IMAGINING WOMEN – CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND
GENDER
Feminist Perspectives
Feminist critic Teresa de lauretis argues that
it is still possible to talk about the ‘essence of woman’, or necessary
attributes (e.g. the experience of femaleness, of living in the world as
female) that women have developed or have been bound to historically in their
differently patriarchal sociocultural contexts which make them women not men.
Investigations of women’s or feminists ‘ways of seeing’ or of the female gaze
can be easily labelled essentialist. We must remember, however, that
definitions of terms such as essentialism in different cultural contexts do not
always coincide precisely.
Teresa de lauretis asserts that a modifies
essentialism is the very basis on which feminist thinking differs from
non-feminist thinking, enabling all different branches of feminist though to be
termed ‘feminist’. The merging of what
previously was opposite positions is central to the discussion of cultural representation
in the book IMAGINING WOMEN. Social
constructivism needs to recognize the essential which informs it (Diane Fuss,
1989).
The Value Of Work
Women’s work in different media is ‘valued’ or
judged and criticized in a variety of ways, but nearly always within the
context of patriarchal culture and its norms.
(Issues
in Women's Studies S.)
Edited by Frances Bonner, Lizbeth Goodman,
Richard Allen, Linda Jones and Catherine King 1992 Open University
Cultural Representations and gender concerns
itself with the activities and interests of ordinary women. Most of the articles in the book could be
described as examples of feminist cultural studies. They ask about how
questions in particular female audiences use texts, how meaning is made from
the and how they are incorporated into everyday life. There is also special concern with how they
evolve and grow from everyday life.
In reference to cultural representation this
book looks at how women are represented, how we represent ourselves and what we
do with the representations we encounter. There is a clear distinction between
representation and reflection.
Representation indicates that some kind of modulation or interpretive
development involved in representation. Some manipulation or transformation is
unavoidable. Not even photographs are reflections – they are two dimensionalrepresentations; which we learn to read and interpret in different ways.
Sources: de Lauretis, 1989, pp. 5 – 6
CONTENTS
Introduction: On imaging women 1
