found in these writings, we agree with those writers who argue that their political strategies more strongly reflect the influence of postmodernism and poststructuralism (Siegel, 1997; Bruns and Trimble, 2001; Huffman, 2002; Dicker and Piepmeier, 2003).

One strategy that reflects the postmodernist preference for lo- calized, mini-narratives over theory is evident in what one observer called the new generation’s “penchant for personal narratives” (Springer, 2002,1060). Indeed, the anthologies by these young femi- nists include a plethora of such personal narratives about the con- tradictions, uncertainties, and dilemmas they face in their everyday lives. Similarly, many of their zines are personal — much like jour- SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 71 nals written to vent anger and frustration (Cashen, 2002, 17). Such personal narratives have been denigrated as too confessional, whiny or subjective by their critics (Pollitt, 1999). Yet, while a careful review of this generation’s writings suggests that they use a variety of forms ranging from the personal to the more theoretical, personal narra- tives and what Bordo has called less abstract “embodied theory” clearly predominate (1993, 184–185). Moreover, some of their more recent writings have made concerted efforts to more explicitly “use personal experience as a bridge to larger political and theoretical explorations of the third wave” (Dicker and Piepmeier, 2003, 13).

This media-savvy generation has also used new technologies, such as the internet, desk-top publishing, and xeroxing, to expand the ven- ues for their voices (Alfonso and Trigilio, 1997). Zines in particular, have provided a form of interaction where “youths are the initiators and producers of their own social agendas and representations . . . an underground with no center, built of paper” (Cashen, 2002, 18).

Another major strategy of these young feminists, which mirrors certain postmodernist and post-structuralist techniques such as decon- struction and the rejection of binary polarities, is their use of contra- dictions to expose the social construction of reality. Cashen describes how Riot Grrrls, a group who reclaimed space for women in punk rock, adopted a feminine “girlie” kind of dress juxtaposed with com- bat boots or words like “slut” written on their bodies to critique and deflate the construction of the feminine (Cashen, 2002, 13–14). Simi- larly, Heywood and Drake discuss how the new generation embraces “hybridity” (1997, 7) or what they refer to in the following quote as “the lived messiness” of the third wave:

The lived messiness characteristic of the third wave is what defines it: girls who want to be boys, boys who want to be girls, boys and girls who insist they are both, whites who want to be black, blacks who want to or refuse to be white, people who are white and black, gay and straight, masculine and femi- nine, or who are finding ways to be and name none of the above. (1997, 8.) Indeed, many younger feminists celebrate contradictions as a means of resistance to identity of categorization, much in the spirit of performance theories and queer theorists. Here, embracing flu- idity is seen as fostering diversity and exposing the categories of race, gender or sexuality as simply social constructions. 72 SCIENCE & SOCIETY This greater resistance to identity by younger women has been empirically documented in a recent doctoral dissertation by Sara L.

Crawley (2002), who found distinct age differences in lesbians’ re- sponses to butch and femme identities. In her study, younger lesbians (those under 30) were more likely to produce the stereotypical butch and femme appearances, but were less likely than older lesbians (those over 30) to identify themselves as butch or femme in terms of a core sense of self. These younger women resisted more permanent identi- ties because they favored more fluidity or having many different ways of being. They also frequently embraced performance politics.

The predominance of postmodernist performance politics within the third wave has been the subject of much controversy among femi- nists in recent years. Some older feminists of color and ethnicity have been particularly critical of performance politics, viewing it as naive — as playing politics and not recognizing the seriousness and dan- ger of this political game. They also view it as a superficial and volun- taristic form of resistance that ignores the material bases of oppression (Collins, 1998). As June Jordan writes: “This infantile and apparently implacable trust in mass individuality is absurd and destructive” ( Jor- dan, quoted in Collins, 1998, 150).

Young feminists also are more likely to embrace the postmodern politics of queer theory, especially on issues related to sexuality. As a consequence, they promote a feminism that is more inclusive of a profusion of gendered subjects, like butch, femme, transsexuals, and transgendered people. They also tend to view the second wave as a prudish feminism that “has put up more restrictions than green lights when it comes to sexuality” (Alfonso and Trigilio, 1997, 12). There is a good deal of truth in these accusations. For example, the radical lesbian politics of the second wave viewed itself as woman-oriented, womyn-born and a “profoundly female experience” that was analyti- cally and politically distinguished from “other sexually stigmatized existences ” (Rich, 1980, 306). These politics were often explicitly critical of various gendered subjects and sexual practices, such as butch/femme, “trans women,” and S&M (DeLombard, in Walker, 1995; Koyama, 2003, 246–247). While some critics continue to view the postmodern turn to queer politics as simply another guise for patriarchy ( Jeffreys, 2003), we find the inclusiveness of queer poli- tics to be more compelling than its tendency to view any and all sub- versive acts as forms of freedom. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 73 Indeed for us, the most serious political fault line between the second and third wave is evident when the openness and freedom embraced by members of the younger generation include what Rebecca Walker refers to as “anti-revolution activities” (1995, xxxviii).

