1997 Siegel

The Legacy of the Personal:
Generating Theory in Feminism’s

Third Wave
DEBORAH L. SIEGEL
This essay focuses on the repeated rhetorical moves through which the third wave
autobiographicalsubject seeks to be real and to speak as part of a collective voice from
the next feminist generation. Given that postmodernist, @structuralist, and multi-
culturalist critiques huve shaped the form and the content of third wave expressions
of the personal, the study is ultimately concerned with the possibilities and limitations
of such theoretical analysis for a third wave of feminist praxis.
Wave (n) 2c. A forward movement of a large body of persons

(chiefly invaders or immigrants overrunning a country, or
soldiers advancing to an attack), who either recede and
return after an interval, or are followed after a time by
qnother body of persons repeating the same movement.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
At a time when feminism has lost much of its political edge

and is undergoing assaults from all sides, it is important that
we learn to say “I” and “we” again, though “I” and “we” are
not so simple.. . . feminism has come to seem even more
endangered, more cut off from a popular and a political base,
more threatened by conservative tendencies from without
and by divisions from within. “Better get it on record before
it disappears,” as Ann Jones quipped, . . . a remark which has
haunted me. (Gayle Greene, “Looking at History,” 1993)
Hypria vol. 12, no. 3 (Summer 1997) 0by Deborah L. Siege1
Deborah L. Siege1 47
Having arrived at this point, I should now adopt a more

confident, visionary tone and scan the cultural firmament for
signs of things to come: portents for feminism in the
nineties. . . . I seem instead to be more at ease reviewing
(even teaching) the history of a feminist past than imagining
its future; waiting, as the decade unfolds, to see what the
critical subjects we have created in our students will bring
about. The nineties in this sense are theirs and lumber what
they make out of it. (Nancy K. Miller, “Decades,” 1993)
Since the early 1980s, there has been much speculation in the United States
about young women’s alleged reluctance to don the feminist mantle.’ The
phenomenon has been explained variously by media pundits, by conservatives,
and, most recently, by self-identified young feminist writers in books that
ostensibly propose solutions to the question of feminism’sdubious future: Katie
Roiphe’s Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism (1993); Naomi Wolf‘s Fire
With Fire: The New Femak Power and How to Use It (1993); and Rene Denfeld’s
New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order (1995).*
A t the same time that Roiphe, Wolf, and Denfeld are traveling the country on
publicity tours attempting to “reclaim” feminism for the “majority,” young
feminist activists, newly radicalized by social injustices ranging from the
passage of anti-abortion legislation to the Clarence Thomas hearings and the
Rodney King beating, are coming of political age and are beginning to orga-
nize. The result is a remarkable resurgence of grassroots student activism,
young feminist conferences, and a host of new or newly revitalized social
action organizations and networks led largely by young women.’
Also during this period, a cohort of feminist scholars, mentored by the
generation of women who founded the nation’s women’s studies programs, are
coming of academic age. Positioning themselves as spokeswomen for the next
feminist generation, Roiphe, Wolf, and Denfeld adamantly insist that Theory,
what they call the refined instrument of academic feminist fascism, exists
independently of grassroots feminist movements and causes. In so doing, they
echo charges leveled by celebrity feminists such as Camille Paglia, Christina
Hoff Sommers, and most recently (and less famously) Daphne Patai and
Noretta Koertge, who have themselves perhaps cashed in on young women’s
frustration with seemingly outdated feminist formulations in their divergent
analyses of where and how academic feminism has gone wrong. While rene-
gade conservatives such as Paglia and Sommers-themselves members of the
academy-caricature and critique academic feminism and its advocates from
within, the anti-intellectualism of the younger critics is differently motivated
yet equally reductive. Substituting a part of feminist theorizing for the whole,
Wolf berates academic feminisms, which she lumps together under the mono-
lithic term “club feminism,” and subsequentlycharges academic feminists with
48 Hypatia
irrelevance. Denfeld similarly blames academic “New Victorians” for having

“climbed out on a limb of academic theory that is all but inaccessible to the
uninitiated” (Denfeld 1995, 5). Meanwhile, Roiphe parodically refers to her
undergraduate feminist seminars as The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Not surpris-
ingly, their new feminist order is a theory-free feminism returning us to a
feminism similar to that which Sommers herself envisions, as common as Mom
and apple pie (Sommers 1994, 275).4Given suchpronouncements, indications
that the younger generation of feminist writers and activists is rejecting the
academy as a viable site for feminist activity, there seems to be no place for
theory production in feminism’s third wave.
The question of theory-how we do it and for whom-has been a focal point
of debate among feminist academics from the beginning.5Calling for a broader
description of the activity that customarily qualifies as theoretical-that is, the
highly inaccessible pontificating of European white men-Barbara Christian
argues that “people of color have always theorized-but in forms quite differ-
ent from the Western form of abstract logic” (Christian 1987, 52). What is
more, she argues, “Our theorizing (and I intentionally use the verb rather than
the noun) is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles and
proverbs, in the play with language, since dynamic rather than fixed ideas seem
more to our liking” (52). In further defense of the multiple sites, forms, and
functions of theorizing, Katie King warns against a metonymic view of the
production of theory in the academy. Speaking of how the academic
machinery often privileges theory produced by certain individuals and leaves
others uncredited or unacknowledged, King observes,
An error feminists make over and over is to mistake the part of
a particular theoretical reading, especially a published reading,
for the whok of the many forms theorizing takes: active think-
ing, speaking, conversation, action grounded in theory, action
producing theory, action suggesting theory, drafts, letters,
unpublished manuscripts, stories in writing and not, poem said
and written, art events like shows, readings, enactments, zap
actions such as ACT UP does: or for that matter, incomplete
theorizing, sporadic suggestiveness, generalizations correct and
incorrect, inadequate theory, images and actions inciting theo-
retical interventions and so on. It’s not that all human actions
are equivalent to theorizing, but rather that a particular product
of many forms of theorizing should not be mistaken for the
processes of production itself. (King 1990,89)
Both Christian and King, then, define theory and theorizing as an activity that
extends well beyond the classroom, the seminar paper, the academic journal.
These “theory debates” provide a context for my own selection of texts
(popular anthologies, newsletters, memos, List-Servs) and also highlight the
unfavorable view of many feminist critics, themselves representing a diverse

range of theoretical identifications, toward the potential dissociation of femi-
nist theory from feminist practice. Indeed, many of them build a regard for the
relationship between theory and praxis directly into their criticism. Though
Roiphe, Wolf, and Denfeld voice a genuine (and justified) concern that theory,
as a democratic tool, should be widely accessible, by engaging in the ever-pop-
ular sport of theory bashing, these popular historians play into an anti-intel-
lectualism that banishes theory as something “they” (and not “we”) do.
Dissenting young feminist voices such as Roiphe, Wolf, and Denfeld partic-
ipate in a much-needed intra- and intergenerational conversation at the very
moment when the status of feminism is being interrogated inside and outside
the academy, from left and right. Yet their claims that the third wave is a
theory-free moment-like the assumption that all theorizing takes place in the
academy-are epistemologically naive, historically inaccurate, and ultimately
misinformed. While young feminist writing is as diverse as the women and men
who write it, much of it shares the assertion that regardless of whether or not
one calls oneself a feminist, donning some aspect of a feminist consciousness
is as natural as wearing cotton: “We are the first generation for whom feminism
has been entwined in the fabric of our lives; it is natural that many of us are
feminists” (Findlen 1995, xii). The rhetoric of naturalization might be a
common trope informing some inflections of young feminist consciousness in
particular, but an inquiry into the theoretical foundation of a third wave
consciousness must nevertheless begin with an analysis of the historical and
political contexts in which such utterances are shaped.
To defend and delineate the historically specific theoretical interventions
of a third wave of feminist praxis, this essay juxtaposes discussion of some
recent articulations of contemporary feminist theory, published in journals or
disseminated by university presses, which target an academic audience, and
the theorizing generated in two third wave anthologies of personal essays:
Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation (1999, edited by Barbara
Findlen; and To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism
(1999, edited by Rebecca Walker. As a literary critic who finds it possible, in
certain instances, to theorize about practices by theorizing through texts, I
understand these texts as participating in a larger movement culture that is
only beginning to define itself. Historical struggles played out in the realm of
young feminist organizing and recorded in the memos, meetings, and projects
of such organizers are reflected in autobiographical writing by third wave
authors, which, in turn echoes theoretical expressions of “academic” femi-
nism. In performing an analysis that crosses the popular-academic divide, I am
actively refusing the narrow parameters of the frequently invoked binarism in
which academic work is condemned as an elitist expression of the ivory tower
and set in opposition to the “real” political work going on in the “outside”
world. Building on Susan Stanford Friedman’s affirmation, “in asserting the
50 Hypatia
political nature of the construction and dissemination of knowledge, I

acknowledge that my academic work is an effect of, and affects, the political
organization in society,” I would suggest that these popular third wave collec-
tions affect, and are also effects of, the production and dissemination of
feminist theory (Friedman 1991,471).
Because Listen Up and To Be Real are edited by women who identify
themselves as “third wave” or “next generation” feminists; who, like many of
their contributors, have some background in women’s studies; and who have
explicit affinities with organized feminist activism in the 1990s, their texts
seem an appropriate starting point for a discussion of third wave theorizing as
an activity that encompasses different spheres, sites, and constituencies.6Katie
King warns, “feminists too easily believe ‘we’ already know the ‘history’or even
histories of feminism, even in the U.S. What is taken as history are some
privileged and published histories of feminism, which have been all too quickly
naturalized” (King 1990,83). By rooting my analysis in a close reading of these
texts, I necessarily limit my scope to the expressions of a select group of
published writers. For in spite of claims to speak to concerns and issues of
“the next feminist generation,” these voices cannot, of course, speak for an
entire generation. Anthologies nevertheless represent a zone of possible
convergence or clustering, where voices from different locations articulate
their commonalties and differences. In centering my discussion around
these two collections, I follow Jane Gallop’s example of reading an anthol-
ogy as a whole as “a method for getting at ‘symptoms’which occur across
various authors” (Gallop 1992, 7).
The titles of Listen Up and To Be Real suggest the grassroots zeal of these
anthologies; in the respective introductions, each editor adopts an informal,
intimate tone, inviting readers to gather ‘round-listen u p t o a diverse
assortment of personal and political tales of “real” life about to unfold. Inter-
estingly, both editors meticulously highlight the diversity of positions, atti-
tudes, and locations through which their contributors identify themselves and
from which they speak. Writes Walker, “the group you will read here is an
eclectic gathering of folks: a fundraiser for women’s organizations, a lawyer, a
videomaker, an actor, a cultural critic, a professor, a musician, a director of
special projects for a film company, a student, a writer of children’s books, and
yes, among others, two men and a ‘supermodel’ ” (Walker 1995, xxxvi).
Echoing Walker, Findlen prefaces her text with the following:
Women in this book call themselves, among other things,
articulate, white, middle-class college kid; wild and unruly;
single mother; Asian bisexual; punk; politically astute, active
woman; middle-class black woman; young mother; slacker;
member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation; well-adjusted; stu-
dent; teacher; writer; an individual; a young lady; a person with
a visible disability; androgynous; lapsed Jew; child of profes-

sional feminists; lesbian daughter; activist; zine writer; a Libra;
and an educated, married, monogamous, feminist, Christian,
African American mother. (Findlen 1995, xiv)
If the limitless multivocality implicit in such listings makes these anthologies
good focal points for a discussion of cultural formations that bear the descrip-
tive label “third wave,” it is perhaps also because that multivocality is an
informing trope of the third wave narrative.
The reading that follows focuses on the repeated rhetorical moves through
which the third wave autobiographical subject seeks “to be real,” to tell “the
truth” about life in the third wave, and to speak as part of a collective voice
“from the next feminist generation.” It begins by grounding third wave femi-
nism as a historical phenomenon. Then, I address the various historiographical
questions, problems, and ambiguities the concept of third wave feminism
raises, even as I attempt to identify some of the components-common tropes,
images, motifs, narrative patterns, general issues of concern-that justify
discussion of a third wave of feminist praxis.
After building a theoretical argument around the commonalities in popular
third wave narratives, the essay attempts to show how theory is being produced
through the personal writings collected in Listen Up and To Be Real. Bearing
in mind the assertion that the grassroots has always been a space for the
production of theory, I provide a matrix for reading these recent grassroots
expressions by considering the use of the personal narrative as a form of
theorizing. The use of the personal in third wave expressions both resembles
and differs from its use in second wave feminism. Even if the third wave
constitutes a return to the personal, and that return seemingly enacts a return
to consciousness raising, third wave personal expression nevertheless differs
from the personalizing of the political effected through consciousness raising.
Given that postmodernist, postructuralist, and multiculturalist critiques have
shaped the form and the content of third wave expressions of the personal, I
am ultimately interested in the possibilities and limitations of such theoretical
analysis for a third wave of feminist praxis.
EXCURSIONSIN FEMINISTOCEANOGRAPHY:
CHARTING THE THIRD WAVE
Wave 2a. An undulatory movement, or one of an intermittent series of

