Week 18 Flashcards
Post Modernism/ Post WW2
Response to war, science, rationality, race purity, nationalism, technology, consumerism, globalization, etc.
-Shift in thinking from universal & sameness to distinctions in sameness; seeks root in structures, focuses heavily on POWER
-Strong links to philosophy, Social-Political Theory, & psychoanalysis.
Destabilizing narratives & the idea of one single true reality:
All universal truths & assumptions need to be questioned & underlying agendas exposed; It takes Radicalism’s root further & wider.
Deconstruction
process of breaking down/taking apart terms, concepts, & ideas said to hold truth; to expose the power & politics embedded.
Discourse
-Includes both what we say & what we do everyday; Language & practice have power.
-Language is critical in the process of producing knowledge; we convey ideas, describe our world, label it; e.g. binary words & thinking
-But meaning of words is not fixed & emerges in context: Ex; Gay once meant happy. We can change meanings & practice in our everyday discourse.
Discursive Power
relations of power in a society expressed through language & practice; Power is with & through everyone; Hard to see & resist.
PostModern Feminism
-Need to question objectivity lying at core of modern thinking- can knowing be unconcerned or unbiased? no.
-Questioning includes both about the knower & about existence: ex, A woman- what is it?
-Categories that define us need to be deconstructed- we need to become participants in discourse rather than objects of it.
-Focus on structural patriarchy- there is a need to deconstruct phallocentrism & heteronormativity.
Post Modern & Post Modern Feminism Critiques
-Eurocentric focus; still predominantly white, upper to upper-middle class, colonial; This is the place where it seeks to deconstruct from
-Too Academic- not accessible
-Still predominantly binary in thinking: still heterosexual too
-Focus on how male self reproduces in society as a kind of universalizing & yet they say they are seeking to challenge/ move away from this type of thinking.
-Need to critically assess the exclusionary practices happening with both PostModernism & Feminism
Butler, Gender Trouble
-Challenged the biological accounts of binary sex & how feminists have used terms like sex & gender; the seemingly natural coherence of categories of sex, gender, sexuality, etc. is all constructed.
Performative
-Produces a series of effects; we walk, speak, & act like consolidate an impression of man or woman.
Gender Performativity
-speaks to both the individuals interpretation of self & to society’s interpretation of them (inward & outward)
-Gender is a stylized repetitive performative; Gender is real only to the extent that it is performative; it can be neither true or false, real or apparent, original or derived.
-In recent years has engaged with the trans community to amend the thesis
Judith Butler Imitation article
-Exploring the identity of lesbian & what it entails- it can affirm but it can also constrain, determine, or specify ones identity in ways that support homophobic and heterosexist thought.
-“Identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes”
-How the “I” gets determined under the category: Lesbians are more than a group who share coming out, sexism, & homophobia.
-She argues to destabilize these categories of gender & sexual identity; heteronormativity is a construct
-Because gender is constructed this allows us to express both a shared identity & individual differences.
What is Queer Theory?
Reclaim of word ‘queer’- celebratory of non-normativity, a unifying term for LGBTQQIA+ persons; QT began academic & spread culturally
Queer Theory Started
-In 1990s to gaps in gay & lesbian theories & other feminist theory; Overcome ‘regimes of normal’ & heteronormativity.
Teresa de Lauretis
-Describes 3 interrelated projects at play:
1) refusing heterosexuality as the benchmark for sexual formations
2) a challenge to the belief that lesbian & gay studies is one single entity
3) a strong focus on the multiple ways that race shapes sexual bias.
-De Lauretis proposes that Queer Theory could represent all of these critiques together & make it possible to rethink everything about sexuality.
Queer Theory (2)
-Combined with PostModernism there are arguments about the power of binary systems the seek to erase those who don’t fit into established categories.
-Focus on individual truths & self understanding that demands separation of sex from gender & sexuality
-Reject the traditional categories of biological or genetic male/ female; use term Cisgender
-Identities of sex, gender, sexuality are all fluid.
