Постмодернизм
В продолжение (повторение) Пускай едят тексты: Настоящая политика постмодернизма наткнулась на хороший текст в двух частях (инглиш):
The ‘Pomo’ Backlash: Looking at Feminism in the Aftermath of Postmodernism (Part 1)
The ‘Pomo’ Backlash: Looking at Feminism in the Aftermath of Postmodernism (Part 2)
Part 1.
1) male-identified сексуальная революция 60-х
2) 1970’s Women’s Liberation Movement в оппозицию ему
3) political radical feminist analysis emerged - identifying women as a sex class, oppressed because of their sex in a patriarchal society.
Из одного радфем-манифеста того времени:
"Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence."
- A sex class system was recognised (see K. Millett, Sexual Politics; 1970)
- the primary goal of Women’s Liberation Movement was for all women (across race, class, ethnicity, etc) to unite together in political sisterhood and work towards the eradication of this system
- A central emphasis: liberation of women from patriarchal oppression, rather than ‘equality’
- методы угнетения включат, но не ограничиваются: traditional sex/gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, culturally enforced ‘feminine’ beauty practices, the pornography and prostitution industries, and reproductive technologies
4) 1980’s-1990’s - backlash against radical feminism, postmodernism gradually took over academic feminism
Суть того, что делает постмодернизм:
After radical feminist theory arose from grassroots accounts of male violence against women, experiences of violations of bodily integrity, etc and a commitment for women to unite against patriarchy, postmodernism has been working on undoing our theory. It opposes ‘metanarratives’, rejects a universalised ‘women’ category (e.g. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble; 1990), and tries to undermine the sex-based class analysis of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
- postmodernism presents no threat to structures of male dominance
- To radical feminists, women must work together towards the elimination of all social divisions amongst women, not by rhetorics of intersectionality. Rhetorics of intersectionality do not recognise sexism as underlying all forms of oppression.
- She [Katja Mikhailovich] described the postmodern fragmentation of women into differences and deconstructional analyses as unable to provide a framework for examining gender-based violence or validating women’s experience of it. Deconstruction of truth about women’s embodied experience of violence is precisely what happens in courts of law, where many victims get blamed and shamed.
- Postmodernism, as established by Foucault and Derrida, rejects the notion of universal truth, objects totalitarian concepts of truth and sees oppression in terms of multiplicity. I see this as a mechanism by some academic elites for preventing a positioning of sex-class consciousness amongst women.
Супер формулировка:
Waters (1996) explains that radical feminists have a rather pragmatic approach to identity politics. All women are recognised as oppressed on the basis of sex and encouraged to unite against this, but there are also male-created differences between women (e.g. race, class, education, etc) that are very real (Koedt et al, 1973, p. 309).
Что делают посмодернистские письмена на практике:
Clearly, there are many forms of oppression in a capitalist, patriarchal society; however, postmodernism claims relativism. Postmodern feminism tells us “it is not quite like that”; that women’s reality is multiple, that things can happen by chance, that there are different points of view (Gunnarsson, 2011), that oppression is “semiotic” (Brodribb, 1992), and so on. Postmodern theorists write to confuse readers into not perceiving their own material oppression.
Radical feminists engage in materialist critiques, denouncing existing oppressions -to be perceived and abolished.
Рождение трансотемы:
The postmodern project contributes to the erasure of the female biology:
Judith Butler (in Gender Trouble, 1990) denied that there was such a thing as the female sex or biology, and claims that it is ‘essentialist’ to say so.
Типичный патриархальный прием:
- postmodern feminism invisiblises and symbolically ‘dismembers’ women through theories of disconnection and dissociation
Вот пошло и за-проституцию, как-личный-выбор:
This is particularly visible in the work of the pro-prostitution postmodern writer. Shannon Bell (in Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body; 1994) conceptualises the flesh-and-blood human female body as an object -‘referent’. The rewriting of the ‘prostitute body’ entails a positive framing of prostitution through discussing how prostituted women “inscribe their own bodies in diverse and contradictory ways…” (бляяя, вы только посмотрите на эту формулировку).