movements, of something passing over or on a surface or through the air.
Although popular and academic commentators alike have begun to invoke
the term “third wave feminism” in reference to expressions and activities
ranging from the rapid proliferation of girlzines and the rise of the riot grrrl
underground to the establishment of “a movement culture that is disparate,
52 Hypatia
unlikely, multiple, polymorphous,” thus far only cursory attempts have been
made to document the historical conditions that constitute and justify the use
of the term (Garrison 1996,3).’ To chart the third wave is to explicate some
of the definitional problematics informing the term’s genesis.
In the oceanography of feminist movement, the “first wave” usually desig-
nates the surge of activism beginning in the 1830s and culminating around the
campaign for women’s suffrage that ended in 1920, while the “second wave”
denotes the resurgence of women’s organizing beginning in the late 1960s and
ending-or at least sufferingmajor setbacks-first with the defeat of the ERA
and then with the advent of the Reagan-Bush era.’ Given this chronology, the
“third wave,” as I understand the term, is a response to what one might call the
cultural dominance of “postfeminism,”a word that itself has a different mean-
ing depending on the site of its invocation.
When Rebecca Walker asserts in the pages of Ms. magazine, “1 am not a
postfeminist feminist. I am the third wave,” for example, the mobilization of
the adjective “third” becomes an act of strategic defiance. Such an insistence
on the continuation of feminist movement (I am the third wave) resists
narrative scripts that imply that women’s movements are no longer moving,
no longer vital, no longer relevant. The very invocation of “third wave
feminism” signals a rejection of scripts that assume that the gains forged by the
second wave have so completely invaded all tiers of social existence that
feminists themselves have become obsolete. When used in this context, “third
wave” becomes a stance of political resistance to popular pronouncements of
a moratorium on feminism and feminists, a sound bite to counter the now
infamous refrain “I’m not a feminist, but. . . .” As Findlen makes clear in her
introduction, a stance of postfeminist feminist defiance prompted the genesis
of Listen up.
Young feminists are constantly told that we don’t exist. It’s a
refrain heard from older feminists as well as in the popular
media: “Young women don’t consider themselves feminists.”
Actually, a lot of us do. . . . The country hasn’t heard enough
from young feminists. We’re here, and we have a lot to say about
our ideas and hopes and struggles and our place within femi-
nism. (Findlen 1995, xiv, xvi)
Such a compelling affirmation of presence recalls the oppositional response
of women of color to a dominant culture that would render their presence
invisible, as exemplified in the title of Amy Ling’s 1987 essay, “I’m Here.” The
third wave oppositional stance may be a welcome voice of contention for many
second wave feminists, for whom the threat of “postfeminism” in the popular
sense is particularly resonant. Many second wave feminists live with the horror
of the first wave’s relative disappearance following the passage of the Nine-
teenth Amendment, a phenomenon that repeated itself after World War 11,
when advances for and by women were rescinded on the veterans’ retum.
If, when invoked by the popular press, “postferninism” smugly refers to an
era in which feminist movement is no longer necessary, in the context of
academic feminist writing, the term “postferninism” sometimes refers to a
series of debates structured around the question ofwhether feminism, as a term
with explanatory power, can survive the differently inflected deconstructive
critiques mounted by poststructuralist, postmodernist, or multiculturalist the-
orists? While the nuances of the critique posited by these theorists fundamen-
tally differ, and while each school in itself encompasses an infinite number of
theoretical positions, together they constitute a powerful attack mounted
against the representative subject of feminism. When, in the introduction to
her collection of young feminist essays, Walker states, “we [third wave activ-
ists] find ourselves seeking to create identities that accommodate ambiguity
and our multiple positionalities: including more than excluding, exploring
more than defining, searching more than arriving,” her assertion of a third
wave consciousness is informed by premises that might be broadly understood
as inflections of both postmodernist and multiculturalist theorizing about
identity and subjectivity (Walker 1995,xxxiii). Such theoretical struggles and
commitments simultaneously play out in the realms of textual practice and
organizational structure. Interestingly, a number of young feminist organiza-
tions including the New York City Young Women’s Network have folded,
unable to sustain an organizational identity that privileges the exploration
over the definition, the search over the arrival.
One might go so far as to argue that third wave organizations and texts are
somewhat shaped by a postmodernist feminist sensibility, for Listen Up and To
Be Real are rightly understood as feminist anthologies without the fixity of one
feminist agenda in view. In her discussion of feminist consciousness in the
1990s, Ednie Kaeh Garrison suggests that a historical moment called
“postmodem” contributes to the third wave’s distinction from the first and
second waves in that “the simultaneous confidence and uncertainty about
what constitutes feminism doesn’t have to be conceptualized as a ‘problem’ ”
(Garrison 1996, 3 ) . Instead, the condition of ambiguity is understood as a
natural consequence of the proliferation of feminism. Such a sensibility allows
for an anthology like Listen Up to be published, an anthology “which contains
a wide diversity of voices talking about differences through the objectlsubject
feminism” (1996,3).
Feminist theorists of the postmodern, such as Donna Haraway, similarly
speak to the political possibilities the postmodem present makes available,
suggesting that postmodern conditions require a politics that acknowledges
the multiple and contradictory aspects of both individual and collective
identities. Walker echoes Haraway when, in an interview entitled “Feminism
Only Seems to Be Fading: It’s Changing,” Walker suggests, “the next phase in
54 Hypatia
feminism’s evolution will entail a politics of ambiguity, not identity” (Tillotson

1995). This conceptualization of the third wave as a post-identity movement
committed to political action is echoed in the title essay of To Be Real. Writes
Danzy Senna,
My yearning to be real has led me in circles, to red herrings

called identity, those visible signifiers of liberation that can be
bought and sold as easily as any other object. Breaking free of
identity politics has not resulted in political apathy, but rather
it has given me an awareness of the complexity and ambiguity
of the world we have inherited-and the very real power
relations we must transform. (Walker 1995,20)
Just as the yearning to be a feminist in an era (however prematurely) labeled

postfeminist implies contradiction, so the simultaneous commitment to a
“politics of ambiguity” and political action suggests that the third wave “real”
is a moment full of contradiction and possibility. Both senses of the term
“postfeminism,” popular and academic, inform the understanding of third
wave feminism as a political stance and a critical practice formulated in
response to the sociohistorical and material conditions of the late 1980s and
early 1990s.
If “third wave feminism” refers to a stance or a practice, however, a third
wave feminist is not so easily defined. Activist and academic venues alike are
currently taking up the question of constituency. Liz Jackson, a high school-age
intern at National NOW who has been instrumental in developing a Young
Feminism brochure, grapples with the qualification of age as the primary
determinant in an April 1996 memo to members of the NOW Young Feminist
Conference Implementation Committee:
What exactly defines a young feminist? Is it the age or the

attitude?Is the distinction generational? Can we identify young
feminists by the issues with which they are grappling?NOW’S
position is that a young feminist is self-defined. But we may
have to develop some of our own distinctions as we need to
define a target audience. (Jackson 1996)’’
Following a series of negotiations with committee members, a draft of the

brochure reads as follows:
Young feminist issues are as diverse and varied as the women

who confront them. While it is difficult to outline a universal
list of what concerns young feminists, it is clear that there is an
urgent need for young activism and awareness around the
country. Young women are being refused access to abortion and
birth control information, they are being raped and assaulted,
harassed for their sexuality, punished for their economic status,

and denied an equal education. Young women must unite to
fight for their reproductive freedom and against parental con-
sent laws. They must demand nationwide to be given equal
education opportunities and adequate birth control informa-
tion. Young women must empower themselves to stop the
violence against their bodies and their self-esteem.Young wel-
fare recipients are at risk of losing all governmental support and
[being] left to fend for themselves in a society that already
discriminates against them. (Jackson 1996)”
While the project of defining young feminist activism is both an exciting,
historic challenge and a political necessity-a new frontier for feminist
movement-the issues listed above are not limited to young women; nor,
of course, can any such list be representative of the complexity of issues
confronting any group called “women.” An additional complexity arises
from the reality that young women grow up. Because “young women” is an
always-shifting constituency, it becomes somewhat problematic to define
the third wave by age.”
At the same time that young feminist activists are struggling to define their
constituency for practical purposes, participants of WMST-L, an interdiscipli-
nary Internet bulletin board serving feminist scholars nationwide, are compli-
cating the concept of an age-defined generational divide. List participants
have recently coined the terms “thirtysumthin’ feminism” and “in-between
feminists” to unsettle the binarism of young-old as it operates in the academy.
Writes one list participant in response to a debate over the use of the category
“new generation feminists,”
this is not necessarily a problem of biological age, as some

women over 40 have also indicated a feeling of [being] caught
in between the bifurcation of feminism into the “new” and
“old” generations. Indeed, it seems that the “generation” of a
feminist has far more to do with coming of age as a *feminist*,
rather than coming of age as a woman (or man, as the case may
be). (Kearney 1996)
Sociological studies augmenting Kearney’s observation suggest that age may

be less important in shaping political outlook than the historical moment at
which one enters a movement (Schnieder 1988).Certainly, age is less impor-
tant in determining the critical apparatus to which a scholar is exposed than
the historical moment at which one enters the academy. If a cohort is defined
as a group “whose experiences are shaped through its members’ common
exposure to a particular society in the context of a unique set of historical
circumstances,” and if “postfeminism” in both its popular and academic con-
56 Hypatia
texts marks a unique set of historical circumstances, then the term “third wave
feminist” applies to a political generation (or an academic cohort) defined not
by a common set of beliefs but by common exposure to the pressure of some of
the same (material, theoretical) problems (Schneider 1988, 7). Walker
approaches such a formulation of the third wave when she suggests that the
contributors to To Be Real “change the face of feminism as each new generation
will, bringing a different set of experiences to draw from, an entirely different
set of reference points, and a whole new set of questions” (Walker 1995,
xxxiv). Substituting “cohort” or “political generation” for “new generation”
here would allow for the various paths to becoming a third wave feminist.
If age is not the primary determinant, then “third wave feminism” becomes
more of a stance than a constituency, a practice rather than a policy. Regardless
ofhow, when, and under what circumstances one becomes a part of the current
wave of feminist activism and scholarship, what unites practitioners in a third
wave of praxis is a pledge to expand on the groundwork laid during waves one
and two; a commitment to continue the feminist legacy of assessing founda-
tional concepts, particularly the category “women”; and the courage to
embrace the challenge of moving feminism, as a political movement without
the fixity of a single feminist agenda in view, into the next millennium.
Social movements change historically and culturally, as do forms of domi-
nance. Walker and Findlen self-consciously position their texts as third wave
formations by foregrounding the ways in which the historical conditions that
shape the lives of their contributors are materially different. Findlen describes
this difference in her introduction, identifying her thirtysomething self as a
member of a “next generation” feminist “we.”
We have been shaped by the unique events and circumstances
of our time: AIDS, the erosion of reproductive rights, the
materialism and cynicism of the Reagan and Bush years, the
backlash against women, the erosion of civil rights, the sky-
rocketing divorce rate, the movement toward multiculturalism
and greater global awareness, the emergence of the lesbian and
gay rights movement, a greater overall awareness of sexuality-
and the feminist movement itself. (Findlen 1995, xiii)
Given that greater awareness of “the feminist movement itself” is a hallmark
of the third wave, that awareness ultimately shapes the third wave personal
narrative.
READINGBETWEEN
THE WAVES (PART 1):
NEGOTIATIONS
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
[Wlaves-which, by definition, curve alternately in

