West Germany’s neue Frauenbewegung and the productive potential of feminist (Gegen)gewalt

Bielby, Clare

Abstract

This article explores the feminist potential of (Gegen)gewalt ((counter-) violence) during the founding years of West Germany's neue Frauenbewegung: firstly, as a discourse and practice which helped create the discursive space to start imagining feminist identity in the late 1960s, when, it has been argued, no such identity existed; secondly, as a militant practice in the early 1970s, through which women were able to change their gendered behavioural scripts in positive feminist ways; finally, as feminist self-defence, understood as enabling women to continue to imagine an active subject position in the mid-1970s, when women as the victims of patriarchal violence had become the predominant idea of the movement. Reading feminist flyers, publications and other documents of the period, as well as more recently published accounts of the movement, alongside the wider discourse on (Gegen)gewalt of the 1960s and 1970s, I trace a cultural history of feminist (Gegen)gewalt.

Citation

Bielby, C. (2017). West Germany’s neue Frauenbewegung and the productive potential of feminist (Gegen)gewalt. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 53(4), 379-404. https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx037

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 16, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Sep 6, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 1, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 7, 2019
• Journal: Forum for modern language studies
• Print ISSN: 0015-8518
• Electronic ISSN: 1471-6860
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 379-404
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx037
• Keywords: Germany; Violence; Neue Frauenbewegung; Militancy; 1970s; Antiauthoritarian student movement
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/440527
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/fmls/article/4106335/West-Germany-s-Neue-Frauenbewegung-and-the
• Additional Information: This is the accepted manuscript of an article published in Forum for modern language studies, 2017. The version of record is available at the DOI link in this record.