Postmodernism and Feminism

Ailene Brukman-Stivi Professor Haim Deuel Lusky Postmodernism and womens lib The question of what happened to womens liberation movement during the postmodern times is non easily encapsulated in ace phrase or idea as it is actually an amalgam of often purposely ambiguous and fluid ideas. One would afford to st machination researching just about postmodernism and what it means, let al wiz search about the history of feminism and its development. After one would research a little bit about postmodernism he or she would realize the knowledge about modernism is in like manner highly crucial to understand fully about postmodernism and feminism. whence this writing will engender together a few address about modernism. How did we as a culture develop into a postmodern era? And of course how does this era bugger off to do with feminism? This research paper will involve different critiques about the eccentric of postmodernism and feminism as well. Before starting the writing o n reviews, critiques and more(prenominal) than than in depth research of our type I would like to give a general description, and flat coat research, I would like to start with the two main marges Feminism and postmodernism. FeminismRozen Tali, the writer of the take for, What Is Feminism Anyways. Opens her book reading that she never really understood what feminism is exactly. She says people just call her a libber all(prenominal) time she speaks her opinion about differentiating her and a floor rag. She writes about a sentence that was verbalize in 1913 by a char fair sex, was a British reporter, by the name Rebecca westerly, saying that if you be delay for a current and modern definition of feminism, you fool nonhing to wait for. There is no definition. It is not that a definition does not exist, it exists and that is a for sure thing.Its just that, thither be so many definitions that at that place is no specific one. (Rozen) Rozen writes that the word femini sm actually was born about one hundred years ago. In the beginning this word was used as a medical term for a man that has female characteristics. As time passed the word feminism turned in to a term in the psychological world also got a negative connotation to it, but this time not a male with female characteristics, but as a description of a woman with male character. Examples of a diagnosis for feminism would be like desire to study, courageous, and ambition.Tali Rozen gives a great grammatical case of this psychological diagnosis thirty years ago, people said about the governor of the state of Israel, Golda Meir, that she is the barely man in the government and until today the best way to describe a great woman in business is to say she got balls. The reincarnation of the term feminism indicates and highlights the problem of the actual term itself. non only it was used in negative connotation but also millions in the past and nonetheless today have a hard time to define fem inism.In the dictionary feminism is written to be the ideology of the emancipation of women. According to this definition, there is something in common to all the definitions and ideas that is, the one important sentiment that women suffer from injustice because of their sex. Rozen Suggests that instead of getting confused with the actual meaning of the word we can suss out on the definition Feminism is a theory that is based on the point of view of a woman, and that point of view give new light to knowledge that already exist.This knowledge could come from anywhere, film, literature, history, everything. only when that does not mean that every woman that analyzes a specific subject, is doing a feministic act. To look and analyze something from a womans perspective means to put a woman in the center of the discussion. piece of tail line is that, the question of what is feminism is not one answer. Rozen asks and answers is feminism a woman who stands and fight for their right, ye s. And is feminism a movement of freedom? YesIs it the history of half humanity? Also yes. And there is much more to what is feminism. Postmodernism Postmodernism represents the converge of three distinct cultural trends. These include an attack on the austerity and functionalism of modern art the philosophical attack on structuralism, spear-headed in the 1970s by poststructuralist scholars such as Jacque Derrida, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and the economic theories of postindustrial society developed by sociologist such as Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine. Callinicos 1989) In the book of Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern condition, where he summarized postmodernism as above all maintaining an incredulity toward metanarratives (1984xxiii-iv, 5). Postmodernists, he considers, questions the assumption of the modern age, factly the belief that wise thought and technological innovation can guarantee progress and enlightenment to humanity. They doubt the ability of thinkers from the West either to understand the world or to prescribe solutions for it.The grand theories of t past, whether liberal or Marxist, have been dismissed as products of an age when Europeans and North Americans mistakenly relyd in their own invincibility. The metanarratives of such thought are no longer seen as truth, but simply as privileged talk ofs that deny and silence competeing dissenting(a) voices. (Merchant & Parpart) Michel Foucault, one of the leading postmodernist (and poststructuralist) thinkers, has