THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:FEMINIST THEORIES
4.4. FEMINISM(S)
4.4.2. Feminist poststructuralism theory (Weedon, 1987)
126 This is not, however, to claim that Zulu culture is not patriarchal: even if the woman can have land ownership and property rights, she is still subordinated to a male. Therefore, to understand women’s oppression and gender relations nowadays we must first look at the original culture. As alluded to earlier on in this section, some aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory closely relate to African feminism, which I briefly discuss below.
127 subjective (an adjective) means to base on or being influenced by ‘self’ or one's personal opinions. According to this theory, subjectivity is the product of culture and it opens up to change and is constructed; that is, it is not innate, not genetically determined, but socially produced (Weedon, 1987). The terms subject and subjectivity are central to poststructuralist theory and mark a crucial break with humanist conceptions of the individual that are still central to Western philosophy and political and social organisation.
Humanist discourses presuppose an essence at the heart of the individual which is unique, fixed and coherent, and which makes her what she is.
As we acquire language we learn to give voices to meanings and to our experiences;furthermore, we learn to understand it and to apply it to particular ways of thinking (Weedon, 1987, p. 83). This theory says it is in language that we construct meanings; in other words, words have no inherent meaning, but we give meaning to experience via language (Weedon, 1987). Feminist post-structuralism states that “as common sense changes,'human nature' has to undergo redefinition, and gender is a particularly active site of such change” (Weedon, 1987, p. 77 – 78). According to feminist poststructuralism theory gender is fluid rather than rigid as portrayed by liberal feminist theory. This means “men can involve themselves in previously female spheres such as childcare and domestic chores to a much greater degree without risking censure or derision” (Weedon, 1987, p. 78).
According to this theory, people should be judged according to their experiences (ibid, p.
80). The ways of thinking constitute our consciousness, positions with which we identify structure, our sense of ourselves and our subjectivity (Woodon, 1987, p. 80 - . Poststructural feminists argue that being brought up in particular system(s) of meanings and values, people may resist alternatives. Also, by moving out of familiar circles through education or politics, people are exposed to alternative ways of constituting the meanings of their experiences (Weedon, 1987, p. 108). Moving out of familiar circles is itself a practice of consciousness-raising which is an activity used by women’s liberation
128 movements and embraced by radical feminists. Contradictions and conflicts between what you were taught and what you discover for yourself or reality can lead to a positive change in social practices. This is the theory that offers how imbalance can be challenged and transformed. The theory also accounts for the limitations of change.
Poststructuralist feminist theory by Weedon (1987)suggests that patriarchal power is structural and exists in the institutions and social practices of our society and cannot be explained by the intentions, good or bad, of individual women or men. This is not to deny that individual women and men are often the agents of oppression, but suggests that we need a theory which can explain how and why people oppress each other, a theory of subjectivity, conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions which can account for the relationship between the individual and socialist feminist poststructuralism (Weedon, 1987, p.3).
The social institutions thatwe enter as individuals, that is, the family, the church, pop culture and so on, pre-existed before us. We learn their modes of operation and the values thatthey seek to maintain as true, natural or good. As children we learn what girls and boys should be, and later what men and women should be. These “subject positions”, ways of being an individual and the values inherent in them, may not all be compatible, and we will learn that we can choose between them (Weedon, 1987, p.3).
Weedon (1987, p.3)says women have a range of possibilities:
In theory almost every walk of life is open to us, but all the possibilities that we share with men involve accepting, negotiating or rejecting what is constantly being offered to us as our primary role, that of wife and mother. Whatever else we do, we should be attractive and desirable to men and ideally, our sexuality should be given to one man and our emotional energy directed at him and the children of the marriage. This message comes to us from a wide range of sources, that is,
129 children's books, women's magazines, religion, through advertising, television, and so on.
The concept of subjectivity in feminist postructuralism means that the relationship between experience, social power and resistence recognises the importance of the subjective in constituting meaning of women’s lived experiencesand accounts for different subject positions. This questions some of the feminists’ implicit assumptions about women’s experiences. The main questions raised within this theory relates to how we know what we know. What is the legitimacy of these understandings and whose interest is being served? So, like African feminism, this theory challenges feminists themselves to self-reflect and question the truth of their own thoughts, which are subjective. Like the African feminist theory that challenges the position of middle-class feminists that speak on issues relating to peasant or working-class women, this theory challenges feminists to seek ways of dealing with gender and women issues “that include humility, skepticism and self-criticism” (Weedon, 1987). Our own “positionality (gender, race, class, age, and so on) are markers of our relational positions” and we should be able to “account for cultural diversities and differences between women” (Weedon, 1987).
