Feminism and Postmodernism
Feminism and Postmodernism: An Uneasy Alliance http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/benhabib-seyla/uneasy-alliance.htm Source: Feminist Contentions. A Philosophical Exchange, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser, with an introduction by Linda Nicholson. Published by Routledge., pp. 1-16.
1. The Feminist Alliance With Postmodernism
A decade ago a question haunted feminist theorists who had participated in the experiences of the New Left and who had come to feminism after an initial engagement with varieties of twentieth-century, Marxist theory: whether Marxism and feminism were reconcilable, or whether their alliance could end only in an “unhappy marriage”? Today with Marxist theory world-wide on the retreat, feminists are no longer preoccupied with saving their unhappy union. Instead it is a new alliance, or misalliance – depending on one’s perspective – that has proved more seductive.
Viewed from within the intellectual and academic Culture of western capitalist democracies, feminism and postmodernism have emerged as two leading currents Of our time. They, have discovered their affinities in the struggle against the grand narratives of Western Enlightenment and modernity. Feminism and postmodernism are thus often mentioned as if their current union was a foregone conclusion., yet certain characterizations of postmodernism should make us rather ask “feminism or postmodernism?” At issue, of course, are not merely terminological quibbles. Both feminism and postmodernism are not merely, descriptive categories: they. are constitutive and evaluative terms, informing and helping define the very practices which they attempt to describe. As categories of the present, they project modes of thinking about the future and evaluating the past. Let us begin then by considering one of the recent more comprehensive characterizations of the “postmodern moment” provided by a feminist theorist.
In her recent book, Thinking Fragments:
1. The Feminist Alliance With Postmodernism
A decade ago a question haunted feminist theorists who had participated in the experiences of the New Left and who had come to feminism after an initial engagement with varieties of twentieth-century, Marxist theory: whether Marxism and feminism were reconcilable, or whether their alliance could end only in an “unhappy marriage”? Today with Marxist theory world-wide on the retreat, feminists are no longer preoccupied with saving their unhappy union. Instead it is a new alliance, or misalliance – depending on one’s perspective – that has proved more seductive.
Viewed from within the intellectual and academic Culture of western capitalist democracies, feminism and postmodernism have emerged as two leading currents Of our time. They, have discovered their affinities in the struggle against the grand narratives of Western Enlightenment and modernity. Feminism and postmodernism are thus often mentioned as if their current union was a foregone conclusion., yet certain characterizations of postmodernism should make us rather ask “feminism or postmodernism?” At issue, of course, are not merely terminological quibbles. Both feminism and postmodernism are not merely, descriptive categories: they. are constitutive and evaluative terms, informing and helping define the very practices which they attempt to describe. As categories of the present, they project modes of thinking about the future and evaluating the past. Let us begin then by considering one of the recent more comprehensive characterizations of the “postmodern moment” provided by a feminist theorist.
In her recent book, Thinking Fragments: