Postfeminism as a critical tool for gender and language study. (1st June 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Litosseliti, Lia; Gill, Rosalind; Garcia Favaro, Dr Laura
• Is Part Of: Gender and language. Volume 13:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 22
• Publication Date: 2018-06-01
• Subjects: gender equality -- popular feminism -- gender and language studies -- postfeminism -- gender diversity -- feminist cultural studies; Language and languages -- Sex differences -- Periodicals; Sociolinguistics -- Periodicals; 306.44081
• DOI: 10.1558/genl.34599
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1747-6321

Abstract

Abstract : This article introduces the concept of postfeminism and highlights its value for research in language and gender studies. After discussing theoretical, historical and backlash perspectives, we advance an understanding of postfeminism as a sensibility - a patterned-yet-contradictory phenomenon intimately connected to neoliberalism. We consider elements widely theorised as constituting the postfeminist sensibility, alongside concerns shared by those who take postfeminism as their object of critical inquiry, in addition to an analytic category for cultural critique. The article then illustrates how the postfeminist sensibility may operate empirically, in the context of the doing and undoing of gender equality policies in workplaces. The article responds to calls for the field of language and gender to reinvigorate its political impetus, and to engage with feminist scholarship on postfeminism, particularly as recently developed in media and cultural studies.