Academic literature on the topic 'Poststructuralist Feminism'

What kind of ethics can we consider in the framework of feminist phenomenology that takes poststructuralist feminism into account? This seems to be a difficult task for at least two reasons. First, it is not yet clear what ethics in poststructuralist feminism is. Second, phenomenology and poststructuralism are still regarded as opposites. As a phenomenologist with strong affinities to poststructuralism, I want to take on this challenge. In this paper, I will argue that phenomenology and poststructuralism share the idea of the “indeterminable.” If this idea is applied to the topic of gender, we can speak of an “indeterminable gender.” Moreover, phenomenology and poststructuralism support an ethical attitude toward genders inasmuch as they both avoid making problematic determinations. My goal is to explore what the so-called “indeterminable gender” is and to illuminate the ethical implications of this concept.

Our intention is to carry out an introductory comparative analysis of three relevant feminist approaches that divide the gender studies scene. Despite the risks, the methodological decision was made by theoretical research (Salvador, 1986; Apple, 1994), aware that it is politically informed, as theories reveal interests of the class, gender, sexuality, nation, race/ethnicity, generation, and are linked to social practice. To proceed with the study, we highlight three aspects, which are: the assumptions, the notion of gender, and the political commitment. The results we have reached inform about the existence of divergences and convergences between these feminist approaches, confirming the irreconcilable divergence between feminist historiography and poststructuralist feminism, inconsistent convergence between poststructuralist feminism, and decolonial feminism, and convergence between feminist historiography and decolonial feminism.Keywords: Feminist historiography. Poststructuralist feminism. Decolonial feminism.

If PMIA invites us to reflect on the state of feminist theory today, it must be because there is a problem. Is feminist theory thought to be in trouble because feminism is languishing? Or because there is a problem with theory? Or—as it seems to me—both? Theory is a word usually used about work done in the poststructuralist tradition. (Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault are “theory” Simone de Beauvoir and Ludwig Wittgenstein are not.) The poststructuralist paradigm is now exhausted. We are living through an era of “crisis,” as Thomas Kuhn would call it, an era in which the old is dying and the new has not yet been born (74–75). The fundamental assumptions of feminist theory in its various current guises (queer theory, postcolonial feminist theory, transnational feminist theory, psychoanalytic feminist theory, and so on) are still informed by some version of poststructuralism. No wonder, then, that so much feminist work today produces only tediously predictable lines of argument.

The paper discusses political implications of the feminist revision of psychoanalysis in the works of major representatives of 1970s French poststructuralism, and their current significance. The influence and modifications of Lacan's interpretation of imaginary structure of the Ego and linguistic structure of the unconscious on explanations of the relations between gender and identity developed by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and H?l?ne Cixous are examined. French poststructuralist feminism, developing in the 1970s, was the second major current in French feminism of the times, different from and in a way opposed to Simone de Beauvoir's approach. While de Beauvoir explores 'women's condition' determined by social and historical circumstances, French feminists of poststructuralist persuasion engage with problems of unconscious psychological structuring of feminine identity, women's psychosexuality, theoretical implications of gendered visions of reality, especially in philosophy, semiology and psychology, as well as opening up new discursive possibilities of women's and feminine self-expression through 'women's writing'. Political implications of their approach have remained controversial to this day. These authors have been criticized for dislocating women's activism into the sphere of language and theory, as well as for reasserting the concept of women's nature. Debates over whether we need the concept of women's nature - and if yes, what kind - and over the relation between theory and political activism, have resulted in the split between the so-called 'essentialist' and 'anti-essentialist' approaches in feminist theory, and the subsequent division into American (non-essentialist) and French (partly labeled as essentialist) strands. The division is an oversimplification and overlooks concrete historical circumstances that produced the divergence between 'materialist' and 'linguistic' currents in France.

AbstractThis article has two aims: (i) to bring Judith Butler and Wilfrid Sellars into conversation; and (ii) to argue that Butler's poststructuralist critique of feminist identity politics has metaphilosophical potential, given her pragmatic parallel with Sellars's critique of conceptual analyses of knowledge. With regard to (i), I argue that Butler's objections to the definitional practice constitutive of certain ways of construing feminism is comparable to Sellars's critique of the analytical project geared toward providing definitions of knowledge. Specifically, I propose that moving away from a definition of woman to what one may call poststructuralist sites of woman parallels moving away from a definition of knowledge to a pragmatic account of knowledge as a recognizable standing in the normative space of reasons. With regard to (ii), I argue that the important parallels between Butler's poststructuralist feminism and Sellars's antirepresentationalist normative pragmatism about knowledge enable one to think of her poststructuralist feminism as mapping out pragmatic cognitive strategies and visions for doing philosophy. This article starts a conversation between two philosophers whom the literature has yet to fully introduce to each other.

