Abstract
In November 2012, CNN published an article asking, “Where are all the millennial feminists?” (Weinberger, 2012). At the time, this headline appeared to be the latest in a long trend of journalists prematurely sounding the death knell for feminism in the United States. However, as Jessalynn Keller argues in her recent book, new to the latest version of this fraught inquisition is a contentious yet understudied figure through which neoliberalism, postfeminism, and feminist studies intersect—the girl.
In Girls’ Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age, Keller synthesizes and expands her previous research on digital media, popular culture, girlhood, and feminism to consider the political significance of young feminists’ blogging practices. She first underscores the centrality of girls to three different but interrelated discourses that erase young women’s presence within US feminism: the individualistic attitude of neoliberal girl power, the postfeminist denial of feminism’s necessity, and the tensions between previous and current generations of feminists. Then, instead of assuming that girls prefer individualism to collective action, Keller hones in on girl feminists’ activist practices as described by girl feminists, themselves. Keller’s study draws on discourse analyses of eight young feminists’ blogs, interviews with five bloggers, and online focus group sessions with eight bloggers to demonstrate the ways in which social media have created new possibilities for performing feminism in a postfeminist age. While her sample size is small, the depth of Keller’s ethnographic detail sends a clear and compelling message—the time has come to take girl feminists’ activism seriously.
In Chapter 1, Keller explores how blogs function as a “discursive space” (p. 14) where girls can develop feminist identities. Young bloggers’ performance of feminist identities “reveals not only ruptures within postfeminist logic, but also the ways in which online spaces such as blogs have been significant spaces to problematize the caricature of feminism found within postfeminist popular culture” (p. 19). Keller argues that girl bloggers’ performances of feminist identities are resistant practices in and of themselves, as they push the boundaries of femininity, providing girls “a political subjectivity to make sense of the world” (p. 43).
Chapter 2 frames blogging as “accessible activism” (p. 49) for young feminists. Foregrounding girls’ feminist blogging against broader histories of feminist discursive activism and youth subcultural movements in the United States, Keller draws three distinctly political practices into focus: young feminist bloggers’ efforts to educate readers about social justice issues, to build communities in which this activist pedagogy unfolds, and to make feminist values and identities visible. Keller’s rich historical and ethnographic details decenter “masculine and adult-focused conceptions” of activism, instead “opening space for girls to perform political subjectivities that are accessible to their social positioning as girls” (p. 49).
The blogosphere’s ability to foster communities becomes crucial throughout these identity formation processes. Keller argues in Chapter 3 that girl bloggers’ communities are “networked counterpublics, forming networks around particular discursive feminist identities and issues, coming together, dissolving, mutating, and reconvening in a fluid manner” (p. 80). Across these counterpublics, young feminists both withdraw from broader publics to develop feminist identities in conversation with one another and agitate broader publics through collective action. In Chapter 4, Keller explores how these networked counterpublics serve as vital spaces for engaging with feminist history. All of these community-based practices, from public performances of feminist identities to collective reimaginings of feminism’s histories, constitute what Keller, in Chapter 5, calls “a practice of citizenship—a way for girls to participate in the public sphere as political agents” (p. 146).
Keller’s book makes an important intervention at a critical juncture in the history of US feminism, but as she acknowledges in the conclusion, feminism’s status in popular culture has shifted since she concluded data collection in 2014. Due in no small part to online feminism, the postfeminist narrative has transitioned from one that acknowledges feminism to repudiate it, toward one that celebrates feminist rhetoric of personal freedoms to market neoliberal values. Today, instead of editorials hailing the end of feminism and maligning the dreaded “f-word,” young women are inundated with tabloid stories interrogating celebrities’ feminist politics and advertising copy that echoes the feminist rhetoric of self-empowerment. How will girl feminists navigate this contemporary moment, in which a version of feminism has become entrenched in popular culture, but a version that is mired in liberal individualism? Will the Internet continue to provide a platform from which girl feminists might exploit ruptures in neoliberal, postfeminist discourse to plant the seeds of more radical, intersectional feminisms? Or is the liberal feminist brand of individualism intrinsic to social media platforms, with their emphasis on personalization and individual expression? Only time will tell, but the theoretical frameworks advanced in Keller’s book equip feminist media scholars with the robust analytical tools necessary to begin tackling these questions and more.