Nietzsche, Butler, Derrida: steps of “woman” – deconstruction and perspectives for feminism.

Abstract

This text reflects on genealogy and deconstruction as theoretical operators for the critique of feminism, particularly the concepts of identity and representativity. The authors subvert the epistemological/ontological systems centered on “metaphysics of substance”, revealing them as historical constructs of the arquitecture of institutionalized power, law and language and questioning their supposition as natural and inevitable, as well as the concepts and categories imposed by them. From the critique of the “woman itself”, identity is conceived as a “discursively impelled performative act”, which creates an issue for the political movements that
elect the defense of the “subject” as an engine for their actuation. The “contexts of parody” are pointed as markers of this aspect of performative construction of what is considered true, original, essential and as “grounds” for the proposition of other and new ways of conducting feminism, that pay attention to the multiple composition of the singular individuals represented by it. “Representativity”, therefore revised, detaches from the notion of a “substance” of the political subject and invests on the strategic move of embracing, through provisory alliances taken accordingly to the needs and pressures of the moment, the diversity of bodies that defy the rules of sex, gender and “woman”.