This paper aims to explore Helen Cixous’ postmodernist trends in her formulations of a new form of writing known as ecriture feminine. The paper attempts to validate the view that Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” is regarded as the manifesto of postmodern feminism. This is done by attempting a critical discourse analysis of Cixous' narrative of ecriture feminine. Deploying a multifaceted-framework, ranging from postmodernism to psychoanalysis through poststructuralist theory and semiotics, the study reveals Cixous' metamorphosing and diversified trend of feminist writing that transposes the subversion of patriarchy into a rather bio-textual feminism, known as bisexuality. The paper highlights the significance of Cixous’ essay as a benchmark of postmodern feminism.

The relationships between peace studies and international relations (IR) has never been easy. The “strategic” nature of inter-state relations in IR and its state-centric focus are some of the big challenges to the humanitarian nature of peace studies. However, the rise of feminism in IR in the 1980s has given us a new promise in opening the field of IR to a greater humanitarian focus which could take even the individual level of analysis into account. IR poststructuralist-feminism - which is understood as an IR feminist perspective which deconstruct the “common assumptions of culture” (Sylvester, 1994) including feminism itself - is particularly progressive in the sense that it does not only provide the room to problematize the basic assumptions of mainstream IR, but also room to even question the premises of the IR feminists themselves, a self-reflective quality shared by contemporary peace studies. One of the latest theoretical developments in poststructuralist-feminist IR is the “adoption” of positive psychology into IR methodology in order to take a deeper look into the mostly forgotten dimension of humans’ capability to flourish even under the most extreme condition (Penttinen, 2013). Again, this new proposal resonates with the current trend in peace studies scholarship in which peacebuilding processes are geared toward fuller ownership by the locals and harnesses their capabilities to survive. This article would like to analyze the potentialities of feminist approaches in IR, particularly those which come from the poststructuralist school of thought, as a fruitful “meeting point” for peace studies and IR. Once we identify the “meeting point,” hopefully it can bring us into a rich inter-disciplinary endeavor in the future as well as a better understanding of the dynamics of peacebuilding practices in the context of international relations.Key Words: international relations, poststructuralist feminist IR, peace studies, positive psychology, reflective practices

AbstractThis paper explores current thinking on the meanings of sex, gender and sexuality and on the relationship between each of these concepts. It suggests that whilst feminist theory has adopted a social constructionist view of gender and, to a lesser extent, sexuality, it has left sex to the conceptual domain of biology. It has also prioritised gender over sexuality conceptually. These issues are explored in the specific area of sexuality and law where it is argued that recent theoretical developments on sex and sexuality within poststructuralist thought have, as yet, failed to influence the dominant understanding of heterosexual relations. Arguably in the field of law and sexuality, feminism has remained wedded to a notion of binary sex and identity politics. The paper then works through two specific instances, namely rape and S/M sexual practice, to identify some of the problems associated with the latter approach. Ultimately it raises questions about whether a poststructuralist politics imbued with feminist ethics might provide us with less essentialist models of masculine/male and feminine/female sexuality without either abandoning feminist political action or falling into a new sexual conservatism.

Over recent years, young feminist activism has assumed prominence in mainstream media where news headlines herald the efforts of schoolgirls in fighting sexism, sexual violence and inequity. Less visible in the public eye, girls’ activism plays out in social media where they can speak out about gender-based injustices experienced and witnessed. Yet we know relatively little about this significant social moment wherein an increasing visibility of young feminism cohabits a stubbornly persistent postfeminist culture. Acknowledging the hiatus, this paper draws on a qualitative project with teenage feminists to explore how girls are using and producing digital feminist media, what it means for them to do so and how their online practice connects with their offline feminism. Using a feminist poststructuralist approach, analyses identified three key constructions of digital media as a tool for feminist practice: online feminism as precarious and as knowledge sharing; and feminism as “doing something” on/offline. Discussing these findings, I argue that there is marked continuity between girls’ practices in “safe” digital spaces and feminisms practised in other historical and geographical locations. But crucially, and perhaps distinctly, digital media are a key tool to connect girls with feminism and with other feminists in local and global contexts.

