Doing “critical” in a postfeminist era: reviving critical consciousness through peer dialog

Abstract

Critical language awareness (CLA) has aimed to raise critical consciousness in language education about the social aspects of language use, and especially the relationship between language and power, and is considered to play a significant role in enabling learners to participate effectively in democratic citizenship within and beyond the classroom. With a focus on gender representations in the media, I explain CLA's usefulness in the study of gender stereotyping, while also discussing challenges posed to CLA in the emergence of contemporary global postfeminist media representations that are ostensibly pro-women and feminist. Arguing that such postfeminist representations numb critical consciousness and create a climate of post-critique, the article addresses the need to keep open channels of critical dialog about gender and, particularly, about postfeminism. I present a case study of a peer discussion among six female undergraduate students on an online forum in a local university classroom that shows how these students “do” critical mutually and collectively in purportedly (global) postfeminist times.