LITERARY CRITIQUES

FEMINISM / QUEER
READING / PATTERNS / IMAGERY

Prof. Ryan Pesigan Reyes (pesigan@gmail.com)

Adjunct Instructor

Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved.

<GENERAL EDUCATION / RYAN PESIGAN REYES> 07/14/2015

FEMINISM

• Basic premise of Feminist

Theory: “Literature is full of
unexamined male-dominated
assumptions.”
• Women writers and women
readers have always had to
work ‘against the grain’.
• Started as a long political
history, developing throughout
the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 2 >

BASIC TENETS OF FEMINISM

• Women have historically been

excluded, suppressed, and
exploited.
• Traditional “Western Civilization”
is patriarchal (controlled by
men).
• Women have represented
values of nurturing, holism, and
unity.
• Women should be given the
same opportunities as men.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 3 >

FIRST WAVE FEMINISM

• The Women’s Rights and

Women’s Suffrage
movements were the crucial
determinants in shaping this
historical phase, with the
emphasis on social, political
and economic reform.

• Feminist criticism of the

earlier period is more a
reflex of ‘first-wave’
preoccupations than a fully
fledged theoretical discourse
of its own. Two significant
proponents emerged:
Virginia Woolf Simone de Beauvoir

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 4 >

SECOND WAVE FEMINISM

• Liberationists such as NOW

(National Organization of
Women) shaped the 2nd wave.

• Five main foci are involved in

most discussions of sexual
difference which emerged from
The Feminine Mystique: biology;
experience; discourse; the
unconscious; and social and
economic conditions.

• The omnipresence of patriarchy,

the inadequacy for women of
existing political organization,
and the celebration of women’s
difference as central to the
cultural politics of liberation
dominate 2nd wave feminism.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 5 >

 THIRD WAVE FEMINISM

• Third-Wave feminist properly participate in

the complex, interactive domain in which
contemporary ‘post-modern’ theories
deconstruct national, ethnic and sexual
identities.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 6 >

FEMINISM THEORY

Feminist literary critics identify

ways women have been:
• Excluded from the positions of
power;

• Suppressed in traditional
literature & film: male characters
are dominant while female
characters are secondary;

• Exploited in literature & film by

sexist stereotypes.
<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 7 >
FEMINISM THEORY

Feminist literary critics identify

ways women have been subjected
to:
• Voyeurism (produced by
looking at another as an object)
• Narcissism (derived from self-
identification with the image)
• The Male Gaze (male fantasies
projected onto female
characters, then internalized by
readers/viewers

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 8 >

 FEMINISM THEORY

• Examines relationships between men and women in

literature & film.
• Examines patriarchal society as it is represented in
literature & film.
• Look for positive female role models.
• Look to establish a more inclusive literature & film industry.
• Analyze “the place” women hold in the book/film.
• Analyze social structure of the book or film, focusing on
gender.
• Compare how men and women writers/directors present
characters.
• Compare how men and women writers/directors use
language.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 9 >

FEMINISM THEORY

1.Feminist criticism attempts to correct historical

abuses against women.
2.It attempts to rectify sexist discrimination and
inequalities.
3.It balances male perspectives with female
ones.
4.It gives women more roles to play.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 10 >

 FEMINISM THEORY

1.Feminism is a narrow-minded view, using only

one limited approach to literature.
2.It can lead to reverse sexism
(prejudice/discrimination against men).
3.It has led to gender relativism, gender-as-
performance, and gender confusion.
4.It has led to problematic debates (the “culture
wars”) about family values, etc.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 11 >

QUEER THEORY

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 12 >

 QUEER THEORY

• Two main influences on queer theory have been Sigmund

Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and
Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality.

<HUM103> <06/23/2015> <PAGE 13 >

DEFINITION

• ‘Queer’, a heterosexist term of abuse designating homosexuals,

but was reclaimed by gay and lesbian militants as a self-
referential term or token of pride to describe their marginal
positionality with regard to the dominant heterosexist culture.

• By the 1990s queer theory was operating as an expression and

exploration of “sexual plurality and gender ambivalence” in the
field of cultural production.

• Broadened to consider alternative sexualities such as drag

queens or camp*, cross-dressing or transvestism which in turn,
through their representational or performative nature, uphold the
non-biological nature of gender construction.
Camp: Exaggerated effeminate mannerisms exhibited especially by homosexuals.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 14 >

DEFINITION

• Queer theory calls into question obvious categories (man,

woman, Latina, Jew, butch, femme), oppositions (man vs.
woman, heterosexual vs. homosexual), or equations (gender =
sex) upon which conventional notions of sexuality and identity.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 15 >

DEFINITION

• A field of critical theory that emerged in the early

1990s out of the fields of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender (LGBT) studies and Feminist
studies.
• Explores and challenges the way in which
heterosexuality is constructed as normal.
• Challenges the way in which media has limited
the representations of gay men and women.
• Challenges the traditionally held assumptions that
there is a binary divide between being gay and
heterosexual.
• Suggests sexual identity is more fluid.
<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 16 >
GENDER FLUID

Gender designates the dynamic that

accommodates a provisional, fluid
identity in which biological (or genital)
identity and socially constructed or
performed, masculinity or feminity need
not concur (coincide) according to
leading queer theorist, Judith Butler.

“There is no guarantee that what one is

identified as being (biologically or
culturally male or female) will line up in a
predictable and necessary way with a
particular set of sexual behaviors or
psychological dispositions or social
practices”.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 17 >

SEXUALITY

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, similarly,

made her most significant contribution
to queer theories in two key early
studies, Between Men (1985) and
Epistemology of the Closet (1990).
With more direct reference to literary
texts, she supposed opposition
between sex and gender and argues
that “sexuality has often been
confused with sex, she says, adding
that other categories such as race or
class might themselves be important in
the construction of sexuality.”

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 18 >

QUEER THEORY

 “advocates dissolving the clear boundaries

between male and female, and between
straight and gay, because these categories
are sources of stereotypes and
oppression.” (Bonnycastle 206)

 establishes that all identities are

constructed, approximate and unstable.

Literary criticism based on queer theory can help

free us from the assumptions of our culture
about what is natural, and so it often undermines
what we accept as natural or realistic in fiction.

<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 19 >

QUEER THEORY

 Emerges from studying what is normal and deviant

and how these are constructed, operated, and
enforced with attention to the social construction of
categories of normative and deviant sexual behavior.
 Looks at and studies, and has political critique of,
anything that falls into normative and deviant
categories, particularly sexual activities and identities.
 Insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking
sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all
categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are
social constructs.
 Follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in
rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essentialists
category, something determined by biology or judged
by eternal standards of morality and truth.
<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 20 >
QUEER LITERARY CRITICISM

Looks at images of sexuality, and ideas of normative

and deviant behavior, in a number of ways:
 By finding gay/lesbian authors whose sexuality has
been masked or erased in history and biography;
 By looking at texts by gay/lesbian authors to discover
particular literary themes, techniques, and
perspectives which come from being a homosexual in
a heterosexual world;
 By looking at texts – by gay or straight authors –
which depict homosexuality and heterosexuality, or
which focus on sexuality as a constructed concept;
 By looking at how literary texts (by gay or straight
authors) operate in conjunction with non-literary texts
to provide a culture with ways to think about sexuality.
<HUM103> <07/14/2015> <PAGE 21 >