Feminism and Postmodernism - Essay Example

Feminism and Postmodernism Postmodernism is the North American movement based on the intellectual inspirations from French poststructuralists including Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray and others. Postmodernism embodies the sceptical sensibility to such ideas as universality, objectivity, essence, totality and unity. It is focused on locality, instability and ambiguity of all global aspects, the self and the concept of good. With the contribution of feminism, postmodernism ideas have been unfolded against the theories purporting to justification of sexist practices. In particular, the so-called postmodernist feminism has challenged the claims that observed differences between men and women are necessary and that women have an essence that justifies their subordinating position in society. Postmodernism Central to the postmodernist understanding of society is the belief that the grand or totalizing principles of modernity and the Enlightenment - including appeals to rationality, progress, humanity, and justice - have been completely undermined. This line of reasoning emerges from poststructuralist critiques of language, subjectivity, and representation. In other words, where poststructuralists criticized the foundations of modernism, postmodernists read these critiques as mandates for rejecting foundations altogether (Stabile 1995). European postmodernists, like Jean-Francois Lyotard, have expressed the belief that Marxism, like the Enlightenment in general, culminated in Stalinism because of its totalizing impulses. Some postmodernists have gone much further than this identification of Marxism with Soviet-style systems, holding Marxism responsible for all kinds of oppression. Twentieth-century Marxism has used the generalizing categories of production and class to delegitimize demands of women, black people, gays, lesbians, and others whose oppression cannot be reduced to economics. This kind of judgment dramatically displays yet another feature of postmodernism: its historical amnesia. Marxism and socialist organizations in general have been repeatedly marginalized and delegitimized by capitalism. Postmodernism is full of confusions and contradictions, nevertheless, it is based on some unifying principles such as non-critical and idealistic focus on the construction of real as well as examination of the concept of difference. For example, if the society is not able to identify any interests which might unite it, then the only mean to unify people is based on identity differences. This Marx's so-called unity in differences or the identity of interests shared by people and represented by the political institutions was rejected by postmodernists who did not accept any form of presentation in favour of the particular difference (Stabile 1995). Feminism From the first glance, feminism seems to be more accessible than postmodernism and refers to the females as the political unity with the identifiable electorate. Feminism shares with postmodernism the idea of rejection of historical materialism. Notably, the contemporary theories of feminism do not reject the idea of system and totality, but rather elaborates its own analysis in which male domination is seen as the alternative or confederate of capitalism. Thus, women, being oppressed by male dominating system, share the common interest to oppose it. At its beginning, feminism was both intellectual and political movement: to help women in understanding their oppressed position and to promote the changes in society in terms of gender issue. Early feminists organized as the distinct class with radical intentions (Tong 1989). Essentialism argument (the foundation of category "women" from biological perspective) and anti-essentialism argument ("women" seen as the historically and socially constructed group) are essential to understanding feministic assumptions. Essentialists believed that women have similar characteristics upon which political action can be founded. While, anti-essentialists claimed that labels "male" and "female" were not fixed by nature and are rather socially constructed. Thus, for anti-essentialists "male" and "female" could vary across cultures and historical periods (Tong 1989). The central tendencies of feminism are converging with postmodernism as both of the philosophical directions lead to the same political result. Anti-essentialist feminists, on the contrary, have emphasized the differences among women as the group and the whole theory moved from postmodernist blindness to mere difference. Thus, if postmodernists argue that the real no longer refers to anything concrete, anti-essentialists dissolved the category of women into fragmented and variable construct (Alcoff 1988). Unlike postmodern feminists, liberal feminists' primary focus was on equal opportunities. It was not the question about the nature of knowledge or the social interactions, but rather about the actions within the particular structure. Radical feminists focused on the historical deep division between males and females in society. Women did not have the same opportunities as men in all areas of life and the goal of radical feminists was to detail how the male dominated world has forced women into oppression. Feminist Postmodernism Postmodern feminism is built on the ideas of Foucault and Derrida, Lacal and de Beauvoir who viewed differences between males and females as the key categorizing tool in society (Butler 1993). For example, de Beauvoir has seen females as being forced into the role of different and criticized this male dominant structure of society. Nevertheless, many postmodern feminists reject the label "feminist" for its essentialist conception. On the contrary, postmodern feminists accept the multiple roles and multiple realities while rejecting the essential nature of women. In addition to essentialism, postmodernism attacks such major perspectives of modernism as foundationalism and assumption of the world, which is referred to as the creation of hierarchical inferior position of women and legitimating of this subordination (Bloland 1995). Feminists are sympathizing to attack on the assumptions associated with neutrality and objectivity for these assumptions related to maintenance of binary opposition which subordinates females. Feminists support the postmodern idea of difference and plurality, however, fight for the elimination of essentialist assumptions which weaken the possibility to develop the strong philosophical foundation for change in political structure as well as in gender relations. As Levitt has noted, "postmodernism is the formula for amnesia about its own sources, an anodyne against the pain of deep reflection on the ineradicability of injustice. Since the feminist wing of postmodernism makes a fetish of detecting misogyny everywhere, the methods of science must be reconstructed by feminist epistemology" (2001, 44). One of the central themes of postmodernism is the idea about language and the system of thinking - what people think of reality is discursively constructed. This is the continuation of Kantian reasoning that human minds understand the things not as they are but through concepts. In other words, postmodernism supports the notion that everything gets its meaning not from the reference to external things but from the relation to other signs in the system. From intellectual perspective, postmodernism is focused on the local and particular - postmodernists teach on what they call totalizing narratives and on they very notion of causality (Holmstrom 2003). The pure postmodernism is deeply discouraging for feminists who try to develop the systematic theory of female