The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory PDF
Preview The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory
THE DIFFERENCE WITHIN: FEMINISM AND CRITICAL THEORY CRITICAL THEORY Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language, Discourse and Ideology Series Editors Iris M. Zavala Myriam Díaz-Diocaretz Advisory Editorial Board: Jonathan Culler (Cornell University, Ithaca) Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam) Roger Fowler (University of East Anglia, Norwich) Wlad Godzich (University of Minnesota/Université de Montreal) Claudio Guillen (Harvard University) Fredric Jameson (Duke University) Cheris Kramarae (University of Illinois at Urbana) Teresa de Lauretis (University of California, Santa Cruz) Fernando Lazaro Carreter (Real Academia Espanola) Cesare Segre (University of Pavia) Gayatri Ch. Spivak (University of Pittsburgh) Volume 8 Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker (eds) THE DIFFERENCE WITHIN: FEMINISM AND CRITICAL THEORY THE DIFFERENCE WITHIN: FEMINISM AND CRITICAL THEORY edited by ELIZABETH MEESE and ALICE PARKER University of Alabama JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA 1989 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Difference within. (Critical theory, ISSN 0920-3060; v. 8) Papers presented at the 13th Annual University of Alabama Symposium on Literature and Language, held in 1986. Bibliography: p. 1. Feminist literary criticism - Congresses. 2. Feminism and literature - Congresses. 3. Women in literature - Congress. I. Meese, Elizabeth A., 1943- . II. Parker, Alice, 1937- . III. Alabama Symposium on English and American Literature (13th : 1986 : University of Alabama) IV. Series. PN98.W64D5 1988 801'.95'088042 88-7916 ISBN 90 272 2415 3 (Eur.)/l-55619-043-3 (US)(pb., alk. paper) ISBN 90 272 2414 5 (Eur.)/l-55619-042-5 (US)(hb., alk. paper) © Copyright 1989 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. Contents Acknowledgments vii Notes on contributors ix "Grins . . . without the cat": Introductory remarks on "The difference within" 1 Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker Nancy Reagan wears a hat: Feminism and its cultural consensus 13 Catharine R. Stimpson Some different meanings of the concept of 'difference': Feminist theory and the concept of ideology 37 Michele Barrett The asylums of Antaeus. Women, war and madness: Is there a feminist fetishism? 49 Jane Marcus When Lindbergh sleeps with Bessie Smith: The writing of place in Toni Morrison's Sula 85 Houston A. Baker, Jr. Sieving the matriheritage of the sociotext 115 Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz The power of division 149 Jonathan Culler Notes on an alternative model — neither/nor 165 Hortense J. Spillers VI CONTENTS Feminist historiography and post-structuralist thought: Intersections and departures 189 R. Radhakrishnan A response to "The difference within: Feminism and critical theory" 207 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Acknowledgments We extend our thanks and appreciation to all of those who helped with this volume: David L. Miller and Gregory S. Jay for having started it all in Alabama with the 1982 symposium "After Strange Texts: The Role of Theory in the Study of Literature"; Claudia Johnson, Chair of the Depart ment of English, for unwavering support; the University of Alabama Lan guage and Critical Theory Group for advice, even when not taken; and Elliot Adams, Andrea Cumpston, Alicia Griswold, and Peggy Kissinger for their word processing, research, printing, transcriptions and enthusiasm. Further, we appreciate permission to reprint the following essays pre viously published: Catharine Stimpson, "Nancy Reagan Wears a Hat: Feminism and Its Cultural Consensus," Critical Inquiry 14,2 (Winter 1988): 223-243 (also in Stimpson, Where the Meanings Are, New York, Methuen, 1988); Hortense Spillers, "Notes on an Alternative Model —Neither/Nor," The Year Left II: An American Socialist Yearbook, Toward a Rainbow Socialism: Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender, ed. Mike Davis, Manning Marable, Fred Pfeil and Michael Sprinker (London: Verso/NLB, 1987): 176-194. In the essay by Jane Marcus, Plate 1 is taken from the cover of Andrew Rosen's Rise Up Women (Routledge, 1974), and Plate 2 is pro vided through the generosity of the Jill Craigie Women's Suffrage Collec tion (London). Notes on contributors HOUSTON A. BAKER, JR., Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of many works on Afro-American literature and culture, including Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), and more recently Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984), his third vol ume of poetry, Blues Journeys Home (1985), and Modernism and the Har lem Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). MICHELE BARRETT, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the City Univer sity of London, has done extensive research on the relationship between feminist and Marxist analysis. In addition to numerous articles, she has published Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing (London: The Women's Press, 1979) and Women's Oppression Today (London: New Left/Verso, 1980). JONATHAN CULLER, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University, is the author of many publications on matters of con cern to critical theory. His books include Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974); Structuralist Poetics: Struc turalism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), which won the James Russell Lowell Prize in 1976; The Pur suit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell Univer sity Press, 1981); and most recently On Deconstruction: Theory and Criti cism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). MYRIAM DÍAZ-DIOCARETZ, Chilean poet, critic and translator, cur rently resides in the Netherlands and is a researcher at the Faculty of Let ters, University of Utrecht. She has published work on translation studies, American literature, Black American women poets, as well as translations X NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS of American poetry. Her books include The Transforming Power of Lan guage: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich (Utrecht: HES, 1984) and Translating Poetic Discourse: Questions on Feminist Strategies in Adrienne Rich (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1985). She co-edited, with Iris M. Zavala, the first book in this series, Women, Feminist Identity and Soci ety in the 1980's: Selected Papers (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benja mins, 1985). JANE MARCUS, Professor of English and Women's Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and the City College of New York, has published widely and edited three collections of essays on Virginia Woolf: New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1981) and Vir ginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1983); and Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury: A Centenary Celebration (Macmillan/ Indiana, 1987). She also edited The Young Rebecca West, 1911-1917(1982). Her most recent books are Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987) and Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman (Ohio State University Press, 1988). ELIZABETH MEESE, Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Women's Studies, The University of Alabama, has published on American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Southern women writers, and feminist criticism. Her most recent publication work is Crossing the Double-Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). ALICE PARKER, Associate Professor of French, The University of Alabama, has published research on eighteenth century French women writers and the philosophes, Francophone writers of the American South, and French and Canadian contemporary lesbian writers. R. RADHAKRISHNAN, Assistant Professor of English, the University of Massachusetts, has published numerous articles on the question of mar- ginalization, politics and deconstruction. His articles includes "Ethnic Iden tity and Post-Structuralist Differance" in Cultural Critique, as well as others in boundary 2, Works and Days, and others forthcoming in Poetics Today, MELUS and various collections. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS XI HORTENSE J. SPILLERS, Professor of English and African-American Literature at Cornell University, teaches literature and criticism. She is co- editor, with Marjorie Pryse, of Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Lit erary Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985), and her stories and arti cles have appeared widely. In 1976, she received the National Award for excellence in Fiction and Belles Lettres for one of her short stories. GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, is the translator of the English edi tion of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) and author of In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987). Her essays have appeared in such journals as Critical Inquiry, Yale French Studies, Social Text, and Diacritics. CATHARINE STIMPSON, Professor and Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University, was the founding editor of the feminist journal SIGNS. She is the author of a novel, Class Notes (1979), the editor of six books, and chair of the Ms. Magazine Board of Scholars and the National Council for Research on Women. Her collected essays, published widely in journals and reviews, are forthcoming in a volume entitled Nancy Reagan Wears a Hat (New York: Methuen, 1988).
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