Using a feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) this research examines discourses surrounding feminist activists within mainstream Western online media articles. The mainstream media can be accused of portraying feminism and its goals negatively (Scharff 2009), often leading to negative consequences regarding identification with the feminist movement (Callaghan et al., 1999). To examine these discourses within mainstream media, 50 articles relating to the Women’s March on Washington were sampled from US and UK online newspaper sites. The findings of this research suggest that although there are both positive and negative discourses surrounding feminist activism within mainstream media, a large proportion were negative, including discourses of ‘feminism is fractured’, ‘hashtag activism’ and ‘What about the men?’ Discussions around intersectionality (including race), social media and men within feminism were seen within these overarching discourses and throughout the research the possible implications of these negative discourses surrounding feminist activists is discussed.

This study focuses upon the relatively unexplored area of sexual harassment in British universities. In sum, the thesis suggests that although MacKinnon's (2004) aim is to enable women to feel more powerful and less stigmatised, the contribution of feminist harassment discourses may, in part, generate in some women an understanding of powerlessness and vulnerability. In particular, it suggests seemingly prevailing discourses surrounding sexual harassment in higher education and considers if and how the women interviewed define themselves through these discourses. Thus, by exploring the power effects of and resistances to these suggested prevailing discourses, it is possible to infer the degree to which these discourses may have constituted the participants' subjectivities. Further, the thesis argues that feminist harassment discourses may have generated specific effects of power with regard to my participants. That is to say, many of my participants seem to understand sexual harassment as exploitative behaviours rooted in the unequal distribution of ascribed power in higher education. Feminism's understanding of power as a static and gendered appears to have generated for the participants, at least in part, the understanding that sex at work is used to humiliate and degrade women, maintaining and reproducing ascribed notions of power. For this research, twenty-four unstructured interviews were carried out with women who had identified themselves as having experienced sexual harassment within higher education, either as a student or a member of staff, or who had witnessed events they had defined as sexual harassment. This was a passionately interested form of inquiry, recognising the partial nature of knowledge and identifying my political positionings (Gill 1995; Aranda 2006). The analysis is Foucauldian oriented, understanding power as fluid - rather than possessed - and as generating particular ways of being. In addition, although it notes that the participants did resists specific effects of power, this resistance always takes place from a new point of power and does not, therefore, carry us beyond power into a power free space. The prevailing discourses suggested from my data are: the 'grades for sex' discourse; the 'all boys together' discourse; the 'trustworthy lecturer' discourse; the 'knickers in a twist' discourse; and the 'sexual harassment as unwanted sexual behaviour' discourse. Supervisors: Dr. Kristin Aune and Dr. Gordon Riches

Background: In 2009, midwifery became a regulated profession and was integrated into the delivery of perinatal health care in Nova Scotia at three model sites. The integration process was challenging for health care providers, and particularly for midwives and nurses, who have different scopes of practice, yet similar roles and skills. Little is known about how midwives and nurses collaborate. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore collaboration between midwives and nurses in Nova Scotia, Canada. Methodology: This research was conducted as an instrumental case study, guided by Stake's approach for qualitative case study research. Intersectional feminist poststructuralism (IFPS) provided the theoretical perspective to explore concepts of; power, discourse, and gender, as they related to collaboration between midwives and nurses. Individual, one on one interviews with 17 participants were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Twenty-five documents were reviewed, and field notes were maintained. Feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings: Four main themes were identified; 1) Negotiating Roles and Practices: ‘Every Nurse is Different, Every Midwife is Different, Every Birth is Different’, 2) Sustaining relationships: ‘The more we can just build relationships with one another’, 3) Reconciling Systemic Tensions: The Medical Model and the Midwifery Model, 4) Moving forward: A Modern Model for Nurses and Midwives Working Together. Discussion and Implications: This study illustrated the potential for building more collaborative teams of midwives and nurses in Nova Scotia, and in Canada. Midwives and nurses in Nova Scotia are positioned to demonstrate leadership in a midwife and nurse led birthing model of care that works. More research, leadership, government funding and support is needed to implement this model of care. Conclusion: The findings of this study can be used to build sustainable, collaborative, equitably distributed midwifery (and birthing) services in Nova Scotia, and throughout Canada.

