Fashioning Postfeminism

Simidele Dosekun is an assistant professor in media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

• CoverTitleContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A New Style of Femininity1. Contextual Crossroads: African Women in the World of Things2. Choosing It All: From Pleasure to Self-Confidence to Pain3. "I'm Working, You Know": The Serious Business of Spectacularity4. Globally Black, "Naija," and Fabulous: Asserting Authentic Selves5. "Not That Kinda Girl": Resignifying Hyperfemininity for Postfeminist TimesConclusion: A New Fashion for Feminism?NotesBibliographyIndexBack Cover

"Fashioning Postfeminism is a superb book. Often theoretically dazzling, it effectively opens a new window onto postfeminism. It will also make a defining contribution to the newly burgeoning field of decolonial global fashion studies, effectively modeling a balance of local specificity with the transnational." --Hypatia"This brilliantly-executed and theoretically exciting book places Dosekun on the frontlines of radically decolonial cultural and feminist theory. The author critically explores the "unhappy technologies," utilised by women determined to re-invent themselves for themselves, not in NY or London, but in the cultural ferment of the global African city of Lagos. Fashioning Postfeminism advances the theorization of feminine agency and subjectivity beyond the inherent coloniality of US and UK (Western) cultural and feminist studies. Dosekun's adept analysis details contemporary elite women's psychic and material investments  in the 'unhappy' technologies and cosmetic practices in the pursuit of individualised fantasies of power and happiness in the neoliberal world."—Amina Mama, author of Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity"This book brilliantly challenges the assumption of whiteness and the Western location of the postfeminist female subject, documenting how postfeminism circulates well beyond the Global North. Dosekun demonstrates a rare sensitivity to place and to the specific norms circulating that space, which, as she underscores, shape the way in which postfeminism is taken up. The arguments are forceful, and the empirical material is handled with great care, sensitivity, and insight."—Catherine Rottenberg, author of The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism