Tanya Ann Kennedy 
Historicizing Post-Discourses 
Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture

Historicizing Post-Discourses explores how postfeminism and postracialism intersect in dominant narratives of triumphalism, white male crisis, neoliberal and colonial feminism, and multiculturalism to perpetuate systemic injustice in America. By examining various locations within popular culture, including television shows such as
Mad Men and
The Wire; books such as
The Help and
Lean In; as well as Hollywood films, fan forums, political blogs, and presidential speeches, Tanya Ann Kennedy demonstrates the dominance of postfeminism and postracialism in US culture. In addition, she shows how post-discourses create affective communities through their engineering of the history of both race and gender justice.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments

Introduction



1. Framing the Past:
The Help and
Mad Men as Posthistory



2. Of Girls and Men: Working the Historical Capital of Racist Patriarchy



3. “Plastic Woman”: The New Gender Essentialism



4. Do You See What I See?: Postfeminism and Colorblind Diversity



Conclusion: Juneteenth 2015



Notes

Works Cited

Index

About the author

Tanya Ann Kennedy is Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Maine at Farmington and the author of
‘Keeping Up Her Geography’: Women’s Writing and Geocultural Space in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture.