A Dialogue of voices : feminist literary theory and Bakhtin PDF
Preview A Dialogue of voices : feminist literary theory and Bakhtin
A Dialogue of Voices This page intentionally left blank Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow, editors A Dialogue of Voices Feminist Literary Theory and Bakhtin University of Minnesota Press • Minneapolis • London Copyright 1994 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55455-3092 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Dialogue of voices : feminist literary theory and Bakhtin / edited by Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-2295-7 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-8166-2296-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Feminist literary criticism. 2. Bakhtin, M. M. (Mikhail Mikhailovich), 1895-1975—Criticism and interpretation. I. Hohne, Karen Ann. II. Wussow, Helen. PN98.W64D49 1994 801'.95-dc20 93-8711 CIP The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. Contents Introduction Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow vii "The Locus for the Other": Cixous, Bakhtin, and Women's Writing Lisa Gasbarrone 1 The Historical Poetics of Excrement: Yeats's Crazy Jane and the Irish Bishops Elizabeth Butler Cullingford 20 ideological becoming: mikhail bakhtin, feminine écriture, and julia kristeva Virginia I. purvis-smith 42 Voicing Another Nature Patrick D. Murphy 59 Monstrous Dialogues: Erotic Discourse and the Dialogic Constitution of the Subject in Frankenstein Siobhan Craig 83 Desire and Temptation: Dialogism and the Carnivalesque in Category Romances Eleanor Ty 97 Is Bakhtin a Feminist or Just Another Dead White Male? A Celebration of Possibilities in Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman Denise Heikinen 114 The Ideological Intervention of Ambiguities in the Marriage Plot: Who Fails Marianne in Austen's Sense and Sensibility'? Julie A. Schaff 12 V vi Contents The Chronotope of the Asylum: Jane Eyre, Feminism, and Bakhtinian Theory Suzanne Rosenthal Shumway 152 On veult responce avoir: Pernette du Guillet's Dialogic Poetics Karen Simroth James 171 Contributors 199 Index 201 Introduction Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow A verbal-ideological decentering will occur only when a national culture loses its sealed-off and self-sufficient character, when it becomes conscious of itself as only one among other cultures and languages . . . there will arise an acute feeling for language boundaries (social, national and semantic), and only then will language reveal its essential human character; from behind its words, forms, styles, nationally characteristic and socially typical faces begin to emerge, the images of speaking human beings. . . . Language (or more precisely, languages) will itself become an artistically complete image of a characteristic human way of sensing and seeing the world.1 In this hope we are as optimistic as Bakhtin. A period of interchange, of dialogue between many voices and many forms of criticism, is approach- ing or, some would argue, has already arrived. This development may be the predecessor to the period Bakhtin describes above, a state of "decen- tering" in which a number of voices, "social, national, semantic," and gendered (we would emphasize), will speak simultaneously. One of the ways this state of affairs is moving toward a reality is through the grow- ing dialogue between Bakhtin's writings and the various points of view that fall under the rubric of "feminist." Such a dialogue does, of course, have its problems. In any verbal in- terchange, one may speak with the other's words, but such an appropri- ation is fraught with dangers. Bakhtin himself was aware of the difficul- ties inherent in appropriating the voices (and thus views) of an/other and vii viii Introduction the additional problems of having one's own voice appropriated for an end one finds abhorrent.2 Several feminist critics point to the dangers of taking on the voice or the theory of any male critic, including Bakhtin; they argue that in doing so feminist critics risk finding their own voices drowned out by patriarchal theories and languages developed by men to write about literature written by men. But as Bakhtin would argue, all languages are influenced by one another. There cannot be a 100 percent pure feminist criticism, just as there is no unalloyed Bakhtinian reading of literature. The importance is the simultaneous reaction, a lively dialogue between the heteroglossic languages of Bakhtin and feminist theory. The argument that Bakhtin is not useful for (or perhaps should not be used for) solving problems raised by feminist analysis of cultural texts on account of (1) his being male and/or (2) the absence of a treatment of gender in his philosophy does not seem valid. To reject him on the basis of his gender not only is to act as if gender determines all that one is (other aspects of oneself are