Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Esta publicación cientíca en formato digital es continuidad de la revista impresa
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197402ZU34
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Vol.39 N° 71
2021
Recibido el 14/08/2021 Aceptado el 21/11/2021
ISSN 0798- 1406 ~ De pó si to le gal pp 198502ZU132
Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas
La re vis ta Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas, es una pu bli ca cn aus pi cia da por el Ins ti tu to
de Es tu dios Po lí ti cos y De re cho Pú bli co Dr. Hum ber to J. La Ro che” (IEPDP) de la Fa-
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ción, dis cu sión y con fron ta ción de las ideas y avan ces cien tí fi cos con com pro mi so so cial.
Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas apa re ce dos ve ces al o y pu bli ca tra ba jos ori gi na les con
avan ces o re sul ta dos de in ves ti ga ción en las áreas de Cien cia Po lí ti ca y De re cho Pú bli-
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nes Cien tí fi cas y Tec no ló gi cas Ve ne zo la nas del FO NA CIT, La tin dex.
Di rec to ra
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OIRALITH
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Vol. 39, Nº 71 (2021), 505-516
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs
postfeminist theories and practices
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.3971.28
Tetiana Vlasova *
Olha Vlasova **
Nataliia Bilan ***
Inna Zavaruieva ****
Larysa Bondarenko *****
Abstract
The aim of the article is considered the conceptual reconstruction
of the relationship between postmodern feminism and the notional
eld of contemporary neoliberalism. The analytical methods
used were based on the assertion that the complexity of textual
interventions requires interdisciplinary approaches. The ndings
and results of the research carried out accentuate that COVID-19
has contributed greatly to the contradictions of the current global
landscape in the contexts of neoliberalism and feminism. Feminism asserts
as a discourse that the conceptual apparatus of neoliberalism has not served
its goals; in fact, postfeminism has not yet chosen its route in the neoliberal
context. The assumption that women cannot win their “vindication battle”
in the world where “the game is xed” continues to be taken as an axiom,
even though the coronavirus pandemic causes some observers to proclaim
the return of inuential governments and social contracts. The latter
accentuates the role of female representation in neoliberal social, cultural,
and political discourses at the global level.
Keywords: life world; virtual economies; problematization of theory;
social construction; pop-culture.
* Doctor of Philosophic Sciences, Professor, Head of the Philology and Translation Department, Dnipro
National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro, Ukraine.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5040-5733
** Candidate of Philosophic Sciences, Associate Professor at the Philosophy and Sociology Department,
Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro,
Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1755-0853
*** Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Philology and Translation Department,
Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro,
Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6732-7831
**** Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Philology and Translation Department,
Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro,
Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2423-9481
***** Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Philology and Translation Department,
Dnipro National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Dnipro,
Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7614-8480
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Tetiana Vlasova, Olha Vlasova, Nataliia Bilan, Inna Zavaruieva y Larysa Bondarenko
Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices
Discursos neoliberales posmodernos frente a teorías y
prácticas posfeministas
Resumen
El objetivo del artículo se considera la reconstrucción conceptual
de la relación entre el feminismo posmoderno y el campo nocional del
neoliberalismo contemporáneo. Los métodos analíticos empleados se
basaron en la armación de que la complejidad de las interpretaciones
textuales exige los enfoques interdisciplinarios. Los hallazgos y resultados
de la investigación realizada acentúan que el COVID-19 ha contribuido
en gran medida a las contradicciones del panorama mundial actual en los
contextos del neoliberalismo y del feminismo. El feminismo arma como
discurso que el aparato conceptual del neoliberalismo no ha servido a
sus objetivos; de hecho, el postfeminismo aún no ha elegido su ruta en el
contexto neoliberal. La suposición de que las mujeres no pueden ganar su
“batalla reivindicativa” en el mundo donde “el juego está arreglado” se sigue
tomando como un axioma, a pesar de que la pandemia de coronavirus hace
que algunos observadores proclamen el regreso de los gobiernos inuyentes
y los contratos sociales. Esto último acentúa el papel de la representación
femenina en los discursos sociales, culturales y políticos neoliberales a nivel
global.
Palabras clave: mundo de la vida; economías virtuales; problematización
de la teoría; construcción social; cultura pop.
Introduction
The list of radical changes, which have been wrought in the “postmodern
condition,” makes scientists conceive late modernity as a dramatic period
with a number of signicant shifts. In the Western world those changes
are both symbolic and real-life, embracing the problematization of the
philosophic absolutes against the background of renouncing abstract
models and modes that have been applied for thousands of years. Scientic
legitimation of the “post-Brave New world” requires the development of
the conceptual apparatus for understanding and explaining collective
and individual experiences of man/woman in the problematic elds of
postmodernity. The contradictory “web” of the social, political and economic
picture of our days is represented in the context of the dominating inuence
of two key factors: “new popular culture” and “new cyberspace” of mass-
media expansion, with the focus on their aggressive attitudes towards the
“public” and the “individual”.
“Life world” (“Lebenswelt” to E. Husserl) of our day-to-day experience
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can be represented nowadays as a kind of universal horizon covering chaos of
non-science-conscious reection, without the burden of scientic concepts
and notions in the minds of “ordinary” people, - men and women, in their
own subjective interpretation. “Life world” is extremely important in the
postmodern context of “hyper-intensication of modernism” with its loads
of facts and metaphors providing much material for comprehension of the
postmodern “landscape”. Still the fact is that “life world” is an initial stage
of any comprehension, a kind of “matrix”, which stipulates all the branches
of the Theory (Svasyan, 2010: 60). The confusions and contradictions of
the contemporary thought have become much more evident due to the
current global pandemic situation with COVID-19, which has shown vividly
“how the real world became a Fable”, and what the realities of the social
construction are at present (Schwab et al., 2020).
Hence follows the importance of popular culture, its idols and ideas, its
ideology including all the aspects of the postmodern life in the production
of the “world picture”, loaded with scientic concepts and the metaphorical
“truths,” which regulate individuals’ relations to the surrounding world
with the focus on the “must” to simulate the “objective essence” of the
existence. The issue, which arises here, is referred to by postmodernists
as the “problematization of theory”. New cosmological ideas are making
the world picture even more complicated, theology seems to add by
concentrating on the particular religious issues, philosophy is, as a rule,
engaged in the analysis of the cultural discourses, not being preoccupied
with the metaphysics of absolutes. Political science provides quite a cluster
of new research trends: political economy, institutional studies, social
politics, neoliberalism, feminism and gender studies (the last two, being no
doubt connected, are not at all synonyms). All mentioned above nowadays
represents the development of the corresponding sub-branches of the
political science in many countries, Ukraine included.
The increase of interest to these scientic elds testies to the evident
successful attempts of the Ukrainian political science in its expansion
into the Western “theory”. Such research entails many interdisciplinary
dialogues; in this particular article it means the analysis of the neoliberal
theories and postfeminist agendas with the focus on understanding their
interconnection and contradiction in the context of the current postmodern
theoretical problematization.
1. Methods of research
With the focus on the complexity of the interpretation of the contemporary
“world picture”, the interdisciplinary approaches are considered of great
signicance. In order to develop the theoretical analysis and the conceptual
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Tetiana Vlasova, Olha Vlasova, Nataliia Bilan, Inna Zavaruieva y Larysa Bondarenko
Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices
presentation of the given research material, some denite methods of
the scientic investigation are also considered important. Here the
deconstruction should be mentioned as the key principle of postmodernism.
The phenomenological and existential approaches to the analysis are
signicant too as they help to stress the issue of the “human experience”,
which is valid in this investigation.
Hermeneutics, as the postmodernism theory of interpretation, also plays
its role in this research. Applying the hermeneutic interpretation means
the coordination of the dierent contexts presented in the article. The
constructivist method permits to claim the social-cultural determination
of the phenomena analyzed in the article. The logic of the hermeneutic
interpretation in the aspects of the sociological discourse leads to the
acknowledgment of the systematic approach used in order to escape the
simplied treatment of the denite socio-cultural facts and phenomena. On
the whole, this scientic paper advocates interdisciplinary dialogue, which
is considered absolutely necessary as it reects the postmodernist idea of
epistemological pluralism.
2. Neoliberal conceptualization of postmodern discourses
Neoliberal conceptualization of political, cultural, and economic
discourses in postmodern neoliberalism is considered by theorists as a
kind of “generalized term”. While mainly treating this term as “a theory of
political, economic practices that proposes that human well-being can be
best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom” (Harvey,
2007: 2), scientists accentuate that neoliberalism is a key to the postmodern
political, social, cultural, and economic transformations. Among many
denitions of neoliberalism there are such, in which the focus is on the
“market” and “trade” (Harvey, 2007: 2). On the other hand, the tendency is
evident to oppose neoliberalism to liberalism primarily in their connection
to the market. Speaking about “a vision of capitalism” F. Jameson claims
that “the armation of the primacy of the market is sheer ideology” (2009:
211).
The liberal “consensus”, which preceded neoliberal “skepticism”, has
been achieved, and, according to F. Fukuyama (2006), has been realized
when America announced the victory of its principal free-market ideal.
Postmodern researchers argue that namely postmodern ideas provide
a valuable critique to Fukuyama’s thesis, and pose the questions: can we
talk about a universal and ideological history; a universal human nature,
or an autonomous individual? The declaration of controversial ideas from
the start provoked much debate. In 1994 J. Derrida set his deconstruction
scheme as a binary opposition to Fukuyama and Modernist-enlightenment
world (Sim, 1995).
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It is stated that liberalism and social democracy tendencies went into the
reverse course with the election of the Thatcher and Reagan governments.
That era has been dominated since early 80s of the last century by the
contemporary forms of neoliberalism - based “market fundamentalism”,
globalization and the ideology of “free trade”. The postmodern scientists
using the theoretical lens of M. Foucault’s ideas of governmentality,
understand it as a form of radical political economy, and criticize
neoliberalism as the ruling “ideological consensus”.
D. Harvey (2007: 3) claims that neoliberalism is the doctrine asserting
that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all
human action. While the institutional framework is often mentioned too, it
is stressed that state interventions into markets must be kept to a minimum,
because the state cannot possess enough information as for the market
signals powerful interest groups will inevitably distort state intentions. Still
D. Harvey (2007: 7) is sure that the conceptual apparatus of neoliberalism
represents concepts of dignity and individual freedom. His assumption is
that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market, and this
is a cardinal feature of neoliberalism.
Some researchers’ approaches to neoliberalism accentuate its cultural
implications. Embracing the complexity of neoliberalism and the
corresponding diculty to comprehend it, J. Gilbert (2016) constructs a
vision of the ways neoliberalism is represented in a full scope of cultural
life. The scientist claims that the possible ways to understand neoliberalism
include viewing it as a discoursive formation, an ideology, a hegemonic
project of ideas, techniques, and technologies, as what Deleuze and Guattari
call “abstract machine”.
As “reality is made up of the Absolute and Causality” (Y. Gonzalez),
we should put some accent on the “concept,” its role and signicance in
postmodernism. In our instance, it is the philosophic evolution of how
G. Deleuze represents transition from one concept to another. For him,
philosophy means creation of concepts, in his view, the history of philosophy
is the history of concepts (Deleuze and Guattari, 2009). G. Deleuze and F.
Guattari create a concept of the “abstract machine”. The preceding concept
of “trans-semiotics” allows Deleuze and Guattari to claim that not the signs
refer to the language, which forms the structural and generating abstract
machine. On the contrary, the language itself refers to the regimes of the
signs. That is why trans-semiotics represents the abstract machine, which
operates not with the “essences”, but with the “matters”. Thus, we cannot
use the categories of the form and the essences to the abstract machine
(Dyakov, 2013).
In the view of all said above the comparison made by J. Gilbert looks
quite provocative. To our mind, it means that an answer to neoliberalism
cannot be some other ideology, because it is not pure ideology, which is
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Tetiana Vlasova, Olha Vlasova, Nataliia Bilan, Inna Zavaruieva y Larysa Bondarenko
Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices
quite disputable. Some researchers maintain that there is an “answer” to
neoliberalism, and it means democracy (Davis, 2017: XI). However, the
denition that appears later in the book, cited here, states that neoliberalism
is the elevation of market-based principles to the level of state-endorsed
norms (Davis, 2017: XI).
Another interesting assertion, made by W. Davis, is about disenchantment
of policies by economics. The example, provided by the scientist, seems
quite valid: the economic crisis of 2008 was separated from the political
one at the beginning, but the Brexit reference was a kind of eruption the
long awaited politization of the crisis.
Psychological pain, which many people suered during that period, is
not separated from the physical pain concept, writes the theorist, asserting
that “pain” has become far more wide-spread in neoliberal societies: “Brexit
and Trump supporters both have an above-average tendency to support the
death penalty” (Davis, 2017: VIII). Summing it up, W. Davis comes to the
conclusion that neoliberalism is “a moral economic system”, which provides
power to the most competitive people and institutions.
The fact is that it has become a target (rationally or not) for the vast
number of people that made them suer not only from the pain of defeat,
they were punished for that defeat politically and economically (Davis, 2017:
VIII). Since its entry on the world stage COVID-19 has dramatically torn
up the existing script of how to govern countries. The paradoxical nature of
neoliberalism is represented in the following situation: the dominating role
of monopolies, banks and other “principal players” in the neoliberal society
along with the decreasing role of states and their institutions should have
led to the prosperity of the citizens free individuals in the free market
relations.
In fact, the aim of neoliberalism absolute freedom of market and
trade has given the reverse result: the aggravating decrease of economic
indices. The pandemic with its great impact on the ve main categories
the economic, the societal, the geopolitical, the environmental, and the
technological has proposed “the reset”, the new conceptual framework
with three dening characteristics of today`s world: interdependence,
velocity, complexity, and – what is of great importance - the return of “big
government” and the social contract (Schwab et al., 2020).
As the key dimension of neoliberalism is competition per se, it should
be noted that this principle seems a bit “cumbersome”, rising much
misunderstanding and confusion in the minds of ordinary people. The
essential change that has recently happened is quite evident to the category
of “ordinary citizens”: bankers, hedge-fund owners have detached their
activities from the real world. Instead of being a “service industry,” banking
became a closed system, which has no social value. This phenomenon
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has not only been analyzed by scientists, but it has also been depicted by
the authors of the “serious novels” and mass culture products (e.g. in the
popular “Billions”, produced by Showtime (2016-2021). One of the main
characters of the novel “A Week in December” by S. Faulks, a hedge-fund
billionaire’s wife, a psychologist, and a lawyer by education, thinks about
what is happening:
Prot was no longer related to growth or increase, but became self-sustaining;
and in this semi-virtual world, the amount of money to be made by nanciers also
become unhitched from normal logic. It followed… that the people who could
ourish here must themselves be in some profound and personal way, detached…,
they did take precautions to minimize the possibility of any contact with reality…
However, it remained necessary for these people to have or to develop very
quickly – a limited sense of “the other”; a kind of functional autism was the ideal
state of mind (Faulks, 2010: 102-103).
It is obvious that if neoliberalism is an “ethic” in itself, it is quite a
special kind of ethic. And it is not only about the crisis of the philosophy
absolutes, it means something dierent, a kind of new realization of the
“old” binary oppositions. G. Gonzalez writes that people are special insofar
they access the higher aspects of the absolutes, the classical philosophic
conception of Truth, Love, Compassion, Altruism, etc. The absolutes have
their oppositions in the classical dichotomies: Evil, Falsehood, Greed, Lust,
Hate, Self-centeredness, Conceit, etc. Predicting society on what scientists
consider the lower aspect of the absolutes, results in personal and social
dysfunction, and consequently – in the end of civilization (Gonzalez, 2019).
3. The neoliberal discourses and narratives vs the postfeminist
theories and practices
If the thesis is true that postcapitalist “logic” and neoliberal “ethic”
generate psychological and cultural pressure resulting in negative eects
on individuals, it is worth addressing it with the examples of discourses
of postfeminism and the narratives of the contemporary popular culture.
As the key dimension of neoliberalism is the ethos of competitiveness,
the women’s place “in the market” and “around the market” is obviously
disadvantageous from the “start”. It is well-known that liberal feminism is
deeply rooted in modernity as a project of emancipation. In the feminism
“dilemma” of two main conceptual directions. The feminist emancipation
political activity has depended on the “linear purposeful time”, in which
the historical achievements of one generation are passed to the next one.
As scientists’ comment, this is the modernist historical mode, in which the
denite acts of self-realization make the realization of the initial objectives
and ideals possible (Appignanesi and Garratt, 2006: 202). To our mind,
feminism is a good example of a long-term emancipational target, though it
is problematic, whether it is “guaranteed” by historical progress.
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Tetiana Vlasova, Olha Vlasova, Nataliia Bilan, Inna Zavaruieva y Larysa Bondarenko
Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices
No doubt, some recent economic and political trends vividly testify
that feminism has successfully realized some (though not all) its goals. At
present the feminist “mainstream” includes governmental programs, grant
projects, funds’ support. The programs and projects can be motivated by
feminism and gender theories, though quite often in the asymmetrical way,
with the obvious bias towards gender ideology and practices. When in the
West it is governmentally accentuated that women live in the “aftermath” of
feminism because now they enjoy the “long-sought” equality with men, it is
often implicitly meant to say to the women living in the West: “You should
remember, how lucky you are! ` Indeed, according to the Forbes ratings,
annually the number of women, who increase their wealth, is constantly
grows (with the exception of 2017).
If in 2018 the Forbes included only 91 ladies in its rating of billionaires,
in 2019 this number was 243, in 2021 it is 328 women. The rst position in
the list of women- billionaires (the 15th in the overall list of 2019) is occupied
by Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the co-owner of L’Oréal. Her mother
Liliane, who died not long ago, had kept the rst position in this “female
list” for many years. Alice Walton, the co-owner of Walmart, occupies the
second position, and Jaqueline Mars –from Mars Inc.- the next. In the
biographies of all those women, notwithstanding their personal abilities
and capabilities, there is “old money”, which is one more proof of the old
proverb “wealth begets wealth”.
Then what about the competition? Are millions of ordinary women
can be considered “losers”? Neoliberalism with its focus on “market” and
“competition” in fact increases inequalities, especially in the economy and
as a result undermines democracy, because democratic state is replaced by
market principles in the organization of major services. This problematic
situation lies in the classical dichotomy “to be to seem”. Feminists
address the public and governmental organizations with the motto “Stop
pretending!
The Global Gender Gap Index, according to the version of World
Economic Forum (The Global Gender Gap Report), shows that the index
of not below 0,8 represents countries: Iceland (0,858), Norway (0,835),
Sweden (0,822), Finland (0,821), Nicaragua (0,809), Rwandan (0,804). In
the list, mentioned above, Ukraine occupies № 65 (0,708) (Global Gender
Gap Index, 2020).
At the average level and in the global context, women take 22% of
people’s representatives in the national parliaments. Three countries
of the EU have the gender parity (50:50): Sweden, France and Slovenia.
In Ukraine the percentage of women in Verhovna Rada is 20,56%
(06.01.2020). According to “Finance and Development” report (March,
2019) in 149 countries, which were under analysis, there were 17 women -
heads of states, 18% – ministers, 24% – parliament members. Only in 60%
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of these countries’ women have the same access to the nancial services as
men; in 42 of them women have the same possibilities for land ownership
as men. Professionally, women are most of all engaged in health care and
educational work: as for technologies the situation shows gender trouble”:
globally 22% of women are specialists in the eld of the articial intellect,
correspondingly, men – 78%.
Feminist scientists claim that taking into consideration all said above,
gender equality cannot be achieved in the nearest hundred years. Without
the aim of going into detail of the sociological aspects, we would like to give
some more information about the gender statistics concerning the higher
educational establishments in Ukraine. At present, there are about 1500
educational establishments of the four levels of accreditation, and less than
a third of them are managed by women as principals, which concerns mainly
colleges. As for the universities, there are only 53 women, who are rectors of
the academies and universities. As a rule, the `glass ceiling` stops the careers
of women at the level of the heads of the departments. The situation in the
Academy of Sciences is even worse, among 342 Corresponding Members
of the Academy there are 30 women, and that vividly shows that in the
nearest 10-15 years the gender tendencies in the academic science will not
change (Gender in detail, 2020). All this is valid evidence that neoliberal
state policy, which at present is often represented as a libertarian one, has
not changed yet, - there are valid gender inequalities in the institutional
domains of economy, political life and academic science.
Of course, there have been some attempts to incorporate feminist
problems within neoliberal project, but as the recent discourses show,
such new forms mainly embrace “genders”; in general, individualism and
sexuality. If we do not touch “genders,” the number of which is growing
with every year, and concentrate on women, we cannot but state that the
neoliberal focus of attention has drifted in the direction of “femininities”
(in plural), no doubt, in close connection with sexualities (in plural).
Generally speaking, the interest for femininity seems to be, as it has been
up to now, in the spheres of gender and cultural studies, with some more
evident accent on popular culture. At present scientists accentuate the ways
in which experiences and representation of femininity are changing, and try
to analyze the possibilities for producing “new femininity”.
Some of them even announce the “impossibility of femininity” (Allan,
2010). J. J. Halberstam writes that new (neoliberal) femininity does not
simply connect people and concepts, the rise of Lady Gaga and her fame
is a hint at new formulations of gender politics for a new generation: “This
feminism is invested in innovative deployments of femininity and nds
them to be well represented by pop performances, characterized by their
ecstatic embrace of loss of control, a maverick sense of bodily identity”
(Halberstam, 2012: XIII).
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Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices
This mode of neoliberal tendencies has been discussed by J. Butler,
J. Scott and other outstanding feminist scientists. The main idea is that
through instrumentality feminist ideals are seized in control by governments
and agencies of the state in order to pursue a completely dierent agenda
(Butler, 2006). It is apparent that Butler asserts the thought that capitalism,
certainly in its neoliberal form, is failing to provide a liveable life for the
majority of human beings (Butler, 2018).
As for the ideology of the neoliberal “new femininities”, researchers
point out that the Internet and mass-media with other popular culture
resources have created the space for sexualities that borrow its vocabulary
from the world of pornography and sex industry (Gill, 2011).
Conclusion
At present, feminism recognizes that the neoliberal world has changed
the agenda of the classical liberal feminism, which was shaped by capitalism
and rooted in modernity. Its emancipational goals have been drifting from
the “liberation of the oppressed” and consequently, from neomarxist
theories, which were very inuential in the second wave of feminism (M.
Barret, L. Vogel, G. Spivak et al.), towards understanding the fact that
the “late capitalism” phase has nished, that the conceptual apparatus of
neoliberalism – concepts of dignity and individual freedom of the market -
have failed to serve the objectives of the classical feminism.
Postfeminism in the neoliberal context has not chosen its new route
yet, however, what is comprehended and represented as the truth is a
supposition that women cannot win their battle under the neoliberal
conditions where, in fact, the “the game is xed” by monopolies, hedge-
funds, and such like “movers and shakers” of the new neoliberal world
where governments have resigned themselves to their decreasing role in
the state support of those social groups, which must be supported in the
democratic regimes.
In general, the context is becoming increasingly hostile to the practical
realization of the feminist targets: neoliberal turn poses threats to feminism
in the classical agenda of achieving gender equality. With the evident
crisis of classical feminism, “management” of social relations prove that
the traditional modes of production have been changed, while women are
still mainly engaged in the “reproduction” sphere, though with changed
narratives and implicitly dierent accents, - e.g. the pandemic of COVID-19
has vividly demonstrated that the social value of an experienced nurse
is much higher than the role of a billionaire, the owner of a hedge fund.
Speaking about hi-tech branches of production, it is necessary to stress that
the percentage of women engaged in hypermodern production spheres is
extremely little.
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CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 39 Nº 71 (2021): 505-516
What is said in mass-media, what is seen in the TV shows and TV series,
what is visible on the “screens” in its meanings makes evident that the de-
materialization of the real is reected in the popular culture narratives,
that the Western world’s media representation of women often borrows its
vocabulary from the pornography and sex industry.
The dichotomy of “to be and to seem” is vividly illustrated by the
recent phenomenon of “#MeToo”. On the one hand, postfeminism is an
extremely active in the struggle with all forms of sexual harassment, on
the other, it looks like the neoliberal conceptualization of the ideology
of new femininities. The problem of woman’s subjectivity is reected both
in high culture and in its pop-version, as it is revealed in many other real-
life instances, in which woman as a subject does not always act in her own
interest in the context of the de-democratizational processes of current
neoliberalism.
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Esta revista fue editada en formato digital y publicada
en diciembre de 2021, por el Fondo Editorial Serbiluz,
Universidad del Zulia. Maracaibo-Venezuela
Vol.39 Nº 71