女权主义批评课件

1、生如夏花Feminist criticism(女权主义批评)Made by KykyContentsTranditional gender rolesFrench feminismA summary of feminist premisesGetting beyong patriarchyMulticultural feminismGender studies and feminismFeminism and literatureIntroductionFeminism criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cul

2、tural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social and psychological oppression of women.女权主义是以妇女为中心的批评，其研究对象包括妇女形象，女性创作和女性阅读等。它要求以一种女性的视角对文学作品进行全新的解读，对男性文学歪曲妇女形象进行了猛烈的批判；它努力发掘不同于男性的女性文学传统，重评文学史；它探讨文学中的女性意识，研究女性特有的写作、表达方式，关注女作家的创作状况；它声讨男性中心主义传统文化对女性创作的压抑，提倡一种女权主义写作方式。Introdu

3、ction文本文本文本文本文本文本文本文本In English, we often use the masculine pronoun he to represent both men and women. For many people, this claim suggests what they see as the trivial, even infantile, nature of feminist demands. We know what we mean when we do it: it is simplty a convention of language that inclu

4、des both male and females. In fact, it is part of a deeply rooted cultural attitude that ignores womens experiences and blinds us to womenss points of view. Habit of seeing is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescibed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only. As

5、 a result, women may experience unexpected side effects while male users are unaffected.Traditional gender rolesPartriarchal woman, a woman who has internalized the norms and values of patriarchy, which can be defined, in short, as any culture that privileges men by promoting tradional gender roles.

6、 Traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive; they cast women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive. Partriarchy is thus, by definiton, sexist, which means it promotes the belief that women are innately inferior to men. This belief in the inbo

7、rn inferiority of women is a form of what is called biological essentialism (生物本质主义)because it is based on biological diffeerences between the sexes that are considered part of our unchanging essence as men and women. Feminism distinguishes between the word sex, which refers to our biological consti

8、tution as female or male and the word gender which referes to our cultral programming as feminine or masculine. -is a destructive role for men because it promotes the bilief that men must be unflagging superproviders wihout emotional needs.(3) Being a real man in patriarchal culture requires that on

9、e hold feminie qualities in contempt.Those good girls and bad girls in fairy tales，it is another way in which sexist ideology continues to influence us. In many tales, a beautiful sweet young girl (for females must be beautiful, sweet, and young if they are to be worthy of romantic admiration). Part

10、riarchal ideology suggests that there are only two identities a woman can have. If she accepts her traditional gender role and obeys the patriarchal rules, she is a good girl, if she doesnt, shes a bad girl. Patriarchy objectifies both bad girls and good girls. That is , patrarchy treats women, what

11、ever their role, like objects: lke objects, women exist, accoring to patriarchy, to be used without consideration of their own perspectives, feelings, or opinions.A summary of feminist premisesFeminists share several important assumptions, which might be summarized as follows.1. Women are oppressed

12、by patriarchy economically, politically, and socially, and psychologically; patracichal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept to.2. Woman is objectified and marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values, defined by what she (allegedly) lacks and that men (all

13、egedly have).3. All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology.4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine). All traits we associate with masculine and feminine behavior are learned, not inborn.5. A

14、ll feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by promoting womens equality.Marxist can be used to help us understand the how economic forces have been manipulated by patriarchal law and custom to keep women economically, politica

15、lly, and socially oppressed as an underclass. Deconstruction, which is discussed in Chpter 8, helps us see, among other things, when our thinking is based on false oppositons, that is, on the belief that two ideas, qualities, or categories are polar opposites. For example, love/hate-when, in fact, t

16、hey are not. So deconstrction is also useful to feminists in helping us see the ways in which patriarchal ideology is often base on false oppostions. Eg: men are naturally rational while women are naturally emotional, using deconstructive principles, a feminist might argue that we are mistaken to se

17、parate the rational and the emotiional into such diametrically opposed categories. The author thinks, one of feminisms strengths is the freedom with which it borrows ideas from other theories and adapts them to its own rapidly evolving needs. Hence, feminist theory will never become stale, and femin

18、ism can be seen as an interdisciplinary theory.French feminism is diverse: it consists of many different points of view. French feminism believes in the importance of social and political activism in order to ensure equal opportunity and equal access to justice for women. However, French feminists h

19、ave tended to focus more strongly on the philosophical dimension of womens issues than have British and American feminists although French feminist theory has become, over time, an increasingly visible presence in Anglo-American feminism. The focus of French feminism has taken two different forms: m

20、aterialist feminism and psychoanalytic feminism. The first form is intersted in the social and economic oppression of women while the second form, as you might expect, concentrates on womens psychological experience. French feminists are also concerned with the ways in which womens social/economic a

21、nd psychological experience are connected. French feminismFrench materialist feminism examines the patriarchal traditions and institutions that control the material (physical) and economic conditons by which society oppresses women, for example, patriarchal beliefs about the difference between men a

22、nd women and the laws and customs that govern marriage and motherhood. Men can act upon the world, change it, give it meaning, while women have meaning only in relation to men. The word woman, has the same implications as the word other. A woman is not a preson in her own right. She is mans Other: s

23、he is less than a man; she is a kind of alien in a mans world; she is not a fully developend human being the way a man is.The first to argue that women are not born feminine but rather coditioned to be feminine by patriarchy, Beauvoir once said: one is not born a woman; one becomes one. Not all wome

24、n want to have children or feel comfortable being mothers. Patriarchy thinks women are unfulfilled as women if they dont have childre.French feminist psychoanalytic theory is interested in patriarchys influence on womens psychological experience and creativity. Its focus is on the individual psyche,

25、 not on group experience. It is not limited to the economic, political, and social domains; it includes womens psychological repression at the level of the unconscious as well. A woman cant be liberated in any meaningful way if she doesnt know that she needs to be liberated. For Cixous(西苏), women wi

26、ll not learn to resist patriarchal thinking by becoming part of the patriarchal power structure, that is, by obtaining equal status and equal opportunity in current patriarchal society. We therefore need a new, feminine language that undermines or eliminates the patriarchal binary thinking that oppr

27、esses and silences women. (P100)French psychoanalytic feminisms tendency toward abstraction has the double pay-off (1) being difficult for novices to understand, thereby securing the position of those prefessors, theorists, and literary critics already holding academic power in the field of critical

28、 theory, and (2) rendering French feminism vulnerable to ridicule and dismissal, which is rather ironic given that the work of many leading American theories is often rather abstract.法国派女权主义批评更关注女性写作的语言和文本，更多的体现出解构主义的特色其代表人物对“女性本质论”和“女性文学传统”的命题持怀疑态度，认为如果一定要寻找固有的“女性文学传统”，客观上反而有可能维持父权制的文学史观。她们的批评吸收了德里

29、达的解构主义和拉康的解构话的精神分析理论的某些思想，面相未来，重点放在“女性写作”上，希望建立一种标举差异的文学乌托邦式的符号学。露丝 伊瑞格瑞, 是法国派女权主义又一位重要批评家, 她提出了独特的“女性谱系”和“ 女人腔”（女人腔）主张。指出,在这个社会中, 人的肉体被符码化了,人的生物学、生理学结构被赋予了不合理的文化意义, 男性被认为是雄健和有阳具( 按: 意谓有创造力), 女性则是被动的和被阉割的. 这不是生物学的结论, 而是身体的社会和心理学意义。她在他看女人的反射镜一书中, 对此作了更深入的分析, 提出建立女性谱系的主张。Multicultural feminismPatriarc

30、hy operates differently in different countries: there are significant differences between patriarchy in the United States and patriarchy in, say, India, Mexico, or Iran. Furthermore, even within the borders of a single country, cultural differences affect womens experience of patriarchy. Eg: In the

31、United States, the experience of patriarchy for women of color is inseparable from their experience of racism. African American feminists have been especially helpful in revealing the political and theoretical limitations inherent in white mainstream feminists neglect of cultural experience differen

32、t from their own. For example, black feminists have analyzed the ways in which gender oppression cannot be understood apart from racial oppression. The Victorian ideal of the true woman as submissive, fragile, and sexually pure, which still influences patriarchal thinking today, excluded by definito

33、n black women and poor women of all races, whose survival demanded hard physical labor and who were vulnerable to rape and to sexual exploitation in the workplace.Black feminists observe, not just because shes a woman but because shes a black woman. Depending on its theoretical orientation, literary

34、 criticism that addresses womens issues may fall under one or more different headings. Among them are feminist criticism, African American criticism (which studies, among other things, works by African Americans within the context of African American experienc, history, and literary traditions), les

35、bian criticism, Marxist criticism, and postcolonial criticism(which studies, among other things, works that have emerged from cultures that developed in response to colonial domination, eg, works by writers from India, which was controlled by Britain until 1947). Of course, womens issues will also b

36、e addressed in any literay criticism that focus on women writers from a partriarchal ethnic group.Gender studies and feminismFeminists analysis focuses a good deal on the enormous role played by gender-that is , by a societys definitions of femininity and masculinity-in daily life. Eg: our gender pl

37、ays a key role in forming our individual identity: both our self-perception and the way we relate to others. Among other issues that figure prominently in gendr studies are the following overlapping topics: (1) patriarchal assumptions about gender and gender roles that continue to oppress women, (2)

38、 alternatives to the current way we conceptualize gender as either feminine or masculine, (3) the relationship between sex and gender (between the ways our bodies are biologically constructed and the genders to which we are assigned), and (4) the relationship between sexuality and gender (between ou

39、r sexual orientation and the ways in which we are viewed in terms of gender). (P108-117)1. Brannon points out, research indicates that. the concept of maternal instinct has no support as a biologically based explanation for caregiving, and both men and women have similar emotions related to nurturin

40、g. In short, nurturing is not a role biologically linked to sex although many people long have believed it to be. 2. Gender is socially constructed rather than a matter of biology: women and men usually behave in ways associated with their assigned gender because they are socially programmed to do s

41、o, not because it is natural for them to do so. (P110) 3. Biological sex does not fit neatly into two separate, opposite categories. (P112)4. Preeeves reports, intersexed individuals should not be seen as abnormalities but as normal people belonging to a different sex category. (P113)5. Feminism and

42、 gender studies are intimately related. They share some of the same subject matter as well as a desire for justice and a belief in the power of education to change our society for the better. For centuries feminism has worked for gender equality: for a dissolution of the patriarchal gender roles that, even today, continue to short-circuit efforts to achieve complete eq