02 Tuesday March 8

Tierney Corrigan 3/8/2011 On Tuesday’s class we discussed Feminist Theory which included an overview of the section in Peter Barry’s book as well as two articles, “The Traffic in Women” by Gayle Rubin and “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey. Before turning to the powerpoint we first discussed how people view feminist criticism and people who consider themselves to be a feminists. Often times feminism is associated with negative connotations such as (imposing, angry, extreme, lesbian, and aggressive) however, many people who consider themselves feminist would describe their feelings as (sexist, capable, equal, and fighting for rights). Throughout the history of feminism the media has played a large role in how it has been portrayed. Names like suffragette and the concept of bra-burning are terms that have been used in the past by journalists to label the behavior of feminists. This discussion set the stage for the importance of history to feminism. The history of feminism is most times referred to in terms of three waves, wave one: voting rights occurred from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, wave two: equal opportunities occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and wave three: anti-essentialist or focus on differences between women especially in terms of class and race occurred in the 1980’s. These waves of feminism’s history are scattered through important literary texts which illustrate the importance of history on a contextual level. Important terms associated with feminism include: sex- biological, gender- social or cultural, patriarchy- a social organization in which men hold a disproportionate amount of power, or a society where men define what it means to be human including female, and phallocentric- or centered on the phallus, creating a system focusing on the phallus as a symbol/source of power. We also discussed the difference between the two different types of feminism. American feminism follows the idea that women are trained to read like men, and focus on women would be considered deviant/wrong. French feminism on the other hand is much more centered on psychoanalysis and discusses ways in which a space can be reclaimed for women. While the two approaches to feminism (French and American) might be different they do have a core set of beliefs. These beliefs include supporting rights for women, labeling the differences between men and women as biological or cultural, understanding the natural theories about gender, examining how women are portrayed in literature, supporting female authors being included in language, and the potential of a feminine language. We wrapped up on Gayle Rubin and Laura Mulvey because their ideas are more specific. Rubin discusses gender in terms of the division of sexes and defines it in terms of how it would be seem in the eyes of other literary theories. For example in terms of marxism: women would be seen as contributing to capital and surplus but not benefitting from the fruits of their labor. Mulvey discusses feminism in terms of cinema and how the pleasure of looking of scopophilia creates a chain reaction. The camera looks, the character looks, the audience looks, looking causes anxiety, anxiety is controlled or seen as deviant.

Amanda McCullough notes for March 8, 2011

The first class back from spring break started with Dr. Mathur asking us if there were any questions from the reading she had assigned that dealt with Feminism. Some of Feminism core beliefs are to advocate for the rights of women, investigate the difference between [missing word] and women and if those difference[s] are biological or social by also examining representations of women in literature. The first exercise we did in class was to discuss the common catch phrase “I’m not a feminist but…” At that point, students from the class gave words/phrases that they thought fit into that particular saying, such as: feminazi, lesbian, imposing, bitter, aggressive, and troublemaker to name a few. These are the negative connotations that we thought of with the word “feminist” in particular. With the “But” phrase, students suggested the following terms: sexist, army, rights, and vote, equal. By doing this exercise, we were able to talk about where the negative connotations of the term and how at the same time that term can be viewed as a negative and positive saying. After that particular exercise, we moved on to the waves of feminism and what was brought into the theory during those waves. We touched base on how Bra- Burning actually was based on one event where no bra was actually set on fire but the media used such terms to capture the audience. As a class we focused on two forms of feminist theory, one of them being French feminism which is used to challenge or intervene in male-dominated discourse by forming their own kind of writing. One French theorist, in particular, that we discussed was Julia Kristeva whose thought was that children enter the law of the father when they are about 18 month old which is paternal and ruled by certain type of language and order that fixes meaning instead of playing with meaning, it is more centered and linked to imaginary i.e. breastfeeding or hearing the sound of your mothers voice. She also suggests that on Lacans imaginary order (mother and child are complete and whole) is a maternal image that we like to think about how these early stages of development plays into puns rational order. The next author we looked at was Laura Mulvey who looked at series of films from the 50-60’s and was interested in who was doing the looking and who was being looked at (men gazed at women generally). She also suggests that looking creates an anxiety about the threat of castration or potential rejection. The threat of the gaze is considered to be a negative one. Mulvey talks of the fear of being looked at by controlling or punishing female character for deviancy. It could be said that when the gazer talks a particular amount of the person being gazed upon body or beauty it leads to strategies of control. To illustrate this idea, we read two poems, and in my group in particular we discussed poem number two by Edmund Spenser. We decided that the author was trying to overcompensate for something. We felt that by admiring her so much, he was afraid of rejection and of being left behind. Dr. Mathur pointed out that it was almost a fetish observation. That by talking so much about her beauty it was the narrators way of dealing with rejection that might occur. This idea ties into the Scopopphillia term that Mulvey talks about.