"Introduction: Speaking Back"

Ahmed begins her discussion of feminist theory and postmodernism by noting the institutional assumptions around feminism and postmodernism: that postmodernism represented a static thing which interacted with feminism (also, to some degree, as a static thing), such that any engagement could only be a "re-staging"; a debate about to what degree postmodernism authorized feminism, or to what degree feminism is like postmodernism (or vice versa). Such an assumed relationship tends to privilege postmodernism so that feminism attempts to "fit in" on postmodernism's terms. Ahmed argues that not only are the two not stable points of reference, but that the question is more accurately: "under what conditions is feminism included within, and excluded from, postmodernism?"(3) Feminism needs to speak to and with postmodernism on its own terms, rather than merely working with the "master's tools" (to steal a useful phrase).

Returning to the issue of postmodernism's method, Ahmed points out that textual methods have clear ideological implications, and often seem to move beyond power relations while in actuality re-inscribing them. Although postmodernism is often thought of in terms of concepts used, Ahmed finds it fruitful to focus on methods, arguing that "postmodernism involves particular ways of organizing or ordering such concepts and values in the process of constructing itself as an object."(p.12) These ways of organizing are not "innocent or neutral", but rather have distinct discursive and political effects. In particular, "[t]he assumption of difference and heterogeneity masks the role of structures of authorization in which postmodernism is itself (ironically) implicated." (p.13) "Difference" tends to be reified without critique, raising a variety of (unasked within postmodernism) questions about who and what gets constituted as "different" or "other", how "difference" relates to power, and so forth.

Turning to feminism, Ahmed points out that feminism itself embodies a contradiction, positioned rather uneasily and in a complicated fashion between aspects of modernism in its insistence on such things as rights, and postmodernism, in, for example, its questioning of the unified subject (Ahmed calls into question this modernism-practice, postmodernism-theory ascription in Chapter One). A cursory examination of postmodernism might note that it lacks gender, so that it provides a kind of utopian gender-free paradigm for feminists. However, Ahmed argues that postmodernism's ascribed lack of gender in fact reflects a very significant absence, in that like mainstream philosophy, the apparent absence of gender is a structural given which operates as "a gendered modality of enunciation."(p.14) To read postmodernism as not having gender is very different from reading it as actively constructing gender as absent. In addition, other forms of embodied inscription, such as race, are likewise absent, and Ahmed takes up these points of entry in the book, since sexual difference cannot be accorded the status of "the" difference which is ontologically privileged. Like the seeming gender neutrality of the humanistic subject, the apparent gender neutrality of postmodernism conceals the "mark of the privilege of the masculine, with its emphasis on the atomisation of the subject, and the determination of knowledge purely through the transformation of local boundaries." (p.15) By drawing attention to these absences and erased privileges, feminism's role in engagement with postmodernism is transformative in that it changes the terms of postmodernism's reference. Furthermore, it draws attention to the divisions within feminism.

In engaging with both feminism and postmodernism in this way, Ahmed argues that she is working within a theoretical tradition of feminist work which positions theory within the context of practical concerns. In doing so she questions the role of boundaries between what is high theory and what is not, as well as the role of the reader. She challenges the notion that the reader who questions high theory, or looks for alternative critical interpretations, is simply reading incorrectly, or inauthentically. Since theory, as a way of organizing the world, eventually has material effects, examining how theory operates is a form of praxis. And asking "who authorizes theories?" shifts the terms of debate from individual authors (as in who speaks) to how theories are legitimated and given discursive power (as in, who can speak, or who is allowed to speak). Thus this project is as much about listening for the absences as for the speech.

Ahmed chooses to use "close reading" as her method. Each chapter uses a close reading of particular texts which are significant for the subject at hand, bound together through the project of critical engagement as sites of possible theoretical potential for feminism.

Chapter One, "Rights"

Feminism has been represented as uncomfortably spanning a divide, both between theory and practice, and between postmodernism and modernism, and these two binaries have been translated on to one another, presenting an apparent contradiction between feminist practice and feminist engagement with theory. Ahmed indicates that this representation is problematic in two ways: first, it minimizes the importance of theory for applied practice, and second, it assumes that theory is made without practical engagement. In this chapter, Ahmed applies herself to the project of challenging this facile division through considering the question of rights. While ostensibly any adoption of rights as a goal is a modernist project, Ahmed argues that feminism, through its particular use of rights discourse which is located in concrete concerns about how laws and rights apply to real bodies, critically displaces conventional configurations of rights. She does this in two ways: first, by examining the relationship between law and embodiment, giving attention to how postmodern discourse situates the law in relation to bodies; and second, by examining the relationship between legal citation and rights.

As in her introduction, Ahmed is careful to note here that postmodernism is not a stable or coherent body of knowledge; rather, stability is only produced through application to legal theory. Postmodernism in terms of legal theory has been understood as a form of interpretation which positions itself against the meta-narrative of such legal principles as jurisprudence. Traditional jurisprudence is challenged by postmodernism through the notion of law as a body; however, postmodernism does not ask "which body?" or "whose body?" in assigning "the body" an undifferentiated status for which "inside" and "outside" are the only signifiers. Sexual (or other) difference is a secondary kind of difference for postmodernism. In addition, positing a body which is ontologically situated within relations of power and privilege erases the process by which power relations come into being, and "neglects the extent to which each site within the social itself is potentially productive rather than simply reflective, involved in the negotiation of contradictions and power relations at a complex and particularized level." (p.29) Thus gender assumes a contested status within the law, "implying an open structural process in which law itself genders bodies in particular (but not fully determined) ways."(p.30) A feminist intervention, then, according to Ahmed, might begin from the interstice between law as applied to figurative bodies and material embodiment.

