Postmodern Feminist Approaches to Psychology

Whilst the discipline of psychology has an indigenous critical and feminist tradition, postmodern feminist approaches have developed from, as well as alongside, the broader philosophical and theoretical critiques generated initially in other disciplines. The focus of postmodern feminist work in psychology is on the construction of gender and relations of power. It seeks to unpack the discursive practices which create the grand narratives of mainstream psychological work. By rejecting the possibility of universal objective truths, postmodern feminist psychology can ask questions about the operation of gendered power relations and how these become played out in and through knowledge. Postmodern feminism brings together a number of feminist approaches which, broadly speaking, question the epistemological premises of realism and universal truth-finding which characterise the development of conventional psychology within the modernist epoch. It is against this backdrop that postmodern feminist approaches to psychology have been played out. Whilst the discipline of psychology has an indigenous critical and feminist tradition with roots in the late nineteenth century, postmodern approaches are not primarily indigenous to psychology having developed from, as well as alongside, broader philosophical and theoretical critiques generated initially in other disciplines. Modernist and postmodernist approaches to the study of gender in psychology raise crucial differences in the conceptualisation of what it means to be a ‘woman’ or a ‘man’. Conventional (modernist) psychology, in its attempts to map and pin down the nature of sex/gender, has produced the characteristics of sex as a fixed and fundamental entity or ‘essence’ of a person (laid down either through social or biological processes) and much research has been dedicated to identifying the differences between gendered groups. This stands in stark contrast to postmodern feminist ideas in that, far from being a foundational category, gender is construed as continuously (re)produced in and through social interactions and processes. The focus of postmodern feminist work is on the construction of gender and the ways in which aspects of gender and gendered experience become understood as a truth. From this perspective, the construction of truth is inevitably situated, “based upon and inextricably Lazard, Lisa ; McAvoy, Jean and Capdevila, Rose (2016). Postmodern feminist psychology. In: Naples, Nancy; Hoogland, Renee C.; Wickramasinghe, Maithree and Wong, Wai Ching Angela eds. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Wiley Blackwell. 2 intertwined with the contexts within which it was created” (Bohen 2003,13). More precisely, postmodern feminist psychology seeks to unpack the situated discursive practices which create the grand narratives of mainstream psychological work. By rejecting the possibility of universal objective truths, postmodern feminist psychology can ask questions about the operation of gendered power relations and how these become played out in and through claims to knowledge. A key tool for unpacking construction in postmodern feminist scholarship is deconstruction. This analytic tool focuses on breaking down dichotomies (e.g. man/woman, dominant/submissive, active/passive) to highlight the ways in which they are created and how they represent artificial categorisations that are embedded within power relationships and the accomplishment of privilege. This kind of analysis underscores the absence of universal truths as well as problematizing the notion of essential differences between men and women, and indeed the simplistic concept of binary sex (male or female). Postmodern feminist psychology is closely related to feminist post-structuralism and the two are often conflated because of a shared basis for critique of the grand narratives and hegemony of positivist scientific knowledge as well as a focus on the constitutive aspects of language and representation. Whilst Conflation is not necessarily a problem, it may skim over contentions between theoretical perspectives. Epistemological Challenges and Feminist Politics Feminist thought in general has offered a significant critique of the discipline of psychology, pointing to the ways in which women have been marginalised, ignored or otherwise rendered invisible (see for example, Weisstein1968,1993). Whilst postmodern feminist scholarship has undoubtedly contributed to the critique of psychology’s treatment of women, it has also raised specific questions around the compatibility of the postmodern epistemological stances described above and feminist activism/ theoretical challenge in psychology. This question of compatibility is raised in debates around the divide between frameworks which either essentialise or focus on the construction of gender. Feminist psychologists working within the modernist tradition, in common mainstream psychology, adopt an essentialised view of gender. This involves a conceptualisation of gender as a property of, and fixed within, the individual. For many feminists, working with an essentialised view of gender was crucial for reappropriating feminine traits that had been implicitly and explicitly denigrated in much mainstream psychological research (Gilligan 1982). In this feminist tradition then, the emphasis was on celebrating women’s difference from men by valuing those points of separation. Starting with the realist premise that gender has an objective material existence, provided feminist scholars and activists with a potentially stable base on which to build solidarity and claim a legitimate voice around objectively shared experiences. This essentialist view has come under heavy criticism from feminist psychologists drawing on postmodern theorising. As Bohan (1993) points out, essentialist versions of feminism tend to homogenise women and so ignore important points of difference between them. It can also make specific kinds of collective action difficult because the problem of gender is rooted in the individual. Therefore change is centred at the level of the individual rather than in oppressive systems. Bohan goes on to argue that postmodern constructionist stances circumvent such problems. For example, by rejecting the idea of universality of womanhood, postmodern feminism is able to engage with women’s diversity and Lazard, Lisa ; McAvoy, Jean and Capdevila, Rose (2016). Postmodern feminist psychology. In: Naples, Nancy; Hoogland, Renee C.; Wickramasinghe, Maithree and Wong, Wai Ching Angela eds. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Wiley Blackwell. 3 acknowledge that women’s identities and experiences are organised around many points of sameness and difference. Therefore it allows psychology to engage with the complexities framing gendered ways of being. In addition, the tenets of postmodernism allow for collective action based on the problematising of oppressive social structures rather than individual change because gender is located, shaped and reproduced within the social context rather than as a property of persons. Postmodern feminism’s emphasis on diversity and the specificity of context is not without problem. There is a danger of particularising women to the point where there is no basis for commonality (Bohan 1993; Butler 1990,1993). This highlights the key problem identified by some feminists in the field – the translation of postmodern thought to feminist action. The problems faced by feminists attempting to ground postmodern theorising for the purposes of political action are summed up by Wilkinson and Kitzinger (1995): 1. Postmodern emphases on diversity makes it difficult to mobilise around a coherent single voice/identification 2. The emphasis on discursive diversity may mask power differentials in those diverse discourses 3. Stress on micro-politics in some close interactional discursive analyses may minimise the importance of macro/structural inequalities 4. The postmodern position of an absence of any unified truth, gives rise to relativism and ‘all versions being equal’ displaces the grounding on which to make cogent political action. This critique has been challenged by feminists taking a postmodern approach to psychology. For instance, Hepburn (2000) responds to the four points above as follows: 1. Singularising what people are ‘really’ like is part of psychology’s oppressive power. Postmodern emphasis on plural identities avoids replicating problems associated with homogeneity and related power dynamics which work to position all women as universally inferior. 2. The emphasis on function of versions or accounts allows for an analysis of power 3. Micro-politics and macro/structural inequalities are inextricably interconnected. Macro/structural issues are constructed in and through micro practices. 4. Relativism allows us to call into question traditional terms and categories. This allows for reflective and critical consideration of taken-for-granted discourses which may allow for political stances/aims to be honed, reimagined or redefined. Instead of politics being grounded in appeals to a pre-discursive female identity, it becomes grounded in context. For many feminists, postmodern thought provides a means to transcend questions of essentialism as well as reimagine the boundaries around sameness and difference which are threaded through debates on feminist identity politics (e.g. Fine & Addelston 1996)