Postmodernism obfuscates reality: No room for activism

Off Our Backs; Washington; Aug/Sep 1999; Val Codd;

Volume: 29
Issue: 8
Start Page: 11
ISSN: 00300071
Subject Terms: Feminism
Activism
Theory
Philosophy
Sociology
Personal Hutcheon, Linda
Names:
Abstract:
Feminist theorist Linda Hutcheon has posed the phrase "complicity and critique" to refer to the feminist post-modern move to critique
masculine definitions of gender from within those categories themselves. Codd discusses the need to move beyond post-modern
(de)construction.
Full Text:
Copyright Off Our Backs, Inc. Aug/Sep
1999
Post-modernism, or post-structuralism, has offered a way out of the Westerncentric dualisms that have devalued and oppressed everything
female. Dualisms refer to categories such as man/woman, culture/nature, etc., whereby the first, implicitly male, term, is valued over the
second, implicitly female, term. Such dualisms have been the basis, or an inherent part of, most Western thought. As compared with cultural
and essentialist feminist theories, post-modernism has exploded the very categories of gender. While cultural feminism's revaluing of the
term "woman" is certainly an encouraging and empowering move, it is still working within the definitions established by Western
patriarchy, and only reinvoking the innate, essential nature of "woman" invoked so often by a misogynist culture.
Feminist theorist Linda Hutcheon has posed the phrase "complicity and critique" to refer to the feminist post-modern move to critique
masculine definitions of gender from within those categories themselves. An example of this move is the use, as promoted in popular
culture beauty magazines, of female sexuality as power. The assertion of power, in this case, is an empty one, since women are still buying
into male-defined traits of beauty and sexuality.
Post-modernism's offering to feminism, then, has been a questioning of the very categories of gender as these have been articulated and
imbued with hierarchy and relations of power. Post-modern critique has also opened theoretical spaces for those outside the all-too-often
referredto categories of gay/straight and male/ female, for example, transgendered and bisexual people. However, insofar as
postmodernism explodes the "center," throws everything into play, and acknowledges partial truths, it threatens to conceal the alltoo-real
relations of power and oppressive forces of patriarchy, racism, classism and heterosexism. Standpoints are, in fact, partial truths, yet the
historical and material specificity of a woman's standpoint, or place of speaking from her experience, is affected by relations of power, such
as patriarchy.
The post-modern person is thoroughly socially constructed, with no essential core, and, so, defined to the point of having no real agency.
The social constructionist perspective can close off the possibility for personal awareness, and, hence, agency. While social constructionism
provides us with insight into how socialization impacts current conditions of gender, race, class and sexuality, subjective awareness is the
first step in moving toward activism and social change. Such awareness is also crucial for "deconstructing" the ways in which our
interactions replicate the very hierarchies we want to dismantle.
So, the deconstructive move in postmodernism allows for a dismantling of categories, yet seems to preclude the construction of any
movement for change. Additionally, the freeplay that emerges from the deconstructive move of postmodernism threatens to conceal the
very real relations of power that impact the lives of women. Acknowledging patriarchy as a partial-truth perspective equal to feminism
conceals the fact that feminism is a necessary response to patriarchal oppression.
Feminist theorist Teresa De Lauretis has offered an idea of experience as central to defining subjectivity, in which the (female) subject
mediates as well as constructs the self in "social reality." As cited by Linda Alcoff, Lauretis' work Alice Doesn Y makes the point that
historically and politically specific experience shapes subjectivity in an extensive and shifting way, and, thus, race, class, gender and
sexuality can enter one's consciousness without repressing individual agency. A woman, then, has a subjective, personal awareness that
mediates, or filters, her socially constructed self - her self in relation to others, as well as her history and her experience.
We can assert political needs while stressing that such needs are related to real historical circumstances. We can, as activists, demand
certain rights as women, with the continual awareness and assertion that such demands are based on current, as opposed to timeless or
perpetual, needs. Standpoints represent partial truths, yet are (should be) materially and historically grounded. Experience is not essence.
Intersections, or overlapping levels, of identity represent a standpoint that is, like Lauretis has pointed out, fluid.
While the process of coming to a feminist consciousness is a highly individual and empowering one, subjectivity is still impacted by social
and institutional oppression. Post-modernism has helped us move from oppressive categories, yet we must move beyond post-modem
(de)construction to define our historically specific and subjective selves as a basis for activism.