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Third Way/ve : The politics of postfeminism
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333
Third Way/ve
The politics of postfeminism
T
F
Stphanie Genz
Feminist Theory
Copyright

2006
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
vol. 7(3): 333353.
14647001
DOI: 10.1177/1464700106069040
http://fty.sagepub.com
Abstract This article argues that the Third Way philosophy that has
been adopted by centre-left parties throughout Europe and the United
States provides the conceptual framework to analyse contemporary
postfeminism and its contentious micro-politics that emerges out of
personal and daily gender-based struggles. The notion of a postfeminist
micro-politics complicates the critical perception of postfeminism as a
depoliticized and anti-feminist backlash and offers a dynamic model of
political action that takes into account the multiple agency positions of
individuals today. Postfeminism and the politics it endorses differ from
emergent political movements such as third wave feminism in that they
are not founded on second wave feminist theory and activism. Instead,
postfeminist politics adopts a Third Way perspective to reconcile a
number of conicting concerns, from feminist calls for female equality
and theoretical debates on anti-essentialism to the consumerist demands
of capitalist society. These controversial new junctures are examined by
paying particular attention to postfeminisms female sexual agent who
becomes the entrepreneur of her own image, buying into standardized
femininities while also seeking to resignify their meanings. In particular,
the article discusses the paradoxical possibilities of active
consumption and fashion feminism whereby women endeavour to
achieve empowerment by exerting their consumer agency and using
their bodies as political tools within the parameters of a capitalist
economy.
keywords micro-politics, postfeminism, third wave, Third Way
Western culture has entered a New Age, one which is still searching for its name.
(Fernando de Toro, 1999, Explorations on Post-Theory)
The last decade of the 20th century has seen the emergence of a new philo-
sophical direction and strategy in Western politics: the Third Way.
1
Hailed
by its proponents as the global principle and movement dedicated to
modernizing politics for the information age, the Third Way has been
adopted by centre-left governments throughout Europe and the United
States as a progressive alternative to the worn-out dogmas of traditional
liberalism and conservatism. In particular, the former US President Bill
Clinton, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the former German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder have popularized the Third Way political
philosophy as the rationale underlying the governments of the New
Democrats, New Labour and die Neue Mitte (the New Centre) respectively.
Starting with Bill Clintons presidential campaign in 1992, Third Way
thinking has reshaped the politics of centre-left parties in the face of the
changes affecting a global society and marketplace. In their manifesto
Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte (1999), Blair and Schroeder set
forth the values and programmes indispensable for a renewal of social
democracy, at a time when the leftist doctrines of the past no longer wholly
apply. This renewal is effected by a loosening of the ideological strait-
jacket of left-wing politics and an embrace of the forces of globalization
and micro-economic exibility. Indeed, as Blair and Schroeder remind us,
the past two decades of neo-liberal laissez-faire are over and new
conditions and new realities call for a re-evaluation of old ideas and the
development of new concepts. In their search for honest well-constructed
and pragmatic policies, they promote a go-ahead mentality and a new
entrepreneurial spirit at all levels of society in order to support a market
economy and create the conditions in which existing businesses can
prosper and adapt, and new businesses can be set up and grow. As the
politicians of the New Centre and Third Way astutely point out, the most
important task of modernisation is to invest in human capital: to make the
individual and businesses t for the knowledge-based economy of the
future. In this way, human and economic interests are seen to be inter-
dependent as they are merged in the promotion of the concepts of
efciency, competition and high performance. Moreover, trying to avoid
becoming the passive recipient of the casualties of economic failure, it is
the states responsibility to act as an agent for employment and put in place
a framework that enables individuals and businesses alike to full their
potential and root out poor achievement.
2
This equivalence of human values and needs with those of the market-
place has been criticized as an abandonment of traditional socialist ideals
in its creation of a market society in which human beings become an
element of a market economy human capital. While claiming to retain
its traditional values, social democracy has undoubtedly been transformed
under the tutelage of the Third Way into a welfare-state amalgam of capi-
talism and socialism that seeks to evade the pitfalls of both right and left
ideology by steering a middle course. In fact, Blair and Schroeder (1999)
emphasize that most people have long . . . abandoned the world-view
represented by the dogmas of left and right. It is to those people in the
New Centre that the Third Way social democrats try to speak and enlist in
their search for economic dynamism and the unleashing of creativity and
innovation. These followers of the Third Way are actively encouraged to
exert control over their future by uniting their individual ambitions and
strengths with the economic concerns and demands of the market. The
Third Way manifesto explicitly conceives of its implied audience as a
group of business-minded citizens who are looking for the opportunity to
become entrepreneurs while also admonishing the less ambitious and
334 Feminist Theory 7(3)
market-oriented public that the state should not row, but steer; not so
much control, as challenge. Accordingly, the individuals responsibility
for his/her welfare cannot be ofoaded on to the state but, somewhat para-
doxically, provides the opportunity to exercise his/her rights and gain
empowerment in an employment-led society. The Third Way thus differ-
entiates between its winners and losers, between high and low performers,
by segregating them through a managerialist grid.
Women in particular are sifted out by the Third Ways criteria of
achievement that want to turn them into, what Angela McRobbie calls,
corporate/suburban women workers (2000: 100).
