Lecture 8- Feminism & Cultural Studies
Feminism and its relation to cultural studies
Not all feminism belongs to realm of cultural studies
But the two domains do share important interests:
– connections with non-academic movements
– suspicion of and challenge to types of discursive knowledge
– inclusion of marginal groups in knowledge and power production
Feminisms: there is no one feminism
In general: “feminism asserts that sex is a fundamental and irreducible axis of social
organization, which has (…) subordinated women to men” (Jane & Barker)
Patriarchy = structural subordination of women by men (male-headed family, male authority
in politics, control of property; married women in the Netherlands were not allowed to have
their own bank account without the authorization of their husband)
Different ‘feminisms’: liberal, difference, socialist, post-structuralist, black, postcolonial, post-
feminism
Three waves – different moments of feminism in history
First wave: Suffragettes - fighting for equal rights / the right to vote
Second Wave: Gender as construction / the personal is political
Third Wave: anti-essentialist, queering, no universal claims about women
First Wave: Late 19th and Early 20th Century
UK and US suffragettes, late 19th, early 20th century: women’s movement for right to vote
(suffrage)
Fights for equal rights between men and women (voting, work, reproduction)
Strictly about political inequalities
Still grounded in binary division between men and women, something that ultimately in the
third wave will be criticized
Second Wave: Cultural Construction / “The Personal is political”
1960s to 1980s
Cultural and political gender roles are linked
Personal life became seen as politicized: “the personal is political”
Awareness of cultural construction of gender
More about cultural inequalities (instead of political), like discrimination
Despite voting right being present by 1960 in the Netherlands, the seemingly progressive line
in the equality between men and women gender roles were still very specific: you´d have
voting rights, the right to education were given to women, but the social expectations that
were imposed upon them still forced them to live a specific kind of life, fulfilling a specific
, kind of gender role of being a stay at home mom even though you had studies, then there is
still no equality; you still very much impacted on the gender specific expectations that are
imposed upon you
Simone de Beauvoir, The second sex (1949)
Start of second-wave feminism
“One is not born, but rather becomes, (a) woman” (Simone de Beauvoir)
Existentialist: women have a choice to conform to what men expect from them
There is no essence, preceding existence, to being a woman
Third Wave: Anti-Essentialism
1990s anti-essentialist reaction to second-wave essentialism
Criticized second wave for being too white, privileged because dominant authors of second
wave were of western background and that comes with its blind spots
Poststructuralist view on gender and sex, as not being binary and universal (there are not
only two genders, the experience of gender is not universal, we should leave behind the
binary oppositions of gender) breaking down binary oppositions between two different
sexes ( rise of the queer study)
Mostly focused against global, universal claims about women, but has a context-specific
approach; ‘woman’ is not a singular term, it´s plural
Breaking down the binaries: Queer Theory
Common assumptions about sex and gender:
Sex is binary (i.e. either female or male)
Sex determines gender (there is an alignment between sex and gender: if your born female
your gender is female too)
Sex determines behaviors (born with mal genetelia means you behave masculine)
Sex determines sexual preferences
Queer theory try to breaking down these binaries
Recent advances in the science of sex shows that, even at the biological level, a surprising
number of people do not fit neatly into the category of ‘female’ or ‘male’.
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1991)
Questions the way we have distinguished between sex and gender
Questions the second-wave assumption that there is a universal idea of womanhood, that
there are only these two genders and one needs to fit in one of them she says there are
multiple genders
, Race and Ethnicity (have just like sex and gender huge effect on the social construct of
identity)
Where does the modern concept of race come from?
The concept of race bears the traces of its origins in the discourses of social Darwinism that stress
‘lines of descent’ and ‘types of people’. Here the concept of race refers to alleged biological and
physical characteristics, the most obvious of which is skin pigmentation. These attributes, often
linked to ‘intelligence’ and ‘capabilities’, are used to rank ‘racialized’ groups in a hierarchy of social
and material superiority and subordination. These classifications are at the root and heart of modern
racism.
The cultural studies approach: racialization (studying racialization is looking at how inequality was
set up on the basis of supposedly biological characteristics that were lumped together and then were
attached to issues about intelligence that would allow people in power to divide between different
categories within society that’s a social and political power struggle)
The idea of ‘racialization’ or ‘race formation’ is founded on the argument that race is a social
construction and not a universal or essential category of biology. Racialization indicates a social
process so its not a universal or essential category of biology.
Race does not exist outside its representation: it is formed in and by symbolization in a process of
social and political power struggle. The closet of race was meant to represent something and what it
represents is a social hierarchy and a political power struggle.
Stuart Hall on the concept of ethnicity:
“If the black subject and black experience are not stabilized by Nature or by some other essential
guarantee (if its not a biological determined thing, if the black subject is not determined by biology),
then it must be the case that they are constructed historically, culturally and politically - the concept
which refers to this is ‘ethnicity’. (According to Hall ethnicity is the concept that refers to the cultural,
historical and political experience of being black). The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of
history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that
all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual.”
Critics acknowledge the importance of what hall is saying but rather stick to the concept of
racialization and race simply to make sure that we do not forget the history that is behind the
concept of race.
Imagines communities
Benedict Anderson: The Nation as Imagined Community
Anderson’s Claim:
