gills_et_all-third_wave_feminism_a_critical_exploration

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake 17
common to the diversity of third-wave thinking is a complicated legacy; the
third wave is torn between the hope bequeathed by the successes of the civil
rights movement and second wave feminism, and the hopelessness born of
generational downward mobility and seemingly insurmountable social and
political problems worldwide. Of necessity, the third wave locates activism
in a broad field that includes the kinds of issues often called ‘women’s issues,’
but that also encompasses environmentalism, anti-corporate activism, human
rights issues, cultural production and the connections between these. In this
era of half-change, when it is clear how global events intersect local lives,
here is what the third wave knows: women’s issues – and women activists –
cannot and do not stand in isolation.
Technoculture and third wave feminism
Although third wave thinking can be understood in the context of postboomer
economics and demographics, it must be acknowledged that many
women and men choose to identify with third wave feminist perspectives
whether or not they are part of a post-boomer generation. The third wave,
then, refers both to a feminist generation and to emerging forms of feminist
activism. These uses of the term overlap but are not the same. They both,
however, emphasise that feminism takes shape in relation to its time and
place. As feminists of all generations craft responses to our current context
of technoculture, new forms of activism are emerging. A discussion of feminism
and technoculture demonstrates how feminist activism has shifted and why
that shift cannot be wholly attributed to generational difference.
Jodi Dean describes technoculture as an economic-political-cultural
formation characterised
by the rise of networked communication [such as] the Internet, satellite
broadcasting, and the global production and dissemination of motion
pictures; by the consolidation of wealth in the hands of transnational
corporations and the migration and immigration of people, technologies,
and capital; [and] by the rise of a consumerist entertainment culture
and the corresponding production of sites of impoverishment, violence,
starvation, and death (1).
This is a familiar litany of the changes wrought by globalisation. However,
Dean raises the question of individual rights, a concept that marks a fundamental
contradiction in feminisms generally. Dean argues that ‘technoculture
is marked by the end of patriarchalism,’ since the conditions of women’s
lives changed substantially in the last half of the twentieth century (1).
Women now make up a substantial percentage of the paid global workforce,
and although working conditions are often appalling, as major wage earners
for their families they have increasingly had some modicum of control in