3
The idea of respon-
sible (i.e. economically successful and competitive) citizenship implies a
move away from the expectation of welfare and can be seen as a direct
message to the disadvantaged and the poor, single mothers being a repre-
sentative case of both. Moreover, McRobbie goes so far as to say that, while
women stand at the centre of Third Way politics, this is essentially a
politics for women without feminism (2000: 99). She examines the case of
British politics under New Labour that has demonstrably distanced itself
from the f word to gain ofce (McRobbie, 2001). Paradoxically, at the
same time, feminism has also been taken into account and achieved the
status of Gramscian common sense in the realm of popular consciousness
(McRobbie, 2003). This double entanglement works through an acknowl-
edgement/repudiation dynamic that simultaneously includes and excludes,
accepts and refutes feminism (McRobbie, 2004; Braithwaite, 2004). While
women are clearly expected to pull their weight and fully move into
employment (with which many feminists would agree), they are also
denied the sense of collectivity provided by the feminist movement. As
McRobbie states, the main concern is narrowly me and my family and
any notion of the social good is accessed through this prism of the family
(McRobbie, 2000: 100). Thus, the Third Ways communitarian commitment
nds its expression, not in the rallying of disadvantaged groups as
suggested by the old left, but in the neo-conservative endorsement of
traditional family values, which of course are aligned with the economic
interests of the market. This new individualism and tolerant traditional-
ism are at the basis of the critique that argues that the centre-left has
abandoned, or even betrayed, its socialist roots and principles, literally
having left the left, to adopt not just a centrist but even a right-wing
approach characterized by the embrace of family ethics and consumer
culture.
4
In fact, while the Third Ways spiritual father Anthony Giddens
maintains that the centre shouldnt be regarded as empty of substance,
its detractors have argued that the beyond right and left rhetoric does not
produce a new political space or outlook and instead provides a differen-
tiation from the old left by the implementation of right policies (Giddens,
1998: 45; McRobbie, 2000). Accordingly, the Third Way is not so much an
innovative middle path that seeks a new balance between economic
dynamism and social security, but a cul-de-sac that reverses into a backlash
of right conservatism.
5
Genz: Third Way/ve 335
Politicizing postfeminism
In the following, I propose that the Third Way philosophy that underlies
centre-left politics provides the conceptual framework to understand and
analyse one of the most notorious phenomena to have emerged in a 21st-
century feminist context: postfeminism. Unlike McRobbie who compre-
hends the Third Way as addressing women without feminism, I argue
that the New Centre circumscribes a site for the questioning and construc-
tion of contemporary (post)feminist theory and practice, in particular
through its project of reconciling the irreconcilable and blurring binary
distinctions (McRobbie, 2000: 97). It is my contention that postfeminism
adopts a Third Way principle to effect a contentious renewal of feminist
policies and ideas, thus becoming feminisms Neue Mitte (New Centre).
My aim in this article is twofold as I seek to attribute a (post)feminist
dimension to Third Way thinking as well as politicize postfeminism. In
fact, the notions of a postfeminist politics and/or a political postfeminism
have often been seen as futile, if not oxymoronic. Postfeminism has been
dened as a depoliticization of feminist goals, inherently opposed to
activist and collective feminist politics. Critics have emphasized that post-
feminism takes the sting out of feminism, confusing lifestyle, attitudinal
feminism with the hard political and intellectual work that feminists
have done and continue to do (Macdonald, 1995: 100; Dow, 1996: 214).
Abandoning the structural analysis of patriarchal power, it masks the larger
forces that continue to oppress many womens lives and re-inscribes their
marginality by undercutting the possible strategic weight of politicized
feminist collectivities. Postfeminism is condemned not just for being
apolitical but for producing, through its lack of an organized politics, a
retrogressive and reactionary conservatism.
In this article, I want to problematize and complicate the critical percep-
tion of postfeminism as a depoliticized and anti-feminist backlash that acts
as a ruse of patriarchy to spread false consciousness among women. By
aligning postfeminism with Third Way thinking, I endeavour to advance a
more complex and diversied understanding of the postfeminist phenom-
enon and depolarize the distinctions between different versions of post-
feminism that have been upheld in various academic and media circles.
Indeed, in most discussions of the term, postfeminism has emerged as a
bifurcated term (with a number of different branches) that seemingly leads
two separate lives as, on the one hand, a descriptive category in popular
culture and, on the other hand, an academic stance associated with post-
modern/poststructuralist theorizing. Critics argue that there are two
distinct and competing postfeminist strands, one dened as a mainstream
backlash and the other as postmodern feminism.
6
In an attempt to impose
a hierarchical structure and value judgement, reviews of media/backlash
postfeminism are invariably accompanied and qualied by an obligatory
footnote on progressive academic postfeminism.
7
To me, this distinction
signals an unwillingness to engage with postfeminist plurality and is viable
only as a disclaimer to ensure that postfeminism remains easily categorized
and contained in well-dened boxes. The establishment of two disparate
and disconnected postfeminist versions and locations (academia and the
media) risks re-creating the articial separation between the academic ivory
tower and popular culture that has hampered critical analysis. This dual-
istic conception relies on the assumption that postmodern postfeminism
is non-hegemonic and inclusive whereas popular media postfeminism
depicts a hegemonic negotiation of second wave feminist ideas.
8
I maintain
that this oppositional logic masks signicant points of overlap between
theoretical and popular postfeminisms that both, to a varying degree,
engage with an anti-universalist stance that questions the possibility of a
singular female/feminist identity. In my later discussion of postfeminist
practices, I specically and deliberately draw on a number of theories and
theorists often considered as participating in postmodern analyses in order
to explicate and illuminate popular postfeminisms such as Girl Power
and femmenism.
Moreover, the dichotomization of postfeminism and the representation
of media postfeminism as a depoliticized backlash also run the risk of over-
simplifying the complex position that contemporary feminisms take up
with regard to Western politics and its intrinsic relationship with media
structures. In my understanding, it would be politically nave and myopic
to reduce postfeminism to such a clear-cut analysis and positioning. What
makes this present historical moment that I describe as postfeminist so
conict-ridden but also exciting is precisely that it does not conform to our
preconceptions of where the boundaries of politics, academia and popular
culture should lie. Postfeminism responds to the changing qualities of
female/feminist experiences in the context of a late liberal society in which
people are less willing to become ideologically identied with any politi-
cal movement, even though at the same time they are still experiencing
gendered struggles in their private and public lives.
