Feminisms: The Evolution

Let’s get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their mouldy neuroses.

Camille Paglia

Today’s perspective on the historical development of feminism gives us a unique opportunity to revisit the question of the needs and requirements to which it responded and thus reassess its current position. In order to understand this complex movement, many perceive the history of feminism in terms of ‘waves’. The first wave concentrated on women’s equal political and economic rights; the second focused on the differentiation of women’s needs and produced radical feminist movements; the third, among other aspects, challenged generalising notions about women and feminism. But can feminism be periodised into waves? We invite papers which discuss this and other topics, such as the origins, development and evolution of feminism in all its ‘phases’, including the current one, from the viewpoint of women’s needs. Do these needs evolve or are they relatively stable and is it rather the recognition of them by society which changes? How do contemporary feminists contribute to our understanding of women’s needs and goals? How do they challenge the universal and homogeneous notion of one ‘feminism’ and encourage the use of the plural ‘feminisms’? We aim to discuss women’s needs as they were addressed in the past and as they are being addressed now. Has, for example, the ‘identity politics’ (which was to target particular personal needs) led to feminism’s being a ‘catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their mouldy neuroses’? Should twenty-first century feminism evolve towards an all-encompassing social agenda and a further politicising of women’s needs or should it be more concerned with art and aesthetics?

We invite contribution from academic staff, postgraduate students, and independent scholars. The submitted articles will be peer-reviewed and, if approved, published in the Summer Issue of the online interdisciplinary journal Skepsi. If you are interested in publishing your research in Skepsi, please send your article, which should not exceed 5,000 words, together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief details about yourself to skepsi@kent.ac.uk. The deadline for articles is 31 March 2011.

Skepsi is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary online journal based in the School of European Culture and Languages at the University of Kent, UK. Skepsi – which originally meant ‘thought’ in Ancient Greek – symbolises our will to explore new areas and new methods in the traditional fields of academic research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.