The political is personal: Father-daughter relationships and working-class consciousness

Journal/Book: Fem Psychol. 1996; 6: 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Sage Publ Inc. 401-410.

Abstract: This article asks if the 1970s women's liberation slogan 'the personal is political' has privileged a 'psychologized', that is an individualistic, version of feminism which, being implicitly grounded in middle-class experiences and concerns, has mane invisible those of working-class women. It looks at the problems encountered in trying to use psychology to explain reciprocal - as opposed to individual - concerns and psychoanalysis to explore working-class girls' entry into gendered identity. In doing so, the discussion draws upon Jessica Benjamin's work on cross-gender identification to explore the difficulties faced by daughters who learned from an early age of the relative powerlessness of their fathers. It argues that such experiences can be seen not as instances of individual pathologies, but as examples of how early consciousness of class positioning might provide the roots of women's adult political activity which is founded not on a gendered but on a classed identity.

Note: Article S Brewer, Univ E London, Dept Commun Studies, Longbridge Rd, Dagenham RM8 2AS, Essex, England

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