Feminist Futures: Critical Engagements with the Fourth Wave

A Symposium at Queen Mary, University of London, 27 June 2015

As the year 2014 drew to a close, the media’s annual summations were awash with celebratory claims regarding the achievements of feminist individuals and organisations across the world, from the work of grassroots activism to new energy generated by prominent political, cultural and popular talking heads. While The Guardian boldly claimed 2014 to be a watershed year, with women’s voices apparently attaining ‘an unprecedented power’, Time magazine went so far as to state that this ‘may have been the best year for women since the dawn of time’.[1]

This one-day symposium invites critical reflection and debate on what has been called feminism’s ‘fourth wave’. Over the past few years, the ambivalent attitudes that characterised the postfeminist climate of the 1990s and early 2000s have arguably been replaced by a vibrant unveiling of new feminist potencies on the streets and online. The economic crash of 2008, the ensuing austerity measures, and the spread of an insidious rhetoric targeting under-privileged and marginalised groups, have laid bare to many the structural inequalities embedded in the UK. Renewed engagement with feminism has been galvanised in this highly politicised environment by a range of issues that continue to confront women into the twenty-first century, from unequal pay, to the objectification and abuse of women’s bodies, to ‘everyday sexism’. Alongside grassroots activism, and publications aimed at a general readership, this putative ‘fourth wave’ of feminism has mobilised political activity online. In the face of the ever-new forms of misogyny churned out by digital media, feminist internauts are fostering valuable spaces for women to stake their claim to the virtual worlds of the future.

However, there are also concerns being voiced about the directions in which these new feminist energies are channelled. What does it mean when members of the coalition government don T-shirts proclaiming ‘This is what a feminist looks like’? Are the ‘feminist’ advertising campaigns run by the beauty industry cause for celebration or concern? Does feminism really need to be ‘re-branded’ as Elle magazine proposes? What happens when ‘feminist’ discourses are co-opted by the political right? Furthermore, there is a sense that, despite its vigour, this ‘fourth wave’ is undertheorised. As Kira Cochrane put it in in her recent exploration of the feminist resurgence ‘[this movement] hasn’t yet produced a swathe of theory’ (2013: 242).

In response to Cochrane’s concern, this symposium invites reflection and debate on the possibilities, limits and contradictions of ‘fourth wave’ feminist discourse. What specific concerns and issues are being foregrounded by the fourth wave? How do they relate to, reflect on, and advance former feminist and postfeminist debates? What is the relation between the surge in feminist activity on the streets, in the media, in popular culture and online, and critical discourses of feminism? How might feminist thought, across the arts and humanities, engage with or theorise this new energy? And what misgivings remain in relation to the rhetoric of a ‘popular’ feminism, one that may well be steeped in neoliberal agenda, easily co-opted and instrumentalised by the very dominant forces that might limit its efficacy? The symposium endeavours to bring ‘academic’ feminism into close contact with broader political and cultural feminist discourses and to illuminate the impact of such debates already being felt within academic contexts themselves.

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers offering critical perspectives on contemporary feminist debates across the arts and humanities, including philosophy, critical and cultural studies, history, geography, the social sciences, English and Modern Languages. Topics may include, but are not limited, to the following:

    theoretical responses to key debates foregrounded by the fourth wave, including women and work, material and structural inequalities; women’s bodies, sexualities, rape culture and consent, abuse and violence, pornography and sex work; everyday sexism

    feminism and grassroots activism

    feminist campaigns

    feminism and consumer culture

    feminism and popular culture

    feminism and the arts

    feminism online

    feminism and humour

    corporate feminism

    intersectional feminism

    feminism and queer culture

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words tofeministfutures2015@gmail.com , along with your name and affiliation, by 5pm on Friday 13th March 2015.

Organisers:

Alice Blackhurst, doctoral candidate in French, University of Cambridge

Amaleena Damlé, Affiliated Lecturer in French, University of Cambridge

Anna Kemp, Lecturer in French, Queen Mary, University of London