Feminist Studies/Critical Studies

239 Pages·1986·25.52 MB·Language, Discourse, Society

by  Teresa de Lauretis (eds.)

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
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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