some thoughts on an awesome panel on 90s feminism at 90swoman.

one other thing i was thinking about during the talk is my own false feminist memory syndrome. hearing about riot grrrl for the first time has a special place in my personal feminist history (a little bit about that here), but i never was one: i didnt listen to bikini kill or read zines or go to college in olympia. my 90s feminist culture was mostly more mainstream—i listened to courtney love, i read sassy, and i went to a school that seemed like it would be political but really wasnt. but since so many of my friends were riot grrrls, and so many of them have been writing about its importance, i feel like i have this unusually intimate knowledge of its history. almost like i was there, but not quite. like i have memories of it, but then realize they arent really mine.

nancy k miller has a great essay that touches on that feeling called “but enough about me, what do you think of my memoir?”

i am particularly interested in the political aspect of remembering this past. if nostalgia can be political—and i dont think i would have written a book about sassy if I didnt think it could be—then what does it mean to be nostalgic for a contemporaneous feminist past that could have been ones own, but wasnt?

i would hazard a guess, but posing questions instead of answers makes me feel like a real academic.