Transmuting Grammars of Whiteness in Third-Wave Feminism: Interrogating Postrace Histories, Postmodern Abstraction, and the Proliferation of Difference in Third-Wave Texts

Abstract

AbstractThe issues of race, inclusion, and diversity are central and contested themes in third-wave feminism. Many foundational third-wave texts suggest that race and racial justice are foregrounded in third-wave theorizing, yet women-of-color feminists and their antiracist allies have challenged this inclusive claim. A close reading of mainstream third-wave texts demonstrates that while they incorporate some ideas, theories, and bodies of women-of-color feminism, there are four key syntactical moves that contain and dilute the transformative impact of antiracist feminist scholarship and serve to maintain whiteness. These are the postrace historical narrative, the postmodern abstraction of women-of-color theories, the flattening and proliferation of difference through a long list of interchangeable elements, and irreconcilable contradiction. The second part of this article calls for a decolonial approach that recognizes the constitutive nature of race, engages in historically grounded analysis, and acknow...