Outline for “Feminisms” Lecture

Assumptions:

ü Civilization is patriarchal

ü Sex is determined by anatomy; gender is determined by culture

ü Patriarchal ideology pervades literature

ü Universally women have been denied access to political power

ü Universally women have either chosen or been relegated to the domestic sphere

ü Economically women’s function has been to produce goods for consumption (rather than exchange)

Knowledge:

ü Only women get pregnant, menstruate, and breast feed children

Cultural Feminism

· Celebration of intuition

· Affirmation of “feminine” qualities as a source of personal strength, pride and public regeneration

ü Pacifism – non-violent resolution of differences

ü Cooperation – affirmation of women’s communities

ü “Electric” nature of women

· Cultural androgyny versus feminization of culture

· Re-conceive and reconstruct sexuality

Criticisms of Cultural Feminism

ü Biological determinism

ü “Difference” inevitably leads to oppression

ü Their objectives haven’t worked historically

Liberal Feminism

· Celebration of rationality

· Celebration of equality

ü Education

ü Business

ü Law

ü Sex

Criticisms of Liberal Feminism

· Women can become like men if they simply set their mind to it

· Most women want to become like men (faulty assumption)

· Women should aspire to “masculine” values – the “norm” is defied as “male” or “masculine

· Class privileges

Success of 19^th Century Women’s Movement

ü Vote

ü Change in married woman’s legal status

ü Divorce laws liberalized

ü Higher education

French Feminism

ü Focus is on language, analysis of how meanings are produced

ü Jacques Lacan: Law of the Father (Symbolic discourse)

ü Emphasis upon binary logic, dualisms

ü Julia Kristeva: Semiotic discourse—Women reject the Symbolic Order and valorize female difference

ü Helene Cixous

ü Luce Irigaray

Criticisms of French Feminism:

ü Biological essentialism

ü Dependence upon male scholars

ü Valorizing “feminine” or “maternal” perpetuates patriarchal stereotypes of women

ü Women are still defined as “other”

ü Inverted Sexism?

ü Why worry about psychoanalysis when there are political issues at stake?

American Feminism

ü Emphasis is upon the text and culture rather than psychoanalysis

ü Concern for a woman’s style of writing

ü Objectives: (1) revisionist re-reading of literary tradition, (2) “gynocriticism”, (3) return to well-known women authors, (4) re-discovery of neglected women authors and women’s history, (5) definition of what is specifically feminine subject matter in women’s literature

ü Women demand equal access to Symbolic Order

Criticisms:

ü The American feminists merely appropriate theoretical assumptions, categories, and strategies developed by men

ü Chaos of multiple feminisms: radical, cultural, lesbian, liberal, Marxist, Black, Existentialist

British Feminists

ü Emphasis upon an engagement with historical process in order to promote social change (Marxist feminism)

ü Recognition of differences of race, class, and culture among women

ü Critical of French and American Feminists as essentialists

ü The dichotomy of masculine and feminine as metaphysical

ü Mary Wollstonecraft

ü Virginia Woolf