For Western girls only? Postfeminism as transnational culture

Much of the literature on post-feminism concerns the “Western” world and variously conceptualizes post-feminism as “Western culture.” This article argues that, as a result, feminist cultural scholars have not sufficiently imagined, theorized or empirically researched the possibility of post-feminism in non-Western cultural contexts. By briefly reviewing what has been said in the literature about post-feminism and the non-West, and by putting this in dialogue with transnational feminist cultural scholarship, this article makes a case for a transnational analytic and methodological approach to the critical study of post-feminism. It argues that such an approach provides an understanding of post-feminism as a transnationally circulating culture, and thus can better account for the fact that the culture interpellates not only women in the West but also others elsewhere. The article concludes by outlining what it means and could afford feminist cultural scholars to work with a new conceptual view of post-feminism as transnational culture.