Constituting Feminist Subjects

by Kathi Weeks

"Kathi Weeks takes a basic insight--modernist and postmodernist thought are not one thing, they are complex fields with multiple and jostling threads running through them--and she proceeds to follow up and disentangle those threads that are important for feminism. I really loved reading this book. It is both critical and appreciative. It is truly written in what I would call a feminist spirit."--Kathy Ferguson, University of Hawaii Kathi Weeks suggests that one of the most important tasks for contemporary feminist theory is to develop theories of the subject that are adequate to feminist politics. Although the 1980s modernist-postmodernist debate put the problem of feminist subjectivity on the agenda, Weeks contends that limited debate now blocks the further development of feminist theory.

Both modernists and postmodernists succeeded in making clear the problems of an already constituted, essentialist subject. What remains as an ongoing project, Weeks contends, is creating a theory of the constitution of subjects to account for the processes of social construction. This book presents one such account. Drawing on a number of different theoretical frameworks, including feminist standpoint theory, socialist feminism, and poststructuralist thought, as well as theories of performativity and self-valorization, the author proposes a nonessentialist feminist subject, a theory of constituting subjects.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Womens

Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

About the author

Kathi Weeks teaches in the Women's Studies Program at Duke University. Her primary interests are in the fields of political theory, feminist theory, Marxist thought, and utopian studies. She is the author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries and Constituting Feminist Subjects, and a co-editor of The Jameson Reader.

Reviews

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since the nineteenth century, feminism, which aims to give women's struggle for social equality and to improve rights, has emerged primarily as a philosophical movement. While the status of being a subject in its own right emerged with the activist identity gained later, on the other hand, subjectification began to emerge in areas such as body, class, sexual tendencies, politics, power.

Postmodenism, which is partly a liberal and mostly a philosophical reflection of the neoliberal period, has opened feminist philosophy to discussion at the point of hermeneutical phenomenology, both at the point of the subject producing knowledge and the conditions of production of knowledge.

The postmodenist attitude criticizing the dualistic attitude of the enlightenment era, which is the philosophy of the liberal period, such as rational-irrational, subject-object, mind-body, has also deconstructed the female subject of feminist philosophy. With the "social construction" phenomenon that emerged as a result of this, feminist philosophy has gained a new identity. The author Weeks also describes the present by considering the postmodenism phase of feminism.

The author Weeks has focused on the loss of the subject in feminist philosophy in the Postmodernist period and the question of where feminism, the phenomenon of power, the functioning of the patriarchal economic system are and whether it feeds them by focusing on the states of existence of the new performative subject.

The book has quite eye-opening interpretations. In particular, it contains serious analyses on the current (i.e., postmodernism) situation of feminism, which has been in a mutually reinforcing attitude with postmodernism in the recent past. I wish you a pleasant reading.

[Quin Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, insightful, and eminently *useful* intervention. Weeks’ argument is that 1. stagnation in contemporary feminist theory can be in pet attributed to a “paradigm war” between the false caricatures of modernism vs. postmodernism and 2. That one way out of this debate is to formulate a theory of collective, laboring feminist subjects understood in relation to the social totality which they inhabit.

This book should be read as a single, cohesive argument aimed at making a very targeted intervention in academic feminist theory. As a Marxist feminist-allied graduate student in a department and field that overwhelmingly privileges what Weeks’ identifies as the “Postmodern” paradigm, I found this book very helpful in legitimating my own work and concerns. However, given the more aspirational description provided on the back cover, one could be easily convinced that this book accomplishes much more than it actually does. As Weeks herself notes, this is only a “beginning” to what she hopes will be further projects.

Read if you have an interested in internecine debates in academic feminism, but don’t expect anything earthshaking.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly dense and extremely reliant on the reader's knowledge AND interest in several areas of scholarship and theory. Which of course means I loved it! Didn't hurt that Weeks loves her some Foucault, even with his well-known weaknesses in the area of feminism. Ha! Definitely not for the casual reader of feminist theory, and by that I mean anyone looking for an easy, simple, shallow incursion into the topic. This book is serious, and in a good way. Her critiques are sound and quite detailed, almost exceedingly so. In fact most of the book is prefacing/backgrounding which caught me by surprise. I have read a lot about a lot, so maybe it was just my previous reading made much of her set-up to be goings on about things I already knew. Something I suppose many readers might also run into, since this hardly seems like a book someone comes across randomly. Maybe? I thought where she ends up to be a great starting point for future works. My only concern, as it always is when theory focuses too keenly on the individual, that in stressing the self as the locus one then becomes selfish, a problem that I think is exacerbated by the mechanisms of social media and its "look at me! I'm special!" model for living in the world.

[Yasir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable synthesis and summary of Foucault, Nietzsche, Lukács, and Althusser. Falters a bit in how radical it could be, though. Best read as a theoretical survey and summary and not for its capitulating critique.

[Elizabeth D · Rating 2 out of 5]

very disappointed. will write a longer review later.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting comparison of Focault and Nietzsche, the philosophers of power. But speaking of power, we all know Elon musk will be the actual one who tells us how to use UBI. Not Kathi Weeks unfortunately. To be clear, he will probably be the one who ends up orchestrating the literal definition of what UBI means. And Kathi Weeks, a feminist writer, will be left in the dust bin of Marxist thinkers. To be fair, the dustbin is the search bar black list.

Just go ahead and see if there is any Recommended Marxist literature on Goodreads. Better yet, even just try to find it. Marxist’s are still materialists but some of them aren’t wrong about everything you know. They certainly should be more accessible to everyone who has a mind of their own. Which is supposed to be an American thing.

Weeks’ idea is to brand most theories as objective and rigid while creating a collective subject that is relativist and situationalist. She uses Focualt, Marx and Neitzche a lot to make this appeal. She tries to find areas where capitalism and Marxism can meaningfully discuss. Modernism and postmodernism too. This is the kind of openminded decision making that should be included in a free society. Not to mention freer access to solid information about our society. (To be abundantly clear once again, I had to find this exceptional book myself without propaganda and everything, it was exhausting, I’m exhausted)

There are brilliant feminist writers out there like Kathi Weeks who no one has heard of. Weeks is more accessible for philosophy or economic interests but it’s refreshing just to have a different perspective than the mainstream. It’s easy to get used to the economic strategies of crooks, politicians, and gamblers when there are true leaders who know what they are talking about.

How do you solve women’s labor concerns that have occurred for centuries? Replace men’s jobs with machines! Men will complain a lot and someone is bound to take THEM seriously…Whichever social media company talks the most about UBI and labor rights please report to Elon Musk now. That will be all.

[Leonardo]

...una explicación sobre cómo muchos teóricos posmodernistas unifican las variedades del pensamiento modernista bajo el título único de “Iluminismo”.

Imperio Pág.109

[Mills College Library]

305.42 W395 1998