Feminist Criticism & Ecocriticism & Marxism & Queer theory

Hello everyone,in this blog I will discuss Feminist Criticism & Ecocriticism & Marxism & Queer theory



Feminist Criticism:-

Feminist criticism is concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson 83). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in writing about women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" .



Common key concepts in theory:-

Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are oppressed.

In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values.

All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.

While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (scales of masculine and feminine).

All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.

Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.




Feminist literature:-

Feminist literature is fiction, nonfiction, drama, or poetry, which supports the feminist goals of defining, establishing, and defending equal civil, political, economic, and social rights for women. It often identifies women's roles as unequal to those of men – particularly as regarding status, privilege, and power – and generally portrays the consequences to women, men, families, communities, and societies as undesirable.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy.

Some works of feminist literature:-

• 1)A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
• 2)A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• 3)Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
• 4)Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein
• 5)Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
• 6)Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• 7)Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
• 8)Redefining Realness by Janet Mock
• 9)Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• 10)The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Three main types of feminism emerged:

• 1)mainstream/liberal
• 2)radical, and
• 3)cultural.

Three waves of faminism:-

First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.

Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" .

Feminism allows equal opportunities for both sexes. Gender roles (a set of conforming rules that say how a person should behave based on their gender) can be harmful to both men and women. ... It is also unfair to place pressure on boys to fulfil certain roles that are based on their gender.



Example:-

"Still I Rise" is an empowering poem about the struggle to overcome prejudice and injustice. It is one of Maya Angelou's most famous and popular poems. Although written with black slavery and civil rights issues in mind, "Still I Rise" is universal in its appeal. Any innocent individual, any minority, or any nation subject to oppression or abuse can understand its underlying theme—don't give in to torture, bullying, humiliation, and injustice.



Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.


Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.


Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.


Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?


Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.


You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.


Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?


Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.


Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.



Still I Rise and Feminism:-

In this poem we find that Maya Angelou raised her voice for the black Women."History's shame" represents slavery and the treatment of africans in colonies. Despite how other black people have been treated in the past, she'll succeed. Shows how much confidence she has in herself and that the race problem in America will solved.

This poem is based on many topics:-

• Politics
• History
• Trade
• Oppression
• Societal Issues
• Individual Rights
• Slavery
• Peaceful Protest

In this poem speaker is someone who faces unjust hatred and prejudice from society. She is also clearly a person who is unafraid to confront her oppressors and mock them with a series of cheeky rhetorical questions. Finally, she is also confident enough to assert her inevitable rise above such antipathy.

More specifically, the speaker of "Still I Rise" is strongly implied to be Angelou herself (which is why we've chosen to use female pronouns in reference to the speaker throughout this guide). The reference to the speaker "danc[ing] like [she's] got diamonds/ At the meeting of [her] thighs" is, perhaps, a nod to Angelou's past as a nightclub dancer. The allusions to slavery and the metaphor comparing the speaker to a "black ocean" also imply that the speaker is a black person living in the western world.

That said, the speaker can also be considered more broadly as representative of any person facing the indignity of racism and oppression. The speaker, who successfully rises above such oppression at the end of the poem, can then be viewed as a symbol of hope for marginalized peoples around the world.

Maya Angelous's poetry is often autobiographical and as such tackles issues related to black identity and womanhood. Angelou herself once said she felt she "was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass—the slave narrative" in her use of personal narrative in her work. A singer, songwriter, dancer, playwright, and actress, Angelou also often blended recitation, theater, music, and dance in her performances onstage. Perhaps it's no wonder then that Angelou's poetry has often been described by as even better heard than read. Indeed, "Still I Rise" can perhaps best be appreciated through performance.



Ecocriticism

If we look for a meaning of Ecocriticism then that means :

"ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment".



The term Ecocriticism is coined by William Rueckert in a 1978 article which called for the formulation of "an ecological poetics".

Ecocriticism is known by a number of other designations, including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literary criticism".

Ecocriticism was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism” with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats.

“Ecocriticism” (or by alternative names, environmental criticism and green studies) designates the critical writings which explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being wrought on that environment by human activities.



Key concept of Ecocriticism:-

• 1. It is claimed that the reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric.
• 2. Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions.
• One poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in England some twenty years later, in “Inversnaid”:
• What would the world be, once bereft
• Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
• O let them be left, wildness and wet;
• Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
• 3. Many ecocritics recommend, and themselves exemplify, the extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres, including prose fiction and poetry, and also to writings in the natural and social sciences.
• 4. A conspicuous feature in ecocriticism is the analysis of the differences in attitudes toward the environment that are attributable to a writer’s race, ethnicity, social class, and gender.
• 5. There is a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature, and do not assign to human beings dominion over the nonhuman world.

Examples:-

If we gave a example of this theory so we can take a A great example of an ecocritical reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is Scott Hess’s article “John Clare, William Wordsworth, and the (Un)Framing of Nature.”

Hess argues that Wordsworth treats the daffodils like a photo on a postcard. Wordsworth doesn’t involve himself in nature. Instead, he looks at nature from afar (like a cloud), and leaves as soon as he has had his fill. In other words, Wordsworth acts like the tourist who comes by once and snaps a quick picture before moving on.

With any theoretical approach there is always the danger that we misrepresent the text in order to further our own agenda. In this case it might be pointed out that Wordsworth is at pains to describe the communion he has with nature. He is not simply a solitary observer, watching from a distance. The personification of the flowers suggests a kind of kinship between people and nature. As Ralph Pite points out, “In Wordsworth’s work, ‘the natural world’ is always social, both in itself and in its relation to man. Consequently, nature does not offer an escape from other people so much as express an alternative mode of relating to them”.

So here if we look from this perspective Wordsworth sees ntature as a teacher, a friend, and a mirror of what it means to be human–and yet he also respects nature’s independence, the distance and difference between humans and their environment.

So this we can do best Ecocritical reading of this poem.



Marxism

The definition of Marxism is the theory of Karl Marx which says that society's classes are the cause of struggle and that society should have no classes.

This is the short and sweet definition of Marxism.

Marxist criticism:-

Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95).

I found some key points which you get easy to understand.


Key Terms:-

• 1)Class:- a classification or grouping typically based on income and education Alienation a condition Karl Heinrich Marx ascribed to individuals in a capitalist economy who lack a sense of identification with their labor and products
• 2)Base:-the means (e.g., tools, machines, factories, natural resources) and relations (e.g., Proletariat, Bourgeoisie) or production that shape and are shaped by the superstructure (the dominant aspect in society)
• 3)Superstructure:-the social institutions such as systems of law, morality, education, and their relat.ed ideologies, that shape and are shaped by the base.

The main features of the Marxist theory of literature are that literature, like all forms of culture, is governed by specific historical conditions, and that literature, as a cultural product, is ultimately related to the economic base of society.

Important 20th-century Marxist critics include :-

• 1)Georg Lucáks,
• 2)Antonio Gramsci,
• 3)Louis Althusser, Terry Eagleton,
• 4)Raymond Williams,
• 5)Frederic Jameson

In England the many social and critical writings of Raymond Williams manifest an adaptation of Marxist concepts to his humanistic concern with the overall texture of an individual’s “lived experience.” A leading theorist of Marxist criticism in England is Terry Eagleton, who expanded and elaborated the concepts of Althusser and Macherey into his view that a literary text is a special kind of production in which ideological discourse—described as any system of mental representations of lived experience—is reworked into a specifically literary discourse.

The most prominent American theorist, Fredric Jameson, is also the most eclectic of Marxist critics. In The Political Unconscious: Narr

ative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), Jameson expressly adapts to his critical enterprise such seemingly incompatible viewpoints as the medieval theory of fourfold levels of meaning in the allegorical interpretation of the Bible, the archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye, structuralist criticism, Lacan’s reinterpretations of Freud, semiotics, and deconstruction.

Examples:-

As a example of Marxist theory we take a Romeo and Juliet novel. In that novel we will find that Benvolio wanted peace between the Montagues and Capulets. ... Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are known to be monumental productions. They both thoroughly show Marxism through their characters. Even with different mise en scenes they both excelled in their sets and having believable characters.

Marxism involves the structure of power. Looking through a Marxist lens, Romeo and Juliet convey alienation from others similar to West Side Story.

Here in this both stories you can find a alienation.

Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are known to be monumental productions. They both thoroughly show Marxism through their characters. Even with different mise en scenes they both excelled in their sets and having believable characters. The alienated characters enhanced the productions further by bringing in more conflict and opposing views. Alienation from others can be seen in both settings by the not characters conforming to societal expectations. Whether it's not being manly enough or having different opinions than others,West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet both have corresponding amounts of alienation from.



Queer theory


Queer theory’s origins are in LGBT studies – which focus on sexuality and gender. It soon distanced itself from those approaches due to disagreements with the stable identities that LGBT studies suggest. Queer theory emphasises the fluid and humanly performed nature of sexuality – or better, sexualities. It questions socially established norms and dualistic categories with a special focus on challenging sexual (heterosexual/homosexual), gender (male/female), class (rich/poor), racial (white/non-white) classifications. It goes beyond these so-called ‘binaries’ to contest general political (private/public) as well as international binary orders (democratic/ authoritarian). These are viewed as over-generalising theoretical constructs that produce an either/or mode of analysis that hides more than it clarifies and is unable to detect nuanced differences and contradictions. But queer theory also analyses and critiques societal and political norms in particular as they relate to the experience of sexuality and gender. These are not viewed as private affairs. Just as feminists perceive of gender as a socially constructed public and political affair, so queer theorists argue with regards to sexuality and gender expression.

See Teresa de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, 1991; and Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction, 1996.

Both lesbian studies and gay studies began as “liberation movements”— in parallel with the movements for African-American and feminist liberation— during the anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment, and countercultural ferment of the late 1960s and 1970s. Since that time these studies have maintained a close relation to the activists who strive to achieve, for gays and lesbians, political, legal, and economic rights equal to those of the heterosexual majority. Through the 1970s, the two movements were primarily separatist: gays often thought of themselves as quintessentially male, while many lesbians, aligning themselves with the feminist movement, characterized the gay movement as sharing the anti-female attitudes of the reigning patriarchal culture. There has, however, been a growing recognition (signalized by the adoption of the joint term “queer”) of the degree to which the two groups share a history as a suppressed minority and possess common political and social aims. In the 1970s, researchers for the most part assumed that there was a fixed, unitary identity as a gay man or as a lesbian that has remained stable through human history.



Examples:-

" Orlando" is the best example Of Queer theory.

Virginia Woolf wrote in a letter to a friend in the 1920s, “[I] intend to cultivate women’s society entirely in the future. Men are all in the light always: with women you swim at once into the silent dusk.” As her exquisite love letters to and from Vita Sackville-West tell us, Woolf made good on her intention — but nowhere does her lesbian sensibility come more vibrantly alive than in her novel Orlando: A Biography.

Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando is a masterpiece of modernist queer fiction. Chronicling the life of the titular protagonist, who changes sex from male to female and lives for over 400 years.

Both women were married to respectable men of financial means – Virginia to the publisher and author Leonard Woolf, Vita to the diplomat and writer Harold Nicolson.

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