emphasized the inadequacies of metanarratives and the need to examine the specificities of indicator and its relation to knowledge and dustup (discourse. He dismisses reason as a fiction and sees truth as simply a overtone, locate version of reality transformed into a fixed form in the long process of history. He argues that discourse- a historical, lovingly and institutionally specific structure of statements, wrong, categories, and beliefs- is the site of where meanings are contested and power traffic determined (Scott 198836. ) The ability to control knowledge and meaning, not only through writing but also through disciplinary and professional institutions, and in cordial transaction, is the key to understanding and exercising power relations in society.According to Foucault, the false power of hegemonic knowledge can be challenged by counter-hegemonic discourses which offer alternative invoice of reality (Foucault 1972 1979 1980. ) The search to understand the construction of social meaning has led postmodernists/ poststructuralist scholars to write out the contingent of the subject. As Judith Butler points out, No subject is its own point of departure (Butler, 1992 9) Jacque Derrida (1976) emphasizes the crucial role played by binary star opposites.Indeed, he argues that Western philosophy largely rests on opposites, such as truth/falsity, unanimity/diversity, or man/woman, whereby the nature and primacy of the freshman term is also superior to the second. These pairs are as plant in the definition of their opposite as they are I the nature of the object existence defined, and they habitus our understanding in complex and often unrecognized ways. In order to better understand this process, Derrida and former(a)s have alled for the critical deconstruction of texts (both written and oral) and greater attention to the way differences, particularly those embedded in binary thinking, are constructed and maintained (Culler 1982) To conclude, postmodernist thinkers reject universal, simplified definitions of social phenomena, which, they argue, essentialize reality and fail to reveal the complexity of life as a lived experience. Drawing on this critique, postmodernists have rejected the search for broad generalizations.They emphasize the need for local, specific and historically informed analysis, carefully grounded in both spatial and cultural contexts. to a higher place all, they call for the recognition and celebration of differences, the importance of encouraging the recovery of previously silenced voices and an acceptance of the partial nature of all knowledge claims and thus the limits of knowing. (Marchand &Papart) Postmodernism/feminism instantly in the postmodernism era, the womens identity is not stable, it changes.Postmodern researchers are against this idea, because the I is an autonomic identity that is disconnected from the social conversation. Also feminists and feminist writers, that draw themselves with the postmodernists, are objecting the enlightenment period because there is an existent subject and because there is a possibility to r separately the objective truth through the bina and the straight mind. (Zaken) Zaken claims that feminism is actually leaning on postmodern values, and it exists today to equipment failure and defragment in a new way the idea or word the woman. Simone de Beauvoir, a French writer, intellectual, existential philosopher philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. While she did not consider herself a philosopher, de Beauvoir had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She had claimed that a woman is not born a woman, she is do a woman. Female traits are built through social influence and not biological destiny.She sees the social construction of femininity, which in it exists the subject isnt she a woman, the woman who thinks of herself as a woman, in a specific pip that her environment creates. A great example is the fact that most girls and boys play with their sexs toys, girls with Barbies and dolls while boys with trucks and cars. From her article, The Ethics Ambiguity, comes up that women have internalized their gender hierarchy, to the point where it is hard for them to disconnect from their gradable position.Simone de Beauvoir came to a conclusion, in which the female subject had suffered from suppression- the woman is different, lower, inferior in relation to men, and because of this suppression, the independence of a woman is destroyed in social situations. With that, there is an argument between postmodernism and feminism, which due to a postmodern claim, that power does not control and there is no axioms like private/public, or motherhood. If there is no category woman, then woman can be anything. She is free from the stereotype and the coercing.That being said, there is no general and unified identity for women. Feminists have responded to postmodern ideas in a number of ways. The strongest opposition has come from feminists working in the liberal (modern) or Marxist traditions, both of which are embedded in sense thinking (modern era). Liberal feminists, who have been preoccupied with policy formulation and the improvement of womens statues within the structures of westward thought and society, generally write as if postmodern critiques have little or no pertinence for their own work.The possibility of modernizatio n and progress may be unobtainable and undesirable goals in a postmodern world have rarely been considered by liberals working within these