Rational Woman

A Feminist Critique of Dichotomy

Raia Prokhovnik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134757855
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

To feminists and some postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman represent two fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our languages, and two sets of hierarchical power relations in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik challenges the tradition of dualism and argues that rational woman need no longer be a contradiction in terms. Prokhovnik examines in turn: · the nature of dichotomy, its problems and an alternative · the reason/emotion dichotomy · dichotomies central to the man/woman dualism, such as sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm

1
DICHOTOMY

From the dichotomous either/or to the relational both–and

The argument of this chapter follows directly from the appreciation expressed in the Introduction for the work of Lloyd and others in explicating the negative role of dualisms in the Western intellectual tradition (Lloyd 1993; see also Flax 1992, Green 1995). Plumwood’s work (1993, 1995) is also dedicated to documenting the important negative effects of dualism. She highlights the dualism involved in the specific opposition between ‘human’ and ‘nature’, leading to a whole series of dichotomous readings of the human condition.¹

Against the viewpoint fostered by the dichotomous mould, there are strong grounds for holding that reality is a meaningful world in which things (objects, persons, concepts, events, practices, language) contain meaning partly through being understood in relation to one another. An example is Patton’s description of the view that the ‘virtual relations with other concepts constitute the “becoming” of the concept in question’ (Patton 1997: 243). Dichotomy plays a part in a world of meaning, but only a part. While dichotomy is a useful tool amongst a range of tools in theorizing, in refining and sharpening distinctions and definitions, its scope has been sharply inflated. The role it has played in arresting the meaning given to persons and qualities, presented to us in A/not-A form, and consequently in systematically promoting the marginalization of both certain social groups and alternative modes of thinking, needs to be challenged.

This chapter examines aspects of the general character of dichotomy that provide the conceptual basis for that history of dualism identified by Lloyd and others, in order to demonstrate how dichotomous thinking has operated to dominate the construction of ideas. The chapter also seeks to argue for an alternative standpoint, one of the possible alternatives, to the stranglehold that has been sustained in the modern period by thinking in dichotomous terms.

The expression of the mind/body split in the philosophies of Descartes and Kant, and the subsequent dominance of rationalist philosophy, led to consequences (intended and unintended) which are now widely recognized as problematic. For instance it is now considered in several areas of political and social theory, international relations theory and post-analytic philosophy, that the impulse to define one’s conceptions, oneself, and one’s political community in opposition to, in rejection of, and in a hierarchy with something else, rather than in connection to it, entrenches division. While not all such attempts are or need be compatible, and not all attempts at an alternative approach achieve their aim, the recent contributions, for example, of Seyla Benhabib (1996) to the debate on subjectivity, of Allison Weir (1996) on identity, of James Tully (1995) on multiculturalism, of Rob Walker (1993) on sovereignty, and of Axel Honneth (1995) on the politics of recognition for citizenship, testify to the diversity of successful attempts to find workable alternatives to the dominant over-arching explanatory force of dichotomy.

Most recently the theory of decentred management, and the work of psychotherapists to overcome in different ways the inside/outside dualism upon which their profession has operated, represent two further examples of attempts in theorizing to overcome a Berlin Wall mentality, to break down the absolute priority given to one component of a pair over the other, and to reconceive richer possibilities for social and personal interaction. Of particular interest are the contributions of two psychotherapists. Susie Orbach (1998) calls for overcoming the split between the inner world and the body, and Adam Phillips (1998) seeks to overcome the Cartesian split between the world of the inner self and the outer world of politics.

Dichotomy forms the basis of one mode of thinking within a range of possible modes. The virtues of dichotomy are clear and can be defended.² What is at issue here is not dichotomy as one mode within a range of modes of thinking: it is the repressive effect on other modes of thinking that the dominance of dichotomy has exercised over the past two hundred years. This dominance is in urgent need of criticism and remedy.

The purpose of examining here the general features of dichotomy and some of the problems associated with it is thus threefold. The first aim is to bring to light the manner in which dichotomy’s domination magnifies features of, and aggravates, its problems. The second is to help to understand the process by which dichotomous thinking, when mapped on to understandings of categories such as man, woman, reason, emotion, culture, nature, mind, body, leads to exclusion in real social practices, and naturalizes the marginalization that takes places in social exclusion. The third aim is to provide the basis for proposing an alternative mode of thinking, free from the naturalized assumptions within dichotomous thinking that would simply deny the value of alternative modes of thinking.

This enterprise inevitably builds upon the intimations of earlier theorists, in particular perhaps Hegel and Spinoza. Contemporary non-dichotomous alternatives involve recovery and recapture as much as exposition and explanation. The intellectual provenance of the idea of a relational alternative to dichotomous thinking goes back at least to Hegel’s discussion of the relationship between master and slave, which centres on misrecognitions, relations, and the need for reciprocal recognition, as well as to Spinoza’s holism which was framed to override dichotomy (See Lloyd 1994, Gatens 1996a, 1996b, Grosz 1994).³ However, an intellectual pedigree does not explain the contemporary significance of earlier intellectual moves against dichotomous thought, nor the use to which they may now be put. Neither can an intellectual tradition in itself provide criteria for the selection of some of its aspects and the discarding of others (for example the misogyny of both Hegel and Spinoza). These crucial features of the current enterprise must be developed and justified in the present. It is also worth noting, to avoid confusion, that the argument pursued here occurs within a primarily Anglo-American theoretical context. As such it develops independently of, and only occasionally intersects with, the route taken by writers such as Irigaray (1993) and Cixous (1981) in their engagement with the legacy (not to mention intellectual baggage) of binary codes and the particular understanding of the role of language of Lacan, Derrida and others. Nor is it designed to chart the route they have taken.

The concern with dichotomy is not exclusively feminist, but it is the argument of this book that feminists have a particularly acute contribution to make to the debate. This is to be explained first by the coincidence between the historical treatment of women and the gender-coded character of subordinate terms in a range of interlocking dichotomies (Plumwood 1993: 427). Second, the wider feminist interest in dichotomy is closely related to the political feminist objective of social change, and so concerns what Jay refers to as the alignment of ‘the insistence on A/Not-A dichotomy (associated with resisting change) and of abandoning dichotomy (associated with striving for change)’ (Jay 1981: 52).⁴ Thus the emancipatory aims of feminism are integral to Jay’s well-substantiated point, that ‘[a]ttention to relations between conservatism and dichotomous thinking seems particularly important for feminist theory because of the great susceptibility of gender distinction to A/Not-A phrasing’ (ibid.: 54). As she observes astutely, the ‘exclusively binary structure of gender distinctions may explain this susceptibility, but not why women, rather than men, are so consistently put in the Not-A position’ (ibid).⁵

A third related interest of feminists with dichotomy follows from the pioneering work of Lloyd (1993), Cocks (1989) and other feminist writers, in tracking the hierarchical element in modern dichotomous thinking, diagnosed as central to the repressiveness of modern rationalism. Feminists such as Grosz (1994) and Gatens (1996a, 1996b) are developing the implications and consequences of non-dichotomous, relational thinking in current theoretical debates.

This chapter analyses key features of dichotomy. It then considers problems involved in dichotomous thinking, before setting out the basis of an alternative to the paradigm of dichotomy.⁶

The features of dichotomy

A dichotomy is a hierarchical opposition.⁷ When it is analyzed, dichotomy can be seen to contain four important defining features, though these do not exhaust the analysis. The four features are an opposition between two identities, a hierarchical ordering of the pair, the idea that between them this pair sum up and define a whole, and the notion of transcendence.

Opposition

Dichotomy takes the virtue of distinction, that is the capacity to distinguish between things, and extends it into opposition. Distinguishability is clearly essential to being able to make evaluations, and so it is easy to see why the notion of a distinction is synonymous with a virtuous attribute. It is therefore no part of the argument developed here to advocate the indistinguishability, or the conflation or merger of distinct categories. However, the presupposition that is habitual in dichotomous thinking leads in turn to the habitual and presumptive extension of distinction into opposition, to an ‘alienated form of differentiation’ (Plumwood 1993: 443). As Butler notes of dichotomous thinking, ‘oppositions are, after all, part of intelligibility; the latter is the excluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as the spectre of its own impossibility, the very limit to intelligibility, its constitutive outside’ (Butler 1993: xi).

