However, this essay analyzes the ways in which jurists in the United States have developed and deployed postmodern feminist legal theory over the past thirty years. The essay offers access to postmodern feminist legal theory, which is rooted in context and time. The essay also sheds light on some of the characteristic aspects of postmodern feminist legal theory at that time and place, linking them to other schools of feminist legal thought. Finally, the essay highlights why these distinctions are important by examining two areas of feminist legal reform through this conceptualization of postmodern feminist legal theory. The term “postmodernism” has been criticized by some theorists who have themselves been called postmodern feminists. [5] Keywords: postmodern feminist legal theory, gender, identity, feminist legal reform, workplace discrimination, rape, sexual pleasure The inclusion of postmodern theory in feminist theory is not readily accepted by all feminists – some believe that postmodern thought undermines the attacks that feminist theory seeks to create, while others are pro-Union feminists. [1] Butler criticizes the distinction made by earlier feminisms between sex (biological) and gender (socially constructed). They ask why we assume that material things (like the body) are not themselves subject to processes of social construction. Butler argues that this does not allow for sufficient criticism of essentialism: although they recognize that gender is a social construct, feminists assume that it is always constructed in the same way. Butler`s argument implies that the subordination of women has no single cause or solution; Postmodern feminism is therefore criticized for not offering a clear path to action. Butler dismisses the term “postmodernism” as too vague to be meaningful.
[5] Of all the existing schools of feminist legal thought, postmodern feminist legal theory is the most difficult to define and categorize. Postmodernism itself is not a fixed concept. Moreover, the different approaches to postmodernism challenge and resist attempts to establish fundamental truths or universal meanings. Feminist legal theory, rooted in postmodernism, thus necessarily avoids a stable understanding of feminism, law, and theory in favor of a fluid and changing understanding. The adoption of these principles renders any attempt to conceptualize postmodern feminist legal theory immediately contingent and contextual, even suspect. Frug`s second postmodern principle is that sex is neither something natural nor something completely specific and definable. On the contrary, sex is part of a system of meaning produced by language. Frug argues that “cultural mechanisms. This included theorizing the failure of the modernist project with its departure. More specifically, for feminism, it was about returning to the debate about equality and difference.
[10] The term was defined in more detail by Toril Moi, a researcher specializing in feminist theory, in her book Sexual/Textual Politics. In this book, she defines French feminism as encompassing few writers such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, while creating a distinction between French feminism and Anglo-American feminism. [11] She notes that the difference between the two is that Anglo-American feminists want to find a “women-centered perspective” and a feminine identity, as they have had no chance of having one in the past. French feminists believe that there is no identity for a woman, but that “the feminine can be identified where differences and otherness can be found.” [10] Elaine Marks, an academic in the field of women`s studies, noticed another difference between French and American feminists. French feminists, especially radical feminists, have criticized and attacked systems that benefit men, as well as widespread misogyny in general, more intensely than their American counterparts. [12] Through American academics inventing their own concept of French feminism, he separated and ignored already marginalized and self-identified feminists, while focusing on theorists associated with psych et po (psychoanalysis and politics) and other academics who did not always identify as feminists. This split eventually led to giving more importance to the theories of French feminists than the political agenda and goals that groups such as radical feminists and the Women`s Liberation Movement had at the time. [13] Paula Moya argues that Butler derives this rejection of postmodernism from misinterpretations of Cherríe Moraga`s work. They draw on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan, as well as Luce Irigaray`s argument that what we usually think of as “feminine” is only a reflection of what is constructed as masculine. [6] [7] There have been many criticisms of postmodern feminism since its emergence in the 1990s. Most of the criticism has come from modernists and feminists who support modernist thought. You focused on the themes of relativism and nihilism as defined by postmodernism.
Although modernist critics believe that by abandoning the values of Enlightenment thought, postmodern feminism “excludes the possibility of liberation from political action.” [14] This concern is evident in critics such as Meaghan Morris, who have argued that postmodern feminism risks undermining the basis of gender-based politics through its anti-essentialism. [15] Alison Assiter published the book Enlightened Women to criticize postmodernists and postmodern feminists, arguing that there should be a return to Enlightenment values and modernist feminism. [16] Gloria Steinem also criticized feminist theory, and in particular postmodern feminist theory, as too academic, where jargon-filled and inaccessible speeches help no one. [17] Mary Joe Frug has proposed that a “principle” of postmodernism is that human experience is “inevitably situated in language.” Power is exercised not only through direct coercion, but also through the way language shapes and limits our reality. She also explained that because language is always open to reinterpretation, it can also be used to resist this formation and limitation, making it a potentially fruitful place of political struggle.