Getting personal : feminist occasions and other autobiographical acts

185 Pages·2013·7.262 MB·English

by  Nancy K. Miller

GETTING
PERSONAL
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GETTING
PERSONAL
FEMINIST
OCCASIONS
AND
OTHER
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACTS
NANCY K. MILLER
~l Routledge
Jii \. Taylor & Francis Group
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published in 1991 by Routledge
This edition published 2013 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an iiiforma business
Copyright© 1991 by Nancy K. Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrei
val system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Miller, Nancy K.
Getting personal : feminist occasions and other
autobiographical acts I Nancy K. Miller.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-415-9032.3-8 (HB).-ISBN o-415-9032.4-6 (PB)
1. Feminist literary criticism. 2.. Feminism and literature.
3· Women and literature. 4· Autobiography. I. Title.
PN98.W64M55 1991
8o1'.95'o82.-dc2.o 91-7404
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data also available.
In Memoriam
LK
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Contents
Preface Feminist Confessions: The Last Degrees Are the
Hardest IX
Acknowledgments XIX
I. Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism I
2. Untitled Work, Or, Speaking as a Feminist ... 31
3· A Feminist Teacher in the Graduate Classroom 38
I: Mastery, Identity, and the Politics of Work
II: Teaching the Two Georges
4· The French Mistake 48
5· Parables and Politics: Feminist Criticism in 1986 56
6. Dreaming, Dancing, and the Changing Locations of
Feminist Criticism, 1988 72
I: Whose Dream?
II: Personal Histories, Autobiographical Locations
Philoctetes' Sister: Feminist Literary Criticism
7·
and the New Misogyny IOI
Coda: Island Fantasia
8. Teaching Autobiography I2I
Coda: Loehmann's, Or, Shopping with My Mother
9· My Father's Penis 143
Works Cited 149
Index 159
Vll
... and Occasions
(Chapters r-8 variously originated in talks and lectures. I
gratefully acknowledge here these occasions.-NKM)
1. "What Is an Author?" Interdisciplinary Seminar, Cambridge Uni
versity, England (1990)
2. "The Scholar and the Feminist V: Creating Feminist Works,"
Conference, Barnard College Women's Center, New York, New
York (1978)
3· "Feminist Pedagogy: Positions and Points of View," MLA, Hous
ton, Texas (1980). "Reading the Two Georges: Sand, Eliot, and
the Making of Feminist Canons," MLA, New Orleans, Louisiana
(1988)
4· "Fran~ais impeccable: Memoirs of a Near Native Speaker," MLA,
New Orleans, Louisiana (r988)
5. "Do Women's Studies Make a Difference?" Roundtable, Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut (1986)
6. "Feminism and the Dream of a Plural Culture," Conference,
Queens College, New York (1988). Colloquium, The School of
Criticism and Theory, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hamp
shire (1988)
7· "Conference on Narrative Literature," University of Wisconsin,
Madison, Wisconsin (1989). "Double Trouble: The Subject in
Feminism," Conference, University of Utrecht, Holland (1990)
8. "The Subject of Autobiography," Conference, University of South
ern Maine, Portland, Maine (1989)
Vlll
Preface
Feminist Confessions:
The Last Degrees Are the Hardest
In a reading group I belonged to in the mid-eighties, we talked on
and off about the liabilities that attached to the transfer of the adjective
"feminist" from a political movement to a critical label. One of the
women in the group objected hotly to receiving professional invitations
to speak "as a feminist" at conferences and campuses. She wanted,
she said, to be invited for herself, as "a critic"-minus any label or
constituency; and mimed the dismay of the generic departmental host,
who finding himself saddled with the feminist speaker imported to his
campus for the occasion, attempts to naturalize the event and banish
discomfort in his role by being humorous: "Why don't we go have
some feminist ice cream," he chortles, "ho, ho, ho." I understood
perfectly what she meant, but at the same time, I found myself stuck
on the very point. Who would I be on those occasions, if not the
"feminist" speaker?
In the last couple of years, I have begun to ponder the implications
of that critic's revolt against the feminist label. Not because I resent
the label's application to my work, or feel intellectually reduced by
feminism's engagements, but because the resistance she expresses to a
position of representativity bears a certain kinship, I think, to two
distinct phenomena that have emerged together on the critical horizon
over the decade of the eighties-albeit on separate tracks. The first
(although it is not practiced uniquely by feminists or women) can be
seen to develop out of feminist theory's original emphasis on the
analysis of the personal: I'm referring to the current proliferation in
literary studies of autobiographical or personal criticism. (I'll distin
guish between these two terms in Chapter r below.) This outbreak of
ix