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Special Issue
Feminism and Postmodernism

Coedited by
MargaretFerguson
JenniferWicke I3
boundary 2
an internationaljournal
of literatureand culture
Volume 19, Number2
Summer 1992
Duke University Press

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 collec-

tion whose domain appears to be at the farthest remove fromthe vanished
certainties of the worldof the nineteenth-centuryrealistnovel. Yet, the bold-
ness 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 femi-
nism practiced, theorized, and lived by many women (and men) today is
set against, or arises within,the vicissitudes of a transformingpostmoder-
nity-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 Wittgen-
stein 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 prac-
tice, 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 position-
alities 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 divergent-
premised 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 col-
lection it does connote a historicalshift, not merely an immanentfeature of
language, a moment that, for theory, might be regarded as the critical his-
toricizingof 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 condi-
tion of postmodernity,"a situation, of course, open to debate and recon-
ceptualization 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 char-
acterized 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 cul-
tural, 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 postmod-
ern feminism still has an uncertain valence. Craig Owens wrote his now-
classic article "The Discourse of Others" precisely to complain of the ab-
sence of feminist theory per se withinpostmodernism,while feminist prac-
tices, in the form of art, mass culture, and politics, were so evident and
prominent within it.3 Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson wrote a memo-
rable 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 Post-
modernism,"in Theory,Cultureand Society 5, nos. 2-3 (1988): 373-94. For further
importantworkin this vein, consult Nancy Fraser'sbook UnrulyPractices (Minneapo-
lis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1989), and the collectionedited by LindaNicholson,
Feminism/Postmodernism(New York:Routledge,1990). Teresa Ebert'sreview of this
other, putting each term under the pressure of a conjunctionacross disci-

plinary 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 culturalproduc-
tion, 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 coun-
tries 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 exam-
ined 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 postmod-
ernism 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 inci-
sively 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 femi-
nist questions of value and hierarchy.MarjorieGarberillustratesthe implicit
hierarchizations of culturalmonumentalityfor a range of Western literary
masterpieces in "'Greatness': Philologyand the Politics of Mimesis,"even
collection,"Postmodernism's in The Women'sReview of Books 8, no. 4

InfiniteVariety,"
(January1991):24-28, is an excellentintroductionto the issue in its own right.
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 surpris-
ing postmodern encounter between Victoriantheories of the body and an
Irigarayanmaterialistspirituality,wherein materialistfeminism is invigorated
by taking to the dance floorwith postmoderndiscourses to provide a revivi-
fied (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 postmod-
ern 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 post-
modern 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 long-
standing 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
fraught dimensions of feminist and postmodern politics. The primaryissue

was the perceived urgency of identitypolitics, the felt need to line up con-
tributors along a spectrum of identities-racial, gender, sexual, and re-
gional-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 jour-
nals, 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 some-
thing like a postmodern antifeminismwith strong individualistovertones;
her success in gaining access to a huge variety of media and culturalout-
lets 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 outra-
geously, is sexual difference, wielding it like a cleaver to separate the girls
from the boys. Her emphasis on sexuality is perversely useful to the con-
cerns of a feminist postmodernism, since it underscores not only the dan-
gers 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 postmod-
ernism in the intricacies of sex, race, and gender that Madonna flaunts,
and even theorizes; Anne McClintockpushes our understandingof sexu-
ality past easy determinations of oppression in her assessment of sex as
labor and its internationalscope. Camille Paglia is an admittedthorn in the

side of feminism, but she can be, perhaps, a goad for a feminist postmod-
ernism 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 pragmati-
cally 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 increas-
ing fragmentation of the categories of gender, class, race, sexuality, eth-
nicity, 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 postmod-
ernism 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 real-
ization is not a questioning of the grounds of feministstruggle, and certainly
5. IntheirestimablevolumePostmodernTheory:CriticalInterrogations(New York:Guil-
ford 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.
not a disparagement of feminist theory as "Western"or taintedly capital-

ist. 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 obtain-
ing in the movement from the local to the global plane of analysis, where
the real location of (much) feminist theory is thereby effaced. A material-
ist 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. Post-
modernism 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 largersys-
tem. This larger system entails not only the division of power, wealth, and
labor across the globe, where the centralfeatures of postmodernity-infor-
mation, 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 theo-
rists 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 postmod-
ern 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 notori-
ously susceptible to puttingon airs, to assuming master status, and, beyond
6. This is arguedmorefullyby JenniferWickein "Postmodernism: The Perfumeof Infor-

mation,"YaleJournalof Criticism1, no. 2 (1989):145-60. ForDonnaHaraway'sfascinat-
ing 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).
that, to erasing its own tenuous location. A global feminist theory is as yet
unformed;it may look something like a combinationof feminism and post-
modernism, 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 glam-
our 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 mislead-
ingly. 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 post-
modernism 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

may signala misalliancebetweenpostmodernism and the politicsof iden-
tity,one withpoliticalconsequences.The two senses of a legal subject-
as a subjectarea underthe headingof the law,and as the humansub-
ject constitutedby legaldiscourse-both come intoplayinthistensionwith
the importunities of postmodernidentity,thattermitselfcoveringboththe
identityof the postmodernandwhatwe couldconsidera newlydetermined
postmodernidentitypolitics.The inevitable"postmodernizing" of legaldis-
course, which may have many local to
insights offer,should not come in
the guise of depoliticizingthe discursiveammunition thatthe law provides
the legal subjectwithinthe nets of postmodernhegemonicforms.Inshort,
whileembracingthe postmoderninsofaras itprovidesa critiqueof the self-
evidentfieldof Law,I willsuggest also the ambivalencesinherentin this
embrace.1
One of the most interesting,albeitappalling,featuresof contempo-
rarylife in the UnitedStates is the extent to whichargumentsover the
natureof femalesubjectivity arecrystallizedinan ongoingseries of trials-
literaland 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 legallyde-
fined.)As such, the trialshave a muchmorecomplexrole to play in the
formationof the politicsof the femalesubjectthantheirsurfacetranspar-
ency 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
12 boundary 1992
self-identity,referentialidentity,or the singularidentityof the subject.This

is quite appropriate,since postmoderntheoryowes its inheritanceof the
questioningof identityto its rootsinpoststructuralism of the Derrideankind,
where it is takenas a giventhatidentitiesmustbe dissolved,unbound,or
at least thoroughlysplicedand diced whereverthey appear.JudithButler
gives a virtuallyclassic statementof this projectof postmodernphilosophi-
cal 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 Bothcap-
sule versionspresentedhere illuminate the degreeto whicha feministand
politicallyorientedpostmoderntheorytakes identityas its target.
Yet we confrontthe very evidentparadoxthat identitypoliticshas
never reignedmoresupremethan now,at whatpostmodernists,including
myself,mightterm"thecurrentconjuncture." Acrossthe boardof political
andculturalagitation,the emphasisis fullyon delimiting a politicspredicated
on identities,celebratingidentities,callingforthe representation of identi-
ties, marketingidentities,andsubdividing identitiesintocunninglystrategic
politicalslices. Withinfeminism,the issue of identitypoliticsfoldsbackinto
the ongoingdebates aboutessentialismversussocial constructionof gen-
der identity.Itshouldbe clearsimplyfromlivedexperiencethatas muchas
postmoderntheoryis squarelyand utterlyin the campof social construc-
tion-for genderidentitiesandanyandallidentities,as elucidatedabove-
a postmodernidentitypoliticsexists and is terrifically influential.Consider-
ing only the domain of feministtheory and practice in this essay, I wantto
analyze how postmodernismparadoxically authorizes a politicsof identity
simultaneouswithits critiqueof identity.Theterrainforthis analysiswillbe
thatof the trialof the (legal)subject,the womanputativelyon trial,and the
audienceforthatinquisition.
Postmodernfeminismoperatesin a contradictory climate,one par-
tiallyof its own making. While contradictions are inevitable, as philosophers
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

out, and contradictions are productiveand engendering,they can also sty-
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
pushingpast the feintof identitybashingto the proliferation of postmodern
identityfixations.
Postmodernism or postmodernity cannotbe takenas a givenin any
culturaldiscourse,particularly wheredisciplinary and discursiveand even
ontologicalboundariesare beingcrossed. Such difficultiesare rifein any
foregrounding of postmodernity, inanycontextwhatever,because the post-
modernhas a highlyequivocalconceptualstatus,an uncertainprovenance,
anda variableandoftenconflictual set of interlocutors.
Thereare morethan
thirty-one flavors of postmodernism, and sortingout the indiciaand differ-
entia of these criticalbrandsentailsopeninga theoreticalPandora'sbox,
especiallyaptforfeminism.
It is necessary to elide a fragmentedhistoryand gloss over prob-
lems 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
subjectswithinthe lens of the social. Interestingly, the majorarticulations
of the postmodernhave arisenin campsthatconstruethese two assump-
tions as antithetical,and that has implicationsfor the politicsinherentin
any postmodernizing of feministdiscourse,especiallyinthe areaof identity
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).
2 / Summer
14 boundary 1992
"thelogicof the cultureof late capitalism." Jamesongets at postmodernity

initiallythroughthe attemptto understandthe aestheticobjectspostmoder-
nitynecessarilyproduces,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.
AfterJameson's informal"laws"of postmodernity are set up, the
methodand the objectof postmodernstudyare irretrievably altered;the
ramifications forlegaldiscoursearealso clear,sincethe assumptionsabout
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 "post-
modern"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 at-
tenuated,what Foucaultreferredto as the juridicopolitical, perhaps-how
subjectsareformedbythe state.Thishas keenrelevanceforthe moldingof
female subjectsinthe spectacularpublicdiscoursesof lawand testimony.
The ineluctablyhybridand multiplenatureof contemporary discursiveob-
jects wouldinvadeeven the more sacred precincts legal thoughtand
of
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 politi-
cal effects of "latecapitalism" and postindustrialsocietyas these inflectall
aspects of modern society and its subjects.
Secondly,Jameson discerns a change in the affect the workof
art evokes or evinces, fromthe anxietyor alienationof modernism'ssub-
ject, nicely emblematizedfor Jameson in EdvardMunch'spaintingThe
Scream, to what must be called the schizophrenicsubject of postmod-
ernism."Schizophrenia" is the emergentpsychicnormof the postmodern,
the consumerconsciousness disintegrating intoa succession of instants,
condemnedthroughthe ubiquity of mass imagesandcommodified informa-
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
multiplicity fragmentedness identity of are celebrated by postmodern
theoryand also denigratedby it as a "female"consciousness?
Jameson'spostmodernism tendsto homogenizeortotalizethe con-
cept at times, makingpostmodernism holdtoo manycontradictory phenom-
ena. Whatis mostsalientfora feministpostmodernism tracingsome lineof
descent fromJamesonis the absence of any specificityforfeminismwithin
this totalization.Thisis notto makethe ratherdrearychargethatJameson
is insufficientlyawareof feminismbut,instead,to exhortus to lookat the
ways that identitypoliticsemergesfromwithinthisversionof the postmod-
ern. Jameson praises the strugglesof feministgroups,along withthose
of gay activistsand people of color,as exemplaryof postmodernpolitics:
local, critical,and, yes, entirelyidentity-based. Jameson'spostmodernism
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 morecommonprob-
lemof seeing onlythe local,whiledenigrating systemicanalysisand global
critiques.) Feminism is present, Jameson,in the formof identitymove-
for
ments or identityimages. Thattheoreticalmove has real consequences,
because he sees theory(inthe formof cultural critique)as sidelinedbypost-
modernism,paralyzedby its insidiousgrip.The nostalgicand despairing
cast of Jamesonianpostmodernism has hadits effects,since ithas become
only too in
easy light of it to 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
may agree that postmodernity does resituatethe culturalscene in all its
parametersandthatthe notionof the legalsubjectcan be stretchedbeyond
recognitionby this new postmodernspace.
A fairlyrecent and spectacularexampleof the implosionof post-
modernityintothe legal subjectoccurredin the Wisconsintrialof a man
for rape. The courtwas told that the rapedwomanwas sufferingfroma
multiple-personality disorderandthatonlyone of the personalitieswas the
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"multiple-
personalitydisorder"),encounteredthe legal normsof selfhoodand sin-
gularself-identity,as well as the legal subjectin the mode of truth-telling
and self-incrimination. Thetrialtookplacewithgreatpublicattentionto the
mediaevent of testimonybeingfunneledthrougha shape-shiftingidentity
onlyone of whose personalities,andthus bodies,
on the partof the plaintiff,
had been raped,whilethe "others"remainedunmolestedby whatwould,
had they been entirelypresentduringthe sex, in theircases have been
consensual.Who"she"was, andthe apparentimpossibility of ascertaining
a single, unifiedvictimfor the crimeof rape, since the offendedperson-
alityhad 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
trial.Playedout inthe tabloids,on tabloidTV,on "regular" televisionnews,
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 spectaculardis-
playof the multiplepersonalities,orthe literalized(iftechnicallyerroneous)
"schizophrenia" on displayin the media-pervaded courtroom,showed the
difficultiesinherentin introducinga postmodernidentitydefinitioninto a
courtroomstilloperatingwithinanotherparadigmforthe legal subject,on
the basis of whichthe defendantwas foundguilty.
A "postmodern identity"of thissort-kitschy,spurious,andthe prod-
uct of an unholyalliancewitha self-promoting formof psychology-is not
at allwhatpostmoderntheoreticiansseek to propose.Instead,a turbulence
in the zone of culture,not in feministpostmodernism, preemptively tossed
in a
outa femalesubject pieces, fluctuating feminine subjectivity, forced
and
its apparitiononto the culturalscreen. Here the trialforrapewas as much
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 collectiveinqui-
sitionsites as the "OprahWinfrey" show was blurredthroughoutthe trial.
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 iden-
tity 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 sub-
ject remains in full force, and the issue of "intention"is still rigidlyinvoked.
The imbalance of this encounter leaves lop-sided the engagement of post-
modern 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 politi-
cal loss. One primaryfeminist take on the trial was to applaud the guilty
verdict as an instance of a woman's voice, however fragmented and rep-
resentationally obscure, being listened to; the dangers lie in attributingall
the polymorphousness to only one side of the gender divide. Multipleiden-
tities 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 Post-
modern 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 dis-
appeared, 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 evo-
lution, 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 utopi-
anism and the teleologyinherentin Jameson'shistoricistpostmodernism
are avoidedby Lyotardinfavorof whatmightbe calledan avant-gardeuto-
piangesture.The adhesiveof the Lyotardian versionof the postmodernhas
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 postmod-
ern theorymaysimplybe the attemptto historicizethe discoursesof post-
structuralism, whichhave been very resistantto this process fromwithin,
oftendenyingthe needforanycomplexhistoricalconsciousnessat all,as is
Lyotard'spreference.Forhis thought,languagegames are allthatare left,
and howeveragonisticthey maybe, no largeraccretionof collectiveidenti-
ties on the historicalterrainof struggleis to be expected.Thismarksa signal
failurein the articulationof the postmodern,leavingit witha blackhole of
analysis, a now-invisible site of the actual,concrete,conflictualstruggles
against hegemony.Puttingit this way riskssoundingretrograde,butonly
withinthe canons of a rarefied,ahistoricalpostmodernism we woulddo
betterto abjure.
To step backand considerthe problemsof "postmodern identity"is
to confrontan immediatecontradiction. a
Following poststructuralist logic
wouldentailputtingthe conceptof identityunderheavy scrutiny,and, in-
deed, insofaras "identity" can be construedas analogousto a stable,
univocalself, an innateor immanentnature,a fixedor self-evidentbeing,
postmodernthoughthas scouredthose Augeanstablesandevacuatedany
such stability.Postmodernidentitycomes withsuch certification of its frag-
mented, fractured nature, of its fissuringby the myriad social discourses
whichconstructit, its elusiverelationto self-presence,its foregoneincon-
clusion,that to workone's way back to the relativelystable plane of an
identityperse is perhapsinconceivableand undesirable.
Nonetheless,and at the same time,whilepostmodernism eschews
any essence or origin,any authoritative center or even fixedpointof lever-
Wicke/ Postmodern
Identities19
age, identityhas come to be a more and more pressingconcernwithin

formationsof the postmodern.Whilethe postmodernitself,as theory,can-
not buttressan identity-formation and remaininternallyconsistent,post-
or
modernity postmodern sociohistorical conditionsmakea demandforthe
structuresof identityto contestthe fragmentation of civilsociety.Postmod-
ernidentityis to thatextentan oxymoron;it is also a neologismforidentity,
a new way of saying thatthere is an identitypeculiarto the postmodern,
and peculiarlypostmodern.
Thisnewcomposite"postmodern identity"has realrepercussionsfor
the intersectionof the legal subjectand postmodernism, whetherin terms
of a change inthe interpretive matrixof the law,inthe confrontation of legal
discoursewithchangedsocial circumstances,or inthe postmodernizing of
law itself,and it has ramifications forthe collisionof postmodernismwith
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
individual humansubject,andthe otherthe pinnedorfixedobjectof subjec-
tion, subjected identity.MichelFoucaultplayson these differencesin his
a
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
to situateone's identity.An "identity" of this sort is connectedto the "sub-
ject" in that identityis the self-chosen and usuallycommunalexpression
of a subject-position, a
making particular subject-position activeas a func-
tioningsocial identity,withthe understanding thatbothof these states take
place in the plural,notthe singular.A pendantto this discussionwouldre-
quirepointingoutthatFoucaultperhapsdevelopsthis understanding of the
subject after repeatedcritiques of the of an
impossibility discerning agent
of change withinhis sociohistoricalschema,whichproposesthe dispersal
of powerrelationsto such an attenuateddegree thatrevolutionor change
or resistanceis difficultto hypothesizeor explain.
6. MichelFoucault'slateressays and interviewsturnon these questions;"TheSubject

in Power"is translatedand anthologizedin ArtafterModernism,ed. BrianWallisand
MarciaTucker(Boston:DavidR. Godine,1984).
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 meta-
narratives, 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 over-
powering 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 be-
cause 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 identi-
ties 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 arrest-
ing catchphrase for a society configured as interlocking,often antagonis-
tic, microidentities. Lyotarddoes turn attention, in Le Differend, to larger
situations of injustice, and he postmodernlycharacterizes these in linguis-
tic 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
Legal Studies, where that discourse also seeks to "deconstruct"or dissolve
the language of rights, scrutinizingrights as innately unstable and indeter-
minant, 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

Wicke/ Postmodern
Identities21
likethat of NativeAmericandemandsforthe upholdingof treatiespredi-

cated on an identityas a tribesuccumbsto a self-defeatinglegitimation
of governmentpowerin the firstplace.Alongthese linesone thinksof the
currentupheavalsin Wisconsinsurrounding the spearfishingrightsof the
Lacdu Flambeau-areaIndianswho are fightingforan enhancedand pro-
tected fishingdomainon the termsof the government'sinitialdealingswith
theirtribe,on promisesmade in originaltreaties,and on the definitionof
theirculturalidentityas land-based.Thesymbolicgesturesof the Mexican-
Americanmovementof 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 dubi-
ous historicalcircumstancesunderwhichthe treatywas signed.Toseek to
dissolve these rightsaway underthe acid bathof postmodernmultiplicity
simplyerases the groundsforself-determination, whichcan onlybe coded
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 suppo-
sitionthat 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 objec-
tions,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 vocifer-
ous 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 (Minneapo-
lis: 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
makingthe "mistake" of essentialism(andhere I'lladmitI concurwiththe
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 addi-
tive or cumulative,withsmallerand smallersubdivisionsto markmoreand
morespecializedidentityformations.(Ultimately, this serves as fodderfor
right-wingjokes about the special claims of, say, disabledLatinalesbian
mothers,a reactionarymisunderstanding of whatneeds to be bettertheo-
rizedby feminism.I'llreturnto the possibilitiesforthis in concluding.)Part
of the impetusfor this discursiveand politicalphenomenonarises out of
culturaland historicalroots in the UnitedStates, where an individualiz-
ing rhetoricpermeatesall our majorsocial forms.The communityidentity
models itselfon individualidentityand coheres aroundshared attributes
thatare seen as defining,whilethe extentto whichthese communityiden-
tities arise in relationto a social dominantbecomes obscured.Ontothis
atomizingand even sentimentalizing identitypoliticsa postmodernismof
local determinationgets grafted, with powerful,but often mixed, results.
Even the brilliantly helpfultheoristsErnestoLaclauand ChantalMouffe
seem to articulatethis impasse,intheircertifiably postmodernreconstruc-
tion of the social sphere, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.8 Grafting a
dizzyingpostmodernvocabularyto an incisivepoliticalarmature,the two
arriveat a formulation forradicaldemocracywhichwouldmandatethat"the
epistemologicalniche fromwhich'universal'classes and subjects spoke
has been eradicated,and it has been replacedby a polyphonyof voices,
each of whichconstructsitsownirreducible Theygo on
discursiveidentity."
shortlythereafter to conclude thatthis politicsis foundedon the "affirmation
of the contingencyandambiguity of every'essence,'andon the constitutive
characterof socialdivisionandantagonism." perhapsessential,
Irreducible,
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
upsocialspace to a multiplicityof approaches,a postmodernpost-Marxism,
ends up dependingon the mobilization of singularidentities.As longas the
8. Quotationsare frompp. 191 and 193 of ErnestoLaclauandChantalMouffe,Hegemony

and Socialist Strategy (London:Verso Press, 1985).
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 short-
coming, by way of an excursion intoanother postmodernflavoror type crys-
tallized in the work of Jean Baudrillard,who intersects with both Jameson
and Lyotard,despite coming to some remarkablydifferentconclusions. Bau-
drillardis the coiner of the all-importantpostmodernist word simulacrum,
his term for the substitutionof the screen for the "real"or even the "spec-
tacle" that comprises modern culture. For Baudrillard,we are now, as a re-
sult 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 ap-
propriately,and will be addressing both a culturalartifact, a kind of text
put under the lens of critique, and engaging feminism as a cultural ac-
tivity 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 Sen-
ate 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 "elec-
tronic 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
script as conversation on the subway, newspaper editorial,family dinner

table argument, or the subject of frantictelephone calls. The national con-
sciousness 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 tele-
vision 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 Wash-
ington 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 contre-
temps 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, im-
bricated 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 set-
ting 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 inter-
section of culturaldiscourses and culturallocales. Everythingoverlaps and
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 femi-
nisms 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 read-
ing 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 Simp-
son, for example, might have it? I would argue not, for there are many
possible feminist angles on the Hill/Thomastangle; and some of those femi-
nist angles are quite at variance with the feminist culturalcriticism I will
try to elucidate. A veritable whirlpoolof misogynies, racisms, and reaction-
ary 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 sym-
bolic 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 broad-
casts 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 re-
9. 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.
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 delinea-
tion 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 MacKin-
non'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 MacKin-
non, 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 Mac-
Kinnonmake the leap froma specific patternof sexually harassing linguistic
encounters to victimizationby pornography?Her definitionof women, and
the resulting definitionof feminism, demands it: MacKinnonwishes to de-
scribe 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 porno-
graphic 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 soci-
ety. Clarence Thomas's statements to Anita Hillwere an epiphenomenon
of pornography and pornographicdesire; it became of the utmost impor-
tance 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 Mac-
Kinnonby the philosopherRichardRortyhas to be one of the most peculiarchaptersin
contemporarycriticalthinking.
Wicke/ Postmodern
Identities27
Hillthus becomingindistinguishable froma womandepictedin a porno-

graphicfilmor magazine,victimizedby the gaze of pornography outright.
Work,power,competition,allvanishfromthisscenario-what definesAnita
Hillas a womanin MacKinnon's feminismis thatshe is this recipientof a
pornographic barrage.Pornography belongsentirelyto men, pornography
expresses men,pornography is the rootcause, the monolithic source,of the
lackof equalitybetweenmenandwomen.Censoranderadicatepornogra-
phyandClarenceThomas'scommentsbecomeimpossible,forMacKinnon;
the flipside is also true-until and unless all pornography is snuffedout,
genderrelationsare doomedto takethe courseof sexual harassment.The
onlyfeministresponse,on these terms?To espy pornography whereverit
lurksandto devoteallone'sfeministenergiesto publicenemynumberone,
pornography.
Catharine MacKinnon'scommentaryon Hill's charges against
Thomasemanatefromcultural feminism,thatfeminismwhichembracesthe
notionof a univocalwoman'scultureandinnateexperience,whose defining
characteristicis vulnerabilityto pornography andviolation.ForMacKinnon,
then, Anita Hillwas Everywoman, susceptibleto the depredationsof por-
nography.Such a positionon her partechoes whathappenedto a major
strandof feminismin the 1980s-its energies were siphonedoff into a
crusade againstpornography thatblurredthe distinctionbetweenfeminist
politics and reactionaryrepressiverhetoric.Ithas been pointedout repeat-
edly, and most notablyby the anti-MacKinnon feministcoalitioncentering
on FACT-FeministsAgainstCensorshipTaskforce-thatthe one constitu-
ency delightedto embracethe antipornography positionhas been the radi-
cal 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 sup-
plants a mediatedunderstandingof humanculture.Boileddown to the
brass tacks of pornography, this entailsassumingthatrepresentationsare
precisely what they represent-there is no intermediatezone of fantasy,
culturalplay,or even justframinggoingon. By this token,there is nothing
moresalient,nothingmoreurgent,than removingpornography fromsoci-
ety's midst.Allwomenare equallyaffectedby pornography, allwomenare
equallyalienatedfrompornography, allwomenare harmedby pornography
at all times-so muchfor racism,or lack of prenatalhealthcare, differ-
ingopportunities forprofessionaladvancement,femalepoverty,etc. Allare
traceable, it would seem, to pornography.
This analysisis off the mark,but it is remarkably interestingfor re-
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 ele-
ment 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 channel-
ing male discomfort about women in the workplace into a hostile parade of
sexual overtures.
That pictureof things should not be compatible with a feminist view-
point, 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 ages-
old 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 discus-
sion of women in our culture demands it. The litmus test for victim status
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 back-
ground 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 re-
sulted 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 culturalfemi-
nism 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 ma-
teriallydeprived and as subject to racism as Clarence Thomas's. Race fig-
ured 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 culturalunconscious-
lynching 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
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 symptom-
atic 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 simi-
lar 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 com-
prised 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 individualmem-
11. Denise Riley,"AmI ThatName?"Feminismand the Categoryof 'Women'in History

