Throughout its long history, feminism (for while the word may have only come into English usage in the 1890's, women's conscious struggle to resist patriarchy goes much further back) has sought to disturb the complacent certainties of such a patriarchal culture, to assert a belief in sexual equality, and to eradicate sexist domination in transforming society.1
Cultural Politics (inclusive of African American study, queer theory, Latino study, etc.) is often used to refer to this approach rather than feminist theory because:
Indeed, some feminists have not wished to embrace theory at all, precisely, because, in academic institutions 'theory' is often male, even macho -- the hard, abstract, avant-gardism of intellectual work; and as part of their general project, feminists have been at pains to expose the fraudulent objectivity of male 'science.'5
Virginia Woolf was one of the original women to explore feminism in her writings.. Woolf contributed the following ideas to feminist thought:
Woolf attempted to find ways to use text to describe the confined life of women.
I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sydney Lee's life of the poet. She died young - alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives, for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh....the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.
- Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own.
Simone de Beauvoir- The Second Sex (1949)6 argues that "a woman is not born, she is made," thus she paved the way for a re-thinking of gender spaces, roles, ideologies, values, beliefs and behavior. This book is considered to be the beginning of modern feminism.
She argues that being dispersed among men, women have no separate history, no solidarity, no coming together as other oppressed groups have. De Beauvoir makes a clear distinction between sex and gender. Sex is a biological construct. Gender is a societal construct. Thus there is no biological determinism in gender and the Male/female relationship is lopsided. Man is "One" Woman is "Other." Thus society paints woman as other.
Women have been made inferior and the relationship is compounded by men's belief that women are inferior by nature.
The patriarchy will fall if women can break out of objectification.
Betty Friedan The Feminist Mystique (1963)...put feminist thought on the national agenda.
Remember Foucault's notion of power????
Kate Millett Sexual Politics (1969) 7 argues that ideological indoctrination as well as economic inequality have caused women's oppression.
Patriarchy subordinates the female to the male.
Women are coerced by the sex role stereotypes to serve in roles acceptable to the Patriarchy.
Sexual Politics are the acting out of sex-roles and relations of domination and subordination to perpetuate the social hierarchy.
Archaeologically demonstrates that there is a long history of women writers and that history has produced a body of works that differ radically from the works produced by male writers. These works had been ignored by male critics Showalter argues that this voice must be evaluated, and included in the traditional male paradigms of literature.
Gender difference is linguistically and socially arbitrary. Non gender signification tends to be Iconic (appears to have a natural relationship). Yet gender signification lacks that harmony. (restroom doors for instance)..
We must deconstruct the signification process in order to stop phallocentrism.
Lacan often calls the phallus-as-signifier "Name of the Father" emphasizing it's non-real, non-biological existence. The role of the "father" is to identify gender. A child "arrives at a sense of identity by entering the symbolic order of language, which is made up of relations of similarity and difference." Only by accepting the exclusions (if this, then not that-identity by negation) imposed by the father can a child become fully gendered and arrive at a sense of identity by entering that gendered space assigned to it by language.9
In Powers Of Horror: An Essay On Abjection Kristeva identifies that we first experience abjection at the point of separation from the mother. This idea is drawn from Lacan's psychoanalytical theory which underpins her theory of abjection. She identifies that abjection represents a revolt against that which gave us our own existence or state of being. At this point the child enters the symbolic realm, or law of the father. Thus, when we as adults confront the abject we simultaneously fear and identify with it. It provokes us into recalling a state of being prior to signification (or the law of the father) where we feel a sense of helplessness. The self is threatened by something that is not part of us in terms of identity and non-identity, human and non-human. Kristeva expresses this succinctly when she says: "The abject has only one quality of the object and that is being opposed to I."
Thus we must be acutely aware of the link between the abject and the subject. The border between these two positions is imaginary, and however we try to exclude the abject it still exists. When we are propelled into the world of the abject, our imaginary borders disintegrate and the abject becomes a tangible threat because our identity system and conception of order has been disrupted. Hence, Kristeva's theory of abjection is concerned with figures that are in a state of transition or transformation. The abject is located in a liminal state that is on the margins of two positions. This state is particularly interesting to Kristeva because of the link between psychoanalysis and the subconscious mind.
We are both drawn to and repelled by the abject; nausea is a biological recognition of it, and fear and adrenaline also acknowledge its presence. These are the feelings that we recall from prior to separation from the mother. Kristeva describes one aspect of the abject as 'jouissance' which is a sensation akin to joyousness. She says that it is because of this sensation that "One thus understands why so many victims of the abject are its fascinated victims - if not its submissive and willing ones."
Thus we can deduce from Kristeva's essay that the main point of her theory of abjection is that "The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them." Consequently it is a manipulator, and as such subverts boundaries, laws, and conventions.11
Questions? Email me at Sophist@Bigfoot.Com