...the prostituted woman is portrayed as ‘choosing’ to feel empowered by her role. Once again here, the subordination and abuse of women in prostitution becomes invisible.
А на самом деле:
This is reminiscent of the fragmentation of prostituted women’s minds that Melissa Farley described (Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress; 2003), after doing a large-scale and cross-country research on prostituted women. Farley explained that the abuse the majority of women experience in prostitution and pornography is so unbearable that prostituted women have to compartmentalise mentally, fragment their minds from their bodies to be able to survive the brutal commodification and violation of their flesh by the sex industry
- postmodern ‘feminism’ denies there is such a thing as truth: в постмодернистком мире теории становятся "дискурсами", слова становятся "символами и знаками", причины заменяются на "желания", сущность становится "стилем"
И все это похоже на попытки иррационализировать феминизм.
Постмодернизм/постструктурализм:
I use the term ‘postmodernism’ more frequently than ‘poststructuralism’ in this essay because, although some poststructuralists do not like being called ‘postmodern’, postmodernism is the broader term that encompasses both the postmodern arts & culture and postmodern theory (or poststructuralism). Therefore, to me, poststructuralism basically is another name for postmodernism as a theory. According to Linda Nicholson (1992), ‘poststructuralism’ is more often used in the context of literary analyses while ‘postmodernism’ is preferred in the realm of social and philosophical theory.
Как вывод, из Пускай едят тексты: Настоящая политика постмодернизма:
- Я предполагаю, что постмодернизм - есть ничто иное, нежели новый релятивизм, и что релятивистские теории возникают как вид защиты властных структур в случае угрозы. Это весьма коварная и изобретательная защита, так как она пользуется риторикой освобождения, превращая эту риторику в бессмыслицу. Настоящая цель маскируется туманными речами и состоит в том, чтобы сохранить статус кво субъектов власти, размывая социальное недовольство в нечто бессмысленное, неэффективное и неспособное набрать какой-либо социальный или политический вес. Несмотря на декларируемое стремление постмодернизма к деконструкции социальных норм, настоящим его результатом становится атомизация индивидов и их опытов, стирание потенциала к солидаризации и объединению, замалчивание прямой и решительной речи, размытие убеждений в бессмыслицу. Постмодернизм оставляет нас неспособными назвать что-либо неправильным или угнетающим с уверенностью или убежденностью.
- В постмодернизме нет ударения на сбор критической массы людей, объединенных в социальное движение, которое действительно сможет бороться и добиваться изменений на социальном уровне.
- Мета-нарратив - это поясняющее утверждение, которое пытается объяснить что-либо в виде обобщенного концепта, а не описание индивидуального случая вне каких-либо обобщений. В постмодернизме употребление ужасного «мета-нарратива» означает возможное замалчивание и подавление других голосов. [Все, ВСЕ “одобряемые” (с лайками и достаточно большим кол-вом позитивных комментов, чтобы продолжать делать видео) lgbt блогерки на ютубе неизменно чуть ли ни перед каждым предложением вставляют personally / this is all personally for me / I’m not saying everyone blabla, I’m only talking about my _personal_ experience - меня уже начинает подташнивать от слова personal]
- Общий эффект дискредитации «мета-нарративов» - удержать людей от возможности описания их социальных условий, от возможности обобщить их индивидуальный опыт, от возможности увидеть общие места в личном опыте, которые смогли бы мобилизировать их на то, чтобы рассматривать проблемы как политические, а не сугубо индивидуальные
- Другой функцией разоблачения мета-нарратива является эффективный подрыв лозунга «личное - это политическое». В постмодернизме личное становится исключительно личным, все всякой политики. Попытки создать связи между угнетенными индивидами или собраться для роста самосознания, показать, как личный опыт является отображением действия социальных сил, - все это интерпретируется как заглушение голосов других. Любая попытка сделать обобщение рассматривается как замалчивание и отрицание опыта тех людей, к кому неприменимо данное обобщение.
Part 2.
Примеры идей и словописаний постмодернисток (-ов):
1) Structural male dominance should adequately be addressed; but Jane Flax (in Thinking Fragments; 1990), for example, would rather use the terms ‘gender’ and ‘gender relations’ than male dominance. She makes the absurd claim that there is a need to find what gender relations ‘really are’, while gender continues to be constructed and enforced by a male-supremacist context.
2) Another postmodern feminist, Chris Weedon (Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory; 1987) cannot distinguish radical feminists’ theoretical contrast between sex and gender when she accuses us of believing in a “true essential non-patriarchal femininity” rather than femaleness. Rich (1977) rejected essentialism when she explained that women are socialised to become nurturing. Radical feminists have always made a crucial distinction between femininity and actual biological femaleness, in other words gender vs. sex.
3) Weedon (1987) also remains undecided on where exactly power relations lie, and eschews naming male dominance and properly identifying whose interests are being served by the status quo.
4) Nicholson (1992) repeatedly use the term ‘sexism’ rather than ‘misogyny’ -which would be more politically powerful.
- postmodern ‘feminist’ much more concerned with avoiding ‘risk of essentialism’ at all cost and with intersections of race and class, rather than being concerned with women’s shared experience of patriarchal oppression.
5) On lesbianism amd compulsory heteresexuality:
Judith Butler’s (Gender Trouble, 1990) analysis of heterosexuality is far removed from Rich’s (‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,’ 1980). Adrienne Rich identified heterosexuality as a patriarchal institution and a primary site for women’s oppression. Similarly to her, Jeffreys (1993) argues that a proper lesbian feminist analysis would constantly address male interests as being served and maintained by heterosexuality.
vs Butler:
- ‘gender as performance’
- supports butch/femme roles
Jeffreys:
- described butch/femme roles as oppressively gendered and suggested that there is a genuine form of lesbian sexuality that exists independently from phallocentric and heteronormative / heteropatriarchal influences - despite a patriarchal gendered culture that continually attempts to chip away at it
Gender is a social construct that benefits men, and helps them preserve structural power over women. It perpetuates culturally and patriarchally enforced oppressive ‘feminine’ conventions on women.
6) А вот и эмпауэринг каблуками, бдсм, похуданием и пластическими операциями:
In Susan Bordo’s (2003) attempt to supposedly change women’s realities through text, she chooses to overcome her reason with desires and playful styles, showing how “conditions that are objectively… constraining, enslaving, and even murderous, come to be experienced as liberating, transforming, and life-giving.” (p. 168) In a magic intellectual tour de force, experiences of eating disorders come to be expressed as ‘empowering’. The irrational doublethink and over-emphasis on texts and meaning is rather troubling here. Postmodernism wants women’s desire to trump their reason.
Общее нагнетание мешанины посмодернистами:
- biological sex disappears as being itself ‘socially constructed’ (хахаха)
- gender has to be ‘explored’ in all its ‘multiplicity’
- Butler’s idea that gender is simply a ‘performance’
- ну и наконец “многогендеры и квадратные трехчлены” (с) Цапка: Butler’s ‘gender-as-performance’ ideology led to a conceptualisation of gender as ‘multiple’ by later queer theorists who purported the existence of many ‘genders’
В итоге:
- ‘queer backlash’ against feminism in contemporary culture
- квир как прямое следствие постмодернизма
О_о ужас, что нас может ждать с этим посмодернизмом:
In the aftermath of postmodernism and Queer theory, gender (which feminists have long sought to eradicate) could well become enshrined in law. The conservative role of queer politics clearly shows itself in the politics of US organisation called GenderPAC, which attempt to legally protect gender roles and identities (Jeffreys, 2003).
