Abstract
Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World is an ambitious project that makes important contributions to sociological understandings of feminist (dis)identification among young women in Germany and Britain. This interdisciplinary study builds on theoretical underpinnings in the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, critical psychology, queer theory, and sociology. In order to better understand young women’s engagements with feminism, Scharff employs discourse analysis and performativity theory to analyze 40 semistructured, in-depth interviews with young women of various sexual orientations and racial, class, and religious backgrounds.
Repudiating Feminism is smartly organized into five data chapters in which Scharff explores how postfeminism, neoliberalism, heterosexual conventions, and identity-based difference facilitate repudiations of feminism for research participants. Chapter one opens with a discussion of the existing literature on young women’s engagements with feminism, and points to the specific contributions that the project makes to this body of literature, including taking a distinctly discursive approach to the topic of feminist identification. Scharff also highlights the sociohistorical contexts of Germany and Britain in relation to feminist (dis)identification. Finally, in this first chapter, Scharff introduces her performative approach and details her methodology for the project.
In the second chapter, Scharff introduces two interpretive repertoires embedded in a postfeminist sensibility, and central to her participants’ engagements with feminism. The first repertoire claims that feminism was important in the past but is no longer needed now that gender equality has been achieved. The second one rejects feminism outright, claiming that it is extreme. Drawing on these two interpretive repertoires, 30 out of 40 research participants rejected feminist identification outright, while eight others qualified their feminist identification. While Scharff admits that these findings are not necessarily new, her unique discursive approach to the data highlights the complexity of feminist (dis)identification, and seeks to unveil why it is that research participants simultaneously adopt a feminist perspective while rejecting feminist identification. For example, she finds that fierce policing of the feminist label is a barrier to feminist identification for her participants.
Chapter three of Repudiating Feminism reveals the ways in which the trope of the “oppressed other woman” is deployed by research participants as a discursive tool to position themselves as empowered individuals and good neoliberal subjects. Throughout her analysis, Scharff seeks to explode this binary of the liberated Western woman versus the oppressed other woman. Scharff also locates the participants’ repudiation of feminism in the rejection of collective struggle, a move necessary to the maintenance of a neoliberal, self-responsible subjectivity. In this chapter, Scharff does the complicated work of clearly connecting individualism, neoliberalism, and the trope of the “oppressed Muslim woman,” analyzing its role in research participants’ rejection of feminism.
Scharff engages queer theory and makes sexuality a central category for analysis in chapter four. She explores the ways in which heterosexual conventions contribute to the construction of and subsequent dismissal of the feminist as “unfeminine, man-hating and lesbian.” Scharff engages in self-reflexive analysis of her own language in this chapter. She examines her conversations with research participants to reveal how the heteronormative imperative permeates discussions of feminism and facilitates its rejection. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s notion of the “sticky sign,” which posits that stereotypes are not merely passing images, but that emotions stick to stereotypes through repetition, Scharff explores why even when participants were unable to provide specific examples, the trope of the man-hating lesbian feminist remained a powerful deterrent to feminist identification (p. 86).
In the fifth chapter, Scharff argues that repudiations of feminism constitute performances of gender and sexuality. She argues that repudiations of feminism are, in fact, performances of femininity. Scharff seeks to develop her performative approach through a discussion of racialized and classed performances of gender and sexuality. Scharff argues that engagements with feminism happen at the intersection of countless vectors of difference, including race, class, religion, cultural context, gender, and sexuality. It was only in this final chapter that I wanted more: more explanation of the performative approach, further connections between this final chapter and preceding chapters, and a more nuanced discussion of difference in relation to feminist (dis)identification.
Repudiating Feminism is a thoroughly researched, clearly structured, and well-written examination of young German and British women’s engagement with feminism. This book applies complex theory in accessible, creative ways, making it appropriate for a broad audience across a wide range of academic disciplines. While Scharff’s performative approach proves an interesting and potentially valuable tool in understanding repudiations of feminism, further elaborating and applying this approach throughout the text might significantly strengthen her analysis. Nevertheless, Scharff’s Repudiating Feminism brings a fresh perspective to the oft-deliberated topic of feminist (dis)identification.