Direction for the Fourth Wave

-- By MelissaMouritsen - 27 Apr 2022

The present echoes of a former generation as women prepare for the elimination of abortion access as a consitutional right. The pendening Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization demands that feminists revisit 1960’s acitivism. This is valuable not only for reviving the use at-home abortion devices, but also for critically inquiring why we are we reliving our grandmothers’ hard fought battles. This is the defining question for the emergent fourth wave of feminism, which may be answered by analyzing the abandonment of consciousness raising.

White Legal Feminism and Liberalism

21st century legal feminism’s myopic focus on privacy and non-interference rights reflects the values of the white-upper class liberalism adopted by feminists at the (perceived) forefront of the third wave. Reluctant to destabilize the foundations of the legal system perpetuating inequality (such as the criminogenic nature of incarceration), this version of feminism posits the paramount recourse available to women as “liberalism’s signature cocktail of individual rights, formal equality, limited government, and the rule of law." This recourse endows feminism with a “false generosity” – a temporary softening of oppression has been reconceptualized as its goal, and the radical agenda set aside. As Audre Lorde laments, this version of feminism confines itself to using the master’s tools to deconstruct the master’s house; legal feminism has done the same by trying to work within the current conceptions of constitutional law rather than reimagining the law’s principal values. Working within the confines of the legal system to confront structural inequality confronts the same impetus Justice Marshall acknowledged in Johnson vs. McIntosh when justifying colonization. Using the gloss of legal jargon, Marshall circumvents analysis of the legitimacy of colonialism and instead manifests that “[the legacy of colonialism] becomes the law of the land and cannot be questioned.” If the limits of constitutional values are unquestionable by the law as Marshall suggests here, then perhaps his subsequent observation is likewise true: “If it be true, that that wrongs have been inflicted, and that still greater are to be apprehended, this is not the tribunal which can redress the past or prevent the future.”

A New Tribunal: Consciousness-Raising Praxis

This is not to say that legal feminism’s victories – such as equal protection, affirmative consent and abortion rights, to name a few – are inutile. These battles are and continue to be integral, but a truly radical feminist ideology demands more: it demands scrutiny of the gendered psychosocial structures covertly operating in society that considers itself liberated and likewise a scrutiny of the movement’s methodology that failed to address this. Coopting the labor of queer feminists of color, third wave white feminists dismissed intersectionality as divisive to create a heterogenous, exclusionary “collective” identity – a legacy which fourth wave feminists must actively resist, for the echo chamber of this exclusionary group has proven blind to its own shortcomings.

Principles of the Praxis

Self-deception has a dual meaning in this context. On the individual level, self-deception is regarding one’s own thought processes as untrammeled and unencumbered by ideologies logically rejected. On the collective level, a feminism that conceptualizes itself a cohesive unit of women with heterogenous interests is likewise deception. Radical feminists in the 1960s initiated conciousness raising groups as a means to confront the former meaning of self-decption, but failed to embrace the latter. These women were focused on uncovering the way in which their adaptation, which had been an essential refuge in fighting for survival, was simultaneously a restraint. Through the praxis of critical consciousness development, women began the process of discovering the possibility of an autonomy free from self-regulation. By the 1980s, third wave feminists dismissed these groups as merely _precursors_ to political action or as psuedo-therapy for voicing complaints and instead focused their efforts on formal legal equality. Devoid of critical consciousness raising and the accompanying integration of diverse perspectives, feminism dissociated itself from the very source of its power.

Emotion has a Place Here

Clinging to preconceived boundaries of the self - or of the movement - stems in part from a [http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/pedagogy/pedagogypreface.html][fear of liberation]] and a fear of the ambiguity that would be induced by integrating the rational and emotional. Western culture has lauded rationality as the ideal and as inherently part of the masculine sphere of influence; emotional inquiries have been dismissed as simply “naval gazing”. In an effort to reclaim voice in the mascuiline governance sphere, many women have internalized its fixation on rationality. This is especially potent for legal feminists, as jurisprudence gains its legitimacy from a false bifurification of emotion and reason. By confining its inquiries to the bounds of traditional law and order, legal feminism obscurificates the underlying need – a need that, if unaddressed, will confine feminits to fighting reruns of their grandmothers’ battles. This need is for consciousness raising.

Tension as a Source of Action

Just as individual consciousness raising destabilizes self-conception, so does the movement’s consciousness raising – embracing the coexisting and conflicting interests poised by feminists’ intersectional identities destbalizes the third wave’s imagined “collective.” Yet this destabilization does not undermine: engagement with inherent tensions– such as identifying as “women” while simultaneously recognizing the limited framework of a binary conception of gender – is essential cultivating the radical imagination. Consciousness raising groups’ lack of political agenda incentivizes inclusion of diverse perspectives without censoring individuals for having different goals: in this space, “difference[s] must not merely be tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark.” Difference doesn’t fracture; embracing difference raises the consciousness of the movement and its members, allowing for a creatively radical reimagination of liberty beyond the confines of liberalism. It's an imagination of a world where our granddaughters will not fight this same fight again. Although this is a radical agenda, it is not so in practice – it is simply a redirection of conversation.

I'm not sure of your chosen readership, although Tasha is justifiably an enthusiastic part of it. If the history of US feminist thought and the value of consciousness raising are the actual as well as ostensible subjects, and the women around you in law school, like Tasha, are the intended readership, then I think there are two good routes to improvement. First, the second-wave history from which "consciousness raising" emerged could use a little more direct attention: it is here described largely in the doctrinaire terms established by later, surprisingly unsympathetic dialogue. Because my mother was so directly involved in that intellectual and political movement, and because I was the oldest male person not required to leave the apartment when conscious raising in my mother's first group was going on, I have a clearer and more empathetic relationship to these events. The women who made their collective self-analyses the root of their politics were activated in the civil rights movement of the early '60s, and anti-war and anti-draft activism thereafter. They were accustomed to anti-racial and anti-capitalist ideological self-development; their feminism was neither separated from nor at any moment unaware of those larger struggles. Recapturing what they thought and how they built is valuable to your readership and part of the conversation you want.

In particular, I think, therefore, the second route to improvement is to focus clearly and simply on the consciousness raising process for which your current draft rather abstractly advocates. The second wave intellectuals created women's studies as a discipline (my mother was one of the team that built the first undergraduate program in the US), out of which so much of the current discourse has grown. But it does not effectively capture, I think, the particular combination of real joy and ironic outrage that the form of conversation that was even more than "consciousness-raising" produced. It's the emotional tenor of that moment, as well as its reshaping of so much social, political and literary theory, that stands to benefit you in your inquiry.

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Hi Melissa,

Reading your essay, I identified with the tensions in legal feminism: sometimes the small victories (like abortion rights) seem too insignificant in the grand scheme of injustice to celebrate, yet sometimes I need to cling to the small wins to avoid feeling hopeless. This is just one of the many relics of white legal feminism and liberalism that I find myself slipping into when I do not undertake enough time for reflection and internal consciousness raising. Admitting that to myself feels both important and wholly insufficient, yet another tension.

While reading your thoughts on how third wave feminism confined itself to using the tools of the master to dismantle the master’s house, I thought of the discourse surrounding Kamala Harris becoming the first woman/ black/ South Asian American Vice President. The instinct to celebrate this historic event as progress was paired with the recognition that Harris has harmed and continues to harm communities of color and women of color. As many memes/tweets pointed out, celebrating Harris is celebrating having more diverse oppressors. This inherent tension, like so many you highlight in your essay, can be difficult to grapple with, as there seems to be no traditional legal solution (i.e. using the master’s tools) to resolve these nuances. Given this, I really appreciate your perspective on how consciousness raising in and of itself is the power of feminism. Thank you for sharing. - Tasha