Weedon (1987) says patriarchy refers to power relations in which women’s interests are subordinated to those of men. Patriarchal power rests on the social meanings given to biological and sexual difference. In patriarchal discourse the nature and social role of women are defined in relation to the norm, which is male. This finds its clearest expression in the generic use of the terms 'man' and 'he' to encompass all of humankind.
These power relations take many forms, from sexual division of labour in the family, to gender roles in procreation and parenting, and the social representations and constructions of femininity and masculinity. Weedon (1987) sees patriarchy as the social system that positions men to occupy a dominant and privileged category over women, who occupy the subordinate and disadvantaged position in a heterosexual norm.
130 Foucault’s (1981) theory of deconstruction, discourse and power produces an analysis of patriarchal power relations which enables the development of active strategies for change. Feminist poststructuralist approaches deny the central humanist assumption that women or men have essential natures. They insist on the social construction of gender in discourse, a social construction that encompasses the desire, the unconscious and the emotional. Furthermore:
Patriarchy implies a fundamental organisation of power on the basis of biological sex, an organisation which, from a poststructuralist perspective, is not natural and inevitable, but socially produced. While biological differences exist, the degree to which they are emphasised, and the meanings they are given, vary. For example, sexual difference can be looked at as a fundamental binary opposition or as a continuum thatallows for degrees of difference. Regarding poststructuralism, biological differences do not have inherent 'natural' or social meaning. Their meanings are produced within a range of conflicting discourses – from medicine and sociobiology to radical feminism – and are not uniform. (Foucault, 1981, cited in Weedon, 1987, p.127)
According to Foucault, a discourse (which is seen as a structuring principle of society, in social institutions, modes of thought and individual subjectivity) produces the subjectivity.
It produces that quality we take most for granted – our very sense of self. Discourses represent political interests and in consequence are constantly vying for status and power (Weedon, 1987, p.41):
Discourses, in Foucault's work, are ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which are inherent in such knowledges and the relations between them. Discourses are more than
131 ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature' of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects which they seek to govern.
The ways in which discourse constitutes the minds and bodies of individuals is always part of a wider network of power relations, often with institutional bases. Foucault points to the way in which women's bodies were given meaning by and became subject to modern science from the beginning of the 18th century onwards. They were, he argued, subject to a process of "hysterisation”, made into nothing but wombs, and simultaneously made “nervous”. As such, discourses become the most invisible and most insidious sources of oppression (Foucault, 1981, cited in Weedon, 1987, p.108). Feminist poststructuralist theory therefore offers a useful framework for understanding the custom of ukuthwala, which, in some way, relates to patriarchy, gender, gender roles, sex, sexuality, body, power relations, masculinities, and manhood in the families and communities at large in some of the rural parts of KZN.
4.4.2.1. Foucault’s concept of bio-power, knowledge and the body, as explained by Smart (2002)
The concept of bio-power (women’s bodies) as not being blank slates or ‘docile’ is interrogated in this thesis. Within women’s bodies, women are subjected to meanings they make about life; for example, they have choices to connive with men who thwalathem. Foucault, (1976 cited in Smart, 2002) argues that “within sociological discourse a conception of the body has generally been absent from analysis and when present it has assumed the form of a natural body, a body that is without either history or culture”.
In Foucault’s work a conception of the body as a central component in the operation of power relations has occupied a prominent place (Smart, 2002). Genealogical analysis
132 reveals the body as an object of knowledge and as a target for the exercise of power.
The body is shown to be located in a political field, invested with power relations which render it ‘docile’ and ‘productive’, and thus politically and economically useful. Focault’s genealogical analyses begin with an examination of the character of modern power relations and questions how power is exercised and how it is alsoassociated with knowledge. Foucault is relevant for this study, which deals with women’s bodies that are literally carried away by men with the intention to marry.