Feminist Alliances (Value Inquiry Book Series 175)

FEMINIST ALLIANCES

VIBS Volume 175 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Mary-Rose Barral Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum H. G. Callaway Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry

Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Adrianne McEvoy Alan Milchman George David Miller Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Anne Waters John R. Welch Thomas F. Woods

a volume in Philosophy and Woman PW Laura Duhan Kaplan, Editor

FEMINIST ALLIANCES

Edited by

Lynda Burns

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006

Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1728-7 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands

CONTENTS Preface

vii

Introduction LYNDA BURNS

1

Part One: Responding to Challenges

9

ONE

The Complexities of Coalition IRIS MARION YOUNG

11

TWO

Whose Politics? Who’s Correct? ALISON M. JAGGAR

19

THREE

Speaking of Feminism . . . What Are We Arguing About? CHRIS BEASLEY

35

Part Two: Rethinking Feminist Alliances

59

FOUR

The Purposes of Politics: A Feminist Inquiry JANNA THOMPSON

61

FIVE

Foucault, Feminism, and History LISA FEATHERSTONE

77

SIX

Emasculating Metaphor: Whither the Maleness of Reason? JACQUI BROAD, KAREN GREEN, HELEN PROSSER

91

SEVEN

Care Ethics, Power and Feminist Socioanalysis SUSAN DUGGIN, JASON PUDSEY

109

EIGHT

Pornography and Power NARELLE LYDEAMORE

133

NINE

Splitting the Difference: Between Young and Fraser on Identity Politics MARGUERITE LA CAZE

151

vi

Contents

Bibliography

165

About the Authors

175

Index

179

PREFACE This book is a contribution to debates about the prospects for alliance between feminism and sundry other political positions. The chapters represent a range of feminist views on alliances. They develop detailed critiques of some alliances. No unified thesis emerges, but the authors’ distinct perspectives on alliances contribute to the development of different aspects of feminist theory. The collection is of central interest to readers in the area of feminism and gender studies. The wide scope of these chapters situates feminism with respect to other left movements, Liberal theory, Foucauldian power theory, Jacques Derrida’s conception of philosophy, the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and to different theoretical and pragmatic approaches to difference. The broad range of topics will extend the readership to researchers in other areas in addition to feminism and gender studies. Readers interested in political theory, sociology and philosophy of language will find this relevant to their work. Its range includes topics of relevance to current issues, making it also of interest beyond a purely academic audience. The Center for Applied Philosophy at Flinders University provided financial support for this project. Ian Hunt, the director of the Center and Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes of Women’s Studies at Flinders, offered valuable advice. The book has taken some time to appear. I would like to thank the contributors for their patience and my family and friends for their encouragement and help. Siobhan Davenport and Gunnar Sivertsen read parts of the text and made many useful suggestions. A study leave spent in the friendly and intellectually generous La Trobe Philosophy Department made it possible to finish the work of editing the volume. I would also like to thank the Editors of Dissent for permission to reprint the article by Iris Marion Young entitled “Complexities of Coalitions” which appeared in Dissent in Winter 1997, Volume 44, issue 1.

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INTRODUCTION Lynda Burns Politics is often a matter of alliances. This is a commonplace about the reality of political practice also reflected in feminist political theory. Often, feminist activists in the last few decades have forged alliances with those working for gay rights, with environmentalists, socialists, and other left wing activists. Also, from its beginning in the 1960s, modern feminist theory has engaged with a range of Marxist, Liberal, Postmodernist, Foucauldian and Communitarian perspectives. Sometimes these engagements have produced a measure of compromise or coalition, a combination of elements of feminism with other nonfeminist platforms or theoretical positions, and sometimes they have aimed at more solid alliances. Since most feminist theories have developed either in conjunction with, or in critical response to mainstream theories, theorists often categorize these as “kinds” of feminist theory. These include Liberal Feminism, Marxist Feminism, Psychoanalytic Feminism, Socialist Feminism, Communitarian Feminism, Existentialist Feminism, Ecofeminism, and Postmodern Feminism and so on. Rosemarie Tong’s Feminist Thought presents these as alternatives between which feminists can choose.1 The theoretical and strategic advantages and problems associated with such alliances remain a contested area in feminist theory. A central purpose of this volume is to contribute to a few of the debates generated by alliances. Presently we need to rethink theoretical alliances because this division into “kinds” of feminism, which has been so fruitful in the past, no longer serves the same purposes. As Moira Gatens says, feminist theories are no longer compelled to assert their allegiances to provide an authority to speak.2 Many feminists, including Gatens, have become skeptical about the usefulness of “applications” of nonfeminist theories to women’s situation. There have been substantial feminist critiques of the prospects for alliances with Marxism, with Rawlsian contractarianism and with Existentialist theory.3 They claim that reflections of masculine experience masquerade as universal claims about the human condition, and that accounts of social justice or of oppression turn out, on examination, to ignore injustices to women. These are quite serious criticisms but they have not spelled the end of feminist alliances. On the contrary, feminist separatism appears, at some levels of theory and practice, to be in decline. One practical reason for this has to do with the strategic advantages of unity with other groups. Where a range of past gains is under threat (including abortion rights, equal pay and even human rights), obvious advantages exist in a regrouping and combining of resources. In the current political climate isolationism is not a healthy option. Another more subtle reason has to do with the impact on both feminist prac-

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tice and theory of the recognition of difference, and the inadequacy of assumptions of some common ground such as the experience of a common oppression of “all women.” This has resulted in a more realistic focus on unity and diversity. If feminist theory must recognize diverse purposes and problems, then some theorists are likely to share common issues with groups of men. Diverse theoretical perspectives on justice, power, or social oppression might also be useful if no clearly specifiable social situation shared by all women exists. Recognition of difference has led, inevitably, to new alliances and new goals, some of which we would not have characterized as “feminist” in the past. The economies of effort and other strategic gains possible from the first type of alliance—short term working coalitions—are obvious. Just what the advantages are of the second, more genuine, variety of alliance is less clear. Unlike short-term coalitions, such alliances involve commitment either to common goals or to theoretical frameworks within which such goals might emerge. Since critical examination by feminists of applications of nonfeminist theories to gender relations often reveals bias, what the advantages of theoretical alliances might be remains unclear. Some feminists, including several of the contributors to this volume, have investigated the possibility of a third sort of alliance making use of some specific notions drawn from nonfeminist theories. Feminists might make use of the idea of a social field (Bourdieu) or power/knowledge (Michel Foucault) or Nietzschean conceptions of social power, while maintaining a critical distance from possible sources of bias in the home theory. This kind of utilization by feminist theorists of conceptual resources drawn from nonfeminist theories is one familiar variety of alliance. As the following chapters show, such types of alliance also have their problems. Another kind of alliance is possible, apart from these three—the short term coalition, application of nonfeminist theory to women, or the more limited appropriation of theoretical conceptions from nonfeminist theories. This fourth variety of alliance involves a critical reworking of existing theory from within. It results in a substantial revision of the original, which then emerges as a feminist theory. One could cite several instances. Simone de Beauvoir’s rethinking of Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism as a feminist theory is one.4 Susan Moller Okin’s reworking of John Rawls5 and Karen Green’s revision of humanist theory6 attempt to forge this type of alliance with varieties of Liberalism. We find another contemporary instance in Iris Marion Young’s article “Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory” (in her book Throwing Like a Girl7) in which she reworks traditional Marxist theory, substituting the conception of division of labor for the traditional conception of class. Her claim is that division of labor is a more fundamental system of social relations, regarded as basic in a materialist social theory. Division of labor is a broader and more general category, making it more fundamental than class. This explains divisions within class. Division of labor is also a more concrete concept in that it refers to activities of labor and their institutionali-

Introduction

3

zation in particular social contexts. We can use division of labor to explain the social significance of other divisions such as race, whereas class fails to be explanatorily useful. Young’s further claim that the gendered division of labor is central to relations of production promises to convert Marxism into a feminist theory. I cannot further investigate this claim here, but it illustrates the potential for a further and possibly fruitful type of alliance. Moira Gatens illustrates this potential in her account of the relation between feminism and philosophy in Chapter 5 of Feminism and Philosophy.8 The chapters in this volume investigate all of these types of coalition and alliance. The first part of the book contains those chapters that respond to current challenges to feminism stemming from its general alignment with radical politics. The second part contains those that develop theoretical perspectives on particular alliances. 1. Responding to Challenges Iris Marion Young’s paper “Complexities of Coalition” introduces a central question in the first chapter: Do we have to transcend difference to forge a more unified and effective movement? She considers strategic problems and benefits of uniting with other radical groups. Feminist activists’ attempts to forge some unity with labor movements, gay rights activists, and environmentalists have resulted in challenges from within and from outside the movement. This leads her to consider the conditions for a genuine and workable coalition. As Young explains, successful alliances are not easy to forge. Yet she believes that we should head in this direction. Coalition of radical groups in the scope of a politics of difference is possible and powerful, provided we respect differences and avoid the narrow pursuit of group interests that make coalition unworkable. Attempting unity under some common banner such as “People before profits” is not the answer either. Young draws her conclusions from a careful analysis of the specific history of radical movements in the United States. The conditions for workable political coalition require drawing on the variable experiences of oppressed groups such as single mothers, illegal immigrants, the unemployed, indigenous peoples, the disabled, gays and lesbians. In this way we can develop a deeper perspective on social injustice and the possibilities for ending it. Effective political unity is possible when we respect specificity and difference. Critical scrutiny of proposed alliances is always a necessary process within developing feminist theory. What this often reveals is masculine or sexist bias in theories presented as objective and as revealing the truth about human social relations. This bias presents a substantial problem for the mainstream theories that claim to be objective descriptions or explanations of the human situation and social relations, or of a common human nature. Exposing bias within mainstream theories ought to situate feminism at the cutting edge

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of contemporary philosophical and political theory. Instead, feminism’s critical tendency has triggered a backlash. Feminists’ attempts to rethink social relations, the family, and political ideals such as Reason and Justice have also resulted in attacks on different fronts. These include attacks based on political correctness, accusations that feminists are making a grab for political power and control in universities, and assertions of the right to express sexist perspectives on women and on social relations. Alison M. Jaggar discusses the reasons for the rise of attacks on feminism. Some detractors present their attacks as defending western democracy and ideals of freedom against a rising tide of political correctness. Critics accuse feminists of indifference to truth and as rejecting Western culture. Jaggar is well placed to provide a perspective on this reaction as her work lies centrally within the feminist project of critically examining the western philosophical and political tradition, and she has been subject to attacks in the media. Her book Feminist Politics and Human Nature is a foundational feminist text that looks critically at mainstream philosophical and political theories, and at feminist attempts to engage with them.9 Her critique reflects on common assumptions about gender ideals, the family, and women’s social roles. In Jaggar’s paper in this volume entitled “Whose Politics? Who’s correct?” she argues that attacks on feminism mistake critique for rejection. She argues that critique of established mainstream theories is necessary and that critique should be an educational ideal. So feminist scholarship does not devalue or reject Western philosophy. On the contrary, it employs the ideals of critical inquiry that developed within the Western philosophical tradition. Nor is it obvious that feminism is committed to any outright rejection of political values and ideals developed by nonfeminist philosophers. The question remains of what feminists should make of proposals to apply or extend to women principles of mainstream political theories. This question raises issues about the identity of feminism, issues addressed in Chris Beasley’s “Speaking of Feminism . . . What are we arguing about?” Beasley also considers some attacks on the current directions taken by feminists, but she considers them from a perspective different from Jaggar’s. Beasley focuses on questions of identity and meaning. She addresses questions about what feminism is, what it means to be a feminist, and what direction feminism is taking. These questions arise from a particular kind of challenge to feminism which is presented as coming from within, and as authoritative criticism and correction. This kind of challenge appears to represent more than a backlash response to criticisms of accepted theories and values since critics occupying a position of “knowing feminism” voice it. This kind of challenge raises crucial issues about the identity of feminism and about the production of meaning. Despite its internal diversity, feminism is not whatever anyone may define it as being. We need some mapping of the boundaries of what feminism is, and what it is not. This task is the

Introduction

5

focus of Beasley’s paper. Such mapping is also essential to the main problem of this volume, which is the problem of assessing strategic advantages and theoretical gains of alliances. With whom we should align ourselves? This issue is central to questions of feminist identity and direction. The question of which methodologies or insights we might usefully appropriate depends, in the end, on what makes a theory “feminist.” Beasley’s conclusion is that problems about delimiting the boundaries may be resolved without making problematic assumptions about a central “core” of feminist principles accepted by all. The search for unity might be misplaced, Beasley argues, and could unduly limit the scope for possible alliances. She argues, instead, for a mapping of alternative possibilities. Beasley’s mapping of the feminist terrain provides an assessment of the significance of challenges to feminism and the extent and direction of social change. While Jaggar’s contribution outlines a political position from which feminists may respond to the challenge of backlash critics, Beasley’s response to the task of defining and delimiting feminism is more pragmatic. It allows scope for strategic maneuver and use of methodologies drawn from different sources. 2. Rethinking Alliances Rethinking of past alliances necessitates a reconsideration of some basic philosophical issues. The second part of the collection investigates these as they arise from attempts to align feminism with other political and social theories. Janna Thompson locates problems for some feminist views in their foundations in nonfeminist theories. She asks what the purpose of politics is. This is more basic than questions about rights or the nature of justice. She argues that feminist attempts to answer it reveal a bias in Liberal political theory. We cannot combine Liberal theory with feminist concerns because the feminist concerns include a concern with intergenerational continua that Liberal theories have consistently ignored or downplayed. She investigates the consequences of including the perspectives of those concerned with care of others on political theory. This inclusion makes a radical difference in the way we conceive the purpose of politics. Care ethics is also a focus of Jason Pudsey and Susan Duggin’s paper on Bourdieu’s socioanalysis. They consider problems for the claim that this is the ethics for feminists. Associating caring with women appears to reinforce some of the central means of diminishing women’s power—stereotyping women as nurturing and responsible for others. Pudsey and Duggin present a new response to this objection to care ethics. It emerges from their investigation of Bourdieu’s socioanalysis, a social theory that has recently gained some attention from feminists. But these authors remain ambivalent about the potential of Bourdieu’s socioanalysis for feminism.

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Jacques Derrida’s account of language is the target of Jacqui Broad, Karen Green and Helen Prosser’s chapter. They ask, how should we understand the making of social meanings? How much control can we have of these processes? The theme of “production of meaning,” discussed in Beasley’s chapter, emerges in their assessment of Genevieve Lloyd’s thesis that a metaphorical association between masculinity and reason is at the origin of women’s social subordination. Their critique of this thesis focuses on Lloyd’s use of Derrida’s claims about metaphor. There has been little critical work done on the alliance between feminism and Derrida, although his conception of language has been extremely influential. It has contributed to a pessimistic view of the prospects for overcoming women’s exclusion from Philosophy and from broader cultural ideals such as Reason. This chapter is a serious attempt to identify weak points in the claims that underpin this common feminist theorizing of oppression. Green, Broad, and Prosser argue that Derridean theories of meaning cannot supply the foundation for an account of women’s lack of social power. Not only is there escape from metaphor, they say, but also scope exists for turning metaphor to our feminist ends. Their paper also explores an alternative theory of metaphor more in line with its uses by women who have contributed to cultural and scientific ideals. How feminists see political alliances often depends on their view of difference. One debate among feminists concerns the creation of sexual difference. How should we theorize the formation of sexual difference? Green, Prosser, and Broad scrutinize the uncritical use by feminists of Derrida’s notion of metaphor as formative of sexual difference and consider the questions: Does metaphor create sexual difference? Can we use it just as well to subvert it? In her chapter “Pornography and Power” Narelle Lydeamore considers claims by feminists such as Catharine A. MacKinnon that pornography is formative in shaping sexual difference. Does pornography create the power differential between the sexes, or can it be exploited by women for their sexual ends? She investigates the theoretical origins of the feminist position that argues against censorship of pornography and plots the ways divisions between feminists over censorship depends on divergent conceptions of sexuality and of social power. We can see so-called pro-sex feminists as allied with Nietzschean power theorists and this alliance is not, she says useful for feminist purposes. The positive perspective on pornography has as its foundation an account of power that will not provide a sound basis for feminism. Lisa Featherstone’s chapter “Foucault, Feminism, and History” also addresses questions about social power and the formation of difference. She discusses the uses made by feminist historians of the theses and methodologies of Foucault, showing that these alliances may be productive. Foucault may provide a methodology for investigating power that escapes the tendency of “totalizing” power theories to reinforce structures of dominance by presenting power as inevitable and rational.

Introduction

7

Some suggest, therefore, that alliances, which utilize conceptual resources, avoid those difficulties mentioned by Gatens and others with “topdown” alliances. This appears to be a strategic advantage of this more distanced variety of alliance. Featherstone argues that this feature of Foucault’s methodology for investigating social power makes it a valuable tool for feminist historical analysis. We may even use it to reveal operations of power, which conflict with his more theoretical conceptions of power. Inadequacies in Foucault’s theory of power need not mean feminists cannot make productive use of his techniques. In the final chapter, titled “Splitting the Difference” Marguerite La Caze considers the history of Liberal attempts to deal with difference and decides that they do not provide a useful foundation for feminist thought. She argues that a politics of difference such as Iris Marion Young’s is best able to attend to the concrete circumstances of women’s lives and can provide better arguments for feminist goals than alternatives. Her discussion of the debate between Young and Nancy Fraser on the significance of diversity is an attempt to move beyond current criticisms of identity politics and into a better feminist understanding of difference. La Caze provides a theoretical response to the program for practical action outlined by Young in the initial paper in the collection. 3. Conclusion This work demonstrates that the account of relations between feminism and other political theories is a complex one, not amenable to simple tracing of interconnections or easy generalizations about the benefits or disadvantages of alliances. Some of the options available to feminists are becoming clearer, and these chapters contribute to that process. Feminists have four kinds of options. One is the short-term, strategically oriented, working coalition whose advantages and difficulties Young discusses. She argues that real interactions between feminists and others in the political arena can lay the foundations for understanding and redressing social injustice. Second are alliances involving common theoretical commitments that apply nonfeminist theories to gender relations. Several of the chapters contribute to the critique of such alliances. As the papers by Duggan and Pudsey, Thompson, and Le Caze demonstrate, this work is essential to the task of refining and defining feminist theory. Third are utilizations of the resources of existing nonfeminist theories. Green, Broad and Prosser, Lydeamore, and Featherstone discuss some of the advantages and problems these face. The fourth type of alliance involves a critical engagement with a nonfeminist theory, reworking it from within. Whether the theory that emerges is a genuinely feminist one that contributes to the understanding of gender relations and social injustice is quite often an issue for debate. All of the chapters in the second part of the book contribute to debates about the feminist status of different theories. Beasley provides guidelines for deciding these debates in her chapter in the first part. Taken together, these

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chapters develop the conditions for a more mature vision of both the limits and the potential for alliance.

Notes 1. Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989). 2. Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 60. 3. Anne Phillips “Universal Pretensions in Political Thought” in Michelle Barrett and Anne Phillips, ed., Destabilising Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1993); Linda J. Nicholson, “Feminism and Marxism” in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds., Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); and Catriona McKenzie “Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy and/or the Female Body” in Carole Pateman and Elizabeth A. Gross, eds., Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1986). 4. Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, ed. and trans. Howard Madison Parshley, (New York: Knopf, 1975). 5. Sandra Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989). 6. Karen Green, The Woman of Reason: Toward a Theory of Liberation (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995). 7. Iris Marion Young, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1990), chap. 1. 8. Moira Gatens, Feminism and Philosophy (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1991,) chap. 5. 9. Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, (Sussex, Eng.: Harvester Press, 1983).

Part One RESPONDING TO CHALLENGES

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One THE COMPLEXITIES OF COALITION Iris Marion Young One audacity of Neoconservatives is their appropriation of the radical egalitarian rhetoric of the 1960s. In his recent book, The Affirmative Action Fraud, for example, Clint Bolick calls for a restoration of the Founding Fathers’ “civil rights vision.”1 According to Bolick and other conservatives, commitment to race and gender blindness was ensconced in the Constitution in 1789; while American practices did not always live up to these ideals, a steady progress brought us as a nation to real equality. Since the 1960s, a “politics of difference” has torn apart America’s common fabric, with groups claiming that they experience oppression, and demanding that we notice their social difference and cultural specificity. These groups call for “special rights” like affirmative action, comparable worth, ordinances forbidding discrimination against gays and lesbians, Indian fishing rights, and protections for labor organizing. America can only return to the road to happiness and prosperity if we restore the ancient “civil rights vision” that ignores differences of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or class. Neoconservative amnesia about slavery, the Civil War, exclusion of women, extermination of Native American Indians, discrimination against Jews, and suppression of Hispanics is disturbing. Portraying current protest groups as the creators of conflict over race, gender, and class to which their movements are a response, is laughable. More disturbing, is to hear respected leaders and writers of the Left sing a similar tune. In an article on third-party movements in the United States in February of 1996, In These Times editor James Weinstein asserts that the Left has been impotent since the 1960s because it has fragmented into gender, racial, and ethnic groupings.2 Politically correct calls to have women, African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, or people with disabilities represented, and their issues addressed have produced only bickering and hand wringing in all movement gatherings, but no significant Left electoral activity since the 1960s. Reduced to “rearguard damage control” in which each fragmented group tries to defend its turf, the American Left has been “mired for the past decade in the self-defeating morass of identity politics.”3 In his recent book The Twilight of Common Dreams, Todd Gitlin similarly bemoans what he regards as nearly three decades of wasted effort on the Left. According to Gitlin, political movements beginning in the late 1960s that asserted the specificity of gender or race oppression and the need to at-

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tend to these specificities to combat oppression, were “a very bad turn, a detour into quicksand.”4 While African-Americans, women, gays, and Latinos all legitimately complain about exclusion and discrimination, the emergence of group-based political enclaves has eroded the unified Left’s commitment to equality and its ability to organize Americans against capitalist greed and misery. Proponents of a politics of difference insist that individuals are no more than their labels, and elevate diversity to religious heights. Identity politics leads to a spiral of multiplied identities, to essentialist definitions of the group that suppress differences within, to the comforts of enclosed marginality, to a relativism in which no claims to truth and rightness have meaning, and finally to backlash. The only hope for a renewed Left is transcendence of difference and a common battle for a decent life for all. Have there been mistakes and excesses within and among the movements attending to group difference? Without a doubt: people within these movements have been among the first to criticize tendencies toward “essentialism” that marginalize some people and wrongly polarize individuals and groups. It only further confuses a project of progressive alliance to judge much of the thought and action of committed progressives for the last twenty years as One Big Mistake. Left critics of the politics of difference have their history wrong when they claim that public attention to group specificity has led to increasing division among Americans and a paralysis of political action. American society needs a progressive movement of those with no interest in enlarging corporate power, a broad movement of working and poor people that crosses gender, race, citizenship status, sexuality, and age. An inclusive movement cannot emerge from the search for a common good but only from careful attention by each vulnerable social segment to the specific experience and vulnerabilities of the others. 1. Increased Understanding, Not Increased Polarization The Left’s historical revisionism about the politics of difference is almost as seriously distorting as the Right’s. Gitlin’s account suggests, for example, that so-called identity politics has led to an increasing “hardening of the boundaries between groups” in the last twenty-five years.5 A more sensitive appraisal of the history of these movements since the 1960s would find an initial hardening of boundaries, followed by a reflective questioning of boundaries, and then increasing interaction, fusion, and exchange. Gender, race, ethnic, and ablement-specific movements arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s as people in the larger Left reflected on their specific experience of oppression. Each group developed an analysis of the structural workings of its oppression or exclusion. Each had to struggle to have this

The Complexities of Coalition

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analysis taken seriously by the others, and by a Left smugly convinced that we could reduce all other oppressions to that of the universal working class. Feminists struggled with labor organizations, socialist groupings, Black Power leaders, and American Indian activists to persuade them not only to take women’s issues seriously, but also to change their internal practices to include women as speakers and leaders. People of color struggled with feminists, socialists, and labor leaders to have racism taken seriously. Gays and lesbians struggled with all these movements, even to be recognized let alone to have their oppressions taken seriously. The “hardening” of group boundaries was born from the frustrations of dismissal and the more-oppressed-than-thou competition. They needed separate organizational and cultural space to withdraw from such arguments, develop solidarity with one another, and create alternative institutions to organize and provide services to their constituencies. We have forgotten, perhaps, how much work it took for each of these social movements to acknowledge the others as important, or for more traditional Left organizations to regard any of them as important enough to justify changing their analyses and practices. In the 1970s, each of these movements did champion a “politics of identity.” Each aimed to construct or recover a core set of experiences, values, and forms of community that defined women, or African-Americans, or Hispanics, and so on. From the beginning, identity politics was unstable, and the force of the movements themselves toppled its project. We did not need to wait for a Weinstein or Gitlin to recognize that group identity can be wrongly essentialist and exclusionary. Movement activists said this to themselves and each other by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Working-class women challenged the class bias in feminist definitions of women’s experience; AfricanAmerican gay men challenged the black movement’s definition of manhood, and so on. The result has been an irresolvable tension between the recognition of the generalities of social position and the affirmation of the multiple positionings of each particular person. Today, I would assert, these group-specific political tendencies draw less rigid boundaries around themselves than they did twenty or thirty years ago and they recognize a wider range of internal differences. This history leads me to claim that “politics of identity” is, today, largely a misnomer. In the meantime, the labor movement and more traditional Left organizations have recognized the specificity of gender, race, and sexual oppressions, and modified their analyses and programs accordingly. The text of the founding principles of the Labor Party adopted in Cleveland in June 1996 would have been unlikely for a group of labor activists in 1970.

