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Postmodern feminism is an approach to feminist theory that incorporates postmodern and post-structuralist theory.
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Origins and theory
The largest departure from other branches of feminism is the argument that sex is itself constructed through language, a view most notably propounded in Judith Butler's 1990 book, Gender Trouble. She draws on and critiques the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. Butler criticises the distinction drawn by previous feminisms between (biological) sex and (socially constructed) gender. Butler argues that this does not allow for a sufficient criticism of essentialism: though recognizing that gender is a social construct, feminists assume it's always constructed in the same way. Her argument implies that women's subordination has no single cause or single solution; postmodern feminism is thus criticized for offering no clear path to action. Butler herself rejects the term "postmodernism" as too vague to be meaningful.[1]
French feminism from the 1970 until now, with the psychoanalytic theory writers Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray has forged specific routes in postmodern feminism and in feminist psychoanalysis. Although postmodernism resists characterization, it is possible to identify certain themes or orientations that postmodern feminists share. Mary Joe Frug suggested that one "principle" of postmodernism is that human experience is located "inescapably within language." Power is exercised not only through direct coercion, but also through the way in which language shapes and restricts our reality. However, because language is always open to re-interpretation, it can also be used to resist this shaping and restriction, and so is a potentially fruitful site of political struggle.
Frug's second postmodern principle is that sex is not something natural, nor is it something completely determinate and definable. Rather, sex is part of a system of meaning, produced by language. Frug argues that "cultural mechanisms ... encode the female body with meanings," and that these cultural mechanisms then go on explain these meanings "by an appeal to the 'natural' differences between the sexes, differences that the rules themselves help to produce."[2] Rejecting the idea of a natural basis to sexual difference allows us to see that it is always susceptible to new interpretations. Like other systems of meaning, it is less like a cage, and more like a tool: it constrains but never completely determines what one can do with it.
References
- ^ Judith Butler, "Contingent Foundations" in Seyla Benhabib et al., Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 35-58
- ^ Mary Joe Frug, "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto (An Unfinished Draft)," Harvard Law Review, Vol. 105, No. 5. (Mar., 1992), pp. 1045-1075, at p. 1049.
Bibliography
- Susan H. Williams and David C. Williams "A Feminist Theory of Malebashing", Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, 4 Mich. J. Gender & L. 35 (1996)
See also
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