Changes, Breaks and Continuities: Feminist Theory and Cultural Analysis from Second Wave to the Present

Over the last few years, with the publication of books and articles on third wave and post feminisms, there has been on-going debate about how to understand and write the history of feminism since 1968. This essay is concerned with this history and its implications for feminist cultural politics, and literary and cultural analysis. It looks at the cultural politics and analysis that emerged in second wave feminism, outlines the critiques of universalism and ethnocentrism raised by Black and ``Third World`` feminist critics and looks at the moves to develop forms of postcolonial feminist critical practice. The essay outlines how, from the mid 1970s onwards, feminist literary and cultural critics began to engage with new theoretical and critical modes, which offered different ways of conceptualising and analysing patriarchy that complexified understandings of female difference and women`s experience. It traces the emergence of forms of ``third wave`` feminism variously concerned with generational difference and with appropriating poststructuralist and queer theories in productive ways. It looks at the relationship between ``third wave`` and ``postfeminism.`` The essay concludes by re-emphasising the importance of understanding the complexity of feminism since the 1960s, of not seeing one wave as finished and over, but as leaving its traces and shaping the present in different ways in different locations. It argues that it is often more productive to look at how specific issues have been understood in different ways over the past four decades, and that ways forward require knowledge of and respect for different positions combined with supportive on-going debate.