Abstract
A key feature of The Politics of the Body is its success in highlighting a series of contradictions within contemporary feminism, and some of its analysis certainly goes to the core of what ought to be contemporary feminism’s central political and epistemological agenda. The timeliness of Phipps’s critique of contemporary feminism is proved by the relevance of nuances in her arguments to various recent news stories, including the recent media coverage of the Oscar Pistorius case. Reading the book helped me revisit my feminist perspective on a diverse range of debates—including female genital cutting, honor killings, and the wearing of the hijab—and question increasingly popular positions on sex work where, as the author argues, “the original radicalism of [sex work] politics have been blurred by the mainstreaming and corporatizing of the sex industry” (p. 77). The book engages with significant questions; however, I am not certain (as the author herself recognizes) that it offers many answers.
The central thesis of this book is that in its current state, feminism faces a series of “problematic developments” informed by what she observes to be an increasing connection between feminism and the mainstream discourses of neoliberalism and neoconservativism. These challenging developments include a focus on women’s agency and identity at “the expense of examining framing structures” (p. 3); a feminist reluctance to return to “victim”-based rhetoric and instead appear to advance the neoliberal construct of individual responsibility; and, finally, a lack of structural critique within “radical” movements in the areas of sexuality and health that appear to often adopt practices of “the capitalist market [and] the material and discursive framing of contemporary femininities” (p. 3). Methodologically, the justification around the choice of case studies can initially appear arbitrary, though by the end of the book, the reader comes to recognize the links between the explored themes, appreciating what the author sees as a “genealogy” into the advancement of a “political sociology of the body” (p. 8).
In chapter one, we find an exploration of the links between women’s bodies and discourses of neoliberalism and neoconservativism. In this analysis, I was hoping to see a more historically bound comparison between neoliberalism and liberalism, particularly as the author seeks to trace a link between feminism and (neo)liberalism. In the second chapter, Phipps explores the contemporary controversies around instances of sexual violence and victimhood. She illustrates the impact of ideological hierarchies found within what can loosely be termed the “left,” whereby feminist activism appears to often fall secondary to other structurally based discourses (such as Anti-American rhetoric or socialist politics).
Less convincing, however, is her argument that, ensuing neoliberal discourse, feminists have moved away from a victim-focused agenda. Arguably, neoliberal discourse itself is increasingly focusing on a politics of victimization, as many examples in criminal justice politics and practice can reveal. Indeed, the (feminist) criminological literature has been tellingly reflexive in showing that discourses of individual responsibility and victimization often enmesh (rather than exist as a clear-cut duality). Thus, there is a relational and interactionist layer to such discourses of victimization and responsibility, which the author neglects at the expense of precision and empirical evidence, and which uncritically appears to advance a logic of law and order as the main way through which to tackle violence against women—arguably, a neoliberal/neoconservative position in itself. Similarly, in the theme explored by Phipps in chapter three, we see a daring critique of “third wave” feminists’ focus on intersections of difference when discussing the relationship between gender and Islam.
Overall, Phipps’s book is thought-provoking, caustic, and self-reflexive, as its wide range of themes reflect both breadth and depth in analytic scope. Phipps engages with concepts that have concerned feminist academics and activists for decades, and thus they should read this book. Although she appears skeptical of what she considers a postmodern pluralism that focuses excessively on issues of particularity, individuality, emotions, and identity, her focus on the female body can be seen as the best example of how the personal is actually political, not “an end in itself” (p. 138). The body’s particularities and lived experiences can expose the social and the structural, while still remaining sensitive to its situated biography and materiality. In other words, perhaps Phipps’s invitation to problematize some of the consequences of feminist engagement with postmodern concepts and methods is a necessary aspect of the movement’s reflexive project. Meanwhile, the suggestion that we ought to return to an intersectionally blind feminism that focuses exclusively on women’s oppression from a structural perspective is, for me, both dangerous and unnecessary, particularly when the binary of structure and agency can be—and has already been—mutually embodied in feminist theory, research, and activism.