This dissertation attempts to contribute to the literature on the transformation of gender relations and patriarchy by creating a discursive nexus between two seemingly incompatible paradigms: materialist dialectics as interpreted by Mao Tsetung and poststructuralist feminism. Despite the important differences between the two traditions, it argues that they have important ontological similarities. This creates the potential for a fecund cross-fertilization, a potential which has been largely unrecognized by scholars. This dissertation argues that Mao's ontology of ceaseless transformation arising from universal and concrete contradictions provides an essential foundation for any progressive praxis of social transformation. It examines aspects of how the maoist approach to materialist dialectics was put into practice in revolutionary China, along with a summary of some of the recent contributions to this paradigm by Bob Avakian. It examines the historical experience of transforming patriarchal relations and ideas under Mao and argues that, though there were real shortcomings, the historical experience of revolutionary China remains an essential foundation and contribution to transforming patriarchal gender relations and identities. Focusing on the writings of Judith Butler, it discusses the contributions of poststructuralist feminist, particularly its thorough critique of essentialism and the deconstruction of the categories and conceptual foundations of feminism. Butler's emphasis on the cultural production of gender and sex, along with the need to destabilize the regulatory functions and frameworks which police them, are invaluable in developing the ability of maoist materialist dialectics to transform gender relations. The dissertation includes a discussion of sexuality, violence and democracy as way of pointing towards a thoroughly materialist and dialectical method and approach which can move beyond the anchors of metaphysics while embracing thinking from a wide spectrum, including Queer theory. The dissertation concludes with a brief discussion on how such abstract theoretical concerns are relevant to current political realities.

Despite the growing interest in the issue of identity formation in the broader TESOL research field, few studies have been concerned with the question of female teachers’ identity formation from a feminist poststructuralist perspective. This study also seeks to further the feminist poststructuralist research within the Iranian TESOL and bridge the substantive gap within the existing literature, which is an almost untouched area of research regarding the teachers’ identity formation. This thesis attempts to explore the construction of identities of eight Iranian female teachers of English and the discourses that shape them through examining their narratives, using data gathered from interviews and email correspondences. In a two-year collaboration with the participants, I applied a feminist poststructuralist conceptual framework to examine the participants’ main subject positions and the prevailing discursive practices that construct them. The research data, collected by individual interviews and email correspondence, indicates the teachers’ identities as multiple, complex, and contradictory. I contend that multiple subject positions stem out of the clash of the multiple discourses that are available to them. Impacted by both gender and professional discourses that sometimes even collide, the findings show how these women struggle to conceive a sense of coherent self. The results of the analysis indicate that the gender and professional discourses are of normative, disciplinary, and individualizing nature. Negotiating identities within themselves and within the complex cultural context they live in, these female teachers are involved in an ongoing process of adjustment, adaptation and resistance.

Sexual harassments have since long been an issue all over the world and schools have not been an exception. Reports from Swedish secondary schools show how 47% of the female pupils state that they have, sometime during their time in school, been the victim of sexual harassment. Other studies claim that pupils exposed to sexual harassments will develop low self-esteem and a decreased sense of self. The Swedish curriculum state that all children shall have the right to a harassment free school environment, but still many pupils claim to be exposed to sexual harassment in school. Several studies have theorized about why sexual harassment is so prevalent in schools but what do the pupils think? This study aims to reveal and analyze pupil opinions about sexual harassment; what do they think it is and why do they think it occurs? This will be done from a post-structural feminist point of view with focus on the shaping of identity among the respondents.      The collected results of this study indicate that sexual harassment is mostly due to a dominant form of the heterosexual male ideal where sexual harassment against both men and women is used to secure ones position as a dominant male and to gain access to the hegemonic male group. According to the respondents, sexual harassment have little to do with the victims and in the discussion an alternative approach to handle sexual harassment in school is discussed.

