Who's Afraid of Third Wave Feminism?

Abstract

This article addresses some issues related to the question of the ‘third wave’ within contemporary British feminism, situating British debates within an international context. My argument is that existing accounts of third wave feminism treat it either in terms of what the term means to the author, or it is treated as a coherent and easily recognizable movement or set of positions within contemporary feminism. By contrast, I adopt an approach drawn from poststructuralist discourse theory which emphasizes the diverse and overlapping ways in which the notion of a ‘third wave’ is appropriated by academics and activists alike. From this theoretical base, I trace two different conceptions of the ‘third wave’ – one referring to a poststructuralist and postcolonial critique of the second wave – and another referring to a specific generational cohort of young feminists. I argue that the latter conception has become dominant in the contemporary British context and to a lesser extent elsewhere. The second half of the article develops a critique of the ‘generational paradigm’ of third wave feminism, drawing on interviews with activists and postcolonial academic perspectives.