9
As Patricia Mann
notes in Micro-Politics: Agency in a Postfeminist Era (1994), [g]iven the
chaotic state of individual motivations and responsibilities in this
scenario, it may be wholely unrealistic to expect anyone to worry very
much about establishing rm social identities feminist, feminine,
maternal, or otherwise (p. 115). In this sense, postfeminism does not exist
as a bounded philosophy or ideology, nor can it be discussed as an
organized political movement that gains its force through activist lobbying
at grass-roots level. Instead, I understand it as a late 20th-century cultural
moment that, in Manns words, pushes us to reach beyond the boundaries
of a feminist audience and address the fact that feminist concerns have
entered the mainstream and they are articulated in politically contradic-
tory ways (p. 118).
The approach that I put forward implies not just a reconsideration of
postfeminism but also involves a re-conceptualization of the political
sphere. I suggest that postfeminism gives rise to a problematic and contro-
versial stance that is doubly coded in political terms (being able to act in
both conservative and subversive ways) while also repudiating traditional
activist strategies and communal demonstrations. Postfeminism is part of
a Third Way political economy, participating in the discourses of capital-
ism and neo-liberalism that encourage women to concentrate on their
private lives and consumer capacities as the sites for self-expression and
agency. As I will discuss, postfeminist women become the entrepreneurs
of their own image, buying into standardized femininities while also
seeking to resignify their meanings. This is certainly a politically impure
practice that is at odds with other, particularly feminist, strategies of resist-
ance. Indeed, my analysis of the political potential of the postfeminist age
does not intend to provide an alternative model of feminist politics or
supersede feminism as a political movement that continues to strive for
social change throughout the world. I believe that postfeminism is rmly
located within a highly situated framework that is specic to a time,
location and even class. It can clearly be linked to a late 20th- and early
21st-century context and period in Western Europe and the United States
that emphasizes consumerist, middle-class values and aspirations.
10
The
postfeminist moment is politically confusing in the sense that it no longer
allows us to assume a modernist vision of political agency and resistance.
Yet the inevitable uncertainties and turmoil attendant upon the post-
feminist age should not be interpreted solely and hastily in terms of a
depoliticized backlash that denies any constructive political potential
while employing an overly simplistic rhetoric of opposition to dichotomize
the feminist/postfeminist coupling. In her analysis of postfeminism as
integral to a postmodern age of social confusion, Mann is adamant that
it is necessary to expand the vocabulary of political actions in order to
make sense of individual agency in moments of discursive uncertainty and
political change (1994: 4, 17). She formulates a theory of agency that she
designates micro-politics that takes into account the multiple agency
positions of individuals today (p. 160).
11
This postfeminist politics differs
from previous models of oppositional politics in its adoption of a more
dynamic and exible model of political agency that arises from a struggle
that is not only without a unitary political subject but also without a
unitary political opponent (p. 159). In this context, the micro-political
agent is characterized as a conicted actor who is capable of individually
integrating diverse desires and obligations through creatively recongur-
ing his/her practices and relationships (p. 32).
12
What makes this postfeminist micro-politics so contentious is that it is
not put into practice by a political community engaged in activism but it
results from individual and daily gender-based struggles. Mann admits that
the playing elds of contemporary gendered conicts are still under
construction and therefore, the rules of postfeminist micro-politics are not
clearly dened (p. 186).
13
Other critics have described this state of un-
certainty and provisionality in contemporary politics by referring to a
politics of undecidability that eschews the xity of theoretical purity or
perfectly politically correct practices, or, in Judith Butlers terms, a politics
of discomfort that is a politics of both hope and anxiety, whose key terms
are not fully secured in advance and whose futural form cannot be fully
anticipated (Harris, 1999; Butler, 1997a: 161). These variously named
politics acknowledge that a transformation of Western politics is taking
place and its outcome cannot be fully explained or decided upon from
within the present without limiting the possibilities of this transformation.
Butler forges the notion of living the political in medias res in order to
describe this reconguration of our place and our ground (1995: 131).
One characteristic of this discomforting and undecidable politics is that it
is not perturbed or immobilized by the absence of a priori laws, universal
truths or appeals to absolute authorities and instead, it promotes a double
movement, what Harris calls a philosophical positioning of both at once
(Harris, 1999: 19).
14
This double movement is apparent in Third Way
politics and its search for the New Middle, a mid-point between left and
right, between social justice and the free market. Postfeminist politics
adopts a similar Third Way perspective to reconcile feminist concerns with
female equality, theoretical debates on anti-essentialism, media-friendly
depictions of feminine empowerment and consumerist demands of capi-
talist culture.
15
This results in an ultimately unstable political position
where there are no xed rules for subversion or resistance, no guarantees
of political efcacy. The implications for postfeminist politics are that
backlash and innovation, complicity and critique can never fully be
separated but they are always ambiguously entwined.
I believe that the notion of a postfeminist micro-politics is particularly
useful as it highlights the contradictory forms of agency that postfeminist
women take up in contemporary society. In what follows, I will concen-
trate on the postfeminist sexual agent who uses her feminine body in a way
that involves both active and passive forms of recognition and motivation.
While this sexual micro-politics might not address or be of relevance to the
global female population, it does speak to a number of Western women
who cannot be dismissed by a reverse denition of what they are not:
non-feminist, non-activist, non-political. My endeavour to politicize post-
feminism can be seen as an acknowledgement of postfeminisms plurality
as well as an attempt to explain and theorize the politically ambivalent
positions that postfeminist women take up. Postfeminism and the politics
that it endorses demand a detailed enquiry and examination that we, as
feminist critics, cannot turn our backs on.
