Feminism has a long political history developing from women’s movements that sought to shake the certainties of a complacent patriarchal society through the call for social, economic and political reform, into a philosophical theory. An insight into the key moments of the history of French feminism through the identification of its philosophical and theoretical underpinnings may offer a comprehensive understanding of the French feminist thought that started as a “leaderless and structurless… collection
other strands of theory. Culturally, women writers’ revision of the existing male discourse that the book suggests bears remarkable resemblance with de Certeau’s
Carol Cohn’s explication of gender discourses’ permeation of other, seemingly disjunctive cultural discourses and Carol J. Adams’ analysis of the cultural connotations attached the meat/vegetable dichotomy, as well as her elucidation of the structure of the absent referent embedded in an oppressive, patriarchal, conceptual framework. Furthermore, Adams offers an anthropological account of the consumption of animals to suggest that meat’s role as a symbol of male dominance is in part the result of
Gender and Sexuality in The Piano The Piano examines the construction of sexuality in nineteenth century colonial New Zealand within the discourses of power that shaped this era. Different discourses of gender and race and their interactions are presented in order to support a narrative critique of the European patriarchal ideology as dominant social structure. In the opening sequence of the film, the viewer is immediately presented with an image of marriage as entirely contractual:
between his discipline and his work as an activist. Jeff Hearn’s training shows that he is interested in the structure of patriarchy and its influence on how our society is constructed on the basis of that framework. That is, his focus of study on patriarchal relations more or less impacted what he, as a sociologist, advocated for through his works. Jeff Hearn’s work primarily revolves around organizations and management, men, gender relations and men’s violence. Contributions of Jeff Hearn’s Work to
One of the many ways that postcolonial literature accomplishes the task of challenging the hegemony of western imperialism is through the use of a ‘canonical counter-discourse,’ a strategy whereby ‘a post-colonial writer takes up a character or characters, or the basic assumptions of a canonical text [where a colonialist discourse is developed directly or indirectly], and unveils [its colonialist] assumptions, subverting the text for post-colonial purposes’. (Tiffin, 1987) Such a revolutionary literary
ways in which they allocate various socio-economic indicators for marriage, how they define themselves in relation to the men in their lives, and their hereditary and economic status. Bronte is examining and critiquing the political issues of the patriarchal society in the 19th century through the use of her characters in the novel.
and Gender in Islam” targets proclaimed feminists, both western and non-western, as the intended audience. The text is involved with the discourse of gender, the discourses of women, the discourses of feminist, and colonial and post-colonial discourses. Historically, “Women and Gender in Islam” discusses the social, political, legal, and religious discourses and structures that have shaped the experience of Muslim women
traditional gender discourse? Written by Australian playwright Jack Davis in 1985, the protest play No Sugar follows the journey of a Nyoongah family, the Millimurras, and the hardships and struggles they face during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was during that period where both European and Aboriginal women were very much marginalized by society and still played the traditional role of mother, wife and nurturer. Jack Davis reinforces certain aspects of traditional gender discourse in No Sugar
LENSES The wallpaper in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is symbolic of the gender-based oppression women of the patriarchal time period of its writing, faced; being infantised, not allowed to vote but expected to raise the children and take care of the house. The short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, is centred on the story of a woman diagnosed by her physician husband, John, with a “slight hysterical tendency,” or what we would call today, post natal depression. As