Feminism and Postmodernism (A Boundary 2 Book)

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Editorialcorrespondence PaulA. Bove, boundary2, University of Pittsburgh,526 Cathedralof Learning,FifthAvenue, PittsburghPA 15260. Submissionsshould be preparedfollowingThe Chicago Manual of Style, 13th edition,and should be submittedin triplicate,double-spaced throughout,and accompaniedby a stamped, self-addressedenvelope and, when possible, by an Apple-or disk. IBM-compatible

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a. 0

C Mil Special Issue Feminism and Postmodernism Coedited by MargaretFerguson JenniferWicke

boundary 2 an internationaljournal of literatureand culture Volume 19, Number2 Summer 1992

Duke University Press

I3

boundary 2 an internationaljournalof literatureand culture

Founding Editor WilliamV. Spanos Editor Paul A. Bove Review Editor Daniel O'Hara Managing Editor MargaretH. Sachse Editorial Collective Jonathan Arac, Universityof Pittsburgh Paul A. Bov6, Universityof Pittsburgh Joseph A. Buttigieg, Universityof Notre Dame MargaretFerguson, Universityof Colorado Nancy Fraser, NorthwesternUniversity Michael Hays, Cornell University Daniel O'Hara,Temple University Donald E. Pease, DartmouthCollege WilliamV. Spanos, SUNY at Binghamton Cornel West, Princeton University Editorial Board Wlad Godzich, Universityof Geneva, Switzerland Stuart Hall,Open University,U.K. FredricJameson, Duke University KarlKroeber,Columbia University Masao Miyoshi, Universityof California,San Diego EdwardW. Said, Columbia University GayatriSpivak, Columbia University Alan Wilde, Temple University Advisory Editors John Beverley, Universityof Pittsburgh TerryCochran, Wesleyan UniversityPress Carol Kay, Universityof Pittsburgh Jim Merod, National University Bruce Robbins, Rutgers University Hortense Spillers, Emory University

Contents Jennifer Wicke and MargaretFerguson / Introduction: Feminism and Postmodernism;or, The Way We Live Now / 1 Jennifer Wicke / Postmodern Identitiesand the Politics of the (Legal) Subject / 10 MaryPoovey / Feminism and Postmodernism-Another View / 34 Linda Nicholson / Feminism and the Politics of Postmodernism / 53 Anne McClintock/ Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law / 70 TorilMoi/ Ambiguityand Alienationin The Second Sex / 96 KathrynBond Stockton / Bodies and God: PoststructuralistFeminists Returnto the Fold of SpiritualMaterialism/ 113 Salwa Bakr/ "Inthe Golden ChariotThings WillBe Better"/ translated by Barbara Harlow / 150 Carla Freccero / Our Lady of MTV:Madonna's"Likea Prayer" / 163 Claire Detels / Soft Boundaries and Relatedness: Paradigmfor a Postmodern Feminist MusicalAesthetics / 184 Andrew Ross / Wet, Dark,and Low, Eco-ManEvolves from Eco-Woman / 205 MarjorieGarber/ "Greatness":Philologyand the Politics of Mimesis / 233

Laura E. Lyons / "Atthe End of the Day":An Interviewwith Mairead Keane, National Head of Sinn Fein Women's Department / 260 Books Received / 287 Contributors / 295

Introduction: Feminism and Postmodernism; or, The Way We Live Now

Jennifer Wicke MargaretFerguson It may seem odd to echo Trollope in the introductionto a collection whose domain appears to be at the farthest remove fromthe vanished certainties of the worldof the nineteenth-centuryrealistnovel. Yet, the boldness of Trollope's title can also serve to mark a strong boundary line for our own volume-in a quite simple sense, the awkwardpairingformed by linkingfeminism and postmodernismis a descriptionof our lives. The feminism practiced, theorized, and lived by many women (and men) today is set against, or arises within,the vicissitudes of a transformingpostmodernity-as a set of practices, an arena of theory, and a mode of life. This may not be a comfortable dwelling place, but it does make up a world, a form of life (shiftingthe echoes to those notions of Heidegger or Wittgenstein which are apt here), with which feminism necessarily conjures. The animating idea of this issue is that postmodernism is, indeed, a name for the way we live now, and it needs to be taken account of, put into practice, and even contested withinfeminist discourses as a way of coming to terms with our lived situations. This is not to say that postmodernityis to be boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

2 boundary2 / Summer1992 celebrated unquestioningly;if it trulyis a rubriccovering the conditions of theory and practice in our time, this demands resistance at least as much as an empowering embrace. How feminism willtransformpostmodernism, as well as how postmodernism alters feminism, are the pressing questions of this moment. The crossing-over of criticalterms impliedby the subterfuge of and, as in Feminism and Postmodernism, wherein the neutrality of the and covers a multitudeof criticalquestions and fierce debates, if not sins, can allow for cross-fertilization,and even forcrossing out or mutualcancellation. As theoretical discourses, both feminism and postmodernism are porous, capacious; equally, they are discourses on the move, ready to leap over borders and confound boundaries. Their intersection in this issue is meant both to provideactive and passive positions for each discourse vis-a-vis the other and to show that that binarydoes not begin to exhaust the positionalities it is possible to invent in the name of feminism and postmodernism. In seeking out and gathering essays for this issue, we, as editors, could not rest comfortablywith entirelyprovisionalmeanings for either term of the title. Tippingour hand to reveal the versions of postmodernism and feminism we held to in order to make our choices of texts is useful if only to underscore the multipleironies of such a linkage. For feminism, we read materialist feminism, feminist theory and practice-however divergentpremised on materialconditions, on the social constructionof gender, and on an understanding of the gender hierarchy as relational and multiple and never in itself simply exhaustive. This is not a matter of formulating an arena of female difference or differences; rather than articulating an essential "difference,"or a woman's "text"or "voice,"the emphasis falls on considering how feminist issues never arrive single-handedly-materialist feminism attempts to move beyond the additive logic of female differences to a grounded, but volatile, understandingof gender in relation to myriad other determinations. Such an understandingincludes the possibility that in given instances gender is not the bedrock oppression. Postmodernism is less easy to qualifyor pin down, but in this collection it does connote a historicalshift, not merely an immanentfeature of language, a moment that, for theory, might be regarded as the critical historicizingof poststructuralisms,in general, the acknowledgment that shifts in theory also are located historicallyand systemically. Postmodernism so conceived has a material situation, what David Harvey calls "the condition of postmodernity,"a situation, of course, open to debate and reconceptualization but still to be seen in relation to concrete phenomena of

Wickeand Ferguson/ Introduction3 material, social, economic, and culturallife.' This designation may be one that, retrospectively, is going to look confining or ill-advised, and, indeed, some theorists like Stuart Hall and even David Harvey are hedging their bets and using post-Fordism to characterizethis feature of our social world; post-Fordism, which refers to what comes after the capitalisteconomics of Fordism (Gramsci's name for the mode of productionhe found best characterized by Henry Ford's assembly-line techniques of rationalizinglabor), is conceptually inadequate-and not catchy enough-to cover phenomena like Madonna's iconic image or the photographicwork of Cindy Sherman, since the term is so exclusively economistic a notion. Postmodernism, in our view, still has some shelf life left as the best umbrellaterm for the cultural, social, and theoretical dimensions of our period. The attempt to think through the transformationsin "geoculture"(Isaiah Berlin'shelpful phrase for our new site)2 by dintof a historicallyspecific postmodernismwillsurely retain its usefulness. Feminist postmodernism once read as an oxymoron, and postmodern feminism still has an uncertain valence. Craig Owens wrote his nowclassic article "The Discourse of Others" precisely to complain of the absence of feminist theory per se withinpostmodernism,while feminist practices, in the form of art, mass culture, and politics, were so evident and prominent within it.3 Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson wrote a memorable essay framingthe "encounterbetween feminismand postmodernism," making it clear that feminism has many reasons to be wary of the encounter but also has many things to gain in a theoreticalsense.4 This present issue is impelled by the task of reading each discourse through the lens of the 1. The geographerDavidHarvey'scomprehensivesocioeconomicand culturaltreatment of postmodernismas a distincthistoricalphase appearsin his 1989 book The Condition of Postmodernity:An Enquiryintothe Originsof CulturalChange (Oxford:BasilBlackwell Ltd.,1989). 2. ImmanuelWallersteinhas an interestingdiscussion of the linkageof racism/sexism in the global worldsystem in his Geopoliticsand Geoculture:Essays on the Changing WorldSystem (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991). 3. CraigOwens's articleappears in TheAnti-Aesthetic:Essays on PostmodernCulture (PortTownsend,Wash.:Bay Press, 1983),a now-standardcollectionon postmodernism, edited by Hal Foster. 4. See "SocialCriticismwithoutPhilosophy:An Encounterbetween Feminismand Postmodernism,"in Theory,Cultureand Society 5, nos. 2-3 (1988): 373-94. For further importantworkin this vein, consult Nancy Fraser'sbook UnrulyPractices (Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), and the collectionedited by LindaNicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism(New York:Routledge,1990). Teresa Ebert'sreview of this

4 boundary2 / Summer1992 other, putting each term under the pressure of a conjunctionacross disciplinary and political lines. Feminist theory and practice, in the materialist sense outlined above, now requirean understandingof the transformations of postmodernity,while a postmodernpolitics-and again, in the thoroughly politicized mode of it we have adopted-entails feminism as a cutting edge of its critique. The essays in this collection trace the mutually inflecting politics of feminism and postmodernism into the arenas of culturalproduction, legal discourse, and philosophicalgrounding,and suggest, as well, the global contours of their interaction.These essays take a variety of paths, turningthe prismof postmodernfeminismonto culturalobjects, focusing on the theoretical dimensions of politics or illuminatingthe politics of theory, and often reflecting back on the act of writinga feminist postmodernism. This issue of boundary 2 includes essays on a wide range of cultural productions originatingin and circulatingacross many differentgeopolitical sites. Fromthe women's prison in Egypt,whichformsthe setting of the story by Salwa Bakr, as translated by Barbara Harlow and published here in English for the firsttime, throughthe prostitutionlaws invoked in such countries as Austria, France, England, and South Africa,as analyzed by Anne McClintockin "Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law,"to a popular U.S. MTVvideo-Madonna's "Likea Prayer"-which reproduces a highlycharged image of Catholic Italian-Americanwomanhood, as examined by Carla Freccero-the phenomena studied in this collection cross, and even confound, boundaries among nations, languages, and media. The writersassess conjunctions and collisions between feminism and postmodernism without presupposing any stable definitionof either of these terms, because they are enacting the practices of feminist postmodernism and postmodern feminism. Defined, provisionally,in terms of the tasks it attempts, a postmodern feminism can analyze the gendering of representations into canonical and noncanonical divisions exemplifyingsexual difference,as ClaireDetels incisively shows: Categories of postmodern theory give feminism a foothold in the solidly masculinist terrainof music theory, where postmodernitymakes the case for the blurringof canon boundaries furtherinterrogatedby feminist questions of value and hierarchy.MarjorieGarberillustratesthe implicit hierarchizations of culturalmonumentalityfor a range of Western literary masterpieces in "'Greatness': Philologyand the Politics of Mimesis,"even in The Women'sReview of Books 8, no. 4 InfiniteVariety," collection,"Postmodernism's to the issue in its own right. introduction is an excellent (January1991):24-28,

WickeandFerguson/ Introduction5 in the instance of the sale of wisdom as a culturalcommodity in the Great Books Series. Here, postmodern feminism exhibits itself also as a style of commentary, an aesthetics of analysis capable of using postmodern theory as a feminist power tool. KathrynBond Stockton's essay provides a surprising postmodern encounter between Victoriantheories of the body and an Irigarayanmaterialistspirituality,wherein materialistfeminism is invigorated by taking to the dance floorwith postmoderndiscourses to provide a revivified (sexual, textual) body politics. Inall these instances, postmodernism is a strategic form for feminist writing,as well as for analysis. Postmodernism has entered the feminist legal realm of equality, rights, and politicalidentityin particularlycharged ways in recent years, as several essays in this issue propose. MaryPoovey investigates postmodern masculine subjectivities for their ramificationon the concrete political issue of abortion rights in "Feminismand Postmodernism-Another View"; she exhibits the postmodern technological basis underpinningour images of masculinity and femininityby investigatingthe film Terminator2 with its real female cyborg. Andrew Ross offers a postmodern spin on the cultural politics of male bonding and its unexpected bridge to the environmental movement's feminist wing, and the polyglot,and surprisingnature, of postmodern politics, legalisms, and theirstrange affinities.As AndrewRoss has argued elsewhere, along with Donna Haraway,Meaghan Morris,and other critics, postmodernism must be specifically confronted as a congeries of technological and informationalforms transformingboth the objects and the subjects of knowledge. A feminist postmodernism will understand the mediated nature of knowledge and representation, as well as the altered politicalsubject produced by these mediations. Both postmodern theory and feminist theory are rooted in longstanding philosophicaldebates, with importantpoliticalrepercussions. The philosophical categories Simone de Beauvoirdeployed as vital aspects of feminist praxis are disentangled by TorilMoi in "Ambiguityand Alienation in The Second Sex"; this salient feminist history is ready for a second, postmodern reading to highlight its relevance to contemporary debates. The turn back to Beauvoir by feminism needs to be accomplished with the same theoretical and politicalfinesse as has been shown in the returnto Benjamin, or Adorno, or Freud, for example. LindaNicholson engages the philosophical constraints of a feministpoliticaltheory in "Feminismand the Politics of Postmodernism,"taking up polemical questions within feminist practice as it engages the sometimes hostile discourse of postmodernity. In preparing this issue, we ourselves encountered the increasingly

6 boundary2 / Summer1992 fraught dimensions of feminist and postmodern politics. The primaryissue was the perceived urgency of identitypolitics, the felt need to line up contributors along a spectrum of identities-racial, gender, sexual, and regional-in order to cover what then becomes the "topic"with a multitude of representative voices. Not only was this a politics far removed from our own questioning of identities as the sole basis for political response, but supplying this "correctness"proved to be impossible, in any event, for the ironic reason that so many competing demands are made of those who fill identity slots that the perfect ensemble of identities proved elusive to muster. In this way, people are livingout many of the contradictions of an identity politics that invades theoretical realms (like special issues of journals, for example) with increasing fervor.Being forced to thinkthrough the consequences of a rainbowcoalitionof feminismand postmodernism,since it could not be provided, in any case, was salutary.A majoraspect of the way we live now is the haunting requirementto match up identities with putative experiences, to click invisibledesignations into place, to "have one or more of each." Whileour contributorsare widely and even wildlydiverse, what has emerged as salient on the politicalfront,too, is how imperative it is to resist identityas the sole criterionof either a feministor a postmodern politics. The triumphaldisplaying of Camille Paglia recently has interesting implications for feminism and postmodernism. Paglia has adopted something like a postmodern antifeminismwith strong individualistovertones; her success in gaining access to a huge variety of media and culturaloutlets is partiallya functionof the postmodernconditionitself, wherein Paglia can annex herself to star figures like Madonnaand extol her postmodernity as an antifeministstance. What Paglia foregrounds,often archlyand outrageously, is sexual difference, wielding it like a cleaver to separate the girls from the boys. Her emphasis on sexuality is perversely useful to the concerns of a feminist postmodernism, since it underscores not only the dangers of a postmodernism sans feminist concerns but also the greater peril of any feminism unable to accept representation,fantasy, and, ultimately, sexuality as a postmodern phenomenon. Carla Freccero, in writingabout an ethnic background she shares both with Madonna and with Paglia, is able to show a differenttrajectorythan Paglia does for feminist postmodernism in the intricacies of sex, race, and gender that Madonna flaunts, and even theorizes; Anne McClintockpushes our understandingof sexuality past easy determinations of oppression in her assessment of sex as

Wickeand Ferguson/ Introduction7 labor and its internationalscope. Camille Paglia is an admittedthorn in the side of feminism, but she can be, perhaps, a goad for a feminist postmodernism able to harness the flamboyant,and potentiallyliberatory,fantasies the imagistic world of the postmodern sets free. Finally,feminism and postmodernism urgentlyconverge in a need to theorize systemic relations and a global politics. In this light, Laura E. Lyons's interviewwith MaireadKeane, Irishfeminist and National Head of Sinn Fein's Women's Department,tests the parameters of feminist politics in a national and an internationalcontext. What feminism means pragmatically in a situationof politicalorganizingand ongoing conflictmust affect our notion of feminism and postmodernismas a practice, includingthe chance that the relations will become complex and even oppositional.The increasing fragmentation of the categories of gender, class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, and religionchallenge easy coalitions and the privilegingof singular politicalidentities, includingthat of 'woman'or even 'feminist'.5At the same time, such de-centering offers fresh possibilitiesfor politicalalignments and furthers a reconceptualizationof the multiplesites of feminism. This issue of boundary 2, as a whole, seeks to map the boundaries between postmodernism and feminism, while it envisions a new terrainfor their crossing in a materialistfeminist politics. Feminist materialistthought requires a geocultural reorientationas well, and it is to supply this that our particularadmixtureof feminism and postmodernism is shaken and bottled as a special issue of boundary 2. To point to a globalism is neither to gesture toward global unity nor to exhort that global differences be given theirdue-in short, this collection does not advocate a refurbishedpluralismor relativism,nor is itcallingfor a thousand flowers of feminist postmodernism to bloom. Globalism, in this theoretical construct, refers to the location of feministtheory as a lever in the ongoing global discursive relation, whose power dynamics, as we know, are not equal. There are reasons why feminism, as currentlyconstrued, emerges at particulartimes in the histories of Western and Europeanstates and why it is attached to particularformationswithincapitalistsocieties. Such a realization is not a questioning of the grounds of feministstruggle, and certainly 5. IntheirestimablevolumePostmodernTheory:CriticalInterrogations(New York:Guilford Press, 1991), authorsSteven Best and Douglas Kellnerconsign the discussion of feminismto a chapterentitled"Marxism,Feminismand PoliticalPostmodernism." This is acute in many ways-especially for materialistfeminism-but it also bringsout the tensions in the "practical" notionof feminismas primarily praxis.

8 boundary2 / Summer1992 not a disparagement of feminist theory as "Western"or taintedly capitalist. On the contrary.The universalityof women's oppression, however, has been theorized by a feminismthat has often thoughtof itself in universalizing terms withoutseeing the systematicity of the actual social relations obtaining in the movement from the local to the global plane of analysis, where the real location of (much) feminist theory is thereby effaced. A materialist feminism above all needs to situate itself, while seeing that situations change over time, needs to keep abreast of the dialectic within feminist theory between the local and the global, and needs to note unflinchingly the limitsof the discourse in order to make it better.A purelycelebratory or identitypolitics precludes the radicaldisidentificationsthat must be made in the global circumstances of feminist politics today and evades the multiple overdeterminations that forge an identity and its resulting politics. Postmodernism has also been a culpritin failingto consider its location. There has been a tendency to embrace its tenets, or at least its alluringcultural shapes, withoutthoughtforthe placement of postmodernismin a largersystem. This larger system entails not only the division of power, wealth, and labor across the globe, where the centralfeatures of postmodernity-information, technologization of knowledge, dependence on the image-carry out a fearfully inequitable hierarchy,but also the specific educational and publishing institutions,themselves partof largersocioeconomic systems. It is often postmodernity,in this sense, that exacts an enormous price from those who produce it or who experience its politicalfallout. Even dystopian postmodernists like Jean Baudrillardcan fail to critiquethe dissymmetries postmodernism, as a social form and as a theory, can create, while theorists as alert as Donna Harawayhave at times too readilyutopianized the cyborgean potential of the postmodern.6 Ultimately,the task for a feminist postmodernism or a postmodern feminism is to remain self-aware and self-critical-to be theory, in the strongest definition of the term. Theory, however, as we know, is notoriously susceptible to puttingon airs, to assuming master status, and, beyond The Perfumeof Infor6. This is arguedmorefullyby JenniferWickein "Postmodernism: mation,"YaleJournalof Criticism1, no. 2 (1989):145-60. ForDonnaHaraway'sfascinating and importantessay "ManifestoforCyborgs,"and an importantcritiqueof it by Joan Scott, see the anthologyComing to Terms:Feminism,Theory,Politics, ed. Elizabeth Weed (NewYorkand London:Routledge,1989).Thiscollectionalso containsan essay by MargaretFergusonsituatingthe problemsof a feministrhetoricof identityand difference withgreat relevanceto the assumptionsof this collection(see "Commentary: Postponing Politics,"34-44).

Wickeand Ferguson/ Introduction9 that, to erasing its own tenuous location. A global feminist theory is as yet unformed;it may look something like a combinationof feminism and postmodernism, or that may be simplya way station. Achievinga global feminist theory withouttotalizing,withoutmastery, is the possibilityever at the edge of our horizons. In the meantime, lodged in the productiveand conflictual uncertainties of feminism and postmodernism,this is the way we live now.

Postmodern Identities and the Politics of the (Legal) Subject

Jennifer Wicke Postmodernism has an alchemical sheen, the abilityto conjoin with disparate words and imparta heady gloss to them, a frisson of difference, a catalyzing agency, the torque of the new. Injust such a manner,the coming together of "postmodernism"and the Legal Subject, with the stern capital L of the Law intact, promises to be a dynamic coupling, postmodernism offering to put its delirious spin on the rigor,and fixity,of the body of law. Of course, in this scenario postmodernismcarries all the significationsof glamour and seduction, the law remainingan unwillingor at least staid partnerin the dalliance. Equallygalvanizing is the conjunctureof postmodernism with feminism, since feminism has a ratherdutifulmien these days in contrast to the potential exhilarationgiven off by postmodernity,however misleadingly. These intertwiningsgive off theoretical sparks but also real tensions in praxis, especially when the issue is how to adjudicate the problems of identity in the real world situation of feminist politics. In addressing postmodernism as it carves out the terrainof identity,as a conceptual term, and then following the collision of this logic with the formidabledominance of boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright2c 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

Wicke/ Postmodern Identities11 the (female)subjectof and underthe law,Iwillbe mappinga tensionthat and the politicsof idenmay signala misalliancebetweenpostmodernism tity,one withpoliticalconsequences.The two senses of a legal subjectas a subjectarea underthe headingof the law,and as the humansubject constitutedby legaldiscourse-both come intoplayinthistensionwith the importunities of postmodernidentity,thattermitselfcoveringboththe identityof the postmodernandwhatwe couldconsidera newlydetermined of legaldispostmodernidentitypolitics.The inevitable"postmodernizing" which have local to should not come in course, may many insights offer, the guise of depoliticizing the discursiveammunition thatthe law provides the legal subjectwithinthe nets of postmodernhegemonicforms.Inshort, whileembracingthe postmoderninsofaras itprovidesa critiqueof the selfevidentfieldof Law,I willsuggest also the ambivalencesinherentin this embrace.1 One of the most interesting,albeitappalling,featuresof contemporarylife in the UnitedStates is the extent to whichargumentsover the natureof femalesubjectivity arecrystallizedinan ongoingseries of trialsliteraland figurative,spectacularor less so-a series thatsets the subject of female identityin the seat of legaltestimony.These trials,whetherthey take place in an actualcourthouseor not, are culturalattemptsto assess or regulateor demarcateWomanwithina legalor politicaldiscourse.They are interrogations of the "feminine" enjoinedbythe spectaculartechniques of postmodernmedia.(Whilemen are puton spectaculartrialas well, as the cases of MikeTysonorWilliamKennedySmithor even JeffreyDahmer bear out, whatis at issue is nottheirstatus as men, or masculinebeings, but ratherthe natureof theiractionsand howthose are to be legallydefined.)As such, the trialshave a muchmorecomplexrole to play in the formationof the politicsof the femalesubjectthantheirsurfacetransparency wouldsuggest. Itis temptingto code themsimplyas outrageousand insidiousdemonizationsof women,givencredenceby the legal trappings thatsurroundthe event. Ina ratherspookyway,however,the proliferation of trialimages connectsto the issue of postmodernidentityformationas it intersectswithfeminism.The resultsof thisintersectionare notas clear-cut as mightbe anticipated-the results,as they say, are surprising. The primaryshibbolethof postmoderntheory,withoutany doubt, is its deprecationof "identity" in any form,whetherconceptualor logical 1. This essay is dedicatedto the late MaryJo Frug,for her pioneeringeffortstowarda postmodernlegal feminism.

2 / Summer 1992 12 boundary self-identity,referentialidentity,or the singularidentityof the subject.This is quite appropriate,since postmoderntheoryowes its inheritanceof the of the Derrideankind, questioningof identityto its rootsinpoststructuralism where it is takenas a giventhatidentitiesmustbe dissolved,unbound,or at least thoroughlysplicedand diced whereverthey appear.JudithButler gives a virtuallyclassic statementof this projectof postmodernphilosophical feministinquiry:"Thetask is to formulatewithinthis constitutedframe a critiqueof the categoriesof identitythatcontemporary juridicalstructures engender, naturalize,and immobilize."2 Commentingon the problemof identity,also underthe sign of a postmodernpoliticalphilosophicalinquiry, ErnestoLaclauwritesthat"the'essentialidentity'of the entityin question will always be transgressed and redefined .... [It]cannot be constituted as

an objectseparatefromthose conditionssince we knowthatthe conditions of existence of any contingentidentityare internalto the latter."3 Bothcapthe degreeto whicha feministand sule versionspresentedhere illuminate politicallyorientedpostmoderntheorytakes identityas its target. Yet we confrontthe very evidentparadoxthat identitypoliticshas never reignedmoresupremethan now,at whatpostmodernists,including Acrossthe boardof political myself,mightterm"thecurrentconjuncture." a politicspredicated andculturalagitation,the emphasisis fullyon delimiting of idention identities,celebratingidentities,callingforthe representation identitiesintocunninglystrategic ties, marketingidentities,andsubdividing politicalslices. Withinfeminism,the issue of identitypoliticsfoldsbackinto the ongoingdebates aboutessentialismversussocial constructionof gender identity.Itshouldbe clearsimplyfromlivedexperiencethatas muchas postmoderntheoryis squarelyand utterlyin the campof social construction-for genderidentitiesandanyandallidentities,as elucidatedaboveinfluential. Considera postmodernidentitypoliticsexists and is terrifically in this feminist and of the domain essay, I wantto theory practice ing only a authorizes how politicsof identity analyze postmodernismparadoxically simultaneouswithits critiqueof identity.Theterrainforthis analysiswillbe thatof the trialof the (legal)subject,the womanputativelyon trial,and the audienceforthatinquisition. Postmodernfeminismoperatesin a contradictory climate,one paras philosophers contradictions are While of its own inevitable, making. tially 2. JudithButler,Gender Trouble(New York:Routledge,1990), 5. 3. Ernesto Laclau,New Reflectionson the Revolutionof Our Time(New York:Verso, 1990), 24.

Wicke/ Postmodern Identities13 fromHegel to Marxto Nietzscheto Derridato de Beauvoirhave pointed are productiveand engendering,they can also styout, and contradictions mie thought.As an often unwilling,but at times enthusiastic,participant in the discourseof whatcouldbe calledpostmodernfeminismor feminist postmodernism,I nonethelesssee the need to arraignthe problemsof a postmodernpoliticsof identitymorethoroughlythan has been done, by of postmodern pushingpast the feintof identitybashingto the proliferation identityfixations. Postmodernism or postmodernity cannotbe takenas a givenin any culturaldiscourse,particularly wheredisciplinary and discursiveand even ontologicalboundariesare beingcrossed. Such difficultiesare rifein any inanycontextwhatever,because the postof postmodernity, foregrounding modernhas a highlyequivocalconceptualstatus,an uncertainprovenance, anda variableandoftenconflictual set of interlocutors. Thereare morethan of flavors and sortingout the indiciaand differthirty-one postmodernism, entia of these criticalbrandsentailsopeninga theoreticalPandora'sbox, especiallyaptforfeminism. It is necessary to elide a fragmentedhistoryand gloss over problems in formulatinga feministpostmodern;I do this not nonchalantlybut with concern for the occlusionsthat willfollowin my criticalwake. Any serious considerationof postmodernity wouldhave to stem both froma historicalperiodizationwhere the termpostmoderndescribeda genuine convergenceof historicalphenomenaat a specific,if looselychosen, time, and also froma recognitionthatpostmodernismrefersto a congeries of theoreticalsuppositionsaboutthe natureof language,texts, and human the majorarticulations subjectswithinthe lens of the social. Interestingly, of the postmodernhave arisenin campsthatconstruethese two assumptions as antithetical,and that has implicationsfor the politicsinherentin of feministdiscourse,especiallyinthe areaof identity any postmodernizing formation. FredricJameson'sessay "Postmodernism and ConsumerSociety" is a touchstonehere, for regardlessof whatflavorof postmodernismone is led to choose, one has to considerthis essay.4Jameson is the firstto state succinctlythatpostmodernism is a historicalmomentthatexpresses 4. FredricJameson's seminal essay has appearedin several forms,shorterand longer, over time, but one signal version of it appears in Postmodernismand Its Discontents, ed. E. Ann Kaplan(London:Verso Press, 1988), 13-29. See also the recentlycollected essays by FredricJameson on postmoderntopicsin Postmodernism,or the Logicof Late Capitalism(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress, 1991).

14 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 "thelogicof the cultureof late capitalism." Jamesongets at postmodernity initiallythroughthe attemptto understandthe aestheticobjectspostmodernitynecessarilyproduces,since for himall art and culturewillstem from the materialconditionsof the society in whichit is producedand received. Postmodernistartwillbe a bricolage,a collectionof scrapsand fragments pasted together,hybridizing highart and mass culture,recyclingimages and narratives,determinedly unoriginal. are set up, the AfterJameson's informal"laws"of postmodernity methodand the objectof postmodernstudyare irretrievably altered;the forlegaldiscoursearealso clear,sincethe assumptionsabout ramifications the legal text shift accordingly.Not that the legal text now is shaped as eitherparodyor pastiche,butrather,the legaltextceases to emanatefrom an originpointof timeless authorityor as a singulartransmission.Beyond the considerationof discretelegaltextsas alteredtextualobjects,the "postmodern"wouldinvadean accountof the Lawtoutcourt,to putit punningly; postmoderncriticalattitudeswoulddirectattentionto the filteringof legal discourse throughelectronicmedia,as in televised courtroomtrialsand even phenomenalikethe much-watched congressionalqueryingof Judge Thomas. By the termslegal or the law here I mean somethingmore attenuated,what Foucaultreferredto as the juridicopolitical, perhaps-how subjectsareformedbythe state.Thishas keenrelevanceforthe moldingof female subjectsinthe spectacularpublicdiscoursesof lawand testimony. discursiveobThe ineluctablyhybridand multiplenatureof contemporary sacred of precincts legal thoughtand jects wouldinvadeeven the more action;since legal discourseis not by and largeself-consciouslyartistic, what is meantby this is the culturalframingby whichand throughwhich legal formsare perceivedand acted out. None of these changes can be consideredwithouttakingintoaccountthe material,historicalspecificityof a vast societalchangeundergoneinWesterncountries,at leastsince World WarII,and prescientvarietiesof postmodernthoughtarticulatethe politiand postindustrial cal effects of "latecapitalism" societyas these inflectall its and modern of subjects. society aspects Secondly,Jameson discerns a change in the affect the workof art evokes or evinces, fromthe anxietyor alienationof modernism'ssubject, nicely emblematizedfor Jameson in EdvardMunch'spaintingThe Scream, to what must be called the schizophrenicsubject of postmodis the emergentpsychicnormof the postmodern, ernism."Schizophrenia" intoa succession of instants, the consumerconsciousness disintegrating informaof mass imagesandcommodified condemnedthroughthe ubiquity

Wicke/ Postmodern Identities15 tionto livein a timeless nowratherthanthe centering,fulltimeof meaning and history.It is preciselythe genderingof this consumerconsciousness that Jameson's essay tends to veer away from,however,and that gap leaves us witha continuedfissurein our understanding: Howis it thatthe and of are celebrated multiplicity fragmentedness identity by postmodern theoryand also denigratedby it as a "female"consciousness? Jameson'spostmodernism tendsto homogenizeortotalizethe conat holdtoo manycontradictory times, cept makingpostmodernism phenomena. Whatis mostsalientfora feministpostmodernism tracingsome lineof descent fromJamesonis the absence of any specificityforfeminismwithin this totalization.Thisis notto makethe ratherdrearychargethatJameson is insufficiently awareof feminismbut,instead,to exhortus to lookat the that ways identitypoliticsemergesfromwithinthisversionof the postmodern. Jameson praises the strugglesof feministgroups,along withthose of gay activistsand people of color,as exemplaryof postmodernpolitics: Jameson'spostmodernism local, critical,and, yes, entirelyidentity-based. is hugelysystemic-that is at once its greatstrengthand its weakness, in thatitcan'tquitelocatethe local,althoughitknowsitmustbe there.(Iadmit to muchpreferring this flawover its opposite,the far morecommonproblemof seeing onlythe local,whiledenigrating systemicanalysisand global Feminism is for critiques.) present, Jameson,in the formof identitymovements or identityimages. Thattheoreticalmove has real consequences, because he sees theory(inthe formof cultural critique)as sidelinedbypostmodernism,paralyzedby its insidiousgrip.The nostalgicand despairing cast of Jamesonianpostmodernism has hadits effects,since ithas become in too it of to only easy light overemphasizethe impotenceof the subject, or person,caughtin itstoils,andto failto recognizethe manyopportunities forrefashioningand redesigningthe culturalcontoursof postmodernforms. Jameson confrontsthis emptinessand longsforthe lostsocial community that pre-datessuch amnesiaand exists nowonly in the glimpseof utopia conjuredup withinmass culture.Withoutdredgingup such longings,one does resituatethe culturalscene in all its may agree that postmodernity parametersandthatthe notionof the legalsubjectcan be stretchedbeyond recognitionby this new postmodernspace. A fairlyrecent and spectacularexampleof the implosionof postmodernityintothe legal subjectoccurredin the Wisconsintrialof a man for rape. The courtwas told that the rapedwomanwas sufferingfroma disorderandthatonlyone of the personalitieswas the multiple-personality rape victim. This rich scenario of the postmodernizingof legal subjectivity

2 / Summer 16 boundary 1992 unfoldedwithJamesonianmelancholiainthe nexusbetweenthe mediaand the courts,as the labile,fissuredidentityof a sort of folk-postmodernism, or postmodernismvia the NationalEnquirer(as sensationalized"multiplepersonalitydisorder"),encounteredthe legal normsof selfhoodand singularself-identity,as well as the legal subjectin the mode of truth-telling Thetrialtookplacewithgreatpublicattentionto the and self-incrimination. mediaevent of testimonybeingfunneledthrougha shape-shiftingidentity on the partof the plaintiff, onlyone of whose personalities,andthus bodies, had been raped,whilethe "others"remainedunmolestedby whatwould, had they been entirelypresentduringthe sex, in theircases have been of ascertaining consensual.Who"she"was, andthe apparentimpossibility a single, unifiedvictimfor the crimeof rape, since the offendedpersonalityhad agreedto sex butwas consideredto be too immatureor troubled to be genuinelyconsenting,opened a mise-en-abymein the notionof the legal subject,an abyss alltoo readilyfilledby the simulacralaspects of the televisionnews, trial.Playedout inthe tabloids,on tabloidTV,on "regular" and in a host of mediaformsincludingNationalPublicRadio,it produced a simulacraltheaterin whichthe publicat largewas asked to witness the implausiblefascinationsandconundrumsof this postmodernpredicament. The defendanthad to be triedsimultaneouslyas a moretraditionallegal subject,in otherwordsas a coherentpsychicidentityforwhomthe words understandingand truthhad some fixedrelevance.The spectaculardisplayof the multiplepersonalities,orthe literalized(iftechnicallyerroneous) on displayin the media-pervaded courtroom,showed the "schizophrenia" difficultiesinherentin introducinga postmodernidentitydefinitioninto a courtroomstilloperatingwithinanotherparadigmforthe legal subject,on the basis of whichthe defendantwas foundguilty. of thissort-kitschy,spurious,andthe prodA "postmodern identity" formof psychology-is not uct of an unholyalliancewitha self-promoting at allwhatpostmoderntheoreticiansseek to propose.Instead,a turbulence tossed in the zone of culture,not in feministpostmodernism, preemptively and feminine in a outa femalesubject pieces, fluctuating subjectivity, forced the trial forrapewas as much its apparitiononto the culturalscreen. Here a trialof this problematicnew culturalidentityas it was forthe assaultthat may or may not have happened;the discourseof the legal subject was asked, as it were, to confirmthe statusof an unprecedentedlegal identity. A boundaryline betweenthe settingof the trialand such collectiveinquishow was blurredthroughoutthe trial. sitionsites as the "OprahWinfrey" The guiltof the man in questionwas foundto inherein realizingthatthis

Wicke/ PostmodernIdentities 17 woman was mentally ill and still proposing sex with her-a violation of the protective law surroundingsuch dealings with those assumed not to be in a position to defend themselves or theirdesires. The neutralizationof identity into a quiverof self-inventoriedalternativepersonalities leaves the legal subject in pieces as well, on one side of this divide only, the side where an alliance between a performativeself and the multiplescreening images of radio,television, and printcan be effected. On the other side, the legal subject remains in full force, and the issue of "intention"is still rigidlyinvoked. The imbalance of this encounter leaves lop-sided the engagement of postmodern identity with the legal subject because it is so irresolvablybound up in a culturalstaging. Postmodern theorizing can helpfullypoint out the fluid borders of such a staging and the ways they overlap with legal norms; nonetheless, to efface or erase the legal subject, however much predicated on an illusoryunity,singularity,intentionality,would be an enormous political loss. One primaryfeminist take on the trial was to applaud the guilty verdict as an instance of a woman's voice, however fragmented and representationally obscure, being listened to; the dangers lie in attributingall the polymorphousness to only one side of the gender divide. Multipleidentities coalesce around a subsuming "female"identity.The difficultiesfor a feminist postmodernism in ridingthese rapids lie in too readily privileging the dissolving of identity,while in this case the woman's "truth"was equally elusive. At the other remove from Jameson's melancholy in the face of the postmodern is the influentialdiscussion of the postmodern conducted in the workof Jean-Frangois Lyotard,especially in the slim volume The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, where Lyotard'sclaims are entirely different. The crux of his book is that in postmodernity,the major narratives governing social experience since the Enlightenmenthave disappeared, and that the disappearance of these meta-narratives has left instead the liberatingpotentialof local, interlockinglanguage games, which replace the overall structures.5The monumental public narrativesof evolution, progress, class struggle, or even Enlightenmenthave all dissolved for Lyotardinto the play of atomized, technologicallyassisted subjects who don't connect with one another in any overarching way, for example, by being members of a proletariat.Constructingpoliticalresponses by way of 5. Jean-FrangoisLyotard,La Conditionpostmoderne(Paris:Minuit,1979),subsequently translatedas The PostmodernCondition(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1988).

2 / Summer 18 boundary 1992 referenceto the teleologicalor progressivescenariosof the past is doomed and frivolouslywrongheaded;there are no Manicheanrents in the social fabricbuta closely knitweave of intricateinterconnections. Boththe utopianism and the teleologyinherentin Jameson'shistoricistpostmodernism are avoidedby Lyotardinfavorof whatmightbe calledan avant-gardeutoversionof the postmodernhas piangesture.The adhesiveof the Lyotardian hadremarkable stickingpower,inthata typicalsummaryof postmodernism involvesrecountingthat it has made linearnarrativesof historyobsolete and has transfiguredthe relationshipof individualsubjectsto social and historicalnarrativesin correspondingly majorways. This is exceptionally trickyforfeministtheoryof a postmodernstripe,notbecause thereis one greatnarrativeof the feministrevolution-a ridiculousnotion-but because the abilityto narratethe discontinuousandfragmentary stages of feminism withinhistoryis stilla necessity,notan archaicrelicof a despised linearity. Muchof the debateaboutpostmodernism arises because postmodern theorymaysimplybe the attemptto historicizethe discoursesof postwhichhave been very resistantto this process fromwithin, structuralism, oftendenyingthe needforanycomplexhistoricalconsciousnessat all,as is Lyotard'spreference.Forhis thought,languagegames are allthatare left, and howeveragonisticthey maybe, no largeraccretionof collectiveidentities on the historicalterrainof struggleis to be expected.Thismarksa signal of the postmodern,leavingit witha blackhole of failurein the articulation a now-invisible site of the actual,concrete,conflictualstruggles analysis, against hegemony.Puttingit this way riskssoundingretrograde,butonly we woulddo withinthe canons of a rarefied,ahistoricalpostmodernism betterto abjure. To step backand considerthe problemsof "postmodern identity"is a to confrontan immediatecontradiction. logic Following poststructuralist wouldentailputtingthe conceptof identityunderheavy scrutiny,and, incan be construedas analogousto a stable, deed, insofaras "identity" univocalself, an innateor immanentnature,a fixedor self-evidentbeing, postmodernthoughthas scouredthose Augeanstablesandevacuatedany of its fragsuch stability.Postmodernidentitycomes withsuch certification discourses of its the social fractured nature, mented, fissuringby myriad whichconstructit, its elusiverelationto self-presence,its foregoneinconclusion,that to workone's way back to the relativelystable plane of an identityperse is perhapsinconceivableand undesirable. eschews Nonetheless,and at the same time,whilepostmodernism or authoritative center even fixed essence or pointof leverorigin,any any

Identities19 Wicke/ Postmodern age, identityhas come to be a more and more pressingconcernwithin formationsof the postmodern.Whilethe postmodernitself,as theory,canand remaininternallyconsistent,postnot buttressan identity-formation sociohistorical conditionsmakea demandforthe or modernity postmodern of civilsociety.Postmodstructuresof identityto contestthe fragmentation ernidentityis to thatextentan oxymoron;it is also a neologismforidentity, a new way of saying thatthere is an identitypeculiarto the postmodern, and peculiarlypostmodern. has realrepercussionsfor Thisnewcomposite"postmodern identity" whetherin terms the intersectionof the legal subjectand postmodernism, of legal matrixof the law,inthe confrontation of a change inthe interpretive of discoursewithchangedsocial circumstances,or inthe postmodernizing forthe collisionof postmodernismwith law itself,and it has ramifications feminismas well.The linkmustinitiallybe teased out throughthe relation of the two wordsidentityand subject. Subject has two valences for this discussion, one the moregeneralmeaningof a locus of subjectivity,the humansubject,andthe otherthe pinnedorfixedobjectof subjecindividual a tion, subjected identity.MichelFoucaultplayson these differencesin his essay "TheSubjectin Power,"wherehe hypothesizesa subjectformedout of its very subjections,become a subjectby virtueof being made subject (to).6Identitydoes not have the neat internalplayof ambiguityas a word, but the same doubleness holdsgood; an identitycould be said to be the adoptedagencyof one whohas been identifiedas the resultof some social process-for example,a gay identitypresupposinghavingbeen socially identifiedas gay, andthenadoptingthatdesignationas a placefromwhich of this sort is connectedto the "subto situateone's identity.An "identity" in is and usuallycommunalexpression the self-chosen that identity ject" a activeas a funcof a subject-position, subject-position making particular thatbothof these states take tioningsocial identity,withthe understanding place in the plural,notthe singular.A pendantto this discussionwouldreof the quirepointingoutthatFoucaultperhapsdevelopsthis understanding of of an after the subject impossibility discerning agent repeatedcritiques of change withinhis sociohistoricalschema,whichproposesthe dispersal of powerrelationsto such an attenuateddegree thatrevolutionor change or resistanceis difficult to hypothesizeor explain. 6. MichelFoucault'slateressays and interviewsturnon these questions;"TheSubject in Power"is translatedand anthologizedin ArtafterModernism,ed. BrianWallisand MarciaTucker(Boston:DavidR. Godine,1984).

20 boundary2 / Summer1992 The Lyotardianversion of postmodernism tunnels into this aspect of identity and subjects it to philosophicalcritique. In the most attenuated sense, the grounds for collective identity are swept away with the metanarratives, so that class no longer serves as an identity marker of any predictiveforce, for example, and subjects are instead bundles of activated discursive shards, where there is never to be any one exclusive or overpowering identity.Thus, for Lyotard,there is always room to maneuver on the speech-activated board of culture and never any entirely hegemonic counterforce to confront.The exception to this is what Lyotardhas come to see as the circumstances of the "ThirdWorld,"whose sad job it is simply to survive, while our FirstWorld,postmoderntask is to multiplycreatively the features of our worlds. The forces arrayedagainst ThirdWorldsurvival are not enumerated or explored in Lyotardianpostmodernism, presumably because these mightthreatento look remarkablylikerelics of the disintegrated meta-narratives, and even the split between the FirstWorldand the Third World,in Lyotard'sfuzzy terminology,would need to be theorized in some interlinkingfashion. Barringthis connection, the grounds on which identities form are murkyat best. The strength of Lyotard'spost-Enlightenment discourse has, however, trulyset an agenda withinpostmodernism, which reverberates to the perceived conceptual inadequacy in both political and philosophical categories of the subject. Local determination is the arresting catchphrase for a society configured as interlocking,often antagonistic, microidentities. Lyotarddoes turn attention, in Le Differend, to larger situations of injustice, and he postmodernlycharacterizes these in linguistic terms; proper names act as signifiers for differends, circumstances of injusticethat falloutside priorgenres of discourse and reduce theirsufferers to silence or to coded names. Auschwitzis Lyotard'smain example of such a differend; so enormous is the matterof the Holocaust that it makes the struggles of, say, feminism seem rather paltry in their formulation.Since these struggles are not paltry,it becomes difficultto establish the grounds on which recourse could be sought in specifically postmodern terms. This postmodern politicaldilemmaconnects withproblems in Critical where that discourse also seeks to "deconstruct"or dissolve Studies, Legal the language of rights, scrutinizingrights as innately unstable and indeterminant, and replacing the rights vocabularywith one of needs. Among the many resulting difficultiesis the status of needs, as identitygroups come under a protectionist shield of need where they remain victims in need of help.7 Critical Legal Studies has also implied that a rights discourse 7. RobertoMangabeiraUnger'sTheCriticalLegal Studies Movementis the best source

Identities21 Wicke/ Postmodern likethat of NativeAmericandemandsforthe upholdingof treatiespredicated on an identityas a tribesuccumbsto a self-defeatinglegitimation of governmentpowerin the firstplace.Alongthese linesone thinksof the the spearfishingrightsof the currentupheavalsin Wisconsinsurrounding Lacdu Flambeau-areaIndianswho are fightingforan enhancedand protected fishingdomainon the termsof the government'sinitialdealingswith theirtribe,on promisesmade in originaltreaties,and on the definitionof theirculturalidentityas land-based.Thesymbolicgesturesof the MexicanAmericanmovementof the 1960s and 1970s, coalescing in New Mexico in the TierraAmarillaarea and dedicatedto the returnof propertytraced back to landgrantshonoredby the Treatyof the Mexican-American War, had a similarthrust;the battlein the courtsrevolvedaroundthe honoring of these claims as the treatypromisedto upholdthem, despite the dubious historicalcircumstancesunderwhichthe treatywas signed.Toseek to dissolve these rightsaway underthe acid bathof postmodernmultiplicity whichcan onlybe coded simplyerases the groundsforself-determination, as an identity(collectiveorindividual) possessing rights.Self-determination wouldseem to entailthe embraceof legalsubject-hood,as the vocabulary of rightsmay still be the only viablemeans to securingthat selfhood.A postmodernismthat ignoresor deploresthis necessity reveals its suppositionthat rightsare alreadyadequatelysecured,and thatthe legal arena cannot be bent to a varietyof discursivepurposes.A relatedstruggleis ensuingin those localitieswheregay rightsactivistsare applyingpressure forthe rightto marry.Marriagecan be subjectedto a witheringcritiqueas a transparently butinthiscase, too,the importanceof ideologicalinstitution, reservinga vocabularyof rightsas a legalsubjecttranscendsthose objections,since the politicalobjectivesof securinggay marriagerightsforthose who wantthem outweighany hesitanceaboutthe identitiespresupposed by marriage.This becomes veryvexed politicallyin otherareas, however, as inthe abortionrightsbattle,forexample.Thenatureofthe rightsclaimed can open the doorto the refusalof abortionitself,as the ominousbumper stickerto be seen on some OperationRescue carsspells out:EqualRights for UnbornWomen. A paradoxof the postmodern,then, is the coincidentand vociferous rise of an identity-basedpoliticshardon the heels of a postmodernist, text (Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1983). Essays that tacklethe movementon its terms includeNancy Fraser,"Struggleover Needs,"in UnrulyPractices (Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), and RobertA. Williams,Jr., "TakingRights Aggressively,"in Lawand Inequality5 (1987):103.

22 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 or at least poststructuralist, consensus thatquestionsidentityat large as an essentialistcategory.Evenwherethere is some circumspectionabout of essentialism(andhere I'lladmitI concurwiththe makingthe "mistake" assessment thatit is a mistake),a separatistidentitypoliticscomes to the fore, and withit a kindof "serialidentity"politics,alongthe lines of serial monogamy,is especiallyrampant.Inthismode,identitiesareseen as additive or cumulative,withsmallerand smallersubdivisionsto markmoreand this serves as fodderfor morespecializedidentityformations.(Ultimately, about the claims of, say, disabledLatinalesbian special right-wingjokes of whatneeds to be bettertheomothers,a reactionarymisunderstanding rizedby feminism.I'llreturnto the possibilitiesforthis in concluding.)Part of the impetusfor this discursiveand politicalphenomenonarises out of culturaland historicalroots in the UnitedStates, where an individualizing rhetoricpermeatesall our majorsocial forms.The communityidentity models itselfon individualidentityand coheres aroundshared attributes thatare seen as defining,whilethe extentto whichthese communityidentities arise in relationto a social dominantbecomes obscured.Ontothis identitypoliticsa postmodernismof atomizingand even sentimentalizing with local determinationgets grafted, powerful,but often mixed, results. Even the brilliantly helpfultheoristsErnestoLaclauand ChantalMouffe seem to articulatethis impasse,intheircertifiably postmodernreconstruction of the social sphere, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.8 Grafting a

dizzyingpostmodernvocabularyto an incisivepoliticalarmature,the two forradicaldemocracywhichwouldmandatethat"the arriveat a formulation epistemologicalniche fromwhich'universal'classes and subjects spoke has been eradicated,and it has been replacedby a polyphonyof voices, discursiveidentity." each of whichconstructsitsownirreducible Theygo on on the "affirmation that this is founded to conclude politics shortlythereafter of every'essence,'andon the constitutive of the contingencyandambiguity characterof socialdivisionandantagonism." Irreducible, perhapsessential, identitiesin a polyphonicharmonyof voices? Thisis a soundthatcan also be heardas the raucous,antagonisticatonalityof the social.The one-note song of an irreducibleidentityis hardto fuse withthe dissolvinglogic of identity,the insistenceon internaldifferences.The laudablegoal of opening of approaches,a postmodernpost-Marxism, upsocialspace to a multiplicity of singularidentities.As longas the ends up dependingon the mobilization 8. Quotationsare frompp. 191 and 193 of ErnestoLaclauandChantalMouffe,Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London:Verso Press, 1985).

Wicke/ PostmodernIdentities 23 postmodern in practice involves such contradictions,the relation between postmodern identity and the legal subject will be in question, too-these confusions in practice willinfect the transferof postmodern elements to the legal sphere. Another legally informed narrativemay help to highlightthis shortcoming, by way of an excursion intoanother postmodernflavoror type crystallized in the work of Jean Baudrillard,who intersects with both Jameson and Lyotard,despite coming to some remarkablydifferentconclusions. Baudrillardis the coiner of the all-importantpostmodernist word simulacrum, his term for the substitutionof the screen for the "real"or even the "spectacle" that comprises modern culture. For Baudrillard,we are now, as a result of the technology of the image, so thoroughlyimbricatedin the image that even the human body is a kindof prosthetic screen. We now live our lives not as actors in psychic dramas on a stage or in a scene but as sites of the arbitrarycoupling of bits of information,images, termini,and so on floating past us in the hyperrealspace of the image-filled simulacrum, an "ob-scene" that has no accessible reverse side. There are echoes of Jameson here: Both theorists depend on an idea of the proliferationand takeover of the technologies of postmodern life, and on the schizophrenia that induces; Baudrillard,however, has no nostalgia for the realm of history or of concerted political action as does Jameson; Baudrillard'sthought is entirely eschatological and apocalyptic, pushed up to the very edge. There is no arena for action, no public discourse; we are seduced by the image and in fact live withinit, likethe boy in the bubble, tethered to the simulacral bubbles that surround us. Baudrillard'sapocalypticism also has affinities to Lyotard's apolitical postmodernism, because it questions any role for agency, any collectivity,any escape fromthe clutches of the image. Intothat divide I am insertingfeminism, or feminist theory more appropriately,and will be addressing both a culturalartifact, a kind of text put under the lens of critique, and engaging feminism as a cultural activity lodged in an interculturalspace. The culturaltext I want to take up to allow myself to follow these two paths simultaneously is a recent one, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmationhearings before the Senate committee in their Anita Hillphase, the most engulfing national cultural event since the CNN-itisof the Gulf Warset in. The hearings duringthose several days amounted to what Alexander Cockburnhas called an "electronic Nurembergrally,"in the sense that forthe space of Fridayto Tuesday a tremendously high proportionof the U.S. populationwas galvanized in front of the same television spectacle and was entrancedly repeating its

24 boundary2 / Summer1992 script as conversation on the subway, newspaper editorial,family dinner table argument, or the subject of frantictelephone calls. The national consciousness had a laser-like focus, perhaps less in the acuity of its thought than in the pure intensity of its gaze at the unfolding hearings; the television set became our collective skull, our jointscreening room, our shared flickering site of Plato's cave. Enmeshed in a cathartic spasm, we, as a suddenly unified Nielsen group, ate, slept, and dreamed Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill;watched Tom Brokaw'ssunny midwesternforehead furrow; leafed through dog-eared copies of The Exorcist;sent telegrams to Washington with frenzied abandon; pored over the newspaper transcripts and caught the talk shows as if they were unofficialextensions of the Senate chambers. This culturalevent was like a spike driven very deep into the body politic,a moment in culturaltime pumped fullof culturaljuice. Iwant to use this collective text as a way of setting feministtheory in motion against the vectors of postmodern theory and identitypolitics, partlybecause one cannot let such a culturaltext simplyget away, and also because the strange spectacle of culturalimmersion in the Anita Hill/ClarenceThomas contretemps can illuminatethe politics of the (legal) subject and the postmodern locations of contemporaryfeminism. Why is this episode so perfect for such an appraisal? Although it was deplored variously as a spectacle, a circus, a nauseating panorama of pornography,or, in Clarence Thomas's words, "a high-tech lynching,"if one subtracts the judgmental perspective, all these definitions insisted on the mediated, the represented, status of the discursive battle. Because that is what it was, a battle of culturaldiscourses coming from many locations, imbricated in differentagendas and histories and vocabularies, on a collision course through the cathode ray tube of television. Whilethe hearings were not a trial, it was so easy to forget that, and essentially the treatment of Anita Hill'stestimony became wreathed in the legal trappingsof the "trials" of subjectivity that were to follow it-the use of the scenario of a trial setting to uncover some presumablycore truthabout female subjectivity.The hearings underscore the painfullyobvious fact that arguments in cultureare filtered through cultural representations, which have their own forms and genres and strategies. This impinges with particularstrength on issues of gender and feminism-here the gap between a feminism acknowledging the complex social formationswe can call "postmodernity"and a feminism that does not is evident. Second, the hearings, if they can be so called, hinge on the intersection of culturaldiscourses and culturallocales. Everythingoverlaps and

Wicke/ PostmodernIdentities 25 crisscrosses here: the sacred trioof race, class, and gender, above all, but also region, occupation, age, and the internationalismof a global audience, the legislative and executive branches of government, mass culture and high culture, education, entertainment,and religion.That hurly-burlyof the discourses, that promiscuityof culturalforms and nuances and levels, is grist for the millof thinkingabout feminism in a contradictory,multiple,and differentialway. One can read in those discourses, as in a glass darkly, some of the energizing and some of the problematicaspects of the feminisms being articulatedin our culturetoday.9 There willbe no way to go on productivelywithoutmakingit apparent that I consider Anita Hillto have described precisely, if reluctantly,exactly what occurred between herself and Clarence Thomas duringtheir time as colleagues-employee and boss, respectively-on the E.E.O.C. My reading has to depend on that as a kind of bedrock, against which to chart certain distortions and perturbationsthat ensue. Is this simply the feminist viewpoint of this culturalevent, or the feminist bias, as Senator Alan Simpson, for example, might have it? I would argue not, for there are many possible feminist angles on the Hill/Thomastangle; and some of those feminist angles are quite at variance with the feminist culturalcriticism I will try to elucidate. A veritable whirlpoolof misogynies, racisms, and reactionary theories emerged in the fetid wash of the hearings-not just a single kind of sexism, or one brand of racism, and so on-and correspondingly, there were many ways of framingthe results withinterms self-described as feminist. That may seem impossible, or counterintuitive-wasn't the symbolic march of the seven female lawmakers on Capitol Hillindicativeof a unitary,coherent, and singular feminist interpretationof the stakes of the hearings and the meaning of AnitaHill'sexperience of sexual harassment? Withoutat all discounting the importanceof that gesture and the interesting implications it had politically,the answer has to be no. A way to gauge just how differentfeministtheorizations of the event can be lies in the omnipresence of Catharine MacKinnonon many broadcasts of the hearings, as a commentator on the proceedings and as a jurist who herself generated the crucial legal terms of the debate itself; Catharine MacKinnontried the first sexual harassment case and was re9. The most salient discussion of the trials I have encounteredis, not surprisingly,bell hooks's "The FeministChallenge:Must EveryWomanBe a Sister?"(Zeta Magazine, December 1991). Myown accounthere had alreadybeen written,butthe importanceof her essay must be noted. Hooksmakes the wonderful,dead-on pointthat Hillherself is not (orwas not then) a feministand thatthatchanges everything.

26 boundary2 / Summer1992 sponsible for the legal language invokingsexual harassment as a specific form of discriminatorydamage. MacKinnon'splace on the networks and in the analysis of the unfolding phenomenon was absolutely earned by her groundbreakinglegal work and her pivotalfeminist position in the delineation of sexual harassment as a bona fide harm. Nothing in my discussion here is meant to question the tremendous achievement that MacKinnon, and others, it should be added, made by bringingsexual harassment to its embodiment in law. However, as a feminist theorist, what was MacKinnon's vision of what Clarence Thomas had done? As she stated repeatedly, and then elaborated, his sexual harassment of Hillwas merely a subset of something else-his use of pornography.Pornographywas, for MacKinnon, the root cause, the only cause, of the sexual harassment that was offensive and indeed illegal behavior. Anita Hillwas at the receiving end of a pornographicdischarge; she was violated, then, by exposure to pure pornography,in this instance pornographyin the workplace.Howdoes MacKinnonmake the leap froma specific patternof sexually harassing linguistic encounters to victimizationby pornography?Her definitionof women, and the resulting definitionof feminism, demands it: MacKinnonwishes to describe women as a class, as a single group, and she does this by analogy to class itself, in the Marxistsense, although her use of Marxistthought is stunningly reductive and untouched by the subtler branches of theory. It is fair to say that MacKinnonis indubitablynot a practitionerof anything to be remotely called feminist postmodernism or postmodern feminism.10 If work or labor fixes and articulates class, then, MacKinnonclaims, sex fixes gender, and she means sex in the literalsense-work is extracted or taken from you as a worker, and sex is extorted or taken from you if you are a woman. The mere existence of, let's say, a heterosexual pornographic text in an empty locked room is nonetheless a violation of women as a class. In MacKinnon'sview, pornographyis the name for,and the literal site of, the gender hierarchyobtaining between men and women in society. Clarence Thomas's statements to Anita Hillwere an epiphenomenon of pornography and pornographicdesire; it became of the utmost importance for MacKinnonto describe Thomas as a pornographyaddict, Anita 10. I have iton verygood authorityfroman auditorthatat a spring1992 series of lectures given at PrincetonUniversityMacKinnonrepliedto all questionsaboutthe possiblymore sophisticatedapproachesto representationthat exist witha referenceto such cavils as "deconstructioncrap.""Realis real,"she propounded.The recentchampioningof MacKinnonby the philosopherRichardRortyhas to be one of the most peculiarchaptersin contemporarycriticalthinking.

Wicke/ Postmodern Identities27 Hillthus becomingindistinguishable froma womandepictedin a pornooutright. graphicfilmor magazine,victimizedby the gaze of pornography Work,power,competition,allvanishfromthisscenario-what definesAnita Hillas a womanin MacKinnon's feminismis thatshe is this recipientof a pornographic barrage.Pornography belongsentirelyto men, pornography is the rootcause, the monolithic source,of the expresses men,pornography lackof equalitybetweenmenandwomen.CensoranderadicatepornographyandClarenceThomas'scommentsbecomeimpossible,forMacKinnon; the flipside is also true-until and unless all pornography is snuffedout, genderrelationsare doomedto takethe courseof sexual harassment.The whereverit onlyfeministresponse,on these terms?To espy pornography lurksandto devoteallone'sfeministenergiesto publicenemynumberone, pornography. Catharine MacKinnon'scommentaryon Hill's charges against Thomasemanatefromcultural feminism,thatfeminismwhichembracesthe notionof a univocalwoman'scultureandinnateexperience,whose defining characteristicis vulnerability to pornography andviolation.ForMacKinnon, Hill Anita was then, Everywoman, susceptibleto the depredationsof pornography.Such a positionon her partechoes whathappenedto a major strandof feminismin the 1980s-its energies were siphonedoff into a crusade againstpornography thatblurredthe distinctionbetweenfeminist and politics reactionaryrepressiverhetoric.Ithas been pointedout repeatand most feministcoalitioncentering edly, notablyby the anti-MacKinnon on FACT-FeministsAgainstCensorshipTaskforce-thatthe one constituency delightedto embracethe antipornography positionhas been the radical antifeministright.Thisamountsto a derailment of culturalfeminisminto the dead-endendeavorsof a purepoliticsof image.Sucha politicsinvolves a deep fear of representation,in the formof imageryor words,and supplants a mediatedunderstandingof humanculture.Boileddown to the brass tacks of pornography, this entailsassumingthatrepresentationsare what precisely they represent-there is no intermediatezone of fantasy, culturalplay,or even justframinggoingon. By this token,there is nothing moresalient,nothingmoreurgent,than removingpornography fromsociallwomenare ety's midst.Allwomenare equallyaffectedby pornography, allwomenare harmedby pornography equallyalienatedfrompornography, at all times-so muchfor racism,or lack of prenatalhealthcare, differforprofessionaladvancement,femalepoverty,etc. Allare ingopportunities it would traceable, seem, to pornography. This analysisis off the mark,but it is remarkably interestingfor re-

28 boundary2 / Summer1992 vealing how much a transmogrifiedsocial terrainof postmodernityaffects even those responses that try to eschew it. In the culturalspectacle I am detailing, this particularvoicing of a feministchallenge to events was loudly heard, but it certainlywas not the only feminist response. The prominence of MacKinnon,though, was in direct proportionto the irrelevance of what this ostensibly crucial legal feminist had to say about the hearings. Every other culturalvariable in the hearings had to drop away. The crucial element of Anita Hillas a black woman and Clarence Thomas as a black man was not part of the pornography/politicsof the image scene, nor was it any problem at all that the attackers of Anita Hilland her testimony all spoke in tones of anguish about pornography-another instance of the radical right finding it perfectly easy to adopt those criteriaon theirown behalf. One can bracket for now the terriblehypocrisy of this gesture on their part, in order to see what the pornographyaspect actually did to the culturalspectacle. Paradoxically,it undercutthe feminist politics of the hearings by making it appear both that Anita Hillwas readilydefinable as a woman wronged, if indeed she had been, by pornography,and that women are not outraged by the fact of sexual harassment as a means of making the workplace a disturbing space for them professionally but instead are to be protected from exposure to sexual talk and sexual overtures. The offense, then, lies in jeopardizing women's innocence or sexual vulnerability,not in channeling male discomfort about women in the workplace into a hostile parade of sexual overtures. That pictureof things should not be compatible with a feminist viewpoint, but the picture unfortunatelydovetailed with one prominentfeminist theorist's construction of the situation. This helped lead to another aspect of the culturaldrama then played out. If along one axis of culturalthought Anita Hill had to be seen as a victim in order to qualify as having been sexually harassed, then the corollaryto that for many people was the proof that she had been damaged, that she was indeed a victim.And here a new culturalslot opened up which AnitaHillcould not, and did not, fill. For her to have been a victim, by these lights, would have to mean that she had lost her job, lost her success, lost her prestige, lost her professional respect, lost her emotional center of gravity:Something along these lines needed to be fulfilled.Frustratingly,Anita Hillrefused to fit into the niche where an agesold narrative of female victimizationcould be intertwinedwith a feminist victimization.Victimwas simply the wrong category, but a powerfulcultural vocabulary on both the feminist and the antifeministsides of the discussion of women in our culture demands it. The litmus test for victim status

Wicke/ PostmodernIdentities 29 was how Anita Hill'sstory played on the female-dominatedtalk shows-by female dominated I mean that their audiences are 90 percent female, even if women are not always the "host."Anyone watching any of these shows as an adjunct to the hearings knows that Anita Hilldid not win over the female mass audience. The precise reason for this was the failure of her "story"-and it was turned into a narrativewith infinitetwists and turns-to cohere as a tale of victimage. Anita Hilldid not cry, one importantsign of victimizationin the Kabukitheater of the talk show, where any query must be met with welling tears. Clarence Thomas was lucky in having the background visuals of his wife's tears in looming and vicarious close-up; she was a victim in the liquidgarb of TV gender, and clearly her emotion resulted from the pain caused her by the tearless AnitaHill.Tears, or at least visible emotion, are the proof-textof having been hurtin the melodrama of our national life, and AnitaHilldisqualifiedherself in that arena. Itmight not have mattered, except that the hearings themselves became overriddenby a modern-day televisual version of the test for witches-thrown in water, the innocent non-witchwould prove it by drowning. I'mnot insinuatingfor a moment that AnitaHillshould have behaved an iota differentlythan she did;what I am tryingto indicate is the complexity of the cultural moment. One immediatelyvisible implicationis that there was no single woman's version of this event. Whilea vociferous reaction to confirmingClarence Thomas in the wake of these accusations was strongly articulatedby women, many of them definingthemselves as feminists, they were joined by men in this outcry,and both were in the distinct minorityifwe are to believe all the polls. If I have discarded the efficacy of a culturalfeminism based on the politics of the image, then what dimension of feminism accounts for the abandonment of the precepts of sexual harassment by so many-the majority-of women? Class and race have their day here. A large numberof women, and probablymen, seem to have been disaffected by AnitaHill'stestimony because itwas offeredby someone now identifiable as a middle-class professional, despite having had a background as materiallydeprived and as subject to racism as Clarence Thomas's. Race figured acutely in this equation. As the AfricanAmericanhistorianNell Painter wrote in a New YorkTimes op-ed piece after the hearings, when Clarence Thomas himself introducedthe history of lynching as a metaphor for the grueling hearings, an implicitscenario floated in the culturalunconsciouslynching suggested the punishment of a black man for the rape of a white woman, and there was no white woman involved. Consequently, the black woman voicing the complaintagainst Thomas was invisibleto most of the

30 boundary2 / Summer1992 white national audience, since her harassment occasioned no indignation in comparison to the rape of a white woman, and forthe black audience her accusation resonated uncomfortablywith a history of blaming black men and thus furtherweakening them vis-a-vis white men. The AfricanAmerican journalistSalim Muwakkilanalyzed the response of the black community in Chicago, in part through editorials in black-owned newspapers and so on, and found sympathies overwhelminglywith Thomas, on the grounds that Anita Hillwas jealous because Thomas had marrieda white woman and wished to penalize him after the fact for this. These responses are clearly not coming from the same direction that, say, Senator Strom Thurmond's were, althoughthey also lead to the supportof Thomas's confirmation.What can be glimpsed here is the way that feminism, or at least gender status, cannot be kept separate fromits instantiationin other divisions of culture. In all of these examples another variable has counted for more, has weighed more heavily, in a certain culturalequilibration. What that evacuation points to is the dead end-at least insofar as politics is concerned-represented by an exclusive politics of identity.The general repudiationof Anita Hill'ssexual harassment charges is symptomatic of, on the one hand, the undeniable grip of sexism still prevailing, but also of the weak response a politics of identitywill be able to make in the face of that sexism. The politics of image despises the image but also lives and dies for the image, since that comes to be the only grounds of political evaluation: Is that a good image or a bad image? is the question, not How do images workand how diversely?The politicsof identityembraces a similar contradiction. A group accepts its singularityas a social category-of race, or sex, or sexual persuasion, for example-as the basis for identifying a common struggle. That identity,though, as Denise Riley asserts in "AmI ThatName?" Feminism and the Category of 'Women'in History,"1 is comprised as much of what has been shunted off onto the category of that social identity-let's say in this case women-as of what can be imagined as an alternative social identity.The nets of identitypolitics can become too tight as rigorous tests are administeredto determine if a member truly belongs with the special identityof a group. What often happens is that all of the group politicalenergy becomes devoted to policingthe identityline, making determinations about when and how and whether it has been crossed over in certain instances, thus invalidatingthe identityof that individualmem11. Denise Riley,"AmI ThatName?"Feminismand the Categoryof 'Women'in History (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1988), chap. 5, passim.

Wicke/ PostmodernIdentities 31 ber. As an initialstarting place, some invocationof identitywillinevitablybe made, but the danger, as Riley and many other feminists and theorists of other movements have pointed out, is that offering up the identity,honing it, and patrollingit are too likelyto come to constitute the sum total of the politics of the group if a freewheeling recognition of the instabilityof that identity is not builtin from the start. Let me circle back to the Thomas hearings after having passed through this critical interlude.Again and again we heard that in Thomas's indirect rebuttalto Hill'scharges, to which he did not listen, the race card had trumped the gender card in our national game of bridge. Thomas's portrayalof himself as subject to the indignitiesof a stereotyping discourse about black male sexual prowess effectivelysilenced the Democraticsenators, who did not want to risk looking like they believed those stereotypes, and empowered Republican senators, many of them with highly suspect backgrounds of bigotry and race-baiting, to "protect"Thomas by charging racism. Throughoutthis, it was very hard to have it be admitted that the woman bringingtestimony of sexual harassment was herself black. In a New York Times op-ed page editorial, Oscar Patterson, a CaribbeanAmerican historian of slavery, swept away this seeming incongruityby his analysis that Anita Hill had succumbed to white feminist puritanism, no doubt through having been educated at Yale Law School in proximityto so many white feminist puritans. Patterson simply asserted that the remarks attributedto Thomas were standardbadinage between black southern men and women; the interpretationof them as sexual harassment was a strange form of brainwashing undergone by Hill,who had, Patterson opined, forgotten her roots in black culture. So much for stereotypes, Patterson said; yes, Thomas had said these things, the fault lay in betraying one's racial culture and lining up with female sexual puritanson the other side of the color line.12Thomas's white senatorial supporters did not take this line at all;they professed horrorat remarksabout pubic hairand Long Dong Silver and were very far from attributingthese to friendlyinterculturalinteraction; no, by their lights Anita Hilllied, lied because she was in love with Thomas, or psychologically unstable, or a dupe of liberals,or a lesbian. These incongruities and irreconcilableattitudes all cluster aroundthe perceived need to 12. Patterson'sessay is reprintedin Reconstruction1, no. 4 (1992):64-77, and is followedby an extraordinarily thoughtfulexchange betweenPattersonand RhondaDatcher, and AfricanAmericangraduatestudent in mathematics.She offers brilliantand telling rejoindersto his ethnographicremarks,as he concedes in his finalstatement.

32 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 take one variable-be it genderor race or, in a veryfarfetchedlink,class: by those lightsAnitaHillwas jealousof Thomas'scareerprominenceand couldn'tbear his goingontothe SupremeCourt-as supreme,as primary, as the bottomline. Postmodernidentitywouldseem to have it alloverthe legal subject here. Inthe churningfrothof mobileandmultiplesexualidentities,of transof objectand subject,in the postmodernwash of gressive reformulations the whocame to the forewas an impossiblemonolith, subject identity, legal a femalemonster.Inproviding a critiqueof thismonstrousresult,one brand of postmodernismcould be seen as a utopiantheoryseeking to undermine all such binariesand divisions,installingthe play of differencesin theirstead. ThinkerslikeCraigOwensandothershavewantedto suggest that postmodernityitself is the "discourseof others,"of those who have fromthe culturalsystem,andinparticular he cites the been disenfranchised prominenceof sexual differencein postmodernartof the last fifteenyears in makingpostmodernism and of the female artistswho have participated whatitis-for him,a questioningof alldifferenceanda dissolvingof natural or essentializedhierarchies.13 A postmodernism of thisvarietyhas been giventhe nameresistance postmodernism,and to this I wouldregistera serious caveat-not to the possibilityof resistancebutto its linkagewiththe postmodern.Viewedin this light,postmodernismbecomes a criticaltool kit,a set of techniques to deployat will,generallyin the realmof textualculture.Thatvision renders postmodernismwithoverlybroadbrushstrokes,as providinginternal going optionsof a reactionaryor progressivekind.Whatthat is ordinarily to mean is an overinvestmentin discursivegestures,the oftenfatuousassumptionthat an alterationof textualstyle or nomenclatureor the decenteringof a discoursein some purelysymbolicway sends shock waves Thatverylocution,of course,is disavowed to the heartof socialdomination. no "heart"or core of hegemonycan be since anyway, by postmodernism of be tailoredto an understanding could This quiteprofitably posited. insight constructbutas a permethe law,of the legal subject,notas a monolithic sites of conflictand innumerable able membranewithinwhichinnumerable formsof strugglecan be seen to exist. The real problemis thatpostmodernfeministtheoryhas a different identitypoliticsfromthatof feminismin the domainof the (legal)subject, 13. See CraigOwens, "TheDiscourseof Others,"in TheAnti-Aesthetic,ed. Hal Foster (Portland,Oreg.:Bay Press, 1983), 57-77.

Identities33 Wicke/ Postmodern in the publicarenaof image,protest,the womanon trial.Itis fashionable to referslightinglyto an academicfeminismof theoryand writing,in contrastto a grass-rootsfeminismof marchingand politicalactionthat does the real workof feminism.Thatdivisionwillno longersuffice,but not on the groundsthattheoryand practicecan no longerbe distinguished."Academic feminism"is itselfsplinteredintomanydomains,as is feminismin the supposedlyreal worldoutsidethe academy.Postmodernfeminismis tryingto catch up to a realitywe barelyhave a name for,the postmodern situationof a theoryof identitythat seeks to overcomethe limitationsof fixed, immutable,and hierarchical identities,witha feminismstillinvolved in a straightforward identitypolitics.Postmodernfeminismis itselfcaughtin those same nets. A singularfeministmovementno longerexists, and postmoderntheoryembracesthe fragmentation of multiplelocales, sites, and dissolvedidentities.Tryingto negotiatethe new space forfeministtheory involvesseeing how muchwe stilloperatewithincongruentand incompatiblemodels.Whenidentitypoliticsis pushedupto the limitlineof its politics of image, there is a priceto pay politically. Thatpriceis the substitution of an identitypoliticsfor a relationalpolitics,a multiplepoliticaldynamic that can see itself at workin the worldin the back and forthof actual politicalengagement.Instead,an identitypoliticsthatbecomes entrenched willmoreand morefocus on the symbolicimageryof namingor of being named.Postmodernfeminismcan readilyfallintothatdiscursivetrapby its concentrationon symbolicimagery,so thatpointingto the insubstantiality of identitycan come backto hauntits owntheoreticalprecincts.We livein a momentof contradiction, wherefindingourway across a sophisticated theoreticalbridgeto a viable politicsbeyond identities,includingfemale identity,looks difficult.Female identitiesare now, as always,on trial,as in the case of AnitaHill.The mistakewouldbe to collapsethat postmodern spectacle intoone discernibleidentitywithone politicalresponse. Hill is a strong, bravewoman,and an articulatelaw professor;she is heroic butis nota feministheroine.Hertransformation intopreciselythat,through awardsand speeches in the feministmedia,is a retroactivecanonization, an indicationof how image-driven feministpoliticsis today.To see her as such is to identifytoo much,and in the wrongways-a symptomof the a postmodernfeminismneeds to outgrow. identi-fixations

Feminism and Postmodernism--Another View

MaryPoovey The summer of 1991 witnessed a spate of popular movies with a strikingly similar theme. Each of these movies features a more or less middle-aged white man who is moderately to wildly successful in a highpressure, high-prestige occupation. Suddenly, because of the vagaries of his own body tissue, random violence, or a desire to forestall the onset of age, these men find themselves humbled, frustrated,and, as a result, miraculously humanized. In Regarding Henry, an amoral lawyer needs a bullet in the brain to rediscover his own ethics; in The Doctor, a heartless surgeon recovers his abilityto care after a bout with a tumor;in Doc Hollywood, a cynical plastic surgeon finds love through mandatorycommunity service in a small South Carolinatown; and in City Slickers, a joyless New York professional delivers a calf and discovers the meaning of life. In the summer of 1991, the wilderness was located not in Wyoming but in corporate America;the enemy was not the "redman"butthe system, the rat race I would like to thank Cora Kaplan,EmilyMartin,and Joan Scott for discussions about various versions of this essay. I am especially gratefulto JudithButlerfor helping me clarifythe logicof my argument. Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity

View 35 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another that has run even the most successful man ragged and stripped him of his abilityto feel. No doubt these movies about masculine resuscitationare more salutary than the body-count movies of the summer before. The fantasy nature of their happy endings, however, seems to me as surely a barometer of anxiety as was the testosterone rush of The Terminator,TotalRecall, and Die Hard. When you put the 1991 born-again movies alongside the biggest money-maker of the year, Terminator2: Judgment Day, the anxiety becomes clearer and, to my mind,more poignant.Likeits predecessor, Terminator 2 is about a cyborg, a cyberneticallyengineered, computer-driven, machine-man, who can break human limbs with a snap of his fingers and who can withstand blasts from an AK-47 at close range. Unlike his namesake predecessor, however, this Terminatoris a good guy. He takes orders from a little boy (with a knowingwink at KindergartenCop), he learns, he makes (clumsy) jokes, he even evokes (and almost expresses) feelings. This Terminator,in fact, is, in some ways, more human than the woman he is forced to workwith. Whereas Schwarzenegger's character has softened considerably in the sequel to the first Terminatormovie, Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor has become as emotionally hard as her muscles. This machine can never be a man, but because he is so faithful,so reliable, and because he chooses at the end to sacrifice himself for the boy, this Terminator can stand in for the father the boy has never known and, in so doing, he can symbolicallyfather the human race, which, withouthim, would have ceased to exist. In this essay, I want to work from the complex of feelings of which the anxiety implicit in these movies is one expression to the structural contradictionthat underwritesit. Put most bluntly,the fear is about ceasing to be human-whether because a man is so successful that nothing but money comes to matteror because the impenetrable,inexorable workings of the multinational,computer-runmegacorporationhas reduced him to a machine-man. I do not think that this anxiety is limitedto white men with stethoscopes and expense accounts. I will argue, in fact, that it is another version of this same fear that is holding a certain definition of feminism in place, that is holding up feminism, in both senses of this phrase. I do think, however, that one defense against this fear-and therefore a telling articulationof it-is clearest in some (white) men's fantasies about women and minorities. This defense displaces the fear that the very nature of the human is at risk with the specific anxiety that some people-specifically, white men--are being denied the opportunityto realize themselves be-

36 boundary2 / Summer1992 cause other people--primarily women-have been given unfairaccess to the opportunitiesthat used to belong to men. I also want to argue, however, that behind the fear that is displaced by the blame is a structuralcontradiction withinthe liberal,democratic version of humanism, made visible by the changes we call postmodernism, that renders all psychological responses inadequate to the problem at hand. Indeed, I will argue that the fact that most responses to the changes that have begun to transformU.S. society are psychological signals a failure of the political. I will also propose that some kindof politicalresuscitationof feminism is necessary to analyze this contradictionand to define the changes that are now bringingit to light. First,let me followthe logic of the scapegoating defense against fear. To do so, I'lllook at an essay about one of the signs of the changes with which dehumanization is associated-the growing problem of homelessness. Writtenby Peter Martinand published in the Nation in July 1991, "The Prejudice against Men"argues that "the problemof chronic homelessness is essentially a problem of single adult men."1 "Outof all single homeless adults, 78 percent are men," Martinexplains; "outof all homeless adults, more than 64 percent are single men; and out of all homeless peopleadults or children-58 percent are single men." After one factors in programs intended to help get people off the streets, Martinconcludes, one is left with the "'chronicallyhomeless,' of whom four-fifthsare men. Seen that way, homelessness emerges as a probleminvolvingwhat happens to men without money, or men in trouble." The sex differentialamong the homeless, according to Martin, is partly a result of federal programs like AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Because AFDC generally denies relief to a household that includes an adult male, this programsets up a situation of unequal competition that discriminates against men: "The regulations as they now stand actually force men to compete with the state for women."2 Part of the problem, however, as Martinelaborates his argument, is not that men must compete with the state but that the state establishes an inequalitybetween men and women, in which women retaina capacity that these men no longer have-the abilityto choose. The language of choice pervades Martin'srepresentations of women. In relationto the AFDC policy, for ex1. Peter Martin,"ThePrejudiceagainst Men,"Nation,8 July 1991, 46. Subsequentquotationsin this paragraphare cited fromthis page. 2. Martin,"Prejudice," 47, 46. Subsequent quotationsin this paragraphare cited from these pages.