Third Way/ve
Before further elaborating on the notion of postfeminist politics, I want to
clarify why I argue for an exchange and interrelationship between post-
feminism and the Third Way. Indeed, postfeminism might not be the most
obvious choice of a Third Way feminist position, given the existence of
what has come to be designated as third wave feminism. Even beyond the
manifest semantic similarity, the third wave seems to be a serious
contender for New Centre feminism as it seeks to combine a dedication
to a feminist political agenda, the theoretical maturity of academic post-
structuralism and an awareness of the importance of consumption. Accord-
ing to the third wave agenda, there is no one right way to be: no role, no
model (Reed, 1997: 124). In fact, contradiction . . . marks the desires and
strategies of third wave feminists who have trouble formulating and
perpetuating theories that compartmentalize and divide according to race
and gender and all the other signiers (Heywood and Drake, 1997: 2;
Walker, 1995: xxxiii). The third wave is clearly informed by postmodern
theorizing as well as a multiculturalist sensibility, refusing a singular
liberal-humanist subjectivity. Simultaneously, the movement is committed
to political action, asserting that breaking free of identity politics has
not resulted in political apathy but rather has provided an awareness
of the complexity and ambiguity of the world we have inherited (Senna,
1995: 20).
The third wave also situates itself within popular culture and under-
stands a critical engagement with the latter as the key to political struggle.
As the third wavers Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake assert, it is this
edge, where critique and participation meet, that third wave activists must
work to further contentious public dialogue (Heywood and Drake, 1997:
52). While the third wave subject is formed within a relentlessly consumer-
oriented culture, it is also informed by the second waves critique of
consumption. The very invocation of third wave feminism and the
mobilization of the adjective third can be interpreted as an act of strate-
gic deance against popular pronouncements of a moratorium on feminism
and feminists.
16
Mimicking the nomenclature of its predecessors, third
wave feminism acknowledges that it stands on the shoulders of other,
earlier, feminist movements. Yet, at the same time, its agenda does not
mirror the preceding waves theories straightforwardly and unquestion-
ingly. Rather, it makes things messier by embracing second wave
critique as a central denitional thread while stressing ways that desires
and pleasures subject to critique can be used to rethink and enliven activist
work (Heywood and Drake, 1997: 7).
The third wave neatly entwines the twin imperatives of continuity and
change, bridging the gap between theory and practice, popular culture and
academia/politics. Its inclusivist stance appears to tick all the right boxes
for a successful coalition partnership and exchange with Third Way phil-
osophy. Yet, despite its undeniable appeal, the third wave is not the natural
ally of Third Way thinking and politics, precisely because it lacks what it
denounces with regard to postfeminism: backlash conservatism. In fact, the
third wave relies on a rhetoric of antithesis to differentiate itself from post-
feminism and its ambivalent, even anti-feminist and reactionary connota-
tions. As Heywood and Drake make explicit, within the context of the third
wave, postfeminist characterizes a group of young, conservative femi-
nists who explicitly dene themselves against and criticize feminists of the
second wave (1997: 1). According to this binary logic, postfeminism is
conceptualized in opposition to second and third wave feminisms as a
conservative/patriarchal ploy to undermine the womens movement.
This distinction between postfeminism and third wave feminism is
misleading in the sense that it rests on an overly simplistic view of post-
feminism as defeatism that, as one third wave critic notes, shuts down
ongoing efforts to work toward change on the level of both theory and
practice (Sanders, 2004: 52). I believe that the dividing line between post-
feminism and third wave feminism cannot be drawn by imposing a
denitional straitjacket on the term postfeminism. Rather, it is to be found
at the level of foundations, where these notions originate and their loyalties
lie. In this way, third wave feminism establishes itself as a political
movement that depends on a close dialogue with second wave feminism
and its organized opposition to womens exclusion and oppression. Third
wave feminists see their work as founded on second wave principles
while offering a more complex theorisation of multiple forms of oppres-
sion that received relatively little attention within the second (Sanders,
2004: 51; Stone, 2004: 95). As Heywood and Drake specify, the third wave
refers both to a feminist generation and to emerging forms of feminist
activism (Heywood and Drake, 2004: 17, emphasis in original).
17
Contrast-
ingly, postfeminism does not exist as an emerging political movement and
ideology with strong afliations to second wave feminist theory and
activism. Its origins are much more impure, emerging in and from a
number of contexts (academia, media and consumer culture) that have
been inuenced by feminist concerns and womens social enfranchise-
ment. Unlike third wave feminists, postfeminist women are not motivated
by a desire to prove their feminist credentials to second wavers, what
Baumgardner and Richards describe as a scrambling to be better feminists
and frantically letting these women know how much we look up to them
(2000: 85). However, this unwillingness or rather indifference to position
themselves in the generational wave narrative does not turn them into the
unwitting victims of a fashionable postfeminist backlash. While the
backlash is certainly a component of the postfeminist moment that cannot
be denied, to dene postfeminism as a straightforward depoliticization and
colonization would be critically reductive and unhelpful.
18
Following
Rebecca Munfords argument in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical
Exploration (2004), I believe that there is an overlap between third wave
feminism and postfeminism but, unlike Munford, I do not interpret this as
a dangerous and deceptive slippage but rather as an unavoidable conse-
quence of the social and political confusion in contemporary culture
(p. 150).
Far from denying postfeminisms inherent conservatism, the backlash
must be seen as an integral part of its outlook and politics. Yet, it is also
the case that a denition of postfeminism as backlash cannot be upheld as
it oversimplies and reduces its critical and political potential. Postfemi-
nism does not mark a simple break from feminism, nor a straightforward
continuity with it. Instead, it is representative of an uneasy middle ground
that aligns it with the Third Way and its progressive/retrogressive manifes-
tations. Following Linda Hutcheon, I use the term complicitous critique
to describe and theorize postfeminism and its attempts to depolarize the
political and feminist landscapes of the 21st century (Hutcheon, 1989). As
Hutcheon notes, this is a strange kind of critique, one bound up . . . with
its own complicity with power and domination (Hutcheon, 1989: 4).