The ‘Pomo’ Backlash: Looking at Feminism in the Aftermath of Postmodernism (Part 1)
The ‘Pomo’ Backlash: Looking at Feminism in the Aftermath of Postmodernism (Part 2)
Part 1.
1) male-identified сексуальная революция 60-х
2) 1970’s Women’s Liberation Movement в оппозицию ему
3) political radical feminist analysis emerged - identifying women as a sex class, oppressed because of their sex in a patriarchal society.
Из одного радфем-манифеста того времени:
"Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence."
- A sex class system was recognised (see K. Millett, Sexual Politics; 1970)
- the primary goal of Women’s Liberation Movement was for all women (across race, class, ethnicity, etc) to unite together in political sisterhood and work towards the eradication of this system
- A central emphasis: liberation of women from patriarchal oppression, rather than ‘equality’
- методы угнетения включат, но не ограничиваются: traditional sex/gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, culturally enforced ‘feminine’ beauty practices, the pornography and prostitution industries, and reproductive technologies
4) 1980’s-1990’s - backlash against radical feminism, postmodernism gradually took over academic feminism
Суть того, что делает постмодернизм:
After radical feminist theory arose from grassroots accounts of male violence against women, experiences of violations of bodily integrity, etc and a commitment for women to unite against patriarchy, postmodernism has been working on undoing our theory. It opposes ‘metanarratives’, rejects a universalised ‘women’ category (e.g. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble; 1990), and tries to undermine the sex-based class analysis of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
- postmodernism presents no threat to structures of male dominance
- To radical feminists, women must work together towards the elimination of all social divisions amongst women, not by rhetorics of intersectionality. Rhetorics of intersectionality do not recognise sexism as underlying all forms of oppression.
- She [Katja Mikhailovich] described the postmodern fragmentation of women into differences and deconstructional analyses as unable to provide a framework for examining gender-based violence or validating women’s experience of it. Deconstruction of truth about women’s embodied experience of violence is precisely what happens in courts of law, where many victims get blamed and shamed.
- Postmodernism, as established by Foucault and Derrida, rejects the notion of universal truth, objects totalitarian concepts of truth and sees oppression in terms of multiplicity. I see this as a mechanism by some academic elites for preventing a positioning of sex-class consciousness amongst women.
Супер формулировка:
Waters (1996) explains that radical feminists have a rather pragmatic approach to identity politics. All women are recognised as oppressed on the basis of sex and encouraged to unite against this, but there are also male-created differences between women (e.g. race, class, education, etc) that are very real (Koedt et al, 1973, p. 309).
Что делают посмодернистские письмена на практике:
Clearly, there are many forms of oppression in a capitalist, patriarchal society; however, postmodernism claims relativism. Postmodern feminism tells us “it is not quite like that”; that women’s reality is multiple, that things can happen by chance, that there are different points of view (Gunnarsson, 2011), that oppression is “semiotic” (Brodribb, 1992), and so on. Postmodern theorists write to confuse readers into not perceiving their own material oppression.
Radical feminists engage in materialist critiques, denouncing existing oppressions -to be perceived and abolished.
Рождение трансотемы:
The postmodern project contributes to the erasure of the female biology:
Judith Butler (in Gender Trouble, 1990) denied that there was such a thing as the female sex or biology, and claims that it is ‘essentialist’ to say so.
Типичный патриархальный прием:
- postmodern feminism invisiblises and symbolically ‘dismembers’ women through theories of disconnection and dissociation
Вот пошло и за-проституцию, как-личный-выбор:
This is particularly visible in the work of the pro-prostitution postmodern writer. Shannon Bell (in Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body; 1994) conceptualises the flesh-and-blood human female body as an object -‘referent’. The rewriting of the ‘prostitute body’ entails a positive framing of prostitution through discussing how prostituted women “inscribe their own bodies in diverse and contradictory ways…” (бляяя, вы только посмотрите на эту формулировку).
...the prostituted woman is portrayed as ‘choosing’ to feel empowered by her role. Once again here, the subordination and abuse of women in prostitution becomes invisible.
А на самом деле:
This is reminiscent of the fragmentation of prostituted women’s minds that Melissa Farley described (Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress; 2003), after doing a large-scale and cross-country research on prostituted women. Farley explained that the abuse the majority of women experience in prostitution and pornography is so unbearable that prostituted women have to compartmentalise mentally, fragment their minds from their bodies to be able to survive the brutal commodification and violation of their flesh by the sex industry
- postmodern ‘feminism’ denies there is such a thing as truth: в постмодернистком мире теории становятся "дискурсами", слова становятся "символами и знаками", причины заменяются на "желания", сущность становится "стилем"
И все это похоже на попытки иррационализировать феминизм.
Постмодернизм/постструктурализм:
I use the term ‘postmodernism’ more frequently than ‘poststructuralism’ in this essay because, although some poststructuralists do not like being called ‘postmodern’, postmodernism is the broader term that encompasses both the postmodern arts & culture and postmodern theory (or poststructuralism). Therefore, to me, poststructuralism basically is another name for postmodernism as a theory. According to Linda Nicholson (1992), ‘poststructuralism’ is more often used in the context of literary analyses while ‘postmodernism’ is preferred in the realm of social and philosophical theory.
Как вывод, из Пускай едят тексты: Настоящая политика постмодернизма:
- Я предполагаю, что постмодернизм - есть ничто иное, нежели новый релятивизм, и что релятивистские теории возникают как вид защиты властных структур в случае угрозы. Это весьма коварная и изобретательная защита, так как она пользуется риторикой освобождения, превращая эту риторику в бессмыслицу. Настоящая цель маскируется туманными речами и состоит в том, чтобы сохранить статус кво субъектов власти, размывая социальное недовольство в нечто бессмысленное, неэффективное и неспособное набрать какой-либо социальный или политический вес. Несмотря на декларируемое стремление постмодернизма к деконструкции социальных норм, настоящим его результатом становится атомизация индивидов и их опытов, стирание потенциала к солидаризации и объединению, замалчивание прямой и решительной речи, размытие убеждений в бессмыслицу. Постмодернизм оставляет нас неспособными назвать что-либо неправильным или угнетающим с уверенностью или убежденностью.
- В постмодернизме нет ударения на сбор критической массы людей, объединенных в социальное движение, которое действительно сможет бороться и добиваться изменений на социальном уровне.
- Мета-нарратив - это поясняющее утверждение, которое пытается объяснить что-либо в виде обобщенного концепта, а не описание индивидуального случая вне каких-либо обобщений. В постмодернизме употребление ужасного «мета-нарратива» означает возможное замалчивание и подавление других голосов. [Все, ВСЕ “одобряемые” (с лайками и достаточно большим кол-вом позитивных комментов, чтобы продолжать делать видео) lgbt блогерки на ютубе неизменно чуть ли ни перед каждым предложением вставляют personally / this is all personally for me / I’m not saying everyone blabla, I’m only talking about my _personal_ experience - меня уже начинает подташнивать от слова personal]
- Общий эффект дискредитации «мета-нарративов» - удержать людей от возможности описания их социальных условий, от возможности обобщить их индивидуальный опыт, от возможности увидеть общие места в личном опыте, которые смогли бы мобилизировать их на то, чтобы рассматривать проблемы как политические, а не сугубо индивидуальные
- Другой функцией разоблачения мета-нарратива является эффективный подрыв лозунга «личное - это политическое». В постмодернизме личное становится исключительно личным, все всякой политики. Попытки создать связи между угнетенными индивидами или собраться для роста самосознания, показать, как личный опыт является отображением действия социальных сил, - все это интерпретируется как заглушение голосов других. Любая попытка сделать обобщение рассматривается как замалчивание и отрицание опыта тех людей, к кому неприменимо данное обобщение.
