Review of Related Studies
“That narratives are discredited and fragmented is no reason to assume that they need always be so. This merely poses us a problem that we must direct our efforts
towards resolving” Sim, 2001: 33. Fragmentation exists of course for a certain reason. The aim of breaking down the narratives into pieces is to help the reader to reach an
agreement of what should be done with those pieces. As mentioned earlier, since it is not for building up an information, fragmentation exists to guide the reader to dig every
single detail of a story so that they could solve the „riddle‟ in the story and get the write
r‟s idea. Through the pieces of text, the reader has already triggered to think why it is so which generates the first problem to solve. The next problem could be seen when
the reader is able to identify the main point in each piece of the broken narratives. There is no one central meaning to any text, but a plurality of possible meanings.
From such a perspective conventional criticism is a pointless act, since it is based on the notion that each text has an essential meaning which it is the critics duty to
present to the reader. Active interpretation represents an explosion of this assumption, since by its manipulation of the texts language it continually discovers
new meanings Sim, 2001: 179.
Since a postmodern work always provides multiple meanings, interpreting is the proper way to solve the problem. Active interpretation is Derrida‟s term of not so much a
reading of a text. Active interpretation here is in the standard sense of a critical interpretation, or „explication de texte‟ Derrida calls it Sim, 2001:179. It is designed to
reveal the texts underlying meaning. In sum, to interpret is to negotiate the value of several possible meanings in order to get the most suitable one Sim, 2001: 179-180.
2. Theory of Feminism
Feminism has many divisions. In this section, there are only three divisions of feminism to be discussed. They are, radical feminism, bourgeois feminism, and
socialistmaterialist feminism. In short, radical feminism supports the separation from male dominated culture.
Apart from l iberating women from men‟s power, radical feminists also emphasize
women‟s superior characteristics Tycer, 2008: 15. Bourgeois feminism emphasizes on the struggle for equality with men within existing social structures. Women need equal
opportunities for professional job, equal education, and also equal pay. Bourgeois feminism is also known as liberal feminism which women want to be „like men‟ Wandor,
1981: 134. Socialist feminism, also known as materialist feminism, focus on the economic relationship.
Rather than assuming that the experiences of women are induced by gender oppression from men or that liberation can be brought about by virtue of women‟s
unique gender strengths, that patriarchy is everywhere and always the same and that all women are „sisters‟, the materialist position underscores the role of class and
history in creating the oppression of women ... Not only are all women not sisters, but women in the privileged class actually oppress women in the working class
Case, 1988: 82-83.
The quotation above is from a feminist theater scholar, Sue-Ellen Case, who simply differentiate materialist feminism and the other feminisms. Women are not only oppress
by men but also the other women from the upper class. During the 1970s, British socialist feminists found that they were underrepresented in labor hierarchies and
struggled with the sexism. Therefore they tried to work with their union „sister‟ to enact social change Rowbotham, 1997: 405-4015.
Social feminism deals with the belief that the oppression of women is not only based on the economic system, but also patriarchy and capitalism combined into one
system. This oppression needs to be understood, not just in terms of inequalities of power
between men and women, but also in terms of the requirements of capitalism and
the role of state institutions in a capitalist society. Socialist feminist writers in the 1970s and early 1980s tended to concentrate on issues such as employment,
domestic labour and state policy Welch, 2001.
Social feminists try to achieve sexual equality through working in masculine world. They work hard there to get public‟s interest to make them realize the recognition of sex
discrimination. What makes social feminism different from the other feminism is that it refers to the fact that women actually are not only oppressed by men but also by women.
In a word, lower class women, or they who are in the working class, are oppressed by not only the upper class women but also the working class women who have higher power
and position than them. 3.
Theory of Postmodern Feminism Feminist experts have reacted to postmodernist thought in a number of ways. Some
reject it directly, while others try to get a synthesis of feminist and postmodernist approaches. Some feminists believe feminist theory has always dealt with postmodern
issues and indeed, has more to offer women than male-centric postmodern writers. Thus, it is seen that postmodern feminist attempts to criticize the dominant order.
Postmodern feminists offer women differential power relations that allow them to be constructed as women in the first place. According to the existentialist Simon de
Beauvoir in her Second Sex, women are socially constructed as the Other Sim, 2001: 43. In this case, womens exclusion is not an accidental omission but a fundamental
structuring principle of all patriarchal discourses. It is called as a fundamental structuring principle because it is like what Beauvoir, in The Routledge Companion to
Postmodernism , states that women have, historically, be
en considered “deviant, abnormal and contends” Sim, 2001:43. It confirms that women had been seen as the
inferior compared to men. Woman at that time had represented the Other that can confirm mans identity as Self, as rational thinking being. Thus, in that patriarchal system,
women seemed to have no rights to be equal to men because of what society had labeled them as the inferior, the „different‟ one. They were different because they were not men.
Women, according to Kant, are passive rather than active. They are dependent creature. They are made for a dependence on man. Kohlberg has responded to the initial
Gilligan critique. He has argued that the differential performance of women and men reflects variations in education and job experience Assister, 1996: 100-1003. Women
tend to have lack of education and job experience than men. This is what makes women hardly get a promising position for their job.
As the evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer, put it: „the deficiency of reproductive power among upper class girls may reasonably be attributed to the
overtaxing of their brains —an overtaxing which produces a serious reaction on the
physique‟ Asisster, 1996: 115. Furthermore, in the late nineteenth century, in Britain and elsewhere, theories about
natural sex differences were used to refuse women access to higher education and to justify differential treatment of the sexes. This is what makes women could not get equal
rights to have equal wage as men. Borrowing Gaten‟s words that is cited in Assister‟s book, the subject is always a
sexed subject. Patriarchy is, in her view, not a „system of social organization that enhances the value of the masculine gender over the feminine gender. Gender is not the
issue; sexual difference is‟ 1996: 121. Bel
ow is a quotation from World Bank cited in Marchand and Parpat‟s book on how the women‟s position in the 1980s:
Culture and tradition vary but often confine women and girls inside the family or
close to home. As a result, women‟s productivity is frequently depressed well below potential levels
—and this carries a cost in economic efficiency. Women are, in a sense, wasted ... women feel reluctant to seek help for themselves or their children ...
In some societies where women are not encouraged to think for themselves, authority figures have helped persuade women to seek health or family planning
services, continue breastfeeding, and so on Marchand and Parpat, 1995: 228.
The quotation above shows how women are seen as the Other, like what Simone de Beauvoir in her Second Sex. Women are bound by tradition and gender based difficulties.
Women have problems with their own self confidence by means that they could not voice what is on their mind. Therefore, there is imposed silence from women who are too
afraid to state the oppression they had experienced for so long. In many cases, feminist theorists only speak up only as women so that they only
theorize things based on their own desires. Some postmodernist French philosophers embrace them in the context of respo
nding to the “contemporary crisis of the rational subject” Sim, 2001: 206. Since the postmodernists embrace the feminists, it is now
known as postmodern feminism. The vision of postmodern feminism itself is to respond the pessimism of postmodern philosop
hy by “embracing its emphasis on the fragmentary nature identity while retaining a politics, ethics of a sexual difference” Sim, 2001: 207.
The difference between traditional feminism and postmodern feminism lies in their point of view of what to show t
o public. Traditional feminism goes public with “no more masks” Sim, 2001: 310. On the other hand, postmodern feminism argues that “we are
nothing but masks” Sim, 2001: 310. Postmodern feminism tends to expose all the sexual roles as nothing more than performance. Women tend to represent themselves as
something different from what society demands.