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IRIS MARION YOUNG 2. Electoral Politics and Difference

The electoral arena is not the only or best place to assess the strength or weakness of Left influence on United States politics. But this is the measure that Weinstein and other Left critics of the politics of difference use, and even then they get their history wrong in claiming that this politics has meant impotence in the electoral arena. The decade of the 1970s saw some electoral success for African-Americans, but otherwise there was little significant activity bringing Progressives and Leftists together. The Citizens Party was an important experiment, abandoned by Left organizations that decided, mistakenly in my opinion, to work within the Democratic Party instead. By the early 1980s, it was possible for the diverse groupings of old and new Leftists, environmentalists, feminists, African-American activists, and other progressives who had persuaded one another of the importance of their issues to come together. In the decade of the 1980s, we called this formation the Rainbow Coalition. People associate this name so closely with Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns that they fail to credit the earlier campaigns that invented the concept. The first Rainbow Coalition formed in 1983 in Boston to try to win the Democratic Party mayoral nomination for Mel King. The coalition included African-Americans, Latinos, white labor leaders, Leftists and Progressives, feminists, and gay activists. Although King did not win the primary, he showed much more strength than the pundits predicted, proving that out-front Left-wing positions could win significant numbers of votes. The Harold Washington campaign in Chicago learned from this near success, brought together a similar coalition of groups, and in November 1983, elected the first black mayor of Chicago under the Rainbow Coalition banner. In retrospect, I look upon the 1984 Jackson presidential campaign as a trial run for the next one. Both Jackson and the campaign made many mistakes, some of them shameful, and there was not enough real grassroots organizing to reach the diverse constituencies needed for electoral success. This had changed by 1988. A genuine coalition of hardworking AfricanAmericans, labor activists, environmentalists, farm activists, Latinos, Native Americans, feminists, socialists, and gay and lesbian activists fuelled a blazing primary campaign. The Jackson message not only concentrated on issues of economic hardship and inequality, but also named the specific oppressions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Jackson won seven million popular votes in 1988, more than the primary victor Walter Mondale had won four years earlier. By any measure, this was one of the most significant progressive electoral campaigns since World War II. This was some years ago. We must be careful not to interpret all roads as leading to the reactionary political field in which we find ourselves today. There remain other fields in this treacherous political terrain, and some roads not taken far enough. The Rainbow movement had many problems. Chief

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among them were leaders afraid of the grassroots and an ultimate commitment to the Democratic Party. But the Rainbow was a coalition of constituencies differentiated by social position and experience of oppression and disadvantage, where each recognized and affirmed the specificity of the others and the need to work together. This history falsifies Weinstein’s claim that there has been no significant Left electoral activity in the United States because the particularist social movements have hopelessly paralyzed us. The ideas and politics of the Rainbow Coalition had significant appeal with the American public. To be sure, the mass interest it elicited is partly attributable to its being a primary campaign with significant media attention. I contend that its appeal also derived from its diversity and because the different parts of the coalition organized their distinct constituencies. The coalition was possible precisely because the different groups had gotten beyond an identity politics in which each is worried only about its situation. Any future Left-wing electoral movement will have to assemble a similar coalition of groups and encourage a similar mutual recognition. 3. Beating Back Backlash Recent social movements have further polarized American life because they have motivated backlash. Many people claim, for example, that America has more racial polarization today than it had during the civil rights era. Naysayers blame assertive movements of African-Americans, Native Americans, or Latinos who claim equal economic opportunity and full political participation at the same time as they assert cultural affinity and reject assimilation. No doubt, the last twenty years has seen backlash on many fronts, and increasing organization among people who would reverse the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, even of the 1930s. Still this is a sign of the success of progressive movements, instead of the failure of a fragmented Left. Conservatives attack affirmative action, for example, partly because its principles are now embodied in the practice of many corporations and nonprofit institutions, and not only in the public programs conservatives wish to end. Even the most Orwellian imagination would not have dreamed of a Defense of Marriage Act in 1975, because the idea that gay men and lesbians might have the same privileges as heterosexual couples was unthinkable in mainstream America then. The idea is gaining acceptance today because the movement for gay and lesbian rights succeeded in changing many people and institutions. Conservatives today have set their well-organized, well-funded sights not only on reversing the gains of identity politics but also on targets the Left has regarded as strictly class matters, such as the welfare safety net and labor’s ability to organize and bargain. Gitlin and others suggest that identity politics is partly responsible for these attacks on labor and the poor,

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because in their quest for cultural self-realization, groups abandon concern for nuts-and-bolts material issues. This is absurdly false. One of the most important organized responses to the recent welfare cuts, for example, has come from feminists. What Weinstein says, that they have directed too much of their energy to such “rearguard damage control,” may be true. It would appear more appropriate to praise them for recognizing the damage than to hold their woman-centered politics responsible for relegating all of us to the rearguard. Conservatives exploit gender and racial rhetoric as a way of diverting attention from the economic restructuring that has been hurting most Americans. Racist anti-immigrant sentiment and sexist calls for “family values” focus attention on blaming other poor and disadvantaged people for shrinking labor markets and increasing social costs, thus setting the working people of America against each other. The Left should not play into this divide-andconquer game by suggesting that African-American-specific, women-specific, gay-specific, American Indian-specific, or immigrant-specific issues divert attention from capitalist domination. In doing so, we risk further marginalizing those who increasingly serve as scapegoats in American politics. We should reject this false dichotomy between attending to group specificity and organizing in response to the job insecurity, increased inequality, and decreased access to healthcare and housing that these many groups all experience in different ways. 4. Fragmented Left Weinstein, Gitlin, and others are correct that we are a long way from mass organizing on such issues today. It seems to me that less organization and energy directed at working for economic and social equality exists today than at any time since the 1950s. Progressives are fragmented, but to lay blame for such fragmentation on the politics of difference is disingenuous. As Weinstein noted in his February In These Times piece, in the last few years there have been new and interesting electoral efforts that potentially include all those who wish to challenge the hegemony of corporate interests.6 With the exception of the Campaign for a New Tomorrow, a predominantly African-American group, they all appear to be the class-oriented organizations that critics of identity politics are looking for. Yet many of these groups are inward looking and fragmented. The Labor party has an extremely strong, comprehensive program, but its leaders want the party tied so closely to labor organizations that they have forbidden local chapters from running candidates making it difficult for persons not affiliated with labor organizations to work with them. The New Party, on the other hand, which has had several successes in local elections around the country, appears politically amorphous. Its publica-

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tions express many generally good ideas, but its policy of sometimes supporting Democratic Party candidates, and its rhetorical distancing of itself from older socialist or even New Deal traditions keeps its vision elusive. The Independent Progressive Politics Network emerged from a meeting in Atlanta aimed at bringing together representatives from local, state, and national organizations in the United States working on progressive politics and interested in independent political work. Dozens of organizations sent representatives, but the Green Party and several states’ Independent Parties have been the most active participants in the National Slate of Independent Candidates. It intends not to be a party or even an organization, but only a coordinated coalition. Yet, despite some interconnections and communication, both the New Party and the Labor Party, two of the biggest progressive thirdparty efforts, have not become actively involved. We cannot lay this kind of fragmentation at the door of so-called identity politics. But the critics of the politics of difference may have something right insofar as attention to the many ways economic and policy decisions damage people can make it difficult to find priority issues around which to form coalitions. Still, as the above examples show, the fragmentation of progressives appears more attributable to a free-for-all spirit than to turf defense or ideological disagreement. Perhaps we lack commitment to the work that careful coalition building requires. 5. Learning from Difference Critics of the politics of difference assume that specificity in public life is necessarily only the expression of narrow and rigidly defined group interest. This inward looking pressing of interests, according to them, is precisely why the politics of difference makes coalition unworkable. The only alternative to such divisive bickering, they suggest, is for the majority of Americans harmed by global economic restructuring and neo-Liberal policies to transcend their differences of culture and social position and unite under the wide banner of “people before profits.” Nonetheless, this way of putting things poses alternatives too starkly. A third way between interest-group competition and a difference-bracketing commonality exists. This would require a coalition that draws on particular experiences and perspectives to construct an enlarged understanding of the depth of society’s injustices and the existing possibilities for addressing them. America is a big and complex society whose members have precious little shared experience other than what appears on their television screens. Only by listening to the voices of differently situated groups can a potential movement united for the sake of meeting people’s needs have a clear sense of what those needs are. Despite the dominant rhetoric in this country that depicts poor people as a group of lazy, irresponsible, black, single mothers, the real circumstances of

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poverty are variable, and analyses from social-group perspectives are crucial for understanding that variability. Latino and Asian movements and groups can explain and interpret one face of poverty, feminist analysis shows another, a rural perspective another, African-American experience of racist exclusion another, reservation Native American Indians another, older working-class white men in the former industrial heartland yet another. If each of these constituencies does not communicate its specific situations to the others, then the ruling powers can continue to co-opt one by using another as scapegoat. Similar reasoning applies to the quintessential class issue, decent jobs for decent pay. Contemporary economic restructuring has made good jobs more scarce and forced many people out of work into low-paying jobs or into two jobs. In this respect, many people have reason to unite behind programs for economic security and meaningful work. But a comprehensive program for work and income needs to develop its specifics from knowledge of the structurally different situation of people with respect to their abilities, proximity to employment, and the demands of their everyday lives. It needs to include young inner-city African-American men, newly arrived legal or illegal immigrants, low-skilled single mothers with little access to childcare, suburban married women with young children and large mortgages, able-bodied old people with small or non-existent pensions, and people who move in wheelchairs. Although jobs matter to each of these groups, their job needs are different, and the constraints on their lives have differences—differences, structured by racist, sexist, ageist, and ablest biases and privileges, and by class and education. Ignoring such differences risks reproducing the old Left’s marginalization of important segments of the working class. Unity and understanding for a new people’s movement will not come from pretending that group differences do not matter, but from understanding precisely how they do matter, so forging an inclusive picture of our social relations. We need to wake up to the challenge of understanding across difference instead of continuing to dream on about common dreams.

NOTES 1. Clint Bolick, The Affirmative Action Fraud (New York: Cato, 1996). 2. James Weinstein, “Third Party Foibles,” In These Times, February 1996. 3. Ibid. 4. Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams (New York: Metropolitan Books,1995). 5. Ibid. 6. Weinstein, “Third Party Foibles.”

Two WHOSE POLITICS? WHO’S CORRECT? Alison M. Jaggar Almost anyone who was a feminist in the late 1970s and early 1980s remembers the expressions, “politically correct” and “politically incorrect.” Feminists of that period never used the term “politically correct” to advocate views to which we were wholeheartedly committed or to describe people we genuinely admired. Instead, we always used it ironically or tongue-in-cheek, as a way of distancing ourselves from a view or a person, implying that the view in question was quite extreme (what Communists used to call “ultra-left”), or that the person was self-righteous, or inflexible or doctrinaire. Similarly, we never used the term “politically incorrect” to express serious criticism. It was typically a term of affectionate mockery, hinting not only at forgiveness for those whose wills were weak but also even at admiration for those who resisted orthodoxies. Around that time, a friend gave me a button with the words “Politically Incorrect.” She did not intend it as a badge of shame announcing that I had strayed from some supposedly “correct line.” I interpreted her gift as a gesture of humorous affection, a way of telling me that, even though my politics and practices were different from hers, we could still be friends and share a joke. When I first received the button, I wore it quite a lot. It captured my continuing sense of myself as someone who is often unable to live up to her ideals but who refuses either to rationalize her failure or to renounce her ideals. I do not remember just when I stopped wearing the button, but I know it was many years ago. It was probably when politically correct jokes faded away in my circles, and it began to appear more urgent to wear buttons with slogans like, “Just Say No to Contra Aid” or “No Blood for Oil.” No one has ever taken much notice of whatever buttons I have worn but my writing has had a little more influence—if only on the small world of academic philosophers who are my usual audience. Since the late 1960s, I have counted myself among those philosophers who examine the Western philosophical tradition from a feminist perspective and I have contributed to developing what by now has become an extensive critique of that tradition. This critique has drawn attention to male biases at many levels in the Western tradition, ranging from the overt contempt for women rationalized by such canonical figures as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to deeper and less obvious biases infecting many classical Western assumptions about reality, knowledge and value. Inevitably, such work has raised a

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few hackles and, in 1988, I was not too surprised to find it castigated in the journal Public Affairs Quarterly.1 The following year, a similar attack appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.2 Both attacks came from Christina Hoff Sommers, a philosophy professor at Clark University in Massachusetts. Sommers was establishing her reputation as a defender of so-called traditional family values against those whom she called radical “gender feminists,” a term she invented to refer to any feminist who had moved beyond the ideas of nineteenth-century philosopher, John Stuart Mill. In rejecting gender, Sommers rejected one of the distinctive conceptual innovations of second wave Western feminism, which drew a theoretical distinction between sex, a set of physiological characteristics relating to biological reproduction, and gender, a variable collection of normative social identities assigned to sexed individuals. Second wave feminists disagreed about many things, including how they should draw the sex/gender distinction, but all agreed that the recognition of gender was a conceptual breakthrough that enabled them to pose many new questions and to articulate new insights. Because virtually all contemporary feminists frame their ideas in terms of gender, how anyone today can reject the concept of gender and still claim to be a feminist is difficult to see. Sommers maintains that she is a liberal feminist after the model of John Stuart Mill, but Mill’s radical critique of the family places him closer to most contemporary “gender” feminists than to Sommers. The conclusion that Sommers is an anti-feminist instead of a feminist is difficult to avoid. In the course of denouncing “gender feminism,” Professor Sommers accused me of claiming that all heterosexual dating was a form of prostitution and that women would never be truly equal with men until it was possible to surgically implant fertilized ova into their abdomens. She further asserted that gender feminists displayed a condescending attitude towards ordinary women, most of whom, according to Sommers, “still want and are willing to pay the price for many of the things—like family and motherhood—that gender feminists [according to Sommers] say they should not want.”3 Sommers even expressed fear that students would be so indoctrinated by gender feminist ideas that they would make personal choices harmful to themselves and their families and live unhappily ever after. I responded to these accusations with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. The views that Professor Sommers attributed to me were such utter distortions of what I had written that I thought nobody could take her allegations at all seriously—though I was soon to learn my mistake. Sommers’s accusation that feminist philosophers were a self-appointed vanguard promoting an ultra-left orthodoxy contemptuous of ordinary women definitely stung me. I wrote to The Chronicle of Higher Education, noting that feminist philosophy upheld no orthodoxy beyond its elementary commitment to eliminating male bias in philosophy; instead, I asserted that a variety of

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competing views characterized feminist philosophy, including views on such social issues as the family, sexuality, and reproduction.4 If anything unified philosophical feminism, I wrote, it was not by some set of dogmas about specific practical issues. Instead, feminist philosophy was: defined by its resolve to counter bias and distinguished by its commitment to giving voice to the hitherto silenced, its respect for the experience of ordinary people, and its concern for their authority and welfare.5 Several other philosophers also responded to Sommers’s piece, including the Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association.6 Eventually the editors cut off the debate, allowing Sommers the customary last word. All this occurred in the late 1980s and by spring 1991, I had more or less forgotten about what I thought was a storm in an academic teacup. Then suddenly I found my supposed ideas attacked again, this time not in academic periodicals but in the pages of general circulation magazines like Forbes, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal. The new attacks echoed many elements in the earlier ones—unsurprisingly, since it turned out that the new attackers knew little of academic feminism beyond what Professor Sommers had written about it. The target this time was not only feminist philosophy or even feminist scholarship in general but also the broader movement with which academic feminism is associated, namely, the movement against academic racism and ethnocentrism that has come to be called multiculturalism. As one of the group that Roger Kimball called “tenured radicals,” I found myself listed among the academic thought police, “femifascist,” and even, according to Dinesh D’Souza, “A Visigoth in Tweed!”7 “Political correctness,” a fading term of irony among feminists, was suddenly revived as a household word used to smear social critics, intimidate students and alarm citizens; the ironic resonances of the term were completely lost. Most amazing of all to me, given my quite painful consciousness of my inability to live up to my own ideals, I was suddenly portrayed as a leader of a supposed political correctness movement “trying to turn campuses into authoritarian ministates.”8 As the media campaign against so-called political correctness on campus gathered momentum, the charges against it fell into several categories. (1) First, “tenured radicals” were accused of devaluing Western civilization and neglecting to study it in our courses.9 We were alleged to present Western culture and American society as “thoroughly and hopelessly racist, sexist, oppressive.”10 We were supposedly critical of the United States Constitution and of individual rights, especially the right to free speech.11 We failed to value the West’s tradition of civil liberties, realm of privacy, or individualism.12 We “jettison[ed] the study of West-

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ALISON M. JAGGAR ern culture”13 while imposing compulsory courses in non-Western or Third World cultures.14 Because we saw Western culture as so “evil and patriarchal,” we were supposed to advocate “discarding” it.15 (2) A second charge was that, as columnist George Will put it, “political indoctrination [was] supplant[ing] education in the nation’s universities.”16 Radical academics supposedly were evaluating the greatest literary, artistic, and scientific achievements of Western civilization against a rigid ideological standard that was anachronistic, dogmatic, and paid little attention to truth. It was said that we excused the failure of students admitted on a “preferential basis” by invoking political bias in the curriculum.17 Our critics asserted that it was our revisionist scholarship that was biased: “Multicultural education, in practice, gravitates towards myths and half truths.”18 “Campus feminists have undermined the university’s traditional search for truth.”19 I was said to view Copernicanism as a male plot;20 Sandra Harding was said to view scientific objectivity as a male plot.21 (3) In addition to ignoring objectivity in practice, critics alleged that radical academics, especially feminists, were anti-rational in principle. It was said that we attacked objectivity and intellectual rigor as strategies for defending the cultural and political supremacy of white heterosexual males,22 seeing rigor as “patriarchal and logocentric.”23 Feminists especially were portrayed as quasi-religious fanatics; Sommers asserted that the “sex/gender prism” functioned more like a religion than a science.24 We were said to ascribe disagreement to false consciousness on the part of others and to deploy false consciousness as a semi-mystical concept suggesting that disagreement cannot be discussed rationally. False consciousness was said to function similarly to “faith” or “enlightenment” for religious believers.25 In the same vein, feminist students were said to be brainwashed, “unreachable and scary . . . like Moonies,” and their teachers were “enemies of reason,” who engaged in “robotic sloganeering.”26 Feminists were said to advocate incoherence and illiteracy. (4) In addition to being anti-rational in principle, critics portrayed radical academics as inconsistent and hypocritical in practice. We were said to care nothing for the feelings of those with whom we disagreed but to care immoderately about the feelings of those we saw as oppressed.27 Our “diversity neglected the classics of Asia or Latin America in favor of popular or underclass perspectives.”28 We criticized the stereotyping of white women or gay people or members of United States ethnic or racial minorities but then ourselves stereotyped white, heterosexual men. We re-

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sisted censorship on the part of right-wing groups but then ourselves sought to impose it on others. 29 (5) Feminist and anti-racist scholars were also accused of being intolerant of interpretations of texts or images that were different to ours.30 We supposedly persecuted scholars with whose views we disagreed, especially those whose scholarship was alleged to be “Eurocentric,” violating their academic freedom and hurting their feelings.31 At the same time, we were said to protect the feelings of women and persons of color by supporting speech codes which prohibited speech that encouraged a “demeaning atmosphere.”32 We demanded intellectual conformity, enforced with harassment and intimidation.33 We presented our views as dogmas,34 we censored school texts and we forced dissenters to undergo thought reform.35 We were totalitarians, fascists of the Left, new McCarthyists36 said to be engaging in an “illiberal revolution.”37 “Lifelong liberals are repelled by the ferocity of their Politically Correct colleagues.”38 (6) Critics claimed that feminist and anti-racist academics promoted hatred, bigotry, and social divisiveness in the name of resisting oppression. Academic residences for ethnic minorities were said to create a kind of academic apartheid;39 African-American studies was said to characterize people of European descent as “ice people,”40 feminists were said to hate men.41 (7) “Tenured radicals” were alleged to hold crazy, ultra-left social views, unrepresentative of the taxpayers who paid our salaries.42 Feminists, for instance, were said to see all women as victims and to define “any sexual encounter not initiated or dominated by the female…as rape.”43 I was alleged to claim that dating was prostitution and to promote destruction of the family and technological reproduction.44 On this characterization of feminism, it became quite plausible to assert academic feminists were unrepresentative of ordinary women, “especially wives and mothers,” whom we were alleged to despise.45 Dinesh D’Souza wrote, “A new barbarism—dogmatic, intolerant and repressive—has descended on America’s institutions of higher learning. We who pay the bills ignore the outrages and subsidize those who would do us in.”46 (8) Finally, critics portrayed feminist and anti-racist scholars as puritanical, self-righteous, unpleasant people who made scapegoats of others. Feminists were portrayed as “homely girls,” ugly, unfeminine and/or ageing.47 We were said to lack a sense of proportion,48 to be arrogant and humorless49 and to be engaged in a dangerous grab for political power.

