Event Title

Female subjects or gender identities: A necessary debate in the current situation

Presenter Information

Birge Krondorfer

Start Date

26-6-2010 10:45 AM

End Date

26-6-2010 11:45 AM

Description

This presentation is part of the Feminist Discourse and Philosophical Traditions track.

In this contribution I want to argue that the reference to identity construction in concepts of gender implies a reduced conception of human existence, in particular of women.

In (Western) Europe, the improvement in the living situation of women depends on their background (milieu, migration) and on their access to education. The argument that the change in social structures in modern times has been accompanied by an increasing individualization of society and the disappearance of traditional gender roles does not affect all women to the same extent and is riddled with ambivalences, contradictions, new risks and inequality. At the beginning of the 21st century, women find themselves in a state of 'not-yet' and 'still-not'. Women's chances in life have become more varied and do not necessarily have to revolve around the family any more, yet the labor markets are still organized in a way that segregates the genders – a fact that has nothing to do with women's capabilities and everything with male-dominated hierarchies. Sixty years ago, Simone de Beauvoir wrote "the text which to this day is the most famous work in feminist theory with regard to an extensive analysis of the situation of the white, Western woman in the middle of the 20th century" (Ursula Konnertz), the topicality of which leaves a lot to be desired. The conclusion that the position of women in the history of gender relations has always been that of the inferior, irrelevant 'Other' of men was taken up by the Second Women's Movement twenty years later. In the struggle for the profound social and individual liberation of women, the Second Women's Movement searched for various strategies and theories to confirm the political and ethical claim of said liberation. In relation to other social movements, this feminist commitment has exercised broad mental and factual influence without ever achieving (mass media) power, a fact which allows us to speak of a current patriarchal backlash – in its neoliberal form.

The general (global) dynamics produces large question marks. One of the main maxims of the women’s movement (in Western Europe) – the self-determination of women – has been misappropriated and twisted to fit the discursive category of the neoliberal self (Michel Foucault), which is concerned with optimizing its own interests, unless it is concerned with sheer survival – as is particularly the case with female existences. In terms of intellectual history this shift finds expression both in the post-modern “subject” debate and in the context of feminist theories.

Let's briefly reminisce: The struggle against oppression and exploitation was primarily directed against the female object status (egalitarian feminism) and consequently was in favour of achieving a subject status for women (differential feminism). At this historical moment – i.e. from the 1980s to today – a certain male “cunning reason” (G. W. F. Hegel:’List der Vernunft’), under the pretence of demoting man from his role of master, declared the subject to be dead, any authorship to be obsolete, and progressive politics to be re-active. Advanced feminist theory was prepared to accept this offer to dissolve the subject in so far as it prevented a concept of “femininity as otherness”, being confined to the adaptation of a rigid, genuine, quasi-natural and prescribed female subject (deconstructionist feminism). With the discursive switch to the total abolition of the female subject as just a registered and ascribed body – with simultaneous dematerialization – “woman” (and hence the subject of feminism) was discarded in favour of a never-to-be-pinned-down, but constantly self-determinable identity (constructionist or post-feminism).

But through all the toils of feminist maxims there was never one that stood for all; there was a porous consciousness of every dogma as being just another form of violence coming with every universalization of the “-ism“ of capital, race and sex.

This understanding of post-feminism exists in the context of academic debates and sub-cultural agendas, both of which prolong a self-analytical access based on post-structural insights. In order to attack the construction of femininity, feminist de/constructivism tries to undermine structural violence in society by not defining the female subject. The speaking subject becomes a mask (a persona of itself), which only allows the vaguest drawing of conclusions on an identity in any possible form. The resistance against society consists of the attempt to make it impossible to be recognized as a woman.

In academia, it happens ever more often that young, intelligent and competent researchers on gender topics who base their academic career on gender studies, avoid questions concerning their relationship towards feminism. “They use ‘sex/gender’ as a historical, sociological and linguistic category on an epistemological level, yet purify it from each and every conflict-laden implication and remove it from the context of the political, intellectual and sexual dispute it comes from.” (Ida Dominijanni)

The urgent question is: after four decades of feminist theory and within the theoretical context of the new millennium, how do we – beyond epistemic premises –have to estimate the power of impact of either this or that theoretical position from a political perspective, i.e., seen from its political results?

To broach women’s issues under the flag of the “category of gender” again reduces women to sexed beings and to questions of sexuality as establishing identity. Today's “advanced” technique of discourse thus withholds what Hannah Arendt called judgment, i.e. the intelligible and intellectual ability of women to conceive themselves. Due to the fixation on “identity” (as non-identity) and the idea that the role “plays” and the imposed social character over-determine us, the “woman as subject” cannot speak (anymore for) herself. This theoretical, ethical and socio-political dilemma should again become the subject of discourse.

