Postfeminism in Context: Women, Australian Popular Culture, and the Unsettling of Postfeminism (Feminism and Female Sexuality)

Postfeminism in Context argues that 'postfeminism', as a critical term, has been too often deployed in ways which fail to account for historical and cultural specificity. Through an analysis across Australian popular culture across three decades - chick lit novels; 'dramedy' television shows; women's magazines; YouTube vlogs; self-help manuals; and newspapers - we find, not the simple disavowal of feminism commonly seen to constitute postfeminist media culture, but a much more complicated, and in many ways more hopeful, picture. Rather than seeing popular culture's attempts to make sense of feminism as inevitably limited or politically reactionary, as is common, our analysis foregrounds the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that have always been constitutive of postfeminism. Building upon recent scholarship which questions the critical efficacy of postfeminism, we argue that in Australian media, rather than being seen as a thinly veiled form of antifeminism, postfeminism is best conceptualised as a form of popular feminism - marked by both constraints and possibilities. Inevitably, given its transnational nature, we do find some of the core postfeminist tropes, themes, and narratives circulating in Australian popular culture, but that is not all we find. Ultimately, we conclude that Australian postfeminism represents a transitional stage between second wave feminism and the full emergence of a new, as yet unnamed form of feminist politics, which can operate within (and possibly resist) consumer capitalism and neoliberalism. Providing a nuanced account of the varied ways in which feminism has been taken up in Australian media, Postfeminism in Context is essential reading for those interested gender, feminism, and the politics of representation--

• | Author: Margaret A. Henderson, Anthea Taylor
• | Publisher: Routledge
• | Publication Date: Oct 23, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 238 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1138894656
• | ISBN-13: 9781138894655