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I cannot discuss all of these accusations here but will address two of them briefly. I will then make some general comments about the political context from which they emanated. Each of the two accusations that I have chosen to discuss alleges disloyalty and treachery on the part of feminist and antiracist scholars. First, critics charged us with being traitors to Western civilization. Second, critics said we betrayed the trust of the taxpayers to whom we owe our salaries. Let us begin with the charge that scholarship such as mine disparages or even rejects the values of Western civilization. This accusation is a reaction against the critical re-evaluations of many great works of Western art, literature, and philosophy undertaken by humanities scholars in many disciplines. Such scholars have also scrutinized the values implicit in decisions as to what should count as the great works of Western art and literature. Historians have focused on aspects of our collective past overlooked by traditional Whiggish narratives, which presented Western history as an unwavering march of progress towards human freedom; and they have looked critically at the criteria for determining which human activities or events should count as historically significant. Observing that most people in the past did not spend much of their time engaging in warfare and diplomacy, they noted that members of disempowered or marginalized groups, including women, were also creators of history, though a history that had been so far neglected. Accordingly, they developed new scholarly fields such as labor history, women’s history, social history and so on. To construe this critical work as devaluing or rejecting Western civilization is utterly mistaken. Instead, we should regard the work as enriching our understanding of the achievements of Western civilization and extending its best ideals forward into the future. No scholarly enterprise is ever entirely value-free and this is especially evident in the humanities. The term “civilization” is an honorific term, gaining its meaning in contrast to derogatory terms like “savagery,” “barbarism,” or “primitivism.” Humanities scholars make evaluative judgments even in determining which activities, practices, and products should count as expressions of Western civilization. Interpretation and evaluation are integral to scholarship in the humanities, and each new generation must do such interpretation and evaluation afresh. This is what it means to make a cultural tradition one’s own. Until the mid-twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of humanities scholars were primarily, though not exclusively, men from the more privileged social classes. It was inevitable that their class and gender locations influenced the ideas of these scholars in some ways—though this does not mean that we can reduce their work to simple propaganda for their class or gender. After World War II, some men from working class backgrounds were able to obtain academic positions and, over the past fifty years, women have entered academic life in increasing numbers, often women from the more

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privileged social classes. People from racial and ethnic minorities are now finally trickling into the academy, though still in painfully small numbers. That scholars whose social experiences have differed markedly from those defined hitherto as standard or universal should appropriate the Western cultural tradition in new ways—for example, that they should notice assumptions or omissions that previously have gone unremarked—is inevitable. My discipline of philosophy has been affected by the entry of significant numbers of white, middle-class women, who have produced an extensive new literature on feminist philosophy, often published in such new professional journals as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, The Feminist Review, and Australian Feminist Studies. These scholars have also founded several professional societies for studying feminist philosophy; they include The Society for Women in Philosophy, which has branches in several countries, the Society for the Study of Women Philosophers, the Society for Analytical Feminism, and the International Association of Women Philosophers. Feminist philosophers have observed that Western philosophy has often devalued women’s competence and contributions, and some feminist scholars are recovering work by forgotten women philosophers. Some feminists have argued that Western philosophy’s representations of such central concepts as individuality, reason and knowledge have often reflected experiences and perspectives that some regard as characteristically masculine. Even traditional definitions of philosophy’s constitutive problems and methods may reflect ways of thinking that are distinctively masculine and that exclude issues of special interest to women. For instance, Western political philosophy has insisted on a distinction between public and private life that has excluded the domestic realm from ethical and political scrutiny, so legitimating the domestic exploitation and abuse of women. Just as how the influx of relatively privileged women affecting philosophical scholarship is easy to see, so the relatively limited amount of philosophical scholarship utilizing the concepts of race, ethnicity, and class reflects the slower entry into philosophy of men and women from less privileged backgrounds, especially men and women of color. Construing feminist scholarship as devaluing Western philosophy or as rejecting it is perverse. Feminist philosophers would not devote our lives to critically re-evaluating the Western philosophical tradition if it were not a tradition about which we cared passionately. We are not saying, “Let us forget about Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel.” We are saying, let us see what Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, have to say to people at the turn of the twenty-first century—where “people” includes men from the less privileged classes and women from all classes. Developing critical perspectives on the Western philosophical tradition is no more to reject that tradition than developing critical perspectives on Ptolemy or Nicolaus Copernicus or Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein is to

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reject Western science. Similarly, to develop new and critical perspectives on Western traditions of art or literature or history is not at all to reject that art, literature, or history, but to take our places as inheritors of these traditions, to appropriate them for ourselves—just as past generations have always done. Far from betraying Western civilization, two of Western civilization’s noblest ideals inspire feminist and other revisionist scholarship. One of these ideals is the spirit of critical inquiry, the suspicion of dogma and the refusal to take things on trust or at face value; the other ideal is that of democracy. Even though Western institutions have frequently betrayed those ideals in practice, they still stand in our tradition as recurrent standards of moral and political evaluation; both linked to other Western ideals of freedom and equality. When we recognize these ideals as central to the aspirations of the Western tradition, if not always to its historical practice, then it becomes obvious that the new revisionist scholarship produced by disciplines such as feminist studies, ethnic studies, and queer studies is not a betrayal of Western civilization but a natural development of it. When “tenured radicals” look with a critical eye at the intellectual and cultural traditions that we have inherited, we show more respect to our forebears than we would if we engaged in selfcongratulatory adulation of their achievements. After all, the greatest Western philosophers, artists, and scientists were radicals in their times—and their greatest achievements consisted precisely in their challenging the assumptions of prevailing philosophical, artistic and scientific traditions and breaking the boundaries of existing paradigms. Similarly, when conservatives suggest that the study of so-called minority or Third World cultures constitutes some kind of disloyalty to Western civilization, they forget that Western civilization, itself, is a multicultural achievement, generated precisely in response to the shock of culture clashing with culture, as trading across the Mediterranean Sea brought the previously isolated Greek cultures into contact with the older civilizations of Asia and Africa. The new revisionist scholarship directly continues the honorable Western tradition of pioneering and non-dogmatic critical enquiry and the Western democratic tradition. Historians tell us that the so-called New World Order, which has followed the collapse of the bureaucratic state socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, is a triumph of democracy and that democracy is a lesson that non-Western nations must learn from Western ones. We know that this claim is, at best, considerably less than the whole truth, but we have no doubt that democracy is something we wish to nurture, especially in studying the humanities, through which we develop our fundamental understandings of ourselves and our culture. The new revisionist scholarship consists precisely in attempts by groups hitherto excluded from authority in interpreting Western civilization to assert that their history, their cultural products and their selfunderstandings are also part of civilization. For this reason, such scholarship is deeply democratic.

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Let me turn briefly to the charge that we Visigoths in tweed promote social views so radical that they are dangerous to our students, not to mention disloyal to the trust of citizens who pay us to educate their children. Few of those engaged in the new revisionist scholarship hold anything like the more outlandish views attributed to us but many do hold social views that are considerably to the left of most taxpaying citizens. I consider myself a case in point. The mildest negative response here is to remember that academicians still do not accept revisionist scholarship—hence the term “revisionist”—and to note those scholars who pursue it still in a minority; for instance, feminist philosophy remains on the fringe of the discipline. Even if feminist and antiracist academics subscribed to a political orthodoxy, and even if we wished to “take over” the universities, we are far from doing so. The threat we allegedly pose is a figment of the right wing imagination, a new version of the 1950s hysteria about a communist conspiracy that saw reds under every bed. More positively, the presence of a few radical academics is not an evil, the unfortunate price of academic freedom. Instead, I would argue that radical thinking and dissent should receive special encouragement in institutions of higher education because they are integral to both the research and the teaching missions of our colleges and universities. Taking research first, I have observed already that the achievements of Western civilization have always depended on challenging accepted modes of thought and practice, developing new perspectives, seeing old traditions in a new light. The heroes of Western civilization have always been rebels. Think of Socrates—another philosopher accused of subverting the youth he was educating, and eventually executed for this. Think of Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, or Sigmund Freud—each in his lifetime viewed as subversive of Western civilization and sometimes persecuted on this account. Critical thinking is crucial to the research mission of colleges and universities, and equally indispensable to their educational mission. Colleges and universities are not primarily professional or vocational training schools whose task is to guarantee that their graduates have acquired practical skills or absorbed a demonstrable amount of technical information. They are not military or religious institutions, part of whose task may be to instill patriotic pride and religious fervor, nor museums whose mission is to glorify the Western heritage. Instead, the primary educational task of liberal arts colleges and universities is to provide an environment sheltered from the pressures of the larger society but rich in cultural and intellectual resources. Such an environment offers undergraduate students a unique opportunity to question their assumptions and develop their aesthetic, moral, and political commitments. Within this environment, radical social criticism has special value as a resource because it stimulates students to engage at the deepest level in the critical evaluation of themselves and their culture.

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Even though I do not personally believe that all heterosexual dating is a form of prostitution, that the Copernican revolution was a male plot, or that women’s liberation requires men to give birth to babies, I think it is highly beneficial for schools to expose students to such views—precisely because they are not the views of most taxpayers. Students do not come to college to learn the social views of average taxpayers, because they are already well aware of those views. Instead, students come to college, among other reasons, to discover perspectives that are not easily available in the world outside the university. As Mill almost said in On Liberty, if academic radicalism did not exist, it would have to be invented!50 If the contributions of feminist and anti-racist scholars are as valuable to the academy, as I am suggesting, then why are they the target of such vicious attacks? It took me a long time to answer—or even ask—this question. At first I assumed that the attacks were reactionary responses by conservative academics who did not want the trouble of rewriting their lecture notes and I did not take them seriously enough to make a public response. I also did not want to spend the scarce time I had available for writing in clarifying and defending previous work. I thought my record could speak for itself and I wanted to get on with new projects. I did take the time to mention to my two teenage daughters that no, I did not think all heterosexual dating was a form of prostitution—a charge that was printed on the front page of my university’s student newspaper. I also informed my neighbor that, regardless of what she had read in The American Scholar, I did not think the Copernican revolution was a male plot. For a long time I maintained a public silence, assuming that the attackers would go away if I ignored them. I also ignored the personal hate mail I received at that time, which included pornography featuring women sexually abusing men, accompanied by a note asserting that obviously I was a woman who understood the attractions of power. In the end, I felt forced to take the attacks more seriously. In a letter to the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Sommers complained that she had been “squelched and silenced” by “the American Philosophical Association’s feminist establishment,” including the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women, which I then headed. Her letter set off fierce controversy within the American Philosophical Association.51 The publication of her book, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, was heralded with huge publicity in the mass media.52 I came to realize that the attacks on so-called political correctness by Sommers and others were orchestrated and funded by right wing foundations seeking to bring about fundamental changes in higher education. For instance, I learned that Sommers was the Boston president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, that Lynne Cheney, then president of the National Endowment for the Humanities, frequently cited her writing in speeches and that she was nominated as a candidate for the Board of the

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National Endowment for the Humanities. Sommers was also “one of five mostly conservative new appointees” appointed by then Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, to an advisory panel providing “oversight” to college accrediting groups that had been irritating the Education Secretary by asking colleges and universities embarrassing questions about such topics as their recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color. The conservative Bradley Foundation awarded Sommers $40,000 to support her book project on academic feminism, and the conservative Olin Foundation awarded her $20,000.53 I realized that the furor over so-called political correctness in the United States reflected a similar controversy over education under Conservative governments in Britain in the 1980s, although the main arena of political conflict in Britain was the inner city schools instead of the universities. Since the early 1970s, many teachers had worked in British schools to broaden the curriculum beyond an exclusively European content and focus and, during that decade, although multicultural policies were usually associated with the Left, they frequently received all-party support in locally elected education authorities. A consensus developed in favor of giving more emphasis to the history and culture of British Asians and Afro-Britons, who made up between 10 and 70 percent of the population in urban districts. Teachers in some classrooms studied gender, racial, and cultural stereotypes. In the middle 1980s, these educational reforms became objects of ferocious attack by a group of intellectuals closely associated with the ruling Conservative Party. Two prominent philosophers, Roger Scruton and Anthony Flew, led the group. These philosophers contrasted the high culture of Britain favorably with the cultures of the Third World, claiming that British culture was “based more in open communication and the feeling for the law than any slavish adherence to custom.”54 As in the United States, multiculturalism was equated with disparaging European and British culture and this theme was taken up with enthusiasm by the popular press who rejoiced in examples of supposed fanaticism on the part of what came to be called the “loony left.” In the late-1980s, the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Mail On Sunday ran a seemingly endless series of antianti-racist stories. They alleged, for instance, that left-wing London Education authorities had banned the nursery rhyme, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” along with black garbage bags, and all references to black coffee in staff canteens. Similar reports were associated with local councils’ plans to “multiculturalize” London Street names. The Sun reported that Hackney Council, in east London, was going to transform Britannia Walk to Shaheed-E-Asam Nhagot Singh Avenue. Retractions sometimes followed these blatantly false reports but their cumulative impact was to create an atmosphere of immense public hostility to the “trendy” educationalists now believed to be teaching Britain’s youth to

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despise “British” culture. In addition, some publications portrayed multicultural reformers in Britain, as in the United States as fanatics, fascists, and Nazis. The outcome of all this was that, in 1988, the Conservative Party introduced a national curriculum with the explicit aim of giving top priority to the teaching of British achievements and civilization. The power of local educational authorities to develop their policies was severely limited and, since Britain has no commitment to the separation of church and state, school assemblies again became Christian in content, despite many British schoolchildren no longer being Christian. The 1988 Local Government Act made it an offence to portray “positive images” of homosexuality in British classrooms. The theme of much British education now is precisely that advocated by Christina Sommers and her allies in the United States, namely, the theme of “traditional values.” Although both the British and United States traditions include social criticism, equality, and democracy, as I argued earlier, the term “traditional values” has become code, in current political usage, for classist, racist, sexist, heterosexist and imperialist values. In Britain, as in the United States, the 1980s was a period of reaction. The violent crushing of the miners’ strike, denationalization of the power industry, and savage cutbacks in the National Health Service followed the war for the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands. In the United States, labor unions were defeated (starting with the air traffic controllers), real wages fell, sweatshops returned, casual employment increased as full-time jobs with benefits diminished, housing costs soared beyond the reach of many working people, and Black college attendance decreased until more young African American men were in prison than in college. Reproductive rights eroded, welfare, medical, social security, and unemployment benefits were cut, and incidence of child malnutrition increased. Meanwhile, the military budget multiplied and in some places more money was spent on prisons than on education. Many people became poor and a few people became rich at the ordinary citizen’s expense. Academic programs like feminist and ethnic studies are among the few achievements of the 1960 and 1970s that we have not seen entirely reversed or eliminated by the inegalitarian and anti-democratic changes of the 1980s, 1990s and the first years of this century. Scholars in these programs, along with the revisionist scholars in the established disciplines, have been among the few remaining voices continuing to challenge prejudice, injustice, violence, exploitation, and militarism. I believe that this is why conservative columnist George Will wrote in 1991 that then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s enemies in the Persian Gulf were far less dangerous than the domestic enemies faced by his wife Lynne Cheney, then head of the National Endowment of the Humanities. When George Will spoke of domestic enemies, he had in mind people like Paula Rothenberg, co-editor with me of Feminist Frameworks,55 and editor of

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the widely used reader Racism and Sexism.56 Lynne Cheney explicitly targeted Rothenberg in a speech given by at the National Press Club. Why anyone would consider people whose work is devoted to opposing racism and sexism to be dangerous enemies of the state is a question instructive to consider. Such a consideration raises fascinating questions of who controls the state and in whose interests they control it. The time is past due for feminist and anti-racist scholars to respond assertively to those who try to silence us, who create a chilling climate for our scholarship, and who push us to write defensively, or to constantly qualify and modify what we say in vain efforts to guard against misrepresentation. We need to respond not only in private but also in public and we need to respond not only defensively, by denying that we hold some outlandish views, but also offensively, by revealing the inconsistency and bad faith of our attackers. We need to point out that our critics are guilty of precisely those offences of which they accuse us. Many of our critics provide textbook examples of projection, in which people attribute to others the qualities that they most dislike or fear in themselves, qualities that take on dimensions larger than life, like monsters in nightmares. They condemn our work because of what they regard as its incorrect politics. They are intolerant of opposition and persecute those of us who dissent from them. They are inconsistent in their charges (for instance, by accusing us simultaneously of both relativism and dogmatism). They are intellectually dishonest, deliberately misreading our work. Their attacks on our competence and integrity, especially the competence and integrity of scholars presumed to be the beneficiaries of affirmative action, promote hatred, bigotry, and social divisiveness. Many critics of so-called political correctness even appear to have the unpleasant personal characteristics they attribute to us: they are often selfrighteous people with no sense of proportion or ability to recognize a joke. How much sense of proportion can people have who regard the handful of academics working in under funded programs like women’s studies or ethic studies as, “trying to turn campuses into authoritarian ministates?” How much sense of humor can they have to take an outdated expression of feminist irony, and turn it into a threat to Western civilization? We must avoid the temptation to remain on the mud-slinging level of those who are attacking us. Most important is to reveal the political and economic interests that are financing those attacks and to explore their larger political agenda. That agenda is not to achieve the openness and justice to which they pay lip service. One respect in which our conservative attackers are correct is in characterizing us as inheritors of the ideals of the 1960s and 1970s. Ideals held by many at that time have still influenced many younger scholars who came politically and intellectually of age in later decades. In the United States, they are the ideals held by those who fought the battles for African American civil

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rights and the war on poverty, who challenged the sexual objectification of women at the Miss America Pageant in 1968 and fought at Stonewall for an end to the persecution of gay people. They are the ideals of those who protested the most powerful state in the world waging high-technology warfare on an impoverished country on the other side of the world, which was just emerging from French colonialism and struggling simultaneously against a United States-supported dictator who took Adolf Hitler as his hero. The decades of the 1980s and 1990s moved many Western societies farther from, not closer to, achieving those ideals, but feminist and anti-racist scholars are among those struggling to keep them alive for a new generation, so that they can be reinterpreted in the twenty-first century. We, and not Dinesh DeSousa, Roger Kimball, Christina Sommers, Roger Scruton, Anthony Flew, or Dick and Lynne Cheney, are doing our best to move our societies closer to achieving the best ideals not just of Western civilization but of liberation movements throughout the world, the ideals of genuine liberty and justice, equality and democracy, truly for everyone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper began as a panel presentation given at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I developed the ideas in discussions with Lori Gruen. Other panel members were Robin Jones and Manning Marable. In preparing this version of the paper, I am extremely grateful to Richard Jones for generous assistance in finding references.

NOTES 1. Christina Hoff Sommers, “Should the Academy Support Academic Feminism?” Public Affairs Quarterly, 2:3 (July 1988), pp. 97–120. 2. Christina Hoff Sommers, “Feminist Philosophers Are Oddly Unsympathetic to the Women They Claim to Represent,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (11 October 1989). 3. Ibid. 4. Alison M. Jaggar, “Letters to the Editor,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (1 November 1989). 5. Ibid. 6. David A. Hoekema, “Letters to the Editor,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (1 November 1989). 7. Dinesh D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” Forbes (1 April, 1991). 8. George Will, “Curdled Politics on Campus: Tenured Radicals are Trying to Turn Campuses into Authoritarian Ministates,” Newsweek (6 May 1991), p. 72. 9. Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Corrupted our Higher Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).

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10. John Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” New York (21 January 1991). 11. Ibid., p. 35. 12. Ibid., p. 40. 13. Debra Cermele, “The Political Seduction of the University,” Campus, 2:2 (Winter 1991), p. 3. 14. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” p. 82. 15. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 38. 16. George Will, “Curdled Politics on Campus,” p. 72. 17. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” p. 84. 18. Ibid., p. 83. 19. Article description inside cover, Campus, 2:3 (Spring 1991), p. 5. 20. Nellie Smith, “The Feminist Politicization of the University,” Campus, 2:3 (Spring 1991), p. 5. 21. Margarita Levin, “Caring New World: Feminism and Science,” American Scholar (Winter 1988), pp. 100–106. 22. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 36. 23. Ibid., p. 40. (Quoting Christina Hoff Sommers.) 24. Christina Hoff Sommers, “The Feminist Revelation,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 8:1 (Autumn 1990), p. 157. 25. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 35. 26. Ibid., p. 40. (Quoting Sommers.) 27. “Review and Outlook: Politically Correct,” The Wall Street Journal (26 November 1990), p. 11. 28. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” pp. 82–83. 29. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” pp. 34–35. 30. Camille Paglia, “Ninnies, Pedants, Tyrants and Other Academics,” The New York Times Book Review (5 May 1991), pp. 1, 29, 33. 31. “Review and Outlook: Politically Correct.” 32. William A. Henry, III, “Upside Down in the Groves of Academe,” Time (4 January 1991), p. 67. 33. “Review and Outlook: Politically Correct,” 34. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” p. 82. 35. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 35. 36. “Review and Outlook: Politically Correct.” 37. Henry, “Upside Down in the Groves of Academe,” p. 67. 38. “Review and Outlook: Politically Correct.” 39. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” p. 86. 40. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 39. 41. Ibid., 38. 42. Ibid., 38. 43. Thomas Ricks, “Woman’s Studies at Duke: A Case Study,” Campus, 2:2 (Winter 1991), p. 3. 44. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 38. 45. Ibid., 38. 46. D’Souza, “The Visigoths in Tweed,” p. 81. 47. George Will, “Curdled Politics on Campus,” p. 72. 48. Ibid., p. 72. 49. Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” p. 37.

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50. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1869). 51. This controversy can be traced in the “Letters” sections: The American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses, 65:5 (January 1992), 65:7 (March 1992), 66:5 (February 1993), and 66:7 (June 1994). 52. Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994). 53. “Olin Fund Gives Millions to Conservative Activities in Higher Education,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (22 January 1992). 54. Roger Scruton, “The Myth of Cultural Relativism,” in Frank Palmer, ed., Anti-Racism: An Assault on Education and Value (London: Sherwood Press, 1986). 55. Alison M. Jaggar, and Paula S. Rothenberg, Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between Women and Men (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978). 56. Paul S. Rothenberg, Racism and Sexism: An Integrated Study (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).

Three SPEAKING OF FEMINISM . . . WHAT ARE WE ARGUING ABOUT? An Essay in the Politics of Meaning Chris Beasley In recent times, there have been some “authoritative” criticisms of and/or attacks on feminism in Australia and elsewhere in the Western world. While critical assessment of feminism is by no means new, these “authoritative” challenges do not present themselves as strictly antagonistic—they do not present as anti-feminist per se—but as “knowing” feminism and accepting supposedly central features of it, such as claims about, and rejection of, the existence of widespread, even systemic misogyny. Such challenges necessarily rely upon conceptions of feminism’s identity. They involve views of what feminism “is.” They are intimately engaged in the production of meaning and we cannot easily ignore them since they apparently offer both knowledgeable and critical judgment regarding the meaning of feminism. Inescapably, these “authoritative” challenges raise the question of definition or “characterization.” In a cultural climate where the term “feminism” is in common usage but also under siege, the question of defining and characterizing feminism takes on a measure of urgency. While I was alerted to the question of definition by the contributions of “knowing” critics, my efforts to clarify the term feminism in a book entitled What is Feminism? An Introduction to Feminist Theory revealed that the task is problematic and contentious.1 Unfortunately, what makes a particular group of writers “feminist” theorists—instead of some other sort—is not as obvious as might be imagined. Although I think we have reason to be wary of strict definition in the traditional dictionary-style sense, feminism is not a term entirely up for grabs. Feminism is scarcely a static label, but this does not mean that it has no boundaries.2 The use of words or labels, no matter how broadly and conditionally understood, does involve the inclusion of some things and the exclusion of others, even if the boundaries change over time, and are permeable or fluid instead of written in concrete. Defining feminism may be theoretically possible, but to reduce the broad concept to a single unambiguous definition appears unlikely. Characterization is by no means a straightforward intellectual endeavor. Considering the politics of whether to engage with characterizations of feminism produced by “knowing” critics—whether to contribute to a process of definition—does not merely involve undertaking a project of simple

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clarification. Considerable uncertainty exists among feminists (including some “insider” critics) whether feminism can or should be defined or characterized. Despite significant difficulties, we should attempt the task of definition. To refuse to engage in the political task of constituting meaning is a pedagogical, strategic, and analytical error. These pedagogical, strategic, and analytical problems indicate that we should pay greater attention to how we can understand the task of definition, instead of concentrating on the question of whether the task should be undertaken. In concluding this essay, I will briefly outline some methodological procedures for characterizing feminism. This paper has some adopted some self-imposed limits on considering the task of characterizing feminism. These include a focus on Western feminisms, and a focus on theory. The initial caveat regarding a Western feminist context arises out of my belief that it would be no simple task to provide a brief account of the issue of definition attending to both the diverse field of Western feminist thought and the enormous complexity of “Third World” feminist thinking. In relation to the second self-imposed limit, this paper examines the meanings attached to the term feminism from the point of view of a focus on feminist theory or thought and feminist theorists—it deals in ideas, assumptions, and frameworks. Some writers adopt the view that we should not conceive feminism in terms of ideas alone, since it also refers to political struggles. Others suggest we can describe feminism more broadly. Rosi Braidotti talks of “the means chosen by certain women to situate themselves in reality so as to redesign their “feminine” condition.”3 I have considerable sympathy with this expanded scope. The limits of this paper are such that I have chosen to concentrate upon systemic, publicly asserted feminist ideas—instead of on the historical development of feminist political movements, practical struggles, feminist sub– fields or modes of inquiry such as economics or cultural studies, or individual women’s negotiation of the “feminine.” I have undertaken an account of the term “feminism” that is already expediently but necessarily restricted. Such an apparently limited focus on ideas still yields an extensive field. 1. What is Seen to be the Problem with Defining Feminism? Can and Should Feminism be “Defined”? A. The (often unacknowledged) Complexity, Diversity, Difficulty The notion of “defining” feminism is a controversial one plagued by many problems. First, “feminism” is a term that encourages a great many people to express opinions, but what these people mean by the term “feminism” is not entirely obvious. Such lack of clarity is not a simple result of limited knowl-

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edge or of prejudiced misrepresentation. “Feminism” is a troublesome word, in part, because it defies simple explanation. While Western feminism is increasingly an accepted part of ordinary social and political life, now—as in the past—it entails a variety of widely differing approaches. In spite of this diversity, in everyday discussions and in lecture rooms, we hear Western feminism often represented as a single entity somehow concerned with “equality.” This limited portrayal is rarely challenged, partly because many forms of current feminist analysis require considerable previous knowledge and are sometimes only available in forms of academic language that are more incomprehensible than quantum physics and as inaccessible to the uninitiated. Despite a growing awareness of, and potential audience for, feminist ideas, feminist thought remains little understood— even within the academy. B. Borders: Where and How do You Draw “The Line”? In addition to the problems associated with a complex, shifting and sometimes inaccessible field, defining feminism involves coming to grips with the issue of its borders. Many feminists (from across the whole spectrum of feminist views) are nervous about any attempt to say that this or that theoretical framework, position, or issue is out-of-bounds, or has stepped over the border that divides feminism from “other” perspectives. This anxiety occurs because attempts to distinguish feminism suggest deciding in advance what feminism is for all feminists, deciding what is outside the feminist agenda, and telling feminists what they may incorporate in their work. This is not an esoteric or abstract problem. A small example of the practical consequences of signaling such borders is relevant here. In 1998, a lengthy debate arose in an Australian email listing devoted to feminism and politics on the subject of whether a major waterfront dispute as an appropriate topic for the discussion listing. The waterfront dispute in question arose in April 1998 after the stevedoring company, Patrick Stevedores, sacked its unionized workforce, and replaced them with contract workers in Melbourne. The Australian Federal Government supported the move by insisting that the waterfront was inefficient. The Maritime Union considered Patrick’s action and government support was intended to break a comparatively powerful union and unionism in Australia per se. The debate on the feminist email listing revolved around the question of whether the waterfront dispute was a “feminist issue” (or perhaps alternatively more of a “class” issue). Borders can generate discussion about the accuracy or usefulness of the demarcation, but they can also reiterate political differences between feminist approaches, which may even lead to accusations of authoritarianism and political censorship.

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CHRIS BEASLEY C. Policing and Fixity: Who Draws “the Line” and Why?

Concern about borders leads us to a more general caution. Feminists themselves are often reluctant to engage in the task of definition.4 Although many authors have considered feminist thought, current writers rarely attend to the issue they are discussing. They almost invariably assume or evade the meaning of the term, feminism. Most texts dealing with contemporary Western feminism tend to deal only with some aspects of feminism—such as focusing on more established (“modernist”) approaches, or only summarizing different “types” of thought named feminist, which does not explain why they are so named. In the main, feminists are inclined—frequently deliberately—not to define what they mean by feminism, sensing dangers like internal policing of the field and its advocates, and the potential to suffocate the unstable vitality of its meanings. Who, after all, can speak for all of feminism? Who can say what is permissible and what is not? Who can speak of feminism’s identity? While we often connect such concerns about pinning down the identity of feminism with the agenda of post-modern feminists, these feminists merely emphasize the point and are not the only ones who have indicated uncertainty about speaking “the truth” of feminism. Feminists attending to class and/or to raceethnicity may display similar concerns. 2. What Might be the Problems Associated with Not Engaging in the Task of Definition? Can or Should Definition be Refused? Although the problems associated with defining feminism are inclined to make one pause, refusing to engage in definition does not mean that we avoid the question of definition. If the production of meaning is inescapable, suggestions that we should resist attempts at definition become doubtful. That only the agenda of defining feminism produces undesirable consequences is untrue. Renunciation of explicit definition creates some serious problems related to the production of implicit characterizations. I will outline two of the problems that signal that we should pay greater attention to rethinking how we might view definition, instead of continuing to focus on whether to define or characterize feminism. Closer analysis of how we can understand definition will, in turn, generate and shape methodological discussion regarding how we might do this. A. Definition/Characterization Cannot be Avoided The difficulties that arise in this search for something distinctive, something definable, about feminism—and relatedly for some limits, or boundaries— may reveal the search, itself, to be no longer important or meaningful. We might ask in this context, “Does the process of characterizing feminism nec-

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essarily assume or demand a unity that feminism has never had and does not need?” On the other hand, if feminism’s distinctive characteristics are so unimportant or insubstantial, its diversity so limitless or ineffable, perhaps the label itself should be abandoned? Even if such issues are by no means easily resolved, we cannot entirely evade the precarious project of delineating feminism’s characteristics. As Denise Thompson notes, “[R]efusing to engage in definition does not mean that definition is thereby avoided altogether.”5 Reluctance to explicitly clarify the meaning(s) of feminism often derives from a concern to reject a fixed conception, which supposedly speaks for all, but inevitably excludes some. No matter how theoretically principled, this reluctance has the effect of leaving in place and reiterating claims to implicit knowledges which are supposedly available to “those in the know.” B. Implicit Definition Leads to Problematic Effects i. Pedagogical Problems: Exclusion Implicit knowledges are inclined to preserve the authority of an alreadyinformed elite making the complexity of feminist thought inaccessible to the broader community. Although we typically couch renunciation of explicit definition in an understandable concern to avoid policing and attempts to fix the meaning of feminism, such a renunciation does not evade the problem of exclusion. Explicit definition involves potential exclusions that are available for scrutiny. By comparison, renouncing definition reiterates implicit characterization, thereby producing exclusions that are less open to debate and more inclined to affect the uninitiated as these exclusions shore up the authority of the elite. Although the task of defining feminism is a controversial and difficult one plagued by many problems, definition, in the form of implicit knowledges, is unavoidable. Asserting that we can or ought to resist definition is over-confident and ignores the risks attached to such an assertion. Engaging in debates concerning the meaning of the term “feminism”—engaging in characterizing or defining feminism—may well incite authoritative exclusions, but to imply that exclusion rests solely in explicit language is dangerously misleading. Authoritarian exclusions are evident in implicit knowledges and may potentially be more problematic precisely because they are not explicit. A crucial element of this concern is that intellectual elitism inevitably tinges implicit “theoretical” knowledges of any sort. Still, we might assess the potential risks associated with implicit knowledges because they do raise serious pedagogical dilemmas. Those who feel they do not understand the term feminism, and wish to learn more about it, are likely to be excluded from debates about its meaning if we make no attempt to clarify how it might be presently characterized. This

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pedagogical concern to clarify need not invoke a narrow conception of “definition” that reduces the meanings attached to feminism by only recognizing what is supposedly always the same within feminist writings. In any case, perhaps we should not be too precious about the dangers of pinning feminism down. The assumption that clarifying the meanings of feminism inevitably requires a prescriptive search for unity, for a definitive, unshakeable universal core, prejudges the task of “definition.” I will return to this theme shortly. ii. Strategic Problems, for example, in Relation to “Knowing” Critics Feminism in Australia and elsewhere in the West has recently been the subject of several “authoritative” challenges or attacks. Such challenges or attacks do not represent themselves as anti-feminist per se but as the work of “knowing” experts providing an informed critique. We can view the issue of whether to engage in explicit definition of the term feminism as an “in-house” epistemological-political problem, but we can also see that these challenges or attacks involve a wide audience. Although “in-house” debates may not be quite on the same order of conversation as unequivocally “public” disputes about feminism, they interconnect in many ways. “In-house” conceptions of feminism may restrict its accessibility to a wider audience. In this setting, unequivocally public challenges or attacks regarding feminism provide a linked but different forum in which to consider whether we should resist explicit definition. The evidently public nature of “authoritative” challenges or attacks highlights pedagogical and strategic political problems associated with renouncing definition. Two main forms of this sort of public authoritative challenge or attack exist. Relatively antagonistic “outsiders” produce the first sort—typically, but not exclusively, produced by men who perceive themselves as at a distance from feminism and critical of it, but who also appear to acknowledge sexism and some of the restrictions of traditional sex roles.6 Like those offering similar attacks on Aboriginal self-determination, who eschew the term “racist,” and proclaim themselves to be supportive of Aboriginal people, these “outsider” critics present themselves as against sexism and supportive of women and families. Such critics attack feminism in terms that suggest its adherents, or their public leaders, belong to an homogeneous group that espouses a common anti-male and/or anti-family stance. Though the “outsider” critics acknowledge the problem of sexism, they either perceive feminism as profoundly misdirected in toto, or make some gesture towards its internal diversity by depicting it as presently captured by an outmoded extremism associated with “1970s” (radical?) feminism. Even in the second case, whether we regard throwing off the dominance of this past homogeneity as possible or capable of redeeming feminism in the eyes of these “outsider” critics remains decidedly unclear. Even this view that femi-

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nism is passé is not an invitation to reconfigure feminism. Overall, “outsider” expert critics decry feminism as irredeemable. Such authoritative “outsider” critics in Australia, as elsewhere, appear to be more confidently vociferous than ever and range from public intellectuals like Robert Manne to popular writers from the “men’s movement” such as Steve Biddulph, an Australian interpreter of Robert Bly’s “mythopoetic” approach.7 While these critics are quite different in many ways, they share an interesting inclination to present themselves not as anti-feminist per se—a stance which might appear too close to a rabidly pro-discrimination position from which they wish to distance themselves—but as legitimate critics. Their base their legitimacy on a knowledgeable stance that involves both an awareness and acceptance of crucial aspects of feminism regarding justice and equity, and their considered view that feminism is harmful. From this position Manne, upon accepting the position of co-editor of the respectable, conservative journal Quadrant, expressed his antagonism to “extremist ideologies” like radical feminism and gay liberation.8 In the past Manne has exhorted the Australian Labor Party, and the broad left, to cast off the “stranglehold” of an “old-style,” “1970s feminism” on the basis that it does not value women who work at home or aspire to do so.9 Recently he has reasserted that hoary old leftist view of feminism as bourgeois aberration in describing the continuous dominance of a “1970s feminism” removed from the realities of the working class. Manne does not entirely reject feminism per se, just its extremist forms, its homogeneous bourgeois past, and its present domination by that unfortunate past. He claims to know what feminists believe, what feminism was, and what feminism is. His “expert” advice regarding the meaning of feminism involves some tactical acknowledgment of its internal diversity in calling for a rejection of that which he views as extreme and/or narrow within it. By comparison, Biddulph speaks as the public and popular face of the men’s movement in Australia and is inclined to name feminism itself as more generally harmful. Though Biddulph opposes “sexism” and domestic violence, he provides an Australian articulation of mythopoetic discourse to argue that the men’s movement, instead of feminism, will end sexism; and that feminism is the enemy of men.10 Like Robert Bly, Biddulph claims in Manhood and Raising Boys that feminism has (in concert with inadequate fathering) contributed to the weakening of men.11 Biddulph offers a perspective common within mythopoetic discourse and now widespread in the popular media in which women’s emancipation from an oppressive gender positioning is endorsed, in principle, but feminism is rejected as harmful.12 This perspective relies on an understanding of feminism as homogeneous, immoderate, and anti-male. Manne and Biddulph are both at pains to represent themselves as supporting justice for downtrodden women—not as old-fashioned sexist blokes.

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Ironically, based on precisely this knowing about sexism and rejecting it, they are able to offer accounts of feminism which present it as largely or intrinsically problematic in the eyes of any reasonable person. Women who perceive themselves as having “insider” knowledge and who regard themselves as “insiders” produce the second main form of public authoritative challenge or attack. They are unsympathetic to what they judge to be either worrisome trends or outmoded elements dominant within contemporary feminism. Such disgruntled insiders either represent themselves as the old, or the new guard. While frequently some generational element in these positions exists, not all the representatives of the “new” are younger than those representing the supposed “old” traditions of feminism. Both groups draw upon assumptions concerning what feminism has been, and is now, and upon conceptions of what it “really is” or ought to be. “Old guard” feminists as disparate as Jean Curthoys and Eva Cox in Australia, Germaine Greer in Britain, and Gloria Steinem in the United States13 suggest that somewhere between the sexual revolution and the Spice Girls, present day feminists have lost the plot.14 Present day feminists in this analysis are described as young, and/or theoretically or culturally modish and/or commercial, while old guard feminists describe themselves in terms of being older or as upholding what they regard as feminism’s past (1960s and 1970s) history. Old guard feminists are inclined to contrast their history as feminists, and/or feminism’s history, with the problematic character of much of the dominant elements within contemporary feminism. They argue variously that present day feminism is (1) complacent about the changes 1960s and 1970s feminism has wrought; (2) naive and laissez faire about continuing structural forms of oppression or discrimination and the expansion of socially regressive government policies (in short, insufficiently political); and (3) individualistic and disinterested in collective political organization for social change. Current feminism is also frequently seen as (4) inclined to ethical relativism and as implicated in silencing the moral commitment associated with feminism in the past, or even as (5) captured by slovenly thinking and corrupt self-interest. The “old guard” suggests that in the 1960s and 1970s feminism had a framework that named the problem as systemic male power but that in recent times by some mysterious alchemy this framework reconfigured into a focus on “what is wrong with women (or more specifically, feminism).”15 Attention now is more often given to the question of women’s unwillingness or otherwise to use their power for themselves and to feminism’s unfortunate tendency to construct women as mere victims.16 For old guard feminists, a focus on individual women’s self-assertion and “individual entitlement” shorn of political, collective and moral context is a worrying development that threatens feminism and its aims.17 These feminists share the view that something of crucial significance to the meaning of feminism has been downgraded, re-

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pressed, or lost. In this sense, the old guard see themselves as the keepers of the feminist torch. If the “old guard” is a disparate grouping of authoritative critics (largely drawn from social liberal, socialist and radical feminisms), the supposed “new guard” critics are much more diverse (including postmodern, liberal and libertarian feminisms). By contrast with how they are represented by the old guard, the new guard do not see themselves as excluding crucial features of feminism and repressing its past history, but as adding to feminism. The new guard perceive themselves as speaking out against the exclusionary tendencies that feminism employed in the past and the continuing dominance of such an outmoded orientation. Feminism is described as still dominated by a stultifying, inappropriate or irrelevant perspective that is sharply criticized as either old-fashioned modernist or old-fashioned “victim” feminism. We can group the new guard primarily in terms of two main strands: (1) those that depict themselves as “young feminists” and/or indicate support for broadly postmodern agendas, and (2) those that identify themselves as supporting “power feminism” and/or “girl power.” Both strands talk in terms of plurality and are not necessarily committed to feminism as a label. They reject the singular sisterhood associated with an older feminism and its supposed grim focus on women’s restrictions or subordination in favor of an optimistic concern with fluidity, choice, individuality, fashion, and pleasure. The first strand, which includes young Australian feminists Catherine Lumby and Suzie O’Brien, refuses to accept the old guard’s depiction of young women feminists as disinterested in a socio-political agenda.18 Instead, such feminists argue that younger women have new issues requiring a reinterpretation of any notion of a singular agenda, let alone a collective revolutionary one. This perspective resonates with the work of some older feminists influenced by postmodern approaches who depict a relatively sharp distinction between so-called modernist feminist thinking in the 1960s and 1970s as against that in the 1980s and 1990s.19 The second strand of the new guard is marked by its rejection of focus on women’s social-sexual subordination as puritan and victim-oriented and a concomitant embrace and celebration of a “pro-sexual,” individualist ethos.20 This strand, which can be identified by the coverall term “power feminism,” includes well-known writers of different ages such as Camile Paglia, Naomi Wolf, Katie Roiphe, Rene Denfeld, and Natasha Walter.21 In an Australian context, Kathy Bail has coined a similar terminology— “Do It Yourself,” or “DIY feminism.”22 Women as various as Madonna and Margaret Thatcher can be described as heroines of feminism within this perspective. For example, Paglia has voiced enthusiastic advocacy of Madonna and Walter has defended Margaret Thatcher as feminist role models. New guard “power” feminists typically straddle the boundaries of academic and mass market feminism and have connections with popular and of-

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ten more strictly commercial conceptions like “girl power,” as espoused by the Spice Girls for example. The emphasis in mass marketing is on refusing to be a doormat, confidence, sexy style, fun and getting what you want. Both of the new guard strands—whether described as young postmodern or power feminists—display a strong concern with abandoning the outmoded, which includes the feminism of yesteryear and its advocates today. While the old guard keeps the torch alight, the new guard dashes water on it and lights others. All these attacks upon or challenges to “feminism” (whether from antagonistic critics or disgruntled insiders) rely upon conceptions of feminism’s identity; views of what feminism is. Even those insider “new guard” commentators who argue that feminism is fluid, and criticize other forms of feminism which do not accept such plurality, are making implicit claims about feminism. As they assert that we no longer have to be concerned about what feminism is, they offer a particular position, which assumes some characteristics for feminism and excludes others.23 In short, no matter what the positioning of such attacks or challenges, their authority rests precisely on their knowledge of feminism. The antagonists assume that they can attack feminism because they perceive it to be a largely a homogeneous and harmful thing. By contrast, the insiders challenge contemporary feminism on grounds that arise from its not being homogeneous (feminism is attacked for not being the same as it once was in its glory years, or for being too resistant to change and not keeping up). Whatever the form of the critique, the point is that these attacks or challenges are about the “meaning” of feminism. They involve definitions of feminism. They initially suggest that critiques of this sort generate definitions that we cannot easily ignore. They alert us to the significance of the issue of definition. Upon initial examination, the issue appears straightforward. Without some engagement with these “knowing” critics, without some debate over the forms of definition brought into play by them, public portrayals of feminism that cannot easily open up discussion remain. We ought to contest those public portrayals of feminism that either constitute it in a demonstrably inaccurate way or divide it up between “grumpy old crones” who want to tell us all what to do and “seductive young chicks” who do not want to be like their mothers. These portrayals compromise feminism’s possibilities in pedagogical, political, and other ways. We can no more leave the characterization of the field of feminism to men speaking as conservative public intellectuals, or as representatives of the men’s movement, than to media take-up of particular insider disagreements. Yet entering public debate about characterizations of feminism is not only fraught with the difficulties of speaking within the imperatives of the mass media but also raises serious concerns that are not only about getting the message across. Some post-modern feminists, following aspects of the work of JeanFrançois Lyotard and Michel Foucault, consider that entering the fray is by no means the obvious strategy and that speaking about what feminism “is” may

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involve a trap as restrictive as the limits of the public portrayals so far discussed.24 Contributing to debates concerning feminism’s meaning, debates that rely upon characterizations of feminism, raises the danger of overly fixing that meaning. Postmodern feminist approaches suggest that the assertion of authoritative knowledge (the confession of feminism’s identity) contains the problem of replicating hierarchical, and exclusionary ways of thinking present in mainstream thought.25 This reluctance to speak, to characterize or define feminism’s identity is associated with an intention to allow a fluidity of possibilities that may avoid totalitarian tendencies.26 While these concerns have merit, it cannot be assumed that the danger associated with speaking of feminism outweighs that of not doing so. The conclusion that speaking about the meaning of feminism is the most dangerous strategy is not self-evident. By comparison, an evident difficulty exists with not speaking in the context of current attacks upon, or challenges to feminism. Silence leaves only some characterizations in place. This hardly appears to allow for a fluid play of accounts of feminism. This diminishes the range and flexibility of the field of feminism. Not speaking involves some additional strategic problems. Relinquishing an authoritative position by remaining silent leaves in place existing elites—existing “authorities”—including both those that speak publicly and those that do not. We cannot presume that only engaging in characterization produces political or theoretical costs, and that renunciation of explicit definition is without costs and provides for openness. To refuse the task of characterizing feminism, of speaking about its meanings, is a risky strategic maneuver at best and a political mistake of considerable importance at worst. Again, the issue appears to be more a question of how, not whether, to engage in this task. Based on this assessment of strategic options other choices exist than those of hierarchical authority or silence. Like Jane Gallop, I see certain advantages in an alternative path, in explicit assertion and the adoption of a position of authority on the subject of feminism.27 This position of authority is undertaken in order to clarify the difficulties of doing so and relatedly to provide the opportunity to disperse that authority by indicating the impermanence of any such characterization. Such a position does not prematurely relinquish authoritative analysis— the presumption of “mastery”—before everybody else, but it does expose the illusions of that presumption. “Gallop’s idea [is] to invoke authority in order to legitimate an attack upon authority.”28 This form of engagement in debates about meaning is not so much concerned with correcting the “mistakes” of “authoritative critics,” as with opening up the field of feminism.

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CHRIS BEASLEY C. Refusal Relies on Questionable Analytical Assumptions: Characterizing/Defining Definition Itself

We can make a case for defining or characterizing feminism. Despite the evident problems of attempting this, the problems of not doing so are substantial and we cannot avoid them. Many of the problems seen to be associated with such a task involve analytical assumptions about “definition” that may be questioned. Not only pedagogical and strategic errors attached to evading explicit definition exist, but also specific analytical ones. Frequently we equate the task of defining or characterizing feminism with a search for unity, a central core that can provide the means to divide the authentic feminist from the traitor within. In this sense, we see the term “definition” as, in itself, necessarily indicating an agenda about fixity that some may be likely to use as a policing device to delegitimize some forms of feminist work as outside what is common within feminism; to delegitimize, for instance, those feminists interested in postmodernism, ethnicity, race, or class perhaps. Equating defining or authoritative speaking about feminism with pinning feminism down prejudges the task of definition. In rejecting fixity with regard to the term feminism, fixity is then overly invested in the meaning of the term “definition.” While potential problems attached to definition exist, these are not preordained. We find no reason why characterizing or defining a term is necessarily equated with discovering its supposed eternal essence. The question then is how one speaks about feminism, how one goes about the task of definition. The issue is one of form or methodology as much as content. 3. If Definition is Unavoidable, No More Problematic Than its Renunciation, and not Inevitably Reductive or Essentialist, How Might it be Undertaken? A. How to Attempt Definition or Characterization of the Field of Feminism What are the methodological procedures and problems that face us? While analyzing all relevant methodological issues in any depth is beyond the scope of this paper, I will touch on a few points. We can view the task of definition as a relatively modest enterprise; as a “clarifying device.”29 In this context, a “definition” of the term feminism cannot mean a dictionary-style definition. Since any brief, neat account of contemporary Western feminism is likely to be controversial, the form of such a “definition” is likely to be more of an exposition or “map.” Feminism’s protean qualities suggest a cautious, openended, and wide-ranging approach to exploring its characteristics instead of an attempt to find some central core. On this basis, I propose employing a

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methodological course that involves looking at the task of definition from different perspectives and provides the sense of a field alive with possibilities instead of focusing on locating a tidy answer. In my book, What is Feminism?30 I have approached the problem of definition from several directions. First, I indicate how feminism might be viewed as distinguishable from “other” forms of thought—the implications of negative demarcation and the question of “borders.” Second, I delineate the field in a several ways—by marking out both the dimensions and content of a positive terrain. The arena of dimensions and content is variously considered by outlining different approaches to a single theme (for example, the issue of “sexual difference”), some major “internal” debates, possible “overviews” including a list of elements and an account of feminism’s “scope,” and finally a typography of content described as contested on several grounds. I adopt some methodological procedures that inevitably generate different perspectives, thereby demonstrating a position of authority on the subject of feminism while simultaneously destabilizing any assumption of definitive access to feminism’s unshakeable core. This form of engagement in debates constituting meaning follows Gallop’s strategic stance in that it involves taking up a position of authority in order to undermine the pretensions of mastery. By indicating several ways of looking at the question of definition, we can make the field available to a wide audience that includes the uninitiated while rendering explicit the restrictions and difficulties associated with these several perspectives. As a result, the complexity of feminism is made more accessible but not through the usual mechanism of the expert’s revelation of its central “truth.” Instead, the politics of meaning becomes evident. Such an approach is not as directed at correcting the “mistakes” of “authoritative critics” from a position of supposedly greater authority, so much as highlighting the politics of their particular standpoints on feminism’s identity, precisely making explicit the limits of claims to higher authority, and claims to “know” what feminism really is. This yields a workable, if pragmatic, response to the problem of “defining” feminism. A pragmatic response allows for diversity and change as well as indicating potential difficulties attached to overly rigid or clear-cut definitions, which attempt to lay down the law regarding what is, and what is not “feminist” thought. Such an exposition enables further opportunities for opening up debates about the meaning of feminism. In short, we see pedagogical, strategic, and other advantages in the use of a variety of methodologies since different procedures will yield different views of feminism, enabling recognition of the politics of meaning. The methodological issues associated with “defining” any field of thought or form of political alliance, including feminism, require more fulsome debate.

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CHRIS BEASLEY B. An Illustration

The question is not whether to engage in defining feminism but how to speak of feminism and how to go about definition. I recommended a methodological approach that highlights different ways of characterizing the field. This calls for illustration. In What is Feminism? I undertake the task of defining the field from several standpoints.31 By contrast in this paper I will only deal in a cursory fashion with three aspects of the discussion advanced in that book in order to provide a condensed illustration of my argument and enable some brief concluding reflections on the contributions of “authoritative” critics. I will focus my discussion of how to speak of feminism by considering first its negative demarcation from other fields of thought and some problems with borders. I will then discuss one procedure for clarifying “internal” dimensions—an “overview” list of elements—and finally consider a method of clarifying content consisting of a typology. i. Negative Demarcation and Borders We can start “defining” feminism by considering that which different feminists describe as providing a point of departure. Feminists indicate what they mean by the term feminism as they point out what distinguishes it from “other” (non-feminist) bodies of thought. Feminists also differ markedly over the degree of departure they envisage, some considering feminism as located upon a continuum shared with traditional thought, while others perceive a distinguishable difference between them. Second, a range of opinion exists among those who are inclined to the latter view. Some perceive feminism’s borders as providing a definitive point of separation or moment of revolt. Others interpret these borders as shifting and permeable. The last argue that feminism theorists cannot refrain from, and we ought not prevent them from, making “tactical” use of any mode of thinking, including modes dependent upon masculine bias.32 Such a position effectively means that aspects of those bodies of thought supposedly “outside” feminism are, nonetheless, incorporated into feminism. This raises some issues. If feminists include “inside” feminism aspects of that which they have demarcated as non–feminist, how then is feminism in any sense distinguishable from these other forms of thought? In response, we can say that even in the work of those feminists who do not sharply demarcate feminism from the mainstream, the term feminism remains associated with a critique of mainstream assumptions concerning the centrality of Man and the related invisibility/marginality of women. While some feminists may sometimes recommend “tactical” use of the mainstream, this engagement apparently involves a simultaneous rejection of its entirety, the totality of its value framework. In sum, all feminists appear to regard femi-

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nism as different with regard to its content, and most feminists consider it different in kind, from traditional thought. The basis for distinguishing its difference in content and kind—whatever the interpretation of the difference— appears to revolve around refusal of the masculine bias of traditional thinking. Feminism has boundaries (feminism does involve some distinguishable meanings), but the interchanges between feminist thought and “other” forms of thinking which feminists criticize indicate that a strict, clear–cut dividing line separating them is unlikely. Perhaps the image of the Berlin Wall is helpful to illustrate this apparent inconsistency. The Wall no longer provides a physical barrier—people continuously breach it—yet this does not mean that East and West Germany are indistinguishable. Similarly, feminism has boundaries that may be permeable, but this scarcely implies that feminism is no different from any other form of thinking. The issue becomes not “where” feminism’s boundaries might be, but “how” we might understand them. Clarifying boundaries (how feminism departs from “other” bodies of thought) and their potential permeability (the ambiguities of that departure), are both part of the first steps in “defining” feminism. This point is relevant to the task of definition in relation to other fields of thought and forms of political alliance as well. ii. Internal Terrain—Dimensions: An “Overview” List of Elements A wide variety of feminist views regarding the relationship between feminism and traditional social and political thought exists. They range from a perspective that considers feminism and mainstream theory to be compatible and quite similar, to an approach that sees feminism as breaking down the categories found in traditional theory. If, as the second view suggests, feminism is in some way distinct, what is distinct about it? Feminism appears to challenge conceptions of women and sexual difference in traditional thought. The critique offered by feminism—the viewpoint that something inadequate and unjust characterizes traditional theory—is more straightforwardly encapsulated than what feminism offers as the alternative. What feminism offers, beyond its initial criticism of existing thought, is exceptionally diverse. The question remains, “What is feminism?” Even if everyone does not always regard feminism as separable from “other” modes of thought, how can we define it from “the inside?” We can describe feminism’s “internal” characteristics using several methods. For the purposes of this chapter I will reiterate one found in What is Feminism?—an “overview” list of elements clarifying feminism’s dimensions.33 The number of uncontroversial elements that we might identify as distinguishing feminist thought is quite small. Even these are neither fixed nor likely to generate a single interpretation. The field of feminism attends to or includes

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eight elements. The first describes borders, the boundaries of the “internal” terrain, and those that follow refer to the terrain itself. These elements are: (1) A critique of misogyny/sexual hierarchy that challenges assumptions of male supremacy and centrality (2) A focus on considering women as the subject of the analysis, which may include reference to differences between or within women, may even question the status of the grouping, and in any case is not necessarily exclusive (3) An expanded account of, and altered orientation towards, what may be discussed within analysis of social and political life, compared with traditional thought—for example, both domestic and “public” life is discussed (4) Diverse perspectives, represented by several typical debates— especially around whether feminism has or should have an abiding core, the degree of social change envisaged, and the extent to which feminism “belongs” to women to the exclusion of men (5) Some recourse to a “normative” imperative in relation to challenging sexual hierarchy (and frequently other intersecting social hierarchies) revolving around resistance to power and the privileging of men— recourse to the view that the status quo is unsatisfactory and ought to be changed—which may be implicit but more often is explicitly evident (6) Some minimal, collectivist, as opposed to individual, orientation (7) An inclination to view feminism as especially relevant to or resonate with women, though men may also be seen as benefiting from and (by some) as party to its concerns (8) A selection of identifiable approaches or “types” of feminism. (I identify seven main types in What is Feminism?34) One of the problems with the list method of characterizing feminism is that it does not appear to summon up the ever-growing volatile fluidity associated with the term. This plentiful exuberance, so distant from the seeming frugality of a mere listing of dimensions, is not easily susceptible to any form of description. Employment of such a listing might suggest an overstated commonality amongst feminists and an overly neat set of “core” elements for feminism. On the other hand, although a listing of elements does involve difficulties such as the potential for prescription in advance, different “cooks” stir and shake these ingredients, generating an intoxicating brew of interpretations.

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iii. Internal Terrain—Content: A Typology While the “overview” method of a listing of elements can suggest the lively complexity of the field of feminism and hint at its content, by far the most common method for characterizing feminism involves focusing on content alone, and on one particular representation of that content. In almost all extended analyses of the subject, authors define feminism by default by listing its constituent viewpoints, or by providing a catalogue of “types” of feminist thinking. This may not appear to be an especially analytical or insightful way of characterizing feminism, but it does offer a pragmatically inclusive account that allows all types of feminism developed thus far. The seemingly open-ended nature of a typological method does involve some debatable assumptions, such as presuming that we can understand feminist thought merely as the sum of a menu of existent constituent viewpoints. It does not answer the question whether any commonalities exist among viewpoints that explain their common designation as feminist. Alternatively, a typology of feminist thought may be said to impose an overly neat order on the current picture of feminist thought that obscures what feminism shares within it.35 Alternatively, a typology of feminist thought imposes a too-neat order on the current content of feminism, ignoring the difficulty that some viewpoints or aspects of them are not easily distinguished, and underestimating the current existence and continuing possibility of “cross-over” between viewpoints.36 The typological method yields a static picture, and does not assist in clarifying the development of viewpoints and debates, or how they might intersect, blur, or change over time. This limitation is worrisome in relation to a field of thought precisely marked by intricacy and innovation. Finally, practical issues exist that are associated with developing a typology related to different understandings of feminism. For example, how many types of feminism are there? What are the main ones? This is a matter of debate. Writers of overview texts such as Jean Bethke Elshtain, Alison M. Jaggar, Josephine Donovan and Rosemarie Tong describe between four to eight main feminist approaches,37 while I refer to seven: liberal, Marxist/socialist, radical feminisms, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic feminists (Lacanian psychoanalytic feminists include so-called French feminists), postmodern or poststructuralist feminists, and feminists concerned with race and/or ethnicity. Different assessments of even something as seemingly banal as the number of main types of feminism means that what one writer might include as a main type another may leave out.38 In addition, when writers agree about a main type, they may differ over what it includes.39 Such a range of opinion is also evident when writers describe where the major divides between types of feminism occur. For instance, Karen Offen and Elizabeth A. Grosz both recognize two major groups or strands within the field of feminism. Offen

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distinguishes between “relational” and “individualist” feminisms, while Grosz refers to “equality” and “difference” feminisms.40 The main types of feminist thinking may be located under four broad headings: modernist, “borderline,” postmodernist, and cross spectrum. Table 1 illustrates a typology including the main types and major groups or divisions within feminism as outlined above. We can also distinguish “minor” types of feminism, such as the “anarchist feminists” who, influenced by anarchism, are different from radical feminists. The intention of the diagram is not to present an exhaustive account of the “content” of feminism, let alone a sufficient characterization of the whole field of feminism. Like the two previous methods (the account of how feminism might be distinguished from “other” forms of thought and the list of elements) the typological diagram is not intended to stand alone. Apart from the limits associated with typologies, we see significant problems attached to providing an all-encompassing map of feminism. It may be simpler and more helpful to forgo the desire to see the whole picture. Advantages exist in laying out several different ways of characterizing feminism one after another. Nonetheless, the typological method is one significant technique for clarifying the field of feminism. Being the most common technique employed in characterizations of feminism, the method allows easy comparisons between most existing overviews. While the labeling in a typology downplays shared features within feminism or assumes discrete fixed types of feminism, such problems are not critical to those who are new to the field. Only those with specialized knowledge can discuss feminism without reference to such labels. The typological method can be a useful tool in exploring different political agendas attached to different representations of feminism if we make explicit its assumptions and limitations. 4. Having Provided an Illustration of How Feminism Might be Defined, and How Its Meaning Might be Understood, What Does It Contribute to a Dialogue with “Knowing” Critics? In the light of this condensed illustration of different ways of considering the meaning of feminism, I will now briefly return to the “authoritative” attacks on and/or criticisms of feminism by “knowing” critics. The approach I have adopted encourages recognition of the politics of all assertions regarding the meaning of the term and raises questions about any claims to know what feminism really is or ought to be. The “knowing” critics offer views of the meaning of feminism, which involve definitions of feminism. Responding to such definitions by claiming a greater authority, by making even stronger claims to expert credentials, or to know feminism’s “true” identity is not especially useful. Raising the expertise stakes hardly advances the dialogue with such critics. It capitulates by accepting a narrowed ground

MAJOR DIVISIONS STATUS SCHOOLS/ GROUPS TYPES MAIN WITH (SUBGROUPS)

MODERNIST MAINSTREAM

BORDERLINE MARGINAL

POST MODERNIST EMERGING POSTMODERN

LIBERAL

SOCIALISTS

Liberal Feminists

Socialist Feminists

(including individualist libertarian feminists)

(including Freudian socialist & eco feminists)

Race/ethnicity feminists

MARXIST Marxist Feminists

ANARCHIST Radical Feminists (including eco feminists)

Race/ethnicity feminists

PSYCHOANALYTIC Freudian Feminists

Lacanian Feminists

PostLacanian Feminists (including corporeal feminists) Post Colonial Feminists (race/ ethnicity)

Postmodern feminists (including “queer theory” feminists)

Post Colonial Feminists (race/ ethnicity)

A Typology of Feminism: Note that “Minor” types of feminism may also be distinguished, such as the “anarchist feminists” who— though influenced by anarchism—are different from radical feminists.

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for debates around meaning. A more helpful approach, in epistemological, pedagogical, and strategic terms, is to employ different perspectives gleaned from several methodological procedures in order to highlight the politics of the “knowing” critics’ standpoints on feminism. For example, antagonistic outsiders may assert agreement with feminism’s departure from misogynist thinking, but if we consider how feminism might be negatively demarcated from “other” modes of thought, then these outsider critics appear to part company with feminists over the rejection of misogyny. In short, outsider critics accept that misogyny be challenged in theory but appear discomforted by decentering men. The methodological procedure of the overview list of elements further clarifies this point. Outsider critics see decentering men as equivalent to antagonizing men. They are resistant to a focus on women as the subject of the analysis (1), and uncomfortable with any blurring of the public-private divide (preferring to maintain a distinction in which traditional gender roles are upheld) (2). Despite a hypothetical critique of the existing sexual hierarchy, they are apparently resistant to any normative imperative to change this hierarchy given their discomfort with destabilizing men’s positioning (or with altering present gender positions) (5). By way of example, Steve Biddulph opposes domestic violence by men against women and children, yet suggests that this can countered by strengthening masculinity.41 The outsider critics’ attack on feminism as largely homogenous, anti-male, and by extension anti-family, ignores or does not recognize debates within feminism, including those about the position of men within feminism (6 and 7). It ignores or does not recognize a range of types of feminism (8 and Table 1.). We can scrutinize the political stance of insider criticisms by using the methodological procedures I have suggested. Such criticisms challenge contemporary feminism on the basis that contemporary feminism is not homogeneous (it has gone downhill since its glory years or is now inflexible and oldfashioned). They are generally understood in terms of generational differences concerning the advantages or otherwise of continuity within feminism. If we look at the list of elements and the typology there might be another way of considering them. We can conceptualize these insider debates as new forms of unexceptional political dispute within feminism about the claim to speak for feminism, or as new attempts to claim authority over the term and capture its “truth.” Insider criticisms may be described as part of a process in which established traditions (liberal, socialist/Marxist, radical) attempt to muzzle emerging perspectives (postmodernist, Lacanian psychoanalytic), or in which a resurgence of mainstream traditions (liberal, individualist libertarian) remain stalwart against social reformist/revolutionary agendas (social liberals, socialist/Marxist, radicals, postmodernist).

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Perhaps both of these forms of dispute are occurring at once. Whatever the case, claims to speak authoritatively for feminism revolve around the issues of collectivism, feminism’s normative orientation, and the extent or kind of social change envisaged. Although disgruntled insiders acknowledge potentially heterogeneous feminist positions and types, they offer views of the meaning of feminism that give little legitimacy to their opponents. Ironically, like the outsider critics, they are uninclined to recognize the variety of feminism (see 4, 8, and Table 1.). This inclination to reject alternative views within feminism—arising from different accounts of political alliance and change, from different accounts of the relation between individual and society—is perhaps new in form, but not in kind. Such insider disputes represent new forms of unexceptional political dispute not just within feminism but within social-political theory more generally, since they appear to arise from differences regarding the classic problem of the relation between individual and society. These disputes represent different views that tend, like most views within social and political theory, to reiterate instead of question the individual-social binary by stressing one term at the expense of the other and by assuming that the terms are necessarily discrete and oppositional. For example, the “old guard” is inclined to trumpet solidarity, while the “new guard” typically associate collectivity with prescription and instead promote individuality and “choice.” Disputes around authority and legitimacy are long-standing within feminism. In presenting such disputes as political—as attempts to claim authority instead of as a matter of generational difference—I am not suggesting that they are somehow petty or merely “ideological.” My intention is to question the way in which we conceive such debates as matters of inevitable generational rebellion between mothers and daughters, and to question the way in which we naturalize the debates. Describing insider debates in naturalized terms simultaneously enables us to interpret them as indicating inbuilt and irrevocable problems within feminism, thereby providing further evidence for defeatism, for a counsel of despair regarding the future of feminism. This defeatism may be all too palatable and convenient in the present unfavorable political climate. By contrast, one crucial point that may be drawn from my brief illustration of how to characterize feminism—which is relevant to both outsider and insider criticisms—is that the form of difference within feminism I have discussed is unexceptional, ongoing, and apparently contributes to its vitality. We cannot inevitably equate difference, as it frequently is in traditional politics, with disunity and ruin. 5. Conclusion Debates about meaning are far from esoteric exercises. They involve pedagogical, strategic-political, analytical, and methodological questions. The

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questions raised by the controversial task of characterizing or defining the fraught terrain of the field of feminism alert us to the significance of meaning. These questions are not relevant to feminism alone, but have implications for all fields of social and political theory, and all forms of political alliance.

NOTES 1. Chris Beasley, What is Feminism? An Introduction to Feminist Theory (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999). 2. Philipa Rothfield, “New Wave Feminism: Feminism and Postmodernism,” in Andrew Milner and Chris Worth, eds., Discourse and Difference: Post– Structuralism, Feminism and the Moment of History (Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Center for General and Comparative Literature, Monash University, 1990), p. 94. 3. Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1991), p. 147. 4. Alice Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 20. In addition, discussion of this reluctance to engage in definition may be found in Karen Offen, “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Perspective,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14:1 (1988), p. 121; and Denise Thompson, “Defining Feminism,” Australian Feminist Studies, 20 (Summer 1994), p. 171. 5. Thompson, “Defining Feminism,” p. 173. 6. Christine Williams, “So How Much of a Difference Has a Century Really Made to Women?” The Guardian (4 January 4 1999). 7. Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book about Men (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990). 8. Robert Manne, Editorial, Quadrant (March 1989). 9. Robert Manne, “Why Labor Must Break the Feminist Stranglehold,” Sydney Morning Herald (17 August 1998). 10. Steve Biddulph, Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Lives, (Sydney, Australia: Finch Publishing Co., 1995), p. 5; and Ben Mudge, “Sexism and Stoicism: Theorising Profeminist Strategies,” (unpub. honors thesis, Women’s Studies Department, Flinders University, 1997), p. 14. 11. Biddulph, Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Lives, pp. 3; 22; and Raising Boys (Sydney, Australia: Finch Publishing Co., 1997). 12. Michael Schwalbe, “Why Mythopoetic Men don’t Flock to NOMAS,” in Michael S. Kimmel, ed., The Politics of Manhood: Profeminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement (and the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer) (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), pp. 323–324 (for feminist analyses of mythopoetry); Bell Hooks, “Men in Feminist Struggle—The Necessary Movement,” in Kay Leigh Hagan, ed., Women Respond to the Men’s Movement: A Feminist Collection (San Francisco, Calif.: Pandora, 1992), pp. 111–117; and Lynne Segal, “Changing Men: Masculinities in Context,” Theory and Society, 22:5 (1993), pp. 625–641. 13. Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia: The Wake of Women’s Liberation (London: Routledge, 1997); Eva Cox, “Eva Cox,” in Jan Bowen, ed., Feminists Fatale: The Changing Face of Australian Feminism, (Sydney, Australia: Harper Collins, 1998); Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman (Sydney, Australia: Transworld, 1999). “Fizzing

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with PMZ, Germaine Boxes Some Ears,” Sydney Morning Herald (22 February 1999), p. 1; Gloria Steinem cited in Cilla Bulbeck, “A Fair Deal for the Fair Sex? Feminism in the Next Millenium” (Inaugural Professorial Lectures, 29 May 1998, University of Adelaide), p. 5; Ann Curthoys, “What is the Socialism in Socialist Feminism?” Australian Feminist Studies, 6 (Autumn 1988), pp. 17–23; Anne Summers, “Letter to the Next Generation,” in Damned Whores and God’s Police (Ringwood, Victoria, Australia: Penguin, 1994), pp. 505–528; Marilyn Lake, “Three Perspectives on Helen Garner’s The First Stone,” Australian Book Review, 174 (September 1995), p. 26; Kath Kenny, “Sex and Harassment: Live from the Mouths of Babes,” in Kathy Bail, ed., DIY Feminism (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996), p. 142; and Liz Kelly, Sheila Burton, and Linda Regan, “Beyond Victim or Survivor: Sexual Violence, Identity, and Feminist Theory and Practice,” in Lisa Adkins and Vicki Merchant, eds., Sexualizing the Social: Power and the Organization of Sexuality (Hampshire, U.K.: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 77–101. 14. Adapted from Suzi O’Brien, “Girl Power Goes Feral,” Sydney Morning Herald (7 August 1998). 15. Kenny, “Sex and Harassment: Live from the Mouths of Babes,” p. 142. 16. Kelly et al., “Beyond Victim or Survivor: Sexual Violence, Identity, and Feminist Theory and Practice,” p. 80. 17. Beverly Skeggs, “Women’s Studies in Britain in the 1990s: Entitlement Cultures and Institutional Constraints,” Women’s Studies International Forum, 18:4 (1995), p. 477. 18. O’Brien, “Girl Power Goes Feral”; Suzi O’Brien, “Horsetarts, Mullets and Slurries: Sexual Subject Positions Available to Young Women at Roseworthy College,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 19:1 (1998), pp. 89– 99; Catherine Lumby cited in Nadine Williams, “Feminism with a Changing Face,” Advertiser (27 April 1998), p. 19; Victoria Nicholson, “Summers of Our Discontent,” Refractory Girl, 46 (1993), pp. 17–18; and Virginia Trioli, Generation F: Sex, Power and the Young Feminist (Melbourne, Australia: Minerva,1996). 19. See, for instance Michèle Barrett and Anne Phillips, eds., Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1993), Introduction, pp. 2–7; and Elizabeth A. Gross (Grosz), “Conclusion: What is Feminist Theory?” in Carole Pateman and Elizabeth A. Gross, eds., Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 190–204. 20. See Narelle Lydeamore, “Pornography and Power” this volume, chap. 8, for further discussion and criticism of this strand. 21. Camile Paglia, Sex, Art and American Culture (London: Viking, 1993); Camile Paglia, Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Naomi Wolf, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993); Katie Roiphe, The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994); Rene Denfield, The New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order (London: Simon & Shuster, 1995); and Natasha Walter, The New Feminism (London: Little Brown), 1998. 22. Bail, DIY Feminism. 23. Williams, “Feminism with a Changing Face.” 24. Rothfield, “New Wave Feminism: Feminism and Postmodernism,” p. 94. 25. Ibid., passim; Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender, and the Self (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1992), p. 108; and Michel Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews

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and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed., Colin Gordon (Sussex, England: Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 209–222. 26. Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic Discourse,” in Linda J. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 338. 27. Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 21; and Rothfield, “New Wave Feminism: Feminism and Postmodernism,” p. 96. 28. Ibid., pp. 94, 96, 102. 29. Thompson, “Defining Feminism,” p. 172. 30. Beasley, What is Feminism? 31. Ibid. 32. Gross, “Conclusion: What is Feminist Theory?” pp. 190–204; and Rothfield, “New Wave Feminism: Feminism and Postmodernism,” pp. 96–97. 33. Beasley, What is Feminism? 34. Ibid. 35. Judith Grant, Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 4. 36. Jackie Stacey, “Untangling Feminist Theory,” in Victoria Robinson and Diane Richardson, eds., Introducing Women’s Studies: Feminist Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 49–73. 37. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Sussex, England: Harvester Press, 1983); Josephine Donovan, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism (New York: F. Ungar, 1985); Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); and Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, (St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 1998). 38. Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, pp. 195–216, (existentialist feminism); and Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, pp. 173–192, (existentialist feminism), pp. 246–277 (ecofeminism). 39. Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, p. 63, (radical feminism); and Anita Perez Ferguson, “Sex War: The Debate between Radical and Liberation Feminists,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 10:1 (Autumn 1984), p. 109. 40. Offen, “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Perspective,” pp. 134– 136; Gross, “Conclusion: What is Feminist Theory?” pp. 190–204; Elizabeth A. Grosz (Gross), “The in(ter)vention of Feminist Knowledges,” in Barbara Caine, Elizabeth A. Grosz, and Marie M. De Lepervanche, eds., Crossing Boundaries: Feminisms and the Critique of Knowledges (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), pp. 92–104. (Grosz published under the name Gross before the late 1980s. For the sake of consistency I refer to her as Grosz in the text.); and Moira Gatens, “Power, Bodies, and Difference,” in Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips, Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1992), p. 135. 41. Biddulph, Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Lives, pp. 3, 5, 86.

Part Two RETHINKING FEMINIST ALLIANCES

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Four THE PURPOSES OF POLITICS: A FEMINIST INQUIRY Janna Thompson 1. Introduction: Social Contract Theory and the Purposes of Politics A primary question for feminist political theory is what difference it would make to political thought and practice if women were full participants in the political life of their society, and if society fully incorporated their concerns and viewpoints into political thought. In particular, what difference would it make to political philosophy? Liberal political philosophers allow that the full inclusion of women into politics might bring about a change in some political practices or in the issues regarded as political. But they are inclined to doubt that it would much affect political philosophy. They think that they can regard women as citizens, bearers of political rights, or as included in a theory of justice without a significant revision of liberal concepts. Some feminists have doubted that this is possible and are, as a result, critics of liberalism. Many feminists, Carole Pateman for example, have concentrated on criticizing the critical liberal distinction between public and private.1 Other feminists have argued that liberalism leaves out the moral voice concerned with care. In this chapter I will argue that feminists should be critical of liberalism, but not because liberal theories of justice or rights are mistaken. I criticize liberal theory primarily for what it leaves out more than for what it puts in. Liberalism downplays or inadequately treats aspects of social life and human concerns central to political thought and practice—namely the relationship between the generations and concerns of individuals as participants in an “inter-generational continuum.” A reasonable explanation for the failure of liberal theory to focus on these concerns and give them their due is that traditionally men have made liberal theory by and for themselves; this is what I term “masculinist bias.” The case for claiming that masculinist bias exists in liberal theory begins with an examination of social contract theory, classical and contemporary. Although not all liberals regard contract theory with favor, and many feminists criticize it, it has a few useful attributes. One of the virtues of contract stories is that they illuminate what political philosophers of the past and present identify as the purposes of political society. They tell us what they think we should accomplish by political cooperation and for what purposes we

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ought to use political power. They tell us how these purposes are related to the motivations, self-conception, and interests of individuals who are supposed to be political actors. The question, “What is politics for?” is more basic than is the question “What is justice?” or “What are our political rights?” We do not exhaust the purposes that political organization ought to serve by presenting the catalogue of rights or principles of justice that the state is supposed to uphold. This fact about social contract theory is likely to prove useful to feminists who find discussions about rights or justice too limited. So a feminist investigation of liberal political philosophy can usefully begin by paying attention to social contract stories and the conceptual tensions that they contain, paying attention to what is pushed aside or inconsistently treated, and to the conclusions they reach. 2. Parents and Individuals Once upon a time the masters of households, motivated by the insecurities of the state of nature and their desire to obtain the benefits of cooperation, got together to establish a political society capable of maintaining justice and peace in their territory. The participants in this process of founding a political society were self-interested, rational individuals with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests. But they also recognized each other as equal possessors of natural rights. Their objective, therefore, was to establish a political order in which they could protect these rights. In particular, they agreed that protection of liberty is a basic function of government, and that they should deprive no individual of any more liberty than necessary for the sake of peace and good government. With this in mind, they proceeded to found a state with its constitution, form of government, laws, and institutions. This is a brief summary of the story of the social contract, as told by John Locke in the second of his Two Treatises on Government;2 one of many attempts of political philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries to found political authority on rational consent. Women play no part in such stories. The stories assume that the masters of households are men. But the absence of women in the social contract story is only a symptom of a deeper problem. In Locke’s version and in other classical theories, an unexplained shift of perspective occurs in the story. He first identifies those who make the contract as heads of families. They are representatives—they are supposed to be concerned not just with their interests but the interests of family members and other dependents. We can reasonably assume that they are not merely, or even primarily, self-interested. They are not unattached individual atoms. Responsibilities burden them, and it would be natural to assume that one motivation for making a social contract is these responsibilities. We can reasonably suppose that one of their concerns is to ensure that the social contract assists

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them in adequately fulfilling their family and household responsibilities. When making the social contract they should want to consider whether some of their responsibilities could be better carried out using the collective resources that a political society can provide; for example, their responsibility for the education of their children or for ensuring a safe, healthy environment for the raising of children. This is not merely a private concern. A political society is an intergenerational association, not merely an association of presently existing adults. Contractors will want not only to ensure that they can live in peace and have their rights protected but also that peace and the protection of rights be assured for their children and future generations. This requires not only good laws and institutions but also devoting attention to how society raises and educates its children. As soon as these heads of families turn their minds to the social contract though, they become self-interested individuals appearing to have nothing more to do than to pursue their personal ends. The desire to protect their rights as individuals and their desire to achieve as much scope as possible for furthering self-interests entirely consumes their political motivation. Nothing in the social contract reflects their identity as heads of families. This shift of perspective is responsible for a well-known inconsistency in classical liberalism. Women, and many men, did not have recognition as political actors because they were not heads of families. The only relevant element is that the contract is not between individuals as heads of families, but between individuals conceived as rational agents who have rights and interests of their own. How then can the exclusion of women be justified? If women are capable of rationality, argued Mary Wollstonecraft, then denying that they have rights is inconsistent, and if they have rights, then they should be citizens.3 Feminists have won that point, but the basic problem created by the shift in perspective remains. John Rawls asks us to imagine what agreement about principles of justice for their society would be made by agents who are rational and “disinterested,” as far as their relations to others are concerned, but do not know any particular facts about their situation.4 The result are principles that make equal liberty a priority but also allow to each a share of socially created resources. The agents who make the contract in Rawls’s hypothetical situation appear to be individuals, each of whom, “desires to protect his capacity to advance his conception of the good.”5 The principles they arrive at reflect this preoccupation. Later though, Rawls suggests that we can think of the parties in the original position as “heads of families.”6 Two related reasons why he uses this conception emerge. One of them is that children cannot participate in the contractmaking process and require representation by others. The other is that principles of justice necessarily include justice between the generations. In reasoning

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about the latter Rawls puts “fathers” behind the veil of ignorance. They are required “to ascertain how much they should set aside for their sons by noting what they would believe themselves entitled to claim of their fathers.”7 Susan Moller Okin and others have criticized Rawls for his use of the anachronistic idea that fathers or heads of families represent their dependents.8 But this is not the main problem. Heads of families can be relied on to have a concern for the welfare of their children and grandchildren. This concern does not play any obvious role in the derivation of the basic principles of justice. By representing children, Rawls appears to mean representing the interests they will have as adult members of society—not their existing interests as dependents. We see that the contractors give no attention to the treatment of children as dependents. For example, when Rawls uses the idea that agents are heads of families in his reasoning about the equal liberty principle, he assumes that heads of families are concerned about the ability of their children, when they become adults, to pursue their personal good. He does not ask them to think about the needs of their children as dependents.9 The makers of the contract proceed as if what is acceptable to them as “disinterested” individuals will be in their children’s interests. Justice between generations is a separate topic. This is why most readers find it reasonable to assume that the agents Rawls makes responsible for determining the basic principles are individuals who are concerned about their interests as individuals. If individuals are supposed to be concerned for the welfare of their children at one stage in their reasoning, then should they not be so all the time? Why should they not be concerned with their interests as dependents instead of merely as the adults whom they will become? If they did have these concerns from the beginning, then it might well make a difference to their reasoning about political principles. Agents who regard themselves as burdened with family responsibilities might want goods that they cannot adequately obtain by their efforts from their political society, for example, a healthy and secure environment for their dependents. They might regard such goods as having a priority higher than, or equal to, the good of individual freedom. Even if their concerns do not cause them to reason differently about principles of justice, they are likely to think that the purpose of politics should include the achievement of other ends. Rawls, to be sure, allows that political society can have other purposes than the establishment and maintenance of just relations. Justice is, “the first virtue of social institutions” though not necessarily the only one. Nonetheless, he and those who have focused on his theory are so entirely preoccupied with questions about justice that other possible virtues or purposes have disappeared from view. Suppose that we did truly think of the social contractors from the beginning as parents. This change of script would create problems of another kind for liberals. Most liberals, including Rawls, think that a political society

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should not favor the interests or idea of the good of any particular individual or group of individuals. All should receive equal treatment as far as their attachments or ideas of the good are concerned. The veil of ignorance that prevents individuals from knowing anything about themselves, including their interests and ideas of the good, is supposed to ensure that the principles on which we base political society are neutral. So if those who have the interests of parents are favored, then cannot single people and couples who have no children reasonably complain that they are not receiving equal respect for their interests? Cannot they legitimately protest that their state should not force them to make sacrifices for the sake of a good that they do not share? Rawls, himself, appears open to this objection when he favors the interests of fathers in the second part of his contract theory or when he suggests that the contractors are from the beginning heads of families. We do not merely find these difficulties in social contract theories. Liberals present themselves as advocates of the independent, self-determining individual. They judge social life and political policies according to whether they promote individual freedom or autonomy to the extent that their opponents often accuse them thinking of individuals as atoms without any essential attachment to each other or their society. On the other hand, liberals assume that individuals care for the members of their families and others, and are often acting not for their self-interests but the interests of their family and friends. We cannot properly understand the defense of property and rights of inheritance historically associated with liberalism without acknowledging the concern individuals have for their families and the future of their children. This is true in Locke’s case. He argues that the duty that parents have to their children gives children a natural entitlement to a share of their parents’ property.10 So after all the liberal individual has relations with others that are basic to his or her identity and ideas about obligation. We tend to suppress or forget this identity when matters of political philosophy are under consideration. In liberal political theory, the agent appears in two guises. He (and more recently, she) is both a representative of his family and an independent selfinterested individual. One problem with liberal theory is that the relationship between these identities is never clear. The tensions between them are never resolved. The second, and more serious, problem is that the second identity automatically takes precedence. In politics, the agent as family representative tends to disappear from view. He or she is reborn as an individual with no explanation or justification for this transformation given. Why does this change of identity occur? What would political philosophy, and political practice, be like if the agent conceived as a self-interested individual were not privileged? A common feminist idea about why the individual replaces the head of family as a subject for politics is that the public/private distinction basic to liberal theory requires it. The relations between the head of household and his

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dependents are a private matter—not something the state should interfere with—and so is the way he carries out his responsibilities for his dependents. But to attribute the inconsistency to the public/private distinction is not so much an explanation as another way of stating the problem. If parents have responsibilities that they cannot adequately carry out by themselves, then the question of how they can cooperate to achieve their ends counts as a public concern. Since the state is an inter-generational association, how it perpetuates institutions deserves to be a basic public issue. If the public/private distinction is the reason for ignoring the concerns of citizens as parents then this distinction is irrational, per se, from their point of view. Carole Pateman suggests that we can best understand the public/private distinction, as liberals have traditionally employed it, as a political deal. The social contract is predicated on the sexual contract. The willingness of men to subordinate themselves to requirements of the state depends on not challenging their patriarchal rights. The question remains whether this arrangement is rational for men as parents.11 One way of answering the second question of what politics and political theory would be like if the self-interested individual were not privileged, is to reconsider the purposes of politics from the perspective of the parent, or more generally, from the perspective of those responsible for dependents. We can then consider what they would regard as a good collective approach to the fulfillment of their responsibilities. Feminists who are concerned with care as a political and moral responsibility have done or started to do this—notably Joan Tronto, Virginia Held, and Selma Sevenhuijsen.12 Several results emerge from their discussions. If, from the beginning, we think about the purposes of politics from the perspective of those with responsibilities of care, then we are not likely to be uncritical supporters of existing welfare states. The welfare state is the result of the state taking over, sometimes reluctantly and inadequately, tasks that families, or some families, are not able to discharge themselves. It has done this by using or expanding institutions, laws, and centralized systems of management that were originally developed to deal with other kinds of problems. Those who think of care as a foundational responsibility of political life are likely to have alternative ideas about what institutions and forms of management are appropriate. Tronto thinks that institutions providing care ought to be more democratic—that those receiving care should be involved in the administration of social services.13 Sevenhuijsen thinks that more people should be involved in providing care and that adequate caring requires a public discussion in which people who are often marginalized can express their needs.14 Others are inclined to advocate decentralized, community-based institutions that are responsive to the needs and situations of individuals.15 If, from the beginning, we consider the purposes of politics from the perspective of those concerned with care, we are not likely to end up with a

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position identical to the philosophy of welfare liberalism. Philosophical defenders of welfare liberalism tend to think of welfare as underwriting the ability of individuals to exercise their individual rights. They point out that liberty has no meaning unless individuals have real opportunities and are in the position to make free choices—and that they are not in this position if they are impoverished, disabled, hungry, or homeless. The central value in this justification for welfare remains liberty or autonomy of individuals. 16 But in a society that regards care as fundamental, citizens would be predisposed to accept restrictions on their freedom for the sake of establishing and maintaining such things as secure, healthy environments for children and other dependents. But what we advocate in the name of care is going to depend on what exactly care is and how it relates to the way in which people perceive themselves and their relation to others. In discussing the political dimensions of care, Tronto and Sevenhuijsen want to broaden the concept and shift it away from what we usually consider it to be—a concern for the well-being of children and other dependents. Tronto defines it as a “species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible.”17 I want to do something similar, not by re-defining care, but through a reconsideration of the purposes of politics. So let us return to the social contract and consider another shift of perspective that occurs in the classical story. 3. Liberals as Traditionalists The main objective of the individuals who make the social contract is to guarantee as much freedom for themselves as is compatible with peace and order. This suggests that they will want political arrangements that allow them to change their goals and relationships and keep their options open— arrangements that are loose and flexible. They will probably not want institutions or regulations that are fixed or permanent. A modus vivendi capable of periodic review appears most compatible with their interests. Given that persons do not stay the same, and that new individuals are continually entering the political scene, a social contract with a limited life span might be the best idea. Some social contract theorists have suggested this. Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet insisted that, “No constitutional law should remain in force for longer than the life span of a generation,” and Thomas Jefferson later agreed with this idea.18 In most versions of the story, this is not what the contractors decide to do. Usually they assume that constitutional rights and bodies of law are perpetual. They create institutions meant to be permanent features of their society. These arrangements are not only made once and for all as far as the contractors are concerned, but are also supposed to be inherited by their children—a situation that leads to the familiar problem of justifying the political

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obligations of those who have not consented to the laws and institutions of their society. The contractors have, in this way, brought about a political state of affairs less free than it would need to be and that they should want it to be, given what kind of individuals they are. By supposing that they do this, liberal political philosophers have created a problem for themselves. Conservatives or traditionalists often criticize liberals, especially social contract theorists, for turning their back on the past, and whatever wisdom it contains, and trying to start afresh. In reality, social contract theorists are traditionalists too—only in a forward-looking way. The social contract marks the beginning of a tradition for themselves and their successors, a tradition to which they expect themselves and their successors to adhere. But if politics is supposed to rest upon the consent of free individuals instead of tradition, then how can traditionalism—even of the forward-looking kind—be justified? Why do we find this inconsistency within social contract theory? One explanation has to do with the concern that heads of families are assumed to have toward their descendants. Consider again Rawls’s approach to justice between the generations. The heads of families he has in mind are not supposed to be concerned exclusively with the fate of their children (the veil of ignorance is supposed to prevent this). They are supposed to take the standpoint of people who belong to a system of social cooperation, value the relationships it makes possible, and want their children to enjoy them too. The inheritance they want to pass on to their children is a social one. Rawls’s primary concern is to determine what each generation ought to save for the sake of generations of the future. But the transfer of resources that the heads of families endorse requires an institutional framework. We can assume that they want their just relations transferred along with the resources. They would not be happy about saving for their predecessors if they thought that one social group might appropriate the wealth they passed on. To pass on just relations and transfer resources from generation to generation requires that heads of families favor the establishment of persisting institutions and laws. The standpoint of a head of family is going to be that of a maintainer of tradition—whether one that comes from the past or one newly established. Two shifts of perspective occur in the social contract story. The first is the shift from the standpoint of a head of family who represents his dependents to the standpoint of the independent individual. The second is the shift from the standpoint of the independent individual to the standpoint of the head of family. This second shift of perspective is not a shift back to the original standpoint. The heads of families, who consider what they owe to their successors or what their successors require, are adopting a social instead of private orientation. They want to ensure for their successors in their political society specific social and political relationships.

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These standpoints or perspectives correspond to ideas about the purposes of politics. The independent individual who wants political society to protect his rights, especially his freedom to pursue his personal ends, occupies center stage. The political purposes of the person concerned about his or her dependents has never been fully articulated or represented in liberal political theory. Presumably those who do think about politics from this perspective (as some feminists have) will want the state to provide, or facilitate, collective solutions to problems of care—those problems that families or other private social groups cannot solve for themselves. Those who take the third perspective want to perpetuate specific social and political relationships and to maintain inter-generational relations of cooperation. Theorists have always acknowledged this as one of the purposes of politics, though liberal theory has never paid it a great deal of attention. It has always been a side issue, an addendum (as in Rawls’s theory of justice). Though all these perspectives have a presence in liberal theory, they are not given equal treatment. Nor are they brought together in a coherent way. 4. Intergenerational Relationships Let us examine more closely the third perspective that appears in the social contract story: the standpoint of the head of family who wants to pass on a social-political inheritance. Rawls requires his contractors to adopt this perspective in order to reason about just relations between generations because “disinterested” individuals are not likely to regard themselves as having duties of justice to future people. The problem is not one of ignorance—a lack of awareness of how our actions can hurt or benefit people of the future. Disinterested individuals will acknowledge that they have benefited from the actions of their predecessors and that what they do can help or harm their successors—that they see a political society as a system of cooperative relationships spanning the generations. But such individuals have an interest in cooperating with others only as far as they can get something out of it. No point in making sacrifices for others exists if these others are not capable of reciprocating. Neither the dead nor the unborn are capable of reciprocity, so disinterested individuals have no reason for thinking that they have duties to future (or past) generations. A solution to this problem for political philosophers who think that people in a political society ought to be concerned about the welfare of their successors—and the one Rawls adopts—is to assume a perspective from which attachments between individuals of different generations are essential to individual identity. A head of family by nature is someone who is concerned about the well-being of his successors. We can regard this traditional masculine perspective as a patriarchal form of caring—a traditionally masculine perspective. To describe the perspective I am criticizing as “masculine” or to suggest that “feminine” alterna-

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tives exist is fraught with well-known difficulties. We can more properly describe the views embedded in liberal political philosophy as the views of a particular class of men belonging to European culture. The alternatives are not necessarily those that women or only women would advance. I describe the views I criticize as masculine only because they correspond to views about masculine ways of thinking common in our culture. This is perhaps why Rawls resurrected the classical supposition that fathers are making the contract. The word “parent” would not have had the right connotation. Heads of families, as imagined by Rawls, are concerned about their children, but not the care of children as dependents—not nursing, nurturing, or the other tasks that are traditionally assigned to mothers of families. What they focus on are the interests their children will have as adults, as members of a political society, as their fathers’ heirs. The goods they are concerned to pass on are not private or familial, but political and social. What appears in the social contract story is not merely a bifurcation between the interests of the head of family and the interests of the individuals, but two ideas about care. Let us look more closely at this “masculine” idea of care. First, the masculine idea of care is about the passing on of things from one generation to another—wealth, laws, and institutions. It abstracts from the people who do the passing on or who have things passed to them, and pays insufficient attention to what makes the passing on of institutions and laws possible. The reproduction of society not only requires the reproduction of people, but also requires the reproduction of citizens, of individuals who have the right attitudes and values. They have to learn to respect and appreciate their inheritance. This means that we cannot separate the care with which women have been traditionally associated from the concerns of the head of family. There has to be a coming together of the concerns of mothers of families and fathers of families. A division of labor that relegates women to the private aspects of care and men to its public aspects is fraught with difficulties as far as the reproduction of society is concerned. Many feminists have pointed this out. How can women be good mothers, asks Wollstonecraft, if they are not citizens? Okin wonders how individuals who respect justice can possibly be the product of an institution in which women are disadvantaged and subordinate.19 More important, the masculine idea of care says nothing about how individuals should regard themselves in respect to their predecessors and successors: how they should conceive of themselves as participants in an “intergenerational continuum.” It does not show how being part of such a continuum could be crucial to the way in which an individual thinks about herself and her responsibilities, and how particular responsibilities can arise out of this self-conception.

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For proponents of this kind of care, political society appears to consist of generational segments. In each segment individuals determine their good and pursue their life plans without reference or regard to other segments, except that society expects them to lay resources aside for the benefit of their successors. Their duty in respect to other generations is to make this transfer. But why should individuals who are so preoccupied with the affairs of their generational segment accept that they have a duty to people of the future? This is one problem. A further problem is that the masculine idea of care does not make intelligible or provide a basis for the idea that we can have duties in respect to citizens of past generations—a duty to keep their promises, to make restitution for their injustices, or to honor those who contributed to our society. To suppose that we have such duties is plausible, and it should be possible to consider what they might be. A way of understanding these problems is this. The perspective of most liberal theory is synchronic, in particular social contract theory: it is centrally concerned with relations between co-present individuals, with what these individuals would consent to, or what their form of cooperation entails as far as their political obligations are concerned. Liberal theorists assume that these individuals are preoccupied with how they are going to live their lives, and how they determine and pursue their personal good: that is, they assume they are preoccupied with their lifetime interests. The design of their political relations gives them as much freedom to pursue these ends as possible. Most liberals recognize that this perspective is inadequate. Members of a political society have to be concerned with the perpetuation of their institutions. They have to accept responsibilities for their successors. So liberals try to add what could be called a “diachronic perspective” to their theories—a perspective that requires individuals to have concerns beyond their lifetime, and to think of their society as consisting of not just co-present individuals. Since the privileged perspective of political philosophy remains that of individuals with their lifetime interests, the diachronic aspect of their theory is pushed into the background. Its relation to the main body of the theory is unclear or even inconsistent. The contents of the diachronic addendum, what I have called the masculine conception of care, are themselves problematic. Liberal theory does not explore what it means for members of a society to regard themselves as participants in a generational continuum. 5. Individuals in an Intergenerational Society The independent individual motivated by his lifetime interests is not inclined to think that he has duties to either future or past generations. Liberals try to solve this problem by supposing individuals are motivated now and then by their concern for their children or by a more disinterested moral concern for individuals who will happen to live in the future.

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What we need is not another theory about justice between generations so much as a different conception of individuals and their motivations. A more satisfactory way of thinking about our moral obligations as citizens of an inter-generational society should start with a theory of the individual. I want to explore two approaches to the development of a more adequate basis for relations of obligation between the generations in a political society. Both begin with an attempt to broaden or change our ideas about who we are, thereby changing what counts as rational and morally responsible behavior. The first is Annette Baier’s idea of individuals as “second persons.” Lorraine Code also uses the idea of a second person to criticize liberal theory in What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge.20 The activities of past generations do not merely benefit (or hurt) us, according to Baier. They make us who we are. A society that provides us with a culture, a language, a stock of concepts, and a body of knowledge nurtures us. Our personalities and ways of knowing and valuing are the result of this inheritance. “Persons are essentially successors, heirs to other persons who formed and cared for them, and their personality is revealed both in their relations to others and in their response to their recognized genesis.”21 According to Baier, as second persons: [W]e acquire a sense of our place in a series of persons, to some of whom we have special responsibilities. We acquire a sense of ourselves as occupying a place in an historical and social order of persons, each of whom has a personal history interwoven with the history of a community.22 For Baier this self-understanding is not a simple addendum to the selfcentered on personal interests and experiences. She insists that it ought to be our primary self-conception. We are persons among others, formed and sustained by our relations with others. These relations are relations in time and space. The activities of our predecessors formed us as we will form individuals of the future. If we see ourselves as second persons, she suggests, we see ourselves as depending on others—not merely on our contemporaries. We think of ourselves as part of a community that extends in time and space, and as she also suggests, this conception is likely to encourage the idea that we have responsibilities that transcend our location in time. Baier’s attempt to make us regard ourselves as second persons has several advantages. The first is that second persons, whether parents or not, will be predisposed to think that they have responsibilities to future members of their society. This responsibility will not only belong to heads, or parents, of families. Second, second persons will conceive of their responsibility as consisting not merely in passing on political institutions and laws but in ensuring that children are properly raised and educated—that they receive the inheri-

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tance that they need as second persons. They will naturally conceive of this as a collective responsibility. Third, second persons will appreciate their relation to the past. They will understand their culture and political society as an inheritance and will relate their interests and values to this inheritance. They will be disposed to regard the benefits they receive with gratitude and perhaps be disposed to take responsibility for the harms done by their community in the past. Political relations and practices will reflect these ideas about responsibility they are prepared to endorse. The second attempt to reconceive the individuals who are the subjects of politics is to show that a “diachronic perspective” is, or should be, fundamental to how individuals view themselves and their lives—as fundamental as the identity favored by liberals—the individual as an autonomous self. The autonomous self takes a synchronic perspective. Autonomous individuals look forward to lives that they can shape and direct. They focus on short or long-term life interests and are concerned about how co-present individuals hinder or contribute to these goals. What they should want from their political society, according to the liberal view, are protection of rights, equal opportunity, and a fair share of social resources. Individuals are not always or forever able to shape or direct their lives. They become ill, old, disabled, and eventually they die. What happens to them, their projects, possessions, and reputations depends upon the actions of others. Individuals who reflect on the fact that they are vulnerable to contingencies and subject to time and fate will be inclined to take a perspective that goes beyond their individual lives. They will be predisposed to think diachronically. When they do so, they are likely to have “posterity-directed desires”—desires about how they should be treated in old age, about their posthumous reputations, the continuation of projects they think have significant value, the survival of things they value, about the moral obligations they leave unfulfilled, or the wellbeing of their children and other people they love. They will be predisposed to think that some of these desires are so important that their successors ought to fulfill them. But if they think that their successors have moral obligations to fulfill some of their posterity-directed desires, then they will have to accept a corresponding obligation to fulfill relevantly similar posterity-directed desires of their predecessors.23 Individuals who see themselves as vulnerable to fate will be inclined to regard themselves as part of an inter-generational community of obligation in which members of each generation not only have obligations in respect to their successors but also in respect to their predecessors. Those who take this perspective will see themselves as participants in an inter-generational continuum of obligation and respect. They will want their political society to underwrite conventions that enable people to communicate with their successors and pass on responsibilities from generation to generation. They will under-

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stand and value their society as an inter-generational continuum and will be inclined to regard themselves as responsible for the inheritance that they receive from its past and passing on what they value to citizens of the future. For example, citizens who take a diachronic perspective will be predisposed to think that they have inherited obligations to keep the promises of their political predecessors and undo injustices they have committed. I will not try to make a judgment about which of these two ways of reconceiving the individual as the subject of politics is likely to be more fruitful. Perhaps thinking of them as complementary instead of as rival conceptions is best. Neither is incompatible with the more familiar actor of liberal political philosophy—the autonomous individual. An individual who regards himself or herself as a second person and locates himself or herself in the framework of an inter-generational community is still free to determine his or her values and live his or her life according to the values that she has chosen. That person also recognizes that being a valuing subject depends upon others and is aware of how personal values relate to heritage as a social individual. An individual whose inter-generational obligations arise from recognition that life is vulnerable to fate is also an individual who can have individual, personal interests and goals. Having interests and goals that transcend individual life or ability to fulfill them is what predisposes the individual to have posterity-directed desires. The idea of the individual at the heart of liberal theory is inadequate, and I have tried to show how this inadequacy reveals itself in the inconsistencies and limitations of liberal political philosophy. Like many other feminists, I suspect that the inadequacies are traceable to a masculinist paradigm—a disinclination of male subjects, the makers of political theory and politics, to see themselves as dependent or vulnerable. The solution is not to jettison liberal ideals and put something else in their place, but to reconsider and redefine these ideals from the perspective of individuals who acknowledge their dependence on each other and their responsibilities as participants in intergenerational communities. A more adequate theory would not only present a consistent and complete account of the purposes that a political society should serve. It would also enable us to integrate concerns of care with advocacy of individual freedom, the pursuit by individuals of their goals with an acceptance of intergenerational obligations.

Notes 1. Carole Pateman, “Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy,” in Anne Phillips, ed., Feminism and Equality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 2. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (1690). 3. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (New York: Norton, 1967).

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4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 12ff. 5. Ibid., p. 12. 6. Ibid., p. 128. 7. Ibid., p. 289 8. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 92. 9. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 208. 10. Locke, Two Treatises on Government, I.88. 11. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). 12. Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethics of Care (London: Routledge, 1993); Virginia Held, Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 1993); and Selma Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality and Politics (London: Routledge 1998). 13. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, p. 176. 14. Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care, pp. 135–139. 15. For a description of ideas about the meaning of women’s citizenship see Wendy Sarvasy, “Social Citizenship From a Feminist Perspective,” Hypatia, 12:4 (1997), pp. 54–73. 16. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, pp. 162–163. 17. Ibid., p. 103. 18. Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet, “Sur la Necessite de Faire Ratifier la Constitution par les Citoyens” (1789), in A. Condorcet, Arthur O’Connor, and M. F. Arago, eds., Oeuvres de Condorcet, vol. 9, (Paris: 1847–1849), pp. 415–416. Reprinted in The Political Theory of Condorcet, ed. and trans. Fiona Somerlad and Iain Mclean, (Working Paper) (Oxford: Social Studies Faculty Center, January 1989), p. 319. 19. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, pp. 197ff. 20. Annette Baier, “Cartesian Persons,” in Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1985); and Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). 21. Ibid., p. 85. 22. Ibid., p. 90. 23. I say more about this view in Janna Thompson, “Inherited Obligations and the Value of Community,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 29:4 (December 1999), pp. 493–515.

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Five FOUCAULT, FEMINISM, AND HISTORY Lisa Featherstone Michel Foucualt’s contribution to postmodern history has been widely discussed, critiqued and admired. Several major theoretical works have addressed the idea that theorists can appropriate Foucauldian theory for feminist means. I wish to merge these two areas of analysis and consider the use (and abuse) of Foucault for feminist history. In order to do so I offer a two-fold examination: first, of the significance of Foucauldian modes of analysis for feminist theorists; and second, a consideration of Foucault’s relevance for feminist historians. The aim is to examine the potential for a feminist alliance with Foucault and to explore its political ramifications. This task contains a fundamental paradox within it. While we may analyze, question, and dispute the use of Foucauldian theory for feminist history, Foucault rejects the use of an overriding theory, a meta-narrative. Foucault questions the master narratives about Western society, including Marxism and liberal humanism, claiming that an outdated juridico-discursive model of power forms the foundation for them. In his “Two Lectures,” Foucault questioned the emancipatory potential of liberalism and Marxism, as both are totalitarian theories devoid of an understanding of difference.1 In the same way, Foucault would have rejected any notion of an all-encompassing convergence of feminism and his work, though the localized, specific, historical use of his work would be in keeping with both the postmodern and the feministpostmodern project. Foucault not only questioned the meta-narratives of philosophical writing, but also challenged traditional history and historiography. He rejected the idea of a total history, of a single theory that explained the past in terms of a simple, linear progression. His work is a direct response to modernist history in that he wants to rescue history from the confines of “scientific” metanarratives such as Marxism and psychoanalysis. The modern reverence for the “scientific” is perceived as severely disabling, as it has more to do with a search for knowledge, and so power, than with any form of resistance or search for emancipation.2 Foucault described his earlier work as an “archaeology,” wherein he rewrote historical moments, in terms of their discursive elements. In his later work, from The History of Sexuality onwards, he uses genealogy as his form of analysis.3 Foucault defines genealogy as “the union of erudite knowledge and local memories which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of

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struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically today.”4 Genealogy is a painstaking accumulation of sources, a scholarly search over “a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and recopied many times,”5 an attempt, through examination of the local and specific, to emancipate history from meta-narratives. Genealogy attempts, not to offer a deep-seated analysis of origins, or even of “what really happened,” but to carefully and painstakingly document the movements involved within the chosen situation. Genealogy also describes how established theories operate and gives an analysis of their relations to power and to knowledge. What Foucault offers is not so much a history, but a theory, or an anti-theory. Ironically, Foucault described the writing of history itself as a desire for knowledge and a route to domination.6 His concerns, as he summarizes them, are with “the rules of right, the mechanisms of power, the effects of truth or if you like, the rules of power and the powers of true discourses.”7 He wishes to examine philosophical abstracts such as “truth,” “power,” and “reason,” but in the light of particular historical conditions. Each work (with the exception of The Archaeology of Knowledge8) uses a specific historical locale to examine a mode of discourse, a technique of power, infused in contemporary social practices. What Foucault does uncover is a “certain fragility . . . in the very bedrock of existence.”9 He offers us no certainty, no natural universal foundation that lies beyond the social order. His work is “freedom-giving” in the sense that it allows us to re-evaluate established ways of thinking, including his own. There may be a clue here to the problems of forging alliances with feminism, for his work allows an examination of the Other, those generally marginalized in mainstream history—the madman, the homosexual, the prisoner (what about the woman?) —while at the same time freeing us from modernist conceptions of the self, “truth,” and history. Just as his aims are in direct opposition to the search for the “truth” of the modernists, so too is his style radically different from theirs. His rejection of scientific narratives has led him to reconsider traditional methods. Foucault does not offer a chronological assessment. He is anti-empiricist, and offers a history not of dates, but of “ruptures,” of “minute deviations” of key changes to the social order, monitored through a study of discourse.10 For example, The History of Sexuality is not a history of sexuality itself but a study of the discourses on sexuality, and their relationship to pleasure, knowledge and power.11 The History of Sexuality lacks closure and does not have a linear construction. His tone is often ironical and subversive with a postmodern blurring of genre boundaries; a juxtapositioning of the historical, the cultural, the literary, and the philosophical is evident.12 The specific historicity of his work does not disallow the application of his theories to other times and places. He would never claim to wish for an all-inclusive historical theory, and he would be little interested in the applica-

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tion of his theories to feminism. Feminism is too close to an over-arching theory for the postmodern man. As Meaghan Morris suggests, Foucault is not much of a “ladies’ man.” He is little interested in the workings of gender, and any appropriation of Foucault’s work must take this into account.13 Having said this, why would feminists desire a tete a tete with Foucault? Feminists should be critical of Foucault, but some of his methodological insights may be useful to feminists. It might be possible to make careful use of his methodologies, especially genealogy. David Shumway says Foucault provides us not with theories or even with methods, or truths or solutions. What he offers is “a box of tools,” a kit for a variety of subversive purposes.14 His idea is that Foucault provides tools that might be used in a practical way to investigate power, knowledge and discourse in general. This “toolkit” metaphor permits the feminist writer to appropriate Foucault’s ideas as an instrument. “Toolkit” might suggest gender issues of its own as the term has masculine connotations, but we can appropriate tools from men and use them for feminist projects. The use of Foucauldian “tools” would allow the feminist writer to investigate social power without permitting Foucault’s preferred use of them to override the agenda and without allowing Foucault to speak for everyone. This appears to be what Foucault himself has in mind when he writes: All my books Histoire de la Folie, or Surveiller et Punir are, if you like, little toolboxes. If people want to open them, use a sentence, an idea, an analysis as a screwdriver or a spanner in order to shortcircuit, disqualify and break systems of power, including if need be those that have given rise to my own books, well, so much the better.”15 Nevertheless, the relationship between Foucault and feminism is problematic at a fundamental level since Foucault does not identify gender as a site of power. As feminist philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky notes, “Foucault treats the body throughout as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women did not differ.”16 This appears overwhelmingly problematic for feminism, for feminist scholars, whatever their individual persuasion, believe that the sexed body is a basic site of power relations. Theorists have long conceptualized power from a masculine standpoint that protects male privilege and ignores the continued subordination of women. The Foucauldian analysis of power is no exception since his “modern” power operates on apparently unsexed (or defeminized) bodies. The relationship (or lack thereof) between gender and power is a fundamental point of conflict between feminism and Foucualt as well as other postmodern theorists. A subtlety exists in Foucault’s examination of power and discipline. On one level, much of his work locates power in the shaping of the body. He considers power as produced through the “disciplined” body of the soldier, the

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prisoner, the patient, the schoolchild. He does focus on the way power operates on sexed bodies (witness his work on the homosexual and the hermaphrodite). In his later work, he acknowledges the effects of power in male/female relations, most directly in “The Subject and Power” where he mentions “the opposition to the power of men over women.”17 He is aware of gender difference but does not consider the connection between power and gender or the ways in which the female sexed body is constrained by power. This indifference or refusal to engage in a detailed way in the politics of power between the sexes makes an alliance with Foucault problematic. In addition, Foucault’s postmodern deconstruction of representation makes any alliance between him and feminism problematic. Cynically, one could suggest that just as subordinated groups define themselves in terms of universal “truths,” these ideologies are deconstructed and withdrawn. Once the object becomes subject, the rules of subjectivity are changed.18 Because men no longer speak for “mankind,” women should no longer speak as representatives of a unified group. Poststructuralist theories in this instance veer surprisingly close to that of liberalism. As Linda Alcoff suggests, for the poststructuralist, class, race and gender are all constructs, and underneath these imposed constraints, we are “all the same.” This view is remarkably similar to the liberal view that class, gender, and race are ultimately irrelevant, for again, “we are all the same.” 19 While criticism of feminist movements of the past as exclusively white and middleclass is justified, and while feminism must come to celebrate diversity and even an element of disunity, to negate the category of “woman” altogether could make women’s subordination invisible. As Biddy Martin suggests, Foucault’s challenges could easily render the question of “women’s oppression obsolete.” She also points out though that feminism’s multiplicity, its fragmentation, may well be a more effective response in a society where power is not monolithic or centralized.20 While Foucault does not deny the concept of “woman” as explicitly as do other poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, his refusal to engage in the politics of gender is a major omission. The absence of the category of “woman” offers feminists fewer avenues of resistance (“How can we speak out against sexism as detrimental to the interests of women if the category is a fiction?”21). Feminists who appropriate Foucauldian theory need to be wary that feminism does not become merely an endless round of deconstructions, offering no suggestions for transformation, but merely a fragmentary commentary on woman as a de-gendered non-subject. Similarly, Foucauldian theory (as with other structuralist and poststructuralist theory) is problematic in that it offers little agency to individual players. It views society in terms of discursives or signifiers, instead of individual agents. Individuals act as part of a system of power and knowledge, but are

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unable to act with any genuine autonomy: we are bodies “totally imprinted by history,”22 and “vehicles” constituted through power.23 Ultimately, this means Foucault provides little hope for transformation or any significant type of social change. When one interviewer asked Foucault what might replace the present system, Foucault replied that to ponder a new system was to remain complicit in the present system, and added that destruction, such as that caused by Joseph Stalin, must follow.24 Foucault emphasized resistance to power over transformation or change. This is fundamentally troublesome for feminists since feminism is an emancipatory politic, based in both political activism and theoretical criticism. Foucault took an almost nihilistic attitude towards notions of emancipation while he claimed his position led, not to “apathy, but to a hyper and pessimistic activism.”25 Though he was personally involved in penal reform, pessimism appears to be the dominant response to his work. His idea that power is everywhere, therefore nowhere, leads one to wonder if any hope for resistance exists. As Nancy Hartsock says, “Foucault suggests that if our resistance succeeded, we would simply be changing one discursive identity for another and in the process creates new oppressions.”26 Having examined the deficiencies of Foucault for feminist writing, we need to address the question, what is to be gained by an alliance? I have suggested that a critical reading of Foucault, and a careful application of his analytic tools, may extend and enhance our understanding of gender and power. For this to be possible, we must not permit the postmodern project to overcome the feminist agenda. We can do this if the limits of the postmodern are clearly defined. Foucault has challenged dominant thought patterns questioning the basic philosophical tenets of the Enlightenment in ways that are useful for feminism. He claims Western humanism has a privileged masculine elite, while negating the experience of all others.27 The construction of a legitimate, “true” self is seen as merely a construct of humanist ideology.28 The humanist ideologies of the West are not freedom giving, but maintain the status quo by offering false universals of “truth,” “freedom,” and “justice.” This pattern, then normalized, appears “natural.” A convergence with feminism is evident. Feminists have critiqued humanism as inherently masculine and have shown that the emancipatory narratives of the Enlightenment offer freedom only to those already dominant in culture, while the aspirations and desires of the oppressors are universalized. Feminist theorists have also questioned the manner in which traditional philosophy has presented the white middle-class masculine voice as genderneutral and universal. The authority of this male voice was established and maintained through philosophical concepts such as “truth” and “reason.” We could claim that Foucault is a part of the problem. His lack of gender analysis serves to perpetuate the system of masculine privilege in the philosophical tradition, and continues to subordinate the bodies of women through

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public discourse. Even Jean Baudrillard (not exactly a feminist icon himself) speaks of Foucault’s work as “the mirror of the powers he describes.”29 Partly because of his failings, Foucault’s notion of the proposed transcendental voice may be useful to feminists. The feminist historian needs to be continually aware of the dangers of replacing one distortion for another; replacing the white, middle class, male academic as universal with the white female middle class feminist in the position of power. For example, early second wave feminists, with their essentialist notions of a feminine superiority, in effect devalued other forms of oppression, including class and race, ethnicity, age, sexual preference and marital status. Their works homogenized women into a single universal and ahistorical category of “Woman.” That these and later feminists replicated many of the problems of traditional scholarship, offering an ethnocentric and homogenic view of the world, in effect marginalizing non-white, non-middle class feminists is ironic. The feminist historian concerned with eliminating these tendencies finds useful tools available for investigating social power found in Foucault’s methodologies. Foucault claims power is not to be located in a single entity, such as the State, but instead is “a composite result made up of a multiplicity of centers and mechanisms.”30 Power is elusive, multifarious, haphazard, and omnipresent: Power must be analyzed as something which circulates . . . it is never localized here or there, never in anybody’s hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth. Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization.31 The new concept of power, which Foucault develops, associates it with knowledge. Power both originates in, and duplicates, discourse: There can be no possible exercise of power without a particular economy of discourses of truth that operates through, and on, the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except though the production of truth.32 Power relations constitute a field of knowledge and knowledge constitutes power relations. Foucault uses this conception of power in his study of the way medical and scientific discourses become functions of knowledge, and so power.33 This methodology for investigating power is especially useful to the feminist historian, for it allows a consideration of areas usually viewed by traditional historians as neither disciplinary nor a sphere of power: the family, marriage, medical institutions, the media, even the body itself.

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Foucauldian analysis sees the body (if not specifically the female body) as a site of power. According to The History of Sexuality, the body is controlled, in one instance, through a surveillance of sexuality. Sex is not an instinctive drive, nor a repressed instinct, but a social construct and a regulating agent. A system of control operates through normalizing agents such as the Church, the medical profession and psychiatry, keeping the body docile and passive. Like feminists, Foucault includes the personal in the political; the domination in the private sphere is significant for the public sphere. Like feminist history, Foucauldian analysis does not work in the usual binary oppositions. History does not equal the public world, the masculine, constructed in opposition to the private sphere, and the feminine. Modern institutions control the body also, and its discipline. The discipline of the army, the penitentiary, schools, hospitals, and the factory produces what Foucault calls “docile bodies.”34 Again, Foucault’s customary blindness is problematic for feminist appropriation, for the female body is subject to specific disciplines. Historically, the female body has been more “docile” than that of the male, and any use of Foucauldian theory should consider this. Despite his limitations and gender ambiguities, feminist sociologists and philosophers have used Foucault, but he has been less popular with feminist historians. Some have appropriated his methods, but always in an extremely cautious and measured manner, as his work deserves. I will now explore the ways that three feminist historians have utilized Foucauldian analysis, in terms of power, knowledge, agency and the body. In particular, feminist historians have found Foucauldian notions of sexuality useful. For example, Judith A. Allen, in Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women Since 1800, expands and elaborates on the ideas found in The History of Sexuality.35 She too finds sex to be a key to history, but she takes a gendered approach which analyzes society not only through a proliferation of discourses surrounding sex, but also through the secrets of the society. Sex is not only discursive, but also silent, especially in reference to crimes of sex against women, such as rape and incest. Even when women attempt to verbalize this abuse in the criminal justice system, the result is generally the familiar, “No witnesses; no corroboration; no evidence; no case to answer; case dismissed.”36 Allen’s emphasis on these “hidden” crimes, atrocities committed in private, in silence, throws into question Foucault’s theories of power in regards to gender. In addition, the lack of prosecution by police of (female) crimes including infanticide, abortion or even prostitution, leads to questions regarding the omnipotence of surveillance and control, and subverts the notion of an ever-present discourse. Allen is more concerned with feminist analysis, than postmodern analysis, given the centrality of gender to her study. In Sex and Secrets she interacts with and offers challenges to Foucault’s work on sexual-

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ity, providing a good example of a feminist historian considering, using, and elaborating on the work of Foucault. One feminist historian quite clearly influenced by Foucault is Judith R. Walkowitz. Her study, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State, was inspired by The History of Sexuality.37 Walkowitz is especially interested in the Foucauldian notion that control over sex is a fundamental form of power in modern society, and sees his theories as “embodied” in her area of interest, the Contagious Disease Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.38 Designed to stem the spread of venereal disease in garrison and post towns, these acts allowed for the internal examination of any woman identified as a “common prostitute.” If found to be suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, authorities could enforce compulsory hospitalization of a woman for up to nine months.39 Walkowitz uses Foucauldian notions of the technologies of power to reveal the institutionalization of techniques of surveillance and confinement. As Foucault argues in The History of Sexualty, no single site or locus of power exists, and power is not localized within the State.40 Walkowitz shows that power over prostitutes and other working class women was operated through multifarious means, including the state, the medical profession, the police, the judicial system, and even middle class feminists, purity groups, and social reformers. The technologies of power included the internal examination with the speculum, the registration of women as prostitutes, daily surveillance by police, and attempts to impose middle class sexual morality on working class women.41 Power was constituted by the systematic surveillance and control over sex and female sexuality, and took a variety of forms including legal-judicial reforms, medical confinement, and the internalization of social purity campaigns. Walkowitz’s analysis of forms of confinement, including the lock hospital for women with venereal disease, is especially Foucauldian. Using his study Madness and Civilization,42 she equates the institutionalization of prostitutes with venereal disease as another instance of the confinement of “deviants.”43 Discipline was both physical (isolation, restricted diets etc), and mental (spatial constraint, discipline of time, training in subordination). The hospital “reproduced the patriarchal and class order of Victorian society.”44 She suggests there was a “public network of control and confinement,” wherein prostitutes were forced into the dreaded workhouse due to pregnancy or ill health. Thus confined, they were separated, stigmatized, subject to lessons in deference and subordination, and denied contact with the outside world.45 Walkowitz’s departures from a Foucauldian analysis are interesting and help to delimit the terms of a workable alliance. This emerges in three ways. First, while she concentrates most on the working class nature of prostitution, she does offer a gender analysis. She points out (as Foucault fails to do) that power and discipline operate differently on sexed bodies. The Contagious Disease Acts worked to institutionalize and reinforce a double standard of sexual immorality.46 She also points out that the fear of venereal disease leads

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to specific controls over only the female body, while the bodies of their (male) clients were not scrutinized. Walkowitz’s second point of departure from Foucault consists in her allowing some degree of agency to individual women. While the women to whom she refers were constrained by social institutions, (they were, for instance, prevented from earning a reasonable independent wage), she feels prostitution was a conscious, rational decision. In a time when laboring women worked for fourteen hours a day, to earn, at best, half the wage of their male counterparts, some women felt it was better to earn a living wage, working for shorter hours. Though prostitutes’ income was unstable, and they were at risk of violence, syphilis, and alcoholism, they had a higher standard of living than that of other poor women working as slave labor as domestics, milliners, or dressmakers.47 While social conditions encouraged prostitution, individual women made the all-important decision.48 Finally, Walkowitz does not show the same postmodern concern for the local and specific. While she does offer a detailed analysis of two specific areas, Plymouth and Southampton, she sees them as a “microcosm” for the national situation. She draws conclusions (however accurately) outside of her particular area of study. This is the antithesis of Foucault’s emphasis on specificity. The relation to Foucauldian theory is less explicit and more measured in Joy Damousi’s work, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality, and Gender in Colonial Society.49 Using the case study of female convicts in Australia, Damousi examines the intersection between masculinity, femininity, race and class, sexuality, familial relationships, order, cleanliness, and deviancy.50 Depraved and Disorderly is a sophisticated and theoretically informed study that uses gender as its primary category of analysis. Historians do not merely add women to the convict period, but gender is used to frame questions and present answers. This revisionist history focuses on the way we make and remake cultural meaning through an examination of cultural signs and symbols. Feminist has more influence on Damousi than it has on other feminist historians. In addition, cultural studies informs a significant portion of the text, especially the work of Mary Douglas.51 Damousi is much concerned with the relationship between “purity” and “contamination,” and in particular, the links between physical filth and moral depravity, as these concepts are imposed on the bodies of convict women. Convict women are a site for sexual anxiety amongst white, middle class men. Yet post modern theorizing also influences Damousi, especially regarding a challenge to “the certainty and closure” implied in convict history.52 In studying convict women, a group not generally considered in modernist histories, she is also interested in those perceived as the “other” in terms of gender, class, and deviancy. Damousi’s debt to Foucault is difficult to decipher. Like other feminists, she is critical of his lack of gender analysis.53 By taking gender as a fundamen-

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tal category in her work she is replicating, analyzing, and critiquing the biases inherent in colonial society. For example, while both male and female convicts were seen as polluted, only the female body was sexed.54 While sexual promiscuity, drunkenness, swearing, and smoking was accepted as the norm for male convicts, these acts were seen as thoroughly offensive in female convicts because they transgressed bourgeois notions of feminine respectability.55 Damousi does use Foucault for specific purposes. Using the Foucauldian notion that culture is inscribed on the body, she discusses the use of head shaving as a punishment for female convicts. While male convicts were subject to all manner of physical violence for a repudiation of order, authorities perceived head shaving as the most “effective” mode of punishment for female convicts. It was the one form of discipline that the women especially disliked because it stripped them of their culturally imposed femininity.56 The bald head of convict women was a cultural symbol for all that was deviant in womanhood, especially their lack of passivity, subordination and respectability. Damousi also makes use of Foucault’s work on the penal system explored in Discipline and Punish.57 Surveillance was seen to be the key to maintaining control over convict women, and as the era progressed, penal reformers were increasingly impressed by the ideas behind Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. A female prison should contain and restrain both moral and physical disorder, and keep the women, as potential pollutants, segregated from the rest of society. Within this jail, there should be both continuous surveillance and isolation in the hope that the woman would be moved to moral consciousness and ideological reform.58 Through punishments including silence, solitary confinement, and darkened cells, the prison produced Foucault’s “docile bodies,” and more specifically, docile female bodies.59 Further, Damousi is interested in the control over sexuality as a form of power as expressed in The History of Sexuality.60 The sexuality of female convicts was a source of considerable anxiety to colonial authorities, for it represented a subversion of order and rationality. In a period when all female sexuality (outside of reproduction) was representative of disorder, the promiscuity and prostitution of convict women was a especially visible reminder that discipline was scarcely maintained. Authorities attempted to impose harsh controls and continual surveillance over the sexuality of these women, for both heterosexual and lesbian “offences.” Power was, in this way, maintained over the bodies and minds of women. At the same time, Damousi is also interested in Foucauldian notions of resistance. Her view is that pleasure, in the forms of dancing, singing, acting and swearing, were a subversion of authority, an appropriation of the gender order.61 Following Foucault, she feels a power structure as rigid and despotic as that of a penal society would necessarily produce such forms of resistance: repression inevitably generates resistance.62 But she is critical of the ideas of other historians in this area, for they notice only male resistance. With power

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emanating from a range of entities, resistance, too, was plural. Damousi, unlike Foucault, suggests these women acted with a degree of agency in their resistance. Their specific forms of counteraction suggest that these women were autonomous to some degree.63 These brief examples, taken from a complex body of work, indicate that Damousi does make use of Foucault’s methodology and analysis of power as a tool in her feminist history. But her reading of Foucauldian theory is directed by her commitment to a gendered analysis, which at all times remains her priority. The value of Foucault to the feminist historian is as a toolkit, which we can appropriate, critique, alter, use, and even abuse. The lack of a coherent feminist-Foucauldian genre may be its strength, as the historian is not tied to the over-reaching disciplines opposed so vehemently by Foucault himself. Instead, a commitment to feminist theory, in all or any of its forms, can act as a basis for the feminist historian, with a Foucauldian analysis acting as a point of reference, information, and conjecture. In many ways, history provides the ideal point of convergence between feminism and postmodernism. Historical writing provides the local, specific situation required by postmodern theory. As much historical work is grounded in a specific time and place, the feminist theorist is less likely to slip into essentialism or ethnocentrism. Foucault’s insistence on the “local, the noncentralized”64 will allow conceptions of the female subject, and an analysis of the material and ideological constraints of female existence, to be examined without constructing an eternal, essentialized “feminine.” As Linda Alcoff suggests, a historical reading of femaleness can overcome some incongruities between feminism and postmodernism: We can say at one and the same time that gender is not natural, biological, universal, ahistorical, or essential, and yet still claim that gender is relevant because we are taking gender as a position from which to act politically.65 Feminist history can appropriate Foucauldian forms of analysis, and when combined with gender specific theorizing, a Foucauldian inspired feminist history can be most useful. Though Foucault would object to a feminist historical discourse as merely another example of knowledge or power, I do not see this as incurably problematic as long as the relationship to power is made explicit. I think we can do no more. We must not let feminist writing be paralyzed by postmodern anxieties, for the only answer then will be deafening . . . silence.