(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1988), chap. 5, passim.
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 Democraticsena-
tors, 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 charg-
ing 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 Caribbean-
American 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, for-
gotten 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 incon-
gruities and irreconcilableattitudes all cluster aroundthe perceived need to
12. Patterson'sessay is reprintedin Reconstruction1, no. 4 (1992):64-77, and is fol-

lowedby an extraordinarilythoughtfulexchange 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 trans-
gressive reformulations of objectand subject,in the postmodernwash of
the
identity, legal subjectwhocame to the forewas an impossiblemonolith,
a femalemonster.Inproviding a critiqueof thismonstrousresult,one brand
of postmodernismcould be seen as a utopiantheoryseeking to under-
mine all such binariesand divisions,installingthe play of differencesin
theirstead. ThinkerslikeCraigOwensandothershavewantedto suggest
that postmodernityitself is the "discourseof others,"of those who have
been disenfranchised fromthe culturalsystem,andinparticular he cites the
prominenceof sexual differencein postmodernartof the last fifteenyears
and of the female artistswho have participated in makingpostmodernism
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 ren-
ders postmodernismwithoverlybroadbrushstrokes,as providinginternal
optionsof a reactionaryor progressivekind.Whatthat is ordinarily going
to mean is an overinvestmentin discursivegestures,the oftenfatuousas-
sumptionthat an alterationof textualstyle or nomenclatureor the de-
centeringof a discoursein some purelysymbolicway sends shock waves
to the heartof socialdomination. Thatverylocution,of course,is disavowed
by postmodernism anyway, since no "heart"or core of hegemonycan be
posited. This insightcouldquiteprofitably be tailoredto an understanding of
the law,of the legal subject,notas a monolithic constructbutas a perme-
able membranewithinwhichinnumerable sites of conflictand innumerable
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.
Wicke/ Postmodern
Identities33
in the publicarenaof image,protest,the womanon trial.Itis fashionable

to referslightinglyto an academicfeminismof theoryand writing,in con-
trastto a grass-rootsfeminismof marchingand politicalactionthat does
the real workof feminism.Thatdivisionwillno longersuffice,but not on
the groundsthattheoryand practicecan no longerbe distinguished."Aca-
demic 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 straightforwardidentitypolitics.Postmodernfeminismis itselfcaughtin
those same nets. A singularfeministmovementno longerexists, and post-
moderntheoryembracesthe fragmentation of multiplelocales, sites, and
dissolvedidentities.Tryingto negotiatethe new space forfeministtheory
involvesseeing how muchwe stilloperatewithincongruentand incompat-
iblemodels.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 postmod-
ern 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 high-
pressure, 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 Holly-
wood, 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 corpo-
rate 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.
boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright ? 1992byDukeUniversity Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.
Poovey / Feminismand Postmodernism-Another
View 35
that has run even the most successful man ragged and stripped him of his
abilityto feel.
No doubt these movies about masculine resuscitationare more salu-
tary 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 big-
gest money-maker of the year, Terminator2: Judgment Day, the anxiety
becomes clearer and, to my mind,more poignant.Likeits predecessor, Ter-
minator 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 name-
sake 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 ma-
chine 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 Termi-
nator 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-
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 structuralcontradic-
tion 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 homeless-
ness. 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 people-
adults or children-58 percent are single men." After one factors in pro-
grams 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 De-
pendent 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 inequalitybe-
tween 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 ex-
1. Peter Martin,"ThePrejudiceagainst Men,"Nation,8 July 1991, 46. Subsequentquo-

tationsin this paragraphare cited fromthis page.
2. Martin,"Prejudice,"47, 46. Subsequent quotationsin this paragraphare cited from
these pages.
View 37
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 feminist-
humanist 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 gen-
dered 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, human-
ist 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 repro-
ductive 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 late-
comers 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 de-
fense is articulated in psychological and gendered terms. Martin'sanaly-
sis, 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
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 ac-
quire 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 mean-
ings 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"depen-
dence of women. Martin'scharge that women have brought about, or at
least benefited from, a fundamentalchange in who is allowed to choose-
like 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
David Harvey has called "theconditionof postmodernity."4 The changes for
3. Martin,"Prejudice,"47-48.
4. See David Harvey,The Conditionof Postmodernity:An Enquiryinto the Originsof
CulturalChange (Oxford:BasilBlackwell,1980). Otherhelpfuldiscussionsof postmoder-
nity include:FredricJameson, "Postmodernism, or the CulturalLogic of Late Capital-
ism," New Left Review 146 (July-August1984): 53-92; Andreas Huyssen, After the
GreatDivide:Modernism,Mass Culture,Postmodernism(Bloomington:IndianaUniver-
sity Press, 1986); and ChristopherNorris,What'sWrongwith Postmodernism:Critical
Theoryand the Ends of Philosophy(Baltimore:Johns HopkinsUniversityPress, 1990).
Amongthe manydiscussionsof feminismandpostmodernity, see DonnaHaraway,"Mani-
View 39
which postmodernity stands include not just observable alterations in the

U.S. economy and welfare system but transformationsin the global econ-
omy, as well: I have in mind both the creation of a part-time"homework"
economy at the level of worldwideproductionand the forging of the corpo-
rate 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 syn-
thetic 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 percep-
tions of the body are being measured by anthropologistEmilyMartin,whose
fieldwork finds people in Baltimore speaking of their bodies not as self-
contained 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 ex-
tends 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,"Col-
lege English53, no. 8 (1991):886-904; JudithButler,GenderTrouble:Feminismand the
Subversionof Identity(New Yorkand London:Routledge,1990);JudithButler,"Contin-
gent Feminismand the Questionof 'Postmodernism,' "inFeministsTheorizethe Political,
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 Repro-
duction"(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 providecrucialrubricsforcon-
ceptualizing 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 vicis-
situdes 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 "learningorganiza-
tion,"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 trans-
formed 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
preferences are their allies. They court the world of the 'irrational.'"6 As
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 be-
liefs 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
pain in seeing the process through ... as change agents, we cannot

walk into any organization and "do transformation."We can, how-
ever, ... 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 "over-
come ... his fear of wildness, irrationality, . . . intuition, emotion, the body,
and nature."8
It is by no means obvious that the corporate executives' appropria-
tion of feminine traitsto negotiate the transitionto postmodernitywillbe any
more beneficial to women than is the humanist defense against postmod-
ernism. 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 withinpostmod-
ernism, and because gendered meanings are being used to ease this tran-
sition, it behooves feminists now to examine both the ways that feminized
traits are being appropriatedto facilitate (or resist) material and concep-
tual 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 par-
ticular 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.
'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 maintainingconti-
nuity with the past, the law is particularlyresistant to change. (2) The law
stages the dynamics of social negotiation specifically in the form of con-
tests 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 regula-
tions 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 ac-
tivityhad taken place; the question at issue was the woman's consent. The
defendants asserted that the woman had gone to the fraternityhouse will-
ingly, that she had consumed the vodka knowingly,and that-explicitly or
implicitly-she had consented to having sex. By contrast, the woman ar-
gued 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 rec-
ognizable as true because they are coherent, comprehensive, and com-
prehensible. 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
even by repressing the memory of the event altogether.10Such juridicalac-

commodation 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"persua-
sion" 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 humanistjuridi-
cal 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 privi-
leges 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 sub-
ject 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:AmericanPsychi-

atricAssociationPress, 1987).
11. "BearingWitnessto the Unbearable,"New YorkTimes,28 July1991.
a social contradictiononto the individualsubject as the split between con-

sciousness (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 exam-
ine 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 fer-
12. See WilliamL. Websterv. ReproductiveHealthServices, et al., 106 U.S. Supreme

CourtReports (1989), 410-71. Forprovocativediscussions of the abortiondebate, see
Ronald Dworkin,"TheFutureof Abortion,"New YorkReview of Books, 28 Sept. 1989,
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).
Poovey / FeminismandPostmodernism-Another
View 45
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 conclu-
sively that it was the intentionof the Supreme Courtto upholdconstitutional
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 gen-
der 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 ren-
dered 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 hos-
pitals, 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.
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 juridi-
cal 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 up-
holding 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 theo-
retically,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 func-
tion 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
and maintained norms of intelligibility" that are anchored by "'intelligible'

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 intelli-
gible 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)homogeniz-
ing each term of the binaryopposition (by marginalizingall other kinds of
difference) and claiming a naturalrelationto the (supposedly binary) bio-
logical difference of sex. This is why I say that gender seems to be the
basis of our culturalsystem of meaning: Gender, with its apparently natu-
ral, 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 cul-
turallyassigned 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
up the cruel contradictionI have been examiningthroughoutthis essay: Be-
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.
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 up-
hold 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 institu-
tionalizes. 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 de-
humanizationwith which I began. We see this fear again in two controver-
sies 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 politiciza-
tion remained relativelyuncontroversialon the Rightbecause the Missouri
legislature was understood to have based its determinationthat life be-
gins 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 irrevers-
ible 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.
Poovey/ Feminism
andPostmodernism-Another
View 49
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 discussing-
indicatesthateven thoughwomenareassignedresponsibility underthe law,
the feminineis also seen as the lastfrontierof nature,the lastguarantorof
identity,masculinity,and life itself.Atthe same time, however,these con-
troversiesand the anxietiesbehindmass-culturalfantasies also suggest
that the contradictionI have been examiningis no longercapableof sus-
tainingitself;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 imaginaryhomoge-
nizationof sex thatis itselfa symptomof these infrastructural
changes.One
outcomeof this overdetermined logicof infra-and superstructural
causes
and effects is the otherphenomenonwithwhichI have been associating
postmodernism: the appropriation of feminizedtraitsto maximizesuccess
in a worldconceptualizedas an inhumanesystem. As the alignmentof
(female)sex and (feminine)genderhas increasinglycome to seem likea
culturalorganization, feminizedtraitshavefloatedfreefromtheirfemaleref-
erent.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 funda-
mentalcontradiction withinhumanismthat I have been examining.On the
one hand,because genderedmeanings(particularly those meaningscoded
"feminine") have historically been accordeda natural,biologicalrelationto
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."
people are resisting by invokingtraditionalgender definitions are altering

perceptions of the relationshipbetween sex and gender, gendered mean-
ings 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 demonstra-
tion 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 employ-
ment 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 Judi-
ciary 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," ac-
cused 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 employ-
ment 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 noth-
ing 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
must stop tryingto resuscitate the humanistsubject. We must move abor-

tion 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 mean-
ings-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 dif-
ference inevitably,and inadvertently,participates in other forms of oppres-
sion, 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 pref-
erence. 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/Thomasde-
bate 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 shift-
ing 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, how-
ever, 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
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 par-
ticipating in the productionof such images, feminists must begin to analyze
the paradox I have been discussing, by whichthe relationshipbetween gen-
der 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 articu-
lations of power institutionalizedby, or alongside, postmodernity-instead
of defending out of fear a humanist subject that is sexist to its very core.
22. Here is Sandoval'sdescription:"Differentialconsciousness requiresgrace, flexibility

and strength:enough strengthto confidentlycommitto a well-definedstructureof identity
for one hour,day, week, month,year;enoughflexibility to self-consciouslytransformthat
identityaccording to the requisitesof anotheroppositionalideologicaltacticif readingsof
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 agreementwithSan-
doval'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 postmod-

ernism/poststructuralism has generateda surprisingdegreeof intensefeel-
ing 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 pas-
sion, and I shall also attemptto resolvesome of the conflicts.My initial
focus willbe on postmodernism,not poststructuralism, because the con-
text 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.

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 previ-
ously perceived as connected. As a philosopher, I was attracted to Jean-
Frangois 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 Postmod-
ern 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 philo-
sophical 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 philoso-
phy was its commitment to identifyingthat which was universal. Thus,
writerssuch as Rortyand Lyotardpointedto the localityand historicalspeci-
ficity of that which in previous philosophy had been described as universal
and as universallyfoundational.This aspect of theirarguments greatly reso-
nated with my own historicistleanings. These leanings-ironically, in regard
to Lyotard'scritiqueof Marxism-derived from my own previous identifica-
tion 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(Minneapo-
lis: 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 spe-
cific 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 historicalspeci-
ficity 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 up-
holdingthis 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 situ-
ated 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'sinadequa-
cies 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, TheMirrorof 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.
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 inadequa-
cies 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,industrialworld-
view 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 philoso-
phy 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 Enlighten-
ment. In the writings of Voltaireand Condorcet, for example, there was a
strong notion of progress, of human ideas and social organization poten-
tially 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-
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 colo-
nialismof eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-centuryEuropeand North
America. Inthis context, the emergence of culturalrelativismwithinanthro-
pological 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 soci-
eties. Duringthe course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as sci-
ence 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 per-
mitted their own visions of the good life to become hegemonic. Thus, doc-
tors 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 fac-
ulty that was attributedthe abilityto attain such ideals-specifically, rea-
son. Enough has been writtenabout the uses and abuses of reason within
modernityto make me wary of saying more here. It is sufficient in this con-
text 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 edu-
cation except for the description of reason as male. More relevant for con-
temporary 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
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 intellectualdis-
course 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 contest-
ing 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 impor-
tance 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 spe-
cific 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 dis-
covery/context of justificationdistinction.5 It had become increasingly ap-
parent 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 impor-
tantextensionof Feyerabendby takingthe discussionbeyondthatof science to the more
generaltopicof truth.
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 resolv-
ing 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 anteced-
ents 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 ordi-
nary 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 ulti-
mate 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 arro-
gance seemed also to be present in certain aspects of feminist theory
itself. The manifestations of such arrogance were more subtle than in other
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 under-
stood 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 pro-
posed, such writings often contained implicittheories. Both such explicit
and implicittheories, by theirethnocentrismand by theirdisregardfordiffer-
ences 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 de-
manded the recognition of diversity among women with regard to race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and so on. To all of these counterten-
dencies, 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

between Feminismand Postmodernism," in Feminism/Postmodernism,ed. LindaNichol-
son (New York:Routledge,1990), 19-38.
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 con-
sensus 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 feel-
ings 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 decon-
struction 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 sub-
stantive 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
hierarchy.Paradoxically, itis to be whatis not.Thusfeministscannot
demarcatea definitivecategoryof "woman" withouteliminatingall
possibilityforthe defeatof logocentrismanditsoppressivepower....
FollowingFoucaultand Derrida,an effectivefeminismcouldonlybe
a whollynegativefeminism,deconstructing everythingand refusing
to constructanything.8
A variationof LindaAlcoff'sargumentis made by Susan Bordo.
Bordoclaimsthatthe poststructuralist idealsof endless movement,of end-
andperspective,leavethe feministreader
less possibilitiesof interpretation
or activistwithouta placeto stand:
I have no disputewiththisepistemological critiqueor withthe meta-
phor of the world-as-textas a means of undermining variousclaims
to authoritative,transcendentinsightintothe natureof reality.The
questionremains,however,howthe humanknoweris to negotiate
perspectival,destabilizedworld.Deconstructionism
thisinfinitely an-
swers withconstantvigilantsuspicionof alldeterminatereadingsof
cultureand a partneraestheticof ceaseless textualplayas an alter-
nativeideal.Hereis wheredeconstruction mayslip intoits own fan-
tasyof escape fromhumanlocatedness-by supposingthatthe critic
can become whollyproteanby adoptingendlessly shifting,seem-
inglyinexhaustiblevantage points,none of whichare "owned"by
eitherthe criticor the authorof a textunderexamination.9
Moreover,accordingto Bordo,when deconstructionism turnsits focus to
the issue of differencesamongwomen,the consequence is a theoretical
perspectivethat allows no roomfor generalizationsof any kind.We are
leftwitha type of theoreticalnominalism,a methodologicalpositionsurely
inadequate to feminism's needs.
political
Howam I,as a feministwhosees the important philosophicalbene-
to
fitsthe postmodernpositioncontributes feminism, to answer these impor-
tantand persuasivelyarticulatedarguments?Myresponseis to distinguish
8. LindaAlcoff,"Cultural The IdentityCrisisin Femi-

Feminismversus Poststructuralism:
nist Theory,"Signs 13, no. 3 (1988):417-18.
9. Susan Bordo, "Feminism,Postmodernism,and Gender-Skepticism," in Feminism/
Postmodernism,142.
/ Feminism
Nicholson andthePolitics
of Postmodernism
63
such a readingof poststructuralism frommanyof the positionsI have de-

scribedas postmodern.Oneofthe reasonsIamableto makethisdistinction
is that the philosophicalpositionsI had describedearlieras postmodern
are highlycompatiblewitha verydifferenttheoryof languagethanthe one
Rather,the theoryof languageI see
attributedhere to poststructuralism.10
as harmoniouswiththe typeof postmodernism previouslyarticulatedis one
thatstems fromthe writingsof the laterWittgenstein andthatis congruous,
in manyrespects,withthe Americanphilosophical traditionof pragmatism.
Toelaboratethisposition,Iwouldliketo drawon an essay by Nancy
Fraser,in whichshe makesa distinctionbetweentwo modelsof theorizing
languagethat have emergedin France:a structuralist modelthatstudies
language as a symbolicsystem, and a pragmaticmodelthat studies lan-
guage as a set of historicallysituatedpractices.The formermodel lends
itselfto whatshe describesas "symbolicism"-that is, the tendencyto ho-
mogenizeand 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
contextualization;and itallowsus to thematizechange.Second,the
pragmaticapproachunderstandssignification as actionratherthan
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
plural.Itstartsfromthe assumptionthattherearea pluralityof differ-
ent discoursesinsociety,thereforea plurality
of communicative sites
fromwhichto speak. Because it positsthatindividualsassume dif-
ferentdiscursivepositionsas 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.
to another, this model lends itself to a theorization of social iden-

tities as non-monolithic.Next, the pragmatic approach rejects the
assumption that the totality of social meanings in circulation con-
stitutes a single, coherent, self-reproducing"symbolicsystem." In-
stead, 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 lim-
ited 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 fea-
ture 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 histori-
cal 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 lan-
guage 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 FrenchDiscourseTheoriesforFeministPoli-

tics,"in RevaluingFrenchFeminism,ed. NancyFraserand SandraBartky(Bloomington:
IndianaUniversityPress, 1992), 177-94.
Nicholson
/ Feminism
andthePolitics
of Postmodernism
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 "SocialCriti-
cism 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 theirimplicitasso-
particular
ciationswithbiologicalfunctions,conveythe possibilityof a transhistorical
of a categorysuch as the mod-
reference.Moreover,the explicithistoricity
ern, restricted, male-headed, nuclear familysuggests furtherquestioning
aboutthe rangeof its applicability,
about,forexample,the geographicalre-
gion to whichit can be applied, rangeof subgroupswithinthatregionto
the
whichitis applicable,andso on. Onthe otherhand,withcategoriessuch as
sexualityand mothering,we are muchless likelyto raise such questions,
again because of widespreadassumptionsthatthese categoriesdescribe
something"natural" and, thus, endemicto humansociety per se. Insum,
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 differ-
entiate "correct" framingfromframingthatis stillsubjectto the chargeof
essentialism?Whiletermssuch as motheringorsexualityaremoreliableto
the dangersof transhistoricalprojectionthanothers,termsthatcarryfewer
biologicalassociations,such as domesticandpublic,have been accused
of beingused in essentialistways.13Moreover, since the possibilityof over-
generalizationalwaysexists, a feministwhowishes to avoidthe chargeof
essentialismwouldseem to be reducedto nominalism,to describingpar-
ticularevents 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-CulturalUnderstanding," Signs 5, no. 3 (1980):389-417.
2 / Summer
66 boundary 1992
For(althoughrace,class, andgenderare privilegedby currentintel-

lectualconvention),the inflectionsthat modifyexperienceare end-
less, and some item of differencecan always be producedwhich
willshatterany proposedgeneralizations.If generalizationis only
permittedinthe absence of multipleinflectionsor interpretivepossi-
bilities,then culturalgeneralizationsof any sort-about race, about
class, about historicaleras-are ruledout. Whatremainsis a uni-
verse composedentirelyof counterexamples, inwhichthe way men
andwomensee the worldis purelyas particularindividuals, shaped
by the uniqueconfigurations thatformthatparticularity.14
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
directlyincrease withthe generality one's claims.Thus,such an attitude
of
does not entaillimitingoneself to descriptionsof particular
phenomenaat
particularpointsintime;itentails,rather,continuouslyweighingthe political
reasonsforspecificgeneralizations againstthe degreeto whichsuch gener-
alizationsriskthese dangers.Moreover, as thereare no rulesforindicating
wherequalification needs to stop,so also arethereno rulesto differentiate
stoppingpointsthat are important fromthose that are not. Here,too, the
needs of the historicallyspecificsituationmustset the framefor decision
making.These last pointsinvokethe second of whatIdescribedas crucial
elementsof a postmoderndiscourse:thatitrecognizeitselfas political.One
problemwithBordo'sobjectionis thatits conceptualization of discourseis
still embeddedin an objectivistframework: Eitherthere are rules for dis-
tinguishingthe important qualificationfromthe unimportant or
qualification,
are equallyimportant.
allqualifications allqualifica-
Ofcourse,theoretically,
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
contemporary Western,white,middle-classwomenontothe livesof women
14. Bordo,"Feminism,Postmodernism,and Gender-Skepticism,"

150-51.
/ Feminism
of Postmodernism
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 histori-
callyandculturally specificpurposes,allcategorieswillbearsome marksof
the needs of theircreators.Wecan onlymitigatethe politicaldangersof this
featureof discourseby becomingawareof those formsinwhichits abilityto
oppress is morelikelyto occurthanin others.16 Finally,ourbest safeguard
may ultimatelylie notwiththe kindsof discoursewe ruleacceptableor not
butwiththe morepracticalissue of who is ableto take partin discourse-
that is, withthe questionof access "tothe meansof communication." 17
This modelof discourseis, however,also subjectto critiquefroma
differentdirection.Indescribingdiscourseas politicalandas shapedbythe
historically Ican imaginesome will
specificneeds of itsdiverseparticipants,
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 (Minneapo-
lis: 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;
or,it maybe the case thatinanyparticular discursiveconflict,theremaybe
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.
This last pointunderlinesone of the most important featuresof the
modelof discourseI am here endorsing:thatdiscoursebe construedas a
process of humaninteraction and notas a structuresusceptibleto abstract
formalization. Itis onlybyconstruingdiscourseinstructuraltermsthatone is
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
of rules mitigatingcommunicative breakdownemerges as a lifepossibility
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 sum-

marizedin 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
arroganceforan endorsementof epistemichumility. Such humility entailsa
recognitionthat our of
ways viewing the worldare mediatedby the contexts
/ Feminism
of Postmodernism
69
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 repre-
sents a reconceptualization of discoursefromthatof a structureto thatof a
process of interaction. Such bringswithit a blurring
a reconceptualization
of the lines that have previouslydividedissues concerningthe criteriafor
arbitrating claimsof truthand falsityfromissues concerningthe contexts
by which such criteriaare established.Thus,questionsconcerningaccess
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 "primi-

tive"religion.Marxtookthe termcommodityfetishand the idea of "primi-
tive"magic to expressthe centralsocialformof the modernindustrial econ-
In
omy. 1887, Freud transferred
fetishism to the realmof sexualityand to
the domainof eroticperversions.'Religion(the orderingof time and the
transcendent),sexuality(the orderingof the body),and money(the order-
ing 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.

