Postmodern/Women: Power, Desire and Gender Performance
Chang Kuo-ching / photos Hsueh Chi-kuang / tr. by D.J. Toman
December 1993
Ever since American women won equal rights and the right to participate in public affairs, the feminist movement became an irreversible trend and feminine consciousness began germinating throughout the world. Recently, Hollywood's studios made some adjustments to Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid When these fairy tales were produced for the big screen so that the films would better conform with current feminist thinking. In Beauty and the Beast, departing her former meek and submissive image, the character Beauty was depicted as an intelligent, independent, and headstrong woman who liked to read.
Woman power has also been gathering steam of late in Taiwan. All kinds of women's groups have been formed throughout society, each with its own agenda. On campuses,female students with strong feminine consciousness have founded numerous women's study groups, while young female scholars in Taiwan's universities and colleges have initiated courses dedicated to studying women's thought. Seemingly overnight, feminism has claimed a prominent position in Taiwanese society.
Author Chang Hsiao-hung can be considered a leading figure in the study and promotion of feminist thinking in Taiwan. Writing from a feminist viewpoint, in one critical essay after another her examination of current cultural happenings in Taiwan has attracted substantial notice.
Chang has recently collected a number of her critiques published in the newspaper over the years in a book entitled Postmodern/Women. In addition to interviewing the author, Sinorama has enlisted National Taiwan University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature associate professor Chang Kuo-ching, himself an observer of the development of feminism, to review the book.
In recent years, given the progressive social diversification and liberalization of Taiwan and its distinct island culture, Taiwan has become an ideal laboratory for testing various postmodern social theories and conducting cultural research. Deconstructionism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and Marxist theory are not in isolated company, making for a bustling cultural scene. Chang Hsiaohung's collection of critical essays, Postmodern/ Women, is a product of this particular time and place. On the one hand this collection offers various paradigms for cultural critique, while on the other it covers a number of issues worth careful consideration.
The Miss Universe beauty pageant, long a familiar cultural phenomenon, has for nearly as long been the target criticism from feminists. Feminists object to the pageant's cultural bias toward appearance over talent, and to its objectification of women. （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching）
Women dressed to the nines:
Postmodern/ Women is a combination of theoretical analysis and cultural criticism. As for its theoretical framework, the book takes notable French feminists (such as Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva) and deconstruction as its main threads with particular emphasis on psychoanalysis, language, and philosophy. The author also touches upon reader responses, Third World theories, and Marxist criticism. She exercises her analytical skills on such subjects as Shakespeare, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and romantic novels. Through it all, Chang Hsiao-hung demonstrates a remarkable grasp of contemporary theory and cultural criticism.
Seen from the attributes of postmodernism, Postmodern/Women is a pastiche of various cultural dimensions. In other words, it rearranges things that are outwardly independent and distinctive from one another and churns them through the author's analysis in order to convey the female longing to take on the traditional patriarchal order. In Chang Hsiao-hung's words, this collection is like "young women dressed to the nines in the latest fashions," as it uses diverse imagery to freely untangle the meaning of self-worth. Meanwhile, it is also much like the "Madonna phenomenon" of which the author is so fond, expressing the desire to constantly find change in varied forms and subjects.
We are nonetheless able to find in this complex process of transformation the central issue raised by the author; that is, to eliminate the traditional classifications of "high" and "low" culture, to reveal the relationship between sex ant the power structure, and to seek the pleasure of transgressing patriarchal culture through games and performances.
Popular culture--the exclusive domain of women?
Actually, differentiating between high-class and low-class cultural products is an ideological constraint, the reason being that popular culture is full of diversity and contains the latent capacity for subverting set social consciousness. In order to preserve their cultural dominion, a minority of "elites" use the high/low distinction to legitimize their cultural order, and to suppress the subversiveness of popular culture. Moreover, as Chang Hsiao-hung says, the definition of high/low culture invariably parallels the common notion of men as honorable and women as petty. Popular culture is constantly fed the association between women and poor taste.
Chang Hsiao-hung uses the example of current popular songs to note that when male singers perform love songs or reinterpret love songs associated with female singers, they show a demureness and emotional depth normally associated exclusively with women which overthrows established sexual identity.
Granted, mass culture cannot escape the influences of traditional ideology. One example can be found in the Taiwan television serial "Empress of an Age," where aside from portraying the Empress Wu as a strong female in the traditional mold, the writers also see fit to credit her success to the support of two capable men. Not even a TV series which exalts the most legendary female figure in Chinese history can escape the confines of maleoriented thinking. Chang Hsiao-hung suggests that our approach to such circumstances should be to take a path of resistance against these cultural products, to condemn "instances where female abilities are suppressed and distorted," and to foster "female consciousness." Simply put, we should cast off set assumptions about high versus low culture, and instead look for consciousness and strength within popular culture with which to take on patriarchal culture.
Power is knowledge:
The inequality between the sexes is tied closely together with the social power structure. In order to solidify its own dominion over politics and culture, the patriarchal hierarchy established a male-oriented knowledge order used to inculcate in women the qualities of forbearance and submissiveness, and to distort women's unique experiences and abilities. Whenever women actively seek to gain equal status for themselves, their actions are smeared as violent efforts to usurp power. The Wu Tze-tien of official histories and legends is one example.
Postmodern/Women also provides a new interpretation of societies of the Amazon model in history and literature from the perspective of power and knowledge. Basically, the traditional image of the "Amazon" paradigm is a product of male-centered consciousness which encompasses male disdain and fear of women's abilities. Chang Hsiao-hung puts the concept of "power is knowledge" up against the male-dominant society, and calls for women to question the conventional knowledge order and to assert their suppressed voices.
I would like to add that, given that power and knowledge are two sides of the same coin, women must completely cast off the wrongful notion that the struggle for power violates nature. Instead, women should set about re-establishing their rightful authority over culture and society.
Doing away with stereotypes:
As far as Chang Hsiao-hung is concerned, postmodern game stratagems, or as she terms it, "gender performance," can lend feminism new vitality and allow it to adapt to complex, changing postmodern culture. Madonna personifies the complexities, contradictions, and ambiguities of postmodern culture. Her daring, unpredictable performance style is in fact a bench mark for breaking through the confines of the stereotypes of early feminism and opening up today's feminism to the pursuit of individual needs.
As Chang Hsiao-hung sees her, Madonna in one sense represents the myth of capitalism or the illusion that women have achieved equal standing. In another sense, she also reminds feminists that they need not tacitly accept au natural stereotyped values; rather, they should freely choose the style of dress and model of resistance against sexual politics which suit their nature. If we apply this doctrine to cultural criticism, then the Madonna phenomenon represents the ability to shift between different postmodern theories. Consequently, Chang Hsiao-hung holds that Madonna's unbridled performing style has changed woman's disadvantaged status it the game of sexual politics. To some extent, women have attained the effect of "showmanship" through popular fashion. Then too, it could also develop into "unbridled methods of protest." In summation, Postmodern/Women stands for a feminism with personality, and for uncommon and varied game strategies.
Miss Universe vs. Miss Muscles:
One chapter of Postmodern/Women, on female bodybuilding contests, touches upon the relationships between sexual role-playing and power. Beauty contests such as the Miss Universe pageant are basically products of patriarchal culture. Taking men as the primary audience, women's bodies are used as a medium for males to project desires and derive visual pleasure. On the other hand, female bodybuilding contests have broken through visual inequality between the sexes. Subverting traditional concepts of feminine beauty with their robust physiques, female bodybuilders constitute a psychological threat of castration. Approached from the relationship between sexual differences and cultural resistance female bodybuilding signifies the attainment of cultural authority by women in the maleoriented knowledge order through game strategy.
Without question, performances or entertainment are expedient tactics used to oppose the hegemonic practices of capitalism and the paternalistic order. I also believe that contemporary feminists need not be bound by past limitations of image, but I cannot help but ask as well if someone like Madonna really represents the full extent of such a diverse cultural spectrum? The point of a feminist juggling various theories should be to look for the strategy with which to subvert patriarchal culture, but as a product of the capitalist commodity culture, Madonna may be loaded with individualism but yet harbors no intent to oppose male dominance. It is accurate to say that feminist game strategy and Madonna's performing style cannot readily be compared in one breath. Is it true that the differences between the self-images and attire of contemporary feminists from those of the past are directly linked to Madonna? Furthermore, some social theorists pointed out long ago that the paternalistic order and capitalism are really two sides of the same coin. Given this understanding, how can we criticize paternalistic culture on one hand while we claim that Madonna "passionately embraces commercial capitalist society?"
Liberate womankind:
Some aspects of fashion and showmanship strategies deserve consideration. As Chang Hsiao-hung notes, the earliest "feminism" denoted the 19th century women's movement in the United States. And as Adrienne Rich once said, feminism grew out of a grass-roots movement. In other words, the ultimate goal of feminism is the liberation of all womankind, which would automatically include middle- and lower-class female workers. Consider that women existing in the lower rungs of society whose basic needs are still not quite fulfilled lack the means to pursue fashion, not to mention turning such a pursuit into a statement of protest. This is an issue which today's feminists cannot afford to ignore.
If it is true that in popular fashion "there is no such thing as absolute rebellion or subversion" and that anti-social and counter-cultural behavior will ultimately be co-opted by the mainstream, then flashy protest can only bring fleeting personal pleasure and has no real function in terms of bringing about social change. Moreover, gender performance can only be done for performance's sake.
Finally, I wish to assert that Postmodern/Women is a rare work whose strengths far outweigh its shortcomings. Given her outstanding intellect and scholarship, Chang Hsiao-hung is a fountainhead of fresh ideas. As a supporter of the feminist movement, I simply wish to recommend Chang's work and offer a few thoughts for her and other feminists to consider.
[Picture Caption]
p.96
The Miss Universe beauty pageant, long a familiar cultural phenomenon, has for nearly as long been the target criticism from feminists. Feminists object to the pageant's cultural bias toward appearance over talent, and to its objectification of women. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)
p.97
In the past, women who smoked were seen as "rebellious," but these days women dare to defy the limitations placed on them by conventional sexual roles.