View 37 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another ample, he writes: "Giventhe choice between receiving aid for themselves and their childrenand livingwith men, what do you thinkmost women do?" In relation to work, Martindeclares that "women, especially when young, have one final option denied to men. They can take on the 'labor'of being wives and companions to men or bearing children, and in returnthey will often be supported or 'taken care of' by someone else." In ascribing choice to women, Martin is exploiting the feministhumanist vocabulary,turningback as an accusation that which, in another arena, some women are strugglingto retainas a right.The fact that he can do so should alert women to the danger for feminism of the assumptions that informan argument like Martin's.Such an argumentreveals the sexism inherent in the traditionof humanismthat has developed alongside, and as part of, the rationalistic,democratizing epistemology dominant during the last two and a half centuries. It also suggests that when feminism takes up the language of this humanism we carry over its sexism, too. This is the first hint of the structuralcontradictionI want to explore. Even though the humanist subject seems to be withoutgender, it is always already gendered as masculine, for, withinthis tradition,the self-determining,rational subject always stands opposed to the subject-in-nature,which is gendered feminine. Martin'scharge that women are, and ought to act like, humanist subjects, then, signals the contradictionthat women now suffer: On the one hand, since the late eighteenth century, women have been excluded from the humanist subject position and have been defined by their reproductive capacity; on the other hand, as the crisis of late capitalismbecomes more pressing in the West, the humanist subject position has opened to those who were previouslyexcluded fromit.As partof this profoundlymixed blessing, those who have enjoyed the benefits of humanism-largely white men-have begun to blame its increasinglyobvious liabilitieson those latecomers who have been admitted only because capitalism's demand for cheap and flexible labor knows, but does not respect, the "barrier"of sex. I will returnin a moment to explore this contradictionin more detail, but before I do so, let me stay with Martin'sdefense. Essentially, this defense is articulated in psychological and gendered terms. Martin'sanalysis, in other words, suggests that he experiences the dehumanizationthat accompanies the crisis of late capitalism as emasculation. In fact, as his argument draws to a close, Martindefines as the root of the problem of homelessness not a failingeconomy or inadequate safeguards for labor but a cultural denigration of men. "To put it simply,"Martinwrites, "men are neither supposed nor allowed to be dependent. They are expected to take

38 boundary2 / Summer1992 care of both others and themselves. And when they cannot do it, or 'will not' do it, the built-inassumption at the heart of the culture is that they are less than men and therefore not worthyof help."3 Martin'sanalysis reveals that he thinksthat the problemis who gets to be a humanist subject and that the gendering of the humanist subject is only a symptom of the currentcrisis. Accordingto Martin,when women acquire the rights associated with humanism and push men out, masculinity comes underthreat.Against Martin,Iargue that the problemis not who gets to be a humanist subject but that the Enlightenmentversion of humanism, with its vocabulary of rights and choice, feelings and equality,continues to be produced as a solution to the crisis at hand. The problemwith humanism is that the state apparatus that Martinaccuses of deprivingmen of choice actually constructs subject positions in such a way that choice seems to exist for some when, actually, it is available to no one. Gendered meanings obscure this contradiction:Up untilthe moment when infrastructural changes open the humanist subject position to those who were previously excluded, gender functions as a "natural"principleof inequality,makingthe relative freedom of men seem absolute by contrast to the "natural"dependence of women. Martin'scharge that women have brought about, or at least benefited from, a fundamentalchange in who is allowed to chooselike the charge leveled by the Rightthat "quotas"make equal opportunity impossible for white men-is naive and misplaced. The changes that the United States is experiencing are actuallymore far-reaching,and ultimately even more threatening, than Martinimagines. Martinis right, however, in thinking that these changes have something to do with gender. In order to extend Martin'sanalysis of the relationshipbetween these changes and gender, I shall look more closely at some of the other ways these changes are being conceptualized. Homelessness is only one symptom in the United States of what The changes for David Harvey has called "theconditionof postmodernity."4 47-48. 3. Martin,"Prejudice," 4. See David Harvey,The Conditionof Postmodernity:An Enquiryinto the Originsof CulturalChange (Oxford:BasilBlackwell,1980). Otherhelpfuldiscussionsof postmoderor the CulturalLogic of Late Capitalnity include:FredricJameson, "Postmodernism, 146 Review New Left ism," (July-August1984): 53-92; Andreas Huyssen, After the GreatDivide:Modernism,Mass Culture,Postmodernism(Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1986); and ChristopherNorris,What'sWrongwith Postmodernism:Critical Theoryand the Ends of Philosophy(Baltimore:Johns HopkinsUniversityPress, 1990). see DonnaHaraway,"ManiAmongthe manydiscussionsof feminismandpostmodernity,

View 39 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another which postmodernity stands include not just observable alterations in the U.S. economy and welfare system but transformationsin the global economy, as well: I have in mind both the creation of a part-time"homework" economy at the level of worldwideproductionand the forging of the corporate conglomerate at the level of global management. These changes also include technological innovations in the electronic storage, retrieval, and transmission of information;medical advances in genetic research and synthetic proteins; and the steady march of new diseases across the planet. Whilethey can be theorized at this macrolevel,the effects of these changes are also being registered more immediately,as challenges to the most basic units of humanist understanding-the individualityof the subject and the bodily integrityof the person. The changes occurring in people's perceptions of the body are being measured by anthropologistEmilyMartin,whose fieldwork finds people in Baltimore speaking of their bodies not as selfcontained entities bounded by a shield-likeskin but as systems that interact with the ecosystem that contains them. Here is one of the descriptions Emily Martinhas recorded: "Ithinkyour immune system, for me, [its] more that you have a whole networkof things that affect you, and you orderthose things to, to workthe most efficientway, and that you have to make choices in what you do with yourself and your life, and where you live and what you eat, for that to work.And it's all intertwined,so no one thing is going to save you from illness."5 It may seem paradoxical that this informantconceptualizes these radical transformations in terms derived from humanism: She simply extends efficiency, flexibility,and choice fromthe autonomous humanist sub-

festo for Cyborgs:Science, Technology,and Socialist Feminism,"Socialist Review 15 (March1985):65-107; Teresa L. Ebert,"The'Difference'of PostmodernFeminism,"College English53, no. 8 (1991):886-904; JudithButler,GenderTrouble:Feminismand the Subversionof Identity(New Yorkand London:Routledge,1990);JudithButler,"Contin"inFeministsTheorizethe Political, gent Feminismand the Questionof 'Postmodernism,' ed. JudithButlerand Joan W. Scott (New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1991), 3-21; and LindaSinger,"Feminismand Post-Modernism," in FeministsTheorizethe Political, 464-75. 5. This quotationis froma personalinterviewwithan unnamedperson. Quotedin Emily Martin,"ProducingNew People, Reproducinga New Society:Gender,Death,and Reproduction"(unpublishedessay, 1991), 6. My discussion of the changes in definitionsof the body and in conceptualizationsof the workplaceis indebtedto Martin'sessay and to Donna Haraway,"The Biopoliticsof PostmodernBodies: Determinationsof Self in ImmuneSystem Discourse,"differences1, no. 1 (Winter1989):3-43.

40

boundary2 / Summer 1992

ject to the molecules and tissues of her body. Yet, it should come as no surprise that as individualsstruggle to assimilate, to make sense of, the hitherto unimaginable changes that various theorists are describing, they use the images and systems of meaning that have provided order to the world as they have known it. Insofaras these changes are imagined at the level of the body, both humanismand gender providecrucialrubricsforconceptualizing new possibilities-just as these terms provide,for Peter Martin, a bulwarkagainst having to accept the implicationsof radicalchange. In a moment, I will suggest that the reason postmodern challenges to humanist commonplaces mobilize assumptions about gender is more complex than just some naturalbond between the body and sex, but in orderto get to that argument, I need to give a few more examples of the variety of ways that responses to the postmodern conditionare enlisting gendered meanings. The cybernetic superiorityof Terminator2's adaptations to the vicissitudes of his environment-his body's ability to close flesh over bullet wounds, or one arm's capacity to peel back synthetic skin from the other to perform electronic surgery-is a type of the trait that many analysts say will triumphin the postmodern world.As these analysts describe both the flexible, adaptive entity that will eventually emerge and the process by which the mass-production corporationwill become a "learningorganization,"they frequentlyuse images that carrygendered-or, more specifically, feminized-meanings. In Developing a 21st Century Mind, for example, Martha Sinetar describes the executives who will succeed in the transformed workplace as embodying traditionallyfeminine traits:They "enjoy, are easy with, the soft, shadowy underbellyof human existence, however illogical it may seem. Feelings, intuitivehunches, moods, dreams, personal "6 As preferences are their allies. They court the world of the 'irrational.' one "human resource management executive" describes the process by which the new corporate entitywillcome into existence, he pictures himself playing a feminized role: The old way of operating must end or die for the realizationof the new to emerge fromits remains.The Phoenix analogy is useful here. The transformedorganizationrises out of the ashes of its old formto take on a new direction,one that raises its performancecapabilityto a much greater level of functioning,sophistication and response. ... Empoweringthe humanspirit,managing emotions and changing beliefs about realityseem to be essential ingredientsto the process.... Transformationinvolves both birthand death. There can be profound 6. Martha Sinetar, Developing a 21st Century Mind (New York:Villard, 1991), 13.

View 41 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another pain in seeing the process through ... as change agents, we cannot walk into any organization and "do transformation."We can, however, ... assist by facilitatingthe conditions to help it along, much like a midwife assisting a naturalbirth. She supports, encourages and guides the process; she does not do the birthingfor the mother.7 The fantasies of rebirthin the films with which I began participate in this effortto forge new myths for success by appropriatingthe traitsassociated with femininity,as do spokesmen for the men's movement, like Robert Bly and Sam Keen. Thus, the hero of City Slickers plays midwife to a calf to heal himself, and Robert Bly encourages his would-be IronJohn to "overcome ...

his fear of wildness, irrationality, . . . intuition, emotion, the body,

and nature."8 It is by no means obvious that the corporate executives' appropriation of feminine traitsto negotiate the transitionto postmodernitywillbe any more beneficial to women than is the humanist defense against postmodernism. Indeed, Isuggest that both humanismand postmodernismhave the capacity to subordinate women-the former,in ways with which we are all too familiar;the latter,in ways we have yet to imagine. Because the potential for sex oppression demonstrated by humanismalso exists withinpostmodernism, and because gendered meanings are being used to ease this transition, it behooves feminists now to examine both the ways that feminized traits are being appropriatedto facilitate (or resist) material and conceptual changes and the consequences for women of these appropriations.In order to begin this project, I want to examine in some detail two recent legal cases that implicitlyquestion the adequacy of the humanist subject as a response to or as a defense against postmodernity.Because each of these cases also centrallyinvolves either sex or reproduction,they also illuminate both the complexities of the role gender plays in such responses and the underlying contradictionof humanism's construction of gender. While the legal negotiation about the humanistsubject is not occurringexclusively in cases having to do with women or even sex,9 I do think that such cases constitute the front line of defenses against change because of the particular position that women and reproductionoccupy in relationto 'truth'or 7. Quotedin Martin,"ProducingNew People,"23. 8. RobertBly,IronJohn:A BookaboutMen(Reading,Mass.:Addison-Wesley,1990), 14. 9. The case of Moorev. TheRegents of the Universityof California, forexample,focused on the questionof whetheran individualhas a proprietary rightoverthe tissues of his/her own body-whether, that is, tissues and organsare a partof the autonomous"self."The CaliforniaSupreme Courtruledin 1990 that John Mooredid not have proprietaryrights to his spleen, whichwas surgicallyremovedin 1976.

42 boundary2 / Summer1992 'nature'.While law is by no means the only arena where such negotiations are taking place-as my earlier examples should demonstrate-I do think that the law may be a criticalarena for feminists to examine. I say this for the following reasons: (1) As an institutiondedicated to maintainingcontinuity with the past, the law is particularlyresistant to change. (2) The law stages the dynamics of social negotiation specifically in the form of contests and, therefore, makes these negotiations available to the public in the familiar,hence easily consumable, formof melodrama.(3) As its linkto melodrama suggests, the law works not only by institutionalizingas regulations assumptions that elsewhere take the formof prejudicesor beliefs but also by psychologizing responsibility,by shoring up its structuralimposition of regulations with what feel like personal, private, unconscious feelings. My first example is intended both to demonstrate how certain legal institutionsfunction to reinforcethe humanistjuridicalsubject and to show how psychologized feelings reinforce the law's conservative tendencies. This case, which was widely publicized last summer, involved a charge that three male students at St. John's Universityhad raped, sodomized, and sexually degraded a female student at a fraternityhouse after forcing her to drinkvodka-laced orange soda. No one disputed that the sexual activityhad taken place; the question at issue was the woman's consent. The defendants asserted that the woman had gone to the fraternityhouse willingly, that she had consumed the vodka knowingly,and that-explicitly or implicitly-she had consented to having sex. By contrast, the woman argued that not only had she not consented to having sex but she had been only intermittentlyconscious duringthe event. InJuly,the three defendants were acquitted of all charges by the jury,who explained that, because the woman's testimony contained contradictionsand gaps, she must not have been telling the truth. One set of assumptions implicitin this verdict underwritesthe very institutionof trial by jury.This assumption is that true stories will be recognizable as true because they are coherent, comprehensive, and comprehensible. Behind this belief lies the furtherassumption that coherent, comprehensive narrativescan be generated by honest individualsbecause these persons are coherent, comprehending subjects. Even though these assumptions are basic to juridicalhumanism, however, they have, in the last few years and with increasing frequency, been set aside by juries who are persuaded by psychological research that asserts that victims of trauma often survive assault precisely by losing their coherence and their ability to comprehend-by falling brieflyunconscious, by becoming confused, or

View 43 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another even by repressing the memory of the event altogether.10Such juridicalaccommodation of what we might call a postmodern view of the subject has begun to erode the authorityof humanism in all kinds of cases involving violent crime, with the exception of sexual assault. Juries are often willing to believe that memory lapses occur in violent crimes, notes Ann Burgess, a recognized authorityon posttraumaticstress disorder, but they will not make the same allowance for sexual assault because they do not associate sex with violence and because they assume that women require"persuasion" before they consent to sex. "People tend to believe when people are robbed or held at gun point,"Burgess comments, "[b]utso many people still see rape as sex. They really don't see it as violence. But it's the violence that brings on the traumaticresponse."'1 This is exactly what happened in the St. John's verdict. Even though the prosecutor argued that his client had momentarilylost consciousness duringthe assault, the juryheld her to the standards of the humanistjuridical subject. This occurred not because the juryassumed that all humans are equal before the law but because a set of assumptions about the gendered nature of the sex reinforcedthe humanistassumptions inherent in the law. These assumptions have become the staple fare of virtuallyall rape trials: The facts that the woman went to the fraternityhouse willinglyand that she knew-even liked-her alleged assailants were used to argue that she willinglyconsented to having sex. Inother words, once a woman enters an environmentwhere sexual relationsoften occur, she is accepting-or even inviting-whatever sexual advances are made; she is renouncing the privileges of the humanist subject and accepting the subject position to which nature has assigned her. Here, then, is the painfulparadoxthat humanismimposes on women. On the one hand, because women are excluded from the humanist subject position in being associated with nature, they are not credited with full rationality;when a woman says "no" in relation to sex, she may as often mean "yes." On the other hand, because the law also assumes that the humanist subject exists apart from gendered meanings, the woman is held responsible for upholding the standards of rationality:She must tell a coherent story or tell no story at all. This unbearable contradiction also produces the psychological; that is, the double bind displaces what is really 10. See Bessel A. van der Kolk,PsychologicalTrauma(Washington:AmericanPsychiatricAssociationPress, 1987). 11. "BearingWitnessto the Unbearable," New YorkTimes,28 July1991.

44 boundary2 / Summer1992 a social contradictiononto the individualsubject as the split between consciousness (rationality)and the unconscious (nature). When we analyze, or respond to, this contradictionin psychological terms, we reinforce this displacement: We substitute an explanation about the nature of "human subjectivity"for what could be a politicalcritique. This double bind helps explain why women, like the accuser in the St. John's case, are so often held responsible for their own oppression. My second example, the 1989 Webster decision about abortion, shows that this double bind results not from some incidental conjunction of assumptions about women and humanism but from the constitutive role that gender plays in juridicalhumanism. To explain this, I need to examine the Webster decision in some detail. The originalcase that resulted in the United States Supreme Court's Webster decision involved a Missouri statute, enacted in June 1986, and the charge broughtby five health care professionals that this statute violated a woman's FourteenthAmendment rights.12 The Supreme Court upheld the original statute, arguing that the Court did not have to decide whether the controversialMissouripreamble, which declared that life begins at conception, is constitutionaland that the statute's injunctionagainst using publicfacilitiesto provideabortions places no obstacles in the path of a woman who wants an abortion.Inother words, the lack of public facilities does not interferewith due process because it does not curtaila woman's rightto choose. Behind the specific provisions of the Webster ruling was a more general objection on the part of some justices to the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. This objection became clear in the ancillary opinion submitted by Justices Rehnquist,White, and Kennedy,which used the fact that medical tests are not capable of determiningexact gestational age to attack Roe's "rigid"trimesterscheme. InRoe v. Wade, this trimester scheme, along with the associated concept of "potentialhuman life,"had been used to distinguish between the period in which a woman and the fer12. See WilliamL. Websterv. ReproductiveHealthServices, et al., 106 U.S. Supreme CourtReports (1989), 410-71. Forprovocativediscussions of the abortiondebate, see New YorkReview of Books, 28 Sept. 1989, Ronald Dworkin,"TheFutureof Abortion," 47-51; CatharineMacKinnon,"Privacyv. Equality:BeyondRoe v. Wade,"in Feminism Unmodified:Discourses on Lifeand Law (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1987), 93-116; RosalindPollackPetchesky,Abortionand Woman'sChoice: The State, Sexuality,and ReproductiveFreedom (Boston:NortheasternUniversityPress, 1985); and LawrenceH. Tribe,Abortion:The Clash of Absolutes (New York:W.W. Norton& Co., 1990).

View 45 Poovey / FeminismandPostmodernism-Another tilized egg constitute a single legal "person"(the woman) and the moment at which this single legal entity is recognized as two legal "persons,"one of whom (the "potentiallife"of the fetus) deserves protectionby the state.13 In 1989, Justices Rehnquist, White, and Kennedy objected to the "web of legal rules" by which Roe had attemptedto establish a distinctionbetween these periods, arguing instead that because there is no medical basis for certainty, the state has an interest in "potentialhuman life"throughout a woman's pregnancy. Inso doing, these justices implicitlyargued that a fetus is, from the moment of conception, a "person"with rights commensurate with those of a pregnantwoman. They argued, in other words, that the fetus is, from the moment of conception and before the differentiationof sex, a humanist subject. The reasoning set out in the Websterdecision demonstrates concluthat it was the intentionof the Supreme Courtto upholdconstitutional sively individualismand the humanistjuridicalsubject. Atthe same time, however, this reasoning also reveals both the strain that new medical technologies have placed on the humanistjuridicalsubject and the crucial role that gender has always played within it. The first sign of this strain emerges with the Court's argument that state legislators have the rightto decide when life begins. Inadvancing this opinion,the Webster decision essentially rendered the definitionof life apolitical, not a medicalor a theological, decision; that is, it opened what had previously been an area policed by "expert"-' even absolute-authority to publicdebate and the democratic process. (At the same time, of course, it also placed the judiciarywithin this political process, not outside it.) The second sign of stress has even more direct implications for the humanist subject, for in arguing that curtailingpublic funds for abortion leaves a pregnant woman "withthe same choices as if the State had decided not to operate any hospitals at all,"14the Webster rulingexposed the limitationsinherentin the concept that has become the centerpiece of the feminist agenda (and of the white male backlash, as well)-the notion of individualchoice. Ifthe state operates no public hospitals, after all, the individualwoman willonly be free to "choose" a private hospital, and this "choice"will be available only to women with sufficient money and then only if private doctors are trained and willingto perform abortions. The thirdsign that maintaininga humanist subject is becoming 13. For a more extensive developmentof this argument,see my essay "TheAbortion Questionand the Deathof Man,"in FeministsTheorizethe Political,239-56. 14. WilliamL. Websterv. ReproductiveHealthServices, et al., 106 U.S. Supreme Court Reports,419.

46 boundary2 / Summer1992 increasingly difficultis also the point at which space has begun to open for what might eventually become a postmodernjuridicalsubject. In adopting Roe's language of "potentialhuman life"butattackingthe trimesterscheme, the Webster decision implicitlyargued that the Constitution'slanguage of individualizedrights is not adequate to accommodate all of the guises in which so-called persons appear. Both the pregnant woman and the fetus (or "potentialhuman")challenge the legal entity of the "person"-the first because she is nonunitary;the second because, being neither autonomous nor embodied, it is incapable of self-determinationor even independent life. This, in turn, creates the possibilityfor a nonunitarydefinitionof the juridical subject, in which sex will be only intermittentlyacknowledged or tied to reproduction.15 The signs of stress evident in both of these cases have appeared, and have been foreclosed, in relationto female sexuality and reproduction because of the criticalrole gender-and women, in particular-plays in upholding the humanist subject. To explain this role more fully, let me return for a moment to the legal assumption that the St. John's case made clear: A legal "person"is an individualcapable of telling,knowing,and acting on a coherent, self-consistent representationof reality,or "truth."Theoretically, that is, an individualbecomes a "person"with legal rightswhen she or he is reasonable, coherent, and capable of moral discrimination.Also theoretically,this coherent person exists before she or he is recognized by the law and in spite of sex, color, or class; the law claims simply to reflect the reality that exists outside it. In actuality,however, the law does not reflect or recognize some preexisting reality;the law recognizes only those things and persons "thatcorrespond to the definitionsit constructs."16In practice, this means that what counts as reasonable, coherent, and moral is a function of the categories the law creates. It also means that what counts as a reasonable, coherent, and moralsubject-the individualupon whom the law confers personhood-is a function of the categories the law uses to define coherence. Among these categories, as Judith Butler has recently argued, the "regulatory"categories of gender are particularly(although not exclusively) influential:"The 'coherence' and 'continuity'of the 'person' are not logical or analyticalfeatures of personhood but, rather,socially instituted 15. For a more elaboratediscussion of these ideas, see my "TheAbortionQuestion," 239-56. 16. ParveenAdamsand Jeff Minson,"The'Subject'of Feminism," m/f 2 (1978):50.

View 47 Poovey / FeminismandPostmodernism-Another that are anchored by "'intelligible' and maintained norms of intelligibility" genders."'17 Gender functions as the bedrock of the humanist juridicalsubject, then, because an orderly system of gender differences seems to be the basis of our culturalsystems of meaning and, therefore,of the very notions of coherence and continuity.Itis also importantto note that gender is intelligible as an ordered (binary)system of meanings only because each gender is defined relationally,by its differencefroman Other.Furthermore,genders attain their appearance of internalcoherence and their definitivedifference from each other by a process that entails both (imperfectly)homogenizing each term of the binaryopposition (by marginalizingall other kinds of difference) and claiming a naturalrelationto the (supposedly binary) biological difference of sex. This is why I say that gender seems to be the basis of our culturalsystem of meaning: Gender, with its apparently natural, or biological, referent, masks the presence of other differences (among these, race) that are marginalizedin order to foregroundgender. Thus, the coherent, reasonable, moral "person,"the humanist juridicalsubject who is the possessor of rights, is not the basis of law but the effect of a set of social institutions-including the law-that differentiates between people on the basis of a binarysystem of coherent genders, which (falsely) claims to derive its coherence from biological sex. Women play a crucial role in upholdingthis system, because theirgender-the feminine-has been culturallyassigned the same side of the binaryopposition as nature. This link reveals that the system of gender is not only binaryand relational;it is also differentialand hierarchical(as each term of the binaryopposition of gender is also both differentialand hierarchical).That is, in the same sense that rights exist for some only when there are others fromwhom the entitled can claim those rights,so the propertiesof humanism,which include both rights and coherence, can obtain for some individualsonly so long as there are others whose exclusion from rights and choice guarantees humanism.18 The role that a differentialsystem of gender plays in humanism sets the cruel contradictionI have been examiningthroughoutthis essay: Beup cause women are human and because the law supposedly recognizes all 17. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York:

Routledge,1990), 16, 17. 18. Fora discussion of the differentialnatureof rights,see Wai-CheeDimock,"Rightful Subjectivity," Yale Journal of Criticism 4, no. 1 (1991): 25-51.

48 boundary2 / Summer1992 humans as rationalsubjects, women are included in and held responsible as humanist subjects. This is the case especially now, as changes in the infrastructurehave forciblyopened the humanistsubject position to women as a group. Because, however, the humanistsubject and the laws that uphold it actually depend upon a binaryand differentialorganizationof gender (and, within gender, upon such differentialdeterminants as race), women are also excluded (albeit differently)fromthe humanistsubject position and (as a group) made the guardians of the entire culturalorder. The cultural logic that seems to tie a woman's gender to her sex makes womanlywomen the guarantors of the oppositions that the humanistjuridicalsubject institutionalizes. At the same time, this logic also makes the womanly woman the guardian of the stabilityof each term of the opposition. This explains why any alteration in the "natural"alignmentof women and childbearing-and, by extension, of women and the home-is so threatening to the basis of masculine identity,as we saw in Peter Martin'sessay. This logic also explains why any challenge to the definitionof woman ushers in fears about the definitionof life and mobilizes the threat of dehumanizationwith which I began. We see this fear again in two controversies that have sprung up alongside the abortiondebate. The firstconcerns the question of who will determine what counts as life. We have already seen the Webster decision politicize this determination,but this politicization remained relativelyuncontroversialon the Rightbecause the Missouri legislature was understood to have based its determinationthat life begins at conception on religious authority.More recently, in January 1991, Catholic ethicists began to dispute even this basis fordiscrimination,noting that, despite the decree of the Churchthat "fromfertilizationthe biological identity of a new human individualis already constituted,"new scientific evidence reveals that the pre-embryolacks the "determinateand irreversible individuality"that is "a necessary, if not sufficient,condition for it to be a human person."19The second of these controversies concerns the other extreme of "life."As early as July 1990 (and with increasing vehemence since the publication of the national bestseller Final Exit), the National Right to Life Committee began to argue that when Roe v. Wade extended the constitutional right to privacy to the realm of reproductionit set the stage for legalizing euthanasia. "Roe v. Wade was a precedent for killing people," one spokesperson recentlydeclared, "andits impact has gone far 19. "CatholicScholars,CitingNew Data,WidenDebateon WhenLifeBegins,"New York Times,15 Jan. 1991.

andPostmodernism-Another View 49 Poovey/ Feminism beyondabortion.We had warnedyears ago thateuthanasiawouldbe the next step."20 The emergence of such controversies-alongside,and as partof, the legal contests and the cinematicanxietiesI have been discussingindicatesthateven thoughwomenareassignedresponsibility underthe law, the feminineis also seen as the lastfrontierof nature,the lastguarantorof identity,masculinity,and life itself.Atthe same time, however,these controversiesand the anxietiesbehindmass-culturalfantasies also suggest that the contradictionI have been examiningis no longercapableof sustainingitself;in otherwords,the alignmentof (female)sex and (feminine) gendercan no longerbe takenforgranted.Thissuggests thatthe specter of dehumanizationI have associated withthe postmodernis massively overdetermined.At one level, it is a response to material,infrastructural changes.21 At anotherlevel, it is a response to the destabilizationof the imaginaryrelationbetweensex andgenderandto the imaginaryhomogenizationof sex thatis itselfa symptomof these infrastructural changes.One outcomeof this overdetermined causes logicof infra-and superstructural and effects is the otherphenomenonwithwhichI have been associating the appropriation of feminizedtraitsto maximizesuccess postmodernism: in a worldconceptualizedas an inhumanesystem. As the alignmentof (female)sex and (feminine)genderhas increasinglycome to seem likea culturalorganization, feminizedtraitshavefloatedfreefromtheirfemalereferent.These traitshave become availableforthe kindof appropriation we see in a movielikeCitySlickersor inthe managementexpert'sdescription of the process of corporatetransformation. Theyhavebecomeavailable,in otherwords,to helpusherinthe postmodernworld. Thus,we havethe paradoxof genderthatemerges fromthe fundamentalcontradiction withinhumanismthat I have been examining.On the one hand,because genderedmeanings(particularly those meaningscoded have historically been accordeda natural,biologicalrelationto "feminine") sex, gendercan be mobilizedto resistthe changesthatare bringinginthe postmoderncondition.On the otherhand,because the verychanges that 20. "Foes of AbortionView 'Rightto Die' as Second BattleOver Lifeand Death,"New YorkTimes,31 July 1990. 21. The entryof increasingnumbersof womenintothe workforce has been instrumental in disturbingthe relationshipbetween sex and gender as has the transformation of work itselfto accommodatebothwomenand changes in the globalrelationsof productionand consumption.Atthe same time,of course,developmentsin reproductive technologyhave problematizedthe relationshipbetweensex, conception,and "life."

50 boundary2 / Summer1992 people are resisting by invokingtraditionalgender definitions are altering perceptions of the relationshipbetween sex and gender, gendered meanings are also available to describe, even to facilitate,these changes. This paradox seems to me to unravelthe twisted skein of meanings contained in a film like Terminator2, in which a human woman is masculinized in order to fight alongside a cybernetic humanoid,whose hypermasculinityis underwrittenby feminine compassion. Italso seems to me to illuminatethe complex effects of the Webster decision, which is indisputablya setback for women who desire control over reproductionat the same time that, in theory at least, it provides an opening for a postmodern juridicalsubject that might be both heterogeneous and only intermittentlydefined by sex. Recently, the American publicwas subjected to an ugly demonstration of the contradiction I have been examining, and I want to conclude by discussing this very briefly. When law professor Anita Hill made the allegation that then nominee to the Supreme CourtClarence Thomas had made sexually insinuatingcomments that rendered her places of employment hostile environments for her as a woman, she was attemptingto use one forum constitutionallydesignated to adjudicatethe claims of humanist juridicalsubjects to make her story known. The responses her testimony provoked, however, especially from the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, mobilizedthe double bind I have been discussing. On the one hand, Hillwas cast out of the position of humanist subject by being hystericized: She was called "schizophrenic"and a "scorned woman," accused of fantasizing and of reading The Exorcistfor prurientsexual details. On the other hand, she was also held up to the standards of the rational subject: She had the choice, senators charged, to leave Thomas's employment when he went to the EEOC;she had the choice to tell. Inchoosing to move with him and in remainingsilent, they charged, Anita Hilleither acted irrationally(and, therefore, deserved what she got) or else proved that nothing was wrong (and, therefore, merited the blame they were assigning to her). Whatthe senators could not-or would not-see is that the responses Hilldescribed are those given by the structuralcontradictionI have been discussing: On the one hand, she became the nonrationalsubject to which gendered meanings assigned her (she did not tell);on the other hand, she acted rationally,as the humanistsubject should (she did not leave her job). If,as I have been suggesting, we are now witnessing the emergence of one of the fundamental contradictionsof humanism as a consequence and expression of the conditionof postmodernity,then Ithinkthat feminism must assist-not fight-this historicaltransformation.I thinkthat feminism

View 51 Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another must stop tryingto resuscitate the humanistsubject. We must move abortion out of the center of the feminist agenda and move choice away from the heart of our campaign for reproductiveoptions. I say this because all arguments that keep sex at the center of legal defenses and social meanings-even arguments that are explicitlydefenses of women-seem to me to support the humanist assumption that women should stand in for nature and to uphold the binaryorganizationof gender. They do so because they endorse the culturalassumption that is the ground of sexism-the notion that sex is the most importantdeterminantof difference. At the same time, I think that a feminism that elevates sex over all other determinants of difference inevitably,and inadvertently,participates in other forms of oppression, which invariablyarise in a culturallogic that privileges sex over other demarcations of identity. In privilegingsex, in other words, feminism, like humanism, marginalizes all other forms of differencethat would fracturethe gendered binary-differences like race, age, class, religion,or sexual preference. Indeed, the complexities of the Hill/Thomashearings, like those of the St. John's case (where the accuser was also black), need to be read more systematically through race than I have been able to do in this essay. Meaningfulanalysis of the role that race continues to play in reinforcingthe structuralcontradictions of gender was preempted in the Hill/Thomasdebate when Thomas alleged racism. Why a black man was believed when he alleged racism, while a black woman was discredited when she alleged sexual harassment, is a question that cries out for serious attention. What feminism needs now is some way to take account of the shifting meanings of sex that does not make sex the fixed, or the only, center of analysis. Feminists need to reconceptualize sex and gender, to see these as dynamic, relational categories-relational to each other and to other determinants of difference-not as the fundamentalbasis of the humanist subject. Such an account of sex might help render obsolete the gendered and race-specific meanings by which Anita Hillwas discredited. At the very least, it might expose the fact that these meanings are complicit with the politicalinterests that members of the JudiciaryCommitteewere advancing. Such an account might move us beyond a psychological account of Hill's behavior and a psychological response to it to some more fully politicized understanding and organized resistance. I suppose that, realistically,what I am calling for is a more flexible feminism, not a rejection of feminism altogether. At the same time, however, we need to guard against simply endorsing flexibilityfor its own sake, for to do so is to run the risk of reproducingthose images that are already

52 boundary2 / Summer1992 being co-opted by corporate analysts. Thus, there is the uncanny similarity between the call of feminist Chela Sandoval for a ThirdWorldfeminism, which combines "grace, flexibility,and strength,"and sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kantor'sdescriptionof the new megacorporation,which combines the "powerof a giant with the agilityof a dancer."22Inorderto avoid simply participating in the productionof such images, feminists must begin to analyze the paradox I have been discussing, by whichthe relationshipbetween gender and sex is currentlybeing used both to resist and support the arrivalof that rough beast, the condition of postmodernity.Perhaps as more people analyze this paradox, the contradictionthat it expresses will become more visible, and itwillthen not be so easy to hold women responsible for our own oppression. Of course, it still willnot be obvious what new configurationsof power postmodernism will usher in. I hope, in offeringthese observations, that feminists can begin to develop new terms that willhelp shape the articulations of power institutionalizedby, or alongside, postmodernity-instead of defending out of fear a humanist subject that is sexist to its very core.

consciousness requiresgrace, flexibility 22. Here is Sandoval'sdescription:"Differential and strength:enough strengthto confidentlycommitto a well-definedstructureof identity to self-consciouslytransformthat for one hour,day, week, month,year;enoughflexibility of another the to oppositionalideologicaltacticif readingsof requisites identityaccording power's formationrequireit;enough grace to recognizealliancewithothers committed to egalitariansocial relationsand race, gender, and class justice, when their readings of powercall for alternativeoppositionalstands"(from"U.S.ThirdWorldFeminism:The Theoryand Methodof OppositionalConsciousness in the PostmodernWorld,"Genders 10 [Spring1991]: 15). The Kantorquotationcomes from WhenGiantsLearnto Dance (New York:Simonand Schuster,1989),33. Ido wantto registermy agreementwithSandoval's basic point, however,that "whatU.S. ThirdWorldfeminismdemands is a new subjectivity,a politicalrevisionthat denies any one ideologyas the finalanswer, while instead positinga tacticalsubjectivitywiththe capacityto recenterdependingupon the kindsof oppressionto be confronted"(4).

Feminism and the Politics of Postmodernism

LindaNicholson The discussion of the relationbetween feminismand postmodhas generateda surprising ernism/poststructuralism degreeof intensefeeling amongfeminists.Inthe UnitedStates, the only recentdiscussionthat has exhibitedthe same degree of passionhas been the sexualitydebates, whereinthe natureof the subjectmattercouldaccountforat least partof the intensity.Whyhas this most academicof discussionsgeneratedso much intensityof feeling? Inthis essay, Ishalltryto uncoversome of the reasonsforthis passion, and I shall also attemptto resolvesome of the conflicts.My initial focus willbe on postmodernism,not poststructuralism, because the context of my own thinkingis philosophyand social theory,whereinthe term postmodernismis morefrequentlyemployed.The termpoststructuralism is morecommonlyused by those workinginthe contextof literarycriticism andtheory.Thereareotherreasons,however,formydesireat least initially to phrase the encounteras one betweenfeminismand postmodernism. As I shallarguelater,thereare certainproblemswithinthe historicallegacy of poststructuralism thathavecontributed to skewingthe discussionamong feministsin nonhelpfulways. boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

54 boundary2 / Summer1992 Let me begin by elucidating the meaning I give to postmodernism. The term has been used in such a diverse way by so many, working in a variety of contexts, that it is necessary to clarifymy own understanding of this term. I will also describe some of the reasons I found myself drawn to many of the positions that seemed to fall under this rubric. Part of my attractionto the term postmodernism followed from its abilityto bring together various positions I had adopted but had not previously perceived as connected. As a philosopher, I was attracted to JeanFrangois Lyotard'suse of the term to signify a critiqueof foundationalism. Such a critique was certainly emerging within contemporary British and North American philosophy, most notably in the writingsof Richard Rorty, but had not yet been given an identifyinglabel. Lyotard,in The Postmodern Condition, providedthat label.' Whilethe specific philosophers Lyotard chose to pick out as most clearly representing a foundationalperspective differedfromthose Rortypointedto, the types of argumentsbeing advanced seemed similar enough to warrantthe use of a common identifyingterm. Thus, both writers saw as centrallyproblematicthe requirementthat philosophical claims be grounded in basic, or foundational,truths. On the basis of such truths, systematic accounts could then be constructed, whether that meant, in the case of a philosopher such as Descartes, an accounting of the validityof sense perception, or, in the case of Marx,an accounting of the motor force of history. Lyotard,Rorty,and, in some respects, Foucault suggested that a mode of doing philosophy that sought to identify certain basic truths and to build up grand explanatorysystems around such truths was suspect. Part of what was problematic about this mode of doing philosophy was its commitment to identifyingthat which was universal. Thus, writerssuch as Rortyand Lyotardpointedto the localityand historicalspecificity of that which in previous philosophy had been described as universal and as universallyfoundational.This aspect of theirarguments greatly resonated with my own historicistleanings. These leanings-ironically, in regard to Lyotard'scritiqueof Marxism-derived from my own previous identification with Marxism.Itwas, after all, Marxwho so prominentlyrailed against bourgeois theorists for theirfalse claims to universalityand for their inability 1. Jean-FrangoisLyotard,ThePostmodernCondition,trans.GeoffBenningtonand Brian Massumi(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1984). Rorty'spositionemerges clearlyin manyof his essays collectedin TheConsequences of Pragmatism(Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1982).

Nicholson/ Feminismandthe Politicsof Postmodernism55 to understand the historicalspecificity of their own ideas. Marx'sinsistence that we understand the dominant ideas of a culture as rooted in the specific conditions of that culture had left a powerfulimpression upon my own thinkingabout the nature of philosophy and social theory. That impression related well to these more contemporary arguments about the locality of philosophical claims. While I recognized my own attractionto the idea of historicalspecificity in philosophy and social theory as rooted in prior attachments to Marxism, I also had come to understand,with writerssuch as Lyotardand Baudrillard,that Marx'sown theory was cruciallyambiguous in regardto upholdingthis position.2Marx'stheory endorsed the ideas of historicalchange and diversitywith respect to many aspects of human life:familialstructures, religious beliefs, economic organization, and the like. Framingthis theory of change, however, was also an implicitcommitmentto certain universals and to the idea that certain categories could cross-culturallyorganize such diversity.Thus, for example, the category of productionserved for Marxin such a way, being used as a means to explain and to organize social life across cultures and throughouthistory. Like many feminists, I had come to see that this focus on production within Marxismprovided a crucial obstacle in Marxism'sabilities to explain and to help remove many forms of women's oppression. Inmy book Gender and History, I noted how Marx,and many Marxists,equivocated in their use of the term production.3Whiletheoreticallythe term referredto any activity conducive to human reproduction,Marxistsmost frequentlyunderstood it in accord with its predominantmeaning in capitalistsocieties: as an activity taking place outside the home in the form of wage labor. Such a use situated oppression outside the home. Moreover,since the theory claimed to account for all aspects of social life, this use constructed Marxismas not only irrelevantto explaining importantaspects of women's oppression but, indeed, as an obstacle in the attemptto develop such explanations. What was interestingto me in this analysis of Marxism'sinadequacies for feminism was that it was as a consequence of Marxism'sreliance on a single category to explain social life across historyand diverse cultures that it had become so politicallyoppressive. As I elaborated in Gender and 2. Lyotard,ThePostmodernCondition;Jean Baudrillard, TheMirror of Production,trans. MarkPoster(St. Louis:Telos Press, 1975).See also LindaNicholson,Genderand History (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1986),chap. 6, 167-200. 3. Nicholson,Genderand History,172-79.

56 boundary2 / Summer1992 History, it was Marxism'svery failureto appreciate the rootedness of many of its own explanatory categories-such as the categories of production, labor, economy, and class-within the hegemonic value system and belief structure of its times that also made it politicallyoppressive for feminists. Moreover,similararguments could be developed to describe the inadequacies of Marxismin relationto other social movements, such as movements against racism or movements of gays and lesbians. Here, too, the failureof Marxismto recognize the rootedness of many of its organizing categories in the context of a nineteenth-century,Western, European,industrialworldview could account for the limitationsof the theory in contributingto such struggles. This conclusion about the failuresof Marxismmeant that there might be something political involved in my allegiance to the idea that philosophy and social theory need to recognize the historical specificity of their own claims. And this suspicion became furtherconfirmedin thinkingabout liberaltheory in Western culturesince the Enlightenment. While it might be said that the nineteenth-centurywritings of Hegel and Marx represented an intensificationof the idea of the importance of history in social theory, a certain turningto history can also be identified in the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers of the Enlightenment. In the writings of Voltaireand Condorcet, for example, there was a strong notion of progress, of human ideas and social organization potentially changing so as to lead to greater happiness. Certainlythe ideas of potential human change and perfectabilityhad contributedto much of what might be described as emancipatory in liberaltheory, to, for example, its ideas about human betterment and equality. If, however, one can say that in a writersuch as Marx,a focus on historicalchange was mitigated by an implicitcommitment to certain universals, this was even more strongly the case with those who constructed liberalsocial theory. For many of these writers, the existence of such ideals as truthand beauty, which possessed universal meaning, and the human faculty of reason, which provided the means to achieve these ideals, made progress possible. Again, such liberal ideals certainly contributed to much of what I would today describe as emancipatory,as did Marx'scategories make their own importantcontributionsto goals I share. It is now possible, however, to identify some of the negative politicalconsequences that also followed from liberalismas a worldview. For one, because the meaning of such ideals as truth and beauty were conceptualized universally,that is ahistorically,history could be con-

Nicholson/ Feminismandthe Politicsof Postmodernism57 structed in evolutionaryterms, withsome societies being described as more "primitive"in their attainment of such ideals. Philosophical universalism contributedto the type of culturalarrogance that helped legitimizethe colonialismof eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-centuryEuropeand North America. Inthis context, the emergence of culturalrelativismwithinanthropological theory in the early twentiethcentury,as evidenced in the writings of such figures as Malinowskiand Mead, must be interpretedas at least in part a politicalreaction against such arrogance. Moreover, such arrogance was not confined to the ways in which Western Europeans and NorthAmericanstreated others outside their societies. Duringthe course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as science increasingly came to be viewed as the sole bearer of truth,those who spoke in the name of science came to possess the kindof power that permitted their own visions of the good life to become hegemonic. Thus, doctors could appeal to science in orderto legitimizethe eliminationof midwives and practitionersof herbal arts from the domain of medicine. Throughout that century, and into the twentieth century, certain legitimizationof social inequality rested upon the view that some, and not others, followed correct standards of morality,attained truththrough education, and employed the rightcriteriain makingaesthetic judgments. Inshort, the ideals of the good, the true, and the beautifulhad a lot to account for. Any accounting must, however, also include reference to that faculty that was attributedthe abilityto attain such ideals-specifically, reason. Enough has been writtenabout the uses and abuses of reason within modernityto make me wary of saying more here. It is sufficient in this context to underlinethe many battles feminists have had to engage in with the idea of this faculty during the course of feminism's history. Such battles include those struggles engaged in by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women whose social class might otherwise have providedthem with education except for the description of reason as male. More relevant for contemporary feminists are the ways in which a more recent description of reason as without gender, race, class, or any culturalattributeprecludes recognitionof the ways in which contemporaryeducation stillserves distinct gendered, racial, class, and other dominantgroup aims. Thus, it is reason's accomplice, "objectivity,"that continues to serve as a principalweapon in the ongoing struggle to limitthe influenceof women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies, and the like in the academy. Again, however, I saw the philosophicalwritings of many of those who could be described as postmodernadding to the discreditationof such

58 boundary2 / Summer1992 aspects of the heritage of liberalism.Some of the contributions replicate themes that have been partof much twentieth-centurycriticaltheory. Thus, Lyotard'sattack on the dominance of instrumentalreason replicated ideas put forthearlier in the century by writerssuch as Horkheimer,Marcuse, and the early Habermas. Similarly,Foucault'sanalyses of the powers of science in organizing and constructingbodies and theirpleasures duringthe course of modernityparalleledideas put forthby others in the twentiethcentury but also extended such ideas in new directions. What I identifiedas one of the distinctive contributionsof "the postmodern turn"was its direct assault on the idea of universal criteriaof judgment. This seemed to take historicism in new and importantdirections.4 The historicism I earlier identifiedas one of the importantlegacies of Marx'swritingshas received supportfrom many forms of intellectualdiscourse during the twentieth century:from KarlMannheim'sconstruction of "the sociology of knowledge" to later work by philosophers of science on the value- and theory-laden aspects of scientific inquiry.Some Britishand North American philosophers sought to prevent such claims from contesting the idea of universalityin regard to truth by insisting on a distinction between what was labeled "the context of discovery" and "the context of justification."While it had become increasinglydifficultto deny the importance of historicalcontext in affectingthe creationof hypotheses and ideas, surely historycould be judged irrelevantin assessing the truthof such ideas. For me, one powerful aspect of postmodernism in philosophy was the questioning of this distinction.The counterpositionhere was that history not only provides us with the context to understandthe emergence of specific claims to knowledge but also supplies us withthe context to understand the emergence of the criteria by which such claims are evaluated. Thus, both in Rorty'srejectionof Truthwitha capital Tfortruthwitha small t and in Lyotard'sinsistence on the locality,plurality,and immanence of procedures of legitimation,I perceived crucialmeans for underminingthe context of discovery/context of justificationdistinction.5 It had become increasingly apparent to me that the hope of attaining universal criteria of justification, 4. See Steven Seidman,"PostmodernSocial Theoryas Narrativewitha MoralIntent,"in Steven Seidmanand DavidWagner,eds., Postmodernismand Social Theory(NewYork: Basil Blackwell,1992), 47-81. 5. To be sure, these positionscan be linkedto earlierclaimsinthe philosophyof science, to those of Feyerabend,for example. Rortyand Lyotardseemed to representan importantextensionof Feyerabendby takingthe discussionbeyondthatof science to the more generaltopicof truth.

Nicholson/ Feminismandthe Politicsof Postmodernism59 whether that be in regard to truth, beauty, or standards of morality,was an unachievable goal. Those attempts that had been made in the history of philosophy to provide such criteria-for example, those of Kant-most often suffered from the liabilitiesnoteworthyin his theory of morality:Such criteriaeither were so general as to provideinadequate assistance in resolving particularconflicts or, by their specificity, they revealed an inadequacy as universal criteria. Rather, it seemed that the only function the belief in the possibilityof such criteriaserved was a politicalone, providingexisting claimants to truth,beauty, or justice withthe unwarrantedpremise that their assertions rested upon such a foundationalbase. Moreover,my perceptionof such politicalaspects of foundationalism seemed also strengthened through the explicit, postmodern identification of knowledge judgments with power.To be sure, this move had its antecedents in priorintellectual/theoreticalmovements. Thus, feminists, with other political activists, had begun to question not only the claims to objectivity made withinthe academy, the media, and the publishingindustrybut also the feasibility of objectivity as a normative ideal. Such activists had also come to extend the terrainof power fromthe state to all institutionsof ordinary life, including those involved in the productionof knowledge. These insights had led to the intuitionthat claims to knowledge represent a form of power. One of Foucault's contributionswas a theoretical elaboration for such intuitions. Insum, I saw the argumentsof postmoderniststo be politicallyuseful for feminists in a variety of ways. They enabled feminists to counteract the totalizing perspectives withinboth the hegemonic cultureof liberalismand within certain versions of Marxism.When liberals or Marxistsargued that their visions of the good life and models of explanationwere those around which feminists should subordinate their claims, feminists now had useful philosophical weapons with which to respond. Postmodernism undermined the theoretical arrogance of these two political perspectives by showing that the foundations upon which each rested were themselves without ultimate justificationand, like any other worldview,could be judged only within the context of historicallyspecific values. From the perspective of values integralto much of contemporaryfeminism, each could be judged useful in some respects, but each could also be shown to be limited. Itwas, however, not only the theoretical arrogance of liberalismand Marxismfor which I saw postmodernism as a useful antidote. Such arrogance seemed also to be present in certain aspects of feminist theory itself. The manifestations of such arrogance were more subtle than in other

60 boundary2 / Summer1992 political theories of modernity.Thus, only sometimes did feminists claim that their theories were about the nature of human society as a whole or about that which was true for all of human history. But, particularlyin the early days of feminist theory, many accounts that aimed for explanations of male/female relations across large sweeps of history were proposed.6 Moreover,and this is a tendency that continues, manyfeministwritingshave included statements containing terms such as man, woman, sex, sexism, rape, body, nature, mothering without any historicalor societal qualifiers attached. The claims containingsuch terms have often been meant to refer to large sweeps of history, and the terms themselves have been understood as possessing similar meanings throughoutthis history. Invariably, however, the meanings attached to such terms have reflected the meanings these terms possess in contemporaryWestern culture, particularlyamong dominant social groups. Thus, even when no explicittheory was being proposed, such writings often contained implicittheories. Both such explicit and implicittheories, by theirethnocentrismand by theirdisregardfordifferences across history and cultures, seemed to involve significantchunks of feminist writings in the kindof theoretical arrogance present in both liberal and Marxistsocial theory. Of course, such arrogance has also been strongly mitigated by the continual admonishments fromfeministanthropologists,feministhistorians, and socialist feminists to acknowledge historicaldiversity.It has also been strongly mitigated by those politicalcurrentswithinfeminism that have demanded the recognition of diversity among women with regard to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and so on. To all of these countertendencies, I saw postmodernist, philosophical writings as constituting one additional resource. In sum, postmodernism appeared to me an importantmovement for helping feminists uncover that which was theoretically problematic in much modern politicaland social theory. Postmodernismwas also useful in helping feminism eradicate those elements within itself that prevented an adequate theorizationof differences among women. This did not mean that feminists should accept everything written by those who were described as postmodern. As Nancy Fraser and I argue in "Social Criticismwithout Philosophy,"it was necessary for feminists to read such writings critically, 6. NancyFraserand LindaNicholson,"SocialCriticismwithoutPhilosophy:An Encounter in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. LindaNicholbetween Feminismand Postmodernism," son (New York:Routledge,1990), 19-38.

Nicholson/ Feminismandthe Politicsof Postmodernism61 to accept what was useful from a feminist perspective, and to reject that which was incompatiblewith feminist purposes.7 What I soon encountered, however, was a much greater lack of consensus among feminists on this issue than Iwould have guessed. Certainly, I found many who were thinkingalong similarlines as I was. On the other hand, I also found not only disagreement but disagreement with strong feelings attached. In the remainder of this essay, I would like to summarize some of what I regard as the most philosophicallysophisticated of these objections. I would also like to suggest ways to resolve some of the strains between postmodern feminists and their feminist critics.

The Argumentagainst Feminismas Negativity and Feminismas Nominalism Withinfeminist discussions, the term postmodernism is often used interchangeably with poststructuralism.It is, however, more frequentlythe latterterm that is the specific focus of the feministattack. Thus, Iwould now like to examine some of the best of these attacks and raise questions about their applicabilityto postmodernismand, specifically,to the type of position I have elaborated above. One of the most interestingcritiquesof feminist poststructuralismis provided by LindaAlcoff.Alcoffargues that Derrida'sarticulationof deconstruction involves the uncoveringof what is most frequentlyunderstood as a binary opposition between such terms as man/woman, subject/object, and culture/nature, in which one side has been constituted as superior to the other. Underminingthe dominatingpower of the superior term involves rejecting the organizing system in which such oppositions are constituted: for Derrida, logocentrism. Inthis context, woman becomes constructed as the ruptureof, the absolute negation of, logocentrism. As Alcoffpoints out, however, this leaves feminism unable to articulateanythingpositive or substantive in the idea of woman and, thus, unable to assert itself as a political project with any positive meaning: For Derrida, women have always been defined as a subjugated difference within a binary opposition: man/woman, culture/nature, positive/negative, analytic/intuitive.To assert an essential gender difference as culturalfeminists do is to reinvoke this oppositional 7. Fraserand Nicholson,"SocialCriticismwithoutPhilosophy,"19-26.

2 / Summer 62 boundary 1992 structure.The onlyway to breakout of this structure,and in fact to subvertthe structureitself,is to assert totaldifference,to be that whichcannotbe pinneddownor subjugatedwithina dichotomous itis to be whatis not.Thusfeministscannot hierarchy.Paradoxically, withouteliminatingall demarcatea definitivecategoryof "woman" possibilityforthe defeatof logocentrismanditsoppressivepower.... FollowingFoucaultand Derrida,an effectivefeminismcouldonlybe a whollynegativefeminism,deconstructing everythingand refusing to constructanything.8 A variationof LindaAlcoff'sargumentis made by Susan Bordo. idealsof endless movement,of endBordoclaimsthatthe poststructuralist andperspective,leavethe feministreader less possibilitiesof interpretation or activistwithouta placeto stand: I have no disputewiththisepistemological critiqueor withthe metaas a of of the world-as-text means variousclaims undermining phor to authoritative, transcendentinsightintothe natureof reality.The questionremains,however,howthe humanknoweris to negotiate anthisinfinitely perspectival,destabilizedworld.Deconstructionism swers withconstantvigilantsuspicionof alldeterminatereadingsof cultureand a partneraestheticof ceaseless textualplayas an alternativeideal.Hereis wheredeconstruction mayslip intoits own fantasyof escape fromhumanlocatedness-by supposingthatthe critic can become whollyproteanby adoptingendlessly shifting,seeminglyinexhaustiblevantage points,none of whichare "owned"by eitherthe criticor the authorof a textunderexamination.9 turnsits focus to Moreover,accordingto Bordo,when deconstructionism the issue of differencesamongwomen,the consequence is a theoretical perspectivethat allows no roomfor generalizationsof any kind.We are leftwitha type of theoreticalnominalism,a methodological positionsurely needs. to feminism's political inadequate Howam I,as a feministwhosees the important philosophicalbeneto these importo answer fitsthe postmodernpositioncontributes feminism, tantand persuasivelyarticulatedarguments?Myresponseis to distinguish The IdentityCrisisin FemiFeminismversus Poststructuralism: 8. LindaAlcoff,"Cultural nist Theory,"Signs 13, no. 3 (1988):417-18. in Feminism/ 9. Susan Bordo, "Feminism,Postmodernism,and Gender-Skepticism," Postmodernism,142.

/ Feminism andthePolitics of Postmodernism Nicholson 63 frommanyof the positionsI have desuch a readingof poststructuralism scribedas postmodern.Oneofthe reasonsIamableto makethisdistinction is that the philosophicalpositionsI had describedearlieras postmodern are highlycompatiblewitha verydifferenttheoryof languagethanthe one attributedhere to poststructuralism.10 Rather,the theoryof languageI see as harmoniouswiththe typeof postmodernism previouslyarticulatedis one andthatis congruous, thatstems fromthe writingsof the laterWittgenstein in manyrespects,withthe Americanphilosophical traditionof pragmatism. Toelaboratethisposition,Iwouldliketo drawon an essay by Nancy Fraser,in whichshe makesa distinctionbetweentwo modelsof theorizing modelthatstudies languagethat have emergedin France:a structuralist language as a symbolicsystem, and a pragmaticmodelthat studies language as a set of historicallysituatedpractices.The formermodel lends itselfto whatshe describesas "symbolicism"-that is, the tendencyto homogenizeand reifythe diversityandhistoricalvarietyof languagepractices intoa monolithicand all-pervasivesymbolicorderand to set such an order apartfromhumanactionand context.Because such a modelabstractsthe issue of languagefrompracticeand context,it provesunableto satisfy a varietyof feministpoliticalneeds. As Fraserargues, a pragmaticmodel whose theoryof languageis focused on discourses,not structures,and that understandsthe latteras concrete,historicallysituatedpractices,is preferable.Such a model providesthe followingadvantagesfor feminist politics: First,ittreatsdiscoursesas contingent,positingthattheyarise,alter and disappearover time. Thus,the modellends itselfto historical and itallowsus to thematizechange.Second,the contextualization; as actionratherthan pragmaticapproachunderstandssignification as representation.Itis concernedwithhow people "dothingswith words."Thus, the model allows us to see speakingsubjects not simplyas effects of structuresand systems, but ratheras socially situatedagents. Third,the pragmaticmodeltreatsdiscoursesinthe of differplural.Itstartsfromthe assumptionthattherearea plurality ent discoursesinsociety,thereforea plurality of communicative sites fromwhichto speak. Because it positsthatindividualsassume differentdiscursivepositionsas they movefromone discursiveframe 10. And to Derrida,in particular.Even if the argumentis putforththat this representsa problematicreadingof Derrida,the issue remainsoverthe stance one shouldtaketoward such a position.

64 boundary2 / Summer1992 to another, this model lends itself to a theorization of social identities as non-monolithic.Next, the pragmatic approach rejects the assumption that the totality of social meanings in circulation constitutes a single, coherent, self-reproducing"symbolicsystem." Instead, it allows for conflicts among social schemas of interpretation and among the agents who deploy them. Finally,because it links the study of discourses to the study of society, the pragmaticapproach allows us to focus on power and inequality.1 Fraser claims that the problems of a structuralistmodel are not limited to structuralistsper se. Rather, they can be found in at least some of those writers who, while claiming a distance from structuralism,in many respects, embody it. For example, Fraser points to Lacan and argues that insofar as he posits a fixed, monolithicsymbolic system and differentiates identities in binary terms (i.e., in relationto the possession or lack of the phallus), the "symbolicism"that is a feature of structuralismis also a feature of his own writings. Fraser notes similartendencies in the writings of Kristeva. Itseems easy, however,to generalize many of Fraser's arguments to the above construction of poststructuralism.The concept of "logocentrism" so posited also construes language as a monolithicsymbolic system. In such a context, the operationof male dominationwithinlanguage becomes an all or nothing affair:One either participatesin it or one rebels against it in the limited,negative ways that Alcoffand Bordodescribe. In neither case is an opening providedfor the study of the very specific forms in which sexism is differentlyembodied in differentlanguages, for examinationof the historical shifts in sexism withinany one language over time, or for analysis of the relation between such specific manifestations of sexism within language and the operation of sexism in other practices. Because language itself is identifiedwith oppression, resistance to oppression can only be formulated as antilanguage. We are left with no cues on "howto do things with words" in the fight against sexism. The question thus becomes: What is a postmodern approach to language that avoids the essentialist arrogance of much modernist, and some feminist, discourse but that also does not reduce feminismto silence or to a purely negative stance? The answer, I claim, is a discourse that recognizes 11. NancyFraser,"TheUses andAbuses of FrenchDiscourseTheoriesforFeministPolitics,"in RevaluingFrenchFeminism,ed. NancyFraserand SandraBartky(Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 1992), 177-94.

Nicholson / Feminism of Postmodernism andthePolitics 65 itself as historicallysituated,as motivatedby values and, thus, political interests,and as a humanpracticewithouttranscendentjustification. To elaboratethis position,let me beginby clarifyingwhatI mean by a discoursethat recognizesitselfas historicallysituated.In "SocialCriticism withoutPhilosophy," NancyFraserand I distinguishbetweenfeminist appeals to categories such as mothering, sexuality, and reproduction and feminist use of a category such as the modern, restricted, male-headed, nuclearfamily.12Whereasthe lattercategoryexplicitlysituatesitselfwithina

timeperiod,the formercategories,because of theirimplicitassoparticular ciationswithbiologicalfunctions,conveythe possibilityof a transhistorical of a categorysuch as the modreference.Moreover,the explicithistoricity ern, restricted, male-headed, nuclear familysuggests furtherquestioning

aboutthe rangeof its applicability, about,forexample,the geographicalreit to which be can the gion applied, rangeof subgroupswithinthatregionto whichitis applicable,andso on. Onthe otherhand,withcategoriessuch as sexualityand mothering,we are muchless likelyto raise such questions, again because of widespreadassumptionsthatthese categoriesdescribe and, thus, endemicto humansociety per se. Insum, something"natural" because a category such as the modern, restricted, male-headed, nuclear

familyalreadypresents itselfas framedwithina certaintime period,it is easier to raise questionsaboutthe validityof this temporalframe,as well as aboutthe need to applyotherframes,thanwithcategoriesthatpresent themselves as withoutframesof anysort. Inresponse,itmightbe arguedthatthe distinctionFraserand Imake is too vague to provideadequatedirection.Whatdoes it mean to differentiate "correct" framingfromframingthatis stillsubjectto the chargeof essentialism?Whiletermssuch as motheringorsexualityaremoreliableto the dangersof transhistorical thanothers,termsthatcarryfewer projection biologicalassociations,such as domesticandpublic,have been accused of beingused in essentialistways.13Moreover, since the possibilityof overgeneralizationalwaysexists, a feministwhowishes to avoidthe chargeof essentialismwouldseem to be reducedto nominalism,to describingparticularevents at particular pointsintime.Thispointis madebySusan Bordo, who argues thatthis type of methodological demandthreatensto destroy the politicalorganizingcategoriesof race and class, as well as those of gender: 12. Fraserand Nicholson,"SocialCriticismwithoutPhilosophy," 34. 13. MichelleZimbalistRosaldo, "TheUse and Abuse of Anthropology:Reflectionson Feminismand Cross-Cultural Understanding," Signs 5, no. 3 (1980):389-417.

2 / Summer 66 boundary 1992 For(althoughrace,class, andgenderare privilegedby currentintellectualconvention),the inflectionsthat modifyexperienceare endless, and some item of differencecan always be producedwhich willshatterany proposedgeneralizations.If generalizationis only permittedinthe absence of multipleinflectionsor interpretive possibilities,then culturalgeneralizationsof any sort-about race, about class, about historicaleras-are ruledout. Whatremainsis a universe composedentirelyof counterexamples, inwhichthe way men andwomensee the worldis purelyas particularindividuals, shaped thatformthatparticularity.14 by the uniqueconfigurations Myresponseis to admitthat,certainly,thereare no rulesthatcan be invokedto diffusethe possibilityof essentialism.Thatdoes not, however, negate the importanceof an attitude,a sensitivity,a continualrecognition of the dangersof historicalprojection, andan awarenessthatsuch dangers the increase with of directly generality one's claims.Thus,such an attitude does not entaillimitingoneself to descriptionsof particular phenomenaat pointsintime;itentails,rather,continuously particular weighingthe political reasonsforspecificgeneralizations againstthe degreeto whichsuch generalizationsriskthese dangers.Moreover, as thereare no rulesforindicating wherequalification needs to stop,so also arethereno rulesto differentiate fromthose that are not. Here,too, the stoppingpointsthat are important needs of the historicallyspecificsituationmustset the framefor decision making.These last pointsinvokethe second of whatIdescribedas crucial elementsof a postmoderndiscourse:thatitrecognizeitselfas political.One of discourseis problemwithBordo'sobjectionis thatits conceptualization Eitherthere are rules for disstill embeddedin an objectivistframework: or fromthe unimportant qualification, qualification tinguishingthe important allqualificaare equallyimportant. Ofcourse,theoretically, allqualifications tionscan become important. If,however,we thinkof discourseas a human specificpurposes,then it practicecarriedout in the service of historically becomes easier to understandboththe necessityforbeingattentiveto the qualificationswe are making,or failingto make,and also that there can be no rulesfor guidingsuch attentiveness.As Fraserand I note, a major problemwithfeministuses of categoriessuch as mothering,sexuality,and reproductionis thatsuch uses projectthe meaningsthese activitiesholdfor Western,white,middle-classwomenontothe livesof women contemporary 150-51. 14. Bordo,"Feminism,Postmodernism,and Gender-Skepticism,"

andthePolitics of Postmodernism / Feminism Nicholson 67 of differentclasses, culturalbackgrounds,and historicalperiods.'"A point of ourargumentis to awakensensitivityto the ways inwhicheven feminist languagecan be implicatedin the processes of culturaldomination.This does not,however,meanthatonce such a sensitivityis awakenedthereare simplemeasuresavailableto preventsuch dominancefromreappearingin even a qualifieddiscourse.Ifwe recognizediscourseas guidedby historicallyandculturally specificpurposes,allcategorieswillbearsome marksof the needs of theircreators.Wecan onlymitigatethe politicaldangersof this featureof discourseby becomingawareof those formsinwhichits abilityto Finally,ourbest safeguard oppress is morelikelyto occurthanin others.16 may ultimatelylie notwiththe kindsof discoursewe ruleacceptableor not butwiththe morepracticalissue of who is ableto take partin discoursethat is, withthe questionof access "tothe meansof communication." 17 This modelof discourseis, however,also subjectto critiquefroma differentdirection.Indescribingdiscourseas politicalandas shapedbythe Ican imaginesome will specificneeds of itsdiverseparticipants, historically claimthatIhave reducedthe issue of truthto the issue of power.Discourse, as I have describedit, is merelya powerstruggle,withno criteriaavailable to ruleagainstoffensivepositions.Thus,such a modelof discourseallows for no distinctionbetween reason and powerand rests upon a theoryof truththatis thoroughlyrelativistic. Again,the force of this type of objectionlargelyfollowsfromthe continuedpowerof a representational modelto shape ourthinking.When one conceptualizesdiscoursenot as representational butas a process of humaninteraction,such objectionslose muchof theirstrength. For one, to say that the process of decidingwhichcategories to employor howthoroughlyqualifiedourcategoriesneed to be is a political decision,shaped by historically specificneeds andpurposes,is notto deny the simultaneouspresenceof rulesof discoursethatare, at least in some cases, also adheredto by those of opposingpurposesand needs. Such rules willvaryboth in termsof theirhistoricalspecificityand in relationto the rangeof discoursestheygovern.Thus,we mightdifferentiate the ruleof noncontradiction fromthe rulesgoverningmostacademicdiscoursesinthe late twentiethcentury,as wellas fromthose governingspecificdisciplines. 15. Fraserand Nicholson,"SocialCriticismwithoutPhilosophy," 31, 33. 16. Forfurtherelaborationof this point,see Steven Seidman,"TheEnd of Sociological Theory:The PostmodernHope,"SociologicalTheory9, no. 2 (1991):131-57. 17. Fora helpfuldiscussionof this issue, see NancyFraser,UnrulyPractices (Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), chap. 8, 161-87.

68 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 Such rulesdo muchto organizediscoursein contextsof contestation.To be sure, such rules may themselvesbecome the subjectof contestation; discursiveconflict,theremaybe or,it maybe the case thatinanyparticular no rulereadilyavailableto arbitratethe conflict.The degree to whichsuch real-lifesituationspresentthemselves, however,seems unrelatedto any philosophicalpronouncement I,oranyoneelse, mightmake.Inotherwords, to say thatdiscursiveconflictmay,indeed,sometimesbe political-that is, not resolvablethroughappealto intersubjectively agreeduponrules-is to makea claimwhose validityappearsindependentof anythingphilosophers mightsay aboutthe strengthor weakness of relativismas a philosophical position. featuresof the This last pointunderlinesone of the most important modelof discourseI am here endorsing:thatdiscoursebe construedas a and notas a structuresusceptibleto abstract process of humaninteraction Itis onlybyconstruingdiscourseinstructural termsthatone is formalization. inclinedto speak of the existenceor nonexistenceof criteriaof legitimation or proceduralrulesthattranscendspecificlocalities.Anyclaim,however, thatrejectssuch criteria,or rules,seems also to implyrelativism.Butifone conceptualizesdiscoursenotas a structurebutas a processof interaction, the issue of relativismmusttake on a differentmeaning.Mostimportantly, if one perceivesdiscourseas a communicative process,then the absence breakdownemerges as a lifepossibility of rules mitigatingcommunicative ratherthan as a positionto be endorsedor not. As a life possibility,the questionof whetheritis resolvableinanygiveninstanceappearsobviously an open one-that is, nota questionforwhichone can providean absolute answer.Finally,then,to thinkaboutdiscourseas a communicative process is not to endorse or rejectrelativismbutto reconceptualizerelativismas communicativebreakdown,a real-lifepossibilitywhose outcomecan never be stipulatedin advance.

Ifthere are any commonthreadsin the above, they can be summarizedin my view that postmodernismrepresentsnot so mucha set of discursiverulesdifferentfromthose foundin modernismas a differenttype of approachto such issues as discourse,knowledge,truth,and validity. First,postmodernismcan be characterizedby the rejectionof epistemic entailsa Such humility arroganceforan endorsementof epistemichumility. contexts the the mediated of world are our that by ways viewing recognition

/ Feminism andthePolitics of Postmodernism 69 Nicholson out of whichwe operate.This means thatnot onlyare ourspecificbeliefs and emotionsaboutthe worlda productof ourhistoricalcircumstancesbut so are the means by whichwe come to those beliefs and emotionsand by whichwe resolveconflictwhen dissent is present.Thisdoes not entail the positionthatthereare no solutionsto epistemicdilemmas,merelythat there are no finalones. Moreover,the kindof postmodernismI am endorsinghere represents a reconceptualization of discoursefromthatof a structureto thatof a of interaction. Such a reconceptualization process bringswithit a blurring of the lines that have previouslydividedissues concerningthe criteriafor claimsof truthand falsityfromissues concerningthe contexts arbitrating which such criteriaare established.Thus,questionsconcerningaccess by to discourse,bothin relationto issues of substanceand in relationto how such issues get to be talkedabout,take theirplace beside questionsof truthand validity.Forme, then, whatpostmodernism adds to feminismis an expansionof the widelyheldfeministdictum"Thepersonalis political" to includethe dictum"Theepistemicis political," as well.

Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law

Anne McClintock A prostitutetells me that a magistratewho pays her to beat him confessed that he gets an erectioneverytime he sentences a prostitute in court.This essay is aboutthe magistrate'ssentence, the magistrate's erection,and the prostitutewho spilledthe beans.

In 1760, a Frenchphilosophecoinedthe termfetichismefor "primitive"religion.Marxtookthe termcommodityfetishand the idea of "primiecontive"magic to expressthe centralsocialformof the modernindustrial In Freud transferred fetishism to the realm of and to omy. 1887, sexuality the domainof eroticperversions.'Religion(the orderingof time and the transcendent),sexuality(the orderingof the body),and money(the ordering of the economy)took shape aroundthe idea of fetishism,displacing 1. I am gratefully indebted to William Pietz's three excellent essays on fetishism: "The Problem of the Fetish I,"Res 9 (Spring 1985): 5-17; "The Problem of the Fetish II,"Res 13 (Spring 1987): 23-46; "The Problem of the Fetish III,"Res (Autumn 1988): 105-24. boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

/ Screwing theSystem 71 McClintock ontothe domain whatthe Enlightenment couldnotincorporate imagination of the "primitive," the zone of racialandsexual"degeneration." Imperialism returnedto inhabitthe liberalenterpriseas its concealed,butcentral,logic. "Theeroticdeviantis not the onlyfetishistfamiliarto us. Thinkof the primitive," says WilliamPietz.2Yet,this couldbe said in anotherway. the idea of erotic By thinkingof the "primitive" (inventingthe "primitive"), deviancewas constitutedin Europeto serve a specificallymodernformof social dominance.By the latterhalfof the nineteenthcentury,the analogy betweeneroticdevianceand racialdevianceemergedas a necessary element in the formationof the modernEuropeanimagination. The invention of racialfetishismbecame centralto the regimeof sexual surveillance, whilethe policingof "degeneratesexuality"becamecentralto the policing of the "dangerousclasses":the workingclass, the colonized,prostitutes, the Irish,Jews, gays and lesbians,criminals,alcoholics,and the insane. Erotic"deviants" werefiguredas racial"deviants," atavisticthrowbacksto a momentin humanprehistory, racially"primitive" survivingominouslyin the heartof the imperialmetropolis.Atthe same time,colonizedpeoples were erotic figuredas sexual deviants,the livingembodimentsof a primordial promiscuityand excess.3 ForFreud,the eroticfetishis akin"tothe fetishes in whichsavages believethattheirgods areembodied."4 Yet,Freudis the firstto definefetishism as a questionof male sexualityalone. As NaomiSchor has pointed out, "Itis an articleof faithwithFreudand Freudiansthatfetishismis the male perversion par excellence. The traditionalpsychoanalytical literature

on the subjectstates overandoveragainthatthereareno femalefetishists; femalefetishismis, inthe rhetoricof psychoanalysis,anoxymoron." 5 Lacan, after "the in absence women of fetishism."6 too, notes, Freud, By reducing 2. Pietz, "Fetish1,"3. 3. See SanderL.Gilman,Differenceand Pathology:Stereotypesof Sexuality,Race, and Madness (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1985). See also NancyStepan, The Idea of Race in Science (London:Macmillan,1982). 4. SigmundFreud,ThreeEssays on the Theoryof Sexuality,vol. 7 of TheStandardEdition of the Complete Psychological Worksof Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey (London:Hogarth,1953-1966). 5. NaomiSchor, "FemaleFetishism:The Case of George Sand,"in TheFemale Body in WesternCulture,ed. Susan R. Suleiman(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1986), 365. 6. Jacques Lacan, "GuidingRemarksfor a Congress on FeminineSexuality,"in Feminine Sexuality:Jacques Lacanand Ecole Freudienne,ed. JulietMitchelland Jacqueline Rose, trans.JacquelineRose (New York:W.W. Norton,1982), 96.

72 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 fetishism,however,to a single, male poeticsof the flesh and a privileged, Westernnarrativeof origins,the traditional psychoanalytic theoryof fetishism does not admiteitherrace or class as formativecategoriescrucialto the etiologyof fetishism. Foucaultargues, in a differentvein,thatthe historicalnotionof sex "madeit possible to grouptogether,in an artificialunity,anatomicalelements, biologicalfunctions,conducts,sensations and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitiousunityas a causal principle,an omnipresentmeaning,a secretto be discoveredeverywhere:sex was thus able to functionas a universalsignifierand as a universalsignified."7By privilegingsex as the inventedprincipleof social unity,however,Foucault conceals the degree to which,in the nineteenthcentury,a racialfetishism in analogywithsexual fetishismbecamethe organizingprototypeforother social "deviations." Farfrombeinga purelysexualicon,fetishismis a memorialto contradictionsin social value that can take a numberof historicalguises. The fetishstands at the crossroadsof a crisisinhistorical value,as the symbolic codes insocial displacementandembodimentinone objectof incompatible which the individual cannot resolve a at level. Thefetish personal meaning, is thus destinedto recurwithritualistic repetition. Thefetishis hauntedby historicalmemory.As a compositesymbolic object,the fetishor fetishizedpersonembodiesthe traumaticcoincidence of historicalmemoriesheld in contradiction.In this article,I explorethe racialand sexual fetishizingof prostitutesand arguethatthe problemof social value embodiedin the whorestigmais the historicalcontradiction betweenwomen'spaidand unpaidwork. The momentof payinga female prostituteis structuredarounda paradox.The clienttouches the prostitute'shandin a fleetingmomentof physicalintimacyin the exchangeof cash, a ritualexchangethatconfirms and guaranteeseach timethe man'sapparenteconomicmasteryoverthe woman'ssexuality,work,andtime.Atthe same time,however,the moment of payingconfirmspreciselythe opposite:the man'sdependenceon the woman'ssexual powerand skill. Prostitutesstand at the flashpointsof marriageand market,taking sex intothe streets and moneyintothe bedroom.Flagrantlyand publicly demandingmoneyforsexual servicesthatmen expectforfree, prostitutes insist on exhibitingtheirsexworkas havingeconomicvalue. The whore 7. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality; Volume 1: An Introduction (New York:Vintage, 1980), 154.

/ Screwing McClintock theSystem 73 stigma reflects deeply felt anxieties about women trespassingthe dandisplaytheir gerous boundariesbetweenprivateand public.Streetwalkers sexual andeconomicvaluesinthe crowd-that socialelementpermanently on the edge of breakdown-andtherebygive the lie to the rationalcontrol of "deviance"and disorder.Hencethe fetishisticinvestmentof the law in violentlypolicingthe prostitute'sbody. The Law and the Whore

In 1981, in Britain,PeterSutcliffe(or,the YorkshireRipper,as the tabloidpress dubbedhim)was broughtto trialforthe mutilationand murder over a six-yearperiodof at least thirteenwomen,some of whomwere prostitutes.Sutcliffefirstclaimedthathe had killedbecause he wantedto "killa woman,any woman.""Later,he claimedthat God had graced him witha "divinemission"9 "scumwhocannot to purgethe earthof prostitutes: Sutcliffe'sdefense restedon the constructionof justifytheirexistence."10 prostitutesas inherentlyunlikeall otherwomenand as culpablycomplicit in theirown murder.He claimedhe was able to tell that his victimswere prostitutes"bythe way they walked.He knewthey were not innocent."11 ForSutcliffe,the prostitutes'guiltcouldbe readofftheirbodiesas a stigma of the flesh, theirculpabilityrevealedunambiguously in the lineamentsof theirlimbs,an anatomicalallegorysignifyingsin. Mosttroubling,however,was the systematiccontinuity betweenSutcliffe'smissionto exterminateprostitutesand the publicsentimentvoiced by the tabloids,the policestatements,andthe judiciaryitselfthatthe prostituteswere, indeed,somehownot innocent.Duringthe extraordinary trial thatfollowed,a legal discourse,a psychiatricdiscourse,and a journalistic discoursetookshape aroundthe preordained verdictof the murderedprostitutes'guiltin the eyes of the law.Throughout the trial,distinctionswere victims(nonprostitutes) and "disreprepeatedlymade between"innocent" victims(prostitutes).12 utable,"or "blemished," Indeed,the policeinvestigationintothe murdersbegan in earnestonlywhenthe fifthvictimwas killed, 8. See WendyHolloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?The Ripperand Male Sexuality,"FeministReview 9 (October1981):33-40. 9. The Guardian(London),19 May 1981. Quotedin Holloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?"36. 10. Quotedin Holloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?"38. 11. The Guardian(London),7 May1981. Quotedin Holloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?"39. 12. Holloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?"39. See also AndrewRoss, "Dem-

74 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 and she turnedout not to be a prostitute.A policeposterread:"Thenext victimmaybe innocent."13 Thejudge,moreover,offeredthe jurythe followadvice.IfSutcliffewas deludedintobelievingthathe had ingextraordinary killedonly prostitutes,"thenthe correctverdictwas probablymanslaughThedistinctionbetweenprostitutesandotherwomenwas ter,"notmurder.14 summed up inAttorneyGeneralSirMichaelHavers'snotoriouscomfinally ment:"Somewere prostitutes,butperhapsthe saddest partof this case is thatsome were not."'5 On28 January1987,at the heightof the celebratedtrialof Madame Cyn Payne (chargedwithexercisingcontrolover prostitutesfor the purpose of gain), SergeantDavidBroadwelldraggedintocourta large,clear, the tabooparaphernalia plasticbag and exposed to the titillatedcourtroom of S/M:whips,belts, chains,a dog collar,and assortedsticks and leather items.16Fordays, police and witnesses had been describingthe "naughtinesses" at Payne's party:spankings;lesbianshows; elderlygentlemen cross-dressedinwomen'seveningclothes;policemenindrag;and lawyers, businessmen,andeven a Peerof the Realmwaitinginqueues on the stairs forsex. The prostitution trial,conductedin a blaze of publicity,exposes its own structuringparadox,staging in public,as a vicariousspectacle, that which it renderscriminallydeviantoutsidethe juridicaldomain.Through in the distribution of the mechanismof the prostitution trial,contradictions and are then and are isolated as crimes performed money,pleasure, power againinthe theatricalceremonyof the trialas confession.Thejudiciaryis a of "truth" (facts,verdicts, system of orderedproceduresforthe production the rationalsentence).Thejudge'swig (likethe prostitute's wig)signifiesa separationbetweensubjectiveidentityand body,and therebyguarantees of the trial. the impartiality inMenin Feminism,ed. AliceJardineand PaulSmith(New onstratingSexual Difference," York:Methuen,1987), 49. 49. Sexual Difference," 13. Quotedin Ross, "Demonstrating 14. The Guardian(London),21 May1981. Quotedin Holloway,"'IJust WantedTo Killa Woman.'Why?"34. 15. WestIndianWorld,6 June 1981.QuotedinHolloway,"'IJustWantedToKilla Woman.' Why?"39. As Ross notes, Sutcliffe'smission"tokillallprostituteswas recognized, notorifromthatof the popularpress to thatof the professional ously,at all levels of interpretation, lawyer,as a moralmission,and was thereforeless culpablethanthe asocial desire to kill Sexual Difference," all women"(see "Demonstrating 48). 16. See GloriaWalkerand LynnDaly,SexplicitlyYours:TheTrialof CynthiaPayne (London: Penguin,1987).

/ Screwing theSystem 75 McClintock alternativediscourses:the The lawis also a regimefordisqualifying disenfranchised,feminists,and prostituteswho mightspillthe beans.'7The moreprostitutesareobligedto speakoftheiractionsinpublic,the morethey incriminate themselves.By orderingthe unspeakableto be spoken in public, however,and by obsessivelydisplayingdirtypictures,filmedevidence, trialrevealsitselfas structured confessions, and exhibits,the prostitution aroundthe veryfetishismitsets itselfto isolateandpunish.Underhisscarlet robe,the judgehas an erection. The prostitution trialis notonlya regimeof truthfordemonstrating the propercirculationof moneyand propertybutalso a technologyof violence, settingin motionthe violentconstraintof women'sbodies:floggings, of the fine serves the purpose dunkings,jailings,and exile. The institution of restoringthe economicexchangesubvertedbythe prostitute.Ifthe prostitutemakesthe judgepayforsexualservicesthatshe shouldofferforfree, then by finingthe prostitutethe judgereturnsillicitfemalemoneybackinto male circulation. Atthe outset,the "sciencesof man"-philosophy,Marxism,psychoanalysis,anthropology-soughtto containthe "primitive" possibilityof the a in backward time to the of racial "perversions" by projection "prehistory" CommercialS/M (the collaborative "degeneration." organizationof fetishism)does the opposite:Itinsistson playingthe roleof the "primitive" (slave, female, baby)as a characterinthe historicaltimeof modernity.Ifthe prostitutiontrialisolatesandorganizesdeviantsexualpleasureforpunishment, commercialS/M is the dialecticaloppositeof the trial,organizingthe punishmentof sexual devianceforpleasure.'8 S/M performsthe social idea of the primitiveirrational as a dramaticscript,a theatrical,publicperformance in the heartof Westernreason.The paraphernalia of S/M (boots, whips, are the state of chains, uniforms) paraphernalia power,publicpunishment convertedto privatepleasure.S/M playsimperialism backward,visiblyand outrageouslystagingracialand genderdifferences,ecstasy, the irrational, and the alienationof the body as at the centerof Westernindividualism. CommercialS/M revealsthe logicof liberalindividualism and refuses it as 17. See Susan Edwards,Female Sexualityand the Law (Oxford:MartinRobertson, 1981), and CarolSmart,Feminismand the Powerof the Law(London:Routledge,1989). 18. Let me emphasize that I referhere to the specific phenomenonof ritualized,commercialS/M, whereinthe exchange of cash takes place in the contextof a consensual agreement. Itis crucialto distinguishbetween consensual S/M and nonconsensualviolence and sexual sadism. These marka continuumratherthan two exclusive poles, and there are relationshipsthatwaverperilouslyacross the twilightmiddle.

