This essay starts by addressing the need for a theoretical transition of feminism based on social constructionism. Judith Butler’s Foucaudian discursive constructionism discloses the dangers of evaporating nature, material, and body into discourse by deconstructing the sex/gender distinction, and repositioning sex as the effects of gender. In order to correct this problem, I argue, we need to propose a new theoretical paradigm called, “material turn,” in which discourse and material are not opposed, and the agency and activity of material are acknowledged without sacrificing the insights of discursive constructionism. This paper finds the existence of this possibility in Luce Irigaray’s conception of sexual difference, and Elizabeth Grosz’s innovative combination of Irigaray’s theory with Charles Darwin’s conception of sexual selection. These two arguments can serve as powerful theoretical supports for the transition to a posthuman feminism that goes beyond humanism tied to social constructionism. In the so-called Anthropocene era, where the human is seen to be the cause of the extinction of all lives on the Earth, feminism needs to reformulate itself in order to contribute to the survival and sustainability of the Earth through the establishment of equal relationships among all life species as well as within human groups.

Nature, Material, Sexual difference, Sexual selection, Vital materialism, Elemental materialism, Constructionism, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz