The Creation of Doxa (Legitimization of Knowledge and Institualization of Notions) in Gender Studies in the Study of Literature

Abstract

In the article analyzes the specifics of scientific knowledge legitimization in gender studies, actualized as the issue of the knowledge production point. Increased focus on gender studies in postmodern philology is linked to the general tendencies of science development, viz. with the search for theories able to provide alternative ways of knowledge. Gender studies in literature, as a theoretical project, in this sense are consonant to the search of the literary theory, as both see themselves in the review of humanitarian knowledge, at the core of which is the impossibility of a single critical notion of a human. It’s no coincidence that Joan Scott, reflecting on the analytic potential of gender approach, notes, that the discovery of gender coincided in time with a radical epistemological change, which marked in post-classic science the transition from scientific to literary paradigms. And in this field, gender studies, as well as the majority of modern critique theories, faces the requirement of researchers (such as a literature historian, for example) to realize their own research methods, which, however, contradicts the “basic” incapability to overcome their own subjectiveness. This lie of the land actualizes the problem of establishing gender studies in post-Soviet humanities in the context of scientific knowledge generation. In the article is analyzed Gender studies in the study of literature in such context appear as strategic inconsistently-sceptical theoretical project.