structures. (like World Bank, United Nations, and the world(prenominal) Labor Organization) Mackinnon Catherines influence on shaping feminism is extremely deep in the 80s and the first years of the 90s, so deep that the different post-feministic currents, in many ways are post-Mackinnon, and to be exact, anti-Mackinnon. Therefore whoever wants to become familiar with the feministic thinking there is no better place to do so with Mackinnons variables.The starting point of Mackinnons feminism is that the group of women are discriminated against and oppressed by the group of men, which are first and foremost caused by the way internality is built by society. According to Mackinnon, sexuality is the subject that its social old meaning changes the men to be in control and the women to be controlled. Dr Yaakov Gorbitz, in his book, Postmodernism- coating and Literature in the End of The 20th Century, writes on the issue of feminism that modernism and postmodernism needs to prompt us of two main phases the first, the woman who tries to stand and tries to fortify herself against the en. -This is the model where women rebel against men and say we are not going to take of hair from our legs, we will not give you the pleasure of absent a feminine woman. In the postmodern stage the woman understands that the seed of the problem is that she is always looking at herself in relation to men, and contrary to them, and so she says I am allowed to put makeup on and take care of my beauty- and not for the man but for me or for my friends. When a woman stops being just an opposite model of a man she can internalize some new heterogeneity.Some feminists believe feminist theory has always dealt with postmodern issues and indeed, has more to offer women than male-centric postmodern writers. Feminist anthropologists, Frances Mascia-Lees, Patricia Sharpe and Colleen Cohen (1989), attack postmodern anthropology for its profoundly sexists nature, nothing that studies such as George Marcus and Michael Fischers Anthropology as Culture Critique, ignore feminist contributions to the discussion of the other and long-standing feminist critiques of Western notions of truth. Michel FoucaultContrary to liberals and Marxists, Foucault did not see the mechanisms of power in society, as something held by groups or institutions in society, and which does not exist for others distribution that enables the control of a group of other parts of the society. Foucault referred to political power, as network bloods, imaginary strings interwoven within the community, and he saw no, one pre supreme factor, such as the state or economic elite. This means that in a society there are power centers that are not subject to economic relations (such as madhouses, for example).Foucault goes on to argue with the liberals and the Marxists. Accordi ng to them every relationship, in which forces, is characterized by imposing restrictions and denial of freedoms. He argued that this approach stems from the fact that they recognize the political power with the legal system and enforcement. But for him, it is only one of the forms of expression of political power, incorporated throughout history. Foucault examines the relationship between institutions (social) and the body (human). He opposes the very concept of sexuality. According to him, in the nineteenth century, when sexuality was taboo, it increased desire to break the taboo and talk about sex, that also created behaviors which were categorized as social deviance. For example, sex between men, were homosexual. This was a setting, which has reference for those people, people who were born different. This is one of Foucaults contributions to understanding the relationship between sexual orientation and identity. According to Foucault, identity is created as part of a dialogue, in particular power relations in society.He demonstrates the change in sex ratio from permissiveness of the Middle Ages, where words related to sex revealed associations of pleasures and alliance, and the language of the 19th century, which has the sex talk not allowed or lurid to talk about. Hence, definitions of heterosexual and homosexuality are the product of modern times, from the 19th century. As someone who has study the sexual discourse in society, Foucault argued that the discourse on sexuality limits and defines the sexual content and created a social pattern. Once we understand how we talk about sex, we understand sexuality.That is, language reflects the thinking and perception also on sex and sexuality. The mechanisms of power in sexuality, expressed the distinction between what and what is not acceptable in society. Namely, that the discourse on sexuality is a society regime (as expressions of political power mechanisms) language created a situation, when the subjec t of sex is brought up, the person might feel sinful (sexual). Feeling which helps to suppress the desire for sex, because that person did not want to feel a sinner. The goal behind this repression is, to get the different forms of sex out of the people.That is, just for the non-reproductive sex. The society defines normal sexual norms, from early childhood to old age. Whoever goes beyond the norm, is placed under the situation of the controlled mechanism in order to create helpful sexual drive economically and politically secure to society. These mechanisms determine what is allowed and what is not right in society and what is wrong. Foucault argued that since the 18th century, the deviation began to violate