Whatever Happened to Women's Liberation? Feminist Legacies of '68

Abstract

The following article was originally presented at the 1998 American Political Science Association's Annual Convention as part of a 30-year retrospective on 1968 sponsored by the Caucus for a New Political Science. Its author was subsequently awarded the 1999 Christian Bay Award by the Caucus for best section paper. The article focuses on the Women's Liberation Movement circa 1968 and argues that contemporary feminism would do well to undertake a critical recovery of three important commitments evident in this early period of radical feminism. Those commitments, as delineated by the author are: (1) a commitment to a mass politic rooted in activism, (2) a commitment to democratic and normatively guided discourse as a basis for action, and (3) a commitment to the conceptual primacy of poor women in feminist analysis. Such commitments, the author argues, might be persuasively reworked from a position of critical social theory with an eye toward re-anchoring feminist analysis in social movement practice. Such a move would help mitigate the de-politicizing trends of current feminist intellectualism.