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Spring 2008
Volume 07, Number 2

Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy

Book Reviews

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Feminist Politics
Deborah Orr, Dianna Taylor, Eileen Kahl, Kathleen Earle, Christa Rainwater, and Linda López McAlister (eds.) (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). 274 pp. $29.95. ISBN: 0-7425-4778-7.

Reviewed by Cynthia D. Coe
Central Washington University, coecy@cwu.edu

As with other liberatory projects of the modern period, feminism grew at least partially out of the refusal to allow women’s identities to be governed by the cultural ideal of femininity, or, rather, the range of cultural ideas about femininity, centering on maternity, domesticity, sexuality, and child-rearing. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous assertion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” crystallizes the feminist denial of an ahistorical, natural, and thus immutable identity based on sex, and instead lays claim to the possibility of self-determination.[1] The issue then becomes what content will replace the patriarchal notion(s) of femininity, and that debate has continued for most of the twentieth century. Many feminists have questioned the assumptions that seem to be built into the very notion of identity, in the critiques of essentialism that have flourished for the past thirty years or so, but others have asked what cohesiveness and political efficacy feminism can have without at least some strategic form of essentialism. Even more broadly, what are the implications of the simultaneous fluidity and stability of the self—its fragile integrity—for political activism?

This anthology represents a cross-section of contemporary reflections on what is at stake for feminists in questions of identity and difference. Along with the collection Beliefs, Bodies, and Being,[2] the collection emerged out of the eighth International Association of Women Philosophers/Internationale Assoziation von Philsophinnen (IAPh) Symposium in 1998. As noted in Deborah Orr’s introduction, the essays have been updated since their presentation at that conference to incorporate changes in the political discourse around identity. The essays are written by a diverse array of authors, who have done research or teach in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Israel, Australia, and the United States; and, the range of approaches to the issues concerning identity are correspondingly multifaceted.

In large part, these debates are still guided by reactions against the liberal assumption that particular aspects of identity are ultimately insignificant in comparison to a universal nature shared by all human beings. The two most prominent reactions within feminism have been a turn to essentialism and the postmodern rejection of a unitary subject or gender identity. Many of these essays reflect continuing concerns about the adequacy of these alternatives: essentialism has long been pilloried as a reification of sexual difference that erases differences between women, and postmodern feminism has been criticized for undermining the possibility of political activism. Therefore, a search for new ways of articulating the significance of identity dominates this collection. For instance, Deborah Orr’s chapter argues that forms of Cartesian dualism continue to pervade feminist theorizing, sometimes subterraneously, and that this way of conceptualizing the self generates theoretical and/or practical problems that should lead us toward a more holistic alternative. The fact that she looks to the third-century Buddhist monk Nagarjuna as well as Wittgenstein for resources in formulating such an alternative speaks to the intellectual pluralism of this anthology.

A second line of concern about trends within postmodern feminism involves its rejection of pre-discursive or extra-discursive materiality, or Nature. Jutta Weber’s chapter attempts to disentangle what she calls a critical denaturalization from dematerialization. While the former deflates the politically suspect gesture that justifies the differential treatment of women by reference to a natural, universal, and immutable difference, she describes dematerialization as an excessive reaction to this history on the part of postmodernism. She advocates resisting the impulse to devalue matter: “We have to find ways to speak of nature, not to deny our relationship to it—without ever being able to know its character” (47). Such a quest also seems to animate Marlene Benjamin’s essay about her struggle to speak from an integrated self—“from my lived, and living, body”—through her experiences with tuberculosis, breast cancer, and prophylactic surgery for ovarian and uterine cancer (104). Her reflection on bodily experience is a political and philosophical critique of the continuing medical and analytic commitment to Cartesian dualism and its attendant hierarchies, and the particularity of her narrative serves as a model for how to write as a situated philosopher as well as an articulate rejection of the universalist conceit.

Many of the chapters describe a vision of identity that is neither static nor infinitely mobile—that is, one that both avoids capturing us within fixed identities and retains a center of gravity for the individual, on the basis of which solidarity might be forged. Morwena Griffiths rejuvenates the term “authenticity” to describe how a plural and changing self can still maintain integrity—a concept of a “patchwork self” that she sets in dynamic relation to María Lugones’ playful world-traveling, Donna Haraway’s trickster subjectivity, and Martin Heidegger’s notion of authenticity. Against the excesses of playful pluralism, Alison Bailey reminds us that “race traitors”—those who attempt to overturn racial hierarchy—can only ever occupy a different relationship to white privilege, rather than leaving behind the identity of “insiders” altogether. Marla Brettschneider appeals to Talmudic methodology to conceptualize the mutually constitutive nature of different elements within one’s identity, as opposed to the relative simplicity of an Aristotelian hierarchy. In these essays and others, the authors reach beyond the binarism of unified, static identity and complete fragmentation.

A prominent characteristic of the collection of essays lies in its focus on the concrete political implications of how we understand and negotiate identity. Two essays in particular highlight the way in which feminist concerns function in relation to national or cultural identities and conflicts: Marie-Claire Belleau’s discussion of feminist strategic coalitions across the divides within Canada, and Sigal Ben-Porath’s analysis of how militarism in Israel has affected conceptions of gender and how this effect might be countered by feminist pedagogy. Both essays emphasize the need to call attention to and challenge the subordination of feminist goals to a national or cultural struggle. A concern with political activism also governs Cathryn Bailey’s description of third wave feminism, often criticized for its political quietism; instead, she claims, young feminists are critical consumers of pop culture. She convincingly argues that as the line between politics and culture blurs, “visible cultural images are simultaneously politically significant” (89). She acknowledges, however, that feminist ideas and images are easily co-opted by popular culture, and that more traditional forms of political engagement—including a critique of consumerism itself—are a necessary element of feminist activism.

The collection ends with two essays that advocate understanding feminist politics without relying excessively on assumptions about gender identity. The continuing debate between ontologies of gender leads Amy Baehr to propose feminist contractualism as an alternative that does not make claims about who women fundamentally are, but rather focuses on forging political arrangements that can be accepted by all, along Rawlsian lines. Dianna Taylor analyzes the political scene within the American Left after September 11th to draw lessons against the impetus toward conformity and unity. Instead, reading Arendt and Foucault, she proposes a “weak nonidentitarian politics” that takes identity as a significant political factor but does not constitute a stable, normalized, or homogeneous ground for political action (250).

The breadth and diversity of this volume is both its strength and a shortcoming: it faithfully reproduces the refusal to present a monolithic conception of identity or feminist politics by offering a variegated collection of current scholarship on these issues, rather than a synopsis of this intellectual territory. A reader looking for an introduction to feminist politics will not find it here; instead, this text is aimed at an audience already familiar with the basic framework of the relevant debates. For these readers, it provides a glittering array of divergent perspectives, in terms of the philosophical figures the chapters refer to, the wide range of questions that surround identity, the spectrum between a focus on the individual and on mass politics, the geographical and cultural contexts within which such ideas and politics play out, and even writing style. The chapters are consistently thought-provoking and timely, and the book as a whole challenges us to recognize the complexity of contemporary feminist theorizing and the pressing need for liberatory praxis.

Endnotes

1. Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage, 1989), 267.

2. Kathleen Earle. Beliefs, Bodies, and Being (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

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