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FOUR
IN-CONCLUSION
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7
THE END OF INNOCENCE
And although I sensed that everything going on inside me remained blurred, inadequate in every sense of the word, I was once more forced to admire the way in which everything fits together with a sleepwalker's precision: the desire of most people for a comfortable life, their tendency to believe the speakers on raised platforms and the men in white coats; the addiction to harmony, and the fear of contradiction of the many seem to correspond to the arrogance and hunger for power, the dedication to profit, unscrupulous inquisitiveness, and self-infatuation of the few. So what was it that didn't add up in this equation?
Christa Wolf, Accident: A Day's News
PART OF A STORY
In the Spring of 1990 I was invited to discuss an earlier version of this paper with a group of women who teach in a well-known and successful women's studies program. I had just spent two days as the only woman at another conference at the same university, and I was looking forward to a more friendly and productive exchange. Instead, I was quite surprised by the atmosphere of tension and hostility that erupted as soon as I entered the room. The last time I recall experiencing such hostility from a group of expected allies was in 1967 when conflicts about Black Power and the role of whites erupted in the Civil Rights movement. The intensity of feelings and the sense that one's integrity, history, identity, and place were at stake reminded me of those earlier and equally painful encounters. Other participants in this meeting commented on the tension, but no one could explain or alter it.
The participants repeated many of the claims that some feminists make about postmodernism. âYou cannot be a feminist and a postmodernist,â I was told. Postmodernists are apolitical or even antipolitical. They are relativists; if we take them seriously, any political stance will be impossible to maintain or justify. Feminists must generate and sustain a notion of truth so that we can adjudicate conflicts among competing ideas and legitimate the claims of (some) feminist theorists and activists. Since postmodernists believe there is no truth, conflict can only be resolved through the raw exercise of power (domination). Postmodernistsâ deconstructions of subjectivity deny or destroy the possibility of active agency in the world. Without a unitary subject with a secure identity and an empirical sense of history and gender, no feminist consciousness and hence no feminist politics is possible. Since postmodernists believe meanings are multiple and indeterminant, if you write clearly and comprehensibly you cannot be a postmodernist. Postmodernists write obscurely on purpose so that no one outside their cult can understand them. One must choose between total acceptance and rejection of their position. Acceptance entails abandoning Feminism or annihilating its autonomy and force, subordinating it to a destructive and inhospitable male-dominated philosophy.
Neither these claims nor the evident emotional investments were illuminated in this particular encounter. The experience did highlight some of the most contested issues in feminist debates about postmodernism: what are the relations between knowledge, power, and action? What kind(s) of subjectivities can demand and support feminist politics? What are the relationships, actual and potential, between feminist theorizing and the practices of feminist politics? Does the actualization of feminist visions of the future depend upon the production of better feminist knowledge or epistemologies (and in what sense is this so)? What are the positions of feminist intellectuals, especially those who teach in universities, to each other, to other women and to power of various kinds? What forms the self-consciousness of feminist intellectuals? What motives and desires (including unconscious ones) drive us to make claims about our subjectivity and the nature and status of our theorizing? Can feminist theorizing (and women's studies programs) develop best in isolation from nonfeminist modes of thought? Should feminist theorists try to produce new grand theories as inclusive and self-sufficient as Marxism claimed to be?
DREAMS OF INNOCENCE
Postmodernism is threatening to some feminists because it radically changes the background assumptions and contexts within which debates about such questions are usually conducted. It is often recognized that white feminist politics in the West since the 1960s have been deeply rooted in and dependent upon Enlightenment discourses of rights, individualism, and equality. However the epistemological legacy that feminists have inherited from these discourses has only recently been called into question.1 Postmodernism, especially when compounded by certain aspects of psychoanalysis, necessarily destabilizes the (literal and figurative) grounds of feminist theorizing. It has this effect on many forms of Western philosophy. If one takes some of its central ideas seriously, even while resisting or rejecting others, postmodernism is bound to induce a profound uneasiness, or threatened identity, especially among white Western intellectuals. Our consciousness and positions are among its primary subjects of critical analysis.
One way to read postmodernism is as an articulation of the identity crisis among certain white Western intellectuals. As much as we might like to imagine ourselves as outside or immune to the conditions that produced this crisis, white feminists are deeply affected by them. We cannot simply dismiss reflections on this crisis as irrelevant to our own positions and self-understandings. Our race and geographic location and (generally) our relative economic and social status implicates us in it.
