Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2062668
Josef Barla, Sophie Bjork‐James
ABSTRACT This essay introduces the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Climate Change, Gender, and Authoritarianism: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right’. Starting from the hypothesis that anti-feminism functions as a metalanguage in the far-right’s fight against liberal democracy as well as social and environmental justice, this special issue explores how anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism merge and inform one another in contemporary far-right discourses and politics on climate change. Focusing on the connections that form the tissue of far-right imaginaries of sex, gender, race, and the nation in the context of the simultaneous dismissal and mobilisation of ecological issues, a broad picture of the state of research on the entanglement of anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism in the far-right will be laid out. In doing so, this special issue aims at providing us with a much-needed insight into the gendered and racialised political ecology of the contemporary far-right.
{"title":"Introduction: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right","authors":"Josef Barla, Sophie Bjork‐James","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2062668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062668","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay introduces the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Climate Change, Gender, and Authoritarianism: Entanglements of Anti-Feminism and Anti-Environmentalism in the Far-Right’. Starting from the hypothesis that anti-feminism functions as a metalanguage in the far-right’s fight against liberal democracy as well as social and environmental justice, this special issue explores how anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism merge and inform one another in contemporary far-right discourses and politics on climate change. Focusing on the connections that form the tissue of far-right imaginaries of sex, gender, race, and the nation in the context of the simultaneous dismissal and mobilisation of ecological issues, a broad picture of the state of research on the entanglement of anti-feminism and anti-environmentalism in the far-right will be laid out. In doing so, this special issue aims at providing us with a much-needed insight into the gendered and racialised political ecology of the contemporary far-right.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42178674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2051166
N. Spierings, S. Glas
ABSTRACT A current focal point of right-wing populist (RWP) parties across Western societies has been anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism, entangled with their dominant anti-migrant agenda. This clustering of positions overlaps with the conceptual GAL-TAN (Green, Alternative, Liberalist – Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist) distinction in voter studies. Still, numerous voters might transcend this distinction, for instance adhering to femonationalism. By taking a feminist ground-up approach, we reveal how nativist, anti-feminist, and anti-environmentalist attitudes do (or do not) cluster across Western Europe. Our results show that approximately 30% of voters deviate from the GAL-TAN logic, with considerable clusters of citizens combining strong nativism with support for gender equality or moderate nativism with anti-feminism. Further, we estimate the support for RWP parties and show that nativism is core to supporting RWP elites, and anti-environmentalism can provide an additional vote bonus. However, our analysis reveals that the (anti-)feminist and nativist elements of people’s political ideology entail more complex entanglements: both anti-feminist nativist voters and femonationalist voters gravitate to RWP parties. These results imply that feminist quantitative studies are needed to lay bare the average-defying minority groups that can be mobilised to support RWP parties.
{"title":"Green or Gender-Modern Nativists: Do They Exist and Do They Vote for Right-Wing Populist Parties?","authors":"N. Spierings, S. Glas","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2051166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2051166","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A current focal point of right-wing populist (RWP) parties across Western societies has been anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism, entangled with their dominant anti-migrant agenda. This clustering of positions overlaps with the conceptual GAL-TAN (Green, Alternative, Liberalist – Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist) distinction in voter studies. Still, numerous voters might transcend this distinction, for instance adhering to femonationalism. By taking a feminist ground-up approach, we reveal how nativist, anti-feminist, and anti-environmentalist attitudes do (or do not) cluster across Western Europe. Our results show that approximately 30% of voters deviate from the GAL-TAN logic, with considerable clusters of citizens combining strong nativism with support for gender equality or moderate nativism with anti-feminism. Further, we estimate the support for RWP parties and show that nativism is core to supporting RWP elites, and anti-environmentalism can provide an additional vote bonus. However, our analysis reveals that the (anti-)feminist and nativist elements of people’s political ideology entail more complex entanglements: both anti-feminist nativist voters and femonationalist voters gravitate to RWP parties. These results imply that feminist quantitative studies are needed to lay bare the average-defying minority groups that can be mobilised to support RWP parties.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48531712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2021.1995847
Susanne Schultz
ABSTRACT A neo-Malthusian reflex can be observed in the climate debate: statistical calculations link climate change to world population growth and suggest strategies for birth control. The undead neo-Malthusian ghost is being revived, with its reference to the category of ‘population’ and its colonial-racist and social-Darwinist legacies. This article discusses this dangerous development, paying particular but not exclusive attention to German constellations, showing that the actors who strengthen this narrative range from ecological mainstream positions to those right-wing forces who do not deny climate change. However, some climate activist and feminist positions have also contributed by advocating a birth strike as a strategy for containing climate change. The article analyses three dimensions of neo-Malthusianism: the abstract statistical construction of an excess population; the historically deeply rooted racist and classist attribution of this excess to ‘others’; and the totalitarian visions of global ‘fertility’ management. The argument is that even if the racist and classist attributions are not directly addressed by the more progressive political actors, the three dimensions of neo-Malthusianism strongly flow together and reinforce each other. In conclusion, the text takes up anti-Malthusian feminist perspectives which place a special emphasis on the concept of reproductive justice.
{"title":"The Neo-Malthusian Reflex in Climate Politics: Technocratic, Right Wing and Feminist References","authors":"Susanne Schultz","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2021.1995847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2021.1995847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A neo-Malthusian reflex can be observed in the climate debate: statistical calculations link climate change to world population growth and suggest strategies for birth control. The undead neo-Malthusian ghost is being revived, with its reference to the category of ‘population’ and its colonial-racist and social-Darwinist legacies. This article discusses this dangerous development, paying particular but not exclusive attention to German constellations, showing that the actors who strengthen this narrative range from ecological mainstream positions to those right-wing forces who do not deny climate change. However, some climate activist and feminist positions have also contributed by advocating a birth strike as a strategy for containing climate change. The article analyses three dimensions of neo-Malthusianism: the abstract statistical construction of an excess population; the historically deeply rooted racist and classist attribution of this excess to ‘others’; and the totalitarian visions of global ‘fertility’ management. The argument is that even if the racist and classist attributions are not directly addressed by the more progressive political actors, the three dimensions of neo-Malthusianism strongly flow together and reinforce each other. In conclusion, the text takes up anti-Malthusian feminist perspectives which place a special emphasis on the concept of reproductive justice.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44058803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2062667
Michele White
ABSTRACT Anti-feminists, anti-environmentalists, and ableists use memes of activist Greta Thunberg, especially representations of her face, to angrily depict her as irrational and a monster. Participants in these interlinked groups create straw versions of feminist activists and distinguish men’s purported rational development of civilisation from emotional girls, women, and nature. Individuals perform such contemptuous operations, as I argue throughout this article, by misrepresenting Thunberg’s climate and feminist platform and shifting the debate from her environmental advocacy to her embodiment and emotions. I closely read these texts and employ academic literature on anti-feminisms, straw arguments, and straw feminisms to suggest how anti-feminists render simplified figurations. Given my consideration of how anti-feminist, anti-environmentalist, and ableist positions are enmeshed in dismissing Thunberg’s activism and physiognomy, I also outline environmental scholarship that addresses gender and disability studies literature on Asperger syndrome and enfreakment. These are complicated critical gestures, but they are necessary since the over 3,000 memes that I studied, and the associated politics, function by simultaneously dismissing girls, women, feminism, the environment, and people with disabilities. Such an analysis of online texts is pressing since anti-feminisms are designed to disqualify feminist thinking about oppression and the vitality of feminist dialogues with related political movements.
