Feminist Trouble

Abstract

For more than two decades Islamic veils, niqabs, and burkinis have been the object of intense public scrutiny and legal regulations in many Western countries, especially in Europe, and feminists have been actively engaged on both sides of the debates: defending ardently strict prohibitions to ensure Muslim women’s emancipation, or, by contrast, promoting accommodation in the name of women’s religious agency and a more inclusive feminist movement. These recent developments have unfolded in a context of rising right-wing populism in Europe and have fueled “femonationalism,” that is, the instrumentalization of women’s rights for xenophobic agendas. This book explores this contemporary troubled context for feminism, its current divisions, and its future. It investigates how these changes have transformed contemporary feminist movements, intersectionality politics, and the feminist collective subject, and how feminists have been enrolled in the femonationalist project or, conversely, have resisted it in two contexts: France and Quebec. It provides new empirical data on contemporary feminist activists, as well as a critical normative argument about the subject and future of feminism. It makes a contribution to intersectionality theory by reflecting on the dynamics of convergence and difference between race and religion. At the normative level, the book provides an original addition to vivid debates in feminist political theory and philosophy on the subject of feminism. It argues that feminism is better understood not as centered around an identity—women— but around what it calls a feminist ethic of responsibility, which foregrounds a pragmatist moral approach to the feminist project.

The problems with feminist nostalgia: Intersectionality and white popular feminism

“…The harmful effects of neoliberalism, particularly post-2008, have been well-documented by feminists, including the exacerbation of existing material inequalities for marginalised women (Bassel and Emejulu, 2017); the problematic promotion of market-based solutions for social and political problems (Fraser, 2013); the integration and normalisation of consumerism as aspirational feminism (Rottenberg, 2014); and its damaging implications for radical intellectual critique (Mohanty, 2013). Meanwhile, populist nationalistic politics has presented new challenges and revived old threats, including the use of gender equality and women's rights to advance anti-Islam agendas (Farris, 2017;Lépinard, 2020); attacks on women's reproductive rights (Franklin and Ginsburg, 2019); and the demonization of refugee women (Korolczuk and Graff, 2018;Schuster, 2020). In such a context, the voices of white feminists, which are relatively privileged, have continued to dominate popular feminism (Phipps, 2020), attempting to both set the agenda and create and recreate fantasies of the past.…”

Sexism and the Far‐Right Vote: The Individual Dynamics of Gender Backlash

“…Far-right parties use the value of women's rights and gender equality to legitimize their attacks on Islam and Islamic migrants (Akkerman 2005;Akkerman and Hagelund 2007;Lépinard 2020;Möser 2020). They often assume that migrants' countries of origin have pronounced gender inequality and discrimination challenges, in contrast to their own countries, which they view as having achieved real equality between men and women (Schwab et al 2019).…”