It can be inferred from the passage that a historian utilizing the traditional "wave" metaphor would most likely view the activism of working-class women during a "trough" period as

the primary catalyst for the ideological shifts of the subsequent wave.

an anomaly that invalidates the fundamental assumptions of the wave heuristic.

a contemporaneous movement that rivaled the hegemonic feminist discourse.

historically marginal or secondary to the defining political activities of that era.

According to the passage, the "genealogical" approach to feminist history differs from the "wave" metaphor primarily in that it

accommodates concurrent and conflicting ideological lineages without imposing a unified narrative.

assumes that feminist ideologies progress linearly toward a state of complete intersectionality.

emphasizes the de jure achievements of feminist movements over their de facto cultural impacts.

relies exclusively on the activism of marginalized women to define chronological periods.

Which of the following best describes the structural function of the second paragraph within the passage as a whole?

It provides empirical evidence to support the pedagogical value of the wave metaphor introduced in the first paragraph.

It introduces a new historiographical methodology that resolves the contradictions inherent in post-structuralist epistemology.

It details specific scholarly critiques that expose the exclusionary and reductive nature of the conventional paradigm.

It outlines the chronological progression of feminist thought from materialist critiques to radical feminism.

In the final sentence of the passage, the phrase "albeit significantly more complex" primarily serves to

suggest that the genealogical approach is too intricate to be of practical use to historians.

concede that the wave metaphor remains the more effective tool for teaching feminist history.

imply that the greater complexity of the genealogical map is the source of its authenticity.

acknowledge a cost of the genealogical approach without retracting the author's preference for it.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the critique of the wave metaphor attributed to Hewitt and Nicholson?

Archival studies show that the activism of working-class women and women of color reached its own peaks in the same periods as the traditional wave crests, and declined with them.

Several prominent leaders of second-wave feminism came from working-class families.

Marxist feminists and radical feminists frequently disputed each other's priorities during the second wave.

Records show that working-class women's organizations remained active between the traditional waves but received little coverage in the mainstream press.

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Waves and Genealogies in Feminist Historiography

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Question No. 1+4 −1MCQ Single Answer

Reading Passage

Historians of feminist thought have long relied upon the "wave" metaphor as a pedagogical and historiographical heuristic to periodize the women's movement. Traditionally, this paradigm constructs a teleological narrative: a "first wave" focused on de jure inequalities and suffrage, succeeded by a "second wave" dedicated to dismantling de facto structural inequalities in the workplace and family, and subsequently a "third wave" emphasizing intersectionality and individual identity. While this chronological scaffolding provided early feminist scholars with a necessary framework to institutionalize women's history within the broader academy, it is increasingly criticized for imposing a monolithic and artificially punctuated trajectory upon a highly heterogeneous movement. Scholars such as Nancy Hewitt and Linda Nicholson argue that the wave metaphor intrinsically privileges hegemonic, middle-class white women's activism, whose political peaks align neatly with the traditional wave crests. Consequently, the continuous, albeit less visible, activism of working-class women and women of color is relegated to the "troughs" between waves. By defining feminist periods through the lens of a specific demographic’s political priorities, the wave paradigm obscures the synchronous heterogeneity of feminist activism. Furthermore, this linearity implies a sequential progression of ideas, subsuming competing ideological strands—such as Marxist feminism's materialist critiques and radical feminism's focus on patriarchy—into a synthesized, consensus-driven narrative that rarely existed in practice. In response to the limitations of the wave metaphor, contemporary feminist historiography has increasingly adopted a "genealogical" approach, drawing heavily upon post-structuralist epistemology. Rather than charting a single, unified march toward liberation, a genealogical framework traces multiple, intersecting, and sometimes contradictory lineages of feminist thought. This methodology acknowledges that varying feminist epistemologies do not merely succeed one another but operate concurrently, often in friction. By discarding the need for temporal and ideological cohesion, the genealogical approach allows historians to recover marginalized feminist voices without forcing them into a pre-existing, teleological schema, thereby rendering a more authentic, albeit significantly more complex, map of feminist intellectual history.

The primary purpose of the passage is to