{"title":"Greta Thunberg is ‘giving a face’ to Climate Activism: Confronting Anti-Feminist, Anti-Environmentalist, and Ableist Memes","authors":"Michele White","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2062667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062667","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Anti-feminists, anti-environmentalists, and ableists use memes of activist Greta Thunberg, especially representations of her face, to angrily depict her as irrational and a monster. Participants in these interlinked groups create straw versions of feminist activists and distinguish men’s purported rational development of civilisation from emotional girls, women, and nature. Individuals perform such contemptuous operations, as I argue throughout this article, by misrepresenting Thunberg’s climate and feminist platform and shifting the debate from her environmental advocacy to her embodiment and emotions. I closely read these texts and employ academic literature on anti-feminisms, straw arguments, and straw feminisms to suggest how anti-feminists render simplified figurations. Given my consideration of how anti-feminist, anti-environmentalist, and ableist positions are enmeshed in dismissing Thunberg’s activism and physiognomy, I also outline environmental scholarship that addresses gender and disability studies literature on Asperger syndrome and enfreakment. These are complicated critical gestures, but they are necessary since the over 3,000 memes that I studied, and the associated politics, function by simultaneously dismissing girls, women, feminism, the environment, and people with disabilities. Such an analysis of online texts is pressing since anti-feminisms are designed to disqualify feminist thinking about oppression and the vitality of feminist dialogues with related political movements.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42541571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670
Lisset Coba, M. Moreno
ABSTRACT In the encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis proposes Integral Ecology as the moral basis for defending the biosphere in light of capitalist ambition. At the same time, he defines the monogamous and heterosexual family as foundational to nature and life. These conceptions are disputed by the faithful of the Church in Amazonia, a region where religious missions have played a key role since colonial times. We use the Pan-Amazon Synod (2019) to explore the debates/rituals around concepts of life within and around the Church. We follow the concurrences and contradictions between the Pope, conservative clergy, local missions, feminist theologists, and women indigenous leaders demanding political positions from the Church. From an ecofeminist and decolonial perspective, we propose that Integral Ecology, taken as a progressive position regarding environmental issues, ends up being a Trojan Horse that reinforces anti-feminist and pro-life agendas.
{"title":"The Pachamama in the Vatican Garden: Integral Ecology, Climate Change, and Conservatism in the Pan-Amazon Synod","authors":"Lisset Coba, M. Moreno","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis proposes Integral Ecology as the moral basis for defending the biosphere in light of capitalist ambition. At the same time, he defines the monogamous and heterosexual family as foundational to nature and life. These conceptions are disputed by the faithful of the Church in Amazonia, a region where religious missions have played a key role since colonial times. We use the Pan-Amazon Synod (2019) to explore the debates/rituals around concepts of life within and around the Church. We follow the concurrences and contradictions between the Pope, conservative clergy, local missions, feminist theologists, and women indigenous leaders demanding political positions from the Church. From an ecofeminist and decolonial perspective, we propose that Integral Ecology, taken as a progressive position regarding environmental issues, ends up being a Trojan Horse that reinforces anti-feminist and pro-life agendas.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44450441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2056873
Sophie Bjork‐James, Josef Barla
ABSTRACT In this interview, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe discusses with Sophie Bjork-James and Josef Barla: the issue of gender inequality in the natural sciences; the toxic entanglement of right-wing extremism, sexism and anti-science rhetoric in discourses on climate change; the far-reaching institutional and social consequences of the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science research and advocacy; as well as the politics of ignorance and promising ways to rebuild trust in shared values and a shared world in the face of multiple planetary crises and challenges from climate change to biodiversity loss to the rise of far-right extremism.
{"title":"A Climate of Misogyny: Gender, Politics of Ignorance, and Climate Change Denial – An Interview with Katharine Hayhoe","authors":"Sophie Bjork‐James, Josef Barla","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2056873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2056873","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this interview, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe discusses with Sophie Bjork-James and Josef Barla: the issue of gender inequality in the natural sciences; the toxic entanglement of right-wing extremism, sexism and anti-science rhetoric in discourses on climate change; the far-reaching institutional and social consequences of the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science research and advocacy; as well as the politics of ignorance and promising ways to rebuild trust in shared values and a shared world in the face of multiple planetary crises and challenges from climate change to biodiversity loss to the rise of far-right extremism.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44624534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2062669
Kjell Vowles, Martin Hultman
ABSTRACT In the autumn of 2018 Greta Thunberg started her school strike. Soon she and the Fridays For Future-movement rose to world-fame, stirring a backlash laying bare the intrinsic climate change denial of Swedish far-right digital media. These outlets had previously been almost silent on climate change, but in 2019, four of the ten most read articles on the site Samhällsnytt were about Thunberg, all of them discrediting the movement and spreading doubt about climate science. Using the conceptualisation of industrial/breadwinner masculinities as developed by Hultman and Pulé [2018. Ecological Masculinities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance. Routledge Studies in Gender and Environments. New York: Routledge], this article analyses what provoked this reaction. It explores how the hostility to Thunberg was constructed in far-right media discourse in the years 2018–2019, when she became a threat to an imagined industrial, homogenic and patriarchal community. Using conspiracy theories and historical tropes of irrational femininity, the far right was trying to protect the usually hidden environmental privileges, related to unequal carbon emissions and resource use, that Thunberg and her movement made visible.
