Page 92 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

FISKE, JOHN (1939– )

liberal feminists regard differences between men and women as social-economic
and cultural constructs rather than the outcome of an eternal biology. They stress
equality of opportunity for women in all spheres which, within the liberal
democracies of the West, is held to be achievable within the broad structures of 69
existing legal and economic frameworks. Socialist feminists point to the
interconnections between class and gender, including the fundamental place of
gender inequalities in the reproduction of capitalism. The subordination of women
to men is seen as intrinsic to capitalism so that the full ‘liberation’ of women would
require the overthrow of capitalist organization and social relations. While liberal
and socialist feminists stress equality and sameness, so-called difference feminism
asserts essential distinctions between men and women. These differences, regarded
as fundamental and intractable, are variously interpreted as cultural, psychic and/or
biological. In any case, difference is celebrated as representing the creative power of
women.
One criticism of difference feminism, and indeed of the concept of patriarchy,
is that the category of woman is treated in an undifferentiated way. By contrast,
black feminists have pointed to the differences between black and white women’s
experiences, cultural representations and interests. They have argued that
colonialism and racism have structured power relationships between black and
white women. Thus, gender is articulated with race, ethnicity and nationality to
produce different experiences of what it is to be a woman.
Feminists influenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism have argued that
sex and gender are social and cultural constructions that are not to be explained in
terms of biology nor to be reduced to the functions of capitalism. This anti-
essentialist stance suggests that femininity and masculinity are not universal and
eternal categories but discursive constructions. That is, femininity and masculinity
are ways of describing and disciplining human subjects. As such, poststructuralist
feminism is concerned with the cultural construction of subjectivity per se,
including a range of possible masculinities and femininities. Femininity and
masculinity, which are a matter of how men and women are represented, are held
to be sites of continual political struggle over meaning.
Links Cultural politics, gender, identity, patriarchy, post-feminism, representation, sex,
women’s movement

Fiske,John (1939– ) Fiske, who has worked in Britain, Australia and the United States,
has been a significant voice in the dissemination of cultural studies throughout the
Academy, most especially during the 1980s and 1990s. His work has been concerned
with the character of popular culture, and television in particular, laying stress on
the uses that people make of texts as active readers or producers of meaning. While
he is clear that popular cultural texts are very largely produced by capitalist
corporations he has been more concerned with the popular tactics by which these
forces are coped with, evaded or are resisted so that popular culture is understood
to be a site of ‘semiotic warfare’. In this he was influenced by the work of De
Certeau. According to Fiske, while the financial economy needs to be taken into