Women on the Edge of Modernity

Abstract

Feminism has long been committed to a critique of stereotypic examples of women in patriarchal discourse and has been keen to see what it could offer by way of alternatives. Yet to suggest that alternatives are possible raises the question of whether feminism itself can altogether avoid the trap of turning women into stereotypes, turning the specific example of woman into a universal model, in its own efforts to represent women. Communication demands the particular; it is not possible to refer to everything at once. At the same time, judgements that arise from the use of those particulars are always to some extent faulty - inaccurate or incomplete, too particular or too general. This applies as much to aesthetics (models of beauty) as it does to politics (another matter of representation). What is at issue here is the entire problematic of inclusion and exclusion, whether in politics or aesthetics. Focusing on the significance of Kant's reliance on woman as an example in the Critique of Judgement , Elam argues that it would be a mistake to dismiss all aesthetic discourses of beauty as ploys on the part of patriarchy to keep women for men's eyes only. The Critique of Judgement stands to be useful to feminism because it demonstrates that the problem of the example cannot be solved by striving for the perfect representation of woman - either an inclusive aesthetics or a fully representational politics - or even by overcoming the use of examples altogether. Rather, taking 'woman' as an example stages both aesthetic and political questions about representation that call attention to the challenges feminism faces in its attempt to form political communities.