The literary works of Chinese women writers became an important component of literature in the 1980s and 1990s, developing new trends, techniques and perspectives, and revealing the multiplicity of women’s experiences and private lives. The thesis seeks to fill a gap in studies of Chinese literature by examining post-Mao fiction published from 1986 to 2000 by Wang Anyi, Tie Ning and Chi Li from a poststructuralist feminist perspective, and offering fresh insights into their treatment of sexuality, subjectivity and femininity. In doing so, it contributes to the feminist study of Chinese women’s writing and to a better understanding of contemporary Chinese culture in relation to patriarchy, misogyny, feminism and transgression. Specifically, this thesis investigates how these three prominent authors positively assert the notion of sexual difference and form an alternative subjectivity that destabilises traditional humanistic beliefs in the patriarchal system. It analyses their creations of different representations of female subjectivity. It analyses how they negotiate women’s identities and spaces among diverse historical forces in their writing, challenging dominant gender narratives. While all the textual analyses in this thesis are commonly informed by poststructuralist feminist notions of female subjectivity, differences, transgression and spatiality, they demonstrate the writers’ different treatment of feminist themes in social, political and economic aspects. Wang Anyi highlights sexual awakening, the tension between sexual desire and social morality, and women’s self-preservation. Tie Ning discloses the negative effects of political forces on women, including female victimisation and male violence, and valorises women’s self-realisation and self-transformation. With a particular focus on economic aspects, Chi Li pays attention to women’s self-sufficiency and self-affirmation, internationally inspired ideals of femininity, urban consumer culture and sisterhood.

This two year, topic-oriented ethnography documents teacher perceptions of cultural and institutional practices relating to sexual harassment in 12 co-educational, government ACT high schools. Participants include over one hundred and forty teachers, seventy eight of whom have contributed formal interviews. Through analysis and triangulation of ethnographic interviews, participant observation data and school and Departmental documents, the study identifies cultural and institutional practices which, according to teacher perceptions, contribute to: � encouraging sexual harassment; � discouraging reports of sexual harassment; and � discouraging implementation of sexual harassment policy. Emerging cultural and institutional practices include blame attribution, silencing and gender construction which contribute to the marginalisation of some female teachers (in terms of their career); some female students (in terms of their education) and some male students who are perceived to be "gay" (in terms of their friendship groups). The usefulness, limitations and capacity to explain sexual harassment of a range of theoretical approaches are discussed. These approaches include Attribution, Role, Reproduction and Feminist theories. It is argued that, although accounting for the majority of sexual harassment, these theories are limited in their ability to fully account for: a) all kinds of sexual harassment practised in ACT high schools; b) the relationship between sexual harassment and other kinds of harassment in ACT high schools; and c) the extent to which some women teachers appear to support the practice of sexual harassment. Emerging Poststructuralist Feminism is proposed as a potentially useful theoretical framework for explaining and responding to sexual harassment in ACT high schools. It is hoped that this study will contribute to informing the decision making of those responsible for developing and/or implementing sexual harassment policy in ACT high schools, including teachers, school counsellors, principals, and administrators.