/ Screwing
McClintock theSystem 71
whatthe Enlightenment imaginationcouldnotincorporate ontothe domain

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.
By thinkingof the "primitive" (inventingthe "primitive"),
the idea of erotic
deviancewas constitutedin Europeto serve a specificallymodernformof
social dominance.By the latterhalfof the nineteenthcentury,the analogy
betweeneroticdevianceand racialdevianceemergedas a necessary ele-
ment 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
racially"primitive"momentin humanprehistory, survivingominouslyin the
heartof the imperialmetropolis.Atthe same time,colonizedpeoples were
figuredas sexual deviants,the livingembodimentsof a primordial erotic
promiscuityand excess.3
ForFreud,the eroticfetishis akin"tothe fetishes in whichsavages
believethattheirgods areembodied."4 Yet,Freudis the firstto definefetish-
ism 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,
too, notes, afterFreud,"theabsence in womenof fetishism."6
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 TheStandardEdi-
tion 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 Femi-
nine 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 psychoanalytictheoryof fetish-
ism does not admiteitherrace or class as formativecategoriescrucialto
the etiologyof fetishism.
Foucaultargues, in a differentvein,thatthe historicalnotionof sex
"madeit possible to grouptogether,in an artificialunity,anatomicalele-
ments, 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 contra-
dictionsin social value that can take a numberof historicalguises. The
fetishstands at the crossroadsof a crisisinhistorical
value,as the symbolic
displacementandembodimentinone objectof incompatible codes insocial
meaning, which the individual
cannot resolveat a personallevel.Thefetish
is thus destinedto recurwithritualisticrepetition.
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
stigma reflects deeply felt anxieties about women trespassingthe dan-

gerous boundariesbetweenprivateand public.Streetwalkers displaytheir
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 mur-
der 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 to purgethe earthof prostitutes: "scumwhocannot
justifytheirexistence."10 Sutcliffe'sdefense restedon the constructionof
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 betweenSut-
cliffe'smissionto exterminateprostitutesand the publicsentimentvoiced
by the tabloids,the policestatements,andthe judiciaryitselfthatthe pros-
tituteswere, indeed,somehownot innocent.Duringthe extraordinary trial
thatfollowed,a legal discourse,a psychiatricdiscourse,and a journalistic
discoursetookshape aroundthe preordained verdictof the murderedpros-
titutes'guiltin the eyes of the law.Throughout the trial,distinctionswere
repeatedlymade between"innocent" victims(nonprostitutes) and "disrep-
utable,"or "blemished," victims(prostitutes).12
Indeed,the policeinvestiga-
tionintothe 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-
2 / Summer
74 boundary 1992
and she turnedout not to be a prostitute.A policeposterread:"Thenext

victimmaybe innocent."13 Thejudge,moreover,offeredthe jurythe follow-
ingextraordinary advice.IfSutcliffewas deludedintobelievingthathe had
killedonly prostitutes,"thenthe correctverdictwas probablymanslaugh-
ter,"notmurder.14 Thedistinctionbetweenprostitutesandotherwomenwas
summed
finally up inAttorneyGeneralSirMichaelHavers'snotoriouscom-
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 pur-
pose of gain), SergeantDavidBroadwelldraggedintocourta large,clear,
plasticbag and exposed to the titillatedcourtroom the tabooparaphernalia
of S/M:whips,belts, chains,a dog collar,and assortedsticks and leather
items.16Fordays, police and witnesses had been describingthe "naugh-
tinesses" 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
the mechanismof the prostitution in the distribution
trial,contradictions of
and
money,pleasure, power are isolated as crimesand are then performed
againinthe theatricalceremonyof the trialas confession.Thejudiciaryis a
system of orderedproceduresforthe production of "truth"(facts,verdicts,
the rationalsentence).Thejudge'swig (likethe prostitute's wig)signifiesa
separationbetweensubjectiveidentityand body,and therebyguarantees
the impartialityof the trial.
onstratingSexual Difference," inMenin Feminism,ed. AliceJardineand PaulSmith(New

York:Methuen,1987), 49.
13. Quotedin Ross, "Demonstrating 49.
Sexual Difference,"
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, notori-
fromthatof the popularpress to thatof the professional
ously,at all levels of interpretation,
lawyer,as a moralmission,and was thereforeless culpablethanthe asocial desire to kill
all women"(see "Demonstrating Sexual Difference,"
48).
16. See GloriaWalkerand LynnDaly,SexplicitlyYours:TheTrialof CynthiaPayne (Lon-
don: Penguin,1987).
/ Screwing
The lawis also a regimefordisqualifying alternativediscourses:the

disenfranchised,feminists,and prostituteswho mightspillthe beans.'7The
moreprostitutesareobligedto speakoftheiractionsinpublic,the morethey
incriminate themselves.By orderingthe unspeakableto be spoken in pub-
lic, however,and by obsessivelydisplayingdirtypictures,filmedevidence,
confessions, and exhibits,the prostitution trialrevealsitselfas structured
aroundthe veryfetishismitsets itselfto isolateandpunish.Underhisscarlet
robe,the judgehas an erection.
The prostitution trialis notonlya regimeof truthfordemonstrating
the propercirculationof moneyand propertybutalso a technologyof vio-
lence, settingin motionthe violentconstraintof women'sbodies:floggings,
dunkings,jailings,and exile. The institution of the fine serves the purpose
of restoringthe economicexchangesubvertedbythe prostitute.Ifthe pros-
titutemakesthe judgepayforsexualservicesthatshe shouldofferforfree,
then by finingthe prostitutethe judgereturnsillicitfemalemoneybackinto
male circulation.
Atthe outset,the "sciencesof man"-philosophy,Marxism,psycho-
analysis,anthropology-soughtto containthe "primitive" possibilityof the
"perversions" a
by projection backward in time to the "prehistory"of racial
"degeneration." CommercialS/M (the collaborative organizationof fetish-
ism)does the opposite:Itinsistson playingthe roleof the "primitive" (slave,
female, baby)as a characterinthe historicaltimeof modernity.Ifthe pros-
titutiontrialisolatesandorganizesdeviantsexualpleasureforpunishment,
commercialS/M is the dialecticaloppositeof the trial,organizingthe pun-
ishmentof 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,
chains, uniforms) are the paraphernaliaof state 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,com-
mercialS/M, whereinthe exchange of cash takes place in the contextof a consensual
agreement. Itis crucialto distinguishbetween consensual S/M and nonconsensualvio-
lence and sexual sadism. These marka continuumratherthan two exclusive poles, and
there are relationshipsthatwaverperilouslyacross the twilightmiddle.
fate but does so withoutsteppingoutsidethe enchantmentof its magic

circle.
Ifthe prostitution
trialredistributes
illicitfemalemoneybackintolicit
male circulation,commercialS/M performedby a womanenacts the re-
verse: 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 spec-
tacle of the conceptualand politicallimitsof the liberalidealof the autono-
mous individual. The outrageof S/M is its provocativeconfessionthatthe
dynamics powerare reversible.
of
The act of payinga female prostituteflagrantlyannouncesthe un-
naturalnessand fictiveinventivenessof the ancestraledictthatwomendo
notownpropertyintheirownpersons.Historically, malelawhas attempted,
withgreat vigilanceand inclemency,to policethe contradictionbetween
male dependenceon femalesexual powerand malejuridicaldefinitionsof
womenas naturallyand universally the propertyof men.
In 1855, in New York,the TrinityChurchvestryman,George Tem-
pletonStrong,confidedto his diarythat "whatthe Mayorseeks to abolish
and abate is not the terribleevilof prostitution ... butsimplythe scandal
and the offense of the peripateticwhorearchy."19 Indeed,states have sel-
domsoughtto abolishprostitution outright;rather,they havesoughtto curb
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 con-
soundcase, buton the groundsthat,as he
structionof a credible,juridically
put it, "a whoreis a whore is a ForAlston,all prostitutesshare a
whore."20
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
PriscillaAlexander(Pittsburgh:Cleis Press, 1987), 185.
/ Screwing
InSan Franciscorecently,the Oaklandpolicechiefadmittedto clos-

ing 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 Brook-
lyn, "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 Engelsfirstsug-
gested thatprostitution andmarriagefindtheirsocialmeaningindialectical
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 maleprop-
erty rights.Historically,femalechastityhas had propertyvalue formen. In
survivinglaw codes of the Mesopotamian valley,forexample,womenwere
legislatedas the of
property fathers,husbands,brothers,or sons, so that
rapewas figurednotas the violationof womenbutas the ruination of male
propertyvalue.24Untillate in the nineteenthcentury,underthe common-
law doctrineof coverture,a woman'ssexual propertypassed intoa man's
handsat marriage;so didherlabor,herinheritance, andherchildren.Under
a
coverture, wife, like a slave, was civillydead. Inthe eighteenthcentury,
in Britain,Sir M. Hale'snotoriousinjunction gave a husbandde juresanc-
tionto 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:
InternationalPublishers,1972), 129-30, 138-39.
24. VernBulloughand BonnieBullough,Womenand Prostitution: A Social History(Buf-
falo: Prometheus,1987), 16. InmedievalEurope,likewise,customarylaw gave the hus-
band 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
upon his lawfulwife, for by theirmutualmatrimonial consent and contractthe wife hath
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-
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 judi-
ciary's own laws, isolating points of conflictin the distributionof male prop-
erty 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 prop-
erty 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
rape law is as follows: Since rape is a crime against man's property in
a
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 prop-
erty, and claims it for her own, removes her body from the sphere of male
law, which exists to negotiate the distributionand circulationbetween men
of property and power. Historically,most regimes have legislated that a
woman's relationto the rightsand resources of the state are indirect,medi-
ated 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. There-
fore, 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.
/ 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 com-
mon land and common prostitute. Untilvery recently,maritallaw enclosed
a woman's "privateparts"and transferredthem fromthe father to the hus-
band. 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 traditionallyasso-
ciated 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

30. KarlMarx,"TheEighteenthBrumaireof LouisBonaparte,"in Selected Works(New
York:International Publishers,1973), 417.
31. Bulloughand Bullough,Womenand Prostitution, 48.
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 re-
ceived 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.
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,produc-
tion, 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 repro-
ductive 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 em-
pire. 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 "abnor-
mal" 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 dis-
placed and represented as a naturaldifference across the time and space
34. See Steven Marcus,TheOtherVictorians: A Studyof Sexualityand Pornographyin

Mid-NineteenthCenturyEngland(NewYork:New AmericanLibrary,1974),xiii.
35. Women "saved"themselves for marriage,or "cheapened"themselves in promis-
or 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
of empire:the differencebetweenthe "enlightened" presentandthe "primi-

tive"past. The movement across the of
space empirewas thus figuredas
a movementbackwardintime.
Prostitutesbecame associated with black and colonizedpeoples
withina discourseon racialdegenerationthatfiguredthemas transgress-
ing the naturaldistributionsof money,sexual power,and property,and as
therebyfatallythreateningthe fiscaland libidinaleconomyof the imperial
state. Prostitutes,whosteppedbeyondthe edictsof heterosexualmarriage
and the doctrinethat womendid not workfor profit,were figuredas ata-
visticthrowbacksto a primordial phase of racialdevelopment,their"racial
deviance"writtenvisiblyon the bodyinthe stigmataof femalesexual devi-
ance: 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
capitalistsuperstitionthatmoneycan breeditselfautochthonously without
labor.The organizeddreamof gamblingwas the orgasmicexcess of pure
exchange valuefromwhichall laborhas been voided.Similarly, masturba-
tion (autoeroticand outsidethe heterosexualreproductive economy)was
widely condemned in sexual treatisesas interfering
witha man'sabilityto
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,andde-
viantrace, 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 "nor-
mal"marketrelations."Dirty" sex-masturbation,prostitution, lesbianand
gay sexuality,and the host of Victorian"perversions"-transgressed the
libidinal economy of heterosexual reproductionwithin the monogamous
maritalrelation ("clean"sex, which has value). Likewise, "dirty"money-

associated 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 Vic-
torian 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 ratio-
nality, 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
gave British police the right to forcibly impose physical examinations on
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 con-
ceptual 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 quintes-
sentially 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 colli-
sion 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'sground-

breakingbook. For a fullerdiscussion of White'sbook, see my review"TheScandal of
the Whorearchy,"
Transition 52 (1991):92-99.
/ Screwing
was nota litanyof victims.

Whiteshows, the historyof colonialprostitution
Workingprostituteswere Kenya's"urbanpioneers,"some of the firstresi-
dents to liveyear-roundin Nairobi.Kenyanprostitutesthemselvesdefined
sexworkas a defiantformof labor.Dodgingcolonialwage labor,manyof the
women used the cash they earnedfrom"diggingwiththeirbacks"to buy
cattleand buildhouses and to foundthe "nearlyrevolutionary notion"that
womencan controltheirown moneyand propertyas independentheads of
households.37
As Whiteshows, malayaprostitution mimickedmarriage,the radical
differencebeingthatwomenexchangedformoneythedomestic,emotional,
and sexual services that wives performedunpaid.38Fosteringvalues of
femaleand communityloyalty,the prostituteshelpedmaintainAfricancom-
munitiesand struggledto shape the colonialurbanscene to meet African
women'sneeds.
Inprecolonialsociety,the daughter'smarriagewas the sourceof the
father'saccumulationof propertyand power.Since womendidthe bulkof
the workandwerethe chiefreproducers of lifeandlabor,theirworkwas the
single most valuableresourceapartfromthe landitself.Incattle-marriage
societies, livestockwere the symboliccoinage of women's laborpower.
Morewives meantgreaterwealthand morecattleformen, and cattlemar-
riage was the fundamentalinstitution by whichwomen'slaborpowerwas
metamorphosedintomale politicalpower.Throughmalecontrolof female
sexualityand marriage,cattle and cash were redistributed throughmale
familialnetworks.
Throughprostitution,however,womenbeganto buytheirown prop-
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'accu-
mulation.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.
2 / Summer
84 boundary 1992
Manyof the women, moreover,consciouslyrefusedto pass their

propertybackthroughthe male system, disinheriting fathersand brothers
and keepingtheirmoneyand theirbodies forthemselves.Malayaprosti-
tutionexpressed a clear rejectionof traditional malefamilyties. Windfalls
went intohelpingwomenfriends,and the womendesignatedfemale heirs
to ensurethattheirpropertydidnotpass backintothe patrilineage,thereby
creatingnew, explicitlyfemale lineages. Not surprisingly, many men took
umbrage at the women's temerity,and the prostituteshad to negotiatecon-
stantlyto keep theirpropertyout of the hands of iratefathers,brothers,
ex-husbands,and the state.
Indeed,the colonialstate'sresponseto Nairobiprostitution was riven
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 pros-
titutesalso 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 prosti-
tutionitselfthan to the women'sscandalousaccumulationof money and
property.41Ina worldwherecolonialssoughtconstantlyto controlthe livesof
Africansthroughhousing,marriage,and migrantlabor,prostitutesowning
propertyand passingon the valuesof community, self-respect,andgender
loyaltywere a constantaffront
to the whitemale managementof power.
Inmanypartsof Africa,the state'sambiguousrelationto prostitution
has enduredafterindependence.Inthe 1970s and 1980s, in Zimbabwe,
Gabon,Zambia,Tanzania,Mozambique,and BurkinaFaso, for example,
policelaunchedmassiveassaultson single,independently workingwomen
inputativeattemptsto "clean"the citiesof prostitution.Yet, realthreatto
the
the state was notprostitutionbutthe generalspecterof economicallyinde-
pendentwomen,who werefetishizedand demonizedby the whorestigma
inorderto licensestate violence.As PaolaTabetputsit,"Control of women
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

42. See Paola Tabet, "I'mthe Meat, I'mthe Knife.Sexual Service, Migration,and Re-
/ Screwing
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 pros-
titutesand 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 privi-
leged access to the bodiesof blackwomen,butprostitution also confused
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 polic-
of
ing prostitutesas racialdegenerates persists in at least three ways.
Prostitutescontinueto be figuredas atavisticthrowbacksto racial"degen-
eracy."In 1969, a Britishpamphlet,forexample,widelyreadby probation
officers,condemnedprostitution as "a primitiveand regressivemanifes-
tation."44Poor,black,immigrant, and migrantprostitutesare subjectedto
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
Throughprostitution laws,space is criminalizedandentersthe realm
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.
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 bat-
tered 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 minoritypros-
titutes 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 ex-
change 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 sex-
work, 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 en-
dangering 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 prostitutionorganiza-
tions 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
voluntaryprostitution as a professionin the EuropeanCharterand for full
rightsas workersunderEuropeanlaborlaw.52 Tothe consternationof many
governments, and some feminists,prostitutescallednotforthe abolitionof
prostitution but for the redistributionof sexual pleasure,power,and profit;
forthe transformation of landandpropertyrights;forthe removalof foreign
armies;and forthe rightof womenand men to workvoluntarily in the sex
tradeundersafe, unregulated,and respectedconditions.53
Manymen, however,preferto findwhoresin theirbeds thanin their
parliaments,and attemptsby sexworkersto organizehave met with un-
swervingviolence. An Irishorganizerwas burntto death, and Thaiorga-
nizers have been murdered.Ecuadoranbrothelowners rotateprostitutes
regularlyto preventthem fromorganizing.54Yetby and large,the interna-
tional Lefthas been largelyindifferent to the issue, whilethe abolitionist
tendencyamong some feministshas been nothingshortof calamitousfor
workingprostitutes.
Mostprostitutesinsistthatthe firsttargetof theirinternational orga-
nizing is the state and the law.Prostitutes argue thatthe lawspunish, rather
thanprotect,women,especiallywomenof color.Wheresexworkis a crime,
clientscan rape,rob,and batterwomenwithimpunity. Murderers knowthe
weightof a prostitute'slife in the scales of the law.As DallasJudge Jack
Hamptonadmitted,"I'dbe hardputto give somebodylifeforkillinga prosti-
55Notsurprisingly,
tute." moreprostitutesare murderedinthe UnitedStates,
where prostitution is stilla crime,thananywhereelse in the world.
Prostitutesdenouncethe lawsthatshuntthemintodangerous,deso-
latedocklands,meatpacking districts,andrailwayyards,unableto organize
for decent conditionsor againstcoercion.Whereprostitution is a crime,
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(Lon-
don), 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
or coercion,forthey therebyexpose themselvesas implicatedin a crimi-

nalizedtrade.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 crimi-
nallycontaminated.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 ad-
ministeredby 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
example, prostitution inhabitsa twilightrealmof legal ambiguity.The law
makes prostitution a crime,butthe green lightis givento male"touropera-
tors"and "entertainment managers,"whose operationsaresanctionedand
definedas the "personalservicesector."
Most prostitutesregardlegalizedprostitution as legalizedabuse.
Despite its benignring,legalizationplaces prostitution undercriminallaw
insteadof commerciallaw,whereit is tightlycurbedby the state and ad-
ministeredby the police. Instead,prostituteswantthe law off theirbodies
and are callingforthe decriminalization of the professionand the repealof
all legislationnotordinarilyapplicableto 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,prevent-
ingorganization and often it
making very hard forthemto leave the tradeif
they wish. Most prostitutesprefer to workillegallyratherthansubmitto the
abusiveand humiliating ordealsof state-controlled brothels.
Frenchprostitutescannotlivewitha husband,wife,lover,orchild,as
anyone undertheirroofcan be chargedwith"cohabitation." Italianprosti-
tutes cannothelptheirhusbandsorwivespaythe rentorgive theirparents
money,as they can be chargedwithlivingoff "immoral earnings."In Brit-
ain, engaging in prostitutionis not a crime (whichlets the johns off the
hook),butvirtuallyeveryaspect of a prostitute's workis criminalized. Two
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 desertedhar-
borarea,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 pri-
vate interview,"Legalizingprostitution sees women as a controlledsub-
stance-controlled by men." The international 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
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 pro-
tect 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
prostitution laws areoftenthe ones whobreakthe laws.Policeareambigu-
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 allpoliceharass-
mentandto 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 herd-

ingprostitutesintobrothelsandforce-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 privateinter-
view, "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 con-
dom.' 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
prostitutes,in particular, willsufferthe increasingindignitiesof arrests,de-
portation,and racistassaults.Prostitutesare moreawarethananyoneelse
of the ordealsof forcedprostitution. Theyinsistthatdecriminalizing volun-
tary sexwork willmake itfareasier to detect and destroy forcedprostitution.
The UnitedNationshas estimatedthatby the year2000 tourismwill
be the most importanteconomicactivityin the world.57 The international
politicsof ThirdWorlddebtandthe international pursuitof commercialsex
have become deeply entwined,turningsex tourisminto a surefire,coin-
spinningventure-with mostof the profitsclatteringintothe coffersof the
multinationals. Sex tourismis creatingbotha new kindof economicdepen-
dence and a new kindof international refusal.In manycountries,tourism
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
of foreignexchange.The militarization of sexualityandthe sexualizationof

the militaryhave deep internationalimplications,as well.Millionsof women
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
gender:on the militarization of masculinity,
on foreignbusinessmenwilling
to investin sexual travel,and on a racialgeographyof sex thatpersuades
privilegedmenthatwomenineconomicallydisempoweredcountrieswillbe
more sexuallyavailableand pliant.58 As LifeTravelassured male adven-
turersinThailand,"Taking a womanhereis as easy as buyinga packageof
cigarettes." 59Sex tourismdependson womenandmenavailableto selltheir
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,borrowing the R and R ideafromthe U.S. military,
regularlysend male employeeson packagetoursto be sexuallyserviced
by womenbilledas "littleslaves whogive realThaiwarmth." 61As yet, there
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 privi-
leged access to sexualpleasure,to porn,andto prostitution, notto mention
that hardyperennial,the doublestandard.Women'sdesire, by contrast,
has been crimpedand confinedto history'ssad museumof corsets, chas-
tity belts, and the virginitycult.Contexts,however,can be changed, and
empoweringprostitutesempowersall women. DeloresFrenchsuggested
58. CynthiaEnloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: MakingFeministSense of Interna-

