In the postmodern era the impact media have on our lives is continuously growing. Not only do media reflect reality, but they also shape and reconstruct it according to the public's hopes, fears or fantasies. Reality itself is not the sum of all objective processes and things, but it is socially constructed by the discourses that reflect and produce power. On the other hand, the public does not simply accept or reject the media messages, but interprets them according to its (...) social background (Zoonen, 1994, p. 41). My interest lies in identifying how are women represented in the media and what are the dominant images of femininity, as well as the alternative ones. There is a strong connection between image and identity as the latter can not be constructed without the former. Basically, the postmodern subject has been reduced to an image, therefore the image plays an important part in constructing the feminine identity. (shrink)

This study shows how Goethe's Die pilgernde Torin, Kleist's Die Marquise von O..., Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and James' Daisy Miller can appeal to the reader who identifies a message friendly towards woman and her plight, whether the message was the author's intention or not.

The article presents the evolution of the language of advertising from the 1960s to the present, presenting various images of women in advertising. Simultaneously a theoretical analysis has been carried out of the demands of second-wave feminism, which exerted significant influence on the creation of images of women in the mass media. The objective of our comparison of feminist theory with advertising practice is an attempt to answer the question of whether the present media image of women liberated from the (...) binary sexual order and weighted towards the genderqueer and/or transgender phenomena is the desired realization of the feminist demands for emancipation of and equality for women announced in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In 1991, Ukrainian independence opened an important theoretical channel for debating the status of its women. The people's collective memory of an ancient matriarchy generated a neo-matriarchal mythology which has been transformed into a delusional ideology that legitimizes female subordination, in the name of her alleged empowerment. Fieldwork in Ukraine – annual visits, including travel from one end of the country to another in official capacities, and many extended stays in Ukraine, as a scholar, researcher, educator and participant in key (...) events, provided opportunities for exchanging views with countless people from many walks of life throughout the country. Participation in a host of programs – television ‘specials’ on gender, seminars, retreats, workshops and conferences, designed to raise the consciousness of women and men alike – provided an array of opportunities to observe at first hand the way that today's women construct individual identity. Extensive research in the press (many runs of daily newspapers, including Den’, in Kyiv, and Vysoky Zamok in Lviv, and women's journals such as the widely read Zhinka, among others) added further insights. Television viewing, popular publications collected habitually during my numerous visits to Ukraine, copies of documents contributed by my Ukrainian friends and colleagues, outdoor advertising, posters and intimate gatherings at the homes of likeminded women, all played a part in the formation of my impressions of Ukrainian women's inferior status. In this paper I use my findings to explore the conflicting discourses on women's alleged empowerment, and the essentialist constraints on their self-realization, together with measures adopted to date on changing gender stereotypes and promoting equal rights and opportunities. (shrink)

The roles of women and of feminine identity have been historically and traditionally constructed around motherhood. However, recent years have seen a growing trend among women to remain childless/ childfree. Drawing on interviews with 25 voluntarily childless women, this article considers the extent to which this trend results from the appeal or pull of the perceived advantages of a childfree lifestyle as well as the ways childfree women might represent a more fundamental and radical rejection of motherhood and the (...) activities associated with it. The article concludes by considering how to recast understandings of feminine identity away from a mother-centered focus. (shrink)

Although there has been significant academic interest in the complex relationship between gender and migration, the relevant literature often focuses on women as victims of trafficking, sexism and racism in the host and sending societies. This article discusses instead the question of gender and migration as an open field of contestation within which transitory and incomplete identities are performed. Based on a series of focus group discussions with Albanian women working in the domestic sector in Athens, the article documents (...) the emergence of a discourse of `becoming masculine' while performing typically `feminine tasks'. Drawing from Judith Butler's theoretical challenge to subject formation, the analysis traces the development of gender relations within discourse. While Albanian women are doubly disadvantaged in the mind—body relationship, they gradually come to perform roles that redefine the space of domesticity where the limits between men/women, private/public and migrants/nationals lie. (shrink)

The evolution of the idea of hospitality can be traced alongside the development of Western civilization. Etymologically, the host is the “master,” but this identity is established through expropriation and loss—the best host is the one who gives the most, ultimately relinquishing what defines him as master. In The Hostess, Tracy McNulty asks, What are the implications for personhood of sharing a person—a wife or daughter—as an act of hospitality? In many traditions, the hostess is viewed not as a subject (...) but as the master’s property. A foreign presence that both sustains and undercuts him, the hostess embodies the interplay of self and other within the host’s own identity. Here McNulty combines critical readings of the Bible and Pierre Klossowski’s trilogy The Laws of Hospitality with analyses of exogamous marital exchange, theological works from the Talmud to Aquinas, the writings of Kant and Nietzsche, and the theory of femininity in the work of Freud and Lacan. Ultimately, she contends, hospitality involves the boundary between the proper and the improper, affecting the subject as well as interpersonal relations. Tracy McNulty is assistant professor of romance studies at Cornell University. (shrink)

This article addresses theoretical problems around the notion of ‘choice’, using empirical data from a three-year, ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear among both women and men. With a focus on female participants who wore, or had worn high-heeled shoes, it draws on Budgeon’s argument for viewing the body as event, as becoming, and Finch’s use of the concept of display, to explore the temporalities of high-heeled shoe wear, particularly as an aspect of ‘dressing up’. Data from both focus (...) groups and year-long case studies allowed everyday and life course patterns of high-heeled shoe wear to be explored – in many cases, as they unfolded. This material has led us to critique the linear, goal-oriented nature of a modernist ‘project of the self’, and to argue that identification, as a dynamic process, may often be erratic, partial and temporary. Emphasized femininity, it is suggested, can be ‘displayed’ episodically, as an aspect of ‘doing gender’, a perspective that problematizes notions of a ‘post-feminist masquerade’ that inevitably secures gender retrenchment. Through an examination of the occasions and non-occasions that pattern the temporalities of women’s lives, therefore, the article demonstrates a distinction between displaying femininity and doing gender, one that simultaneously sheds light on their relationship with one another. (shrink)

This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of (...) young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources – feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history – in an original discussion of women′s relationship to modern and post–modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women′s writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their identities (...) in a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body. (shrink)

The title of this congress begins with the word “identity”. It also includes the word “reciprocity,” which indicates a form of relationship and finally, “gift of self”. This would lead us to conclude that the identity of the human person has something to do with reciprocity and that reciprocity involves giving of oneself to others. This talk will attempt to shed light on how the concept of gender might in some way be incorporated into these three concepts. Defining what constitutes (...) the identity of the human person has been explored, and attempts to define it have been made by every major theorist in the field of psychology. At a previous Psychology and Communion congress one of the talks spoke of loving and being loved in return as the basic foundation of human identity. In that presentation we find the following observation: “The identity of the human person can be compared to the identity of a book: we know where and when it was printed; but the author is certainly not the publishing house, nor is the typesetter who prepared the text…The same is true for us human beings: we know the time and date of birth. But who is author?”. We ask ourselves, therefore: what lies at the core of the identity of this being who is born at a certain time on a certain date? Before proceeding, I think it is important to note that the basic idea regarding the identity of the human person, as we have defined and understood it from the inception of psychology and communion and explored in previous encounters, remains unchanged. I will use a quote of Chiara Lubich here that perhaps many of you know but which can serve the purpose of laying the foundation for what follows: Human beings are “ all equal but distinct. To each person [God] gave his own beauty so that they would be desirable and lovable by others; and so that in love they would be recomposed into the One who had created them with his Light, which is Himself.” Now we ask ourselves: What exactly is this “beauty” that Chiara is speaking of? What are the components, if you will, of our identity that makes us “… desirable and lovable by others…”? (shrink)