opposite directions-embody contradictions.
(Jeannine DeLombard, “Femmenism,” 1995)
If it is supposedly a contradiction to be a third wave feminist in 1997, then
that contradiction will manifest itself in third wave self-expression. The
contradictions inherent in speaking “as a” third wave feminist drive many of
the narratives in Listen Up and To Be Real. To read these autobiographical
essays as rhetorical projects embedded in concrete material situations is to
explore how a third wave subject emerges out of a series of historically specific
contradictions. Because these personal narratives are simultaneouslythe enun-
ciations of individual autobiographical subjects and the inscriptions of mem-
bers of a next generation feminist “we,” they express a range of
implications-practical, political, theoretical, and rhetorical-of a third wave
“I” and “we.”
The most explicit contradiction that drives many third wave narratives
echoes a dilemma that characterizes contemporary feminist theorizing inside
and outside the academy, a dilemma that is perhaps more theoretical than
historiographic in nature. As Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller explain
in their conclusion to Conflicts in Feminism,
feminists entering the 1990srequire a new understanding of the
meaning both of feminism and of feminist theory. Such an
understanding needs to encompass the manifest contradictions
between our recognition of “the disintegration of the represen-
tative subject of feminism,” and the continuing need for a
coherent voice with which to articulate political demands on
behalf of the group called “women.” (Hirsch and Keller 1990,
379)
Engagement with various challenges to the “representative subject of
feminism” is indeed a foundational feature of the third wave narrative. Many
third wave narratives are pulled between a desire to deconstruct an
essentialized feminist “we” (often assumed to be a set whose members are
white, heterosexual, and middle-class) and the political need to confirm
common bonds. That the third wave draws heavily on the legacy of critique,
which was made explicit through the feminism, or womanism, of women of
color from the early 1970s on, is evident in statements such as the following:
These days, whenever someone says the word “women” to me,
my mind goes blank. What “women?” What is this “women”
thing you’re talking about? Does that mean me? Does that
58 Hypatia
mean my mother, my roommates, the white woman next door,

the checkout clerk at the supermarket, my aunts in Korea, half
of the world’s population? I ask people to specify and specify,
until I can figure out exactly what they’re talking about, and I
try to remember to apply the same standards to myself, to deny
myself the slightest possibility of romanticization. Sisterhood
may be global, but who is in that sisterhood? None of us can
afford to assume anything about anybody else. This thing called
“feminism” takes a great deal of hard work, and I think this is
one of the primary hallmarks of young feminists’ activism
today: We realize that coming together and working together
are by no means natural or easy. (Lee 1995,211)
Listen Up contributor JeeYeun Lee’s recognition that collective action in the
1990s requires critical and practical “work” is echoed in the following
articulation of third wave practice, published in the April 1996 issue of See
It! Tell I t . Change I t , the official newsletter of the Third Wave Direct
Action Corporation, by third wavers Julie Carlson, Kathryn Starace, and
Alexandra Villano.
Third wave practice seeks to create what Angela Davis calls

“unpredicted coalitions.” We should have several smaller orga-
nizations, each with its own agenda and approach, rather than
replace each with bigger or better ones. We need to use each
other as resources, pulling together our strengths and abilities
in order to be effective and efficient in reaching our goals.
Simultaneously, we need to strive to move beyond the bound-
aries that exist between us. We must challenge our own fears of
difference, whatever the shape, size, color or name.
As this description shows, third wave practice is inextricably linked to

theoretical activity. For in this formulation, third wave praxis fundamentally
depends on the “work” of theory that strives to re-imagine “the boundaries
that exist between us” as a vital space of feminist encounter (see Anzaldlia
1987). True to this calf for a third wave organizational structure inspired by an
embrace of the borderland, the voices in Listen Up and To Be Real coalesce in
the space between differences. Each anthology functions as a somewhat
“unpredicted coalition.” While efficiently and effectively united in the “goal”
of postfeminist feminist defiance, the editors’ emphasis on limitless multi-
vocality troubles the conventional understanding of an anthology as an
“organized chorus” (Gallop 1992, 8).
As students of the 1990s, emerging feminists are well aware that attempts to
assert the primacy of a feminist consciousness that can be codified and
described is a necessarily exclusionary act. Yet while third wave narratives seek
to disturb the assumption of an all-inclusive feminist “we,” many of them are

compelled by nostalgia for an ideal of collectivity, the dream of a common
language, which was foundational to certain strains of second wave feminist
thought. Often, the feminist desire that courses through the narratives
collected in Listen Up and To Be Real oscillates between a longing for a
romanticized notion of inclusion and an acknowledgment of the limita-
tions inherent in any act of representation. Such an oscillation is made
explicit in the very title of Listen Up: Voices from the N e x t Feminist Generu-
tion. The emphasis on the plurality of perspectives to which the reader is
compelled to listen is held in tension with the promise that such voices will
cohere in generational unity.
If the title appeals to a myth of generational unity, however, the editor
immediately foils such expectations by insisting in the introduction that
“there’s no singular ‘young feminist’ take on the world” (Findlen 1995, xv).
This disclaimer, in turn, is held in tension with successive invocations of the
pronoun “we.” Although she is highly conscious of the limitations inherent in
the assumption of a “natural or easy” feminist collectivity, Findlen deploys a
“next generation’’feminist “we” in outer-directed proclamations of postfemin-
ist feminist defiance, or in descriptions of the historical conditions that shape
contributors’ lives.
When invoked as a postfeminist feminist stance of defiance, the third wave
“we” becomes a public performance, an outward show of solidarity. Instead of
an affirmation of unity across difference, the third wave “we” is frequently
mobilized as an expression of strategic essentialism. Just as often, however, this
highly provisional, highly self-conscious third wave “we” is inflected with a
longing for an uncomplicated notion of identification associated with a myth-
ical feminist past.
If third wave narratives are set in motion by the contradictions that
ensue from engagement with challenges to the monolithic subject of femi-
nism, then challenges to the unified or coherent subject, the authoritative
“I,” surface in third wave personal narratives as well. In many instances,
the autobiographical 1’s that comprise the third wave “we” are simulta-
neously coherent and unstable formations. In Walker’s introduction in
particular, the representative “I” is alternately the confident assertion of a
coherent and knowing feminist self and the incoherent mark of a frag-
mented feminist subject always in process. Both editors begin their intro-
ductory essays with a personal anecdote in which they retrace the
development of their feminist self through the memory of a childhood
experience. Writes Walker, “My existence was an ongoing state of saying
no to many elements of the universe, and picking and choosing to allow
only what I thought should belong” (Walker 1995, xxx). In contrast to this
past coherent, knowable self stands the ever-shifting “we” of the feminist
present: “The ever-shifting but ever-present ideals of feminism can’t help but
60 Hypatia
leave young women and men struggling with the reality of who we are” (1995,
xxxi). If the third wave is marked by a politics of ambiguity, if third wave
organizational structure is predicated on “unpredicted coalition,” so, too, the
third wave subject is always in process: “seeking to create identities that
accommodate ambiguity and our multiple positionalities: including more than
excluding, exploring more than defining, searching more than arriving” ( 1995,
xxxiii).
The foregoing discussion deliberately draws from two different taxonom-
ies, for symbolic purposes grossly oversimplified as “multiculturalist” (to
signify critiques of the representative subject on the grounds of material
exclusions) and “postmodernist” (to signify the destablization of a human-
ist conception of self). This is done to emphasize that third wave discourse
is simultaneously inflected by two very different modes of deconstructive
feminist theorizing. Carlson, Starace, and Villano maintain that “Third
wave theory synthesizes new and old theories, while continuously creating
maps of our own” (1996). Although the cultivation of theoretical hybridity
may be symptomatic of third wave praxis, it would be historically inaccu-
rate, of course, to suggest that such negotiations are characteristic of the
third wave alone. Indeed, many of the negotiations, struggles, and driving
contradictions described so far have been characteristic of feminist theoriz-
ing-and activism-from the start.
READING BETWEENTHE WAVES (PART 2):