Participatory research methodologies and the use of interactive communication technologies (ICTs) such as email are increasingly seen by many researchers, including feminists, as offering ways to enhance women's inclusion, participation and empowerment. However, from critical and poststructuralist perspectives, some researchers suggest the need for greater caution about claims that participatory methodologies and certain communication technologies automatically enhance inclusion and empowerment. These researchers argue that issues of power, agenda and voice in the research context require greater attention (LeCompte, 1995). The major argument made in this thesis is that feminist researchers need to adopt a more critical and rigorous yet pragmatic approach to evaluating women's empowerment, inclusion and participation, and that this approach needs to include an analysis of diversity and difference, macro and micro contexts, power-knowledge relations, and the contradictory effects of participation. The outcomes of this study suggest that this approach can create new knowledge and understanding that will enable the development of more effective strategies for women's empowerment and inclusion. To explore and support this argument, findings are presented from a detailed evaluation and critique of a major feminist action research project that involved women in rural, regional and remote Queensland, Australia and elsewhere, a university research team and several government and industry partners. The project made extensive use of ICTs, including email and the Internet, and aimed to be empowering and inclusive. Given the many contradictory discourses of empowerment that currently circulate, empowerment is seen as a problematic concept. The multiple meanings and discourses of empowerment are therefore identified and considered in the analysis. With the increasing importance of communication technologies in rural community development, this study also evaluates the effectiveness of ICTs as a medium for empowering rural women. The 'politics of difference' (Young, 1990) that underpins attempts to include a diversity of rural women in feminist research projects presents many challenges to feminist praxis. Chapters 1 and 2 propose that, in evaluating such projects, researchers need to take diversity and difference into account to avoid reproducing stereotyped images of rural women, and to identify those who are included and excluded. This is because of the complex nature of the identity 'rural woman', the multiple barriers to women's participation, and the diverse needs, agendas and ideologies of participants and stakeholders. The concept of seriality (Young, 1994) is used in this study to avoid reproducing 'rural women' and feminist researchers as women with a singular identity. Chapters 1 and 2 argue that a comprehensive and critical analysis of these complex issues requires an eclectic, transdisciplinary approach, and that this can be fruitfully achieved by using a combination of two feminist frameworks of theory and epistemology: praxis feminism and feminist poststructuralism. While there are commonalities between these frameworks, the feminist poststructuralist framework takes a much more cautious and critical approach to claims for empowerment than praxis feminism. The praxis feminist framework draws on feminist theories that view power as social, cooperative and enabling. Women's diverse needs, values, issues and experiences are taken into account, and the analysis aims to gives voice to women. The purpose of this is to better understand the processes that meet women's diverse needs and could be empowering and inclusive for women (or otherwise). In contrast, the feminist poststructuralist framework uses Foucault's (1980) analytic of power as positive and strategic, exercised in all our interactions, and intimately connected to knowledge. The power-knowledge relations, and the multiple and shifting discourses and subject positions that were taken up in various research contexts are identified and analysed. The purpose of this is to highlight the contradictions and dangers inherent in feminist practices of empowerment that often go unnoticed. To achieve its practical and critical aims, this study uses two different, but complementary, research methodologies: participatory feminist evaluation and feminist deconstructive ethnography, and multiple research methods, which are outlined in Chapter 3. This eclectic approach is argued to provide maximum flexibility and creativity in the research process, and to enable the complexity and richness of the data to be represented and understood from a diversity of perspectives. Triangulation of the multiple methods and sources of data is employed to increase the validity and rigour of the analysis. Assessing how well feminist projects that use ICTs have met the aim of including a diversity of women requires an analysis of a wide range of complex social, economic,cultural, technological, contextual and methodological issues related to women's participation. Analysing these issues also requires giving voice to a diversity of participants' and stakeholders' assessments and meanings of 'diversity' and 'inclusion'. The results of this analysis, set out in Chapter 4, suggest that differences in perceptions of diversity and inclusion are strongly related to participants' and stakeholders' political and ideological beliefs and values, and their degree of commitment to social justice issues. The evaluation found that a limited diversity of women participated in the project, and identified many barriers to their participation. Feminists argue that women-only activities are often more empowering than mixed gender activities. The evaluation findings detailed in Chapter 5 suggest that the project's women-centred activities, particularly the workshops and online groups, were very successful in meeting the multiple needs of most participants. However, contradictory or undesirable effects of the project's activities were also identified. This analysis demonstrates the need to consider the various groups of participants and their diverse needs in assessing how well feminist methods and activities have met women's needs or are empowering. Chapter 6 identifies various forms and features of empowerment and disempowerment and categorises them as social, technological, political and psychological. A model is developed that illustrates the interrelationships between these four forms of empowerment. Technological empowerment is identified as a new under-theorised form of empowerment that is seen as increasingly important as ICTs become more central to women's networking and participation. However, the findings suggest that the extent to which participants want to be empowered needs to be respected. While many participants were found to have experienced the four forms of empowerment, their participation was also shown to have had various disempowering effects. The project's online group welink (women's electronic link), which linked rural and urban women, including government policy-makers, was assessed as the most empowering project activity. The discourse analysis and deconstructions, undertaken in Chapter 6, identify competing and contradictory discourses of new communication technologies and feminist participatory action research. The various discourses taken up by the researchers and participants were shown to have both empowering and disempowering effects. The analysis demonstrates the intersection between empowerment and disempowerment and the shifting subject positions that were taken up, depending on the research context. It was argued that the discourses of feminist action research operated as a 'regime of truth' (Foucault, 1980) that regulated and constrained the discourses and practices of this form of research. An analysis of a highly contentious welink discussion challenges feminist assumptions that giving voice to women will lead to empowerment, and suggests that silence can, in some circumstances, be empowering. This analysis highlights the intersection of voice and silence, the limitations of the gendered discourse of care and connection, and how this discourse, and other factors, regulated the use of more critical discourses. Critical reflections on the study are made in Chapter 7. They include the suggestion that an 'impossible burden' was placed on the project's feminist researchers who used an egalitarian feminist discourse that produced expectations of 'equal relations' between participants and researchers. However, these relations had to be established in the context of a university-based project that involved senior academic, government and industry staff. Drawing on the new knowledge and understandings developed, this study proposes several principles and strategies for feminist participatory action research projects that seek the inclusion and empowerment of rural women and use ICTs. They include the suggestion that feminists need an awareness of the limits to the politics of difference discourse when power-knowledge relations are ignored. A further principle is that there is value in adopting a Foucauldian analytic of power, since this enables a better understanding of the complex, multifaceted and dynamic nature of power-knowledge relations in the research context. This approach also provides an awareness of how processes that attempt to empower will inevitably produce disempowerment at certain moments. Principles and strategies for undertaking participatory feminist evaluations are also suggested.