Examining Levinas’s critique of the Heideggerian conception of temporality, this book shows how the notion of the feminine both enables and prohibits the most fertile territory of Levinas’s thought. According to Heidegger, the traditional notion of time, which stretches from Aristotle to Bergson, is incoherent because it rests on an inability to think together two assumptions: that the present is the most real aspect of time, and that the scientific model of time is infinite, continuous, and constituted by a (...) series of more or less identical now-points. For Heidegger, this contradiction, which privileges the present and thinks of time as ongoing, derives from a confusion about Being. He suggests that it is not the present but the future that is the primordial ecstasis of temporality. For Heidegger, death provides an orientation for our authentic temporal understanding. Levinas agrees with Heidegger that mortality is much more significant than previous philosophers of time have acknowledged, but for Levinas, it is not my death, but the death of the other that determines our understanding of time. He is critical of Heidegger’s tendency to collapse the ecstases of temporality into one another, and seeks to move away from what he sees as a totalizing view of time. Levinas wants to rehabilitate the unique character of the instant, or present, without sacrificing its internal dynamic to the onward progression of the future, and without neglecting the burdens of the past that history visits upon us. The author suggests that though Levinas’s conception of subjectivity corrects some of the problems Heidegger’s philosophy introduces, such as his failure to deal adequately with ethics, Levinas creates new stumbling blocks, notably the confining role he accords to the feminine. For Levinas, the feminine functions as that which facilitates but is excluded from the ethical relation that he sees as the pinnacle of philosophy. Showing that the feminine is a strategic part of Levinas’s philosophy, but one that was not thought through by him, the author suggests that his failure to solidly place the feminine in his thinking is structurally consonant with his conceptual separation of politics from ethics. (shrink)

The article provides a critical analysis of a postfeminist identity that is emergent in a set of beauty advertisements, called ‘entitled femininity’. Three major discursive themes are identified, which are constitutive of this postfeminist feminine identity: 1) ‘It’s about me!’ focuses on pampering and pleasuring the self; 2) ‘Celebrating femininity’ reclaims and rejoices in feminine stereotypes; and 3) ‘Girling women’ encourages a youthful disposition in women of all ages. The article shows that entitled femininity occupies an ambivalent discursive (...) space, which celebrates as well as repudiates feminism, and re-installs normative gendered stereotypes. The ambivalence, it is argued, contributes to fostering a culture of post-critique, which numbs resistance and deflects criticism. For all its appearances to be pro-women, feminine entitlement based squarely on an entitlement to consume offers a rather limited and problematic vision of femininity and gender equality. (shrink)

This study aims to portray the self of the sacrificial subject, specifically the feminine sacrificial self. The Christian discourse on sacrifice is dominated by the scholarship of René Girard and his followers. This study briefly presents Girard’s approach and pinpoints its weaknesses in order to complement it with the work of Julia Kristeva and Jan Patočka. All these approaches, taken together, provide a complex picture of what the autonomous feminine sacrificial self looks like. Starting from thorough theoretical and (...) analytical analyses of Girard, Kristeva and Patočka, this study then applies their insights through the particular example of the feminine sacrificial self of Milada Horáková. The example of this political prisoner and victim of a Stalinist showtrial in 1950s Czechoslovakia aptly illustrates the uniqueness of the feminine sacrificial self. (shrink)

For Beauvoir, literature provides unique access into the concrete life out of which philosophical reflection is born. Nowhere are the complications of ambiguous ethical choice more sensitively portrayed in her writings than in her fictional characters – particularly her women – as they navigate their way through webs of deceit, patriarchal control, manipulation, authenticity, desire, and passion in an attempt to ground their identities in a kind of absolute meaning. This chapter explores the theme of failed feminine identity‐formation (...) in three characters from Beauvoir's literary corpus: Françoise from She Came to Stay, Régine from All Men Are Mortal, and Monique from the short story, “The Woman Destroyed.” All three characters touch on themes surrounding the desire for and ultimate failure to obtain fixed meaning and an absolute identity. (shrink)

Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to (...) describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity. (shrink)

Notorious for advancing a strict dichotomy between the masculine “demiurgic father” and the feminine “nurse/receptacle of becoming” as the “natural” origin of the cosmos, Plato's Timaeus has become a site for feminist interrogation. Most critics easily deem the text a masculine fantasy that projects feminine impotence and obligatory heterosexuality, reinforcing patriarchal power structures that are blindly reproduced in their historical reception. Consequently, this article analyzes the Neoplatonic replication of this framework, but with special attention given to Proclus's challenges (...) to this gendered and sexual context. In this late, sometimes forgotten figure, we find, rather surprisingly, a Platonist who neither sequesters the feminine to the domain of the passive receptacle nor charges her simply with being a bastard image of the masculine. Rather, for Proclus, the feminine becomes the site of lived, erotic power that produces and sustains the value of authentic otherness. Furthermore, Proclus offers a challenge to the naturalness of the sex binary, suggesting a radical queerness as the basis of all identity. Overall, we shall see how classical patriarchal thinkers may, despite themselves, offer subversive models that might present readers with possibilities for troubling the sexual prejudices of ancient metaphysical schemas. (shrink)

This essay traces the origin of feminine thought in poststructuralism, which opens up new vistas of experience that differ from traditional philosophical thinking based on a conceptual grasp of the world. Rather than viewing the feminine as the essence of the woman gender, it is seen here as the experience of a plurality of truths produced in the affectedness of the human body by the world. The representative function of language and methodology in traditional philosophy cannot capture the (...) plurality of truths. Feminine experience is not a prerogative of women philosophers or feminist writers. It is accessible even to male philosophers. Since it is the outcome of the affectedness of the body by phenomena, it is accessible to all human beings, irrespective of their gender identities. The construction of the truth of entities in terms of their universal essence has a significant role in forming masculine and feminine experiences. Masculine experience is produced by the representation of conceptual truth by the self. Feminine is a kind of existence prior to self-formation that is in operation in all humans. The linguistic turn in philosophy created by Nietzsche and Saussure is the main force behind the growth of feminine thinking in poststructuralism. It marks the end of the abstract, concept-based thinking of the masculine sort and the formation of the differential thought of the feminine. (shrink)

The gender order is subject to challenge and change, particularly when situations arise in which existing inequalities become apparent and therefore must be managed. This study examines one such situation by analyzing how conservative Christian women, who were married to gay men, negotiated feminine identities in marital situations that challenged the legitimacy of traditional gender ideologies and practices. To investigate how these women coped, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 participants of Christian support groups for wives of homosexual (...) men. Through support group participation, these wives learned two key strategies, redefining homosexuality and submitting to God, to transform the meanings and emotional experiences associated with their marital situations. An analysis of the use and the consequences of these strategies shows how they empowered the wives to positively redefine their marriages and themselves while justifying the existing pattern of gender relations. (shrink)

Talk of gender identity is at the core of heated current philosophical and political debates. Yet, it is unclear what it means to have one. I examine several ways of understanding this concept in light of core aims of trans writers and activists. Most importantly, the concept should make good trans people’s understanding of their own gender identities and help understand why misgendering is a serious harm and why it is permissible to require information about people’s gender identities (...) in public life. I conclude that none of the available accounts meets these essential criteria, on the assumption that the gender norms of femininity and masculinity are unjustified. But we can, and should, pursue the feminist project without “gender identity”. Such feminism can include trans people because it is possible to account for the specific harm of misgendering without assuming a claim to the recognition of our gender identities. I conclude that we should eliminate the concept of “gender identity.” To understand the phenomena that are putatively captured by “gender identity,” we are better off employing other concepts, such as “sexual dysphoria,” (assigned or aspirational) “gender roles,” and (internalised or endorsed) “gender norms”. These concepts can usefully replace “gender identity” in an individual evaluation of each of the trans people’s claims to inclusion into particular spaces. (shrink)

