Between Gazes
Camelia Elias
postfeminism in cultural studies
 encompasses the intersection of feminism with
postmodernism, poststructuralism, and post-colonialism
 represents pluralism and difference
 marks a shift within feminism from debates around
equality to focus on debates around difference
 challenges hegemonic feminism and its focus on:





oppression,
patriarchy
sexuality
identity
difference
concerns
 What is the relationship between women’s knowledge
and women’s experience?
 Can only the oppressed generate knowledge?
 To what extent can we equate a certain type of
experience with ‘truth’ and with valid knowledge?
 What are the consequences of identifying ‘contradictory
identities’ and ‘contradictory social locations’ for feminist
theorizing?
(Sandra Harding: “Reinventing Ourselves as Others: More
New agents of History and Knowledge”, 1993)
form and Butler
 the performativity of gender is a process of
coercion
 the anticipation of enforced gender roles
conjures its object
 and by this means power is installed
 to be an ‘I’ is to have a sex
women’s positionality
 “the position women find themselves in can be
actively utilized … as a place from where
meaning is constructed, rather than simply the
place where meaning can be discovered (the
meaning of femaleness)”
(Linda Alcoff “Cultural Feminism versus PostStructuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist
Theory”. Signs, 13(3)
postfeminist films
 attempt to retain the category of ‘woman’, while
investigating what empowers or disempowers it.
 meaning as constructed in context is stronger
and more significant than the meaning which is
derived from fixed identity
 interest in uncovering what it means to be a
woman than focus on whether or not one is one
Down with Love
 themes
the battle between sexes
women’s place in society
men’s knowledge of what women want




reversals
melancholia
men’s feminization
women’s power
form and context
 intertextuality
 parody
"imitation with a critical
difference, not always
at the expense of the
parodied text." Linda
Hutcheon, A Theory of
Parody, 1984
 pastiche
imitation as hodgepodge
celebration of past
forms
 irony
form and context




classic comic dialogue
postmodern metanarrative
artificiality: word play, puns
feminism vs postfeminism