Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism

by Mascia-Lees, Frances E.; Sharpe, Patricia

• ISBN13: 9780791447161
• ISBN10: 0791447162
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World offers an engaged cultural criticism in a postfeminist context. At the end of the twentieth century, an increasingly globalized world has given rise to a cultural complexity characterized by a rapid increase in competing discourses, fragmented subjectives, and irreconcilable claims over cultural representation and who has the right to speak for, or about, "others". While feminism has traditionally been a potent site for debates over questions that have arisen out of this context, recently, it has become so splintered and suspect that its insights are often dismissed as predictable, seriously reducing its capacity to offer powerful cultural criticism. In this postfeminist context, the authors argue for a cultural criticism that is strategic, not programmatic and that preserves the multiple commitments, ideas, and positions required of interactions and identifications across lines of cultural, racial, and gender difference.

Author Biography

Patricia Sharpe is Dean of Academic Affairs at Simon's Rock College of Bard.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction
On Shaky Ground: Shifting Terrain and the Predicaments of Postfeminism	3	(16)
Part I: Shifting Stance: Strategic (Re)Positioning
The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective	19	(24)
The Anthropological Unconscious	43	(14)
Part II: Taking a Seat at the Movies: Assessing Theories of Representation and Identification
An Oblique Look: Theorizing the ``Other'' as Spectator	57	(22)
Courting the Nineteenth Century: Object, Image, and Fetishistic Desire	79	(14)
Self Help Hollywood Style: Masculinity, Masochism, and Identification with the Child Within	93	(10)
Piano Lessons: Jane Campion as (Counter)Ethnographer	103	(14)
Part III: On Display: Style and (Ad)dress in Consumer Culture
The Female Body in Postmodern Consumer Culture: Subjection and Agency at the Mall	117	(26)
Arts and Crafts Mass Marketed	143	(10)
Part IV: Taking a Stand: Subjects and (Dis)courses in the Academy
Body as Text: Young Women's Negotiations of Subjectivity	153	(14)
Interpreting Charges of Sexual Harassment: Competing Discourses and Claims	167	(24)
Conclusion
Locked In, Locked Out, or Locked Up?	191	(12)
Notes	203	(14)
References	217	(22)
Index	239