Childhood innocence has often been treated by scholars as an empty, idealised signifier. This article contests such accounts, arguing that innocence is best regarded as a powerfully unmarked training in heternormativity, alongside class and race norms. This claim will be demonstrated through attention to two recent films addressing childhood: Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy and P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan. The films characterise young femininity as an ‘impossible space’, in which subjects face the contradictory, schizoid demands to simultaneously show both childhood innocence and (...) heteronormative femininity – or else face the threat of a spoiled identity. The plot of each film traces how the protagonist attempts to manoeuvre in the face of and precisely using this contradiction. In dramatising such manoeuvring, the films reveal the surprising forms of subjectivity that can be inhabited for a time in the interstices between age and gender norms, and which might have lasting value. Both films thus drama... (shrink)

To date, Javanese-Indonesian coastal women have only been part of the batik craft industry, but their strategic roles and expressions have never been disclosed or cared. Whereas the feminine side and the aesthetic symbolic adaptation of Batik-crafter women are very important issues in the creation of the Indonesian cultural repertoire. This study succeeded in explaining the visual identity signs and aesthetic structures described by the community of the crafter woman in the Paoman Village, as well as revealing the meaning (...) of the Indramayu written batik motif as a sign in coastal culture. (shrink)

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved, demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a grimly (...) pessimistic Hardy. (shrink)

The ordinary Latin words for ‘lonian’ are lonicus and lonius. Ovid does not use the former at all, and except for one problematical instance applies the latter only to the Ionian Sea . Copyists, editors, and lexicographers, however, credit him, and him only, with Ioniacus, supposedly attested in two passages of almost identical wording.

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and (...) practices. This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

An exploration of the untamed crossroads where 'the feline' and 'the feminine' mingle and make magic. From ancient Egypt to early modern Venice to Edo Japan, the witch trials to the Women's March, Catwoman to cat ladies, kitten play to cat conventions, this book tracks the cat's circuitous connection to women and femininity through a magical lens. By combining historical research, pop culture and art analyses, and original interviews, this book uncovers what the 'feral feminine' might mean to (...) witches, sluts, feminists, artists, historians, philosophers, cat ladies, and cat lovers today. (shrink)

While there has been much focus on the disempowering and incapacitating effects of ‘normative’ femininity, less attention has been paid to the queer possibilities of femininity. Queer femme has been proposed by some as a key site for rethinking femininity. Extending upon these discussions, and drawing on interviews conducted with queer femmes in Australia in 2013, this article proposes focusing on affective dimensions to deepen our understanding of queer femme as more than an identity, but rather, as assemblage Working from (...) the basis of assemblage, this article examines exactly how and why femme bodies queer femininity. However the article also argues that where queer femme discourse distances itself from non-femme, or ‘normative’, femininity, it misses an opportunity for advocating for a different approach to gender presentation within a broader collective. The central argument of this article is that from an affective theory of queer femme as assemblage, we can better understand both queer femme identity and the attachments to femininity that people maintain more generally, without relying on a binary logic that proclaims femininity as only disempowering or empowering, queer or not queer enough. (shrink)