In her anthology, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995), one can find authors who engage in such acts as vigi- lante violence, eroticizing violent rape, or being supermodels. For Walker, such “courageous reckoning” with contradictions is part of what she means by changing the face of feminism (1995, xxxviii). She writes: Rather than judging them as unevolved, unfeminist, or hopelessly duped by patriarchy, I hope you will see these writers as yet another group of pio- neers, outlaws who demand to exist whole and intact, without cutting or censoring parts of themselves; an instinct I consider to be the very best legacy of feminism. These voices are important because if feminism is to continue to be radical and alive, it must avoid reordering the world in terms of any polarity, be it female/male, good/evil. . . .” (1995, xxxv.) A rather benign form of this reckoning with contradictions is exemplified by the “Girlie-girl persona” or the “Girlie feminist” (Baumgardner and Richards, 1997, 164–165). Girlies, who should not be confused with the more radical Riot Grrrls, reclaimed the word “girl” to address what they saw as the anti-feminine, anti-joy features of the second wave. For them, wearing pink, using nail polish, and celebrating pretty power make feminism fun. Yet, as Baumgardner and Richards point out, critics were quick to attack this new face of feminism as “light on issues and heavy on vanity,” labeling it dispar- agingly as “babe feminism” or “lipstick feminism” (2000, 255). In contrast, to many in the younger generation, “what Girlie radiates is the luxury of self expression that most Second Wavers didn’t feel they could or should indulge in” (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, 161).

Less benign are the politics of power feminists like Elizabeth Wurtzel, who states: “These days putting out one’s pretty power, one’s pussy power, one’s sexual energy for popular consumption no longer makes you a bimbo. It makes you smart” (Wurtzel, quoted in Baum- gardner and Richards, 2000, 141). In the writings of this new genera- tion, it is not unusual to find celebrities, like Madonna or Missy Elliott, who have “parlayed their sexual selves into power,” used as “positive examples of women’s subjectification,” rather than their objectifica- tion (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, 103). Here, Audre Lorde’s 74 SCIENCE & SOCIETY warning that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (2000, 292) clearly goes unheeded.

However, not all young feminists share such views of empower- ment. For example, in a scathing critique of power feminism, Danzy Senna describes it as “a cloak for conservatism, consumerism, and even sexism” (Senna, in Walker, 1995, 18). Similarly, many contribu- tors to the anthology Adios Barbie reject pretty power and obsessions with body image (Edut, 1998). Other young feminists voice more mixed messages. In her introduction to The Bust Guide to the New World Order (1999), Marcelle Karp not only encourages women to reject internalized negative body images, but also rallies them to view our bodies — “our tits and hips and lips” — as “power tools” (1999, 7).

Indeed, it appears that many in this new generation appreciate the rebellious desire to reclaim what has previously been used against them, while some recognize how this can entail political dangers (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, 138).

What is common among these young voices is that there seems to be a strong strain of individualism within this new generation. As Heywood and Drake admit: “Despite our knowing better, despite our knowing its emptiness, the ideology of individualism is still a major motivating force in many third wave lives” (1997, 11). Other young feminists more clearly celebrate this individualism, like Marcelle Karp, who writes:

We’ve entered an era of DIY feminism — sistah, do-it-yourself — and we have all kinds of names for ourselves: lipstick lesbians, do-me feminists, even postfeminism. . . . No matter what the flava is, we’re still feminists. Your femi- nism is what you want it to be and what you make of it. Define your agenda.

(1999, 310–311.) To us, DIY feminism is politically regressive and presents a major fault line between the second and the third wave. Indeed, it reverses the second wave’s notion that the personal is political as the political becomes totally personal. One of the best critiques by younger femi- nists of this individualistic feminism is provided by Dicker and Piep- meier in their anthology Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (2003), where they call this type of feminism a “feminist free-for-all” that empties feminism of any core set of values and poli- tics (2003, 17). They argue that, while it is fine to challenge percep- SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 75 tions of what feminism is or to engage the world in a playful and in- dividualistic way, feminist engagement has to take into account the power relations surrounding gender, race, class, and sexual orienta- tion. Hence, feminism must entail a politics that is transformative of both the individual and society (Dicker and Piepmeier, 2003, 19).

Other young feminists, like Baumgardner and Richards, make the same point more playfully when they write: “Without a body of poli- tics, the nail polish is really going to waste” (2000, 166).

Better to Polish It Red? Marxist Feminism and the Third Wave Having discussed key features of the four major perspectives that contributed the most to the new discourse of third wave feminism, we now examine how Marxist feminism (MF) compares and contrasts with this new discourse. Given that there are as many Marxisms as there are feminisms, we should first state that the features of Marx- ism that shape our feminism are more akin to the Marxism referred to as Critical Theory (Agger, 1998).

Politically, the discourse of third wave feminism shares with MF a commitment to human emancipation. Both see the past and present as characterized by various forms of oppression, just as they see the future as holding the possibility for greater human liberation. Both also recognize the role of human agency in history and hold people responsible for working toward a future that is free from oppression.

However, unlike postmodernist and post-structuralist feminisms, as well as many spokespersons for the new generation, MF does not equate human agency with voluntarism. Indeed, these strands of the third wave have a facile view of resistance that assumes an almost infinite ability to transform one’s life. They also entail a more indi- vidualistic politics that is centered on self-making or that has a subject- centered ethics.

By contrast, MF neither views individuals as free to make history as they please nor equates freedom with individuals doing as they please. Rather, MF views the relationship between human agency and social structure as more complex. It recognizes there are structural constraints on people transforming themselves and the world as they please. It also recognizes that structural inequalities enable some people to shape social reality more easily than others. In turn, while MF ac- knowledges the tension between individual freedom and collective 76 SCIENCE & SOCIETY politics, it rejects notions of individual freedom that take place at the expense of others. MF sees mutuality and collectivity as crucial orga- nizing principles of individual lives.

