Fetishism

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Feminism is the struggle to end sexual oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.

--bell hooks, 1984, p. 26

Feminism is the struggle to end sexual oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class or women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives.

--bell hooks, p. 26

Feminism/feminist theory/feminist criticism has changed over time. Chela Sandoval presents the "commonly cited four-phase feminist history of consciousness.which [she schematizes] as 'women are the same as men,' 'women are different from men,' 'women are superior,' and the fourth catchall category, 'women are a racially divided class'" (1991, p. 9). Sandoval also offers a critique of these categorizations. She notes Jaggar's "dictionary of hegemonic feminist consciousness" which states the descriptive, rather than theoretical, value of scholarship from "feminists of color (such as Paula Gunn Allen, Audre Lorde, Nellie Wong, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Morega, Toni Morrison, Mitsuye Yamada, [and] bell hooks)" (Sandoval, p. 9). Sandoval problematizes the canon of feminist theory and calls for "a new theory and method of oppositional consciousness, a theory only visible when U.S. third world feminist praxis is recognized" (p. 16). For example, hooks does not locate the feminist struggle in one group or with one agenda: "It is essential for continued feminist struggle to end violence against women that this struggle be viewed as a component of an overall movement to end violence" (1984, p. 118). The feminist struggle is within a larger struggle to end violence.

Luce Iriguray's "paradigm of two" is one attempt toward this greater goal. She challenges the singular 'self' of Western philosophy: "Western philosophy, perhaps all philosophies, have started from a singular subject. For centuries, no-one imagined that different subjects might exist and, more particularly, that man and woman might be different subjects" (p. 121). However, the "different subjects" are not related as "one + one + one neutral and separate individuals" (p. 118). It is not an argument for greater inclusion among singular subjects, but a reformulation of 'self' based on sexual difference:

If we are to get away from the omnipotent model of the one and the many, we have to move on to the two , a two which is not two times one itself, not even a bigger or a smaller one, but which would be made up a two which are really different. The paradigm of this two is to be found in sexual difference. Why here? Because it implies two subjects who should not be situated in either a hierarchical or a genealogical relationship. (p. 129)

A new paradigm of this two breaks free from the one-one relation of the self-other. The two are "really different" yet their differences do not necessitate a "hierarchical or a genealogical relationship." The differences maintain a distinction between inside and outside:

The alterity of the other [man] imposes itself on [the woman] because of the extraniety of his behavior, and because of the resistance which he opposes to her own dreams and intentions. But she must constitute the transcendence of the other in a horizontal way, through sharing of life which respects absolutely the other as other." (pp. 138-139)

However, the "extraniety" of the man should not result in an antagonistic exclusion. Although there is "resistance" and man "opposes.her own dreams and intentions," a hierarchical structure is replaced with a "horizontal" one. Irigaray states the possibility of the "two which comes into existence between a man and a woman who meet and respect each other in their irreducibility" (p. 26). Here, the two "meet" and instead of struggle and violence, there is "respect."

References

Iriguray, L. (2000). Democracy begins between two . New York : Routledge.

hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: from margin to center . Boston : South End Press.

Sandoval, C. (1991). U.S third world feminism: The theory and method of oppositional consciousness in the postmodern world. Gender, 10 , 1-24.

 

Contributed by Jennifer Chung