tionalPolitics (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 gen-
dered distribution of powerand profitby flagrantlydemandingmoneyfor
nonreciprocal sex that manywomengive forfree.
Historychanges the meaningof the sexual body.There is no one
privilegednarrativeof prostitution, nor is there any one politicallycorrect
politicsof prostitution. Some sexworkersplytheirtradein opulenthotels,
some in parkedcars, some in bars and caf6s, some in agricultural plan-
tationsand 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 all-
is on the increase.Whatis crucial,however,is thatprostitutesthemselves
definethe conditionsfororganizingtheirworkto suittheirown localneeds
and contexts.
Perpetuatingthe image of prostitutesas eitherbrokenbaby dolls
or fatal Frankenhookers serves only to heightenthe climateof violence
and hypocrisyunderwhichso manywomenlive. Indeed,the feministcri-
tiqueof prostitutesis to mymindtheoretically misbegottenandstrategically
unsound,short-circuiting sexworkers'efforts(manyof whomare feminists
themselves)to transform the tradeto meettheirownneeds. Whateverelse it
is, female prostitutionis the erasureof a woman'ssexualdesireinexchange
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
themselves,findsocial mobility, and raisetheirchildrenin the comfortand
securityusuallygivento onlygood whitegirls.
Itseems crucial,therefore,to remainalertto the nuancesand para-
doxes of prostitutionratherthanto patronizeprostitutesas embodimentsof
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
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 them-
selves; rather,likeallworkers(includingfeminists),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 re-
spect allwomen.
Society demonizessexworkersbecause they demandmoremoney
thanwomenshouldforservices men expectforfree. Prostitutesscrewthe
system, dangerouslyinterfering inthe maledistribution of property,power,
"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,
and howto ask formoney." 62Byorganizingfordecriminalization, 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 pre-
ceded 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.
Parshley(Harmondsworth: Penguin,1984);DSa = Le Deuxi6meSexe, Coll.Folio,vol. 1
(Paris:Gallimard,1949);DSb = Le Deuxi6meSexe, vol. 2; FC = The Force of Circum-
stance, 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
Moi/ Ambiguity in TheSecond Sex 97
andAlienation
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 Beau-
voir's analysis of female desire. Drawingthese threads together, the chapter
concludes by examining the philosophicalimplicationsof Beauvoir's analy-
sis 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 analy-
sis 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 read-
ings of Beauvoir I try to produce a dialectical understandingof her contra-
dictions 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 politi-
cal 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 phi-
losophy 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 condi-
tion. 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).
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 contradic-
tion, 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 majorcontra-
dictions 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 oppres-
sion 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
Moi/ Ambiguity in TheSecond Sex 99
andAlienation
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 fundamentallydif-
ferent, 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 gen-
eral. 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 free-
dom and alienation. Beauvoir,in other words, is not interested in producing
a competitive hierarchyof oppression. Her point is not that women neces-
sarily 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'scom-
parisonof 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
Rich and varied, Beauvoir'sown vocabularyof ambiguityand conflict

ranges from ambivalence, distance, divorce, and split to alienation, contra-
diction, 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 fundamentalcontra-
diction underpinningan apparently stable and coherent phenomenon. In
The Second Sex, every conflict is potentiallyboth productiveand destruc-
tive: 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 paradoxicalad-
vantages 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 con-
tradictionof 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 non-
Jewish: nothingpreventsus fromarguingthatthe positionof a blackJewish woman,for
instance, wouldforma particularly complexintersectionof contradictorypowerrelations.
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:whilecriticiz-
ing Beauvoir's"exclusivism," Spelmanherselfexcludes womenfromoutside the United
States from her categories. Thus, her eminentlypedagogicalfigures illustratingdiffer-
ent categories of people all have the suffixAmericanappendedto them (Afro-American,
Euro-American,Hispanic-American, Asian-American,and so on). See ElisabethSpel-
man, Inessential Woman:Problemsof Exclusionin FeministThought(Boston:Beacon,
1988), 144-46.
Moi / Ambiguity in TheSecond Sex 101
andAlienation
By sexuality I understand the psychosexual, as well as the biological, as-

pects 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
(SS, 295; DSb, 13; TA). The question, of course, is how. How does the
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 politicaleman-
cipation.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 produc-
ing 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 Lacanlec-
ture"(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 anteced-
ents), 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.
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 imagi-
nary. 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 differ-
ence. 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 masquer-
ades 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), 89-
94. Beauvoirherself tells of a drunkenafternoonin 1945 spent discussing Kojevewith
Queneau (FC, 43; FCa, 56-57). Giventhat Lacan'sconceptof the mirrorstage also dis-
plays the traces of Kojeve'sreadingof Hegel, Beauvoir'sown readingsof Hegel may well
have predisposedherto feelingparticular affinitiesforthis aspect of Lacaniantheory.Nor
shouldit be forgottenthatLacanhimself-as everyotherintellectualin postwarFrance-
was 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 Beau-
voirconsistentlyuses the phrases'affirmercommesujet,forexample,Parshleytranslates
vaguely and variablyas "assume a subjectiveattitude,"or "affirmhis subjective exis-
Moi/ Ambiguity
andAlienation
in TheSecond Sex 103
the Other"(SS, 296; DSb, 14; TA).This drama is characterized by existen-

tial 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 catastro-
phe 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 com-
pletely 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 alien-
ated 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
"situation"and situationas "situation"or "circumstances," and so on. The same ten-
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 English-
language 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.
transforms the situation. For littleboys, Beauvoir argues, it is much easier

to find an object in which to alienate themselves than for littlegirls: admi-
rably 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 experi-
ence 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.
Moi/ Ambiguity
andAlienation
inTheSecondSex 105
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 irredeemablycaughtup in
theirown alienatedself-image.Butthis is not all. On the evidenceof this
surprisingpassage, littlegirlsareforcedby theiranatomyto alienatethem-
selves in themselves. Furthermore, Beauvoirclaims,they failto "recover"
or "retrieve"(r6cup6rer) themselves. Inmyview,these remarksoffera con-
densed versionof the whole of Beauvoir'stheoryof alienation.As such,
they have a series of wide-ranging andcompleximplications thatIwillnow
go on to explore.
MuchlikeLacan,Beauvoircasts the momentof alienationas consti-
tutiveof the subject,but,unlikeLacan,she believesthatthe subjectonly
comes into authenticbeing if it completesthe dialecticalmovementand
goes on to recover(r6cup6rer),or reintegrate, the alienatedimageof itself
(the double,the alter ego) back into its own subjectivity.Drawingon this
Hegelianlogic, Beauvoir insiststhat littleboys easily achievethe required
synthesis,whereaslittlegirlsfailto recoverthemselves.Why,then, do little
boys easily "recover" theirowntranscendence?ForBeauvoir,the answer
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-cutdistinc-
tion betweenthe boy'ssubjectivityand his own projectedtranscendence,
the penis, accordingto Beauvoir,enables the boy to recognize himselfin
his alterego: "Becausehe has an alterego in whomhe recognizeshim-
self, the littleboy can boldlyassume his subjectivity,"
she writes,"thevery
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
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 subject-
other distinction),yet not quite other (thus makingrecognitionof oneself in
the other easier), the penis facilitates the recuperationof the boy's alien-
ated 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, Beau-
voir 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 allur-
ing 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 situa-
tion 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 quota-
tion 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.
Moi / Ambiguity in TheSecond Sex 107
andAlienation
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 differ-
ence 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 transcen-
dence in a "thing"that remains ambiguously part of her own originaltran-
scendence. Her alienation, we might say, creates a murkymixtureof tran-
scendence, 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 ambigu-
ous 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 transcen-
dence 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 her-
self 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 ambiva-
lent 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'salienationtrans-
forms and extends her own highlyreifiedinitialconcept of alienation:rather
14. Itfollows fromthis analysis that I cannot agree with MoiraGatens's claim in Femi-
nism 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
unwittingly, I think,Beauvoirhere managesto challengethe limitationsof

her originalpointof departure.The resultis thathertheoryof female sub-
jectivityis farmoreinterestingandoriginalthanherrathertoo neatandtidy
accountof male psychologicalstructures.15
Towardsthe end of TheSecond Sex, Beauvoirarguesthatthe pro-
cess of alienationis constitutiveof narcissism.(On this point,one may
add, herpositionis entirelycompatiblewiththatof Lacan.)"Narcissismis a
well-definedprocessof alienation," Beauvoirwrites,"inwhichthe ego is re-
garded as an absoluteend and the subjecttakes refugefromitselfinit"(SS,
641; DSb, 525; TA). Forthe narcissisticsubject,herego or self is nothing
butan alienatedand idealizedimageof herself,anotheralterego or double
indangerinthe world.As faras Ican see, the differencebetweenthe narcis-
sistic andthe non-narcissistic womanis thatthe latterconservesa sense of
or
ambiguity contradiction, whereas the formerpersuadesherselfthatshe
is the image projectedby her alienation.This is why narcissism,accord-
ingto Beauvoir,representsa supremeeffortto "accomplish the impossible
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 spe-
cifictheoryof castrationanxietyto explainwhylittleboysfeel thattheirpenis
is constantlyendangered.To worryaboutthe safety of one's penis, how-
ever, is infinitelypreferableto feelingobscurelythreatenedin one's whole
person,as littlegirlsdo:
The diffuseapprehensionfelt by the littlegirlin regardto her "in-
sides" . . . 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 influ-
15. Beauvoirherselfwouldcertainlydisagreewithmyvaluejudgmenthere. As I go on to
show, she idealizes the male configuration,perhapspreciselybecause she perceives it
as more "neatly"philosophical.
Moi/ Ambiguity
andAlienationin TheSecond Sex 109
ence of social factorson the developmentof sexualdifference,she hugely

overestimatesthe convenienceof the penis as a foolproofinstrumentof
alienationand reintegration. Everylittleboy or everyadultmale does not,
afterall, come across as an authentically transcendentsubject.Beauvoir's
admirationof masculinityis such thatshe even assumes thatgirlsbrought
up by men ratherthanby women"verylargelyescape the defects of femi-
ninity"(SS, 308; DSb, 30).
Whilethereare strongbiographical reasonsforhermisjudgment on
this point,rhetoricallyspeaking,the main source of Beauvoir'sidealization
of the penis wouldseem to be metaphorical. Littered withreferencesto the
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
organ moves and, moreover,that it is upwardlymobile,particularly in its
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 sexualdiffer-
ence as the resultof differentmodesof alienation.Atfirstglance, however,
it looks as if the developmentof differentformsof alienationdepends en-
tirelyon the anatomicalpresence or absence of the penis. The question
is whetherthis reallyis a correctreadingof Beauvoir'sposition.Insisting
thathers is a theoryof the social constructionof femininityand 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 ex-
cellent way to help girlsdevelop a sense of themselves as subjects.
still manage to recover their transcendence. While the penis is a privi-

leged 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' transcen-
dence is precariouslybalanced between complete alienation and authentic
subjectivity,itdoesn't take much to push the girlin either direction.Less pro-
nounced 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 temp-
tation 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 strong-

est 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 suc-
ceed 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 "estab-
lish herself as a subject." If"equivalentsof the phallus"are what is needed
Moi/ Ambiguity inTheSecondSex 111
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
her own uneasy feelingthat heroriginalformulation of the girl'salienation
privilegesanatomy more than she would wish. Her contradictory feelings
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.Atten-
tive readersmayalreadyhave noticedthathertextmovesdirectlyfromthe
Lacanianidea of the alienationof the childin the gaze of the otherto the
ratherdifferentideathatboys andgirlsalienatethemselvesintheirbodies.
Unfortunately, Beauvoirmakes no attemptto relateLacan'stheoryto her
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 alien-
ation.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
theoryof femininity functionas a foilto herratherless sophisticatedtheory
of masculinity.It is not difficultto show that Beauvoir'sidealizationof the
phallusin fact contradictsSartre'sown accountof masculinedesire and
transcendence.17 Nowhereis she on a greatercollisioncourse withSartre
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 contradic-
tions of women'sposition.The strengthof Beauvoir'stheoryof alienation
as constitutiveof sexualdifferenceis notonlythatitmanagesto suggest-
albeitsomewhatimperfectly-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.
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 differentprac-
tices will yield differentresults: hers is not at all a theory of intrinsicsexual
differences. Providingthe basis for a sophisticated analysis of women's dif-
ficulties in conceiving of themselves as social and sexual subjects under
patriarchy,Beauvoir'stheory also impliesthat it is both unjustand unrealis-
tic 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.
-Mary Jacobus,EvelynFoxKeller,SallyShuttleworth, intheirintroduction
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
? 1992byDukeUniversity
Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.
Cultivating belief in 'real bodies' as 'material presence', poststructuralist

feminists now want to compensate for deconstructive excesses and ex-
treme forms of social constructionism,both of which so heavily stress how
language constructs human beings and their world.2That is to say, post-
structuralistfeminists 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 some-
thing 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)stilldistinguishbe-
tween the termspostmodernandpoststructuralist as a way to distinguishphilosophically
orientedformsof deconstruction(whichthey call poststructuralist) fromthe postmodern
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 en-
close 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
poststructuralistsnow consistentlyinterrogate-termssuch as 'God',butalso termssuch
and 'biology',whichhave not traditionally
as 'body','reality','man','woman','objectivity',
been deemed philosophicalbutwhichhave become deemed so over the course of post-
structuralistdiscussions. 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)
formsthe objectof poststructuralist feministbelief.
3. I use the wordreturnto describethese feminists'reconsideration of whatmay looklike
positivistmaterialistclaims,even thoughthey returnas poststructuralists. I use this term
because this sense of going back and reexaminingpriortheories and assumptions is
how these poststructuralists themselves seem to viewwhatthey are doing.
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. Poststruc-
turalistfeminists 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 inscru-
table 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 re-
markablyecho 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 post-
structuralists. This bend is particularlytrue, I will show, of Carlyle's dis-
cussion of bodies as "mysticunfathomableVisibilities."I seek to illuminate
this unexpected join between poststructuralistfeminists and Victorianintel-
lectuals, 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,em-
bodied 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).
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 Har-
away, Jane Gallop, and Luce Irigaray.Admittedly,Haraway and Gallop,
along with 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, en-
tirely 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 in-
scriptions" 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 re-
spect), 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
1985):65-107. The publicationof hermasterpieceon primatology,
80, no. 2 (March-April
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
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 essen-
tialist, sometimes dismissed but only superficiallyunderstood as a mystic,
rarelyseriously deemed a materialist,and never read as a spiritualmateri-
alist, 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 Har-
away 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 abbrevi-
ated SK.
118 boundary
2 / Summer
1992
Clearly,I am kickingagainstthe goads when I arguethatsome material-

ist theories may be read as formsof spiritualdiscourse.Myeffortsin this
directionare not meantto criticizefeminists,as if I were upbraiding them
for writingspiritualities.Noris my goal to arguefor a morepristinepost-
structuralist stance. Myaim is to dramatizea difficulty, dauntingeven for
poststructuralists: how to departfromformsof faithor mysticismswhen
they are anxiousto envisionmovementsbeyondoppression.Hopes and
desire forescape, even at this historicaljuncture,oftenfindtheirway, and
quiteunknowingly, intorecapturesof spiritualschemas.
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
thatcan pointto bothVictorians' relianceon general
and poststructuralists'
categories of inscrutabilities.Spiritualdiscourse, as I willdefine it, is not
merelylanguage-useboundto religiousinstitutionsor to the representa-
tions of traditionallyreligiousbehaviors.Spiritualdiscourse,definedmore
broadly, is discourse on whatexceeds humansign systems;discourseon
where humanmeaningsfail;discourseon escapes fromdiscourse;and,
most importantly, culturallyconstructeddiscourseon escapes fromculture,
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 fullhumancomprehen-
sion. 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 definitionbe-
tween the terms exceeds, fails, and escapes (and I couldeasily add eludes), these are
terms that are used synonymouslyboth by the poststructuralist feministsin this essay
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,forex-
ample, 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 spiri-
tualdiscourse?Inotherwords,mightsome poststructuralists arguethatmy
definitionof spiritualdiscoursecouldalso be citedfor literarydiscourse?I
am not convincedthatthe questionmatters.Itmay not matterbecause I
simplywantto show thatthe poststructuralist stance on language(withits
stress on the failureof languagefullyto capturemateriality) makes post-
structuralistgestures toward real bodies to
correspond gestures Victorians
called spiritual.Whenthey bend backto bodies, poststructuralists almost
inevitablyrepeata Christianspiritualproblematic, since they mustinvestin
beliefs in somethingrealthatescapes and exceeds humansign systems.
Atthe veryleast,the poststructuralist distinctionbetweena hiddenmaterial
'reality'versus a hidden spiritual'reality'mustbe called intoquestion.My
second clarificationconcernswhatcouldseem a too neatcorrespondence.
That is to say, the correspondenceI note here does not make Victorian
spiritualizingthe same as that of poststructuralists. True,for many Vic-
torianintellectuals,amongthem Carlyle(a majorcontributor to Victorian
religiousthought),spirituality if
lies equallyclose, notcloser,to conceptions
of enigma/inscrutability/escape thanit does to the religiousdoctrinesand
practicesof theirday. Unlikepoststructuralist thinkers,however,manyVic-
torianintellectualsholdtheirspiritualdiscoursein obvioustensionwithor
againstthe moretraditional religiouscontextsoutof whichthey write.Post-
structuralists,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
escape fromthe constructionsand commodifications of the bodyaccom-
pany,furthermore, a desire to producethose bodies elsewhere, in some
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 poststructuralistneed fora conceptof indeterminacy. Beforepoststruc-
turalism,alienationstood forthe sense thatthe dominantculture'sallowed
relationsto one's own bodyfundamentally conflictedwithone's realself-
fromwhichone 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 cur-
rentlyavailablealternatives,then we are leftindeterminate. Indeterminacy
becomes, in this way,our modeof resistanceto those determinateselves
we do notwantto be.
Thisprojectionoutsideknownsystemsseems at leastobliquelyspiri-
tualizing(as it seems to me in Gallopand Haraway); in its moveto exceed
discourseswe know,this projectionoutsidecan overtlyemploy(as Irigaray,
to be sure, overtlyemploys)spiritualdiscourse(as I have definedit, dis-
course on an escape fromdiscourse).This faithin escape for the sake
of our bodies, as the necessary precondition for non-alienatedembodi-
ment, evinces logic concerningmaterialismas a hidden
poststructuralist
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 Afri-
can Americanmen):"Anobjector energy,"she writes,"entersthe blackhole, is infinitely
compressed to zero volume,as Bakerreported,then it passes throughto anotherdimen-
sion, whereuponthe objector energy reassumes volume,mass, form,direction,velocity,
all the propertiesof visibilityand concreteness, but in another,perhaps unimaginable,
dimension."See MicheleWallace,Invisibility Blues:FromPop to Theory(London:Verso,
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 be-
long 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.
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 re-
emerging 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 poststructural-
ist 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 pro-
cess of adaptation .... Instead "failure"is something endlessly re-
peated 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,lan-
guage, and occupation;(2) dominantconstructionsattemptto "fix"women to assured
and familiarpositionsin culture.Thisdoubleness constituteswhatwe mightcall women's
"fix"(theirbind).
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 "un-
think"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 "impos-
sible 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 identities-
runs 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 envision-
ing 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 iden-
tity, 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 au-
thorize certain positions rather than others, certain politics rather
than others. A utopia is the sighting (in terms of the gaze) and sit-
ing (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.
Laterin this essay, Iwilladdress how the openness of nonauthorita-

tive 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 real-
bodies 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 rela-
tions 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 femi-
nist 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 Gal-
lop 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"essen-
tialism, 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), MarkTay-

lor associates poststructuralist
"unthinking," "notknowing,"and "sayingthe unsayable"
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 Iri-
garay,"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.
stress on strategic essentialism bears the rhetoricaleffect of reemphasizing

Irigaray'scloseness to the body ratherthan the ways in which she elabo-
ratelymystifies 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 cer-
tainty, 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 ex-
plicitness 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, offer-
ing 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 dis-
19. I mean suture in both its ordinarylanguagesense of "sewingup"and its more tech-
nical 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,
1983), 200. Bothsenses suit Irigaray, because she associates women'soppressionwithin
the symbolicregister(whereher bodyappearsonlyintermsof lack)withthe "sewingup"
of women'sgenitallips.
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
quite some time. One detects worryover things-in-themselves as early as
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, poet-
ize. ... 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 demysti-
fying 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 ob-
jects 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.
Barthes's poetize means nearly the opposite (if one could hold these con-
cepts 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 referen-
tial 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 ap-
pear, 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 cli-
mate-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 rela-
tions of productioncan only make themselves knownthrough repre-
sentations. I returnin a moment to the compromise I have tried
....
to strike in my organizationof each chapter, but the effect of the self-
consciousness 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 Mid-
VictorianEngland(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1988), 18.
What is material, we note, has become perhaps the most "elusive" (and
remains an "ever elusive") category in deconstructive thought. Represen-
tations are endlessly available, whereas materialityand bodies elude, de-
manding now belief, self-conscious confession, and quotation marks that
the 'real'cannot shed.
In Haraway's1988 essay "SituatedKnowledges:The Science Ques-
tion in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," she reveals a
familiarnervousness about where extreme constructionism-especially de-
construction-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 con-
fidence 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 can-
not intelligentlytalk about realitywithoutsounding like (very conservative)
religious believers whose appeals to hidden realities, beyond worldlycon-
structions, 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 "respon-
sible" (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 pres-
ences. 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!):
So, I think my problem, and "our"problem, is how to have simul-

taneously an account of radical historicalcontingency for all knowl-
edge claims and knowingsubjects, a criticalpractice for recognizing
our own "semiotic technologies" for making meanings, and a no-
nonsense 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 ten-
sion; 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, mod-
esty, finitude, accountability, responsibility,and noninnocence (central to
her essay's thematic embrace of things "partial")all spell a twist that re-
sembles Christianbelievers' requiredhumilitybefore God, since God repre-
sents a domain of possibility and agency beyond believers' control. With
this panegyric to "partial"perspectives, Harawayis able to stress the bene-
fits 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 pos-
sible. 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. Ac-
knowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes room for
some unsettling possibilities, includinga sense of the world's inde-
pendent sense of humor.... The Coyote or Trickster,as embodied in
Southwest native Americanaccounts, suggests the situation we are
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 produc-
tion; 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 poststruc-
turalistmaterialismdepend 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 post-
structuralists 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. Out-
side the theological model there is no possibilityof verifyingan inter-
pretation: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,
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 "morpho-
logical 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 conscious-
ness 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 divi-
nations, and final guarantees of intended meaning-even though theology
can only ever command faithinthese things. Clearly,however,Gallop's anti-
theological 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.
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 emer-
gent 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 poststructuralistfemi-
nists 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 func-
tion of approaching "a fact" that always recedes, "faroff on the edge of
far horizons, towards which we are to steer incessantly for life."23For Car-
lyle, 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 cross-
question 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.
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 "inscru-
table 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 his-
torical 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. Car-
lyle 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]proceed-
ing, 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 be-
tween 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 fin-
gers, 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 evi-

dent in this passage, with his own brandof full-blownconstructionism. By
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 "mysticunfathom-
able Visibility"(a phrase that could describe some poststructuralistconcep-
tions of 'the body' apart from social constructions) points in two directions
simultaneously: toward concealment and toward revelation. The intercon-
nections 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,
but something of a Creatoror Divinity," there is anotherside to the revelation
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 be-
speaks 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 poststruc-
turalists stress as material.Thus, Gallop explains, "by 'body' I mean here:
perceivable givens [Visibility]that the human being knows as 'hers' with-
out 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, for-
mularies, 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.
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 subjectivi-
ties (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 Althus-
ser). 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,historicalretrospec-
tion provides some: "Monachism[sic], Feudalism, with a real King Plan-
tagenet, 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 be-
come 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 discern-
ible 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 "gar-
ments" 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
'God' between TheirLips:

In Search of Symbolic Holes WomenCan Feel
Here-on the question of perceivable concealments that only mysti-
cal 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 mys-
ticism, 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
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 illumi-
nates 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 poststructural-
ist 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 construc-
tions. 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 "unformableapart-
ness" [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 materi-
alism 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
one identitywith anotherbut fuses them withoutresidue or loss to either. This is a
....
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.
to something we deem substantial. Irigaray'sopaque essentialism, her ten-

dency 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 ap-
pear 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 conceal-
ment?
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 distinc-
tive 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.
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 culturalread-
ing that assigns to their genitals an unhappy lack and missing materiality,
enter the Symbolic as underprivilegedsubjects who "sacrifice"their in-
feriorbodies 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 privi-
leges 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-as-
lost-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
31. Jacques Lacan, "Desireand the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet,"trans. James