These political differences flow, in part, from MF’s greater focus on social relations as opposed to atomistic individuals. Here MF shares with postcolonial and intersectionality theories a view of power that is based in social structural relations, rather than in individual gra- dations of privilege and penalty. In contrast, the more individualis- tic strands of the third wave have an unanchored view of power that flattens hierarchies and obscures the systemic nature of oppression.

Yet, we appreciate the third wave’s greater emphasis on internalized forms of oppression. Recognizing such internalized oppressions in theory and in practice reveals how feminists themselves can repro- duce relations of ruling and ignore the differences among women that the third wave have so aptly highlighted (Hernandez and Rehman, 2002).

The third wave’s focus on difference also calls into question MF’s view of mass-based social movements. MF must forgo its earlier, more universalistic notions of social movements where commonalities of oppression were the basis for unity. We have to better understand how acknowledging difference in theory and in everyday practice has the potentiality to enhance, rather than to divide, a movement. In- deed, all of the strands of third wave feminism see building connec- tions based on difference as central to an effective politics today.

Because this new view of social movements is a more pluralist image than we harbored in the past, Marxist feminists tend to be suspicious of its political efficacy, and for good reason. The old plu- ralism, often supported by political liberals, not only was prone to tribalism, but also was vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. Such tyranny is far more likely if political demands simply involve demands for polyvocality or having voice, rather than for material resources.

Hence, this new, more radical pluralist image of social movements must generate a new, more radical politics that recognizes the mate- rial bases of power, rather than simply locating power in discourse, as is the tendency of postmodernists and post-structuralists.

Yet materialism seems to be passé in much of the third wave. A critical analysis of capitalism and material life seems out of fashion — particularly in the writings by postmodernist and post-structuralist feminists, and only somewhat less so in the writings of the new gen- SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 77 eration. An explicit anti-capitalist politics is more evident in inter- sectionality theory and most evident in feminist postcolonial theory.

A similar pattern is found in terms of those third wave feminisms that ignore or downplay class differences among women. While the man- tra of race, gender and class is frequently invoked in this new discourse of difference, class is often the last and the least addressed in this tril- ogy (Kandal, 1995).

We acknowledge that MF has often erred in the opposite direc- tion by hierarchicalizing oppressions and privileging class oppression as the most fundamental form. By contrast, we think that a critical MF should recognize the simultaneity and multiplicity of oppressions discussed by the third wave. However, we do not think that all forms of oppression are equally important at any given time and place in history. Rather, we view this as a historically specific question that must be analyzed carefully if social change and the alliances formed to foster social change are to be successful. As some postcolonial writ- ers have argued: “whilst gender will always be imbricated in the ma- trix of power . . . it is not always the predominant factor in people’s consciousness nor is it always the most effective rallying point” (Lewis and Mills, 2003, 20).

Indeed, MF shares with feminist postcolonial theorists an appre- ciation for historically specific analysis. Like these contributors to the third wave, some Marxist feminists have long argued that historical specificity can avoid essentialism by treating collective categories not as a priori givens, but rather as historically specific formations (Mitchell, 1966, 90, 100). We also think it can resolve some of the debates over political strategies and issues that have divided feminists today. For example, some political strategies, like performance politics, may work better in certain historically specific social contexts than in oth- ers. Even the same act can be regressive in some situations and pro- gressive in others, as the multiple meanings and uses of female veiling has revealed (Lewis and Mills, 2003, 14–18). In short, historical speci- ficity is as important for political practice as it is for theory.

While we think the women’s movement is spacious enough to incorporate a multiplicity of diverse strategies for fostering eman- cipation, we draw the line on issues like “power feminism” or the “anti-revolution” activities discussed by some third wavers. Here the free-to-be-me feminisms of some spokespersons for the third wave transgress our notion that mutuality and collective well-being are 78 SCIENCE & SOCIETY lynchpins of an emancipatory feminism. We also think this “anything goes” politics mirrors the “anything goes” methodologies and relativ- ism of the epistemological assumptions of most third wave perspectives (Rosenau, 1992, 192). Consequently, it is to the issue of epistemology that we now turn.

Epistemologically, the third wave has done an immense service to feminism by exposing the integral relations between discourses, knowledge and power. Its new epistemology shares with MF the view that knowledge is socially constructed, socially situated, and shaped by one’s social location. These features of knowledge undermine any claims to value neutrality and pose a serious threat to positivist forms of knowledge and science. They also entail a reflexive view of knowl- edge that should make us ever vigilant to the vantage point of the knower, as well as to who may benefit or suffer from such knowledge.

Yet, while MF is anti-positivist, it is not anti-empirical. Rather, it embraces empirical analysis in its attempt to gain ever more accurate understandings of social reality that can be appealed to as grounds for justice or to guide social movements. In contrast, certain strands of third wave feminism demote the empirical as just one of many ways of validating knowledge claims. In doing so, they move onto the more idealist and relativist terrain of multiple realities that are subjective and discourse-dependent. Here adjudicating among knowledge claims is problematic because any notions of greater truth are lost in a vicious hermeneutical circle that opens a Pandora’s box for any and every viewpoint to claim legitimacy (Harding 1993, 61).

