Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 73 Hari M. G. 3 Theorisation of the Feminine in Gender Studies The discourse on the feminine has mostly been caught up in presenting it as an ideologically conditioned social construct designed to limit women to a socially inferior status. In quite unequivocal terms, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) theorises femininity as an essentialist idea as opposed to an intrinsic characteristic trait. For de Beauvoir, femininity is a social construct imposed by patriarchal systems. Falling in line with de Beauvoir’s critique of the feminine, Elaine Showalter in her influential work A Literature of Their Own (1977), identifies three phases in the history of women’s writing: the feminine phase, the feminist phase, and the female phase. These phases correlate with the evolution of women’s literature from its patriarchal roots to the emergence of an authentic literary voice rooted in the lived experience of being a woman. But the use of the word feminine is quite derogatory in her critical discourse. The feminine phase, according to Showalter, is essentially an imitation of the conventions of the patriarchal literary canon. Post-Structuralist Feminists such as Helene Cixous, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray theorize the feminine from a Psychoanalytic point of view. Helene Cixous, in her essay The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), introduces the concept of écriture féminine (Fr. “feminine writing”), as a subversive form of writing that is strategically designed to debunk patriarchal forms of cultural expression. It is a form of writing that is essentially driven by the unconscious mind and hence is conceived as a counter-narrative to the rational order of the male-centric patterns of thought. In her book Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler argues that gender is not an innate quality of an individual but an ongoing, socially constructed performance, a constitutive act of the repeated performance of behavioural traits that produce the illusion of a stable gender identity. Julia Kristeva theorises the masculine and the feminine on the basis of Jacques Lacan’s argument regarding the linguistic foundation of the human psyche. She makes a distinction between the Symbolic and the Semiotic, which she identifies as pertaining to the masculine and the feminine respectively. The semiotic stems from the pre-linguistic, bodily drives involved in the mother-child relationship, whereas the symbolic is filiated in rationality and structure. For Kristeva, the feminine is essentially another name for the semiotic, which she conceives as a primordial aspect of the mind that disrupts the rational order of the symbolic. Luce Irigaray in her book In Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), argues that the entire Western philosophical tradition has a patriarchal bias, and philosophers since Plato have reduced the feminine to a spectral presence that does not have an identity of its own. Irigaray’s response to this exclusion is quite similar to Kristeva and Cixous when she pitches in for the need for a feminine language that is not simply an inversion of the masculine, but one that operates independently of the patriarchal structures. In contemporary gender theory, the feminine has often been positioned within a binary of either passivity or resistance. The former, deeply rooted in traditional understandings of gender, frequently portrays the feminine as a domesticated state of existence, confined to domestic roles and subjugated to patriarchal norms. Poststructuralist feminists like Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray have embraced femininity and contextualised it outside the rigid, patriarchal frameworks. However, even these critiques place the feminine as a site of resistance against the social expectations associated with patriarchy, and hence, fail to find an independent identity for the feminine. It is in this context that the positioning of the feminine in mystical traditions such as Bhakti attains relevance because these traditions present femininity as not merely a site of political resistance, but as a creative space that is potent enough to transcend dualities. The women saints in these traditions do not merely oppose oppressive machineries of power; they go beyond these power structures through their unwavering sense of integrity, surrender, and an intimate connection with the divine. 4 Bhakti Tradition and Akka Mahadevi The Bhakti movement, which spanned from the 7th to the 17th century in India, was a spiritual revolution that has had socio-cultural ramifications. The saint-poets belonging to this movement “revolutionised the individual and society in the light of an innate sense of justice and society” (Shivaprakash 2010, xxii). Aided by the alchemy of Bhakti, the saints dismissed the rigid social structures of caste, creed, and gender. Their devotion was rooted in spiritual experience rather than dogmatic religious dictums, and the women mystics of this tradition were not just political rebels who fought patriarchy but phenomenal beings who had an enduring impact on the spiritual life of the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Going against the passive stereotypes of femininity, these women-saints such as Akka Mahadevi, Mirabai, and Andal asserted their individuality and agency through devotion that bloomed into beautiful poetry. Bhakti offered them an alternative space wherein
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