At virtually the same time as the male hegemony of the modernist literary canon was being valorised by some writers, a number of feminist writers and literary critics (in both the US and Europe) were establishing a range of feminist interventionist strategies. The growth of the Women’s Movement and Women’s Studies in the US and […]

What becomes apparent in reflecting on the theorists and critics of modernism and postmodernism is that there is an overwhelming monopolisation of the debate by male writers and an attendant marginalisation of feminist writers and issues within these debates. Examples of the absence or marginalisation of feminism’s contribution to modernism’s project, as Marshall (1994) notes, […]

Feminism, cultural difference and the culturalpolitics of the academy INTRODUCTION Feminism and postmodernism are recognised as two leading intellectual critiques of ‘epistemological foundationalism’ emerging from the liberal humanism of the Western Enlightenment which has framed academic culture’s modernist discourse. However, it is apparent that there is an overwhelming monopolisation of these debates by male theorists […]

The problem for both feminist and post-colonial intellectuals is, given this position, how the charge of relativism can be challenged. For critics like McLennan (1992a), as McRobbie notes, relativism is the issue. He raises the question of whether cultural relativism leads to cognitive relativism, encouraging indifference. McRobbie takes issue with McLennan’s conclusions and follows Yeatman […]

Postfeminism and post-colonialism have both theorised the politics of oppression and repression. As Ashcroft etal. (1995:249) note, ‘women, like colonised subjects, have been relegated to the position of “Other”, “colonised” by various forms of patriarchal domination’. They go on to note that, despite the similarities in feminist and post-colonial theoretical discourses, there have been few […]

The intersection of discourses around postmodernism, post-colonialism, antiracism and feminism has provided an intellectually vibrant landscape, facilitating a pluralistic model of resistance which Yeatman has described as ‘interlocking oppressions’. As a result of critiques posed by feminist and subaltern discourses in the 1980s, she contends (1995a:53) that it is possible for ‘multiple oppressed subjects to […]

This intersection is an interesting one, as all three movements have in common the process of dismantling or subverting dominant hegemonic discourses. In the process all three seek to challenge traditional epistemologies and to reestablish marginal discourses. AH three areas have experienced an upsurge of theoretical development in the last two decades and, as Ashcroft […]

The relationship between feminism, postmodernism and epistemology is a complex one. Yeatman (1994:15) maintains that ‘what can be argued is that a postmodern feminism, or one which is refracted through the politics of difference, is a feminism committed to a specific epistemological polities’. She identifies a number of dimensions which characterise such an orientation. These […]

For feminism, the failure of theories of modernity has been their inability to come to terms with sexual difference and to theorise particularity. Yeatman (1993, 1995a) has argued that the impact of postmodernism and poststructuralism has forced feminism to investigate both ‘the genealogy’ and ‘status of oppression as a category of a modern politics of […]

Feminism is centrally situated at the intersection of a number of intellectual debates emerging from the dialogue between modernism and postmodernism. Benhabib (1992:210) notes that, confronted with ‘debates about the “end” or “transformation” of philosophy and the emergence of a postmodernist agnostics of language, feminists feel ambivalent…’ She maintains that, while feminists want to take […]