Abstract
In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each one understands the current mediated feminist landscape.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.Ahmed, Sara (2010) The Promise of Happiness . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
2.Armstrong, Jill (2017) ‘Higher Stakes: Generational Differences in Mother and Daughters’ Feelings About Combining Motherhood with a Career’. Studies in the Maternal , 9(1): 1–25 .
3.Banet-Weiser, Sarah (2018) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
4.Berlant, Lauren (2008) The Female Complaint: the Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
5.Brock, André (2012) ‘From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation’. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media , 56(4): 529–549 .
6.Brown, Wendy (2015) Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution . New York: Zone Books .
7.Brown, Wendy (2016) ‘Sacrificial Citizenship: Neoliberalism, Human Capital, and Austerity Politics’. Constellations , 23(1): 3–14 .
8.Buck-Morss, Susan (2003) Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left . London: Verso .
9.Butler, Jess (2013) ‘For White Girls Only? Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion’. Feminist Formations , 25(1): 35–58 .
10.Chatman, Dayna (2017) ‘Black Twitter and the Politics of Viewing Scandal’. In: Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington (eds) Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World . New York: New York University Press, pp. 299–315 .
11.Dosekun, Simidele (2015) ‘For Western Girls Only? Post-Feminism as Transnational Culture’. Feminist Media Studies , 15(6): 960–975 .
12.Farris, Sara (2017) In the Name of Women’s Rights: the Rise of Femonationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
13.Favaro, Laura and Rosalind Gill (2018) ‘Feminism Rebranded: Women’s Magazines Online and the Return of the F-word’. Revista Dígitos , 4: 37–66 .
14.Feher, Michel (2009) ‘Self-appreciation; Or, the Aspirations of Human Capital’. Public Culture , 21(1): 21–41 .
15.Flood, Roisin and Rosalind Gill (2018) ‘Postfeminism and Lesbian Cultures’. Under submission to Feminist Review .
16.Gill, Rosalind (2007) ‘Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility’. European Journal of Cultural Studies , 10(2): 147–166 .
17.Gill, Rosalind (2011) ‘Sexism Reloaded, Or, It’s Time to Get Angry Again!’. Feminist Media Studies , 11(1): 61–71 .
18.Gill, Rosalind (2016) ‘Post-postfeminism? New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times’. Feminist Media Studies , 16(4): 610–630 .
19.Gill, Rosalind (2017) ‘The Affective, Cultural and Psychic Life of Postfeminism’. European Journal of Cultural Studies , 20(6): 606–626 .
20.Gill, Rosalind and Akane Kanai (2018) ‘Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism: Affect, Subjectivity and Inequality’. Journal of Communication , 68(2): 318–326 .
21.Gill, Rosalind and Akane Kanai (2019) ‘Affirmative Advertising and the Mediated Feeling Rules of Neoliberalism’. In: Marian Meyers, (ed.) Media and Neoliberalism . Routledge .
22.Gill, Rosalind and Shani Orgad (2015) ‘The Confidence Cult(ure)’. Australian Feminist Studies , 30(86): 324–344 .
23.Gill, Rosalind and Shani Orgad (2017) ‘Confidence Culture and the Remaking of Feminism’. New Formations , 91: 16–34 .
24.Gill, Rosalind and Shani Orgad (2018) ‘The Amazing Bounce-backable Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism’. Sociological Research Online , 23(2): 477–495 .
25.Gray, Herman (2013) ‘Subject(ed) to Recognition’. American Quarterly , 65(4): 771–798 .
26.Grewal, Inderpal (2005) Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
27.Gross, Larry (2012) Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America . New York: Columbia University Press .
28.Gunn, Caitlin (2015) ‘Hashtagging for the Margins: Women of Color Engaged in Feminist Consciousness-raising on Twitter’. In: Keisha Edwards Tassie and Sonja M. Brown Givens (eds) Women of Color and Social Media Multitasking: Blogs, Timelines, Feeds, and Community . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 21–34 .
29.Halberstam, Jack (2011) The Queer Art of Failure . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
30.Hearn, Alison (2017) ‘Verified: Self-presentation, Identity Management, and Selfhood in the Age of Big Data’. Journal of Popular Culture , 15(2): 62–77 .
