Based upon TERESA LAURETIS PAPER

1. UPPING THE ANTI
(SIC) IN FEMINIST
THEORY-TERESA
DE LAURETIS
PRESENTED BY
NAEEMA NEEFA
MFM/17/245

2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Emphasis on the constitution of
subjectivity within representation, sexuality.
• Theorize and invite
desire and fantasy, and construct ways of thinking about feminism and
subjectivity .
• “Theory” - as a scientist might, as a proven
postulate, “a set of statements or principles devised to explain a
group of facts”.

3. KEY WORDS
• ESSENTIALISM - every entity has a set of attributes that are
necessary to its identity and function.
• STRUCTURALISM - elements of human culture must be
understood by way of their relationship to a larger.
[
• POST STRUCTURALISM - way of studying how knowledge is
produced .
• CULTURAL FEMINISM -there is a "female nature" to revalidate
attributes ascribed to femaleness. [

4. Introduction
De lauretis essay is about feminist debates over essentialism. Identity is never fixed
according to her and it is narrated as for a woman to say “Iam woman "there is no need to
transparently refer to particular kind of body as that would be the essence of being a woman
. Even a person without that body can possess a woman’s identity .
“Woman is something not in relation to essential quality of womanhood , but
identified in distinction to other categories mostly the maleness”
De Lauretis says that feminism’s historical specificity is based on female embodied
social subject and not merely a un nuanced woman.

5. • Feminist theory essential difference of feminist
conception between women , woman , & world and not a
difference between men and women .
• Essence in feminist thoughts and self
representation debate topic everywhere.
• Anti essentialist deals with typologizing , defining ,
branding feminisms along theoretico political sophistication .
• Essentialism is not having effective criticism in feminist
theory .

6. According to Locke,
3 acceptations are important as follows :
• Absolute being in the metaphysical sense : the reality underlying phenomenon
• Being a thing –which it is (nominal essence ) , and what it is (real essence).
I. Conceptual entity-totality of properties without which it comes to the very same
thing.
For eg : essence of triangle- three lines at three angles , make a triangle .
I. Real entity – internal constitution on which all the sensible properties depend .
Actually it is unknown .
“Women are made not born ,gender isn’t an innate feature but a sociocultural
constitution and patriarchy is historical”-Locke

7. The two entities for better
understanding
CONCEPTUAL ENTITY REAL ENTITY

8. Essence of woman = Essence of Triangle
THAN AN ESSENCE OF A THING IN ITSELF ,IT IS WITH SPECIFIC PROPERTIES LIKE
FEMALE SEXED BODY,QUALITIES AND ATTRIBUTES HISTORICALLY BOUND IN
PATRIARCHIAL SOCIOCULTURAL CONTENT WHICH MAKES HER WOMEN AND
NOT MEN AT THE END OF THE DAY . AND WOMEN STRUGGLE TO DEFINE HER
OWN TRIANGLES……

9. 2 ESSAYS ARE QUOTED BY DE LAURETIS . THEY ARE :
1. CHRIS WEEDON’S “FEMINIST PRACTICES AND POST STRUCTURALIST THEORY” ,
published in 1987
2. LINDA ALCOFF’S “CULTURAL FEMINISM VERSUS POST STRUCTURALISM – IDENTITY
CRISIS IN FEMINIST THEORY”, published in 1988.
WEEDONS BOOK:
• RADICAL FEMINIST THEORY – systematise individual insights about the oppression of
women into relatively coherent theories of patriarchy which co opt women and supress
femininity .
• PSYCHOANALYTICAL FEMINISM –more politically sophisticated discourse .
• POST STRUCTURALISM – requires historical specificity about subject positions of women ,
modes of femininity and place in network of social relations
POST STRUCTURAIST FEMINISM IS THE FIRST STAGE IN FEMINIST INTERVENTION

10. ALCOFF’s ESSAY :
• Apart form crisis of feminist theory there is also crisis of identity.
• DILEMMA : self definition has to be deconstructed in all of it’s
aspects .
• HER RESPONSES TO THIS ARE :
Cultural feminists replaced the definition given by men to
create a more accurate definition of essential female according to
them .
Post structuralist reject defining women all together and
replace the gender politics it differences so the gender loses
significance .
DE LAURETI’S QUESTION:
If women is a fiction , & there are no women as such then the issue of
women’s suppression is obsolete and feminism wont have raised?

11. Woman as positionality – women is a position from which feminist politics
can emerge than a set of attributes that are objectively identifiable.
Gender is not essential, but relevant because we are taking gender as a
position from which to act politically.
CONCURRENT DRIVES in production of self representation:
♣EROTIC DRIVE – enhances images of feminism as rebellion ,daring, excess ,
disloyalty , agency .
♣ETHICAL DRIVE - act towards community ,accountability , sister hood,
bonding belonging to the common world of woman .

12. CONCLUSION
• UPPING THE ANTI analyse the un decidability , conceptual and pragmatic nature of
alternative and breaks it’s fixity of meanings which polarisation had suggested and
reintroduce larger contextual and conceptual frame analysis .
•
• Explain the positivity and negativity –topic in debates as feminism and shift focus
from mere internal opposition to complex analysis.
• Feminist theory isn’t oppression in culture.
• It’s a developing theory of female embodied social subject.
• Social existence of female sexed subject depends on not only gender and sex but
also sociocultural divisions an representations.
IT’S ALL BASED ON CONFLICTUAL HISTORY .

13. THANK YOU