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THE POLITICS OF MEMORY AND GENDER: WHAT HAPPENED TO SECOND‐WAVE FEMINISM IN GERMANY?
Author(s) -
BeckerCantarino Barbara
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12063
Subject(s) - feminism , gender studies , politics , politics of memory , femininity , sociology , mythology , political science , art , law , literature
ABSTRACT ’68 has become a powerful cipher for the political renewal of post‐war (West) Germany, but references to women and their impact on social (and political) changes are mostly absent from personal and collective memorials. Using the notion of cultural memory work as social constructivism, the paper explores how the politics of memory, femininity and gender reflecting un‐negotiated gender issues, especially the lingering myth of traditional femininity, are pivotal in second‐wave feminism's low visibility and esteem in spite of the movement's apparent success in promoting women's legal and social equality. Dating back to the contested relationship between '68ers and second‐wave feminism, anti‐feminist discourse in the media employs strategies of displacing the social arguments of equality feminism into the erotic and personal, presenting feminist gender negotiations as ridiculous, irrational, prudish, anti‐democratic, and even dangerous. Equality feminism as a social movement promoted and supported mostly by women does not easily fit into the traditional categories of German paternalistic national history and present memory culture in Germany.