Sémiotique de l’enterrement prématuré : le féminisme à l’ère du postféminisme

Abstract

This essay investigates the strange coincidence of the unprecedented growth of global feminism over the past four decades with recurrent proclamations of feminism’s death. Treating the texts of feminism’s death as forms of meaning-making ripe for semiotic analysis, the paper explores the rhetorical mechanisms by which feminism’s death is produced and the means by which alternative representations of the corpse of feminism are linked to particular assumptions about the nature of feminism. Situating the premature burial of a thriving global feminism in the context of a gendered history of live burial practices, the paper suggests that recurrent pronouncements of the death of feminism should be interpreted as a form of damage, an effort to undermine and erase feminist struggles for social justice while covering the traces of the erasure.

Keywords

• feminism
• social movements
• postfeminism
• semiotics
• burial