Monday, March 23, 2009

Feminist Criticism?

While reading over the chapter in BT on Feminist criticism the explanation of "...that between the terms 'feminist', 'female', and 'feminine'. As Toril Moi explains, the first is 'a political position', the second 'a matter of biology', and the third 'a set of culturally defined characteristics'". This reminds me a little bit of how the word and language we use for things is in itself almost insignificant at times, in regards to why we call a table a table, etc. 

I related these two ideas because in dealing with the idea of feminine, how can we really define this word, or even a feminist? Female even to an extent can be argued, but due to the inherent biological requirements is easier to define. It seems that literary criticism should be able to cross cultures and societies by using tangible ideas/ways of looking at literature, etc. But with the feminist approach, it seems that you may not be able to fully achieve this. 

Because if feminine and feminist are defined differently, depending on the culture and society, the pressures put on females or the independence, would you not also have an imbalanced way of criticism that may not be able to "cross" those cultural divides? I guess what my question is coming down to is if a society or culture has not been able to fully express female independence or thought, can they have feminist criticism?  

1 comment:

  1. Your question is interesting. I think so though, merely because Feminism is a goal. If one calls herself/himself a feminist it means they have the ideology that someday equality will come. I think feminist criticism tries to find women in the literary canon and etch out a place us in our own history. I don't think we can have equality without first finding our own history and that's what the criticism is all about.

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