Le présent article propose d’étudier le métissage culturel, social et linguistique qui compose les identités féminines dans les œuvres de Malika Mokeddem, auteure algérienne de langue française. Cette écrivaine, engagée dans la dénonciation des inégalités entre femmes et hommes, y interroge la notion d’identité à travers l’exploration de différentes images hybrides des corps — l’altérité y tenant une place prépondérante. Refuser le clivage identitaire apparaît dans ses productions romanesques comme un acte fécond, car cela permet d’échapper à l’enfermement dans les (...) clichés et les stéréotypes, en amenant à la création d’identités nomades et plurielles. Dès lors, on ne saurait parler du corps féminin, au singulier, mais bien des corps féminins. Les nombreuses hybridations construisent la réflexion sur les corps des femmes : la singularité d’une identité essentialisante est réfutée au profit d’un corps-texte, se faisant le support des identités plurielles des femmes. This paper wishes to study the cultural, social and linguistic interbreeding which forms women’s identities in Malika Mokeddem’s books, a French-speaking Algerian author. Committed to the denunciation of inequalities between men and women, this author question the notion of identity through the exploration of several hybrid images of bodies—where otherness occupies an important place. In her fictional productions, to refuse the identity division seems a fertile action: it allows to escape from an imprisonment of clichés and stereotypes, by creating nomadic and plural identities. From then on, we can’t speak of a “woman body” but only of women bodies, in its plural form. The various hybridations build a reflection about the bodies of women: the singularity of an essentializing identity is refuted in favour of a “body-text” becoming the medium of women’s plural identities. (shrink)

This article uses a comparative-case research design of two different national beauty pageants in Nigeria to ask how and why gendered nationalisms are constructed for different audiences and aims. Both contests claim to represent “true Nigerian womanhood” yet craft separate models of idealized femininity and present different nationalist agendas. I argue that these differences stem from two distinct representations of gendered national identities. The first pageant, “Queen Nigeria,” whose winners do not compete outside of Nigeria, brands itself as a (...) Nigerian-based pageant, centered on a cultural-nationalist ideal, which is focused on revitalizing and appreciating Nigerian culture to unify the nation. In contrast, the second contest, “The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria,” utilizes “international standards” to select and send contestants to Miss World and Miss Universe, the top pageants in the world, and promotes a cosmopolitan-nationalist ideal, which remains concentrated on propelling and integrating Nigeria into the international arena. (shrink)

Modern feminist movements run the risk of being appropriated by capitalist agenda and commodified for mass appeal, thus stripping them of their revolutionary potential. I would propose that in order for feminism to challenge this, movements may want to consider the subversion of subjectivity. Deleuze and Guattari's notions of becoming-animal and becoming-woman emphasise a subjectivity not confined by rigid identity, such as man/woman. However, feminists have challenged this theory, suggesting it is difficult to both fight for and dispel the very (...) same notion, that is, woman. I argue that in first considering the feminine subject via the Lacanian understanding of ‘Woman’, it can be argued that feminine subjects can engage with becoming-animal to destabilise the notion of ‘Woman’. Riot Grrls, FEMEN and Pussy Riot all demonstrate tactics which could be said to utilise becoming-animal and have had varying success in avoiding commodification. (shrink)

Existing research on women’s construction of professional identities and, more specifically, on leader identities in the workplace, has traditionally focused mainly on western contexts. This article aims to extend this focus by investigating the position of women in the workplace in India. We do this by discursively analyzing audio-taped semi-structured interviews with women who are working in the corporate sector in India. The aim of these analyses is to present a number of case studies about the unique challenges (...) that women face at the workplace in the urban Indian context, especially when they take up leadership positions. The issues they grapple with are the collision of the traditional dominant discourses on appropriate female behavior and the new professional identities that these women wish to embrace. The paper discusses how these female professionals mainly construct two quite diverging identities: either as nurturing mentors or as aggressive professionals who are involved in activities traditionally viewed as “a man’s domain”. Conclusions are then drawn regarding how these professional identities acquiesce to, counter, or — as is the case in one interview — carefully mould, hegemonic discourses of femininity in India. (shrink)

Issues surrounding birth and death have been fundamental for Western philosophy as well as for individual existence. The contributors to this volume unravel the gendered aspects of the classical philosophical discourses on death, bringing in discussions about birth, creativity, and the entire chain of human activity. By linking their work to major thinkers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Beauvoir, and Arendt, and to major philosophical currents such as ancient philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, and social and political philosophy, they challenge prevailing feminist articulations (...) of birth and death. These philosophical reflections add an important sexual dimension to current thinking on identity, temporality, and community. (shrink)