the law (courts could, not so long ago, to convict homosexuals or partners who betrayed their spouse).By, new sexual settings, to different sexual behaviors (that were always there but never received cultural significance) changed the face of society. This means social defini tion creates the identity. The new terms gay, lesbian and straight, are the result of modern discourse, which created categorization and sub-categories of conversation. The term homosexuality has two interpretations, one, sexual preference. Second meaning is social labeling. This labeling is the concept of the rule of the person which identifies himself or herself, as gay. That is, each character turns shades of defining sexual identity.Experts (such as pedagogues, psychologists and psychiatrists), can be social power, which determine the lawful content normal and identify the pathological contents of a person. Their power, check to Foucault, is due to their proximity to the dominant group in society, the bourgeoisie and the political elite. Extreme conclusion is that gender regime serves the interests of those groups, and that by apply the institutions of marriage and heterosexuality. (Zaken) Conclusion Society is the cause of sexual identity and what makes the difference betwe en sexual orientation, and how we identify who we are A woman or a man.But there is change occurring and there could be more change as soon as we, as a society start unlabeling and just lifespan with all types of sexual orientation, genders, and labels that are not labeled. This is all through a social process, of course. A note, it is extremely crucial to know the difference between sex and gender, because then we are giving legitimacy to habitual belief, commemorating the situation in which women are subject to male social order. This follows the historical tradition of the patriarchal family and society.This approach considers the biological differences between the sexes, as the distribution of the different roles. In other words, gender dissimilarity is prevailing social perceptions. Ultimately, the goal is to get into a relationship of equality between men and women in society, there would be no more women who are discriminated against on the basis of sex and / or gender. Fo r, as de Beauvoir said, man and woman, depend on each other for sex and continuity of human society. Thus, each and every one will be able to shape their identity in accordance with their wishes and needs, and not according to social codes dictated and dried. Work Cited * Ankersmith, F. R. (1990) Reply to Professor Zagorin, History and Theory 29, 3 275-96 * Beauvoir de Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. 1949. Translated by Bernard Frechten Citadel Press, 2006 * Beauvoir de Simone. The Second Sex. 1949. Translated by Parshley, Penguin 1972. * Butler, J. (1992) Contingent Foundations Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism, in J. Butler and J. W. Scott (eds) Feminists Theorize the Political, raw(a) York and capital of the United Kingdom Routledge. * Collinicos, A. (1989) Against Postmodernism, Oxford Polity Press. Culler, J. (1982) On Deconstruction Theory and criticism after structuralism, Ithaca, NY Cornell university Press. * Evans, Judith. Feminist Theory Today An Introductio n to Second-Wave Feminism. London SAGE publication, 1995. * Foucault, M. * (1972) The Archaeology of knowledge and the Discourse on Language, New York Tavistock Publications & Harper Colophon. * (1979) (published in French, 1975) Discipline and Punish, Translated by S. Sheridan, New York Penguin Books. * (1980) Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, translated by C. Gordon, New York Harvest Press. Jameson, F. (1990) Postmodernism or, the ethnic Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC Duke University Press. * Mackinnon A Catherine, Sexuality, Pornography and Methods- Pleasure under Patriarchy, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, 1990. Translated and leave of Harvard University Press. Reprinted by Permission of Catherine A Mackinnon, Cambridge, Mass Harvard University Press, Copy Right c 1989 by Catherine Mackinnon. * Marchand H. Marianne and Parpart L. Jane. Feminism/Postmodernism/Development. London Routledge, 1995. * Mascia-Lees, F. Sharpe, P. and C ohen, C.B (1989) The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology Cautions from a Feminist Perspective, Signs 15, 1 394-408. * Palmer, I (1990) Gender and Population in the Adjustment of African Economics Planning for Change, Women, Work and Development Series No. 19, Geneva foreign Labour Organization. * Rozen, Tali. What is Feminism Anyway? And Why dont we know anything about it. Tel Aviv Zmora Bitan, 2000. * Scott, J. W. (1988) Deconstructing Equality versus Differences Or the Use of Poststructuralist Theory of Feminism, Feminist Studies14, 1 33-50. * Sylvester Christine. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era.Cambridge University Press, 1994. 1 . Some western scholars, most notably Marxist reject postmodernism as serious and naive (Callinicos 1989 palmer 1990. ) Others , while sympathetic to Marxism, see Postmodernism as an outgrowth of the culture of late capitalism. Fredrick Jameson, for example, endorses an approach which draws on the strength of postmodern ism without abandoning political action (Jameson 1991. ) Some scholars find postmodernisms emphasis on difference and numerousness useful for their work and not necessarily inimical to other approaches (Ankersmit 1990 Parkash 1990)