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
DILEMMAS
If waves travel in a circular pattern through space, the chronological

wave-ing of feminist movement also implies a forward motion in time.13
Belief in a category called “third wave” depends, in part, on a temporal
narrative of progress. Yet as soon as one sets out to identify some of the
constituent components of “third wave feminism,” it becomes obvious that
many third wave themes and issues are fundamentally enmeshed in praxis
established by earlier waves. Attempting to identify, name, and perhaps
nudge along a political stance or critical practice that bears the label “third
wave feminism,” therefore, inevitably raises a number of historiographic
dilemmas.
Jeannine DeLombard, a contributor to To Be Real, eloquently reminds us
that waves by definition curve alternately in opposite directions. If we think
of the third wave as curving alternately in the directions of the past and the
future, if we think of the third wave as overlapping both temporally and
spatially with the waves that preceded it, then it becomes clear that the
difference of the “third wave” may have been present in some moments and
some places during earlier periods as well. While any assertion of a “third”
wave presumes an existence distinct from moments designated “first” and
“second,” as periods in feminism, waves 0ver1ap.l~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.
Indeed, inasmuch as conflicts surrounding the representative subject of
feminism impel third wave narratives, the logic and language of second wave
feminism shape the very vocabulary through which many third wave nar-
rators describe a self and a life. For many third wavers who come to
feminism through the academy, women’s studies classrooms and textual
encounters have replaced the consciousness-raising group of the late 1960s
and early 1970s as the site of feminist awakening^.'^ Considering that a
good number of the epiphanies described in Listen Up occur in the context
of the college classroom (which itself serves as tribute to the institutional
success of the feminist movement), those epiphanies qualify as feminist
encounters of a “third” kind. A t the same time, their idealized and almost
spiritual rhetoric of awakening and conversion recalls the spirited rhetoric
of second wave narratives of coming to consciousness. Many autobiograph-
ical narratives from the 1970s invoke “the click” as trope for sudden
feminist epiphany (O’Reilly 1972). The extent to which the rhetoric of
third wave awakening echoes that of second wave epiphany is evident in the
following excerpts from Listen Up.
When I read [Adrienne] Rich‘s “CompulsoryHeterosexuality,”
a space opened up for me to speak as a lesbian/bisexual woman.
Suddenly there were other lesbian/bisexual feminists around,
women who welcomed me, supported me, maybe even loved
me. (Gilbert 1995, 112)
My first women’s studies class at Georgetown further kindled
my identity as a feminist. . . . Margaret introduced me to the
writings of feminists of color, such as Cheryl Clarke, bell
hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith. The
thoughts and words of black lesbian feminists such as Lorde
and the Smith sisters resonated deeply within me. (Bowleg
1995,48)
[My women’s studies class] raised my consciousness about issues
of oppression, power and resistance in general. I learned a
language with which I could start to explain my experiences
and link them to larger societal structures of oppression and
complicity. It also gave me ways that I could resist and actively
fight back. (Lee 1995,207)
Following the example of their second wave predecessors, third wave auto-
biographers liken the process of awakening to feminist theory to establishing
“a space” of enlightening encounter, the acquisition of “a language” in which
62 Hypatia
to explain their daily experience. Yet unlike some of their second wave
foremothers, for whom learning (inventing) the language was a revolutionary
and often contested process, third wavers, like the children of immigrants,
achieve fluency at an earlier age, under less strenuous circumstances, and with
greater ease, as only members of the “next generation” can. These excerpts
from Listen Up show how the rhetoric of women’s studies drives the discourse
of third wave autobiography.
My friends advised me. “She’s objectifying herself. If she sets
herself up as a sexualized Other, she will never centralize her-
self, she’ll never be truly Subject,” they said. “Tell her to throw
away her tight jeans!” (Shah 1995,115)
I succeeded with this reinterpreted analysis of go-go dancing for

a while and placed my concerns about being eroticized on a
back shelf. (Hakim-Dyce 1995,233)
Our friendship jelled quickly. We were middle-class black

women in an environment where there were few, and we shared
a passion for music, books, and psychology. We soon assumed
our position on the lesbian continuum. . . . Life on the contin-
uum was powerful, giddily overwhelming and liberating. (Bow-
leg 1995,47)
As an educated, married, monogamous, feminist, Christian,

