Our low-paid workers are our lifeline

On Wednesday 18th March, Angela McRobbie was admitted to hospital with what turned out to be COVID-19. Here she discusses her experiences of the virus, and pays tribute to those low paid workers who are at the forefront of efforts to tackle the pandemic

On phantasms of gender: A feminist cultural studies perspective

This article provides a response to Judith Butler’s recent book Who’s Afraid of Gender? making the case for the volume as a key contribution to feminist cultural studies, an exemplary pedagogic text, close to Stuart Hall’s style of writing. The book works as a counter to the anti-gender currents which have demonised genderqueer and trans people through the unleashing of populist sentiments securing these to a right-wing agenda. The article draws attention to the UK tabloid press and its reliance on social media invective. With the university as a contested space, what scope is there for new forms of public pedagogy to emerge

Inside the socialist nursery: welfare maternity and the writing of Denise Riley

This article considers Denise Riley's contribution to a feminist history of the British welfare state apparatus, with a focus on maternity and reproduction. Drawing attention to the inter-locking of historical method with the emergence of feminist theory, the article comments on the importance and originality of this encounter. There is also an abbreviated attempt to convey a line of argument subsequent to Riley's early work, with reference to the power of the vernacular language of the popular media as purveyor of morality and harsh judgement of women

Feminism, the Family and the New 'Mediated' Maternalism

This essay interrogates the emergence of a new moment in the unfolding of contemporary neoliberal hegemony which sees the political potential in creating strong connections with liberal feminism, updating this while also retaining some of its most salient features dating back to the mid to late 1970s. At the same time this process, which can be traced through the very contemporary entanglements of political culture, visual media and new social media, finds concretisation through the figure of the middle-class mother who is slim and youthful in appearance. This persona, whether in full time work or a ‘stay home Mum’ is accredited a more substantial professional status than was the case in the era of the ‘housewife’. With feminism ‘taken into account’ she is considered an equal partner in marriage and thus charged with making the right choices and decisions for her family needs. In this neoliberal version of past notions of ‘maternal citizenship’ a number of socio-political processes can be seen at work, she is compared favourably for her well-planned and healthy life in comparison to her less advantaged, low income, single parent counterparts. Her lifestyle and childcare choices mark a strong departure, indeed an entirely different trajectory to previous generations of mothers, who across the boundaries of class and ethnicity, benefited from a feminist post-war welfare ethos which regarded nursery provision for pre-school children, toddlers and indeed babies as a social good. And finally her presence and visibility in a number of campaigning and online organisations suggests a stronger class divide than was the case in the past and with this the eclipsing of the egalitarian principles of social democracy. The essay reflects on the film Revolutionary Road (2009) and the recent book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as conduits for this new ‘maternal- feminine’

Reflections on Feminism and Immaterial labour

In the many articles and books written in recent years on the topics of precarious labour, immaterial and affective labour, all of which are understood within the over-arching frame of post-Fordist regimes of production, there is a failure to foreground gender, or indeed to knit gender and ethnicity into prevailing concerns with class and class struggle. I seek to rectify this by interrogating some of the influential work in this terrain. I draw attention to those accounts which have reflected on gender and on changes in how feminists and sociologists nowadays think about the question of women and employment. I ask the question, how integral is the participation of 'women' to the rise of post-Fordist production, and what kind of role do women, especially young women now play in the urban-based new culture industries? By prioritising gender I am also critiquing its invisibility in this current field of new radical political discourse associated with writers like Hardt and Virno (eds 1996) and Hardt and Negri (2000). I argue for a more historically informed perspective which pays attention to the micro-activities of earlier generations of feminists who were at the forefront of combining forms of job creation with political activity (eg women's book stores and publishing, youth-work or 'mädchenarbeit', child care and kinderladen) under the auspices of what would now be called 'social enterprise'

Beyond anti-welfarism and feminist social media mud-slinging: Jo Littler interviews Angela McRobbie

In this wide-ranging interview, which took place in spring 2021, Angela McRobbie talks about her work in relation to social politics, the contemporary conjuncture, cultural studies, decolonisation and feminism. Beginning with a discussion on her experience of Covid, it contextualises these reflections through a discussion of anti-welfarism and the scapegoating of dependency, drawing from her new book Feminism and the Politics of Resilience. It moves on to discuss different forms and experiences of feminism: including the neoliberal Anglo-German academic context; the legacies of queer theory and radical feminism; the ‘mud-slinging’ of social media which ‘does not allow us the time and space to rehearse what is really going on’; the need to engage with social policy alongside cultural theory; and the ongoing intersectional work of rewriting the curriculum

Positives and negatives: reclaiming the female body and self-deprecation in stand-up comedy

Drawing on existing research into feminist humour, this article argues that many of the functions of self-deprecation within comic performance that have been identified and explored in relation to the American context of the late 90s and early 2000s are still evident on the current UK circuit. Self-deprecation in stand-up comedy by women continues to be understood as both positive (as part of the rise of popular feminisms) and negative (as reinforcing patriarchal norms). These contradictory understandings of self-deprecation in stand-up comedy are always inextricably linked to the identities of the audiences for such humour. I consider how emergent female stand-up performers may rationalise and understand the role self-deprecation plays within their own work in the current British context. I then discuss the work of stand-up comedian Luisa Omielan as an example of the rejection of self-deprecatory address. I make the argument that self-deprecation cannot function simply as positive or negative in the current UK context, but must always be considered (for both audiences and performers) as challenging and reinforcing restrictive patriarchal attitudes towards women simultaneously

Feminism and the New 'Mediated' Maternalism: Human Capital at Home

The article focuses on maternity in the new bio-politics of the family. The work "The Anti-Social Family" is considered as an instructive material as it also discusses the oppressive aspects of domesticity and the tyranny of maternity as well as the exclusion of lesbian women who had few possibilities for maternity. The author says the post-feministry view of maternity puts young mothers in a field of anxieties caused by the promise of perfection