Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Politics of Representation

In: Women & politics, Band 22, Heft 3, S. 35-57

Abstract

At the core of feminism is the issue of representation. Historically, feminism has always been a struggle for the proper representation of women. Postmodernism questions this agenda by questioning the very identity of womanhood itself. I argue that to see the challenge postmodernism poses to feminism in terms of its political objective is in fact misguided. The source of the confusion likely lies in the philosophical ground that feminism & postmodernism seemingly share: their respective critiques of the Enlightenment. However, feminism is critical of the Enlightenment to the extent that it has failed to live up to its own principles & values. Unlike postmodernism, feminism as such is not necessarily an anti-Enlightenment project. Against this argument, the works of Jana Sawicki & Bonnie Honig are analyzed for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of postmodernist feminism. Sawicki draws the connection between feminism & postmodernism by way of Michel Foucault, while Honig turns to Hannah Arendt. Since neither Foucault nor Arendt is particularly committed to feminism, one needs to question why Sawicki and Honig find Foucault & Arendt useful. It turns out that in the hands of Sawicki & Honig, postmodernist feminism is fundamentally a rejection of liberal representational politics by way of a non-Marxist route. But the need for such an exit appears to be postmodernist rather than feminist. 55 References. Adapted from the source document.