{"title":"Dead White men vs. Greta Thunberg: Nationalism, Misogyny, and Climate Change Denial in Swedish far-right Digital Media","authors":"Kjell Vowles, Martin Hultman","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2062669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062669","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the autumn of 2018 Greta Thunberg started her school strike. Soon she and the Fridays For Future-movement rose to world-fame, stirring a backlash laying bare the intrinsic climate change denial of Swedish far-right digital media. These outlets had previously been almost silent on climate change, but in 2019, four of the ten most read articles on the site Samhällsnytt were about Thunberg, all of them discrediting the movement and spreading doubt about climate science. Using the conceptualisation of industrial/breadwinner masculinities as developed by Hultman and Pulé [2018. Ecological Masculinities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance. Routledge Studies in Gender and Environments. New York: Routledge], this article analyses what provoked this reaction. It explores how the hostility to Thunberg was constructed in far-right media discourse in the years 2018–2019, when she became a threat to an imagined industrial, homogenic and patriarchal community. Using conspiracy theories and historical tropes of irrational femininity, the far right was trying to protect the usually hidden environmental privileges, related to unequal carbon emissions and resource use, that Thunberg and her movement made visible.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47188268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2073544
Morgan Rocha
ABSTRACT Environmentalist concerns have been consistently dismissed and disputed by conservative right-wing actors. In this article, I argue that anti-environmentalism, with its persistent links to anti-genderist, racist and classist discourses, is best understood through an ecofeminist lens. Within hegemonic development discourse, nature is routinely apprehended as a commodity to be used. I argue that the conceptual framework which rationalises an unsustainable use of nonhuman nature is aligned to that which maintains unequal human relations, and that recognition of this alignment is vital to fighting the environmental crisis we all face today. Indeed, such recognition may foster more unified rather than fragmented efforts in this fight. In this article, I offer a thematic analysis of the discourses of the current far-right authoritarian Brazilian government and demonstrate how concepts of gender, race and class are intertwined with those of nature, development and sustainability, all contributing to the perpetuation of hegemonic identities which foster environmental exploitation. I conclude that to move forward we should turn instead to a reappraisal of what it means to be human and of what truly constitutes our self-interest as such.
{"title":"Commodified Nature: Intertwined Threads of Identification","authors":"Morgan Rocha","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2022.2073544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2073544","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Environmentalist concerns have been consistently dismissed and disputed by conservative right-wing actors. In this article, I argue that anti-environmentalism, with its persistent links to anti-genderist, racist and classist discourses, is best understood through an ecofeminist lens. Within hegemonic development discourse, nature is routinely apprehended as a commodity to be used. I argue that the conceptual framework which rationalises an unsustainable use of nonhuman nature is aligned to that which maintains unequal human relations, and that recognition of this alignment is vital to fighting the environmental crisis we all face today. Indeed, such recognition may foster more unified rather than fragmented efforts in this fight. In this article, I offer a thematic analysis of the discourses of the current far-right authoritarian Brazilian government and demonstrate how concepts of gender, race and class are intertwined with those of nature, development and sustainability, all contributing to the perpetuation of hegemonic identities which foster environmental exploitation. I conclude that to move forward we should turn instead to a reappraisal of what it means to be human and of what truly constitutes our self-interest as such.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42268754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2021.2011706
R. Daly
ABSTRACT This article brings into dialogue the writings of Hélène Cixous and Bracha Ettinger. I contend that Cixous’s writing unsettles the very questions that form the basis for Ettinger’s key theoretical propositions, making for a productive dialogue between these two feminist thinkers. I identify key concepts and convergences that, when considered together, offer a novel methodology for thinking our way out of a conceptual impasse in which the ‘feminine’ exists either as a lack vis-à-vis the masculine or as unthinkable. What makes this meeting of works particularly generative is their ability to slide under the phallocentricity of Language to approach an ethics of the Other. A Cixousian reclamation of the feminine, coupled with Ettinger’s theorisation of subjectivity, in which the feminine is not foreclosed, offers to feminist debate and criticism an Other axis of sexual difference accessible to all living subjects. Considered together, Cixous’s and Ettinger’s formulations offer radical potentialities for reading with: that is, not a process in which we read as I’s positioned in opposition to an Other, but rather, one in which text and reader co-exist. Such a mode contests the violence that is done by phallic disciplinary structures and indifferent practices of reading.