Postfeminisms complicitous critique is always compromised and contro-
versial, setting up a negotiating site that problematizes dualistic
constraints. This stance has been described as post-theoretical in its move
from the exclusionary logic of either/or to the inclusionary logic of
both/and (Rutland, 1999: 72, 74). As Fernando de Toro explains, post-
theory entails exploiting the in-between spaces . . . a transitory space, a
space other, a third space that is not here/there, but both (Toro, 1999: 20).
Postfeminisms Third Way thus disengages the dualistic frameworks of
Platonism to engender a destabilization of and movement across binaries
and establish a contested in-betweenness.
This ambivalent blur of the binary is at the bottom of the denitional
struggles that have produced antithetical perceptions of postfeminism as
a particular vigorous and invasive weed that infests the otherwise healthy
garden of feminism or, contrastingly, the new and improved mind of
feminism (Elam, 1997: 55; Cacoullos, 2001: 80). I do not seek to settle the
disagreement over postfeminisms meanings or provide a denite and nal
answer to the transgression/containment arguments. Instead of discussing
postfeminism in static terms and paralysing it by a strict descriptive
category, I maintain that it is a site of interrogation that refuses to be im-
mobilized through polarization. I resist dichotomous formulations that
want to x and dene postfeminisms directionality and politics as either
feminist or non-feminist, academic or popular, subversive or contained,
neo-conservative or radically revolutionary. A criticism that insists on the
necessity of binary distinctions is doomed to conclude with unsatisfactory
generalizations and simplications that do not take into account post-
feminisms plurality and contradictions. In contrast, I want to rethink the
terms of the postfeminist/Third Way debates by questioning the either/or
structure that underlies many of their articulations and understandings. In
Hutcheons terms, postfeminisms Neue Mitte is much more resolutely
dialogic or paradoxical, characterized by a complicitous critique and
double encoding, whereby it can assume both progressive and conserva-
tive positions, incorporating misogyny and anti-feminism as well as
resilience and pro-feminism (Hutcheon, 1990). It is precisely at the
junctures of binary divisions that the postfeminist Third Way posits its
propositions and its challenge to established notions of politics and
feminism.
Adopting Fernando de Toros (1999) terminology, postfeminisms
critical/political position can be identied as inhabiting the, the resigni-
cation of hegemonic structures and their subversion from the inside. The
new postfeminist centre uses a logic of renewal through synthesis in order
to de-doxify the givens that go without saying in a capitalist/patriarchal
society and hollow them out from the inside (Hutcheon, 1985, 1989).
Accordingly, the task of postfeminisms critical and/or political endeavour
is not to establish a viewpoint outside power constraints but it is to locate
subversive strategies that are enabled by those very limitations.
19
Yet, this
also means that postfeminist politics cannot avoid the double binds
inherent in these strategies of appropriation. Recuperation is ever a real
possibility as the postfeminist Third Way does not effect a radical un-
mooring of the binary between left and right, feminism and patriarchy. It
is an inherently impure space that preserves what it seeks to super-
impose. Consequently, postfeminisms political strategies are always
double-edged, historically provisional and liable to oscillate in and out of
a critical attitude. Importantly, this conclusion is not to be understood as
a conation of resistance and recuperation (i.e. as a resistance that is really
a recuperation of power or as a recuperation that is really a resistance).
What it does imply is that risk will always be an unavoidable component
of the Third Way, offering no rules or guarantees of political efcacy.
20
Postfeminist frontiers
In the remainder of this article, I will address some of the junctures that
the new postfeminist centre opens up and I will discuss who is positioned
in this third space of the in-between, in other words who is the post-
feminist subject. The intersection of individual and communal values that
has been at the forefront of Third Way centre-left politics also plays a major
part in postfeminisms Neue Mitte. Postfeminism has often been criticized
for effecting a de-collectivization of the feminist movement, translating
feminist social goals and political ideas into matters of individual choice
and lifestyle. Second wave feminist critics take a unanimously negative
view of postfeminisms individualistic stance, arguing that the distinction
between feminist politics and feminist identity is in danger of completely
disappearing (Dow, 1996: 209). The resort to individualism is said to
negate feminism, removing the basis for womens collective self-
understanding and action (for example, Cott, 1987). According to second
wave critiques, the danger lies not in postfeminisms celebration of the
personal struggles and triumphs of women, but rather in mistaking these
often satisfying images for something more than they are: a rhetoric of
tokenism that redenes oppression and structural disadvantage as personal
suffering while reframing success as an individual accomplishment (for
example, Laws, 1975; Helford, 2000). This tokenism obscures the collec-
tive nature of oppression and the need for organized action to remedy
social injustice. Consequently, postfeminism is identied as a privileged,
distinctly middle-class perspective appealing to young women
professionals imbued with condence, an ethic of self-reliance and the
headstart of a good education (Kaminer, 1995: 23). Angela McRobbie refers
to this breed of postfeminist women as the TV blonde who presents a
fantasy of female omnipotence and exudes a happy hedonism while being
unanchored politically between left and right (McRobbie, 2001). Critics are
resolute that postfeminism actively contributes to a power and privilege
imbalance that persists among women. At its best, postfeminisms individ-
ualist discourse is a luxury the majority of women cant afford while at
its worst the conation of the personal and the political . . . enables
backlash politics (Lee, 1988: 172; Gillis and Munford, 2004: 176). Follow-
ing these critiques, postfeminism easily distinguishes between its winners
and its losers and the postfeminist woman, if there is one, is rich and can
afford to consume clichs (Lee, 1988: 172).
While these reviewers rightly highlight postfeminisms individualistic
agenda and backlash component, the danger lies in a potential failure to
recognize and/or oversimplify its power to attract and be an object of
identication. The notion of tokenism is neither adequate nor accurate to
account for postfeminisms appeal as it relies on a facile binary between
the postfeminist haves and have-nots. Postfeminism allows for the
plurality and contradictions of contemporary female experience in Western
cultures that cannot be explained by a rich/poor dichotomy. It taps into a
variety of often competing discourses, seeking to combine the supposed
freedoms of neo-liberalism with the demands of a capitalist economy, the
female agency celebrated by the feminist movement with a patriarchal
interest in heterosexual femininity. Postfeminist individualism plays an
important part in this attempt to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable as
it questions the possibility of a singular female/feminist identity, a
common ground from which to construct a collective politics and criticism.
