The Semiotics of Pemature Burial: Feminism in a Postfeminist Age

Abstract

In this article, I will explore how the death of feminism is represented in order to plumb the larger meanings embedded in proclamations of feminism’s symbolic death. I will begin by investigating two mechanisms by which feminism’s death has been produced to unearth the tacit values of feminism’s morticians. I will then consider competing accounts of the “signs of death” in order to explore how particular assumptions about the ontology of feminism are tied to specific forms of metaphorical death. Given the particular kind of distortion involved in the premature burial of a thriving global feminism, the final section of the article situates contemporary feminism’s death knell in the context of a gendered history of live burial practices. By excavating and interpreting such archaic practices, I will link the rhetorical burial of contemporary feminism to an ongoing effort to undermine feminist struggles for social justice.