31.Hegde, Radha S. (2011) Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures . New York: New York University Press .
32.Hochschild, Arlie ([1983] 2003) The Managed Heart: the Commercialisation of Human Feeling . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
33.Hochschild, Arlie and Anne Machung ([1989] 2012) The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home . New York: Penguin .
34.Imre, Anikó, Katarzyna Marciniak and Áine O’Healy (2009) ‘Guest Editors’ Introduction: Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference’. Feminist Media Studies , 9(4): 385–390 .
35.Kanai, Akane (2017a) ‘Girlfriendship and Sameness: Affective Belonging in a Digital Intimate Public’. Journal of Gender Studies , 26(3): 293–306 .
36.Kanai, Akane (2017b) ‘The Best Friend, the Boyfriend, Other Girls, Hot Guys, and Creeps: the Relational Production of Self on Tumblr’. Feminist Media Studies , 17(6): 911–925 .
37.Mason-Deece, Liz (2018) ‘From #MeToo to #WeStrike: What Can the #MeToo Movement Learn from Latin American Feminists?’ In: Verso (ed.) Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo. New York: Verso, pp .
38.McCann, Hannah (2015) ‘Pantomime Dames: Queer Femininity Versus “Natural Beauty” in “Snog, Marry, Avoid”’. Australian Feminist Studies , 30(85): 238–251 .
39.McNicholas Smith, Kate and Imogen Tyler (2017) ‘Lesbian Brides: Post-Queer Popular Culture’. Feminist Media Studies , 17(3): 315–331 .
40.McRobbie, Angela (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage .
41.McRobbie, Angela (2015) ‘Notes on the Perfect’. Australian Feminist Studies , 30(83): 3–20 .
42.Mukherjee, Roopali (2016) ‘Antiracism Limited: a Pre-history of Post-Race’. Cultural Studies , 30(1): 47–77 .
43.Mukherjee, Roopali and Sarah Banet-Weiser (eds) (2012) Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times . New York: New York University Press .
44.Orgad, Shani (2017) ‘The Cruel Optimism of the Good Wife: the Fantastic Working Mother on the Fantastical Treadmill’. Television & New Media , 18(2): 165–183 .
45.Orgad, Shani (2018) Heading Home: Work and the Failed Promise of Equality . New York: Columbia University Press .
46.Phillips, Whitney and Ryan Milner (2017) Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online . Polity Press .
47.Rottenberg, Catherine (2014a) ‘Happiness and the Liberal Imagination: how Superwoman Became Balanced’. Feminist Studies , 40(1): 144–168 .
48.Rottenberg, Catherine (2014b) ‘The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism’. Cultural Studies , 28(3): 418–437 .
49.Rottenberg, Catherine (2017) ‘Neoliberal Feminism and the Future of Human Capital’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 42(2): 329–348 .
50.Rottenberg, Catherine (2018) The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism . New York: Oxford University Press .
51.Sandberg, Sheryl (2013) Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. New York: Knopf .
52.Scharff, Christina (2011) ‘Disarticulating Feminism: Individualization, Neoliberalism and the Othering of ‘Muslim Women’. European Journal of Women's Studies , 18 (2): 119–134 .
53.Scharff, Christina (2016) ‘The Psychic Life of Neoliberalism: Mapping the Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity’. Theory, Culture & Society , 33(6): 107–122 .
54.Scott, Joan W. (1991) ‘The Evidence of Experience’. Critical Inquiry 17(4): 773–797 .
55.Scott, Joan W. (2017) Sex and Secularism . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
56.Silvia Federici (2018) ‘Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons ’, PM Books/Kairos .
57.Slaughter, Anne-Marie (2012) ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have it All’. The Atlantic, July/August .
58.Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra (eds.) 2007. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture . London: Duke University Press .
59.Valenti, Jessica (2014). If Everyone is a Feminist, Is Anyone? The Guardian , 24 November 24: available online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/24/when-everyone-is-a-feminist .
60.Williams, Raymond (1961) The Long Revolution . London: Chatto & Windus .