With the project presentation coming up, I used most of my time to look into more secondary sources on the subject of the second wave of feminism from a transnational perspective and think of where I wanted to go with my final project. In my last blog, I mentioned my desire to go further than a western centered analysis of the subject and try to highlight not only the exchanges but also the absence of circulation in some cases and the barriers to the circulation of feminist ideas. My main aim is to explore how a transnational approach can help rethink and offer new perspectives on the subject of the second wave of feminism.
In that sense Molony and Nelson’s book Women’s Activism and « Second Wave » Feminism: Transnational Histories is particularly interesting in how it highlights the role of transnational perspectives in reshaping the spatialization as well as the temporality of the second wave of feminism. Indeed, they argue that the idea that the second wave of feminism started in the early 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s is due to historiography having mostly focused on anglo-saxon and french movements.
However, by using a transnational approach and trying to expand and de-westernize the study of feminist movements of the period, the second wave of feminism appears as a larger and longer process which, the authors argue, could be defined as starting directly following the beginning of the cold war and ending in the early twentieth century.
Molony and Nelson also question the relevance of the image of the wave in scholarly work on feminist movements of the period as it conceals the continuity and gives the appearance that there were no feminists mobilizations in between waves. They mobilize Molyneaux’s work on feminism and women’s activism and highlights the continuity between both as although women’s activism is not inherently feminist it can serve as a catalyst for feminist demands thus again putting into question the relevance of the wave image. I found this particularly interesting and I wish to keep in mind some of those concepts and points of critique that both authors made while working on my final project.