Communication as politics: Feminist Print Media in English Canada

Abstract

The recent attention to diversity and difference in feminist theory and practice has opened important lines of debate relating to the tension between universality and particularity in social and political theory. Taking Habermas's conception of the democratic public sphere as a starting point, the concept of an oppositional public is develped in light of feminist critiques, such as those of Nancy Fraser and Rita Felski, as a conceptual anchor for understanding feminist reconceptualizations of universalistic political categories. Drawing on both feminist theory and critical communications research, this paper argues that feminist print media play an integral role in the constitution of feminism as an oppositional public sphere which embodies the tensions between universality and particularity. Feminist print media in English Canada are taken as an example of a discursive counter-public within which diversity is actively promoted, identities are constructed and political claims are formed and pressed. Because both the process and content of feminist print media demonstrate, in practical, empirically-grounded ways, feminist reconceptualizations of political discourse, it is argued that attention to the construction and dissemination of feminist ideas through feminist media is of both theoretical and political significance in facilitating a revitalized sense of public life.