Not waves but ripples: re-worlding and counter-worlding of intergenerational feminism

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical study derived from the WomenWeLove Project (http://ofwomenwelove.org/) and inspired by the storyworlding methodology. Exploring the central questions of how we became feminists and what enabled us to encounter each other in the Feminist Research Collective, we, the two authors, shared our stories with the women we love and contextualized them within their respective socio-cultural histories of the time. The following reading of the ripple stories focuses on rethinking the canonical narrative of feminist movements as three or more distinctive different waves. It suggests that a re-worlding effort could work with the metaphor of ripples instead of waves, start with microscopic personal and intergenerational narratives, and attend to the macro, cultural, and sociopolitical ramifications of the stories. Putting the ripple stories and the following essay together, the article critically explored storyworlding, feminist agency, consciousness-raising, and inter/intra-generationality in critical feminist studies.