Emancipation without Utopia: Subjection, Modernity, and the Normative Claims of Feminist Critical Theory

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Allen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Diagnostic Analysis ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Depth And Complexity ◽  
Paradox Of Power

Feminist theory needs both explanatory‐diagnostic and anticipatory‐utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory‐diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory‐utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory‐utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception of emancipation is compatible with a complex explanatory‐diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique.

Humanism and the Human

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Winters
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Working Through ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Sylvia Wynter

This chapter engages humanism and its fundamental assumptions by working through critical theory, black feminism, and black studies. It contends that there is a tension at the heart of humanism—while the ideal human appears to be the most widespread and available category, it has been constructed over and against certain qualities, beings, and threats. To elaborate on this tension, this chapter revisits the work of authors like Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Marx acknowledges that the human is a site of conflict and antagonism even as his thought betrays a lingering commitment to progress and humanism. Foucault goes further than Marx by underscoring the fabricated quality of man and the ways in which racism functions to draw lines between those who must live and those who must die. In response to Marx and Foucault’s tendency to privilege Europe, this chapter engages black feminism and Afro-pessimism—Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Frank Wilderson—who show how the figure of the human within humanism is defined in opposition to blackness.

scholarly journals We are the Process: Reflections on the Underestimation of Power in Students as Partners in Practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Kehler ◽  
Roselynn Verwood ◽  
Heather Smith
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Model Theory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Pedagogical Theory ◽  
Embedded Power

The concept of Students as Partners (SaP) has much merit; however, further reflection on the power embedded in daily SaP processes and relationships is needed. In this article, we use the SaP model articulated by Healey, Flint, and Harrington (2014) to examine three reflections of SaP in practice from two different Canadian post-secondary contexts. Informed by critical pedagogical theory and feminist theory, we highlight sites of harmony and dissonance between the Healey, Flint, and Harrington (2014) model (theory) and our reflections (practice) and highlight embedded power relations in SaP processes and practices. We argue that there is often an underestimation of power in SaP. 

scholarly journals SOBRE ESTRATÉGIAS E DISPOSITIVOS NORMATIVOS EM FOUCAULT: CONSIDERAÇÕES DE MÉTODO - DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5216/rfd%20ufg.v40i2.44128

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Jean François Y Deluchey
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Second Moment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

Resumo: Neste artigo, busco refletir as potencialidades e dificuldades metodológicas relativas ao uso do “dispositivo” como ferramenta de investigação nas ciências sociais e sociais aplicadas. Sugiro pensar a relação entre dispositivos normativos e sujeitos de direito, a partir da analítica do poder de Michel Foucault, para quem o poder existe como feixe de relações dissimétricas coordenadas por estratégias que impactam os sujeitos em suas dimensões inter e intraindividuais. Para tanto, o uso do dispositivo – em especial no caso do dispositivo normativo – apresenta-se como importante ferramenta metodológica, na medida em que funciona como grade de análise das relações de poder, de identificação das estratégias e de seus efeitos nos sujeitos. Nas conclusões, observo que a identificação da estratégia de um dispositivo deve perpassar pela análise da lógica das relações que o compõem, para, em um segundo momento, ver de que forma e em que medida esta estratégia impacta as formas de vida dos atores que compõem o nosso campo de estudo.Abstract: In this article, I try to interrogate the potentialities and methodological difficulties related to the use of the "dispositive" as a tool for research in the social sciences and applied social. I suggest to think the relation between normative dispositives and subjects to law from the Michel Foucault´s analytics of power, philosopher for whom the power exists as a beam of dissymmetrical relations coordinated by strategies that impact the subjects in their dimensions inter and intraindividuals. The use of the dispositives – especially of the normative ones - presents itself as an important methodological tool, to the extent that works as analytic framework of power relations, identification of strategies and their effects on the subjects. Finally, I observe that the identification of a dispositive strategy should pass by analysis of the logic of relations that compose it, for, in a second moment, see how and to what extent this strategy impacts the ways of life of the actors that compose our field of study. 

scholarly journals A critical reflexive politics of location, ‘feminist debt’ and thinking from the Global South

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-412
Author(s):  
Sumi Madhok
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Global South ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Conceptual Work ◽  
Politics Of Location

