Radical Press and Radical Pressure. Printed Matter, Pamphlets and Radicalities in US Second Wave Feminism

Abstract

The second wave of feminism, starting in the 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, was a period of feminist resurgence. Contemporaries witnessed an emerging network of radical feminists who fiercely attacked male-centred society and intensely questioned the roles women had traditionally played in the United States. Many radical feminists published their positions in pamphlets, a literary form historically associated with protest and upheaval. The semantic identity of pressure and the press in German (Druck) allows for the application of the term “Druckerzeugnisse” in order to analyse these functions of pamphlets across a range of radical feminist activism. This essay draws on influential pamphlets by groups such as the Redstockings, Cell 16, The Feminists or individual authors such as Valerie Solanas or “Joreen”. The aim is threefold: firstly, to portray the second wave of feminism as a densification of radical feminist discourse; secondly, to trace the similarities between a variety of feminist
self-understandings; and thirdly, to outline the different, often opposing, political standpoints in order to map the networks of radical feminism.