Beyond the Nation-State: Toward a Plural Global Feminism

Introduction

Feminism has always wrestled with borders. Rooted in local struggles yet speaking in universal terms, feminist movements have sought to claim both the intimacy of the everyday and the authority of the global. But in an era of climate crisis, digital surveillance, mass migration, and resurgent authoritarianism, the nation-state has proven an unstable vessel for feminist futures. The task now is to imagine feminism beyond the borders of the nation — not as a singular project, but as a plural global chorus.

This essay synthesizes insights from six regions — Vietnam, South Korea, Latin America, France, Germany, and South Africa — to argue that global feminism must move beyond universalist abstraction and nationalist appropriation. What emerges instead is a plural global feminism: grounded in local traditions, responsive to transnational forces, and unafraid of dissonance.

Vietnam: Spiritual Epistemologies

In Vietnam, Đạo Mẫu (Mother Goddess worship) reveals that feminist empowerment can emerge from spiritual practices often dismissed as folklore. Women in lên đồng rituals embody goddesses, claiming authority through sacred performance. Here, feminism is not secular emancipation but ritual sovereignty.

The Vietnamese case teaches that global feminism must expand its epistemologies. Theories of liberation cannot be confined to Western secular frames; they must also learn from indigenous traditions where the sacred is not antithetical to, but constitutive of, feminist agency.

South Korea: Digital Feminism and Surveillance

In South Korea, feminism confronts the paradox of hyperconnectivity. Hidden-camera (molka) crimes made women hyper-visible as victims, while hashtags like #MeToo and #StopMolka made them hyper-visible as resisters. Technology both endangers and empowers.

South Korean digital feminism underscores the politics of visibility: to be seen is both to be vulnerable and to be powerful. Global feminism must grapple with this paradox, asking how digital tools can be reimagined to amplify voices without reproducing surveillance.

Latin America: Feminism as Populist Mass Politics

From Argentina’s Ni Una Menos to Chile’s feminist student movements, Latin American feminism shows the power of the street. Feminism here is not elite but populist, not fragmented but intersectional in practice — linking femicide, reproductive rights, austerity, and state violence.

The lesson from Latin America is that feminism thrives when it refuses to be siloed. It becomes strongest when it merges private pain with public politics, transforming grief into spectacle, and spectacle into change.

France and Germany: Intersectionality at the Borders

In Europe, feminism collides with borders of religion, race, and migration. In France, veiling debates expose tensions between secular universalism and Muslim women’s agency. In Germany, migrant domestic workers reveal the hidden economies sustaining middle-class equality.

These cases show the limits of universalist feminism: to defend “women’s rights” without addressing exclusion is to defend only some women. Intersectionality, in Europe as elsewhere, is not optional but necessary.

South Africa: Rhythm and Solidarity

South African feminism beats to the rhythm of history. From anti-apartheid marches to protests against gender-based violence, the drum carries memory and urgency. Here, solidarity is not abstract but embodied — in chants, in footsteps, in collective rhythm.

The South African case reminds global feminism that movements are not only about ideas but about affect, rhythm, and resonance. To build transnational solidarity, we must learn to move not in unison but in polyrhythm — multiple beats sustaining one another.

Against the Nation-State Frame

Across these cases, one lesson is clear: the nation-state both enables and constrains feminism. On one hand, feminist movements must negotiate with states for laws, policies, protections. On the other, states instrumentalize feminism for nationalist projects (France’s “femonationalism,” Vietnam’s branding campaigns, South Africa’s electoral politics).

To remain confined within the nation-state is to risk co-optation. Global feminism must therefore transcend the frame, building solidarities that are transnational, cross-cultural, and intersectional.

Toward a Plural Global Feminism

What might such a feminism look like?

1. Plural Epistemologies: Recognizing Đạo Mẫu, Ubuntu, Pachamama, and other indigenous systems as theoretical centers, not cultural footnotes.

2. Digital Ethics: Reimagining technology to protect as well as connect, ensuring that visibility is chosen, not coerced.

3. Mass Participation: Following Latin America’s lead, feminism must leave elite rooms and take root in streets, plazas, and communities.

4. Intersectional Solidarity: Listening to migrant, Muslim, and marginalized voices not as add-ons, but as shapers of the feminist agenda.

5. Embodied Resonance: Understanding that movements are sustained not only by policies and papers but by rhythms, rituals, and shared affect.

Plural global feminism does not seek consensus at the cost of difference. It embraces multiplicity as strength.

Conclusion

Beyond the nation-state lies not a single feminism but many. From Vietnamese temples to South Korean hashtags, from Argentine plazas to French suburbs, from German care homes to South African marches, feminist struggles pulse with diverse rhythms.

The challenge for global feminism is not to unify these into sameness but to hold them together in difference. To weave a chorus that is sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant, but always alive.

In the end, plural global feminism is less about speaking in one voice than about listening across many. And in that listening, perhaps, lies the possibility of a future where borders no longer divide whose liberation counts.