Postfeminisms solipsistic trend declares Woman to be an indeterminate
and open category by undermining the a priori assumption that there is a
continuous eld of experience shared by all.
This rejection of monolithic concepts of Woman is double-edged as it
helps to mask an inherent conservatism that betrays postfeminisms
complicitous critique. Postfeminisms critical stance is unavoidably
compromised as the potential for innovation and change is always
accompanied by the threat of backlash. By seemingly foregrounding the
differences between women, postfeminism also forcefully undercuts them
by reinforcing patriarchal doctrines and modes of being/appearance. The
intermingling of backlash and innovation is exemplied by postfeminisms
Third Way between feminism and femininity that has emerged as a new
site of female subjectivity in Western cultures. Postfeminism addresses the
opposition between feminist and feminine identities that has been central
to second wave politics and its critique of patriarchy. It calls attention to
the fact that much feminist criticism has oversimplied the problematic
surrounding femininity through a reinstatement of rigid and immutable
categories of feminist resistance and feminine conformity. Indeed, in many
feminist treatises, femininity is discussed as a form of obedience to
patriarchy and a disciplinary strategy that works through the internaliza-
tion of inferiority by placing a panoptical male connoisseur . . . within the
consciousness of most women (Bartky, 1990: 72). The second waves
solution to this enforced state of docility and submissiveness is the rejec-
tion of all feminine attributes and modes of self-presentation that block the
development of a feminist consciousness (see, for example, Daly, 1979).
This encapsulates the feminist anti-thesis that applies the oppressor/
oppressed model and insists that women are the done to, not the doers
(Bordo, 1993: 22, emphasis in original). The underlying assumption is that
feminism and femininity are mutually exclusive and the adoption of one
of these identities can only be achieved at the expense of the other.
Postfeminism, rightly I maintain, distances itself from the idea of an
enlightened feminist elite that strives to illuminate the obfuscated and
silent majority of women. It suggests that the feminist protest against the
damaging effects of feminine myths does not have to culminate in a
counterproductive anti-feminine stance that opposes the value of feminin-
ity in itself. The postfeminist Third Way establishes a link between these
previously opposed alternatives as it carves out a new subjective space for
women, allowing them to be feminine and feminist at the same time,
without losing their integrity or being relegated to the position of passive
dupes. In particular, postfeminism makes room in its ranks for
femmenists who stage a sexualization of the feminist body in order to
construct a new femininity (or, new femininities) around the notions of
autonomy and agency.
21
These sexualized representations are not designed
to portray women as victimized objects but as knowing and active sexual
subjects. Rosalind Gill describes this process as a shift from sexual objec-
tication to sexual subjectication and she uses the now infamous
example of the little tight T-shirt bearing slogans such as fcuk me or t
chick unbelievable knockers to illustrate this move (Gill, 2003). This
neatly encapsulates postfeminisms link between individual and economic
concerns as, indeed, a browse through any British High Street or American
shopping mall bears witness to the ubiquity of this phenomenon and the
ease (and almost pride) with which women/girls have embraced the titles
of Sexy Bitch with Soul and porn star.
While critics have tended to dismiss these everyday acts of shopping as
instances of patriarchal colonization, the paradoxical possibility of active
consumption also contains the seeds of a sexual micro-politics whereby
women exert their consumer agency to achieve empowerment by using
their bodies as political tools within the parameters of a capitalist
economy.
22
The balancing act from High Street activity to emerging
political activism has recently been accomplished by controversial
American designer/writer/womens rights activist Periel Aschenbrand
whose provocative T-shirt campaigns use sexuality to sell feminism to a
new generation. Founder of the company body as billboard which sells
T-shirts across the United States and Europe, Aschenbrand summarizes her
mission statement in the following way:
we should reject renting our bodies as billboard space for odious companies and
use them instead to our advantage, to advertise for shit that matters. We should
be wearing politically minded clothing, clothes that say things people arent
saying. We should use our tits to make people think about the things no one is
making them think about. (2005: 66)
Slogans include campaigns against the Bush administration, date rape,
domestic violence and the erosion of American abortion legislation.
Aschenbrands clothing items, most (in)famously exemplied by a T-shirt
bearing the words The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own (which also ttingly
doubles up as the title of her autobiographical polemic (2005)), have been
taken up and worn by a number of celebrities and feminist writers includ-
ing Gloria Steinem, Susan Sarandon and Eve Ensler, playwright of The
Vagina Monologues.
23
Aschenbrands motivations can be understood in
terms of a sexual micro-politics that seeks to effect change and redistrib-
ute the dimensions of female agency by reworking the systems of sexual
and economic signication. As she succinctly puts it, [i]f Michael Moore
made being politically involved hip, I wanted to make it sexy, I am on a
mission to change things one pair of tits at a time (2005: 67, 109).
24
Aschenbrands fashion feminism illustrates the precarious boundary
between, what Munford calls, fashionable postfeminism characterized by
apolitical individualism and the more politically aware third wave
feminist activism that uses style as part of a politics of identication
(2004: 149, 147, emphasis in original). Munfords discussion of Girl Power
is interesting in this respect as it highlights different manifestations of girl
culture, from the punk group Riot Grrrl to the popular Girlie. According to
Munford, in the transition from underground music scene to mainstream
culture, various dangers of colonisation and recirculation become
apparent and they are epitomized by the lipglossed Spice Girls who fall
prey to this dangerous slippage between feminist agency and patriarchal
recuperation (pp. 148, 149). In my opinion, this slippage cannot be
avoided (least by setting up a dichotomization between postfeminism and
third wave feminism) and is symptomatic of the different dimensions of
agency that women participate in. In this way, it might be futile to erect a
line of demarcation and differentiation between what constitutes post-
feminist activity and third wave activism as they both involve micro-
political forms of gendered agency that play to the expectations of the
patriarchal gaze while hoping to rewrite the patriarchal codes which deny
women . . . the quality of recognition they aspire to (Mann, 1994: 87).