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Shiva Hemmati This paper examines Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre through Irigaray’s notion of feminine divine in order to argue how Charlotte Brontë’s main characters achieve their autonomous gendered identity by expressing their erotic desire. It discusses the resistance of Charlotte Brontë’s female protagonist, Jane Eyre, to the dichotomies of active subject/passive object, self/other, body/mind, passion/intellect, and the domination/submission through her ethical and intersubjective (...) relationship with Rochester, her counterpart, rather than being an object of his desire. It is argued how Jane challenges these dualities of patriarchal society and the logic of the same by expressing her erotic nature. Where the patriarchal society tries to confine women in the patriarchal culture, Brontë develops Jane within and against those confines and allows her to experience her female desire by exploring the internal and external nature. Jane’s liberation from the dualities can be read through the lens of Irigaray’s feminine divine which focuses on women’s autonomous gendered identity and creates a balance between their passion and reason. Charlotte Brontë indicates how women are able to achieve individuality, social standing, and subjective identity by expressing their female desire. (shrink)

Yan Yuan (1635-1704) has long been a controversial figure in the study of Chinese intellectual and cultural history. Although marginalized in his own time largely due to his radical attack on Zhu Xi (1130-1200), Yan became elevated as a great thinker during the early twentieth century because of the drastic changes of modern Chinese intellectual climate. In Body, Ritual and Identity : A New Interpretation of the Early Qing Confucian Yan Yuan (1635-1704), Yang Jui-sung has demonstrated that the complexity of (...) Yan's ideas and his hatred for Zhu Xi in particular need be interpreted in light of his traumatic life experiences, his frustration over the fall of the Ming dynasty, and anxiety caused by the civil service examination system. Moreover, he should be better understood as a cultural critic of the lifestyle of educated elites of late imperial China. By critically analyzing Yan's changing intellectual status and his criticism that the elite lifestyle was unhealthy and feminine, this new interpretation of Yan Yuan serves to shed new light on our understanding of the features as well as problems of educated elite culture in late imperial China"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Examining changing role models for masculine identity--from cowboy in the 1950s to Terminator in the 1990s, from flesh-and-blood man to machine--this book suggests that men need new role models and that sufficient room needs to be left for the expression of male vulnerability, a psychic space that would accept attitudes and behaviors traditionally labeled as "feminine." This new model, Badinter argues, may reduce the profound effects of homophobia and misogyny.

ABSTRACT Social media has given way to information and prosumption-oriented discursive fields wherein individuals construct their own social identities. Although interactivity, multimodality, user-centeredness and accessibility are the unique aspects of digital media but the fact that digital media as effective spaces for representing extreme self/other representation while being anonymous and free from following social norms, can cause dysfunctional social behaviours such as cyber hate. Mirroring the normative notions of femininity, masculinity and gender stereotype allows groups and individuals to connect (...) and express similar manifestations of hate, which, often result in the emergence of a ‘discursive spiral of hate’, misogyny and sexism. This paper draws on the important caveats discussed around Social Media-Critical Discourse Studies understanding of the contemporary digital discourses to deconstruct the complex relations between gender, hate speech and celebrities’ discourses on social media. In particular, how Lena Dunham, American celebrity, portrays herself on her Instagram page by going against the hegemonic views and how the audiences, i.e. the digital prosumers perceive that portrayal. Analysing 2000 user-generated comments deconstruct how women are required to suppress their feeling and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. (shrink)

Examining changing role models for masculine identity--from cowboy in the 1950s to Terminator in the 1990s, from flesh-and-blood man to machine--this book suggests that men need new role models and that sufficient room needs to be left for the expression of male vulnerability, a psychic space that would accept attitudes and behaviors traditionally labeled as "feminine." This new model, Badinter argues, may reduce the profound effects of homophobia and misogyny.