While there are many aspects of the threat that postmodernism poses to the self-understanding of white Western intellectuals, there is one I will emphasize here. Postmodernism calls into question the belief (or hope) that there is some form of innocent knowledge available. This hope recurs throughout the history of Western philosophy (including much of feminist theory). While many feminists have been critical of the content of such dreams, many have also been unable to abandon them.2
By innocent knowledge I mean the discovery of some sort of truth that can tell us how to act in the world in ways that benefit or are for the (at least ultimate) good of all. Those whose actions are grounded in or informed by such truth will also have their innocence guaranteed. They can do only good, not harm, to others. They act as the servant of something higher and outside (or more than) themselves, their own desires, and the effects of their particular histories or social locations.3
One of the great promises of Enlightenment is that truth will set us free. Those whose actions are grounded in truth and whose work gives them a privileged relation to it will be the agents of progress and freedom for all. This story deeply affects white Western intellectualsâ sense of identity and guarantees us a special place in modern political life.
Conflicts between truth and power can be overcome by grounding claims to and the exercise of authority in reason.4 Reason both represents and embodies truth. It partakes of universality in two additional ways: it operates identically in each subject and it can grasp laws that are objectively true, that is, are equally knowable and binding on every person. Power grounded in such truth will never generate domination, only freedom.
Three of the discourses feminists have attempted to adapt to our own purposesâliberal political theory, Marxism, and empirical social scienceâexpress some form of this Enlightenment dream. The coherence and moral force of each theory are dependent upon its grounding in some of these Enlightenment beliefs. Liberal political theorists from John Locke to John Rawls attempt to distinguish legitimate authority from domination by listening for and recording reason's voice. They claim they are articulating a set of rules or beliefs in Reason's own language. To hear Reason's language a rite of purification must be undergone (imagining a âstate of natureâ or drawing the âveil of ignoranceâ around oneself)5 to strip away the merely contingent or historical. The rights or rules that are truly Reason's own and hence binding on all will then re-present themselves. Conformity to these (neutral) laws by the state and its subjects guarantees the rationality, justice, and freedom of both.
Marxists have their own variant of this dream. Their âobjectiveâ ground tends to be History rather than Reason. However, in their account, History itself is ultimately rational, purposive, unitary, law governed, and progressive. In the Marxist view, events in history do not occur randomly; they are connected by and through an underlying, meaningful, and rational structure comprehensible by reason /science. The pregiven purpose of history is the perfection of humans (especially through labor) and the complete realization of their capacities and projects. Marxist theory and its articulator (the Party, the working class, the engaged intellectual) have a privileged relation to History.6 They speak but do not construct its âlawsâ and legitimate their actions by invoking its name. Since History, like Reason, has an essentially teleological and homogeneous content, we can look forward to its âend.â Then all sources of irresolvable conflicts or contradictions will disappear. Authority will take the form of the administration of things rather than the domination of persons. Power will be innocent and human actions in conformity with our highest and most emancipatory potentials.7
Empirical social science also inherits, reflects, and is the beneficiary of Enlightenment dreams. Here the relationship between knowledge and power is mediated by science, or at least by a particular understanding of science. Science is the paradigm of knowledge for Enlightenment thinkers. Modern philosophy, as exemplified by Kant, began with the task of explaining how scientific knowledge is possible. Kant's particular problem was how physics could develop such accurate and reliable knowledge of the physical world.8 Until recently, most influential modern philosophers did not interrogate the belief that science does generate such knowledge.
Social scientists also rarely questioned science's relationship to the Real. Their concern was whether such knowledge could be obtained about the social world and if so what methods were most likely to produce such results.9 They adopted the Enlightenment belief that science is the ideal form of knowledge, the model for the right use of reason, and the methodological paradigm for all truth claims. They accepted a story about science created by pre-Kuhnian philosophers. Science progresses according to this story because its practitioners are governed by a universal and neutral âlogic of discovery.â10 Use of the proper scientific method guarantees that investigators will not distort the data they gather. This method and the scrutiny of the scientific community ensure that investigator bias will be controlled and errors corrected. If social scientists adhere to the rules intrinsic to this logic they too can generate reliable cumulative truth about the Real.
A grounding in science preserves the innocence of the social scientist. Knowledge acquired by the proper methods must reflect the Real (which is also the rational, the benevolent, and the true). Hence knowledge produced by social science can be simultaneously (and without contradiction) neutral, useful, and emancipatory. It can be on the side of good and has no unjustifiable costs. Social scientistsâ knowledge and power can be innocent of bias, prejudice, or ill effects for anyone. Its innocence is warranted by the (universal) truth /laws in which it is grounded.
The plausibility, coherence, or even intelligibility of these claims depends upon a set of unstated background assumptions. These assumptions include a belief that truth and prejudice are clearly distinguishable and dichotomous categories. There is a neutral language available to report our discoveries. The âlogic of discoveryâ operates independent of and without distorting either its subject (user) or object of investigation. The âscientificâ process is self-correcting and governing. It will gradually but necessarily el...
