Lectures 16-18 Flashcards
The Death of God
Concept written about by Frederich Nietzsche in The Madman. He claimed that because of the evolving world the religious God, Moral absolutes, and the physical absolutes of science are dead. Instead, the ultimate act of human power is the will to power and we must challenge the scientific/philosophical method and language. He concludes that there are absolutes, truth is relative and situated, there is no point of origin, and we are in freefall. A key part of post-modern thought.
Modern Crisis
The need to recognize politics of collective differences ie. regions: regionalism, gender: feminism, ethnicity: multiculturalism and
post-colonialism
Post-modern tenets
- Power structures the world
- Language and medium are critical
- The individual cannot exist outside the observed
world - All knowledge is situated
- Deconstruction is a key tool
Identity Politics
The political idea that recognizes identity-based differences and calls for recognizing group rights (liberal multiculturalism, nationalism/regionalism, indigenous self-determination, etc.)
Simone Debeauvoir
Wrote The Second Sex in 1949, which expressed that gender was constructed and the world was designed for men, creating a feeling of otherness for women, who were always defined as objects and in relation to men. In the book she says “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, which argues that femininity is not based on any biological, psychological, or intellectual differences, and is instead a construction of society.
The public/private divide
An ideological dichotomy between domains gendered respectively as male and female: the public sphere is that of men and the private sphere is of women.
First Wave Feminism
The movement by the Suffragettes (~1869-1920) who wanted the right to vote. This was done in a way that did not challenge the public-private divide or gender roles, instead emphasizing that private-sphere ethics could be brought to the public sphere through “a mother’s touch”. The movement was racist, only beliving in white women’s right to vote.
The Feminine Mystique
Written by Betty Friedan in 1963. Showed that women’s magazines and other forms of culture sold the ‘feminine mystique’ of the perfect housewife who was a clean, busy “domestic engineer” in charge of the household but second class in the rest of the world. The book also coined the concept of “the problem with no name”, which explained the phenomenon of women being unhappy but unable to explain why and often turning to substance abuse.
Second Wave Feminism
The movement (1960’s-1980’s) which called for full equality of women, challenged gender roles and the public private divide, and pushed for consciousness-raising.
‘the personal is political’
A slogan of second wave feminism that challenged the idea of the public/private divide.
Third Wave Feminism
The current evolution of feminism that calls for equality but also emphasizes that there is no single universal view, difference should be celebrated, gender and identity are fluid and not binary, and that feminism is intersectional.