The freedom to act and to think must remain a feminist and philosophical project.

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Jun 26th, 10:45 AM Jun 26th, 11:45 AM

Female subjects or gender identities: A necessary debate in the current situation

This presentation is part of the Feminist Discourse and Philosophical Traditions track.

In this contribution I want to argue that the reference to identity construction in concepts of gender implies a reduced conception of human existence, in particular of women.

In (Western) Europe, the improvement in the living situation of women depends on their background (milieu, migration) and on their access to education. The argument that the change in social structures in modern times has been accompanied by an increasing individualization of society and the disappearance of traditional gender roles does not affect all women to the same extent and is riddled with ambivalences, contradictions, new risks and inequality. At the beginning of the 21st century, women find themselves in a state of 'not-yet' and 'still-not'. Women's chances in life have become more varied and do not necessarily have to revolve around the family any more, yet the labor markets are still organized in a way that segregates the genders – a fact that has nothing to do with women's capabilities and everything with male-dominated hierarchies. Sixty years ago, Simone de Beauvoir wrote "the text which to this day is the most famous work in feminist theory with regard to an extensive analysis of the situation of the white, Western woman in the middle of the 20th century" (Ursula Konnertz), the topicality of which leaves a lot to be desired. The conclusion that the position of women in the history of gender relations has always been that of the inferior, irrelevant 'Other' of men was taken up by the Second Women's Movement twenty years later. In the struggle for the profound social and individual liberation of women, the Second Women's Movement searched for various strategies and theories to confirm the political and ethical claim of said liberation. In relation to other social movements, this feminist commitment has exercised broad mental and factual influence without ever achieving (mass media) power, a fact which allows us to speak of a current patriarchal backlash – in its neoliberal form.

The general (global) dynamics produces large question marks. One of the main maxims of the women’s movement (in Western Europe) – the self-determination of women – has been misappropriated and twisted to fit the discursive category of the neoliberal self (Michel Foucault), which is concerned with optimizing its own interests, unless it is concerned with sheer survival – as is particularly the case with female existences. In terms of intellectual history this shift finds expression both in the post-modern “subject” debate and in the context of feminist theories.

Let's briefly reminisce: The struggle against oppression and exploitation was primarily directed against the female object status (egalitarian feminism) and consequently was in favour of achieving a subject status for women (differential feminism). At this historical moment – i.e. from the 1980s to today – a certain male “cunning reason” (G. W. F. Hegel:’List der Vernunft’), under the pretence of demoting man from his role of master, declared the subject to be dead, any authorship to be obsolete, and progressive politics to be re-active. Advanced feminist theory was prepared to accept this offer to dissolve the subject in so far as it prevented a concept of “femininity as otherness”, being confined to the adaptation of a rigid, genuine, quasi-natural and prescribed female subject (deconstructionist feminism). With the discursive switch to the total abolition of the female subject as just a registered and ascribed body – with simultaneous dematerialization – “woman” (and hence the subject of feminism) was discarded in favour of a never-to-be-pinned-down, but constantly self-determinable identity (constructionist or post-feminism).

But through all the toils of feminist maxims there was never one that stood for all; there was a porous consciousness of every dogma as being just another form of violence coming with every universalization of the “-ism“ of capital, race and sex.

This understanding of post-feminism exists in the context of academic debates and sub-cultural agendas, both of which prolong a self-analytical access based on post-structural insights. In order to attack the construction of femininity, feminist de/constructivism tries to undermine structural violence in society by not defining the female subject. The speaking subject becomes a mask (a persona of itself), which only allows the vaguest drawing of conclusions on an identity in any possible form. The resistance against society consists of the attempt to make it impossible to be recognized as a woman.

In academia, it happens ever more often that young, intelligent and competent researchers on gender topics who base their academic career on gender studies, avoid questions concerning their relationship towards feminism. “They use ‘sex/gender’ as a historical, sociological and linguistic category on an epistemological level, yet purify it from each and every conflict-laden implication and remove it from the context of the political, intellectual and sexual dispute it comes from.” (Ida Dominijanni)

The urgent question is: after four decades of feminist theory and within the theoretical context of the new millennium, how do we – beyond epistemic premises –have to estimate the power of impact of either this or that theoretical position from a political perspective, i.e., seen from its political results?

To broach women’s issues under the flag of the “category of gender” again reduces women to sexed beings and to questions of sexuality as establishing identity. Today's “advanced” technique of discourse thus withholds what Hannah Arendt called judgment, i.e. the intelligible and intellectual ability of women to conceive themselves. Due to the fixation on “identity” (as non-identity) and the idea that the role “plays” and the imposed social character over-determine us, the “woman as subject” cannot speak (anymore for) herself. This theoretical, ethical and socio-political dilemma should again become the subject of discourse.

The freedom to act and to think must remain a feminist and philosophical project.