76 boundary2 / Summer 1992

fate but does so withoutsteppingoutsidethe enchantmentof its magic circle. Ifthe prostitution trialredistributes illicitfemalemoneybackintolicit male circulation,commercialS/M performedby a womanenacts the reverse: stagingthe contradictions of women'sunpaidsexual and domestic workas unnatural-as theater-and insisting(strictly)on payment.The paradoxand scandalof S/M is its flagrantexposurein the formof a spectacle of the conceptualand politicallimitsof the liberalidealof the autonoThe outrageof S/M is its provocativeconfessionthatthe mous individual. of dynamics powerare reversible. The act of payinga female prostituteflagrantlyannouncesthe unnaturalnessand fictiveinventivenessof the ancestraledictthatwomendo notownpropertyintheirownpersons.Historically, malelawhas attempted, withgreat vigilanceand inclemency,to policethe contradictionbetween male dependenceon femalesexual powerand malejuridicaldefinitionsof the propertyof men. womenas naturallyand universally In 1855, in New York,the TrinityChurchvestryman,George TempletonStrong,confidedto his diarythat "whatthe Mayorseeks to abolish ... butsimplythe scandal and abate is not the terribleevilof prostitution and the offense of the peripateticwhorearchy."19 Indeed,states have seldomsoughtto abolishprostitution rather,they havesoughtto curb outright; sexworkers'controlof the trade. Of whatsin are prostitutesguilty?What,precisely,is the scandalof the whorearchy? The Scandal of the Whorearchy:Prostitutionand Property In1986, PasadenaSuperiorCourtJudgeGilbertC. Alstonpresided overthe trialof DanielZabuski,whowas chargedwiththe violentrapeand sodomy of RhodaDacosta,a prostitute.Alstondismissedthe charges on the groundsthat a whorecannotbe raped.He based his judgmentnot on standardproceduralgroundsof legallyrelevantevidence,noron the consoundcase, buton the groundsthat,as he structionof a credible,juridically whore is a whore."20 ForAlston,all prostitutesshare a whore is a put it, "a commonidentitythatmakesthemessentiallyand universallyunrapeable. 19. Quoted in ArleneCarmenand HowardMoody,WorkingWomen:The Subterranean Worldof Street Prostitution(New York:Harperand Row,1985), 6. 20. "JudgeRules ProstitutesCan'tBe Raped,"Whisper1, no. 2 (Spring1986): 1. See also Sex Work:Writingsby Womenin the Sex Industry,ed. FrederiqueDelacoste and Cleis Press, 1987), 185. PriscillaAlexander(Pittsburgh:

/ Screwing McClintock theSystem 77 InSan Franciscorecently,the Oaklandpolicechiefadmittedto closing rape cases of prostituteswithoutproperinvestigationsimplybecause the victimswere prostitutes.DavidP. Lambkin,a detectivewiththe Los Angeles police,admittedthatrapeof prostitutesis on the increase,buthe added: "It'shardenoughto make a rapecase witha legitimatevictim."21 "Sure,"said LieutenantVitoSpano, head of the sex crimesunitin Brooklyn, "surethey get victimized,but they are theirown worst enemies."22 Whatdoes the malejudiciarysee in prostitutesthatputsthemoutsidethe protectionof the law? Untilvery recently,two categoriesof women have been deemed unrapeableby law:wivesandprostitutes.Indeed,Friedrich Engelsfirstsugandmarriagefindtheirsocialmeaningindialectical gested thatprostitution relationto each other.23Rape is not illegal,it is regulated.Judge Alston's notionthat a whorecannotbe rapedfindsits logic in an ancienttradition thatdefines rapenotas an affrontto womenbutas an affrontto malepropfemalechastityhas had propertyvalue formen. In erty rights.Historically, law the codes of surviving Mesopotamian valley,forexample,womenwere as the of legislated property fathers,husbands,brothers,or sons, so that of male rapewas figurednotas the violationof womenbutas the ruination propertyvalue.24Untillate in the nineteenthcentury,underthe commonlaw doctrineof coverture,a woman'ssexual propertypassed intoa man's handsat marriage;so didherlabor,herinheritance, andherchildren.Under a like a was In dead. the coverture, wife, slave, civilly eighteenthcentury, in Britain,Sir M. Hale'snotoriousinjunction gave a husbandde juresanctionto rapehis wifeby the legalcategoryof conjugalrights.25UntilOctober 21. Jane Gross, "Prostitutesand Addicts:Special Victimsof Rape,"New YorkTimes, 12 Oct. 1990, 14. 22. Gross, "Prostitutesand Addicts,"14. 23. FriedrichEngels, TheOriginof the Family,PrivateProperty,and the State (NewYork: International Publishers,1972), 129-30, 138-39. 24. VernBulloughand BonnieBullough,Womenand Prostitution: A Social History(Buffalo: Prometheus,1987), 16. InmedievalEurope,likewise,customarylaw gave the husband the rightto execute his wife if she committedadultery,and rape was seen as the tarnishingof male propertyvalue (115).See also GerdaLerner,"TheOriginof Prostitution in AncientMesopotamia,"Signs 1, no. 2 (1986):236-54. 25. Hale laid down that "the husbandcannot be guiltyof a rape committedby himself consent and contractthe wife hath upon his lawfulwife, for by theirmutualmatrimonial given up herself in this kindunto her husband,whichshe cannot retract"(Sir M. Hale, The Historyof the Pleas of the Crown[London:Sollom Emlyn,1778], vol. 1, chap. 58, 628). Until1884, in Britain,a wife could be forciblyincarceratedin a state prisonfor re-

78 boundary2 / Summer1992 1991, it was legal for a man to rape his wife in Britain,except in Scotland. It is still legal in many states in the United States and in most countries around the world. The rape trial serves to police contradictions inherent in the judiciary's own laws, isolating points of conflictin the distributionof male property rights over the bodies of women. Central to the idea of the modern, universal citizen is John Locke's famous formulation:"Every Man has a Property in his own Person."26 Yet, the principlethat individualsown property in theirown persons is immediatelycontradictedby the fact that women do not, whereupon a fissure opens in the ideology of individualism.The rape trial serves to isolate and close the fissure, which is identified as a crime: a rape, a theft, adultery,prostitution. "Awoman,"Judge Alston explains, "whogoes out on the street and makes a whore out of herself opens herself up to anybody.""27 The logic of law as is a is follows: Since crime a rape rape against man's property in the woman, a wife cannot be raped by her husband, for a man cannot rob himself of his own property.Similarly,since rape is a crime against a man's property,and since the prostituteis a common prostitute, the prostituteno longer has private propertyvalue for men. By "opening herself up" to any man, the prostituteruins her potentialvalue as privatepropertyfor a single man and becomes, by definition,unrapeable. A prostitute who removes her body from the stock of male propand claims it for her own, removes her body from the sphere of male erty, which exists to negotiate the distributionand circulationbetween men law, of property and power. Historically,most regimes have legislated that a woman's relationto the rightsand resources of the state are indirect,mediated through a social relationto a man (father, husband, or nearest male kin). By publiclyselling sexual services that men expect for free, prostitutes transgress the fundamental structureof the male trafficin women. Therefore, as Judge Alston put it, a prostitute"steps outside the protectionof the law."28As a result, she is also disqualifiedfrom speaking for herself before the law. Alston adds: "Whothe hell would believe a prostitutein the witness fusing conjugalrights(see CarolePateman,TheSexual Contract[Oxford:PolityPress, 1988], 123). 26. John Locke, Two Treatisesof Government,ed. P. Laslett(Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1967), vol. 2, 183, 81-82. 27. "JudgeRules ProstitutesCan'tBe Raped,"1. 28. "JudgeRules ProstitutesCan'tBe Raped,"1.

/ Screwingthe System 79 McClintock stand anyway?"29 Marx'sinjunctioncould hardlybe more apposite: "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented."30 A standard Latin term for prostitute, meretrix means "she who earns."31Since prostitution,in European history, is theft by a woman of sexual propertythat rightfullybelongs to a man, some of the earliest laws against prostitution were laws to curb the kind of money and property women could accumulate.32 Hence the analogy between the terms common land and common prostitute. Untilvery recently,maritallaw enclosed a woman's "privateparts"and transferredthem fromthe father to the husband. The wife, by law,did not possess the titledeeds to her sexual property but served only as custodian and gatekeeper to ensure that the grounds remained private. Inthe sexual commonage of the prostitute,however, the body fluids and liquidassets of men from differentclasses and races mix promiscuously. It is, therefore, not surprisingthat prostitutes are traditionallyassociated with challenges to rule, with figures of rebellion,revolt, insurrection, and the criminalappropriationof property.The scandal of the whorearchy amounts to flagrantfemale interferencein male contests over propertyand power. Not for nothing did Parisian public health officialParent-Duchatelet call prostitutes "the most dangerous people in society."33

29. "JudgeRules ProstitutesCan'tBe Raped,"1. 30. KarlMarx,"TheEighteenthBrumaireof LouisBonaparte,"in Selected Works(New York:International Publishers,1973), 417. 48. 31. Bulloughand Bullough,Womenand Prostitution, 32. Atthe end of the firstcenturyA.D., EmperorDomitiantriedto ruleagainstprostitutes receivinginheritancesand legacies. In Romanlaw, a prostitutewas canonicallybarred fromaccusing others of crime,was forbiddento inheritproperty,and couldnot represent herself in court.MedievalByzantinechurchlegislationforbadea prostitutefromowning property.In the Visigothickingdomin Spain, prostituteswho persistedin theirtrade received three hundredlashes. In 1254, Louis IXdecreed that all prostitutesbe placed beyond the protectionof the king'slaw and that all theirpersonalgoods, clothing,furs, tunics, and linenchemises be seized (Bulloughand Bullough,Womenand Prostitution, 48, 55, 116, 120, 122). 33. Alexandre-Jean-BaptisteParent-Duchatelet,De la prostitutionde la ville de Paris (Paris:J. B. Bailliere,1836), quotedin LouiseWhite,TheComfortsof Home:Prostitution in ColonialNairobi(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1990), 2.

80 boundary2 / Summer1992

Black Markets:Prostitutionand Race In late VictorianBritain,the imagery for representing sexuality was drawnfromthe sphere of economic activity.34 Sexual problems were figured as fiscal problems and were imaged by metaphorsof accumulation,production, and excessive expenditure.35 As Foucault has suggested, the middle class lacked the means, and therefore had to inventthe means, for defining itself as a class. Sexual reproductionand economic production became deeply symbolicallylinked.Sexuality (one's relationto one's body and to the bodies of others) became the language forexpressing one's relationto class (one's relationto labor and to the laborof others). The middle class figured itself as differentfromboth the aristocracyand the workingclass by virtue of its sexual restraint(its monogamy) and its economic moderation(its thrift). The bank, as the economic institutionfor managing the accumulation and distributionof capital,found its accomplice in monogamous marriageas the social institutionfor managing the accumulation and distributionof reproductive power and property.A contradictionin the formof gender, however, opened in the formation of class identity,for monogamy was monogamy for women only, and saving and accumulatingpropertywere for men only. In order to foreclose the contradiction,nature was reinventedto guarantee gender difference withinclass identity.The primarysymbolic means for the reinventionof nature was the idea of race, and the primaryarena was empire. The invention of imperial nature, moreover,would guarantee that the "universal"quintessence of Enlightenmentindividualismwould belong only to propertiedmen of European descent. The relationbetween the "normal"male controlof reproductionand sexual pleasure in marriage, and the "normal"bourgeois control of capital was legitimized and made naturalby reference to a thirdterm: the "abnormal" zone of racial "degeneration."Illicitmoney and illicitsexuality were seen to relate to each other by negative analogy to race. The internal, historicalcontradictionwithinthe modern social formationwas thereby displaced and represented as a naturaldifference across the time and space A Studyof Sexualityand Pornographyin 34. See Steven Marcus,TheOtherVictorians: Mid-NineteenthCenturyEngland(NewYork:New AmericanLibrary,1974),xiii. 35. Women "saved"themselves for marriage,or "cheapened"themselves in promisor homosexuality.See Sander cuity;men "wasted"or "spent"themselvesin masturbation Gilman,Differenceand Pathology:Stereotypes of Sexuality,Race, and Madness. See also Gilmanin TheAnatomyof Racism, ed. DavidGoldberg(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1990).

/ Screwing theSystem 81 McClintock of empire:the differencebetweenthe "enlightened" presentandthe "primiThe movement the of across tive"past. space empirewas thus figuredas a movementbackwardintime. Prostitutesbecame associated with black and colonizedpeoples withina discourseon racialdegenerationthatfiguredthemas transgressof money,sexual power,and property,and as ing the naturaldistributions therebyfatallythreateningthe fiscaland libidinaleconomyof the imperial state. Prostitutes,whosteppedbeyondthe edictsof heterosexualmarriage and the doctrinethat womendid not workfor profit,were figuredas atavisticthrowbacksto a primordial phase of racialdevelopment,their"racial deviance"writtenvisiblyon the bodyinthe stigmataof femalesexual deviance: exaggeratedposteriors,mutantgenitalsand ears, excessive sexual appetites,disheveledhair,andothersundry"racial" stigmata. Gambling,likewise,as SanderGilmanpointsout, took its place in a vocabularythat metaphorically intertwinedmoney,sexuality,and race. If commercialS/M was the dialecticaltwinof the sex trial,the gambling hall was the dialecticaltwinof the bank.Gamblingwas the institutional display of organizedcommodityfetishism:the flagrantexhibitionof the without capitalistsuperstitionthatmoneycan breeditselfautochthonously labor.The organizeddreamof gamblingwas the orgasmicexcess of pure masturbaexchange valuefromwhichall laborhas been voided.Similarly, tion (autoeroticand outsidethe heterosexualreproductive economy)was in condemned sexual treatisesas interfering witha man'sabilityto widely workandaccumulatecapital.Homosexuality andclitoraleroticism,similarly, stood outsidethe reproductive economyandoutsidethe narrative teleology of racialevolution,and were bothfiguredas precipitating a steady decline into"racial" degeneration,visiblyexpressedinthe stigmataof hairyhands, shamblinggait, mentaldeficiency,and irrationality. Inthe symbolictriangleof deviantmoney,deviantsexuality,anddeviantrace, the so-calleddegenerateclasses-the militantworkingclass, the colonized,prostitutes,gays and lesbians,gamblers,the Irish,and the Jews (particularly those who livedinthe East Endof London,on the cusp of empire)-were metaphorically boundin a regimeof surveillancefigured by images of sexual pathologyand racialaberration. InVictorianiconography, the fetishemblemof dirtwas compulsively drawnon to police the boundariesbetween"normal" sexualityand "normal"marketrelations."Dirty" lesbianand sex-masturbation,prostitution, the gay sexuality,and the host of Victorian"perversions"-transgressed libidinal economy of heterosexual reproductionwithin the monogamous

82 boundary2 / Summer1992 maritalrelation ("clean"sex, which has value). Likewise, "dirty"moneyassociated withprostitutes,Jews, gamblers, and thieves-transgressed the fiscal economy of the male-dominated, marketexchange ("clean"money, which has value). The bodily relationto dirtexpressed a social relation to labor. Because it was the surplus evidence of human work, dirtwas a Victorian scandal. Dirtwas the visible residue that stubbornlyremained after the process of industrialrationalityhad done its work.Smeared on clothes, hands, and faces, dirtwas the memory trace of human labor,the evidence that the production of industrialwealth, and the creation of liberal rationality, lay in the hands and bodies of the workingclass and the colonized. For this reason, Victoriandirtentered the symbolic realm of fetishism with great force, and the body of the prostitute,standing on the street corner of marriage and market, became subject to vigilantand violent policing. In late Victorian Britain,the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts British police the right to forcibly impose physical examinations on gave women suspected of workingas prostitutes in designated garrison towns in Britainand its colonies. The initialimpetus for the Acts came from blows to male self-esteem in the arena of empire, in resurgent militancyin India, South Africa, Ireland,and elsewhere. The argument ran that the real threat to the potency of the imperialarmy lay in the sexual bodies of transgressive women. If working women could be cordoned off, the purityof the army and the imperialbody politiccould be assured. Withthe Acts, the policing of female sexuality became both metaphor and means for policing unruly working-class and colonized peoples at large. If the Western discourse on degeneration sees the white prostitute as a racialdeviant, and colonized people as inherentlysexually degenerate, the prostitute in the colonies brings the discourse on deviance to its conceptual limit. If all colonized people are the embodiment of degeneration, there is no way to represent the special case of the prostitute.How can she be defined as sexually abnormalif all colonized people are already quintessentially abnormal? In the colonies, the relation between prostitutionand female property,between paid and unpaidfemale work, comes criticallyto the fore. In colonial Kenya, for example, prostitutionemerged from the collision of naturalcatastrophe and colonialism,fromthe disruptionsof African agricultureand African resistance to colonial wage labor.36Yet, as Louise 36. See LouiseWhite,TheComfortsof Home.Iam gratefullyindebtedto White'sgroundbreakingbook. For a fullerdiscussion of White'sbook, see my review"TheScandal of 52 (1991):92-99. the Whorearchy," Transition

/ Screwing theSystem 83 McClintock was nota litanyof victims. Whiteshows, the historyof colonialprostitution Workingprostituteswere Kenya's"urbanpioneers,"some of the firstresidents to liveyear-roundin Nairobi.Kenyanprostitutesthemselvesdefined sexworkas a defiantformof labor.Dodgingcolonialwage labor,manyof the women used the cash they earnedfrom"diggingwiththeirbacks"to buy notion"that cattleand buildhouses and to foundthe "nearlyrevolutionary womencan controltheirown moneyand propertyas independentheads of households.37

mimickedmarriage,the radical As Whiteshows, malayaprostitution differencebeingthatwomenexchangedformoneythedomestic,emotional, and sexual services that wives performedunpaid.38Fosteringvalues of femaleand communityloyalty,the prostituteshelpedmaintainAfricancommunitiesand struggledto shape the colonialurbanscene to meet African women'sneeds. Inprecolonialsociety,the daughter'smarriagewas the sourceof the father'saccumulationof propertyand power.Since womendidthe bulkof of lifeandlabor,theirworkwas the the workandwerethe chiefreproducers single most valuableresourceapartfromthe landitself.Incattle-marriage societies, livestockwere the symboliccoinage of women's laborpower. Morewives meantgreaterwealthand morecattleformen, and cattlemarby whichwomen'slaborpowerwas riage was the fundamentalinstitution metamorphosedintomale politicalpower.Throughmalecontrolof female sexualityand marriage,cattle and cash were redistributed throughmale familialnetworks. however,womenbeganto buytheirown propThroughprostitution, erty.Manyof the malayaprostituteswere runawaywiveswho came to the cityto escape forcedmarriages.Insteadof sendingtheirmoneybackto the male-headedhomestead,womenboughtlivestockandhouses andbecame independentheads of households,movinga whole cycle of new, female familyformationintothe new urbancenters. If marriagewas a source of fathers'accumulation,prostitution becamethe sourceof daughters'accumulation.As KayayaThababuputit:"Athome,whatcouldIdo? Growcrops for my husbandor my father.In NairobiI can earn my own money,for myself."39By the early 1930s, halfof the landlordsin Pumwani,Nairobi's blacktownship,werewomen.40 37. White,TheComfortsof Home,34. 38. Unlikethe watambezi,or streetwalkingprostitutes,malaya prostitutesworkedfrom theirhomes, exchangingbothdomesticand sexual services forcash. 39. White,TheComfortsof Home,51. 40. White,TheComfortsof Home,64.

2 / Summer 84 boundary 1992 Manyof the women, moreover,consciouslyrefusedto pass their fathersand brothers propertybackthroughthe male system, disinheriting and keepingtheirmoneyand theirbodies forthemselves.Malayaprostitutionexpressed a clear rejectionof traditional malefamilyties. Windfalls went intohelpingwomenfriends,and the womendesignatedfemale heirs to ensurethattheirpropertydidnotpass backintothe patrilineage,thereby many men took creatingnew, explicitlyfemale lineages. Not surprisingly, at the women's and the had to umbrage temerity, prostitutes negotiateconstantlyto keep theirpropertyout of the hands of iratefathers,brothers, ex-husbands,and the state. was riven Indeed,the colonialstate'sresponseto Nairobiprostitution withparadox.On the one hand,prostitution was essential to the smooth runningof a migrantlaboreconomy,savingthe state the cost of servicing Africanmen,as wellas forestalling the perilsof settledAfricancommunities takingrootinthe urbanareas. Onthe otherhand,the earningsof the prostitutesalso allowedwomenand men to elude the depredationsof colonial wage labor.Settlersconstantlycarpedat Africanscoundrelsand slothful layaboutswho livedoffwomen'searningsandweretherebyable to refuse to workforwhites. In colonialKenya,as elsewhere,the state objectedless to prostitutionitselfthan to the women'sscandalousaccumulationof money and Ina worldwherecolonialssoughtconstantlyto controlthe livesof property.41 Africansthroughhousing,marriage,and migrantlabor,prostitutesowning self-respect,andgender propertyand passingon the valuesof community, a affront to white were constant the male managementof power. loyalty Inmanypartsof Africa,the state'sambiguousrelationto prostitution has enduredafterindependence.Inthe 1970s and 1980s, in Zimbabwe, Gabon,Zambia,Tanzania,Mozambique,and BurkinaFaso, for example, workingwomen policelaunchedmassiveassaultson single,independently the inputativeattemptsto "clean"the citiesof prostitution. Yet, realthreatto butthe generalspecterof economicallyindethe state was notprostitution pendentwomen,who werefetishizedand demonizedby the whorestigma of women inorderto licensestate violence.As PaolaTabetputsit,"Control in marriageand exploitationof theirlaboris based on male monopolyof resources and means of production.Whenwomenhave access to other forms of income, marriageand directmale controlare threatened."42 In 41. White,TheComfortsof Home,219. 42. See Paola Tabet, "I'mthe Meat, I'mthe Knife.Sexual Service, Migration,and Re-

/ Screwing theSystem 85 McClintock 1983, inZimbabwe,forexample,the Mugabegovernmentorderedmassive roundupsof womenwho couldnotdemonstratean immediaterelationto a man. Womenwalkingalone on the streets, livingalone in flats in Harare, or raisingchildrenindependently as single motherswerearrestedas prostitutesand sent to camps, wherethey were subjectedto appallingabuse. The roundupswere repeatedduringthe recentCommonwealth Summit. Prostitutionis a realmof contradiction. Inthe colonies, prostitution may very well have confirmedcolonialfantasiesaboutwhitemen's privialso confused leged access to the bodiesof blackwomen,butprostitution racialsegregationandthe racialandgendereddistributions of money.The fact thatmen had access to prostitution didnotmeanthatthey hadcontrol over prostitutes.Prostitutesobligedwhitemento payfarbetterthan usual for Africanwomen'sworkand, at least temporarily, subjectedwhite men to Africanwomen'scontrol.Prostitutesdictatedthe times and termsof the exchange,whatservicestheyoffered,and howmuchthey charged.43 In contemporaryBritain,Europe,and the UnitedStates, the policof ing prostitutesas racialdegenerates persists in at least three ways. Prostitutescontinueto be figuredas atavisticthrowbacksto racial"degeneracy."In 1969, a Britishpamphlet,forexample,widelyreadby probation as "a primitiveand regressivemanifesofficers,condemnedprostitution and migrantprostitutesare subjectedto tation."44 Poor,black,immigrant, systematic,and especiallyviolent,harassment.The police,moreover,use the controlof prostitutesas a coverforpolicingblack,minority, immigrant, and working-classcommunities,bothmale and female. Definingzones of the cityas sexuallydeviant,the policeattemptto penetrateandsubduethe blackbodypolitic.As a statementfromthe EnglishCollectiveof Prostitutes protested,"Womenare pushedfromarea to area, and even fromcity to city,butthe policeremaininthe area afterthe womenhave left."45 andentersthe realm laws,space is criminalized Throughprostitution of law. In Britain,the recent,notoriousKerbCrawlingBillis no exception. In 1985, underthe guise of protectingwomen,it became a crimefor men to engage in "persistentkerbcrawling" (solicitingwomenforsex). In1990, pression in Some AfricanSocieties,"in TheVindicationof the Rightsof Whores,ed. Gail Pheterson, Preface by MargoSt. James (Seattle:Seal Press, 1989), 204-23. 43. As Whitepoints out, women controlledthe price,the type, the time, and the length and intensityof the services they preferredto exchange. 44. Quotedin Pateman,TheSexual Contract,194. 45. EnglishCollectiveof Prostitutes'Statement,KingsCross, London,10 July 1987.

86 boundary2 / Summer1992 under the Sexual Offenses Bill,Sir WilliamShelton proposed the removal of the termpersistent, in orderto make it possible for a single officerwithouta witness to charge any man simplysuspected of talkingto a prostitute(hence the term sus law). Prostitutes argue that the new bill, far from protecting women from violent clients, only deepens the dangers. Nervous johns do not have time to dawdle, so women do not have time to check them out or negotiate for safe sex. As a result, some women have been badly battered and murdered.As a Kings Cross prostitutecomplained:"Ifthe law can nick them straight away, everything will be done so fast you won't have a chance, especially at night. Withsome of the nuts you get around here, it's a frightening prospect."46 At the same time, the bill has been widely used as a "sus" law to arrest and harass black, immigrant,and minoritymen for unrelated reasons. In London, many black and immigrantmen have been stopped, arrested, charged with stealing their own bicycles, or harassed and beaten up simply for talkingto a woman who is "suspected" of being a prostitute.White, middle-class men, like Prosecutor Allan Green, however, are let off with a fraternalslap on the wrist.47 Prostitutes who are poor and black bear the most vicious bruntof the law. In 1982, in London,police abuse of black, immigrant,and minorityprostitutes became so widespread that women occupied the Churchof the Holy Cross to draw publicattentionto theirplight.Inthe UnitedStates, while only 40 percent of streetwalkers are women of color, they make up 55 percent of those sentenced to jail.48In New York,police hold "tricktournaments," lining black and white prostituteson either side of a road and forcing them to run races against each other. Those who lose go to jail.49 Generally speaking, in Britain,Europe, and the United States, black and white prostitutes experience the metropolis in differentways. A racial geography of sex maps the city and divides the sex industry. In the exchange of commercial sex, the private(white)spaces of escort services and 46. See Jo Grant,"StreetsApart,"TheGuardian(London),3 July 1990, 14. 47. Chief ProsecutorAllanGreen was arrestedfor kerbcrawlingnear the KingsCross Stationin 1991. In 1985, the Campaignagainst KerbCrawlingLegislationwas launched by a coalitionof sexworkers,anti-rape,black,and civilrightsgroupsto lobbymembersof Parliamentand maketheirobjectionsknownto the press. On Friday,11 May1990, aftera rowdyand acrimoniousdebate, Memberof ParliamentKenLivingstontalkedthe Sexual Offenses Billdown.The bill,however,comes up every Friday,and willbe passed unless one MPopposes it. 48. Delacoste and Alexander,Sex Work,197. 49. Arlene Carmenand HowardMoody,WorkingWomen:The SubterraneanWorldof Street Prostitution(New York:Harperand Row,1985), 146.

/ Screwingthe System 87 McClintock clubs are tacitlycondoned, while the public(black) spaces of streetwalking and car sex are more violent, more heavily policed, and more profoundly stigmatized. In the 1970s, in New York,massage parlorson the East Side were run by white men who overwhelminglyemployed white women and were comparativelysafer and more comfortablethan the less opulent black parlors on the West Side. Black and Asian women in the United States find it harder to get work as go-go dancers and escort women than white and Latina women do. In Nevada, until the 1960s, black women could not enter casinos. Today, many bar owners, hotel keepers, and landlords either do not allow black prostitutes to use their premises or they charge them punitivelyinflatedrents. Police are far more tolerantof less overt sexwork, largely because the customers are drawnfromthe white, middle, and professional classes. By licensing indoorwork, and harassing street work, police isolate the poorest women, who cannot affordto pay high rents and who have the least access to health care, social resources, and legal aid. The police thereby ensure that poor, black women pay the heaviest price for the criminalizationof sexwork. The whore stigma polices the racial divide, stigmatizing and endangering the lives of women of color, as well as perpetuatingracism within the sex industry and among some white prostitutes. At the same time, in Britain, Europe, and the United States, clients are overwhelminglywhite, married,and middleclass, while most of the men arrested are men of color, are gay, or are transvestite.

"It'sa Business Doing Pleasure with You": ProstitutionIs Work Prostitutes around the world are now becoming their own media advocates and politicalactivists, radicallychallenging the stigma of sexual and racial deviance.50 Since the 1970s, hundreds of prostitutionorganizations have burgeoned worldwide,from Hawaiito Austria, from Canada to the Philippines, from Zimbabwe to the Netherlands. In 1986, prostitutes from around the world met in Brussels at an extraordinarysession of the European Parliament, where they launched the Second World Whores' Congress. Drawnfrom over sixteen countries and representing millionsof 50. See Delacoste and Alexander,Sex Work.See also DoloresFrench,Working:MyLife as a Prostitute(New York:E. P. Dutton,1988), and Good Girls/BadGirls:Feministsand Sex TradeWorkersFace to Face, ed. LaurieBell(Toronto:Seal Press, 1987).

2 / Summer 88 boundary 1992 sexworkersworldwide,the prostitutesdrewup a Whores'Charter,calling of sexworkandan endto allviolationsof sexworker forthe decriminalization rights.51

InOctober1991,sexworkersfromsixteencountriesmetin Frankfurt at the FirstEuropeanProstitutes'Congressto call for the recognitionof as a professionin the EuropeanCharterand for full voluntaryprostitution Tothe consternationof many rightsas workersunderEuropeanlaborlaw.52 some callednotforthe abolitionof and feminists, prostitutes governments, but for the redistribution of sexual pleasure,power,and profit; prostitution of landandpropertyrights;forthe removalof foreign forthe transformation in the sex armies;and forthe rightof womenand men to workvoluntarily tradeundersafe, unregulated,and respectedconditions.53 Manymen, however,preferto findwhoresin theirbeds thanin their parliaments,and attemptsby sexworkersto organizehave met with unswervingviolence. An Irishorganizerwas burntto death, and Thaiorganizers have been murdered.Ecuadoranbrothelowners rotateprostitutes regularlyto preventthem fromorganizing.54Yetby and large,the international Lefthas been largelyindifferent to the issue, whilethe abolitionist feminists some has been tendencyamong nothingshortof calamitousfor workingprostitutes. Mostprostitutesinsistthatthe firsttargetof theirinternational orgathe law. Prostitutes that the laws rather is the state and punish, argue nizing thanprotect,women,especiallywomenof color.Wheresexworkis a crime, Murderers knowthe clientscan rape,rob,and batterwomenwithimpunity. weightof a prostitute'slife in the scales of the law.As DallasJudge Jack Hamptonadmitted,"I'dbe hardputto give somebodylifeforkillinga prostimoreprostitutesare murderedinthe UnitedStates, tute." 55Notsurprisingly, is stilla crime,thananywhereelse in the world. where prostitution Prostitutesdenouncethe lawsthatshuntthemintodangerous,desolatedocklands,meatpacking districts,andrailwayyards,unableto organize is a crime, for decent conditionsor againstcoercion.Whereprostitution womencannotdemandpoliceprotectionorclaimlegalrecourseforrobbery of the Rightsof Whores. 51. Fora fullaccountof the congress, see Pheterson,Vindication 52. See Anne McClintock,"Downby Law,"TheGuardian(London),23 Oct. 1991, 20. 53. See Anne McClintock, "MeanwhileBackat the ChickenRanch,"The Guardian(London), 12 May1992, 36. 54. Pheterson,Vindicationof the Rightsof Whores,7. 55. Lisa Belkin,"ReportClears Judge of Bias in Remarksabout Homosexuals,"New YorkTimes,2 Nov. 1989, A25.

/ Screwing theSystem 89 McClintock or coercion,forthey therebyexpose themselvesas implicatedin a criminalizedtrade.Wheresexworkis a crime,prostitutesareforcedby landlords to pay exorbitantrentsor are drivento workthe freezingand dangerous streets. Prostitutescannotclaimsocialwelfareor lifeinsurance,healthcare or maternitybenefits,childcareor pensions.Whereprostitution is a crime, migrantwomenare evictedfromtheirhomes,are deniedworkpapers,and are detainedand deported.Everycent of a prostitute'searningsis criminallycontaminated.The propertyand possessions of prostitutesare often forfeited,and mothers,brothers,friends,andloverscan be flungintoprison for livingoff immoralearnings.Mostcruelly,a prostitutecannotkeep her children.Mostprostitutesare mothers,and most are in the game fortheir children.In many countries,however,social workershave the powerto take a prostitute'schildrenoutof "moraldanger"into"care."Inthese ways, the state curtailswomen'spower,divertingillicitfemale money back into the coffersof malecirculation andcurtailing the emergenceof independent female heads of family. Sexworkthat benefitsthe malestate, however,is toleratedand administeredby a system of international euphemisms:massage parlors, escort agencies, bars, rest and recreationresorts,and so on, whichare runnot by hookersbutby male"entertainment managers."InThailand,for inhabitsa twilightrealmof legal ambiguity.The law example, prostitution makes prostitution a crime,butthe green lightis givento male"touroperators"and "entertainment managers,"whose operationsaresanctionedand definedas the "personalservicesector." Most prostitutesregardlegalizedprostitution as legalizedabuse. undercriminallaw Despite its benignring,legalizationplaces prostitution insteadof commerciallaw,whereit is tightlycurbedby the state and administeredby the police. Instead,prostituteswantthe law off theirbodies and are callingforthe decriminalization of the professionand the repealof all legislationnotordinarily applicableto a businessor trade. Legalizationputswomen'sbodiesfirmlyin men'shands.Inthe aptly namedChickenRanch,a legalizedbrothelinNevada,prostitutesareforced to workthreeweeks at a stretch,servicingany manwho picksthem,at any timeof the dayornight,a dizzyinganddispiriting carouselof faceless tricks. In manyof the legalizedbrothelsand clubs in Europe,Lisbet,a German prostitute,toldme, "Womenhave no rightto refusemen andoftenno right to use a condom." Underlegalization,the profitsof women'sworkclatterinto men's pockets. The state becomes a licit pimp, penning prostitutes in brothels

2 / Summer 90 boundary 1992 and levyingpunitivetaxes at rateshigherthanotherworkers.InGermany, legalizedprostitutespay 56 percentof theirearningsin taxes, but, unlike other taxpayers,they are not eligiblefor any social benefitswhatsoever. Underlegalization,the state controlsprostitutes' workand leisure,preventit and often themto leave the tradeif hard for ingorganization making very wish. Most to work they prostitutesprefer illegallyratherthansubmitto the abusiveand humiliating ordealsof state-controlled brothels. Frenchprostitutescannotlivewitha husband,wife,lover,orchild,as Italianprostianyone undertheirroofcan be chargedwith"cohabitation." tutes cannothelptheirhusbandsorwivespaythe rentorgive theirparents money,as they can be chargedwithlivingoff "immoral earnings."In Britain, engaging in prostitutionis not a crime (whichlets the johns off the workis criminalized. Two hook),butvirtuallyeveryaspect of a prostitute's womenworkingtogetherforsafetycan be chargedwithkeepinga brothel. InSwitzerland,if a womandecides to leavethe tradeandseek otherwork, she firsthas to get a "goodgirl"letterfromthe policeto proveher good conduct.To get the letter,she has to waitthreeyears withoutworkingas a prostituteto proveher good conduct.Untilthen, she cannotlegallyfind otherwork.InFrankfurt, zoninglawsforcewomento workthe desertedharborarea,wheretheycan be torturedanddumpedinthe waterwithouta stir. InCanada,prostitution is nota crime,but"communicating forthe purposes is. Prostitutescan be penalizedfororganizingand informing of prostitution" each otherof dangeroustricksor corruptpolice.Austrianprostituteshave to reportto the policesimplyto go on holiday.Some of the most appalling conditionsprevailin India.Between1980 and 1984, not a single landlord was arrestedfor illegallypanderingto prostitutes,but 44,633 prostitutes were arrestedforsolicitingin Bombayalone. As DoloresFrench,author,activist,and prostitute,toldme in a prisees women as a controlledsubvate interview,"Legalizingprostitution men." The international stance-controlled by prostitutes'movementthus calls for the decriminalization,not the legalization, of theirwork. Prostitutes

demandthattheirworkbe respectedas a social serviceforbothmen and womenand thatit be broughtundercommerciallawlikeotherprofessions. Why,they ask, can masseurscommandrespectandgratitudeforservicing naked clients in comfortablerooms,whileprostitutesare criminalized?If theirworkweredecriminalized, prostitutescouldplytheirtradeinsafetyand respect,payingnormalrentandtaxes, in houses as clean and comfortable as those of the averagetherapistor chiropractor. Prostitutesinsistitis notthe exchangeof moneythatdemeansthem but the conditions under which the exchange is made. They demand, as

/ Screwing McClintock theSystem 91 a priority, the rightto choose and refusetheirclients,rejectingmenwhoare inanywaydisrespectfuloroffensive,drunk,orsimplyunsavory.No respect, they say, no sex. Prostitutesalso wantthe rightto stipulatewhatservices they offer.Some preferto give handshandies,others prefervanillasex. Some preferto workwiththeirmouths,otherswitha whip.Some refuseto undress.Mostrefuse anal sex. Manyrefuseto kiss. Alldemandthatthey be free to negotiatethese preferencessafely and professionallywiththeir clientsand thatthe prostituteshavethe finalsay on the terms. Some clientsare expertsat anger,ventingon whorestheirmisogyny and sexual despair.Ifsexworkweredecriminalized, prostitutescouldwork inconjunctionwithtrainedtherapists,offeringcounselingreferralforclients in need. Prostitutescouldalso organizecollectively,educatingeach other, theirclients,and the publicaboutsexualpleasureand sexual health. Prostitutesscoffat the notionthatthe criminallawsarethereto protect them. Why,they ask, are men arrestedfor payingprostitutesbut not arrestedforrapingthem?Prostitution catchesthe lawwithitspantsdown.In the eyes of the prostitute,the emperorhas no clothes:Thosewho makethe laws areoftenthe ones whobreakthe laws.Policeareambiguprostitution ous exterminating angels, curbingand harassinga tradethey don'treally wantto destroy.Prostitutesinsistthatthe policearetheirgreatestscourge, demandingfreebies,rapingthem in vans and in precincts,and interfering withsafe sex practicesby puncturingholes in condomsand confiscating bleach. Inthe states of Washingtonand Arizona,cops are legallyallowed to have sex withprostitutesinorderto entrapthem.InNewYork,policeare on recordforconfiscatingwomen'sshoes inthe winterandforcingthemto walkhome barefootthroughthe icy streets. Prostitutesare callinginternationally forthe end to allpoliceharassmentandto the forcedtestingof prostitutesforHIV.56 Inthe currentclimate of sexualparanoia,prostitutesarebeingdemonizedas deadlynightshades, fatallyinfectinggood familymen. A hue and cry has gone up aroundthe world,with publicofficialsclamoringfor prostitutesto be force-testedfor HIVand corralledintoquarantine.Officials,however,have been far less gung ho aboutthrowinga cordonsanitaireof arrests,tests, andquarantine aroundjohns,perhapsbecause so manyof these good publicservantsare johnsthemselves. Since mostjohnsarehusbands,the currentcallforlegalizationstems 56. See Delacoste and Alexander,"ProstitutesAreBeingScapegoatedfor Heterosexual AIDS,"in Sex Work,248-63. See also Anne McClintock,"Safe Sluts,"Village Voice, 20 Aug. 1991.

2 / Summer 92 boundary 1992 less fromrecognitionof prostitutes'rightsthanfromthe illusionthat herdingprostitutesintobrothelsandforce-testingthemforHIVwillprotectgood familymen frominfection.Force-testingprostitutes,however,onlyfosters the illusionthateitherpartneris then safe withouta condom. As prostitutestirelesslypointout, it is notthe exchangeof cash but high-riskbehaviorsthattransmitdisease. Moreover,safe sex, not testing, preventsHIV.As Jasmin,a Germanprostitute,told me in a privateinterview, "Testingis always too late."Mostsexworkers,except, perhaps,for the veryyoung,the verydesperate,andthose deniedaccess to condoms, insistthat men use condomsforall services, includinghandshandiesand oralsex. As a result,studiesshowthat,contraryto popularstigma,cases of HIVforprostituteswho are notalso IVdrugusers remainconsistentlylow. Of greaterconcernthan a safe sex slut is a clientwho refuses a condom. For prostitutes,the onus is on the womanto get the rubberon the man.As Jasmintoldme, "Somemen ask me: 'Iwantit withouta condom.' I say: 'Youcan't pay me what my life is worth.Get out of here.'" Thus, the EuropeanCongress reporton AIDSdemandedthat managers of clubs, brothels,and ErosCenterswho forciblypreventprostitutesfrom usingcondomsshouldbe punishedbycriminallawforattemptedhomicide. Speakersat the EuropeanCongressvoicedgreatestconcernforthe plightof migrantworkersin the new Europe.In 1992, borderswithinthe "EuropeanFortress"willbe opened to all workersbut not to prostitutes. Unless prostitutesare recognizedas workerslikeeveryoneelse, migrant willsufferthe increasingindignitiesof arrests,deprostitutes,in particular, portation,and racistassaults.Prostitutesare moreawarethananyoneelse volunof the ordealsof forcedprostitution. Theyinsistthatdecriminalizing will forced make it far easier to detect and sexwork prostitution. destroy tary The UnitedNationshas estimatedthatby the year2000 tourismwill The international the most importanteconomicactivityin the world.57 be pursuitof commercialsex politicsof ThirdWorlddebtandthe international have become deeply entwined,turningsex tourisminto a surefire,coinspinningventure-with mostof the profitsclatteringintothe coffersof the Sex tourismis creatingbotha new kindof economicdepenmultinationals. refusal.In manycountries,tourism dence and a new kindof international has replacedproducts,such as bauxiteand sugar,as the leadingearner 57. See Thanh-DamTruong,Sex, Money, and Morality:Prostitutionand Tourismin SoutheastAsia (London:Zed, 1990). Fora moredetaileddiscussionof this book,see my reviewin the TimesLiterarySupplement,16 Aug. 1991, 10.

/ Screwing McClintock theSystem 93 of sexualityandthe sexualizationof of foreignexchange.The militarization as well.Millionsof women the militaryhave deep international implications, and menworkincountriesofficially designatedas R andR sites forthe U.S. military,in the burgeoningcruiseship industry,and in touristhotels,clubs, and resorts.Sex tourismdepends on powerfulconstructionsof race and of masculinity, on foreignbusinessmenwilling gender:on the militarization to investin sexual travel,and on a racialgeographyof sex thatpersuades privilegedmenthatwomenineconomicallydisempoweredcountrieswillbe more sexuallyavailableand pliant.58 As LifeTravelassured male adventurersinThailand,"Taking a womanhereis as easy as buyinga packageof 59Sex tourismdependson womenandmenavailableto selltheir cigarettes." services and on a networkof international companieswillingto fosterlocal bureaucraticstructures,to organizesex tours,and to preventsexworkers fromorganizing. The boy's-ownadventureof sex travelis as muchaboutempireas it is about sun, sex, and souvenirs.Foreignsunseekers fly to Southeast Asiawithairlinesthatpromiseto embodythefemininequintessenceof their nation:"Singaporegirl,you'rea greatwayto fly."As ThaiAirlineadvertised, "Somesay it'sourbeautifulwide-bodiedDC-10sthatcause so manyheads to turn. . . . We think our beautifulslim-bodied hostesses have a lot to do

withit."60Multinationals, the R and R ideafromthe U.S. military, borrowing regularlysend male employeeson packagetoursto be sexuallyserviced 61As yet, there by womenbilledas "littleslaves whogive realThaiwarmth." are no packagetoursforfemaleexecutivesfromTokyo,Dallas,and Ryad; and companywives chafingunderthe sexualennuiof marriagedo notlight out in drovesfora "taste"of the Orient. The currentsocial contextof most prostitution-pleasurefor men and workfor women-well-nigh guaranteesits sexism. Men enjoy privinotto mention leged access to sexualpleasure,to porn,andto prostitution, that hardyperennial,the doublestandard.Women'sdesire, by contrast, has been crimpedand confinedto history'ssad museumof corsets, chastity belts, and the virginitycult.Contexts,however,can be changed, and empoweringprostitutesempowersall women. DeloresFrenchsuggested 58. CynthiaEnloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: MakingFeministSense of InternationalPolitics (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1990). 59. Quotedin Thanh-DamTruong,Sex, Money,and Morality,178. 60. Quoted in Thanh-DamTruong,Sex, Money,and Morality,179. 61. Quoted in Thanh-DamTruong,Sex, Money,and Morality,178.

94 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 to me ina privateinterviewthatmanywomenfearprostitutesbecause they makewomenfeel tricked.Prostitutescall men'sbluff,challengingthe genof powerand profitby flagrantlydemandingmoneyfor dered distribution sex that nonreciprocal manywomengive forfree. Historychanges the meaningof the sexual body.There is no one nor is there any one politicallycorrect privilegednarrativeof prostitution, Some sexworkersplytheirtradein opulenthotels, politicsof prostitution. some in parkedcars, some in bars and caf6s, some in agricultural plantationsand migrantworkerhostels, some on cruiseliners,some at R and R sites for the U.S. military.Sexworkersdo not share the same reasons for enteringthe trade,nordo they experiencethe workin the same way. Not all sexworkersare women;not all customersare men. The enormous trade in gay commercialsex complicatesthe notionthatprostitution is no morethanthe embodimentof femalebondage.By some men'saccounts, commercialsex forwomen-arguablyone of the deepest taboos of allis on the increase.Whatis crucial,however,is thatprostitutesthemselves definethe conditionsfororganizingtheirworkto suittheirown localneeds and contexts. Perpetuatingthe image of prostitutesas eitherbrokenbaby dolls serves only to heightenthe climateof violence or fatal Frankenhookers and hypocrisyunderwhichso manywomenlive. Indeed,the feministcritiqueof prostitutesis to mymindtheoretically misbegottenandstrategically sexworkers'efforts(manyof whomare feminists unsound,short-circuiting the tradeto meettheirownneeds. Whateverelse it themselves)to transform is the female erasureof a woman'ssexualdesireinexchange is, prostitution for cash. Itis, however,no differentin that respectfrommost otherforms of women'swork.Prostitution that is not tightlycontrolledby men differs frommost women'sworkin that it is far betterpaid,has flexibleworking hours,and gives womenconsiderableeconomicindependencefrommen. As a result,working-classwomenandwomenof colorare able to educate and raisetheirchildrenin the comfortand themselves,findsocial mobility, securityusuallygivento onlygood whitegirls. Itseems crucial,therefore,to remainalertto the nuancesand pararatherthanto patronizeprostitutesas embodimentsof doxes of prostitution female sexual degradationor to glamorizethemas unambiguousheroines of female revolt.Sexworkis a genderedformof workthattakes its myriad meaningsfromthe differentsocieties inwhichit emerges. Wouldfeministswho condemnprostitutesforbecomingcomplicitin commodityfetishism,forexample,makethe same criticismof blackSouth

/ Screwing theSystem 95 McClintock Africanmineworkerswho dragfromthe earththe verystuffof commodity fetishism?Doesn'tthe argumentthat prostitutessell themselves bear an uncannyand perilousresemblanceto the sanctionedmale view that a woman'sidentityis equivalentto hersexuality?Prostitutesdo notsell themselves; rather,likeallworkers(including feminists),they exchangespecific services for cash and carefullynegotiatewiththeirclients what services they provide,at whatrate,andforhowlong. The whorestigmadisciplinesall women.As one prostitutetold me in a privateconversation,"It'sthe stigmathathurts,not the sex. The sex is easy. Facingthe world'shate is whatbreaksme down."The license to despise a prostituteis a license to despise any womanwho takes sex, money,and mobilityintoherhands.Iftricksare at libertyto abuse whores, chances are they willabuse otherwomen.Empowering whoresempowers all women,and educatingmen to respectprostituteseducates men to respect allwomen. Society demonizessexworkersbecause they demandmoremoney thanwomenshouldforservices men expectforfree. Prostitutesscrewthe inthe maledistribution of property,power, system, dangerouslyinterfering "In and profit.As MargoSt. James putsit, privatethe whorehas power.The greatfear for men, who are runningthings,is that if whoreshave a voice, suddenlygood womenare goingto findout how muchtheirtime is worth, 62Byorganizingfordecriminalization, and howto ask formoney." prostitutes are organizingto putcontrolof womens'workbackinwomens'hands.

62. "TheReclamationof Whores,"in Bell,Good Girls/BadGirls,82.

Ambiguity and Alienation in The Second Sex

TorilMoi Divided,torn,disadvantaged: for women the stakes are higher;there are more victories and more defeats for them than for men. -Simone de Beauvoir,TheForceof Circumstance(translation amended)

PreliminaryNote The article that follows is an excerpt from a much longer discussion of alienation and the body in The Second Sex, taken from chapter 6 of my forthcoming book on Simone de Beauvoir.'The excerpt printedhere is preceded by a discussion of the relationshipbetween The Second Sex and The 1. Page references to frequentlyquotedtexts by Beauvoirappearin parentheses in the text and notes. I use the followingabbreviations:SS = The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Penguin,1984);DSa = Le Deuxi6meSexe, Coll.Folio,vol. 1 Parshley(Harmondsworth: (Paris:Gallimard,1949);DSb = Le Deuxi6meSexe, vol. 2; FC = The Force of Circumstance, trans. RichardHoward(Harmondsworth: Penguin,1987); FCa = La Force des choses, Coll. Folio,vol. 1 (Paris:Gallimard,1963);FCb = La Force des choses, vol. 2; TA = TranslationAmended.I providereferencesto the Englishtranslationfirst,followed by referencesto the Frenchoriginal. Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. C 1992byDukeUniversity boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright

in TheSecond Sex 97 andAlienation Moi/ Ambiguity Ethics of Ambiguity, and by an analysis of the rhetoric-the language-of philosophy in The Second Sex. It is followed by a detailed study of Beauvoir's analysis of female desire. Drawingthese threads together, the chapter concludes by examining the philosophicalimplicationsof Beauvoir's analysis of what I like to call patriarchalfemininity.One of my conclusions in this chapter is that Beauvoir actually succeeds in dismantling the patriarchal paradigmof universal masculinityin philosophy.I am afraidthat the excerpt published here only forms one of the steps on the way to that conclusion. I nevertheless hope that it can be read on its own as a close textual analysis of the concept of alienation in Beauvoir'stheory. As this excerpt makes clear, this concept is bound up with the idea of the body: it is imperative to integrate any discussion of alienation with an explorationof Beauvoir's understanding of the body. I should perhaps also say that in my own readings of Beauvoir I try to produce a dialectical understandingof her contradictions and ambiguities. Itfollows that I don't consider every contradiction to be unproductive. It also follows that any single concept, such as that of alienation, should be examined in its interactionwithother crucial concepts in Beauvoir's texts. This is why Beauvoir'saccount of female sexuality-or female psychosexual development-should not be taken to represent the whole of her analysis of women's oppression. In order to grasp the political implications of her epochal essay, it is also necessary to explore the strength and limitationsof her understandingof freedom. That is the task I try to carry out in chapter 7 of my book. Ambiguity In The Ethics of Ambiguity(1947) Beauvoir presents a general philosophy of existence.2 Herfundamentalassumptions in this book also form the starting point for her next essay, The Second Sex (1949). According to Beauvoir's 1947 essay, men and women share the same human condition. We are all split, all threatened by the "fall"into immanence, and we are all mortal. In this sense, no human being ever coincides with him- or herself: we are all lack of being. In order to escape from the tension and anguish (angoisse) of this ambiguity,we may all be tempted to take refuge in the havens of bad faith. Starting where The Ethics of Ambiguity ends, 2. Simone de Beauvoir,The Ethicsof Ambiguity,trans. BernardFrechtman(New York: Citadel Press, 1976). Pour une morale de I'ambiguite,Coll. Idees (Paris: Gallimard, 1947).

98 boundary2 / Summer1992 The Second Sex launches its inquiryintowomen's conditionby focusing on the question of difference: Now, what specifically defines the situationof woman is that she-a free and autonomous being like all human creatures-nevertheless discovers and chooses herself in a worldwhere men compel her to assume the status of the Other.3They propose to turn her into an object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is for ever to be transcended by another consciousness which is essential and sovereign. The dramaof woman lies in this conflictbetween the fundamentalaspirationsof every subject-which always posits itself as essential-and the demands of a situationwhich constitutes her as inessential. (SS, 29; DSa, 31; TA) This is perhaps the single most importantpassage in The Second Sex, above all because Beauvoir here poses a radically new theory of sexual difference. Whilewe are all splitand ambiguous, she argues, women are more split and ambiguous than men. For Simone de Beauvoir, then, women are fundamentally characterized by ambiguity and conflict. The specific contradictionof women's situationis caused by the conflictbetween their status as free and autonomous human beings and the fact that they are socialized in a world in which men consistently cast them as Other to their One, as objects to their subjects. The effect is to produce women as subjects painfullytorn between freedom and alienation,transcendence and immanence, subject-being and object-being. This fundamental contradiction, or split, in which the general ontological ambiguityof human beings is repeated and reinforcedby the social pressures broughtto bear on women, is specific to women under patriarchy. For Beauvoir,at least initially,there is nothing ahistoricalabout this: when oppressive power relations cease to exist, women willbe no more splitand contradictorythan men. As Iwillgo on to show, however, Beauvoir's analysis implies that while the majorcontradictions of women's situation may disappear, women will in fact always remain somewhat more ambiguous than men. Again Beauvoir's theory is clearly metaphorical:the social oppression of women, she implies, mirrorsor repeats the ontological ambiguityof existence.4 Paradoxicallyenough, on this point Beauvoir'sanalysis gains in 3. In this crucial spot, the Folio edition reads "s'assumercontre I'Autre"(DSa, 31). Introducinga whollyerroneousidea of opposition,this misprintmay give rise to many misunderstandings.Fortunately,the original6ditionBlanche correctlyprints"s'assumer comme I'Autre" (31). 4. At this point, one may well ask why it is not the other way around:could one not

in TheSecond Sex 99 andAlienation Moi/ Ambiguity potentialstrength from its metaphoricalstructure:it is precisely the absence of any purely logical linkbetween the two levels of analysis that leaves us free to reject the one withouthaving to deny the other as well. In this way, Beauvoir's careful account of women torn between freedom and alienation under patriarchymay well be experienced as convincing, even by readers radicallyat odds with Sartre's theory of consciousness. The oppression of women, Beauvoirargues, is in some ways similar to the oppression of other social groups, such as that of Jews or American blacks. Members of such groups are also treated as objects by members of the rulingcaste or race. Yet women's situation remains fundamentallydifferent, above all because women are scattered across all social groups and thus have been unable to forma society of theirown: "Thebond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparableto any other,"Beauvoirinsists (SS, 19; DSa, 19).- The effect of this social situation is that women tend to feel solidaritywith men in theirown social group ratherthan withwomen in general. This is why, unlike every other oppressed group, women have been unable to cast themselves as historicalsubjects opposing their oppressors: under patriarchy,there are no female ghettos, no female compounds in which to organize a collective uprising:"Women,"Beauvoirwrites in 1949, "do not say 'We' .

.

. they do not authentically posit themselves

as Sub-

ject" (SS, 19; DSa, 19). The specificity of women's oppression consists precisely in the absence of a female collectivitycapable of perceiving itself as a historicalsubject opposed to other social groups. This is why no other oppressed group experiences the same kindof contradictionbetween freedom and alienation. Beauvoir,in other words, is not interested in producing a competitive hierarchyof oppression. Her point is not that women necessarily are more, or more painfully, oppressed than every other group but simply that the oppression of women is a highlyspecific kind of oppression. argue that the ontologicalambiguitymirrorsthe social conditionsof existence? Taking ontology-the general theoryof humanfreedom-as the startingpointfor her analysis, Beauvoirherself wouldclearlynot condone such a reversal.Givenwhat I call elsewhere the metaphoricalstructureof her argument-the fact thatshe neverspells out the exact relationshipbetween the two levels of the argument-nothing preventsthe readerfrom preferringsuch a readingto thatof Beauvoirherself. 5. To argue, as ElisabethSpelmandoes in her InessentialWoman,that Beauvoir'scomparisonof womenwithblacksandJews is sexist because itimpliesthatBeauvoirexcludes the existence of black and Jewish women fromher categories is to make the mistake of takinga statement about oppression (thatis, about powerrelations)for a statement aboutidentity.WhatBeauvoiris saying is thatthe relationshipof men to women may, in some ways (not all), be seen as homologousto thatof whitesto blacks,anti-Semitesto Jews, bourgeoisieto workingclass. Insuch a statementthereis absolutelyno implication

100 boundary2 / Summer1992 Rich and varied, Beauvoir'sown vocabularyof ambiguityand conflict ranges from ambivalence, distance, divorce, and split to alienation, contradiction, and mutilation.But every ambiguityis not negative: as readers of The Second Sex, we must not make the paradoxicalmistake of taking the value of ambiguity to be given once and for all. For Beauvoir, the word ambiguous often means "dialectical"and describes a fundamentalcontradiction underpinningan apparently stable and coherent phenomenon. In The Second Sex, every conflict is potentiallyboth productiveand destructive: in some cases, one aspect wins out; in others, the tension remains unresolved. The advantage of Beauvoir's position is that it enables her to draw up a highly complex map of women's situation in the world, one that is never blindto the way in which women occasionally reap paradoxicaladvantages fromtheirvery powerlessness. As a whole, however, The Second Sex amply demonstrates that such spurious spin-offs remain precarious and unpredictable:for Beauvoir,the effects of sexism are overwhelmingly destructive for men as well as for women. Every one of the descriptions of women's "livedexperience" in The Second Sex serves to reinforceBeauvoir'stheory of the fundamental contradictionof women's situation. Unfortunately,the sheer mass of material makes it impossible to discuss the whole range of her analyses: her brilliant account of the antinomies of housework,or the absolutely stunningdefense of abortionrights (see the chapters entitled"TheMarriedWoman"and "The Mother"),for instance, ought still to be requiredreading for us all, yet they will not be discussed here. Instead, I have chosen to explore the single most important-and by far the most complex-example of contradictions and ambiguity in The Second Sex: Beauvoir'saccount of female sexuality. that these other groups do not containwomen, nor that all women are white and nonJewish: nothingpreventsus fromarguingthatthe positionof a blackJewish woman,for powerrelations. instance, wouldforma particularly complexintersectionof contradictory In her chapteron Beauvoir,Spelmanalso confuses the idea of otherness and the idea of objectification(Sartre'sdistinctionbetween autre-sujetand autre absolu). Spelman's book,in general,is an excellentexampleof the consequences of treatingthe wordidentity as if it representeda simple logicalunitand of mistakingthe oppositionof inclusionand exclusion for a theoryof powerrelations.Such strategiestend to backfire:whilecriticizSpelmanherselfexcludes womenfromoutside the United ing Beauvoir's"exclusivism," States from her categories. Thus, her eminentlypedagogicalfigures illustratingdifferent categories of people all have the suffixAmericanappendedto them (Afro-American, Asian-American,and so on). See ElisabethSpelEuro-American,Hispanic-American, man, Inessential Woman:Problemsof Exclusionin FeministThought(Boston:Beacon, 1988), 144-46.

in TheSecond Sex 101 andAlienation Moi / Ambiguity By sexuality I understand the psychosexual, as well as the biological, aspects of female sexual existence, or, in other words, the interactionbetween desire and the body.

Alienation "One is not born a woman, one becomes one," Beauvoir writes 295; DSb, 13; TA). The question, of course, is how. How does the (SS, little girl become a woman? In her impressive history of psychoanalysis in France, Elisabeth Roudinesco credits Simone de Beauvoir with being the first French writerto linkthe question of sexuality to that of politicalemancipation.6Beauvoir's interest in the various psychoanalytic perspectives on femininitywas so great, Roudinesco tells us, that a year before finishingher book, she rang up Lacan in orderto ask his advice on the issue: "Flattered, Lacan announces that they would need five or six months of conversation in order to sort out the problem. Simone doesn't want to spend that much time listening to Lacan for a book which was already very well researched. She proposes four meetings. He refuses."7 It is not surprisingthat Lacan was flattered by Beauvoir's request: in Paris in 1948, Beauvoir possessed 6. ElisabethRoudinesco,LaBataillede cent ans. Histoirede la psychanalyse en France. 2: 1925-1985 (Paris: Seuil, 1986). The fact that Beauvoirexplicitlyrejects Freudian psychoanalysisin the firstpartof The Second Sex does not preventher from producing a relativelypsychoanalyticalaccountof women'spsychosexualdevelopment.As far as I can see, her rejectionof psychoanalysisis based on the Sartreangrounds that the unconscious does not exist and that to claimthat humandreams and actions have sexual significationis to posit the existence of essential meanings. When it comes to the phenomenologicaldescriptionof women'sfantasies or behavior,however,Beauvoir is perfectlyhappyto accept psychoanalyticalevidence. 7. Roudinesco,La Bataillede cent ans, 517. Beauvoirmet Lacanduringthe Occupation, at a series of ratherwildpartiesorganizedby Picasso, Camus,and Leiris,among others. InSimone de Beauvoir:A Biography(NewYork:Summit,1990), DeirdreBairclaimsthat when writingThe Second Sex, Beauvoir"wentsporadicallyto hear Jacques Lacanlecture"(390), butthis is notverylikely.Accordingto ElisabethRoudinesco,Lacan'searliest seminars were held at Sylvia Bataille'sapartment,from1951 to 1953 (see Roudinesco, La Bataillede cent ans, 306). In his essay "De nos ant6c6dents"(Aboutour antecedents), Lacanhimselfclaimsthat he startedhis teachingin 1951: "Norealteachingother than that routinelyprovidedsaw the lightof day beforewe startedour own in 1951, in a purelyprivatecapacity"(Jacques Lacan,Ecrits[Paris:Seuil, 1966], 71). Accordingto DavidMacey,the subjectof thatfirstseminarwas Freud'sDora(see DavidMacey,Lacan in Contexts [London:Verson, 1988], 223). If Beauvoirever attended Lacan'sseminars, then, it must have been well afterfinishingTheSecond Sex in 1949.

102 boundary2 / Summer1992 much more intellectualcapital than he; in other words, she was famous, he was not. Given this highly Lacaniandisagreement on timing,the tantalizingly transgressive fantasy of a LacanianSecond Sex has to remainin the imaginary. Althoughshe never sat at Lacan'sfeet, Beauvoirnevertheless quotes his early workon Les Complexes familiauxdans la formationde I'individu, and much of her account of early childhood and femininityreads as a kind of free elaborationon Lacan's notionof the alienationof the ego in the other in the mirrorstage.8 The term alienation, in fact, turns up everywhere in The Second Sex. Mobilized to explain everything from female sexuality to narcissism and mysticism, the concept plays a key role in Beauvoir'stheory of sexual difference. Itis unfortunateindeed thatthis fact fails to come across in the English translation of The Second Sex. In Parshley's version, the word alienation tends to get translated as 'projection',except in passages with a certain anthropological flavor, where it remains 'alienation'.Alienation, however, also shows up as 'identification',and on one occasion it even masquerades as 'being beside herself'. As a result, English-language readers are prevented fromtracing the philosophicallogic-in this case particularlythe Hegelian and/or Lacanian overtones-of Beauvoir's analysis. In my own text, I amend all relevant quotations, and I also signal particularlyaberrant translations in footnotes.9 According to Beauvoir,the littlechild reacts to the crisis of weaning by experiencing "the originaldrama of every existent: that of his relationto 8. I don't mean to suggest that Lacan'sconcept of alienationis radicallyoriginalor that it is the only source of Beauvoir'sdevelopmentof the concept. Eva Lundgren-Gothlin makes a plausiblecase forthe influenceof Kojeveon Beauvoirin her Konoch existens: Studieri Simone de BeauvoirsLe Deuxi6meSexe (Gothenburg:Daidalos,1991), 8994. Beauvoirherself tells of a drunkenafternoonin 1945 spent discussing Kojevewith Queneau (FC, 43; FCa, 56-57). Giventhat Lacan'sconceptof the mirrorstage also displays the traces of Kojeve'sreadingof Hegel, Beauvoir'sown readingsof Hegel may well affinitiesforthis aspect of Lacaniantheory.Nor have predisposedherto feelingparticular shouldit be forgottenthatLacanhimself-as everyotherintellectualin postwarFrancewas influencedby Sartre. 9. 1 don'tthink,as some have argued,that this is an effect of conscious sexism on the partof the translator.Rather,it demonstratesthe fact that he was utterlyunfamiliarwith existentialistphilosophicalvocabulary.The generaleffectof Parshley'stranslationof The Second Sex is to divestthe bookof the philosophicalrigorit has in French.When Beauvoirconsistentlyuses the phrases'affirmercommesujet,forexample,Parshleytranslates vaguely and variablyas "assume a subjectiveattitude,"or "affirmhis subjective exis-

andAlienation in TheSecond Sex 103 Moi/ Ambiguity the Other"(SS, 296; DSb, 14; TA).This drama is characterized by existential anguish caused by the experience of delaissement, or what Heidegger would call Oberlassenheit, often translated as 'abandonment' in English. Already at this early stage, the littlechild dreams of escaping her freedom either by merging with the cosmic all or by becoming a thing, an in-itself: Incarnal form[the child]discovers finiteness, solitude, abandonment in a strange world. He endeavours to compensate for this catastrophe by alienating his existence in an image, the realityand value of which others willestablish. Itappears that he may begin to affirmhis identity at the time when he recognizes his reflection in a mirror-a time which coincides with that of weaning.10His ego blends so completely into this reflected image that it is formed only through its own alienation [il ne se forme qu'en s'ali6nant] ....

He is already an au-

tonomous subject transcending himself towards the outer world,but he encounters himself only in an alienated form. (SS, 296-97; DSb, 15; TA). Initially,then, all childrenare equally alienated. This is not surprising, since the wish to alienate oneself in another person or thing, according to Beauvoir, is fundamental to all human beings: "Primitivepeople are alienated in mana, in the totem; civilized people in their individualsouls, in their egos, their names, their property,theirwork.Here is to be found the primary temptation to inauthenticity"(SS, 79; DSa, 90). But sexual difference soon tence" (SS, 19, and SS, 21). The wordsituation,heavy withphilosophicalconnotations for Beauvoir,is not perceivedas philosophicalat all by Parshley,who translatescas as and so on. The same ten"situation"and situationas "situation"or "circumstances," dency to turn Beauvoir'sphilosophicalprose into everydaylanguage is to be found in the Englishtranslationsof her memoirs,particularly ThePrimeof Lifeand The Force of Circumstance.The effect is clearlyto divest her of philosophyand thus to diminishher as an intellectual.The sexism involvedin this process has moreto do withthe Englishlanguage publishers'perceptionand marketingof Beauvoiras a popularwoman writer, ratherthan as a serious intellectual,thanwiththe sexism of individualtranslators. 10. At this point,Beauvoirinserts a footnotequotingLacan'sComplexesfamiliaux.Itis interestingto note that Lacan'sessay introducesthe notionof alienationin the other,not in relationto the motherbut in the contextof a discussionof jealousy as a fundamental social structure.As oftenhappens,Beauvoir'sactualquotationis slightlyinaccurate:"The ego retainsthe ambiguousaspect [figure]of a spectacle,"she quotes (SS, 297; DSb, 15), whereas Lacanactuallyrefersto the "ambiguousstructureof the spectacle"(Lacan, Les Complexes familiauxdans la formationde I'individu: Essai d'analyse d'une fonction en psychologie [1938;reprint,Paris:Navarin,1984],45); my emphasis.

104 boundary2 / Summer1992 transforms the situation. For littleboys, Beauvoir argues, it is much easier to find an object in which to alienate themselves than for littlegirls: admirably suited to the role as idealized alter ego, the penis quickly becomes every littleboy's very own totem pole: "The penis is singularlyadapted for playing this role of 'double' for the littleboy-it is for him at once a foreign object and himself,"Beauvoirclaims. Projectingthemselves into the penis, little boys invest it with the whole charge of their transcendence (SS, 79; DSa, 91).11For Beauvoir,then, phallic imagery represents transcendence, not sexuality.12 A littlegirl, however, has a more difficulttime. Given that she has no penis, she has no tangible object in which to alienate herself: "Butthe little girl cannot incarnate herself in any part of herself," Beauvoir writes (SS, 306; DSb, 27). Similar in many respects to Freud's analysis of femininity, Beauvoir's account differs, as we shall see, in its explicitdenial of lack and in its emphasis on the tactile ratherthan the visual. For Freud, girls experience themselves as inferiorbecause they see the penis and conclude that they themselves are lacking;for Beauvoirthey are different(not necessarily inferior)because they have nothing to touch. Because her sex organs are impossible to grab hold of (empoigner), it is as if they do not exist: "in a sense she has no sex organ,"Beauvoirwrites: She does not experience this absence as a lack; evidently her body is, for her, quite complete; but she finds herself situated in the world differentlyfrom the boy; and a constellation of factors can transform this difference, in her eyes, into an inferiority.(SS, 300; DSb, 19) Deprived of an obvious object of alienation,the littlegirlends up alienating herself in herself: Not having that alter ego, the littlegirldoes not alienate herself in a materialthing and cannot retrieveher integrity[ne se recupere pas]. On this account she is led to make an object of her whole self, to set herself up as the Other.The question of whether she has or has 11. Beauvoiralso uses the termphallus. Ingeneral,she tends to use penis and phallus as interchangeableterms, mostlyin the sense of "penis." 12. This is true for Sartre,too. When I claimthat theirmetaphorsof transcendenceare phallic,Sartreand Beauvoirwouldclaimthatit is the phallusthatis transcendent,not the other way around.For my argument,however,it does not mattervery much whichway roundthe comparisonis made: my pointis thatin theirtexts, projectionand erectionget involvedin extensive metaphoricalexchanges.

andAlienation inTheSecondSex 105 Moi/ Ambiguity not comparedherselfwithboys is secondary;the important pointis that,even if she is unawareof it,the absence of the penis prevents herfrombecomingconsciousof herselfas a sexualbeing.Fromthis flowmanyconsequences.(SS, 80; DSa, 91; TA) Objectsforthemselves,regardlessof whetherthey knowaboutthe penis's existence or not,littlegirlsare radicallysplit,yet irredeemably caughtup in theirown alienatedself-image.Butthis is not all. On the evidenceof this surprisingpassage, littlegirlsareforcedby theiranatomyto alienatethemselves in themselves. Furthermore, Beauvoirclaims,they failto "recover" or "retrieve" Inmyview,these remarksoffera conthemselves. (r6cup6rer) densed versionof the whole of Beauvoir'stheoryof alienation.As such, andcompleximplications thatIwillnow they have a series of wide-ranging go on to explore. MuchlikeLacan,Beauvoircasts the momentof alienationas constitutiveof the subject,but,unlikeLacan,she believesthatthe subjectonly comes into authenticbeing if it completesthe dialecticalmovementand the alienatedimageof itself goes on to recover(r6cup6rer),or reintegrate, the alter back into own its double, (the ego) subjectivity.Drawingon this Beauvoir insists that little Hegelianlogic, boys easily achievethe required synthesis,whereaslittlegirlsfailto recoverthemselves.Why,then, do little theirowntranscendence?ForBeauvoir,the answer boys easily "recover" is to be foundin the anatomicaland physiologicalpropertiesof the penis. Eminentlydetachable,the penis is neverthelessnot quitedetachedfrom the body. Projectinghis transcendenceintothe penis, the boy projectsit intoan objectthat is partof his bodyyet has a strangelifeof its own:"the functionof urinationand laterof erectionare processes midwaybetween the voluntaryand involuntary," Beauvoirwrites;the penis is "a capricious and as it were foreign source of pleasure that is felt subjectively. . . . The

penis is regardedbythe subjectas at once himselfandotherthanhimself" (SS, 79; DSa, 90). Notso foreignand distantas to appearentirelywithout connectionswiththe boy,yet notso close as to preventa clear-cutdistinction betweenthe boy'ssubjectivityand his own projectedtranscendence, the penis, accordingto Beauvoir,enables the boy to recognize himselfin his alterego: "Becausehe has an alterego in whomhe recognizeshimshe writes,"thevery self, the littleboy can boldlyassume his subjectivity," object in whichhe alienates himselfbecomes a symbolof autonomy,of transcendence,of power"(SS, 306; DSb, 27; TA). In my view, the word recognition here must be taken to allude to the

106 boundary2 / Summer1992 Hegelian Anerkennung. Loosely inspiredby Hegel, Beauvoirwould seem to implythat there can be no recognitionwithoutthe positing of a subject and an other. By being relativelyother (thus allowingthe positing of a subjectother distinction),yet not quite other (thus makingrecognitionof oneself in the other easier), the penis facilitates the recuperationof the boy's alienated transcendence back into his subjectivity.Recuperating his sense of transcendence for himself, the boy escapes his alienation:his penis totem becomes the very instrumentthat in the end allows him to "assume his subjectivity"and act authentically. To say that there is something Hegelian about Beauvoir's argument here is not to claim that she is being particularlyorthodox or consistent. Freely developing the themes of recognitionand the dialectical triad, Beauvoir entirely forgets that for Hegel recognitionpresupposes the reciprocal exchange between two subjects. As far as I can see, however, Beauvoir never actually claims that the penis speaks back. Confrontedwith the alluring idea that it is not only the little boy who must recognize himself in his penis, but the penis that must recognize itself in the boy, Hegel himself might have had some difficultyin recognizing his own theory.13 Whatever the vicissitudes of the penis may be, little girls have a harder time of it. As we have seen, Beauvoir holds that the girl's anatomy makes her alienate herself in her whole body, not just in a semi-detached object, such as the penis. Even if she is given a doll to play with, the situation doesn't change. Dolls are passive things representingthe whole body, and as such they encourage the littlegirl to "alienate herself in her whole person and to regard this as an inert given object," Beauvoir claims (SS, 306; DSb, 27; TA). In her alienated state, the littlegirl apparentlybecomes "passive" and "inert."Why is this the outcome of the girl's alienation? The "alienated"penis, after all, was perceived by the boy as a proud image of transcendence. Why does this not happen to the girl'swhole body? Where does her transcendence go? On this point, Beauvoir'stext is not particularlyeasy to follow. I take her to argue that the girl's alienation sets up an ambiguous split between herself and her alienated image of herself. "Woman,like man, is her body," Beauvoir writes about the adult woman, "buther body is something other than herself" (SS, 61; DSa, 67). This, one may remember,is an exact quotation of her description of the boy's alienated penis. The adult woman, then, 13. Vigdis Songe-Mollerhelped me fullyto appreciatethe comic aspects of Beauvoir's use of Hegel.

in TheSecond Sex 107 andAlienation Moi / Ambiguity has still not achieved the dialectical reintegrationof her transcendence. The reason why she fails to do so is that, paradoxically,she wasn't alienated enough in the first place. Precisely because her body is herself, one might say, it is difficultfor the girl to distinguish between the alienated body and her transcendent consciousness of that body. Or,in other words, the difference between the whole body and the penis is that the body can never be considered simply an object in the worldfor its own "owner":the body, after all, is our mode of existing in the world:"Tobe present in the world implies strictlythat there exists a body which is at once a materialthing in the world and a point of view towards this world,"Beauvoirwrites (SS, 39; DSa, 40). Alienating herself in her body, the littlegirl alienates her transcendence in a "thing"that remains ambiguously part of her own originaltranscendence. Her alienation, we might say, creates a murkymixtureof transcendence, thingness, and the alienated image of a body-ego. The very ambiguity of this amalgam of the in-itselfand the for-itself recalls Sartre's horrifiedvision of the "sticky"or "slimy,"as that which is eternally ambiguous and always threatening to engulf the for-itself.Permittingno clear-cut positing of a subject and an other, this ambivalent mixture prevents the girl from achieving the dialectical reintegrationof her alienated transcendence which, apparently, is so easy for the boy. For her, in other words, there is no unambiguous opposition between the two first moments of the dialectic: this is what makes it so hard for her to "recover"her alienated transcendence in a new synthesis. It does not follow from this that the littlegirl has no sense of herself as a transcendence at all. Ifthat were the case, she would be entirely alienated, which is precisely what she is not. Instead, Beauvoir appears to suggest that there is an ever present tension-or even struggle-between the little girl's transcendent subjectivityand her complicated and ambivalent alienation.14On this theory, the girl's psychological structures must be pictured as a complex and mobileprocess ratherthan as a static and fixed image. But on this reading, Beauvoir'saccount of the girl'salienationtransforms and extends her own highlyreifiedinitialconcept of alienation:rather 14. Itfollows fromthis analysis that I cannot agree with MoiraGatens's claim in Feminism and Philosophy:Perspectives on Differenceand Equality(Cambridge:Polity,1991) thatfor Simone de Beauvoir,the "femalebodyand femininityquitesimplyare absolutely Otherto the humansubject,irrespectiveof the sex of that subject"(58). I also thinkit is rathertoo easy simplyto assert, as Gatensdoes, thatthe inconsistenciesand difficulties in TheSecond Sex are the resultof Beauvoir's"intellectual dishonesty"(59).

2 / Summer 108 boundary 1992 I think,Beauvoirhere managesto challengethe limitationsof unwittingly, her originalpointof departure.The resultis thathertheoryof female subjectivityis farmoreinterestingandoriginalthanherrathertoo neatandtidy accountof male psychologicalstructures.15 Towardsthe end of TheSecond Sex, Beauvoirarguesthatthe process of alienationis constitutiveof narcissism.(On this point,one may add, herpositionis entirelycompatiblewiththatof Lacan.)"Narcissismis a well-definedprocessof alienation," Beauvoirwrites,"inwhichthe ego is reas an absolute end and the subjecttakes refugefromitselfinit"(SS, garded For the narcissistic 641; DSb, 525; TA). subject,herego or self is nothing butan alienatedand idealizedimageof herself,anotheralterego or double indangerinthe world.As faras Ican see, the differencebetweenthe narcissistic andthe non-narcissistic womanis thatthe latterconservesa sense of or whereas the formerpersuadesherselfthatshe ambiguity contradiction, is the image projectedby her alienation.This is why narcissism,accordthe impossible ingto Beauvoir,representsa supremeeffortto "accomplish synthesisof the en-soi andthe pour-soi":the "successful"narcissistreally believes thatshe is God (SS, 644; DSb, 529). For Beauvoiras for Sartre,alienationis transcendenceattempting to turnitselfintoan object.Alienatingourselvesin anotherthingor person, we depriveourselvesof the powerto act foror by ourselves.Deprivedof agency, our alienatedtranscendenceis defenselesslydeliveredup to the dangersof the world.ForBeauvoir,thereis thus no need to mobilizea specifictheoryof castrationanxietyto explainwhylittleboysfeel thattheirpenis is constantlyendangered.To worryaboutthe safety of one's penis, however, is infinitelypreferableto feelingobscurelythreatenedin one's whole person,as littlegirlsdo: The diffuseapprehensionfelt by the littlegirlin regardto her "insides" . . . willoften be retainedfor life. She is extremely concerned

abouteverythingthathappensinsideher,she is fromthe startmuch more opaque to her own eyes, more profoundlyimmersedin the obscuremysteryof life,thanis the male.(SS, 305-6; DSb, 27) Inthis passage, as everywhereelse in TheSecond Sex, Beauvoir's subtle and incisiveexplorationof women'ssituationis juxtaposedto a far too sanguineview of masculinity.Inthe lightof herown beliefin the influ15. Beauvoirherselfwouldcertainlydisagreewithmyvaluejudgmenthere. As I go on to show, she idealizes the male configuration,perhapspreciselybecause she perceives it as more "neatly"philosophical.

andAlienationin TheSecond Sex 109 Moi/ Ambiguity

ence of social factorson the developmentof sexualdifference,she hugely overestimatesthe convenienceof the penis as a foolproofinstrumentof alienationand reintegration. Everylittleboy or everyadultmale does not, transcendentsubject.Beauvoir's afterall, come across as an authentically admirationof masculinityis such thatshe even assumes thatgirlsbrought up by men ratherthanby women"verylargelyescape the defects of femininity"(SS, 308; DSb, 30). on Whilethereare strongbiographical reasonsforhermisjudgment of this point,rhetorically the main source Beauvoir's idealization speaking, of the penis wouldseem to be metaphorical. withreferencesto the Littered powerfulsymboliceffects of urinationfroma standingratherthan froma crouchingposition,hertextrepeatedlyemphasizesthe penis'scapacityfor quasi-independentmotion,as well as for the projectionof liquidsover a certaindistance.Whatfascinatesher above all is the idea that the male in its organ moves and, moreover,that it is upwardlymobile,particularly grandioseprojectionof urine:"Everystreamof waterinthe airseems likea miracle,a defianceof gravity:to direct,to governit,is to wina smallvictory overthe laws of nature,"Beauvoirclaims,quotingSartreand Bachelardto substantiateherpoint(SS, 301-2; DSb, 22).16 Strikingly originalinherapproach,Beauvoirinfactsees sexualdifference as the resultof differentmodesof alienation.Atfirstglance, however, it looks as if the developmentof differentformsof alienationdepends entirelyon the anatomicalpresence or absence of the penis. The question is whetherthis reallyis a correctreadingof Beauvoir'sposition.Insisting thathers is a theoryof the social construction of femininity and masculinity, Beauvoirherself categoricallyrefuses the idea of a biological"destiny." On the contrary,she argues, it is the social contextthatgives meaningto biologicaland psychologicalfactors:"Truehumanprivilegeis based upon anatomicalprivilegeonly in virtueof the totalsituation[la situationsaisie dans sa totalite]"(SS, 80; DSa, 91). Itis onlywhenthe girldiscoversthat men have powerin the worldand womendo not thatshe risksmistaking herdifferenceforinferiority: "Shesees thatitis notthe women,butthe men who controlthe world.Itis this revelation-muchmorethanthe discovery of the penis-which irresistibly altersher conceptionof herself"(SS, 314; DSb, 38).

Giventhe rightsocial encouragement,Beauvoirargues, girls may 16. Interestinglyenough, the same belief in the transcendentqualitiesof any form of movementmakes her recommendsports and otherformsof physicaltrainingas an excellent way to help girlsdevelop a sense of themselves as subjects.

110 boundary2 / Summer1992 still manage to recover their transcendence. While the penis is a privileged possession in early childhood, after the age of eight or nine it holds onto its prestige only because it is socially valorized. Social practices, not biology, encourage little girls to remain sunk in passivity and narcissism, and force little boys to become active subjects. It is because little boys are treated more harshly than girls, and not because they intrinsicallyare less self-indulgent,that they are better equipped to projectthemselves into the competitive world of concrete action (SS, 306-7; DSb, 28-29). In my view, Beauvoir'stheory of alienationactuallyimpliesthat social factors have greater influence on girls than on boys: precisely because girls' transcendence is precariouslybalanced between complete alienation and authentic subjectivity,itdoesn't take much to push the girlin either direction.Less pronounced in boys, one might argue, this ambiguitymakes girls particularly susceptible to social pressure: Along withthe authentic demand of the subject who wants sovereign freedom, there is inthe existent an inauthenticlongingfor resignation and escape; the delights of passivity are made to seem desirable to the young girlby parents and teachers, books and myths, women and men; she is taught to enjoy them from earliest childhood;the temptation becomes more and more insidious;and she is the more fatally bound to yield to those delights as the flightof her transcendence is dashed against harsher obstacles. (SS, 325; DSb, 53) I take her constant appeal to social factors to be one of the strongest points of Beauvoir's position. But when it comes to explaining exactly how we are to understand the relationship between the anatomical and the social, Beauvoir's discourse becomes curiouslyslippery. Not to have a penis, for instance, is not necessarily a handicap: "Ifwoman should succeed in establishing herself as subject, she would invent equivalents of the phallus; in fact, the doll, incarnatingthe promise of the baby that is to come in the future,can become a possession more precious than the penis" (SS, 80; DSa, 91). Dolls, it now appears, do not necessarily cause alienated passivity after all: "The boy, too, can cherish a teddy bear, or a puppet into which he projects himself [se projette];it is withinthe totalityof their lives that each factor-penis or doll-takes on its importance"(SS, 307; DSb, 29). There is something circularabout Beauvoir'sargument here. For if the very formof the littlegirl'sbody encourages a sticky and incomplete mode of alienation in the firstplace, the littlegirlwillfind it difficult,indeed, to "establish herself as a subject." If"equivalentsof the phallus"are what is needed

inTheSecondSex 111 Moi/ Ambiguity andAlienation in orderto become an authenticsubject,itis hardto see whywomenwould wantthem afterthey have managedto becomesubjectsin theirown right anyway.Inmy view,Beauvoir'shesitationsoverthe subjectof dolls signal of the girl'salienation her own uneasy feelingthat heroriginalformulation more she Her than would wish. contradictory feelings privilegesanatomy about the role of dolls, then, reveala deeper theoreticaldifficulty: that of findinga way of linkingan anatomicaland psychologicalargumentwitha sociologicalone. The fact that Beauvoirfails explicitlyto raise this problemcauses her to overlookan important gap in her own accountof alienation.Attentive readersmayalreadyhave noticedthathertextmovesdirectlyfromthe Lacanianidea of the alienationof the childin the gaze of the otherto the ratherdifferentideathatboys andgirlsalienatethemselvesintheirbodies. Beauvoirmakes no attemptto relateLacan'stheoryto her Unfortunately, own. For her, apparently,the two simplycoexist. Failingto perceivethis as a problem,Beauvoiralso misses out on a crucialopportunity to bridge the gap in her own theory,for instanceby suggestingthat it is the gaze of the otherthatoriginallyinveststhe child'salienatedimageof itselfwith the phallocentricvalues it then goes on to repeatin its own workof alienation.Bygivingherowntheorya slightlymoreLacaniantwiston this point, she wouldhave managed,at least in myview,to producea betteraccount of the relationshipbetweenthe biologicaland the psychosocialthan she actuallydoes. It is unfortunate,to say the least, that Beauvoirmakes her subtle functionas a foilto herratherless sophisticatedtheory theoryof femininity of masculinity.It is not difficultto show that Beauvoir'sidealizationof the phallusin fact contradictsSartre'sown accountof masculinedesire and Nowhereis she on a greatercollisioncourse withSartre transcendence.17 than in her idealizedaccountof masculinity: thereis a nice paradoxin the factthatinthe verypassages whereshe unconsciouslyseeks to paytribute to Sartre,she entirelybetrayshis philosophical logic. In Beauvoir'stheoryof alienation,I appreciateabove all her effort to thinkdialectically,her courageousattemptfullyto graspthe contradictions of women'sposition.The strengthof Beauvoir'stheoryof alienation as constitutiveof sexualdifferenceis notonlythatitmanagesto suggestalbeitsomewhatimperfectly-thatpatriarchal powerstructuresare at work 17. I go on to demonstratethatthis is the case in the nextsection of the chapterof which this essay is an excerpt.

112 boundary2 / Summer1992 in the very construction of female subjectivitybut also that it attempts to show exactly how this process works. Emphasizing the social pressures broughtto bear on the littlegirl, Beauvoiralso indicates that differentpractices will yield differentresults: hers is not at all a theory of intrinsicsexual differences. Providingthe basis for a sophisticated analysis of women's difficulties in conceiving of themselves as social and sexual subjects under patriarchy,Beauvoir'stheory also impliesthat it is both unjustand unrealistic to underestimate the difficultyinvolvedin becoming a free woman. Given Beauvoir's logic, for a woman to be able to oppose the orderthat oppresses her is much harder than for a man to do so; under patriarchy,women's achievements therefore become rathermore impressive than comparable male feats. As she puts it in The Force of Circumstance: "Forwomen the stakes are higher;there are more victories and more defeats for them than for men" (FC, 203; FCa, 268; TA).

Bodies and God: Poststructuralist Feminists Return to the Fold of Spiritual Materialism

KathrynBond Stockton Incontemporaryfeministtheory, no issue is more vexed than that of determining the relations between the feminine body as a figure in discourse and as materialpresence or biologicalentity.The debates surroundingthis question in recent years have been the most highly charged, but also perhaps the most fruitful. intheirintroduction -Mary Jacobus,EvelynFoxKeller,SallyShuttleworth, to Body/Politics: Womenand the Discourses of Science

Poststructuralistsand Victorians Poststructuralistfeminists are the new Victorians. What 'God' was to Victorianthinkers, 'the body' is to poststructuralistfeminists: an object of doubt and speculation but a necessary fiction and an object of faith.' IgratefullyacknowledgeMelaneeCherry,BarryWeller,and SrinivasAravamudan fortheir astute criticismsof this essay's earlierdrafts.Manythanksto MargieFerguson,Jennifer Wicke,and Meg Sachse forsuperbeditorialsupport. 1. When I referto poststructuralistfeministsor poststructuralistsin this essay, I willbe Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity

114 boundary2 / Summer1992 Cultivating belief in 'real bodies' as 'material presence', poststructuralist feminists now want to compensate for deconstructive excesses and extreme forms of social constructionism,both of which so heavily stress how language constructs human beings and their world.2That is to say, poststructuralistfeminists are becoming believers as they returnto the fold of materialism.3

Whatcan materialismmean to poststructuralists?Materialismis now difficultto think; it is the opaque impasse poststructuralistshave reached. I don't mean materialism in the sense of ideologies by which we live out our relations to the real (ideology as "a materialpractice,"Althusser would say).4 Few would deny that materialismin this sense is pierced throughwith constructions. I mean materialismin its stronger sense: the material onto which we map our constructions: 'matteron its own terms' that might resist or pressure our constructions. This materialismis the nondiscursive something poststructuralistfeminists now want to embrace, the extradiscursive referringto those theoristsbothwho live in the postmodernage (post-WorldWarII)and who consciously borrowheavilyfromdeconstruction.AlthoughI considered using the termpostmodern in this way-as signalingboth a perioddesignationand a theoretical orientation-I decided to choose (whatmightbe regardedas) a narrowerterm.I wish, in this way,to markmyawarenessthatsome theorists(mostlyEuropean)stilldistinguishbeas a way to distinguishphilosophically tween the termspostmodernandpoststructuralist fromthe postmodern orientedformsof deconstruction(whichthey call poststructuralist) playfulnessof Lyotardand Baudrillard. 2. Let me, fromthe outset, call attentionto a typographicaldilemmathat relates to my essay's argument.Inaccordancewiththe Chicago Manualof Style, I am requiredto enclose philosophicalterms in single quotationmarks('being','nonbeing',and 'the divine' comprise the examples this style book furnishes).Wordsused as words are italicized (such as all the words in this paragraphI have markedinstead with single quotation marks);wordsused ironicallyare enclosed indoublequotationmarks,alongwithmaterial quotedfromtexts. Mydilemmais this:Iwishto markseveraltermsin this essay as terms now consistentlyinterrogate-termssuch as 'God',butalso termssuch poststructuralists and 'biology',whichhave not traditionally as 'body','reality','man','woman','objectivity', been deemed philosophicalbutwhichhave become deemed so over the course of poststructuralistdiscussions. Even so, the readerwillnotice that in the case of 'body','real', and 'reality'I will at times let quotationmarksdrop. By this move I wish to emphasize thatthe bodyoutsidequotationmarks(realbodiesthatexist apartfromculturalmarkings) feministbelief. formsthe objectof poststructuralist of whatmay looklike 3. I use the wordreturnto describethese feminists'reconsideration I use this term positivistmaterialistclaims,even thoughthey returnas poststructuralists. because this sense of going back and reexaminingpriortheories and assumptions is themselves seem to viewwhatthey are doing. how these poststructuralists 4. Althusserexplains:"Whereonlya single subject(such and such an individual)is con-

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 115 something they confess necessarily eludes them. This materialismstands as a God that might be approached through fictions and faith but never glimpsed naked. Real bodies are what never appear. I want to speculate on this strange eclipse, as if to keep vigilwith this newly emerging feminist tendency to spiritualizebodies, to endow bodies with sacred enigmas and mystical escapes-all in order to gesture toward bodies that stand apart fromthe constructionsthat renderthem. Poststructuralistfeminists likeJane Gallop,forexample, admitthat bodies elaborately present themselves as objects for construction.Yet, Gallop argues, bodies resist domination by the mind. The body is "a bodily enigma," "an inscrutable given," and "pointsto an outside-beyond/before language."5 "The body is enigmatic,"moreover,"because it is not a creation of the mind"and "willnever be totallydominated by man-made meaning"(TTB,19). Gallop demonstrates that poststructuralistfeminists in the act of making problematicwhat (we think)Victoriansoften took for granted-the body's presence-end up sounding like Victorianbelievers. Stranger yet, poststructuralistfeminists write versions of a spiritual materialismthat remarkablyecho Victoriandiscussions of bodies and God.6For example, we find the VictorianThomas Carlylebent aroundconundrumsthat do not die out in the nineteenth century but that surface, resurgent, to plague poststructuralists. This bend is particularlytrue, I will show, of Carlyle's discussion of bodies as "mysticunfathomableVisibilities."I seek to illuminate this unexpected join between poststructuralistfeminists and Victorianintellectuals, such as Carlyle. By doing so, I believe, we can better locate the conceptual dilemmas these feminists face in their returns to materialism cerned,the existence of the ideas of his [ideological]beliefis materialinthathis ideas are his materialactions insertedintomaterialpracticesgovernedby materialritualswhichare themselves definedby the materialideologicalapparatusfromwhichderivesthe ideas of that subject"(see LouisAlthusser,Leninand Philosophyand OtherEssays, trans. Ben Brewster[New York:MonthlyReview Press, 1971], 158). Alex Callinicosprovidesthis gloss: "Despitethe repetitionof the word'material'likean incantation,we can see that the materialityof a set of ideologicalbeliefsderivesfromthe factthatthey are, firstly,embodied in particularsocial practices,and, secondly,the productsof what Althussercalls an IdeologicalState Apparatus(ISA)"(see AlexCallinicos,Althusser'sMarxism[London: PlutoPress Ltd.,1976],63-64). 5. Jane Gallop,ThinkingThroughthe Body (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1988), 16, 18. Allfurtherreferencesto this textwillbe abbreviatedTTB. 6. ThinkingI had coined the phrasespiritualmaterialism,Iwas intriguedto discoverthat the phrasehas also been used by ChogyamTrungthin his bookCuttingThroughSpiritual Materialism(Berkeley:Chambhala,1973).

116 boundary2 / Summer1992 and can better understand why spiritualizinggestures suggest themselves to feminists as ways to produce escapes back to bodies. Three exemplars of this feministcurve have emerged in Donna HarJane away, Gallop, and Luce Irigaray.Admittedly,Haraway and Gallop, with along Irigaray,are among those feminists I seek when I look to be shaken into the next phase of feminist disturbance. Gallop and Haraway present, moreover, an intriguingpair,since they would not be, to my mind, likely candidates for spiritual gestures. Yet, both of these feminists, entirely sympathetic to, familiarwith, and shaped by poststructuralisttheory and its largely constructionistslant, now worryabout where the body might stand apart from, or at times against, the representations that encode it at every turn. Unfoldingtheir worry,we will find that Haraway and Gallop evince a more oblique form of spiritualmaterialism.They, unlike Irigaray, do not overtly use Christian discourse in order to leverage their returns upon the body. Inthis way, we could distinguishbetween greater and lesser spiritualmaterialisms, or, as I preferto regardthem, as oblique or overt in their spiritualizingcharacter. Nonetheless, however we may cut between Gallop and Haraway on the one hand, and Irigaray(and Carlyle) on the other, I want to suggest that the antitranscendentalbent of poststructuralist feminists only masks their deep dependence upon the kinds of gestures commonly deemed spiritual in VictorianChristianwritings. Most likely, it is precisely because of their differences that I have been struck by these feminists' surprisingconvergence on the plane of spiritualmaterialism. Haraway, a biologist and philosopher of science, is clearly seeking new ways to conceptualize 'objectivity'and 'biology';she thinks we lose too much if we see "the body itself" as only "a blank page for social inscriptions" without seeing how our bodies, by being agents themselves, resist linguisticcapture.7Gallop, a psychoanalytictheorist and literarycritic of French and American texts (quite removed from Haraway, in this respect), continues to explore the linguistic and materialist issues she has pondered for a decade: the points of contact and frictionbetween bodies and language and between politicaland psychoanalyticcategories.8 Hence 7. Harawaycapturedfeminists'attentionwithher now-legendaryessay "AManifestofor Cyborgs:Science, Technology,and Socialist Feminismin the 1980s,"Socialist Review 80, no. 2 (March-April 1985):65-107. The publicationof hermasterpieceon primatology, PrimateVisions:Gender,Race, and Naturein the Worldof ModernScience (New York: Routledge,1989), has only strengthenedher positionas a leadingtheoreticalvoice. 8. Gallop'scareer began withher bookon Sade (Intersections:A Reading of Sade with Bataille, Blanchot,and Klossowski[Lincoln:Universityof NebraskaPress, 19811).Her

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 117 her attempt in ThinkingThroughthe Body to make bedfellows (her term) of Adrienne Rich and Roland Barthes, and to explore "the impossibilityin our culturaltraditionof separating an earnest attempt to listen to the material from an agenda for better control"(TTB,4). For both Harawayand Gallop, political responsibilityto real bodies and political rage against "agenda[s] for better control" (Gallop) spur their different "attempt[s]to listen to the material."9 This responsibility and rage is shared by Irigaray,the widely read deconstructive feminist philosopher and psychoanalyst, steeped in French intellectual traditions. Irigarayis almost always read as an essentialist, sometimes dismissed but only superficiallyunderstood as a mystic, rarelyseriously deemed a materialist,and never read as a spiritualmaterialist, as I primarilywish to read her. Itis curious to me that her materialism always gets reduced to essentialism, since her early works clearly evince Gallop and Haraway'ssame strong concerns for (female) bodies that resist constructions and (in Gallop's words) "agenda[s]for better control." Itis time to scrutinize materialismin poststructuralistfeministthought and the undeniable ways in which spiritualizingmeans have come to justify materialistends. As a poststructuralistfeminist schooled in theologies and spiritualtraditions,I confess my fascination withthese feminist returns:how bodies now demand belief and mystical gestures fromfeminists who would point in their direction. Iconfess again: Though Iam not necessarily arguing for their claims, I continue to find these feminists inspiring.The problems and limits that stem from these versions of spiritualmaterialism reveal, I suggest, some of the most tellingconcerns we encounter in feministstudies. At firstglance, of course, the subversive possibilities of resubmitting to anythingspiritualwould not appear promising.Inthe discussions of many poststructuralisttheorists, whether Marxistsor feminists, "god-talk,"as Haraway tags it, serves as the most convenient foil to subversive theorizing. next two books focused squarelyon psychoanalytictheory:The Daughter'sSeduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1982) and Reading Lacan (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1985). ThinkingThroughthe Body followsas an extended meditationon and challengeto the mind-bodysplit,containinga collectionof Gallop'sfeministessays writtenover a decade. 9. On the issue of control,Harawayconfesses her "nervousnessabout the sex/gender distinctionin the recenthistoryof feministtheory,"by means of which"sex is 'resourced' for its representationas gender,which'we' can control."See DonnaHaraway,"Situated Knowledges:The Science Questionin Feminismandthe Privilegeof PartialPerspective," FeministStudies 14 (Fall 1988): 592. Allfurtherreferencesto this text will be abbreviated SK.

118 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 Clearly,I am kickingagainstthe goads when I arguethatsome materialist theories may be read as formsof spiritualdiscourse.Myeffortsin this them directionare not meantto criticizefeminists,as if I were upbraiding Noris my goal to arguefor a morepristinepostfor writingspiritualities. stance. Myaim is to dramatizea difficulty, structuralist dauntingeven for how to departfromformsof faithor mysticismswhen poststructuralists: they are anxiousto envisionmovementsbeyondoppression.Hopes and desire forescape, even at this historicaljuncture,oftenfindtheirway, and intorecapturesof spiritualschemas. quiteunknowingly, Unbindspiritual.Theconnotationsof religiousdoctrineandreligious practices wouldseem to be impliedby the termspiritual,and, indeed, this term can includesuch meanings.I wish, by contrast,to find a term relianceon general and poststructuralists' thatcan pointto bothVictorians' I will as define it, is not Spiritualdiscourse, categories of inscrutabilities. merelylanguage-useboundto religiousinstitutionsor to the representations of traditionally religiousbehaviors.Spiritualdiscourse,definedmore on whatexceeds humansign systems;discourseon discourse is broadly, where humanmeaningsfail;discourseon escapes fromdiscourse;and, constructeddiscourseon escapes fromculture, most importantly, culturally thoughfromthe presentstandpointthese escapes are alwaysincomplete and deferred.10 10. Readers may wonderhow Judeo-Christianpeople of the Book can be linkedto the failureof human meaningand to discourse on what exceeds humansign systems. Let me underscore,then, how muchthe sense of bothOld and New Testamentrevelations carries the sense of inscrutablecommunications-whetherit be the opaque revelation of Yahweh("IAMWHATI AM,"[Exodus3:141)or the puzzlingstatements by and about Jesus thatmake the opacityof his Personthe Wordthatescapes fullhumancomprehension. By theirenigmaticqualities,these revelationspurposelyand divinelycause human meanings to failtheirfamiliartransparenciesin orderto open up some meaningthat can only appearas discoursein excess of establisheddiscourse. Let me say, in addition,that lest it seem that I slip impreciselyin this definitionbetween the terms exceeds, fails, and escapes (and I couldeasily add eludes), these are feministsin this essay terms that are used synonymouslyboth by the poststructuralist and by those who writeon mysticismgenerally.Forevidence withregardto mysticism, see EvelynUnderhill,Mysticism(New York:New AmericanLibrary,1974), 3-37. Since, for the purposes of length, I have kept my quotationsfromGallopand Harawayshort, see the full texts of Gallop's"Thinking Throughthe Body"(TTB,1-9) and "TheBodily Enigma"(TTB,11-20), and Haraway's"SituatedKnowledges."Gallop'spage four,forexample, uses the terms failure,exceeds, and impossibilityin fairlyclose succession (and in oppositionto the termtransparenton her previouspage). Both Gallopand Haraway, to be sure, tend to distance themselves fromthe termtranscendence (shying fromits

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 119 Twopointsof clarification are requiredhere.First,one mightwonder to what extentthese featuresof spiritualdiscourseproveuniqueto spiritualdiscourse?Inotherwords,mightsome poststructuralists arguethatmy definitionof spiritualdiscoursecouldalso be citedfor literarydiscourse?I am not convincedthatthe questionmatters.Itmay not matterbecause I stance on language(withits simplywantto show thatthe poststructuralist stress on the failureof languagefullyto capturemateriality) makes poststructuralist toward real bodies to gestures correspond gestures Victorians called spiritual.Whenthey bend backto bodies, poststructuralists almost since they mustinvestin inevitablyrepeata Christianspiritualproblematic, beliefs in somethingrealthatescapes and exceeds humansign systems. Atthe veryleast,the poststructuralist distinctionbetweena hiddenmaterial a hidden versus 'reality' spiritual'reality'mustbe called intoquestion.My second clarification concernswhatcouldseem a too neatcorrespondence. That is to say, the correspondenceI note here does not make Victorian the same as that of poststructuralists. True,for many Vicspiritualizing torianintellectuals,amongthem Carlyle(a majorcontributor to Victorian if lies equallyclose, notcloser,to conceptions religiousthought),spirituality of enigma/inscrutability/escape thanit does to the religiousdoctrinesand thinkers,however,manyVicpracticesof theirday. Unlikepoststructuralist torianintellectualsholdtheirspiritualdiscoursein obvioustensionwithor againstthe moretraditional religiouscontextsoutof whichthey write.Poststructuralists,by contrast,are generallyso dismissiveof religionin terms of institutionsand practicethattheirspiritualizing seems idiosyncratic, cut free fromthe dominantstrandsof Judeo-Christian traditions-even when it is not. Unbendthe poststructuralist investmentin writingescapes backto bodies. Briefly,the poststructuralist impetusfor escapes emerges froma sense that the dominantculture'sallowedrelationsto 'one's own body' (especiallyifone livesunderthe 'woman'sign)are notdesirable.Desirefor of the bodyaccomescape fromthe constructionsand commodifications a desire to producethose bodies elsewhere, in some pany,furthermore, otherculturalspace, wherebodiesmightbe returnedupon,and so touched upon,on differenttermsand indifferentways." spiritualring, I suspect), even whilethey continueto use the terms listed above; in the mysticalliterature,however,a termlikeescape is consistentlyused in appositionto the termtranscend (see Underhill,Mysticism,33). 11. We see this impetusfor an escape-as-returnin other significant(and overlapping)

120 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 This is where the humanistneed for a conceptof alienationjoins the poststructuralist need fora conceptof indeterminacy. Beforepoststructuralism,alienationstood forthe sense thatthe dominantculture'sallowed relationsto one's own bodyfundamentally conflictedwithone's realselffromwhichone was alienated.'2Now,in a postmodernperiodthat is as waryof realselves as realbodies,we cannotuse any determinatesense of an originalor essential self by whichto mark(as we desperatelyneed to do) our alienations.The most we seem able to performis a scream againstourconstructions-to say they don'tsuit us. Ifwe do not liketheir opposite, more privilegedconstructionsany better(masculineinstead of feminineones, forexample)butdesireto appearoutsidethe system of curIndeterminacy rentlyavailablealternatives,then we are leftindeterminate. becomes, in this way,our modeof resistanceto those determinateselves we do notwantto be. Thisprojectionoutsideknownsystemsseems at leastobliquelyspiriin its moveto exceed tualizing(as it seems to me in Gallopand Haraway); discourseswe know,this projectionoutsidecan overtlyemploy(as Irigaray, to be sure, overtlyemploys)spiritualdiscourse(as I have definedit, discourse on an escape fromdiscourse).This faithin escape for the sake for non-alienatedembodiof our bodies, as the necessary precondition evinces ment, poststructuralist logic concerningmaterialismas a hidden move to believe in a God. That is to say, it parallelsthe poststructuralist materialitythat, like God, escapes our constructions,whilestillrendering this 'matteron its ownterms',likeGod,inaccessibleto view. quartersof theorizing.MicheleWallace,for example, revisitsHoustonBaker'strope of the black hole as a way of conceivinghow blackfeministcreativityescapes prevailing classificationsand interpretations (even those thatprevailamongwhitefeministsand African Americanmen):"Anobjector energy,"she writes,"entersthe blackhole, is infinitely compressed to zero volume,as Bakerreported,then it passes throughto anotherdimension, whereuponthe objector energy reassumes volume,mass, form,direction,velocity, all the propertiesof visibilityand concreteness, but in another,perhaps unimaginable, Blues:FromPop to Theory(London:Verso, dimension."See MicheleWallace,Invisibility 1990), 218. 12. Marx,of course, is the famous example here. For a discussion of "the alienation of labor,"which demonstratesthat "laboris externalto the worker,i.e., it does not belong to his essential being,"see KarlMarx,Economicand PhilosophicManuscriptsof 1844 (Moscow:ForeignLanguagesPublishingHouse), 68-81. Fora feministversionof alienation,see CatherineMacKinnon,"Feminism,Marxism,Method,and the State: An Agenda forTheory,"Signs 7, no. 3 (1982):515-44.

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 121

Hope in Failure:Feminists' Felix Culpa There is a kindof spiritualizinggoing on around us in feminist theory. It involves us in failures of human meaning; it immerses us in (discursive) attempts to escape from discourse. No wonder we find dramatically reemerging in feminist forms the Christian doctrine of felix culpa, or, "the happy fall"-the doctrine that proclaimsthat humanfailuremakes possible a greater good. (ForChristians,for example, humanity'sfall makes possible the greater good of Christ'sappearing.) Indeed, feminists of poststructuralist stripes are investing in failurefor the sake of our future, for what failure might eventually make luminous by screening off our currentsights. Now more than ever, poststructuralistfeminists are losing their hope in 'positive' projects that directlydeliver 'the' feminine difference, and they are placing hope, instead, in the failure of the dominant constructions that would fix them.13Feminine specificity,given this scenario, has moreto do with escape (what 'she' is not, or what 'she' is elsewhere) than with essence (what 'she' is), for we need escapes fromfixed constructions if we are to produce new bodies and selves. Feminists, to be sure, have long desired the failure of (masculine) meanings. Yet, the advent of poststructuralismhas made feminists newly cautious toward, if not downrightresistant to, any fixed feminist meanings. One senses this leeriness in Jacqueline Rose's 1983 essay "Femininity and Its Discontents." Arguing against what she saw at that time as "the present discarding of psychoanalysis in favor of forms of analysis felt as more material in their substance and immediatelypoliticalin their effects," Rose was arguing for a psychoanalysis (namely, Freud's) that lets us put feminist hope in the failureof who we are as 'women' and 'men': The unconscious constantly reveals the "failure"of identity.Because there is no continuityof psychic life, so there is no stabilityof sexual identity, no position for women (or for men) which is ever simply achieved. ... "Failure"is not a moment to be regretted in a process of adaptation .... Instead "failure"is something endlessly repeated and relived moment by moment throughout our individual 13. I use fix in this sentence in two senses: (1) dominantgender constructionsattempt to "fix"women in orderto make them "right"and properin appearance,behavior,language, and occupation;(2) dominantconstructionsattemptto "fix"women to assured and familiarpositionsin culture.Thisdoubleness constituteswhatwe mightcall women's "fix"(theirbind).

122 boundary2 / Summer1992 histories. .

.

. Feminism's affinity with psychoanalysis

rests above

all, I would argue, with this recognitionthat there is a resistance to identityat the very heart of psychic life.14 Feminist poststructuralisttheorizing is still full of attempts to "unthink"and "renderimpossible" the versions of bodies and selves that we have known, even the feministversions that we have come to prefer.Hence, Mary Ann Doane acknowledges that "all feminist positions are in some sense uninhabitable,"echoing ElizabethWeed's comments on the "impossible relationof women to feminism."15Ellen Rooney, in a similarvein, seeks "the possibility of a politicalgesture that is not rooted in identity"(CT, 239). In fact, the desire to escape fixed gestures-toward politics or identitiesruns so strong in these feminists that even their materialistcautions against escape end with imaginingsome vision of it. Donna Haraway,for example, in her effortto stress materialities,seeks escape fromescapes like Christian "salvation history"(CT, 175). Yet, she ends her cyborg essay by envisioning what reads like a feminist embrace of Christian Pentecost: "a dream not of a common language,

but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia

. . . a

feminist speaking in tongues" (CT, 204; my emphasis). In "Post-Utopian Difference,"MaryAnn Doane actually critiques as utopian Rose's feminist hope in failed identities. We can cling to "theconstant failureof sexual identity, its instability,or even its impossibility,"but we must remember, Doane would caution, that this belief is a utopiangesture, for "identityin the realm of the social may be oppressive but insofaras patriarchyseems to work... it [identity]cannot be seen either as a failureor an impossibility"(CT, 76). Withthis materialistcaution in mind, Doane ends her essay with a seeming reaffirmationof utopia (but utopian beliefs recognized as utopian): Mycritiqueof psychoanalysis is not a critiqueof utopianthinking-to the contrary-but of its misrecognition(as authoritativescience).... Utopias open up a space for non-essentialized identities-they authorize certain positions rather than others, certain politics rather than others. A utopia is the sighting (in terms of the gaze) and siting (in terms of emplacement) of another possibility.The chance of escaping the same. (CT,78) 14. Jacqueline Rose, Sexualityin the Field of Vision(London:Verso Press, 1986), 83, 90-91. 15. MaryAnn Doane, "Post-UtopianDifference,"in Comingto Terms:Feminism/Theory/ Politics, ed. ElizabethWeed (New York:Routledge,1989), 209. Allfurtherreferencesto this text will be abbreviatedCT. See also ElizabethWeed, "AMan'sPlace,"in Men in Feminism,ed. AliceJardineand PaulSmith(New York:Methuen,1987), 74.

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 123 Laterin this essay, Iwilladdress how the openness of nonauthoritative visions like utopias is paradoxicallyassociated withlimitingand placing identities in relation to "certain positions" and "certain politics." Here, I simply want to underscore a point that prepares for my discussion of realbodies mysticism. The point is this: What is strikingabout all the theorists I have discussed is the way in which poststructuralist"unthinking,""not knowing,"and "saying the unsayable" is strongly being tied to materialist gestures that would bring us (back) to bodies.16I thinkthis is why escapes remaincrucialto Harawayand Doane, in spite of theirstrong stands against some escapes: Both feminists desperately want out of the material relations we have known, even as both desperately desire new materialitieswe would embody. Unforeseen, and as yet unrepresented, embodiments and "emplacements" (as Doane would have it) are what they seek. Here is the crucial context in which to read Luce Irigaray.Gallop, as usual, has put the matter well. In discussing Irigaray'sfocus on women's genital lips, she locates in Irigaray'stheorizing"thetension between a feminist investment in the referentialbody and an aspirationto poetics" (TTB,95) ("poetics"is Gallop's term for constructions). Irigaray's"referentialillusion," Gallop claims, "mightjust save (post)modernist poetics from the absurd appearance of asserting the nonreferentialityof language and move it into a more complex encounter with the anxiety produced by the absence of any certain access to the referent"(TTB,95-96; my emphasis). Aside from noting that if we substituted "God"for "the referent,"this last phrase could apply aptly to Victorianthinkers, I want to emphasize something that Gallop was among the first to notice: Irigaraypoeticizes the body that many readers thinkshe essentializes.17This pointlooms radiantamong Irigaray's poststructuralistsupporters, though they often stress her "strategic"essentialism, arguing that she "risks"biological reference for the sake of making different bodies appear."1This slant is ultimatelymisleading, I believe. A 16. Throughouthis bookAltarity(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1987), MarkTaylor associates poststructuralist "notknowing,"and "sayingthe unsayable" "unthinking," with religiousand theologicalcategories. Since his book does not address materialism, however,he does not makethese furtherlinks. 17. My book on spiritualmaterialismand desire between women (StanfordUniversity Press, forthcoming)exploresBronteand Eliotas examplesof such Victorianthinkers. 18. See Naomi Schor, "ThisEssentialismWhichIs Not One: Comingto Gripswith Irigaray,"Differences 1, no. 2 (Summer1989):38-58; DianaFuss, EssentiallySpeaking: Feminism,Nature,Difference(New York:Routledge,1989); MargaretWhitford,"Luce Irigarayand the Female Imaginary:Speaking as a Woman,"Radical Philosophy 43 (Summer1986):3-8.

124 boundary2 / Summer1992 stress on strategic essentialism bears the rhetoricaleffect of reemphasizing Irigaray'scloseness to the body ratherthan the ways in which she elaboratelymystifies it-especially throughblatantmystical conceptions. Itis not that Irigarayis too close to the body in some assured, or even strategically essentialist, manner; it is perhaps the opposite: The impetus for Irigaray's "referentialillusion"(a formof faith?) is her anxiety that we cannot, with certainty, anymore assume access to the referent-and some form of access, not just failure, is what she desires. Farfromalone, then, Irigarayis like Doane, like Haraway,like Gallop, in wanting to escape (back) to feminine bodies-to the bodilyenigmas that, in Gallop's terms, exist "beyond/before language" by virtue of how they resist words' captures. Irigaray'suniqueness lies, if anywhere, in the explicitness withwhich she spiritualizes-not just poeticizes-bodies in order to get to them. Pointedly mystical moves, which effectively locate lack and God between 'woman's'genital lips (no small moves, these), make possible her bold belief in women's bodies that escape the dominant constructions that would suture them.19Irigaray,on some level, seems to understand, and to dramatize, what I am calling real-bodies mysticism. This is the belief (not the certainty)that real bodies may exist on their own terms but that we can reach them only by the same visionarymeans that separate us from their 'reality'.

Real-Bodies Mysticism For poststructuralistfeminists, this separation from 'reality'remains one of the most familiardilemmas-so much so that in the introductionto their book Body/Politics: Womenand the Discourses of Science, Jacobus, Fox Keller,and Shuttleworthcite this dilemma as their central issue, offering us the statement in my essay's epigraph. These feminists wish to hold in "tension" (and Gallop used this word exactly) discursive figures "and" materialpresences. This impliedduality,however, cannot be so easily held, if imagined (in spite of the "and"that serves both to separate and to join these terms). Even in stating the problem,one can point only through dis19. I mean suture in both its ordinarylanguagesense of "sewingup"and its more technical theoreticalsense of "thatmomentwhen the subjectinserts itself intothe symbolic registerin the guise of a signifier,and inso doinggains meaningat the expense of being." Forthe latterdefinition,see KajaSilverman,TheSubjectof Semiotics(NewYork:Oxford, because she associates women'soppressionwithin 1983), 200. Bothsenses suit Irigaray, the symbolicregister(whereher bodyappearsonlyintermsof lack)withthe "sewingup" of women'sgenitallips.

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 125 course to that bodilyaspect-"material presence or biologicalentity"-that exceeds, escapes, or stands partlyseparate from "a figure in discourse." Materialism in its discursive shades has shadowed theorists for some time. One detects worryover things-in-themselves as early as quite Barthes's famous structuralistessay "MythToday."Concluding, Barthes wonders if we can ever know objects apart from the myths by which their cultures grasp them: It seems that this is a difficultypertainingto our times: there is as yet only one possible choice, and this choice can bear only on two equally extreme methods: either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history,and ideologize; or, conversely, to posit a reality which is ultimatelyimpenetrable,irreducible,and, in this case, poetize. ... The fact that we cannot manage to achieve more than an unstable grasp of realitydoubtless gives the measure of our present alienation. ... For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy it;and if we acknowledge its fullweight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. Itwould seem that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality.20 Barthes is discussing what later becomes the debate between full-blown linguistic constructionists (who "posita realitywhich is entirely permeable to history")and essentialists, or at least believers in objects that might, at some point, in some way, resist full linguistic construction (who "posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible").His most important insight appears toward his end remarks,where he recognizes that to pull apart an object's myths is to lose the very object itself ("we liberateit but we destroy it"),for nothing that we can reach remains beneath our demystifying penetrations. Extreme constructionism loses its object. Conversely, Barthes notes that to believe that the object does exist, somewhere on its own terms, is to leave it mystified or to mystify anew ("we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified").Materialistrespect for objects that exist apart from our myths can only serve to "poetize"and thus still "mystify"the very objects materialistsor poets would want to deliver in "inalienable"form. Importantly,Barthes's use of poetize here should not be confused with Gallop's use of poeticize. For Gallop,poeticize refers to the use we make of language's metaphoricalproperties-its discursive figures. 20. RolandBarthes,Mythologies,trans.AnnetteLavers(NewYork:Hilland Wang,1957), 159.

126 boundary2 / Summer1992 Barthes's poetize means nearly the opposite (if one could hold these concepts apart): We poetize when we (thinkwe) point to a reality that exists outside our discursive figures. Truly,then, this distinctioncollapses, since we can only poetize by poeticizing in a mystical vein. In fact, Barthes's last point-"that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality"-makes clear that every materialist must "poetize," must mystify, and even must make mystical, I would claim, the nondiscursive realityfor which they would reserve some conceptual, discursive, and materialspace. On poststructuralistterrain,one cannot speak of "the tension between a feminist investment in the referential body and an aspirationto poetics," as Gallop does for Irigaray,without confessing that these two conceptions cannot rest side by side. One can only lean upon the other, and only one-"an aspiration to poetics"-can ever appear. The most real, most referentialthing, cannot be seen. The legacy of poststructuralistdicta, warningthat referents never appear, proves startling in its effects. Theorists have become so squeamish about pointingto the body or to a realityoutside of language that they have taken to putting the terms the body itself and reality in quotation marks. Here is an oxymoronic confession that they are pointingto an outside to language fromwithinits domain. By contrast,the terms materialconditions, material effects, and material limits-increasingly used in our critical climate-are not standardly marked with quotation marks. Even so, in the introductionto her book Uneven Developments: The Ideological Workof Gender in Mid-VictorianEngland, MaryPoovey finds it necessary to qualify even material conditions: Despite my assumption that the conditions that produce both texts and (partlythroughthem) individualsubjects are materialin the ever elusive last instance, I also maintainthat this famous last instance is ever elusive--precisely because the materialand economic relations of productioncan only make themselves knownthrough repreI returnin a moment to the compromise I have tried sentations. .... to strike in my organizationof each chapter, but the effect of the selfconsciousness I voice here willhave to carryover into the rest of the book, where I occasionally represent the "real"as if it were a linear development that could shed both textualizationand the quotation marks that signify that it is always a social construction.21 21. Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Workof Gender in MidVictorianEngland(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1988), 18.

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 127 What is material, we note, has become perhaps the most "elusive" (and remains an "ever elusive") category in deconstructive thought. Representations are endlessly available, whereas materialityand bodies elude, demanding now belief, self-conscious confession, and quotation marks that the 'real'cannot shed. In Haraway's1988 essay "SituatedKnowledges:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," she reveals a familiarnervousness about where extreme constructionism-especially deconstruction-has left us vis-a-vis 'reality'(which Haraway, at the start, italicizes, letting italics and quotationmarksdrop as she states her desires): The strong program in the sociology of knowledge joins with the lovely and nasty tools of semiology and deconstruction to insist on the rhetoricalnature of truth, includingscientific truth. So much .... for those of us who would still liketo talk about realitywith more confidence than we allow to the ChristianRight when they discuss the Second Coming and their being rapturedout of the final destruction of the world. We would like to think our appeals to real worlds are more than a desperate lurchaway fromcynicism and an act of faith like any other cult's. (SK, 577) What makes Harawaynervous is twofold:(1) since deconstruction, we cannot intelligentlytalk about realitywithoutsounding like (very conservative) religious believers whose appeals to hidden realities, beyond worldlyconstructions, must always constitute "anact of faith";(2) we need to talk about reality, real bodies, and real worlds if we are to hold each other "responsible" (a key word for Haraway)for how we learn to see a world of bodies and things that are agents themselves. Harawaywants the fruitsof real-bodies mysticism, minus mysticism. She eschews any "act of faith"that relies on escapes from embodiment. She states: "Tolose authoritativebiological accounts of sex, which set up productive tensions with gender, seems to be to lose too much; it seems to be to lose not just analytic power within a particularWestern tradition but also the body itself as anything but a blank page for social inscriptions, includingthose of biologicaldiscourse" (SK, 591). What Harawaywants is something very close to the "tension"that Gallop and the editors of Body/ Politics outline: the tension between discursive figures and material presences. Not surprisingly,Haraway's statement of the problem, as well as Gallop's and the editors', depends largelyon an unexamined "and"(which she italicizes) that joins and separates both sides of the equation (and keeps both sides withinthe same sentence!):

128 boundary2 / Summer1992 So, I think my problem, and "our"problem, is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historicalcontingency for all knowledge claims and knowingsubjects, a criticalpractice for recognizing our own "semiotic technologies" for making meanings, and a nononsense commitmentto faithfulaccounts of a "real"world,one that can be partiallyshared and that is friendlyto earthwide projects of finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limitedhappiness. (SK, 579; Haraway'semphasis) One could conclude that Harawayis not telling us how to performthis tension; rather,she is stating that it should be our goal. Iwould argue, however, that in her call to "commitmentto faithfulaccounts,"particularlyin her listing of "earthwide projects"-"finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering,and limitedhappiness" (my emphasis here)an importantclue resides: Poststructuralisthumilitywill save the day and will actually enable a reliance on escape to sneak in through back doors. What I mean is this: Haraway'sstress on particularity,limits, modesty, finitude, accountability, responsibility,and noninnocence (central to her essay's thematic embrace of things "partial")all spell a twist that resembles Christianbelievers' requiredhumilitybefore God, since God represents a domain of possibility and agency beyond believers' control. With this panegyric to "partial"perspectives, Harawayis able to stress the benefits of our acknowledging our limits,over and against our seeking forms of disembodied transcendence, for this human humilityis what would make possible, in her scheme, a world(and bodies) that transcends us. We limit ourselves so that our world (and our bodies) can escape us and returnto us (at least in part) outside our constructions. In taking a stand against transcendence, Harawaythus makes a certain kindof transcendence possible. Small wonder that her essay ends by tying our humilityto the possible appearance of something other than our selves: The approach Iam recommendingis not a version of "realism,"which has proved a rather poor way of engaging with the world's active agency.... Ecofeminists have perhaps been most insistent on some version of the worldas active subject, not as resource to be mapped and appropriatedin bourgeois, Marxist,or masculinist projects. Acknowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes room for some unsettling possibilities, includinga sense of the world's independent sense of humor.... The Coyote or Trickster,as embodied in Southwest native Americanaccounts, suggests the situation we are

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 129 in when we give up mastery but keep searching for fidelity,knowing all the whilethat we willbe hoodwinked.Ithinkthese are useful myths for scientists who might be our allies. Feminist objectivity makes room for surprises and ironies at the heart of all knowledge production; we are not in charge of the world. . . . Perhaps our hopes for

accountability,for politics, for ecofeminism, turn on revisioning the worldas coding tricksterwith whom we must learn to converse. (SK, 593-96) How far are we here from a VictorianGod? Institutionallyand practically,it appears that we are quite far, so that Harawaymight rightfullybalk at the question. Discursively,however,some points of contact remainstriking:The world, like God, is deemed an active subject with an independent sense of humor, which may prove uncomfortableto human projects; the world, like God, demands that we "give up mastery but keep searching for fidelity, knowing all the while that we willbe hoodwinked,"for "we are not in charge of the world";the world, like God, demands that our hopes be expressed in conversations with what, with whom, remains outside our abilityto bind everything with words. I have tried to show that Harawayspeaks against transcendence on behalf of materialism.Yet, her very gestures that would script a poststructuralistmaterialismdepend upon escapes that wouldreturnus to bodies that surprise us. Now I want to argue something similarfor Gallop in Thinking Through the Body, for Gallop stresses that side of the duality that poststructuralists only recently have stressed: "the body as insubordinate to man-made meaning";the body as "enigmaticbecause it is not a creation of the mind"(TTB,18). This is no naive returnto bodies, evincing linguistic, or material,transparency.Gallop rejects the notionthat there could appear "such a thing as a 'body itself,' unmediated by textuality"(TTB,93). What she does explore, however, is the body's resistance to linguisticdomination: The human being cannot help but try to make sense out of his own idiosyncraticbody shape: tall or short, fat or thin, male or female, to name but a few of the least subtle morphologicaldistinctions. Outside the theological model there is no possibilityof verifyingan interpretation:no author to have intended a sense in composing such a body.... By "body"I mean here: perceivable givens that the human being knows as "hers"without knowingtheir significance to her. In such a way a taste for a certain food or a certain color, a distaste for another, are pieces of the bodily enigma. We can, a posteriori,

130 boundary2 / Summer1992 form an esthetic, consistent system of values (rules for Good Taste) to rationalize our insistent, idiosyncratictastes. But the system is a guess at the puzzle, a response to the inscrutable given. (TTB, 12-13) Fromthe start, one mightargue that Gallophas troublepointingto "morphological distinctions"-"tall or short, fat or thin, [especially] male or female"that are not already the result of culturallyspecific codes; this difficulty seems most dramaticallyapparent in her appeal to "a taste for certain food or a certain color," as well as in a later list of tastes, predilections, and repulsions (which could be fully culturallyinduced in some cases, though perhaps not in all). Of course, Gallop's trouble surrounding"morphological distinctions" points to the very issue I have been discussing all along: the difficultyof indicatingin language whatever we want to designate as falling outside it. Not surprisingly,Gallop seems most convincing on the body, from a deconstructive standpoint, at those points where she discourses on escapes from discourse, where the 'body' (in quotation marks, we note) "means all that in the organism which exceeds and antedates consciousness or reason or interpretation,"where 'body' means "perceivablegivens that the human being knows as 'hers' withoutknowingtheir significance to her."This last phrase, in fact, sounds like Lacan on St. Theresa ("itis clear that the essential testimony of the mystics is that they are experiencing it [the "jouissance which goes beyond"]but know nothing about it").22True, Gallop defines the body against "theologicalmodels," linkingtheology to (beliefs, I guess, in) verifiableinterpretations,puzzle-masters, correct divinations, and final guarantees of intended meaning-even though theology can only ever command faithinthese things. Clearly,however,Gallop's antitheological returnto the body proves itself a spiritualizingproject of major magnitude, for the body is defined here in terms of escape, the failure of meaning, and the impossibilityof humansign systems ("thatwhich exceeds and antedates consciousness or reason or interpretation").Precisely, as she puts it, the body is an "inscrutable"given. The same gesture, then, that makes the body seem like it is solidly there, renders it elusive. The best argument for its material resistance to our domination is its propensity to escape our efforts at capture. We believe, however,that the puzzle remains 22. Jacques Lacan, "Godand the Jouissance of thA Woman,"in FeminineSexuality: Jacques Lacanand the Ecole Freudienne,ed. JulietMitchellandJacquelineRose, trans. JacquelineRose (New York:Norton,1985), 147.

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 131 as what Gallop rather mystically calls "the mark of an enigmatic silence (sign of an impossible transcendence)" (TTB,14). "Mystic Unfathomable Visibilities" These issues that so concern Gallop and Harawaylie already emergent in Thomas Carlyle. In fact, in Carlyle, this dilemma adumbrates the conceptual surprises we encounter now in feminists who would shed the linguistic garments that constrain them-shedding them through forms of cloaking and concealment. Carlyle,that is, better than any theorist I know, represents the kind of spiritualmaterialismto which poststructuralistfeminists are returning.In Carlyle,too, as in poststructuralists,materialismhas to do with concealment: Carlyle'shistoricalenigmas, akinto Gallop's bodily enigmas, reveal resistance to our linguistic and conceptual control, thus heightening their existence apart from us. Most importantof all, consulting Carlyle who uses avowedly spiritualdiscourse, we can sense the collapse between 'spiritual'and 'material'bordersin which poststructuralists,despite their deconstructions, still invest so much distinction. Some issues in Carlyle'sPast and Present lightup this collapse. This is a book as focused on the need to escape intolerablematerial relations (produced by structures resulting from the Corn Laws and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834) as are feminist visions. This book, too, envisions an alternative materiality,but one that directs our hope to a historicalpast, not the future. The historical past limns itself as a beckoning enigma, a puzzle that promises a materialpresence to be approached and followed. Yet, troublingsenses of inaccessibility seem wedded to Carlyle's hope in history:The Past is a "dimindubitablefact,"whose dimness seems a function of approaching "a fact" that always recedes, "faroff on the edge of far horizons, towards which we are to steer incessantly for life."23For Carlyle, as much as for any poststructuralist,history has gotten difficult.Even writtenvoices from the past stubbornlyrepel us in their "remote,""exotic," "extraneous"character, as Carlylediscovers when he reads the notebooks of a twelfth-centurymonk. "We have a longing,"writes Carlyle, "to crossquestion him, to force from him an explanation of much";"butno; Jocelin, though he talks with such clear familiarity,like a next-doorneighbor,will not answer any question: that is the peculiarityof him, dead these six hundred 23. Thomas Carlyle,Past and Present, ed. RichardD. Altick(Boston:HoughtonMifflin, 1965), 41. Allfurtherreferencesto this text willbe abbreviatedPP.

132 boundary2 / Summer1992 and fifty years, and quite deaf to us, though still so audible!"(PP, 49-50). In history's character as "inscrutableand certain"(Carlyle'sphrase), these historical enigmas, as one mightcall them, bear discursive resemblance to the "bodilyenigmas" that Gallop discusses, rather mystically, as "inscrutable givens." Because history resists us, because it is not transparent, it asserts, we believe, a materialitythat exceeds us. How fittingfor Carlyle'ssense of history,and for the poststructuralist debates that concern us, that Carlyle concludes his journey into the historical past with a monk's report of a bodily enigma. The story involves Abbot Samson's wish to glimpse the body of the martyrSt. Edmund. Carlyle quotes his monk, Jocelin, on this secret sacred event, from which he, Jocelin, was unhappilyexcluded and heard about only through witnesses: "These coverings being liftedoff, they found now the Sacred Body all wrapped in linen.... But here the Abbotstopped; saying he durst not proceed farther,or look at the sacred flesh naked. [Yet]proceeding, he couched the eyes; and the nose, whichwas very massive and prominent... and then he touched the breast and arms; and raising the left arm he touched the fingers, and placed his own fingers between the sacred fingers. And proceeding he found the feet standing stiff up, like the feet of a man dead yesterday; and he touched the toes and counted them. ... And now it was agreed that the other Brethrenshould be called forwardto see the miracles."(PP, 124-26) Here is testimony: The most naked materialityseems the most holy, the most mysterious, the most difficultto grasp-something that Irigaraywill dramaticallydemonstrate. Infact, the passage illuminatesa difficultymore than it illuminatesa body: the difficultyof grasping naked flesh. Where the description becomes most particular(the reference to the nose as massive), or most intenton the act of grasping (placingfingers between the sacred fingers, counting the toes), we receive the strongest sense of a bodilyenigma that defies our captures. Carlyle caps this instructivescene with his own gloss on bodily enigmas: Stupid blockheads, to reverence their St. Edmund's dead Body in this manner? Yes, brother;-and yet, on the whole, who knows how to reverence the Body of a Man? .

.

. For the Highest God dwells

visible in that mystic unfathomableVisibility,which calls itself "I"on the Earth. (PP, 126) Surprisingly,we can couple Carlyle's spiritualmaterialism, so evident in this passage, with his own brandof full-blownconstructionism. By

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 133 so doing, we can understand why deconstructive thinkers like Gallop and Haraway,who seem to be constructionists,primarily,importantlyparticipate in spiritualmaterialism. Carlyle'sview of the body as a "mysticunfathomable Visibility"(a phrase that could describe some poststructuralistconceptions of 'the body' apart from social constructions) points in two directions simultaneously: toward concealment and toward revelation. The interconnections between these terms prove quite intricate.Whatthe body reveals most easily are the fabrications-in Carlyle's terms, the "garments,"or "clothes"-by which we know it. This is, in large part,what his earlier book Sartor Resartus had explored: "thewhole Universe and what it holds is but Clothing,"dressed up by society and religiousinstitutionsin every mannerof word, symbol, and human conception.24Since "theTailoris not only a Man, there is anotherside to the revelation but something of a Creatoror Divinity," of human constructions.25 Every "garment"(every person or thing) reveals not only the set of human tailoringsby which we know it, but it also reveals a divine concealment. What is revealed, what "supernaturalism[brings] home to the very dullest," is concealment itself; and this concealment bespeaks a spiritual reality that "dwells visible in that mystic unfathomable Visibility"(PP, 126). Again, we graze certain poststructuralistformulations, except that spiritualdiscourse is renderingthe concealment that poststructuralists stress as material.Thus, Gallop explains, "by 'body' I mean here: perceivable givens [Visibility]that the human being knows as 'hers' without knowingtheir significance to her [mystic, unfathomable]"(TTB,13). Or, as Lacan will say: "The essential testimony of the mystics is that they are experiencing it but know nothing about it." There is furtherevidence that Carlyle'sspiritualmaterialismsits close to his own social constructionist tendencies. Having ended his historical review with a "mysticunfathomableVisibility"(St. Edmund'sbody), Carlyle closes Book IIof Past and Present, "The Ancient Monk,"by taking a turn that looks like a version of extreme constructionism: What a singular shape of a Man, shape of a Time, have we in this Abbot Samson and his history;how strangely do modes, creeds, formularies, and that date and place of a man's birth,modify the figure of the man! Formulas too, as we call them, have a realityin Human Life.They are real as the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's Life;and a 24. ThomasCarlyle,SartorResartus,ed. KerryMcSweeneyand PeterSabor(New York: OxfordUniversityPress, 1987), 57. 25. Carlyle,Sartor,219.

134 boundary2 / Summer1992 most blessed indispensable thing, so long as they have vitalitywithal, and are a living skin and tissue to him! ... And yet, again, when a man's Formulasbecome dead ... tillno heart any longer can be felt beating through them, so thick, callous, calcified are they . .. yes, then, you may say, his usefulness once more is quite obstructed. (PP, 128-29) Carlyle not only appears a precursorto poststructuralistanalysts who would claim that everything is fashioned by discourse; he also sounds faintly like Althusser on how ideologies ("Formulas,"for Carlyle)hail us into subjectivities (asks Carlyle:"thisEnglishNationality... has it not made forthee a skin or second-skin, adhesive actuallyas thy naturalskin?"[PP, 129]). Formulas are real and inescapable (as are ideologies and subjectivities for Althusser). What we need, suggests Carlyle,are better formulas, since "blessed [is] he who has a skin and tissues, so it be a livingone, and the heart-pulse everywhere discernible through it"(PP, 131). Happily,historicalretrospection provides some: "Monachism[sic], Feudalism, with a real King Plantagenet, with real Abbots Samson, and their other living realities, how blessed!-" (PP, 131). Seemingly, the only thing Carlyle can promise is other (possibly better) formulas, more distant and provocative. Yet, Carlyleis not this fullyconstructionist,as we have seen. The clue to what might escape these formulas is his almost unnoticeable reference to "the heart-pulse,"which he mentions twice: "Whena man's Formulas become dead ... till no heart any longer can be felt beating throughthem ... his usefulness once more is quite obstructed";"blessed he who has a skin and tissues, so it be a livingone, and the heart-pulse everywhere discernible through it."The sense of something not commonlyseen but felt beating or pulsing through skin is vital to Carlyle. This pulse, or beat, indicates, again, a perceivable concealment, a mysterious sign of a realitythat can best prove its presence when concealed. For bodily and historicalobjects seem most real and most referentialnot where they reveal something we recognize (forthis revelationwould prove their confinementwithinthe "garments" by which we know them) but where they conceal something from us.26 These are concealments constructions cannot capture-except for mystical formulas, which tell us that there is something that cannot be told. 26. Gallopsays somethingquiteclose to this, in fact, when she discusses confusionand contradiction:"Toread for and affirmconfusion,contradictionis to insist on thinkingin the body in history.Those confusionsmarkthe sites wherethinkingis literallyknottedto the subject's historicaland materialplace"(TTB,132). Scientists wouldseem to know

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 135

'God' between TheirLips: In Search of Symbolic Holes WomenCan Feel Here-on the question of perceivable concealments that only mystical formulas can capture-is the linkto the deconstructive feminist Irigaray. For the sake of making different(female) bodies appear, Irigarayrenders these bodies opaque but seeks to lavish upon them concealments that they might wear. More striking yet, in offering us her version of spiritual materialism, Irigarayputs 'God' between women's lips. By means of this puzzle I want to make bold that with all that has been writtenin reference to Irigaray,we have not fullyrealized the interest of her materialistdilemmas (formy purposes, her theories in Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Whichis Not One). They are, I suggest, more engaging, more nuanced, and even much differentthan they have been represented to be. Irigarayhas been called an essentialist, for example, but she may be more aptlydeemed a believer: She believes in bodies (and labors) whose essence, if anything, is escape.27 Moregenerously, she has been called a "strategic"essentialist but may be more accurately deemed one who makes opaque the very essentialism that she invokes; hence, she is really an opaque essentialist, and a very mystical one at that, since mysticism, she asserts, "is the only place in the history of the West in which woman speaks and acts so publicly."28 She has been called a theorist of plenitude but may be more powerfullyread as a feministtheologian of lack, for whom the happy fall may be found between a woman's lips-the same place, importantly,she locates 'God'.29

this knottingwell, since they encounterthe bodyand matterat those places where every known scientificformulaor constructionfails to explainwhat they are observing. It is precisely this failure,however,that convinces us that bodies and matterdo push back against even our most subtle, precise formulations. 27. For the essentialist designation,see, for example, MoniquePlaza, "'Phallomorphic Power' and the Psychology of 'Woman',"Ideology and Consciousness 4 (Autumn 1978):57-76; and TorilMoi,Sexual/TextualPolitics:FeministLiteraryTheory(New York: Methuen,1985), 143. 28. Luce Irigaray,Speculum of the OtherWoman,trans. GillianC. Gill(Ithaca:Cornell UniversityPress, 1985), 191. Allfurtherreferencesto this text willbe abbreviatedS. For the strategicessentialist readingof Irigaray,see those criticscited in note 18. 29. Ina recent majorstudyof Irigaray,ElizabethGroszcontinuallyreads Irigarayagainst the grainof loss. Discussing Irigarayon mother-daughter relations,for example, Grosz examines the dynamicsof "WhenOur LipsSpeak Together"(the concludingessay to

136 boundary2 / Summer1992 By virtue of her stance as a believer, a mystic opaque essentialist, and a feminist theologian of lack, I take Irigarayas the premiere test case for spiritual materialism. Her theorizing, for a start, unambiguously illuminates how spiritualdiscourse engenders discourse on materialitiesunseen by dominantconstructions. Infact, she ties together the many issues I have discussed already in my broad address to spiritualmaterialism. She, like other poststructuralistfeminists, places hope infailure,lookingforthe failure of dominantconstructions to capture 'woman';she, likeother poststructuralist feminists, represents 'woman's'essence as escape. Yet, Irigaray'shappy fall is more specific. She puts a version of felix culpa, "the happy fall"(lack, separation, failure),between the lips, representingthe self-caress of the lips as made possible by the slit, 'woman's'nothing, her (supposed) castration, that divides her genitals. Like Gallop, Haraway,and Carlyle,then, Irigaray is trying to uncover a body that has been so covered over by constructions. Like these three real-bodies mystics, Irigaraybelieves there must exist bodies, or something of them, other than the constructed ones that we have known. Like these writers, in her effort to make a conceptual space for bodies that, in part, resist culture'sdefinitions,she makes these bodies mystical in their escapes. This is why, as I must explain, Irigaraylocates not only lack, but also 'God', between the lips: She implants escape within the genitals and thus makes escape (what she terms "unformableapartness" [S, 235]) their most essential biologicalfeature. This is why, too-as much as Irigarayshares Marx'sneed for faith in 'natural'objects, 'matteron its own terms' before it is mystifiedthroughcommodifications-her materialism breaks from Marx:She elaborately mystifies the female body, using blatantlymystical terms to bolster it against mystificationsthat are far more alienating than her own. I want to convey how Irigaray'sstance as an opaque essentialist (my term) is tied to her stance as a feminist theologian of lack (my term, again). At bottomlies my centralclaim:Irigaraywants to say that something of women's bodies is concealed withoutsaying exactly what this something is. This something, however, is closer to a crack, a seam, a slit, than it is ThisSex WhichIs Not One). WritesGrosz:"The'we' here does not subsume or merge This is a one identitywith anotherbut fuses them withoutresidue or loss to either. .... space of exchange withoutdebt, withoutloss, withoutguilt,a space women can inhabit withoutgivingup a partof themselves"(see ElizabethGrosz,Sexual Subversions:Three FrenchFeminists[Sydney:Allen&Unwin,1989], 126;my emphases). I desire to provide an alternativeto this reading.

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 137 to something we deem substantial. Irigaray'sopaque essentialism, her tendency to make visible the body's opacity, thus enables her to performtwo operations at once: She can complainagainst women's alienationfromtheir bodies (by arguing that something is concealed by constructions), and she can forge a deconstructive pact to leave the body's essence indeterminate (by arguingthat what is concealed is a crack).Whatwe mightconclude from Irigaray'ssimultaneous embrace of alienationand indeterminacyis a maxim like this: Women are alienated not from some past body they have known but froma futurebody owed to them. These are bodies women have not yet been allowed to see, to fashion, or to listen for, even though these bodies already resist dominant constructions, particularlywhere these bodies appear as holes in the dominant Symbolic. My focus on holes should remindthe reader that for Irigaraythese issues center on genitals-understandably so, since the body's genitals are still the prime site for the culturalreadings that fashion boys and girls. Here is the importof Irigaray'sfamous, and much contested, figure of the lips: The lips represent Irigaray'saddress to the matterof castration. Do women, she seems to query, possess anythingto be seen materiallyat the genital level? Or are women, as their culturepaints them, a "hole-envelope"?30 It is a common mistake to begin discussion of Irigaray'slips with the tired, overwrought issue of essentialism. Perhaps it is time to say directly that I want to make her theories ride new rims, on the lipof old extremities. This push appears in my portraitof her as opaque essentialist and feminist theologian of lack who puts 'God' between the lips. These formulationsare my own manufacture. I'msuggesting how to read her, moreover, in order to usher the question of materialconcealments, perceivable concealments, into an explicitlygendered domain. The question of castration,to which the lips speak, leads us to a border we have not yet broached: What bodies in dominant Western culture are privileged to claim a material concealment? We can probe this concern by takingup an issue Irigarayknows well. I am referringto Lacan's notion of primarycastration: the child's loss of direct material access to its body when it enters language. One of Lacan's central insights and revisions of Freud,and one that shapes Lacan's distinctive slant on human tragedy, is that both 'boys' and 'girls'lose unmediated 30. Luce Irigaray,ThisSex WhichIs Not One,trans.CatherinePorterwithCarolynBurke (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1985), 23. All furtherreferences to this text will be abbreviatedTS.

138 boundary2 / Summer1992 contact with their bodies when they become speaking subjects caught in the "defiles"of signification.Lacan puts it this way: "Whatby its very nature remains concealed from the subject [is] that self-sacrifice, that pound of flesh which is mortgaged [engag6] in his relationshipto the signifier."31 Even Lacan links this "poundof flesh" to the productionof sexual difference that attends the child's castrationthrough language, for children do not enter the Symbolic (language/law/culture) on equal terms. 'Boys', by virtue of a culturalreading that assigns to their genitals a valued and visible materiality,enter the Symbolic as privilegedsubjects who "sacrifice" their "poundof flesh" for Symbolic rites. 'Girls',by virtueof a culturalreading that assigns to their genitals an unhappy lack and missing materiality, enter the Symbolic as underprivilegedsubjects who "sacrifice"their inferiorbodies for inferiorrightswithinthe Symbolic. Culturalreadings clearly determine, then, how bodies mortgage materialityfor culture. Indeed, these differentialdoors to privilege are why so many poststructuralistfeminists have argued that the phallus-the privilegedsignifierof what I am calling here Symbolic rites-cannot be easily separated from the penis. Witness KajaSilverman, who spells out the privilegethat attends the male subject's castration through language: Lacan suggests

. . . that the male subject "pays" for his symbolic

privileges with a currency not available to the female subject-that he "mortgages" the penis for the phallus. In other words, during his entry into the symbolic order he gains access to those privileges which constitute the phallus, but forfeits direct access to his own sexuality, a forfeitureof which the penis is representative. ... What woman lacks withinthe Lacanian scheme is the phallus-aslost-penis, the "amputated"or "castrated"appendage which assures the male subject access to the phallus-as-symbolic-legacy.32 The "phallus-as-lost-penis,"says Silverman(or, as Lacan puts it, "whatby its very nature remains concealed from the subject [is] that self-sacrifice, that pound of flesh which is mortgaged [engage] in his relationshipto the signifier"): Here is a material concealment, "a pound of flesh," worth its weight in gold, since this particularmaterial concealment (whatever the of Desire in Hamlet,"trans. James 31. Jacques Lacan, "Desireand the Interpretation Hulbert,YaleFrenchStudies 55/56 (1977):28; my emphases. 32. Silverman,Subject of Semiotics, 185, 186, 188.

Stockton/ Bodiesand God 139 penis as a pound of flesh mightbe if not "concealed"by discourse) can be cashed in for culturalcoins. Now we see what lies at stake in achieving a certain kindof access to lack, along with a material concealment one can point to, and why Irigaray might seek to acquire lack and concealment on behalf of women. What emerges from Silverman,so importantfor my essay, is precisely this: The phallus signifies materiallack and concealment while transmittingprivileges to dominant men that remain, perniciously, unavailable to women. Dominant men's associations with veiled lack appear to empower them, whereas women, who by assigned culturalreadings figure lack, mortgage their bodies for the phallus (that is, for signification)free of charge, with no symbolic payoff. In this way, so perverse is the game, the Symbolic offers to dominant men the myththat they have lost nothing in language and that they are genitally superior to women who are lacking, materially,the sign of success (the penis). This Symbolic myth, of course, offers the reading children learn to apply to their bodies ('he' has one, 'she' doesn't). In other words, men's lack gets them privilegealong withthe means by which to veil their lack; women, however, possess no empowering passage to the lack that they are made by the Symbolic to wear. For according to dominant cultural constructions, the penis, against some feminists' splendid hopes for failure, is not deemed lost, or latent, or lacking-rather, 'woman' is, and her genitals are, too. What women are lacking, withinthe Symbolic, is the privilege of a materialconcealment. Clearly,it would be in 'her'interests to unveil'his' lack-to show that the fullness of the penis is a fraud, as Gallop, joined by Rose and others, tries to do.33But 'her' lack? Should 'she' reach for veils or revelations? One might expect, under these circumstances, that Irigaraywould offer to women their own plenitude and grant them something to be seen as genitals. The lips have surely been read this way, as part of a pluralityof sex organs Irigaraywants to make visible. There is, however, another way to interprether lips. By focusing there, Irigarayattempts to gain a more em33. See Gallop's"OfPhallicProportions:LacanianConceit,"in The Daughter'sSeduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1982), 29 and throughout,for her discussion of how Lacanpurposelyinflatesthe phallusas privileged signifierso as to underminethe penis, to make it fall short of impossiblephallicqualities. See JacquelineRose's "Introduction II,"in FeminineSexuality,forher discussion of Lacan'sattackon "theorderof the visible"thatwouldseem to privilegethe penis.

140 boundary2 / Summer1992 powered conduction both to materialityand to lack at the same time. We can read women's genital lips as a perceivable concealment: As for woman, she touches herself in and of herself withoutany need for mediation, and before there is any way to distinguishactivityfrom passivity. Woman "touches herself" all the time, and moreover no one can forbidher to do so, for her genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact. Thus withinherself, she is already two-but not divisible into one(s)-that caress each other. (TS, 24) The lips tell us that something is there. The lips tell us that women's bodies are not the "hole-envelope"the Symbolic currentlyfashions them to be. The lips also say that the signal feature of what is there is what Irigaray calls "an unformable apartness" (lack, separation). This failure to fuse is a happy gap, a felix culpa, that was there "inthe beginning,"making the contact between lips possible. Irigarayhere turns full face onto masculine theory by arresting Lacan's narrativewith an image, with a material concealment of 'woman's'own.34"Reopen[ing]paths in a logos that connotes [woman] as castrated" (S, 142), Irigaraymakes visible what was supposed to remaininvisible:'woman's'genitals. The lips, however,wear their material concealment for all to see, for it is the lack of closure between her lips'woman's' nothing-to-see-that forms "two lips in continuous contact," a nearness made possible by a space, a lack, a gap that allows 'woman'constantly to caress herself. This radicalvaluation of lips invests in 'woman's' slit-a dangerous expenditure. Nonetheless, castration, by this alternate logic of loss, converts to autoerotic pleasure. Strangely, the question of belief enters in here, showcased in a Derrida passage on castration: "Woman"-her name made epoch-no more believes in castration's exact opposite, anti-castration,than she does castration itself... Unable to seduce or to give vent to desire without it, "woman"is in need of castration's effect. But evidently she does not believe in it. She who, unbelieving, still plays with castration, she is "woman." 34. I am obliquelymakingreferencehere to feministfilmtheory'sfoundingmoment in LauraMulvey'sfamous essay "VisualPleasureand NarrativeCinema,"in whichshe asserts that (feminine)image arrests(masculine)narrative(see Mulvey'sVisualand Other Pleasures [Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1989], 19-22).

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 141 She takes aim and amuses herself(en joue) withit as she would witha new conceptor structureof belief,buteven as she playsshe is gleefullyanticipatingherlaughter,hermockeryof man.35 The way Derridaposes castrationin termsof amusementand belief suits that Irigaray.This slant, in fact, may providethe termsfor understanding not others does refuse castration mistake Rose and (a Jacqueline Irigaray make in readingher) but refuses to believe in its standardassociations withthe female body. I wantto underscoreDerrida'snotionthat 'woman' IfDerridastresses whatshe does not "amusesherself... with[castration]." believe in-Irigaray as unbeliever-I willstress Irigaray's stance as a believerandthe new structureof beliefshe createsby "converting" castration intoaffirmation WhatIrigaray believes in, (notthe same as anti-castration). I willargue, is a materialconcealmentthatshe can simultaneouslyreveal andpreserve by makingwhatshe revealsa crack. We are nowpositionedto realizehow,inthe case of Irigaray at least, bends back toward discourse feminist discourse poststructuralist spiritual on the questionof escape fromfullphallicinscription.It is not simplythe case that Irigaray's discussionof escape takes on a spiritualring.Falling back uponmysticism,as we see below,she takes refugein a discourseof mostelaborate escape thatis a spiritualdiscourse.Here,we findIrigaray's demonstrationof how she ties escapes backto femininebodies: Irigaray brilliantly imagines'God'(usingthe termundererasure)betweenwomen's lips. Inthis way, she conductsus fromthe psychoanalyticlandscape,with its focus on the phallusand lack,to a theologicalterrainwhere'God'casts 'His'lotwithlack.To makethis move, Irigaray mustbe relyingupon 'God' as the mostrespectable,andcertainlythe mostelegant,absence inJudeoChristiantraditions.Even in the most incarnational theologies-Catholicism, for example,whichinvests most heavilyin the body of Christ,endowed withsacramentalmystery,nonetheless-'God' is a sacred space, the one we must humblyallow,in the finalanalysis,to remainresistantto us. Inthis respect, as elegantlyabsent Person,or figurefor materialconcealment,'God'designateswhateverresistsour attemptsat securingour bodies and world. envisionshowthis Irigaray's mystical,lyricalessay "LaMysterique" 35. Jacques Derrida,Spurs:Nietzsche'sStyles/Eperons:Les Styles de Nietzsche, trans. BarbaraHarlow(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress), 59, 61.

142 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 divine resistanceto familiarvisibilitiesmightoperateto make a different body seen, thoughseen opaquely.Visibleconcealmentand escape once again become friendsto bodiesthatwouldmaketheiropacitiesseen and own hope in failure(forthe sake of our bodies) appears known.Irigaray's when she stresses the need as subjectsand objectsto escape fromsight. "Butas the eye is alreadyguardianto the reason,"writesIrigaray, "thefirst necessity is to slipawayunseen ... andinfactwithoutseeing mucheither," for "hereye has become accustomedto obvious'truths'thatactuallyhide whatshe is seeking"(S, 192-93). Irigaray even directlyinvokesthe opacity of objects, especially bodies, that we must learnto see. She speaks of "theopaque barrierthat every body presentsto the light"(S, 193). She also queries in ways thattouchuponHaraway,Gallop,and Carlyle'stendencies to define matterin termsof escape: "Whatif matterhad always, already,had a partbut was yet invisible,beyondthe senses, movingin (S, 197).Thispassage makes "matter" ways aliento any fixedreflection" fromeven traditional sound indistinguishable explanationsof 'God'. Ifmatter'sopacitydefieslinguisticcapture-as Haraway, Gallop,and that material do all opacities defy language-then this is Carlyle suggest a defiancethat mysticism,withits stress on sacredsilence or inarticulate utterance,is well designed to make perceivable.Hence, Irigarayon the female mystic'sfailureto speak: Butshe cannotspecifyexactlywhatshe wants.Wordsbeginto fail her.She senses somethingremainsto be said thatresistsallspeech, that can at best be stammered out. .... So the best plan is to ab-

stainfromall discourse,to keep quiet,or else utteronlya sound so inarticulatethat it barelyformsa song. Whileall the whilekeeping an attentiveear open for any hintor tremorcomingback. (S, 193; emphasis) Irigaray's

Thisis a particularly opaqueessentialism,if itcan countas essentialismat all ("forit is no longera matterof longingforsome determinableattribute, "attensome mode of essence, some face of presence"S, 193). Irigaray's with her tive ear open for any hintor tremorcomingback,"along "expectantexpectancy,absence of projectand projections" (S, 194), mayremind us of Gallop's"attemptto listento the material"apart"froman agenda for bettercontrol."Boththeoristsstress escapes on behalfof "anyhintor tremorcoming back,"and on behalfof materialitiesthat mightresist our invocationof "song"and Gallop'sstress on learnedvisions(note Irigaray's listening).

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 143 We stillseem a farcryfromsomethingI have claimed:that Irigaray puts 'God'betweenwomen'slips.Whatis the clueto thisbizarreassertion? The hint,I suggest, is itself"thehintor tremor[thatcomes] back,"thattells us some materialresistance,some materialescape, is takingplace. This "hintor tremor"of materialescape Irigaraycodes as 'God';morecrucial yet, Irigaraymakesthistremorfeltbetweena woman'sgenitallips,implanting escape, as I earlierargued,withinthe genitals.Thus,if Irigarayseeks, as she says, "thepossibilityof a differentrelationto the transcendental," then "God,"she writes,"knowswomenso wellthathe nevertouchesthem directly,butalwaysinthatfleetingstealthof a fantasythatevades allrepresentation:betweentwounitieswhothusimperceptibly takepleasureineach other"(S, 236). This statementimportantly 'God's' touch between implies the autoeroticlips.Giventhatthis touchis notdirectbutcaughtup, rather, in a "fleetingstealth,"and given that the lips, as we knowfromIrigaray, touch by means of unformableapartness,'God',by this logic, becomes spacing. 'God'is the gap, at the gap, in the gap-'God' is the gap-of a woman'spleasurebetweenthe lips,"openingup a crackin the cave (une antr'ouverture)so that she may penetrateherselfonce more"(S, 192). 'God'is figuredas thematerialresistanceof 'woman's'bodyto representationsthathave neglectedherpleasure.Thismaterialresistanceeludes her in termsof specificities,butshe can perceivethis resistanceas concealed in mysticalencounters. I wantto pierceIrigaray's mysticism:to show howherown mystical interestsare stronglystakedto lack-who wears it, who suffersforit, and who envisionseconomies based uponit.36Mysticaldiscourse,by this acso as to use differently, count, may providefor Irigaraya way of affirming, the lack assigned to 'woman'.As muchas womenmightliketo flee God, Irigarayimplies,they mustretreatuponthe mystical,because "thisis the only place in the historyof the West in whichwomanspeaks and acts so publicly"(S, 191). We, as readers,are asked to enterintoIrigaray'smysticaldiscoursesympathetically, and, as women-even spiritual reverently, women-are so good at, expectantly. Irigaraycomes to a different'God'and a differentrelationshipbetween 'God'and 'woman'thantraditional Christiantheologyhas rendered. of Irigarayspeaks "thatmost femaleof men, the Son"-Christ-the one 'man'who lines up with'woman'.Infact, 'God'figuresa seemingly mas36. Forotherdiscussions of Irigaray'smysticism,see TorilMoi'sSexual/TextualPolitics, 135-37, butespecially ElizabethGrosz'sSexual Subversions,140-83.

144 boundary2 / Summer1992 culine body that wears its lack-its wounds unveiled-for all to see. Irigaray plays jubilantlyupon mystical holiness, celebrating'his' holes that tell 'woman' glorious things about 'her'own: And that one man, at least, has understoodher so well that he died in the most awful suffering .... And she never ceases to look upon his

nakedness, open for all to see, upon the gashes in his virginflesh.... Could it be true that not every wound need remain secret, that not every laceration was shameful? Could a sore be holy? Ecstasy is there in that glorious slit where she curls up as if in her nest, where she rests as if she had found her home-and He is also in her... In this way, you see me and I see you, finally I see myself seeing you in this fathomless wound which is the source of our wondering comprehension and exhilaration.Andto know myself I scarcely need a "soul," I have only to gaze upon the gaping space in your loving body. (S, 199-200) This is Irigarayat her recapturingbest, mapping lack onto the masculine body so that she can afford to reclaim lack for women. She makes the Christian traditiongive back what Christ on the cross has borrowed from the feminine: a "gaping space" in the body worth gazing upon. 'Woman's' "slit,"here pronounced "glorious,"mirrorsChrist's"fathomlesswound."The wound itself acts as a mirror,enabling 'woman' to reflect upon her folds. In this way, the wound tells all, making possible her peculiar abilityto feel a hole she now inhabits as a mystery and as a revelationin a secret. The wound is a place from which to see a materialopacity revealed by a gash. Irigarayrenders this mysticalversion of perceivable concealment as a fold, where "He is also in her": "She is closed over this mystery where the love placed withinher is hidden, revealing itself in this secret of desire" (S, 200). This "secret of desire" shifts bodily boundaries even as the pronouns shift and bleed. The "He"who bleeds into "you,"bleeds into "her," who bleeds into "me." Such a plea (and pli, in French, means "a fold") for the other that folds the other into the lips requires, we can see, a god who bleeds. Irigaraytakes castration, therefore, to its most excessive degree, complete with Freud's fatal look upon nakedness that reveals the "shameful""secret"of the "gapingspace"-a secret and a sacred lack that 'woman' shares with Christ, reminiscentof the mystics' stigmata that function as speaking wounds. Irigaraytakes castration to the crypt, where she makes castration convert into autoerotic concealments. There might well be "exhilaration"in these bodies' hidden, but perceivable, materialfolds.

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 145 If Irigaraygets mysticalwhen discussingsexual economies, she attemptsto be pointedlymaterialistin her Marxistessays, in which she theorizes women'sbodies as commodities("Womenon the Market"and "Commodities amongThemselves,"in ThisSex WhichIs NotOne).Inthese essays, Irigarayappears to agree with Marx'scritiquesof capitalismas she fashions feministanalogiesto his commoditiesanalysis.Whiledoing so, however,Irigarayconvenientlyforgets (or possiblydoes not realize) that she, in an essay like"LaMysterique," has repeatedsome of the very on the question moves Marxcritiques.She provesparticularly contradictory of what Marxcomplainsis "themysticalcharacterof commodities"-the contradictions alienationof objectsthroughabstractions.Indeed,Irigaray's on this questionare so centralto herown dramaticreal-bodiesmysticism thatthey providea fittingclimaxto myessay. Women don't exchange, they are exchanged. Irigaraybegins "Womenon the Market" withthisfundamental pointthatshe takes on loan fromL6vi-Strauss.37 This point,in fact,when she connects it to those she borrowsfromMarxon the bodies of commodities,formsthe nerve of her argument.Women,she asserts,whensocializedintoa "normal" femininity, playthe roleof commoditiesin the dominant(masculinesexual)economy, (and sometimesliterally)boughtand sold on the marriage metaphorically market.38'Woman's'"price,"moreover,is set not accordingto her body's problem)but accordingto what 'own properties'(an essential Irigarayan counts in a phalliceconomy:'woman's'abilityto mirrormen's "needs/destandardsset forwomenas reprosires"and thus to copy the "fabricated" ductiveand sexualvessels (TS, 176). LikeMarx,Irigaray,in her righteousangerover commodifications, leans heavilyupona natural/alienated opposition:"Acommodity-a woman -is dividedintotwo irreconcilable 'bodies':her 'natural'body [notice Irigaray's use of quotationmarks]and her sociallyvalued, exchangeable mimeticexpressionof masculinevalues"(TS, body,whichis a particularly The real 180). surpriseappears when Irigaraybegins to depend upon Marx'scritiqueof commodities'"mysticalcharacter"-thoughthis surprise depends uponhowone readsIrigaray's seemingessentialism.Ifone reads as one is notamazedthatshe laments essentialist, Irigaray conventionally 37. See, in particular,the firsttwo pages of Irigaray's"Womenon the Market"(TS, 17071) for her repetitionand questioningof Levi-Strauss. 38. Irigaraydoes notconsidermen's bodies as commodities.Considerationsof nondominant men demandthatwe take up these complications.

2 / Summer 1992 146 boundary with Marxthat (the bodies of) commoditiesare treatedas abstractions, abstractionsthatobscuretheir"coarsemateriality": Marx:The value of commoditiesis the veryoppositeof the coarse of theirsubstance,not an atomof matterenters into its materiality composition.Turnand examinea singlecommodity,by itself,as we will.Yetinso faras itremainsan objectof value,itseems impossible to grasp it. Irigaray:When women are exchanged, woman's body must be treatedas an abstraction.Theexchangeoperationcannottakeplace in termsof some intrinsic,immanentvalueof the commodity.... Marx:The fact thatit is value, is made manifestby its equalitywith the coat, just as the sheep's natureof a Christianis shown in his resemblanceto the Lambof God. Irigaray:Each commoditymay become equivalentto every other fromthe viewpointof thatsublimestandard.... Theyare exchanged by means of the generalequivalent-as Christianslove each other in God,to borrowa theologicalmetaphordearto Marx. Marx:The mysticalcharacterof commoditiesdoes not originate, therefore,in theiruse value. Irigaray:This phenomenon has no analogy except in the religious

world.(TS, 175-76; 178-79; 181;182-83) Weddingheranalysisto Marx,thisstingingcensureof makingmaterialities fromthe authorof "LaMysterique." Irimysticalcomes withcontradictions of sublime the abstraction between herself 'God' lips-a mystical puts garay to appear, proportions-in orderto enable 'woman's'"coarsemateriality" is with while Her albeitopaquely. agreement Marx, contradictory, nonetheless wise. Believingalong withMarxthat use values and real bodies do exist, thoughthey are neverseen trulyunclothedin capitalisteconomies, Irigaraycan stronglyregisteran alienationundercapitalism. alienationwas a concept As Istressed earlier,beforedeconstruction real or but with one's conflict thatmarkeda body self; since deconstruction, withits breakfromany notionof authenticselves or bodies,we have found it less possibleto use anydeterminatesense of originalselves or bodiesby whichwe mightmarkouralienations.Weareleftwithconceivingalienation, then, as alienationfromnew possibilities,notfromoriginalones. Thisis an essentialpast alienationfroma futurewe mightdiscover,notfroma familiar, from what couldprove thatwe have known.This is an unhappyalienation a happier one. This is an alienationfrom whatever exists outside of (forIri-

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 147 garay,"ek-static"to) capitalism.Thisalienationcan best be marked,then, by positing,as a formof belief,whatmustexistbelow,behind,or insidethe bodies thatcommoditiesare currentlyrequiredto wear.Thisis real-bodies whereinone can onlyhope to splitthe good mystimysticismMarxist-style, cal stuff(realbodies and theiruses) frombad mysticism(commodification of the bodieswe knowto masculinecapitalistends). As is so oftenthe case withIrigaray, whatshe registersas complaint bleeds intopossibility: [Acommodified] bodybecomes a transparent body,purephenomeof But value. this a supplementto the constitutes nality transparency materialopacityof the commodity.(TS,179) The value of a woman[apartfromher transparentvalue as commodity]alwaysescapes: blackcontinent,holeinthe symbolic,breach indiscourse.... Itis onlyinthe operationof exchangeamongwomen that somethingof this-something enigmatic,to be sure-can be felt. (TS, 176) offersevidenceonce againthat Irigaray's opposition,transparency/opacity, are particularly available("transrepresentations(here,commodifications) parent,"in this case), whilethe bodies and objectsthatare made to wear these transparentsupplementselude throughtheir"material opacity."For this reason, Irigaraymustconcernherselfwithmaking'woman's'material wellknowsthe compliopacityseen andfeltas opacity.Ofcourse,Irigaray cationsthatlie inwait:'Woman's' valuemayescape the Symbolic (material) as a "hole,"but,to a largeextent,thisescape is reappropriated by the Symbolicand madeinternalto the workingsof the system.Thus'woman's'value as a commodityseems to includeherenigmaticescapes fromthe system thatalso containsher:'Woman'gets commodified,bought,and sold as an cannotfinallylet herselfbelieveinsuch totalcontainment. enigma. Irigaray She invests,therefore,in 'woman's'hole.Byso doing,she registerstwoobjectives:First,she registersresistanceto totalizingmasculinevalues (since she preservesthe sense of 'woman's'escape fromthe dominantSymbolic); second, she registershope formakingwomen"feel"this "somethingenigmatic"in ways thatmightempowerthem, leading,as she says, to "a new critiqueof the politicaleconomy"(TS,191). seeks, then,to give a formto "material Irigaray opacity"thatwomen can investinforthemselves,withoutfallingbackuponthe masculinevalue of transparentselves thatrelateas rivals.Itis notsurprising thatIrigaray believes "itis only in the operationof exchange among women that something

2 / Summer 148 boundary 1992 of this-something enigmatic,to be sure-can be felt."Giventhe cultural and economicstatus of womenas commoditiesexchangedamong men, alternativeexchangesbetweenmenandwomenaresometimeshardto see and feel.39Exchangesbetweenwomen(or,as in mysticism,between the femininemysticand 'God')can, at times,provideat least a partialisolation fromthe circuitsof the masculinesexual economyand thus lend a more vividbackdropagainstwhichto see a materialopacityas opaque. Perhapsfor this reason, Irigarayends her Marxistessays withthe female homosexual's"inconceivable" desireforwomen.Hereis an enigma that psychoanalysis-Freud,explicitly-has been madeto feel as a "difficulty,"she writes,"so foreignto his 'theory'"(TS, 195). "Hencethe fault, the misconduct,andthe challengethatfemalehomosexuality the infraction, entails"(TS,194).Thefemalehomosexualwritesa happyfallforfeminists, since psychoanalysisunderFreudis itselfforcedto feel a materialopacity. ofthefemalehomosexual's As muchas he attemptsto forcethe explanation complex,"Freudcannot,even by his own terms,accountfor "masculinity 'her'to his satisfaction.Women'sdesire, turnedtowardeach other,can potentiallymakethemfeel the Symbolichole betweenthem,thateach, as commodity,mirrorsforthe other.Feelingthis hole, they mightproducefor themselvestheirmaterialopacitythatdefies theirculture'sattemptsto deliverthemas fullyboughtandsold. Somethingmighteven accruefromthis butan economy, says Irigaray, cipher--"acertaineconomyof abundance," I wouldadd, that,accordingto herown mostcherishedtheories,is solidly based uponfractureand loss. Icannotfollowthese finalissues to theirdestination.Todo Unhappily, of women's so wouldinvolveus inthe complicatedcircuitsof the invisibilities forms to these address and of desire women's and labor attempts Irigaray's of materialconcealmentby makingdesirea formof labor.We wouldhave to take stock of how pleasurableloss can be producedbetween bodies, familiarfracturesbased upon inattendingto the dangersof reproducing cannotsee: howwomen what to examine have We would Irigaray equities. that so as are positionedasymmetrically commodities, exchanges between them are alwayssusceptibleof partialaccountsalongotheraxes (those of class, race, religion,age, appearance,etc.). These implicationsraise seri39. This problemof makingvisible,readable, alternativeexchanges runsparallelto the problemof fashioningfor women a visible renunciation.Howcan theirwillingembrace of loss be read as resistingtheir prescribedrole as "woman"when read against the backgroundof traditionalcouplingthatenjoinsthis partuponthem?

Stockton/ BodiesandGod 149 ous questionsfor alternativeexchanges thatwouldcountso dramatically upondiscernibleloss.40 These are questionsfor furtherexaminationsof materialconcealments and whatto makeof them.Mypurposeinthis essay, I confess, has proveda relativelysimpleone, thoughits expositionis necessarilydense. My purposeis simplebecause I simplywantto discoverpoststructuralist feministsin the moves-spiritual moves-that returnthem to seemingly materialistcommitmentsto bodies and objectsoutside/beyonddiscourse. Myexpositionis dense because so muchresistancefrompoststructuralists lies inwaitforthose whowouldwandertoo close to eithermaterialism orto spirituality. To conclude,the fix forfeministsis this:Ifescapes, thoughpartial, fromdominantconstructionsdo take place, if subordinatesto systems are never fullyconstrainedby the boundariesthat writetheirrelations,then what 'body'gets touchedwhenthe boundariesare broken?Is it enoughto believe-to have faith-that some freerbodyis beingtouchedupon?Can one touch a bodythatone must,in orderto touchit, locateoutsidein the impossibleplaceof a discoursethatescapes the discoursesthatwe know? Is this necessary detourof one's culturally constructedbody-through an otherbodythatone cannot,mustnot,knowby meansof dominantconstructions-the ultimateact of political,mysticalautoeroticism?The question remains(and I believe it bears a spiritualmaterialiststamp),Howcan we bend ourselvestowardthe impossiblebodies and selves we mustbelieve now thatwe can be? Andhowcan we keepfromfullyarriving atthismaterial destination,so thatwe do notfullyovertakeourselves,captureourselves, enslave ourselves,butcontinueto yearnaftera telos thatrecedes fromour desire to fix it?

40. Iaddress these complicationsin my bookon spiritualmaterialismand desire between women in Irigaray,Bronte,and Eliot.Inparticular, I explorehow the questionof women's differencespersists as Irigaray'sown blindnessand how Victorianwomen novelistshelp us to see, betterthan any theoristsI have read,the limitsto Irigaray's splendidvisions.

"Inthe Golden Chariot Things Will Be Better"

Salwa Bakr Translatedby BarbaraHarlow

Introductionby BarbaraHarlow is a prisonerinthe women'sprisonin Egypt, Azizathe Alexandrian servinga lifesentence forthe murderof hermother'shusband.Aziza,the main characterin Salwa Bakr'srecent novel The Golden ChariotWon't Ascend to the Heavens (1991),assassinatedthe man who had seduced her followingher mother'sdeath,when,despite his apparentpromisesto Aziza,he tookanotherwomanas his newwife.Aziza,meanwhile,plansto leave the prisonin a goldenchariotdestinedforthe heavens,butshe does not intendto leave alone. Bakr'snoveldescribesnotonlyAziza'sliberation projectbutalso the life historiesof the otherwomenprisonerswhomshe has elected to accompanyherinthe chariot. "Inthe GoldenChariotThingsWillBe Better"is a chapterfromBakr'sbook TheGolden ChariotWon'tAscend to the Heavens (SalwaBakr,Al-'arabaal-dhabiyyala tus'aduilaI-sama' [Cairo:Sina li-l-nashr,1991]).The translatorthanksHatemNatshehfor his help withthe hardplaces and manyof the easy ones, as well. boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50, tr. by BarbaraHarlowfrom The Golden ChariotWon'tAscend to the Heavens, ? 1991.

Bakr/ "IntheGoldenChariot ThingsWillBe Better"151 UmRagab,forexample,becamea pickpocketinorderto supporther children.Hanakilledherhusband,afterforty-fiveyearsas his sexual slave anddomestic,byleavingon the gas undera cookingpot.Azima"theTall"too tall, that is, to get married-who became a naddaba (professional mourner),then a vocal performerat religiouscelebrations,and, finally,a popularsinger,killedher abusivelover.Aida,who is fromUpperEgypt,is in prisonon her brother'saccount,havingtaken,on her mother'sorders, the blame for his honorand revenge killingof Aida'sbatteringhusband. Huda,at sixteen,a drugaddictand motherof two,is the youngestprisoner. is the best eduZaynabMansur,referredto inthe companyas "madame," cated and mostculturedamongthe prisoners.The storyof Dr.BahigaAbd describesthe painfuldifficulties al-Haq,in prisonforalleged"malpractice," and contradictions of lower-classwomenwho have succeeded in entering the professionalranks.Shafiqahad been a beggar.Umal-Khayr,a peasant, is likenedto a Pharaonicgoddess. Andso on. Twelveprisonersin all are to accompanyAzizainthat"goldenchariotto the heavens." The chaptertranslatedheretellsthe storiesof Gamalat,a thiefwho assaulted her sister's would-be"boyfriend," and Huda,the youthfuldrug addictand prostitute,and accountsfor,as well,the storyof the only political prisonerwho passes brieflythroughthe prison.ForAziza,one political prisoner'sstoryis likeanother,and they are not veryinteresting,and she dismisses this one, too, as moreof the same. The place of the anonymous politicalprisonerinthe chapteris significant,however,bothto Aziza's remainisolated,as Aziza projectand to Bakr'snarrative.Ifthe "politicals" the from Aziza's own liberation pointsout, "people," projectis itselfstillnot consciouslyconstructedas an effectivepoliticalagenda or a collectively organizedmovement.The goldenchariotremainsan escape from,rather than a challengeto, the system, in whichshe, likeGamalatand the other women inmates-includingthe "politicals"-isimprisoned.The imposed silence of the politicalprisonerinthe text,inturn,rearticulates criticallyand reflexivelythe probatoryspace of the novelitself. Set in prison,Bakr'sfictionalnarrativeproposesnotonlya contemporarysociology of Egyptianwomen and gender relationsthroughtheir "oralhistories"but argues, as well, the necessary, if conflicted,connectionbetweenwomen'sissues andtheirhistorical,political,institutional, and, especially,familialcontext.Whatthe state, and withitthe traditional order, construes as women's"crimes"punishableby law are recast as gender issues-abuses, determinedby class, as wellas by genderoppressionagainst the women themselves. Ratherthan the salvational "goldenchariot

2 / Summer 152 boundary 1992 to the heavens"Azizaimaginesin prison,however,the novelsuggests the projectsforsocialandpoliticalchangegrounded necessityof emancipatory inthe currenthistoricalconditions-bothregionalandglobal-and the materialrealitiesof women'slives.WhileSalwaBakrhas chosen the novelas the formandprisonas the settingforthisreexamination of women'slocation in the gender orderand the variousways they resistthis positioning,her text also mobilizesthe politicalprisoner'ssilence in combiningthe generic and disciplinary diversityof personalaccount,ethnographicreport,cultural critique,reviewessay, and politicalanalysis,collectivelysuggestingthe reciprocalanddevelopingparameters,bothacademicandactivist,social and political,forengagingwithwomen'sissues preciselythroughwomen'sown engagementwiththese issues. Thatengagementis beingwaged on multiplefrontsand in variedspaces, and oftenagainstofficial,and unofficial, opposition.In 1991, the Women'sHealthBookCollectivein Cairo,for expublishedtheirimportant ample,aftermorethanfiveyears of preparation, volumeHayatal-mar'awa sihhahatu(Women'slifeand health),based on OurBodies Ourselvesbutcriticallyadaptedto the specificcircumstances of Egyptianwomen.The ArabWomen'sSolidarityAssociation,however, foundedin 1985 by Nawalal-Saadawi,was closed by the Egyptiangovernmentearlythatsame year.Meanwhile,in Nablus,inthe occupiedWest Bank,the PalestinianwriterSaharKhalifehhas establishedthe Women's Centerforyoungwomen.Acrossthe "greenline,"in ResearchandTraining forPoliticalPrisoners(WOFPP)was creIsrael,the Women'sOrganization ated in the firstyears of the intifadato assist Palestinianwomenprisoners and theirfamiliesmateriallyand legally.Womenacross the MiddleEastthatis, fromMoroccoto the Gulfstates-are continuingto engage withthe theirlives.1 social and politicalexigenciesthatcontinueto interrupt dies inthe lastchapterof SalwaBakr'snovel, Azizathe Alexandrian for the departureof the "golden just as she is makingfinalpreparations title the novel's chariot."The chariot,as concludes,"does not ascend to the heavens."Aziza'sproject,however,is even nowbeinggivenmanynew shapes and multipleinnovativeroutes,whilethe skies themorganizational selves are beingrelocatedon the groundinthe shiftingpolitical,social,and order. culturalmapof the MiddleEastandthe international

1. Forfurtherdiscussionof some of these organizations,see the special issue on gender and politics,MiddleEast Report173 (November/December1991).

Bakr/ "Inthe GoldenChariotThingsWillBe Better" 153

"Inthe Golden ChariotThings WillBe Better" The old pavement of Aziza the Alexandrian'scell looked shiny clean despite its grayish white color, the result of time and much use. Gamalat had devoted herself to scrubbing it with water and liquidchloride, the only disinfectant and cleaner allowed and used like carbolic acid, whose strong clean smell Aziza preferred.But unfortunatelythis was forbidden, since it came in darkglass bottles ratherthan in the transparentplastic containers, which couldn't be used in any violent incidents that mightbreak out among the women residents of the prison. Aziza looked with satisfaction at the washed floor,with its dampness so agreeable in that hot season, and at the strip of foam matting rolled up in the corner, and reflected contentedly from her solitary iron bed on the political prisoner, one of those who get broughtto the prison from time to time withoutany reasonable explanationfor her sentencing or why the government should want to push her head in amongst their heads. This political prisoner seemed very nice to Aziza and had greeted her once while crossing the corridorwhen she was standing there with Azima the Tall. Aziza plucked up her courage and approached her in orderto learn her story. The political smiled a broad welcoming smile. Aziza guessed that she must be either a Communist or fromthe MuslimBrotherhood,since those were the only kinds of politicalsthat Aziza had met duringher stay in prison. She concluded, somewhat hastily,that the politicalmust be a Communist, since she wasn't veiled and appeared even rather cheerful and ordinary. Aziza reproached herself that she could no longer understand things at firstglance as she used to be able to when her mindwas alert and her thinking active. When she conversed with her, though, the girl spoke the same language that Aziza had heard from the other Communists she had met time and again in the prison withoutever understandinganything of it or grasping the reasons behind all the intellectualand emotional pain that these women had acquired. Most of the ones that Aziza had met were well educated and respected, with decent jobs and comfortable living circumstances, and were much better off than most people. And she noticed that they received quite splendid visitors every day or two and cartons of cigarettes. Aziza sighed heavily when she had heard the girl'sstory, which had nothing new in itfor her. She had heard its like many times before. Heropinion, that these stories were joyless and withouthope, remained the same. They were just stories. The people are in one world and these politicals

154 boundary2 / Summer1992 are in another, that's for sure, because they know nothing about the life of the poor that they are always talkingabout. Butthen, when she looked into the political'scell, she saw that there was no bed in it, and she noticed the damp foam mat on the floor. When the politicalasked her about her own story, Aziza told her just a brief part of it. The young woman smiled again and appeased Aziza with the offer of a fullpack of Marlborosas a gift. That generosity caused Aziza to reconsider her reactions, and when she went back to her room, she decided to give the young woman her own iron bed. ForAziza, itdidn'tmatterwhether she slept on a bed raised off the ground or on a mattress placed directlyon the pavement, especially since it was summer and hot. And then Aziza considered whether she might not invite her to the heavens when the time came for the golden chariot with its winged horses to ascend. Aziza followed throughon her firstthought, though, and asked Gamalat and Azima the nadabba [a professional mourner]to take the bed and to put it in the political'scell. As for her second consideration, the government aborted it when it released the girl after just a month of detention. Aziza regretted that she hadn'ttold her about the heavenly ascent in the beginning, before the question of her release came up, since the politicalgirlwould, of course, accept that release and wouldn'tthen be able to leave the prison together with the passengers in the chariot to the beautiful heavenly world,which had no comparison on earth. After thinking a bit, however, Aziza thanked God for the girl's departure, since if she had really joined in the chariot, she would certainly never be able to stop talking politics and agitating everyone else against the miserable prison conditions, and this would only make the government rearrest her, even if the chariot had already departed for the clouds of the heavens. The government had many planes and could easily send one of them to arrest the girl, and this could delay, or even destroy, the project of the ascent. Aziza looked around the wide room and checked the arrangement of the few things in it-her old dresses, her comb and hairpins,and some plastic cups and plates. Satisfied that everything was clean and in place just as she liked it, she looked at Gamalat, who had done all that, and said to her, "Insha'allah[literally,"Godwilling,"an expression used frequentlyin conversation], Gamalat, thank you ... my soul feels better now." Gamalat smiled happily,which made her roundface light up like the shiny wrapping of children's candy, and answered Aziza, "Areyou really happy with it, moon?" Aziza glanced around the room once again with the kind of feigned disdain, which she had often noticed in her old life on the

Bakr/ "Inthe GoldenChariotThingsWillBe Better" 155 part of those superior to her, was silent awhile, and said, "Fine .

.

. now

wash out the trash can, please, and put it back where it belongs and come eat something." Gamalat went out to wash the trash can in the communal bathroom at the end of the long corridorof cells. Aziza began to prepare for her a bit of bread and a piece of white cheese, which Azima the nadabba had given her, together with a Cleopatracigarette, the local kind,not for export, which had a lot of sawdust, perhaps out of some kindof concern for the health of the smokers. There was a homegrownguava, too, which Safiya Heroin had given her from the basket of guavas she distributedto her friends. They had been broughtby her sons on a visit, and she couldn'treallysave them, since they would only spoil if she kept them too many days. All the while, Aziza was thinkingabout Gamalat'scircumstances. Gamalat returnedand put the clean trash can in the corner of the room opposite the mattress and clothes. Then she came and squatted on the worn floor in front of Aziza and plunged into the bread and cheese. Still chewing, she said, "Iwant your opinion about something, Aunt Aziza." "Yes?"Aziza replied. Her eyes grew big and focused on the angelic face of Gamalat, thinkingthat Gamalat was about to open the question of the winged golden chariot and her wish to be included in its ascent to the heavens. Gamalat stuffed the rest of the bread into her mouth now that there was no more cheese and went on, spitting out the small stones from her last mouthful:"Youknow, when I leave here, insha'allah, at the end of my sentence, I was thinking about changing my work. Stealing is coming to have too many problems, runningand hurryinghere and there and at the end of the day there is nothingfor it. So Ithoughtof workingthe way women originallyworked. That would solve my headaches." Gamalat looked at Aziza with wide, innocent eyes as she made this momentous statement, which she had never before told anyone. But she trusted her and felt secure and comfortablewithher, inspite of all the rumors in the prison about Aziza's craziness. Gamalat preferredto serve her rather than the drug leaders, who showered favors on all those who worked with them and who, with all their money, bought everythingin the prison, including the prisoners themselves. But Gamalatpersisted, whatever her feelings about the craziness of Aziza, who sometimes woulddartfrighteningglances at her, and then at others smile for no reason at all, during their conversations, with a warm and affectionate humanity.She was always changing, and if Gamalat one day asked her for something, she would give it to her

156 boundary2 / Summer1992 if she could. Thus, Gamalat did not heed the warnings she heard about Aziza's peculiarityor that she mightbeat her or turnagainst her if she were angry or upset. Gamalat had found no one in the prison betterthan Aziza to serve and to attach herself to as a sister. Sisterhood between one prisoner and another was necessary, and they would become as sisters born from one womb, supportive and affectionateto each other, bound by their ordeal of defenselessness and the punishment of incarcerationinside the walls. And so Gamalat disclosed her secret to Aziza and sought her advice about her intentions, to help her to live and to leave this place far behind. Aziza was older and understood the worldbetterthan she did, and she had a wise insight into people. Time had only reaffirmedher correctness. Aziza bowed her head to the ground, thinking. At her prolonged silence, Gamalat resumed her talk in order to explain her point of view: "Prostitutionis easy and secure, and the penalties are lightifthere's a police raid. If I worked at it a year or two, I would make some money and then get out of it all and open a small store or some business to support myself in peace." Aziza didn't answer, but she was busy observing a large ant dragging a small bread crumbthat Gamalat had let fall while eating a littlewhile ago. Aziza watched the ant untilit was just about to enter its hiding place in the hole at the bottom edge of the cell's old door, whose paint had peeled away, exposing the wood, dark black from much use, and said to it, "Come on up. It'smore comfortable up here." The ant responded by disappearing entirely into the hole. Gamalat, who didn't understand what Aziza meant by these words, pretended to be busy brushing back some strands of her smooth brownhairthat had fallen across her cheeks, and then said, "Doyou know,tomorrowthey mightbring us some meat. I wish I could find some fat red meat to boil into soup with vinegar and garlic. You and I could eat it together." Aziza raised her head from the floor and asked Gamalat to go and make a cup of tea for the two of them. When she got up, Aziza watched her full body and soft, white legs and continued thinkingabout what she had said to her. This was new talk for her, of a kindthat she had never uttered before, notwithstandingthe long months of their attachmentand sisterhood in this prison, and despite Aziza's sharp knowledge of the girland her story and what had led to her imprisonment. Aziza knew that Gamalat belonged to a family of thieves, professionals at pickpocketing and stealing, from grandfatherto father, and that the men of the family plied their trade in Saudi Arabiaand the Gulf, espe-

Bakr/ "IntheGoldenChariot ThingsWillBeBetter"157 to Meccaand Medina]whenthe crowds ciallyduringthe hajj[thepilgrimage of humanitymade an excellentfieldfortheirwork.As for the motherless Gamalatand her sister,they livedwhereGamalatcould practiceher own theft, in Tanta,particularly duringthe mawlid[a religiousfestival]of Said withpleasure Badawi,whenthe crowdsof peopleandtheirpreoccupation were at theirpeak,makingthefteasy and uncomplicated. Gamalat,however,was arrestedfor a reason otherthan stealing. The matterinvolvedher sister,threeyears youngerthanshe and prettier, butless cleverand intelligentas a resultof braindamageduringherdifficult birth,whichhad also takenthe lifeof hermother.Thissister,withfinerhair thanGamalatandcaptivatinghoney-colored eyes, fellpreyto the pursuitof withhimwhen a young manwho attemptedto involveherin a relationship he noticedthatthe two girlslivedalone in a furnishedapartment.Such an arrangementwas sociallydisapprovedof because of what Egyptianfilms had shown of the inhabitantsof these apartmentsand theirimmorality, as wellas theirconnectionwiththe worldof oilfromwhichthey tooktheirrent and whichwas associated withacts both illegaland irreligious.[Wealthy visitorsfromthe oil-richGulfstates are wellknownin Egyptfortheirprofligate use of Egyptianapartments,servingto inflaterentalprices,as wellas to debase traditional codes of morality.] The problemwas thatthe idiot,if well-endowed,sistercaredmoreaboutcreamand sweets thanshe didfor thatyoungman,forwhose existenceandpursuitshe feltnothing,justas he never discoveredher retardedness.ButGamalatworriedthatthis person mightbe careless one dayanddo somethingwithhersisterthatwouldhave unwantedconsequences.Thenthe problemGamalatfaced wouldbecome two problems,and she mighthaveto arrangefora third,smallcreature,as well. This sister-crossthatshe carriedcontinuallyon herbackspoiled her lifenightand day.She accompaniedhersisterwhenevershe wentout, and if she leftherat home,she wouldhaveto makesurethatthe windowswere well closed and wouldturnthe key inthe apartmentdoorseveraltimes for fear thatthe idiotgirlwouldopen it or allowsomeone else to open it from outside. Nonetheless,Gamalat,whenevershe was away fromher sister, remainedanxiousaboutthe dangerher sister was exposed to in her absence, such as playingwitha sharptool or accidentallysetting a fire in the house. Gamalatreallydidtryto get hersisterto take partin supportingherself. She attemptedto teach herthe basics of stealingand the simplearts of pickpocketing, buthersisteralmostcaused anotherproblemforGamalat once, when she went up to an old man walkingin the street and, sticking a

158 boundary2 / Summer1992 corncob she was eating in his chest, shouted at himto give her the change in his pocket. If the old man had not made a small joke about a naughty littlegirl in distress, the problemwould have gotten bigger, only God knows how big. Gamalat had warned the young man, who worked as an assistant in a women's hair salon on the ground floor of the same buildingshe lived in with her sister, about the difficultieshe was exposing the girlto. If he didn't go away and leave her and her sister alone, she would give him a good beating and make a spectacle of him in frontof everyone around. But one day she was surprised to find the young man knockingat the door. When she opened it to chase him away and to tell him that he had nothing to do with these stupid matters that he had started with them, even coming to the door of the apartment,the young man, ratherthan withdrawingapologetically, forced the door open and tried to enter. What could Gamalat do, then, but take the hot iron she had been using to press a red silk blouse, which she had stolen from a well-knownshop in the city, and, unplugging the iron,throw it at him? Ithit him and gave him a concussion, according to the diagnosis of the doctors at the publichospital, since the iron had struck him directlyon his head. Aziza thought that the hairdressermightbe the one who had tried to entice Gamalat, since Lulawas a professional prostituteand madam, who had been in prison numerous times for the many networksof vice that she managed. Among her victims were universitystudents, office employees, and women of some social standing. Aziza gave up that idea, however, because Gamalat hated Lulamore than anything. She treated her with scorn once she discovered her eccentricity,even though Lulastillclung to Gamalat for no apparent reason. When Lulasaw Gamalat standing in the prison yard, she would want to touch her in a way that just wasn't natural. In the beginning, Gamalat would explain this as a kind of love and affection that made her happy, because it came fromsomeone who felt sorry for her and took care of her. Then one day Gamalatwas bathing in the prison bath and the water fromthe tap was very slow because the mainwater pipe had been broken for nearly a month. There was water, but not enough of it reached the bath. Gamalat asked Lulato bringher a bucket of water, and then when she broughtit Lulaoffered to scrub Gamalat'sback withthe luffaand soap. That was how Gamalat discovered that Lulawanted to do more than just clean those areas that Gamalatcouldn'treach herself. Theirbreaths met as Lula played with the details of Gamalat's body, which, despite its tendency to corpulence, was indeed lovely.Gamalattriedto push her away. She didn't

Bakr/ "Inthe GoldenChariotThingsWillBe Better" 159 need any more evidence of her immoralityand lewdness, and if she didn't put a stop to it, it would be all over the prison, especially among those who liked to gossip about such things, like the hags in the older women's cell, and Um Ragab, who spied on the prisonersforthe administration.Forsure, that reputation had helped Aziza with them. Saniya Matar,however, the most famous drug dealer in the prison,serving a life sentence for smuggling drugs from outside the country by plane, grabbed the morsel happily and took Lula as one of her main lovers, but Gamalat never gave up her bitter scorn. It helped her to deal with Lulawhenever she ran into her, poisoning her life and cornering her so that she couldn'trespond, not because of good manners or a modest tongue, which, like the rest of her body, had never known modesty anyway, but because, despite the insults and harshness, she was really in love, like a littlegirlwho can't sleep at night. Aziza never did know who was behind Gamalat'sdecision to change her profession or how she came to be persuaded to it. Aziza met Huda, the newest inmate in the scabies cell, who had arrivedonly the previous week, afterwards. Even though at sixteen Huda was the youngest woman-wife in the prison, the mother of two children, she, nevertheless, from her short and intense experience of life, could have persuaded Gamalat to change her profession to a better and more successful one. Huda had come to her own low pass along unimaginablytwisted routes. The beginning was years earlier, when she had first entered the police station with her mother, not as criminalsbeing broughtto justice but to reportthe murderof a hen. Her motherowned fourteen other hens, which she had raised since they were hatched and which had now become laying hens themselves. Huda's mother's complaintwas against a neighbor who lived in a shack near her own in one of those sprawling areas of the city that had grown and grown untilit almost resembled a large country town. Before that, Huda's mother had gone to the government hospital, not because of her eye, which she had lost in the fight with her mighty neighbor who had hit her straight in the eye with a brickbig enough to gouge it out, but to persuade the naturallyunconvinced doctor on duty to write a death certificate for the murderedhen, confirmingthat it had been violentlyslain, which she could present to the police, who would then take the necessary steps against the neighbor. When the doctor refused to understand Huda's mother, maintaining that he didn't write medical certificates for hens but that he could write a certificate indicating the extent of the physical damage to her burst eye, she left, claiming that the government never understood the real essence

2 / Summer 160 boundary 1992 of the problem,the truthof the matter,and went, instead,to the police station.Here,she was met at the doorby a fat sergeantwho paid no attentionto the mother'slost eye norto the departedhen lyingmotionless wrappedin the edge of the woman'slong,blackveil.Allhis attentionwas fixedon the tender,whitebodyof the littlegirlwho stoodjustthen clinging fearfullyto her motherand watchingcautiouslywhatwas goingon around her.The sergeantofferedto buythema colddrink-somethingthatdidnot usuallyhappenin policestations-and, assuringthe motherthathe would avenge the wrongdone to her,inquiredaboutthe girland hersituation.Not fourhourslater,he had proposedto the motherthathe marrythe littlegirl standingat herside. The motherforgotherlosteye, thedepartedhen,andthe cruelneighborat this astonishingand momentousoccurrence.Never,ever,and in no way had she dreamedthatshe couldpossiblybe relatedto someone with connectionsto the governmentorthatshe couldreceivesuch distinction.It didnot,therefore,take herlongto reflectbeforeshe agreedto marryoff her daughterwithoutdelay,having,meanwhile,remarkedwithsatisfactionthe thathe reallywas a sergeantand coloredbraidon the man'sarm,indicating notjust an ordinarysoldierwithno rankinthe policeforce.Huda'smother figuredthatfate hadthrownhimin herpathin orderto liftherfromher life among the lowest of the low and to bringher intothe view of the world. The manwas lavishand mostseriousinhis behaviorandhadpromisedher thirtypoundsas a dowryand the same amountagainto prepareclothes and othernecessities forthe smallwedding.He also announcedhis intentionto presentherwitha gold braceletfromone of those wholesaleshops specializingin the sale of copperjewelryplatedwithgold, guaranteedby a legal stamp,the kindthatpleasedthe poorfellahinbutthat most others wouldn'tbuy. Fortwo months,the sergeantpreparedto become the husbandof the littlegirlnotyet thirteenyearsold.Theobstacleof legalage determined fortwopoundsa certificate bythe governmentwas overcomebypurchasing of age froma doctorwho specializedin such illegalmedicalpracticesas of girlsreadyformarriage,and issuing abortion,repairingthe lost virginity certificatesof age forgirlstoo youngto marrylegally.Thisthen allowedthe officialauthorizedto performmarriagesto issue the governmentdocuments and to issue, in turn,a marriagecertificateto the sergeant. Despite the official'ssuspicionsaboutthe girl'sage, the sergeanthadthe legal paper, togetherwiththe otherpapers,forthe marriagecontract,therebyremoving him from any judiciaryquestion or suspicion. Afterjust a year, Huda, from her esteemed husband, gave birthto

Bakr/ "IntheGoldenChariot ThingsWillBe Better"161 a fine boy,who eventuallycame to resembleher.Anotheryear later,there was a babysisternextto him,alwayscryingandupset,because of the drug habitshe had inheritedfromhermother,whowas, infact, an addict.From the beginningof theirmarriage,herhusbandhad nevercome home in the evening withoutsome opiumor hashishin his pocket,seized in raidson the dens of drugtraffickers or givento himby dealersin the neighborhood to ensure his implication and to buyhis silence. Whenthe husbandcame home less and less frequentlyand abandonedhis smallfamilyforanother womanwhomhe hadmetthroughhis excitingwork,whichbroughthiminto dailycontactwithdozens of differenthumantypes, Hudahadto confrontlife on herown. She hadto finda sourceof foodforherselfand herchildren,as well as anothersource forfeedingthe needs of her nervoussystem. This tookheralltoo naturally to the ABCsof the matterandthe easiest and most availableprofessionin historyforwomen. Gamalatwas not an inmatein the scabies cell, likeHuda,but she did spend most of her time there because of theirfriendship.Mostof the inmatesin the prisonavoidedany interaction withthe womenwho livedin that cell forfearthatthey wouldbe contaminatedbythose packedintothe scabies clubbytheirdestitutionandpoverty,whichmeantthattheycouldn't affordto buy even a cheap piece of soap, justenoughto batheand wash theirclothes, to supplementthe bitof soap issued them by the prisonadministration. The realportionthey were supposedto get disappearedinto the pocketsof the concessionairesandthe pettyfunctionaries of the prison, and so the young bodies of most of the cell's residentsbecame feeding groundsfortinyinsects and microscopicvermin.Huda'sboisterousdesire forlife,herfriendliness,and herabilityto makejokes all attractedGamalat to her,in additionto the singingand dancingpartiestheyjoinedin withthe restof the girlsinthe cell. Hudawouldattempt-unsuccessfully-to imitate Faridal-Atrash[a popularEgyptiansinger],whomshe likeda lot, but, in any case, she was the uncontestedstarof the partiesin the scabies cell and its leader,in spite of heryoungage. Everyoneelse had to followher orders, especiallywith regardto designatingsleeping spaces, assigning cleaningduties,whichdidn'ttake muchtimebecause of the lackof cleaning materials,and collectingrags and scraps of paperin the prisonyard in the afternoonto burnat nightin the cell in the futileeffortto driveaway the disgustingmosquitoeswhojoinedthe otherverminin suckingthe prisoners'blood.The smokethatrosefromthe burningof thisgarbagewas not enoughto keep away the mosquitoes,butit didgive all the womenchest ailments. Aziza lit a cigarette and reflected sadly: How many men would lick

162 boundary2 / Summer1992 the nectar of that tender body before her if Gamalat were to become one of those women who sold their bodies to any and every man who presented himself? Aziza thought about the old men, the tall and the short men, the ones with huge paunches and smoke-stained teeth, dirtiedfrom taking drugs, all those who would squeeze the last drop of youthfulness from Gamalat's body and destroy her soul, bit by bit, until,in the end, she became a human deformity,wornout fromso much use. She asked herself why such a young and pretty girl should have to endure all that ugliness and spend her life, which had only just begun, in a way that could only lead to a dead end. She wondered why Gamalat couldn't have a man as handsome as she, to whom she could give her heart and her body and who would give her everythinga man can give a woman. Aziza went so far as to imagine what would become of Gamalat if she pursued this path she was contemplating, how, in the end, she would become a professional prostitute, selling her love to anyone who could pay for it, untilone day she would become another Lula,a shrewd proprietress,not only selling her own body but managing the sale of the bodies of other women, as well. At this point in her thinking,Aziza's sadness turnedto defiant anger. Liftingher head, she fixed her eyes on the iron bars of the window and raised her voice in protest to the inscrutablehigher power that she considered responsible for all that had happened and that would happen in the future to that good and lovely young woman with a soul as pure and innocent as the souls of children. Lookingat the bit of sky draped in dark gray clouds, she said in sorrow and anger, "Doyou hear? Do you see? The story breaks all bounds. We can't be silent about it any longer!"She went on in her anger and sorrow, "Fine,then. I swear on my mother's grave that the girlwill leave with us. I won't leave here withouther. Butfirstshe must have a hot bath with Finiksoap, so no one will catch any disease. Insha'allah, she will be in good shape then and ever so sweet-smelling." At that point she noticed Gamalat, who was busy scratching someher fingers as Aziza spoke. She turned to where she was between thing standing in the corner of the room and poured the tea into the two cups on the tray. She was late in pouringit out, and the color of the tea had turned a dark red, the color of rubies. Flirtingwith Aziza a bit, she spoke in surprise, calling her by the secret name that she had given her and that she liked to use in moments of happiness, "Allah,were you speaking to me, moon?"

Our Lady of MTV:Madonna's "Likea Prayer"

Carla Freccero Whiteacademicfeministsandfeministintellectualsare currentlyenactingthe wanna-besyndromeof Madonnafans,analyzed,alongwithfashion,by AngelaMcRobbie,and morerecentlyby LisaLewis,as the complex andspecificmodeof interpretation, andrevisionbelongingto appropriation, "girlculture"in Britainandthe UnitedStates.'Whatbetterwayto construct an empoweredperformative female identitythan to claimforourselves a heroinewho has successfullyencodedsexiness, beauty,and powerintoa The use of initialcaps in writing"Black"is a deliberatepoliticalgesture on my part, referringnot to a color butto a politicaldesignation. 1. Angela McRobbie,Feminismand YouthCulture:From"Jackie"to "JustSeventeen" (Boston:UnwinHyman,1991);Lisa Lewis,GenderPoliticsand MTV:Voicingthe Difference (Philadelphia:Temple UniversityPress, 1990). See also Simon Frithand Angela McRobbie,"Rockand Sexuality,"Screen Education29 (1978-1979): 3-19. I owe a debt of gratitudeto numerouspeople who have assisted in this study of Madonna:Nancy Vickers,in particular,for her studies of the lyrictradition,MTV,and popularmusic;Tom Kalin(see "MediaKids:TomKalinon Pussy Power,"ArtforumInternational [September 1991]:19-21); CharlesHamm;the audiences,mainlystudents,who have heardand criticized this paper;and CirriNottageand MelindaWeinstein,whose research assistance has been invaluable. Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity

2 / Summer 164 boundary 1992 performingembodiment?Youcan have it all, Madonnasuggests, and be creditedwitha mind,as well. For her girlfans, Madonnahas suggested rebelliousmasculineyouthculture,bothpreserving ways of appropriating and subvertingfemininity,mitigatingthe adolescentdisempowermentof the female position.Itis Madonna'sambition,hardwork,and success, as she moves into her thirties,that her womenfans appreciate.Thus, Lisa Lewisand Susan McClary, feminist'ssuspicion abandoningthe intellectual of popularculturalrepresentationsof female empowerment,argue for a feministreclamationof Madonnaon solidintellectualandfeminist,if overly celebratory,grounds.2 Whileimpressedwiththeirinsightsand sympatheticto their "defense" of Madonnaagainstherdetractors(allof whom,to my knowledge, deploy traditionalelite or masculinisttopoi in theirattacks),I am skeptical of theirand my own desireto appropriate Madonnafor intellectuals,if so because to this desire and fits so well into "she"responds easily only the progressivewhitefeministfantasy I am aboutto explorein her text. Since I am interestedin practicingculturalpolitics,in strategicallylocating in popularculand developingwhatAndrewRoss calls the "protopolitical" in those media that have been ture,particularly derogatorily designatedas by left-and right-wingintellectu"mass culture"or the "cultureindustry" to considermy investmentin this reading,as als alike,it willbe important femiItalianAmericanacademic,antiracist(multiculturalist) a patrilineally cultural is to the whose nist, micropolitical positioning peculiarlyadapted representationscalledMadonna.3 Muchhas been made of MTV'spostmodernstyle:the fragmenting 2. See, in particular,Susan McClary,"Livingto Tell: Madonna'sResurrectionof the Fleshly,"Genders 7 (March1990):1-21; and Lewis,GenderPoliticsand MTV. 3. AndrewRoss, No Respect: Intellectualsand PopularCulture(New Yorkand London: in Technoculture, Routledge, 1989);see also his "HackingAwayat the Counterculture," ed. Constance Penley and AndrewRoss (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991), 107-34: "Thesignificanceof these cultureslies in theirembryonicorprotopolitical languages and technologiesof oppositionto dominantor parentsystems of rules. Ifhackers lack a 'cause,' then they are certainlynot the firstyouthcultureto be characterized in this dismissiveway. In particular,the left has sufferedfromthe lackof a culturalpolitics capable of recognizingthe powerof culturalexpressionsthat do not wear a mature politicalcommitmenton theirsleeves" (122). Fora critiqueof the too-rapiddismissal of neo-FrankfurtSchool leftistintellectuals'suspicionof mass culture,see MeaghanMorris, "Banalityin CulturalStudies,"in PatriciaMellencamp,Logics of Television:Essays in CulturalCriticism(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1990), 14-43: "Thereis an active or covert inprocess going on in both of discrediting-by directdismissal (Baudrillard)

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 165 of images, the blurringof generic boundariesbetweencommercial,prothe circulationof commodities gram, concert, and station identification, wrenchedfromtheirmarketplacecontext,the sense of playand carnival; the attentionto fashion;andthe de-centeredappropriation of imageswithout regardfor contextor history.Now,there is even a show called "PostmodernVideos."Itsadvertisedde-centeredness,its "semioticdemocracy" (John Fiske'sterm),its refusalof nationalboundaries,are, however,like postmodernismitself,far frominnocent,and most comparisonsthat foregroundMTV'spostmodernismneglect its project,a sort of globalcultural thatis nowheremoreclearlydemonstrated thanin its ownselfimperialism advertisement:"ONEWORLD, Icall ONEIMAGE, MTV." ONECHANNEL: this imperialismbecause MTVis not a democraticmedium,equallyavailable to all culturesand nationsforuse, buta specificcreationof the United States forthe incorporation of "worldmusic"intoitselfandforthe creation of globaldesires to consumethe productsof U.S. popularculture. The global preparationfor Madonna'sPepsi commercialtestifies bothto MTV'ssuccess in havingcolonizedcable andto some of the more concretegoals of this capitalistmedium(forMTVmodelsitselfon television advertisementsand airs commercialsfor songs and albums).A commercial appearedaroundthe world,featuringan aboriginerunningacross the intoa bar,arriving plainsof Australia(inreality,California) justintimeto see, you guessed it, Madonna'sPepsi commercialversionof "Likea Prayer." The commercialitselfairedin fortycountrieson 2 March1989. Madonna is, likeGeorge Michaeland otherrelativelyrecentstars, one of the "corprock"generation,as the VillageVoiceputs it, untroubledby NeilYoung's accusationsof sell-outas they take directorialcontrolover multinational commodityadvertisingto the tuneof $3 to $5 million.4 I pointoutthese thingsto emphasizethatitis nota questionof holdthese starsto some kindof moralor political"standards"; the portrait of ing scriptionas Other(culturalstudies)-the voices of grumpyfeministsand crankyleftists School' can do dutyfor both).To discreditsuch voices is, as I understandit, ('Frankfurt one of the immediatepoliticalfunctionsof the currentboominculturalstudies (as distinct fromthe intentionalityof projectsinvestedby it).To discredita voice is somethingvery differentfromdisplacingan analysiswhichhas become outdated,or revisinga strategy which no longer serves its purpose. It is to character-izea fictivepositionfromwhich anythingsaid can be dismissed as alreadyheard"(25). 4. Leslie Savan, "DesperatelySellingSoda,"VillageVoice34, no. 11, 14 Mar.1989, 47. See also BillZehme, "Madonna:The RollingStone Interview," RollingStone, 23 Mar. 1989, 52.

2 / Summer 1992 166 boundary the folk/rockartistas an oppositionalfiguredoes notapplyto the same extentinthe domainof pop.Rather,ifresistance,oropposition,is to be found, it is in the subordination of the multinationals' intereststo the promotionof an individual; bothGeorgeMichaelandMadonnamadelong,seminarrative minimusicvideos out of Coke and Pepsi bucksthatde-centeredthe corporation'sproduct(DietCoke and Pepsi) relativeto theirown. Madonna's as piece is thatof an auteurinscribinga thoroughlyprivateautobiography a masterpieceof globalinterestin its own right.5 It is often said of the postmodernthat its messages are both reactionaryand leftist;certainlypopulartexts mustoccupyat least boththose positionsto be "truly" popular,forthe clearerthe partispris, the narrower and morespecificthe addressee.6Madonnaaimsfora wideraudience,the widest possible, as her changingimage indicates.One song that quintessentiallyillustratesthispoliticalboth/andpositionis Madonna's"PapaDon't Preach,"a song abouta girlwho decides againsthavingan abortionbut articulatesthis decisionin assertivelypro-choiceterms.7 I startfromthe positionthatthese productsof late capitalismare, of dominantideologies;Ithen withalmostno embarrassment, reproducers ask whetherthereis anythingelse to be foundinthem.Fiske,in his studies of television,of Madonna,and of televisionaudiences,argues for a reading of televisionthat emphasizesnot onlythe dominantideology'sefforts of hegemonic to reproduceand maintainitself,notonlythe representation forces, but also the activeand empoweringpleasuresthat are negotiated 5. Lewispointsout howthe traditional oppositionbetweenrockandpop(serious/frivolous, etc.) has oftenbeen used to marginalizefemalevocalistsby trivializing political/apolitical, the genre with which they are most frequentlyassociated. See Lewis, Gender Politics and MTV,29-33. Foran analysisof the MadonnaPepsi commercial,see NancyVickers, "Maternalismand the MaterialGirl,"in EmbodiedVoices: Female Vocalityin Western Culture,ed. Leslie Dunnand NancyJones (CambridgeUniversityPress, forthcoming). 6. John Fiske, "BritishCulturalStudies,"in Channelsof Discourse:Televisionand ContemporaryCriticism,ed. RobertC. Allen(ChapelHill:Universityof NorthCarolinaPress, 1987), 254-89: "Thetelevisiontext can only be popularif it is open enough to admita range of negotiated meanings, throughwhichvarioussocial groups can find meaningful articulationsof their own relationshipto the dominantideology.Any television text must,then, be polysemic,forthe heterogeneityof the audiencerequiresa corresponding heterogeneityof meaningsin the text"(267). 7. For an interestingand suggestive survey of audience response to this video and to "OpenYourHeart,"see Jane D. Brownand LaurieSchulze, "TheEffectsof Race, Genof Madonna'sMusicVideos,"Journalof der, and Fandomon Audience Interpretations Communication40, no. 2 (Spring1990):88-102.

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 167 in televisionby subcultures,by the marginalizedand subordinate."Television and its programsdo not have an 'effect'on people. Viewersand televisioninteract," he asserts, whichis anotherwayof sayingthatviewing televisionis, for its viewers,an act of readingand thatthe culturaltext is thatwhichis producedby these acts of reading.8 Television,Fiskeargues, is an open text, one thatenables "negotiated," resistive,and oppositional meaningsto be readeven as it promotesthe values and serves the interests of the rulingclasses. I proposeto readthe ways in whichseveralof Madonna'smusicvideos enablesome oppositionalreadings,and I wantto discoursethat moves go a step furtherin describinga theologico-political intoand outof focus inthese videos. Iwantto makean argumentfordeliberatelylocatingelementsof resistancein culturaltexts produced,as inthis andcapitalisthegemony.Ofcourse,itis case, squarelywithina patriarchal difficultto gauge whethersuch elementsare indeedresistive,or whether, throughtheirstagingof rebellion,they,infact,contributeto hegemony. The VillageVoice,givento a greatdeal of highbrowsneeringwhen it comes to Madonna,remarksnastilyof herautobiographical album,"Like a Prayer,""Youdon't need Joseph Campbellto untangleher personal mythos."9Iam suggesting,however,thatthereis a specificityto Madonna's mythosandthatthe specificculturalsemioticsof Madonna'slyricandvisual 8. John Fiske, TelevisionCulture(Londonand New York:Methuen,1987), 19; see also his "BritishCulturalStudies,"260. Muchof Fiske'sdiscussion here is taken fromStuart in Culture,Media,Language,ed. StuartHallet al. (London: Hall,"Encoding/Decoding," Morris Hutchinson,1980): 128-39. Itake to heartthe critiqueofferedby the "disgruntled" in "Banalityin CulturalStudies"with regardto Fiske's and others' "makingthe best of things"approachto popularcultureas a wayof salvagingleftistenergyfrommass media, yet I also findit necessary continuallyto rehearseargumentsforattendingat all seriously to elements of resistancewithinthese texts. Atthe same time,myown projecttakes some distance fromFiske'sparticularapproachto culturalstudies and Madonnaby its in-depth focus on an "ethnic"and "female"subculturalspecificity.Inthis regard,it resembles more the "newphilological" projectof culturalcriticssuch as StephanieHull,thoughour (political) conclusions divergesignificantly("Madonna'sVogue,"Paper presented at session number504: "Essentialism,Philology,and PopularCulture,"ModernLanguageAssociation AnnualMeeting,San Francisco,29 Dec. 1991). Inone of the most intellectually serious treatmentsof Madonnaas a postmoderntext, RamonaCurrycites RichardDyer's discussion of stars as composite images and argues that one should read Madonnaas an "intertextual conglomerate":"Meaningsof any given text arise not predominantlyin readers'experienceof its constructionbutintheirdiscursiveinteractionswithit inthe context of myriadassociated texts"(see "MadonnafromMarilynto Marlene-Pastiche and/ or Parody?"Journalof Filmand Video42, no.2 [Summer1990]:15-30; in particular,16). 9. Steve Anderson,"ForgiveMe Father,"VillageVoice,4 Apr.1989, 67.

168 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 of an Italian productionare locatedwithinthe historyandpopularspirituality Americanculturalimagination. RobertOrsi,inTheMadonnaof 115thStreet: Faith and Communityin ItalianHarlem1880-1950, describes the mythos of

itsrelationship the immigrant to the homelandandto spirituality, community, chilas well as the relationshipof the second generation(the immigrants' centeredon the domus, householdor dren)to this mythos,fundamentally Orsiarguesthatone mustunderstandItalian family,as its significantunit.10 formsits popular to the sometimes"strange" culture understand immigrant of an earlier those of "Like a and Prayer," pietytakes. The visualimages video, "OpenYourHeart,"bringthis ItalianAmericancultureintofocus so streettheology.Criticsof "Likea as to articulateMadonna'sfeminocentric even it and accuse of heresy.Orsinotes thatthere is a sacrilege Prayer" in the communitieshe forms of similarresponse to the popularspirituality ... studied,and he adds, "Thereis a spiritof defiancein popularspirituality it allowsthe people to claimtheirreligiousexperienceas theirown and to Orsiprovidesa affirmthe validityof theirvalues"(Orsi,221). Furthermore, mother or the the central role to (mamma playedby Madonna, heavenly key celeste), in Madonna'stheologyand provides,as well,a keyto herstaging of a daughterlydiscoursewithina patriarchal familycontext. MadonnaLouiseVeronicaCicconewas bornin 1958andgrewup in ItalianAmerican,whose Pontiac,Michigan.Herfatheris a first-generation parentscame fromthe Abruzziinthe twentiesorthirtiesto workinthe steel millsof Pittsburgh.LikemanyItalianAmericansof his generation,he was upwardlymobile.SilvioCicconewentto collegeto becomean engineer,and he movedto the Detroitareato workinthe automotiveindustry.Likemany ItalianAmericans,SilvioCicconeserved in the U.S. military.In "patriotic" interviews,Madonnatalksabouthis ambition,his workethic,and his willto succeed materially,all of whichbequeatheda legacythat is embodiedin the nicknamecriticsgive to Madonnaandthatis also the titleof one of her Girl." mostfamoussongs, "Material Madonnatakes her name from her mother,a FrenchCanadian 10. RobertAnthonyOrsi, The Madonnaof 115thStreet:Faithand Communityin Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven and London:Yale UniversityPress, 1985); hereafter cited in my text as Orsi. Luc Sante, in "Unlikea Virgin,"New Republic, 20 Aug. and 27 Aug. 1990, 25-29, modifieshis acerbictone when he discusses Madonna'sCatholicism: "If,at this point,there is any aspect of Madonna'sact that seems independentof calculation,it is her preoccupationwiththe Catholicmysteries"(28). Fora hightheologisee AndrewGreeley,"Likea Catholic: cal readingof Madonna,especially"Likea Prayer," Madonna'sChallengeto HerChurch,"America,13 May1989, 447-49.

Freccero/ OurLadyofMTV 169 woman, who lived in Bay City and who died when the singer was six. Madonnais the thirdof six children,the oldestdaughter.Afterhighschool, of Michigan,whereshe reshe won a dance scholarshipto the University mainedfora yearor so. She then leftforNewYorkand "workedin a donut shop"untilshe joinedthe AlvinAileyDance Co., afterwhichshe wentto Paris,whereshe beganto sing. Hersis a typicalandtypicallyromanticized immigrantstory,an Americandreamcome true.She affirmsthis mythat the beginningof the VirginTour,wherehervoice-overprefacesthe concert tape withthe followingstory:"Iwentto NewYork.I had a dream.I wanted to be a bigstar.Ididn'tknowanybody.Iwantedto dance. Iwantedto sing. Iwantedto do allthose things.Iwantedto makepeoplehappy.Iwantedto be famous. Iwantedeverybodyto love me. Iwantedto be a star.I worked reallyhardand my dreamcame true.""11 The autobiographical album,"Likea Prayer,"makes explicitthe traces of a RomanCatholicItalianAmericanfamilyethos in Madonna's work.Familyis the majortheme of the album:from"TillDeath,"an accountof the violentdissolutionof hermarriage; to "Promiseto Try,"a child's hymnof mourningto the lost motherand an appeal for guidanceto the Virginherself;to "OhFather,"an indictmentand a forgivingof the severe to "KeepItTogether," a song thatasserts the necessityof family patriarch; ties. The albumalso includesa distortedrenderingof the RomanCatholic Actof Contrition thatturnsintoa sortof child'sparodyof thisfrequentlyrecitedconfessionalprayer.Thealbumitselfis dedicatedto hermother,who, she writes,"taughtme how to pray."The cover playfullyexploitsRoman Catholicreligiousthemes andreinscribesMadonnasignifiers,mostnotably her navel, from her earlierwork.12 The albumcover of "Likea Prayer," whichreveals Madonna'snakedmidriffand the crotchof her partiallyunbuttonedblue jeans, imitatesthe RollingStones's "StickyFingers"album cover. Abovethe crotchis printedher name, Madonna,withthe o (positionedwhere her navel shouldbe) surroundedby a cruciformdrawingof lightandtoppedwitha crown(theVirgin's,presumably).13 Madonnainthiscontextdependson threeaspects of Understanding 11. "MadonnaLive:The VirginTour,"WarnerMusicVideo,BoyToy,Inc.,1985. 12. For a meditationon Madonna'snavel, see HaroldJaffe, Madonnaand OtherSpectacles (New York:PAJPublications,1988),7-12. 13. The cover design also puns on the Elizabethanmeaningof o as a designationfor female genitals;on this cover, Madonnamakes a joke about her phallicpower by comthe phallus,withthe o of her own biningthe RollingStones blue jeans, which"contain" phallicabsence.

2 / Summer 1992 170 boundary to undo these videotexts. First,Madonnaplayswiththe codes of femininity dominantgendercodes andto assert herown powerand agency (and,by extension,thatof women,in general),not by rejectingthe femininebut by She takes on adoptingit as masquerade;that is, by posingas feminine.14 andadds an ironictwistthatasserts her codes of femininity the patriarchal powerto manipulatethem. The second salientaspect of Madonna'stext a subculturethatgoes unread,forthe mostpart, dependson understanding culture: a connectednessto Italy-in name,of course; in the dominant by and to exile, departure, tradition;and in relationto theology,to femininity, Madonnarepresentsherselfas doubly,if nottriply,exiled: and immigration. she is a She has lost her homeland(as a second-generationimmigrant), in a relation of genherself also motherless. She she and is woman, figures within the erationalconflict(as the oppresseddaughter) severelypatriarchal structureof the household,representedby her ItalianAmericanfather.15 The inscriptionof the daughterlypositionis a marketstrategy,as well,for withadolescentgirls,whoinitiallyconstitutedthe itsets up an identification majorityof Madonna'sfans. These motifsappearstrikinglyin two videos:"PapaDon'tPreach" and "OpenYourHeart.""OpenYourHeart"presentsan earlyversionof Madonna'smusingsabouther Italianheritage,explicitlybroughtout by the conversationin the 1987 Ciao Italiatour,whereshe attemptsrudimentary language and makes a pilgrimageto the home of her Italianrelatives.In this video, Madonnaalso works,dream-like, throughherrelationshipto an actress she idolizes,MarleneDietrichin the BlueAngel, and to Dietrich's 14. For the notion of femininityas masquerade,see Joan Riviere,"Womanlinessas a Masquerade,"and Stephen Heath,"JoanRiviereand the Masquerade,"in Formationsof Fantasy, ed. VictorBurgin,James Donald,and CoraKaplan(1986; reprint,Londonand New York:Routledge,1989),35-61; see also MaryRusso, "FemaleGrotesques:Carnival and Theory,"in FeministStudies/CriticalStudies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis(Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 1986), 213-29. Lewis(GenderPoliticsand MTV)convincingly argues the case for female empowermentand gender code manipulationin the works of several female pop musiciansfromthe pointof view of authorialcontroland production, on the one hand, to fan response and the issue of female address, on the other hand; Fiske ("BritishCulturalStudies")pointsto the evidence of female fan response; while McClary'sstudy (FeminineEndings:Music, Gender,and Sexuality[Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991])traces, amongotherthings,a genealogy of female in Madonna. musicianshipand strugglesforempowermentthat"culminates" 15. This notionof the householdcouldbe extendedto includenot onlythe familybutthe music industry,as well, for this upstartfemale has not always been well received in the whitemale bastionthatis MTV. traditionally

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 171 darksister LizaMinnelli(anotherItalianAmerican),in its remake,Cabaret. as a The relationshipto Italy,to the father,andto herowncommodification starare alldeeplyambivalent. female sex objectand a performing The videoopens witha smallboytryingto gainadmittanceto a sort of cabaret/peepshow thatdisplaysoutfrontphotographsof nakedwomen (withblackbars coveringbreastsand pubes) and a blue-tintedposterof willnot admitthe boy. Madonna,who wears a blackwig. The ticket-taker We move inside,then, to Madonna's"stripshow"number,whereshe manipulatesa chairandsings, whileonlookerssit incoin-operatedboothsthat enablethemto watchthe show (thisvideoalso includes,forthe firsttime in Madonna'svideos, the gay spectator-a womanratherthan a man).The videoplayswiththe notion,madefamousbyLauraMulvey,of the malegaze in cinema,the constructionof the camera's"look"as male and its object as female. Madonnais clearlythe objectof these voyeuristicgazes, yet, at the same time,she fracturesthe monolithicnatureof the camera'slook withthe openingandclosingbarriersof the booths,herdirectcountergaze intothe camera'slens, and the cuts in the video to the littleboy standing outside,placinghis handsoverthe variousbodypartsof the pinupwomen as if to cover them. Thus, the video makes the audience uncomfortably awareof the voyeuristicaspect of ourenjoymentof the performance,while neverthelessstagingthat performancefor us to watch.The cameracuts to the young boy, who, lookingin a mirror,dances in a mannerimitating beMadonna'sdance insidethe cabaret,thusestablishingan identification tween them. When Madonnacomes outside,she is dressed likethe boy, with her hairsimilarlydisheveled.McClaryargues that "theyoung boy's game of impersonatingthe femmefataleand Madonna'stransvestismat the end bothrefuseessentialistgendercategoriesandturnsexual identity intoa kindof play,"a visualeffect echoingthe musicalresistanceto closure inthe song itself.16 Madonnagives the boya chaste kiss, andthey run off together.The ticket-taker runsafterthemand mouthssome wordsthat appearas subtitlesin the video.Thetwo "children" go skippingoff intothe distance. The subtitles withouttranslation,"Ritorna... ritorna... Madonna. 16. McClary,"Livingto Tell,"13. See also Curry'sreadingof "OpenYourHeart,"which makes the argumentthat the video constructsan "alternativeaudience address"that fromMarilyn to Marlene," champions"oppressedsocial andracialgroups"(see "Madonna 19-20). Brownand Schulzefoundthatwhitegirlsdidnot reactto the pornographicperformance as parody,althoughthey did interpretthe finalscene as an escape intochildhood innocence (see "TheEffectsof Race, Gender,and Fandom,"97-99).

172 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 Abbiamoancorabisognodi te"("Comeback... come back... Madonna. We stillneed you")literalizeLouisAlthusser'sdescriptionof how ideology functionsby "hailing" the subject;here,Madonnais hailedbywhatis represented as Italianpatriarchy.In the VirginConcertTour,her real-lifedad comes on stage duringthe song andsays, "Madonna get offthatstage right now!"Madonnalooksaroundand out intospace, as if puzzled,and says: "Daddy,is thatyou?" The fatheris figuredas in the roleof serviceto a clientele(he is a and thus not inthe dominantposition,clueingus in on the imticket-taker) in this context."We"is, of course, statusof "Italian" migrantor subcultural a symbolicutterance:"We,"utteredin Italian,suggests thatthe "we"has fromthe woman's to do withbeing Italian,with"serving," andwithprofiting in the clientele.Itis also a prostitution.Itis not, otherwords,the "we"of privatemessage. Subtitles,whichare meantto makewhatis foreignintelligible, here refuseto translateforthe Anglophoneviewer,staging,instead, the privatein a publicplace; likethe cabaretact and the childrens'flight fromboth it and the camera,subtitlespermitvoyeurismbutrejectvoyeuristic masteryby the viewer.Meanwhile,what is also staged is the flight in musicvideo)to the exterior froman interiorspace (codedas "feminine" with drawnvanishingpoint.17 and its as "masculine" "free"), explicitly (coded The familytriadof Madonna,child,and interpellating father,who is resisted to the absent mother,who is both sacrifice and refused,uneasilyalludes (Madonnaas commodity)andsavior(fantasyof escape), the homeland,or motherland. Madonnasays thatherfatherwas sociallyambitious,focusingon his Thisvideostages Madonna's own,andhischildren's,upwardsocialmobility. ironicresentmentof the hostilityand rejectionshe receives as a "bad woman"(whore,slut,skeezer,etc.) withinthe veryculturethatuses herfor profit;and she marksthatcultureas Italian.The ambitionsare figuredas 17. Lewisdiscusses the coding in musicvideos of male and female spaces and the creof whatis coded as "male ationof female address videos throughan initialappropriation space," primarilythe street. See "FemaleAddressin MusicVideo,"Journalof Communication Inquiry11, no. 1 (Winter1987): 73-84; also "Formand Female Authorshipin MusicVideo,"Communication9 (1987):355-77. She developsthis discussionat greater lengthin GenderPoliticsand MTV.Fora feministcritiqueof subculturestudythatfocuses on the street as a site of youth activity,see Angela McRobbie,"SettlingAccountswith Screen Education34 (Spring1980):37-49. McClary, Subcultures:A FeministCritique," in "Livingto Tell,"12-13, and Lewis,in GenderPoliticsand MTV,141-43, also provide of "OpenYourHeart." (different)interpretations

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 173 herfather's.She stages, as well,the typicalsecond-generation resentment of the make-it-in-America materialist mentality(andherwillingnessto serve to the male gaze, but she esthose ends). Madonnais thus "martyred" into innocence. this is simultaneously Yet, preadolescent martyrdom capes a recognitionof her powerto rakein profit,to fix and fragmentthe male gaze, and to controlmen. A thirdimportantaspect of Madonna'stext is the way in whichthe relationto exilebecomes displacedin"Likea Prayer," so thatthe positionof exile withouta home, pariah,or outsidercomes to be occupiednot by Italian immigrantsbut by AfricanAmericans.Thisdisplacementhas become even morepronouncedinherrecentwork,whichconsistentlyfeaturesBlack gay dancers.This,too, has its microcultural history:ItalianHarlemshared borderswith BlackHarlemin New York,as in many urbancommunities across the UnitedStates, and Italiansand AfricanAmericansshare a long Americanhistoryof similarities anddifferences,conflictsandcooperations. ForMadonna,thereis, additionally, a personalnarrativeof guiltassuaged, in that Steven Bray,an AfricanAmericanR&Bmusician,composer,songwriter,and producer,gave her herfirstbreakintothe business and established her on the R&Bchartsbeforeshe ever crossed over intopop. She subsequentlyabandonedhimfor a producerwith moreprestigebut has since then providedhimwithopportunities forfame and has reunitedwith himto collaboratein songwriting.18 of Finally, course,whattraversesmany white popularmusicians'workis a sense of indebtednessand collective guiltaboutR&B,or Black,music,whose deliberateexclusionfromavenues of mainstreamstardomand,untilrecently,MTVitself,is welldocumented.19 "Likea Prayer"is the now-notorious video thatoccasionedPepsi's withdrawalof the Madonnacommercialfeaturingthe same song but differentvisuals. Fundamentalist religiousgroups,in the UnitedStates and abroad,protestedthatthe videowas offensive,andtheythreatenedto boycott Pepsi.20 In part,theirreactionstems froma long-standingdominant 18. ChristopherConnelly,"MadonnaGoes Allthe Way,"RollingStone, 22 Nov. 1984, 15-20, 81. Subsequent to the makingof "Vogue"and "Truthor Dare,"there has been a dispute about Madonna'sbusiness relationshipto dancers Jose Gutierrezand Luis Camacho;here, too, the politicsof race plays a subtextualrole. See "Madonna'sBoyz ExpressThemselves to JonathanVanMeter,"NYQ13, 26 Jan. 1992. 19. See the NAACP'spamphlet"The DiscordantSound of Music":A Report on the Record Industry(Baltimore:The NationalAssociationfor the Advancementof Colored People, 23 Mar.1987). IthankNancyVickersforprovidingme withthis document. 20. James Cox, "PepsiCans Its MadonnaAd underPressure,"USA Today,4 Apr.1989;

174 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 culturehostilityto ItalianCatholicpopularspirituality: statuescomingto life, bleeding(an old traditioncalledecce homo,wherebyChrist's,or a saint's, face becomes bathedin blood),stigmata,sexualitycoupledwithreligious involvedin developingan intimate worship,as well as the demystification to the divine(Orsi,225). Thereis also and personalreciprocalrelationship the factthatMadonnais insertedas an activeagentin a storyand in a role reservedformen, and inso doing,she challengesthe patriarchal strangleholdon the Catholicchurch.Thevideoof "Likea Prayer"can also be read of a whitemalepatriarchal as an indictment inthe nameof what Christianity has happenedto "white" womenandto Blackmen. Here,then, is Madonna's(andthe video'sdirector,filmmakerMary Lambert's)accountof the plotfor"Likea Prayer": A girlon the streetwitnesses an assaulton a youngwoman.Afraid to get involvedbecause she mightget hurt,she is frozenin fear.A blackman walkingdownthe street also sees the incidentand decides to help the woman.Butjustthen,the policearriveand arrest him.As they take himaway,she looksupand sees one of the gang memberswhoassaultedthe girl.He gives hera lookthatsays she'll be dead ifshe tells.Thegirlruns,notknowingwhereto go, untilshe sees a church.She goes inandsees a saintina cage wholooksvery muchlikethe blackmanon the street,andsays a prayerto help her makethe rightdecision.He seems to be crying,butshe is not sure. She lies downon a pewandfallsintoa dreaminwhichshe beginsto tumbleinspace withno one to breakherfall.Suddenlyshe is caught by a womanwho representsearthand emotionalstrengthand who tosses herbackup andtells herto do the rightthing.Stilldreaming, she returnsto the saint,and her religiousand eroticfeelings begin to stir.The saintbecomes a man.She picksup a knifeand cuts her hands. That'sthe guiltin Catholicismthatif you do somethingthat feels good you willbe punished.As the choirsings, she reaches an withherlove of intertwined orgasmiccrescendoof sexualfulfillment God. She knowsthat nothing'sgoing to happento her if she does

Karen Phillips,"MadonnaCanned: Pepsi Pulls the Plug on ControversialAds," New YorkPost, 5 Apr.1989; "Madonna's'Likea Prayer'ClipCauses a Controversy," Rolling Stone, 20 Aug. 1989. Pepsi deniedthe charge (see BruceHaring,"PepsiDenies Pulling MadonnaSpots,"Billboard,18 Mar.1989, butthis commercial,unlikeGeorge Michael's DietCoke commercial,no longerappearedon television.

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 175 whatshe believes is right.She wakes up, goes to the jail,tells the policethe manis innocent,and he is freed.Theneverybodytakes a bow as ifto say we all playa partinthis littlescenario.21 of thisvideo,in combinationwiththe The puns, reversals,and circularities are The name Madonna and "thevoice"are constantlyrelyrics, dizzying. ferredto yet nevernamed:"Whenyou callmy name it'slikea littleprayer." The name is Madonna,heavenlymother,herealso embodiedin the singer herself.Callingthe name Madonnais "likea littleprayer," a prayerto the Virgin,"little," presumably,because the bigone wouldbe the "OurFather." Yet, it is "likea" prayeras well, suggestingthe deep irreverencefamiliar to us froma formercontext,Madonna's"Likea Virgin." Itis and it is not a to the absent prayer,the name-callingreferring devoutlyanddaughter-like mother(whose namewas Madonna)andnarcissistically to the starherself. Whenshe entersthe church,she is singing:"Ihearyou call my name ... and it feels like ... Home,"whereupon she closes the door to the church.

Orsimentionshowthe womenof EastHarlemcalledtheirchurchla casa di mamma(Momma'shouse), graftingtogethertheirreal mothersin the lost homeland,Italy,and theirheavenlymother(the Madonna)(Orsi,206-7). Madonnadoes this, and goes a step further,returning the name Madonna to herself.The strangedistortionof pronounsinthe song can be attributed to this circularity: Madonnais bothmotherandchild,bothdivineintervener and earthlysupplicant. Afterwitnessinga doublecrimethatis equatedwitha burningcross, Madonnafalls intoa dream.Thatthis is a dreamis of utmostimportance, for it signals thatthe characterMadonnais not reallyputtingherselfin the place of the redeemerbut imaginingherselfas one (note the insistence on dreamingin the script).At this point,Madonnasings the words, "Oh God, I thinkI'mfalling"and "Heavenhelp me,"clich6sthatin the context of a dreamflightand a divineencounterbecome literal.A Blackwoman 21. Citedby Stephen Holden,"MadonnaRe-CreatesHerself-Again,"New YorkTimes, Sunday, 19 Mar.1989, Artsand Leisuresection. There are many imagistic,verbal,and thematic resemblances between the video "Likea Prayer"and MaryLambert'searlier film Siesta, starringEllenBarkin,indicatingthat intertextuality occurs on the directorial level, as well, so that not only the star but also (at least) the directorcontributeto the composite,or conglomerate,textthatis Madonna.The centeringof female subjectivityin Siesta also supportsan argumentfor Lambert'simportantrole in constructingthe structure of address in "Likea Prayer."I thankNancy Vickersfor drawingthese similarities to my attentionand MaryLambertfor her corroboration of my readingof these texts as feminocentric.

176 boundary2 / Summer1992 catches her; the woman is a figure of divinity(a heavenly mother) and assists Madonna. She plays this role throughout;meanwhile, similarities of hair, halo, and voice establish an identificationbetween the two women. Back at the church, Madonna encounters the black icon (apparently a representationof Saint Martinde Porres), who comes alive through the praying Madonna's faith and who, after conferringupon the character Madonna a chaste kiss (like the chaste kiss in "OpenYourHeart"),leaves the church.22The scene of the encounter between mortaland saint epitomizes Orsi's description of "popularreligion"and the hostile reactions it provokes from the established church: When used to describe popular Catholic religiosity,the term conjures up images of shrouds, bloody hearts, bilocating monks, talking Madonnas [!], weeping statues, boiling vials of blood-all the symbols which the masses of Catholic Europe have found to be so powerfulover the centuries and which churchmen have denigrated, often while sharing in the same or similardevotions. (Orsi, xiv) Afterthe icon comes to life and departs from the church, Madonna picks up his dropped dagger and receives the stigmata that mark her as having a role to play in the narrativeof redemption. Stigmata, with their obvious phallic connotation, are a sensual sign of contact with the divine, a kind of holy coupling, which the filmAgnes of God has made clear in the popularfilmicimagination.This reciprocitybetween the worshipperand the divine is a common feature of popularpiety (Orsi, 230-31). During the (second) scene of the crime, an identificationis established (through the camera's line of sight, through hair color and style) between Madonna and the victim. The woman's death is compared to a crucifixion(arms out, Christlikeknife wound in her left side) and, perhaps, to a rape.23Madonna first sings the lines, "Inthe midnighthour I can feel your power,"in the scene with the icon; now these words are given a sinister reinterpretation,suggesting the collusion between patriarchaland racist power ratherthan the more traditionallylyric"seductive power"of woman. The woman cries out while the lyricline is "Whenyou call my name." The look between the ringleaderand Madonnasets up a complicity (one com22. Sante, "Unlikea Virgin,"28. 23. Freudrefersto experimentsfindingsexual symbolismin dreamsaboutstabbingand shooting in The Interpretationof Dreams, vols. 4 and 5 of The Standard Editionof the CompletePsychological Worksof SigmundFreud,trans.James Strachey(London: HogarthPress, 1953), 419.

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 177 mitsa crime,one remainssilentaboutit)thatis also a challenge.Thescene sets up a parallel:Whitemen rape/killwomen,whitemen blameiton Black forbeingon the streetsat night;Blackmen men;or,womenare raped/killed are throwninjail. Withthe line, "Lifeis a mystery,everyonemust stand alone,"the scene cuts to Madonnasinginginfrontof a fieldof burningcrosses, a visual citationof the filmMississippiBurning,as is the young boy in the white choirgown (referring, perhaps,to the onlyBlackpersonrepresentedin the movie as speakingout againstKlanviolence),who beckonsto Madonna. She prays.Thisscene, whichmarksthe dramaticcenterof the video,uses the privileged"sign"of Madonna(the cross, or crucifix,whichshe always wears)to set up the religiousand politicaldiscoursesof the text.24 Backat the church,Madonnais broughtintothe communityof worshippers by the female deity.Withthe layingon of hands, Madonnais orslaininthe spirit;the community is an AfricanAmerican "commissioned," The scene of erotic union with the saint sets up the syntaxfor community. a sentence: We see the kiss;a burningcross; Madonna;a fieldof burning crosses; Madonna'sface lookingshocked;the bleedingeye of the icon, all of whichseem to suggest: Blackmen have been martyredfor kissing whitewomen. At this point,the dreamends, and the choirfiles out. The icon reto turns its position,andthe barsclose infrontof him.Madonnawakes up, and the cameracuts to the jailcell, whichis the church,now withoutthe altarand withthe Americanflag in its stead. We see Madonnamouthing the words"Hedidn'tdo it"to the police,who then free the Blackman. A red curtaincloses on the scene, whichfades to Madonnain the field of burningcrosses. Next,the curtainrises on the church,withallthe actorsthe criminalsand victimand police-gathered, seated or standingin the foreground.Theytake a bow;the cameramoves in to focus on the Black woman. Madonnaand her co-star,Leon Robinson,come center stage, holdinghands,and they take a bow.The camerapullsbackandthe credit comes up:"Madonna/'Like a Prayer'/Like a Prayer/SireRecords."We see 24. Home, an important,if not central,termof the text, is repeatedagain in this scene the scene in (Madonnainthe fieldof burningcrosses), referringbackto and reinterpreting whichshe enters the church.There,home seemed a relativelypositiveterm,althoughthe conflationbetween the churchand the policestationat the end of the video suggests an ambivalenceaboutthe positioningof the institutionof the church.Inthis scene, however, home is ironicand constitutesan indictmentof racistand patriarchal America.

2 / Summer 178 boundary 1992 the actorsdancing,and the curtaincomes downagain.Finally,"TheEnd" is writtenin scripton the curtain.

Howcan we readthe politicalandspiritualinthismelodramatic medieval moralityplay?On the one hand,there is the displacementof a prein relationto a religioustraditionis dicament:A woman'sdisempowerment displacedby a storyabouthow a whitewoman,withthe help of a female Blackdivinity,saves a Blackman.Madonnastages the predicamentof the ItalianAmericanimmigrantdaughterwithinthe patriarchalinstitutionsof family,church,and state and enacts a femininefantasyof resolutionand mediation,the quintessentialRomanCatholicfantasyof sacrifice,redemption, and salvation.This femininefantasyof resolutionresemblesthat of the popularreligiousfeste that constitutethe spiritualexperiencesof the East Harlemwomendescribedby Orsi,as wellas those of most southern communitiesin citiesalloverthe UnitedStates, withtheir Italianimmigrant specificfocus on the divineintercessionof the Virgin.It is the temporary empowermentof sacrificethat connectsthe womanto the Madonnaand that allowsher to playa centralrolewithinthe Italianspiritualcommunity. Thisroleis also a trap,however,foritperpetuatesan ethos of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation.The video suggests Madonna'srebellionagainstthis entrapmentby presentingthe imageof a successfulheroine.Inthisfantasy of female empowerment,the mother,as divineintercessor,empowersthe daughterto playthe son's salvificrole.The narrativeattemptsto breakthe cycle, wherebythe mother'scentralityto the domusalso disempowers,by findinga place of empowermentas the mother,as the mammaceleste, the omnipotentwoman-Madonnaherself.Inothercontexts,Madonnawill figure herself as playfullyand parodicallyphallic,but here she remains emphaticallyfeminine,even whileenactingthe son's castrationin the stigsacrificeremains,for at the end mata.25Yet,the trace of a self-wounding The RollingStone 25. The RollingStone photographsof Madonna(Zehme,"Madonna: focus on the phallicMadonnawithshots of her crotchand the now-infamous Interview") "phallicwoman"gesture-first used parodicallyby MichaelJackson,then deployed(postOn the parodicuse of this gesture, Madonna)by Roseanne Barr-of crotch-grabbing. of MichaelJackson, see MarjorieGarber,"FetishEnvy," and on Madonna's"imitation" October54 (Fall1990):45-56. On Madonna'slaterphallicism,see also Sante, "Unlikea 27: "Ohyes, andtherewerethose maledancersadornedwithbreaststhatflopped Virgin," likeso manypairsof flaccidphalliwhileher own lookedlikearmor-plated projectiles."

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 179 of the play there is a corpse, the young woman, who is also a double for Madonna, thus remindingus that phallicpower also kills. There is clearly guilt here, a guilt Madonnashares with many white rockand pop musicians who have been making"BlackAmerica"the subject of their videos, for theirs is a musical traditiongrounded on a violationand a theft, the appropriationof musical forms originatingwith AfricanAmerican musicians who were unable, in racist America, to profit.That appropriation made millionsof dollars for these white musicians. But if we take seriously the culturalspecificities of this particularwhite woman (Madonna), culturalspecificities that may be applicable to communities larger than the private fantasies of one individual,then the mixtureof religious traditions in the video and the intertwiningof two politicalhistories may constitute a differentsort of text. Orsi points out that southern Italian immigrantswere often associated with Africans by their northerncompatriots, by the Protestant majority, and by the established Catholic church.26 Chromaticallyblack Madonnas and saints abound in southern Italianand Catholic worship. The video, too, sets up a chromatic proximitythrough the racial indeterminacy of the woman who is killed and, most markedly,through hair: Madonna's hair is her naturalbrown(she says it makes her feel more Italian)and curled into ringlets, the female deity's hair is similarlybrown and curly,while the female victim's hair is black and curly. The only blond characters are the white men who attack. Madonnasays she grew up in a Black neighborhood and that her playmates and friends were Black. In a Rolling Stone interview, she notes apologetically that when she was littleshe wanted to be Black.27Likewise,there is a traditionof AfricanAmericans in northernurban 26. Orsi, The Madonnaof 115thStreet, 160: "Americansand AmericanCatholicsdistinguishedthe northernItalianracialtype ('Germanic')fromthe southern ('African'),a of East HarlemwithWest Harlem. tendencythatmayhave contributedto the identification In 1912, NormanThomasadmittedthatAmerican-born Protestantsin Harlemdid not appreciatethe presence of Italiansin theirchurches."Sante cannot resist a racist remark about Madonna'sethnicity,thoughhe says it isn'tone: "Inher'Ciao Italia'video, decked out in variousgymnasticoutfitsand body-pumping to the screams of tens of thousandsin a soccer stadiumin Turin,Madonnalooks perfectlyable to make the trainsrunon time. (Do not mistakethis for an ethnicslur:her last name couldjust as easily be O'Flanagan and the setting Oslo or Kalamazoo.)"("Unlikea Virgin," 27). 27. Zehme, "Madonna: The RollingStone Interview," 58:"'WhenIwas a littlegirl,Iwished I was black. All my girlfriendswere black. I was livingin Pontiac,Michigan,and I was definitelythe minorityin the neighborhood.Whitepeople were scarce there. Allof my friendswere black,and all the music I listenedto was black.'"

180 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 in orderto pass or to protect settings who identifythemselvesas "Italian" themselvesfromthe fullforceof U.S. racisminthe majority community. This fantasythus attemptsto reachout beyondthe privateethnic imaginationto create a bridgeto anotherculture'spopularpiety, itself groundedin an experienceof exile and oppression.McClarynotes how the song mergesthe traditional solemnityof Catholicorganmusicwiththe of thus the fusionof the two joyous rhythm gospel, musicallyreinforcing Moreethnographic communities.28 researchmightrevealthe ways in which these communitiesmet or meet (East and West Harlem)in the neighborhoods of New YorkCityor Detroitand mightalso revealwhatis produced fromthe similaritiesin theirfamilystructures,spiritualities, and theirhistoricalexperiences.The media,the press, and even resistivesubcultural narratives,such as Spike Lee's filmDo the RightThing,suggest thatthe dominantrepresentationof intercultural relationsis a narrativeof conflict. The alternativevisionof communitypresentedin this videochallengesthe complicitywithhegemonicviolenceof SpikeLee'sculturalpolitics.Iwonder to whatextentthe rarenessof this fantasyis relatedto the fact that it is a femininefantasyof mediation,a woman'srepresentation of the possibilities of connectedness ratherthan conflict.Inotherwords,one difference narratedhereandthe representations betweenthe cooperativeinteraction and grounded of violentconflictis thatthis representation is feminocentric in a spiritualvision. Pointsof contactbetweencommunitiesare imagined not only in termsof conflictingand competingethnicitiesbutalso in terms interactionsandthe potentialfor of communicativeopenings,the affirming communicationbetweencontiguousculturalgroupswho also share some experiences of oppressionwithina majoritycommunityhostile to their presence.29 Thevisualbridgesthatconnectthe twocommunitiesare identityand 28. McClary,"Livingto Tell,"14-15. 29. MarkD. Hulsether,writingfor the LeftprogressiveChristianjournalChristianityand Crisis,forcefullyaffirmshis sense of the radicalmessage of "Likea Prayer":"Thisvideo is one of the most powerfulstatementsof the basic themes fromliberationtheologies I have seen in the mainstreammedia. Itsharplyrejects racistperversionsof Christianity such as the KuKluxKlan;emphasizes Jesus' humansolidarityor identitywithvictimsof oppression;places the cross in the contextof sociopoliticalstruggleand persecution;and justice. In presents the churchas a place of collectiveempowermenttowardtransforming cultureand combats bothpolice viothe contextof racism,it promotesAfrican-American lence and the scapegoating of blackmales. Ina way that converges withsome feminist theology,it stresses the importanceof the eroticin conceptualizingfaith"(see "Madonna and Crisis,15 July1991, 234-36, especially235). and Jesus," Christianity

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 181 icon. Identityconnects Madonnaand the Blackpriestess,the Madonna, a phallicwoman,the "muse,"who answers Madonna'sprayersand asThe identification, sists her,who participatesas hermirrorin the narrative. two Madonna does not redeem extends individuals; furthermore, beyond and fromthe commualone, she seeks assistance fromher Blackdouble nityof worshipwhom the womanrepresentsand leads. The icon is the Madonnaicon par excellence:The cross, or crucifix,the calvaryfor African Americans,and the burningcross of the KuKluxKlanall remindus thatCatholicsandAfricanAmericans(as wellas Jews) weretargetsof this nationalistprojectconductedinthe nameof the cross. Itis no wonder,then, and thatthe firstto speak out aboutthisvideo,condemningits irreligiosity were fundamentalist leaders and sacrilege, religious televangelists-Jimmy Swaggart,DonaldWildmon,BishopGracidaof Texas, and the American FamilyAssociation.30 Thisstoryof how a whitegirllearnsto "dothe rightthing"and succeeds, withthe helpof a Blackwomanandthe Blackcommunity, depends on the scapegoat and the saved being Blackand in a positionof even more radicaldisempowerment relativeto the policeand to "America." As the recognitionof a predicament,the narrativeis politicallyprogressive; in its resolution,however,it participatesin the mythof the great white in its simulfemininewishfulfillment savior,markedhere as a traditionally taneous desire for powerand approval.The absent-mother-returned-asdivine-intercessor-become-Black mitigatesthat usurpation,coveringalso forthe guiltof the whitewoman'seroticappropriation of the manshe saves (the Blackwomansays "I'lltake you there"just beforethe cameracuts to the kiss).The narrativeitselfsignalsthisironythroughthe explicitreference to fantasyand dreamas the contextsforwish fulfillment and throughthe framingdevice of the play,whichdistancesthe events fromanythingthat in the video and her mightoccur in "reallife."Madonna'shyperfemininity associationwiththe childreninthe choirattemptto convinceus thatshe is, indeed, a daughter,a mediator,and notthe powerfulsuperstarMadonna, so thatwe can "believein"the powerandagencyof the otherwoman.But the governingironyof the text as a whole,an ironythatremainsunstated, is thatthe mother,the Madonna,is Madonna; the Blackwomanis "merely" a screen. Itis in its relationto the "Otherwoman"then,to use GayatriSpivak's that the politicalblindspot in the narrative,and in its reception, term, 30. Cox, "PepsiCans Its MadonnaAd underPressure."

182 boundary2 / Summer 1992

appears.31We wouldnot expect a Madonnacommercialto assume any otherthanthatof its protagonist,Madonna.Thoughin the subject-position media we can see interviewswith Leon Robinsonand hear him speak about his role,withregardto the otherwomanthere is silence, so much silence that I do not knowher name.This necessarilyquestionsthe genin its interaction der/raceempowermentof the representation witha hegemonicracismthattraditionally suppresses nonstereotypicrepresentations of womenof color.The erasureof the embodiedAfricanAmericanwoman, the Madonnaof the narrative--Madonna's double-is even moremarked, because she is the onlycharacterotherthanMadonnato have a solo part inthe song. The Pepsicommercialmerelyreinforcesthe interchangeability of that image, forthe gospel solo is sung not by the womanwe see here but by a morestereotypical-maternaland desexualized-memberof the forthe traditional choirwho is, therefore,more"fitting" worshipsettingof the service. relatednessthatwillnotobey the rules A boldfantasyof intercultural of necessaryinterracial of the dominantculture'snarrative conflict;a fantasy thatrecognizesitselfas such;a worldwherewomen of self-aggrandizement are bothheroicand omnipotent,wherefemaleagency can be effective.A world,too, where the authoritiesare benign,where policewilladmitthat they have madean honestmistake.AworldwhereBlackwomenapproveof of AfricanAmeriwhitewomen'sdesiresforthe leadingroleinthe narrative can salvation.As AndrewRoss has insisted,"Wecannotattributeanypurity of politicalexpressionto popularculture,althoughwe can locate its power to identifyareas and desires that are relativelyopposed, alongsidethose Incelebratingthe protothatare clearlycomplicit,to the officialculture."32 feminists must academic of Madonna's texts, recognize,as well, political these fantasiesserve. Madonnais not,afterall, a the self-aggrandizement feminist(pace CamillePaglia);she is a female multimillionrevolutionary aire.33MTVreveals its politicalinadequaciesin the very postmodernism and Sexual Difference,"in Contemporary 31. GayatriChakravortySpivak,"Imperialism ed. RobertCon Davisand RonaldSchleiand Cultural Criticism: Studies, Literary Literary fer (New Yorkand London:Longman,1989), 517-29. 32. Ross, No Respect, 10. 33. CamillePaglia,"Madonna-Finally,A Real Feminist,"New YorkTimes,4 Dec. 1990. Both Paglia and Madonnaare calledfeministsby the press, butfeministssui generis. In my own understandingof feminismthis is not possible, since feminism,by any political definition,implies collective politicalstruggle,distinguishingit froma liberalbourgeois even when the individualis markedas female. ideologyof individualism,

Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 183 of its premise:It is the individual, or the privatesubject,who makes culorcollectivities, andindividuals turalmeaning,ratherthancommunities may become empoweredthroughthose meanings.34 So whyreadMTV,andwhyreaditinthisway?Forone thing,it'spleasurable-pleasurable because these texts are thereto be readand talked and gossiped about publiclyin the culture.Theyoften bridgeclass gaps and, at least in my experience,have madeforsome interestinginterracial, and interfaithconversationsthat have served as occaintergenerational, sions for politicaldebate. Almostanyonecan participatein such debates and conversations,since Madonna,MTV,and television,in general, are availableto the manyratherthanthe few.Ifthe news constructs,produces, and mediates hegemonicnationalfantasies underthe guise of a reality principle,why not franklyconfrontand contestit withalternativefantasies explicitlyproducedinthe nameof pleasure? Atthe same time,the Leftcannotretreatintoanachronisticpuritanism withregardto whatit calls the new opiateof (young)people-"mass" culture-or else it cedes a strategicterrainof culturalpoliticsalltoo clearly recognizedas such by the New Right.These texts maysuggest strategies forthe empowermentof the subordinated, marginal,andde-centeredin advanced capitalistculture,strategiesthatare not anachronisticbut bornof the mediumof advancedcapitaland the gaps thatare producedwithinit. I am interestedin the ways such strategies,and such technology,may be used to producesignificantcounterhegemonic forceswithina culturewhose classes seem to have the of containment.IfGilScottart ruling perfected Heronis correctin claimingthat"therevolution willnotbe televised"(and I am no longerconvincedthathe is), it may,nevertheless,be the case that throughstrategicarticulationsof these popularculturaltexts, something "likea" revolutioncan be imagined.

34. Perhapsthis is a sign of capitalism'striumphfromwithinthe postmodern,forthe constructionof the privatesubjectas addressee andagent seems to be simplythe extension of bourgeoisindividualism.

Soft Boundaries and Relatedness: Paradigm for a Postmodern Feminist Musical Aesthetics

Claire Detels This articlewas inspiredby three convergingacademic developments: (1) the rising interdisciplinary influenceof postmodernthought; feminist the of aesthetic (2) emergence theoryinthe literaryandvisualarts, developed in supportof the feministcriticismin those fields;'and (3) the I would like to acknowledgethe assistance received at the 1991 Instituteon "Philosophy and the Historiesof the Arts,"directedby ArthurDanto,co-directedby AnitaSilvers, GerroldLevinson,and NoelCarrollandsponsoredbythe AmericanSociety forAesthetics and the NationalEndowmentforthe Humanities,in revisingand completingthis article.A shorterversionof it was deliveredat the 1991 Portlandmeetingof the AmericanSociety forAesthetics. 1. See TorilMoi, Sexual/TextualPolitics:FeministLiteraryTheory(London:Methuen, 1985), fora concise descriptionof the origins,development,andvariouscamps and practitionersof feministaesthetics. Also see NancyK.Miller,ed., ThePoetics of Gender(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress); and Josephine Donovan,ed., FeministLiteraryCriticism: Explorationsin Theory,2d ed. (Lexington:UniversityPress of Kentucky,1989), for essays by and aboutmanyof the centralfiguresof feministliterarytheory.Fortheoretical essays on the visual arts, see LindaNochlin,Women,Art,and Powerand OtherEssays (New York:Harperand Row, 1988);GriseldaPollock,Visionand Difference:Femininity, Feminism,and the Historiesof Art(New York:Routledge,1988);and a special issue of Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness185 recentfloweringof feministmusiccriticism,offeringa challengeto the positivisticmode of mainstreammusicologyand its overlyreifiedconception of music, as especiallyseen in the theory,pedagogy,and productionof Westernartmusic.2 it appears the time In view of the thirddevelopmentin particular, may now be ripeforthe emergenceof a feministmusicalaesthetics, featuringa new paradigmthatcan supportthe new feministmusicalcriticism by changingthe termsof the musico-aestheticdebate, similarto the way in whichnew feministparadigmsand theoreticalconcepts have changed the aesthetic debate in the literaryand visual arts.3The paradigmI am proposingis that of soft boundariesand relatedness,whereinthe covert valuationof "hard"(i.e., clearlydistinct)boundariesin traditional aesthetic definitionsandjudgmentsaboutmusicis supersededby the recognitionof the need to considerrelatednessof musicandmusicalentitiesacross "soft" (i.e., permeable)boundaries,includingrelatednessto social contextand function.The soft boundaryof the paradigmis not a hard-and-fast lineor rulefordefiningandjudgingmusicas intraditional aestheticsbutis similar to Heidegger'ssense of boundary:"thatfromwhichsomethingbegins its essential unfolding."4 As a result,the implicitcriticalfocus of the paradigm is on howthe unfoldingproceedswithinandacross permeableboundaries, ratherthan on the definitionand reification of the boundariesthemselves. in other the is focus Or, words, necessarilythe whole musicalexperience ratherthanany particularized musicalentities. Inits attentionto relationship, ratherthansingularfact or thing,the Journalof Aesthetics and ArtCriticism,entitled"Feminismand Traditional Aesthetics," 48, no. 4 (Fall1990). 2. See Susan McClary,FeminineEndings(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991), 3-31, for a surveyand discussionof the rise of feministmusiccriticism. 3. The need fornew paradigmsand theoreticalconcepts has been a consistenttheme in feministtheory for the literaryand visual arts, and notablesuccess has been achieved with the paradigmof genderized perspectiveand such concepts as the "malegaze" and the gendered sadomasochismof narrativeand representationin general.See Mary Deveraux,"OppressiveTexts,ResistingReaders,andthe GenderedSpectator:The New Aesthetics,"Journalof Aesthetics and ArtCriticism48, no. 4 (Fall1990):337-48. Deveraux discusses howthe conceptof the "malegaze" has literallychangedthe subjectin art and filmcriticism.See also Teresa de Lauretis,Technologiesof Gender (Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 1987),forsome of herinfluentialessays on the genderviolence of narrativeand representationin literatureand film. 4. MartinHeidegger,Basic Writings,ed. DavidFarrellKrell(New York:Harperand Row, 332. 1977), in chap. 8, "BuildingDwellingThinking,"

186 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 paradigmof soft boundariesand relatednesshas ties to contemporary hereas a postpostmodernandfeministtheory,hence its characterization modernfeministparadigm.The ties to postmodernism are most obvious, has stated, the key to the postmodernhabitof for, as Jerome Klinkowitz is "that the authentic thought phenomenonin any event is not fact but The reorientation fromfactto relationship has rootsin exisrelationship."5 tentialand pragmatistphilosophy,6 but it has receivedparticularemphasis in the Frenchpoststructuralist theoryof, forexample,MichelFoucault, and "logoJean-FrangoisLyotard, Jacques Derrida,whereinthe traditional centric"claims to epistemologicaluniversalityand objectivityhave been deconstructedand replacedby a recognitionof the validityof multipleperspectives of reality,each relatedto its owncontext.7Thus,postmodernism has becomethe philosophyof pluralism andrelativity, or,as Lyotardputsit, thatwhich"deniesitselfthe solace of good forms."8Inthe case of music, that denial must extend to supposed normsof musicalstructure,as we shallsee. Theconnectionsof the paradigmof softboundariesand relatedness to feministtheoryare moredifficultto definebutjust as important.Note, for example,thatthe identification of relatednessas a feminine-identified functionstartedin Freudianpsychoanalytic theoryandwas counterfeminist insome respects.Manyfeministtheorists,however,havealso exploredthe connectionbetweenrelatednessand the feminineand have foundvalidity than nature.9Anothertie therein,usuallymore in terms of enculturation 5. Jerome Klinkowitz, Rosenberg, Barthes, Hassan: The PostmodernHabitof Thought (Athensand London:Universityof GeorgiaPress, 1988), 8. 6. See Heidegger,Basic Writings.See also John Dewey,Artas Experience(New York: Minto,Balchand Co., 1934),whose focus on experienceis becominginfluentialagain in aesthetic circles;see, forexample,ArnoldBerleant'srecentArtand Engagement(Philadelphia:Temple UniversityPress, 1991), and MarciaEaton'sAesthetics and the Good Life(Londonand Toronto:Associated UniversityPresses, 1989). 7. See Jacques Derrida,"Structure,Sign and Play in the Discourseof the Social Sciences," in The StructuralistControversy:TheLanguages of Criticismand the Sciences of Man, ed. RichardMackseyand EugenioDonato(Baltimoreand London:Johns Hopattackon Western kins UniversityPress, 1971),247-65, forthe definitivepoststructuralist logocentrism.Also see Jane Flax, ThinkingFragments:Psychoanalysis,Feminismand Postmodernismin the ContemporaryWest (Berkeley,Los Angeles, and Oxford:University of CaliforniaPress, 1990), 187-221, for an insightfulgeneral discussion of the postmodernepistemologiesof Derrida,Foucault,Lyotard,and RichardRorty. 8. Jean-FrangoisLyotard,The PostmodernCondition:A Reporton Knowledge, trans. Geoff Benningtonand Brian Massumi (Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1984), 81. 9. See, most notably,Carol Gilligan,In a DifferentVoice: Psychological Theoryand

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness187 to feministtheoryis in the implicitemphasison experienceand the body, and hierarchization towarda an emphasisthatleads awayfromreification morecommunal,sharedconceptionof art.10 Inaddition,the implicitpluralism of the paradigmhas ties to feminist in viewtraditional that like feminists, postmodernists, theory many logocentricthinkingas inherentlymonistic,hierarchic, andmarginalistic because of its habitualbinarydivisionsand the tendencyto privilegeone memberof the binarypairoverthe other(as inthe structuralist dyadsof culture/nature, Suchan observationis feminist,not cooked/raw,and masculine/feminine). just postmodern,because, as biologicalandculturalmothers,womenhave the roleand consequenthardshipsof oursociety'sprimaryOther,andthey are thus best positionedto recognizeand theorizeon the functioningand ingeneral." ramifications of marginalization, a relevant responseto the hardboundariesof traditional Although Westernthoughtand culturein general,the paradigmof soft boundaries and relatednessis especiallywell suitedto the task of changingthe subject in aesthetics because it directlyreveals and countersthe otherwise covertvalueof hardboundariesthathaveprevailedin aestheticdefinitions and judgmentsgoing back to classical Greekcultureand the categories of Aristotle.In the seventeenthcentury,these hardboundariestook the formof Cartesiandualism,which,accordingto Susan Bordo'scritique,consisted largelyof masculinistprojectionsof rageandfearontothe feminineidentified,sensual realmof natureand the consequentattemptsto control Women'sDevelopment(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1981);and Nancy Chodorow, The Reproductionof Mothering:Psychoanalysisand the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1978). 10. See, for instance, Jane Gallop, ThinkingThroughthe Body (New York:Columbia "NinePrinciplesof a Matriarchal UniversityPress, 1988); and Heide Gottner-Abendroth Aesthetic,"in FeministAesthetics, ed. Gisela Ecker,trans. HarrietAnderson(Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 81-94. Also see Hilde Hein, "TheRole of FeministAesthetics in FeministTheory,"Journalof Aesthetics and ArtCriticism48, no. 4 (1990): 281-91. Hein finds both feministtheory and feministaesthetics to be groundedin the notionof experience (288-89). 11. Discussed by DorothyDinnerstein,TheMermaidand the Minotaur:Sexual Arrangements and HumanMalaise (New York:HarperColophonBooks, 1976). Also note the feministessentialistpositionof LuceIrigaray, ThisSex WhichIs NotOne,trans.Catherine Porter(Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1985),who makesa biological-sexualconnection of monismto the male body(thusthe termphallogocentric)andof pluralismto the female body. See also JudithButler,Gender Trouble:Feminismand the Subversionof Identity (New York:Routledge,1990), who warnsagainstthe use of all such binarydistinctions; see especially chap. 1, "Subjectsof Sex/Gender/Desire,"1-34.

188 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 that realmwith dualisticdefinitionsand judgments.12 WithKantand the romanticaestheticrevolution, the hardboundariestookfurtherformin the insistence on a pure, intellectualdisinterestednessin the aesthetic perceiverandon autonomyforthe artistandartwork. Accordingto Marxistcritic the romantic "aestheticideology"amountedto a kindof TerryEagleton, and universality denial,wherebythe combinedassumptionsof subjectivity acted as the "jokerin the pack"that served to circumventconsideration of the culturalrelatednessof art-includingthe relatednessof the critics' to theirown psychologicaland/or insistenceon autonomyand universality politicalagendas.13Inotherwords,once culturewas clearedfromthe field, the way was clear forthe criticto fillthe vacuumwithprojectionsof supposedlyuniversaldefinitionsandcriteriaforjudgmentsandthento use them of "greatness" canonsandhierarchies to buildunconsciouslyself-interested in the their Because of their construction cultural on basis. vacuum,the resultingdefinitions,judgments,and hierarchieshave since tendedto suffer that is, the judgmentsof meritserve as argumentfor the fromcircularity; criteria,and the criteriaserve as argumentforthe judgments. The above critiqueof aesthetics in Westerncultureapplies most as Catherine powerfullyto music, the realmof "risk-freeidentification" of aestheticcontenthas tended Clementputsit;there,the greaterambiguity to give freer reinto masculinistdenials and projections,especiallysince the rise of the romantic"aestheticideology"in the nineteenthcentury.14In 1854, EduardHanslick'sOnthe MusicallyBeautifultranslatedthe romantic aesthetic intothe autonomist,or formalist,theoryof music,a theorythat denies the aesthetic importanceof music'semotionaleffects and cultural functionsand,instead,regardsmusicas a purelyautonomousconfiguration musicphilosopherssince Hansof "tonallymovingforms."15Mostinfluential of Thought,"Signs 11 (1986):439-56, 12. Susan Bordo,"TheCartesianMasculinization especially 448-55. Also see ArthurC. Danto, ThePhilosophicalDisenfranchisementof Art (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1986), for a nonfeministperspectiveon the tendency of philosophyto disenfranchiseart. 13. TerryEagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Cambridge,Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 93. 14. CatherineCl6ment, Opera, or the Undoingof Women(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1988), 9. Also see John Shepherd,"Musicand Male Hegemony,"in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition,Performanceand Reception (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1987), 151-72. Shepherdsays the powerand physical relatednessof musicalsound "remindsmen of the fragileand atrophiednatureof their controlover the world"(158). 15. EduardHanslick,On the MusicallyBeautiful,trans.GeoffreyPayzant(Indianapolis:

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness189 lickhave continuedhis formalistviews at least to some extent. Moreover, since the 1950s and the rise of analyticaesthetics,the disciplineof music theory(inwhichmusico-structural conceptsaredevelopedandapplied)has from formed a distinctprofessionwithits own and separated musicology societies, journals,andcredentials.Bothmusictheoristsandanalyticmusic hard-boundaried manner, philosopherstend to view musicin a particularly aboutthe culturalcontextof music excludingpractical,historicalinformation and relyinginsteadon formalistconceptsand circularargumentation. Evena briefexaminationof the academicproductsof musictheory and analyticmusic philosophyserves to underscorethe importanceof a new musico-aestheticparadigm.Forinstance,theoristLeonardMeyerunwittinglyprovidedan excellentexampleof the pitfallsof formalismand cirin his much-readandreprinted cularargumentation essay "SomeRemarks on Valueand Greatnessin Music,"whenhe referredto the question"What makes musicgreat?"as the $64,000 question.16 Inthe essay, Meyergives the formalistanswerthatmusic'sgreatnessdependswhollyon "syntactical and he argues for his positionin a covertcircularmanner. organization," "Ifwe ask,"he says, "Whyis Debussy'smusicsuperiorto thatof Delius? the answer lies in the syntacticalorganizationof his music, not in its suThisis a circularargumentbecause it startsfrom periorsensuousness.""17 the assumption,based on Debussy'shighercanonicalstatus over Delius, that Debussy'smusicis superior,andthatthe reasonforits superiority will the universal criterion for musicalgreatness.Inother provide understanding of Debussy'smusic"leads words,the answer"thesyntacticalorganization back in circularfashionto the formalisttheory,which,in turn,leads to the

HackettPublishingCo., 1986), 29 and throughout.I use the termformalistinsteadof the morefrequentlyencounteredcognitivistinorderto avoidconfusionwiththe sense of cognitivismfound in experimentalpsychology,where it comprises physical,emotional,and formalisticmentalfunctions. 16. LeonardMeyer,"SomeRemarkson ValueandGreatnessinMusic,"in Music,the Arts and Ideas: Patternsand Predictionsin Twentieth-Century Culture(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1967), 22-41. 17. Meyer,"Some Remarks,"36. Meyer'swritings,in whichhe posits universalformalist criteriafor musical meaning and value, remainin printand influential.His more recent work,however,shows an increasedrecognitionof the relatednessof musicalmeaningand value to culturalcontext.See, forexample,"Exploiting Limits:Creation,Archetypes,and Style Change,"in ContemplatingMusic:Source Readingsin the Aestheticsof Music,ed. Ruth Katzand CarlDahlhaus,Aesthetics in MusicSeries, no. 5 (New York:Pendragon Press, 1987), vol. 2, 678-717.

190 boundary2 / Summer1992 proof of the superiority of Debussy's music (which, however, was never doubted inthe firstplace). Here and elsewhere, circularargumentationfunctions so smoothly that issues of substance, such as an explanation of how Delius's or Debussy's musics are more or less sensuous or syntactical, fall by the wayside. Those who recallthe 1950s TVgame show "The$64,000 Question" also may remember the scandal that broke out when it was revealed that winningcontestants had been told the rightanswers in advance of receiving the questions. Unfortunately,the circularequation of the rightanswers preceding and followingthe questions is so common in musical aesthetics and criticismthat no such scandal breaks out in the academy when the musicoaesthetic value fix is in. Again, it is the greater ambiguity and confusion about what constitutes musical content-a confusion fostered by the denial of culturalconnection-that allow weak arguments like Meyer's to pass as authoritative. A more complex example of the pitfalls of formalism and circular argumentation is found in Peter Kivy's Osmin's Rage: Philosophical Reflections on Opera, Drama, and Text(1988). (Kivyis the most prolificand prominentphilosopherof music at present.) Followinga highlyquestionable assertion that "all art requires theory-not just for its creation but for its appreciation,"18Kivy compares the judgment of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte underJoseph Kerman'stheory of "operaas drama"withthe judgment under his own theory of opera as "drama-made-music"and reaches almost comic heights of dialectic: On Kerman'sinterpretation,Cosi emerges as a deeply flawed though (I am sure Kerman would agree) estimable work. On my view it emerges as Mozart'smost perfect opera-which may be to say the most perfect opera. What does this tell us about Cosi as a work of art? What I want to emphasize is this: it by no means follows that Cosi emerges as a greater workof art under my descriptionthan under Kerman's.Or,to put it another way: under my description of opera as drama-mademusic, Cosi fan tutte is a more perfect example of that kindthan The Marriageof Figaro; but this in no way impliesthat, under my description, Cosi is a greater work of art. Indeed, I thinkthe opposite: that 18. Peter Kivy,Osmin's Rage: PhilosophicalReflectionson Opera, Drama,and Text (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress), 184.

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness191 althoughCosi is the moreperfectopera,whichis to say, the greater drama-made-music, Figarois the greaterwork.19 The comedy is thatamidthese torturedeffortsto clarifythe appropriatetheoryon whichto judgeCosifantutte,the actualexperienceof the music is lost to consideration.Thus, Kivy'sargumenthere, rathertypical of his musico-aestheticworkin general,demonstrateshowformalistthinking tends to evade and/orcontrolhumanaestheticexperiencewithinthe sharpboundariesof the theorythatsupposedlygives it birth"quamusic, qua art, qua aestheticalobject,"as he puts it.20In the narrowsector of contemporaryacademicmusic,where composers'writtenand published theoriesabouttheirmusicareoftenbetterknownthanarethe compositions themselves, Kivy'sview appearsreasonable.It also makes sense in the somewhatwidercontextof the classicalconcert,or, to cite PrimatConehead's analytic-styledefinition,the "gathering of humansto absorbsound In a more life-connected musical vital, culture,however,the patterns."21 notionthat music needs theoryfor its existence, especiallytheoryof the disconnectedkind,is highlyproblematic. Whatmusic formalistic,culturally moreprobablyneeds, at least fromscholars,is a greaterunderstanding of its relatednessto life, somethingit may receivewhen the covertmusicoaestheticvaluingof hardboundariesis supersededbythe paradigmof soft boundariesand relatedness. Thereare at least threeaspects of musicalexperienceto whichthe paradigmof soft boundariesand relatednesscan usefullyapply:(1) relatedness of musicalexperienceto the body;(2) relatednessamong the constituenciesof musicalexperience,includingthe composer,performer, audience,critics,and community;and (3) relatednessof musicalstyle to culture.Inthe restof my remarks,Iwillexploreeach of these areas briefly, musico-aesthetictheoryare, suggesting what the problemsof traditional how the new paradigmwilladdressthem,and how it connects to intellectualand musicaldevelopmentsthatare alreadyin process. Iwillalso offer some suggestions aboutthe new types of theoreticalconceptsand critical 19. Kivy,Osmin'sRage, 261. 20. Peter Kivy,"WhatWas HanslickDenying?"Journalof Musicology8 (1990):13. Kivy also denies that musiccan arouse whathe calls the "gardenvariety"emotions(i.e., love, hope, fear,joy, and sorrow)"inany aestheticallysignificantway"(18). 21. Fromthe "SaturdayNightLive"sketchof the ConeheadswithFrankZappa,rebroadcast on TheBest of SaturdayNightLive,28 Feb. 1991.

192 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 approachesthatcouldbe developedand used underthe paradigmof soft boundariesand relatedness. Music's Relatedness to the Body Recognitionof music's relatednessto the body appearedprominentlyin late eighteenth-century expressiontheory,but such recognition recededinthe nineteenthcentury,whenmostaesthetictheoriststendedto makea sharpCartesiandivisionof mindandbodyandto projectsensuality culturalnormsonto the feminine-identified away fromthe male-identified male authors,painters,and realmof the Other.(Latenineteenth-century inextreme,sadomasochistic composersfrequentlyexhibitedthisprojection Nonetheless, images of female madness, hysteria,and nymphomania.)22 the connectionof music to the body was maintainedin Schopenhauer's tying of music to the will(the existence of whichhe constructsfromthe in Nietzsche'scall for a reindividual'sawarenessof her/hisown body),23 and intwentieth-century psycho-aesthetic valuingof the Dionysianmode,24 Carl and Donald of Julia Kristeva, Winnicott, amongothers.25 writings Jung, Intermsof actualmusicalexperience,the denialof music'srelatedness to the bodyhas quiteliterally"heldsway"in the contextof the Western musicalconcert,resultingin the sharpboundaries-taboos, reallyresponsesof swaying, appliedagainstotherwisecommonmusico-physical 22. See BramDijkstra,Idolsof Perversity:Fantasiesof FeminineEvilin Fin-de-siecleCulture (New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1986),372-76; and LawrenceKramer,"Culture and MusicalHermeneutics:The Salome Complex,"CambridgeOperaJournal2 (1990): 269-94. 23. ArthurSchopenhauer,TheWorldas Willand Representation,vol. 1, trans.E.J. Payne (1819; reprint,New York:Dover,1969), 255-67 and 99-103. 24. FriedrichW. Nietzsche, TheBirthof Tragedyfromthe Spiritof Music,in ThePhilosophy of Nietzsche, trans.CliftonP. Fadiman(New York:ModernLibrary,1984), 162-87. 25. See, for example, Julia Kristeva'scharacterizationof music as "constructedexclusively on the basis of the semiotic"(i.e., the pre-symbolic),in The Revolutionin Poetic Language, trans. MargaretWaller(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress), 24. Musicologist Renee Cox develops Kristeva'sapproachin "RecoveringJouissance: FeministMusical Aesthetics,"in Womenin Music:A History,ed. KarinPendle (Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress, 1991), 331-40, proposingthe revaluationof flexibleor cyclicalmusical elements and techniqueswhich,unlikethe structured,logicallinearelements and techniques of masculinistmusic, may give us access to the "jouissance"of the pre-symbolic realm.(I wish to thankthe authorfor allowingme to read this essay while it was still in manuscript.)

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness193 singing,and beatingtime.This is especiallynotableduringclassical concerts, where permittedphysicalresponse is frozenintorequiredclapping zones between musicalworks(and, acting as a signifierof the unnaturalrepression,some occasionalspasms of uncontrollable coughingduring the works).These prohibitions againstthe body,beginningroughlywiththe concertperformancesof Kant'stime,contrastsharplywiththe intentional bodilyengagementfoundin the maingenres and performancesituations of manyother musicalcultures,includingpartsof our own popularmusic culture,manyancientandtribalcultures,andpre-industrial Westernculture to time before the decline of aristocraticpatronage roughlyup Kant's (i.e., andthe consequentfixingof the middle-classconcertas the privilegedform of musicaldissemination). Indeed,one can hardlyoverestimatethe influenceof the nineteenthcenturymiddle-classconcertand its continuedhegemonyas the privileged formof musicaldisseminationin Westernart-musiccultureon accepted modes of musicalstyle and experience.One notes, for instance,that the formalisttheoryof musicarose outof the contextof the concerthall.There, emotionaland physicalresponsesthathad previouslybeen welcome,accepted partsof musicalexperienceamongfriendsand familycould now have the unwelcomeeffectof alertingnearbystrangersto one's innermost theirabilityto hearthe music.Moreover, feelings, notto mentioninhibiting at the same time bodilyresponsewas ruledout of boundsforthe concert audience, it began to be expected in the creatorand performeras one of the signs of genius(a conditionKanthaddefinedas out-of-normal bounds), and so images of the intenselysensual, physicallyabnormal,or even contortionalperformer(andcomposer)beganto appearin publishedsketches and verbalaccounts of Beethoven,Chopin,Berlioz,Paganini,and Liszt. carriedthe deJacques Attaliarguesthatthese alienatedartist-celebrities niedsensual projectionsof theiraudiencesand learnedto feed offthem in sadomasochisticdemonstrations of power.26 26. Jacques Attali,Noise: ThePoliticalEconomyof Music,trans.BrianMassumi,Theory and Historyof LiteratureSeries, no. 16 (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1985), 65-72. Attaligives a Marxistanalysisof nineteenth-century concertculturein general,especiallythe orchestraandthe "genealogyof the star."See AnnE. Kaplan,"Gender Address and Gaze in MTV,"Rockingaroundthe Clock:Music TV,Postmodernism,and ConsumerCulture(New York:Routledge,1987), 89-142, for an analysis of the psychological relationshipbetween star and fans in contemporaryrockmusic. The relationship of starand audience is also relevantto the currentcontroversyover performancepractice for early or pre-romanticmusic, muchof whichwas originallycomposed and performed

2 / Summer 1992 194 boundary Itis easy to see how,inthisrepressedcontext,the notioncouldtake holdthat one's properapproachto musicas composeror listenerwas to attendto a set of "tonallymovingforms,"disembodiedfrommotion,emotion,or extrastructural meaning.Indeed,few wouldfaultHanslickforfailing of the concertandthe aestheticjudghistorical to understandthe relativity ments he made in its context.Today'sformalists,however,are on much thinnerground,continuingto viewas universalan approachto musicalproductionand receptionthatmodernhistoricalresearchhas clearlyrevealed to be culturallyrelative,an approachthat has the ethnocentriceffect of discounting,or discrediting,the great majorityof global musicalcultures throughouthistory. On the other hand, when we turnfromformalistcriticsto actual musicalartists,we findmoreawarenessand responsewithregardto the connectionbetweencontextof disseminationand style, probablybecause theirsurvivaland success are at stake. So, just as composersof instruformalist-oriented mentalmusicrespondedwithan increasingly style as the to concert church and chamber moved from context hall,and performance laterto privateand academicmeetingsof avant-gardecomposers,they willalso likelyrespondto a moveof art-musicbackto connectednesswith life.Giventhe threatof decliningpublicinterestand patronage,some have done so already.Forexample,the processand new-ageidiomsare a step consciousin this direction,both in theiremphasison the "being-in-time" and ness of the bodyand in theirreadyaccessibilityto the understanding of a wideaudience.27 participation The new, softer-boundariedperformancecontexts may include orothersocial comeverydaysettings,such as outdoorparks,restaurants, restrictionson and fewer with freer ambience a physical muningplaces include and or settings moving,talking,eating,drinking, sleeping, theymay in a very differentcontext fromthat of the concert hall. In my opinion,the unacknowledged subtext of the controversyis that some modernconcert performershave found the more historicallyauthenticinstrumentsand techniquesintroducedby performance practicespecialists to be less dazzlingto audiencesthanthose creatablewithmoderninstrumentsand techniques,and they have thereforeconcluded,in ahistoricalfashion,that authenticinstrumentsand performancesare not as good as modernperformances.See also Nicholas Kenyon,ed., Authenticityand EarlyMusic (New York:OxfordUniversity Press, 1988), fora varietyof essays on the controversy. 27. Steve Reich's music and writingsdemonstratethis;see Writingsabout Music (Halifax: Press of Nova Scotia College of Artand Design; New York:New YorkUniversity Press, 1974), especially9-11.

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness195 not yet imaginedfor genres that cross the boundariesof currentconvention. To our romantically acculturatedminds,some of these settings may statusformusic;butparadoxisuggest an unacceptablyhumble,utilitarian it I'art is the insistence on pourI'artautonomythathas cally, probably proud resultedin its humblingghettoization andneglectinourpubliclife,whereby utilitarian at athleticevents, arethe musipurposes,such as entertainment cal activitiesthat receivethe most regularsupportin the civic sector. On when it is the contrary,musicappearsto occupya higherstatus culturally in its evident with other forms of life for experience,as, example, integrated withpoetry,dance,eating,weaving,andreligiousceremoniesof integration the ancientPhrygians28 and in varioushunter-gatherer societies, wherein musicplaysa prominentrolein communalritualand life.29 Relatedness of MusicalExperienceamong Composer, Performer,Audience, Critics,and Community Ideasborrowedfrompoststructural theorystronglysuggestthe value of softer,less hierarchical boundariesamongthe constituenciesof artistic audience,critexperience-in the case of music,the composer,performer, viewof the literary ics, and community.Forinstance,the deconstructionist workas "text,"of writingas "textuality," and of readingas involvinga cocreative"intertextuality" is a modelthat, in effect,softens the boundaries and among writer,reader, community,and emphasizes not the fixingof absolute or hierarchical value butthe playof meaningsamongfluidconstituencies.30

In the case of the experience-oriented performanceart of music, the deconstructionistview is particularly applicable,not only because of the likelihoodof widelyvariantperformancesof any given workbut also 28. Renee Cox, "AHistoryof Music,"Journalof Aesthetics and ArtCriticism48 (1990): 395-409, especially 395-96. 29. See essays in Ellen Koskoff,ed., Womenand Music in Cross-culturalPerspective, Contributionsin Women'sStudies, no. 79 (New York,Westport,Conn., and London: GreenwoodPress, 1987); and MarciaHerndonand Suzanne Ziegler,eds., Music, Gender and Culture,Intercultural MusicStudies, no. 1 (Wilhelmshaven: FlorianNoetzel Verlag,1990). 30. Fora clear and concise discussionof these issues, includingtheirparticularapplication to music, see RolandBarthes, "FromWorkto Text,"in Joseph Margolis,ed., Philosophy Looksat the Arts:ContemporaryReadings in Aesthetics, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: TempleUniversityPress, 1987), 518-24.

2 / Summer 196 boundary 1992 because of the limitationsand variationsin the specificityof notational practicesover the historyof Westernart-music,not to mentionpopular music,and musicof othercultures.Forexample,incontrastto the relatively stable historicalpracticesof "notation" for,say, novels, or even dramatic of plays-which arguablypreservemany the author'sintentionsinthe written words,music-notational universal practiceshavebeen neitherculturally norhistoricallystable. Those practicesrangefroman absence of notation instrumen(a vast quantityof musicin the area of song and improvisatory tal genres and passages); to the merelymnemonicindicationsof phrase directionin ninth-century chant notation;to laterMedieval,Renaissance, and Baroquepractices(wherenotationof pitches and rhythmsis often incomplete,misleading,or ambiguous,and wherelittleor no information is providedon timbre,dynamics,tempo, and articulation). These crucial musicalelementswere all leftto the co-creationof musicalperformers,asmusicof theirown. Even in sumingthey were not occupiedin performing the case of our "commonpracticeperiod"(ca. 1750-present),notationof the mainmusicalelementsis stillusuallyincompletewithoutthe interpretawho is knowledgeablein the termsand tionof a skilled,musicalperformer of the techniques performancepracticeforthe periodandgenre involved.31 Thus,notonlyis the score a badgauge of a composer'sintentions, its very inadequacyto that purposesuggests the need to reevaluatethe Westernart-musicalviewof the composeras isolatedgenius-creatorat the top of a hierarchy-whose intentionsalone determinethe musicalworkand to considera demotion,if not a death, of the composer'sauthority.32 Thereigningnotiontoo closelyresemblesReagan's"trickle-down" theoryof economicsand has parallelresultsin termsof the musicaldisenfranchiseof the public.Weshouldnotethat of the majority mentand impoverishment domination the most of vituperative proponentsof this compositorial many were composers themselves (e.g., Berlioz,Wagner,Schumann,Brahms, 31. The article on "notation"is one of the longest in the standardreference workfor music, The New GroveDictionaryof Musicand Musicians,ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,1980), with eighty-sevenpages and fourauthors(Ian D. Bent, DavidHiley, MargaretBent, and GeoffreyChew).Giventhe complexityof the issues aroundmusical notationand the score, the effortamong analyticaestheticians,such as Nelson Goodman, to define the composer's intentions,and the musicalworkby referenceto it, would seem to be an exampleof the wrong,hard-boundaried paradigmat work. 32. RolandBarthesseems to haveoriginatedthe postmoderntrope"deathof the author"; in Image-Music-Text, see Barthes,"TheDeathof the Author," trans.Stephen Heath(New York:Hilland Wang, 1977), 142-48.

Detels/ SoftBoundaries andRelatedness197 Mahler,Schoenberg,and Stravinsky).Indeed,startingin the nineteenth century,the tendencyof composers less towardperformanceand more towardtheoryand criticismas a methodof supportingthemselvesand/or disseminatingtheirmusicis itselfa sign of the triumphof hard-boundaried theoryover musicalexperienceinthe Westernart-musictradition. Sadly,the composersare onlyapparentlythe victorsin this evoluof music'sotherconstituencieshas the tion,since the disenfranchisement effect of alienatingeveryonefroma healthyculturalconnectionto music andconsequentlyof leavingus passivereceivers,notso muchforI'artpour I'artculture,or even forthe cultureof popularmusic,butforthe multibilliondollarindustriesof civic and corporateGebrauchsmuzak, if I may coin a term. By Gebrauchsmuzak,I mean the footballfightsongs, supermarket music,advertisingjingles,movieandtelevisionsoundtracks,andotherartificiallyproducedsound environments,not to mentionthe mass-produced music videos and sound recordingsthatfeed the chainof demandin the popularmusicworld.Theproblemis notthe supposedgap invaluebetween highand low culturebut,rather,the largelyunnoticeddisenfranchisement and disengagementof peoplefromactiveengagementin a musicalculture of theirown.Wherepopularmusicas a wholefitsinthispictureis difficult to say, since it is comprisedof so manyhighlyvariantsubcultures.Chances are, though,that the extentto whichpopularmusicplays on us like elevatortapes (i.e., withoutourawarenessand involvement), it is partof the Gebrauchsmuzakproblemas well.On the otherhand,withthe paradigm of softer boundariesand relatednessamong musicalconstituencies,the and disengagementmight disenfranchisement, process of hierarchization, be turnedaround,anda moreequitablerelationship mightbe reestablished betweenmusicand its constituencies. Some composersfromthe art-musiccommunityhave blazeda trail for this kindof turnaround.(Ironically, they may be freerto do so than morecommercially tied popularmusicians.)Forexample,in writingsgoing backto the 1930s, proto-deconstructionist JohnCage challengedeveryasof Western art-musical in particular, he emphasized culture, and, sumption of the and the audience in the experience greaterengagement performer of music.33Morerecently,PaulineOliverosfrequentlycrosses the boundaries of genre and constituencyin her music,as in her explicitlyfeminist 33. See John Cage, Silence: Lecturesand Writings(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1939); and John Cage at Seventy-Five,a special issue of BucknellReview 32, no. 2 (1989), ed. RichardFlemingand WilliamDuckworth.

198 boundary2 / Summer1992 performance piece Sonic Meditations (1971), which she dedicates to "the elevation and equalization of the feminine principle along with the masculine principle."In the first of these musical meditations, entitled "Teach Yourself To Fly,"Oliveros gives performinginstructionsthat are accessible to anyone (not just professional musicians) and that emphasize the performers' engagement in the experience instead of requiringthem passively to transfer the composer's intentions down the chain to the even more passive listeners. The instructionsare: Any number of persons sit in a circle facing the center. Illuminate the space with dim blue light. Begin by simply observing your own breathing. Always be an observer. Graduallyobserve your breathing become audible. Then graduallyintroduceyourvoice. Color your breathing very softly at first with sound. Let the intensity increase very slowly as you observe it. Continue as long as possible until others are quiet.34 "Teach Yourself To Fly" may be too radical for some, but, at the very least Oliveros's instructions remind us that music is, first and foremost, experienced. Her view that valuing the feminine must mean a more egalitarian sharing of that experience, and thus a de-professionalization and de-hierarchization of it, is one that is shared by many feminists outside music, as well. Do we risk"greatness"by de-emphasizing professionalism? Perhaps, but if that means the reenfranchisementof people into active participation in a musical culture of their own, it could be worth the risk and might lead to a more generally shared culturalvalue down the road. The possibilityof softer boundaries and relatedness among the constituencies of a musical culture has also been raised through the explorations by twentieth-centuryanthropologistsand ethnomusicologists of preindustrialsocieties whose boundaries between the main constituencies of musical experience are frequentlysofter and differentlyfocused than those of Western industrialsociety. Forexample, ethnomusicologistElizabethTolbert tells of the spiritual,communalfunctionof the lamentamong the Finnish Kareliansand analyzes the music in context withthatfunction.35Anthropologist Carol Robertson finds that music, in the formof communallyperformed Music: His34. Quoted and discussed furtherin RobertP. Morgan,Twentieth-Century tory of Musical Style in ModernEuropeand America(New Yorkand London:Norton, 1991), 454. Powerand Genderin the KarelianLament,"in 35. ElizabethTolbert,"Magico-Religious Music, Genderand Culture,41-53.

andRelatedness199 Detels/ SoftBoundaries andSouthAmeriinthe AfricanKassen-Nankani ritual,offersthe individual tribes web of within which his/her can Mapuche "a individuality relationships can be defined,"includingthe web of gender relationships.36 Communal ritualgenerallyfigureprominentlyin dance, song, and religious-dramatic musiccultures,castingconsiderablequestionon the Westpre-industrial ern art-musicalview of these experiencesas secondaryto the "pure"exmusic.The long-standingtendencyof perience of untexted,instrumental musicologiststo ignoresuch discoveriesand thus to evade the relativizationof the practicesand values of Westernart-music,is finallygivingway, the curthanksin greatpartto the influenceof postmodernism-including and popularculture rent movementtowardmakingroomfor multicultural studies in Westernacademicinstitutions.37 Relatedness of MusicalStyle to Culture to considerstudiesleads verynaturally The mentionof multicultural ationof the thirdareaof musicalrelatednessunderdiscussioninthisessay, thatof the relatednessbetweenmusicalstyle and culture.Thisarea of relatedness has alreadyreceivedconsiderableattentionfromfeministand Marxistcritics,and some profoundinsightson the relatednessof style to culturehave alreadybeen reached,makingthe traditional aestheticclaims of autonomyfor the musicalworkand composermuch more difficultto criticismon the marmaintain.Nonetheless,somethingmorethaninsightful if of is needed the conservative practicesof ourinstitutions gins musicology of musicaleducationare to be affected.Forexample,despite multiculturalist success in introducing jazz, popularmusic,and worldmusicintothe academiccurriculum, the teachingmethodsfor musichistorycontinueto ignore connectionsof musicalstyle to culture,in favorof the otherwise longdiscredited"GreatMan[sic]"approach,wheremostof whatis empha36. Carol Robertson,"SingingSocial Boundariesinto Place: The Dynamicsof Gender and Performancein Two Cultures,"Sonus 10, no. 1 (Fall 1989): 59-71, and 10, no. 2 (Spring1990): 1-13. 37. The Westernethnocentricityof musicologistsis also reflectedin the use of the general termmusicology forthe moreculturallylimitedenterpriseof Westernmusicalstudy, and its isolationfromthe broader(thoughmorenarrowlytitled),fieldof ethnomusicology, which has its own separate society and journals.The isolation,and the assumptionof Westernculturalsuperiority,is onlynow beginningto be challengedin musicologycircles. See, forexample, JudithBecker,"IsWesternArtMusicSuperior?"MusicalQuarterly72 (1986):341-59.

2 / Summer 200 boundary 1992 sized, tested, and recalledis data aboutcomposers,almostentirelymale, inthe traditional canonof Westernart-music.Indeed,thereseems to be no timeforanythingelse, since accordingto standardcurricular practicesthe wholeof musichistorymustbe squeezed intoat best onlya few semesters out of sixteen years of public-supported educationand at worsta single semester (oreven no timeat all).As a resultof the curricular squeeze, the complexculturalevolutionand relationship amongmusicalgenres, styles, media,andtechnology,whichreallycomprisesthe historyof music,remains largelyunexamined,and studentsinsteadmemorizesimplistic,linkedsuccessions of style periodsand composers-said to have influencedeach other-in whatessentiallybecomes an extensionof "who'sbest"intothe historicalmode.38 The academicevasionof music'sculturalrelatednessis coupled,as is usuallythe case, witha diminution of women'smusicalactivities.Indeed, a masculinistslantcontinuesin musicologyandmusichistoryteachingto a degree thatwouldamaze culturalcriticsof otherfields.Take,forexample, TheMusicof Man,an expensivelyproducedseries of videosthataccompanies a currenthigh-sellingmusichistorytextbook.TheMusicof Manclearly marginalizeswomenin the titleand inthe accountsof the music-historical Of the myriadof active,influential musicalwomenof the twentiperiods.39 eth century,thisseries shows onlyMarthaGraham,JudyCollins,andJoan Baez, the last of whomis presentedas a womannotableforhavinghad a hismusic.(Infact,JoanBaez's love affairwithBobDylanandforperforming fame and influenceas a performerand composerprecededDylan's,and withher ratherthan the his career profitedfromthe personalrelationship otherway around.)Clearly,a new paradigmis needed in the teachingof musichistoryin orderto challengethe masculinistslant,the preoccupation withgreatness,andthe denialof culturalconnectedness. Withrespectto the teachingandanalyticalpracticesof musictheory, the paradigmof soft boundariesandrelatednessis intendedto leadto analyticalapproachesthatde-reifythe hardboundariesillustratedin the very terms withwhichwe thinkabout and analyze music (i.e., as in pitches, 38. The academic evasion of music'sculturalrelatednessis furtherdiscussed in Susan McClary,"TerminalPrestige: The Case of Avant-GardeMusic Composition,"Cultural Critique12 (1989):57-81. 39. TheMusicof Manvideos accompanyK.MarieStolba'sTheDevelopmentof Western Music:A History(Dubuque,Iowa:Brown,1990), ironicallythe firstmajorhistorytextbook to prominentlyincludematerialon womenin music.

andRelatedness201 Detels/ SoftBoundaries chords, rhythmicmotives,phrases, sections, movements,and works).40 Underthe new paradigm,applicationof supposedlyuniversal,theoretical concepts wouldbe restrictedto musicfor whichevidence of theirapplicabilitycould be foundin the music'sown culturalpractices,includingthe theoreticaldiscussion. performancepractices,notation,andcontemporary and would be applicableto a Thus,forexample,chords,sections, periods lot of eighteenth-century music,since composersnotatedthem and theoristsdiscussedthem,butnotto musicacrosshistoricalperiodsandcultures. Rather,musictheoristsand philosopherswouldbe forcedto deal withthe culturalpracticesof the musicthey are judging,in orderto develop and theoreticalconcepts,ina culturally related applythe new,softer-boundaried manner. The new culturally relatedboundaryconceptswouldcome fromthe actual experienceof the music,includingthe way it is performed,heard, taught,danced or movedto, and fromany dramaticor poetic texts with whichit is associated.The conceptscouldincludeterms(preferably in the language of the period)for sequences of bodilygestures that are associatedwithdancingor playingthe musicinquestion,orforthe organization of accompanyingtexts or dramaticrepresentations.Somethingvery like phraseswouldprobablyremainvalidforlotsof music,giventhe analogous structureof accompanyingpoetic lines and dance motionsin each case. Manyothersupposedlyuniversalboundaryconceptswouldhave to be rethoughtand replaced,however,if we are to take the relatednessof music to culturemoreseriously. relatedboundaryconceptstakes Oncethe developmentof culturally place,the waywouldbe clearformusiccriticismto developina morelegitimateandprofoundmanner,similarto the operationof criticisminthe literary andvisualarts.Thetypes of boundariespresentina musicalrepertory, and the waytheyfunction,wouldlikelybecomea regularfocus of musicalstudy and couldleadto strongerconnectionswithgeneralculturalcriticism,such as is alreadyfoundin criticismof the literaryand visualarts. Forexample, 40. It should be noted that some aesthetic views and analyticproceduresborne out of the romantictraditionemphasizedrelatedness,butto the extentthatthey operatedunder the assumptionof universality, they werejustas problematic.See, forexample, Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition,trans. ErnstOster (New York:Longman,1979), in which analyticaldiagramsoverlookprominentintendedphraseand sectionalendingsinorderto emphasize organiccontinuity,his universalvalue. Schenkerianmethodis a foundationof the currentmusic theoryprofession,and it is often appliedto repertoriesacross cultural periods,regardlessof relevance.

202 boundary2 / Summer1992 extrapolationsfrom Marxistliteraryand art criticismsuggest that in cultures of aristocratic patronage, where art and artists have been owned as property, the artistic styles reflect the hard boundaries of ownership, as can be seen in the distinct, often symmetrical, phrases, sections, and movements articulated by clear meters and mainlymasculine cadences of eighteenthcentury musical style.41The tendency of romanticand modernistmusic criticism has been to associate the breakingof these boundaries with "genius," which is very much in accordance with Kant'sview of the concept,42and to base canonical hierarchizationsof greater and lesser geniuses on theirtendency to break the boundaries. WolfgangAmadeus Mozart(our archetypal musical genius), for example, is a great composer because of his constant resistance to these boundaries, which takes the form of frequent feminine cadences, assymetrical phrases, metricaldisplacements, and surprises of chromaticism, tonality,and melodic contour. Putting the mythology of artistic genius aside, however, Mozart's boundary breaking might be understood better in relationship to his resistance to playing his expected role within the patronage system and against conventions and authority,in general.43By comparison within Mozart's close circle of contacts, this was a resistance that did not appeal to Antonio Salieri, on whom Pushkin, Schaffer, and their audiences have projected such heavy doses of romanticideology. Moreover,such resistance was probably psychologically impossible for Wolfgang's older sister Maria Anna Mozart:also a child prodigybut barredby familyand culturefrom public musical activityas an adult woman.44These observations move the criti41. See John Berger's influentialanalysis of seventeenth- throughnineteenth-century Europeanoil painting,Waysof Seeing (NewYork:PenguinBooks, 1977), 83-112. 42. ImmanuelKant,Critiqueof Judgment,trans.WernerS. Pluhar(1790; reprint,Indianapolis:HackettPublishing,1987), 176-78. 43. There is not time to develop this pointadequatelyhere, but resistance to authority is apparentin the composer's relationshipto his fatherand in the attitudesto musical and social conventions expressed in his letters, as, for instance, when he makes fun of the French "FirstStroke of the Bow"in a letterof 12 June 1778. W.A. Bauer and O. E. Deutsch, eds., Mozart:Briefeund Aufzeichnungen,II(Kassel:Barenreiter,1962), 378-79. 44. See RudolpheAngemuller,New Grove Dictionaryof Music and Musicians, s.vv. MariaAnna Mozart,on her retirementfrompublicmusicalachievement.Also see Eva Rieger,"DolceSemplice?On the ChangingRole of Womenin Music,"FeministAesthetmuting"of musical ics, 135-49, fora discussionof the psychologicaleffectof the "cultural women such as AnnaMariaMozart,ClaraWieckSchumann,Cosima LisztWagner,and AlmaSchindlerMahler,on theircreativity,147-48.

Detels / SoftBoundariesand Relatedness 203 cal focus from hierarchizationof greatness to culturalrelatedness, but they do not in any way devalue Mozart's music. Rather, they present another, more culturallyrelated basis for appreciatingthat music, without requiring the devaluation and dismissal of musical repertories in which boundary breaking is a lesser factor. In terms of current musical practice, application of the new paradigm of soft boundaries and relatedness between musical style and culture means questioning and playingwith the hard boundaries of traditionaland modernist styles, as in the deconstructive play of Cage, Peter Schickele (masquerading as P.D.Q. Bach),45and performanceartist LaurieAnderson, whose characteristic electronic distortionsof her own voice seem to mirror the electronic distortion and transformationof the subject in postmodern culture in general.46 Althoughthe new paradigmdoes not aim to privilegefemale musical voices over male, there is stilla prominentrole forwomen to play in its application, because they are best positionedto use the paradigmto deconstruct the traditionalbases of masculinistmusical privilegeand to explore expressions of feminine culturalidentitythat have been overlooked under the old paradigm. In Feminine Endings, Susan McClarydiscusses the possibilities of new discursive strategies for women composers at length, including a description of Janika Vanderwelde's Genesis II, in which the composer consciously decided to turn from the masculinist "beanstalk gestures" of traditionalmusical narrativeto an explorationof birthimagery in sound.47 It is impossible to predict exactly what effect an untried paradigm might have on the discourse and practice of music should it become accepted and current. Based on the effect of new feminist concepts in the other arts, it does appear that a new paradigmcan help lead to increased theoretical and criticalactivity,which, in turn,may have considerable effect on how music is taught and practiced in our society. On the pessimistic side, however, the positivisticfragmentationand isolation of music professionals into composition, theory, history,education, and performance, and the equally stark fragmentationof our musical subcultures, mean that any 45. See, for example, Peter Schickele's combinationof Baroqueand countrywestern idioms in Oedipus Texand OtherChoralCalamities(TelarcCD-80239, 1990). 46. See McClary,FeminineEndings, 132-66, for furtherdiscussion of LaurieAnderson and of the popularmusicianMadonnaas examples of womenfindingtheircreative musicalvoices throughnew feminist-minded discursivestrategies. 47. McClary,FeminineEndings,112-31.

204 boundary2 / Summer1992 new paradigmfaces an uphillbattle in receivingwide currencyin all the relevant musical institutions,journals, and associations.48Institutionalchange is necessary in order to address the professional fragmentationand, more generally, in order to reverse the ghettoization of music in the academy as an arcane study of the Western canon relevant only to music majors pursuing careers in performanceor in the teaching of more of the same. Actually,this may be the most crucialtask for which the paradigmof soft boundaries and relatedness is needed in our musical culture:to bring music out of the fragmented professional ghetto and back into relationship with people of all walks of life. At the moment, it appears as though only very extensive, interdisciplinarycurricularreformfromgrade school to university would be able to produce such a change. That view, however, of the situation may underestimate the readiness with which teachers and students of many subjects, and people in general, would reintegratemusic into their cultural awareness and activities if critical discourse in music were accessible and culturallyrelevant, as it would be under the new paradigm.

48. See MarciaJ. Citron,"Gender,Professionalism,and the MusicalCanon,"Journal of Musicology 8 (1990): 102-17; and Bruce Wilshire,The MoralCollapse of the University;Professionalism,Purity,and Alienation(Albany:State Universityof New York Press, 1990), 255-76, for a wider,more philosophicalview of the sickness of academic reification,in general, and the need forthe feministchallengeto it.

Wet, Dark,and Low, Eco-Man Evolves from Eco-Woman

Andrew Ross Thereis a terribleconfusionaboutourplace in nature. -Ynestra King,Healingthe Wounds

Does anyonereallywantto listento storiesaboutthe victimization of men? Thiswas one of the questionscoursingthroughthe cultureat large in 1991.The ostensibletopicmaywellhavebeen the mid-life"crisis"of the whitemaleyuppie,whose generationalexperienceseems to have become the dominantnarrativeof our culture;but the underlyingconditionsmay have just as muchto do withthe mid-lifecrises of the women'smovement andthe ecologymovement,alltoo apparentinthe emergenceof fundamentaliststrainsof ecofeminism,whose EarthGoddess is now being courted by its male cognate,the GreenMan,or the WildManof the media-struck "men'smovement."The essay thatfollowsspeculatesaboutsome of the circumstancesthat identifythis moment.As is often the case, the most symptomaticplaceto beginis withthe summermovies.

boundary 2 19:2, 1992. CopyrightC 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

206 boundary2 / Summer1992

LincolnGreen Perhaps it was too much to expect a truly"green"Robin Hood, his Merrie Men in bioregional sync with Sherwood Forest. But Kevin Costner had been well groomed as Hollywood'sambassador of nationalist myths of environmental romanticism. Hamming his way from one pastoral field of dream to another, he had survived Madonna's most public put-down in Truthor Dare and had graduated to the big league of ecological hype with his production of Dances with Wolves. His film rhapsodized the subsistence contract between tribe and herd on a buffalo-busyprairie,while its friendliness to the Lakota Sioux stroked Hollywood'sconscience about its appalling recordon Native Americandocudrama.Mostof all, Costner's persona was well tailored to the cut of modern liberalmasculinity,harmlessly heroic in spite of its best testosterone-induced intentions,and thus was targeted for honor by default ratherthan by officialhistory'selective aim. With a little heat, however, this new breed reduces to old school stock. The white man, now, with clean hands and dirtylaundry,and the red man, with humorthis time, not to mention native authenticity,mouthing,"We,who are about to die, salute you." Environmentalkitsch plays a co-starring role in all of this, for the film proved that the uncultivatedprairieremains a pivotal scene for illustrating stories about the national identityof North America's postcolonial societies. The appearance of the pristine prairiealways records the last moment of the native hunter-gatherereconomy before the new ecological revolution gives way to myths centered around the white settler's family farm. The transformationof the "wilderness,"which was once so crucial to North American expansionist destiny, has, in this century, become the very antithesis of white national identity,now so ideologically dependent upon the conservation of that same wilderness, whether on celluloid, on the Native American reservation, or in the strictlypoliced territoriesof the national parks "system"(systematizing what?). When Costner donned the Lincolngreen and set up shop in Sherwood Forest, his transnationalcelebrity value crossed over onto another country'secological terrain,similarlycharged withhistoricalsymbolism. The loss, and subsequently, the desperate preservation, of England's forests occupies a comparable place in the nationalecological romances, not least because the forest is the leafy location of all that has been resistant to the laws and decrees of the officialpoliticaland religiouspowers: the outlawed home, respectively, of the pagan spirit traditionsfeared by the church's

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 207 legislators, of masterless men feared by their would-be landed masters, of lost arcadian sentiment feared by Victorianindustrialists,and, most recently, of nondeveloped nature feared by would-be developers. Not that these two locations-the ecological and the ideological-are easily separable. The profitableclearing of forests, for example, had long been sanctioned by Christiantheology in the name of its holy war against the "sacred groves" of pagan worship. So, too, in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century England of Robin Hood, early capitalistmodes of productionin the metal industry had combined withrapidincreases in populationto drasticallyreduce the extensive woodland ecosystem, hithertothe preserve of the kingand the nobility,now given over to arable land reclamation.'The resultwas a terrain busily crossed by economic and culturalforces in conflict with each other: the domain of the king's laws of the vert and the monasteries' privileges, each suppressing the peasantry's demand to supplement its subsistence farmingwith hunting;the site of industrialexploitationof naturalresources, contested by the old organic religion'sinterdictionagainst such practices as profane; and the location of the gentry's nightmares about social bandits in an unregulatedterritory,matched by the counterculturalfantasy of a sylvan homeland for freed serfs. No wonder that the medieval tales about Sherwood Forest came to provide such an enduring myth for the national culture, or that the Robin Hood ethic of redistributingwealth would come to hold such internationalsignificance as a politicalallegory (the high point was the banning of Robin Hood stories from U.S. publiclibrariesduringthe McCarthyistheyday). Such historical questions may seem remote from a modern audience's response to the Costner vehicle of 1991, butthey are hardlyirrelevant to the accumulated associations of the Robin Hood figureas it has survived through centuries of differentmedia: the medieval ballads, the saturnalian rituals of the May Games, mummers plays, Renaissance printed broadsides and garlands, the historical romance, the Victorian penny weekly, 1. CarolynMerchantnotes the effects of diminishedforestlandin The Death of Nature: Women,Ecologyand the ScientificRevolution(San Francisco:Harper&Row,1980):"By the late thirteenthcenturyin London,itwas becomingnecessary to importsea coal from Newcastle, a soft coal witha highsulfurcontentwhichwhen burnedpollutedthe airwith black soot and irritating,chokingsmoke"(62). In Merchant'saccount,the demographic collapse of the fourteenthcenturyhelpedthe forests recoveruntilthe sixteenthcentury, when a more advanced ecological crisis, caused by the destructionof forests for naval construction,helpedgeneratethe firstmovementforconservationand a new managerial approachto nature,exemplifiedby John Evelyn'sDiscourseon Forest Trees(1662).

208 boundary2 / Summer1992 and the Hollywood blockbuster. Never a static legend, not even in medieval minstrelsy, it is only in the most recent Hollywood phase that the picture of Robin as a self-outlawed aristocrathas become an established convention, although this suggestion, which runs against the grain of the plebeian legend, goes back to the Scottish chroniclersof the mid-fifteenth century and was influentiallyrevived by the most Jacobin of the tale's editors, Joseph Ritson, in the wake of the French Revolution. That suggestion was at last fully incorporatedinto popular consciousness in Michael Curtiz's lavish 1938 film, where ErrolFlynn's noble Robin is posed as a self-outlawed Saxon freedom fighter resisting the Normanyoke. The 1991 version preserved the aristocraticconvention and added an actual Middle Eastern location to the Crusader story, which may say just as much about U.S. foreign policy in the nineties as the Curtizfilm'sSaxon patriotismsaid about antifascist sympathies in Hollywood'sPopularFrontyears. Kevin Reynolds's film may have missed a golden opportunity to "green"Costner further;itbarelydwells on the eco-communal yeoman order of the Merrie Men, and it deals the pagan hand to the townsman villain, Alan Rickman's deliciously sadistic Sheriff of Nottingham,whose actions are enthusiastically guided by a haggish prophetess. Instead, the film explains Robin's motives with a plot involvingbaronialtreachery against his patriot father and the subsequent dispossession of the son's patrimonial inheritance. Robin fights, then, in the name of an absent father, as part of an initiationrite to reclaim his noble title ratherthan to liberate the Saxon masses. The rottenness of the State produces his "dysfunctional"family, and Robin takes to male company (includinga Moor substitute father) in the wilderness to regain his legitimate place in society. Inthis respect, the film'sfilialadventurestory can be set alongside a differentkindof summer movie, John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood, a black, urban version of filialinitiation.Where dominantwhite Hollywoodrenditions of this narrative rework mythical figures-the urban Batman or the rural Robin Hood-marginal AfricanAmericanversions choose a contemporary realist setting.2 Only in 1991 would a mythical Anglo-Saxon outlaw be a match for the young black gangstas who were the focus of the year's spate of black-directed films, from New Jack City to Boyz N the Hood. In fact, Singleton's film was an earnest attempt to address the issue of paternal responsibility,which dogs so much of the discourse about the "problem"of 2. See my discussionof Batmanand Do the RightThingin "Ballots,Bulletsand Batmen: Can CulturalStudies Do the RightThing?"Screen 31, no. 1 (Spring1990).

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 209 young black masculinity.The "'hood"is a south-centralLos Angeles neighborhood, which is booby-trappedeverywhere by the corporate police state for the "self-destruction"of its inhabitants-gun shops and liquor stores on every street corner, the omnipresence of searchlights from LAPD helicopters constantly circlingoverhead, army recruiterssoaking up young surplus labor, and housing developers forcing rents up throughthe downward spiral of neighborhood impoverishment.The filmpresents an experiment in the social ecology of this kindof late twentieth-centuryurbanenvironment. The son in question, Tre Styles, is delivered by his buppie mother into the care of her estranged, but politicallysavvy, husband to do a properfather's job of saving him from the gangsta life. To set up this experiment, which meets with mixed results, the film accepts the standard bromide that responsibilityfor the dysfunctionalblackfamilylies with its flawed matriarchal structure.Consequently, a strong, nurturingfather-son relationshipis posed as the only shield against a waywardlife;the mother is demonized, and the environment is presented as naturallyHobbesian. In both films-Robin Hood and Boyz N the Hood-the sons survive their initiationadventures through the respective mediation of an absent father and a present father.Whatthe films share is an excision of mothers, mythicallyvacated in Robin Hood, sociologically expunged in Boyz N the Hood. As such, these films are welcome fuel for Hollywood's obsessive endeavor to find workable narratives of patriarchyfor its filial protagonists.3 After all, the summer's biggest film, Terminator2, whose hardbody Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton)finally signaled a response to the long-standing feminist demand for nongendered dramatic roles, would also showcase ArnoldSchwarzenegger's transformationfrommean cyborg motherfuckerto ideal father/just warrior.The erstwhile Terminatorshared his metamorphosis with the leading men of the summer's cluster of male conversion movies, Regarding Henry, The Doctor, and City Slickers, all focusing on the traumas of male mid-lifecrisis.

HairyGreen The loudest proclamationsof male mid-lifecrisis and anxieties about filial initiationin 1991 were to be found untrammeledin the media-hyped "men's movement,"associated withthe best-seller middlebrowpsychology PatriarchalCrisisand Generic Exchange," 3. See VivienSobchak, "Child/Alien/Father: CameraObscura 15 (1986):7-34.

210 boundary2 / Summer1992 and self-help literatureof Robert Bly (IronJohn), Sam Keen (Fire in the Belly), John Lee (The Flying Boy), RobertMooreand Douglas Gillette(King WarriorMagician Lover), the writingof psychologist James Hillman,and with the men's seminars and ruralWildMangatherings-replete with drum rituals and sweat lodges-which have become the experiential workshops of the movement. Rooted in the belief that all men share a deep atavistic masculinity that must be plumbed in order to overcome the wounds of an upbringing at the hands of overwhelming mothers and distant or absent fathers, advocates of this new male emotion therapy present it as a response to a social crisis of masculinityevolving in the West since the Industrial Revolution. Dismissive of the ruthless, exploitativecodes of dominant masculinity,these men-straight, white, middle-class professionals, for the most part-are also seeking an assertive alternativeto the softer or "feminine" personalitytypes favored by sensitive men over the last two decades. A numberof common themes sound throughoutthe literature:the pathology of the modern family has produced a "father-hunger"in men; the lessons of the women's movement have all been absorbed and need to be transcended, ratherthan answered, in the pursuitof authentic masculinity;the alienating patternof modern corporate life is only the latest industrialorganization of laborthat has increasinglydistanced fathers fromtheir sons; the work of healing involves initiatoryrelationshipswith older fatherfigures and a studied immersionin men's perennialphilosophyof fairytales, myths, and pre-Christianrituals. Ifthis is a social movement, on the partsof men-in-crisis,then it is not exactly a movement with a radicallineage or with ends that resonate with anything like familiar radical aims. Fifteen years ago, pro-feministmen's groups sprang up in most cities in NorthAmerica and Britainin response to the ideas and practices of the women's movement. Groups like Men Against Sexism and Men's Liberationflourished in an uneasy alliance with feminists and with gay and lesbian liberationists(the response fromwomen and gays ranged from damning with faint praise, to fearing cooption, to outrightlycondemning homophobia)and generated a steady flow of critical literaturethat constitutes a significantadditionto the body of workproduced in women's studies and gay and lesbian studies.4 Nowhere in the literature 4. Some of the more prominenttitles in this basicallyheterosexualliteratureincludeJon Snodgrass, ed., For Men Against Sexism: A Book of Readings (Albion,Calif.:Times Change Press, 1977); HarryBrod,ed., The Makingof Masculinities:The New Men's Studies (Boston:Allen & Unwin,1987); Jeff Hearn,The Gender of Oppression:Men,

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 211 of or about the new "men'smovement"is there any mention of these activities or texts. One reason forthis omission is that Bly and his fellow travelers are not engaged in a primarilypro-feministproject,and their concerns harbor even less of an appeal to sexual minorities. The broader reason for the lack of dialogue, however, lies in the difference of community.Popular or middlebrowpsychology literature,like Bly's Iron John, is addressed to a general audience. Its market is composed primarilyof heterosexual men in trouble, men who are alienated fromwork, romance, family,mainstream politics, and in search of some "truth"about themselves. These anxieties and desires are treated as a commodityby the author-therapistswho write the books and conduct the workshops. This audience, or community,is not concerned with responding to the shortcomings of masculinist Leftthought or to the universalistcritiques of radicalfeminism;this audience may have had littledirect contact with the arguments and debates about masculinity that have engaged these other communities of intellectuals and activists. This is not to say, however, that the discussion about masculinityfound in the pages of these new books is untouched by such arguments, or that the desire for a movement of this sort does not have something fundamentally

Harvester,1987);ArthurBrittan,MasMasculinityand the Critiqueof Marxism(Brighton: culinityand Power (Oxford:Basil Blackwell,1989); J. Nichols,Men's Liberation(New York:Penguin, 1975); RobertConnell,Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics (Cambridge:PolityPress, 1987); MichaelKaufman,ed., Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power, and Change (London:OxfordUniversity Press, 1987); Paul Hoch, WhiteHero, Black Beast: Racism, Sexism, and the Mask of Masculinity(London:Pluto,1979);Joseph Pleck, The Mythof Masculinity(Cambridge: MITPress, 1981); AndrewTolson, The Limitsof Masculinity(London:Tavistock,1977); EmmanuelReynaud,HolyVirility: TheSocial Constructionof Masculinity(London:Pluto, 1983); AndyMetcalfeand MartinHumphries,eds., TheSexualityof Men (London:Pluto, 1985); Brian Eslea, Science and Sexual Oppression:Patriarchy'sConfrontationwith Womenand Nature(London:Weidenfeldand Nicholson,1981), and Fatheringthe Unthinkable(London:Pluto,1983);AnthonyEasthope,Whata Man'sGottaDo: TheMasculine Mythin PopularCulture(London:Paladin,1986);AliceJardineand PaulSmith,eds., Men in Feminism(New York:Methuen,1987);Joseph Boone and MichaelCadden, Engendering Men: The Questionof Male FeministCriticism(New York:Routledge,1990); Vic Seidler, RediscoveringMasculinity:Reason, Language, and Sexuality(New York: Routledge,1989), and RecreatingSexual Politics(NewYork:Routledge,1991). The leading journalsincludeChangingMen (UnitedStates) and Achilles Heel (United Kingdom).In addition,Vic Seidler has edited a selection of essays fromAchilles Heel, entitled,TheAchillesHeel Reader:Men, Sexual Politics,and Socialism(London:Routledge, 1991).

212 boundary2 / Summer1992 to do with the more radical social, economic, and culturalcriticism of the last twenty years. Blythe showman has always been regardedas something of a snake oil salesman withinthe poetry community,or at best-with his cheesy, performative blend of Eastern mysticism, Jungian philosophy, and folk storytelling soaked in perennial wisdom-as an ersatz version of the truly holy Ginsberg. Nonetheless, his career as a poet lends philosophicalauthorityto his position today as the paterfamiliasof the emergent tribeof newly mature men. Iron John's middlebrowculturalhomeland lies beyond the realm of commercial popularculture,which, Bly believes, rituallydegrades men and excludes any representations of men who are preparedto accept the legitimate authority of what he calls "positive leadership energy" for the sake of the community. Politically,IronJohn positions itself beyond the twentyyear-old critiques offered by the women's movement, the separatist wing of which, "ina justifiedfear of brutality,has laboredto breed fierceness out of men."5 IronJohn rejects the model of masculinitythat evolved in response to feminism-that of the nondomineering,receptive, cooperative, supportive, and nonaggressive man-just as it rejects the polarizing, red meat alternative represented by John Wayne. In addition, the book attacks the whole premise of a "youthculture"that serves to defer boys' initiatoryentry into adulthood. IfIronJohn is not, at least on the face of it, the revenge of patriarchy,it is quite open about the revenge of the elders, whose gerontocratic power over the young was challenged by the generational disrespect of the sixties ("never trust anyone over thirty"),and whose authority Bly seems most interested in reaffirming.IronJohn may be yet another book originatingin some authorialtrauma experienced in the course of that turbulent decade. Youths, Bly concludes, need to go to finishing school with older male initiators,not withtheirown peers. And grown men must give up tryingto hold onto their youth. In place of the bland, domesticated men of today-"the sanitized, hairless, shallow man"of the Judeo-Christiancorporateworld-Bly invokes the pre-Greek myths of the Wild Man as the source of "deep masculinity" available to men who want to reclaim an energy that has been sapped by popularculture, feminism, and youth culture: When a contemporary man looks down into his psyche, he may, if conditions are right,find underthe water of his soul, lying in an area 5. RobertBly,IronJohn:A Book AboutMen (Reading,Mass.: Addison-Wesley,1990), 46; hereaftercited as IJ.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 213 no one has visited for a long time, an ancient hairyman.... Welcoming the HairyMan is scary and risky,and it requires a differentsort of courage. Contact with IronJohn requiresa willingness to descend into the male psyche and accept what's dark down there, including the nourishing dark. (IJ, 6) Who knows where this auto(homo)-eroticlook downward and this "different sort of courage" will lead? While Bly is persuaded that the engagement with this repressed HairyMan is a highly sexualized encounter, and while the fairytale he relates about IronJohn has a heterosexual-maritaldenouement, the outcome of this libidinalrendezvous is difficultto place in the actual worldof sexual relations. Myassumption is that the meeting with the Wild Man capitalizes on the fantasy of a same-sex encounter that dare not speak its name. Too much of this stuffmimicsstandardexotic gay male narratives and fantasy sexual types to pass itself off as hetero male bonding, no matter how deep or courageous. If Bly is symptomaticallydiffidentabout the question of sexuality, he is slightly more open about the raciallineage of this deep male atavism:The IronJohn fairy tale that structures his book "retainsmemories of initiation ceremonies for men that go back ten or twenty thousand years in northern Europe" (IJ, 55). This, however, has nothing to do with simple Aryan race worship. Bly is an effortless name-dropperin the realmof comparative religion and world mythology. His Wild Man, as it turns out, is universally present in Mediterranean,African, Indian,Greek, Celtic, Siberian, Sumerian,Chinese, and NativeAmericanmyths. Ifthe same atavistic male sexual energy is represented in each culture, then why bother at all with cultural difference? By choosing to celebrate the suppressed WildMen of only one (Western) culture-Pan, Dionysus, Hermes-Bly may be stealing a march on the PC-bashers. The barbariansdo not lie outside the Eurocentrictradition; they are withinit, and, what's more, they are life-affirming.Withfriends like IronJohn, who needs multiculturalist enemies? In the months leading up to the year of the Columbian quincentenary, it seems necessary to recall that the WildMan of European myth has already had at least one bloody career in the New World.The accounts of Native American life written by explorers and historians from the Columbian period and from the century of exploitationthat followed are heavily populated by types that divide the "good"Indian,who resembled the Noble Savage, from the "bad" Indian, who resembled the Wild Man of European medieval life (forColumbus,the operative distinctionwas between the

214 boundary2 / Summer1992 "gentle"Tainos and the "warlike"Caribs). Portable features of the naturefearing Wild Man legend provided much of the justificationfor the violent subjugation and near exterminationof the native peoples of Mesoamerica and NorthAmerica. Inthe lightof this history,any white man acting out the Wild Man role in 1992 is playing in full redface, complete with the offensive minstrelsy of loincloths, drums, war paint, sweat lodges, tribalmasks, and hoarse-making New Warriorschants. While Bly has publiclydistanced himself fromsome of the more theatrical excesses of the movement, he is recognized everywhere as the master-thinkerbehind such activities. Two other best-selling books in the movement attest to his influence in differentways. Incontrast to the analytical temper of IronJohn, AustintherapistJohn Lee's book The Flying Boy is writtenas a confessional narrative,describing the progress of the author's exercise in self-healing by followingBly's teachings.6 Itoutlines the various stages of grieving and releasing anger throughwhich an initialrefugee from the worldof men, who is unable to make commitmentsin his life, comes into his true, mature, masculine inheritance. Lee's story is especially revealing in its awestruck veneration of Bly himself, whose poetry he studies as a doctoral candidate for many years, and whose role as a father figure Lee uses to resolve problems with his own father. Inthe finalanalysis, this treatment of Bly may say more about the personality cult of the guru-teacher than it does about the general role of male initiatorsin the art of grieving. While Sam Keen's Firein the Belly does not owe quite the same debt a to guru-master,it does share the tone of Bly'sown middlebrowreverence for great artists, writers,"deep"thinkers,and "meaning"junkies, especially radical theologians, who eat away at the paradoxicalheart of religious experience. Anyone, moreover,who enthusiasticallycites NormanO. Brown's opinion that "the loins are the place of judgment"in 1991 needs to be hit upside his head. In general, Keen is more attentive to the social and the economic contexts of the masculinitycrisis than Bly is. His attacks on the theology of work, on the corporate killingfields, and on the military'sclaim on young male lives are sound enough, except, perhaps, when he reaches for the transhistorical metaphor: "The credit card is for the modern male what killingprey was to the hunter,"or "Mostmen are shackled to the mercantile society in much the same way medieval serfs were imprisonedin the feudal system."7 It isn't long before men as a gender are cast as victims, 6. John Lee, The FlyingBoy: Healingthe WoundedMan(DeerfieldBeach, Fla.:Health Communications,Inc.,1989). 7. Sam Keen, Firein the Belly:On Being a Man(NewYork:Bantam,1991), 52, 55.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 215 victims of corporate state violence, and hence as victimizers themselves. For the most part, Keen does not pursue this shaky thesis about the origins of domination and focuses instead on the emotional injuries incurred by men who cannot live up to the expectations set by dominantmodels of masculinityin our culture. Keen's solutions, however, do not involve contesting or reshaping these expectations; rather,they lie in withdrawal(especially from the world of women), in the discovery of wildness, and in reestablishing a spiritualreconnection to fatherhood. Itis fromthe vantage point of the good father, for example, that Keen cites the gay male community,where arguably the strongest and most admirable forms of emotional solidarity among men exist today, as a bad example of unsocialized masculinity: Itstrikes me that the lack of substantial manliness one finds in some gay communities is a result not of a homoerotic expression of sexuality, but the lack of a relationshipof nurturanceto the young. To be involved in creating a wholesome future, men, gay or straight, need an active, caring relationshipto children.A man who takes no care of and is not involved in the process of caring for and initiatingthe young remains a boy no matter what his achievements. This generation of men knows by its longing forfathers who were absent that nothing fills the void that is created when men abandon their families out of selfishness, dedication to work,or devotion to "important" causes.8 This is not quite the way that Jesse Helms would put it, but the sentiments are nonetheless in basic alignment with the official family values sanctioned by the corporateJudeo-Christianstate. Indeed, the significance of the stories told by Keen, Bly, and others may lie, ultimately,in their contributionto a culturalconsciousness that redefines and reaffirmsthe eroded authorityof patriarchalfamilialism.The worked-upsincerity of a Keen or a Bly is not likelyto be publiclyreceived withthe ritualcynicism that greets the pronouncements of moralityhacks like Helms. It is no coincidence, moreover, that the "dysfunctional"familymodel-an overattentivemotherand an indifferentfather-that Bly and Keen use to describe the plightof the modern male is precisely the one traditionallyused by homophobic pathologists to explain the "plight"of the homosexual. It is with a good dose of ironythat the fundamentalquestion of this men's movement (Newsweek described it as a "postmodernsocial movement," because its founding moment was a media event-the 1990 airing 8. Keen, Fire in the Belly, 227.

216 boundary2 / Summer1992 of the BillMoyers PBS special on Bly, "AGatheringof Men")is increasingly posed as: What Do Men Want? This question means something quite different from What Do Women Want? or What Do Chicanos Want? In fact, it can be asked only after questions like these others have already been addressed. Masculinity,in other words, became a salient concept only after the critiques of feminism hit home; the ethnicity of whiteness becomes a nonnormativeconcept only afterthe critiquesof ethnic minoritieshave been established in public consciousness. Likewise for heterosexuality and the visibilityof gay and lesbian rights. If masculinitytoday is seen as a "problem," it is largely because feminism has focused some of its attention on men in the last decade or so. Afterdevoting themselves to the task of claiming control over their lives, women have turnedto the "problem"of masculinityin areas that cover a broad spectrum, from domestic violence, to the appropriationby men of spheres and practices in the home that had traditionally been considered female domain, to rape, and to militarism,wherein men have played a unilateralrole as architects of nuclear terror.9Ifstraight men today are almost as wary about conventional codes of "masculinity" then it is a directresult of the as women are about standards of "femininity," social pressure exacted by the women's movement and by the alternative models of sexuality, lifestyle, and emotional solidarityoffered by gay men. How many men, however, actually share this uneasiness? How broadly,across the class spectrum, say, are these anxieties felt? And how can we differentiatethese worriesfromthe way men used to feel about their masculinity? For sure, it is importantto consider differences of class, education, race, and sexual preference, but these differences may determine only the degree to which male anxiety is experienced from the position of oppressor ratherthan victim. So, too, the inadequacy of historicalperspec9. LynneSegal, Slow Motion:ChangingMasculinities,ChangingMen (New Brunswick: RutgersUniversityPress, 1990), 294-97. Segal also addresses the concomitantshift of focus withinthe women's movement,fromthe concept of equalityto that of difference. By the late seventies, it was clear that only a minorityof well-educated,professional, white women were benefitingdirectlyfromtwo decades of feministthoughtand action. Overall,the situationfor women had worsened in the course of the seventies and was thatcompelledcapitalismto exploitforcheap labor stillstymiedby the basic contradiction those whose primaryworkfor capitalismwas stillin the realmof reproductionand childcare. Equalitywas consideredunachievableinthe currentconditions(i.e., withcapitalism as it was, and withmen as they were, unwillingto eradicatetheirown relativepower).At that point,differencebecame the favoredconceptof analysisacross the whole spectrum of feminism,fromculturalcriticismto legal inquiry.Men'sdifferencebecame a "problem" subject to examination.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 217 tive poses a real problem.Indiscussing the fraughtquestion of the historical relationshipbetween patriarchyand capitalism,ArthurBrittannotes: One of the problems here is that it is difficultto reconstruct masculinitybefore the modern era. We can talk about the role of the father in peasant communities in MedievalEurope, but we find it difficultto dig out the subjective dimension of this role. ... Because some of us are fathers, we may rememberour own fathers and grandfathers;we have biographies which intersectwiththe biographiesof parents and children. As men, we also may believe that there is some continuity between our experiences and those who lived before us. Although the large majorityof men in industrialsociety do not hunt and do not fight wars, they still find it conceivable that this is what they did in the past.... Inother words, we see the past as some kindof validation of who and what we are now. The image of economic man, the rationalcalculator who takes a risk in order to maximize his profits and advantages, is so much taken for granted that it is not surprising that we read all historyin these terms.10 It is precisely because this illusion of continuity persists that the sense of a crisis can be generated in the present, and it is in this context that I believe we ought to view the currentcrisis of masculinitywiththe kind of skepticism that all manufacturedcrises merit. As Brittanhimself points out, the persuasive appeal of any crisis that relates to masculinitydepends upon the assumption that men, in the past, knew who and what they were and that the secure sense of identitythey once enjoyed has been very recently undermined.We used to live our masculinityas naturallyas breathing air; now we are alienated from our true sexuality, from what we once knew about ourselves. Time to come home. It is this postromantic thesis about the estrangement of men from their true selves that is now maximizedand exploited throughthe pithywisdoms offered by Bly and his circle. Ithas to be assumed that men who actually do write about heterosexual masculinityare, in some sense, always involved in a process of reasserting their own authority.The larger, more conspiratorialversion of this process is one in which patriarchymodernizes and reconstitutes itself throughthe resolutionof a manufacturedcrisis. All rulinggroups use the rhetoricof crisis to reconsolidate their power, but this is not to say that the conditions of such crises are themselves illusory. 10. Brittan, Masculinity and Power, 99-100.

218 boundary2 / Summer1992 The latest crisis of masculinity is a case in point. In many instances, the state's increasingly repressive regulationof the body, linkedto changes in the economy, labor market, and social policy, and fomented by a conservative fear of sexuality, poses clear physical obstacles to the rights and freedoms of certaingroups of men-gay men and young black males-specifically on account of demonized qualities and practices associated with their masculinity.Such groups are used to livingwith crisis-like conditions of persecution; it is a normative part of the history that has shaped their identity politics. So, too, deindustrializationand class polarizationover the last two decades has brought about a precipitousdecline in job earnings for almost all men (AfricanAmericans and Latinos, in particular),who now belong to the secondary layerof today's two-tiereconomy. Despite the crippling effects of this economic landslide, these crisis conditions are, again, part of a familiarclass logic. Increasingly,however, in and aroundthe men's movement, we hear speculation about a crisis of the gender itself, a set of debilitatingcircumstances that affect men as a class. When a crisis is presented as a general condition for all men, this is a sure sign that the process of redefining hegemonic masculinity has gone onto its overtime work schedule, distillingthe old truths, compensating for the discards, incorporatingthis and that trace of hipness from the various countercultures, and generally shifting its contours to disguise the jagged edges. This is the often hectic laborof refashioningand repositioning dominant masculine codes, leaning heavily on the narrativeof evolutionary adaptation to justifythe rejectionor the revivalof older traits in the name of survival. And this is where Bly's WildManbegins to merge withthe grunt in jungle camouflage. Afterall, healing the psychically wounded foot soldiers in the gender wars mightjust produce a stronger, more dominant breed of man. What rough beast then, in the guise of IronJohn, slouches toward the Pentagon? There is no more reason to trust the narrativeof evolution than the rhetoricof crisis. One of the historicaltales told about masculine survivalism in an embattled environment is that the advent of Darwinismattached the seal of scientific objectivityto the Victorianmasculine ideal of stoical discipline, reinforcingolder, Hobbesian themes of brute competitiveness that of men strugglingas harkback to a primalimage of man the hunter-warrior, they always have for survival in a hostile environmentof rivals. You do not have to subscribe to alternativeromanticnarrativesabout the cooperative tribalethic of prelapsariantimes to see how this story relates, above all, to

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 219 the life of competition in a marketeconomy, and how it therefore elevates local capitalist principles to the level of general, transhistoricallaws about masculine nature. Men are no more innately competitive or domineering than women are innately cooperative or compliant. Masculinity,defined from context to context as a set of cultural standards to be observed and emulated, is shaped by social institutions, each with a long history and a potentially changeable future, predominantlyshaped by the interests and desires of elite groups. All men find it difficultto match up to those standards. Some men can afford not to. Most, however, actually do suffer from the consequences to varying degrees and fall back upon compensatory fantasies (which are often mistaken for reality by radical feminists). This does not make them losers, nor does it make them victims, both terms drawn from the noxious rhetoricof competitionand domination.Itdoes, however, place the studied markof difference upon their masculinitiesand their psychosexual lives, differences that are often, but not always, related to race, class, and sexual preference. To disregardthese differences and to view masculinityas a single collective propertyis just bad social theory. To see men as a universallyexploitativeclass, to see male sexuality as a uniformlyviolent force, is to accept at face value only our (as men) most reactionary fantasies of power and to reduce the prospects of change to the occasional glimpse of chinks in a vast and formidablemale armor.

NeolithicGreen Whatever its current function and eventual fate, the ideas of the "men's movement"I have been discussing are primarilya response to arguments that have linked male power to a historyof systematic, hierarchical domination.The most full-blowncritiqueof this sort has materializedwithin the emergent ecofeminist movement, with its description of the wholesale masculine domination of the naturalworld. It is no surprise, then, that the philosophy of the Wild Man takes its cue from, and presents itself as, a cognate of the ecofeminist poetics of nature.Just as women have been exploringthe Great Goddess, so men can now find a spiritualpersonification of naturethat would correspond to what Bly calls our "psychictwin"(IJ, 53), or what WilliamAnderson designates as the Green Man in his recent study of this vegetative figure, long suppressed in the ChristianWest but consistently surfacing in Europe's art and architecture,folktales, and vestigial

220 boundary2 / Summer1992 pagan rituals."Indeed, it is this Green Manwho is likelyto become the neoJungian complement to the EarthMotherin coming years, as the search for an appropriatedeity rooted inthe soil displaces the much malignedtradition of worshiping patriarchalsky-gods, like Zeus, Allah, and Yahweh. Of the so-called new social movements, the ecology movement has been exceptional in ceding a leading role, intheory and in practicalactivism, to heterosexual white men. It has been one of the few spaces in post-New Left politics where such men have felt they can breathe freely and easily, while indulging,to various degrees, inthe wilderness cults traditionallyassociated withthe makingof heroic white male identities:the frontiersman,the cowboy, the Romantic poet, the explorer,the engineer, the colonizer, the anthropologist, the pioneer settler, and so on. In this tradition,the mark of a real man is to have direct and untrammeledcontact with the wilderness. At times, the consequences of this legacy to the ecology movement have been recidivist,not only in the deep ecology wing, where a form of macho, redneck bonhomie came to informEarth First!'sactivist ethic, but also in the social ecology wing, which carried some of the weaponry of Old Left sectarianism into its battles with the deep ecologists.12 For the most part, however, the commitmentto the movement by straightwhite men has been charged withthe kindof spirituallycharged passion that they have been unable to lend so easily and righteouslyto movements for women's liberation, sexual minorityliberation,and civil rightsfor people of color. Male predominance notwithstanding,women have always played a prominentrole in the movement, whether as intellectuals,as in the case of Rachel Carson, Helen Caldicott,Petra Kelly,Vandana Shiva, Carolyn Merchant, and Susan Griffin,or as activists incommunityand nationalstruggles. Increasingly, however, the proponents of ecofeminism claim more than an equal share of the action. In fact, many of the arguments of ecofeminism rest upon the claim that women are the rightfulleaders of the ecology movement because of their historicalrole as protectorsand intimates of the naturalworld.This claim does not arise out of the unprivilegedlocations that 11. WilliamAnderson,Green Man:TheArchetypeof OurOneness withthe Earth(New York:HarperCollins, 1990). 12. See the dialogues between MurrayBookchinand Dave Foremanrepresentingthe positionsof social ecology and deep ecology,respectively,in Steve Chase, ed., Defending the Earth(Boston:South End Press, 1991). Fromthe perspectiveof sexual politics, some of the insultstraded between the antagonistsspeak for themselves: Foremanis brandedby Bookchinas a "machomountainman,"Bookchinis dismissed by Ed Abbey as a "fatold lady"(11).

Ross / Wet,Dark,andLow,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 221 women share in relation to environmentalthreats, although it is certainly reinforcedby the extremityof those threats. Women, for example, are often the frontlinevictims of ecological illness, especially in matters of reproductive health, where contaminationby biohazards is responsible for a whole range of birth defects. So, too, women's situation in the ThirdWorld has steadily deteriorated as a result of the commercial logic of "development," especially the theoretically benign development policies shaped by former colonial powers and administrativelyexploited by national elites to further their own interests.13 Women are not the only frontlinevictims in these cases; they share such threats with people of color or lower class who live in First World areas where hazardous activities are located, or with peasants and tribal peoples whose subsistence livingis imperiledby monoculturalproduction. Consequently, women have no overridingstake to claim in the politics of combating these practices, althoughthey are often the most activist among the threatened groups. On the contrary,the special claim of ecofeminism for women's proprietary rights within the ecology movement lies with the long historical association, however warranted,of women with nature.Second-wave feminism sought to demystify this association and to disconnect the link,insistently placing women on the culture, or social-constructionist, side of the nature/culture divide. The cogency of ecological critiques, however, gave rise to concerns that the feminist repudiationof nature was itself potentially complicit with the degradation of nature. In particular,the scholarly and inspirationalwork of Carolyn Merchant,MaryDaly, and Susan Griffin underlined the commonality,withinthe modern mechanistic culture of the capitalist West, of women's oppression and ecological degradation. Consequently, some feminists sought to rethinkthe women-natureconnection, embracing and strengthening the linkto support the claim that women are the instinctive caretakers and custodians of nature. One of the results of this realignmentwas the transformationof the ecological critiqueof anthropocentrism into a critiqueof androcentrism.Invariably,there was a spiritual 13. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women,Ecology and Development(London:Zed Press, 1988);EstherBoserup,Women'sRolein EconomicDevelopment(London:Allen& can be foundin BrindaRao's Unwin,1970).A surveyof "womenindevelopment"literature useful Capitalism,Nature,Socialismpamphlet"DominantConstructionsof Womenand Naturein Social Science Literature" (publishedby the Centerfor EcologicalSocialism, Santa Cruz).

222 boundary2 / Summer1992 dimension to this critique,for this was not only a philosophy but also a religion of nature. While the male land ethic, in the traditionof Henry David Thoreau, John Muir,and Aldo Leopold,had always been infused witha deep naturalistreligiosity,and while ecological activism was ever distinguished by its evangelical zeal, ecofeminism broughta supernaturalelement to this spiritualityin the form of the earth-based Goddess religions. The inspirational basis for what is essentially a liberationtheology lay in the myths, symbols, and ritual practices of pagan traditionsof nature-worship,Wiccan, pre-Christiancreation-centered cults, or in Native American religions, all of which rest upon the principleof immanent spiritualityand subscribe to a holistic worldviewof the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman nature. Inthis respect, ecofeminist spiritualityshares in the broad New Age response, over the last two decades, of holistic alternativecultures to the materialistcivil religionof scientific and technological rationality. One resultof this strong infusionof neomysticism has been the bornagain, Great Revivalist feel of much of ecofeminist thought and literature. The heady combinationof poetry,politicalanalysis, experientialconfession, inspirationalphilosophy, and chutzpah magic to be found in the work of Starhawk,for example, has become one of the more influentialhouse styles of the movement, a distinctive strategy of personal empowerment that she as opposed to the destructive patriarchal describes as "power-from-within," A modern urbanwitch's invocationof the power traditionof "power-over."14 of Great Goddess can be a useful, humorous politicalstrategy for "bending and shaping reality,"as she puts it,15and thus for defamiliarizingthe given daily truths of a culture ideologicallysaturated with militaristicvalues. Interestinthe GreatGoddess has been morethan inspirational,however, for it has given rise to a full-blownecofeminist philosophy of history that often threatens to mire debates about the social origins of ecological domination. It is often unclear how seriously the imperativeof reclaiming the values of prepatriarchal,earth-worshipingtribalculturesare to be taken. Andree Collard'ssentiments are quite typical. Inthe introductionto her wellknown book Rape of the Wild(1988), she asserts that she does not "believe in tryingto reverse time, and 'go primitive,'but it is importantto broaden our 14. Starhawk,Dreamingthe Dark:Magic,Sex and Politics(Boston:Beacon Press, 1982); Truthor Dare: Encountersof Power, Authorityand Mystery(San Francisco:Harper& Row, 1988). 15. Starhawk, "Feminist,Earth-BasedSpirituality,and Ecofeminism,"in Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism,ed. Judith Plant (Philadelphia:New Society, 1989), 175.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 223 understandingof the past and learnfromother cultures and other times the way of universal kinship."16Despite this concession, the spiritof the book's polemic is more in line withAnne Cameron'satavistic suggestion, cited with approval by Collard,that "thereis a better way of doing things. Some of us remember that way.""17 By the end of the book, she has prepared the way for a grand historicalsweep: Historicallyour destiny as women and the destiny of nature are inseparable. Itbegan withinearth/goddess worshipingsocieties which celebrated the life-givingand life-sustainingpowers of women and nature, and it remains despite our brutalnegation and violationin the present. Women must re-member and re-claimour biophilicpower. Drawingupon it we must make the choices that willaffirmand foster life, directingthe futureaway fromthe nowhere of the fathers to the somewhere that is ours-on this planet-now.18 There are a numberof leaps condensed in this move, from an initial waiver, to an assertion of female privilege, to the final declaration of historical truths. Itgoes like this: We do not want to returnto the past, but we ought to seek to reclaim what we have lost even though we have always had it and always will. To understand what lies behind these rhetoricalmoves is to consider a philosophy of history that draws heavily upon the work of archaeologists and scholars of religion in the Neolithic period of "Old Europe," from 7000 to 3000 B.C., when egalitarian,peace-loving, nature-worshiping societies are held to have flourished in advance of the patriarchal,warriortribes from Eurasia that destroyed the old matricentricway of life and introduced the ways of male domination to Western culture.19While the Great Goddess religionssubsisted, in some part,elsewhere-Isis in Egypt, Ishtar in Canaan, Demeter in Greece, Magna Mater in Rome, and Virgin Mary in global Catholicism-the authentic, prelapsarian culture survived only in Minoan Crete, and thereafter in scattered, suppressed folk rituals 16. Andre6Collard,Rape of the Wild:Man's Violenceagainst Animalsand the Earth (London:Women'sPress, 1988), 2. 17. Collard,Rape of the Wild,8. 18. Collard,Rape of the Wild,168. 19. See, in particular, the worksof the archaeologicalhistorian,MarijaGimbutas,including The Goddesses and Gods of OldEurope,6500-3500 B.C.:Mythsand CultImages, rev. ed. (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1982). See also MerlinStone, When God Wasa Woman(New York:HarcourtBraceJovanovich,1976).

224 boundary2 / Summer1992 and heretic pagan traditions. In search of vestiges of continuitywith Old Europe, Charlene Spretnak, for example, notes "the peasant rituals that persisted in parts of Europe even up to WorldWar I, where women would encircle the fields by torchlightand symbolicallytransfertheir fertilityto the land they touched."20 That Neolithic society reallydid flourishin the form of a matricentric paradise has been disputed long and hard, and it has often been pointed out that there exists no correlationbetween societies wherein God was a woman, honored by female priestesses, and the social status of women or the political freedoms of the citizenry;slavery and forced labor were the order of the day in Egypt, and human sacrifices were practiced in Minoan Crete. So, too, there is no clear evidence to suggest that the fabled Neolithic egalitarianism immediately dissolved with the introductionof animal husbandry in the transition from hunter-gathererto agriculturalsocieties. Most social theorists trace the origin of status hierarchyin tribal societies to internaltensions resultingfromthe ascendancy of elders; in other words, men and women dominated other men and women through gerontocratic privilege before men dominatedwomen throughthe sexual divisionof labor. What does seem clear, however, is the structural,or mythical, need for a golden age of organic cooperative harmonybetween equal peoples that no longer exists. For ecofeminism, this Edenic society flourishedin the peaceful, unfortifiedsettlements that fell to an invadercultureand was dominated by a spirituallyinferiorgender, just as, for classical Marxism,say, the lapsarian break occurred with the rise of class society and the emergence of private property. In The Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant'smore socially oriented version of ecofeminist history,the break is located much later, during the scientific revolution, between 1500 and 1700, when a mechanistic rationalism, with its worldview of nature as passive and dead, replaced an organicist cosmology with a living female earth at its center. The dominant metaphor of social consciousness of the naturalworldchanged from organism to machine.21In her more recent book, Ecological Revolutions, Merchant describes the transformationswrought on indigenous ecologies in New England by, first,the colonial revolution-with its transplantationof in IreneDiamondand OurRoots and Flowering," 20. CharleneSpretnak,"Ecofeminism: Gloria Orenstein,eds., Reweaving the World:The Emergence of Ecofeminism(San Francisco:SierraBooks, 1990), 9. 21. CarolynMerchant,TheDeathof Nature.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 225 European animals, plants, pathogens, and peoples-and then by the capitalist revolution,beholden to a dynamic marketeconomy that extinguished the subsistence farming of the colonial farmer and the indigenous trader alike. Inquick succession, then, indigenous huntingand tradingeconomies were displaced by rival settler agriculturesand then drawn into a system of worldwide mercantile exchange that soon came to exploit profitablythe linkbetween enslaved Africanlabor,Americannaturalresources, and European capital.22The ethic of marketproductionfor long-termprofitdisplaced productionfor short-termsubsistence. Males replaced females in the fields, plows replaced hoes, maps replaced an animisticsense of space and place. What was lost was quite clear-cut in Merchant'saccount: the mimetic consciousness of a hunter-gatherereconomy, in which humans, animals, and plants coexist as reciprocalface-to-face subjects-"an active spiritualworld of maternalancestry regulatedthroughparticipatoryconsciousness," where "the naturaland spiritualwere not distinct nor were people denigrated by association withthe wild."23Andwhatwas won? A nature-culturedichotomy, a transcendental god, and the fetishism of commodities. Merchantdoes not give us much of a choice here. The good organic life, of course, is irretrievably lost, as it must be for all originstories, especially ecological ones that separate us from paradise at the same time as they blissfully deliver us from the messiness of history. The lapsarian mythnotwithstanding,Merchant'sconcept of "ecological revolutions"is a useful one. Such revolutions, she writes, "arise from changes, tensions, and contradictions that develop between a society's mode of production and its ecology, and between its modes of production and reproduction.These dynamics in turn support the acceptance of new forms of consciousness, ideas, images, and worldviews."24The point is to underline the historical agency of the naturalworld (as opposed to underliningthe mechanism's inert nature) and to reintroduce nonhuman nature as an actor that either acquiesces to human interventions or resists them by evolving. The ecological, then, becomes a determiningfactor in historical analysis, alongside the economic, the political, the cultural, the demographic, and so on. While Merchant is careful to insist on the socially constructed character of the conceptions of nature that she dis22. CarolynMerchant,Ecological Revolutions:Nature, Gender, and Science in New England(ChapelHill:Universityof NorthCarolinaPress, 1989), 55. 23. Merchant,Death of Nature,50. 24. Merchant,Death of Nature,3.

226 boundary2 / Summer1992 cusses, the binaryvalue system used to divide her organic paradise from our fallen, rationalistworld feeds into the nature-culturedualism affirmed by more essentialist ecofeminists, for whom biological reproduction,and not social reproduction,is the ground of all politicalvalue. Merchant has little, if anything, to say about the social ecology of the rationalistculture that succeeded her golden age: the contradictionsof patriarchalcapitalism, both libertarianand repressive; the radicaldemocratic legacies of individual rights and freedoms; the Enlightenmentidea of the public sphere; the formationof the centralized nation-state;the emancipatory potential of science; and so on. However mechanistic, instrumental,and utilitarian,it also has to be said that rationalismhas thrown up evolved institutionsthat are not necessarily linkedto capitalism'sgrow-or-dieethic and that are the immediate social context and imaginativehorizonof most people's lives in an advanced technological society. This complex of circumstances and traditions cannot be dismissed as male property,whether in the modern or in the post-Neolithic period, without shutting out from history altogether the experience of too many people, especially women, and without forgetting all of the long struggles against hierarchicaldominationand injustice,which must be maintainedand developed in some formifthe dominationof nature is now to be opposed. Social ecologists, like MurrayBookchin, have long insisted that the roots of today's global ecological crisis are intrinsicallysocial and not "natural."If the domination of nature evolved out of forms of social domination related to gender, race, class, and age, then it cannot be addressed as a separate issue. Among the prominentecofeminists sympathetic to Bookchin's position, Ynestra King has suggested that the domination of man over woman is nonetheless the prototype of these differentkinds of social domination and thus worthyof particularattention.25Janet Biehl, author of RethinkingEcofeminist Politics, the most exhaustive critiqueto date of atavistic nature-worshipwithinthe movement, is more skeptical of any such claim that the position of women, whether as victim or as heiress of spiritual intuition, marks them as uniquely ecological beings. To reason that women's relationshipwith nature is intrinsicallybound up with the ecological crisis, or that women are privileged hierophantsof nature's mysteries, is to accept the patriarchalconception of what women ought to be. Biehl finds the irrationalismof ecofeminism to be an "embarrassing"and "regres25. YnestraKing,"TheEcologyof Feminismand the Feminismof Ecology,"in Healing the Wounds:ThePromiseof Ecofeminism,19.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 227 sive" tendency that has muddiedthe once clear waters of radicalfeminism's commitment to claiming for women the benefits of Enlightenmentthought in matters of equality: As a woman and a feminist, I deeply value my power of rationality and seek to expand the full range of women's faculties. I do not want to reject the valuable achievements of Western culture on the claim that they have been produced primarilyby men.... We cannot dispense with millenniaof that culture'scomplex social, philosophical, and politicaldevelopments-including democracy and reasonbecause of the many abuses intertwinedwiththat culture.26 Biehl's commitmentto the rationalhumanistideals and eco-anarchist politics of social ecology is steadfast throughouther book-long search for rationalistheresies. Accordingly,this veritable "witch-huntress"holds to a ratherascetic position against the gynocentriccosmologies, is scandalized by their playfulsupernaturalism,and is sleuth-likein trackingdown inconsistencies of argument around the women-naturequestion. For example, she seizes on Ynestra King's suggestion that ecofeminists can "consciously choose not to sever the women-natureconnection by joining male society. Rather, we can use it as a vantage pointfor creating a differentkindof culture and politics that would integrate intuitive,spiritual,and rationalforms of knowledge, embracing both science and magic insofar as they enable us to transformthe nature-culturedistinctionand to envision and create a free, ecological society."27 Interpretingthis as a betrayalof King'sown commitment to socialist feminism, Biehl is outraged at the pragmatic use of a "connection"that Kinghas elsewhere asserted is "nottrue":"Howcan this ecofeminist, who has long criticized instrumentalreason, justify an instrumental 'use' of something she believes is not true? ...

An ethics cannot

be based on something that is factuallywrong."28 Biehl's riposte seems to reflect perfectly the position of the rationalhumanist in response to what is basically the doctrine of strategic essentialism, here invoked in the context of ecofeminism. King,after all, is advocating the strategic use of the essentialist women-nature connection as one of the options open to women, who need to use all the options available to them. Ifthis "strategy"helps to confound male adversaries who also have to deal withwomen's rationalistside, 26. Janet Biehl,RethinkingEcofeministPolitics(Boston:South EndPress, 1991), 7. 27. King,"TheEcologyof Feminism,"23; King'semphasis. 28. Biehl,RethinkingEcofeministPolitics,95.

228 boundary2 / Summer1992 then all the better. In Biehl's politicalworld of fixed identities and crystal clear reasoning, such strategies are dishonest: Committedpoliticsdepends on cleaving to truths and should not stoop to the pragmaticexploitation of myths or beliefs; you cannot have your cake and eat it, too. For Biehl, the admission of a differentlogic is clearlyan "error"and has "tainted"the once "promisingproject"of ecofeminism.29 To many ecofeminists, Biehl's critiquewill seem dogmatic, puritanical, and, yes, politicallycorrect, redolent of all of the bad attitudes of the sectarian Left. Bookchin's swinging attack on deep ecology of a few years ago met with a similar response. The new social movements, after all, are supposed to be the home of diversity,where politics is infused with more experimental forms of pleasure and personalitythan the older, more austere Left was wont to recognize. For an Emma Goldman, it was all about being allowed to dance. For a Starhawk, it may be about being allowed to cast a spell or two. Some see this as innocuous enough, others see it as the beginning of the end. Still others see it as a way of transformingthe style of politics itself. Biehl is more literal-mindedthan most. In her view, magic "never works-unless sheer coincidences come into play."30One wonders, then, about her attitudetowardideology, which presents itself as orthodox, up-todate knowledge about eternal wisdoms and yet hovers somewhere between those categories of knowledge that we designate as belief, mythology,truth, disinformation, propaganda, and common sense. Magic surely presents itself as the converse: unorthodox, ancient knowledge about the latest truths. As proscribed knowledge, its symbolic power appeals to those in needy pursuitof autonomy. Look,for example, at the strategic use of black magic and satanism by teenage metalheads in the wilds of suburbia. The point of this is surely to confirm parents' worst fears about their own loss of authority and influence over their children.As a strategy, it leads more often to parental hysteria than to understandingor self-criticism, but it is one of the few modes of empowerment available to kids whose lives are highly regulated by authorities and institutions.Feminists practicingwitchcraft play a similar sort of game with patriarchy.Indeed, it has become a conventional strategy of identity politics for all sorts of groups to reclaim stereotypes of themselves, includingderogatory labels ("queer,""nigger," "bitch")from the dominant culture in a bid to establish control over their 29. Biehl,RethinkingEcofeministPolitics,5. 30. Biehl, Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics, 91; Biehl's emphasis.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 229 own social and culturalidentities. Since they feed into long-standing sexist the goddess mythologies escharacterizations of "feminineirrationality," poused by ecofeminism are part of the same response. At best, they are embraced with a sense of humorand in the name of utopian creativity.At worst, they are enforced with a fundamentalist'sfervor,whose utopias lie in prehistory,in a world now lost, with littlepersuasive hold upon a modern social environment. The progressive ideologies of the post-Enlightenmentperiod have promised us that our utopias lie inevitably in the future, not in the past. Withthe techno-scientific narrativeof progress everywhere impeded by the toxic clouds of the ecological crisis, other nondystopian mythologies are clearly needed. Ifthey are to be elements of a survivalistphilosophy, then they must make sense of the lived, daily experience of people in advanced technological societies. Ifthey are to move people beyond their short-term interests, then they must appeal to our social memory of past communal desires and to the creative imaginationof diverse futures,withoutcollapsing back into either millennialor year-one mythologies.

CyborgGreen The most audacious effort at drafting such a mythology remains Donna Haraway's "CyborgManifesto,"which is, perhaps, best read in the context of ecofeminist supernaturalism,for it is presented as a blasphemous, hereticaltractthat regards the cyborg myths it propagates withdeep, irreverentirony.31In every respect, Haraway'smythology is disloyal to the principles of ecofeminist spirituality.In contrast to the atavism of the goddess myths, the cyborg, the "illegitimateoffspringof militarismand patriarchal capitalism" is so unfaithfulto origins that it "would not recognize the Garden of Eden."32For the cyborg, there are no ancestral homes to dream about, no egalitarianmatriarchiesor phallicmothers, no prelapsarian havens of unalienated labor or pre-oedipal sexuality; the cyborg is "completely without innocence"33and is a stranger to institutionalpromises of redemptionand salvation. Cyborgismis hardlyimmanentin the earth, but its 31. DonnaHaraway,"ACyborgManifesto:Science, Technology,and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth-Century," in Simians, Cyborgs,and Women:The Reinventionof Nature(New York:Routledge,1991). 32. Haraway,"ACyborgManifesto,"151. 33. Haraway,"ACyborgManifesto,"151.

230 boundary2 / Summer1992 hybridspirit is manifest everywhere in today's postindustrialisteconomies, where the boundaries between human and machine, human and animal, are daily breached. As such, it is a myth for workers withinthe new information and surveillance networks, a myth for bodies in the grip of medical technologies, and a myth for all those in late capitalist militarism's"bellyof the beast." Haraway's infidel mythology extends to the quixotic personification of nature itself as a "codingtrickster."34 On the face of it, this sounds like Radical profane ecology. ecologists traditionallystand against an anthroworldview that attributes human characteristics and quirksto the pocentric physical properties and nonhuman inhabitantsof the naturalworld. Ecofeminism stands against androcentrismand endows the naturalworld with a logic, most often spiritual,that transcends the rapacious interests of its male dominators. Inthis respect, it shares, with deep ecology, the impulse to put the interests of the "earthfirst,"reasoning that the human species/ male gender is the main threat to the welfare of the wilderness. Andree Collard'spartipris is representative:"Iam firstof all always on the side of nature. Her innocence (in the etymological sense of 'not noxious') may derive fromthe fact that she acts not fromchoice but from inherent need. Whatever naturedoes that seems cruel and evil to anthropomorphizing eyes is done withoutintentto harm."35Collard'sposition here is decidedly antihumanist.Survivalist"needs"of the planet are strictlyopposed to the "choices" of humans. This position, often colloquiallyreferredto as "eco-fascist," ultimatelyviews humans as a threateningspecies, whose extinction, or draconian regulation, would remove a blight from the planet. Moreover, it perceives the species as undifferentiatedand pays little heed to the social and culturalcomplexities that characterize human societies and their interactionswith the naturalworld.The corollaryof this biocentric position is the disembodied (male) point of view of science, unclouded by essentially human concerns, which alone can understandthe rationalityof planetary "needs." For most ecofeminists, there is another perspectivewomen's-whose special relationshipwith nature affordsthem an intuitive understandingof nature's otherwise "cruel"ways. Ifwe are to have a more socialized conception of our relationto the naturalworld,then we need not only a new attitudebut also a new language 34. Donna Haraway,"SituatedKnowledges:The Science Questionin Feminismand the Privilegeof PartialPerspective,"in Simians,Cyborgs,and Women,201. 35. Collard,Rape of the Wild,2.

Ross / Wet,Dark,and Low,Eco-ManEvolvesfromEco-Woman 231 that attributes autonomous agency to nonhuman nature, but one that does not exclude a sense of dialogue with human nature. The relationship, in other words, has to be a semiotic one in order to make sense as a lived relationship. Haraway offers such a vision of the naturalworld when she describes it as a "wittyagent," with an "independentsense of humor."36 She chooses, as a figure for this, not the primalmother but the trickster figureof the coyote fromSouthwest NativeAmericanmyth.Dealing withthe coyote is a way of acknowledging that "we are not in charge of the world" but that we are still "searching for fidelity,knowingall the while we will be The resultingdialogue is respectful but not innocently revhoodwinked."'37 erent. It acknowledges our maturity,as an evolved species, and also the necessity of our connections with an equally evolved nonhuman nature, which is capable of getting the betterof us. The coyote personificationitself is highly ambiguous: "'Our'relations with 'nature'might be imagined as a social engagement with a being who is neither'it,''you,''he,' 'she,' nor 'they' in relation to 'us.' "38 From a humanist point of view, such a relationshipis entirelycorruptand incomplete, since it promises no end in self-discovery. It is, however, a socially intelligiblerelationship,and it seems to me that such an affinityought to make sense to anyone who has felt the incompleteness of their connection to the worldand yet who refuses to explain this feeling by recourse to some expression of defeat before the "mysteries"of nature. While Haraway'scyborg mythcontains the utopianvision of a "monstrous world without gender,"39 its current manifestations continue to be coded as male and female. Who could forget the motel room scene in The Terminator,which gave ArnoldSchwarzenegger his most famous line?the cyborg-eye point of view shot that produced the screen readout "Fuck you, asshole." Here, surely, was the homophobic embodiment of masculine cyborg vision, guided and programmedby a military-industrial logic that needed no translation into the Hobbesian language of competitive human relations. One mightthinkthat seeing the worldin this way is as naturalin an advanced technological patriarchyas seeing the world from the point of view of a plant or a beaver had been in predominantlyagriculturalor hunter-gatherersocieties. Audiences instantlyappreciatedthis perspective as cyborgism-with-attitude,the dominant bad boy cyborg's worldview,but they also recognized its counterpointin Sarah Connor's parting line to the 36. Haraway,"SituatedKnowledges,"199. 37. Haraway,"SituatedKnowledges,"199. 38. Haraway,"Introduction," Simians,Cyborgs,and Women,3. 39. Haraway,"ACyborgManifesto,"181.

232 boundary2 / Summer1992 Terminator:"You'reterminated,fucker."The sequel, as I noted earlier,contains Connor's remarkablefantasy about the Schwarzenegger cyborg as "a perfect father,"who has no role in or control over the reproductiveprocess but who is programmednonetheless to protect her son, come hell or high water. One could say that this fantasy contains prepatriarchalelements (i.e., before men's consciousness of paternityset in, before they discovered their role in biological reproductionand moved to appropriateand control the process). Its debt to technological dependence makes it finally postpatriarchal,a fantasy about the "good"welfare state of the future, which sends an agent into the present as protector.This time around, the Terminator is no warriorinvader, programmedto erase any human threat to the machine-dominated future. Is he an evolved, reformedspecies of ecoman, programmed to learn from a son who adopts him in the name of saving the planet, or is he the latest ruse of patriarchy,who looks good only because the new terminator-the real, proteancop machine-makes Freddie Krueger look like child's play? Forthe same reason that movie sequels do not instillour trust in reformedcharacters, especially in figures so terrifying in the original, Schwarzenegger's Terminatorbarely persuades us of his capacity for coevolution. Whateverfantasies are woven aroundthem, terminators are a techno-fix, attitudinallyrelated, by kinship,to the dysfunctional nerd sensibility of their creators that is so prevalent in the Al and robotics communities. Male cyborgs are stillvery much sexually different.Forthe men who can afford it, the cyborg myth is a narrativeof dominationin a worldwhere they are fully empowered to inhabitthe firmest ground of masculinity. For those who cannot afford it, cyborgism is a familiartale of survivalism in a world where forms of social ecology that would promote coevolution in the name of sexual politics are still very much a luxury.With these kinds of historical lineage, the humanist fantasy of self-discovery cannot help but be destructive. Male cyborgs, whatever their constitution,won't recognize Bly's Wild Man and are more likelyto "find"themselves in the cyberspace of virtual realitythan in the wilderness or on a dude ranch. What is more importantfor men right now? Withdrawalfrom the social fray in search of some late-breakingriteof passage? Orthe self-conscious reinhabitationof the world of social reproduction-a worlddifferentfrom, but not unrelated to, the world of the food chain and the water cycle-in order to champion change, with humor,with passion, and with politics?

"Greatness": Philology and the Politics of Mimesis

MarjorieGarber Itis naturalto believe in great men. -Emerson, "Usesof GreatMen" "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."This essay addresses the culturalfantasy of heroes and greatness-the fantasy of "greatness"as something recognizable and objectified-and the ways in which that designation, that epithet, informs and structures our culture. Greatness, as a term, is today both an inflated and a deflated currency, shading over into categories of notoriety, transcendence, and some version of the postmodern fifteen minutes of fame.' Today, "greatness" sometimes functions rhetoricallyas pure boilerplate. For example, at the conclusion of the recent Americantrade embassy to Japan, the Japanese prime minister,KiichiMiyazawara,having bluntly 1. This essay was originallyconceived, in a shorterform,for a panel on "Philologyand the Politicsof Mimesis"at the 1991 meetingof the ModernLanguageAssociationin San Francisco. Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50. boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity

234 boundary2 / Summer1992 accounted for America's decline as a world power because of problems like AIDS, homelessness, and decliningeducational standards, politelypredicted that Americans willovercome these problems "because America is a great country."2At other times, "greatness"-so often linked,in our national rhetoric,with "America"-seems to be its own, tautologous ground of selfevident truth. For example, the announcement of the U.S. Postal Service's plan to issue an Elvis Presley commemorative stamp-thus officiallydeclaring Elvis dead, as well as transcendent-was greeted with pleasure by a 72-year-old Vermontwoman who had writtenthe Postmaster General almost every week since the King'sdeath, pushingforan Elviscommemorative: "Ican't imagine anybody more deserving to be put on a stamp than my Elvis,"she told the New YorkTimes. "I'mnot one of those who believes he's not dead. He's dead, unfortunately.He was a great man, a great American. I knew that the firsttime I laid eyes on him in that black leather suit."3 I am interested not only in literaryrepresentations of greatness but also in the cultural stature of contemporary heroic figures as diverse as JFK, MartinLuther King, Paul de Man, and Bess Myerson; in politicians and entertainment figures; and in sports heroes like MuhammadAli, who had the spectacular boldness to claim the title of greatness for himself"I am the greatest"-in a gesture of self-nominationthat is the rhetorical equivalent of Napoleon's self-crowning. In what follows, I will be analyzing the mechanisms for producing greatness in a numberof differentcontexts, fromthe politicsof our so-called national pastime to the politics of the so-called Great Books, from a children's story to a presidentialcampaign. This is a big topic, and I will touch on a number of related issues in order to sketch out its parameters. Let me begin by establishing a couple of quick benchmarks, fairlystraightforward instances in which greatness is produced as an effect of mimesis, with consequences that are political, ideological, and cultural,while appearing, to some eyes at least, to be none of these. My investigations have taken me fromAristotle'sPoetics to L. Frank Baum's The WonderfulWizardof Oz, in which the wonderfulWizard, appearing severally to Dorothyand her friends as an enormous head without a body, a lovely lady, a terriblebeast, and a ballof fire, introduces himself: "I Boston Globe, 2. ColinNickerson,"Assessingthe Summit:LostFace, LostOpportunity," 11 Jan. 1992, 8. of ElvisSightingsCertainin '93,"New YorkTimes, 3. B. DrummondAyres,Jr., "Millions 11 Jan. 1992, 6.

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 235 am Oz the Great and Terrible."4Oz is a nice instance of Lacan's "sujetsuppose savoir,"the one who is supposed to know-and, of course, he turns out (perhaps like Lacan's all-knowingpsychoanalyst) to be a humbug and a ventriloquist:"Pay no attentionto that man behind the curtain,"blusters the voice of Oz in the MGMfilm,when Dorothy'sfamiliar,the littledog Toto, tugs away the hangings to disclose a frightened littleman pullinglevers behind the scenes. (Here, we could footnote, were we so inclined, another dictum from Lacan: "[The phallus] can play its role only when veiled.")5The film is more cynical than the book on the question of "greatness";the Wizard's main speech, writtenfor W.C. Fields, who declined the part, has him handing out a diploma in place of the Scarecrow's wished-for brains, a plaque in place of the Tin Woodman's heart, and a medal in place of the Lion's courage. Significantly,what are today in politics called "characterissues" (brains, courage, heart) are thus here explicitlyfetishized and commodified, displayed as assumable attributesof the surface. Baum's Wizard of Oz, as it happens, was published in 1900, the same year as another seminal text on wish fulfillment-Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Lacan's essay "The Significationof the Phallus," by what may or may not be coincidence, was firstdelivered as a lecture in 1958, the same year as Jean Genet's play The Balcony, which likewise turns on the consequences of the unveilingof the phallus. The Balcony is a wonderfully rich text for the discussion of greatness, heroes, and the politics of mimesis, since it takes place in a brothelwhere clients pay to enact their erotic fantasies while dressed as pillars of society's institutions:the Judge, the Bishop, and the General. The Chief of Police, also knownas the Hero, is disconsolate because no one has yet asked to impersonate him, to play his part-the Chief of Police-in a sexual studio of fantasy. To enhance his appeal, he is advised to appear in the form of "a gigantic phallus, a prickof great stature."6 This will enable him, he thinks, to "symbolizethe nation."Let this fantasmatic giant phallus, like the giant disembodied head of the Great Oz, stand as a clear example of the politics of mimesis. The Police Chief's companions, the Judge and the Bishop, are dumbfounded: 4. L. FrankBaum, The WonderfulWizardof Oz (New York:Dover Publications,1960), 127. Allsubsequent referencesto this textwillbe abbreviatedWWO. 5. Jacques Lacan,"Signification of the Phallus,"in Ecrits:A Selection,trans.AlanSheridan (New York:W.W. Norton,1977), 288. 6. Jean Genet, The Balcony,trans.BernardFrechtman(New York:GrovePress, 1958), 78. Allsubsequent referencesto this textwillbe cited as Balcony.

236 boundary2 / Summer1992 The Judge: A phallus? Of great stature? You mean-enormous? The Chief of Police: Of my stature. The Judge: But that'llbe very difficultto bringoff. The Chief of Police: Not so very. What with new techniques in the rubberindustry,remarkablethings can be worked out. The Bishop (afterreflection):... To be sure, the idea is a bold one ... it would be a formidable figure-head, and if you were to transmit yourself in that guise to posterity .... The Chief of Police (gently): Wouldyou like to see the model? (Balcony, 78) This scheme, in fact, never does quite come off. The fantasy of the Hero unveiled as a phallicfigurehead is revised in practice, as the character of the revolutionaryRoger does choose to impersonate the Hero, but mimetically, as Chief of Police, dressing in his clothes, even wearing his toupee. Likethe other pretenders in the brothel,Roger wears the traditional footwear of ancient tragedy, cothurniabout twenty inches high, so that he towers over the "real"Hero and the others onstage. The Police Chief is ecstatic: "So I've made it?"he asks, and declares, "Gentlemen,I belong to the Nomenclature"(Balcony, 92). Roger, in turn, mistakes the role for the real: "I'vea rightto lead the character I've chosen to the very limitof his destiny . . of merging his destiny with mine" (Balcony, 93). Dramatically,he takes out a knife and, according to Genet's stage direction,"makes the gesture of castrating himself" (Balcony, 93). Afterthis, the Chief of Police, ostentatiously feeling his own balls, heaves a sigh of relief: The Chief of Police: Mineare here. So which of us is washed up? He or I? Though my image be castrated in every brothel in the world, I remain intact.... An image of me willbe perpetuated in secret. Mutilated? (He shrugs his shoulders.) Yet a low Mass will be said to my glory. ... Did you see? Did you see me? There, just before, larger than large, stronger than strong, deader than dead? (Balcony, 94) This is the apotheosis of the Hero, performedin a place called the Mausoleum Studio, since the dissemination of the Hero's image-as we have already seen with Elvis-is coterminouswith his death: "Thetruth[is] that you're dead, or ratherthat you don't stop dying and that your image, like your name, reverberatesto infinity"(Balcony, 92). Such is the realityof the brothel,the place of greatness as mimesis. "Judges, generals, bishops,

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 237 chamberlains, rebels," says the Madam of the House to her customers in the play's closing lines, "I'mgoing to prepare my costumes and studios for tomorrow.... You must now go home, where everything-you can be quite sure-will be falser than here" (Balcony, 96). "Youmust now go home, where everything-you can be quite surewill be falser than here." The instruction,the desire, or the necessity to go home again, to quit the fantasy world of greatness, is another move that links Dorothy'sadventures in Oz, and her longingfor Kansas, withthe world inside-and outside-Genet's theatrical brothel. Make-believe is a term that unites these fantasy worlds. "It'smake-believe that these gentlemen want," says the brothel madam (Balcony, 61), and Oz meekly confesses that he has been only "makingbelieve": "Makingbelieve!"cried Dorothy."Areyou not a great Wizard?" "Hush,my dear,"he said, "don'tspeak so loud, or you willbe overheard-and I should be ruined.I'msupposed to be a Great Wizard." "Andaren'tyou?" she asked. "Nota bit of it, my dear; I'mjust a common man." (WWO,184) Or, as the Scarecrow points out, to Oz's evident pleasure, a "humbug" (WWO, 184). That this is what greatness is-that greatness is not only indistinguishable from make believe and from humbug but is, in fact, necessarily dependent upon them-is the somewhat tendentious startingpoint of this essay. Dorothy wants-or thinks she wants-to go home to Aunty Em, to returnfromthe technicolorsplendors of Oz to the sepia "reality"of Kansas. The customers in Genet's brothelare sent home to a "real"worldthat is a pale copy of their fantasies. I want now to pointout that the uncanniness of the returnhome, the simultaneity,in Freud's now-familiarargument, of the Heimlich and the Unheimlich, the home-like and the uncanny, something "familiarand old-established ... which has been estranged by the process of repression,"7 is persistently literalizedin contemporaryAmerican culture through the figure of baseball, another fantasy world, or "fieldof dreams," in which greatness is figured as the capacity to control the return home, through the agency of the "home run." 7. Sigmund Freud,"TheUncanny,"in The StandardEditionof the Worksof Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London:The HogarthPress and the Instituteof PsycheAnalysis, 1955), 17:241.

238 boundary2 / Summer1992 A clear example of this tendency appears in the recent film Hook, made by America'sown Oz figure,Steven Spielberg, as a rewritingof Peter Pan for the 1990s. For me, Spielberg's film loses all the magic of the origiof Pan in the figure of nal, not incidentallybecause of the "normalization" a childish middle-aged male actor, Robin Williams, rather than a woman cross-dressed as the eternal boy. But in a crucial moment in Hook, when Peter's son Jack has been captured, Hookattempts to seduce his affections by replaying a scene in which the "real"father, Peter Banning/Robin Williams, failed his son by not showing up at a baseball game. The son struck out; the team lost. Captain Hook restages the baseball game in Neverland, with Jack as the hero, and posts his pirate minions in the crowd with placards. Each pirateholds a card witha letter,and the sequence is intended to spell out the slogan "Home Run, Jack."The pirates, however, being British ratherthan American, are unfamiliarwith the terminologyof the game and get their terms confused. Instead of "Home Run, Jack,"the hortatorymessage that greets the batter at the plate is the subliminalone that surfaces: "Run Home, Jack." A great deal of the filmturns on the question of which place is home: "Iam home," the son, flushed with the pleasure of the ball game and the home run,defiantlytells his father in Neverland. In the movie Field of Dreams, the protagonist'sunconscious desire to recuperate his relationshipwith his dead father is accomplished through the mediation of the father's own baseball hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, the star player unfairlydisgraced, debarred from heroism, greatness, and professional baseball itself by the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Buildinghis baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield ("Toto,I think we're not in Kansas anymore"),he, too, restages an American drama of greatness: Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox get to play baseball again, reversing the ban placed on them by the baseball commissioner, and the dead father returns as a young man in baseball uniformto play catch with his now grown son. (It is of some small interest that the ghostly baseball players, returning to the boundary of the cornfield into which they disappear each evening after the game, jokingly call out to the living spectators a famous phrase from The Wizard of Oz, "I'mmelting, I'm melting"-the last words of the Wicked Witch.) Furthermore,this configurationof baseball commissioner, banned and disgraced hero, and the fantasy of return("RunHome, Jack") is not, of course, a story only of the distant past, for the story itself subsequently returned, in the controversy between Cincinnati Reds baseball star Pete

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 239 Rose, banned from professional baseball for allegedly betting on games, and the commissioner who banned him, the late A. BartlettGiamatti.The confrontationbetween the two men was dramatic,based and grounded (so to speak) in notions of greatness and of mimesis. Could a man be a sports hero, especially for children, when he violated baseball's cardinal rules? "idealism,"and "integrity"were at stake, said Giamatti, so "Authenticity," that it was necessary for Rose to be "banished"from baseball forever.8 The tough, eloquent stance Giamattitook on the Rose case "elevated" him, wrote James Reston, Jr., "toheroic stature in America. By banishing a sports hero, he became a moralhero to the nation."9 Seven days after his dramatic announcement banning Rose from baseball, Giamatti himself was dead of a heart attack. When the news of his death, flashed over the television screen, reached the denizens of a Cincinnatisports bar, Rose fans broke out in a chorus from The Wizardof Oz: "Ding, dong, the witch is dead, the wicked, wicked, witch is dead.""1 Quite recently, however, the issue of Rose's banishment from baseball has been revived, specifically with regardto the question of greatness. Should Pete Rose be forever banned, not only from baseball but also from its Hall of Fame? New YorkTimes sports columnistDave Anderson, among others, thought not:The "best interests of baseball,"he wrote, citing Giamatti'sown phrase, would be served by Rose's election to the Hallof Fame.1 Bart Giamatti is described on the jacket blurbof his baseball book TakeTimefor Paradise as "a Renaissance scholar and formerPresident of Yale Universityand of the NationalLeague."12 (Thatthis can be offered not as a zeugma but as a simple compound tells its own, fascinatingly American, story.) "WhenA. BartlettGiamattidied,"wrote U.S. News and World Report in a quotationgiven prominentplace on the frontcover of the paperback edition, "baseball lost more than a commissioner. It lost an expositor. A philosopher. A poet. A high priest. Giamattiplays all of those positions with distinctionin TakeTimefor Paradise." Notice, ifyou will,the nice cross8. James Reston, Jr.,Collisionat HomePlate:TheLivesof Pete Rose and BartGiamatti (New York:HarperCollins, 1991), 306. 9. Reston, Collisionat Home Plate, 308. 10. Reston, Collisionat Home Plate, 312. 11. Dave Anderson,"PardonRose, and Put Himin Hall,"reprintedin the MiamiHerald, 5 Jan. 1992, sec. 3C. 12. A. BartlettGiamatti,TakeTimeforParadise:Americansand TheirGames (New York: SummitBooks, 1989). Allsubsequentreferencesto this text willbe abbreviatedTTP.

240 boundary2 / Summer1992 over phrase, "playsall of those positions."Giamattiis both philosopher and utilityinfielder.And, since his book is published posthumously, he is also, and very effectively, its immanentand ghostly figure of pathos. Take Time for Paradise begins with a quote from Shakespeare's Prince Hal ("Ifall the world were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work"),which is all the more strikingfor its relevance to the concept of banishment in the Henry IVplays (and in Richard II). Giamatti's book ends with Aristotleon mimesis, cited, purposefully,in the chatty style of present-tense baseball talk, "thetone and style of our national narrative" (TTP, 101), a style, says Giamatti,"almost biblicalin its continuityand its instinct for typology"(TTP,99): So, now, I'm standing in the lobby of the Marriottin St. Louis in October of '87 and I see this crowd, so happy with itself, all talking baseball . . . working at the fine points the way players in the

big leagues do, and it comes to me slowly, around noon, that this, this, is what Aristotlemust have meant by the imitationof an action. (TTP, 101) This (this) is the end of Giamatti'sbook. Politics for him-glossed both from Aristotle'sPolitics and etymologicallyfromthe word'sroots inpolis-"is the artof makingchoices and findingagreements in public"(TTP,51), and baseball "mirrorsthe condition of freedom for Americans that Americans ever guard and aspire to," so that "to know baseball is to aspire to the condition of freedom, individually,and as a people" (TTP,83; Giamatti'semphasis). In Giamatti's reading of baseball, Western culture is itself confirmed in its centrality:"BeforeAmericangames are American,they are Western"(TTP, 30). Itis, I think,highlysignificantthat Giamattishould choose to frame this humanist argument in the context of philology, in a selective reading of the concept of home. The crux of Giamatti'sphilologicalargument centers around nostalgia, around the nostos, the classical figure of return,and its relationshipto "home plate, the center of all the universes, the omphalos, the navel of the world"(TTP,86). "Inbaseball,"he writes, citingthe descriptionof this "curious pentagram"from The OfficialBaseball Rules, "everyonewants to arrive at the same place, which is where they start"(TTP,87). And "everyone"is a version of the classical hero: Home is the goal-rarely glimpsed, never attained-of all the heroes descended from Odysseus. .... As the heroes of romance beginning

Garber/ "Greatness": andthePolitics ofMimesis 241 Philology withOdysseus know,... to attemptto go homeis to go the longway around,to strayandseparateinthe hopeof findingcompletenessin reunion.(TTP,92-93) Giamattidramatizeshis analogywiththe empathicenergyof identification: Oftenthe effortfails, the hungeris unsatisfiedas the catcherbars is too strongin his denial,as the imas the umpire-father fulfillment, possibilityof goinghomeagainis reenacted.... Orifthe attempt... works,thenthe reunionandall it means is total-the runneris a returned hero .... Baseball is ... the Romance Epic of homecoming

Americasings to itself.(TTP,95) Andwhatis home? Giamattioffersthe followinggloss: Home is an Englishwordvirtuallyimpossibleto translateintoother tongues. No translationcatches the associations,the mixtureof memoryand longing,the sense of securityand autonomyand accessibility,the aromaof inclusiveness,of freedomfromwariness, thatclingto the wordhome.... Homeis a concept,nota place;it is a state of mindwhereself-definition starts;it is origins-the mixof timeand place andsmellandweatherwhereinone firstrealizesone is an original,perhapslike others,especiallythose one loves, but discrete,distinct,notto be copied.Homeis whereone firstlearned to be separateanditremainsinthe mindas the placewherereunion, if itwere everto occur,wouldhappen.(TTP,92) Discrete,distinct,not to be copied. This serene nostalgiaof oriis gins not the home of Freud'suncanny,the simultaneouscontradictory presence of das Heimlich and das Unheimlich,"somethingthat is secretly

the returnof the repressed,associatedwiththe livingdead, the familiar," unconscious,the female genitals,and the compulsionto repeat.Giamatti is untroubledby the mise en abimeof literary theoryfromBenjaminto Bauthe of infinite of drillard, space replication, representationand simulacra, the postmodernconditionof copies insteadof originals.ForGiamatti,home is the space of baseball,of middle-America-theMarriott inSt. Louis-and of "theGreeks.""Ancient," he says, "meansGreek,forus"(TTP,27). Home, in short, is Homer-a name that has become in baseball parlancebotha nounand a verb,signifyingthe ultimateachievement,the fulfillmentof desire. To homer-to hit a homer-is to be a hero, to go home again.

242 boundary2 / Summer1992 Bart Giamattiwas the founder of Yale's Great Books course on the Western traditionfrom Homer to Brecht and the author of a study of the earthly paradise in the Renaissance epic. He was a premierand eloquent defender of the concept of humanism in literarystudies, and an explicit champion of both the traditionalliterarycanon and-as these quotations will have demonstrated-the capacity of "greatliterature"to informand shape human life. What I want to emphasize in citing these passages is both the conservatizing use of the canon to enforce a politics of mimesis, inclusion and exclusion, and the crucial role of philology in apparentlyestablishing a ground for such a claim. Philology and the politics of mimesis. The ideology of greatnessan ideology that claims, precisely, to transcend ideological concerns and to locate the timeless and enduring, the fit candidates though few for a Hallof Fame, whether in sports or in arts and letters-is, in fact, frequently secured with reference to a philology of origins. Yet, a specific examination of the relationshipof philologyto the politicsof mimesis yields, as well, some interesting complications. Consider the case of ErichAuerbach'slandmarkstudy Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature,a study that takes as its starting point a sustained meditationon the concept of Homerand "home." "Readers of the Odyssey," the book begins withoutpreamble, "willremember the ... touching scene in book 19, when Odysseus has at last come home."13 But where is "home"for ErichAuerbach? A distinguished professor of romance philology who concluded his career as Sterling Professor at Yale, Auerbachwas a Jewish refugee from Nazi persecution who was born in Berlin. Discharged from his position at MarburgUniversityby the Nazi government, he emigratedto Turkey,where he taught at the TurkishState University,untilhis move to the UnitedStates in 1947. His celebrated book Mimesis was writtenin Istanbulbetween May 1942 and April1945. It was published in Berne, Switzerland, in 1946, and translated into Englishfor the BollingenSeries, published by Princeton University Press, in 1953. The politics of Mimesis were thus, at least in part, a politics of exile-and a politics of nostos and nostalgia. "Home"was the Western tradition,and the translatiostudii. In his epilogue to Mimesis, Auerbach is at pains to point out that trans. 13. ErichAuerbach,Mimesis:TheRepresentationof Realityin WesternLiterature, WillardTrask(GardenCity,N.Y.:DoubledayAnchor,1957), 1. Allsubsequent references to this text willbe cited as Mimesis.

Garber/ "Greatness": andthePolitics of Mimesis243 Philology "thebook was writtenduringthe warand at Istanbul,wherethe libraries are not well equippedfor Europeanstudies."Thus, he explains,his book necessarilylacks footnotesand may also assert somethingthat "modern researchhas disprovedor modified." Yet,he remarks,"itis quitepossible thatthe bookowes its existenceto justthis lackof a richand specialized library.If it had been possiblefor me to acquaintmyselfwithall the work that has been done on so manysubjects,I mightneverhave reachedthe pointof writing" (Mimesis,492). This last sentiment-that readingcriticismand scholarshipmay sometimes impedethe creativeprocess-will doubtlessbe familiarto all graduatestudentsembarkingon the writingof a Ph.D.thesis. Yet,it is also and strikinglysimilarto a certaintacticalenhancementof "greatliterature" "greatness"in generalthroughthe evacuationof historicalcontext.I want to suggest that the absence of a criticalapparatusin a book on the evolutionof the greattraditionin Westernlettersis somethingmore,or less, than an accidentof historicalcontingency.Auerbach'sresearchopportunitieswere limitedby his circumstances;his choice of topicwas not. The scholarwhowouldlaterwritethat"ourphilological homeis the earth;itcan no longerbe the nation"14sustainedhis argumentthrougha selection of texts that he alleges were "chosenat random,on the basis of accidental acquaintanceand personalpreference"(Mimesis,491). Outof this came a book that claimedin its subtitle,and has been taken,to set forth"the representationof realityin Westernliterature." EdwardSaid has noted that Auerbach'salienationand "displacement"in Istanbuloffersa good exampleof the way in whichnot being "at can home,"or "inplace,"withrespectto a cultureand itspolicingauthority, ButwhatforErich enable, as wellas impede,literaryandculturalanalysis.15 Auerbachwas a wartimenecessity became, for a groupof U.S.-based scholarsin the same period,a democraticprincipleof pedagogy. I want,therefore,to move now,profitingfromGiamatti'sand Auerbach'sspeculationson homeand Homer,to a considerationof the specific 14. Auerbach,"Philologyand Weltliteratur," trans.N. and E.W. Said, CentennialReview 13 (Winter1969):17. Auerbachsays, "Culture oftenhas to do withan aggressive sense of nation,home, community,and belonging"(12;myemphasis).WhatEdwardW.Said calls the "executivevalue of exile"demystifiesthe notionsof culturalstandardsas "natural," and "real"(see Said, TheWorld,the Text,and the Critic[Cambridge:Harvard "objective," UniversityPress, 1983], 8-9). Notice here the differencebetween real and realism,the second termpreciselydifferingfrom,not coincidentwith,the first. 15. Said, The World,the Text,and the Critic,8.

244 boundary 2 / Summer 1992 kindof "greatness"embodiedinthe conceptof the GreatBooks,the cultural heroes of ourtimeforpunditsfromAllanBloomto HaroldBloom.To study the "Greats"at Oxfordand Cambridgeis to readthe ancientclassics; for this generationof Americans,however,the Greatshave been updatedslightly. Insearch of some wisdomon this topic-of whatmakes the Great Booksgreat-I decidedto consultthe experts:specifically, the editorsof the EncyclopaediaBritannicaGreatBooksSeries, moreaccuratelydescribed as the Great Books of the Western World,first collected and published

in 1952 in a Founders'Editionunderthe editorshipof RobertMaynard Hutchinsand Mortimer J. Adler.16 Hutchins'sprefatory volumeto the series, entitledTheGreatConversation: The Substance of a LiberalEducation, makes it clear that, at least

in 1952, "there[was]notmuchdoubtaboutwhich[were]the mostimportant voices inthe GreatConversation" (GB,xvii)."Thediscussionsof the Board revealedfew differencesof opinionaboutthe overwhelming majorityof the books in the list,"whichincludedauthorsfromHomerto Freud."Theset" continuedHutchins,"is almostself-selected,in the sense that one book it"(GB, xvi).The leads to another,amplifying,modifying,or contradicting GreatConversation,as Adlerand his boardconceivedit,at the timeof the election of PresidentEisenhower,was, it is not surprisingto note, exclusively consideredas takingplace betweenEuropeanand Americanmen, men who were no longerlivingat the timetheywereenshrinedin the hard covers of "greatness."The explicitpoliticsof the editionwas, nonetheless, was includedin the set, apparatus" aggressivelydemocratic:No "scholarly since the editorsbelievedthat"greatbookscontaintheirownaids to reading;that is one reasonwhythey are great.Since we holdthatthese works to the ordinaryman,we see no reasonto interposeourselves are intelligible or anybodyelse betweenthe authorandthe reader"(GB,xxv). Givena The assumptionhere was one of enlightened"objectivity." boundset of volumesvettedfor "greathandsomelyproduced,uniformly ness," the editorsthoughtthatthe reader-unreflectivelygenderedmale, an inevitablecommonplaceof the times-would be ableto "findwhatgreat men have hadto say aboutthe greatestissues andwhatis beingsaid about these issues today"(GB,xxv-xxvi).Toaid in the process,the editorspro16. Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J.

Adler,54 volumes (Chicago:EncyclopaediaBritannica,1952).Allsubsequentreferences to this text willbe abbreviatedGB.

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 245 duced a curious kind of two-volume outline called the Syntopicon, "which began as an index and then turned into a means of helping the reader find paths through the books" (GB, xxv). A chief obstacle to this process, apparently, was what Hutchins called, in a phrase later to be echoed by the likes of BillBennett and Lynne Cheney, "the vicious specialization of scholarship."With the help of this completely objective and apolitical edition, "the ordinary reader,"we are assured, will be able to break throughthe obfuscating barrierof "philology, metaphysics, and history,"the "cult of scholarship" that forms a barrier between him and the great authors. For example, despite the huge "apparatus" of commentary surroundingThe Divine Comedy (an apparatus the "ordinaryreader" has "heard of" but "never used"), the purchaser and reader of the Great Books will be "surprisedto find that he understands Dante without it"(GB, xxiv). The endpapers of The Great Books of the Western World,uniform throughoutthe fifty-fourvolumes, are themselves a treasure trove of information. FollowingStephen G. Nichols's invitation,in his essay on "the new to inquireinto the material nature of the text and its physical Philology,""17 and culturalmargins, I offer one or two briefobservations about them. The firstpairof endpapers, inthe frontof each volume, lists the product being sold (and bought): The Great Books of the Western World,and the three introductoryvolumes that frame them, The Great Conversation, The Great Ideas I, and The Great Ideas II(see Figure 1). But what are the Great Ideas? In case we have any doubt, the editors conveniently list them for us in the second set of endpapers, the set that closes the book (see Figure 2). Remember that this is an objective, nonpoliticallist, assembled by editors who "believe that the reductionof the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy" (GB, xiii), and that "untillately [again, 1952] there never was very much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankindcalled the finest creations, in writing,of the Western mind"(GB, xi). The Great Ideas, the preoccupations of the great authors who wrote the Great Books and who participatedin the ongoing Great Conversation, in which the ordinarycitizen is encouraged to thinkhe should also take part, are listed in the second set of endpapers in alphabetical order,from Angel 17. Stephen G. Nichols,"Introduction: Culture,"Speculum 65, Philologyin a Manuscript no. 1 (January1990): 1-10.

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248 boundary2 / Summer1992 to World.Notice that this list, which includes ideas likeCitizen, Constitution, Courage, Democracy, and Education,also includes entries with a more disquieting ring: Evil, Pain, Contingency, Other, and the great cornerstone of individualism,and therefore of humanist hero-making,Death. All of these words are tamed and contained-and here we should indeed think of the Cold War containmenttheory-by being presented as part of a dyad. Angel, Animal,and Aristocracystand alone; but Good and Evil, Life and Death, Necessity and Contingency,One and Many, Pleasure and Pain, Same and Other, Virtueand Vice, Universal and Particularare tethered together like the horses of the charioteer. It is perhaps too much to say that cuttingfree each of the darktwins in this dyad would produce an entirelydifferentprofileof great ideas and great books; but it is not too much to say that the last fortyyears of literaryand culturaltheory have explored, precisely, the dangerous complacencies of these binarisms, the politics of their masquerade as opposites ratherthan figures for one another, and the master-slave relationthat informsthem. Myother observation about "TheGreat Ideas"is one that addresses the question of packaging. On one page of this list, the ideas runalphabetically from Angel to Mathematics;on the other page, they run from Matter to World. In each case, the list fills up the entire page, with one decorative squiggle at the beginning, and one at the end. Angel to Mathematics,Matter to World. It is of some small interest, however, that the two volumes that contain the Great Ideas, the Syntopicon, volumes 1 and 2, choose slightly differentmoments to begin and end. Volume 1 ends not with Mathematics but with Love; Volume 2 thus starts with Man. Volume 1: Angel to Love;volume 2: Manto World.You have to admit that this puts a somewhat differentspin on the alphabetical iconography of greatness. Matter and Mathematics are worthy enough categories in themselves, but they seem somehow so material, lacking the humanist grandeur of Love and Man. Nor is this an accident of division based on the length of the individualarticles. Angel to Love, chapters 1 to 50, the contents of the first volume, covers 750 pages; chapters 51 to 102, Man to World, the contents of the second volume, covers 809 pages. It is reasonable to thinkthat an editorialdecision has been made-and a perfectlyappropriate one, given the presumptions of the Great Books project. The titles of the prefatoryvolumes will be an icon of the whole. The very trope usually ascribed to deconstructionists, and to a deconstructive playfulness, the trope of chiasmus ("thepoliticsof mimesis and the mimesis of politics"),is here quietlyemployed to anchor the ideology of

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 249 the series; the relationshipof Manto Love (not the relationshipof Matterto Mathematics) willserve as a fulcrum,a microrelationmediatingthe macrorelation of Angel to World.Readers of Tillyard'sElizabethan WorldPicture and Lovejoy'sGreat Chainof Being will here recognize a familiarstructure. What Ifind so scandalous about this whole enterprise, however, is its blithe claim that the absence of a scholarly apparatusis preferable because it is, apparently,nonideological. I quote again from Hutchins'spreface: We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. . . . The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the

great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall a prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues forthemselves (GB, xiii).... [Thus,]the Advisory Board recommended that no scholarly apparatus should be included in the set. No "introductions" givingthe Editors'views of the authors should appear. The books should speak for themselves, and the reader should decide for himself. (GB, xxv) Angel to Love; Man to World. I want now to turn to another crucial text of the same year, 1952, a work not included in Hutchinsand Adler'sGreat Books Series, but one that I myself consider a foundational midcenturyAmericantext for the making of the hero-and for the theorizationof fame and greatness-through an effectively placed sound bite: E. B. White's Charlotte'sWeb.18 You willrecallthat in White'stale, Wilbur,the innocent, unworldlypig, is threatened by a "plot"to turnhimintosmoked bacon and ham. "'There'sa regularconspiracy around here to killyou at Christmastime,'" an old sheep tells him, complacently. "Everybodyis in on the plot"-the farmer,the hired hand, and, unkindestcut of all, the allegoricallynamed John Arable,whose daughter Fern was Wilbur'sfirst foster mother, and who is himself nowaccording to the old sheep-about to arrive,shotgun in hand, to slaughter Wilburthe pig in time for the holidays (CW,49). Wilbur'sstory is a classic fable of natureand culture,or of the transi18. E. B. White,Charlotte'sWeb (New York:HarperCollins, 1952). Allsubsequent references to this text willbe abbreviatedCW.

250 boundary2 / Summer1992 tion fromthe Imaginaryto the Symbolic.The dyadic, prefallen,and preoedipal world inhabited by Wilburand Fern Arable,in which the infantWilburis fed with a bottle like a human baby and wheeled about in a baby carriage, is disrupted by farmerArable'sdecision that "'Wilburis not a baby any longer and he has got to be sold' " (CW, 12). The purchaser, a near neighbor and relation, is John Arable's brother-in-law,HomerZuckerman. Nature and Homerwere, he found, the same, says Pope of the poet of the Georgics, but for Wilbur,the move down the road fromArable's farm to that of his brother-in-lawHomer is precisely a move from nature to culture. Withthe threat of impendingdeath, Wilburis translated into a far more dangerous-but also potentiallymore heroic-world of language, a world, in fact, in which philologydoes produce a politics of mimesis. It is in Uncle Homer's barn that Wilburmeets Charlottethe spider, whose instincts for publicity-and for understandingthe way significationfollows the signwill be his salvation. Charlottehas a plan. "Some Pig!" she writes neatly, in block letters, in the middle of her web, to be discovered in the morningby the hired hand. "Some Pig!"The word spreads quickly."'Edith,something has happened,'" farmerZuckerman reports to his wife "ina weak voice." "'Ithinkyou had best be told that we have a very unusual pig'" (CW,79). A look of complete bewildermentcame over Mrs.Zuckerman'sface. "HomerZuckerman,what in the worldare you talkingabout?" "This is a very serious thing, Edith,"he replied. "Ourpig is completely out of the ordinary." "What'sunusual about the pig?"asked Mrs.Zuckerman. ... "Well,I don't really know yet. ... But we have received a sign.... [R]ightspang in the middle of the web there were the words "Some Pig." ...

A miracle has happened and a sign has occurred here on

earth, righton our farm, and we have no ordinarypig." "Well,"said Mrs. Zuckerman,"itseems to me you're a littleoff. It seems to me we have no ordinaryspider." "Oh, no," said Zuckerman."It'sthe pig that's unusual. It says so, rightthere in the middle of the web." (CW,79-81) Such is the power of publicity."Some Pig" is, of course superbly chosen as an epithet of praise, since it could mean anything, and shortly does. "'Youknow,'"muses Mr.Zuckerman,this time in "animportantvoice," "'I'vethought all along that that pig of ours was an extra good one. He's a solid pig. That pig is as solid as they come'" (CW,81). "'He's quite a pig,'"

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 251 says Lurvythe hiredhand. "'I'vealways noticed that pig.... He's as smooth as they come. He's some pig.'" In days, the rumorhas spread through the county, and "everybody knew that the Zuckermans had a wondrous pig" (CW, 82-83). Philology enters the story explicitlythroughthe quest for new signs and new slogans, since "Some Pig," though a good, all-purpose characterization, soon begins to seem stale, and other suggestions are sought from the barnyardanimals. What should be writtennext in the web? "Pig Supreme" is rejected as too culinaryin association--"'It sounds like a rich will do, even though Wilburprodessert,' " says Charlotte-but "Terrific" tests that he's not terrific."'That doesn't make a particle of difference,'" replies Charlotte,"'Not a particle.People believe almost anythingthey see " (CW,89). in print.Does anybody here know how to spell "terrific"?' The chief agent of philologicalinstrumentality,however, is the barn's resident research assistant, Templetonthe Rat, whose nocturnalforaging in the local dump produces scraps of paper-advertisements torn from old magazines-that will provide Charlottewith something to copy. Not every piece of research pays off. "Crunchy"(from a magazine ad) and "PreShrunk"(from a shirt label) are both discarded as inappropriateto a discourse of fame and transcendence. Crunchy, says Charlotte, is "'just the wrong idea. Couldn'tbe worse.... We must advertise Wilbur'snoble qualities, not his tastiness' " (CW,98). A package of soap flakes in the woodshed, however, produces a winner:"WithNew RadiantAction"(CW,99): "Whatdoes it mean?" asked Charlotte,who had never used any soap flakes in her life. "Howshould I know?"said Templeton. "Youasked for words and I broughtthem. I suppose the next thing you'llwant me to fetch is a dictionary."(CW,99) Together, they contemplate the soap ad, and then they send for Wilburand put him through his paces. This is the mimesis test. "'Run around!'commanded Charlotte, 'I want to see you in action, to see if you are radiant'" (CW, 100). After a series of gallops, jumps, and back-flips,the brain trust of the spider and the rat decides that, if Wilburis not exactly radiant,he's close enough. said Wilbur,"Ifeel radiant." "Actually," "Do you?" said Charlotte, looking at him with affection. "Well, you're a good little pig, and radiantyou shall be. I'm in this thing prettydeep now--I might as well go the limit."(CW, 101)

252 boundary2 / Summer1992 In sequence, then, the web declares Wilburto be "Some Pig," "Terrific,""Radiant,"and, finally,"Humble,"a word Templetonfinds on a scrap of folded newspaper, and one Charlotteglosses for him: "Humble?"said Charlotte."'Humble'has two meanings. Itmeans 'not proud' and it means 'near the ground.' That's Wilburall over. He's not proud and he's near the ground."(CW, 140) Indeed, Charlotte the spider is the book's learned philologist, the erudite definer of terms like gullible, sedentary, untenable, and versatile, a scholar whose Latin is as good as her English. She describes her egg sac as her "magnum opus" (CW, 144), explaining to Wilbur,whose Latin is weak, that a magnum opus is a great work (CW, 145). (Neither Wilbur nor Charlotte seem to speak pig latin, the obvious lingua franca for the great conversation in the barnyard.)As this concept of a great work implies, Charlotte is also, ultimately,the book's figure of humanist aesthetic pathos, a self-described writerwho foretells her own demise: "'[Humble]is the last word I shall ever write'" (CW, 140). Her death displaces Wilbur's and preserves him as a hero, as "Zuckerman'sFamous Pig" (CW, 133). The name of Wilbur'snew owner, HomerZuckerman,introduces into this littlefable a tonic note of culture and, indeed, of both the Great Books and the paternal Law. That this Homeric nomination is not entirely trivial may be discerned by considering again the identityof the media agent in Wilbur'sstory, the resourcefulCharlotte,a spider with a magic web. Charlotte, this uncanny precursor of the modern "spin-doctor,"the media manipulatorfor politicalfigures, is also, classically, a Penelope, weaving and unweaving her web, creating headlines that guarantee Wilburnot only his fifteen minutes of fame but also his life. "The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web; a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries."This is Derridaat the beginningof "Plato'sPharmacy,"an essay that also begins with philologicalexplorations, with the multiplemeanings of histos, which means at once 'mast', 'loom', 'woven cloth', and 'spider's web'.19Both mast and loom; that is, both the story of Odysseus, bound to the mast, hearing the Sirens, and the story of Penelope, weaving and unweaving her web. (Is it an accident that this is also the design of Auerbach's Mimesis-from "Odysseus' Scar" to Mrs. Ramsay's "BrownStocking"? A coincidence, certainly,but perhaps not altogether an accident.) in Dissemination,trans.BarbaraJohnson (Chi19. Jacques Derrida,"Plato'sPharmacy," cago: Universityof ChicagoPress, 1981), 63.

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 253 Recall the completely disregarded observation of Mrs. Zuckerman, on hearing the news of the miraculousweb, that what they have is "noordinary spider," and not, as her husband claims, "no ordinarypig." Oh, no, he assures her; the spider is quite ordinary-a common gray spider. It is the pig who is remarkable,terrific,and radiant;it says so quite clearly in the web. The text is, indeed, dissimulated behind the self-evidence of its message: Ever since the spider had befriendedhim, [Wilbur]had done his best to live up to his reputation.When Charlotte'sweb said SOME PIG, Wilburhad tried hard to look like some pig. When Charlotte's web said TERRIFIC,Wilburhad tried to look terrific.And now that the web said RADIANT,he did everythingpossible to make himself glow. Itis not easy to look radiant,but Wilburthrew himself into it with a will. (CW, 114) What are the politics of this mimesis? "'Ladeez and gentlemen,' " blared the loud speaker at the County Fair, "'we now present Mr.Homer L. Zuckerman'sdistinguished pig. The fame of this unique animal has spread to the far corners of the earth' " (CW, 157). "Inthe words of the spider's web, ladies and gentlemen, this is some pig .... This magnificent animal," continued the loudspeaker,

"is trulyterrific Note the general radiance of this animal! Then .... remember the day when the word 'radiant'appeared clearly on the web. Whence came this mysterious writing?Not fromthe spider, we can rest assured of that. Spiders are very clever at weaving their webs, but needless to say spiders cannot write."(CW, 157-58) Now, if Charlotteis a humanist,she is also a feminist.Wilburnaively, but unerringly,recognizes the physical stigmata of feminism, as described in the popularmagazines of today. "'Youhave awfullyhairylegs,' " he says to her soon after they meet (CW, 55). Feminist theologian Mary Daly has claimed Charlotte as a fellow Spinster, tracing her ancestry from Arachne and the Spider Woman of Navajo myth, and lamentingthe apparent role of the mythicfemale spider, however powerful,as merely the accomplice and the public relations agent of the male hero's fame.20 Daly's chief target here, and one worth attacking, is Joseph Camp20. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology:The Metaethics of Radical Feminism(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 396-99. Subsequentreferencesto this text willbe cited as Daly.

254 boundary2 / Summer1992 bell, the arch-archetypalistwho is also the source for her account of the Spider Woman myth. Campbell writes, "SpiderWoman with her web can control the movements of the Sun. The hero who has come under the protection of the Cosmic Mothercannot be harmed."21 MaryDaly would prefer a more female-affirmativefable. "Is Wilburworth it? What if the aided pig had been Wilmaor Wilhelmina?"(Daly,399). Forher, Spinsters, takingtheir cue from "the complex and fascinating web of the spider,"can spin ideas about such interconnected symbols as "the maze, the labyrinth,the spiral, the hole as mystic center . . to weave and unweave, dis-covering hidden threads of connectedness" (Daly, 400). There are uncanny connections between the figure of the female spider (who weaves and unweaves, who mates and kills) and the story of the hero, from Freud's essay on "Femininity"to The Wizardof Oz to Darwin to Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Despite Joseph Campbell, it is clear that the spider's transgressive and sexualized power, and, indeed, her relationship to the psychoanalytic figure of the phallic woman, renders her potentially threatening, as well as nurturant.Shakespeareans will recognize the uncanny and ambivalent power of magic in the web and of the spider in the cup. In Genet's Balcony, the powerfulfantasmatic Queen, who never appears, is described as "embroideringand not embroidering,""embroidering an invisible (and an 'interminable')handkerchief"(Balcony, 62, 69). In the film The Kiss of the Spider Woman, the "spider woman" is a powerful, transgendered storyteller,a gay man who sometimes calls himself a woman and who "embroiders"(the word is literallyused) the plots that are his own version of Penelope's web. My point is that Charlotte's web, like the prisoner Molina's web, frames the sign. It produces an object of desire-Wilbur-who seems to stand free of the apparatus that produces him-like the Wizard of Oz, like the apparentlyfreestanding Great Books that are, similarly,showcased as self-evidently great, decontextualized, and made into icons. WilburTERRIFIC,RADIANT,and HUMBLE-emerges as something likethe ideal politicalcandidate, with only invisiblestrings attached. Wilburhimself makes one vain attemptto spin a web, to become the 21. Joseph Campbell,The Hero witha ThousandFaces (1949; reprint,Princeton:Bollingen, 1968), 71. Campbell'sreadingof the place of "woman"in the heroicscheme of things can be deduced fromthe listingunderthat heading in the index:"symbolismin hero's adventures;as goddess; as temptress;CosmicWoman;as hero'sprize;see also mother."

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 255 self-sufficient spider-artist (albeit with string attached). Under Charlotte's indulgentdirection,he climbs to the top of a manurepile witha stringtied to his tail. "'Youcan't spin a web, Wilbur,'"counsels Charlotteafter this sorry adventure, "'and I advise you to put the idea out of your mind.You lack two things needed for spinning a web.... You lack a set of spinnerets, and you lack knowhow'" (CW, 59). Here, again, nature and culture, or biology and destiny, are linkedtogether. Pigs, it seems, can't fly. Or can they? For a generation brought up on Charlotte's Web-for my generation-the intuitionthat Wilburresembled a political candidate, and, in a way, the ideal politicalcandidate, was literalizedin one glorious gesture by Jerry Rubin and the Yippies-the Youth InternationalParty. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Yippies nominated a pig for president, withthe campaign pledge, "Theynominate a president and he eats the people; We nominate a president and the people eat him."22Perhaps significantly,in the context of the rhetoricof nostalgia and the politics of mimesis, this pig had a classical name: "Pigasus."Who says that pigs can't fly?23 The tangled web of philologyand the politicsof mimesis-or rather, at this juncture, of politics as a version of mimesis-was actualized in the media-conscious sixties through a metonymic figure, that of the network, an electronic web. As in all of those old movies and newsreels, in which the concentric circles of radiosignals were seen to spread out across the country in a widening rippleeffect, the spin-doctorsof media culturedissimulated their messages.

"Wehave to be very clear on this point,"wrote RichardNixon's speech writer,Raymond Price, "thatthe response is to the image, not the man. It's not what's there that counts; it's what's projected-and carrying it one step further,"Price continued, "it'snot what he projects but rather what the voter receives. It's not the man we have to change, but rather the received impression. And this impression often depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate himself"(Price's emphasis).24 As we have just seen in the case of Wilbur. 22. Abbie Hoffman,Soon To Be a MajorMotionPicture (New York:Perigee Books, 1980), 144. 23. "The time has come, the Walrussaid, / To talk of many things:/ Of shoes-and ships-and sealingwax- / Ofcabbages-and kings- / Andwhythe sea is boilinghot/ And whether pigs have wings."LewisCarroll,Throughthe Looking-Glass,and What Alice Found There,chap. 4, stanza 11. 24. Joe McGinniss,TheSellingof the President(1969;reprint,NewYork:PenguinBooks,

256 boundary2 / Summer1992 To us this is no longer a surprise. The use of advertising in political campaigns is, by now, commonplace; the Boston Globe, for example, currently features "AdvertisingWatch,"a regular column in which campaign commercials are described, named (each has a title, like that of a short subject or a feature film),and analyzed for truthand politicaleffectiveness. The workof Michael Rogin, among others, has described "RonaldReagan, the Movie"as a commodified, empty fiction.25There was a time, however, when politicaladvertising, and the involvementof ad men in politicalcampaigns, was not only surprisingbut transgressive-and, if you were an ad man, both exciting and lucrative. Journalist Joe McGinniss himself became a "nonfictionstar of the first rank"-according to the bio-blurbon his book-when he wrote The Selling of the President, the book that exposed to the general reading public "the marketing of political candidates as if they were consumer products, ... selling Hubert Humphrey(or Richard Nixon) to America like so much toothpaste or detergent" (SP, xiv). Or, as in the case of Wilbur,soap flakes. McGinniss chronicled in fascinated-and fascinating-detail the machinations of men like Raymond Price, Roger Ailes, Leonard Garment, and Frank Shakespeare in the packaging of RichardNixon. For me, there is a certain pleasure even in the accident of these names: Price, Garment, Shakespeare, the very allegorical structureof hero-making. The element of "Some Pig" in the Nixon success story is considerable; the back room boys work on Nixon's "personalityproblems,"on his "lackof humor,"on his need to concoct some "memorablephrases to use in wrappingup certain points,"and so on (SP, 73-75). Sound bites are very much at issue, as are their visual counterparts,photo opportunities.At the end of a staged television panel discussion-one of a number scheduled coast-to-coast throughoutthe campaign-"the audience charged from the bleachers, as instructed.They swarmed around RichardNixon so that the last thing the viewer at home saw was Nixon in the middleof this big crowd of people, who all thought he was great"(SP, 72). Once again, as with the words in Charlotte'sweb, as with Angel to Love and Man to World, let us focus on the framingof the sign. J. Walter Thompson advertising executive HarryTreleaven, a mastermindof Nixon's 1988), 37; emphasis in original.All subsequent referencesto this text will be abbreviated SP. 25. MichaelRogin,RonaldReagan, the Movie,and OtherEpisodes in PoliticalDemonology (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1987).

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 257 first successful campaign, submitted a passionate memo explaining "Why Richard Nixon Should Utilize Magazine Advertising in the State of New Hampshire Primary": This writerbelieves firmlythat the chances of overcoming Richard Nixon's cold image and the chances of making himloved and making him glamourous via commercial exposure on television (where admittedlyhe has not been at his best) are far less than the chances of making him loved and making him glamourous via saturationexposure of artfullyconceived and produced four-color,full-page (or double spread) magazine advertisements

.... Are women going to

vote for a RichardNixon they currentlybelieve to be cold, unloving, unglamourous?

No. .

.

. But rich, warm advertising in a woman's

own medium, the service magazine, next to her cake mixes and her lipstick advertisement will go a long way, I believe, toward making Mr.Nixon acceptable to female viewers. ... Warm,human, four-color magazine illustrationsdepicting Dick Nixonthe familyman, perhaps even surrounded by his beautiful family, will allow the women of America, and, initially,the women of New Hampshire,to identifywith him, and his home life.... This warm visual image ... will sell his qualificationsto voters who can study the advertisement leisurely in their home. (SP, 218-19; Treleaven's emphasis) Here is that American "home"again, full of "warm,human, four-color... illustrations."Run home, Dick. (Even real estate agents now sell "homes" ratherthan "houses"-at least in ads targeted to the middle-class "homeowner."This, too, I think, is partof the contemporaryrhetoricof nostalgia.) "It'snot what's there that counts, it's what's projected,"wrote Raymond Price about candidate Nixon.This pronouncementis strikinglysimilar to a recent remarkmade by rock star George Michael:"It'snot something extra that makes a superstar, it's something missing."26 For me, the question is reallynot one of elegiac loss but of the political uses of nostalgia. Are great books most in need of being called "great" when their link with the culture is most tenuous? Has political life, as we commonly understand it-from Wilbur,to Nixon, to Reagan, to Bush-become an arena in which what is imitated is mimesis? (Recall, for example, George Bush, pretendingthat he buys his socks at JC Penney in an attempt 26. Interviewwith George MichaelentitledMusic, Money,Love, Faith(MTVNetworks, 1988).

258 boundary2 / Summer1992 to stimulate the economy; Reagan, "remembering"wartime events that he saw, or acted, in HollywoodB-pictures;David Duke, transforminghimself, by plastic surgery, into the boy next door, a matinee idol for voters who have been trained by recent historyto thinkactors are politicians,that there is such a thing as "lookingpresidential.")Is "greatness" largely or entirely an effect-and if so, what kind of effect? A stage effect, a psychoanalytic effect, or an effect of nostalgia? It's not something extra, but something missing. What is at issue is overcompensation and an anxious fantasy of wholeness, as with Oz the Great and Terrible,and with Genet's Chief of Police and his fantasy of the giant phallus. MortimerAdler,updating his list of "GreatBooks, Past and Present" in 1988, lists thirty-sixnew white male authors who published between 1900 and 1945, and an additionaleighteen authors-also all male and all white-who publishedbetween 1945 and the present. He is worried, however, about his capacity to see clearly: "Could it be that my nineteenth-century mentality . . . blind[s] me to the merit of work that represents the artistic and intellectualcultureof the last forty or so years?"'27Adler'sconcern is that he may failto identifysome of the great works, but he is entirelyconvinced not only that they are there to be found but that greatness can be pinpointed,however tautologous the test. "Ifwe say that a good book is a book that is worth reading carefully once, and that a better book than that-a great book-is one that is worth reading carefully a second or thirdtime, then the greatest books are those worth reading over and over again-endlessly."28 Wilbur,Oz, the Great Books, the Great Tradition.Greatness is an effect of decontextualization, of the decontextualizingof the sign-and of a fantasy of control, a fantasy of the sujet suppos6 savoir, of a powerful agency, divine or other. "Ifyou build it, he will come"; "a miracle has happened and a sign has occurred here on earth, righton our farm, and we have no ordinarypig." Someone knows; someone-someone else-is in control. The politicallogic of this is as disturbingas its psychology. "Good"books, like "competent"politicians, are, in our inflated culture, somehow not good enough. From the canon debate to the political arena, "greatness" has become an increasinglyproblematicstandard. Ifwe have greatness thrust upon us in either sphere, we should recognize it as 27. MortimerJ. Adler,ReformingEducation:The Opening of the AmericanMind, ed. Geraldine Van Doren (New York:Collier Books, 1988), 350. 28. Adler, Reforming Education, 343.

Garber/ "Greatness": Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 259 an ideological category, a redundancyeffect, a "recognitionfactor,"as the pundits say. It seems clear that anxieties about greatness in literatureare closely tied to anxieties about national,political,and culturalgreatness, and that the more anxious the government, the more pressure is placed upon the humanities to textualize and naturalizethe category of the "great."This is no reason to discard such a category entirely, even if it were possible to do so. But it is a good reason to be wary, and to pay some attention to that man behind the curtain-or, if anyone tries to sell you one, to be cautious about lionizing"some pig"-however terrific,radiant,and humble-in a poke.

"Atthe End of the Day":An Interviewwith MaireadKeane, National Head of Sinn Fein Women's Department

LauraE. Lyons As National Head of the Women's Department,MaireadKeane has been responsible for finding out what concerns Irishwomen feel are important to their daily lives. Her position involves both working with other activists to advance those issues outside of Sinn Fein and formulatingpolicies and developing educational programs that address those concerns withinthe party.Sinn Fein is a legally recognized politicalparty,which operates through electoral politics in both the six counties of the North and the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Irelandto end the partitionof the country resulting from Britishrule in the six counties since 1920. Although Sinn Fein rejects media constructions of itself as the "politicalwing of the IrishRepublican Army,"the party identifieswith the goals of the IRA,while reserving the rightnot to endorse all IRAactivities. Electoral politics is, of course, about representation,but in all thirtytwo counties of Ireland, Sinn Fein's access to representation is severely curtailed by legislation that prohibitsinterviewswith members of Sinn Fein from being broadcast. In the six counties, the successful election to parboundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC 0190-3659/92/$1.50.

withMaireadKeane 261 Lyons/ An Interview liament of Bobby Sands through Sinn Fein duringthe 1981 hunger strikes led to new laws that prevent prisoners from standing as candidates and that require a five-year waiting period before ex-prisoners are allowed to campaign for office. Given the overwhelmingobstacles that prevent Sinn Fein from representing their platform,it is not surprisingthat they hold no positions in the Republic's Dail Eireann. Sinn Fein works across and against the artificiallyimposed border of partition,and their work must necessarily take place not just in Ireland but in the internationalarena, as well. In addition to geopolitical borders, Mairead Keane also discusses in this interviewless obvious borders, the ideological boundaries that map out both the divisions and intersections between IrishRepublicanismand feminismand the roles of the church and the state, which Sinn Fein envisions for a new, secular, and democratic Ireland. These demarcations are always subject to negotiation in an ongoing process of debate that, as she points out, takes place both inside and outside the party,theoreticallyand on the ground. This interview with MaireadKeane took place in Austin, Texas, on 26 March1991, at the end of the day, her last day of a month-longtripto the United States, during which she met with students, church groups, artists, politicians, academics, activists from solidaritygroups, women's organizations, and representatives from other nationalliberationstruggles.' In IrishEnglish, "Atthe end of the day" suggests not just the time of this interview but a considered response, a weighing of factors that allows one to come to conclusions and say "inthe final analysis," or "when all is said and done." For Sinn Fein, which means "ourselves alone" in Irish, it is the national question, the problems of partition,which must be both asked after and resolved at the end of the day.

1. Ms. Keane's visitto Austin,Texas, was fundedthroughthe generosityof Genevieve Vaughanand the Foundationfor a CompassionateSociety and was coordinatedby the IrishWomen's Studies Group.Based in New York,the IrishWomen'sStudies Group is composed of women in the UnitedStates who wantto examine the intersectionbetween nationalliberationand women's liberationin Irelandby bringingwomen active in the IrishRepublicanstruggleto the UnitedStates. Sinn Fein Women'sDepartment is located at 44 ParnellSquare, Dublin1. Telephone:726100/726932. Fax: 733441. For more information,writeto the IrishWomen'sStudies Group,c/o Jan Cannavan, 922 East 15th Street #1A, Brooklyn,NY 11230. I wouldlike to thankAnn Cvetkovich, BarbaraHarlow,and LoraRomero,who each readthe fulltranscriptof this interviewand made valuableeditorialsuggestions.

262 boundary2 / Summer1992

LL:Iwant to ask you about yourbackground,your role as a representativeof Sinn Fein, and the ways in which the two mightbe related. Havingjust read TenMen Dead, by David Beresford,which is about the 1981 hunger strike, I was particularlyinterested in the communiques that each man sent to Sinn Fein about himself before going on the strike.The men providedinformation on where they had grown up, their earliest memories of the troubles, their initialreasons for getting involved in the struggle, their arrest records, their family,and any other informationthey felt mightbe of use in mobilizingthe community outside of the prison and makingtheir case for politicalstatus. I was struck by the ways personal narrativeand politicalhistory are almost inextricable in those short communiques and by the ways these men, who were about to embark on an extraordinaryprotest, presented themselves as people whose stories were somewhat typical, or representative, of the history of their community.Since you are speaking as a representative of Sinn Fein Women's Department,could you say something about your own personal history and how you see that history as being importantto your status as a representative? MK:Well, you're right about the book being fascinating, and it is interesting that you should begin with the hunger strikes, because, in a way, that was how I began as an activist, as well. So, I suppose my own background had an impact in terms of where I am today, in that my involvement in Irish solidaritywork began in the United States, where, at the time, I was living and going to school in southern Californiaat Golden State College and coming to political activism-all at the same time as the hunger strikes. I had been involvedjust for a very short period of time with the Students for Economic Democracy, who organized on the campus at the time, and we were doing a rent control survey, canvassing in Santa Monica. Also, from literaturetables, I got informationon and became interested in workingon the issue of El Salvador. And fromthat point I became politicized. My familytraditionallyhad been nationalists, and I was always verbally supportive of the struggle in the six counties, but at that time my supportwould not have gone beyond that, because in Ireland,as in other countries, we tend to live in ghettos of the mind. My family'spoliticalallegiance was Fianna Fail, which is the largest party in the twenty-six counties. My father was active in local politics as the constituency chairperson of Fianna Fail, and our familywas anti-British.For example, when Michael Gaughan

withMaireadKeane 263 Lyons/ An Interview died on hunger strike in Britain,2my mother marched at the funeral. When the struggle erupted in the six counties [1969], there was massive support, but then, of course, the establishment got their act together and tried to criminalizethe struggle. And so, coming fromthat kindof verbalized nationalismand leaving Irelandwhen I did-when I was eighteen, I went to Spain to be an au pair because there was no money for college-helped to politicize me. Even at this point, I never was really interested in the war, but after I went back to school-and, again, that's how I ended up in southern Californiaduring the hunger strikes-I just started through, first, politicalscience, because I was always interested in politics. Then, all of a sudden, I made the link, I suppose, between the realityof being verballysupportive of the struggle in Ireland and the activism I was just getting involved in on other issues. Of course, once I had that link in my head, it seemed naturalto examine what was going on in my own country.Initially,the problemwas: How could I get involved in Irelandwhile I was livingin the United States? I was able to do that through Noraid[IrishNorthernAid],a solidaritygroup here in the United States. With Bobby Sands on hunger strike, I actively looked for a solidaritygroup. I finished school, worked with Noraid,and then went back to Irelanda few years after Ifinished school. So, in one way, I became politicized because I emigrated, and I became politicized, too, I suppose, on feminist issues throughmy marriage,my child,and by going back to school. There was a conscious development on my part regardingfeminism. My history certainly has had an impact on my politics. And, I suppose, my role in Sinn Fein is to furtherinterest in women's issues and in politics, and I am conscious of that. LL:Wouldthat be a fairlytypical historyof the ways women get involved in Sinn Fein? Or have more women become involvedin Sinn Fein because of living in or having relatives who live in the six counties? MK:Most people who get involvedin Sinn Fein, particularlyin the six counties, come from Republicanfamilies,or they see themselves, in some ways, as victims of the Britishoccupation. People in the United States say to me, "Whereare you from, Belfast or Derry?"And when Itell them I'mfrom Dublin, they look a bit perplexed and say, "Oh,that's in the South." People see 2. In 1976, IRAmembersMichaelGaughanand FrankStagg died whileon hungerstrike for politicalstatus in Britishprisons.

264 boundary2 / Summer1992 the Republican struggle as a conflictexclusive to the six counties. Interms of people coming into Sinn Fein whose families aren't already involved in the party or the struggle in the six counties, it is much more difficult.For example, if I had not become involved in a solidaritygroup in the United States, I might not have ended up workingfor Sinn Fein in Ireland.The reality is that if you get involved with Sinn Fein, it means that you will be harassed by the Special Branch, that you will never have any work, and that you will live on little money. If you have a job and you belong to a union, you will never advance economically. People have to consider all those factors before they come in. On top of that, particularlywith young people coming in, the Special Branchgoes to their parents and says, "Oh, your son or daughter is in the IRA,"to scare them off.3With all that, it is very difficultfor people to get by it all and to join Sinn Fein. For the most part, our people are from Republicanfamilies or from working-class areas where Sinn Fein is getting involved in issues. If they are working class, they know police harassment anyway, so they are much more likelyto get over that. In middle-class areas, you have to have the traditionalRepublican family history,because you have more to lose at the end of the day. In the six counties, the struggle is relevantto the person on the street, so our people are clear on why they should get involved.They are getting involved because they are getting beaten off the streets. LL: In 1979, Sinn Fein established a Women's CoordinatingCommittee, which became, in 1980, the Sinn Fein Women's Department.Could you discuss the initialmotivationsfor starting a separate women's division? What kinds of pressures-both withinand outside the party-contributed to the formationof the CoordinatingCommittee? MK:Initially,I thinkwomen came together throughtheir involvement in the nationaliststruggle, which politicizedthem about theirown oppression, and they came together throughthe effortsof the women's movement, which, at the time, was campaigning in the South, largelyfor equality in employment and for the right to contraception. Women came together to discuss the issues that were affectingthem not only as women but also as women political activists, and there was a need to have an organized politicalvoice within 3. Actionsagainstthose who workforSinn Feinoftengo beyondharassment.On 5 February1992, an off-dutyofficerof the RoyalUlsterConstabularyshot to deaththree people and woundedtwo others in Sinn Fein'sBelfastoffice.The officercommittedsuicide after claimingresponsibilityforthe deaths.

withMairead Keane 265 Lyons/ AnInterview the party.This culminatedin the discussionaboutdepartmentsand the need to have a separatedepartmentinwhichwomencouldcome together and meet as women,as womenonly,to discuss, to debate, and to push forwardthe issues important to us. Therewas a need fora groupthatwould serve as a supportforwomenwithinthe party. LL:What, in the early days of the department,did women see as "the issues"? Were they differentfromthe issues that we see as women's issues today? MK:No. I thinkthey are stillthe same issues: childcare,violenceagainst women,the occupationinthe six counties,politicalprisoners,andthe need to developactivelyaroundthe prisonersso thatthe campaignwillget suptherewas a need to have a port.Withthe developmentof the department, policy,andthatwas passed at the partyconferenceas the Women'sPolicy all of those issues withina three-or fourDocument,whichincorporated document and had thatanalyzedthe factthatwomen an introduction page wereinvolvedinthe nationalliberation struggleandthatthe issue, forthem, was nationalliberation.Inthatintroduction, we explainthatpartitionaffects women on bothsides of the border,thatpartitionaffectswomen'shealth, childcare,employment,and reproductive rights. evolvedfromthattimeuntilnow,in LL:Howhas the Women'sDepartment termsof overallleadershipin the party?Havethere been any particularly difficultmomentsin its development? all that rushof energyin womencomingtogether-lobbying MK:Initially, forthe departmentand passing policy-was exciting.Insome sense, the departmenthas been seen as an elite groupof womenwho are concentratedin Belfast,Dublin,and, maybe,Derry.Insome ways, womenfrom ruralareas, andsome otherRepublican women,generallyfeltthatthatwas what was happening.Butthey wouldn'thave said anything,because the correctthingto do was to havethe Women'sDepartment. Whileall this great policywas progressiveand good, we had to move to get a positionon abortion,whichbecame a debate inside Sinn Fein.Therewas a lotof debateoverthe right-to-choose motionwithinthe Women'sDepartment; therewas as largea varietyof opinionson the issue as there were women in the department.Therewas, however,a right-tochoose motionputforwardin 1986 or 1987 by Sinn Fein in Derry.Itwas because we are nota major passed, butit led to problemsforus politically, in not are the and we can't advancethe issue even mainstream, party-we

266 boundary2 / Summer1992 if we pass it, because tomorrowwe won't be in power. The next day, the media headlines were, "SinnFein is not content with murderingpeople, it's now going to murderbabies." We are involvedin an electoral strategy, so it caused problems for us. Duringthe next year, there was certainly a move to put our policy where it is rightnow, which is basically that we agree with abortion under certain circumstances, like ectopic pregnancy,for example. But while that happened, the whole campaign for the rightto informationon abortion,which is a progressive issue, was going on, and that was the issue that should have been pushed-that was the issue that Republicans should have been involved in and subsequently are. The right-to-information position is the most progressive step one can take on that issue, rather than the actual right-to-choose position. At the end of the next year, there were motions on the rightto informationon abortion.Because of the paranoia of some people, the most watery motionwas passed, and all the others were defeated because of the debate on the rightto choose, which was a major setback for us. Just after that, I got the job of heading the Women's Department, and my job was a healing one. First, I felt that we had to bring everybody together and to build a common view, and that's when I started a series of meetings with GerryAdams, the president of Sinn Fein. He felt that the Women's Department was pushing the issue of abortion far ahead of our base of support withoutdoing the groundwork,and he felt that we had to do the groundworkbefore we advanced the issue. That, basically,was my own position, in that I didn't feel that having a right-to-choose platformwould ultimatelyadvance the issue, even though I myself believe in the right to choose. Also, some women felt that the Ard Chomhairle,the national executive, was making the decisions and that they wouldn'tpromote women, wouldn'trunthem as candidates, or have a policyon childcare.Then we had the meeting with GerryAdams and other executives and withwomen in the party.He raised, as did other women, the issue of makingsure that the party does the groundworkon controversialissues, like abortion,first;otherwise, we can't advance the issue, and that willaffect the group's base of support. We have to be criticallyacute in terms of our tactics on every issue. A numberof decisions were taken at this meeting. One decision was issues like abortionwithinthe party,so that we would advance discuss to issues internallybefore we would get to an Ard Fheis, the annual party conference. Another decision was that we would actively-at the grassroots level and at the national level-promote women into leadership positions. We certainly have done that to the full extent at the national level.

withMaireadKeane 267 Lyons/ An Interview GerryAdams actively campaigns in ruraland in urbanareas-wherever he goes-to make sure that women are on the platform.He talks about the need to involve women in the struggle, and in Sinn Fein's Belfast office, there have been many events and effortsto recognize women's involvement in the struggle in the last twenty-some years. He was very much the push behind Women in a WarZone.4 He doesn't just pay lip service-he actually learned something fromthe whole experience. He reads more, and he realizes that he had been guilty,as all men are, of theoreticallyagreeing to the new roles but not giving serious attentionto them. His commitmenthas a spin-off effect on other people because of his leadership position. This year, for example, we have women involved at the national level in a lot of differentareas-general secretary, head of trade union, head of education, directorof publicity.We are well represented on the nationalexecutive, and we are workingon representationat a grass-roots level. It'smore difficultat the rurallevel. Those were the lessons we learned. Another lesson that has yet to be learned is that the Women's Department is for all women in the party;it is for whatever issues women feel the Women's Departmentshould be active on, whatever issues they think are important.I did a series of meetings aroundthe countryto find out what women wanted the department to do, and the major issue that came up was childcare. We have tried to provideevery woman who works in a head office with childcare money, and to some degree we have been successful in this. The local offices in Belfast, Derry,and Dublinprovide such money for their women employees. The issue now is that every conference organized should have a creche. In the smaller, local areas, those who want to go to their local Sinn Fein partymeeting must face two issues: who provides the childcare, and who pays for it. In families with two political activists, one of whom is a woman, is it she who stays home? Of course, it is, for the most part, and that needs to be changed. That's the pointof education. So, we're in a situation now where we have a department that is well in tune with the overall party. We try to make sure that the quotas are filled on the national level, but we don'tjust pay lip service to having one-quarter of the positions filled by women. We actually get areas to make sure that they nominate women, so that we get a good cross section of women on 4. Publishedin 1989 by Sinn Fein'sAn Phoblacht/Republican News Print(AP/RNPrint), Womenin a WarZone, edited by ChrissieMcAuley,chroniclesthe effect the last twenty years of the strugglehave had on women'slives in the six counties and documentsthe importantroles that Republicanwomenhave takenin resistanceto occupation.

268 boundary2 / Summer1992 the national executive, and so that we get women from all areas. And, of course, the RepublicanWomen's Conference is also developing an agenda to give focus, to push the issues annuallyand nationally. LL:What is the Women's Conference? MK:The Women's Conference is organized by Sinn Fein's Women's Department. Itis a publicconference, which is open to men and women inside and outside the party.We deal with a varietyof issues and topics-women and the European Community,sexual abuse and pornography,and women politicalprisoners. We also have a bit of drama-theater-as part of a cultural session. 20/20 vision, a working-class theater collective from Derry, has been asked to our conferences. At the last conference, they dealt with a gay relationship through drama, which is a really good way of getting people to deal with the issue of homosexuality, because people are more likelyto accept talkingabout it in that way. They also did a piece that dealt with a family in Derry,whose unwed daughter becomes pregnant. It was really quite brilliant.We've managed to have about 120 women at the conference, which is very good in terms of our department'sdevelopment. We also give presentations to the most recentlyreleased politicalprisoners from Maghaberry,or other prisons. Jennifer McCannwas the last one we made a presentation to. She has agreed to coordinate a women's committee in Belfast. She spent ten and one-half years in jail, and she just got out this last year. She's very enthusiastic. LL:You write in the forewardto Womenin a WarZone about how women's contributions have been largely written out of Irish history and that the book is importantbecause "forthe firsttime it is the women involved in the struggle who document their own history.They are volunteers in the IRA, politicalactivists in Sinn Fein, campaigners, fund-raisers,politicalprisoners, and the relatives of prisoners. They providethe IRAwith safe houses, care for volunteers on the run, and confront the British occupation forces on the streets. They are the solid bedrock of the nationalliberationstruggle." Given that women's contributionshave often been excluded from history, I wonder if you could discuss some of the women's organizations that preceded the Women's Department, such as the Ladies' Land League, the suffragette movement, and Cumann na mBan. What do you think is the relationship between these early groups and your own work within Sinn 5. McAuley,Womenin a WarZone, 5.

withMaireadKeane 269 Lyons/ AnInterview Fein? What organizationallessons do you thinkwomen learned fromthese early groups? MK: There have always been active women in the struggle throughout Irishhistory, and a lot of that work has not been documented, so we don't know about it. Certainly,duringthe Ladies' Land League, the women were more radical than the men, but they were only allowed to fill the vacuum when the men were in jail. However, the debate between feminism and nationalism was put aside probablyat the time when Cumann na mBan, a nationalist women's group, was formed in 1914. For them, it was the primacy of the national question. Cumann na mBan is always portrayed as playing a backup role to the actual volunteers in the 1916 Uprising,but this group was organized around the country and did a lot of the work. These women had an influence after the uprisingin terms of becoming politicized as women through their active participation.And then, of course, there were the women who were in the Citizen's Armyand who were accepted as equals in the army.That history is all there and culminated in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. I thinkthat the quote about equal rights for everybody is included not because the men were feeling benevolent and decided to put it there but because of the influence of the women's movement as a politicalforce at the time, as a vision of where Irelandwas going.6 Unfortunately,when the Republicans lost the War of Independence, the leaders of the movement were executed, and the leaders of the women's movement were not really coherent. There was a bit of a gap at that time. A lot was lost, certainly in terms of the development of the movement for those years from 1926 to 1969. Whatwomen have learned today fromthose women's experiences of fightingin the uprisingand actively participatingat the turnof the century is that women must put theirdemands on an agenda, and they must put them on the agenda in a strong, coherent manner.There must be a strong women's movement that clearly knows what it wants in terms of national self-determinationand can linkwomen's demands to that core issue of self-determination. We are now makingsure that this message becomes partand parcel of Republican ideology through a video program,which is currentlyone of 6. Writtenby the leaders of the 1916 Uprising,the "Proclamation of the IrishRepublic" states: "TheIrishRepublicis entitledto, and herebyclaims,the allegianceof every Irishman and Irishwoman.The Republicguaranteesreligiousandcivilliberty,equalrightsand equal opportunitiesto all its citizens"(quotedin PadraigPearse, TheBest of Pearse, ed. ProinsiasMacAonghusaand LiamO'Reagain[Cork,Ireland:Mercier,1967], 188).

270 boundary2 / Summer1992 the Education Department'stop priorities.The video educational programis all about findingand buildinga common view among Republicans of where we are going. We want to look at strategy and then buildthe view with the strategy. Withthe videos, we look at women's historyas an integralpart of the whole programand not as something tagged on at the bottom or done as a separate video. We completed the firstvideo six months ago. It looks at women's involvement,from 1798 throughtoday, as an integralpartof the Republican struggle. The next video we willdo is on the ideology of Republicans, and feminism is included as partof that ideology. That will certainly be a first. What we are saying to Republicans is that feminism is part of the ideology. Feminism is not importedfrom America; it is here and it has always been here. It is part of our Republicanhistory. LL:In an interview in Spare Rib, you discuss how the "mobilizationof the new righthas put the women's movement on the defensive in the eighties. Although new women's groups have sprung up across the country and in local communities, women have not managed to assemble effective opposition."7Yougo on to say that the women's movement has failed in its inability to address the issue of partition.Could you elaborate on the specific differences between the problems women currentlyface in the six counties and in the twenty-six counties? Forexample, how does partitionaffect women's access to birthcontrol, abortion,and their abilityto obtain a divorce? MK: Well, the British partitionof Irelandin the 1920s took on a different face in each state-one as colony in the six counties under the direct influence of the British,the other as neo-colony in the twenty-six counties. British involvement in Irelandand partitionhave social, economic, political, and militarydimensions. Obviously, in the area of occupied Irelandthe six counties-it's the militarydimension that is prominent,in that the British are actually on the streets. We have an army of occupation and all that that entails particularlyfor women, which quite clearly includes harassment, politicalprisoners, raidson houses, plastic bullets, and a shoot-to-kill policy, among other things. But it's also about the social and economic conditions that stem from livingin a colony where large numbers of people are unemployed and livingon welfare. There is poverty, basic poverty, poverty and repression. On the other side of the border,in the twenty-six counties, a neo-colony has developed, which is under the indirect influence of the 7. Jo Tully,"Womenand NationalLiberation:Reportsfromaroundthe World,Ireland," interviewwithMaireadKeane,Spare Rib 204 (August1990):49.

withMairead Keane 271 Lyons/ AnInterview and has an economythatis inthe interBritish,is relianton multinationals, est of bigfarmersand big business.Thereis a largepercentageof people who are livingon low incomesor who are unemployed;there is also an enormouspercentageof peoplelivingbelowthe povertyline,mostof whom are women.Intermsof the social and economicrealities,it'sthe same for people on both sides of the borderand forwomen,because women end up bearingthe bruntof those kindsof policies.The difference,of course, isohatwomenin the six countiesliveunderthe occupation,and they have the added threatof an armyon the streets.The state thatdevelopedinto the twenty-sixcountiesfaced the stronginfluenceof the Catholicchurch, whose influencewas enshrinedin the 1937 constitution.8 Controlof other like with in the church a waythatwas represinstitutions, education,stayed sive forwomen,andithas been difficult to advancewomen'sissues. Onthe otherside of the border,you havethe influenceof Protestantfundamentalismandthe same kindsof reactionsto women'srightsandwomen'sissues. Partitionstops, or certainlyhinders,the developmentof a secularcountry. Partitionmust be on the agenda. Itshouldn'tbe the next issue-it should be the issue thatwomenare addressingnowto bringnationaldemocracy to the country. betweenmainstream feminismandthe RepubLL:Whatis the relationship lican movementtoday?Whateffects have the agendas of feminismand hadon one another?I'mthinking,also, of the way in which Republicanism Nell McCafferty has asserted that it has, so far,provedeasier to get Republicansto take up feminismthanto get feministsto engage seriouslyin a discussionof Republicanism. MK:Interms of the influenceof feminismon Republicanism,I thinkthat we were activelycampaigningon those issues, butalso, at the same time, womenwere campaigningon occupationissues, whichwere importantto women'slives in the six counties.Womenin the nationaliststrugglewere also becomingconsciousof factorsthatwereinhibiting theminfulfilling their 8. In additionto legally forbiddingdivorce,Article41 of the 1937 IrishConstitutionarticulatesthe fundamentalimportanceof the familyand of the motherto Irishsociety: "In particular,the State recognizes that by her lifein the home, womangives to the State a supportwithoutwhichthe commongood cannotbe achieved.The State shall, therefore, endeavorto ensure thatmothersshall not be obligedby economicnecessity to engage in laborto the neglect of theirduties in the home"(quotedin BasilChubb,A Source Book of IrishGovernment[Dublin:Instituteof PublicAdministration, 1964],57).

272 boundary2 / Summer1992 roles, so their consciousness-a feministconsciousness, if you want to call it that-was developed from their actual political activity on the ground. They may have been influenced by the feminist movement and the work that feminists were doing, but they were influenced more by their own experiences. And that's how the Women's Departmentcame into existence. It wasn't because feminists suddenly had influenced the movement. They had raised consciousness-there is no doubt that they had raised consciousness-but, in some ways, people would have been hostile to the way feminists were organizing. And, of course, it wouldn't be just Republican women who would be hostile; it would be working-class women, as well. The women's movement had not organized among working-class women in the twenty-six counties because they hadn'tactively put a policy on the agenda for women's issues. Subsequently, that led also to a split in the feminist movement because of an emphasis on consciousness raising instead of on policy. I don'twant to underestimatethe workthey did, because there is quite a lot of work in raising consciousness, but in terms of politicization of Republican women-that came from their own experiences as women. Feminists, who are campaigning for equality within the system, have not actively taken on the issue of partitionin any great way, and that is a challenge. Feminists have to ask themselves why things have not changed for the vast majorityof women in this country in the last twenty years. What do we need to do? We feel women need to be involved in the buildingof a strong women's movement that linkswomen's self-determination with national determination. LL:Since we have been talkingabout the various ways women get involved in the national struggle, it seems importantto discuss how the imprisonment of Republican women has drawn attention to the role of women in the movement. I'd like to ask you about two specific situations: first, the "no wash" protest in Armaghin 1980 and 1981, duringwhich women political prisoners turned their bodies against the prison authorityby refusing to wash and by smearing their bodilyissues on the walls; and second, the ongoing strip searches of women prisoners. Could you say something about the ways in which both the prison system and the Republican movement have had to come to terms withthe presence of women? How has the treatment of women prisoners affected attitudes about women's participationin armed struggle in NorthernIreland? MK: Well, I think, initially,in 1969 and in the seventies, when women got involved in the armed struggle, they felt accepted as equals in the armed struggle, and this is in all the interviewswith women volunteers in the IRA.

Lyons / An Interviewwith MaireadKeane 273

So, I don't know exactly if it was a matterof the movement having to come to terms with women participatingin the armed struggle. There is a history of women being involvedand accepted as comrades in fightingagainst the Brits. Maybe you're thinkingof MaireadFarrell'sstatement about how when women firststarted going into prison,the attitudewas that women shouldn't be involved doing this kindof work.Butthat attitudewould have come more from society, because of the traditionalattitudes. For example, when Mairead Farrellwas shot dead on Gibraltar,people would say, "She was such a nice girl.Why did she ever get involvedin all that?"Ithas more to do with society's image of the role of women and what women "should"do. LL:Whereas, for Republicancommunities, itwouldseem naturalfor women to "get involved in all that?" MK:Well, it would be respected and accepted that MaireadFarrellwas an IRAvolunteer.Women, as well as men, are IRAvolunteers, and that is definitely accepted. Also, I think respect for women in the nationaliststruggle developed to a greater extent through the Armagh prison protest and the whole fight for political status. That is probablywhat Mairead Farrellwas saying initiallyabout women being on the no wash protest. The attitude of the general public was, "Howcould these women go through with such a protest?" Later, the public admired and respected these women. The women in Armagh became very politicizedthemselves about their own oppression as women-in jail and throughthe education classes, which they organized for themselves. The prisonsystem, Ithink,has tried to break and take the spirit out of women politicalprisoners, and the tool they used in Armaghwas the strip search, which was designed to degrade, to humiliate, to break their spirit, and to break the resistance of the prisoners. But, you know, strip-searching is used everywhere for this purpose. LL:Itis used extensively in the UnitedStates's prison system, for example. MK:Yes. It'sused in a certain psychologicalway against women in Armagh, Maghaberry,and in Britishjails, where ten or more screws [prison guards] would be forcing women down, making them put their hair on top of their heads, making them turn around in a certain degrading fashion.9And the screws and the prison officials knew that this was affecting women psycho9. Over four thousand strip searches of Republicanwomen have been carriedout in and Britishprisons.Whileon remandin the all-maleBrixtonPrison Armagh,Maghaberry, in Englandfrom 1 July 1985 to 30 September1986, EllaO'Dwyerand MartinaAnderson, Republicanprisoners,were each strip-searchedfourhundredtimes (see McAuley, Womenin a WarZone, 75).

274 boundary2 / Summer1992 logically, even though it never broke their spirit. Prisons still use strip searches, but they don't use them as extensively as before, and that is because of a campaign both inside and outside the jails on the issue. The stripsearching campaign politicized, more than anything, a lot of women about the Republican struggle and about Republicanwomen in the struggle. A lot of women actively got involved in the strip-search campaign in the South. Trade union people, clergy, and religious people also went on delegations to the jails. Maybe, in some ways, for the religious people, it was because "those poor girls are getting strip-searched and have to take their clothes off." But from the women's organizations' points of view, strip-searching was an attempt to degrade and to dehumanize the women prisoners. And that politicizedwomen in the women's movement quite a bit.A lot of women got active in that campaign and subsequently read more and got interested in the Republican struggle because the campaign hierarchized not only the strip-searching question but also the struggle that these women were involved in. LL:So, these women were being strip-searched not just because they were women but because they acted on their politicalbeliefs, which were threatening to the state. What is the problem like in Maghaberrynow? MK:They still use strip-searching.There was a lot of pressure brought on the Britishgovernment to do away with strip-searching,but they didn'ttake it away. They still use it as a method of control and it's still legally sanctioned, so we are tryingto highlightthe fact that strip-searchingis still used. But there are other issues in the jails, too, like censorship and isolation, that need attention. LL:What are the prison's other ways of dealing with women political prisoners? MK: Well, there is the whole issue of keeping remand prisoners separate from sentenced prisoners. In Maghaberry,there are about twenty-four women political prisoners. If they are separated, small numbers are kept together. The sentenced prisoners would like to interactwith the prisoners on remand. Another reason prisoners are separated is because there is plenty of prison staffing in Maghaberry,and there are fewer women political prisoners. The staff tends to read everythingthat comes in, and they tend to censor more heavily. In the prison at Long Kesh, in the H blocks, there are more prisoners per guard to deal with. But in Maghaberry,it is sometimes months before prisoners get letters or our newsletter. Ifwe don't get

withMaireadKeane 275 Lyons/ An Interview involved, the prisoners might not receive anything, and so they may feel really isolated from the movement. LL:Iwant to get back to the issue of the body. The no wash protest and stripsearching appear to be occasions for a rapprochementbetween women in the Republican movement and feminists. Inresponse to both of these situations, feminists have taken up the issue of "bodilyintegrity,"whereas for Republican women the more central issue would seem to be their political status as women engaged in armed struggle and, therefore, subject to the disciplinaryinstitutionsof Britishoccupation. MK:You are right.These are two times when women outside the Republican movement have become involvedin campaigningto highlightwhat they see as an abuse of the basic human rights of women political prisoners. You could say that, but it also probablyhas to do withthe heightened profile of women in the struggle at the time, in that women on the no wash protest got the attentionof the media, as didthe issue of strip-searching,so itwould be seen as an attack on women's bodies, on women's rightsto controltheir bodies. LL:This is something that particularlyinterests me-that is, the issue of the body and its integrity,or wholeness, which feminists take up. I wonder if concern over bodily integrityisn't a way for some feminists not to come to terms with the politicalcommitments of these women. MK: Well, I think there are actually two factors involved here. First, we're actually talking about British and Irishfeminists who took up the issues. But in one way, if it actually brings women to supportthe struggle, then it's good, because people come in to work on plastic bullet abuse, or shootto-killpolicy, or whatever. They come because of human rights issues, and they get interested in the struggle;throughthat interest,they get politicized about women as politicalprisoners. So, in that sense, if their involvement happens, it is great. LL:By way of human rights? MK: Yes. In a way, that is okay, because I don't think we can be hard or stubborn with other people-people who come in through human rights issues. Some of the people who get involvedon the basis of human rights can be a problem-for example, the ones who make analyticalstatements claiming, "Well,I am against what is happening to these women prisoners on the basis of human rights, but I don't support the politicalproject they

276 boundary2 / Summer1992 are involved in." These people artificiallydivide the issue. It is extremely patronizingto thinkthat it is because of the men that women are involved, that our women prisoners are just supportingthe men in Long Kesh, when what they are really doing is fightingfor their own politicalstatus and using whatever weapons they have to use. Women who get involved because women's bodies have been violated, and actually take it up as a human rights issue and a women's issue, are actually advancing the cause of the struggle at the end of the day, because they are raising awareness. Some of those women may get involvedjust in those issues and then they may leave, like some who got involved in the strip-searchingcampaign. LL:For those women whose involvementmight come firstthrough human rights, do you thinkit's a matterof lookingat the violationof women's bodies as being related to the violationof the body politicof Irelandthrough partition? MK:Yes, that's an interestingway of thinkingabout it, but I think that is a long jump to make. One can work around the strip-search campaign and actively get involved in stopping strip searches but never make any other advances, never linkpartitionto that issue. To do that, one would have to be seriously open to questioning the women's movement and what progress has, in fact, been made for women. There are a lot of women who are only looking for equality within the system-they don't actually see anything wrong with itfor themselves. And ifthey can get equalitywithinit, they aren't going to be in favor of a radicalchange at the end of the day. LL: I want to ask you about the church, but I wanted to come up with a question that wouldn'tjust go over constructions of the problems in the six counties as being simply sectarian, or religiouspolitics,when, as your other answers indicate, the problems are better understood in terms of a system that has inequitable socioeconomic relationshipsas part of its foundation. I want to ask you about something that the Marxistcritic Stuart Hall said. He asserts that in social formations,"wherereligionhas been the ideological domain, . .. no politicalmovement in that society can become popular without negotiating the religious terrain.You can't create a popular movement in such social formations withoutgetting into the religious question, because it is the arena in which this communityhas come to a certain consciousness."10 Would you agree with Hall's assessment on the necessity interviewwith LawrenceGross10. Stuart Hall, "OnPostmodernismand Articulation," 2 no. of Communications Journal 10, 1986):54. (Summer Inquiry berg,

withMaireadKeane 277 Lyons/ An Interview for any movement that wants to create a popularbase of support to come to terms with or to engage the religiousgroundon which people have come to understand their lives? How do you see Sinn Fein workingto negotiate that religious terrain? MK: Yes, I think we would first distinguish between the Catholic church, specifically, the hierarchyof the church, and the ordinarybelievers. I think, in a way, a lot of our supporters, who are both Republican and Catholic, don't accept the hierarchy'sview of our struggle because they are actively involved in the struggle. And in the historyof our struggle, the church was, at times, on the side of the people and identifiedwith the people. But the British have managed to appease the church in order to get the hierarchy on their side. The hierarchyof the churchalways acts on self-interest, which is not the common interest of the people. And that, of course, is not the doctrine of the church: "Feed the hungry, help the poor,"and all of that. So, I thinkthat when it comes to the historyof the church, and the history of the church involved in Irishlife, Republicans, and even the general Irish population, are cynical about the hierarchyof the church, but that doesn't mean they don't believe in their religion. LL:Or aren't affected by it, particularlyduringthe divorce referendum? MK:Oh, absolutely. People filterwhat the church says, and they take what they agree with and throwout the rest. Now, in some areas, it is quite clear that the church is entrenched and still manages to influence the cultureof the people throughthe educational system, especially in the areas of sexuality and divorce, where the images of women, men, and relationships are formed according to Catholic doctrine. The church hierarchyhas managed to have socialization on these issues as an integral part of education. In areas like Dublin, people tend to be very much in favor of divorce, but in ruralareas, the church could play off fears that women were going to be left and that men were going to move in with other women. The church still has footholds in certain areas of the country, less so in the urban areas, more so in the ruralareas, obviously. In terms of dealing with the church, we don't, really-we deal with it on our terms. We deal with the justice of our struggle and what we are doing. There have been priests who have become involved, like Des Wilson and FatherRaymond Murray,both of whom have actually exposed Britishinjustice in the six counties and, in doing so, have gone against the hierarchyof the church. Sometimes the clergy is so blatantlypro-Britishthat it is obvious to

278 boundary2 / Summer1992 everyone, not just to Republicans, what their agenda is. Cathal Daly is an example of someone who is constantlyworkingfromthe pulpitforthe British agenda. He is a bishop and Cardinalof All Ireland,and he spends most of his time criticizingthe IRA.Daly was recently interviewedon "60 Minutes" regardingthe BirminghamSix. In his office, he had a poster with UDA [the pro-BritishUlster Defense Association] and IRAin bold letters, with blood drippingdown from the letters. This is an example of concentrating on the symptoms of the problemwithouttacklingthe real causes of the conflict. It is interesting to me what Stuart Hall says: It is true that where the church has control, you have to get in there not just by workingwith people but by actually trying to work with the religious people, as well-you have to politicize them about what is going on. Republicans need to do more work in that area-we need to get religiouspeople to take up liberationtheology and support those radicalnuns and priests. Whethersuch members of the clergy could influence the hierarchyis hard to say, because the church is also controlled from Rome, but they could make waves. I think we could help make them conscious of doing that kind of work, of finding ways to do that. LL:One of the most frequent attacks on certain strands of feminism in the United States is the way in which feminism essentializes women's experiences. The place of men in women's movements is often difficultfor both men and women to negotiate. I'minterested in those Republican men who include feminism in their course of study in the prisons. In issues of The Captive Voice, put out by Republicanprisoners, I'venoticed that men occasionally contributepieces on the role of women in the nationalstruggle. Do you think such study has changed the movement as a whole? MK:Well, I think the fact that we have a Sinn Fein Women's Department would encourage men, particularlypoliticalprisoners in jail, who assume a different role withinthe movement because they are in jail. In the case of political prisoners, when they are in jail, they focus educationally on different issues. They have a lot of discussions on feminism and women's oppression, and they actively contributearticles on these issues forour publications. Certainlythey approach feminismfroma man's pointof view, and their discussions circulate through other jails besides Long Kesh. These prisoners want to know about feminism because they are politicallyminded people in a revolutionthat involves feminism in parts of that movement. In terms of the influence of feminism on Republican men, I think their

withMaireadKeane 279 Lyons/ An Interview awareness and acceptance of this issue parallels the development of the Women's Department-initially, men were obviously feeling threatened. Progress comes through education, by actually taking up the issues in a nonconfrontationalforum,by debating in a coeducational way how feminism forwards the equality of men and women, what that means, and how that actually gets translated in people's real lives. Women political prisoners, and the rights given to them, have influencedtheir male comrades and the movement as a whole. Now, I think there is an acceptance of feminism theoretically,at least with the majorityof politicalactivists. LL:The desire to construct feminism as something "foreign,"particularly with regard to Republicanism,is interestingbecause it seems another way of saying Irishwomen must be getting this from somewhere else, or they must be doing something that somebody else is tellingthem to do. They are either parrotingmen or, in this case, they are followingthe lead of women outside Ireland.In both cases, women are denied the abilityto have and to act on their own politicalbeliefs. MK:Untilpeople become politicized,men, and also some women, who are threatened by feminism will act in certain ways because they feel threatened. They may feel they have to say all the rightthings, but they don't really understand what they are saying. We need to get rid of all that, so that people can sit down in comradeship and discuss oppression and what it means in terms of black people and oppressed people in other countries, and what it means for the Irishand the historyof Britishinvolvement, and what it means as women, and what James Connolly meant when he said "Women are the slaves of slaves." Did you ever read Alice Walker's book The ThirdLife of Grange Copeland? Ithinkit is very good at showing women as an oppressed people withina largergroup of oppressed people. LL: Why don't we go on to talk about some of those connections. What relationships do you see between the borderthat separates the six counties of the North from the twenty-six counties in the Republic and other geopolitical borders? What kinds of resistance movements get organized around such borders? MK:Well, that's a good question. I think in terms of our own struggle, we would see the border as artificiallyimposed on us by a foreign oppressor. The occupied territoriesseem the most similarsituationto me. It might be a littledifferenthere with the U.S./Mexican border.

280 boundary2 / Summer1992 LL:Although,for example, Texas, where we are rightnow, was not always part of the United States. MK: Yes, right. Livingnear the border,you have situations where people are separated from their naturalhinterlands,families are separated, towns are split up, spy posts are erected to stop people fromcrossing the border, armies of occupation grow, and armies police the borders.Allof these combine to harass people daily,to terrorizepeople who live in those areas. That is how it happens in Ireland.Now, I suppose that it might be a bit different in the United States, in that you have no armyof occupation, but it certainly is the same situation in the West Bank. In San Diego, where I just visited, I saw these big signs showing a man, a woman, and a child, with the words, "Beware!Stop! Be Careful People Crossing!"There are posts beyond San Diego where people bring illegal immigrantsover the border.These immigrantsare dropped off, and then they have to try to cross the highway. Many people have been killed there, runover. Itis reallyhorribleto look at those big signs showing people running. I think, in terms of the problems that come about because of our border, we would quite clearly have sympathy with any people who are suffering because of occupation, because of interactions that result from borders, like here, in the United States, where people are trapped in cars, or bribed into paying out huge amounts of money to get help crossing the border,or put into detention camps. LL:I was thinking,too, of the sheer amount of money that goes into establishing that border and protecting it. In the United States, an enormous amount of money goes intofortifyingand protectingthe borderwith Mexico. In the West Bank, too, the cost of militarypersonnel is enormous. How much, exactly, does the Britishgovernment spend on the border between the six and twenty-six counties? MK: It is estimated that the Dublingovernment alone spends $1 milliona day patrollingthe border. The money spent is enormous, and it prevents a lot of economic opportunitieson both sides of the border. Beyond that, the border means harassment. The Britishuse borders to spy on people in their big watchtowers with all their expensive electronic equipment. Also, they are an inconvenience to local people, people who might live five miles from a town they'd liketo go to but who willhave to go fiftymiles out of their way to get there because they can't cross everywhere. And where they can cross, they must deal with borderguards and all of that. This is a particu-

withMaireadKeane 281 Lyons/ An Interview larlyhard financial burden on farmers whose fields are righton the border, whose fields might be broken up to build spy posts, which quite clearly is one of the major threats to people living in those areas. In the last year, there has been a majorcampaign to reopen some of the border roads that the Britishclosed, and these campaigns have been very successful. People from the North have managed to open up some of the roads even under fire by plastic bullets! Now the government has broughtin legislation, a typical Britishsolution, that allows them to seize equipment and to arrest and imprison people for actually operatingthe equipmentto open the roads. LL:So, people have been tryingto open the roads themselves-to the border and to "redefine"it.

"retake"

MK:Yes. And, as I have said, it has been very successful at opening a few roads, but the Brits have gone back and brokenthem up. Withthe legislation to seize equipment, they can basically lift[arrest]you. Again, the law is being used as a tool by the Britsto defeat the bordercampaign. LL:Does the government in the twenty-sixcounties have to share a certain amount of the cost for the border? MK: Yes. The cost to maintainthis border is high. Both North and South share equal amounts, but the Britishspend millions,as well, because they have to have guards out there with special tactics, and the army of the southern state police it on the southern side. There are British soldiers on both sides of the border.The Brits spend millionson their surveillance technology used at the border and in the six counties. So, in terms of the similaritiesbetween the Irishborderand the U.S./Mexican border,the most obvious parallels are the financialburdento the publicand, particularly,the harassment of the people living near the border. In some ways, though, I think that harassment at the border would be more of a problem for the Mexican people and for the Mexicans now living within the U.S. border than for us. So, while there are similarities,I thinkthey more clearly, more obviously, parallelthe Palestinian situation,because both situations involve occupying armies. Now, the borderthat has been taken down between East and West Germany is also important,and, of course, what we are saying about that is that if there can be such celebration over that border coming down, and, really, over borders coming down throughoutEastern Europe, why not over our border, too? But people don't seem to be making that connection.

282 boundary2 / Summer1992 LL:What effects, if any, willthe EEC have on the border? Partof the EEC's mission is to do away withthe problemsthat geographical and national borders impose. Is there a special exception in the EECobjectives for Northern Irelandin orderto maintainthat border?There is a move to issue EEC passports, which would seem to make it much more difficultfor the Britishto have control over who is coming in and who is going out of the six counties. MK:The European Communityis interested in the free movement of goods and services across borders, and it is not interested in taking sovereignty away from countries. MargaretThatcher and her successor have made it quite clear that NorthernIrelandis an integralpart of the United Kingdom and that nobody has the rightto say anythingabout it. Boththe EEC and the Britishgovernment are interested only in big business and in making bigger profitsat the end of the day; they are not interested in advancing the position of any people in any country and certainly not a country on the periphery, like Ireland,which will be a big processing plant for goods. The new EEC won't be bringingdown the spy posts or giving people greater economic opportunities in Ireland.MargaretThatcherhas always been interested in the EEC for the buildingand development of a richerBritain,obviously richerfor only a certain class of people. She was never interested in doing anything else. She is quite resistantto anythingthat wouldreplace Britishsovereignty with some kindof European rule, as are Mr.Majorand the Toryparty. LL: In your talk last night, you mentioned doing work with other solidarity groups and sharing platformswith representatives from the FMLN[the El Salvadoran FarrabundoMartiNationalLiberationFront]and Native American groups while you've been in the United States. Itwould be interesting to talk about notions of solidarityand the relationshipbetween tourism and politics. In part, I am interested in this because of my own trip to Belfast. Can you talk about the usefulness of trips, such as the Noraid solidarity tours, in which people come intothe countryand take informationout? How is that differentfrom having people, likeyou, come here to bringinformation into the United States? MK:Well, Ithinkthe importantthing about being here, in the United States, is that people are asking me what they should do. The firstthing they should do is get alternativesources of informationabout Ireland,informationother than what they get from the mainstream media. When they do that, it's possible for them to learn, to go into the occupied area, and to see what British rule in Irelandis like. I don't think anything can substitute for that,

withMaireadKeane 283 Lyons/ An Interview and, for that reason, we need people to be personallyinvolved. One needs to be living under occupation to see for oneself what it is like to live in an area with armed forces on the street and all the paraphernaliaof an occupation-tanks, guns, fortresses, whitecoats. Informingpeople about what is happening in Irelandand about what Britishrule means for Irishpeople under occupation and encouraging people to visit the countryare all part of buildingsupport for the Irishstruggle. Sinn Fein is trying to encourage delegations to go to Irelandwith differentpeople-with, for example, the IrishPeople Tour,a group of interested people that goes to Irelandevery year. I thinkit's importantfor activists, as well as academics, to go, so that they can become informedabout the situation in Ireland. If you're involved in education, you are supposed to present a balanced position of knowledge, and if you don't get information directlyfrom Ireland,you have an unbalanced position. To really know about Ireland,you have to go there. LL:This kind of work argues against the myths people here, in the United States, would have, being subject to certain kinds of media representation. MK:Absolutely. You've been there; I'dbe interested to know the ways you think your attitudes have changed. What did you learn? LL:The thing that was most startlingfor me was the degree to which the Republican cause has support in its communities. I don't think I was prepared for how organized or cohesive the communitieswere, because in the United States, the IRAis usually figured as a random collection of people who reallydon't have any representativestatus. Seeing the publicmuralsmurals supporting Sinn Fein and the IRA,as well as murals done in solidaritywith the people of other national liberationstruggles-in Republican communities throughout Belfast made me understand how importantthe Republican movement is to the communityand how committedthe people are to ending both the occupation and partition.Ihad to confronthow powerfullythe media had influenced my ideas about the six counties, even though I wanted to believe that my training,as someone who has been taught "to read carefully,"would make me less subject to those media representations. But I also think that by coming from the United States, where the militaryisn't seen very often-there are camps and bases outside of or at the edges of cities, but one doesn't have a chance to see them, or at least not before the Gulf War-the amount of security forces on the streets in Ireland,and the deliberate tension they caused, was quite alarming,though

284 boundary2 / Summer1992 that word doesn't seem quite adequate. The soldiers not only had guns but they were always pointing them at someone-not carrying them at their sides, but pointing them. MK:Yes, I thinkthat sometimes surprises people the most. LL:You talk about the need for academics-and all kinds of people-to go to Ireland,and you've talked to women's groups, church groups, solidarity groups, college students, and professors. How did these different audiences affect your own presentationof the issues? Is it the same thing, for example, to talk to IrishCatholics in New Yorkand to talk to people in Austin, or elsewhere? MK: I think that depends on the audience. Obviously, the Irish communities here, and people doing solidaritywork here, are more informedthey have been to Irelandand they know what is going on. So, I talk about the latest issues, in terms of Sinn Fein strategy, or the latest human rights abuses, highlightingthem and bringingthe latest news from Ireland.But, again, there's never an audience who knows everything;there are always those who have just come in. We are constantlyeducating people about the national struggle. On this trip, I have visited colleges, as well as activists in various struggles, women's groups, and women's centers, so, quite clearly, most of these people don't have any informationabout Ireland.The information people get here is that Irelandis either leprechauns and shamrocks or the terrorists,so, for us, it's a matterof explaining Ireland'shistory,why people are engaged in a war situation, what Sinn Fein's position is, and what we do. And, obviously, when we're talkingto women, it's a matter of explaining the position of women in Irishsociety. I have found that most people are overwhelmed by two issues. One is censorship, the legislated restrictionon informationabout the conflictboth in the UnitedKingdomand in the Republic. The other issue that gets a lot of response is human rights abuses, which seems to contradictthe perception of Britainas a country founded on civil rights, with common law and freedom of speech. When one talks about censorship, when one talks about human rights abusesthe removal of the rightto silence and no-jurycourts-people have lots of questions about those issues because they don't have any real information on Ireland.

MK: I have enjoyed this trip to the United States very much. The people I have met genuinely want to know about Ireland.Although I get a wide

withMaireadKeane 285 Lyons/ An Interview variety of questions about Ireland,oftentimes people want to know Sinn Fein's position on the armed struggle. Howinformeddo you thinkthe people reading this interviewwill be? LL:I can't say how much people who read boundary 2 will know about Ireland, because even though this journalhas a highlyeducated audience, it's always hard to tell what people in the United States know about any given geopolitical conflict. In part, my strategy was to limitthose issues to the introduction,because it seems to me that partof the problemof discussing the thirty-twocounties is that the discussion always begins and ends with IRAviolence. I wanted to find other ways to begin the conversation and to look at differentissues. So, it isn't that I want to overlook those questions. But you could certainlysay something about them now. MK: In terms of the relationshipbetween Sinn Fein and the IRA,it's often said that Sinn Fein is the politicalwing of the IRA,but this is not true. We are part of the same movement and have the same objective-that is, the IRAfighting militarilyagainst the British,and Sinn Fein workingpolitically for the same objective. We believe that the struggle has to be advanced in many forms-social, cultural,political,and military-and we're fighting politically.On the question of peace in Ireland,what I've been saying in this country for the past three weeks is that we are interested in bringingpeace to our country;that is what we're all about. We'refightingfor peace. We're fighting for freedom, justice, and peace. And we have, in our scenario for peace, a document that actually states how we feel peace can come about in the country." In that document we are saying that the Britishmust disengage from Irelandand that they must do that withinthe lifetime of the Britishgovernment. They must release all politicalhostages unconditionally, and they must disband Loyalistforces. Irishpeople willcall a constitutional conference, in which all politicalforces on the island willbe represented, including women, trade unionists, Loyalists,and Republicans, and they'lllook to the Irishpeople to decide what kindof countrythey want. It'snot for the Britishto decide. There was a question raised after a meeting in San Francisco, where I was sharing a platformwith Native Americans. Somebody asked, "Well,who's going to mediate at this constitutional conference?" 11. A Scenario for Peace: A Discussion Paper was writtenand publishedby the Ard Chomhairle,Sinn Fein'sNationalExecutive,in May1987 and was reissued in November 1989. The groupissued the paperas an attempt"toanswerthose who claimthatthere is no alternativeto the continuationof Britishwithdrawal." Sinn Fein does not considerthe documentdefinitiveor exclusiveof otheralternativeproposals.

286 boundary2 / Summer1992 And a fellow from the Native Americans said, "We will."So, we have an offer. Wouldn'tthat be great-to have the Native Americans mediate at our constitutionalconference? That solves that problem. That is our scenario for peace. I think many people don't know that we have this document. Also, in the last year, the British have made a couple of interesting statements: they've said that they can't speak to the IRA;and then they've said that they would have to talkto Sinn Fein at some stage, but that Sinn Fein must give up supportingthe armed struggle. What we are saying is that we are willingto talk to the Britishunconditionallywe're not asking them to withdrawtheir armed forces, all thirtythousand of them, more than twenty thousand in the nationalist areas. And people don't know that. In the United States, we are often portrayedas mindless terrorists, while, actually, we are saying that we will sit down and talk with people, and we are actively interested in cultivatingpeace with the British. We are saying, "Let'stalk, let's talk unconditionally."

Books Received Adams, Hazard. CriticalTheorySince Plato. Revised Edition.Fort Worth,Philadelphia, and San Diego: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992. Agamben, Giorgio. Language and Death: The Place of Negativity.Trans. Karen E. Pinkus and MichaelHardt.Theory and Historyof Literature,vol. 78. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1991. Armstrong,Carol. Odd Man Out: Readings of the Workand Reputation of Edgar Degas. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1991. Armstrong,TimothyJ., trans. Michel Foucault:Philosopher. New York:Routledge, 1992. Originallypublished as Michel Foucaultphilosophe (Editionsdu Seuil, 1989). Bacon-Smith, Camille. EnterprisingWomen:TelevisionFandom and the Creationof Popular Myth. Philadelphia:Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Barnes, TrevorJ., and James S. Duncan. WritingWorlds:Discourse, Text,and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. Londonand New York:Routledge, 1992. Barthes, Roland. The Fashion System. Trans. MatthewWardand RichardHoward. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1990. Originallypublished as Systeme de la Mode (Editionsde Seuil, 1967). Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share, Volumes II and ll. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York:MITPress, Zone Books, 1991. Becker, Howard S., and MichalM. McCall,eds. Symbolic Interactionand Cultural Studies. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1990. Behler, Ernst. Confrontations:Derrida,Heidegger, Nietzsche. Trans.Steven Taubeneck. Stanford:Stanford UniversityPress, 1991. Bernstein, Richard J. The New Constellation: The Ethical-PoliticalHorizons of Modernity/Postmodernity.Cambridge:MITPress, 1992.

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Berube, Michael.MarginalForces/Cultural:Tolson,Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon. Ithaca and London:CornellUniversityPress, 1992. Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner.Postmodern Theory:CriticalInterrogations.Critical Perspectives, ed. Douglas Kellner.New York:GuilfordPublications, 1991. Bialostosky, Don H. Wordsworth,Dialogics, and the Practice of Criticism. Cambridge and New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992. Calder6n, Hector, and Jose David Saldivar. Criticismin the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature,Culture,and Ideology. Durhamand London:Duke University Press, 1991. Calhoun, Craig, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridgeand London:MIT Press, 1992. Carrithers,Gale H., Jr. Mumford,Tate,Eiseley: Watchersin the Night. Baton Rouge and London:LouisianaState UniversityPress, 1991. Cascardi, Anthony J. The Subject of Modernity.Cambridge and New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992. in LiteraryHistory. Clayton,Jay, and EricRothstein,eds. Influenceand Intertextuality Wisconsin 1991. Madison: Universityof Press, Collini,Stefan, ed. Interpretationand Overinterpretation:UmbertoEco with Richard Rorty,Jonathan Culler,and ChristineBrooke-Rose. Cambridgeand New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992. Collins, Christopher.The Poetics of the Mind's Eye: Literatureand the Psychology of Imagination. Philadelphia:Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Crone, Rainer, and David Moos. KazimarMalevich: The Climaxof Disclosure. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1991. Cruz, Anne J., and Mary Elizabeth Perry, eds. Culture and Control in CounterReformation Spain. Hispanic Issues, vol. 7. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992. Dawidoff, Robert. The Genteel Traditionand the Sacred Rage: High Culture vs. Democracy in Adams, James, and Santayana. Chapel Hilland London:University of North Carolina Press, 1992. De Duve, Thierry,ed. The DefinitivelyUnfinishedMarcel Duchamp. Cambridgeand London:MITPress, 1991. Derrida,Jacques. Acts of Literature.New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1992. Dorscht, Susan Rudy. Women,Reading, Kroetsch:Tellingthe Difference. Waterloo, Ontario,Canada: WilfridLaurierUniversityPress, 1991. Doyal, Len, and lan Gough. A Theoryof HumanNeed. New York:GuilfordPublications, 1991.

Books Received 289 Eliot,T. S. ToCriticizethe Criticand Other Writings.Lincolnand London:University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Elliot, Emory, ed. The Columbia Historyof the American Novel: New Views. New York:Columbia UniversityPress, 1991. Epstein, Julia, and KristinaStraub, eds. Body Guards: The CulturalPolitics of Gender Ambiguity. New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1991. Epstein, WilliamH., ed. Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism.The Theory and Practice of Biography and BiographicalCriticism,vol. 1. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UniversityPress, 1991. Ermarth,Elizabeth Deeds. Sequel to History:Postmodernismand the Crisisof Representational Time. Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1992. Falck, Colin. Myth, Truth,and Literature:Towardsa TruePost-Modernism. 1989. Reprint.Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991. Fehn, Ann, Ingeborg Hoesterey, and MariaTatar,eds. Neverending: Towarda Critical Narratology.Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 1992. Ferguson, Russell, WilliamOlander,MarciaTucker,and KarenFiss, eds. Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Artand Culture.DocumentarySources in ContemporaryArt,vol. 3. Cambridgeand London:MITPress, 1990. Ferguson, Russell, Martha Gever, TrinhT. Minh-ha,and Cornel West, eds. Out There: Marginalizationand ContemporaryCultures.DocumentarySources in ContemporaryArt,vol. 4. Cambridgeand London:MITPress, 1990. Fleming, Bruce E. An Essay in Post-RomanticLiteraryTheory:Art,Artifact,and the Innocent Eye. Studies in Artand LiteraryTheory, vol. 1. Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter:Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. Flieger, Jerry Aline. Colette and the Fantom Subject of Autobiography. Ithaca and London:Cornell UniversityPress, 1992. Foti, Veronique M. Heidegger and the Poets: Poiesis, Sophia, Techne. Philosophy and LiteraryTheory,ed. HughJ. Silverman.New Jersey and London:Humanities Press, 1992. Franco, Jean. Plotting Women:Gender and Representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1989. Franklin,Raymond S. Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolisand Oxford:University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Garber, Marjorie.Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and CulturalAnxiety. New York and London:Routledge, 1992. Gelpi, Albert. The TenthMuse: The Psyche of the American Poet. 1975. Reprint. Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991.

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Gilman,Sander L. Inscribingthe Other.Lincolnand London:Universityof Nebraska Press, 1991. Ginzburg, Lydia. On Psychological Prose. Trans. and ed. Judson Rosengrant. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1991. Gless, DarrylJ., and BarbaraHerrnsteinSmith, eds. The Politics of LiberalEducation. Durhamand London:Duke UniversityPress, 1992. Goldensohn, Lorrie.ElizabethBishop: The Biographyof a Poetry. New York:Columbia UniversityPress, 1992. Goodheart, Eugene. Desire and Its Discontents. New York:Columbia University Press, 1991. Greene, Gayle. Changing the Story:FeministFictionand the Tradition.Bloomington and Indianapolis:IndianaUniversityPress, 1991. Gunn, Giles. ThinkingAcross the American Grain:Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1992. Harrison, Faye V., ed. Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation.Washington, D.C.: Association of Black Anthropologists, American AnthropologistAssociation, 1991. Harrison,Robert Pogue. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization.Chicago and London: Universityof Chicago Press, 1992. Hicks, D. Emily.Border Writing:The MultidimensionalText.Theory and Historyof Literature,vol. 80. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1991. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Sander L. Gilman,eds. HeinrichHeine and the Occident: Multiple Identities, Multiple Receptions. Lincolnand London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Holland,Norman N. The CriticalI. New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1992. Jameson, Fredric.Postmodernism, or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism. Durham and London:Duke UniversityPress, 1991. Jayyusi, Salma Khadra.ModernArabic Poetry:An Anthology. New York:Columbia UniversityPress, 1987. Jusdanis, Gregory.Belated Modernityand Aesthetic Culture:InventingNationalLiterature.Theory and History,vol. 81. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1991. Kamps, Ivo, ed. Shakespeare Left and Right. New Yorkand London: Routledge, 1991. Kauffman,LindaS. Special Delivery:EpistolaryModes in Modern Fiction. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1992.

Books Received 291 Kernan, Alvin. The Death of Literature.New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Klinkowitz,Jerome. Donald Barthelme:An Exhibition.Durhamand London: Duke UniversityPress, 1991. Klinkowitz,Jerome. Structuringthe Void:The Struggle for Subject in Contemporary American Fiction. Durhamand London:Duke UniversityPress, 1992. Larson, Wendy. LiteraryAuthorityand the Modern Chinese Writer:Ambivalence and Autobiography. Durhamand London:Duke UniversityPress, 1991. Leitch,Thomas. Find the Directorand OtherHitchcockGames. Athens and London: Universityof Georgia Press, 1991. Lepenies, Wolf. Melancholy and Society. Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris Jones. Cambridge and London: HarvardUniversityPress, 1992. Originallypublished as Melancholie und Gesellschaft (SuhrkampVerlag, 1969). Livingston,Paisley. Literatureand Rationality:Ideas of Agency in Theoryand Fiction. Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991. McCaffery,Larry,ed. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunkand Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham:Duke UniversityPress, 1992. McKenna,AndrewJ. Violence and Difference:Girard,Derrida,and Deconstruction. Urbana and Chicago: Universityof IllinoisPress, 1992. Maltby,Paul. Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme,Coover, Pynchon. Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Maranhao,Tullio,ed. TheInterpretationof Dialogue. Chicago and London:University of Chicago Press, 1990. Masse, Michelle A. In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic. Ithaca and London:Cornell UniversityPress, 1992. Massumi, Brian.A User's Guide to Capitalismand Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari.Cambridge:MITPress, Swerve Editions, 1992. Mellard,James M. Using Lacan: Reading Fiction. Urbanaand Chicago: University of IllinoisPress, 1991. Millington,Richard H. Practicing Romance: NarrativeForm and CulturalEngagement in Hawthorne's Fiction. Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1992. Mobley, MarilynSanders. Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and ToniMorrison:The CulturalFunctionof Narrative.Baton Rouge and London:Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1991. Moriarty,Michael. Roland Barthes. Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1991. O'Donnell, Patrick,ed. New Essays on "TheCryingof Lot49." Cambridgeand New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991.

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Okada, RichardH. Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry, and Narratingin "The Tale of Genji" and Other Mid-Heian Texts. Durhamand London:Duke University Press, 1991. Olalquiaga, Celeste. Megalopolis: ContemporaryCulturalSensibilities. Minneapolis and Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992. Olsson, Gunnar.Lines of Power: Limitsof Language. Minneapolisand Oxford:University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Pack, Robert. The Long View: Essays on the Discipline of Hope and Poetic Craft. Amherst: Universityof Massachusetts Press, 1991. Page, Thomas Nelson. Red Rock. Albany:NCUP, Inc., 1991. Panofsky, Erwin.Perspective as Symbolic Form.Trans.ChristopherS. Wood. Cambridge and New York:MITPress, Zone Books, 1991. Penley, Constance, and Andrew Ross, eds. Technoculture.CulturalPolitics, vol. 3. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1991. Perera, Suvendrini. Reaches of Empire: The English Novel from Edgeworth to Dickens. New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1991. Perloff, Marjorie.Radical Artifice:WritingPoetry in the Age of Media. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1991. Pfister,Joel. The Productionof Personal Life:Class, Gender, and the Psychological in Hawthorne's Fiction. Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1991. Poster, Mark.The Mode of Information:Poststructuralismand Social Context. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1990. Prince, Gerald. Narrativeas Theme:Studies in French Fiction. Lincolnand London: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1992. Rainey, Lawrence S. Ezra Pound and the Monumentof Culture:Text,History,and the Malatesta Cantos. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1991. Randolph, Jeanne. Psychoanalysis and Synchronized Swimming and Other Writings on Art.Toronto:YYZBooks, 1991. Raper, Julius Rowan. Narcissus from Rubble: Competing Models of Character in ContemporaryBritishand American Fiction. Baton Rouge and London:Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1992. Reinfeld, Linda. Language Poetry: Writingas Rescue. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State UniversityPress, 1992. Ronell, Avital.Crack Wars:LiteratureAddictionMania. Lincolnand London:University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Rose, MargaretA. The Post-Modern and the Post-Industrial:A CriticalAnalysis. Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991.

Books Received 293 Rothfield, Lawrence. VitalSigns: Medical Realism in Nineteenth-CenturyFiction. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1992. Sakai, Naoki. Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse. Ithaca and London:CornellUniversityPress, 1991. Schulte, Rainer, and John Biguenet, eds. Theories of Translation:An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Chicago and London: Universityof Chicago Press, 1992. Schweitzer, Ivy. The Workof Self-Representation: Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England. Chapel Hilland London:Universityof NorthCarolinaPress, 1991. Sergeant, Philippe. Donald Sultan Appoggiaturas. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York:PortmanteauPress, 1992. Shapiro, Michael J. Reading the Postmodern Polity: Political Theory as Textual Practice. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992. Silverman, Hugh, ed. Gadamer and Hermeneutics. ContinentalPhilosophy, vol. 4. New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1991. Silverman, Hugh, and James Barry,Jr., eds. Textsand Dialogues: Merleau-Ponty. Trans. Michael B. Smith. New Jersey and London:HumanitiesPress, 1992. Simms, WilliamGilmore. MartinFaber: The Story of a Criminal.Albany: NCUP, Inc., 1990. Simons, HerbertW., ed. The RhetoricalTurn:Inventionand Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry.Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1990. Simpson, David,ed. Subject to History:Ideology, Class, Gender. Ithacaand London: Cornell UniversityPress, 1991. Sobchack, Vivian. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1992. Soderlind, Sylvia. Margin/Alias:Language and Colonizationin Canadian and Quebecois Fiction. Theory/Culture,vol. 6. Toronto,Buffalo,and London:Universityof TorontoPress, 1991. Suleri, Sara. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1992. Sund, Judy. Trueto Temperament:VanGogh and French NaturalistLiterature.Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1992. Tannery,Claude. Malraux:The Absolute Agnostic; or, Metamorphosisas Universal Law. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago and London:Universityof Chicago Press, 1991. Taussig, Michael. The Nervous System. New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1992.

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Tobin, Patricia.John Barthand the Anxietyof Continuance. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Tsur, Reuven. What Makes Sound Patterns Expressive?: The Poetic Mode of Speech Perception. Durhamand London:Duke UniversityPress, 1992. Turkle,Sherry. Psychoanalytic Politics, 2nd Edition:Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution. Critical Perspectives. New Yorkand London: GuilfordPress, 1992. Van Den Abbeele, Georges. Travelas Metaphor:From Montaigne to Rousseau. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992. Vaughan, Megan. Curing TheirIlls: Colonial Power and African Illness. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1991. Wang, David Der-Wei.FictionalRealism in 20th-CenturyChina:Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen. New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1992. Weber, Samuel. Return to Freud: Jacques Lacan's Dislocation of Psychoanalysis. Trans. MichaelLevine. Literature,Culture,Theory,ed. RichardMacksey and Michael Sprinker.Cambridge and New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991. Yarbrough, Stephen R. Deliberate Criticism:Toward a Postmodern Humanism. Athens and London:Universityof Georgia Press, 1992. Zumthor,Paul. Towarda Medieval Poetics. Trans. PhilipBennett. Minneapolisand Oxford:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992.

Contributors Salwa Bakr was born and raised in Cairo. She is the author of four collections of short stories: Zinatin the President's Funeral(1986), The Shrine of 'Atiyyah(1987), The GraduallyEroded Soul (1989), and The Peasant's Dough (1992). She is the author of a novel The Golden ChariotWon'tAscend to the Heavens (1991) and is completing a forthcomingnovel entitled The Description of the Bulbul (1993). Claire Detels is associate professor of music at the Universityof Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her research areas are musical aesthetics and nineteenth-centuryopera. Her publications include articles on Verdiand Puccini operas in InternationalDictionary of Opera (St. James Press, forthcoming)and "Puccini'sDescent to the Goddess: Feminine ArchetypalMotifsfrom Manon Lescaut to Turandot,"in Yearbookof Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts. Margaret Ferguson is professor of English and comparative literatureat the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is currentlyfinishing a book entitled Partial Access: Female Literacyand LiteraryProductionin EarlyModernEnglandand France (Routledge, forthcoming). She is the author of Trialsof Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (1983) and coeditor of Rewriting the Renaissance (1986) and Re-membering Milton(1987). Carla Freccero is associate professor in the LiteratureBoardand Women's Studies Programat the Universityof California,Santa Cruz. Herrelatedworkincludes "Notes of a Post Sex-Wars Theorizer,"in Conflictsin Feminism, edited by MarianneHirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller(1990). She is also the authorof Father Figures: Genealogy and NarrativeStructurein Rabelais (1991). MarjorieGarber is professor of English and directorof the Center for Literaryand CulturalStudies at HarvardUniversity.She is the author of two books on Shakespeare and, most recently, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and CulturalAnxiety, a literaryand culturalstudy of transvestism.

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BarbaraHarlowis associate professor of Englishat the Universityof Texas, Austin. In addition to articles on ThirdWorldliteratureand criticaltheory, she is the author of Resistance Literature(1987), a study of the literatureproduced in the context of organized resistance movements. Barred: Women, Writingand Political Detention, an analysis of women politicalprisoners and the role played by writingin new forms of politicaland culturalorganizationin and outside prison over the last three decades, is forthcoming. Laura E. Lyons is a graduate student in English at the Universityof Texas, Austin. She is writinga dissertation on issues of representationin the literatureand cultural politics of Irishnationalism. Anne McClintockis assistant professor of gender and culturalstudies at Columbia Universityand is the authorof Maids, Maps, and Mines: Gender and Empirein Victorian Britain and South Africa (forthcoming).She has written monographs on Simone de Beauvoir and Olive Schreiner and is currentlywritinga book entitled Power to Come: Women and the Sex Industry.She is editing a book collection on sexwork and technosex entitled Screwing the System and is coediting, with Ella Shohat, two book collections, one on sexuality and imperialism,the other on Third Worldculture. TorilMoiis professor of literatureand romance studies at Duke University.She is the authorof Sexual/TextualPolitics (1985) and the editorof The KristevaReader (1986) and French Feminist Thought (1987). She is currentlycompleting a book entitled Simone de Beauvoir: The Makingof an IntellectualWoman(Blackwell,forthcoming). Linda Nicholson is professor of educational administrationand policy studies, women's studies, and politicalscience at the State Universityof New York,Albany. She is the author of Gender and History:The Limitsof Social Theoryin the Age of the Family (1986) and the editorof Feminism/Postmodernism(1990). She edits the book series ThinkingGender for Routledge. At present, she is at work on a book currentlyentitled The Genealogy of Gender. Mary Poovey is professor of English at Johns Hopkins University.Her most recent book is Uneven Development: The Ideological Workof Gender in Mid-Victorian England (1988). She is currentlyworkingon a book-lengthstudy of statisticalthinking between 1654 and 1850. Andrew Ross teaches English at Princeton University.He is the author of Strange Weather:Culture,Science and Technologyin the Age of Limits(1991) and No Respect: Intellectualsand Popular Culture(1989) and the editorof UniversalAbandon and Technoculture. KathrynBond Stockton is assistant professor of English at the Universityof Utah, Salt Lake City. Her research interests include contemporarytheories, Victorianfiction, and AfricanAmerican literature.Her book on spiritualmaterialismand desire between women is forthcomingfromStanfordUniversityPress.

Contributors 297 Jennifer Wicke is associate professor of comparative literatureat New York University. She is the author of Advertising Fictions: Literature,Advertisement, and Social Reading (1988) and writes on film, Freud, postmodernity,and modern literature and culture. Herbook on the politicsof feministtheory is forthcomingfromBasil Blackwell;her currentprojectis a study of consumptionand gender.

1992 AnnualMeetingof the AmericanStudiesAssociation

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encouraged, as arecomparatist proposals, nsurgency especially interaction, topicsandproposals that removalespeciallyinterhemispheric exchange, cultural transformations intheU.S.withsimilar/ invasion, gathering,compare traditions elsewhere. schism, progress, different

growth, incorporation,

whichchallenge the conventions of an conversion,Proposals sessionsatwhichatopicis academic assimilation, session,including

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Next in boundary 2: 1492-1992: American Indian Persistence and Resurgence, a special issue edited by KarlKroeber KarlKroeber/ American Indian Persistence and Resurgence EdwardH. Spicer / The Nations of a State KarlKroeber/ An Interviewwith Jack Salzman, Director of the Columbia University Center for American Culture Studies WilliamOverstreet / The Navajo Nightway and the Western Gaze Priscilla Wald / Terms of Assimilation: Legislating Subjectivity in the Emerging Nation Douglas R. Parks and Raymond J. DeMallie/ Plains Indian Native Literatures Elaine A. Jahner / Transitional Narratives and CulturalContinuity Jarold Ramsey / Francis LaFlesche's "TheSong of Flying Crow" and the Limits of Ethnography Jonathan Boyarin / Europe's Indian,America's Jew: Modiano and Vizenor Gerald Vizenor / Manifest Manners:The Long Gaze of Christopher Columbus Wendy Rose / "December 1890-1990" Wendy Rose / "RetrievingOsceola's Head, Okemah, Oklahoma, June 1985" KatharinePearce / "Own"