The third wave’s suspicion of both theory and empirical science as master narratives or veiled attempts by dominant groups to impose their views on others fails to make important distinctions between positivist and non-positivist approaches to understanding the world.

These twin epistemological assumptions cripple political action, since formulating an analysis of the structural implications of social condi- tions to guide political action becomes a difficult, if not impossible task (Fraser and Nicholson, 1997; Touraine, 1998; Smith, 1996).

In contrast, MF embraces theory and gives it a key role in guid- ing political action. However, in doing so, MF often ignores how emancipatory theories can be dominating, exclusive and disciplinary.

In this regard, MF can benefit from the insights of post-structuralists who highlight how knowledges are also formations of power that delineate specific inclusions and enforce overt and covert exclusions. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 79 MF can also learn from those third wave feminists who have felt like outsiders within the feminist movement and who have stressed how an overly restrictive and disciplinary feminism can lead to internecine battles.

The next section of this article grounds some of the key ideas of third wave feminism in changing social, economic and political con- ditions and highlights yet another major difference between MF and the non-materialist strands of the third wave. That is, while the latter take an idealist tack that highlights how discourse shapes social real- ity, MF views material reality or social conditions as providing the ground for the rise of new discourses.

Grounding the Discourse of Third Wave Feminism When new recruits entered the women’s movement in the 1980s, they faced a world that was immensely different from the world en- countered by their second wave sisters in the 1960s. Politically these new recruits were confronted with a highly mobilized and vocal New Right, which had a significant voice in national politics through the Reagan/Bush Sr. years. Economically, they faced the worst job mar- ket since World War II and were the first postwar generation expected to fare worse than their parents (Sidler, in Heywood and Drake, 1997). This period of political backlash and economic recession con- trasts sharply with the progressive social movements and post–World War II prosperity that many second wavers encountered upon reach- ing adulthood. Below we examine some of the major factors that trans- formed both the women’s movement and the world in which we live over the last few decades. This analysis highlights how changes in the realm of ideas reflect changing social and material conditions.

One of the most important developments that heightened our sense of difference and decentering was the rapid growth in the global economy and its impact locally on the United States. Indeed, between 1960 and 1980, direct foreign investments by U. S. corporations in- creased more than ten-fold, and many companies flocked across inter- national borders to reap higher profits from cheap labor abroad (Thurow, 1996, 42). While capital was decentered in the sense of being relocated globally, it was not weakened, but became more powerful and anarchic as national-level controls over economic be- havior weakened (Touraine, 1998). This process intensified during 80 SCIENCE & SOCIETY the 1980s and 1990s with the deregulation of the Reagan/Bush Sr.

years and the rise of transnational units, like NAFTA, which reduced national barriers to the free flow of labor, capital and commodities.

In turn, other technological and political barriers to global capital- ism were transcended as the growth of satellite, computer and other electronic technologies virtually annihilated barriers of time and space, while the fall of the Soviet Union significantly reduced politi- cal barriers to free enterprise (Giddens, 1990; Touraine, 1998).

As a consequence of these developments, the United States ex- perienced a period of rapid deindustrialization and declining wages.

Between 1965 and 1985, the manufacturing share of total employ- ment dropped from 60% to 26%, while the share of employment in lower-paying service jobs rose from 40% to 74% (Stacey, 1991, 18).

Real male wages consistently fell — a reduction that had never be- fore occurred in U. S. history over a two-decade period when real per capita GDP was advancing (Thurow, 1996, 24). In turn, the gender, race, and ethnicity of the American labor force dramatically changed.

Women entered the workforce in record numbers, in large part to buttress their households against the fall of male wages, while the increase in service jobs opened the doors to the employment of im- migrants and minorities. Moreover, immigration into the United States during the 1980s and 1990s entailed much more racial diver- sity, particularly from Asia and Latin America, than did the largely European immigration of the 19th century.

Hence, it is not surprising that theoretical discourses during this period placed less emphasis on social class and more on other forms of difference, such as race, ethnicity and gender. While the former mirrors the decentering of the first world industrial proletariat, the latter mirrors the changing composition of the labor force at home and the increasingly global nature of the division of labor. Since these processes are integrally interwoven, “a full understanding of gender, race and ethnicity in the U. S. must be related to the totality of capi- tal accumulation on a world scale” (Kandal, 1995, 156).

Other features of globalization also fostered awareness of these forms of difference and identity. Some observers have noted how people tend to retreat to the micro worlds of community and iden- tity in the face of financial and job insecurity (Touraine, 1998). Others have discussed how the homogenizing tendencies of global capital- SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 81 ism toward cultural conformity, secularism and consumerism sparked rediscovered ethno-histories that strove to maintain cultural and eth- nic distinctions (Smart, 1993). Examples of this at home and abroad range from the ongoing struggles of various racial, ethnic, and na- tional liberation movements to the resurgence of fundamentalist religions and white ethnicity. Hence, identity politics of numerous political persuasions — progressive and regressive — were spawned by these global developments.

