Page 170 - Decoding Culture

G E N D ERED SUBJECTS, WOMEN'S TEXTS 163

response involved turning to theories of identity in an attempt to
delineate the fundamental features of gender in which pleasures
were grounded. Here psychoanalytic concepts became central,
derived not only from the Lacanian 'structural psychoanalysis'
already pervading the Screen theory tradition, but also from other
more clearly feminist revisions of Freud such as that found in
Chodorow's work.
This is perhaps the most tangled area of feminist influence on
cultural studies theory. The use of psychoanalytic theory has
remained controversial within feminism, as elsewhere, although it
is probably fair to say that it has gained much wider acceptance
since Mitchell (1974: xv) began her pioneering defence with the
blunt observation that ' [ tlhe greater part of the feminist move­
ment has identified Freud as the enemy'. Happily this history is
beyond my scope here, other than to observe that - whatever one's
judgement on the virtues and failings of psychoanalytic theory
itself - as a loose framework of concepts it has been of considerable
significance in shaping the growth of feminist cultural studies. In
the course of that, inevitably, charges of gender essentialism, over­
determinism and reductionism have been levelled at its supporters,
sometimes for good reason. In consequence, alternative ways of
approaching identity and gender have emerged, more sensitive to
variations in social and cultural context, as recent 'postmodern'
forms of feminist cultural studies have served to suggest. Where
they will lead remains to be seen. But at the most general theoret­
ical level it is important to recognize that, on top of all the specific
contributions that feminism has made to cultural studies, it has
also played a crucial role in the theoretical and methodological
movement away from the deterministic post-structuralism of the
1970s and toward the relativistic postmodernism of the 1990s. It is
to mapping that shift that we now turn.

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