A ghost haunts postfeminist constructivism: the “essence” of women
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/endoxa.56.2025.34244Keywords:
Social constructivism, gender, intersectionality, queer theory, sexual differenceAbstract
Under the hegemony of postmodern linguistics and its queer drifts, the ontological essence of a woman turned out to be a discursive construct for social control and uniformity, a normative ideal that stigmatizes linguistic subjects who do not respond to its imperatives. This sociological narrative explains the anti-essentialist and de-ontologizing crusade of cultural constructivism. The present article aims at showing the fallacies and false assumptions of this post-foundational narrative, which indeed conceals socio-linguistic foundationalism. Lacking a realistic ontological sense, the postmodern account ends up emptying the objective content of its representations and essentializing instead the most oppressive and unfair social stereotypes. My critique of postfeminist constructivism is based on some principles of the new speculative realisms, which have already warned about the violent and authoritarian outcome of postmodern fictions.
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