On Monday night, Northwestern Professor of Political Science Linda Zerilli spoke about the impossibility of uniting people under the single category of their gender. As a result, feminism as a movement is rife with deep inner conflict.

“Judging from the state of publications about feminism, it would seem that it’s over as a social and political movement,” she said.

In her lecture, Zerilli also described the three waves of feminism. The first wave was the struggle for enfranchisement that led up to the 1920s and was represented by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This period was guided by political motives.

“The ballot was not an end in itself but a means to an end,” Zerilli said.

She explained that the idea of women’s freedom shaped ideas of a better society and was used as a political tool for women to gain autonomy.

“Freedom disturbs politics as a means for an end,” she said. “Freedom is sovereignty.”

The second wave took place in the middle of the 1960s and the third in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This final wave involved many French feminist thinkers and American notables, like Judith Butler.

Zerilli framed much of her lecture around the political theory of Hannah Arendt, a prominent political philosopher during the early twentieth century. Arendt did not specifically study feminism but rather the morals and theory behind the politics as a whole. She proposed the notion of assessing why people would come together politically.

“How does the frame of the social questions blind us to what doesn’t fit in?” Zerilli asked. “How is feminism limited by fitting in? Can it be partnered to other movements in order for us to understand it better?”

She addressed the concept of a subject question, speaking to the discrepancy between what a woman is and who a woman is, as determined by society. According to her, a woman must be considered in terms of her surroundings.

“A world of things is between what things have in common,” Zerilli said. “Politics takes place in this in-between space. The idea of politics as world building is unintelligible…if we think of politics as something that’s everywhere, that’s always existed and will always exist. For example, housework becomes political when two things are brought into a relationship as a dispute,” she elaborated.

Zerilli’s comments framed the rise and critique of identity politics in relation to the development of feminist theory.

“There is never the possibility of a collective movement…there is no ‘we’ or unified subject, but why do we think that?” Zerilli asked. “We’re still thinking about women as a demographic group, and they get more split up as time goes on. It’s hard to see because we think of politics in sociological terms.”

Students and faculty who attended the lecture were largely interested in Zerilli’s interpretation of the reorganization of the feminist movement.

“Her view on third wave feminism seems to be based less on demonstration and more on philosophical debate on what to do next,” said Emilie Phelps ’07. “This new movement is trying to direct its efforts to political legislation and less to mobilization. It’s focused more on the written side.”

“I think the lecture was a bit over my head, but it was interesting to get a look at really intense feminist theory,” said Alex Early ’07. “I usually think of it on a practical level, like the pay gap, and women being overly sexualized and domesticated…but it is important to look at the theoretical battles behind feminism.”

Chris Wade, a graduate student, said that he found the lecture refreshing because of how Zerilli questioned the definition of feminism.

“At Wesleyan there is a fear of speaking for a specific group, for example, in this case, women,” he said. “This is because it is impossible to find a concrete identity or group that can be spoken for with any accuracy. She did an excellent job of attempting to remove the concept of feminism from the framework of identity politics.”

Zerilli is the author of “Signifying Woman: Culture and Chaos in Rousseau, Burke and Mill” and “Feminism Without Solace,” which will be released later this year.