‘Wave’ Speak Hurts Intersectional Feminism. Here’s How.
Feminist history is more than second-wave feminism and the #MeToo movement.
Feminism has had a complex relationship with time. Western feminist history is often presented and discussed in terms of a progressive series of ‘waves’, centred on decade-specific periodisation.
However, narratives about feminism and its past go beyond an objective account of feminist theory and activism, reflecting the agenda and interests of those who recount them. A nuanced self-reflexivity in feminist historiography is crucial to recover the feminists who had been excluded, erased or distorted by the master narratives of history.
I argue that the use of the ‘wave metaphor’ in feminist history and historiography is problematic, for two reasons.
Firstly, it encourages unproductive generational conflict between so-called second and third-generation feminists. More importantly, it perpetuates a hegemonic—Western—feminist history at the expense of othering and marginalising the experiences of women of colour and queer women.