Yet, just as marginalized identities moved to the center of the political arena, a new politics of non-identity emerged with post- modernism’s and post-structuralism’s call for a blurring of racial, ethnic, and gender lines. Some critics view these new politics of non- identity as offering a place at this historical juncture for decentered intellectuals from dominant groups to still have a voice. For example, Christine de Stefano argues that post-structuralism was deconstructing the category of human agency “at the moment in Western history when previously silenced populations have begun to speak for themselves and on behalf of their subjectivities” (de Stefano, quoted in Messer- Davidow, 2002, 209). Similarly, in her critique of postmodernism, Patricia Hill Collins describes how the movement of people of color and ethnicity into the spaces of the dominant group “shattered the illusion of insider security” previously held by radical intellectual voices with dominant group privilege (1998, 131). These new dis- courses of non-identity offered safe havens for such intellectuals by supporting the impulse to difference through their distrust of essen- tialism and unitary thought, while remaining rather exclusive, given their highly abstract and inaccessible language (Collins,1998, 142).

Other observers view postmodernist ideas as surfacing from the disjunctures and uncertainty that have accompanied the global dif- fusion of modern Western economic, political and cultural forms.

Here the complex contests, conflicts and accommodations between the homogenizing effects of Western imperialism and the efforts by diverse cultures to maintain their integrity have undermined the in- ternal coherence of the Euro-American masternarratives of modernity, and have increased awareness of how other, non-Western, civilizations are exercising influence over global economic, political and cultural life (Smart, 1993, 148–149). From this perspective, postmodernism is a product of the actual decentering of the West. 82 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Features of poststructualist thought are mirrored in the forms of work that have come to characterize the new global economy as work sites became more organized along post-Fordist lines. For ex- ample, a cornerstone of post-Fordist management practice is the belief that loose networks are more open to innovation than are the more structured, pyramidal hierarchies that ruled the Fordist era. A deceptive feature of this team-work is that lines of authority appear to be flattened, even though control from the top still exists (Sennett, 1998, 43, 57). Authority is further diffused as these loosely organized teams shift and change with the demands of work. Moreover, because these teams are constantly breaking apart or continually being rede- signed, they require a more flexible, elastic and chameleon-like orien- tation to work (Sennett, 1998, 110). These features of the post-Fordist workplace echo the blurred lines of authority and the non-hierarchical view of power espoused by post-structuralism, as well as its more fluid and chameleon-like views of identity.

Mass culture also has been significantly transformed through the enormous growth in the new electronic technologies and the new means of consumption that have characterized the last few decades.

Indeed, some observers argue that mass culture has intertwined with consumerism to become the cognitive and moral focus of contem- porary social life (Featherstone, 1991). Culture critics view the ide- ologies embedded in mass culture today as far more complex and subtle than in the past, appearing almost as “silent argument” (Agger, 1998, 125). The new electronic media dramatically quicken and in- tensify the distribution of ideologies such that they flash by with a speed that makes them even more difficult to unpack. In such a swirl- ing sea of signs and symbols, it is not surprising that discourse ap- pears to have inordinate power, or that a major device used to decode such messages — deconstruction — has become a new buzzword in social thought (Agger, 1998, 125). In a world where simulations in- creasingly blur the line between artifice and reality, it also is not sur- prising that certain strands of third wave feminism have taken a more idealist tack that loses sight of the social and material conditions that created a world where difference, decentering and deconstruction became ever more prominent. Yet, as we discuss below, social and material conditions also transformed the women’s movement dur- ing the era that witnessed the rise of third wave feminism. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 83 Transformations of the Women’s Movement We focused above on how second wave feminism was challenged from within by the voices and visions of the third wave. However, during the 1970s and early 1980s the second wave was also challenged from without as the fusion of Christian fundamentalism and the New Right fueled successful conservative backlashes to both the women’s movement and the Civil Rights movement. The success of this con- servative backlash resounded in the defeat of the Equal Rights Amend- ment in 1982. As Susan Martin has argued, this defeat had a serious class component in that it reflected the second wave’s failure to gar- ner support from working-class women. Here again, while their ab- stract theoretical writings did not ignore class, their concrete political practice failed to adequately address the everyday concerns of these women. In contrast, right-wing and fundamentalist conservatives were superior at mobilizing these women at a grass-roots level and turn- ing the anxiety of this decentered class into a backlash against the gains won by feminists and the Civil Rights Movement (Martin, 1989).

Although the women’s movement entered a tough period of retrenchment after the ERA was defeated, it did not enter a period of abeyance, as occurred after the first wave attained the vote in 1920 (Taylor, 1989). New recruits continued to enter the women’s move- ment, despite or to spite media claims that we had entered a “post- feminist” era (Siegel, 1997, 52). Indeed, some writers have discussed how such postfeminist claims, as well as various caricatures of femi- nism by “dissenting daughters” like Katie Roiphe or Rene Denfeld, actually triggered the mobilization of younger feminists (Siegel, in Heywood and Drake, 1997, 58). In any event, new recruits entered a feminist movement that was under attack from opponents that crossed the political spectrum and that included anti-feminists, postfeminists, and feminist dissenters.

Despite this backlash, some segments of the women’s movement actually gained ground in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the large, formally organized, liberal feminist organizations — NOW, the Na- tional Abortion Rights Action League and the Women’s Equity Action League. In contrast, many community-based, feminist organizations that had been the stronghold of the more radical wing of the second wave feminist movement declined (Whittier, 1995, 195). 84 SCIENCE & SOCIETY While this more radical wing embraced the social-change strate- gies they had learned in the social movements of the 1960s, neither the New Left nor the radical wing of the women’s movement ever developed the infrastructures at the grassroots level attained by the Civil Rights Movement or the New Right, such as the networks of schools and churches that provided structure and continuity over time. Rather, the community-based organizations of the women’s movement that depended largely on volunteers, like rape crisis cen- ters or battered women’s shelters, were plagued by chronic resource deprivation. In the face of the recession of the 1980s, these organiza- tions were forced to seek government funds to survive. This not only mired them down in grant writing and donor solicitation, but also transformed them from activist organizations into more professional- ized, social service agencies (Messer-Davidow, 2002, 163).