This article critically examines what might be titled the feminisation of success that is ascribed to optimistic characterisations of new constructions of femininity for young women in the UK, particularly in relation to classed positions. In order to do this it is necessary to understand the complex relationship between feminism, post-feminism, neoliberalism and femininities, especially since the millennium. Young women have been positioned as the beneficiaries of successful social and political change which, together with ideas of individualism and reflexive constructions (...) of identity, almost mandate young women to embody success. The article seeks to examine and assess the discursive constructions of ‘successful femininities’ in relation to their normative limitations and asks in particular whether the putative existence of ‘new femininities’ is attainable for all young women. With the impact of over a decade of neoliberal policies and austerity measures being felt by many, it is argued that the discourses of ‘successful femininities’ work to obscure the recalibrated inequalities that have been forged by neoliberal conditions. (shrink)

This article examines the production of consecrated femininity in contemporary Polish convents. Drawing on qualitative data from 35 interviews in five religious communities the article explores the type of female agency which transforms the dominant model of Polish femininity instead of resisting it. Following Lois McNay’s concept of narrative identity, the article argues that female agency does not necessarily emerge out of subversion of the male-dominated Polish Catholic Church. Rather than simply being placed within discursive structures, Catholic nuns reflexively alter (...) them by using a mixture of gender ideology and spiritually driven gender work in order to produce coherent and socially meaningful narratives of consecrated femininity. (shrink)

Starting with Richard Wright’s controversial address to the Paris Congress of Black Writers and Authors of 1956, this article explores Wright’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s focus on existential freedom as key to an emancipatory political subjectivity. Both Wright and Beauvoir reject the content of identity formed via oppression, seeking to move beyond categories of culture, religion, femininity and blackness. They argue that solidarity can be better forged across identity groups by nurturing a political subjectivity that recognizes the historical and political (...) impact of embodied identities but is driven by ontological freedom expressed in collective action and dissociation with normative categories. Putting Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices in conversation with Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, we can more fully appreciate Wright’s political writing after he left the United States. Here we see the potential for solidarity across borders, and with women and other oppressed peoples. Most important, we witness these two thinkers imagining political invocations that do not reinforce political meanings given to bodies, thus allowing new forms of solidarity and collective action to emerge. (shrink)

Dans chaque culture et chaque époque parmi les fonctions des couvre-chefs apparaît celle d’élément symbolique et de signalétique. Cette contribution se veut une réflexion sur le couvre-chef féminin comme élément chargé de signifier l’identité : de genre, de religion, mais aussi sociale et donc comme support sémantique de l’appartenance. Ce qui sera fait en examinant en particulier les prescriptions relatives aux couvre-chefs dans les lois édictées dans deux régions de l’Italie centrale à la fin du Moyen Âge et au début (...) de l’époque moderne. Les interprétations de l’obligation imposées aux femmes par un passage de saint Paul (1 Cor. 11,3) mais aussi les lois civiques qui les obligent à garder toujours la tête couverte à l’Église et dans les rues de la cité procurent diverses informations. Elles montrent la volonté des législateurs de discipliner la société urbaine et d’obtenir des avantages de la désobéissance à ces règles, mais aussi la résistance opposée par une partie des femmes et, plus généralement, la force du phénomène de la mode. (shrink)

This article argues that eighteenth-century theatrical reviews and biographical descriptions equate the physical decline of the aging actress with the loss of her identity. It analyses disappearing selfhood through an investigation of the intersection of gender and age in William Hazlitt’s essays on retiring players: namely, “Miss O’Neill’s Retirement,” “Mr. Kemble’s Retirement,” and “Mrs. Siddons’ Lady Macbeth.” In these essays, Hazlitt suggests that the actress only maintains her public identity through an early departure from the stage. This is enforced by (...) societal understandings of normative and desirable femininity as youthful. To emphasize the feminine loss that accompanied aging, Hazlitt and his contemporaries would often juxtapose a player’s physical body with those of younger players, as well as with the memory—or ghost—of its own younger form. (shrink)