This results in what Plumwood, discussing the conceptions ‘human’ and ‘nature’, calls the ‘discontinuity problem’ (the general form of which she explains in the terms coined by Rodman), that is, ‘“the Differential Imperative” in which what is virtuous in the human is taken to be what maximizes distance from the merely natural’ (Plumwood 1995:157, 156). In terms of the specific human/nature dualism with which Plumwood is concerned, she argues convincingly that the ‘upshot is a deeply entrenched view of the genuine or ideal human self as not including features shared with nature, and as defined against or in opposition to the non-human realm’, such that the ‘human sphere and that of nature cannot significantly overlap’ (ibid.: 157). Furthermore, she adds ‘this kind of human self can only have certain kinds of accidental or contingent connections to the realm of nature’ (ibid.).

It follows that the first defining feature of dichotomy is related, but not identical, to the notion of antinomy or contradiction. The distinction between dichotomy and antinomy helps to highlight the meaning of dichotomy.⁸ There are two important examples of contradiction which are relevant to the discussion of dichotomous thinking: the contradiction between two equally binding laws, and the contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary; that is, a paradox. Antinomy describes the only possible permitted result of the tension between the two things, namely contradiction. It describes the mode of judgment where a contrast and comparison between two things cannot be allowed to rest, with its connections explored and articulated, but the two must immediately be seen instead as conflicting, antagonistic, contrary, competing, as rivals.

Thus antinomy and dichotomy share the feature of not only holding two things in tension, but holding them in rigid, fixed tension. Rogers provides a valuable definition of dichotomy which emphasizes this element of rigidity. She says a ‘dichotomy is a polarization with discontinuity which ignores overlap. Differences are seen to be more interesting than similarities and there is a tendency to see these differences as absolute’ (Rogers 1988: 44). Grosz refines Rogers’s point in an interesting way. In the course of her discussion of feminist epistemology, she describes three kinds of ‘male’ knowledges, which she calls sexist, patriarchal and phallocentric. She argues that dichotomy is present, for example, in phallocentric knowledge, which is founded upon ‘excluded, negative counterparts, or “others”’ (Grosz 1988b: 96). However, what is particularly useful about Grosz’s work here is the idea that the relation within the dichotomy is different in each kind of knowledge; her classification breaks down the assumption that there is only one kind of possible relation between a polarized pair.

Antinomy and dichotomy also have in common the significance placed on duality. Whereas contemporary theorists such as Iris Marion Young (1990a, 1990b) highlight the positive value of ‘difference’, contradiction and dichotomous thinking are both based on difference, now as a negative feature in the sense of things being incompatible, incommensurable and untranslatable. But in contradiction and dichotomy, difference is narrowed down to only two possibilities, and they are seen in terms of opposition. Difference here is always dual and always antagonistic. The equality of difference, which underlies the notion for theorists like Young, is something that in the dichotomous-thinking mentality must be overcome. Thus while a contradiction poses an opposition between two things held in tension which are equally valued (since if they were not equally valid, one would simply be considered ‘wrong’ and there would be no tension), a dichotomy describes an opposition between two things held in tension, only one of which can be right.

A second important difference between antinomy and dichotomy is that while both terms could describe special cases of two things which are regarded as polar opposites, antitheses, extremes, which are adverse, irreconcilable, or inconsistent, in a dichotomy these two things are characteristically thought to sum up the whole range of possibilities. The scope of antinomy – equally binding laws, equally valid conclusions – is more localized, open-ended, and does not contain this sense of closure. Thus for instance the dichotomies man/woman, reality/appearance, mind/body each between them define the universe as it exists through the lens provided by that pair. The oppositional feature of dichotomy is thus what Grosz calls a dualism, the ‘assumption that there are two distinct, mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive substances, mind and body, each of which inhabits its own self-contained sphere. Taken together the two have incompatible characteristics’ (Grosz 1994: 6).

