Book | Chapter
(2010) Between feminism and materialism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
In the last two chapters I have shown how phenomenological ontology can be brought together with dialectical materialism to move us beyond the dichotomy 'sex/gender." The phenomenological account of the body-as-situation offers tools for theorizing body-consciousness within intricate and variegated object-complexes. But situations were themselves revealed to be complicated, differentiated according to, inter alia, race, nationality, class, sexuality, mobility, and sex/gender. Patterns of conduct reflect this diversity. For this reason, the problem "what does it mean to be a woman" could be thought to evaporate, leaving a more fluid and open embodiment and "an infinite array of differences."1 But if this really were the case, if there were insufficient resemblances between individuals to classify them as either men or women, we would be unable to detect patterns of regularities. The concept of systematic oppression would be thereby meaningless. But we can detect patterns of regularities, and the concept of systematic oppression is certainly not meaningless.
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Full citation:
Howie, G. (2010). Patriarchy, in Between feminism and materialism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 179-200.
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