Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

generationality, in theory as well as in (teaching) practice, involves a feminismof sexual difference that affirms the mother-daughter relationship, empiricallyas well as figuratively, precisely because it does not make sense to negate it. 15 Inother words, it does not embark upon what Rich has called a ‘matrophobia.’ 16Negation entails remaining confined within the framework that one intendsto shift, because, as Michel Serres has powerfully stated: “An idea opposed toanother idea is always the same idea, albeit affected by the negative sign. Themore you oppose one another, the more you remain in the same frameworkof thought.” 17 This is clearly illustrated by the second-wave feminist patriarchalconceptualization of generationality. Intending to break through secondwavefeminism as well as patriarchy, third-wave feminism exchanges negationfor affirmation. The creativity that is necessary for this shift includes antirepresentationalism.The theorists whom I call ‘third-wave feminist’ includeSara Ahmed and Claire Colebrook. Third-wave feminist practices are to befound in a teaching context, but also in the socio-political and cultural sphere.The music of for instance the U.S. band Le Tigre (particularly their song ‘HotTopic’) and the Profesora project of the Swedish performer Catti Brandeliusare exemplary instances. However, let me continue first with discussing thesecond-wave feminism of sexual difference that third-wavers work with.Second-wave feminism of sexual difference came in two guises. First, thereis thinking ‘difference’ according to the Anglo-American definition: of which thepractice ‘feminist standpoint epistemology’ 18 was the famous epistemic outcome.Second, there was the feminism of sexual difference according to the Frenchtradition. In the 1970s and 80s this work had, however, not yet become sedimentedinto the classifications of feminist theory that were so central to genderstudies when post-feminism was hailed by its students and by young activists inthe 1990s. Rosi Braidotti ended Patterns of Dissonance, her book-length study ofradical French feminist theories of sexual difference, by asking whether the voicesof the feminists under study had been heard. 19 The implied answer in the beginningof the 1990s was clearly: no, they had not. On the other hand, Rich, who isfrom the U.S., shows how the two traditions converge as well as diverge.15Braidotti in Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister, 11.16Rich, Of Woman Born, 235.17Michel Serres with Bruno Latour, “Third Conversation: Demonstration and Interpretation,” in Conversations onScience, Culture, and Time (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995): 81.18Harding , The Science Question.19Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women and Contemporary Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press,1991), 273.25