Thus an important aspect of dichotomy is that it entails an exclusive disjunction. Gatens (1991) highlights this feature of dichotomy, whereby the definition of the subject/scope of the object/world is either A or not-A. Not-A is anomalous with respect to A, the very antithesis of A. As Haste graphically puts it with respect to the man/woman dichotomy, ‘A is defined as being not-B; it is defined as the negation of B. Women and the feminine, therefore, exist as that-by-which-men-define-themselves-as-not-being’ (Haste 1993: 6). The consequent negative effects of dichotomy for philosophical thinking in general and feminist theorizing in particular are summed up by Grosz when she recommends Gatens’s attempt to develop ‘a philosophy that could articulate what cannot be spoken in philosophical paradigms derived from Cartesian dualism’ (Grosz 1988b: 57). However the quality of exclusive disjunction that characterizes the two-fold nature of the element of opposition in dichotomy is not limited to the A/Not-A logical form; it applies also to the A/B form. So long as only two possibilities can be envisaged, the oppositional element of dichotomy has negative effects, in being unable to countenance heterogeneity.

Hierarchy

Grosz identifies the central significance of the hierarchical feature of dichotomy when she argues that the ‘bifurcation of being … [in] mind and body, thought and extension, reason and passion, psychology and biology … is not simply a neutral division of an otherwise all-encompassing descriptive field’ (Grosz 1994: 3). For ‘[d]ichotomous thinking necessarily hierarchizes and ranks the two polarized terms so that one becomes the privileged term and the other its suppressed, subordinated, negative counterpart’ (ibid.). Lloyd reinforces the point when she notes that ‘the male-female distinction… has operated not as a straightforward descriptive principle of classification, but as an expression of values’ (Lloyd 1993: 103). It also follows from the hierarchical ranking of dichotomy that so long as A represents what is socially and intellectually valued, then the same negative self/other effect occurs whether the logical formulation is A/Not-A or A/B.

The distinction between difference and dichotomy is important in elucidating the second as well as the first feature of dichotomy. For instance Young (1990b) contrasts the case in which difference is horizontally disposed and means heterogeneity, and has positive social effects, from the case in which difference is vertically ranked, such as when categories of dominant/subordinate, norm/deviant, internal/external, self/other, community/foreign, strong/weak, and male/female are introduced. In the latter case, not only is one side of the pair weighted, but also that side of the pair is defined and elevated by shunning, excluding, not being the other, and so difference has negative social effects. In the same way Plumwood notes with respect to the human/nature dualism, ‘[n]ature is sharply divided off from the human, is alien and usually hostile and inferior’ (Plumwood 1995: 157). Grosz also draws out the negative social effects of hierarchical patterns informing thinking when she comments that, ‘[d]ichotomies are inherently non-reversible, non-reciprocal hierarchies, and thus describe systems of domination’ (Grosz 1989: xvi).

Furthermore, as Lloyd (1989) and others have noted, the ‘separate but equal’ or ‘separate spheres’ formula for men and women, which has sought to legitimize dichotomy during the modern period, has negative effects not only in implying hierarchy behind the benign facade, but also in denying women self-determination of location between the two terms of the pair, denying them choice, and denying altogether a free play of differences.

However, on the positive side, hierarchical ordering in dichotomy is designed to promote at least two positive purposes. First, its aim is to be instrumental in overcoming an obstruction or obstacle to the emergence of truth. Second, hierarchical ordering shares with the feature of opposition a rigidity and inflexibility, the positive objective of which is to sustain order. There are two aspects of this: the truth is seen to emerge triumphant, and the truth is defined precisely in terms of the exclusion of the term which is sub-ordinated.

But it follows that hierarchical ordering necessarily involves a form of oppression, through the necessary suppression of one term, and because of this element it can be argued that the positive purposes of the oppression are either self-defeating or achieved at too great a cost. An example with respect to the first aspect, the triumphant emergence of truth, can be seen clearly in the dichotomy man/woman. Although the dominance of the predominant term ‘man’ contains within it a promise of independence, autonomy can never be achieved. Because the winning term never breaks away from the vanquished one, the tension between them remains perpetually, perennially. In other words, this aspect of dichotomy ‘results from a certain kind of denied dependency on a subordinated other.’ Furthermore this ‘relationship of denied dependency determines a certain kind of logical structure, as one in which the denial and the relation of domination/subordination shapes the identity of both the relata’ (Plumwood 1993: 443). As Baier observes in taking issue with Davidson’s either/or approach (with respect to motives, using the same logic), ‘[w]e rarely have to leave a f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Dichotomy: From the dichotomous either/or to the relational both–and
• 2. Reason and emotion
• 3. Sex and gender: Beyond the sex/gender dichotomy to corporeal subjectivity
• 4. Conclusion: The third wave: the future of feminism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index