Abstract
This chapter explores shifts in feminist and postfeminist discourse on sexuality using two
influential novels about women’s sexual agency and empowerment as a case in point.
The first novel, Ha¨utungen [Shedding], appeared in the mid-1970s at the peak of the New
German Women’s Movement and went on to become one of the most important
feminist fictional texts. The second novel, Feuchtgebiete [Wetlands] was published in
2008 in the wake of what has been called postfeminism. Both books are discovery
narratives about young women coming of age and both have been heralded by the
media as having ruptured sexual taboos and old ways of talking about women’s
bodies and sexuality. In different ways, both have also been influential in feminist and postfeminist debates about the possibilities for empowering women as sexual subjects.
Both texts show how fiction can draw upon and help shape a transgressive sexual
politics, making it instrumental in women’s sexual empowerment. In this chapter, we
examine the resonances and the differences between these two texts, paying particular
attention to the kind of narratives that are produced and how in each case a sexual
subject is constructed in and through the text. Specific exclusions in terms of race,
ethnicity, class, and sexuality are explored, as well as the sexual political strategies that
each text generates with an eye toward the possibilities each creates for women’s
sexual (dis)empowerment and critique of normalised sexuality.
influential novels about women’s sexual agency and empowerment as a case in point.
The first novel, Ha¨utungen [Shedding], appeared in the mid-1970s at the peak of the New
German Women’s Movement and went on to become one of the most important
feminist fictional texts. The second novel, Feuchtgebiete [Wetlands] was published in
2008 in the wake of what has been called postfeminism. Both books are discovery
narratives about young women coming of age and both have been heralded by the
media as having ruptured sexual taboos and old ways of talking about women’s
bodies and sexuality. In different ways, both have also been influential in feminist and postfeminist debates about the possibilities for empowering women as sexual subjects.
Both texts show how fiction can draw upon and help shape a transgressive sexual
politics, making it instrumental in women’s sexual empowerment. In this chapter, we
examine the resonances and the differences between these two texts, paying particular
attention to the kind of narratives that are produced and how in each case a sexual
subject is constructed in and through the text. Specific exclusions in terms of race,
ethnicity, class, and sexuality are explored, as well as the sexual political strategies that
each text generates with an eye toward the possibilities each creates for women’s
sexual (dis)empowerment and critique of normalised sexuality.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Women’s Liberation Movement: Impacts and Outcomes |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Publisher | Berghahn |
| Pages | 129-157 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-1-78533-586-0 |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Keywords
- Abjection, agency, embodiment, feminism, normalisation, postfeminism, sexuality, textual