Notes 1. Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 202.

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2. Ibid., 205. 3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans., R. Hurley (London: Pantheon, 1976). 4. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 203. 5. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans., Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 76. 6. Jana Sawicki “Feminism and the Power of Foucauldian Discourse,” in Jonathon Arac, ed., After Foucault: Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 164; and Harry D. Harootunian “Foucault, Genealogy, History: The Pursuit of Otherness,” in Arac, After Foucault. Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges, p. 112. 7. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 211. 8. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972). 9. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 202. 10. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 81. 11. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. 12. Frances Bartowski, “Epistemic Drift in Foucault,” in Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds., Feminism & Foucault: Reflections on Resistance (Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1988), p. 49. 13. Meaghan Morris, “The Pirate’s Fiancee: Feminists and Philosophers, or Maybe Tonight It’ll Happen,” in Diamond and Quinby, Feminism & Foucault, p. 26. 14. David Shumway, Michel Foucault (Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1989). 15. Cited by Clare O’Farrell, Foucault, Historian or Philosopher? (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 110. 16. Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Feminity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” in Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds., Feminism and Foucault. Reflections on Resistance (Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1987), p. 63. 17. Michel Foucault “The Subject and Power” in Michel Foucault, Power: The Essential Works, vol. 3, ed., trans. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Press,1983), p. 329. 18. Nancy Hartsock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?” in Linda J. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (London; Routledge, 1990), p. 163. 19. Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism,” in Dirks et al., Culture/Power/History, p. 107. 20. Biddy Martin, “Feminism, Criticism and Foucault,” in Diamond and Quinby, Feminism and Foucault, p. 3. 21. Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism,” 106. 22. Foucault, cited by Alcoff, Ibid., p. 103. 23. Foucault “Two Lectures,” p. 214. 24. Hartsock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?” pp. 167–168. 25. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics; an overview of work in progress,” in Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 343. 26. Hartsock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?” 27. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds., “Introduction,”in Feminism and Foucault. Reflections on Resistance (Boston, Mass: Northeastern University Press, 1988), p. x 28. Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” in Culture/Power/History, pp. 96–122, esp. p. 103.

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29. Quoted by Frances Bartkowski, “Epistemic Drift in Foucault,” in Diamond and Quinby, Feminism & Foucault, p. 45. 30. Cited by Martin, “Feminism, Criticism and Foucault,” p. 6. 31. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 214. 32. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 211. 33. See Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception, trans., A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1973). 34. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans., A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York; Pantheon,1977), p. 138. 35. Judith A. Allen, Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women since 1800 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990). 36. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 37. Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 38. Ibid., p. 4. 39. Ibid., p. 2 40. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, pp. 33–34. 41. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, pp. 32, 203, 211, 252–253. 42. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Pantheon, 1965). 43. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. 44. Ibid., p. 221. 45. Ibid., p. 156 46. Ibid., p. 70 47. Ibid., p. 195 48. Ibid., p. 21 49. Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality, and Gender in Colonial Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 50. Ibid. 51. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Conceptions of Pollution and Taboo (London: Penguin, 1966). 52. Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly, p. 6. 53. Ibid., p. 103. 54. Ibid., p. 43. 55. Ibid., p. 48, 95. 56. Ibid., p. 31. 57. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 58. Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly, p. 98. 59. Ibid., p. 103. 60. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. 61. Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly, p. 61. 62. Ibid., p. 65. 63. Ibid., p. 84. 64. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” p. 202. 65. Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism,” p. 116.

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Six EMASCULATING METAPHOR: WHITHER THE MALENESS OF REASON? Jacqui Broad, Karen Green, Helen Prosser Feminists have pointed out that within the text of philosophy, reason has often been associated with masculinity, while its others—passion, body, madness, and intuition—have been deemed co-relatively feminine. The force binding the pair “masculine” and “feminine” to the contrast between reason and its others, is that of metaphorical association. Susan Bordo, who dubs this “the masculinization of reason,” thinks that this metaphorical force reflects an underlying fact.1 Object relations theory suggests that men experience themselves as isolated rational egos reflecting from an objective standpoint a world of alien material fact.2 Women are not rational egos in this sense. The empirical thesis that men and women think and experience themselves in different ways has had considerable appeal. Despite this appeal, it suffers from some weaknesses, and these include especially the difficulty of disentangling in these associations what is ideology, what is metaphor and what is literal fact.3 Other feminists, more or less influenced by Jacques Derrida, have not depended on empirical data to make their case, but have associated feminism’s critique of masculine reason with Derrida’s critique of logocentrism. Genevieve Lloyd, in particular, made us aware of the “maleness of reason.”4 Lloyd does not take the association between masculinity and rationality, femininity and reason’s opposites, to describe a literal fact. Woman is not mad, irrational, passionate, or intuitive. Lloyd accepts that this is a metaphorical association, and uses Derrida’s work on metaphor to argue that this association is integral to philosophy. Philosophy constitutes itself in opposition to women, and the dominance of a metaphorical masculinization of reason makes it the case that, “Women cannot easily be accommodated into a cultural ideal which has defined itself in opposition to the feminine.”5 The masculinization of reason may only be a metaphor, but metaphors have power. In his paper “The White Mythology,” Derrida uses metaphor to emasculate philosophy’s pretensions. By bringing metaphor to the fore, he forces philosophy to question itself and its own objective “reason.” Philosophy has defined itself, since Plato, as the pursuit of timeless objective truth in opposition to the illusory ephemera of the sophists and poets. Derrida argues that philosophy cannot escape metaphor. It requires metaphor in order to uphold the defining distinction between metaphor and literal truth. Feminists have interpreted this as showing that metaphor takes upon itself the powers of literal truth.

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Those who believe in an unambiguous distinction between metaphor and literal truth will say that the masculinization of reason is only a metaphor. In light of this Derridian deconstruction, what they repress with this “only” is complicity with a metaphorical power without which metaphor’s magic would not work. Like the sleight of hand of a conjurer, this power must be hidden and denied. Even when the sleight of hand is exposed, the illusion still keeps us in its thrall. The power of this metaphor determines feminism’s uneasy relationship with philosophy and reason. It stands like a giant illusion before the gates of rational authority frightening us off with its degendering breath. But from whence does metaphor derive such masculine power? Is metaphor the hidden power out of which philosophy conjures its objective truth? Or is it time to emasculate this dominating metaphor? The position occupied by the feminist advocates of deconstruction stands in some tension with Derrida’s thinking on sexual difference. He speaks in places of a multiplicity of gendered voices, implying the kind of refusal of identity politics which is articulated in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble.6 An influential school of Australian deconstructive feminists is troubled by this vision of a dispersal of identity at the historical moment at which women appear to be successfully articulating their sense of identity.7 They see women as being constructed through the metaphors that associate women with dispersal or unreason. Lloyd speaks of the metaphors, “playing a role . . . in the formation of ideas and stereotypes of maleness and femaleness.”8 Roslyn Diprose suggests more strongly that ‘“metaphors” are constitutive of the bodies of women. “The bodies of women (real-life women), their habits, desires, and experiences, are constituted by social discourses and practices which position women as other to privileged identity.”9 Elizabeth A. Grosz suggests, “‘Real’ women are the products and effects of discursive practices that cannot be confined to misogynist (mis)representations.”10 How did metaphor acquire such power? Between Lloyd’s talk of metaphor, “playing a role . . . in the formation of ideas and stereotypes,” and Diprose’s claim that bodies are constituted by metaphors, came a rejection of the sex-gender distinction which allowed earlier theorists to distinguish ideological gender from bodily sex.11 Two steps take us from a stereotypical representation to a lived reality. The distinction between metaphor and literal truth is undermined, and abstract gender is replaced by lived bodily reality. Metaphor acquires the power of creating the literal truth about women. Yet what are the powers of metaphor? Could metaphor, such a subtle sweet child, have sold its sinews to a discourse that binds us to madness and non-identity? Perhaps the trope “woman” is a false trollop, who gives us poisons wrapped as gifts to cure metaphorical hypochondria. The issues raised by the feminist use of philosophical metaphor are complex.

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What is metaphor? Is there any literal truth? What is the relationship between metaphorical and literal language? We cannot hope to answer these questions adequately in a single paper. We will show that feminists may have succumbed too quickly to an illusory power. Some accounts of metaphor enable us to distinguish metaphors from literal truths. On a recent account, which we need to take seriously, the powers of metaphor are, plausibly derived from the literal. Even if philosophy cannot escape metaphor, neither can metaphor escape the literal. Metaphor can, and has, offered its services equally to men and women. It need not be slave to man’s pretensions. It will offer its fertile bounty to anyone who, with a modicum of wit, will sew from its threads, a new analogy. Our argument will have three parts. One part is critical. It looks at Derrida’s claims for metaphor and the use that Lloyd makes of them. If we accept that Derrida has shown that philosophy cannot escape metaphor, one plausible interpretation of Lloyd’s claim requires that literal truth can be distinguished from metaphor. Derrida’s analysis appears to disallow this possibility. In addition, Lloyd moves too quickly from Derrida’s claim, which is that philosophy cannot escape all metaphor, to the conclusion that masculinizing metaphors are constitutive of philosophy. The next part is historical. It looks at some metaphors from female philosophers, in order to demonstrate how flexible metaphor is, and how easily transformed for feminist purposes. The last part is exegetical. It outlines a recent theory of the structure of metaphor and argues that it accounts well for what is going on in the metaphors we have extracted from philosophers and feminists. It provides reasons for thinking that what Derrida has to say is not the last word on metaphor. It gives an alternative explanation for the ubiquity of the masculinizing metaphors. We argue that these particular metaphors are not constitutive of philosophy, but reflect the historical reality of women’s subjection. Together these three parts show that the masculinizing metaphor is not a constituting power. Metaphor clothes itself in the garments of literal truth, and since it depends for its powers on the literal, it can wear any fashion that suits the times. 1. Derrida and Lloyd on Metaphor and the Pretensions of Philosophy In the paper “White Mythology,” Derrida argues that philosophy sets itself up as a search for timeless truth in contrast to rhetoric and poetry deemed ephemeral and illusory. Philosophy’s foundation is in metaphor. It cannot express its central propositions, the search for clear and distinct ideas, or the escape from the cave of illusory appearance into the sunlight of reality, without the aid of metaphor that it claims to despise and shun. Christopher Norris

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expresses Derrida’s conclusion as, “The discourse of philosophy is everywhere subject to a play of rhetorical signification which exceeds all the bounds of intentional restraint.”12 As Genevieve Lloyd points out, why the use of metaphor should automatically undermine philosophy’s claim to be the pursuit of truth is not entirely obvious. Derrida appears to accept Aristotle’s warning that analogy can be misleading.13 Derrida then suggests that Aristotle’s appeal to the clarity, or obscurity, of an argument shows that philosophy’s distinction between the literal and the metaphorical itself depends on a metaphor. By Aristotle’s lights, an argument that involves a metaphor like “obscure” is inadequate. Philosophy cannot make out its central distinction without depending on metaphor, and so fails its own test of philosophical rigor. Aristotle warns of the inadequacy of arguments that involve metaphor, and, as we will see below, his warning is still pertinent. Aristotle says: Another rule is to see if he [the arguer] has used a metaphorical expression, as, for instance, if he has defined knowledge as unsupplantable, or the earth as a nurse, or temperance as a harmony. For a metaphorical expression is always obscure. It is possible, also, to argue captiously against the user of a metaphorical expression as though he had used it in its literal sense; for the definition stated will not apply.14 As Lloyd acknowledges, the use of metaphor to make an independently true point need not undermine the truth expressed. According to Lloyd, when the metaphor is “effaced” things become problematic. A metaphor is “effaced” when, “It is not at all clear that the philosophical point is external to, or extricable, from the metaphor.” She uses as an example of this Socrates’ claim that philosophy is a higher form of procreation. Lloyd suggests that this is a shifty use of metaphor, “which brings philosophy into closer connection with the values and beliefs of its surrounding culture.” We do not recognize effaced metaphors as such. Terms such as “grasp” and “comprehend” are originally metaphors, taken to be literal, and these metaphors cannot “be governed by philosophy, for they are constitutive of it.”15 Lloyd’s claim is that the maleness of reason is an effaced metaphor that constitutes philosophy. Yet saying that the metaphoric masculinization of reason is “effaced” is odd. Unlike words like “grasp” and “obscure,” which we do not immediately recognize as metaphors, the metaphors associating men with form and rational mastery, and women with formlessness, matter, or nature, are manifest on the surface of texts. Some texts claim that reason is an ideal for both men and women, while reading the relationship between reason and the inferiors that it should govern (such as body, sense-perception, appetite, or matter) through the relationship of man to woman. In the Timaeus, for example, Plato’s ideal society is one in

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which women are Guardians, but male and female are associated with form and the formless.16 Lloyd does not spend much time explaining what it means for a metaphor to be effaced, nor exactly why this is problematic. In Derrida’s text, an effaced metaphor is a word like “obscurity” as applied to arguments. We no longer recognize the metaphorical origins of this usage as such. Another way in which we can efface a metaphor is if it comes to provide the basis of an argument. This is a specious argument of the sort against which Aristotle warns us. Specious arguments of this kind are rife in philosophy. For example, Plotinus is an especially rich source, in particular the Sixth Tractate.17 The metaphorical maleness of reason is likely to lead to just such an argument. The metaphor may derive from the analogy between reason governing and directing the body, and men governing and directing women. When used as a premise in an argument for excluding women from higher learning, its metaphorical character is “effaced.” As Aristotle warns, metaphors and analogies provide insecure bases for argument. If this is Lloyd’s point, the point is well taken. But this point involves maintaining the distinction that Derrida is interested in undermining. This is the distinction between the precise literal use of words appropriate for sound argument and the metaphorical and analogical extensions of words that are not. Whether Derrida has a convincing argument for the impossibility of maintaining this distinction depends on whether the kind of effaced metaphor that he finds in philosophy is still a metaphor. If we think the danger of effacement is the danger that Aristotle warned of, Lloyd’s suggestion that metaphor becomes dangerous only when effaced requires a distinction between literal and metaphorical language. According to Derrida this distinction involves a philosophical metaphor. Still, if we agree that Derrida has established that metaphysics is, “a mythology which assembles and reflects Western Culture,” and that, “the white man takes his own mythology . . . his logos—that is the mythos of his idiom, for the universal form of that which it is still his inescapable desire to call Reason,” then the maleness of reason may appear to fit especially well into that myth.18 Whether reason, or the maleness of reason is a myth is a bit obscure; as is the power of this myth to constitute our bodily reality. Despite these doubts, the moral drawn is obvious. That reason ought to govern, govern women, and keep them enslaved within its metaphoric bonds is constitutive of this mythic discourse. Are things so simple? The above quote from Derrida summarizes the conclusion of Anatole France’s essay, “The Language of Metaphysics.”19 Like the early logical positivists, France is critical of metaphysicians, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who use words that have lost any precise sensory meaning. His sketch of the metaphysician’s wearing away of sensory vocabulary, so as to produce abstract philosophical terms, ends with the claim that metaphysics is a white mythology: anemic, because the original sensory meanings of its terms have been effaced; and mythic, because once the original

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sensory meaning of the terms is restored, philosophy sounds like a Vedic hymn. A particular theory of meaning lies behind this dismissal of metaphysics. It has two parts: the meaning of a word is the sensible object or quality to which it refers, and its original sensory use determines the real meaning of a term. Derrida alludes to a similar thought in Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who says, “Truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses.”20 But Derrida can hardly accept such a theory of meaning. He has often insisted that meaning is not fixed, that no fixed boundary between proper and improper usage exists, and so, apparently, no place for finding a proper sensory meaning effaced in an improper abstract use exists. Derrida acknowledges this.21 France’s theory of meaning privileges etymology over system. Ferdinand de Saussure has shown how the synchronic structure of language as much as its diachronic development results in words having the meaning that they do. The “exergue” with which Derrida begins his paper is effaced by the later discussion that asserts that the distinction between the proper sensory meaning of a term and its metaphorical extension cannot be maintained.22 Derrida’s purpose in relating the conclusions of these philosophers is not so much to endorse them, but to show that the concept of metaphor is a philosophical concept which presupposes an untenable philosophical account of meaning. By philosophy’s account, central philosophical terms are metaphors, yet metaphor is a notion that depends on philosophy’s metaphors. Philosophy and metaphor are inextricably intertwined.23 Something odd remains in Derrida’s use of these philosophical texts. He argues that central philosophical terms are metaphors, “Philosophy is less in the philosophical text . . . than the philosophical text is within metaphor.”24 His central contention is that philosophy cannot do without metaphor because the structure of signification in general is not fundamentally different from the structure of metaphor, and because we cannot characterize signification and metaphor without the use of metaphor. If this is true, it cannot be a criticism of philosophy that it fails to escape metaphor. Analytic philosophers such as Henry Nelson Goodman have also claimed no fundamental distinction exists between literal and metaphorical uses of language for more or less the same reason as Derrida.25 The use of all language is fluid. No properties exist independent of language. Therefore, no proper sensory meaning exists to contrast it to the metaphorical. Having no proper meaning, we cannot criticize philosophy for being a white mythology from which the robust sensory meaning has been effaced. The political reading Lloyd and others impose on this passage from France is possible, but, on this reading, no justification for the political claim emerges. We agree with Derrida and Goodman that behind our ability to use metaphor, a fluid and open-ended capability to perceive similarities exists,

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without any political consequences following from this. If we cannot circumscribe proper or literal use of words, this kind of critique of effaced metaphors on which Lloyd relied will be unavailable. If Derrida’s point in saying that philosophy cannot escape metaphor is to show that philosophical argument can never achieve the criterion of soundness that it sets for itself, there will be little point in attempting to expose effaced metaphor, for escape from metaphor will be impossible. To say, as Derrida does, that philosophy is constituted by metaphor is not to say that particular metaphors constitute philosophy but merely to say that philosophy cannot state its truths without using some metaphor. Lloyd needs something stronger in order to argue that the particular metaphor that associates maleness with reason constitutes philosophy. Derrida might also think that particular metaphors are ineliminable. The metaphor of the sun, which provides a natural light, the heliotrope around which philosophical discourse turns, is one.26 If this metaphor is deemed masculine then, as Luce Irigaray does, one might find the light of reason already male, but this is not a line of thought developed by Lloyd.27 Even if we cannot escape all metaphor as Derrida contends, the next section of this paper will illustrate that to escape or transform particular metaphors is easy. We will argue, more strongly, that we can distinguish the literal from the metaphorical use of sentences, and that not metaphor, but the literal social relations that form ground for metaphors are difficult to change. 2. Metaphor in the History of Philosophy In this section, we will focus on one metaphor that has acted as a companion to the masculinization of reason: the personification of nature as female. The symbolic association between nature and femaleness is common in seventeenth-century writings in which a mechanistic worldview superseded the Medieval and Renaissance conception of nature as an organic cosmos.28 With the rise of Cartesianism and the new science, many philosophers no longer regarded the natural world as an intelligent entity, alive, vital, and capable of self-motion. In the writings of the period, nature was typically personified as a passive female, completely devoid of intellect—a resource to be manipulated and exploited for the good of society. Alternatively, in some instances, writers described nature as a disorderly and recalcitrant woman—an unruly force we must control and dominate. In both cases, the “man of reason” is encouraged to transcend or conquer nature, and the “feminine” is associated with what we must transcend or conquer. In the work of early modern women philosophers, we can find some positive conceptions of the relation between reason and nature, men and women. Their use of figurative language shows that when metaphor serves a

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JACQUI BROAD, KAREN GREEN, AND HELEN PROSSER

new mistress, she can wear a new livery and puts herself busily to work for the valorization of nature and the feminization of reason. The philosophical writings of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, for example, reveal that the alignment between femaleness and nature can be affirmative, and that we can incorporate this affirmation into a cogent materialist philosophy. Cavendish, an English philosopher and woman of letters, was an outspoken opponent of Cartesian dualism and the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society. She was also a strong defender of her sex, and lamented the exclusion of women from serious learning. Cavendish’s eighth published work, the Philosophical Letters (1664), is a collection of epistles criticizing the opinions of “famous and learned authors,” including Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes. In this work, Cavendish adopts a strong anti-dualist and anti-mechanist position. She believes that the mind and body are not two distinct things, but are both made from the same material substance. Every particular creature, Cavendish says, contains a thorough intermixture of three different kinds of matter: the rational and the sensitive (which are animate), and an inanimate kind of matter. According to her theory, every human being, animal, vegetable, and mineral is endued with “Life and Soul, Sense and Reason.” Cavendish denies that the mind can be separated from the body and subsist without it. What Descartes calls the mind, she says, is only rational and sensitive matter, “the living and knowing parts of Nature.” In her view, for any individual to transcend the senses and the body is impossible. Cavendish believes that no single particle of the material world is dead or inert, “there is no part of Nature that hath not life and knowledge,” she says, “For there is no Part that has not a co-mixture of animate and inanimate matter.”30 To illustrate these philosophical claims, Cavendish says: though Nature is old, yet she is not a Witch, but a grave, wise, methodical Matron, ordering her Infinite family, which are her several parts, with ease and facility, without needless troubles and difficulties; for these are only made through the ignorance of her several parts or particular Creatures, notwithstanding their Mistress, Nature, and her actions and government, for which they cannot be blamed; for how should a part understand the Infinite body, when it doth not understand it self; but Nature understands her parts better, then they do her.31 She says