Postmodernist Feminism

Like ecofeminism, postmodernist feminism is an amalgam of two distinct perspectives. This strand of feminist theory combines postmodernist with feminist standpoints, albeit in diverse shapes. The result is extremely powerful expressions of resistance to or rejection of Enlightenment notions, especially universalism, human nature, and [Page 584]sociopolitical progress. Postmodernist feminists join other postmodernists in rejecting or at least radically chastening these notions, and they bring to postmodernism women-centered concerns that go so far as to problematize the very notion “woman.”

By rendering the identity and the concept of woman problematic, postmodernist feminists illustrate some of the key theoretical underpinnings of postmodernism. To wit, postmodernist feminists argue that no universal identity or reality undergirds “woman.” From their perspective, theorizing as if this category represents some universal status results in theorizing away the multitude of differences gathered together and erased under this conceptual aegis. For postmodernist feminists, then, there is no female “nature” any more than there is a single, unitary human nature throughout human history and across human societies. Furthermore, postmodernist feminism rejects or substantially refashions the tales of progress for girls and women implied in modernist narratives of progress for humankind. Aware of all those girls and women around the globe whose lives have worsened as “progress” supposedly marched on, these feminist theorists resist the erasure of differences that sustains misbegotten dreams and perpetuates biased theorizing.

Postmodernist theorizing among feminists exhibits the same propensities toward ambiguity, irony, and paradox found elsewhere in the world of postmodernism. These feminist theorists also exhibit a parallel feel for how localized and embedded knowledge inevitably is. Thus, they criticize the exaggerated claims of other scholars, particularly around issues of objectivity as well as generalizability.

Three postmodernist feminist theorists whose ideas have wielded widespread influence are Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and Laurel Richardson. Some of Butler's (1990) most important work theorizes about the cultural “intelligibility” of only some few identities, so that other identities get rendered as nothing more than deviations reflective of what is perverse, maladapted, or abnormal. Butler treats identity as a performative phenomenon heavily regulated within institutionalized regimes that construct some enactments as “real”—that is, intelligible—versions of a given identity and other enactments as something other than versions of that identity. For example, “womanhood” is recognizable only within socially regulated boundaries. Some versions hardly get seen at all. Some women's behavior, then, gets recognized as little more than self-centeredness, man hating, opinionated stridency, or bitchiness rather than versions of womanliness. Butler (1992:15–16) argues that “part of the project of postmodernism…is to call into question the ways in which such ‘examples' and ‘paradigms' serve to subordinate and erase that which they seek to explain.” More generally, Butler (1992:15–16) treats identity as something normative, regulatory, and exclusionary.

For Haraway (1993:257, 258), feminist postmodernism or postmodernist feminism revolves around “politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating” as well as around a rejection of universalism. Her feminism greatly favors what is partial and limited as the key to claims that are rational and meaningful. Haraway (1990:190–91) considers irony more than a rhetorical tool. For her, it is also a political strategy that revolves around serving as a “valid witness” who is modest as well as allied with diverse other witnesses. Best known perhaps for her contributions to feminist science studies as well as feminist epistemology more generally, Haraway has greatly affected how feminist theorists think about issues of knowledge construction, including scientific methodology and scientific writing.

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