‘But We Didn’t Mean That’: Feminist Projects and Governmental Appropriations

Abstract

This extract — from an interview with a feminist activist in the UK — inspired the focus of this chapter. Feminist political projects have sought to transform politics and culture while also seeking to extend rights and recognition in the existing polity, but at the same time such struggles have produced resources on which governments draw. This has been understood in terms of an ‘elective affinity’ between feminism and neoliberalism (Fraser, 2009), in which feminist projects are viewed as complicit with the rise of new governmentalities that are not in women’s interests (see also Eisenstein, 2009; McRobbie, 2009). Governments in many countries are seen as having appropriated women’s claims for inclusion and equality in projects of economic development and modernisation. They have mobilised notions of (economic) independence and (social) empowerment in ways that resignify women’s claims for equality, and drawn on notions of ‘diversity’ to legitimate the expansion of consumerism and choice. They have promulgated ideologies of active citizenship that seek to transform the meanings and practices of civic life in ways that simultaneously appropriate and displace feminist politics. This all gives rise to dismay on the part of many women engaged in transformative social and political struggles, as illustrated in the opening quotation.

The saddest thing was when I heard the leader of the Tory party quoting back my own words [about promoting active citizenship among women living in poverty]. I thought what’s happening here? (laugh) [int: and what had happened?] Well I think that they’ve listened to the words, and they have sort of — they are coming back and biting us on the bum with them, saying well we’ve listened, this is what you have asked for. But oh my god we didn’t mean that.