Abstract
In this chapter, Guest suggests that the women’s feminist identities are formed through ‘touches across time’ (Dinshaw 1999). They each draw connections with different points in feminist time and incorporate them into their own feminist stories. Rather than imagining feminism to be a static and clearly boundaried entity, narrative methods enable exploration of how these connections are formed. Through a brief discussion of her own story of becoming feminist, Guest highlights how the framing of the moments where we seek to explain, defend or question feminist identities in a coherent, recognisable narrative offers a momentary means of coming to know feminism. However, becoming feminist is a continual, relational process that is negotiated through moments and encounters, rather than a static, unchanging identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Both within a UK context and across the world, the impact and influence of these political movements on political institutions, practices and governments have been felt in various ways. In the UK, the context for this book, Hilary Wainwright (in Rowbotham et al., 2013) has noted the shift in public discourse and increased popular critique of the, at this point, coalition government’s austerity agenda. The recent 2015 UK general election, which saw a Conservative government elected by a very narrow majority, also saw the Scottish National Party, who campaigned on an anti-austerity platform, win 56 of the 59 Scottish constituencies. Following the election and the resignation of the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, the leadership campaign saw a surge of support for its eventual winner and current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn’s victory has meant that the main UK opposition party now leads with an anti-austerity voice, albeit one facing divisions and opposition within the party itself. Corbyn’s leadership campaign was facilitated by a swell of grassroots support from non-party member and has seen a surge in Labour membership following his election. Indeed, it was an email and social media campaign for Corbyn to receive the required number of nominations to be included on the ballot paper that meant he was a contender in the race at all. These recent developments in UK politics illustrate the influence of political campaigns that operate outside of and independent of political parties, and their interaction with political parties and systems themselves.
- 2.
‘Lucy’ refers to the 3.5-million-year-old hominid discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.
References
Denzin, Norman. 2008. Interpretive Biography. In Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, ed. J. Gary Knowles and L. Cole Ardra, 117–125. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. 1999. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre-and Postmodern. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
———. 2001. "Got Medieval?" Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2): 202-212.
Frosh, Stephen, and Carla Willig. 2012. A Conversation with Professor Stephen Frosh. In Qualitative Interpretation and Analysis in Psychology, ed. Carla Willig, 169–185. McGraw-Hill: Open University Press.
Guest, Carly. Forthcoming. Cultivating Reflexive Research Practice when Using Participants’ Photographs as Research Data. In Ethics and Visual Research Methods: Theory, Methodology and Practice, eds. D. Warr, M. Guillemin, S. Cox, and J. Waycott. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lewis, Patrick J. 2011. Storytelling as Research/Research as Storytelling. Qualitative Inquiry 17(6): 505–510.
Letherby, Gayle. 2012. Theorised objectivity. In Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research, ed. Gayle Letherby, John Scott, and Malcolm Williams, 79–102. London: Sage.
Mani, Lata. 1989. Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multiple Mediations. Inscriptions 35: 1–23.
Rowbotham, Sheila, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright. 2013. Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. London: Merlin Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Guest, C. (2016). Becoming Feminist. In: Becoming Feminist. Citizenship, Gender and Diversity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53181-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53181-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53180-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53181-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)