Does woman exist?: deconstruction of female subjectivity and physicality in philosophy of postmodernism
Thearticle reveals the problematic nature of sets of traditional and feminist discourses, which promote the circulation of the objective,subjective and physical woman's "evidences" in present-day culture. А. The classic philosophical dualism produces a binaryconceptualization of gender differences. Under this concept the female beginning is contrasted to the male one, and opposition itselfbuilds in the general ontological perspective, where the transcendent, the active, the intelligent and the spiritual is contrasted to theimmanent, the passive, the sensual and the material. Therefore, a female is an object in relation to the subject / human / man, and theontological status in the given system seems intact. However, the objective ontological female status loses its persuasiveness with thecriticism of the traditional Western metaphysics and with the beginning of the "post-modern era". The status of female is interpreted asthe one constructed by patriarchal traditional dualistic metaphysics, artificially imposed on women as their natural destiny. So, theontological status of women, as an object is deconstructed by the criticism of Western metaphysics. B. At the same time, from thebeginning of the 18th century women begin a long and persistent struggle for their economic and political rights. The movementtransforms into an independent field of first theoretical and later scientific discourse in the 20th century. Due to these changes the ofwoman transforms. To fight for rights and freedoms, to save one's reasonable nature, and to urge for cultural representation one musthave subjectivity. Thus, the feminist theory and practice are based on the evidence of the female subject understood, however, in thetraditional terms as a strong-willed, free and rational individual. Post-feminist analysis based one the concepts of "power", "discourse"and "subjection" detects the historically constructed character of feminine subjectivity. Mechanisms are revealed that feminist discourseuses to create a female subject as its non-discourse and natural basis. Thus, this ontological paradigm turns to be a metaphysic constructrepressively prescribing the woman norm in the feminist society. C. The woman body as the last base of the ontological evidence offemale does not meet the denaturalizing postmodern criticism and discovers its constructed, discursively stipulated nature. So, theexistence of women in terms of present post-feminism theory is explicated as a serious philosophical problem. All of the describedabove forms of construction of female aimed at destroying the possibility of female et cetera, which is indeed the only way to savefemale.
Keywords
женщина, онтологический статус, телесность, субъекция, власть, woman, ontological status, physicality, subjection, powerAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Khitruk Yekaterina B. | National Research Tomsk State University | lubomudr@vtomske.ru |
References