Hulbert,YaleFrenchStudies 55/56 (1977):28; my emphases.
32. Silverman,Subject of Semiotics, 185, 186, 188.
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 Iri-
garay 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 transmittingprivi-
leges 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 geni-
tals. 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 em-
33. See Gallop's"OfPhallicProportions:LacanianConceit,"in The Daughter'sSeduc-

tion: 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 impossiblephallicquali-
ties. See JacquelineRose's "IntroductionII,"in FeminineSexuality,forher discussion of
Lacan'sattackon "theorderof the visible"thatwouldseem to privilegethe penis.
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 con-
cealment 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'con-
stantly 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 Der-
rida 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 as-
serts that (feminine)image arrests(masculine)narrative(see Mulvey'sVisualand Other
Pleasures [Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1989], 19-22).
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
Irigaray.This slant, in fact, may providethe termsfor understanding that
Irigaray does not refuse castration(a mistakeJacqueline Rose and others
make in readingher) but refuses to believe in its standardassociations
withthe female body. I wantto underscoreDerrida'snotionthat 'woman'
"amusesherself... with[castration]." IfDerridastresses whatshe does not
believe in-Irigaray as unbeliever-I willstress Irigaray's stance as a be-
lieverandthe new structureof beliefshe createsby "converting" castration
intoaffirmation (notthe same as anti-castration). WhatIrigaray believes in,
I willargue, is a materialconcealmentthatshe can simultaneouslyreveal
andpreserve by makingwhatshe revealsa crack.
We are nowpositionedto realizehow,inthe case of Irigaray at least,
poststructuralist feminist discourse bends back toward discourse
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
escape thatis a spiritualdiscourse.Here,we findIrigaray's mostelaborate
demonstrationof how she ties escapes backto femininebodies: Irigaray
brilliantlyimagines'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 inJudeo-
Christiantraditions.Even in the most incarnational theologies-Catholi-
cism, for example,whichinvests most heavilyin the body of Christ,en-
dowed 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 materialcon-
cealment,'God'designateswhateverresistsour attemptsat securingour
bodies and world.
Irigaray'smystical,lyricalessay "LaMysterique" envisionshowthis
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
known.Irigaray's own hope in failure(forthe sake of our bodies) appears
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'sten-
dencies to define matterin termsof escape: "Whatif matterhad always,
already,had a partbut was yet invisible,beyondthe senses, movingin
ways aliento any fixedreflection" (S, 197).Thispassage makes "matter"
sound indistinguishable fromeven traditional explanationsof 'God'.
Ifmatter'sopacitydefieslinguisticcapture-as Haraway, Gallop,and
all
Carlyle suggest that materialopacities defy language-then this is
do
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,
some mode of essence, some face of presence"S, 193). Irigaray's "atten-
tive ear open for any hintor tremorcomingback,"along with her "expec-
tantexpectancy,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
learnedvisions(note Irigaray's invocationof "song"and Gallop'sstress on
listening).
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,implant-
ing 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 allrepre-
sentation:betweentwounitieswhothusimperceptibly takepleasureineach
other"(S, 236). This statementimportantly implies 'God's'touch between
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 representa-
tionsthathave 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 ac-
count, may providefor Irigaraya way of affirming, so as to use differently,
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'smys-
ticaldiscoursesympathetically, reverently,and, as women-even spiritual
women-are so good at, expectantly.
Irigaraycomes to a different'God'and a differentrelationshipbe-
tween '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 mas-
36. Forotherdiscussions of Irigaray'smysticism,see TorilMoi'sSexual/TextualPolitics,

135-37, butespecially ElizabethGrosz'sSexual Subversions,140-83.
culine body that wears its lack-its wounds unveiled-for all to see. Iri-
garay 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 pro-
nouns 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 de-
gree, 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 func-
tion 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.
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
moves Marxcritiques.She provesparticularly on the question
contradictory
of what Marxcomplainsis "themysticalcharacterof commodities"-the
alienationof objectsthroughabstractions.Indeed,Irigaray's contradictions
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,
metaphorically (and sometimesliterally)boughtand sold on the marriage
market.38'Woman's'"price,"moreover,is set not accordingto her body's
'own properties'(an essential Irigarayan problem)but accordingto what
counts in a phalliceconomy:'woman's'abilityto mirrormen's "needs/de-
sires"and thus to copy the "fabricated" standardsset forwomenas repro-
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 Iri-
garay's use of quotationmarks]and her sociallyvalued, exchangeable
body,whichis a particularly mimeticexpressionof masculinevalues"(TS,
180). The real surpriseappears when Irigaraybegins to depend upon
Marx'scritiqueof commodities'"mysticalcharacter"-thoughthis surprise
depends uponhowone readsIrigaray's seemingessentialism.Ifone reads
as
Irigaray conventionally essentialist, one is notamazedthatshe laments
37. See, in particular,the firsttwo pages of Irigaray's"Womenon the Market"(TS, 170-

71) for her repetitionand questioningof Levi-Strauss.
38. Irigaraydoes notconsidermen's bodies as commodities.Considerationsof nondomi-
nant men demandthatwe take up these complications.
2 / Summer
146 boundary 1992
with Marxthat (the bodies of) commoditiesare treatedas abstractions,

abstractionsthatobscuretheir"coarsemateriality":
Marx:The value of commoditiesis the veryoppositeof the coarse
materiality of theirsubstance,not an atomof matterenters into its
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
mysticalcomes withcontradictions fromthe authorof "LaMysterique." Iri-
garay herselfputs 'God'between the lips-a mystical of
abstraction sublime
proportions-in orderto enable 'woman's'"coarsemateriality" to appear,
Her
albeitopaquely. agreement with Marx, whilecontradictory, nonethe-
is
less wise. Believingalong withMarxthat use values and real bodies do
exist, thoughthey are neverseen trulyunclothedin capitalisteconomies,
Irigaraycan stronglyregisteran alienationundercapitalism.
As Istressed earlier,beforedeconstruction alienationwas a concept
thatmarkeda conflictwithone's real body self; since deconstruction,
or but
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
alienationfroma futurewe mightdiscover,notfroma familiar, essentialpast
thatwe have known.This is an unhappyalienation from what couldprove
a happier one. This is an alienationfrom whatever exists outside of (forIri-
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
mysticismMarxist-style, whereinone can onlyhope to splitthe good mysti-
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,purephenome-
nality of value.Butthistransparency constitutesa supplementto the
materialopacityof the commodity.(TS,179)
The value of a woman[apartfromher transparentvalue as com-
modity]alwaysescapes: blackcontinent,holeinthe symbolic,breach
indiscourse.... Itis onlyinthe operationof exchangeamongwomen
that somethingof this-something enigmatic,to be sure-can be
felt. (TS, 176)
Irigaray'sopposition,transparency/opacity, offersevidenceonce againthat
representations(here,commodifications) are particularly
available("trans-
parent,"in this case), whilethe bodies and objectsthatare made to wear
these transparentsupplementselude throughtheir"material opacity."For
this reason, Irigaraymustconcernherselfwithmaking'woman's'material
opacityseen andfeltas opacity.Ofcourse,Irigaray wellknowsthe compli-
cationsthatlie inwait:'Woman's' (material)valuemayescape the Symbolic
as a "hole,"but,to a largeextent,thisescape is reappropriated by the Sym-
bolicand 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
enigma. Irigaray cannotfinallylet herselfbelieveinsuch totalcontainment.
She invests,therefore,in 'woman's'hole.Byso doing,she registerstwoob-
jectives:First,she registersresistanceto totalizingmasculinevalues (since
she preservesthe sense of 'woman's'escape fromthe dominantSymbolic);
second, she registershope formakingwomen"feel"this "somethingenig-
matic"in ways thatmightempowerthem, leading,as she says, to "a new
critiqueof the politicaleconomy"(TS,191).
Irigarayseeks, then,to give a formto "material opacity"thatwomen
can investinforthemselves,withoutfallingbackuponthe masculinevalue
of transparentselves thatrelateas rivals.Itis notsurprising
thatIrigaraybe-
lieves "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 "diffi-
culty,"she writes,"so foreignto his 'theory'"(TS, 195). "Hencethe fault,
the infraction,the misconduct,andthe challengethatfemalehomosexuality
entails"(TS,194).Thefemalehomosexualwritesa happyfallforfeminists,
since psychoanalysisunderFreudis itselfforcedto feel a materialopacity.
As muchas he attemptsto forcethe explanation ofthefemalehomosexual's
"masculinity complex,"Freudcannot,even by his own terms,accountfor
'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 de-
liverthemas fullyboughtandsold. Somethingmighteven accruefromthis
cipher--"acertaineconomyof abundance," says Irigaray, butan economy,
I wouldadd, that,accordingto herown mostcherishedtheories,is solidly
based uponfractureand loss.
Unhappily, Icannotfollowthese finalissues to theirdestination.Todo
so wouldinvolveus inthe complicatedcircuitsof the invisibilitiesof women's
laborand women's desire and of attempts
Irigaray's to address these forms
of materialconcealmentby makingdesirea formof labor.We wouldhave
to take stock of how pleasurableloss can be producedbetween bodies,
attendingto the dangersof reproducing familiarfracturesbased upon in-
equities.We would have to examine whatIrigaray cannotsee: howwomen
as
are positionedasymmetrically commodities, so thatexchanges between
them are alwayssusceptibleof partialaccountsalongotheraxes (those of
class, race, religion,age, appearance,etc.). These implicationsraise seri-
39. 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?
ous questionsfor alternativeexchanges thatwouldcountso dramatically

upondiscernibleloss.40
These are questionsfor furtherexaminationsof materialconceal-
ments 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 dominantconstruc-
tions-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
Azizathe Alexandrian is a prisonerinthe women'sprisonin Egypt,
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'aduila-
I-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.
ThingsWillBe Better"151
Bakr/ "IntheGoldenChariot
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.
ZaynabMansur,referredto inthe companyas "madame," is the best edu-
cated and mostculturedamongthe prisoners.The storyof Dr.BahigaAbd
al-Haq,in prisonforalleged"malpractice," describesthe painfuldifficulties
and contradictions of lower-classwomenwho have succeeded in entering
the professionalranks.Shafiqahad been a beggar.Umal-Khayr,a peas-
ant, 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 politi-
cal 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 anony-
mous politicalprisonerinthe chapteris significant,however,bothto Aziza's
projectand to Bakr'snarrative.Ifthe "politicals" remainisolated,as Aziza
pointsout, from the "people,"Aziza's own liberation
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,rearticulatescriticallyand
reflexivelythe probatoryspace of the novelitself.
Set in prison,Bakr'sfictionalnarrativeproposesnotonlya contem-
porarysociology of Egyptianwomen and gender relationsthroughtheir
"oralhistories"but argues, as well, the necessary, if conflicted,connec-
tionbetweenwomen'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 genderoppression-
against the women themselves. Ratherthan the salvational "goldenchariot
2 / Summer
152 boundary 1992
to the heavens"Azizaimaginesin prison,however,the novelsuggests the

necessityof emancipatory projectsforsocialandpoliticalchangegrounded
inthe currenthistoricalconditions-bothregionalandglobal-and the ma-
terialrealitiesof 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 re-
ciprocalanddevelopingparameters,bothacademicandactivist,social and
political,forengagingwithwomen'sissues preciselythroughwomen'sown
engagementwiththese issues. Thatengagementis beingwaged on mul-
tiplefrontsand in variedspaces, and oftenagainstofficial,and unofficial,
opposition.In 1991, the Women'sHealthBookCollectivein Cairo,for ex-
ample,aftermorethanfiveyears of preparation, publishedtheirimportant
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 Egyptiangov-
ernmentearlythatsame year.Meanwhile,in Nablus,inthe occupiedWest
Bank,the PalestinianwriterSaharKhalifehhas establishedthe Women's
ResearchandTraining Centerforyoungwomen.Acrossthe "greenline,"in
Israel,the Women'sOrganization forPoliticalPrisoners(WOFPP)was cre-
ated in the firstyears of the intifadato assist Palestinianwomenprisoners
and theirfamiliesmateriallyand legally.Womenacross the MiddleEast-
thatis, fromMoroccoto the Gulfstates-are continuingto engage withthe
social and politicalexigenciesthatcontinueto interrupt theirlives.1
Azizathe Alexandrian dies inthe lastchapterof SalwaBakr'snovel,
just as she is makingfinalpreparations for the departureof the "golden
chariot."The chariot,as the novel's title concludes,"does not ascend to
the heavens."Aziza'sproject,however,is even nowbeinggivenmanynew
organizational shapes and multipleinnovativeroutes,whilethe skies them-
selves are beingrelocatedon the groundinthe shiftingpolitical,social,and
culturalmapof the MiddleEastandthe international order.
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 gov-
ernment should want to push her head in amongst their heads. This political
prisoner seemed very nice to Aziza and had greeted her once while cross-
ing 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 Com-
munist, 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 cir-
cumstances, 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. Heropin-
ion, that these stories were joyless and withouthope, remained the same.
They were just stories. The people are in one world and these politicals
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 sum-
mer 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 as-
cent 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 de-
parture, 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
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, includ-
ing 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 conver-
sations, 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
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 drag-
ging 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, profes-
sionals at pickpocketing and stealing, from grandfatherto father, and that
the men of the family plied their trade in Saudi Arabiaand the Gulf, espe-
ThingsWillBeBetter"157
ciallyduringthe hajj[thepilgrimage to Meccaand Medina]whenthe crowds

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
Badawi,whenthe crowdsof peopleandtheirpreoccupation withpleasure
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
a young manwho attemptedto involveherin a relationship withhimwhen
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 Egyptfortheirprofli-
gate 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 ab-
sence, such as playingwitha sharptool or accidentallysetting a fire in
the house.
Gamalatreallydidtryto get hersisterto take partin supportingher-
self. 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
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 withdrawingapolo-
getically, 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, be-
cause Gamalat hated Lulamore than anything. She treated her with scorn
once she discovered her eccentricity,even though Lulastillclung to Gama-
lat 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
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 be-
cause 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 at-
tentionto 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 cruelneigh-
borat 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
coloredbraidon the man'sarm,indicating thathe reallywas a sergeantand
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 inten-
tionto 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
bythe governmentwas overcomebypurchasing fortwopoundsa certificate
of age froma doctorwho specializedin such illegalmedicalpracticesas
abortion,repairingthe lost virginityof girlsreadyformarriage,and issuing
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
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 prisonad-
ministration. 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 clean-
ing materials,and collectingrags and scraps of paperin the prisonyard
in the afternoonto burnat nightin the cell in the futileeffortto driveaway
the disgustingmosquitoeswhojoinedthe otherverminin suckingthe pris-
oners'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
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 pre-
sented 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 prosti-
tute, 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 consid-
ered 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 inno-
cent 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 some-
thing between her fingers as Aziza spoke. She turned to where she was
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 currentlyen-
actingthe wanna-besyndromeof Madonnafans,analyzed,alongwithfash-
ion,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 Differ-
ence (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 criti-
cized this paper;and CirriNottageand MelindaWeinstein,whose research assistance
has been invaluable.
Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.
2 / Summer
164 boundary 1992
performingembodiment?Youcan have it all, Madonnasuggests, and be

creditedwitha mind,as well. For her girlfans, Madonnahas suggested
ways of appropriating rebelliousmasculineyouthculture,bothpreserving
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, abandoningthe intellectual feminist'ssuspicion
of popularculturalrepresentationsof female empowerment,argue for a
feministreclamationof Madonnaon solidintellectualandfeminist,if overly
celebratory,grounds.2
Whileimpressedwiththeirinsightsand sympatheticto their "de-
fense" of Madonnaagainstherdetractors(allof whom,to my knowledge,
deploy traditionalelite or masculinisttopoi in theirattacks),I am skepti-
cal of theirand my own desireto appropriate Madonnafor intellectuals,if
only because so
"she"responds easily to this desire and fits so well into
the progressivewhitefeministfantasy I am aboutto explorein her text.
Since I am interestedin practicingculturalpolitics,in strategicallylocating
and developingwhatAndrewRoss calls the "protopolitical" in popularcul-
ture,particularly in those media thathave been derogatorilydesignatedas
"mass culture"or the "cultureindustry" by left-and right-wingintellectu-
als alike,it willbe important to considermy investmentin this reading,as
a patrilineallyItalianAmericanacademic,antiracist(multiculturalist) femi-
nist, whose micropolitical is
positioning peculiarlyadapted to the cultural
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:
Routledge, 1989);see also his "HackingAwayat the Counterculture," in Technoculture,
ed. Constance Penley and AndrewRoss (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress,
1991), 107-34: "Thesignificanceof these cultureslies in theirembryonicorprotopolitical
languages and technologiesof oppositionto dominantor parentsystems of rules. Ifhack-
ers lack a 'cause,' then they are certainlynot the firstyouthcultureto be characterized
in this dismissiveway. In particular,the left has sufferedfromthe lackof a culturalpoli-
tics 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 Cul-
turalCriticism(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1990), 14-43: "Thereis an active
process going on in both of discrediting-by directdismissal (Baudrillard) or covert in-
Freccero/ OurLadyof MTV 165
of images, the blurringof generic boundariesbetweencommercial,pro-

gram, concert, and station identification,the circulationof commodities
wrenchedfromtheirmarketplacecontext,the sense of playand carnival;
the attentionto fashion;andthe de-centeredappropriation of imageswith-
out regardfor contextor history.Now,there is even a show called "Post-
modernVideos."Itsadvertisedde-centeredness,its "semioticdemocracy"
(John Fiske'sterm),its refusalof nationalboundaries,are, however,like
postmodernismitself,far frominnocent,and most comparisonsthat fore-
groundMTV'spostmodernismneglect its project,a sort of globalcultural
imperialism thatis nowheremoreclearlydemonstrated thanin its ownself-
advertisement:"ONEWORLD, ONEIMAGE, ONECHANNEL: MTV." Icall
this imperialismbecause MTVis not a democraticmedium,equallyavail-
able 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 commer-
cial appearedaroundthe world,featuringan aboriginerunningacross the
plainsof Australia(inreality,California) justintimeto see,
intoa bar,arriving
you guessed it, Madonna'sPepsi commercialversionof "Likea Prayer."
The commercialitselfairedin fortycountrieson 2 March1989. Madonna
is, likeGeorge Michaeland otherrelativelyrecentstars, one of the "corp-
rock"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 hold-
ing these starsto some kindof moralor political"standards";
the portrait
of
scriptionas Other(culturalstudies)-the voices of grumpyfeministsand crankyleftists

('Frankfurt School' can do dutyfor both).To discreditsuch voices is, as I understandit,
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
166 boundary 1992
the folk/rockartistas an oppositionalfiguredoes notapplyto the same ex-

tentinthe 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 cor-
poration'sproduct(DietCoke and Pepsi) relativeto theirown. Madonna's
piece is thatof an auteurinscribinga thoroughlyprivateautobiography as
a masterpieceof globalinterestin its own right.5
It is often said of the postmodernthat its messages are both re-
actionaryand 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 quintes-
sentiallyillustratesthispoliticalboth/andpositionis Madonna's"PapaDon't
Preach,"a song abouta girlwho decides againsthavingan abortionbut
articulatesthis decisionin assertivelypro-choiceterms.7
I startfromthe positionthatthese productsof late capitalismare,
withalmostno embarrassment, of dominantideologies;Ithen
reproducers
ask whetherthereis anythingelse to be foundinthem.Fiske,in his studies
of television,of Madonna,and of televisionaudiences,argues for a read-
ing of televisionthat emphasizesnot onlythe dominantideology'sefforts
to reproduceand maintainitself,notonlythe representation of hegemonic
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 Con-
temporaryCriticism,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 meaning-
ful 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, Gen-
der, and Fandomon Audience Interpretations of Madonna'sMusicVideos,"Journalof
Communication40, no. 2 (Spring1990):88-102.
in televisionby subcultures,by the marginalizedand subordinate."Tele-

vision 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 inter-
ests of the rulingclasses. I proposeto readthe ways in whichseveralof
Madonna'smusicvideos enablesome oppositionalreadings,and I wantto
go a step furtherin describinga theologico-politicaldiscoursethat moves
intoand outof focus inthese videos. Iwantto makean argumentfordelib-
eratelylocatingelementsof resistancein culturaltexts produced,as inthis
case, squarelywithina patriarchal andcapitalisthegemony.Ofcourse,itis
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
Hall,"Encoding/Decoding," in Culture,Media,Language,ed. StuartHallet al. (London:
Hutchinson,1980): 128-39. Itake to heartthe critiqueofferedby the "disgruntled" Morris
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 (politi-
cal) conclusions divergesignificantly("Madonna'sVogue,"Paper presented at session
number504: "Essentialism,Philology,and PopularCulture,"ModernLanguageAsso-
ciation 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 con-
text 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
productionare locatedwithinthe historyandpopularspirituality

of an Italian
Americanculturalimagination.RobertOrsi,inTheMadonnaof 115thStreet:
Faith and Communityin ItalianHarlem1880-1950, describes the mythos of
the immigrant community, itsrelationshipto the homelandandto spirituality,
as well as the relationshipof the second generation(the immigrants' chil-
dren)to this mythos,fundamentally centeredon the domus, householdor
family,as its significantunit.10 Orsiarguesthatone mustunderstandItalian
immigrant culture to understand the sometimes"strange" formsits popular
pietytakes. The visualimages of "Likea Prayer,"and those of an earlier
video, "OpenYourHeart,"bringthis ItalianAmericancultureintofocus so
as to articulateMadonna'sfeminocentric streettheology.Criticsof "Likea
Prayer" accuse it of sacrilege and even heresy.Orsinotes thatthere is a
similarresponse to the forms of in the communitieshe
popularspirituality
studied,and he adds, "Thereis a spiritof defiancein popularspirituality ...
it allowsthe people to claimtheirreligiousexperienceas theirown and to
affirmthe validityof theirvalues"(Orsi,221). Furthermore, Orsiprovidesa
key to the central role the or
playedby Madonna, heavenly mother (mamma
celeste), in Madonna'stheologyand provides,as well,a keyto herstaging
of a daughterlydiscoursewithina patriarchal familycontext.
MadonnaLouiseVeronicaCicconewas bornin 1958andgrewup in
Pontiac,Michigan.Herfatheris a first-generation ItalianAmerican,whose
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
"patriotic" ItalianAmericans,SilvioCicconeserved in the U.S. military.In
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
mostfamoussongs, "Material Girl."
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'sCatholi-
cism: "If,at this point,there is any aspect of Madonna'sact that seems independentof
calculation,it is her preoccupationwiththe Catholicmysteries"(28). Fora hightheologi-
cal readingof Madonna,especially"Likea Prayer," see AndrewGreeley,"Likea Catholic:
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,
she won a dance scholarshipto the University of Michigan,whereshe re-
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 ac-
countof 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
patriarch;to "KeepItTogether," a song thatasserts the necessityof family
ties. The albumalso includesa distortedrenderingof the RomanCatholic
Actof Contrition thatturnsintoa sortof child'sparodyof thisfrequentlyre-
citedconfessionalprayer.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 partiallyun-
buttonedblue jeans, imitatesthe RollingStones's "StickyFingers"album
cover. Abovethe crotchis printedher name, Madonna,withthe o (posi-
tionedwhere her navel shouldbe) surroundedby a cruciformdrawingof
lightandtoppedwitha crown(theVirgin's,presumably).13
Understanding Madonnainthiscontextdependson threeaspects of
11. "MadonnaLive:The VirginTour,"WarnerMusicVideo,BoyToy,Inc.,1985.

12. For a meditationon Madonna'snavel, see HaroldJaffe, Madonnaand OtherSpec-
tacles (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 com-
biningthe RollingStones blue jeans, which"contain"
the phallus,withthe o of her own
phallicabsence.
2 / Summer
170 boundary 1992
these videotexts. First,Madonnaplayswiththe codes of femininity to undo

dominantgendercodes andto assert herown powerand agency (and,by
extension,thatof women,in general),not by rejectingthe femininebut by
adoptingit as masquerade;that is, by posingas feminine.14 She takes on
the patriarchalcodes of femininityandadds an ironictwistthatasserts her
powerto manipulatethem. The second salientaspect of Madonna'stext
dependson understanding a subculturethatgoes unread,forthe mostpart,
by the dominant culture: a connectednessto Italy-in name,of course; in
and to exile, departure,
tradition;and in relationto theology,to femininity,
and immigration. Madonnarepresentsherselfas doubly,if nottriply,exiled:
She has lost her homeland(as a second-generationimmigrant), she is a
woman, and she is motherless. She also figuresherselfin a relation of gen-
erationalconflict(as the oppresseddaughter) within
the severelypatriarchal
structureof the household,representedby her ItalianAmericanfather.15
The inscriptionof the daughterlypositionis a marketstrategy,as well,for
itsets up an identificationwithadolescentgirls,whoinitiallyconstitutedthe
majorityof Madonna'sfans.
These motifsappearstrikinglyin two videos:"PapaDon'tPreach"
and "OpenYourHeart.""OpenYourHeart"presentsan earlyversionof
Madonna'smusingsabouther Italianheritage,explicitlybroughtout by the
1987 Ciao Italiatour,whereshe attemptsrudimentary conversationin the
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 produc-
tion, 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
musicianshipand strugglesforempowermentthat"culminates" in Madonna.
15. This notionof the householdcouldbe extendedto includenot onlythe familybutthe
music industry,as well, for this upstartfemale has not always been well received in the
traditionallywhitemale bastionthatis MTV.
darksister LizaMinnelli(anotherItalianAmerican),in its remake,Cabaret.

