Page 50 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

P.G.KNIGHT
NAMING THE PROBLEM: FEMINISM

AND THE FIGURATION OF CONSPIRACY

ABSTRACT
This article takes as its starting point Naomi Wolf’s claim that the
argument of The Beauty Myth (1991) does not amount to a conspiracy
theory. In order to understand what might cause her rhetorical insistence,
the figuration of conspiracy is traced through the trajectory of popular
American feminism from Betty Friedan to Wolf. A reading of The
Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1992) demonstrates its reliance on the cold
war language of brainwashing, as well as a conspiracy theory of mass
culture, in its description of being a housewife in the early 1960s. If the
language of conspiracy provides Friedan with a metaphor which highlights
the political dimension of personal experience, then an analysis of some of
the feminist groupings later in the decade reveals an increasing
literalization of the figure. A discussion of Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology
(1984) provides the next key moment, leading to the observation that
during the 1970s and 1980s the emphasis in popular feminism shifted from
‘naming the problem’ to the problem of naming. A close reading of the
rhetorical strategies of The Beauty Myth indicates that Wolf’s text marks a
crisis point over the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical,
centred on the notion of conspiracy. It emerges that what this textual
anxiety points to is a deeper division between academic and popular
feminism. In effect, this article argues that feminist cultural studies should
seek to read popular feminism in a fashion similar to its engagement with
popular culture.
KEYWORDS

conspiracy theory; American popular feminism; figuration
Having outlined in the Introduction to The Beauty Myth the ‘now conscious
market manipulation’ of the diet, cosmetics, and pornography industries, Naomi
Wolf insists that ‘this is not a conspiracy theory’ (1991:17–18). And, having
described how the ‘ideology that makes women feel “worth less” was urgently
needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more’,