African American mother, I suffer from an acute case of multi-
plicity. (CurryJohnson 1995, 222)
In passages such as these, second wave theory enables a third wave epistemol-
ogy. The narrators fluently and casually draw on theoretical formulations to
explain and make sense of their everyday existence.
Another seemingly important distinction between second and third
wave narratives of awakening is their method of language acquisition.
Whereas most second wavers came to theory through grassroots activism,
in many third wave narratives the introduction to this discourse, or the
discovery of this space, occurs in an institutional space. Some may fear that
“women’s studies”-that is, the institutionalization of feminism-limits
the countercultural potential of feminism as a movement for social change
and a radical philosophy. Annette Kolodny, for instance, speculates that in
contrast to the generation of women who came to feminist literary criticism
out of the 1960s New Left and the consciousness-raising groups of the late
1960s and early 1970s, “feminism [may become] merely another entree into
sophisticated critical theoretical circles” for many graduate students of the
1980s and 1990s who have not been involved in social activism outside the
academy (Kolodny 1988,461). While in many instances, a student’s engage-
ment with feminism may indeed be limited to textual encounters and confined
to institutional spaces, Listen Up and To Be Real suggest that this is not
universally the case. Indeed, as is evident in the connections between theory
and practice drawn by the contributors (many of whom are or were campus
activists, involved in protests both inside and outside their colleges) the
feminism of a new generation of activists is informed largely by the theory
transmitted in women’s studies classrooms.16
Through direct references to their theoretically informed activism, these
third wave writers emphasize that grassroots activism and women’s studies
courses are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they often feed off each other, as
students serve as volunteers in local feminist organizations. For third wavers
who get their feminism in the classroom and on the street, from teachers,
parents, siblings, and the media; for campus activists who organize in the wake
of such national events as the Clarence Thomas hearings and the ensuing Year
of the Woman; and for those who come to consciousness in a world that already
holds many images of feminism, feminism has once again become as much a
culture as a cause.
Second and third wave praxis clearly overlaps in significant and exciting
ways. In the interest of affirming the difference of the third wave, however,
the authors of third wave autobiography often assume a metonymic view of
the second wave, in which a part of second wave activity is substituted for
the whole. While the mobilization of a third wave of feminism is a politicaI
necessity, the rhetorical insistence on chronological categorization pre-
sumes that each wave is a monolithic formation, when this is emphatically
not the case. Gloria Steinem, who is herself popularly identified as “the
face” of second wave feminism, sounds a note of contention in the foreword
to To Be Real. Responding to the charge raised by some of the contributors
that “a depolarized, full-circle world view, one that sees and instead of
eitherior, linking where there has been ranking, has not always been a
feminist specialty,” Steinem voices her concern that third wave daughters
hold some serious misconceptions about the face that is to be, according to
the title, changed (Steinem 1995, xxiii). “Imagine how frustrating it is to
be held responsible for some of the very divisions you’ve been fighting
against,” she implores, “and you’ll know how feminists of the 1980s and
earlier may feel as they read some of these pages” (xxiii). When third wave
writers construct the second wave as a straw (or bad) mother, in the interest
of asserting their difference (or independence), second wave women are
bound to experience the third wave’s irreverence as insult and to understand
their challenge as wrongful condemnation. Positioning herself rhetorically
as a movement mother, Steinem speaks t o the experience of being on
the (m)other side of the mother-daughter equation: “After all, it will
take a while before feminists succeed enough so that feminism is not
perceived as a gigantic mother who is held responsible for almost every-
64 Hypatia
thing, while the patriarchy receives terminal gratitude for the small favors it
bestows” (xix).
If Steinem “speaks as” a movement mother, To Be Red is rhetorically a
daughterly text. Bookended by historical perspectives-a foreword by Steinem
and an afterword by Angela Davis, both of whom Rebecca Walker met as a
child-To Be Real is truly the labor of a movement daughter. Whereas Steinem
is literally godmother to Rebecca (daughter of Alice), the dynamics of the
mother-daughter relationship figuratively play out through many third wave
narrative^.'^ Indeed, most of the writers in To Be Real speak as daughters, as do
many in Listen Up, struggling to differentiate themselves from the feminism of
their mothers and their mothers’ world. Walker constructs a psychoanalytic
narrative to account for her dangerous attempt to break free of a powerful
pre-Oedipal symbiosis.
Linked with my desire to be a good feminist was, of course, not
just a desire to change my behavior to change the world, but a
deep desire to be accepted, claimed, and loved by a feminist
community that included my mother, godmother, aunts, and
close friends. For all intents and purposes their beliefs were my
own, and we mirrored each other in the most affirming of ways.
As is common in familial relationships, I feared that our love
was dependent upon that mirroring. Once I offered a face
different from the one they expected, I thought the loyalty, the
bond of our shared outlook and understanding would be dam-
aged forever. (Walker 1995, xxx)
Here and throughout the introduction, Walker refers to the pain involved
in allowing herself to create this anthology. Describing her book as her difficult
progeny, she tells the reader, “What you have in your hands now is the book
that I struggled for two years to even allow myself to bring into being” (1995,
xl). While the struggle referred to is the creation of the book, the struggle
functions as a figure for the difficult birth of Walker’s third wave self. The
dynamic is particularly heightened in Walker’s text, yet ambivalence toward
the issue of self-authorization is symptomatic of many third wave personal
narratives.
Consequently, the third wave narrative is frequently tempered by the trope
of obligatory gratitude, mixed with the assertion of the right to speak.’* Writes
Lee in Listen Up, “NOWmind you, I’m still grateful for this women’s studies
class. . . . But . . .” (207). Yet while movement daughters may be eager to
express gratitude in order to avoid incurring the disaffection of the women who
fought for the very notion of feminism and women’s studies, they are nonethe-
less quite determined to refashion feminism in their own image; for what else
is the third wave about if not making waves?Writes Listen Up contributor Inga
Muscio, “I sincerely thank the individuals who have fought so hard for
themselves and their daughters. I thank the people who bent over backwards
so that I can have the luxury of experiencing the beliefs I now hold. Evolution-
arily speaking, however, it is quite natural for this fight to progress into a new
arena” (166). As Muscio suggests, third wave issues are both extensions of
second wave issues and “new” issues in their own right. From the view of the
ocean, waves are part of the same body of water. Yet from the view of the shore,
each new wave makes an impression, forever changing the topography of the
land.
Sociological research on generations has been based on a model of conflict,
rivalry, and rejection. In an interview, Walker has responded to the charge that
by insisting on calling herself a third wave activist, she is acting out against her
mother, a central figure in second wave feminism.
It’s so easy for people to want to make it sexy and juicy by

turning it into this kind of Greek tragedy of daughter against
mother and matricide and all that. And that’s not really what
it is at all. It’s about trying to strengthen the relationships
between mothers and daughters by allowing the difference and
respecting the differences and really working through the dif-
ference. (quoted in Danquah 1995)
Findlen, too, downplays the mother-daughter dynamic in the introduction to

Listen Up.
The spirited voices in this collection are not “daughters” rebel-
ling against the old-style politics of their “mothers.” In fact,
many of the writers in this anthology cite the writings and
actions of older feminists as an integral part of their own
development and beliefs. It is clear that the kinds of experi-
ences that lead young women to feminism are often similar to
those that have always led women into feminism, even though
the personal circumstances and social context may differ.
(Findlen 1995, xv)
As Audre Lorde commented in 1984, the “generation gap” becomes yet

another tool of repression; for if one generation views another generation as
“contemptible or suspect or excess, they will never be able to join hands and
examine the living memories of the community” ( I 17). If intergenerational
dialogue among feminists is to move forward, it must move beyond narrative
scripts in which the second wave necessarily becomes the bad mother and the
third wave the bad child. Such scripts ultimately result in paralysis: “I confess
that there are moments in these pages,” writes Steinem in the foreword to To
Be Real, “when I-and perhaps other readers over thirty-five-feel like a
sitting dog being told to sit” (Walker 1995, xxii).
66 Hypatia
Naming the “third” wave emphasizes the imperative for the second wave to
pass the torch and let the “next” generation carry it wherever historical
conditions may lead. The metaphor most commonly employed to describe
intergenerational relations among feminists, that of familial generations, is so
fraught with intense emotion that perhaps we need a new way to conceive the
difference between cohorts of feminists. Writes Christina Crosby, “The ques-
tion remains of how to deal with difference and how to work for difference-
how to think difference as a problem for theory and not a solution” (1993,
139). Following Crosby’s invocation of theory and solution, perhaps we might
better understand the (r)evolution that is feminism through the analogy of
science. Instead of seeing the work of the pioneering investigators as a failed
experiment, however, the third wave needs to experience itself as fundamen-
tally part of the same project. The third wave is a continuation of the
experiment; it builds on foundations of the past even as it races toward the
future. Heinz Kohut, a founder of the self-psychology movement in the United
States (a relatively “young” movement that challenges some of the founda-
tional premises of classical psychoanalysis) likens the psychoanalytic theoreti-
cian-practitioner to a playful scientist.
The true scientist-the playful scientist as I put it before-is
able to tolerate the shortcomings of his [sic] achievements-
the tentativeness of his formulations, the incompleteness of
his concepts. Indeed, he treasures them as the spur for further
joyful exertions. I believe that the deepest meaning of sci-
ence is revealed when it is seen as an aspect of transient yet
continuing life. The sense of continuity despite change-
even despite deeply significant change-supports the scien-
tist in his ever-repeated return from theory to observation.
(Kohut 1977,312)
We would do well to apply this spirit of true inquiry to our investigation of
the feminist present; for just as the third wave cannot afford to deny its past
if it is to lead us all into the future, so the second must come to see the
efforts of the third-however incomplete-as the joyful exertion born of its
labors.
THELEGACYOF THE PERSONAL: THEORIZING

(IN) THE THIRD
WAVE
To Be Real, then, is not a book of feminist theory. It is not a

dry, academic tome, or a political manifesto. It is a very
personal book filled with anecdotes about individuals’ own
struggles with the contradictions and complexities of their
own beliefs, their perceptions of feminist dogma and their
daily encounters with a society that more easily categorizes
people than it treats them as individuals.
(Phil Haslanger, review of To Be Real, 1996)
The inchoate belief that feeling bad is the equivalent of
being oppressed may be especially appealing to the young,
whose solipsism can be excused as developmental. But social
and political commentary requires detachment from the self
as well as engagement in its dramas. . . . Almost all the young
contributors to Listen Up focus on themselves with the
unchecked passion of amateur memoirists who believe that
their lives are intrinsically interesting to strangers. . . . They
write about feminism by writing about growing up.
(Wendy Kaminer, “Feminism’s Third Wave,” 1995)
Contrary to these popular conceptions, I would argue that Listen Up and To