AbstractThis chapter is structured around the issue of gender research and what it means to conduct research with a gender perspective. Thus, it discusses research methodologies inspired by feminist ontological and epistemological approaches. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, situated knowledge, feminist poststructuralism and intersectionality, the chapter shows how feminist scholars, especially feminist legal scholars, have adopted feminist epistemologies in challenging gender inequalities in law and society. The chapter draws on legal methods combined with feminist social theories that have assisted feminist scholars to go about legal reforms. Furthermore, focusing on qualitative methods, the chapter explains some of the methods of data collection and data analysis in gender research which have been applied interdisciplinarily across social science and humanities studies. The last part of the chapter concentrates on practical knowledge about conducting gender research that is informed with feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Finally, through some exercises, the students are given the opportunity to design and outline a gender research plan with a socio-legal approach.

AbstractMedia institutions always have a public obligation to disseminate news that is fair, balanced and gender sensitive, more so in times of crisis. Within the context of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, it is important that media provide a diverse, balanced and gender sensitive coverage that reflects existing inequalities in a society rather than merely prioritising statistics of the infection and its death rates. Informed by poststructuralist feminist theory and normative roles of the media, this chapter investigates the discursive parameters of gendered media discourses within the context of COVID-19. This chapter presents results from a case study of two main daily newspapers—the Chronicle and NewsDay—circulating in the country by investigating their representation of gender. Findings indicate that while there was generally more coverage of issues affecting women, both newspapers reinforced deeply rooted biases in their reporting. The findings further show that the emphasis was on gender-based violence with statistics indicating that it was on the rise during lockdown. We argue that newspapers must always strive for sensitive reporting that challenges hierarchical gender relations if the transformative potential of the media is to be realised.

Exile is one of the central motifs of the 20th century European culture and literature; it is closely related to the historical events throughout this century and especially those related to World War II. In the culture of East Central Europe, the phenomenon of exile has been greatly determined by the context of socialism and post-socialist transformations that caused several waves of emigration from this part of Europe to the West or other parts of the world. It is interesting to compare cultures of East Central Europe, the historical situations of which both during World War II and after the collapse of socialism were different, e.g. Latvian and ex-Yugoslavian ones. In Latvia, exile is basically related to the emigration of a great part of the population in the 1940s and the issue of their possible return to the renewed Republic of Latvia in the early 1990s, whereas the countries of the former Yugoslavia experienced a new wave of emigration as a result of the Balkan War in the 1990s. Exile has been regarded by a great number of the 20th century philosophers, theorists, and scholars of diverse branches of studies. An important aspect of this complex phenomenon has been studied by psychoanalytical theorists. According to the French poststructuralist feminist theorist Julia Kristeva, the state of exile as a socio-cultural phenomenon reflects the inner schisms of subjectivity, particularly those of a feminine subject. Hence, exile/stranger/foreigner is an essential model of the contemporary subject and exile turns from a particular geographical and political phenomenon into a major symbol of modern European culture. The present article regards the sense of exile as a part of the narrator’s subjective world experience in the works by the Yugoslav writer Dubravka Ugrešič (“The Museum of Unconditional Surrender”, in Croatian and English, 1996) and Latvian émigré author Margita Gūtmane (“Letters to Mother”, in Latvian, 1998). Both authors relate the sense of exile to identity problems, personal and culture memory as well as loss. The article focuses on the issues of loss and memory as essential elements of the narrative of exile revealed by the metaphors of photograph and museum. Notwithstanding the differences of their historical situations, exile as the subjective experience reveals similar features in both authors’ works. However, different artistic means are used in both authors’ texts to depict it. Hence, Dubravka Ugrešič uses irony, whereas Margita Gūtmane provides a melancholic narrative of confession; both authors use photographs to depict various aspects of memory dynamic, but Gūtmane primarily deals with private memory, while Ugrešič regards also issues of cultural memory. The sense of exile in both authors’ works appears to mark specific aspects of feminine subjectivity.