Write a note on Theories used in Cultural Studies

Name:-  Kubavat  Kishan B.

Semester :- 2

Roll no :- 11

 Enrolment No :- Pg14101021

Year :- 2014-15

Paper No :- 8- C

Paper Name :- The Cultural Studies

Topic :-  Write a note on Theories used in Cultural Studies

(1)          Feminisms and Post-feminisms

(2)          Queer Theory

Email ID :- kishan.kubavat@gmail.com

Submitted to :-  Department of English

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

(1) Feminisms and Post-feminisms

Introduction

          Feminism in Cultural Studies Focuses on the ways in which the woman and her body is represented as a commodity, an adjunct to the man in a society whose cultural, economic, and political contexts enforce this unequal division, and where gender is socially constructed and imposed. In Cultural Studies, feminist theory examines the gendered use of media, and rhetoric to reinforce patriarchy. In general practice- which is Cultural Studies larger goal of ‘praxis’- feminism seeks empowerment for the woman over the modes of representation advertisements or in medicine, changes in the role of technology, religion, politics and economics control the women’s lives even as it theorizes about media, culture, medicine, the law and the general forms of cultural control exerted by men over women.

          Feminism can be defined as a Political, cultural, pedagogic, and theoretical response to the patriarchal structure of power that seek to subordinate women’s lives interests, bodies and sexualities..

          It argues that these structures create and enforce all relationship between men and women. The women’s movement became a major political force in Europe and America in the 1960 and 1970.

          The movement took various issues for the gender- debate- science- politics-economics- culture- epistemology. In the literary arts the feminist critics exposed the patriarchal ideology that informed the construction of the ‘English Literature’ canon in the first place, and which made male- centred writing possible. During 1970 ‘Feminist Theory’ emerged with works such as Kate Millett’s sexual politics, Shulamith Firestone’s ‘The Dialectic of sex and others’ with the 1980 and 1990, we have a post-feminist phase that also addresses questions of technology.  

   

          Feminism looks at all the representational strategies in popular and other cultural forms, drawing attention construction of women within these representations and acquiring a political platform form which such an agenda can be articulated and justice fought for.

          Literary and cultural texts operate on the lines of power struggle; that between men and women. The ‘text’ (meaning, cinema, poetry, theatre, advertisement) naturalizes the oppression of women through its stereotypical representation of women as weak/ vulnerable, seductress, obstacle sexual object of the male’s desire a procreating device and so on. That is such ‘texts’ reproduce patriarchal social biases that see the woman as only the ‘other’ of the male. Religion, Social conditions and cultural traditions perceive the woman as an adjunct to the male. This means that the woman’s identity is never separate but is subsumed under that of the male.

          Sexuality becomes a tool through which stereotyping of the female as prostitutes, virgins, unchaste woman achieves patriarchal domination. The woman is typecast as ‘Mother nature’, thus reducing her to the role of the perpetual ‘giver’. Religious doctrines aid these representations. Language makes it appear permanent and ‘natural’ through the use of patriarchal terms like Mother Earth and Mother nature.

          Sex, argue feminists, is biological while gender is socially constructed. There is no necessary link between gender and biological sex. Masculinity and femininity are essentially coercive categories that ensure that men and women behave in certain ways. The socialization of woman renders her a woman with certain apparently ‘inherent’ qualities-weakness, feeble mindedness, patience and so on. Notions of morality or sensibility are used by males to argue that women need to be confined to the home (being weak), protected (being vulnerable),and controlled (being native, unpredictable and unstable). Feminists suggest that inequality of sexes does not have a biological basis or origin, it originates in the cultural constructions of gender difference. Gendering is a practice of power, where masculinity is always associated with authority. Further authoritarian discourse such as those of law or science are based on certain assumptions and binary thinking about woman, sexuality and ‘welfare’.

          It terms of language and epistemology the feminists seek to formulate either a gender natural language which will reject patriarchal terms like history and mankind, or a specifically female language which will help create an alternative system of knowledge itself one based on female subjectivity, identity and experience. This is what Elaine Showalter termed ‘gynocriticism’. 

                        

Capitalism produced a massive spilt between the public and private spheres. The family become the ‘retreat’ away from the women, within the family, ‘work’, and ‘life’, had collapsed into one other. Housewives had the responsibility of maintaining the emotional and psychological realm of personal relations and preserving the morality and tradition of the family.

Luce Irigaray argues against the ‘logic of sameness’. Irigaray  shows how Freud’s theory of sexuality is basically premised on one sex-the male. There is the male and there is the absence which is the female. The male is the paradigm of all sexuality physical changes.

Irigaray suggests a specifically feminine writing practice. Her own writing is unique with puns, word plays, syntactic experiments and new arrangements. Reading and writing then must favour  the images and metaphors of fluidity, dynamism, polysemy and plurality rather than those of  unity, monologism, stability and fixity.

                   Post-feminism seeks multiplicities and varieties rather than singular  and unified subject positions contemporary feminism moves away from the Eurocentric and heterosexual biases of early feminism  and develops into Black feminism, ‘Third World’ or postcolonial feminism, and  lesbian feminism. A good example would be from feminist science studies.  Sandra Harding’s Is Science Multicultural? (1998) looks specifically at the women whose lives are affected by technologies but who have no role in the knowledge-processes that create these technologies. Standpoint epistemology identifies the Eurocentric and male centric elements in the conceptual frameworks used to analysis scientific and technological change. Thus, tribal and local knowledge must be incorporated into development projects and programs.  

 

                   Cyberfeminism ; This is the age of heavily media- driven, technologized and globalized network society. Feminist studies of the relationship of gender and technological artefects , and technology looked at technological practies systems of knowledge, institutions and compentencies.

