Feminisms and

Gender Studies
Week 11
 Feminist Movement
and Feminisms
Feminism is a political and power
movement as well as a literary approach

The different phrases of the feminist

movement and the feminist literary
development are not identical but
they are interrelated.
 First-wave of
feminist
movement
(1890’s to 1960)
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights of
Woman is regarded as the
earliest and the foundation
work of feminist movement
 First-wave of
feminist
movement
The focus of the first
phrase of the
movement is on
acquisition of rights
that was reserved
for men, such as the
right to work and
most importantly,
the right to vote
1932 Soviet poster for
International Women’s
Day
First phrase of literary Development
Woman: Created or Constructed?

•Elaine Showalter has

identified three phases of
modern women’s literary
development: the feminine
phase (1840-80), during
which women writers
imitated the dominant
male traditions;

Elaine Showalter
 Second-wave Feminist
Movement(1960s-1990s)
The second-wave feminism saw cultural
and political inequalities as inextricably
linked.

Second-wave feminism was largely concerned

with other issues of equality, such as the end
to discrimination.
 Second-wave
Feminist
Movement
(1960s-1990s)
Carol Hanisch’s essay “The Personal is Political”
is the representation of second-wave feminism.

“Women’s Liberation” is the slogan of the

second-wave movement
Second phrase of literary Development
The second one is
•

the feminist phase

(1880-1920), when
women advocated
for their rights; and
the female
phase(1920-present
emphasizes on the
rediscovery of
women’s texts and
women
 Third-wave
feminist
Movement
(1990s onwards )
Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid
what it deems the second-wave's "essentialist"
definitions of femininity, which (according to
them) over-emphasized the experiences of upper
middle class white women.
 Third-wave feminist
Movement
(1990s onwards )
A post-structuralist interpretation of
gender and sexuality is central to much of
the third-wave's ideology.

Third-wave feminists often focus on

"micropolitics," and challenged the
second-wave's paradigm as to what is, or
is not, good for females.
 Showalter’s four models of
difference: biological, linguistic,
psychoanalytic, and cultural

Today it seems that two

•

general tendencies, one

emphasizing Showalter’s
biological, linguistic, and
psychoanalytic models, and
the other emphasizing
cultural model, account for
most feminist theories.
•Certain theories may
be said to have an
essentialist argument
for inherent feminine
traits that have been
undervalued,
misunderstood, or
exploited by a
patriarchal culture
because the genders
are quite different.
•These theories focus
on sexual difference
and sexual politics
and are often aimed
at defining or
establishing a
feminist literature
(and culture, history
and so forth) from a
less patriarchal slant.
•Opposed to this
notion is constructivist
feminism, which asks
women (and men) to
consider what it
means to be a
woman, to consider
that inherently
female traits are in
fact culturally and
socially constructed.
 Feminism and Psychoanalysis

The famous type of monster-

madwoman figure is the madwoman
in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s novel
Jane Eyre.

•Many essentialist feminists make the

argument that female writers often
identify themselves with the literary
characters they detest through such
types as the monster-madwoman
figure counterposed against and
angel/heroine figure.
 •Jacques Lacan comes
to the notion of the
Imaginary, a pre-
Oedipal stage in which
the child has not yet
differentiated her- or
himself from the mother
and as a consequence
Like Freud, Jacques Lacan has not learned
describes the unconscious language, which is the
as structured like a
language; like language its
Symbolic Order to be
power often arises from taught to be the father.
the sense of openness and
play of meaning.
 Hélène Cixous proposes an utopia place,
a primeval female space free of symbolic
order, sex roles, otherness, and the Law
of Father.

•The feminine “language” of the

unconscious destabilizes sexual
categories in the Symbolic Order of the
Father, disrupting the unities of
discourse and indicating its silencings.
French feminists speak of “exploding”
rather than interpreting a sign.
•Luce Irigaray
etymologically
links the word
“matter” to
“maternity” and
“matrix,” the
latter being the
space for male .
Luce Irigaray No matter how
philosophizing theoretical and abstract French
feminists’ prose becomes, French
and thinking. feminist do not stay far from the
body.
 •Julia Kristeva, in her
Desire in Language,
presents a mother-
centered realm of the
semiotic as oppose to
the symbolic. She
argues that the
semiotic realm of the
mother is present in
symbolic discourse
as absence or
Julia Kristeva’s latter work moves toward
contradiction.
a more direct embrace of motherhood as
the model for psychic female health.
 Multicultural Feminisms
•Among the most prominent of
feminist minorities are women
of color and lesbians. These
feminists practice what is
sometimes called identity politics.
Alice Walker disputes the term
feminists as applied to black
women; she writes that she has
replaced feminist with
womanist, remarking that a
womanist does not turn her back
upon the men of her community.
•Black feminists have
often turned to the slave
narrative and the
captivity narrative, both
old American forms of
discourse, as of especial
importance to black
women writers.

Bell Hooks is a
famous critic who
challenges the
traditional canon
 • Related to the rise of
feminisms among
women of color is the
area of postcolonial
studies. Chakravorty
Gayatri Spivak
examines the effects
of political
independence upon
subaltern , or
subproletarian
women, in Third World
Chakravorty Gayatri Spivak countries.
 Battlegrounds
Although the feminist movement
is already over 100 years old,
there are still a lot to be done.

The status of women is still very

low in some countries in the world

Even in the West, gender equality

is still only apparent
 Battlegrounds
Women in Saudi Arabia who walk
unaccompanied, or are in the company of
a man who is neither their husband nor a
close relative, are at risk of arrest on
suspicion of prostitution or other "moral"
offences.

And they are disallowed to some modern

activities as basic as driving a car
Battlegrounds
Orange Broadband Prize is a
prominent literary prize in
England

It is established as a protest to
the male-dominant literary
world.
70% of the fiction writers are
women, yet female writers are often
ignored by literary reviews and
other “serious” literature venues.
Battlegrounds

How about Philippines?

Can you think of some

feminist issues in this
country?
Gender Studies
•As a constructivist
endeavor, gender
studies examines how
gender is less
determined by nature
than it is by culture, and
such a cultural analysis
is at the center of the
most complex and vital Many theorists point out
critical enterprises at that what is “normal”
sexually depends upon
the present time. when and where one lives
 Judith Butler is one of the
representing figures of
gender studies

Her work Gender Trouble is one

of the “canons” of gender
studies

Its central argument is the

gender is cultural and artificial as
well as biological.
Lesbian critics
•Lesbian critics counter
their marginalization
by considering
lesbianism a privileged
stance testifying to the
primacy of women.

Lesbian critics reject the notion of a

unified text, finding corroboration in
poststructuralist and post-modernist
criticism and among the French feminists.
 Related works and links
de Beauvior, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
Reprint. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin,
1972.
Butler, Judith. The Judith Butler Reader. Ed, Judith
Butler and Sarah Salih. London: Blackwell, 2004.
Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Sign
1, no. 4 (1976): 875-93.
hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and
Feminism. Boston: South End P, 1981.
Humm, Maggie. Feminist Criticism: Women as
Contemporary Critics. Brighton, England:
Harvester, 1986.
Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman.
Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1985.
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language. New York:
Columbia UP, 1986.