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Feminist Studies/Critical Studies PDF

239 Pages·1986·25.52 MB·Language, Discourse, Society
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LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY General Editors: Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley published titles Norman Bryson VISION AND PAINTING: The Logic of the Gaze Teresa de Lauretis ALICE DOESN'T: Feminism, Semiotics and Cinema FEMINIST STUDIES/ CRITICAL STUDIES (editOtj Alan Durant CONDITIONS OF MUSIC jane Gallop FEMINISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: The Daughter's Seduction Peter Gidal UNDERSTANDING BECKETT: A Study of Monologue and Gesture in the Works of Samuel Beckett Peter Goodrich LEGAL DISCOURSE: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal Analysis Paul Hirst ON LAW AND IDEOLOGY Andreas Huyssen AFTER THE GREAT DIVIDE: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism Nigel Leask THE POLITICS OF IMAGINATION IN COLERIDGE'S CRITICAL THOUGHT Michael Lynn-George EPOS: WORD, NARRATIVE AND THE ILIAD Colin MacCabe JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD THE TALKING CURE: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language (editor) Christian Metz PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: The Imaginary Signifier jeffrey Minson GENEALOGIES OF MORALS: Nietzsche, Foucault, Donzelot and the Eccentricity of Ethics Michel Pecheux LANGUAGE, SEMANTICS AND IDEOLOGY jean-Michel Rabate LANGUAGE, SEXUALITY AND IDEOLOGY IN EZRA POUND'S CANTOS jacqueline Rose THE CASE OF PETER PAN OR THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CHILDREN'S FICTION Brian Rotman SIGNIFYING NOTHING: The Semiotics of Zero Raymond Tallis NOT SAUSSURE: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory David Trotter CIRCULATION: Defoe, Dickens and the Economies of the Novel THE MAKING OF THE READER: Language and Subjectivity in Modern American, English and Irish Poetry forthcoming titles Lesley Caldwell ITALIAN WOMEN BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE Elizabeth Cowie TO REPRESENT WOMAN: The Representation of Sexual Difference in the Visual Media james Donald THE QUESTION OF EDUCATION: Essays on Schooling and English Culture, 1790-1987 Alan Durant SOUNDTRACK AND TALKBACK Piers Gray MODERNISM AND THE MODERN Stephen Heath THREE ESSAYS ON SUBJECTIVITY ian Hunter AFTER REPRESENTATION: The Relation between Language and Literature ian Hunter, David Saunders and Dugald Williamson ON PORNOGRAPHY Rod Mengham CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POETICS jean-Claude Milner FOR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE jeffrey Minson GENESIS AND AUTHORSHIP Laura Mulvey COLLECTED WRITINGS Denise Riley 'AM I THAT NAME?' Michael Ryan POLITICS AND CULTURE james A. Snead and Cornel West SEEING BLACK: A Semiotics of Black Culture in America Peter Womack IMPROVEMENT AND ROMANCE: The Scottish Highlands in British Writing after the Forty-Five Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ud, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG212XS, England. FEMINIST STUDIES/CRITICAL STUDIES Edited by Teresa de Lauretis Professor of the History of Consciousness University of California, Santa Cruz M MACMILLAN PRESS ©The Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 1986 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1 E 7A E. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in the USA by Indiana University Press 1986 First published in the UK by Macmillan 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Feminist studies, critical studies. 1. Feminism 2. Feminism-Congresses 3. Criticism (Philosophy)-Congresses I. De Lauretis, Teresa 305.4'2 HQ1154 ISBN 978-0-333-45537-1 ISBN 978-1-349-18997-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18997-7 CONTENTS Preface vi 1. Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms, 1. and Contexts by Teresa de Lauretis 2. What's New in Women's History 20 by Linda Gordon 3. Writing History: Language, Class, and Gender 31 by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg 4. Lab Coat: Robe of Innocence or Klansman's Sheet? 55 by Ruth Bleier 5. Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature's Secrets 67 by Evelyn Fox Keller 6. A Desire of One's Own: Psychoanalytic Feminism 78 and lntersubjective Space by jessica Benjamin 7. Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing, and the Reader 102 by Nancy K. Miller 8. Feminism and the Power of Interpretation: 121 Some Critical Readings by Tania ModJeski 9. Inhibiting Midwives, Usurping Creators: The Struggling 139 Emergence of Black Women in American Fiction by Sondra O'Nea/e 10. Considering Feminism as a Model for Social Change 157 by Sheila Radford-Hill 11. From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism 173 by Cherrie Moraga 12. Feminist Politics: What's Home Got to Do with It? 191 by Biddy Martin and Chandra Talpade Mohanty 13. Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory 213 by Mary Russo Notes on Contributors 230 PREFACE The Center for Twentieth Century Studies at the University of Wis consin-Milwaukee is a crossdisciplinary research institute devoted to the study of contemporary culture from the point of view of the hu manities and with an emphasis on critical theory. Theories of Con temporary Culture, the Center's book series with Indiana University Press, represents the Center's commitment to crossdisciplinary, col lective research in contemporary cultural studies. Subjects of Center books that have already appeared over the past ten years include performance in postmodern culture, technology and culture, aging and psychoanalysis, mass culture, and deconstruction and displace ment, among others. Research is planned in television/video studies and social theory. I am pleased to announce that in the future Theories of Contemporary Culture will also include single-authored collections of essays. This volume, Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, the eighth in the series, had its beginnings in a conference of the University of Wis consin-Milwaukee conceived and organized by Teresa de Lauretis and held at the Center in April 1985. To my former colleague, whose