Feminism

Feminism in it's basic form proposes or demands a political and /

or ethical viewpoint towards cultural experience emphasizing

all types of social conditioning towards gender or sexual

difference. Modern feminism further focuses on the aspects

of sexual orientation, racial and ethnic identification.

Suffragette movement

Feminism itself takes it's roots from the suffragette

movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

continuing to the women's lib movement of 1960's however it is

difficult to map historically, and is not a singular discourse

that can be simply defined. In The Feminism

and Visual Culture reader edited by Amelia Jones, feminism

is loosely defined as "any argument (whether visual or verbal,

embodied, virtual, or textual) which takes an interest in, or can

be deployed to explore , the ways in which subjects take on,

perform, or project gendered identities is, to some extent,

feminist, or at least is useful for feminist study of visual or other

kinds of culture"

Amelia Jones

Whether or not the definitions around what feminism are

clear, one thing is certain, there is a direct correlation between

feminism and postmodernism. Alice Jardine was quoted in Steven

Conner's book Postmodernist Culture An Introduction to theories

of the Contemporary

"To give a new language to these other spaces is a project filled

with both promise and fear....."

The quote above indicates how key works in the field of

linguistics and semiotics (Roland Barthes) coupled

with developments in the field visual culture which

in similar way to cultural studies has the impulse to reject

disciplinary hierarchies have given feminism a critical voice.

Roland Barthes

"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

This determines not only most relationships between men

and women but also the relation of women to themselves"

artists like Cindy Sherman and feminism artist like her have

taken this voice and embraced it

Cindy Sherman