For Friday’s Feminist Philosophies class, we read about Postmodern Feminism in Rosemarie Putman Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Tong writes that

Postmodern feminists, like all postmodernists, seek to avoid in their writings any and all reinstantiations of phallogocentric thought, ideas ordered around an absolute word (logos) that is “male” in style (hence the reference to the phallus). Thus, they view with suspicion any mode of feminist thought that aims to provide the explanation for why woman is oppressed or the ten steps all women must take to achieve liberation. (193)

During our graduate section, my teacher critiqued postmodernism quite harshly as philosophically unsound on two basic premises: 1) they are claiming to not do theory because it is phallogocentric, but in reality, if they are explaining things, then it is theory; and 2) they claim that language creates society, but if our language is phallogocentric, we can’t get out of it — we can’t just create a new language.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it and review the chapter, I don’t think that postmodern feminists are claiming that they aren’t doing theory, but rather that they aren’t going to try to come up with a totalizing theory; they refuse “to develop one overarching explanation and solution for women’s oppression” (193).

Additionally, I’m not sure if I really care for Tong’s discussion of postmodern feminism. She never really gives a good description of what postmodernism is, I think (not that I really have one either). She also only discusses Hélene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva (in addition to Lacan, Derrida, and de Beauvoir). I was somewhat shocked that Judith Butler (and Foucault) didn’t make it into the chapter.

My teacher (and some classmates agree) that postmodern feminism doesn’t offer much practical use. They agree with critics that it is too esoteric and meant for a small audience, that it can be read as essentialist (though arguably, so can all feminist theory), and that it is too wrapped up in play.

I thought I’d do some preliminary research for a possible paper topic on postmodern feminism and its applicability in our material conditions (i.e., how can we use this stuff). Part of this is perhaps that I am enamored with postmodernism and want to defend it, but I think it is also that I want to understand this theory better, and to get a better grasp of it for myself (after all, if postmodernism is passé and bunk, as my philosophy teacher might have it, then perhaps I shouldn’t be so enthusiastic about it).

So, like all college students (and now professors too!) I went to Wikipedia. Wikipedia explains that postmodern feminism’s “largest departure from other branches of feminism, is the argument sex is itself constructed through language” (emphasis added). The article is limited, and in need of an expert (perhaps by the end of the term, I could do that?), so it only offers up two postmodern feminists: Judith Butler and someone new to me: Mary Joe Frug.

I’ve already found some journal articles online, but I think they’ll have to wait until I’m done with a few other papers that are due next week.

For my feminist philosophies term paper this quarter I am considering writing a paper to answer the question, “What is woman?” As my professor, Lani Roberts, noted in class, this isn’t a simple biology question. We can’t say a woman is a person with a uterus, because that excludes women who have had hysterectomies, as well as transwomen and, as Stoltenberg has pointed out, women in prisons (biologically male but gendered woman in the prison society). Additionally, sex (a set of biological traits) and gender (the values and behaviors assigned culturally to sex) are different, so “woman” is not so easily biologically defined. Some radical feminists define woman as “people dominated by men” and men as “people who dominate women.”

Any comments from readers about ideas of how to define “woman” would be greatly appreciated. What do you think? What makes “woman”? (Alternatively, if you have speculations on what makes “man,” that would be appreciated as well).

Grimshaw, Jean. “Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking.“ Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. Ed. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1988. 90-108.

In “Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking,“ Jean Grimshaw deconstructs the feminist assumption that there is a core self if we strip away the way we have been constructed — that underneath our false ideologies is a true autonomous self (93).

She notes that this feminist thought makes four assumptions:
1. There is a potential unitary, rational self that is aware of its interests;
2. Splits in the psyche are caused by the interference of patriarchy;
3. Undoing conditioning is solely a rational process of undoing socialization;
and 4. There is an autonomous self that originates within the self (95).

The consequences of these assumptions are many. First, it provokes a derogatory attitude towards “inauthentic“ people (96). Second, it cannot see value in the ways women currently live their lives; it divides women into two camps, those who have shaken off patriarchy and those who haven’t. Lastly, it presents a normative (emphasis Grimshaw’s) image of “this is what a feminist looks like“ (97).

The feminist view that there is a core self fails in the following ways:
• It does not understand the appeal of romantic “images“ that are criticized by feminist criticism.
• It does not understand that it is possible to disagree with imagines “in one’s head“ but not to change one’s desire (100).

We cannot assume, according to Grimshaw, a “coherent“ self, and people must instead negotiate “contradictory or conflicting conceptions of themselves“ (101-102).

Grimshaw concludes:

It seems to me that there is a sort of dialectic we need to preserve when thinking about autonomy. There is no authentic or unified ‘original’ self which can simply be recovered or discovered as the source of ‘autonomous’ actions. But we are often faced with the experienced need to make ‘sense’ of our lives and our feelings and goals, to relate confused fragments of ourselves into something that seems more coherent and of which we feel more in control. We are often also faced, however, with the need to tolerate contradictions, not to strive for an illusory or impossible ideal, and to avoid self-punishing forms of anxiety, defense and guilt (and feminist guilt can be as punishing as any other kind). The dialectic of autonomy s one in which a constant (but never static or final) search for control and coherence needs balancing against a realism and tolerance born out of efforts to understand ourselves (and others) better. (106)