Feminism and Its Discontents :-)

One of the major hindrances with which feminist discourse in our society has to contend with, in my opinion, is functionalism (the social theory). Of course, with globalisation well in vogue, things appear to be changing, at least at the symbolic level. Symbolic reality doesn't always correspond to actuality though. The absence of actuality is one of the major aspects of postmodernism, or in other words "late capitalism". Signification has now taken over and poses itself as ‘The’ reality, thus replacing the ‘actuality’ and ‘factual reality’ that they once represented. Our cultural altercation with this hyperreality seems to be showing signs of alteration in our social dynamics (and I’ll be attacking this hyperreality head-on in due time). Anyway, feminist endeavours will always be hindered by arguments championing notions the likes of 'necessity' etc. especially in critical treatments of history. Contemporary critical historicism may point out issues of female subjugation, but did the women back then feel that they were being subjugated (?) this is a question worth contemplating. Or shall we just label them as ignorant[s] who did not know the left and right of freedom, power, and rights? It would be extremely naive on our part to label people who were ethically and morally much more sound than us as ignorant[s].

I'm neither a feminist nor an anti-feminist, the point here is - should we not respect people and their legacy, their legacy of beliefs, their legacy of ideology, their legacy of contentment and their legacy of dignity? After all, it was on such condition, on such epistemology and axiology that their entire ontology was constructed. In other words, the condition in which women were situated back then was one of the most crucial normative [or is it pragmatic?] structures that governed their socio-administrative as well as the economic setups of the Mizo societies back then [argument not to be situated or contextualized within the framework of contemporary societal setup].

Another problematic issue is the naivety and ignorance of both so-called "feminists” and "anti-feminist" alike on what feminism is. Of course, feminism has different facets, and it's always an impossibility to give a clear-cut definition. But, the intellectual ones aren't necessarily about uplifting the 'second' gender or about gender equality. Don't get me wrong, these are the most important aspects of feminism, but at the fundamental level, feminism should be and is about confronting and shifting paradigms in epistemology and axiology to enable a more favourable political, cultural and social dynamics for the afore-mentioned notions to thrive upon. Another important thing for a feminist to remember is to always understand the politics of situatedness and the situatedness of politics, and the bio-political relational establishment in which a ‘cause’ [feminist in this case] has been constructed and situated. Otherwise, the functionality of whatever discourse or counter-discourse [for that matter] that may be produced is already nullified by its displacement, by its failure to locate itself within situational specificity. What’s even worse is that such stray discourse can become an oppressive discourse in itself. A lucid example of such a case can be seen in Fay Waldon’s remark, “Feminism was necessary in the 1970s because men were so awful then. By the end of the 1980s they (men) had realised what was going on and, to their credit, changed. But women didn't change and went on to be victims. Now women can be absolutely horrible to men” (Waldon 2016).

Liberals today seem to be ignorant of the factual reality that is geo-political states. Geopolitical boundary itself, however, is by no means an epistemic objective entity; rather it is an ontological subjective entity that is solely dependent on the collective intentionality of individuals for its existence. And yet, it is the fundamental political structure that governs civilization today. Every geo-political state serves as an epistemic space for certain notions of epistemology, metaphysics, ontology and axiology or in Zizek's notion "(the sublime object of) ideology" to thrive. These are the fundamental building blocks of value systems, which culminate in what we call identity, culture, religion and ethnicity and each space has its own unique notion, and they are often incompatible. And it becomes imperative to cordon such traits within a specific geographical space. A prime example would be the Taharrush that's spreading across Europe with the arrival of war refugees. This is exactly why contemporary leftist thinkers, the likes of Zizek and Badiou are voicing concerns about the (possible) cultural altercation. They may be leftists but they are not blinded by their goal to see the factual reality that is governing civilisation today. Anyway, that's probably too far off-topic, and feminism isn't really my interest department (hence the smiley in the heading) so I’ll refrain from going into details.