Download - Points Against Postmodernism

POINTS AGAINST POSTMODERNISMKM

POINTS AGAINST POSTMODERNISMCatharine A. MacKinnon

Chicago-Kent Law Review2000

75 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 687The theory is that feminism lacks its own theory of women's experience at the epistemic level. The crucial issue is between knowledge and power that women situation and critical theory are opposed to each other and that sexuality holds the juxtaposition.

IPractical confrontation with sexuality issues created feminism and "high theory" in form and content. In formulating the theory a method arose which enabled the how of the what is known about feminist theory. Sex politics is the theory. Diversity bolsters rather than hinders the theory since it is concrete and systemic. The concreteness of the movement aimed at showing that how of the what in order to expose the inequality and dispense with it."Women" as a category is distilled from concrete experiences which are synthesized and used to show what women experience and how. In essence the theory is not general but of particulars making it a particular theory.Objective theory seeks to objectify people as items in an effort to understand and control them. Men maintain the objectification position, which was invisible to all but women and exposed by feminism.Gender identity is a problem for feminism because it is off focus. Feminism seeks to take the particulars and collectively access them in an effort to understand and change them for the better.There should be an attack on pornography because it is demeaning to women because it has a tendency to objectify and victimize them. Women are not subjective and when attacked they now state what happens and a remedy follows. The analogy for pornography is that when attacks on women take place because they are women it is similar to an act of genocide. Allowing women access to things, which enable bettering of women in general, is a fundamental tenet of feminism.In gaining power, feminism used credibility. It is not ignored or denied that relegating women to second-class citizenship happened, but rather exemplified and exposed in an effort to empower women through the credible reality of their experience.

IIParallel to women's theory is postmodernism which seeks to destroy reality and in doing so erode the women's movement. The de-realization of postmodernism claims that the it is not there and it therefore, is unreal. Postmodernism has few new ideas and the ideas that are new pale in comparison to feminist thinking, which predates postmodernism.

A. “Women”Postmodernism is incorrect because it seeks to find a different voice or differences among women. There is no singular only plural. Women have their voice as a collective in their experiences but each experience in particular and hence there are no grand theories or meta-theories. One problem is that some of these metanarratives have been equated to universals. However, feminism has never endorsed a single causal factor and hence the model causal nature of the universal characterization is incorrect.Women in feminist theory are concrete rather than abstract. Within feminist theory, there

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are subdivisions. It is not simply gender, which defines women but race and other categories, which lead to sub categories etc. in feminist theory.Particulars build from the ground up which makes women concrete because feminist theory rejects the abstract top-down theory. In short, male supremacy privileges gender in a top-down abstract way in which feminist theory rejects.Some would equate feminism with essentialism. However, essentialism is not the same as feminism. Essentialism should demarcate as much. Cutting to the quick of the argument is to say that feminism is comparable to racism in that they are both biological traits and that they are both reducible to biology witch is categorically incorrect.Multiculturalism is a politically correct normative version of anthropological relativism. The cultural relativist would criticize other cultures from the standpoint of their own culture, as distinguished from feminism since feminist theory does not call for looking at situations from only a female or feminist point of view thus, feminist theory is distinguishable from multiculturalism.

B. MethodPostmodernism is a method that is of ideas or the ideological. Hence, the representation of the penis has been a phallus, yet women are praised for the female body. (I think the point here is that the focus of the masculine is the penis yet women are regarded as "bodies.") The idea presented is that women are agents. The definition of an agent is one who acts for the principal. Hence, women are not seen as individuals but rather as an extension of some "other."Postmodernism tends to be lopsided in evaluating gender. It does not account for nor explain anything remotely coherent about what happens to pornographic material, which is exploitive, or other effects of the industry.

C. RealityThe theory is that the relation between feminism and reality is altered by postmodernism and hence pre-feminism may be preferable. According to postmodernism, everything is interpretation; hence, there is no reality for feminism to relate. The real essence of the argument is that postmodernism attempts to beat dominance by dominating. It is a constant struggle for power and one vehicle for that power may be methodologically. Another problem is modernism. If postmodern thought were to advance, it would logically make sense to have post-feminist thought. Apparently, there is post-feminist thought and the theory claims to take feminism a step further. The entire line of reasoning seems to beg the question that if postmodernism rejects reality it also rejects pre-reality or post-reality for that matter. Second-class citizen status does not create a reality question it has simply been relegated to the background, ignored, or perhaps overlooked. The fact of the matter is that it has always been there and must be addressed. Reality is a social status. It allows for power in that something is only real when recognized as real hence reality as a status is self-defining and continues in perpetuity until non-reality is recognized as real and therefore becomes real. (Circular reasoning) The General distilled point is that postmodernism dictates what is real or accepted as real it then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and enables the exploitation of women and others. The point to be made is that the viewpoint of the victimized should be examined in a way other than that of the victimizer. Unless this is done a proper viewpoint cannot be obtained.

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Given that postmodernism in feminist theory originated approximately 30 years ago, it would make logical sense if they both progressed in a linear fashion. However, feminist legal thinkers take more time on postmodernist issues. In reality this is a waste of time because postmodernism holds that reality is simply what one projects or what one imagines and hence feminists are not advancing feminism through postmodern thinking. Thus quite simply postmodernism does nothing to advance feminism since it rejects reality.

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