The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory

Robin Truth Goodman, Robin Truth Goodman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350032392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory was a PROSE Award finalist. The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of the art of contemporary feminist thought. With chapters written by world-leading scholars from a range of disciplines, the book explores the latest thinking on key topics in current feminist discourse, including: · Feminist subjectivity – from identity, difference, and intersectionality to affect, sex and the body
· Feminist texts – writing, reading, genre and critique
· Feminism and the world – from power, trauma and value to technology, migration and community Including insights from literary and cultural studies, philosophy, political science and sociology, The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory is an essential overview of current feminist thinking and future directions for scholarship, debate and activism.

PART ONE

The Subject

CHAPTER ONE

Subject

SUSAN HEKMAN

The question of the feminine subject has, of necessity, been at the forefront of feminist theory. Who is “woman”? How does she relate to “man”? To “human”? As feminists have grappled with these questions, they have come to realize the enormity of the issues involved. It does not suffice to define woman as man’s opposite yet his equal. Nor is it sufficient to declare the humanity of woman. It became clear to feminists early on that “human” is defined in masculine terms. Once feminists began to examine these questions, it seemed that we were embarking on a quest that had no obvious method or answer.

In 1949 in The Second Sex (TSS), Simone de Beauvoir plunged into this morass by asking, “What is a woman?”¹ On one level, it might seem too simplistic to begin with Beauvoir. She is not the only feminist or even the first to ask this question. The value of Beauvoir’s work, however, is the profundity of her analysis. More so than any previous theorist or many who succeeded her, Beauvoir understands that to attempt to define the feminine subject entails calling into question the entire tradition of Western philosophy and theology. It also necessitates redefining the “human.” Although Beauvoir does not state this as clearly as we might like, a careful reading of TSS leads to these conclusions. Beauvoir does not have an answer to the questions she raises, but she defines the radical path that feminist theory must follow in the search for the subject.

The question of the human is from the outset central to Beauvoir’s exploration of “woman.” She first approaches the issue of what it means to be human in The Ethics of Ambiguity (EA).² Employing male pronouns throughout her discussion, Beauvoir asserts that being human is ambiguous in that we are both separate and collective beings. At the core of her theory is the assertion that all human beings are on a moral plane as seekers of freedom. But as she begins to develop this assertion, complexities arise. Women in Western countries, she asserts, lack an apprenticeship in freedom and even consent in their servitude.³ In EA, Beauvoir does not pursue this issue, but in TSS it becomes her principal focus. The One/Other relationship that defines the human, she claims, is primordial, and the One is gendered masculine. It follows that women, who are the Other rather than the One, are denied full subjectivity.

This premise is the impetus behind TSS. Beauvoir declares that the purpose of her book is to assess the condition of women. This she does in great detail, looking at women from the perspectives of biology, religion, philosophy, and social condition. Her analysis probes both the causes and consequences of women’s inferior status in society. It is easy to interpret TSS as doing only this, and many of her interpreters have done so. But there is more going on here than an empirical analysis. What if we read Beauvoir’s analysis not only as a brutally accurate description of the roots of women’s inferiority in society but, rather, also as a definition of the challenge that women must meet and transcend? What if Beauvoir is saying, in effect, that the One/Other dichotomy gives women no way out and it is incumbent on us to develop a new approach—a feminist approach—to find that way? And, finally, what if Beauvoir is saying that our tradition and culture fail to provide a way out and introducing women entails deconstructing the whole edifice?

This more radical interpretation of Beauvoir fits the tenor of TSS more accurately than the conventional interpretation. Interpreting Beauvoir this way clarifies the claim that Beauvoir begins the feminist search for the subject. She makes it clear what is at stake here—the entire Western tradition—and that our search for a subject will entail reinventing the human. It is unfortunate that Beauvoir does not state this as clearly as she might have. It is also unfortunate that she provides us with only a sketch of what that subject might look like. But the overall message is clear: we need to start from scratch, and we need to define our own terms.

What is important about Beauvoir, then, is that she throws down the gauntlet for subsequent feminist explorations of the subject. She outlines the path that these explorations must follow without herself providing us with specifics. Although feminist theorists after Beauvoir have approached the question of the subject from a variety of perspectives, they have all implicitly acknowledged Beauvoir’s thesis—that our task constitutes a radical challenge to the tradition that has defined “woman.”

As feminists moved into this unchartered territory, a particular pattern emerged. First, these thinkers agree with Beauvoir that what is required is, quite literally, a new form of life. They concur that masculinist theorists will be of no help in defining this new form.⁴ Second, each of the major approaches to the subject adds a theoretical element absent from previous theories. If we think of these theorists as building a new edifice, each major theory adds a brick to that edifice as it is constructed. The third element of the pattern, however, is less positive. There is a tendency among feminist theorists to characterize their theories as correcting the errors of previous theories. Instead of defining their contribution as adding to the cumulative enterprise of constructing a radically new subject, most theorists have tended to characterize their predecessors as wrong and their position as correcting these errors. This tendency is unfortunate. Feminist theory would be better served by theorists acknowledging their participation in a common enterprise than by criticizing their predecessors.

The so-called French feminists, principally Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixious, were the first to answer Beauvoir’s call to redefine the subject. They exemplify the pattern described above nearly perfectly. They concur that we need a radically new approach to the subject. In characterizing their approach, Alice Jardine asserts that they are “diving into the wreck of western culture.”⁵ Second, the theoretical elements that these theorists add to the task of defining the subject are psychoanalysis and language. Beauvoir’s disdain for psychoanalysis is well known. Against this, the French feminists embrace psychoanalysis as an analytic tool. Furthermore, they are clear that at the center of the status of woman as “Other” is language. Our language defines women as inherently inferior; no alternatives are available. What is required, Irigaray insists, is to “jam the theoretical machinery.”⁶

Unfortunately, however, these theorists fit the third element of the pattern as well. They claim that Beauvoir had not sufficiently broken away from the tradition she critiqued but was still bound to humanist assumptions. As a consequence, they define the characterization of the subject they propose as a necessary corrective to Beauvoir’s errors. These theorists begin a regrettable tradition in feminist theory that finds it necessary to reject a predecessor in order to advance one’s own theory. Instead of criticizing Beauvoir’s “errors,” it would be much more fruitful—and accurate—to define the emphasis on psychoanalysis and language as compatible additions to the understanding of the subject that they are jointly constructing.

The next major contribution to this edifice is the feminist exploration of the relational subject. It is beyond question that this is a major step forward for the understanding of the feminine subject. At the center of the Western tradition stands the Cartesian subject: autonomous, individual, and separate. This subject not only defines full subjectivity for humans but also defines the opposite of this subject, the relational, connected subject, as inferior. The Cartesian subject embodies the essence of the fully human that only men can achieve. Women’s relational self prevents her from achieving this full subjectivity.

The effort by feminists to define, rather than dismiss, the relational self is a watershed event in the evolution of the feminine subject. The tradition paid scant attention to this subject because it was defined as inherently inferior and hence not worthy of attention. By focusing on the relational subject, feminists in a sense brought her out of the shadows. But more importantly, by claiming equality for the relational subject, feminists in effect challenged the hegemony of the Cartesian subject; the Cartesian subject’s exclusive definition of subjectivity was called into question.

Perhaps the most influential proponent of the relational subject is Carol Gilligan. Although Gilligan does not have the philosophical sophistication of some other relational theorists, what she accomplishes in A Different Voice is nothing short of revolutionary.⁷ What appears on one level to be merely an empirical analysis of how women’s moral reasoning differs from that of men, what Gilligan is actually accomplishing is a challenge to the entire Western tradition. Her argument is directed against one aspect of that tradition: the understanding of moral reasoning as necessarily involving abstraction, removal from circumstances, and the appeal to universal principles. The belief that this style of moral reasoning, and it alone, will produce singular and absolute moral truth was constitutive of Western thought.

Gilligan’s counter is deceptively simple. Through a careful analysis she concludes, first, that women’s moral reasoning is different from that of men and, second, that it is equally valid. Her first conclusion would receive little resistance. The second, however, embodies the radical element of her argument. It calls into question the definition of moral truth extant in the tradition. In that tradition, there can be only one moral truth and that truth is arrived at through the abstract principled reasoning defined by the Cartesian subject. There is no room for a second equally valid truth.

The parallel here between Gilligan and Beauvoir is striking. Both effect a radical displacement of the tradition, but neither offers a philosophical satisfying account of this displacement. We wish both had done so. But the net effect remains: both challenged the sacred cows of Western thought and suggested a radical alternative. Gilligan’s work resonated strongly with a cross-section of women because she reaffirmed what they already knew—that their moral reasoning was different but equally valid from that of the accepted version. But in so doing she brought down the long tradition that established the sole validity of Cartesian morality.⁸

There is another parallel between Gilligan and Beauvoir as well. From a Beauvoirian perspective, Gilligan fails to challenge the One/Other dichotomy at the center of Western thought. Her strategy, instead, is to attempt to elevate the status of the Other to equality with the One. Subsequent work will reveal this to be a futile strategy. We need to displace this dichotomy, not try to redefine it. But this does not diminish the importance of the relational subject in feminist thought.

The theorists discussed thus far have followed Beauvoir’s lead by attempting to redefine “woman” apart from masculinist theories. But there are two exceptions to this pattern: liberal feminism and Marxist/socialist feminism. In both of these cases, feminists attempted to base their theories of the subject in masculine theories. The failure of these attempts reinforces Audre Lorde’s famous statement that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

The connections between liberalism and feminism go back well before Beauvoir to the liberal tradition of Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But, as Zillah Eisenstein argues in The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, the contradictions between liberalism and feminism doomed this association from the beginning.⁹ The sexually egalitarian and collectivist roots of feminism are fundamentally incompatible with liberalism’s patriarchal individualism. Despite this, many attempts have been made to link the two. We live in a society founded on liberalism, a society in which women are overcoming many aspects of patriarchy. It seems to follow that feminists should embrace liberalism because it fosters equality and freedom, two key feminist values. But the argument for liberal feminism always founders on the contradictions that Eisenstein describes. Theorists such as Susan Moller Okin and Martha Nussbaum make impressive arguments for liberal feminism.¹⁰ But they cannot overcome the impossibility of fitting feminism into the individualism of liberalism and the Cartesian subject on which it is founded. The defenders of liberal feminism inevitably produce theories that are neither feminist nor liberal.

The relationship between Marxism and feminism is equally complex. As with liberalism, the connection between the two seemed initially obvious. Both are libertory theories that hold out hope for freedom from the oppression of capitalism and patriarchy, respectively. But it so...