In this article, I raise a question and acknowledge a ‘feminist debt’. The ‘feminist debt’ is to the politics of location, and the question asks: what particular stipulations and enablements does a critical reflexive feminist politics of location put in place for knowledge production and for doing feminist theory? I suggest that there are at least three stipulations/enablements that a critical reflexive politics of location puts in place for knowledge production. Firstly, it demands/enables scholarly accounts to reveal their location within the prevailing entanglements of power relations and to highlight the politics of struggle that underpin these. Secondly, it demands/enables conceptual work from different geographical spaces – and in particular, it facilitates the production of conceptual work in non-standard background contexts and conditions. And finally, a critical reflexive politics of location demands/enables a methodological response to capture the different conceptual and analytical and empirical knowledges produced in different locations.

scholarly journals Feminisms and decolonising psychology: Possibilities and challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-305
Author(s):  
Catriona Ida Macleod ◽  
Sunil Bhatia ◽  
Wen Liu
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Liberation Psychology ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
Gendered Power

In this special issue, we bring together papers that speak to feminisms in relation to decolonisation in the discipline of psychology. The six articles and two book reviews address a range of issues: race, citizenship, emancipatory politics, practising decolonial refusal, normalising slippery subjectivity, Islamic anti-patriarchal liberation psychology, and decolonisation of the hijab. In this editorial we outline the papers’ contributions to discussions on understanding decolonisation, how feminisms and decolonisation speak to each other, and the implications of the papers for feminist decolonising psychology. Together the papers highlight the importance of undermining the gendered coloniality of power, knowledge and being. The interweaving of feminisms and decolonising efforts can be achieved through: each mutually informing and shaping the other, conducting intersectional analyses, and drawing on transnational feminisms. Guiding principles for feminist decolonising psychology include: undermining the patriarchal colonialist legacy of mainstream psychological science; connecting gendered coloniality with other systems of power such as globalisation; investigating topics that surface the intertwining of colonialist and gendered power relations; using research methods that dovetail with feminist decolonising psychology; and focussing praxis on issues that enable decolonisation. Given the complexities of the coloniality and patriarchy of power-knowledge-being, feminist decolonising psychology may fail. The issues raised in this special issue point to why it mustn’t.

scholarly journals Problematizing the Postfeminist Gaze: A Critical Exploration of Young Women’s Readings of Gendered Power Relations in Advertising

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 546-562
Author(s):  
Alexandra Serra Rome ◽  
Stephanie O’Donohoe ◽  
Susan Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Women As Readers ◽  
Blind Spots

This article explores young women’s engagements with gendered power relations embedded in advertising. Drawing on four case studies, we demonstrate how their readings of gendered ads are informed by postfeminist discourse, which, for all its contradictions, presents gender inequality as a thing of the past. Specifically, we illustrate and theorize the problematic workings of a postfeminist gaze directed at both models in ads and young women as readers of ads, with judgements shaped by postfeminist ideals and blind spots concerning intersections of gender, class, and race. We contribute to macromarketing scholarship by (1) illustrating how, in the context of gendered ads and young American women, gendered power relations and a postfeminist sensibility are both produced by and productive of gendered readers; and (2) highlighting the insidious nature and limitations of this sensibility informing young women’s lived experiences, engagements with media culture, and position in society.

The Melancholy of Faith

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jermaine Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Hierarchy ◽  
Gendered Power

This chapter addresses the question of how unresolved racial grief works through the demands of capital, racialization, and sacred ritual practice to enact a gender hierarchy. It thinks through James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), to explore how testifying serves as a technology of black patriarchy—a ritual that arises out of the need for racial and economic redemption yet unfolds within and propagates gendered power relations. It examines how the content and structure of Baldwin's Bildungsroman, set in Harlem's Pentecostal community during the Great Depression, allegorizes the conversion of John Grimes, who embodies the “weak, feminine flesh” of his matrilineal line that is sacrificed to secure his “manchild” status of salvation. The chapter is punctuated by a section that situates Baldwin's novel as a form of sexual testifying on the part of Baldwin himself. In doing so, it places Baldwin's novel in conversation with its dramatic sequel, The Amen Corner (1954), to explore how both texts anticipate and extend queer theoretical conversations about the social construction of black, gay subject-formations.

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