Part 2.
Примеры идей и словописаний постмодернисток (-ов):
1) Structural male dominance should adequately be addressed; but Jane Flax (in Thinking Fragments; 1990), for example, would rather use the terms ‘gender’ and ‘gender relations’ than male dominance. She makes the absurd claim that there is a need to find what gender relations ‘really are’, while gender continues to be constructed and enforced by a male-supremacist context.
2) Another postmodern feminist, Chris Weedon (Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory; 1987) cannot distinguish radical feminists’ theoretical contrast between sex and gender when she accuses us of believing in a “true essential non-patriarchal femininity” rather than femaleness. Rich (1977) rejected essentialism when she explained that women are socialised to become nurturing. Radical feminists have always made a crucial distinction between femininity and actual biological femaleness, in other words gender vs. sex.
3) Weedon (1987) also remains undecided on where exactly power relations lie, and eschews naming male dominance and properly identifying whose interests are being served by the status quo.
4) Nicholson (1992) repeatedly use the term ‘sexism’ rather than ‘misogyny’ -which would be more politically powerful.
- postmodern ‘feminist’ much more concerned with avoiding ‘risk of essentialism’ at all cost and with intersections of race and class, rather than being concerned with women’s shared experience of patriarchal oppression.
5) On lesbianism amd compulsory heteresexuality:
Judith Butler’s (Gender Trouble, 1990) analysis of heterosexuality is far removed from Rich’s (‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,’ 1980). Adrienne Rich identified heterosexuality as a patriarchal institution and a primary site for women’s oppression. Similarly to her, Jeffreys (1993) argues that a proper lesbian feminist analysis would constantly address male interests as being served and maintained by heterosexuality.
vs Butler:
- ‘gender as performance’
- supports butch/femme roles
Jeffreys:
- described butch/femme roles as oppressively gendered and suggested that there is a genuine form of lesbian sexuality that exists independently from phallocentric and heteronormative / heteropatriarchal influences - despite a patriarchal gendered culture that continually attempts to chip away at it
Gender is a social construct that benefits men, and helps them preserve structural power over women. It perpetuates culturally and patriarchally enforced oppressive ‘feminine’ conventions on women.
6) А вот и эмпауэринг каблуками, бдсм, похуданием и пластическими операциями:
In Susan Bordo’s (2003) attempt to supposedly change women’s realities through text, she chooses to overcome her reason with desires and playful styles, showing how “conditions that are objectively… constraining, enslaving, and even murderous, come to be experienced as liberating, transforming, and life-giving.” (p. 168) In a magic intellectual tour de force, experiences of eating disorders come to be expressed as ‘empowering’. The irrational doublethink and over-emphasis on texts and meaning is rather troubling here. Postmodernism wants women’s desire to trump their reason.
Общее нагнетание мешанины посмодернистами:
- biological sex disappears as being itself ‘socially constructed’ (хахаха)
- gender has to be ‘explored’ in all its ‘multiplicity’
- Butler’s idea that gender is simply a ‘performance’
- ну и наконец “многогендеры и квадратные трехчлены” (с) Цапка: Butler’s ‘gender-as-performance’ ideology led to a conceptualisation of gender as ‘multiple’ by later queer theorists who purported the existence of many ‘genders’
В итоге:
- ‘queer backlash’ against feminism in contemporary culture
- квир как прямое следствие постмодернизма
О_о ужас, что нас может ждать с этим посмодернизмом:
In the aftermath of postmodernism and Queer theory, gender (which feminists have long sought to eradicate) could well become enshrined in law. The conservative role of queer politics clearly shows itself in the politics of US organisation called GenderPAC, which attempt to legally protect gender roles and identities (Jeffreys, 2003).