The relationshipto Italy,to the father,andto herowncommodification as a
female sex objectand a performing starare alldeeplyambivalent.
The videoopens witha smallboytryingto gainadmittanceto a sort
of cabaret/peepshow thatdisplaysoutfrontphotographsof nakedwomen
(withblackbars coveringbreastsand pubes) and a blue-tintedposterof
Madonna,who wears a blackwig. The ticket-taker willnot admitthe boy.
We move inside,then, to Madonna's"stripshow"number,whereshe ma-
nipulatesa 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
Madonna'sdance insidethe cabaret,thusestablishingan identification be-
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 clo-
sure 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
champions"oppressedsocial andracialgroups"(see "Madonna fromMarilyn to Marlene,"
19-20). Brownand Schulzefoundthatwhitegirlsdidnot reactto the pornographicperfor-
mance 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 repre-
sented 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
ticket-taker)and thus not inthe dominantposition,clueingus in on the im-
migrantor subcultural in this context."We"is, of course,
statusof "Italian"
a symbolicutterance:"We,"utteredin Italian,suggests thatthe "we"has
to do withbeing Italian,with"serving," andwithprofiting fromthe woman's
in
prostitution.Itis not, otherwords,the "we"of the clientele.Itis also a
privatemessage. Subtitles,whichare meantto makewhatis foreignintelli-
gible, here refuseto translateforthe Anglophoneviewer,staging,instead,
the privatein a publicplace; likethe cabaretact and the childrens'flight
fromboth it and the camera,subtitlespermitvoyeurismbutrejectvoyeur-
istic masteryby the viewer.Meanwhile,what is also staged is the flight
froman interiorspace (codedas "feminine" in musicvideo)to the exterior
(coded as "masculine" and with
"free"), its drawnvanishingpoint.17
explicitly
The familytriadof Madonna,child,and interpellating father,who is resisted
and refused,uneasilyalludes to the absent mother,who is both sacrifice
(Madonnaas commodity)andsavior(fantasyof escape), the homeland,or
motherland.
Madonnasays thatherfatherwas sociallyambitious,focusingon his
own,andhischildren's,upwardsocialmobility. Thisvideostages Madonna's
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 cre-
of whatis coded as "male
ationof female address videos throughan initialappropriation
space," primarilythe street. See "FemaleAddressin MusicVideo,"Journalof Commu-
nication 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
Subcultures:A FeministCritique," Screen Education34 (Spring1980):37-49. McClary,
in "Livingto Tell,"12-13, and Lewis,in GenderPoliticsand MTV,141-43, also provide
(different)interpretationsof "OpenYourHeart."
herfather's.She stages, as well,the typicalsecond-generation resentment

of the make-it-in-America mentality(andherwillingnessto serve
materialist
those ends). Madonnais thus "martyred" to the male gaze, but she es-
capes intopreadolescent innocence. Yet,this martyrdom is simultaneously
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 Ital-
ian 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,song-
writer,and producer,gave her herfirstbreakintothe business and estab-
lished 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 dif-
ferentvisuals. Fundamentalist religiousgroups,in the UnitedStates and
abroad,protestedthatthe videowas offensive,andtheythreatenedto boy-
cott 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
worship,as well as the demystification involvedin developingan intimate
and personalreciprocalrelationship to the divine(Orsi,225). Thereis also
the factthatMadonnais insertedas an activeagentin a storyand in a role
reservedformen, and inso doing,she challengesthe patriarchal strangle-
holdon the Catholicchurch.Thevideoof "Likea Prayer"can also be read
as an indictment of a whitemalepatriarchal Christianityinthe nameof what
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 de-
cides 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
orgasmiccrescendoof sexualfulfillment intertwinedwithherlove of
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.
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
The puns, reversals,and circularities of thisvideo,in combinationwiththe
are
lyrics, dizzying. The name Madonna and "thevoice"are constantlyre-
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
prayer,the name-callingreferring devoutlyanddaughter-like to the absent
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 struc-
ture of address in "Likea Prayer."I thankNancy Vickersfor drawingthese similarities
to my attentionand MaryLambertfor her corroboration of my readingof these texts as
feminocentric.
catches her; the woman is a figure of divinity(a heavenly mother) and as-
sists 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 (appar-
ently 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 epito-
mizes Orsi's description of "popularreligion"and the hostile reactions it
provokes from the established church:
When used to describe popular Catholic religiosity,the term con-
jures up images of shrouds, bloody hearts, bilocating monks, talk-
ing 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 estab-
lished (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 sinis-
ter 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 com-
22. 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.
mitsa crime,one remainssilentaboutit)thatis also a challenge.Thescene

sets up a parallel:Whitemen rape/killwomen,whitemen blameiton Black
men;or,womenare raped/killed forbeingon the streetsat night;Blackmen
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 wor-
shippers by the female deity.Withthe layingon of hands, Madonnais
"commissioned," orslaininthe spirit;the community is an AfricanAmerican
community. The scene of eroticunion with the saint sets up the syntaxfor
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 re-
to
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 actors-
the 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
(Madonnainthe fieldof burningcrosses), referringbackto and reinterpreting the scene in
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 patriarchalAmerica.
2 / Summer
178 boundary 1992
the actorsdancing,and the curtaincomes downagain.Finally,"TheEnd"

is writtenin scripton the curtain.
Howcan we readthe politicalandspiritualinthismelodramatic medi-

eval moralityplay?On the one hand,there is the displacementof a pre-
dicament:A woman'sdisempowerment in relationto a religioustraditionis
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,redemp-
tion, and salvation.This femininefantasyof resolutionresemblesthat of
the popularreligiousfeste that constitutethe spiritualexperiencesof the
East Harlemwomendescribedby Orsi,as wellas those of most southern
Italianimmigrant communitiesin citiesalloverthe UnitedStates, withtheir
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 stig-
mata.25Yet,the trace of a self-woundingsacrificeremains,for at the end
25. The RollingStone photographsof Madonna(Zehme,"Madonna: The RollingStone

Interview") focus on the phallicMadonnawithshots of her crotchand the now-infamous
"phallicwoman"gesture-first used parodicallyby MichaelJackson,then deployed(post-
Madonna)by Roseanne Barr-of crotch-grabbing. On the parodicuse of this gesture,
and on Madonna's"imitation" of MichaelJackson, see MarjorieGarber,"FetishEnvy,"
October54 (Fall1990):45-56. On Madonna'slaterphallicism,see also Sante, "Unlikea
Virgin,"27: "Ohyes, andtherewerethose maledancersadornedwithbreaststhatflopped
likeso manypairsof flaccidphalliwhileher own lookedlikearmor-plated projectiles."
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 appropria-
tion made millionsof dollars for these white musicians. But if we take seri-
ously 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 asso-
ciated with Africans by their northerncompatriots, by the Protestant ma-
jority, and by the established Catholic church.26 Chromaticallyblack Ma-
donnas 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 inter-
view, 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 AmericanCatholicsdis-

tinguishedthe northernItalianracialtype ('Germanic')fromthe southern ('African'),a
tendencythatmayhave contributedto the identification of East HarlemwithWest Harlem.
In 1912, NormanThomasadmittedthatAmerican-born Protestantsin Harlemdid not ap-
preciatethe 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
settings who identifythemselvesas "Italian" in orderto pass or to protect

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
joyous rhythm gospel, thus musicallyreinforcing the fusionof the two
communities.28 Moreethnographic researchmightrevealthe ways in which
these communitiesmet or meet (East and West Harlem)in the neighbor-
hoods of New YorkCityor Detroitand mightalso revealwhatis produced
fromthe similaritiesin theirfamilystructures,spiritualities, and theirhis-
toricalexperiences.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 possibili-
ties of connectedness ratherthan conflict.Inotherwords,one difference
betweenthe cooperativeinteraction narratedhereandthe representations
of violentconflictis thatthis representationis feminocentricand grounded
in a spiritualvision. Pointsof contactbetweencommunitiesare imagined
not only in termsof conflictingand competingethnicitiesbutalso in terms
of communicativeopenings,the affirming interactionsandthe potentialfor
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
presents the churchas a place of collectiveempowermenttowardtransforming justice. In
the contextof racism,it promotesAfrican-American cultureand combats bothpolice vio-
lence and the scapegoating of blackmales. Ina way that converges withsome feminist
theology,it stresses the importanceof the eroticin conceptualizingfaith"(see "Madonna
and Jesus," Christianity and Crisis,15 July1991, 234-36, especially235).
icon. Identityconnects Madonnaand the Blackpriestess,the Madonna,

a phallicwoman,the "muse,"who answers Madonna'sprayersand as-
sists her,who participatesas hermirrorin the narrative. The identification,
furthermore, extends beyond two individuals;Madonna does not redeem
alone, she seeks assistance fromher Blackdouble and fromthe commu-
nityof worshipwhom the womanrepresentsand leads. The icon is the
Madonnaicon par excellence:The cross, or crucifix,the calvaryfor Afri-
can Americans,and the burningcross of the KuKluxKlanall remindus
thatCatholicsandAfricanAmericans(as wellas Jews) weretargetsof this
nationalistprojectconductedinthe nameof the cross. Itis no wonder,then,
thatthe firstto speak out aboutthisvideo,condemningits irreligiosity and
sacrilege, were fundamentalist religiousleaders and televangelists-Jimmy
Swaggart,DonaldWildmon,BishopGracidaof Texas, and the American
FamilyAssociation.30
Thisstoryof how a whitegirllearnsto "dothe rightthing"and suc-
ceeds, 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
savior,markedhere as a traditionally femininewishfulfillment in its simul-
taneous desire for powerand approval.The absent-mother-returned-as-
divine-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
mightoccur in "reallife."Madonna'shyperfemininity in the video and her
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
term, that the politicalblindspot in the narrative,and in its reception,
30. Cox, "PepsiCans Its MadonnaAd underPressure."

appears.31We wouldnot expect a Madonnacommercialto assume any

subject-position otherthanthatof its protagonist,Madonna.Thoughin the
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 gen-
der/raceempowermentof the representation in its interaction
witha hege-
monicracismthattraditionally 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
choirwho is, therefore,more"fitting" forthe traditional worshipsettingof
the service.
A boldfantasyof interculturalrelatednessthatwillnotobey the rules
of the dominantculture'snarrative of necessaryinterracial conflict;a fantasy
of self-aggrandizement thatrecognizesitselfas such;a worldwherewomen
are bothheroicand omnipotent,wherefemaleagency can be effective.A
world,too, where the authoritiesare benign,where policewilladmitthat
they have madean honestmistake.AworldwhereBlackwomenapproveof
whitewomen'sdesiresforthe leadingroleinthe narrative of AfricanAmeri-
can salvation.As AndrewRoss has insisted,"Wecannotattributeanypurity
of politicalexpressionto popularculture,althoughwe can locate its power
to identifyareas and desires that are relativelyopposed, alongsidethose
thatare clearlycomplicit,to the officialculture."32 Incelebratingthe proto-
politicalof Madonna's texts, academic feminists must recognize,as well,
the self-aggrandizement these fantasiesserve. Madonnais not,afterall, a
revolutionary feminist(pace CamillePaglia);she is a female multimillion-
aire.33MTVreveals its politicalinadequaciesin the very postmodernism
31. GayatriChakravortySpivak,"Imperialism and Sexual Difference,"in Contemporary

LiteraryCriticism:Literary and Cultural Studies,ed. RobertCon Davisand RonaldSchlei-
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
ideologyof individualism, even when the individualis markedas female.
of its premise:It is the individual,

or the privatesubject,who makes cul-
turalmeaning,ratherthancommunities orcollectivities,
andindividuals may
become empoweredthroughthose meanings.34
So whyreadMTV,andwhyreaditinthisway?Forone thing,it'splea-
surable-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,
intergenerational, and interfaithconversationsthat have served as occa-
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 Leftcannotretreatintoanachronisticpuritan-
ism 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 ad-
vanced 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
ruling classes seem to have perfectedthe art of containment.IfGilScott-
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 con-

structionof 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 develop-

ments: (1) the rising interdisciplinaryinfluenceof postmodernthought;
the
(2) emergence of feminist
aesthetictheoryinthe literaryandvisualarts,
developed in supportof the feministcriticismin those fields;'and (3) the
I would like to acknowledgethe assistance received at the 1991 Instituteon "Philoso-
phy 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 prac-
titionersof feministaesthetics. Also see NancyK.Miller,ed., ThePoetics of Gender(New
York:ColumbiaUniversityPress); and Josephine Donovan,ed., FeministLiteraryCriti-
cism: 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
boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

Detels/ SoftBoundaries
andRelatedness185
recentfloweringof feministmusiccriticism,offeringa challengeto the posi-

tivisticmode of mainstreammusicologyand its overlyreifiedconception
of music, as especiallyseen in the theory,pedagogy,and productionof
Westernartmusic.2
In view of the thirddevelopmentin particular, it appears the time
may now be ripeforthe emergenceof a feministmusicalaesthetics, fea-
turinga 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.
Or, in other words, the focus is 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. Dever-
aux 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,
1977), in chap. 8, "BuildingDwellingThinking," 332.
186 boundary
2 / Summer
1992
paradigmof soft boundariesand relatednesshas ties to contemporary

postmodernandfeministtheory,hence its characterization hereas a post-
modernfeministparadigm.The ties to postmodernism are most obvious,
for, as Jerome Klinkowitz has stated, the key to the postmodernhabitof
thought is "thatthe authentic phenomenonin any event is not fact but
relationship."5The reorientation fromfactto relationship has rootsin exis-
tentialand pragmatistphilosophy,6 but it has receivedparticularempha-
sis in the Frenchpoststructuralist theoryof, forexample,MichelFoucault,
and
Jean-FrangoisLyotard, Jacques Derrida,whereinthe traditional "logo-
centric"claims to epistemologicaluniversalityand objectivityhave been
deconstructedand replacedby a recognitionof the validityof multipleper-
spectives 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
therein,usuallymore in terms of enculturation than nature.9Anothertie
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(Phila-
delphia: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 Sci-
ences," in The StructuralistControversy:TheLanguages of Criticismand the Sciences
of Man, ed. RichardMackseyand EugenioDonato(Baltimoreand London:Johns Hop-
kins UniversityPress, 1971),247-65, forthe definitivepoststructuralist
attackon Western
logocentrism.Also see Jane Flax, ThinkingFragments:Psychoanalysis,Feminismand
Postmodernismin the ContemporaryWest (Berkeley,Los Angeles, and Oxford:Uni-
versity 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
andRelatedness187
to feministtheoryis in the implicitemphasison experienceand the body,

an emphasisthatleads awayfromreification and hierarchizationtowarda
morecommunal,sharedconceptionof art.10
Inaddition,the implicitpluralismof the paradigmhas ties to feminist
theory in thatmany feminists,likepostmodernists, viewtraditionallogocen-
tricthinkingas inherentlymonistic,hierarchic, andmarginalisticbecause of
its habitualbinarydivisionsand the tendencyto privilegeone memberof
the binarypairoverthe other(as inthe structuralistdyadsof culture/nature,
cooked/raw,and masculine/feminine). Suchan observationis feminist,not
just postmodern,because, as biologicalandculturalmothers,womenhave
the roleand consequenthardshipsof oursociety'sprimaryOther,andthey
are thus best positionedto recognizeand theorizeon the functioningand
ramifications of marginalization,ingeneral."
Although a relevant responseto the hardboundariesof traditional
Westernthoughtand culturein general,the paradigmof soft boundaries
and relatednessis especiallywell suitedto the task of changingthe sub-
ject 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,con-
sisted largelyof masculinistprojectionsof rageandfearontothe feminine-
identified,sensual realmof natureand the consequentattemptsto control
Women'sDevelopment(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1981);and Nancy Cho-

dorow, The Reproductionof Mothering:Psychoanalysisand the Sociology of Gender
(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1978).
10. See, for instance, Jane Gallop, ThinkingThroughthe Body (New York:Columbia
UniversityPress, 1988); and Heide Gottner-Abendroth "NinePrinciplesof a Matriarchal
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 Arrange-
ments 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 per-
ceiverandon autonomyforthe artistandartwork. Accordingto Marxistcritic
TerryEagleton, the romantic "aestheticideology"amountedto a kindof
denial,wherebythe combinedassumptionsof subjectivity and universality
acted as the "jokerin the pack"that served to circumventconsideration
of the culturalrelatednessof art-includingthe relatednessof the critics'
insistenceon autonomyand universality to theirown psychologicaland/or
politicalagendas.13Inotherwords,once culturewas clearedfromthe field,
the way was clear forthe criticto fillthe vacuumwithprojectionsof sup-
posedlyuniversaldefinitionsandcriteriaforjudgmentsandthento use them
to buildunconsciouslyself-interested canonsandhierarchies of "greatness"
on theirbasis. Because of theirconstructionin the vacuum,the re-
cultural
sultingdefinitions,judgments,and hierarchieshave since tendedto suffer
fromcircularity; that is, the judgmentsof meritserve as argumentfor the
criteria,and the criteriaserve as argumentforthe judgments.
The above critiqueof aesthetics in Westerncultureapplies most
powerfullyto music, the realmof "risk-freeidentification" as Catherine
Clementputsit;there,the greaterambiguity of aestheticcontenthas tended
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
of "tonallymovingforms."15Mostinfluential musicphilosopherssince Hans-
12. Susan Bordo,"TheCartesianMasculinization of Thought,"Signs 11 (1986):439-56,

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 (Cam-
bridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1987), 151-72. Shepherdsays the powerand physi-
cal relatednessof musicalsound "remindsmen of the fragileand atrophiednatureof their
controlover the world"(158).
15. EduardHanslick,On the MusicallyBeautiful,trans.GeoffreyPayzant(Indianapolis:
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
separated from musicology and formed a distinctprofessionwithits own
societies, journals,andcredentials.Bothmusictheoristsandanalyticmusic
philosopherstend to view musicin a particularly hard-boundaried manner,
excludingpractical,historicalinformation aboutthe culturalcontextof music
and relyinginsteadon formalistconceptsand circularargumentation.
Evena briefexaminationof the academicproductsof musictheory
and analyticmusic philosophyserves to underscorethe importanceof a
new musico-aestheticparadigm.Forinstance,theoristLeonardMeyerun-
wittinglyprovidedan excellentexampleof the pitfallsof formalismand cir-
cularargumentation in his much-readandreprinted 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
organization," and he argues for his positionin a covertcircularmanner.
"Ifwe ask,"he says, "Whyis Debussy'smusicsuperiorto thatof Delius?
the answer lies in the syntacticalorganizationof his music, not in its su-
periorsensuousness.""17 Thisis a circularargumentbecause it startsfrom
the assumption,based on Debussy'shighercanonicalstatus over Delius,
that Debussy'smusicis superior,andthatthe reasonforits superiority will
provide the universalcriterion
for understanding musicalgreatness.Inother
words,the answer"thesyntacticalorganization of Debussy'smusic"leads
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 cog-
nitivismfound 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.
proof of the superiority of Debussy's music (which, however, was never

doubted inthe firstplace). Here and elsewhere, circularargumentationfunc-
tions 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 pre-
ceding and followingthe questions is so common in musical aesthetics and
criticismthat no such scandal breaks out in the academy when the musico-
aesthetic 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 Re-
flections 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-made-
music, Cosi fan tutte is a more perfect example of that kindthan The
Marriageof Figaro; but this in no way impliesthat, under my descrip-
tion, 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.
andRelatedness191
althoughCosi is the moreperfectopera,whichis to say, the greater

drama-made-music, Figarois the greaterwork.19
The comedy is thatamidthese torturedeffortsto clarifythe appro-
priatetheoryon whichto judgeCosifantutte,the actualexperienceof the
music is lost to consideration.Thus, Kivy'sargumenthere, rathertypical
of his musico-aestheticworkin general,demonstrateshowformalistthink-
ing 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 PrimatCone-
head's analytic-styledefinition,the "gathering of humansto absorbsound
patterns."21 In a more vital,life-connected
musical culture,however,the
notionthat music needs theoryfor its existence, especiallytheoryof the
disconnectedkind,is highlyproblematic.
formalistic,culturally Whatmusic
moreprobablyneeds, at least fromscholars,is a greaterunderstanding of
its relatednessto life, somethingit may receivewhen the covertmusico-
aestheticvaluingof hardboundariesis supersededbythe paradigmof soft
boundariesand relatedness.
Thereare at least threeaspects of musicalexperienceto whichthe
paradigmof soft boundariesand relatednesscan usefullyapply:(1) re-
latedness 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,
suggesting what the problemsof traditional musico-aesthetictheoryare,
how the new paradigmwilladdressthem,and how it connects to intellec-
tualand 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,rebroad-
cast 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 appearedpromi-
nentlyin late eighteenth-century expressiontheory,but such recognition
recededinthe nineteenthcentury,whenmostaesthetictheoriststendedto
makea sharpCartesiandivisionof mindandbodyandto projectsensuality
away fromthe male-identified culturalnormsonto the feminine-identified
realmof the Other.(Latenineteenth-century male authors,painters,and
composersfrequentlyexhibitedthisprojection inextreme,sadomasochistic
images of female madness, hysteria,and nymphomania.)22 Nonetheless,
the connectionof music to the body was maintainedin Schopenhauer's
tying of music to the will(the existence of whichhe constructsfromthe
individual'sawarenessof her/hisown body),23 in Nietzsche'scall for a re-
valuingof the Dionysianmode,24 and intwentieth-century psycho-aesthetic
writings of Julia Carl
Kristeva, Jung, and Donald Winnicott,amongothers.25
Intermsof actualmusicalexperience,the denialof music'srelated-
ness to the bodyhas quiteliterally"heldsway"in the contextof the West-
ern musicalconcert,resultingin the sharpboundaries-taboos, really-
appliedagainstotherwisecommonmusico-physical responsesof swaying,
22. See BramDijkstra,Idolsof Perversity:Fantasiesof FeminineEvilin Fin-de-siecleCul-

ture (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 ThePhiloso-
phy of Nietzsche, trans.CliftonP. Fadiman(New York:ModernLibrary,1984), 162-87.
25. See, for example, Julia Kristeva'scharacterizationof music as "constructedexclu-
sively on the basis of the semiotic"(i.e., the pre-symbolic),in The Revolutionin Poetic
Language, trans. MargaretWaller(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress), 24. Musicolo-
gist Renee Cox develops Kristeva'sapproachin "RecoveringJouissance: FeministMusi-
cal 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 tech-
niques 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.)
andRelatedness193
singing,and beatingtime.This is especiallynotableduringclassical con-

certs, where permittedphysicalresponse is frozenintorequiredclapping
zones between musicalworks(and, acting as a signifierof the unnatu-
ralrepression,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
roughlyup Kant's time (i.e., before the declineof aristocraticpatronage
andthe consequentfixingof the middle-classconcertas the privilegedform
of musicaldissemination).
Indeed,one can hardlyoverestimatethe influenceof the nineteenth-
centurymiddle-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,ac-
cepted partsof musicalexperienceamongfriendsand familycould now
have the unwelcomeeffectof alertingnearbystrangersto one's innermost
feelings, notto mentioninhibiting theirabilityto hearthe music.Moreover,
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 con-
tortionalperformer(andcomposer)beganto appearin publishedsketches
and verbalaccounts of Beethoven,Chopin,Berlioz,Paganini,and Liszt.
Jacques Attaliarguesthatthese alienatedartist-celebrities carriedthe de-
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-centuryconcertculturein gen-
eral,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 psycho-
logical 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
194 boundary 1992
Itis easy to see how,inthisrepressedcontext,the notioncouldtake

