The politicization of gender: from identity politics to post-identity

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2011

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Kale, Nülüfer

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The aim of this thesis study is to understand the significance of today’s feminist politics in Turkey for post-identity politics. When it is considered that identity politics is being widely practiced today, whereas there is still much vagueness regarding the ways of doing post-identity politics, in order to achieve the aim of this study it becomes necessary to make a critique of identity politics and to reveal post-identitarian tendencies through this critique of identity-based political mobilization. In this study, feminist identity politics is analyzed and criticized from the perspective of Judith Butler, who is a poststructuralist feminist questioning identity and its relation to gender politics. These issues are questioned through qualitative research method and semi-structured in-depth interviews are used as the data gathering technique. Five in-depth interviews were conducted with women who consider themselves feminist. The interviews aim at providing individual narrations of the participants to be exposed to deconstruction later on through the analysis process. Therefore, participants are not asked direct and categorical questions about their ideas on specific issues; instead, they are encouraged to talk about how they perceive the gendered world around them and how they respond to it and how these ideas are transferred to the political arena. It was found that the participants perceived sex, gender and sexuality in a dualistic framework to a certain extent and this relative fluidity enables them to realize the importance of doing post-identity politics, but they do not have a tendency to transfer this to the political arena in the near future.

Subject Keywords

Feminism, Gender identity

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613815/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/21085

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

N. Kale, “The politicization of gender: from identity politics to post-identity,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2011.