The recession and fierce economic competition of this era also affected other activities of the women’s movement. Movement peri- odicals that initially flourished were unable to endure in the face of resource shortages. Bookstores failed if they did not master the fis- cal and marketing techniques used by their mainstream competitors.

Independent presses were swallowed up by media empires as the publishing industry was transformed between 1970 and 1990 (Messer- Davidow, 2002, 133, 163). Hence, commercialization and profes- sionalization went hand-in-hand to undermine more activist-oriented and grassroots organizations.

Women’s studies also followed this path of professionalization and deradicalization. While the burgeoning women’s studies programs of the early 1970s had few of the resources that exist today, they did have a more radical vision of breaking down the boundaries that separated scholarship from activism, the academy from the community, and vari- ous disciplines from each other. In the 1980s and 1990s, this radical vision was thwarted, not by outright suppression, but rather by more subtle processes inherent in the institutionalization and intellectual- ization of academic knowledge (Messer-Davidow, 2002, 165).

Indeed, rather than being suppressed, women’s studies grew immensely during the last decades of the 20th century. This growth was facilitated by the steady flow of women into higher education; with women outnumbering men in enrollments by the 1990s (Messer- Davidow, 2002, 79). Financially strapped universities seeking tuition revenues upped their funding of women’s studies courses because SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 85 they attracted high enrollments. This, in turn, meant that depart- ments hired more women’s studies faculty and commercial presses competed to wring profits from this niche market in feminist publi- cations. Ellen Messer-Davidow discusses at length how the trajectories of both disciplinary growth and commodification worked together to intensify the production of specializations and difference within women’s studies discourse. She writes:

Specialization and commodification drove the proliferation of particular- ized knowledges, which invited specialist criticisms, which sparked the meta- discourse about how to produce more adequate knowledges, which, once they were produced, went spinning through the same routines. (2002, 207.) Hence, ironically, the production of difference within feminist thought was, in part, a product of the movement of feminism from activism to academic discourse.

One would have expected affirmative action programs to play a large role in the production of differences. Yet, changes in the racial and ethnic profiles of both the faculty and the student body in higher education were meager. Between 1970 and 1990, the number of doctorates awarded to non-whites increased by only three percent.

From 1980 to the mid-1990s, the percentage of African–American and Hispanic–American high school students enrolling in college actually declined, while that of whites rose (Messer-Davidow, 2002, 193). Main- stream publication venues and feminist journals were also slow to open their doors to marginalized voices. Only in the 1980s did they make a serious commitment to disseminating African–American women’s scholarship and criticism (Messer-Davidow 2002, 197). These slow developments in changing the racial and ethnic profile of women’s studies may also go some way toward explaining the widespread view that race and ethnicity were ignored before the 1980s.

One of the few areas of the women’s movement that both flour- ished and remained true to its radical roots during this period of re- trenchment was women’s culture. National cultural events proliferated, as did more local concerts, festivals, and artist’s/writer’s workshops. It has been argued that women’s culture maintained its radical roots to the past, largely because it was organized by lesbian feminists who, of necessity, had built their own communities and who were less likely to trust liberal feminist organizations that had eschewed them in the 86 SCIENCE & SOCIETY past. These lesbian feminists continued to build on the strategies of the 1970s radical women’s movement and their cultural events reflected this, whether they were aimed at lesbian-only or broader audiences (Whittier, 1995, 212). Given the paucity of radical sec- tors of the women’s movement, it is understandable why culture and sexuality became major sites of struggle for many young recruits to the women’s movements in the 1980s and 1990s (Heywood and Drake, 1997, 4).

Other arenas of growth in the 1980s and 1990s were self-help groups, feminist therapies, and feminist spirituality. While these activities existed during the second wave, they became larger sectors of the women’s movement in these later decades (Whittier, 1995, 196). Their growth suggests an increasing focus on personal trans- formation as a means of social change and may help explain why many strands of the third wave focused more on internalized op- pressions and why some appeared primarily as a “revolution of the self ” (Pineros, 2002).

Overall, during the last decades of the 20th century, the women’s movement in the United States became more mainstream, more professionalized, more commercialized, and less radical. Liberal femi- nist organizations on the national level grew, while more radical, grassroots feminist organizations declined or became more profes- sionalized and service-oriented. Women’s studies witnessed immense growth both in its size and in its production of difference, but it too became more institutionalized and less activist-oriented. The women’s movement also experienced a turn inward to focus on self-growth and transformation. It maintained its radicalism primarily through the efforts of lesbian feminists in the realm of women’s culture. Given these transformations, it is not surprising that the foci of the new generation of recruits, who entered the women’s movement in the1980s and 1990s, differed from their second wave sisters on several impor- tant dimensions. They focused more on the individual than society; more on internalized than external oppression; and more on culture than on material life. CONCLUSION We began this article noting how theories of emancipation are often blind to their own dominating, exclusive and restrictive tendencies. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 87 The second wave of American feminism was often blind to the ways its theories and political praxis failed to adequately address the every- day concerns of women of color and ethnicity in the United States and abroad. It was also blind to how it appeared to many in the younger generation as an austere and disciplinary feminism. As a consequence of such blind spots, it bred counter discourses that even- tually undermined its hegemony. By contrast, the new discourse of the third wave embraced a more diverse and polyvocal feminism that appealed to those who felt marginalized or restricted within the sec- ond wave. Built on difference, this new discourse deconstructed and decentered the ideas of the second wave, producing new ways of understanding and framing gender relations.