holdthat one's properapproachto musicas composeror listenerwas to
attendto a set of "tonallymovingforms,"disembodiedfrommotion,emo-
tion,or extrastructural meaning.Indeed,few wouldfaultHanslickforfailing
to understandthe historical of the concertandthe aestheticjudg-
relativity
ments he made in its context.Today'sformalists,however,are on much
thinnerground,continuingto viewas universalan approachto musicalpro-
ductionand 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 instru-
mentalmusicrespondedwithan increasingly style as the
formalist-oriented
performance context moved from church and chamber to concert hall,and
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
in this direction,both in theiremphasison the "being-in-time" conscious-
ness of the bodyand in theirreadyaccessibilityto the understanding and
participation of a wideaudience.27
The new, softer-boundariedperformancecontexts may include
everydaysettings,such as outdoorparks,restaurants, orothersocial com-
muningplaces with a freer ambience and fewer physical restrictionson
or and
moving,talking,eating,drinking, sleeping, theymay include settings
in a very differentcontext fromthat of the concert hall. In my opinion,the unacknowl-

edged subtext of the controversyis that some modernconcert performershave found
the more historicallyauthenticinstrumentsand techniquesintroducedby performance
practicespecialists to be less dazzlingto audiencesthanthose creatablewithmodernin-
strumentsand 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 (Hali-
fax: Press of Nova Scotia College of Artand Design; New York:New YorkUniversity
Press, 1974), especially9-11.
andRelatedness195
not yet imaginedfor genres that cross the boundariesof currentconven-

tion. To our romantically acculturatedminds,some of these settings may
suggest an unacceptablyhumble,utilitarian statusformusic;butparadoxi-
it is the
cally, probably proud insistenceon I'artpourI'artautonomythathas
resultedin its humblingghettoization andneglectinourpubliclife,whereby
utilitarian purposes,such as entertainment at athleticevents, arethe musi-
cal activitiesthat receivethe most regularsupportin the civic sector. On
the contrary,musicappearsto occupya higherstatus culturally when it is
integrated withotherformsof life for
experience,as, example, in its evident
integration withpoetry,dance,eating,weaving,andreligiousceremoniesof
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
experience-in the case of music,the composer,performer, audience,crit-
ics, and community.Forinstance,the deconstructionist viewof the literary
workas "text,"of writingas "textuality,"
and of readingas involvinga co-
creative"intertextuality"
is a modelthat, in effect,softens the boundaries
among writer,reader, and community,and emphasizes not the fixingof
absolute or hierarchicalvalue butthe playof meaningsamongfluidcon-
stituencies.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-culturalPerspec-
tive, Contributionsin Women'sStudies, no. 79 (New York,Westport,Conn., and Lon-
don: GreenwoodPress, 1987); and MarciaHerndonand Suzanne Ziegler,eds., Music,
Gender and Culture,InterculturalMusicStudies, no. 1 (Wilhelmshaven: FlorianNoetzel
Verlag,1990).
30. Fora clear and concise discussionof these issues, includingtheirparticularapplica-
tion to music, see RolandBarthes, "FromWorkto Text,"in Joseph Margolis,ed., Phi-
losophy 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
plays-which arguablypreservemany the author'sintentionsinthe writ-
of
ten words,music-notational practiceshavebeen neitherculturally universal
norhistoricallystable. Those practicesrangefroman absence of notation
(a vast quantityof musicin the area of song and improvisatory instrumen-
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,as-
sumingthey were not occupiedin performing musicof theirown. Even in
the case of our "commonpracticeperiod"(ca. 1750-present),notationof
the mainmusicalelementsis stillusuallyincompletewithoutthe interpreta-
tionof a skilled,musicalperformer who is knowledgeablein the termsand
techniques of the 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 musicalwork-
and to considera demotion,if not a death, of the composer'sauthority.32
Thereigningnotiontoo closelyresemblesReagan's"trickle-down" theoryof
economicsand has parallelresultsin termsof the musicaldisenfranchise-
mentand impoverishment of the majorityof the public.Weshouldnotethat
many of the most proponentsof this compositorial
vituperative domination
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 Good-
man, 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";
see Barthes,"TheDeathof the Author," in Image-Music-Text, trans.Stephen Heath(New
York:Hilland Wang, 1977), 142-48.
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 evolu-
tion,since the disenfranchisement of music'sotherconstituencieshas the
effect of alienatingeveryonefroma healthyculturalconnectionto music
andconsequentlyof leavingus passivereceivers,notso muchforI'artpour
I'artculture,or even forthe cultureof popularmusic,butforthe multibillion-
dollarindustriesof civic and corporateGebrauchsmuzak, if I may coin a
term. By Gebrauchsmuzak,I mean the footballfightsongs, supermarket
music,advertisingjingles,movieandtelevisionsoundtracks,andotherarti-
ficiallyproducedsound 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 ele-
vatortapes (i.e., withoutourawarenessand involvement), it is partof the
Gebrauchsmuzakproblemas well.On the otherhand,withthe paradigm
of softer boundariesand relatednessamong musicalconstituencies,the
process of hierarchization, disenfranchisement, and disengagementmight
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 challengedeveryas-
sumption of Western art-musicalculture,and, in particular,
he emphasized
greaterengagement of the performer and the audience in the experience
of music.33Morerecently,PaulineOliverosfrequentlycrosses the bound-
aries 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.
performance piece Sonic Meditations (1971), which she dedicates to "the

elevation and equalization of the feminine principle along with the mas-
culine 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 per-
formers' 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 breath-
ing 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 egali-
tarian 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 par-
ticipation 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 con-
stituencies of a musical culture has also been raised through the explora-
tions by twentieth-centuryanthropologistsand ethnomusicologists of pre-
industrialsocieties whose boundaries between the main constituencies of
musical experience are frequentlysofter and differentlyfocused than those
of Western industrialsociety. Forexample, ethnomusicologistElizabethTol-
bert tells of the spiritual,communalfunctionof the lamentamong the Finnish
Kareliansand analyzes the music in context withthatfunction.35Anthropolo-
gist Carol Robertson finds that music, in the formof communallyperformed
34. Quoted and discussed furtherin RobertP. Morgan,Twentieth-Century
Music: His-
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
inthe AfricanKassen-Nankani
ritual,offersthe individual andSouthAmeri-
can Mapuche tribes"a web of within
relationships which his/herindividuality
can be defined,"includingthe web of gender relationships.36 Communal
dance, song, and religious-dramatic ritualgenerallyfigureprominentlyin
pre-industrial musiccultures,castingconsiderablequestionon the West-
ern art-musicalview of these experiencesas secondaryto the "pure"ex-
perience of untexted,instrumental music.The long-standingtendencyof
musicologiststo ignoresuch discoveriesand thus to evade the relativiza-
tionof the practicesand values of Westernart-music,is finallygivingway,
thanksin greatpartto the influenceof postmodernism-including the cur-
rent movementtowardmakingroomfor multicultural and popularculture
studies in Westernacademicinstitutions.37
Relatedness of MusicalStyle to Culture

The mentionof multicultural studiesleads verynaturally to consider-
ationof the thirdareaof musicalrelatednessunderdiscussioninthisessay,
thatof the relatednessbetweenmusicalstyle and culture.Thisarea of re-
latedness has alreadyreceivedconsiderableattentionfromfeministand
Marxistcritics,and some profoundinsightson the relatednessof style to
culturehave alreadybeen reached,makingthe traditional aestheticclaims
of autonomyfor the musicalworkand composermuch more difficultto
maintain.Nonetheless,somethingmorethaninsightful criticismon the mar-
of
gins musicology is needed ifthe practicesof ourinstitutions
conservative
of musicaleducationare to be affected.Forexample,despite multicultur-
alist 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 empha-
36. 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 gen-
eral 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 traditionalcanonof 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,linkedsuc-
cessions 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 diminutionof women'smusicalactivities.Indeed,
a masculinistslantcontinuesin musicologyandmusichistoryteachingto a
degree thatwouldamaze culturalcriticsof otherfields.Take,forexample,
TheMusicof Man,an expensivelyproducedseries of videosthataccompa-
nies a currenthigh-sellingmusichistorytextbook.TheMusicof Manclearly
marginalizeswomenin the titleand inthe accountsof the music-historical
periods.39 Of the myriadof active,influential
musicalwomenof the twenti-
eth century,thisseries shows onlyMarthaGraham,JudyCollins,andJoan
Baez, the last of whomis presentedas a womannotableforhavinghad a
love affairwithBobDylanandforperforming hismusic.(Infact,JoanBaez's
fame and influenceas a performerand composerprecededDylan's,and
his career profitedfromthe personalrelationship withher ratherthan the
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 ana-
lyticalapproachesthatde-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
chords, rhythmicmotives,phrases, sections, movements,and works).40

Underthe new paradigm,applicationof supposedlyuniversal,theoretical
concepts wouldbe restrictedto musicfor whichevidence of theirappli-
cabilitycould be foundin the music'sown culturalpractices,includingthe
performancepractices,notation,andcontemporary theoreticaldiscussion.
Thus,forexample,chords,sections, and periods would be applicableto a
music,since composersnotatedthem and theo-
lot of eighteenth-century
ristsdiscussedthem,butnotto musicacrosshistoricalperiodsandcultures.
Rather,musictheoristsand philosopherswouldbe forcedto deal withthe
culturalpracticesof the musicthey are judging,in orderto develop and
applythe new,softer-boundaried theoreticalconcepts,ina culturallyrelated
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 asso-
ciatedwithdancingor 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 re-
thoughtand replaced,however,if we are to take the relatednessof music
to culturemoreseriously.
Oncethe developmentof culturally relatedboundaryconceptstakes
place,the waywouldbe clearformusiccriticismto developina morelegiti-
mateandprofoundmanner,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.
extrapolationsfrom Marxistliteraryand art criticismsuggest that in cultures

of aristocratic patronage, where art and artists have been owned as prop-
erty, 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 eighteenth-
century musical style.41The tendency of romanticand modernistmusic criti-
cism 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 theirten-
dency 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 re-
sistance to playing his expected role within the patronage system and
against conventions and authority,in general.43By comparison within Mo-
zart's close circle of contacts, this was a resistance that did not appeal to
Antonio Salieri, on whom Pushkin, Schaffer, and their audiences have pro-
jected 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 pub-
lic musical activityas an adult woman.44These observations move the criti-
41. 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,India-
napolis: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,"FeministAesthet-
muting"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 para-
digm 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 appli-
cation, because they are best positionedto use the paradigmto deconstruct
the traditionalbases of masculinistmusical privilegeand to explore expres-
sions of feminine culturalidentitythat have been overlooked under the old
paradigm. In Feminine Endings, Susan McClarydiscusses the possibili-
ties 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 ac-
cepted 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 profes-
sionals 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 LaurieAnder-
son and of the popularmusicianMadonnaas examples of womenfindingtheircreative
musicalvoices throughnew feminist-minded discursivestrategies.
47. McClary,FeminineEndings,112-31.
new paradigmfaces an uphillbattle in receivingwide currencyin all the rele-

vant 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 uni-
versity would be able to produce such a change. That view, however, of the
situation may underestimate the readiness with which teachers and stu-
dents 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 Uni-
versity;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 fundamen-
taliststrainsof 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.

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 subsis-
tence 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 per-
sona was well tailored to the cut of modern liberalmasculinity,harmlessly
heroic in spite of its best testosterone-induced intentions,and thus was tar-
geted 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 illus-
trating 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 Sher-
wood 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 re-
cently, of nondeveloped nature feared by would-be developers. Not that
these two locations-the ecological and the ideological-are easily sepa-
rable. The profitableclearing of forests, for example, had long been sanc-
tioned 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 in-
dustry 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 ban-
dits 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 audi-
ence'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 broad-
sides 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).
and the Hollywood blockbuster. Never a static legend, not even in medi-
eval 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 edi-
tors, Joseph Ritson, in the wake of the French Revolution. That sugges-
tion 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 ex-
plains 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).
young black masculinity.The "'hood"is a south-centralLos Angeles neigh-

borhood, 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 heli-
copters constantly circlingoverhead, army recruiterssoaking up young sur-
plus 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 re-
sponsibilityfor 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 protago-
nists.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
3. See VivienSobchak, "Child/Alien/Father:

PatriarchalCrisisand Generic Exchange,"
CameraObscura 15 (1986):7-34.
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 re-
sponse to a social crisis of masculinityevolving in the West since the Indus-
trial 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 "femi-
nine" 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 tran-
scended, ratherthan answered, in the pursuitof authentic masculinity;the
alienating patternof modern corporate life is only the latest industrialorga-
nization 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,
of or about the new "men'smovement"is there any mention of these activi-

ties or texts. One reason forthis omission is that Bly and his fellow travelers
are not engaged in a primarilypro-feministproject,and their concerns har-
bor 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
Masculinityand the Critiqueof Marxism(Brighton: Harvester,1987);ArthurBrittan,Mas-

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 Patri-
archy: 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 Un-
thinkable(London:Pluto,1983);AnthonyEasthope,Whata Man'sGottaDo: TheMascu-
line Mythin PopularCulture(London:Paladin,1986);AliceJardineand PaulSmith,eds.,
Men in Feminism(New York:Methuen,1987);Joseph Boone and MichaelCadden, En-
gendering 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:Rout-
ledge, 1991).
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, per-
formative blend of Eastern mysticism, Jungian philosophy, and folk story-
telling 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 legiti-
mate authority of what he calls "positive leadership energy" for the sake
of the community. Politically,IronJohn positions itself beyond the twenty-
year-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, support-
ive, 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 geronto-
cratic 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 tur-
bulent 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.
no one has visited for a long time, an ancient hairyman.... Welcom-

ing 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 "differ-

ent 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-maritaldenoue-
ment, 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 nar-
ratives 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 north-
ern 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, Sume-
rian,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 Eurocentrictradi-
tion; 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 quincente-
nary, 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 Colum-
bian 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 Euro-
pean medieval life (forColumbus,the operative distinctionwas between the
"gentle"Tainos and the "warlike"Caribs). Portable features of the nature-

fearing 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 the-
atrical 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 analyti-
cal 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 treat-
ment 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
to guru-master,it does share the tone of Bly'sown middlebrowreverence
a
for great artists, writers,"deep"thinkers,and "meaning"junkies, especially
radical theologians, who eat away at the paradoxicalheart of religious ex-
perience. 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 mer-
cantile 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.
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 mas-
culinityin 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 reestablish-
ing 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 sexu-
ality, 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 gen-
eration of men knows by its longing forfathers who were absent that
nothing fills the void that is created when men abandon their fami-
lies 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 senti-
ments 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 con-
tributionto 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, more-
over, that the "dysfunctional"familymodel-an overattentivemotherand an
indifferentfather-that Bly and Keen use to describe the plightof the mod-
ern 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 move-
ment," because its founding moment was a media event-the 1990 airing
8. Keen, Fire in the Belly, 227.

of the BillMoyers PBS special on Bly, "AGatheringof Men")is increasingly

posed as: What Do Men Want? This question means something quite dif-
ferent 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 "prob-
lem," 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 claim-
ing control over their lives, women have turnedto the "problem"of mascu-
linityin areas that cover a broad spectrum, from domestic violence, to the
appropriationby men of spheres and practices in the home that had tradi-
tionally 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"
as women are about standards of "femininity," then it is a directresult of the
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, edu-
cation, 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 historicalperspec-
9. 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
stillstymiedby the basic contradictionthatcompelledcapitalismto exploitforcheap labor
those whose primaryworkfor capitalismwas stillin the realmof reproductionand child-
care. 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.
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 mascu-
linitybefore 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 valida-
tion 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 re-
cently 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 pithywis-
doms offered by Bly and his circle. Ithas to be assumed that men who actu-
ally 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 patriarchymodern-
izes 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.

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 conser-
vative fear of sexuality, poses clear physical obstacles to the rights and
freedoms of certaingroups of men-gay men and young black males-spe-
cifically 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 crip-
pling 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, compensat-
ing 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 disci-
pline, reinforcingolder, Hobbesian themes of brute competitiveness that
harkback to a primalimage of man the hunter-warrior, of men strugglingas
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
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 conse-
quences 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 psychosex-
ual lives, differences that are often, but not always, related to race, class,
and sexual preference. To disregardthese differences and to view mascu-
linityas 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 fan-
tasies 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 argu-
ments 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 ex-
ploringthe 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 con-
sistently surfacing in Europe's art and architecture,folktales, and vestigial
pagan rituals."Indeed, it is this Green Manwho is likelyto become the neo-

Jungian 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 traditionallyasso-
ciated 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 un-
able 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 Mer-
chant, 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., Defend-
ing 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 reproduc-
tive 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 pro-
prietary rights within the ecology movement lies with the long historical
association, however warranted,of women with nature.Second-wave femi-
nism sought to demystify this association and to disconnect the link,insis-
tently 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 poten-
tially 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. Con-
sequently, 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 anthro-
pocentrism 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&
Unwin,1970).A surveyof "womenindevelopment"literature can be foundin BrindaRao's
useful Capitalism,Nature,Socialismpamphlet"DominantConstructionsof Womenand
Naturein Social Science Literature"
(publishedby the Centerfor EcologicalSocialism,
Santa Cruz).
dimension to this critique,for this was not only a philosophy but also a reli-
gion 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 inspira-
tional basis for what is essentially a liberationtheology lay in the myths,
symbols, and ritual practices of pagan traditionsof nature-worship,Wic-
can, 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 born-
again, 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
describes as "power-from-within," as opposed to the destructive patriarchal
traditionof "power-over."14 A modern urbanwitch's invocationof the power
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,how-
ever, 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 well-
known 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.
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 in-

separable. 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 his-
torical 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 con-
sider a philosophy of history that draws heavily upon the work of archae-
ologists 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,war-
riortribes 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.
19. See, in particular,
the worksof the archaeologicalhistorian,MarijaGimbutas,includ-
ing 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).
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 Neo-
lithic 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 peace-
ful, unfortifiedsettlements that fell to an invadercultureand was dominated
by a spirituallyinferiorgender, just as, for classical Marxism,say, the lap-
sarian 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 ratio-
nalism, with its worldview of nature as passive and dead, replaced an
organicist cosmology with a living female earth at its center. The domi-
nant 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
20. CharleneSpretnak,"Ecofeminism: in IreneDiamondand

OurRoots and Flowering,"
Gloria Orenstein,eds., Reweaving the World:The Emergence of Ecofeminism(San
Francisco:SierraBooks, 1990), 9.
21. CarolynMerchant,TheDeathof Nature.
European animals, plants, pathogens, and peoples-and then by the capi-

talist 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 Euro-
pean 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 con-
sciousness 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 irretriev-
ably 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 "ecologi-
cal 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 produc-
tion 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 re-
sists 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 dis-
22. 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.
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 patriarchalcapital-
ism, both libertarianand repressive; the radicaldemocratic legacies of indi-
vidual 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 tra-
ditions 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 "natu-
ral."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 Book-
chin'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 ata-
vistic nature-worshipwithinthe movement, is more skeptical of any such
claim that the position of women, whether as victim or as heiress of spiri-
tual intuition, marks them as uniquely ecological beings. To reason that
women's relationshipwith nature is intrinsicallybound up with the ecologi-
cal 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 "regres-
25. YnestraKing,"TheEcologyof Feminismand the Feminismof Ecology,"in Healing

the Wounds:ThePromiseof Ecofeminism,19.
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, philosophi-
cal, and politicaldevelopments-including democracy and reason-
because 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 inconsis-
tencies 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 cul-
ture 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 com-
mitment 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 instru-
mental '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 essen-
tialist 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 con-
found 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.
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, puritani-
cal, 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 aus-
tere 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-to-
date 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 practicingwitch-
craft 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.
own social and culturalidentities. Since they feed into long-standing sexist
characterizations of "feminineirrationality," the goddess mythologies es-
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 blasphe-
mous, 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 god-
dess myths, the cyborg, the "illegitimateoffspringof militarismand patri-
archal 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 "com-
pletely 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.
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 infor-
mation 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."34On the face of it, this sounds like
profane ecology. Radical ecologists traditionallystand against an anthro-
pocentric worldview that attributeshuman characteristics and quirksto the
physical properties and nonhuman inhabitantsof the naturalworld. Eco-
feminism 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 nox-
ious') may derive fromthe fact that she acts not fromchoice but from inher-
ent need. Whatever naturedoes that seems cruel and evil to anthropomor-
phizing eyes is done withoutintentto harm."35Collard'sposition here is de-
cidedly 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 ex-
tinction, 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 perspective-
women'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.
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
hoodwinked."'37 The resultingdialogue is respectful but not innocently rev-
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 "mon-
strous 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 mascu-
line 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.
Terminator:"You'reterminated,fucker."The sequel, as I noted earlier,con-

tains Connor's remarkablefantasy about the Schwarzenegger cyborg as
"a perfect father,"who has no role in or control over the reproductivepro-
cess 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 post-
patriarchal,a fantasy about the "good"welfare state of the future, which
sends an agent into the present as protector.This time around, the Termi-
nator 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 be-
cause 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, termi-
nators 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 recogniz-
able 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 noto-
riety, transcendence, and some version of the postmodern fifteen minutes
of fame.'
Today, "greatness" sometimes functions rhetoricallyas pure boiler-
plate. 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.
boundary2 19:2,1992.Copyright Press.CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.
accounted for America's decline as a world power because of problems

like AIDS, homelessness, and decliningeducational standards, politelypre-
dicted 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 self-
evident truth. For example, the announcement of the U.S. Postal Service's
plan to issue an Elvis Presley commemorative stamp-thus officiallyde-
claring 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 Elviscommemora-
tive: "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 chil-
dren'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 con-
sequences 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, ap-
pearing severally to Dorothyand her friends as an enormous head without
a body, a lovely lady, a terriblebeast, and a ballof fire, introduces himself: "I
2. ColinNickerson,"Assessingthe Summit:LostFace, LostOpportunity," Boston Globe,

11 Jan. 1992, 8.
3. B. DrummondAyres,Jr., "Millionsof ElvisSightingsCertainin '93,"New YorkTimes,
11 Jan. 1992, 6.
Philologyandthe Politicsof Mimesis 235
Garber/ "Greatness":
am Oz the Great and Terrible."4Oz is a nice instance of Lacan's "sujetsup-

pose 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 hand-
ing 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 Interpreta-
tion 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 mime-
sis, 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,"Significationof the Phallus,"in Ecrits:A Selection,trans.AlanSheri-
dan (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.
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? (Bal-
cony, 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 charac-
ter 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 him-
self" (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. Muti-
lated? (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,
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 sure-
will 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 over-
heard-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, nec-
essarily 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 Psyche-
Analysis, 1955), 17:241.
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 origi-
nal, not incidentallybecause of the "normalization" of Pan in the figure of
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 Wil-
liams, 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 plac-
ards. 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 hortatorymes-
sage 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 re-
turns 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
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?
"Authenticity," "idealism,"and "integrity"were at stake, said Giamatti, so
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 Ameri-
can, story.) "WhenA. BartlettGiamattidied,"wrote U.S. News and World
Report in a quotationgiven prominentplace on the frontcover of the paper-
back 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 cross-
8. 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.
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 talk-
ing 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 base-
ball "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 nostal-
gia, 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 "curi-
ous 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
Philology ofMimesis 241
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 im-
as the umpire-father
fulfillment,
possibilityof goinghomeagainis reenacted.... Orifthe attempt...
works,thenthe reunionandall it means is total-the runneris a re-
turned 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 ac-
cessibility,the aromaof inclusiveness,of freedomfromwariness,
thatclingto the wordhome.... Homeis a concept,nota place;it is
a state of mindwhereself-definitionstarts;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 ori-
gins not the home of Freud'suncanny,the simultaneouscontradictory
is
presence of das Heimlich and das Unheimlich,"somethingthat is secretly
familiar,"the returnof the repressed,associatedwiththe livingdead, the
unconscious,the female genitals,and the compulsionto repeat.Giamatti
is untroubledby the mise en abimeof literarytheoryfromBenjaminto Bau-
the
drillard, space of infinite of
replication, representationand simulacra,
the postmodernconditionof copies insteadof originals.ForGiamatti,home
is the space of baseball,of middle-America-theMarriottinSt. 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.
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 greatness-
an 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 examina-
tion 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, "willremem-
ber 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 Uni-
versity 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
13. ErichAuerbach,Mimesis:TheRepresentationof Realityin WesternLiterature,trans.

