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postmodern feminism | ||||||
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 postmodern
feminism is a hybrid, contemporary and sometimes conflicted set
of concepts and practices about the feminine at this sociohistorical
moment. postmodernism calls into question all grand narratives (reason,
truth, beauty, art, science) in a society informed by western metaphysics
and accelerated by technological development. its historical situation
is complex: "the postmodern is not simply a chronological 'after'
to the modern; it is always embedded within the modern as interference
or interruption and as a coming to consciousness!
of a subject no
longer modelled upon the western white male" [halberstam 473].
the postmodern radically interrogates notions of origin, essence,
nature. balsamo states: "the 'natural' body has disappeared,
replaced by a technologically produced simulacrum" [28]. postmodern
feminism, in consequence, presents a challenge to essentialist feminisms
by emphasizing the artificiality of the body, of gender, of race,
of sexuality, of femininity. pomofem posits gender as a technology
that consolidates itself through imitative performance [butler 24].
there is no origin. this has fascinating consequences for mainstream
feminist discourse, often criticized from the 'margins' for its
elitist construction of 'natural woman' as western, white, middle
class, heterosexual and able-bodied. the postmod!
ern shift decentres
the canonized feminist self, creating space for new realities to
come into play.
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