We used a materialist analysis to ground the key ideas of this new discourse in changing social conditions. Here we discussed how the third wave’s common foci on difference, deconstruction and decen- tering, as well as their analyses of power and identity, were mirrored in macro-level processes like globalization, the changing composition of the U. S. labor force, new post-Fordist forms of work, and the more complex and pervasive nature of mass culture. We also examined how transformations of the U. S. women’s movement, such as its deradicali- zation and the rise and demise of certain of its sectors, help explain the major sites of struggle of the new generation of third wave feminists.

We pointed to a number of new insights and political strategies developed by the third wave that we think are compatible with a criti- cal Marxist feminism and that should be taken seriously by all femi- nists who want to be engaged in ongoing developments in feminism today. There are both progressive and regressive paths within the third wave and we must navigate them with a greater openness to difference and to the various strategies that may prove fruitful to fostering emancipatory goals.

Susan Archer Mann:

Department of Sociology University of New Orleans New Orleans, LA 70148 [email protected] Douglas J. Huffman:

1549 Placentia Ave. #221 Newport Beach, CA 92663 [email protected] 88 SCIENCE & SOCIETY REFERENCES Agger, Ben. 1998. Critical Social Theories: An Introduction. New York: Westview Press.

Alcoff, Linda. 1988. “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory.” Pp. 403–414 in Kolmar and Bartkowski, eds.

Alfonso, Rita, and Jo Trigilio. 1997. “Surfing the Third Wave: A Dialogue Between Two Third Wave Feminists.” Hypatia, 12:3 (Summer), 8–16.

Andersen, Margaret, and Patricia Hill Collins, eds. 1994. Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology. New York: Wadsworth.

Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Op- pression. New York: Routledge.

Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Amy Richards. 2000. ManifestA: Young Women, Femi- nism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berke- ley, California: University of California Press.

Breines, Wini. 2002. “What’s Love Got to Do with It? White Women, Black Women, and Feminism in the Movement Years.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 27:4, 1096–1133.

Bruns, Cindy M., and Collen Trimble. 2001. “Rising Tide: Taking Our Place as Young Feminist Psychologists.” Pp. 19–36 in The Newest Generation: Third Wave Psycho- therapy, ed. Ellen Kaschak. Binghamton, New York: The Haworth Press.

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge.

———. 1992. “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Post- modernism.” Pp. 3–21 in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott. New York: Routledge.

Cashen, Jeanne. 2002. “The Revolution Is Mine: Grrrl Resistance in a Commodity Culture.” Unpublished manuscript, University of New Orleans.

Collins, Patricia Hill. 1998. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice.

Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

———. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston, Massachusetts: Unwin, Hyman.

Combahee River Collective. 1978. “A Black Feminist Statement.” Pp.121–124 in Jagger and Rothenberg, eds.

Cooper, Anna Julia. 1982 (1892). A Voice from the South. Boston, Massachusetts:

Unwin, Hyman.

Crawley, Sara L. 2002. Narrating and Negotiating Butch and Femme: Storying Lesbian Selves in a Heteronormative World. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Sociol- ogy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

De Beauvoir, Simone. 1952. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Dent, Gina. 1995. “Missionary Position.” Pp. 61–76 in To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, ed. Rebecca Walker. New York: Anchor Books.

Dicker, Rory, and Alison Piepmeier. 2003. Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press.

Edut, Ophira, ed. 1998. Adios Barbie: Young Women Write about Body Image and Iden- tity. Seattle, Washington: Seal Press.

Featherstone, Mike. 1991. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 89 Findlen, Barbara, ed. 1995. Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Seattle, Washington: Seal Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1984. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. London:

Penguin.

———. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane.

Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Nicholson. 1997. “Social Criticism Without Philosophy:

An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism.” Pp. 131–146 in Femi- nist Social Thought: A Reader, ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers. New York: Routledge.

Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Gimenez, Martha E. 2001. “Marxism, and Class, Gender, and Race: Rethinking the Trilogy.” Race, Gender & Class, 8:2, 23–33.

Grant, Judith. 1993. Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory. New York: Routledge.

Grimshaw, Jean. 1993. “Practices of Freedom.” Pp. 51–72 in Ramazanoglu, ed.

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. 1995. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African–American Feminist Thought. New York: New Press.

Halstead, Ted. 1999. “A Politics for Generation X.” Atlantic Monthly, 284:2 (August), 33–42.

Harding, Sandra. 1993. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is Strong Objectivity?” Pp. 49–82 in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. L. Alcoff and E. Potter.

New York: Routledge.

Henry, Astrid. 2003. “Feminism’s Family Problem: Feminist Generations and the Mother–Daughter Trope.” Pp. 209–231 in Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, ed. Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. Boston, Massachu- setts: Northeastern University Press.

