GENDER STUDIES: A REFLECTION ON CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS (original) (raw)
Related papers
Gender: concept, category and more (a theoretical confusion)
2017
The confusions that have originated from the gender category are explored and described. A confusion that arises from the feminist academy in the distinction as to how the biological bodies of human beings become social, and therefore, every social interaction is sexed. The gender category has been widely divulged in the last years, but while doing it, its use has become freer and less rigorous, identifying it with feminine, women, feminist movements and social movements of women. Underlying theoretical and epistemology are proposed. Theoretical essays that borrow categories of social analysis from conceptual schemes are revised, but these are decontextualized when using them for theorizations of gender. Difficulties arise in the theoretical categories of sociological character and of political science such as social construction and power, they are transported without epistemic mediation or specification to the language of other disciplines, mainly psychology or anthropology.
Toward a critical relational theory of gender
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1991
This article analyzes and critiques the construct of gender as a psychoanalytic and cultural category. Without succumbing to a nonpsychoanalytic notion of androgyny, the argument developed here challenges the assumption that an internally consistent gender identity is possible or even desirable. Beginning with the idea that, from an analytic perspective, the construct of "identity" is problematic and implausible, because it denotes and privileges a unified psychic world, the author develops a deconstructionist critique of our dominant gender-identity paradigm. It is argued that gender coherence, consistency, conformity, and identity are culturally mandated normative ideals that psychoanalysis has absorbed uncritically. These ideals, moreover, are said to create a universal pathogenic situation, insofar as the attempt to conform to their dictates requires the activation of a false-self system. An alternative, "decentered" gender paradigm is then proposed, which conceives of gender as a "necessary fiction" that is used for magical ends in the psyche, the family, and the culture. From this perspective, gender identity is seen as a problem as well as a solution, a defensive inhibition as well as an accomplishment. It is suggested that as a goal for analytic treatment, the ability to tolerate the ambiguity and instability of gender categories is more appropriate than the goal of "achieving" a single, pure, sex-appropriate view of oneself. C ONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC THINKING ABOUT GENDER has resulted in a profound critique of Freud's phallocentric theories of male and female development. While there is no simple consensus among the many competing perspectives now being developed, most
Every time that we have to determine an object, we are obliged to use terms (such as nouns or adjectives) able to indicate its main characteristics. One of the most representative examples of definition is that offered by Aristotle: “Man is a rational animal”. ‘Animal’ and ‘rational’ are the two properties that allow us to collocate “man” into a precise category, containing all the other beings definite by the same essential properties. The primary goal of philosophy is consisted in individuating these determinations, but also in reconsidering their status: do the categories have an ontological value, or are they mere determinations thank to which our mind can build, classify and especially control the reality? The contemporary debate on gender is undeniably connected with the process of categorization. My prospective moves towards a specific evidence: the academic approach, that puts its stress on the necessity to complete a categories list able to include all the aspects of the reality, seems to privilege only the general and superficial features; consequently it disregards the peculiar connotations which define an individual in his/her irreducibility to roles and stereotypes. Whether the goal of the linguistic categorization is to built general classes, the humanities and, in particular, the psychoanalysis, have claimed the right of the single individual. From the above, this paper aims to discuss the traditional process of categorization, trying to put in evidence the limits involved in the classical definition of category, in order to move toward a new prospective that will be the basis for a richer theory of singularity. After discussing the principal approaches to sexuality and their limits (from Essentialism to Constructivism and Queer movements), the essay will conclude with the most prolific psychoanalytic thought (in particular the Lacanian concept of sessuation) in order to demonstrate that, far from being only a gene or a social construction, the sexual identity always includes the subject’s mediation.
Gender and Ideology: For a Marxist Critique of the Ideology of Gender
VIANA, Nildo. Gender and Ideology: For a Marxist Critique of the Ideology of Gender. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES, SOCIAL SCIENCES AND EDUCATION, v. 4, p. 1-7, 2017., 2017
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of gender ideology in a critical and Marxist perspective. Criticism of the gender ideology is now a must, as well as present their social roots and their relationship to a particular historical period. Based on the critical analysis of the work of Joan Scott and his inspiring sources, especially Bourdieu, it seeks to show the ideological roots of gender conception. The present paper aims to discuss the issue of gender ideology. We won't do an archeology of genre term, as some have done 1 ,nor will pursue its etymological roots, nor its past uses, but only its recent use and its ideological character. The critique of gender ideology is, nowadays, a necessity as well as present its social roots and its bond with a certain historical period. Before we begin, let's clarify what we mean by ideology, since this is a polysemic term. Here we use the Marxist conception of ideology 2 , according to which it is a systematization of false consciousness, that is, a illusory thinking system. Ideology is a systematic way of false consciousness produced by the ideologists.What we term as gender ideology is the conception that places the construct 3 "gender" as a fundamental term of the analysis of the issue of women and even of society as a whole. We won't present here the most diverse works that discuss and use the construct "gender".We will elect one of the most cited and influential works on this issue for analysis, although other references are made throughout this text. It is the text of the historian Joan Scott 4 , Gender: A Usefull Category of Historical Analysis. Joan Scott presents in her text an overview of different conceptions of feminist thought and of the use of the construct (which she denominated category) genre. The various concepts are presented descriptively, with superficial observations, and the author's point of view is presented peripherally, with a minimum contribution to the discussion around the issue that is proposed to treat.In fact, this defect to take long descriptions of feminist conceptions, consisting of all or almost all of the text, is quite common and is repeated in Scott's article. She states that the term gender in its most recent use occurred among American feminists, "who wanted to insist on the fundamentally social quality of distinctions based on sex". This use was aiming to reject biological determinism that would be implicit in the use of the terms "sex" and "sexual difference". The term gender would present a relational view and would present men and women in reciprocal terms, preventing the separate study of both. But the author points out that more important than that is that gender "was a term offered by those who claimed that women's scholarship would fundamentally transform disciplinary paradigms" 5. A new methodology and epistemology would be with the term gender, giving it meaning. However, this position did not come right away: For the most part, the attempts of historians to theorize about gender have remained within tradicional social scientific frameworks, using longstanding formulations that provide universal causal explanations. These theories have been limited at best because they tend to 1 Stolke, 2004.
1979
This seminar focuses on the recent developments in the sociology of gender, broadly defined. We begin with an overview of the field, using the framework of sociology of knowledge. We identify major trends in the area and consider the relationship of gender scholarship to the discipline of sociology, the social sciences, and scholarly inquiry more generally. Introductory readings address gendered modes of knowledge production in the field.