oppression. The postmodernism claim that everything is socially constructed and, thus, the distinction between sex and gender is eliminated, has become central to feminist perception of gender relations. In this way, postmodernism extended its ideas about the language to the general social issues. The major theme is that actions as well as practices are the linguistic signs in essence. Similar to the words, actions signify things that go beyond themselves through the linguistic device like metaphor. For example, the elevated bench of the judge signifies his superior position over the other people in the courtroom. Thus, with the means of linguistic every social behavior and practice exhibits the same dynamics and structure as language. Postmodernists assume that the self (constituted by the signs) acquires its meaning only in the relation to other signs. Thus, the self is not free to make the sense of these signs because it is entangles into the unity of meanings already created. From feministic perception, this assumption is further expanded to explain the subordinating position of women in the male-dominated world. Following the above idea, female identity is socially imposed rather than independently created. Nevertheless, this assumption does not undermine the possibility of agency because females occupy multiple social identities such as a politician, a mother and an American (Tong 1989). The tensions between the identities create the space for disrupting the whole system. Feminism vs. Postmodernism Gender, being the socially and discursively constructed, is the outcome of the social practices of meaning that can be disrupted. It is clear that this perception of gender comes out of the postmodernism assumption about the signs and their meaning. Over the last 20 years, feminist thinking has been exposing within the feminism itself and lesbians, for example, have pointed out that feminist theories have ignored their perspectives. Feminist postmodernism has underwritten the concept of "woman" (Butler 1993). Returning to essentialism, is should be noted that feminism has contributed to the philosophical understanding of gender identity as constructed by norms and deviances. This critique has reinforced the skepticism about the unity of "woman" category by highlighting the inter-sectionality of gender, class, race and sexual orientation identities. Nevertheless, the contribution of feminism to postmodernism is not seen as positive by all theorists. Felski, in particular, notes that feminism's engagement with postmodernism has been restrained and women's insistence upon the difference could be seen as compatible with the postmodern thought only partially (1989). Postmodernism, through the lenses of feminism, is viewed as the crisis in establishment of the male intellectual authority. At the same time, the issues raised by postmodernism cannot be ignored by feminism because skepticism of epistemological and ethical norms associated with postmodernism are echoed and undermined by feminist critique of patriarchy. In addition, feminism has enriched postmodern discussions with the understanding of specific situation of contemporary women. Furthermore, postmodernism, viewed as the phenomenon of the thought and the presentation potentially beneficial to feminism, undermines the stability of the fixed belief system about the gender roles (Felski 1989). Feminism investigates the interconnection between the gender and culture in relation to the contemporary forms of resistance and analyzes how this relation is affected by the female's differing positions within the class and race hierarchy as well as within the bureaucratic institutions and in the process of technological change. Nicholson's argument has further contributed to the understanding of feminism in postmodernism setting. She noted that postmodernism enabled feminists to counteract the totalizing perspectives within both hegemonic culture of liberalism and within Marxism (1992). Postmodernism undermined the theoretical basis of both political perspectives and showed that the foundations upon which they rested could be judged only in the context of specific historical setting. Nicholson argues that most of the feministic writings are devoted to the explanation of male/female relations and include such terms as sex, sexism, body and nature without any societal qualifiers attached to them (1992). The meanings attached to these terms reflected the contemporary culture among the dominant social groups and, thus, without explicit theory applied, feminist writing contained the implicit postmodernism theories. Concluding Notes Postmodernism emphasizes diversity and plurality relation to power - diversity as the argument against the view that individuals are in possession of attitudes and personalities. From feministic perception, the terms attitude and personality need to be suspended in their traditional meaning. In addition, feminist contributes to postmodernism in understanding identities as diverse and fragmented. As Butler has noted, feminists "refuse to engage the exclusions which put feminism into play" (1993, 29). The exclusions mean the mobilization around the single woman identity. Feminism, just as postmodernism, put special value to diversity explanation and analysis. Postmodern emphasis on the politics of power reduces the importance of macro-structural inequalities, while feminism emphasized the gender inequality in the broad social context. Thus, postmodernism ignored the wider political structure. From Foucault's perspective, the power operated not just from the top, from also from below. It was argued that postmodernist commitment to relativism is not supported by feministic theories. Feminists suspend their commitment to the traditional meaning of the terms ("woman" for example) just to understand better how this meaning can be deployed. This does not mean that the postmodernist meaning of the term is completely objected, but is rather expanded. Feminists reject the postmodern idea of certainty about the female identity, however, it does not mean that that the commitment to the fundamental principles of women oppression are also rejected. In conclusion, feminism has much contributed to the postmodernism as the philosophical and social theory. Feminists did not support most of the postmodernist assumptions about gender and other related issues; however, some of the feministic ideas are closely related to postmodernism. It can be noted that feminism has found the theoretical basis in postmodernism even though with some modification. Postmodernism was not focused on explaining the position of women in society, but rather covered the societal structure in general, while feminism has emphasized the need to understand why the existing meaning is attached to the term "woman" and why women are dominated by men. Word Count: 2104 References Alcoff, L. (1988). Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 13(3), 405-36. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge. Bloland, H. (1995). Postmodernism and Higher Education. Journal of Higher Education, 66 (5), 521+. Felski, R. (1989). Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Critique of Modernity. Cultural Critique, 13, 33-56. Holmstrom, N. (2003). The Socialist Feminist Project. Monthly Review, 54 (10), 38+. Levitt, N. (2001). The Sources and Dangers of Postmodern Anti-Science. Free Inquiry, 21 (2), 44. Nicholson, L. (1992). Feminism and the Politics of Postmodernism. Boundary 2 19 (2), 53-69. Stabile, C. (1995). Postmodernism, Feminism, and Marx: Notes from the Abyss. Monthly Review, 47 (3), 89+. Tong, R. (1989). Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press. Read More