Mapping second wave feminist periodicals: Networks of conflict and counterpublics, 1970–1990

Abstract

The second wave of feminism saw a surge in women's publishing that resulted in a women-controlled communications infrastructure within feminist periodicals. As a result of women actively contributing to the ‘letters to the editor’ pages, second wave periodicals offer rich source material for tracing the development of feminist theory. Indicative of an invested and participatory counterpublic of readers, second wave periodicals also reveal the internal disagreements and debates which feminists were grappling with during the 1970s and 1980s.Spare rib,Trouble & strife,Revolutionary/radical feminist newsletterandOutwritewere feminist periodicals that all published coverage of the 1982 Lebanese war, and discussed the subsequent implications of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Conflict over how correctly to cover the disagreements, both editorially and ideologically, dominated the correspondence pages of these periodicals. However, mediating conflict was uniquely suited to the medium of a periodical, as it allowed for less outspoken women to see themselves as contributors and add to a plurality of opinion. The visual mapping of these debates by means of Social Network Analysis highlights how the circulation of feminist periodicals enabled communication in the form of a webbed network of debate. The periodical format, and in particular the letters pages, offered a much-needed forum for criticism and disagreement to play out, and in turn the advancement of feminist discourse. As historical source material, they tell the story of a complex and diverse movement, unsettling the notion of a neat chronology of distinct decades of feminist history.