Reclaiming Feminist Futures: Co-Opted and Progressive Politics in a Neo-Liberal Age
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12046 |
| Published date | 01 October 2014 |
| Date | 01 October 2014 |
| Author | Catherine Eschle,Bice Maiguashca |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Reclaiming Feminist Futures: Co-opted and
Progressive Politics in a Neo-liberal Age
Catherine Eschle
University of Strathclyde
Bice Maiguashca
University of Exeter
This article engages with the influential narrative about the co-optation of feminism in conditions of neo-liberalism
put forward by prominentfeminist thinkers Nancy Fraser, Hester Eisenstein and Angela McRobbie.After drawing out
the twin visions of ‘progressive’feminist politics that underg irdthis nar rative– couched in ter ms of either the retrieval
of past socialist feminist glories or personal reinvention – we subject to critical scrutiny both their substantive claims
and the conceptual scaffolding they invoke.We argue that the proleptic imaginings of all three authors, in different
ways, are highly circumscribed in terms of the recommended agent, agenda and practices of progressive politics, and
clouded by conceptual muddle over the meanings of ‘left’,‘radical’ and ‘progressive’.Taken together,these problems
render the conclusions of Fraser, Eisenstein and McRobbie at best unconvincing and at worst dismissive of
contemporary feminist efforts to challenge neo-liberalism. We end the article by disentangling and redefining left,
radical and progressive and by sketching a contrasting vision of progressive feminist politics enabled by this
re-conceptualisation.
Keywords: feminism; left; radical; progressive; neo-liberalism
2009 saw the publication of three high-profile feminist texts: Hester Eisenstein’s book,
Feminism Seduced; Nancy Fraser’s article,‘Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of
History’; and Angela McRobbie’s anthology of essays, The Aftermath of Feminism. Asserting
that feminism not only has failed to challenge neoliberal capitalism effectively but has
actually helped strengthen its hegemony, these works rearticulate a longstanding anxiety
amongst contemporary feminists about the general trajectory of their movement (see also
Eisenstein, 2007; Power, 2009) and, in particular,its proclivity towards institutionalisation,
on the one hand (e.g., Lang, 1997; Martin, 1997), and its preoccupation with culture,
identity and difference, on the other (e.g.,Benhabib, 1995; Nussbaum, 1999). In this way,
the interventions of Fraser,Eisenstein and McRobbie cr ystallise ongoing feminist concerns
about the decline and depoliticisation of a previously vigorous and emancipatory collective
struggle.
While we share the three authors’ apprehension about the neo-liberal project and its
capacity to co-opt feminist politics, we think that their work merits critical interrogation
for two reasons.To begin with, their particular interpretations of co-optation induce in us
a sense of cognitive dissonance to the extent that they render invisible the particular
feminist struggles on which we published recently (Eschle and Maiguashca, 2010). Rooted
in fieldwork on feminists at the European and World Social Forums in Paris, London,
Mumbai and Porto Alegre between 2003 and 2005, our book sought to map the wider
terrain of what we called feminist ‘anti-globalisation’ activism.The f act that such activism
is explicitly opposed to neo-liberalism, among other things, raises questions for us about
empirical overgeneralisation and unwarranted pessimism in the writings by Fraser, Eisen-
stein and McRobbie.
bs_bs_banner
doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12046
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014 VOL 62, 634–651
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
We have an additional reason for engaging with these three texts, however, which takes
our analysis in a different direction. On our reading, in addition to reiterating a narrative of
the downward trajectory of feminism, they also, to varying degrees, expound on how
feminism could be reclaimed from the clutches of neo-liberalism.Their attention to what
we will call here the ‘progressive’potential of feminism is undoubtedly more marginal, but
we believe it underpins the analyses of co-optation that are being put forward and also that
it offsets the pessimism therein by proffering hope for an alternative future for feminism and
for a more feminist future for us all.The question of what exactly constitutes progressive
feminist politics in a neo-liberal age thus lurks in the shadows of these texts. It seems to us
a crucial question, deserving of more sustained critical attention.
In this article, we argue that the proleptic imaginings in the three pieces by Fraser,
Eisenstein and McRobbie all, in different ways, constitute a circumscribed vision of a more
progressive future for feminism – one that is at best unconvincing and at worst injurious,
functioning as it does to dismiss contemporary feminism by comparison. We develop this
argument in four steps, mapping on to the four parts of the article. In the first par t, we
outline the respective stories of co-optation that are on offer here before bringing to the
fore the conceptions of progressive feminism underlying them. In the second part, we
develop a critique of the substantive claims contained therein about progressive feminist
politics, focusing in turn on who is named as the agent or bearer of progressive politics, the
agenda they are urged to pursue and the practices to which they are expected to commit.
In the third part, we continue our critical scrutiny by turning to the conceptual scaffolding
erected by our authors to capture and defend their exemplars of progressive politics.The
fourth and final part of the article seeks to disentangle and refine this conceptual language
in an effort to open up questions of who can enact progressive politics, to what end and
how. In this way, we seek not only to critique the narratives of Fraser, Eisenstein and
McRobbie, but also to begin work on an alternative framework for conceptualising
progressive politics and thereby to reveal a contrasting substantive vision of feminism
reclaimed.
Tales of Feminism Lost and Found
As a necessary first step in establishing the notions of progressive feminist politics that
underpin the arguments of our three authors, we begin by giving some space to the
accounts of co-optation that are, after all, front and centre in their texts and that are fleshed
out in very different ways.
Eisenstein’s Feminism Seduced is historical-sociological in its approach, broadly Marxist
in its orientation, and focuses mostly on the US. Its primar y aim is to trace the ways in
which ‘mainstream’ and particularly liberal feminism has served unwittingly to legitimise
the ideas and practices of corporate capitalism. In Eisenstein’s view, it has done so, in part,
by undermining labour and ‘social feminist’ struggles to protect the distinct needs and
interests of women by,for example, securing the family wage.Instead, by pushing for the full
integration of women into the capitalist economy on the same basis as men – in the name
of professional advancement and equity in the workplace – liberal feminist campaigners
provided a convenient justification for the neo-liberal elite to lower wages and cut welfare
programmes (Eisenstein, 2009, pp. 39–72). In addition to directing their energies towards
RECLAIMING FEMINIST FUTURES 635
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014, 62(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial