POSTMODERNISM AND THE GENDER RELATIONS IN FEMINIST THEORY - CONCLUSION

A central object of feminist theory is to analyze gender - its multiple meanings, the ways it is constituted and changes over time in one and in many societies, its effects on apparently non-gendered activities such as thinking, and its interactions with and interdependence on other social relations such as class and race. In insisting on the social constitution and instability of gender, feminist theorists join in the decentering of subjectivity which is also an important project for postmodernists. While feminists' attention to relations of domination makes them sceptical about the potential gender biases in postmodernism, the epistemological conflicts within feminist discourses also indicate that they have much to gain from closer attention to postmodern ones.