Hernandez, Daisy, and Bushra Rehman. 2002. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. New York: Seal Press.

Heywood, Leslie, and Jennifer Drake, eds. 1997. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.

Huffman, D. J. 2002. “Making Sense of Third Wave Feminism.” MA Thesis, Univer- sity of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hull, Gloria, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. New York: Old Westbury.

Jaggar, Alison, and Paula Rothenberg, eds. 1993. Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations Between Women and Men. 3rd ed. New York:

McGraw-Hill.

Jeffreys, Sheila. 2003. Unpacking Queer Politics. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Kaminer, Wendy. 1995. “Feminism’s Third Wave: What Do Young Women Want?” New York Times Book Review, June 4, 8–9.

Kandal, Terry. 1995. “Gender, Race and Ethnicity: Let’s Not Forget Class.” Race, Gender & Class, 2:2, 139–162.

Karp, Marcelle, and Debbie Stoller, eds. 1999. The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order.

New York: Penguin. 90 SCIENCE & SOCIETY King, Deborah. 1988. “Multiple Jeopardy: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideol- ogy.” Pp. 220–236 in Jaggar and Rothenberg, eds.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. 2001. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives.

2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kolmar, Wendy, and Frances Bartkowski, eds. 2000. Feminist Theory: A Reader. Moun- tain View, California: Mayfield.

Koyama, Emi. 2003. “The Transfeminist Manifesto.” Pp. 244–259 in Dicker and Piepmeier.

———. 2002. Discussion of “third wave” on Women’s Studies Listserv WMST-L@listserv.

umd.edu, June 7.

Lewis, Reina, and Sara Mills, eds. 2003. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Routledge.

Lorde, Audre. 2000. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Women.” Pp. 288–293 in Wendy Komar and Frances Bartkowski, eds., Feminist Theory: A Reader. Mountain View, California: Mayfield.

Mann, Susan A. 2000. “The Scholarship of Difference: A Scholarship of Liberation?” Sociological Inquiry, 70:4, 475–498.

Martin, Susan. 1989. “Keep Us on the Pedestal: Women Against Feminism in Twentieth-Century America.” Pp. 547–560 in Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed.

Jo Freeman. Mountain View, California: Mayfield.

McHoul, Alec, and Wendy Grace. 1993. A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject. New York: New York University Press.

Messer-Davidow, Ellen. 2002. Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Minh-ha, T. T. 1989. Women Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloom- ington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Mitchell, Juliet. 1966. Woman’s Estate. New York: Pantheon.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2000 (1991). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholar- ship and Colonial Discourses.” Pp. 344–351 in Kolmar and Bartkowski, eds.

Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldua, eds. 1983. This Bridge Called My Back: Writ- ings by Radical Women of Color. Latham, New York: Kitchen Table Press.

Morgan, Joan. 1999. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures/Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Femi- nism. New York: Routledge.

Pineros, Marcela. 2001. “The Art of Being Third Wave: Coloring Outside the Lines.” Unpublished paper, Florida International University.

Pollitt, Katha. 1999. “Solipsisters,” The New York Times Book Review, April 18, 25–29.

Quinn, Rebecca. 1997. “An Open Letter to Institutional Mothers.” Pp. 174–182 in Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue, ed. Devoney Looser and Ann Kaplan.

Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Ramazanoglu, Caroline, ed. 1993. Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism. New York: Routledge.

Rich, Adrienne. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Pp. 304–312 in Kolmar and Bartkowski, eds. SECOND AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM 91 Rosenau, Pauline Marie. 1992. Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Ruth, Sheila. 1998. Issues in Feminism: An Introduction to Women’s Studies. Mountain View, California: Mayfield.

Sedgwick, Eve. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

Seidman, Stevan. 2000. “Queer-ing Sociology, Sociologizing Queer Theory.” Pp. 434–455 in Social Theory: Roots and Branches, ed. Peter Kivisto. Los Angeles, California: Roxbury.

Sennett, Richard. 1998. The Corrosion of Work: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton.

Siegel, Deborah L. 1997. “The Legacy of the Personal: Generating Theory in Feminism’s Third Wave.” Hypatia, 12:3, 46–75.

Smart, Barry. 1993. Postmodernity: Key Ideas. New York: Routledge.

Smith, Barbara, ed. 1983. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press.

Smith, Dorothy. 1996. “Telling the Truth after Postmodernism.” Symbolic Interac- tion, 19:3, 171–202.

Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. Inessential Woman. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.

Spivak, Gayatri. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. London:

Routledge.

———. 1987. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Methuen.

Springer, Kimberly. 2002. “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 27:4, 1059–1082.

Stacey, Judith. 1991. Brave New Families. New York: Basic Books.

Taylor, Verta. 1989. “Social Movement Continuity: The Women’s Movement in Abeyance.” American Sociological Review, 54, 761–775.

Thurow, Lester. 1996. The Future of Capitalism. New York: W. Morrow.

Touraine, Alain. 1998. “Sociology Without Society.” Current Sociology, 46:2 (April), 119–143.

Vogel, Lise. 1991. “Telling Tales: Historians of Our Own Lives.” Journal of Women’s History, 2 (Winter), 89–101.

Walker, Rebecca, ed. 1995. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Femi- nism. New York: Anchor Books.

Whittier, Nancy. 1995. Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women’s Movement. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press.

Wurtzel, Elizabeth. 1998. Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. New York: Doubleday.