Last night saw the Metaphysical Society’s (the Metafizz) first collaboration with Nemesis, Trinity’s new intersectional feminist journal, yield highly thought-provoking results. A crowd of about 50 gathered to hear Dr Sinéad Kennedy of Maynooth University present her paper “Antigone’s Daughters: Women and State in the Age of Neoliberalism”. Set in the context of the encroaching US presidential election, Kennedy took a relevant and poignant approach to the topic of feminism as we understand it in 2016.
Kennedy’s project essentially sought to portray Antigone, the fictional figure from classical antiquity, as the beacon of resistance to the state’s totalising control. In Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone disobeys the King’s edict that her brother shall remain unburied, and instead honours her familial duty and buries him. Subsequently, she dies for her actions. If Antigone has come to represent the greatest figure of defiance against the mechanisms of the state, how can we reconcile her persona with allegedly feminist figures such as Hillary Clinton, especially in light of her acquiescence with corporate, neoliberal interests? Dr Kennedy’s point was irrefutable — she unfurled the shift from second wave feminism to the new, “mainstream feminism,” one that values the brevity of the 140-character tweet or a catchy hashtag,
Contemporary feminist discourse, Kennedy noted, has become wildly reductive. Due to a lack of public understanding, it is deployed to boost the status quo, effectively becoming a cheerleader for convention and deliberately fusing with neoliberal capitalist interests in a “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” mentality. Rather than challenging the social, cultural and economic forces that oppress women and continue speaking on behalf of the veracity of the female condition, mainstream feminism has acquired a new flash. This pomp and circumstance, Dr Kennedy seemed to suggest, is embodied in Clinton’s campaign as well as in the media support that it draws.
Clinton’s 2016 campaign in pursuit of “feminist-in-chief” presents a marked transformation from her 2008 campaign, in which, as Dr Kennedy put it, “she was loathe to emphasize her feminist credentials”. It is only when faced with “misogynist-in-chief”, Donald Trump, that her feminist persona has become fleshed out. With celebrity supporters such as Beyoncé and Lena Dunham, the popularisation of contemporary feminism is undeniable. Dr Kennedy explained that “the ecstasy of feminist public opinion makers over Clinton’s ‘proclaimed’ feminism” yields an “insider’s only” view, excluding women of a lower class and “patholigising women who disagree” as jealous, misinformed or intimidated.
Kennedy then laid out the devastating effects of neoliberalism’s assault upon the individual — how personal responsibility as a consumer has become the “natural way” for society to think. She delivered the crux of her argument by depicting contemporary feminist ideology as inextricably connected, even dependent upon, neoliberal theory. Mainstream feminism does not challenge, as it should in the spirit of Antigone; rather, it accommodates the neoliberal state.
Kennedy’s most convincing point (at least to a female audience member) was her idea that society’s conception of the individual coincides with the capitalist agenda to sell products marketed solely toward the “improvement” of the female body. In a neoliberal framework, “oppression becomes privatised,” and, Kennedy suggested, the individualised burden of the consumer is most definitely gendered. The woman is a weaker target in areas of self-discipline. Thus, she becomes the ideal target for a neoliberal agenda: the ideal consumer. Capitalism functions by creating a problem and, instead of fixing the problem, offering a new business or product as the solution. For women in particular, Kennedy emphasised with reference to Dove deodorant ads, these “problems” are numerous and mainly appearance-based.
Kennedy closed out her argument with the slightly troubling fact that yes, in the tragedy, Antigone died. Although it seems mildly unconvincing to Antigone’s relevance today, Kennedy stressed the importance of her role in resisting the absolute dominance of the state. Kennedy added an optimistic notion, that we do “have the value of hindsight”, and that it is essential to expose the limits of the framework our neoliberal society has imposed upon us. While Kennedy’s thinking appealed to our consideration of Antigone as a model of a radical political alternative, it lacked much interpretation. She finished on an idealistic note, however, true to her Marxist leanings: a call for a greater amount of solidarity in order to improve the entirety of the human condition.
