Individuals in the present generation of popular feminists wear attractive headgear, and body-positive postings are the norm. The stereotype feminist is presented as a confident powerhouse who dominates the workplace. Hartman’s work on Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments unearths revolutionary potential in these women’s everyday behaviours. In the situation of financial restriction, material hardship, racial confinement, and social appropriation, they continually sought new ways to exist, to be alive. Tolentino’s Optimized Societal Deception flits between chic chopped-salad eateries and barre studios, scrutinizing the ladies who patronize each. This paper will explore Saidiya Hartman and Tolentino’s views on feminism.
Feminists acknowledged the limitations of identifying females as a universal category, preferring to emphasize a location- and context-dependent variable and sensitive to diverse experiences of power and marginalization. However, the mainstream feminist theory continues to downplay the significance of race, even though capitalism, ethnic origin, sexuality, and gender were and continue to be critical components of the capitalist world’s power system (Hartman, pg. 10).
Black feminists in the western hemisphere have argued for recognizing their Black Supremacy and the distinctiveness of their experiences compared to white women. The mainstream and social academics saw black women’s rights in stereotypical, pathological, and problematic ways, from which humankind learnt nothing about women’s duties other than toxicity, abused women, and the like.
Historically, the ideal lady has been one-size-fits-all. You can probably guess the sort of woman who presently runs the show. She is unknown in age but appears to be in her twenties. She glistened with dazzling beauty and the flawless, unafraid smile of someone who believes she was born to live lavishly. When you see her, she is generally luxuriating — on faraway coasts, beneath the Sahara’s lights, or at a beautifully prepared table surrounded by exquisite items or attractive company. Presenting oneself for pleasure is likely the majority of her vocation or a significant component of it; she is not alone – for many individuals these days, particularly ladies, packaging and promoting one’s image is an effortlessly lucrative talent. She does have a brand personality, and most likely, a boyfriend or partner: he is the genuine personification of her ever-present, unseen audience, reinforcing her status as an intriguing subject, a desirable commodity, and a conscious spectacular with an audience.
In other words, the ideal woman is always optimizing. She leverages technology to her advantage, both in how she spreads her image and the precise enhancements she makes to that image. Her hair looks to be rather expensive. She spends a lot of money on skincare products, which combines the sacred element of a holy ritual with the practical constancy of setting an alarm clock. At this moment, the ideal woman cheeks and lips have been hydrated, some creases have been sealed, and their eyelashes have been extended every four weeks by a professional utilizing incredible lashes and glue. The same can be said for her figure, which no longer requires conventional clothing or strategic undergarments; it has been periodically reshaped via training, guaranteeing nothing to conceal or reorganize.
The future facilities may focus on recreation, and more specifically on the forms of entertainment that generate the most profit, such as intimate relations, crime, and digital effects, while ignoring services that educate, inspire, or provide satisfaction and willingness to connect and operate collectively. In terms of public engagement, scientific evidence from mature democracies, particularly during the early years of the Internet, does not inspire excessive hope, at least not at the moment of expecting millions of individuals to become socioeconomic and cultural activists spontaneously. The Internet reaches and strengthens already-informed and committed individuals, but this does not readily surpass those exposed to conventional political speech.
The extensive diffusion of the Internet and its presumed dominating or privileged role in the information society must get questioned. For the time being, it is more acceptable to assert that it provides information rather than knowledge, implying a correlation of numbers rather than thought or creation. It has been dubbed an electronic rubbish dump, as it is noisy and intrusive. It’s tough to pinpoint the gems of brilliant and useful knowledge that emerge and should be made more widely available. It is commonly known that the benefits of this breakthrough are unequally distributed.
The concept of digital literacy, which distinguishes between technologically advanced and technologically impoverished nations, encapsulates the large initial differences, require a complex solution, and are reliant on a range of circumstances. The latter encompasses the framework of possibilities connected with each nation’s governmental and commercial attempts to increase access to and universality of technical education, investment in research and technology, service prices, and telecommunications regulation.
Additionally, sociocultural perspectives on computing use and the data circulating on the network get monetized by the vast majority of the modern woman. Additionally, we cannot neglect the importance of English proficiency. Individuals’ socioeconomic resources are critical to consider when dealing with information science. Finally, but certainly not least, contemporary technology provides hurdles that prevent individuals from all social groups from developing a pleasant, safe, and, most importantly, meaningful connection based on their difficulties, needs, and expectations.
I believe that the narrative framework against which Hartman’s thoughts arise distinguishes and intrigues his work. Rather than being solely an intellectual exercise, this is the sort of contemplation that serves to fortify one’s resolve to examine tradition from Harman’s perspective. Despite her best efforts, women got not accepted at Hartman’s Jerusalem synagogue. Hartman believed she had no choice but to resign; after all, no one would ever accept her point of view if it was deemed to contravene the norms. She and other like-minded partners’ development of the new Orthodox congregation went far beyond her old community’s readiness to recognize women as full members and adopt feminist ideology.
According to Hartman, one feature that appears to be spiritually clotheslined is capitalism’s the nearly rapid appropriation of dissent. As a result, even though her work is opposed to contemporary American tendencies toward queen the self, she concedes that her “self-hood has become more com-modified.” Ultimately, she asserted, the author’s public role as eyewitness and observer will become more critical than ever.
It is becoming increasingly critical to determine how we will be transparent about these anomalies to address them fully. Tolentino addresses recent occurrences in the news industry, from readers’ diminishing cognitive flexibility to wander capital’s erasure of self-government. Self-published social media platforms and editorial employment had transformed the industry into a more hostile environment for creative individuals to blow into than it had been for her as a child. On the other hand, she advises aspiring authors not to give up entirely.
Resistance accelerates development regardless of whether it is focused on more traditional forms of resistance and social movements or more personal or everyday acts of resistance. On the other hand, other forms of resistance are centred on norms and the dissemination of disruptive truths. As a result, opposition typically depends on the threat of repetition, eroding the standardization’s strength. The governing agencies or prevailing norm’s classifications and terminology have been challenged by restatement, re-articulation, or duplication of significant discussions with slightly altered meaning.
Counterrevolutionary repetitions have been conceptualized as internal resistance that happens inside or via forming a network of moveable resistance locations. While the matrix of power relations culminates in developing a dense web that travels through pieces of machinery and organizations without being contained entirely inside them, the buzzing of defiant sites passes through class inequalities and interpersonal unities.
To summarize, feminism’s goal is to modify the world to ensure the equality and freedom of all persons. Without this objective in mind, we may see the mainstream media recasting femininity as a less basic principle in and of itself. By utilizing the Internet to give voice to persons who lack notoriety or a public platform, feminism may take a collaborative and global perspective rather than the progressive and individualist ideas promoted by the mainstream press.
WORK CITED
Hartman, S. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women, and queer radicals. WW Norton & Company.
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