This is not to dismiss or discredit any criticism that has been levelled at
sexual micro-politics and subjectication, including Girl Power. These
endeavours undoubtedly commodify and objectify female bodies by using
irony as a get-out clause to make women buy into the old patriarchal stereo-
types that tie them to their feminine/sexual appearance (for example,
Whelehan, 2000). Yet, at the same time, these contemporary uses of stan-
dardized sexual imagery also have the potential to uproot the feminine
commodity and make it available for alternative signications. As Patricia
Mann cautions us, [p]articipation in such risky signifying enterprises is
increasingly a part of everyday life for women and it is bound to be a
messy process (1994: 87, 88). In my opinion, what will prove to be even
messier will be the question of how to reinforce this micro-political action
at a macro-political level. I remain hesitant about such a possibility, yet
hopeful that the old patriarchal script can be exorcized by a female/
feminist agency that is no longer devoid of femininity. The multiple
agency positions that women take up in contemporary Western society are
confusing and conicting as they must attempt to integrate a highly varied
set of motivations, obligations and desires (Mann, 1994). Perhaps, this can
be described best with reference to the Foucauldian term assujetissement
that explains the dialectic of subject formation as involving both the
becoming of the subject and the process of subjection (Butler, 1997b: 83).
25
In this oxymoronic formulation, the subject is instituted through constraint
and s/he inhabits a contradictory site that is constraining and liberating,
productive and oppressive.
This doubled process comes to the fore in postfeminist politics that
allows for a paradoxical kind of political activity that always expresses the
polysemic voices of progress and backlash. This does not mean that post-
feminism is disqualied from politics but that it is a politically ambivalent
formation that seeks to adopt a Third Way to reconcile the irreconcilable.
The existence of Third Way postfeminist politics does not eliminate the
continuing importance of other political forms and practices, nor does it
undermine the basis of and need for a feminist resistance. Rather, it points
to the mixed messages and conicting demands of a neo-liberal consumer
culture that offers women both freedom and enslavement. Ultimately, the
Third Way is an inherently contradictory path that cannot be walked
without anxiety and uncertainty as to where its nal destination lies.
Notes
I would like to thank the anonymous Feminist Theory reviewers for their
helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Dr Benjamin Brabon for his insight-
ful comments.
1. The term Third Way can be credited largely to the social theorist
Anthony Giddens whose book The Third Way (1998) discusses the
renewal of social democracy in a world where the views of the old left
have become obsolete, while those of the new right are also inadequate.
He uses the label Third Way to refer to the debate about the future of
left-of-centre parties in the face of the major changes of our time
globalization, technological change, the coming of the knowledge-based
society and changes on the level of individual life.
2. One example of this would be the Welfare to Work programmes that are
designed to raise incomes for those previously out of work as well as
improve the supply of labour available to employers (Blair and
Schroeder, 1999). Commentators have criticized this British/German
equivalent to the American workfare programmes as a deliberate
creation of a low-wage sector that sustains social inequality.
3. McRobbie offers a detailed description of these Third Way women:
Blonde, late 30s, well groomed and attractive, suburban-living, two cars,
caring about schools and health, but deeply consumerist and embracing
an individualism within the family unit (2000: 100).
4. As the New Democrats Online web page highlights: The Third Way
represents an acceptance of two verdicts of history that many on the Left
have been slow to acknowledge. First, capitalism is the best economic
system yet devised for creating growth and efciently allocating
resources, and second, two-parent families nurturing such values as faith,
work, personal responsibility, civility, and openness to new ideas are the
best social unit yet devised for raising children. The full article is
available at http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=128&subid=187&
contentid=1723
5. In this respect, it is vital to note the election losses by centre-left
governments throughout Europe and the United States. In fact, of the 13
European Union nations that were under centre-left leadership, only one
remains: the United Kingdom. Germany is the latest country to see its left
party SPD being superseded by the conservative Christian Democrats
CDU at the elections of 18 September 2005. Outside Europe, the United
States provides the most prominent example of Third Way politics giving
way to a conservative government, with the New Democrats being
superseded by the election (and re-election) of George W. Bush.
6. See Deborah L. Siegels article in Hypatia (1997) for more on the two
versions of postfeminism. Also see Ann Brooks Postfeminisms (1997) for
an analysis of theoretical postfeminism and Imelda Whelehans
Overloaded (2000) for a discussion of popular postfeminism.
7. For examples of these disclaimers, see Ann Brooks introduction in
Postfeminisms (1997) and articles by Ednie Kaeh Garrison, Rebecca
Munford and Kristyn Gorton in Third Wave Feminism (2004).
8. In Brooks theoretical account, postfeminism is conceptualized as a
position [that] resists closure of denition, a non-hegemonic feminism
capable of giving voice to local, indigenous and post-colonial feminisms
(1997: 5, 4). Contrastingly, Fernando de Toro and Bonnie Dow dene
postfeminism as the feminism which works with patriarchal theory,
absorbing and appropriating feminist rhetoric and events and
representing them in media discourse for public consumption (Toro,
1999: 16; Dow, 1996: xvi).
9. The decline in participation (often termed voter apathy) in national and
local elections, hovering in the United Kingdom around 60% and 40%
respectively, is a representative example of this.
10. I do not want to present postfeminism as the only feminist alternative
nor do I wish to write out of feminism womens struggles in other parts of
the world, say the global South or the former Soviet bloc states, which
would nd it difcult to relate to postfeminisms consumerist and
individualist notions of empowerment.