Be Red, while intensely personal books, are by no means “merely personal.’’
Following Kathleen Hanna (lead singer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill) in a
promotional blurb on the book’s back cover, I would have to agree that Listen
Up is “A valuable resource for anyone who knows that feminism is more than
just a ‘subject’or a ‘line of study.’ The writers have managed to document how
different feminist ideas and practices actually function in their lives.” The
charge that To Be Real, according to Haslanger, is not “feminist theory” on the
grounds that it is a “very personal book filled with anecdotes” is somewhat of
a contradiction in terms, as well as historically misinformed. As Hanna’s
commendation suggests, there is a sense in which the personal has always been
the material of feminist theory.
Writes Nancy K. Miller, “If one of the original premises of seventies femi-
nism (emerging out of sixties slogans) was that ‘the personal is political,’
eighties feminism has made it possible to see that the personal is also the
theoretical: the personal is part of theory’s material” (1991, 21). As the
autobiographical mode in theory has become increasingly prominent, the
question of whether theory can be personalized and the personal adequately
theorized has become, of course, a source of much debate in academic feminist
circles. Whereas Kaminer dismisses the “stories” told in Listen Up as the
solipsistic rantings of the developmentally immature, other critics warn that
the excessive personalizing of feminist discourse can potentially obscure
68 Hypatia
instead of unveil systemic problems and power structures. Some argue that the
proliferation of the personal narrative in feminist theory displaces women with
a few writerly I’s.’~In the autobiographical narratives in Listen Up and To Be
Real, the personal is not inherently theoretical, nor does it claim to be.
Nevertheless, most of the writers ground their essays in the premise that the
personal, as Miller insists, is part of theory’s material. Writes Walker,
I prefer personal testimonies. . . . I believe that our lives are the
best basis for feminist theory, and that by using the contradic-
tions in our lives as what Zen practitioners have called the
“razor’s edge,” we lay the groundwork for feminist theory that
neither vilifies or deifies, but that accepts and respects differ-
ence. (1995, xxxvii)
If the personal is not inherently theoretical, however, neither are the stories
mere tales of growing up, as Kaminer suggests. Kaminer’s assumption that
“political commentary requires detachment from the self as well as engage-
ment in its dramas” signals, in effect, a return to the binary opposition of the
personal and the political, an opposition that the second wave emphatically
opposed. In defense of the multiple forms of theorizing, Gayle Greene argues
that “personal criticism, rather than a practice pitted against theory and
reinforcing the usual binarisms (personal against public, female against male,
concrete against abstract), may be imbricated in theory in a way which
broadens the notion of theory; and that, far from turning in on itself in a
response which is trivial, self-indulgent, ‘merely personal,’ such writing is
‘engaged’” (1993,20). Instead of the trivial musings of “amateur memoirists,”
as Kaminer snidely suggests, the personal criticism practiced in Listen Up and
To Be Real is more often the engaged and engaging expression of the third wave
as it confronts the personal, political, and theoretical predicament of being a
feminist in the 1990s.
Gloria Steinem likens Listen Up to “a consciousness#raisinggroup between
covers.” As Steinem suggests retrospectively in her own recent work, the
primary function of the CR group was to provide a space in which the isolated
“I” could, by means of identification, collapse into a collective, rescuing “we.”
These [early] radical feminist groups assumed that women’s
experience should be the root of theory. Whether at speak-outs
or consciousness-raising groups, “talking circles” or public
hearings, the essential idea was: Tell your personal truth, listen to
other women’s stories, see what themes are s h e d , and discover that
the personal is political-you are not alone. (1994, 270)
If the third wave constitutes a return to the personal and the return to the
personal enacts a return to CR, the result is CR with a difference. I t is true that
these third wave anthologies forge a temporary and contingent textual com-
munity, for the individual stories converge in a moment of unpredicted textual

coalition. Yet third wave personal expression differs from the personalizing of
the political effected through CR because third wave texts are not necessarily
intended to be that shared space designed to facilitate an unqualified identifi-
cation between the reading and writing subject. Because the third wave is
about how to practice feminism differently, to broaden and deepen the analysis
of gender in relation to a multiplicity of issues that affect women’s lives, third
wave theory places differences among women at the center of the project.
While such a focus bears the risk of obscuring commonalties, solidarity inheres
in the reality of commitment to being the third wave.
CONCLUSION
Wave. 4c. A seismic disturbance of a portion of the crust or surface of the

earth, traveling continuously for a certain distance.
While it has become customary for popular feminist writers to condemn the
work of academic feminists and, likewise, for academic feminists to refuse to
take seriously the work of popular feminist writers, those of us currently writing
and coming of age as feminists inside and outside the academy can no longer
afford to remain on different sides of the fence. As Linda Kauffman reminds us,
“Theory should, after all, lead to reconceptualizations of power that go beyond
traditional definitions of politics. This is one of the many areas in which
feminism’s contributions have been vital. It exposes the falsity of the dichot-
omy between theory and practice by consistently reminding us that the point
of theorizing is to transform human behavior” (1989,3). Indeed, one of the
most vital legacies feminism has to offer is its insistence on joining theoretical
analysis with political practice. In Public Access: Literary Theory and American
Cultural Politics, Michael BerubC challenges scholars on the academic left to
write publicly accessible theory. As the “political correctness” debates have
made clear, when academics do not popularize academic work, others are more
than willing to popularize it for us. “That kind of popularization takes place on
terms we can neither influence nor anticipate,” warns Berube, “and now that
we know just how bad criticism’s ‘popularization’might look in hands not our
own, we have all the more reason to get busy” (1994, 163).
Third wave feminists are getting busy. Excerpted in widely circulating
magazines, including Ms., Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselk, and Girlfriends, the
essays in Listen Up and To Be Real have become grassroots venues in which
theory is being generated and disseminated. As I hope to have demonstrated,
the personal narratives collected in these anthologies exist in a state of
dialogue with contemporary academic feminist work. Contrary to the vari-
ously inflected caricatures of academic feminism posited by Roiphe, Wolf,
Denfeld, Paglia, Sommers, and Patai and Koertge, academic feminism and
grassroots expression are once again informing each other in ways that are
70 Hypatia
exciting, energetic, and vital. Unlike the women showcased in Elizabeth