                      Cyberfeminists  see cyber culture as a revolutionary social experiment with the potential to create  new identities relationships and culture. Cyberfeminisms seek ways to link feminism with contemporary feminist projects and networks both on and off the net. The work of the cyberfeminists group, the UNS Matrix aims to employ specifically and graphically female arts for the construction of  libidinal pleasure in a feminized and postfeminist erotics of technocultural production. It appropriates paternal organs, spermatic metaphors and metaphors of viral infection as well as those reference on female ganitals and bodily processes.   

 

Thus, Feminism argues that gender inequalities in society are ‘naturalized’ through systems of representation in media and culture, where the woman is always a secondary figure an object. Cultural artifacts are therefore modes of social control and must be examined for their gender prejudice. It suggests  more just system where women discover means of writing their true selves, representing themselves and bodies. It proposes using resources as diverse as local spiritual beliefs, the ballot and cybertechnology for thy empowerment of women.

 

Queer Theory

          Queer theory in cultural studies looks at various cultural constructions of the gay/lesbian as deviant, sick or criminal and asks us to interrogate the ways in which an entire range of sexuality has been excluded through the politics of identity, a politics that informs and governs popular cultural representations of the queer.

          Queer studies in an attempt to redefine sexual identities. It seeks a cultural/political space where the homosexual is no more the ‘preverted’, ‘sick’, other of  heterosexuality.

          Queer theory is a significant contributor to cultural studies and is closely aligned with political and social movements and activism. In 1969 police raided the Stonewell Tauern in New York city. Many gays, lesbians , transevestites fought back. The subsequent battles and riots received wide publicity. The first meeting of the British Gay Liberation front took place at the London school of  Economics on 13 November 1970, and the first annual Gay pride march  on 1^st April 1972 since then the Gay liberation movement has sought to fight social, legal, medical and religious oppression and tried to locate a whole new cultural space for the thus far marginalized community.

          Gay and lesbian theory assumes that sexuality and sexual preferences play a prominent role in the construction of social identity. Sexual orientation is the fundamental category of analysis and understanding. Gay and lesbian studies suggests that the patriarchy which feminism contests is actually ‘heteropatriarchy’. Kinship and marriage are deemed to be completely heterosexual. Sexual practices and relationship that are out side purview of a law that recognizes only heterosexual marriages are deemed to be untenable. Thus heterosexuality is taken as a given and natural.

          Queer theory argues following Michel Foucault that the homosexual as a social category emerges essentially in the post-Renaissance period. In the late nineteenth century several legal and medical texts speak of the homosexual as a deviant or a criminal and homosexuality as a perversion and sickness. Homosexuality was projected as the dark other of heterosexuality. Thus it is not so much the sexuality of the homo/hetero individual then the political and cultural contexts in which these sexualities are lived that need to be studied for cultural Edelman studies this is crucial for it suggests that sexuality, like gender is primarily a socially constructed and enacted aspect of life and individuality.

          The use of poststructuralism by queer theorists like Judith Butler , Lee  and Diana Fuss enables gay/lesbian theory to debate issues of identity, marginality authenticity and epistemology. There is an emphasis on the social context of identity. Queer theory rejects an ‘essentialism’ of  identity politics, and the binary opposition of  heterosexual/ homosexual in favour of a more fluid and impermanent nature of the same.

          Lesbian theorists argues that even heterosexual woman exhibit a certain fear of lesbianism. That is even the feminist critiques of patriarchy are informed by an acceptance of heterosexuality as the standard and homosexuality/ lesbianism as a deviation. Lesbians were seen as monsters or unnatural. The arguments of the lesbian feminists is that the feminist movement so far has assumed heterosexuality to be the universal condition of all women. Moreover the experience of the white , middle –class, urban woman was the ‘standard’ subject of analysis. Lesbian feminist thus emphasize the need for accommodation of difference within a feminist practice ; the difference of class race, culture and sexual orientation.

          Some lesbian studies have suggested that the woman- woman bond need not always be sexual. the concept of the ‘lesbian continuum’ is a term that seeks to incorporate within itself the whole range of  woman- woman relation ; mutual help networks, camaraderie, woman’s institutions, female friendships that are not necessarily sexual in nature.

          Queer theory suggests the possibilities of political change where gay/lesbian identities find a voice. Gay/lesbian theories are sensitive to racial and class categories within sexuality. The assumption here is that gay/lesbian individuals of say the economically disadvantaged working class Asian immigrant population are doubly marginalized ; by the white race for being the racial other and within their own community for being not heterosexual.

          Queer theory emphasizes the liminal nature of identity. They stress the gay/lesbian identity as a ‘crossing-over’. The work of Judith Butler is crucial here because it offers a new way of dealing with the problem of identity. Butler begins with the assumption that identity is not a stable entity. Gender identity is ‘performed’, and is performed repeatedly. Butler argues that feminism has presupposed the category of woman as a stable and unitary subject. Feminism by treating the very fact of being a woman as the defining factor of identity ignores other equally crucial factors of identity such as a class, race or sexuality. Butler is suggesting that even feminist theory cannot assume that being ‘female’ or ‘male’ creates certain kinds of identities.

Queer theory interrogates the modes by which sexual boundaries of the inside and outside are constructed sexual identities assigned and sexual formulated. language and law regulate the practice and as a system. ti is the language of defense and protection heterosexuality secures itself against the intrusion of the homosexual is the excluded.

          Thus, Queer theory demonstrates how heterosexuality has been considered the norm and homosexuality as deviance. It argues that identity is secured only through performance and repetition. Homosexuality is a social construction the result of power relations between the ‘dominant’ sexual types and how such a construction delegitimizes gay and lesbian as deviant, criminals ans immoral.