Reconstructing

The Postmodern Subject

Defining the dominant beliefs of the postmodern period can be quite problematic, because the very nature of postmodernism is to reject dominant beliefs, authority and definitions.

As Westgate (2009) explains, postmodernists have, at the very least, “settled on three ideas: most oppose a totalizing view of reality, objective knowledge construction, and the possibility for neutral values” (p. 772). This epistemological, ontological and axiological environment has created a disruptive and fractured experience for the individual subject, leaving her to set out on a journey of perpetual self-discovery. Fenton (2000) observed that this can be viewed as a positive development for women specifically, as postmodernism can be “an unprecedented opportunity for women to forgo fixed identities and explore fluid subjectivities” (p. 723).
In creating these fluid subjectivities, postmodernism is expanding the very idea of what it means to be a woman. As Butler (1990) argues, this fluidity presents multiple possibilities for identity, and as Fenton (2000) continues, “enables a reconceptualizing of identity and a deconstruction of the universal category ‘woman’” (p. 725). Therefore, due to its detailed exploration of female identity through the personal narrative of its author and main character, Eat, Pray, Love, is a text worthy of scholarly attention for its illumination of the female subject’s identity confrontation in the face of postmodernism.
The Female Subject in the Third Wave

Prior to postmodernism and third wave feminism, the possibilities for female identity were limited. With the introduction of the birth control pill, and as a result of the equal opportunities fought for by the second wave feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, women are now able to delay motherhood, have careers and seek identities outside of “mother” and “wife.” As Kearney (1979) explains, the goals of the second wave were “focused primarily on needed social structural changes and did not emphasize change in sex roles on an interpersonal level” (p. 28) - issues that the third wave has handily taken up.

In third wave feminism, a greater emphasis is placed on individual action and empowerment over the collective action that marked the second wave movement (Hammers, 2005; Orr, 1997; Shugart, 2001; Walker, 1995). According to the third wave philosophy, women are “responsible to and for themselves, not representative of and thus beholden to generations of women past, present, and future” (Shugart, 2001, p. 133). As Hammers (2005) further explains, in the third wave of feminism, “change is directed at the level of the individual experience” (p.
170) and women are now empowered to create their own subjective meanings about the world.

Knudson (2011) adds that: “Key social structures that have in the past provided individuals with guidance on their relationships and general life direction (such as the church) have lost cultural potency….[and that] families, intimate relationships, jobs, and career trajectories have also become increasingly insecure or unclear”(p. 66). She concludes that “since women have experienced the most significant changes most directly, they may also be the most likely to wrestle with issues of identity and life purpose” (Knudson, 2011, p. 66). Walker (1995) echoes this sentiment by offering that women in the third wave are always “seeking to create identities that accommodate ambiguity and our multiple personalities: including more than excluding, exploring more than defining, searching more than arriving” (p. xxxiii). And as bell hooks (1991) asserted, challenging “notions of universality and static over-determined identity within mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new possibilities for the construction of self” (p. 28). In other words, as a result of postmodernism and the deconstruction of the conditions and structures that women previously used to co-create their identity (i.e. the absence of a prescribed, fixed view of social identity), the number of contradictions within and possibilities for new identities increases, which explains part of Gilbert’s exigence in the text.

Some of the most recent research on third wave feminism comes from Sonja and Karen Foss (2009) who based a new “repowered” definition of feminism largely on self-empowerment. They explain that the new feminism is defined as: "the effort to make conscious, deliberate choices to create the kind of world in which we want to live using all of the creativity, resilience, and resources available to us" (Foss & Foss, 2009, p. 45). They go on to explain that this definition, “is rooted in a deliberate and conscious decolonization of the mind whereby individuals disconnect from hegemonic ways of thinking, believing, and acting and choose new ways that do not depend on dominant ideologies” (p. 45). It not only allows for the "pursuit of what has not yet been thought" but, as Meyer (2007) asserted, it also pushes us not to "rest content with any identity—even one we have helped produce" (p. 45). As Carrillo Rowe (2009) points out, this definition is also notable for its "metaphysical account of power and agency that emphasize[s] deliberate creation and focus on our agency and our responsibility for creating our own lives" (p. 20).
Since women are now empowered to form their identities largely on individual values and beliefs, as opposed to a prescribed view on the roles they should adopt in society, how do they make sense of their place in the world and construct new identities? In Gilbert’s case, her existential crisis prompted her to deconstruct her previous identity as an unhappily-married wife and writer, and set out on a solo journey to reconstruct an identity that was more authentically her. Next, we will turn to some research that illuminates the approach and resources that Gilbert draws from in the process of creating this new identity.