What is the matter of feminist criticism?

This paper is situated in the context of feminist debates around nature, culture, the body and essentialism, and focuses specifically on matter and materiality. In part, it is a response to recent developments in the natural sciences which suggest that strictly social constructionist and/or epistemological approaches to matter may be inadequate to the task of analysis and critique. It begins by considering some of the specific conditions under which the sex/gender model emerged, and its implications, before addressing the work of three contemporary theorists who are engaged with differing conceptions of matter, ontology and substance. I suggest that, while not necessarily providing ‘solutions’, these projects raise the kinds of questions that promise torevivify the flesh and blood of feminist critique.     

Governing peacekeeping: the role of authority and expertise in the case of sexual violence and trauma

Abstract

The surprising authority of gender expertise on sexual violence within post-Cold War peacekeeping can be understood by tracing how sexual violence became linked with political torture and combat violence in peacekeeping security rationality. The linkage emerged from the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) theory within anti-Vietnam war activism, which gained international authority during the 1980s. Post-Cold War narratives of ‘multi-dimensional’ peacekeeping as the policing and rehabilitation of perpetrators and victims for self-government drew on PTSD expertise on ‘integrity violations’, thus problematizing sexual violence. However, gender expertise should not be dismissed as providing ideological cover for imperialist projects: the contingent authority gender expertise has claimed has disrupted the peacekeeping narrative by representing peacekeeping operations as fostering flourishing sex industries in which integrity violations are a norm.     

Feminism and the siren call of law

Feminists have so often declared and celebrated the fecundity of the relationship between feminism and legal reform that critique of legal doctrine and norms, together with proposals for their reconstruction, have become the hallmarks of the modern feminist engagement with law. Yet today the long-cherished ‘truth’ about law’s potentially beneficial impact on women’s lives has started to fade and the quest for legal change has become fraught with problems. In responding to the aporetic state in which feminist legal scholarship now finds itself, this paper offers a recounting of the relationship between feminism and the politics of legal reform. However, in so doing, it seeks neither to support nor to oppose these politics. Instead, it explores the historical contingencies that made this discourse possible. Utilizing Foucault’s concept of episteme, it demarcates the nineteenth century as the historical moment in which this discourse arose, and tracing the epistemic shifts underpinning the production of knowledge, locates its positivities at the interface of the time’s episteme and the discourse of transcendental subjectivity that it engendered.

语言观的颠覆与重建——论法国女权主义文学批评

法国的女权主义文学批评主要是针对妇女与语言的关系问题,创立了"女性写作"理论,以激进的态度来颠覆男权语言观对女性的压抑.为此,法国的3位著名的女权主义文学批评家海伦娜·西苏、露西·伊瑞加雷和朱莉娅·克里斯蒂娃分别创立了"女性写作"、"女人腔和女性谱系"和"符号学"来在语言中建构主体.但她们的共同弱点是过分强调女性的生理和语言,带有明显的空想色彩.     

试析女性主义心理学的三种研究取向

西方主流心理学植根于经验实证主义传统,认为科学是客观的和价值中立的。这种观点与女性主义理论格格不入。女性主义心理学试图调和女性主义理论与传统心理科学观之间的冲突,在其研究历程中形成了三种研究取向：一是实证主义取向的女性主义心理学,强调遵循实证主义研究传统,重新改造主流的心理科学,以服务于女性主义目标;二是现象学取向的女性主义心理学,强调从女性立场出发,创建一个全新的,“以女性为中心”的心理科学来代替传统的心理科学;三是后现代取向的女性主义心理学,强调采用解构的方法,重新解读主流心理学中的关于女性的所谓“科学的”知识,揭示心理学中的男性中心主义偏见。     

Feminism and the Gender Recognition Act 2004

This paper argues, first, that the legal construction of transsexualism is a matter of interest, not only to members of the trans community, but to all students of gender, including feminists. The paper then proceeds to explain and analyse, using feminist perspectives, key aspects of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in the light of the recent caselaw concerning the rights of trans persons. The 2004 Act, it is argued, is a conservative move, which attempts to deny the threat transsexualism poses to the binary system of gender, by instigating a system to formally ‘recognise’ only men and or women. However, the way in which the Act constructs the public/private divide and the mind/body relation carries potential for legal recognition of subject positions which may in a variety of ways be ‘beyond’ the binary system that is currently orthodox. The paper can as such be read as a case study in the legal (re)construction of gender, the gender/sex relation, and the widespread tendency to construct gender conservatively.     

To Pay Suspicious Attention: Following the Weave of ‘Mixed Logics’ in Women’s Ethical Decision Making

This article explores areas of law loosely within English equity and trusts law that have not conventionally been subject to feminist debate, and within the context of a discussion about feminist method. The particular areas examined are whistleblowing and trustees’ powers of investment, each of which calls for consideration of decision-making processes which have an ethical content. These sites are chosen because they take debate outside the all too familiar locations of woman or ‘the body of woman’, including the family home, where feminist analysis in relation to equity and trusts tends to stray. In exploring these chosen fields, Hobby’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 219–255) critique of gender dimensions in relation to whistleblowing and Dunn’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 179–196) account of women trustees’ investment decisions are evaluated and developed. The debate within feminist legal criticism of the possibility of integrating an ‘ethics of care’ and an ‘ethics of rights’ is acknowledged. Whilst acknowledging of the difficulty of adopting an approach that recognises ‘mixed logics’, it is concluded that women (and men) do integrate the ethics of care and the ethics of rights in their decision-making. It is argued that the effort should be made to trace the specific weave in particular circumstances, thereby paying suspicious attention to the values that underlie courts’ analyses of ethical choices.     

中西女性主义文学批评差异的原因探究

中西方传统文化的不同是中西女性主义文学批评产生差异的历史原因,其中对其产生较大影响的有:二元对立与阴阳调和对女性主义文学批评的影响;中国传统的“孝亲观”对女性主义文学批评的影响;中西文明发展逻辑的差异对女性主义文学批评的影响(文化落差的影响)。除了传统文化的影响,中西方女性主义文学批评的不同背景是其产生差异的现实原因。     

女性学的研究方法及其学科意义

文章在简单介绍国内学者对女性学研究方法主要研究成果的基础上,回顾和评价女性学研究方法的发展历程及其学科意义,揭示女性学研究方法的主要特点。     

The Question of Evil and Feminist Legal Scholarship

In this article, we argue that feminist legal scholars should engage directly and explicitly with the question of evil. Part I summarises key facts surrounding the prosecution and life-long imprisonment of Myra Hindley, one of a tiny number of women involved in multiple killings of children in recent British history. Part II reviews a range of commentaries on Hindley, noting in particular the repeated use of two narratives: the first of these insists that Hindley is an icon of female evil; the second, less popular one, seeks to position her as a victim. In Part III, the article broadens out and we explain why we think feminist legal scholars should look at the question of evil. In large part, the emphasis is on anticipating the range of possible objections to this argument, and on trying to answer these objections by showing how a focus on evil might benefit feminist legal thinking – specifically in relation to the categories of perpetrator and victim and, more generally, in relation to laws motivated by a desire to secure women’s human rights.