Revisiting Second Wave Feminism in the Light of Recent Controversies

Authors

  • Nina Power

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51151/identities.v17i2-3.466

Keywords:

sex, gender, sexuation, sexual difference, second wave feminism, parallax, motherhood, law

Abstract

This paper revisits elements of second wave feminism—in its psychoanalytic, radical, materialist, Marxist and deconstructionist aspects—the better to understand how it is we might define sexual difference today. The vexed question of sexuation, of what it means to be a woman in particular has today generated great tensions at the theoretical, legal and philosophical level. This paper is an attempt to return to aspects of the second wave—an unfinished project where many enduring feminist concerns were for the first time thoroughly and metaphysically articulated—the better to defend the importance of sexual difference. To this end, the transcendental and parallax dimensions of sexed life will be discussed, alongside a defence of the centrality of the mother to our thinking about the relevance and necessity of preserving the importance of sexual difference, not only for thought but also for political and legal life.

Author(s): Nina Power

Title (English): Revisiting Second Wave Feminism in the Light of Recent Controversies

Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020)

Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje

Page Range: 28-35

Page Count: 8

Citation (English): Nina Power, “Revisiting Second Wave Feminism in the Light of Recent Controversies,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 28-35.

Author Biography

Nina Power, Independent Researcher

Nina Power is a philosopher and writer, and the author of many articles on politics, feminism and culture. She is the author of One-Dimensional Woman (2009) and the forthcoming What Do Men Want? (2021). She is currently teaching at Mary Ward and has previously taught at the University of Roehampton and many other institutions

Downloads

Published

2020-12-30

How to Cite

Power, N. . (2020). Revisiting Second Wave Feminism in the Light of Recent Controversies. Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, 17(2-3), 28-35. https://doi.org/10.51151/identities.v17i2-3.466

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 2-3 (2020): Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) - Issue No. 33-34 | Topic: Xenofeminism and Other Forms of Realist and Materialist Feminism: A Vantage Point of a Radically Novel Politics

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Identities is published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Under this license, users of our content must give appropriate credit to authors and source as well as indicate if changes were made, cannot be used for commercial purposes, and, in the instance that it is built upon or transformed, may not be distributed. For Identities, the copyrights allow the audience to download, reprint, quote in length and/or copy articles published by Identities so long as the authors and source are cited. For more information on our license, see the following: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0.