excluded or irrelevant) but also is to decide that ex- perience is pure —purely masculine or purely feminine —and thus mono- logic, closed, dead, a question of static being instead of a process, a be- coming, a movement Bakhtin himself would insist on. Rejecting him because he does not treat gender as a determining factor in language/ ideology would be like rejecting any and all literature written by straight white men. There are indeed literatures written by that group that are well worthy of rejection, and these are characterized by their refusal to have truck with any other viewpoints or voices except as objects. But Ba- khtin is accessible and valuable to feminism not only in terms of his phi- losophy, which is specifically directed at celebrating, highlighting, bring- ing to the fore the vitalizing force of dialogism —that is, the incorporation and interweaving of various voices to create a sum far greater and more generative than the parts —but even in terms of his form. Certainly Ba- khtin has never been criticized for being too linear; in fact, many have bemoaned his lack of order. Even in his language his rule-breaking word inventions give voice to his essentially otherly philosophy. In short, al- though he nowhere openly discusses gendrified language, he certainly ex- emplifies it. The only real danger in using Bakhtin's philosophy is the one we encounter when using any philosophies (including those of femi- nism) —we can fall into dogmatism. The error of dogmatism is not, how- ever, one we will learn from Bakhtin, but one we might bring to him, and this ought to remind us just how much control we the readers have over what the text ends up being/saying. As both Josephine Donovan and Michael Holquist have argued, Ba- khtin is more than just a simple pluralist.3 Bakhtin argues that not all lan- guages bear hearing; rather, all the languages, concepts, ways of being in Introduction ix an utterance must be sorted and identified. A dialogic is formed by the different meanings within and between utterances. Thus, the bringing to- gether of different theories of feminist criticism and the various emphases on those parts of a whole called "Bakhtin" result in a type of dialogism. Perhaps a more pertinent question than whether Bakhtin is, as a male thinker, worth using is whether Bakhtin's philosophy has anything to contribute to feminism. Could his philosophy elucidate problems raised by/in feminism? More interesting than a flat rejection of Bakhtin because of his gender or because he did not speak on gender are the possibilities that his concepts, such as heteroglossia and dialogism, hold for feminist writers. The question of what feminine écriture is/should be and whether it is even necessary is one that Bakhtin serves well to address. But what would be a "feminist dialogics"? Patricia Yaeger, Dale M. Bauer, and Susan Jaret McKinstry state that a feminist dialogics would emphasize gender,4 a topic that many feminist critics of Bakhtin under- score that he has left unexplored. For both Bauer and Ann Herrmann, a feminist dialogics would disrupt patriarchal hierarchy.5 Bauer claims that the "female voice" disrupts the "surveillant" male gaze.6 Here, as in many feminist criticisms, the female voice is referred to but is not defined. Is the female voice simply the voice of a female author or character? And what is this emphasis on singularity, on unity, on voice rather than voices? If we agree with Bakhtin that, given the heteroglossia of dialogism, each voice, whatever its gender(s), will contain the voices of others, then the singularity of the female voice is at best an illusion, at worst a silencing of the many experiences and contexts about which and within which women have spoken through the ages. An example of the heteroglossic nature of the feminine or "etherized" voice is discussed in Siobhan Craig's essay in this volume, "Monstrous Dialogues: Erotic Discourse and the Dialogic Constitution of the Subject in Frankenstein"; she points out that Frankenstein's creature speaks with the voice of patriarchal authority, although he is denied any power by his creator and by society and is forced to the margins of his world. The crea- ture speaks against his oppressors but appropriates their speech. While Frankenstein sees him as the enemy, the creature perceives Frankenstein as his oppressor. If we regard the creature as representing the other, the feminized voice in the novel, is it empowering to define this feminized voice as a simple opposition to the voice of power and authority? If the "female voice" or female writing, feminine écriture, is defined as being the opposite of the masculinist products of a patriarchal culture, then we end up only validating masculinism. There is the problem of the word to which feminine ecriture is reacting or opposing itself—call it masculinist, authoritative, monologic, phall-
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