11. According to Mann,
It is more politically compelling, as well as more analytically precise, to think
in terms of the multiple agency positions we occupy. Each engaged individual
must attempt to integrate and reconcile a confusingly varied set of motivations,
obligations, and desires for recognition or reward on a day-to-day basis, and
over time. (1994: 171)
12. The key to this micro-political agency is, as Mann notes, an engaged
individualism that allows individuals to combine economic and
interpersonal forms of agency, and experiment with various identities as
well as diverse familial and community relationships (1994: 124).
13. In fact, the lives of contemporary women, as multiply-engaged
individuals attempting to integrate diverse and conicting forms of
agency, do not t within available social narratives (Mann, 1994: 186).
14. As Harris notes, the politics of undecidability strives to discover a
position between wild hope and total pessimism, in order to deal
pragmatically with the fact that we are always within that which we
would criticize without falling into passivity or relativism (1999: 180).
15. This is not to say that postfeminist micro-politics and Third Way politics
are the same but they share a number of characteristics (including the
emphasis on individualism and a consumerist economy and the
coexistence of previously opposed discourses in one historical/political
site).
16. As Deborah L. Siegel notes, one should think of the third wave as
overlapping both temporally and spatially with the waves that preceded
it. . . . Just as the same water reforms itself into ever new waves, so the
second wave circulates in the third, reproducing itself through a cyclical
movement (1997: 601).
17. Another point of difference can be found at the level of location. Whereas
postfeminism can be identied as a late 20th-century moment that has no
or little relevance to women outside the United States and Western
Europe, third wave feminists have turned to US Third World feminism
for the terms of their argument, indicating an engagement with feminist
discourses which moves beyond the Anglo-American models endorsed by
the second wave (Saadallah, 2004: 224).
18. In this way, I do not adopt the denition of postfeminism as after
feminism but I highlight the programmatic indeterminacy of the prex
whereby, as Rotislav Kocourek notes in his discussion of the prex post
in contemporary English terminology, an expression post + X can
either be X or non-X, or both at the same time, which makes the
derivative motivationally ambiguous (1996: 106).
19. My theorization of the New Centre owes much to the Foucauldian insight
that sees power and resistance as inescapably allied and insists that while
power is always already there and one is never outside it . . . this
does not entail the necessity of accepting an inescapable form of
domination or an absolute privilege on the side of the law (Foucault,
1980: 141).
20. Following Giddens, risk is an essential component of a future-oriented
environment. As he notes in an online interview, [a] lot of business, a lot
of government, a lot of the management of technology is essentially about
the sophistication of risk management. . . . The notion of risk has nothing
to do with living in a risky world. Its much more to do with how you
manage the world and how you manage future time in relation to the
changes that we introduce into the world. The full text is available at
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/giddens/giddens_index.html
21. Jeannine Delombard describes this feminine politics by alluding to Audre
Lordes famous precept, femmenism is using the masters tools to
dismantle the masters house (1995: 22). Femmenism involves a re-
inscription of the language and meanings of femininity whereby feminine
signiers are reclaimed for a makeover and redened in feminist terms of
liberation and empowerment. Postfeminisms resignication of femininity
is also exemplied by the renewed interest in domesticity and the gure
of the housewife. In a chiastic reversal of the home/work dichotomy,
domesticity has been redened as mystique chic (for example, Kingston,
2005). Whereas work outside the home is now an unavoidable economic
necessity for most women, homework has become the refuge of, what
the June 2000 issue of Cosmopolitan referred to as, housewife wannabes
(Dutton, 2000: 164).
22. The cultural theorist John Fiske employs the term active consumption to
highlight the semiotic activity of the consumer. He advocates an
entirely different kind of production called consumption that uses the
products of capitalism [as] the raw materials, the primary resources of
popular culture (1989: 142).
23. Other T-shirt campaigns include What Would You Give For A Great Pair
of Tits? to raise money for breast cancer, Knockout to raise money for
victims of domestic abuse and Drug Dealer for the Keep A Child Alive
organization.
24. I think that a similar movement from mainstream activity to postfeminist
micro-politics can be witnessed with regard to the modern technology of
cosmetic surgery. While more people are opting to change their bodies
surgically (with breast augmentation remaining the most popular job
among the 22,000 procedures carried out in the UK in 2005), the French
performance artist Orlan has taken cosmetic surgery to a new level of
creative self-determination and deconstruction by transforming herself
into a self-made self-portrait that combines such features as the chin of
Venus and the brows of Mona Lisa.
25. This process of assujetissement is not exclusive to postfeminism but also
characterizes, for example, radical feminism or liberal feminism, which
all attempt to subject women to certain discourses at the same time as
those discourses provide the resources for their action. I thank the
anonymous reviewer for making this valid point.
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Stone, A. (2004) On the Genealogy of Women: A Defence of Anti-
Essentialism, pp. 8596 in S. Gillis, G. Howie and R. Munford (eds) Third
Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration. Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Toro, F. de, ed. (1999) Explorations on Post-Theory: Toward a Third Space.
Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert; Madrid: Iberoamericana.
Walker, R., ed. (1995) To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of
Feminism. London: Anchor Books.
Whelehan, I. (2000) Overloaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism.
London: The Womens Press.
Stphanie Genz lectures on the Culture, Media and Society Programme at
Napier University, Edinburgh. She specializes in gender theory and
contemporary British and American literature and lm. She has written a
number of articles in this area and she is the editor of a collection of essays
entitled Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture
(Palgrave, 2007) as well as a special edition of Gothic Studies (Manchester
University Press, 2007) on Postfeminist Gothic. She is currently working on
a reader of Gothic criticism and a book-length study on postfeminism entitled:
Postfeminism: Texts, Contexts, Theories.
Address: Email: sgenz@fsmail.net

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