On the Advantage of Tragedy for Feminism

The paper addresses the consequences of postmodern ideas about knowledge production for feminist theory and practice, with particular regard to the notions of the tragic and the sublime, as closely related to the postmodern condition. My intention is to reconsider the traditional feminist scepticism towards tragedy as a masculine, patriarchal, anti-democratic and hierarchical genre. On the contrary, I intend to show that the tragic genre, as well as the tragic world view, are not only consistent with postmodern epistemology, but also particularly fruitful for feminist knowledge, because they perfectly fit its desire to be democratic, open to the Other, devoid of tyranny and violence, and inclined to link knowledge and art.