Fox-Genovese’s Feminism is Not the Stmy of My Life (1994) (another popular
attack o n feminism, using the personal as the place to do it), the contributors
to Walker’s and Findlen’s anthologies insist that feminism and its theories
remain but one of the many narratives informing their lives and their activism.
Given such points of explicit overlap, I envision the third wave as a moment
that asks us as scholars to re-imagine the disparate spaces constructed as
“inside” and “outside” the academy instead as mutually informing and inter-
secting spheres of theory and practice. Understanding the activities going on
in these different arenas of theory production as inextricably linked might
encourage emerging academic feminists to rethink the relationship between
the feminist scholar and the public, and young or emerging feminists operating
outside the academy to rethink the relationship between activism and aca-
demic theory. For the activity of the third wave, I maintain, is quite possibly
beginning to resemble that of a n earlier period, in which links between
feminism, the academy, and grassroots activism were visible and viable. If a
wave is defined as a large body of persons-chiefly invaders or immigrants
overrunning a country, or soldiers advancing to a n attack-who recede and
return after an interval, and if the 1980s marked the recession, perhaps the
1990s mark the return.
NOTES
1. As early as 1982, journalists labeled women in their teens and twenties the
“postfeminist”generation. See Bolotin 1982. For more recent articles “documenting”
this phenomenon in the popular press, see Ellerbe 1990, Hogeland 1994, and Shapiro
1994. For a book-length account of the phenomenon, see Kamen 1991.
2. While multiple and varied rationales remain for rejecting the “f.word,” the
arguments put forth by Roiphe, Wolf, and Denfeld-that the primary reason young
women flee from the term today is because “we feminists” has come to mean “we
victims”-have been hailed in the mainstream U S . press as the sentimentsof an entire
generation. For a more detailed analysis of the popular reception of these works, see
Siegel, forthcoming.
3. Among these networks are African American Women in Defense of Ourselves;
Bay Area Teenage Feminist Coalition; Campus Organizing Project; Feminists United
to Represent Youth (FURY); Grnl Club; National Abortion Rights Action League
(NARAL); Students Organizing Students; Third Wave Direct Action Corporation;
Women’s Action Coalition (WAC); Women’s Health Action and Mobilization
(WHAM); Women’s Information Network (WIN); Women Express, Inc.; Youth Mu-
cation Life Line (YELL); Young Women’s Action Network; Young Women’s Project;
and Young Women’s Voices. Newly published magazines and journals by and about
young women and their activism include Hear Us Sisters Emerging (HUES) and GAYA:
A J o u By ~ About Young Women. NOW held its first national Young Feminist
~ and
Conference in February 1991. Other recent young feminist conferences have included
Feminist Futures: First National Conference By, For, and About Women in Their 20s,
sponsored by the Center for Women Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., November
1989, and A Call to Action-Common Ground: Toward a Collective Voice of Young
Women, sponsored by the Young Women’s Project, Institute for Women’s Policy
Research, Washington, D.C., October 1990.
4. My thanks to Dale Bauer for making this connection.
5. Early feminist journals and magazines in the 1970s were constantly debating the
relationship between theory and practice. The debate about the uses of theory therefore
well precedes Barbara Christian’s more recent intervention, “The Race for Theory”
(1987), which is specifically directed at advocates of poststructuralist theory. See also
Homans 1994, Davies 1994, hooks 1994.
6. Findlen is currently the executive editor of Ms. magazine; Walker, a founder of
the Third Wave Direct Action Corporation and a contributing editor at Ms., was
recently named by Time magazine as one of the nation’s top fifty leaders.
7. For discussion, see Walker 1992; Kaminer 1995; Heywood and Drake, forthcom-
ing; Albrecht et al., forthcoming; Garrison 1996; Sandoval 1991.
8. For historically grounded analyses of feminist generations, see Cott 1987;
Whittier 1995.
9. For a more detailed discussion of the term as it circulates in academic feminist
writing, see Modleski 1991; Mann 1994.
10. The NOW Young Feminist Conference Implementation Committee (CIC) is
made up of twelve young women from different NOW regions who collectively offer
input on NOW conferences, rallies, and projects. In 1993, the NOW membership
passed a resolution “to create and distribute brochures on young feminist issues and
organizing, [and] create a Young Feminists Resource Kit, which would include informa-
tion on convening both chapters and action teamsltask forces.” The Young Feminist
CIC became active following the Young Feminists Summit, a NOW-sponsored confer-
ence in April 1994 held in Washington, D.C. The CIC is beginning to define projects
of its own, beginning with the development of this brochure.
11. For an earlier articulation of young feminist issues, see Nadia Moritz, The Young
Womn’s Handbook, published under the auspices of the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research in 1991. While some young women are struggling to name issues as age-spe-
cific, others draw on class and health issues as the primary markers. Writes a contributor
to the Summer 1994 issue of GAYA: A Journal By and About Young Women, “The daily
feminist agenda for young women often differs from that of older, more settled women.
At 26 I am more concerned with AIDS than breast cancer, or whether I’ll ever be able
to afford healthcare. Right now I am more concerned about finding a job that pays
above minimum wage, than equal pay for middle management. This is not to say
that 1 am not concerned about breast cancer or economic equity, but these are not
the top priorities for me or for a vast majority of the women I have talked to in recent
months” (3).
12. Perhaps it is this confusion that commentators in the mainstream press respond
to when they characterize third wave feminism as unorganized and unfocused. Writes
Joannie Schrof in an article published in U.S. News @ World Report, “The third-wave
agenda is a m b i t i o u ean d unfocused, according to some critics. . . . The young
generation’s indignant mindset translates into an aggressive,cdorful style of activism-
a style some find invigorating, others juvenile” (1993,69).
13. The following discussion draws on Virigina Woolf’s invocation of waves as trope
for the simulaneously linear and circular aspects of time. See, e.g., The Waves.
72 Hypatia
14. For a discussion of feminist activity between the first and second waves, see
Meyerowitz 1993.
15. As important as it is to the survival of feminism, women’s studies is not the sole
crucible for the next wave. As Barbara Ehrenreich aptly notes, women’s studies is
“limited to the 52 percent of young women who go to college at all (and, of course, to
the far smaller percentage who are willing or able to take courses with no clear
vocational goal)” (Ehrenreich 1988,33).
16. For media coverage of young feminist activism on and off campus, see Davis
1990; Dulin,1993; Houppert 1991;Ness 1995;Oulette 1992;Pfister 1993;Schrof 1993;
Slee 1992; Tillotson 1995; Wells 1991; Young feminists 1991.
17. For discussions of how the psychosocial dynamics of the mother-daughter
relationship shape intergenerational tensions among women in the academy, see Keller
and Moglen 1987; Michie 1986; Miner and Longino 1987; Sprengnether 1993;
Westphal 1994.
18. When a friend of mine, a founder of a young feminist network in Washington,
D.C., asked a panel of older feminists what words of advice they had for the next
generation, one of the panelists responded with “Say thank you.”
19. For critiques of the movement toward personal criticism, see Scott 1993;
Bernstein 1992; Kauffman 1993.
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What are some of the main topics discussed in the document?

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What are some of the perspectives discussed regarding feminism?

What are some of the perspectives discussed regarding feminism?

The Legacy of the Personal:

Generating Theory in Feminism’s

Wave (n) 2c. A forward movement of a large body of persons

At a time when feminism has lost much of its political edge

Having arrived at this point, I should now adopt a more

irrelevance. Denfeld similarly blames academic “New Victorians” for having

unfavorable view of many feminist critics, themselves representing a diverse

political nature of the construction and dissemination of knowledge, I

a visible disability; androgynous; lapsed Jew; child of profes-

Wave 2a. An undulatory movement, or one of an intermittent series of

feminism’s evolution will entail a politics of ambiguity, not identity” (Tillotson

My yearning to be real has led me in circles, to red herrings

Just as the yearning to be a feminist in an era (however prematurely) labeled

What exactly defines a young feminist? Is it the age or the

Following a series of negotiations with committee members, a draft of the

Young feminist issues are as diverse and varied as the women

harassed for their sexuality, punished for their economic status,

this is not necessarily a problem of biological age, as some

Sociological studies augmenting Kearney’s observation suggest that age may

[Wlaves-which, by definition, curve alternately in

mean my mother, my roommates, the white woman next door,

Third wave practice seeks to create what Angela Davis calls

As this description shows, third wave practice is inextricably linked to

to disturb the assumption of an all-inclusive feminist “we,” many of them are

READING BETWEENTHE WAVES (PART 2):

If waves travel in a circular pattern through space, the chronological

“second,” as periods in feminism, waves 0ver1ap.l~Just as the same water

I succeeded with this reinterpreted analysis of go-go dancing for

Our friendship jelled quickly. We were middle-class black

As an educated, married, monogamous, feminist, Christian,

It’s so easy for people to want to make it sexy and juicy by

Findlen, too, downplays the mother-daughter dynamic in the introduction to

As Audre Lorde commented in 1984, the “generation gap” becomes yet

THELEGACYOF THE PERSONAL: THEORIZING

To Be Real, then, is not a book of feminist theory. It is not a

Contrary to these popular conceptions, I would argue that Listen Up and To

munity, for the individual stories converge in a moment of unpredicted textual

Wave. 4c. A seismic disturbance of a portion of the crust or surface of the

exciting, energetic, and vital. Unlike the women showcased in Elizabeth

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