-introduction of texts which assume or proclaim the advent of postfeminism

-**conflation of feminization with feminist**

-removal of political project from feminism, and its reduction to a conduit to gender studies

-to defining characteristics of postfeminism:

-useful male criticism, in contrast, analyzes male power and hegemony with a view to how it affects the female subject, and how male subjectivity can appropriate "femininity" while still oppressing women

-7 **while male subjectivity may be "in crisis", male power is actually consolidated thru cycles of crisis and resolution, whereby men deal with the threat of female power by absorbing, appropriating, or incorporating it

-notions of what constitutes "feminized" rely on static and essentialist definitions of male and female, e.g. female constituted as passive and masochistic

-relocation of the feminist struggle against patriarchy to feminist struggle within patriarchy/psyche of the patriarch; thus misogyny becomes self-loathing by men, and discussions about feminism become conversations with himself

-11 insofar as men "submit" to cultural stereotypes, they become feminized... "or, insofar as men are men, they are women"

-13 offhand mention of family as oppressive social unit [what of profamily feminist crits?]

-14-15 significance of title: either triumph of male feminist perspective or feminist disavowal of "woman" in the name of anti-essentialism

-poststructuralism: once "the subject" is called into question, and once gender/sex are seen as arbitrary, a "man" can become a "woman" [Brooks]

-pros and cons of pstruc: liberatory potential of alternate performances, complete decentralization of subject which impacts on political organizing

-16 imp of context: feminist decentralization of subject in opposition to patriarchy's all-encompassing categorization

-17 perceived problems of organizing around category woman

-18 crit of anti-essentialists wrt race

-19 "an appeal to a shared experience of oppression provides the starting point with which women as a group can open up the problematic of gender, at the same time as this notion of gendered community contains a strongly utopian dimension."

-simultaneous holding on to category of women while recognizing process of definition, thus the struggle is the most important thing

-luxury of anti-essentialism

23 main thesis of ch; to show how ways of thinking and discourse are so bound up with notions of feminine that the need for feminist crit is obvious

-24- history of women "debasing" mass culture, mass culture as feminine

-discussion of 2 positions on mass culture:

• traditional posn of mass culture as "feminized"
• affirmation + re-valuation of mass culture's relation to the feminine (Puig and Baudrillard) (does this represent a positive step for feminism since feminine has always been either exalted or denigrated)

Position 1: women as consumers of mass culture; women's habit of consumption seen as unavoidable and part of their natures, as opposed to a phenom of economics, women's production of texts even counts as consumption, questioning of importance of "production" (male, progressive acts of reading/viewing/participation) over "consumption" (female, regressive acts of reading/viewing/participation)

Strategies of Critique: a) reclaim consumption b) re-evaluate the hierarchy and binarism of consumption/production, reader/writer

Position 2: affirmation and re-valuation of feminine in mass culture, imp of personal for political revolution, masses' refusal of meaning in favour of spectacle, all-consuming "black hole" (!) of consumptive engulfment, in a sense masses sleepwalk through revolution (Baudrillard), "submission" of masses to culture equated with femininity, psychoanalytic equation of women's ascribed exclusion from the symbolic order with masses outside of language and meaning

Critique: reifies masc-fem divide, theory created by those who have the privilege to pretend to be removed from "the masses"

Concluding Thesis: A feminist approach to cultural crit should begin by examining the problematic sexual analogies that pervade even recent theory, esp when these present themselves as theories of liberation

Main goal: to examine assumptions and basic presuppositions of feminist ethnographic methodology

Central question: What do feminists hope to accomplish by examining popular texts (or any text)?

37- aim of ethnographic crit: to locate and examine areas of resistance to dominant ideology, or at least locate the space where people make meaning for themselves when faced with some kind of cultural input; ultimate goal is to find resistance that can be used for political struggle

-central Q of eth approach: what is the relationship between people and what they view/read/consume etc.; indivdual : text?

