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The Many Genealogies of Feminist Activism

Review products

Speaking of Feminism: Today's Activists on the Past, Present, and Future of the U.S. Women's Movement. Rachel F. Seidman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019 (ISBN 978-1-4696-5308-2)

Pushing Back: Women of Color-Led Grassroots Activism in New York. City. Ariella Rotramel. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-8203-5666-2)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2024

Breanne Fahs*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, USA

Extract

The stakes of feminist activism, and the fault lines within feminism, have a newfound significance in this cultural moment. In response to the fall of Roe, the ascendancy of incendiary far-right politics, and the mainstreaming of white-supremacist ideologies, grassroots feminist activism and its impacts have never mattered more. When reading Rachel Seidman's Speaking of Feminism and Arielle Rotramel's Pushing Back, both books that feature interviews and ethnographic work on feminists and feminist groups prior to the 2016 election (Seidman interviewed participants from 2014 to 2016, and Rotramel worked on this material primarily from 2007 to 2011), the gap between the pre- and post-2016 realities seems ever more stark. These books highlight feminisms just prior to the series of aggressive assaults that feminism (and all forms of social justice) would face following the 2016 US presidential election. Both serve as a kind of warning—feminists of all ages understood the hazards of fusing misogyny and white supremacy—and as capturing the histories of feminist activism before the cascade of traumas that would ensue from 2016 to the present day. In this way, feminist ethnographic work and interviews with activists operate as time capsules with unique relevance to the genealogical structure of feminist history and activism. By foregrounding women-of-color-led activisms in particular, historians can trace in this period the movement from theorizing about intersectionality to enacting feminist activisms that draw from experiences of marginalization. The significance of feminist work that built on, and contributed to, theorizing about intersecting identities and interlocking oppressions is brought boldly to life in these two texts.

Type
Invited Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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References

Collins, Patricia Hill. 1994. Shifting the center: Race, class, and feminist theorizing about motherhood. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Combahee River Collective. 1997. The Combahee River Collective Statement. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/.Google Scholar