{"title":"Disrupting Phallic Logic: (Re)thinking the Feminine with Hélène Cixous and Bracha Ettinger","authors":"R. Daly","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2021.2011706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2021.2011706","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article brings into dialogue the writings of Hélène Cixous and Bracha Ettinger. I contend that Cixous’s writing unsettles the very questions that form the basis for Ettinger’s key theoretical propositions, making for a productive dialogue between these two feminist thinkers. I identify key concepts and convergences that, when considered together, offer a novel methodology for thinking our way out of a conceptual impasse in which the ‘feminine’ exists either as a lack vis-à-vis the masculine or as unthinkable. What makes this meeting of works particularly generative is their ability to slide under the phallocentricity of Language to approach an ethics of the Other. A Cixousian reclamation of the feminine, coupled with Ettinger’s theorisation of subjectivity, in which the feminine is not foreclosed, offers to feminist debate and criticism an Other axis of sexual difference accessible to all living subjects. Considered together, Cixous’s and Ettinger’s formulations offer radical potentialities for reading with: that is, not a process in which we read as I’s positioned in opposition to an Other, but rather, one in which text and reader co-exist. Such a mode contests the violence that is done by phallic disciplinary structures and indifferent practices of reading.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49334233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2021.2018992
Ilya Parkins, Rosie Findlay
ABSTRACT Fashion as a cultural industry, with its interface between self and social, is laden with potential for interventions in systems of power. Yet its changemaking potential is susceptible to co-optation by neoliberal discourses that harness politics with a commodified, perfectible individuality that superficially counteracts hegemony even as it subtly reinforces it. So much is evident in nominally feminist wedding website A Practical Wedding, which provides an alternative media space for people who are marginalized by or politically opposed to the politics and commercial logics of the mainstream wedding industry. While many of its posts critique the ‘wedding industrial complex’ and provide meaningful spaces for queer and feminist people to discuss and plan their weddings, the posts relating to fashion and dress are largely emptied of feminist politics. While these posts gesture towards inclusivity and resistance, by harnessing these messages to commodity feminism and neoliberal concepts of self-perfection, these posts ultimately reinforce the heteropatriarchal messages in the industry that APW is ostensibly trying to resist. This article asks: what is at stake in the blog’s excision of fashion from politics? What insights does this cleavage between apparel and the feminist political scene offer for scholars of feminism’s digital ecosystem?
{"title":"Commodity Feminism and Dressing the ‘Best Self’ on A Practical Wedding","authors":"Ilya Parkins, Rosie Findlay","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2021.2018992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2021.2018992","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Fashion as a cultural industry, with its interface between self and social, is laden with potential for interventions in systems of power. Yet its changemaking potential is susceptible to co-optation by neoliberal discourses that harness politics with a commodified, perfectible individuality that superficially counteracts hegemony even as it subtly reinforces it. So much is evident in nominally feminist wedding website A Practical Wedding, which provides an alternative media space for people who are marginalized by or politically opposed to the politics and commercial logics of the mainstream wedding industry. While many of its posts critique the ‘wedding industrial complex’ and provide meaningful spaces for queer and feminist people to discuss and plan their weddings, the posts relating to fashion and dress are largely emptied of feminist politics. While these posts gesture towards inclusivity and resistance, by harnessing these messages to commodity feminism and neoliberal concepts of self-perfection, these posts ultimately reinforce the heteropatriarchal messages in the industry that APW is ostensibly trying to resist. This article asks: what is at stake in the blog’s excision of fashion from politics? What insights does this cleavage between apparel and the feminist political scene offer for scholars of feminism’s digital ecosystem?","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43000896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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