postmodern Post-feminism without Women

This article aims at showing the way in which the discursive constructivism and ethical relativism characteristic of postmodern feminism and post-feminism leads to a neo-liberal and conservative political agenda that threatens women’s sex-based rights. The article will especially focus on the thought of Paul-B Preciado as a post-feminist activist. It draws a comparison also with the work of Saba Mahmood. In such a context, we will point out the necessity of a neo-material and realist framework able to account for the ontological reality of women, and their irreducibility to social hetero-norms. Keywords: Constructivism, nominalism, embodiment, sexual difference, human rights, materialism.

Postmodern Feminist Perspectives in Eat Pray Love

Postmodern Feminism is the epitome of two massive movements, Postmodernism and Feminism, in literature. It inculcates the features of Postmodernism into Feminism, hence urging feminism to confront and reconstruct its framework. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia (2006), deserves scholarly attention as it allows us to apply the notions of the theory on the text and analyze it in the light of the theory. This paper evaluates the points of similarities and/or differences found during the discourse analysis of the chosen text with a focused emphasis on the aspects of ‘Non-Essentialism’, ‘De/Reconstructing the Female Self’, and ‘Breaking free from the boundaries of cliché Feminism’. The study reveals results which satiate the expectations of a Postmodern Feminist in the form of the protagonist, Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert breaks free from her ‘Essential’ mundane life and embarks on her inward and outward journey of self-discovery and in the process Deconstructs and Reconstructs one’s own self.

14. Feminist theory

Many of the theories discussed in the previous chapters neglect or even ignore the position of women in society, and how they are treated by the law, the legal system, and other aspects of social, economic, and political life. Feminist writers have, in various ways, sought to correct this imbalance or prejudice. This chapter examines several key elements of feminist legal theories, and explores the origins of feminism; legal feminisms (liberal feminism, radical feminism, postmodern feminism, and difference feminism) and their impact on legal philosophy. It discusses the enormous literature on the subject, and its criticism of conventional jurisprudence.

When Sex = (Socially Constructed) Gender, What Is Lost, Politically?

This chapter examines the Lacanian view that sexual difference is neither a biological position nor a discursive construct but a negative ontological category. Sex thus refers to the condition of being split — out of joint and never whole. This contrasts sharply with recent feminist theory's tendency to ignore sexual difference in favor of gender as social construction, which has caused it to overlook the negativity and “trouble” inherent in sex, thereby missing an important way of radicalizing feminist politics. The chapter focuses on two recent variants of the gender and development literature — postmodern feminism and Butlerian performativity — arguing that each prescribes a politics founded on discursivity that yields to a timid and fragmented politics that is ultimately unthreatening to the neoliberal and patriarchal capitalist order. It seeks to valorize instead a feminist politics of development centered on sex as the domain of the “too much” and the “not enough,” amenable to both a more radical politics and universal collective action.

The Special is Women: Suatu Ritual Adat Masuk Minta di Tanimbar Provinsi Maluku

This paper aims to describe a traditional ritual in Tanimbar-Maluku, which is the ritual of asking for requests or applications with its own uniqueness in which the position and value of women are very high because they have a special room that no one can find, with this ritual, women's existence is in the spotlight both in the scope of the family and society in dealing with polemic about the position of women today. The problem in this paper is focused on the value of women in adat which can be implemented or equated with the reality of social life so that the position of men and women can be equal. To approach this problem the theoretical references from the theory of cultural structuralism and the theory of postmodern feminism are used to collaborate between interconnected cultural and feminist roles. The data is collected through observation and interview results from the informant descriptively ... and the data analysis conducted is qualitative analysis. The results obtained are ritual entrance asking to pay attention to the position and values of women; it is not arbitrary to get women (Tanimbar) so this paper provides a concrete contribution that reconstructs the understanding of women's position and values in cultural and social contexts so that there is a balance between men and women.

POSTMODERNITY, SEXUALITIES AND CULTURE: FEMINIST SCRIPTS AND GENDER POP-ICONS (Review of the book: Gaga Feminism. Sex, Gender, and The End of Normal. J. Jack Halberstam. Boston : Beacon Press, 2013. 157 p.)

Lady Gaga as a postmodern cultural icon manipulating with images and symbols has created in her “performances” a kind of new “post”-postmodern feminism, in which she followed the line of feminine anarchists – in politics, arts and culture. “Gaga ideology”, which in fact “embraces a void”, nowadays is vividly presented across alternative forms of popular culture with the subsequent great impact on the generation of millennials.