presence I very much miss at the Center, I owe my warmest thanks. I would also like to thank Dean William F. Halloran of the College of Letters and Science and Dean George Keulks of The Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for their ongoing support of the work of the Center, which has flourished under their admin istrations. Most importantly, Teresa de Lauretis and I would like to thank all those at the Center without whom this book would not have assumed tangible form. To Jean Lile and Carol Tennessen, to Shirley Reinhold, Jon Erickson, Laura Roskos, Ed Scheib, and Debra Vest, we extend our affection and gratitude. Kathleen Woodward Director, Center for Twentieth Century Studies General Editor, Theories of Contemporary Culture FEMINIST STUDIES CRITICAL STUDIES 0 N E Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms, and Contexts Teresa de Lauretis "It is by now clear that a feminist renaissance is under way ... a shift in perspective far more extraordinary and influential than the shift from theology to humanism of the European Renaissance."1 Like fem inism itself, these words of Adrienne Rich, written in 1973, bear reev aluation; not so much, perhaps, to discuss the validity of their as sessment or the extensiveness of its claim as to examine the manner of the shift, to analyze, articulate, address the terms of this other perspective. For just such a purpose was a conference held, in April 1985, at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies of the University of Wis consin-Milwaukee on the topic "Feminist Studies: Reconstituting Knowledge." This volume may be read as one record of that confer ence, or better, as one text of many that could have been written or heard from it.* The conference focused on feminist work in the fields of history, science, literary writing, criticism, and theory, with the re lation of feminist politics to critical studies (and thus also to each and all of these disciplinary areas) as its general and overarching concern. Its project was outlined in a letter to participants, as follows: The intellectual presence of feminist studies has been felt in the acad emy for well over a decade. The work of feminist scholars in literary and social criticism, theory, and history has significantly altered the configuration of critical studies in this country. But while the results of feminist scholarship-ranging from the (re)discovery of forgotten writ- *All the contributions to this volume are revised and/or expanded versions of papers presented at the conference, with the exception of the essays by Modleski, Moraga, and Martin and Mohanty. These contributors, however, were also invited to participate, and, but for Moraga, who was unable to attend due to prior commitments, did take part in the conference. I wish to thank Elaine Marks, who generously and graciously shared with me the task of opening and directing the three-day conference. 2 FEMINIST STUDIES/CRITICAL STUDIES ers, artists, and cultural figures to the revision of the canon and the "rewriting" of history-are acknowledged as an important achievement, there are a general uncertainty and, among feminists, serious differences as to what the specific concerns, values and methods of feminist critical work are, or ought to be. If it is true, as many claim, that feminist studies have proposed new ways of thinking about culture, language, morality, or knowledge itself, then it is timely and necessary to arrive at a more precise understanding of the epistemological framework and critical foundations of feminist studies. Or if it is true, as some feminist critics maintain, that feminist theory has reached an impasse, notably on the issue of essentialism (the idea of an innate femininity, an essential nature of woman, whether biologically or philosophically defined); or if it is true that feminist thought is stalemated in the debate concerning culturalism vs. biologism, then it is vital that we look around the room and ask: are there any new faces, any different perspectives, any possibilities of theoretical break through? At a time when the women's movement is being both integrated and quietly suffocated within the institutions, when the feminist critique is partially accommodated within some academic disciplines and emar ginated otherwise, when feminism is nudged into the pockets of the economy with one hand, and of the intelligentsia with the other, it seems important and even crucial to assess the intellectual and political role of feminist studies in the production, reproduction and transfor mation of social discourses and knowledges. Focusing mainly on three areas-social history, literary criticism and cultural theory-speakers will seek to identify the specificity of feminism as a critical theory, its methods, goals and analytic framework(s), its epistemological and ideological foundations. The approach will be speculative and theoretical, rather than empirical or quantitative. Par ticipants will include leading scholars both within and outside feminist studies, younger scholars whose training was influenced by Women's Studies programs, and scholars who are also active in professional fields such as publishing, psychotherapy, and community work. The sessions will consist of papers and responses, in the manner of a dialogue, deal ing with areas of study where the feminist discourse has articulated specific issues, themes or questions: papers will survey those areas of research and outline critical concepts, problems and directions; re sponses will focus on one or two aspects of those areas, giving a sharper, if narrower, critical view of the issues involved and sketching out further directions for analysis. The panels will address areas and problems not yet sufficiently articulated within feminist theory, questions that arise at the boundaries of feminism and other critical practices or mark the limits of current feminist thought. The project of the conference was conceived in the awareness of the very differences, contradictions, even impasses that-precisely made it necessary, that made such a meeting crucial, as well as timely. One of those contradictions was purposely inscribed in the title of

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