WillardTrask(GardenCity,N.Y.:DoubledayAnchor,1957), 1. Allsubsequent references
to this text willbe cited as Mimesis.
Garber/ "Greatness": andthePolitics
Philology of Mimesis243
"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
strikinglysimilarto a certaintacticalenhancementof "greatliterature"and
"greatness"in generalthroughthe evacuationof historicalcontext.I want
to suggest that the absence of a criticalapparatusin a book on the evo-
lutionof the greattraditionin Westernlettersis somethingmore,or less,
than an accidentof historicalcontingency.Auerbach'sresearchopportu-
nitieswere 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 "displace-
ment"in Istanbuloffersa good exampleof the way in whichnot being "at
home,"or "inplace,"withrespectto a cultureand itspolicingauthority, can
enable, as wellas impede,literaryandculturalanalysis.15ButwhatforErich
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 Auer-
bach'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 updated-
slightly.
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'sprefatoryvolumeto the series, entitledTheGreatConver-
sation: 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
leads to another,amplifying,modifying,or contradicting it"(GB, xvi).The
GreatConversation,as Adlerand his boardconceivedit,at the timeof the
election of PresidentEisenhower,was, it is not surprisingto note, exclu-
sively consideredas takingplace betweenEuropeanand Americanmen,
men who were no longerlivingat the timetheywereenshrinedin the hard
covers of "greatness."The explicitpoliticsof the editionwas, nonetheless,
aggressivelydemocratic:No "scholarly apparatus" was includedin the set,
since the editorsbelievedthat"greatbookscontaintheirownaids to read-
ing;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).
The assumptionhere was one of enlightened"objectivity." Givena
handsomelyproduced,uniformly boundset of volumesvettedfor "great-
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 editorspro-
16. 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.
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 "appa-
ratus" 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 infor-
mation. FollowingStephen G. Nichols's invitation,in his essay on "the new
Philology,""17 to inquireinto the material nature of the text and its physical
and culturalmargins, I offer one or two briefobservations about them.
The firstpairof endpapers, inthe frontof each volume, lists the prod-
uct 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 pro-
paganda, 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:

Philologyin a Manuscript
Culture,"Speculum 65,
no. 1 (January1990): 1-10.
GREAT BOOKSOF 'ITE WEST'ERNIWORLD GREAT BOOKSOF TIlE
-•
.. I 2. LUCRETIUS 28. GILBERT

EPICTETUS GALILEO
S Introductory Volumes ---REIS
?•' hMARCUSAURELIEUS ,• IHARVEY
1. A Liberal Education S
. CERVANTES2
S29"CERVT
13. VIRGIL 29.
2. The Great Ideas I
,r" 14. PLUJTARCII ? 30. FRANCIS BACON
S3, The Great Ideas II 15. TACITUS
TACITUS 31. DESCARTES
16. PTOLEMY SPINOZA
4. HlOMlER COPERNICUS 32. MILTON
KEI'LER
"ELJ
5. AESCIIYLUIS S •33. PASCAL
SOPllOCIES 17. PIiOTINUS
EURIPIDES 34. NEWTON
URIIS 18. AUGUSTINE - 40 IIIJUYGENS
ARISTOPIIANES
6EOOU S 19. TilONMASAQUINAS I ; S 35. LOCKE
S 6. IIEROI)O'TUS
20. TIIOMAS AQUINAS II BERKELEY
TIIICYDID)ES -o IIUME
8149.
7. PLATO 21. DANTE ~36
SWI
8. ARISTOTL.E 1 22. CIIAUCER STERNE
.
9. ARIST'OTLE II 23. MACIIIAVELLI 37. FIELDING
10. IIIPPOCRATES
IlOBBES i
z
38. MONTESQUIEU
GALEN 24. RABELAIS ROUSSEAU
SI. EIUCLID 25. MONTAIGNE 39. ADAM SMTII

ARCIIIMEIRES
AOIUS 26. SIIAKESPEARE I 40o.GIBBON I
N
APOLL.ONIUS
NICOMACIIUS 27. SHiAKESI'EARE 1
II
8no8zhv
Figure 1. Opening endpapers to The Great Books of the Western Wo

listingthe productbeingsold therein
TIHE GREA T IDEAS, Volumes 2 and 3 THE GREA IDEAS
S. FAMILY
MNATT'ER
ANGEL FATE
MECHANICS
ANIMAL FORM
MEDICINE
v ARISTOCRACY GOD
MEMORY AND
ART GOOD AND EVIL A)
IMAGINATION
ASTRONOMY GOVERNMENT
METAPHIYSICS
BEAUTY HABIT
MINI)
BEING IIAPPINESS
MONARCIIY
CAUSE HISTORY
NATURE
CHANCE IIONORI
NECESSITY AN[)
CIIANGE EHYPOTHIESIS
CONTINGENCY
CITIZEN IDEA
OLIGARCIIY
CONSTITUTION IMMORTALITY
ONE AND MANY
COURAGE INDUCTION
OPINION
CUSTOM AND INFINITY
OPPOSITION
CONVENTION JUDI)GMENT SPI ILoOSOIPIIY
DEFINITION JUSTICE PIIYSICS
DEMOCRACY KNOWLEDGE
PLEASURE AND PAIN
DESIRE LABOR
IOETRY
DIALECTIC LANGUAGE
PRINCIPLE
DUTY LAW
, PROGRESS
EDUCATION LIBERTY tt PROPIIECY
ELEMENT LIFE AND DEATII
PRUDENCE
EMOTION LOGIC
PUNISIIMIENT
ETERNITY LOVE Ai
QIUALITY
EVOLUTION MAN
QUANTITY
EXPERIENCE MATHEMATICS
REASONINGC"'-
Figure 2. Closing endpapers to The Great Books of the Western W

listingthe GreatIdeas
to World.Notice that this list, which includes ideas likeCitizen, Constitution,

Courage, Democracy, and Education,also includes entries with a more dis-
quieting 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 runalphabeti-
cally 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 de-
constructive playfulness, the trope of chiasmus ("thepoliticsof mimesis and
the mimesis of politics"),is here quietlyemployed to anchor the ideology of
the series; the relationshipof Manto Love (not the relationshipof Matterto
Mathematics) willserve as a fulcrum,a microrelationmediatingthe macro-
relation 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 propa-
ganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democ-
racy. . . . 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 now-
according 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 transi-
18. E. B. White,Charlotte'sWeb (New York:HarperCollins,

1952). Allsubsequent refer-
ences to this text willbe abbreviatedCW.
tion fromthe Imaginaryto the Symbolic.The dyadic, prefallen,and preoedi-

pal 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 cul-
ture. 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 sign-
will 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,'" farmerZucker-
man 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 com-
pletely 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,'"
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 charac-
terization, 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
dessert,' " says Charlotte-but "Terrific" will do, even though Wilburpro-
tests that he's not terrific."'That doesn't make a particle of difference,'"
replies Charlotte,"'Not a particle.People believe almost anythingthey see
in print.Does anybody here know how to spell "terrific"?' " (CW,89).
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 "Pre-
Shrunk"(from a shirt label) are both discarded as inappropriateto a dis-
course of fame and transcendence. Crunchy, says Charlotte, is "'just the
wrong idea. Couldn'tbe worse.... We must advertise Wilbur'snoble quali-
ties, 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!'com-
manded 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)
In sequence, then, the web declares Wilburto be "Some Pig," "Ter-

rific,""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 im-
plies, 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. Char-
lotte, this uncanny precursor of the modern "spin-doctor,"the media ma-
nipulatorfor 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 cen-
turies 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 un-
weaving 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.)
19. Jacques Derrida,"Plato'sPharmacy," in Dissemination,trans.BarbaraJohnson (Chi-

cago: Universityof ChicagoPress, 1981), 63.
Recall the completely disregarded observation of Mrs. Zuckerman,

on hearing the news of the miraculousweb, that what they have is "noordi-
nary 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 Camp-
20. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology:The Metaethics of Radical Feminism(Boston: Beacon

Press, 1978), 396-99. Subsequentreferencesto this text willbe cited as Daly.
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 pro-
tection 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 Dar-
win 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 un-
canny and ambivalent power of magic in the web and of the spider in the
cup. In Genet's Balcony, the powerfulfantasmatic Queen, who never ap-
pears, 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. Wilbur-
TERRIFIC,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:Bol-

lingen, 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."
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 genera-
tion-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."22Per-
haps 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 coun-
try 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 empha-
sis).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,
To us this is no longer a surprise. The use of advertising in political

campaigns is, by now, commonplace; the Boston Globe, for example, cur-
rently 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 politicalcam-
paigns, 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 pub-
lic "the marketing of political candidates as if they were consumer prod-
ucts, ... 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 consider-
able; 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 abbrevi-
ated SP.
25. MichaelRogin,RonaldReagan, the Movie,and OtherEpisodes in PoliticalDemon-
ology (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1987).
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 ad-
mittedlyhe has not been at his best) are far less than the chances
of making him loved and making him glamourous via saturationex-
posure 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 "home-
owner."This, too, I think, is partof the contemporaryrhetoricof nostalgia.)
"It'snot what's there that counts, it's what's projected,"wrote Ray-
mond 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 politi-
cal 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-be-
come 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).
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 hap-
pened 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 cul-
ture, 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.
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 cau-
tious 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 im-
portant to their daily lives. Her position involves both working with other
activists to advance those issues outside of Sinn Fein and formulatingpoli-
cies and developing educational programs that address those concerns
withinthe party.Sinn Fein is a legally recognized politicalparty,which oper-
ates 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 thirty-
two 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 par-
boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright? 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC 0190-3659/92/$1.50.

Lyons/ An Interview
withMaireadKeane 261
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 be-
tween 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 pro-
cess 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 organiza-
tions, and representatives from other nationalliberationstruggles.' In Irish-
English, "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 intersectionbe-
tween 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.
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 interest-
ing 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 ver-
bally supportive of the struggle in the six counties, but at that time my sup-
portwould not have gone beyond that, because in Ireland,as in other coun-
tries, 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
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 politi-
cized 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 coun-
ties, 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 Dub-
lin, 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.
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 traditionalRepubli-
can 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 dis-
cuss 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 politi-
cal activists, and there was a need to have an organized politicalvoice within
3. Actionsagainstthose who workforSinn Feinoftengo beyondharassment.On 5 Feb-

ruary1992, an off-dutyofficerof the RoyalUlsterConstabularyshot to deaththree people
and woundedtwo others in Sinn Fein'sBelfastoffice.The officercommittedsuicide after
claimingresponsibilityforthe deaths.
Lyons/ AnInterview
withMairead
Keane 265
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 sup-
port.Withthe developmentof the department, therewas a need to have a
policy,andthatwas passed at the partyconferenceas the Women'sPolicy
Document,whichincorporated all of those issues withina three-or four-
page document and had an introduction thatanalyzedthe factthatwomen
wereinvolvedinthe nationalliberation struggleandthatthe issue, forthem,
was nationalliberation.Inthatintroduction, we explainthatpartitionaffects
women on bothsides of the border,thatpartitionaffectswomen'shealth,
childcare,employment,and reproductive rights.
LL:Howhas the Women'sDepartment evolvedfromthattimeuntilnow,in
termsof overallleadershipin the party?Havethere been any particularly
difficultmomentsin its development?
MK:Initially,all that rushof energyin womencomingtogether-lobbying
forthe departmentand passing policy-was exciting.Insome sense, the
departmenthas been seen as an elite groupof womenwho are concen-
tratedin 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-to-
choose motionputforwardin 1986 or 1987 by Sinn Fein in Derry.Itwas
passed, butit led to problemsforus politically,
because we are nota major
party-we are not inthe mainstream, andwe can'tadvancethe issue even
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 posi-
tion 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 ex-
ecutive, 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
to discuss issues like abortionwithinthe party,so that we would advance
issues internallybefore we would get to an Ard Fheis, the annual party
conference. Another decision was that we would actively-at the grass-
roots level and at the national level-promote women into leadership posi-
tions. We certainly have done that to the full extent at the national level.
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 actu-
ally 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 De-
partment 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 orga-
nized 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.
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 De-

partment. 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 cul-
tural 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 con-
ference, 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 pre-
ceded 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.
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 pri-
macy 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 Proc-
lamation 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 move-
ment 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 Irish-
man and Irishwoman.The Republicguaranteesreligiousandcivilliberty,equalrightsand
equal opportunitiesto all its citizens"(quotedin PadraigPearse, TheBest of Pearse, ed.
ProinsiasMacAonghusaand LiamO'Reagain[Cork,Ireland:Mercier,1967], 188).
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 Repub-
licans, 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 opposi-
tion."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 differ-
ences 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 in-
fluence of the British,the other as neo-colony in the twenty-six counties.
British involvement in Irelandand partitionhave social, economic, politi-
cal, and militarydimensions. Obviously, in the area of occupied Ireland-
the 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 harass-
ment, politicalprisoners, raidson houses, plastic bullets, and a shoot-to-kill
policy, among other things. But it's also about the social and economic con-
ditions 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.
Lyons/ AnInterview
withMairead
Keane 271
British,is relianton multinationals,

and has an economythatis inthe inter-
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
institutions, education,stayed with in
the church a waythatwas repres-
sive forwomen,andithas been difficult to advancewomen'sissues. Onthe
otherside of the border,you havethe influenceof Protestantfundamental-
ismandthe 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.
LL:Whatis the relationshipbetweenmainstream feminismandthe Repub-
lican movementtoday?Whateffects have the agendas of feminismand
Republicanism hadon one another?I'mthinking,also, of the way in which
Nell McCafferty has asserted that it has, so far,provedeasier to get Re-
publicansto 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
theminfulfillingtheir
8. In additionto legally forbiddingdivorce,Article41 of the 1937 IrishConstitutionar-

ticulatesthe 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).
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 ex-
periences. 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 con-
sciousness-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 in-
stead 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 politi-
cization 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-determina-
tion 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 imprison-
ment 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 politi-
cal prisoners turned their bodies against the prison authorityby refusing to
wash and by smearing their bodilyissues on the walls; and second, the on-
going 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 treat-
ment 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 Mai-
read 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 defi-
nitely 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 op-
pression 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 psycho-
9. Over four thousand strip searches of Republicanwomen have been carriedout in

Armagh,Maghaberry, and Britishprisons.Whileon remandin the all-maleBrixtonPrison
in Englandfrom 1 July 1985 to 30 September1986, EllaO'Dwyerand MartinaAnder-
son, Republicanprisoners,were each strip-searchedfourhundredtimes (see McAuley,
Womenin a WarZone, 75).
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 be-
cause of a campaign both inside and outside the jails on the issue. The strip-
searching 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 threat-
ening 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 sanc-
tioned, 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 pris-
oners?
MK: Well, there is the whole issue of keeping remand prisoners sepa-
rate 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 some-
times months before prisoners get letters or our newsletter. Ifwe don't get
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 strip-
searching appear to be occasions for a rapprochementbetween women in
the Republican movement and feminists. Inresponse to both of these situa-
tions, 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 Republi-
can 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 shoot-
to-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
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 parti-
tion?
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 any-
thing 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 ideologi-
cal domain, . .. no politicalmovement in that society can become popular
without negotiating the religious terrain.You can't create a popular move-
ment in such social formations withoutgetting into the religious question,
because it is the arena in which this communityhas come to a certain con-
sciousness."10 Would you agree with Hall's assessment on the necessity
interviewwith LawrenceGross-
10. Stuart Hall, "OnPostmodernismand Articulation,"
berg, Journalof Communications 10,
Inquiry no. 2 (Summer 1986):54.
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 sexu-
ality 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 be-
come 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
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 experi-
ences. 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 occa-
sionally 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 dif-
ferent issues. They have a lot of discussions on feminism and women's
oppression, and they actively contributearticles on these issues forour pub-
lications. 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
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 threat-
ened. 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 coun-
tries, 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 coun-
ties 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.
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 com-
bine 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 estab-
lishing 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-
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 typi-
cal 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 "retake"
the border and to "redefine"it.
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 legisla-
tion 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.
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 bor-
ders impose. Is there a special exception in the EECobjectives for Northern
Irelandin orderto maintainthat border?There is a move to issue EEC pass-
ports, 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 op-
portunities 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 Ameri-
can 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,
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 occu-
pation-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 inter-
ested people that goes to Irelandevery year. I thinkit's importantfor activ-
ists, 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 informa-
tion 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 pre-
pared 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 publicmurals-
murals supporting Sinn Fein and the IRA,as well as murals done in soli-
daritywith 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 power-
fullythe 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 representa-
tions. 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
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, soli-
darity 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 commu-
nities here, and people doing solidaritywork here, are more informed-
they 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 infor-
mation 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 abuses-
the 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
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 Ire-
land, 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 dis-
engage 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, in-
cluding 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 Fran-
cisco, 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.
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 Britishunconditionally-
we'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."
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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, Fayette-
ville. 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 Inter-
disciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts.
Margaret Ferguson is professor of English and comparative literatureat the Uni-
versity of Colorado, Boulder. She is currentlyfinishing a book entitled Partial Ac-
cess: Female Literacyand LiteraryProductionin EarlyModernEnglandand France
(Routledge, forthcoming). She is the author of Trialsof Desire: Renaissance De-
fenses 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 Shake-
speare and, most recently, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and CulturalAnxiety,
a literaryand culturalstudy of transvestism.
296 boundary 2 / Summer 1992
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 Deten-
tion, 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 Vic-
torian 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 Re-
spect: 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, Victorianfic-
tion, and AfricanAmerican literature.Her book on spiritualmaterialismand desire
between women is forthcomingfromStanfordUniversityPress.
Contributors 297
Jennifer Wicke is associate professor of comparative literatureat New York Uni-

versity. She is the author of Advertising Fictions: Literature,Advertisement, and
Social Reading (1988) and writes on film, Freud, postmodernity,and modern litera-
ture and culture. Herbook on the politicsof feministtheory is forthcomingfromBasil
Blackwell;her currentprojectis a study of consumptionand gender.
1992 AnnualMeetingof the
Call AmericanStudiesAssociation
for TheBostonParkPlaza,Boston,
Massachusetts,4-7 November,1993
Papers
sessionsThe1993convention
Weencourage willbe'Cultural
Transformations/
thatemphasizeCountering
ofchange:
processes Traditions.'The ProgramCommittee
survival,
encourages sessions that emphasizeprocessesof
andwelcomes
westering, change, proposalsthatanalyzetheways
emerging,
meeting,inwhichsuchprocessesbecometraditions countering
imonfaic
migraion,traditions. Sessionswhich make useofBoston'scultural,
parting,
immigration,
collaboraon,political,literary,historical,
and socialofferingsare
nsurgency especially
interaction, encouraged,
as arecomparatist
proposals,
removalespeciallyinterhemispheric
exchange, topicsandproposals that
gathering,compare
invasion, cultural
transformations
intheU.S.withsimilar/
progress, different
schism, traditions
elsewhere.
growth,
incorporation,
whichchallenge
conversion,Proposals the conventionsof an
academic
assimilation, sessionsatwhichatopicis
session,including
addressed
resistance, fromradically
diverse orhistorical
disciplinary
as well as
canonization,perspectives and
pedagogically-oriented
fads, performance-orientedproposals, multi-media
decanonization,
trends,
schools, and/orsessionsthat solicitaudience
cycles, presentations,
movements, areencouraged.
etcetera. involvement Wewelcome proposals
topicsinclude for individual
Possible papersas wellas for fullpanelsand
Native
American tribal workshops.
interactions,
survivads,
religious Proposalsshouldinclude(1) a coversheet,(2) short
traditions,
frontiers,
celebrations,
(250wordmax.)abstractsof individual and(3)
papers,
and thefull
newdharmonies nameandaffiliation
ofallparticipants.
Workshop
discords,
filmcnge, proposals
shouldsuggesttheissuesto bediscussed
cultural
change, and indicatethe proposedformat. Proposalsfor
landscapes,
changing
enwronmenta performance-oriented sessions mightincludeeither
interfaces, tapes,videos,orotherdocumentation
transporta- (including
reviews
culturesofof past performances),while those proposing
#on,
sessionsshouldindicate
utopian/experimental
information, howtheaudience
communi-
dystoplan mightbeintegrated intotheevent.
offood,
ties,cultures
thebody, Proposals
shaping bynolaterthanJanuary
shouldbesubmitted
art, 15, 1993,to:ASAProgram
transforming Committee, c/o American
literatures 2101SouthCampus
ofchange,StudiesAssociation, SurgeBuilding,
archives
and University CollegePark,MD20742.
of Maryland,
preservation,
and
sexualities maybe directedto: Thadious
socialdInquiries Davis,1993
change, Committee
& Program
pedagogy Chair, of English,
c/o Department
cultural BrownUniversity,
transformation. RI02912.
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f 6*

Photocopying Copyright? 1992 by DukeUniversity

Feminism and Postmodernism

Volume 19, Number2

Duke University Press

Founding Editor WilliamV. Spanos

Editor Paul A. Bove

Review Editor Daniel O'Hara

Managing Editor MargaretH. Sachse

Jennifer Wicke and MargaretFerguson / Introduction:

MaryPoovey / Feminism and Postmodernism-Another View / 34

TorilMoi/ Ambiguityand Alienationin The Second Sex / 96

KathrynBond Stockton / Bodies and God: PoststructuralistFeminists

MarjorieGarber/ "Greatness":Philologyand the Politics

It may seem odd to echo Trollope in the introductionto a collec-

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

celebrated unquestioningly;if it trulyis a rubriccovering the conditions of

material, social, economic, and culturallife.' This designation may be one

1. The geographerDavidHarvey'scomprehensivesocioeconomicand culturaltreatment

other, putting each term under the pressure of a conjunctionacross disci-

collection,"Postmodernism's in The Women'sReview of Books 8, no. 4

in the instance of the sale of wisdom as a culturalcommodity in the Great

fraught dimensions of feminist and postmodern politics. The primaryissue

labor and its internationalscope. Camille Paglia is an admittedthorn in the

not a disparagement of feminist theory as "Western"or taintedly capital-

6. This is arguedmorefullyby JenniferWickein "Postmodernism: The Perfumeof Infor-

Postmodernism has an alchemical sheen, the abilityto conjoin with

boundary 2 19:2, 1992. Copyright2c 1992 by Duke UniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/92/$1.50.

the (female)subjectof and underthe law,Iwillbe mappinga tensionthat

1. This essay is dedicatedto the late MaryJo Frug,for her pioneeringeffortstowarda

self-identity,referentialidentity,or the singularidentityof the subject.This

2. JudithButler,Gender Trouble(New York:Routledge,1990), 5.

fromHegel to Marxto Nietzscheto Derridato de Beauvoirhave pointed

"thelogicof the cultureof late capitalism." Jamesongets at postmodernity

tionto livein a timeless nowratherthanthe centering,fulltimeof meaning

unfoldedwithJamesonianmelancholiainthe nexusbetweenthe mediaand

referenceto the teleologicalor progressivescenariosof the past is doomed

age, identityhas come to be a more and more pressingconcernwithin

6. MichelFoucault'slateressays and interviewsturnon these questions;"TheSubject

The Lyotardianversion of postmodernism tunnels into this aspect

7. RobertoMangabeiraUnger'sTheCriticalLegal Studies Movementis the best source

likethat of NativeAmericandemandsforthe upholdingof treatiespredi-

text (Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1983). Essays that tacklethe movementon

or at least poststructuralist,consensus thatquestionsidentityat large as

8. Quotationsare frompp. 191 and 193 of ErnestoLaclauandChantalMouffe,Hegemony

postmodern in practice involves such contradictions,the relation between

script as conversation on the subway, newspaper editorial,family dinner

sponsible for the legal language invokingsexual harassment as a specific

10. I have iton verygood authorityfroman auditorthatat a spring1992 series of lectures

Hillthus becomingindistinguishable froma womandepictedin a porno-

vealing how much a transmogrifiedsocial terrainof postmodernityaffects

was how Anita Hill'sstory played on the female-dominatedtalk shows-by

white national audience, since her harassment occasioned no indignation

11. Denise Riley,"AmI ThatName?"Feminismand the Categoryof 'Women'in History

ber. As an initialstarting place, some invocationof identitywillinevitablybe

12. Patterson'sessay is reprintedin Reconstruction1, no. 4 (1992):64-77, and is fol-

take one variable-be it genderor race or, in a veryfarfetchedlink,class:

13. See CraigOwens, "TheDiscourseof Others,"in TheAnti-Aesthetic,ed. Hal Foster

in the publicarenaof image,protest,the womanon trial.Itis fashionable