-concept of "subculture"; limited by cross-cultural occurrence (e.g. romance readers are not a subculture tho they are sometimes treated as one)

-problems with methodology: researchers reproducing power relations they hope to undermine, need for self-reflexivity on part of researcher + ack of political/personal investment; need for concept of contradiction within subjects' lives and views

Proposed model for feminist eth crit: crit as symbolic exchange/gift-giving (recognizing that women are in a system where they don't give gifts but are gifts), recognition of bringing meaning into being rather than discovering what was already there, performative "promise" of feminist crit in that it is constantly in the process of bringing new meanings into being as well as envisioning the future (simultaneously performative and utopian); task is not to affirm or deny which interpretations are "true" but examine how meanings function to describe/prescribe social relations and how different interpretations are accorded weight within particular contexts; transgressive potential exists in the act of becoming speaking subjects; simultaneous seizing of authority while questioning the foundations of that authority; imp. of theory of the performative as pleasure (power of ideo cannot be explained solely through logic)

Main theme of chapter: war : sexuality : masculinity

-sexual conquest = military conquest

-homosocial relations

-appropriation of femininity in female characters who desire men in their capacity as warriors, reiterating feminine love for hypermasculine man; the heroine herself is often made to invalidate "feminine" language

66 - "Feminism has now paradoxically become the last alibi for the liberal male's fascination with war."

-war as ultimate authoritative experience, as ultimate male referent; all other experiences are either in relation to it or pale by comparison

-war rescues men who are in danger of being consumed by femininity/female; reasserts the law of the father

-masochism v. sadism in psychoanalysis; relies of particular defns of male and female

-feminism symbolically occupies place of "mother"/law

-male masochism as a shift from male sadism merely means assigning men "feminine" chars or acts; does not challenge fundamental power relations of who has authority to speak and decide how to interpret; feminism denies men the power to be the sole authorities on war

Main theme: male appropriation of motherhood, male fears of female sexuality

-tie-in of Baby M case with this male motherhood; appropriation of mothering role and procreative function, elimination of female from the equation

-simultaneous that men can want to fulfill female roles but still hate/fear them, and this envy goes with a fear of feminization; male i.d. with women is couched in "male protest"

-sexualization of infant girl

-does male mothering represent a positive challenge to traditional norms or merely a shift in surface relations with even further marginalization of women?

Main theme: erasure of sexual and familial distinctions without challenging power structure; thus obliteration of difference =/= equality

Main theme #2: exploration of metaphor of size, of male regression into smallness or childhood, male desire to escape limits of body

Main question: how do these two themes challenge or reinforce traditional power relations and patriarchal gender divisions?

95 - body : voice : authority

-male becomes more authoritative the more his body disappears (voice-over is a narrative deity), while females are disempowered by being reduced to only their bodies

99 - nostalgia : marginalization

103 -oscillation between male and female does not necessarily entail positive subversion; desire to appropriate and desire to denigrate coexist, and both modes involve a degree of misogyny

Main theme: how culture understands questions of race and gender by exploring how cultural representations show black men/white women relation, and by examining role of black women in popular film, esp how black women fn as site of white culture's fears and anxieties

-colonialist discourse and mechanics of fetishization; notion of ineradicable racial difference simultaneously affirmed and negated

-role of mimicry for both colonizer and colonized

-represented blacks as "splitting" into montrosity/bestiality and nobility/wisdom; reductionist binarism which reflects white culture's ambivalence

127 -given the fetishistic nature of discourses on race and gender, can a politically effective strategy ever operate via "reversal"?

130 - women of colour as receptacle of white culture's fears

-black woman as sexualized body/sexual demon or victim, or maternal body/psychic surrogate for white mother

-black women is represented as "too literally" a woman (reduced to biology) or not really a woman at all (co-opting masculine power or denying "feminine" sexuality in some way)

-role of white women in engagement with these stereotypes

Main goals: a) to examine recent attempts by feminists to either eliminate gender or separate it from sex and b) to examine some of the problems in issues of representation btw sexual minorities and women c) to elucidate common problems and aims of 2 groups

-examining "straight male fantasy", then examine gay male sexuality, then lesbian s/m

-some of the most marginal positions may be bringing us back to the centre

-Dead Poets Society, Lethal Weapon

-Bruce Bawer, Leo Bersani and issues of powerlessness in gay male representation/porn, ish of male masochism in guise of powerlessness (luxury of empowered beings), coexistence of social power and sexual humiliation, different ideo valences of powerlessness and masochism for women and men

-celebration of powerlessness is not subversive in that it affirms structural value of power as an opposition

-male body as under-represented, and female body as over-represented

• to examine different aspects of the "postfeminist" movement within cultural criticism as applied to mass culture

• current development of postfeminism as a theoretical standpoint
• role of men in theorizing about feminism
• feminized =/= feminist
• male subjectivity "in crisis", male power re-established thru shift of focus to men, men absorb, appropriate, or incorporate female power
• feminist disavowal of gender can result in a return to the "universal subject", i.e. men

• psychoanalytic theory
• cultural criticism