On the subject of citationality, Ahmed notes that the law provides both a body of knowledge in precedent, but requires a new performance for each bringing of the law into being from text to action. Although the law is codified it requires this citational aspect to enact it, and "[t]he demand for a decision necessarily goes through a passage of the undecidable: a passage which exceeds the very opposition between calculable programmes and the incalculable."(p.32) In terms of rights, "rights are constituted through the decision and in that act of (re)constitution are subject to re-iteration and displacement."(p.33) Although assumed to be universal, the boundaries and parameters of rights are subject to performative citation when they are applied to real bodies, so that each occasion of citation "establishes and enforces the boundaries".(p.33) In a sense, then, the project of rights is the project of boundary negotiation.

What are the implications here for feminist intervention into the law? Ahmed is critical of engagement at the level of deconstruction, arguing that "deconstruction as a strategy for reading law is not sufficient for a feminist politics of the law because it is not a pragmatism: it does not detail the specific content of laws and their effects according to regimes such as gender."(p.34) However, for Ahmed this is not to say that deconstruction cannot be a useful tool, merely that it is not the only tool, and that moreover "the notion of a 'meeting' of deconstruction and pragmatics points to a double deficiency of both as strategies for reading law. The absence of a socio-historical, contextualized, and contingent analysis cannot then be simply positioned as incidental to a deconstructive strategy: it structures and limits how that strategy might operate at the level of intervention."(p.34) Given Ahmed's earlier identification of citationality as a point of interest, what then does citationality mean to the formation of gendered subjectivity?

Therefore, Ahmed argues, a feminist model of rights "asks the question, 'who gains' in order to restore the opaqueness and conflict concealed by the metaphysics of the governmental right."(p.42) The subject here is a particularized, differentiated, embodied person existing in a real material state, not an abstract homogeneous other upon whom rights are enacted.

The theoretical implications for this stance mean that feminist rights discourses and strategies cannot be adequately characterized as either modern or postmodern.

Chapter Two, "Ethics"

In this chapter, Ahmed asks "what is at stake in the production of a 'postmodern ethics'?".(p.45) In asking this question, she signifies her awareness of postmodernism as "the temporary forgetting of the ethical demand insofar as it names itself (ambiguously) as a 'posting' of modernity."(p.45) The demise of the role of ethics is taken in postmodernism to be concomitant with the demise of the rational subject. Ahmed is critical of the reduction of ethical concerns to a debate of universality vs. difference, in that she feels it both oversimplifies the debate and restricts the terms of engagement to static, narrow categories. In outlining the ethical theories of both Lyotard and Levinas, she discusses postmodern rethinkings of ethics, and then provides a challenge to both through feminist ethical intervention. In particular, she is concerned with the embodied nature of the ethical subject, as well as with how feminism "may re-figure its ethical relation to 'other women'."(p.46)

Moving to the subject of "otherness" in ethical theory, Ahmed states that "postmodernism has written itself as an ethics through a readmission of the proximity of the Other."(p.59) Rather than being radically separate from the self (as in the existential model used by de Beauvoir), the Other in the postmodern model "constitutes the very force of the ethical demand" (p.59) in its relational aspect. Despite its ostensibly promising aspects, Levinas' model of the Other posits the Other as marginal and unknowable, not possessing the power of speech/signification; the Other, then, stands for the "not-Self". Thus although we are told to resist generalizing in postmodernism, this model of the Other, in its ascribed unknowability, is precisely that kind of homogenized generalization. Furthermore, the Other does not act, but is acted upon and through by the self/subject. The Self/Subject's constitution as normative and unmarked "conceals the mark of privilege… the self-other relation is an impossibility that is already marked, and that marking engenders a difference."(p.62)

In Derrida's reading of Levinas, moreover, this problematic notion of difference is augmented by Derrida's assignation of sexual difference as symbolic of the difference. Ahmed argues that "a feminist reading of this dialogue must not repeat the very same gesture—to recognize the violence when sexual difference comes to stand for difference per se: a process that makes other differences themselves derivative."(p.62)

Chapter Three, "Woman"

In this chapter, Ahmed examines how the relationship between postmodernism and "woman" has been developed, and argues that a connection between postmodernism and "the feminine" is not a de facto connection based on characteristics of postmodernism; moreover, the relationship that does exist must be critically dissected to show how it is played out in "specific sites of inscription."(p.68)

To summarize Ahmed's main points in this section: first, that the notion of "becoming woman" requires placing 'woman' in the realm of phantasy such that 'she' assumes a "saturation of significance"; second, that this operation re-centres the male philosophical subject and puts him in dialogue with himself; third, that becomings in general provide opportunties for already privileged subjects to play with identies. Most importantly, phantasies of becoming woman do not resolve problems inherent in being woman.

The next section, where Ahmed examines more closely the work of Derrida, is not entirely clear to me, and I suspect this is because I have only minimal familiarity with Derrida's work. However, though some of the details are not explicitly obvious to me, her central thesis remains constant and understandable. Essentially, Ahmed here is concerned with the development of a philosophical notion which is divorced from its social context, and points out that "women" do not figure into Derrida's analysis, since "woman" as a "singular signifier may participate in itself, in a protection of the masculine as a mode of enunciation. That is, in the very event of taking a position in relation to the question of woman as enigma, whereby she is circulated in the form of a 'signifier' within the text, Spurs may protect the discursive space in which the male subject enunciates the terms of exchange by naming woman with the impossibility of a name."(p.86) "Woman", as used by Derrida, not only erases "women" but also a specific linguistic unit. She is unfigurable because to figure her would be to figure a negation; no sign can be made for a void. As a result, not only are real women erased, but moreover the entire history of real women is obliterated. The male philosopher is re-validated in his claim to phallogocentric usefulness. When told he may no longer play with certain toys, he merely goes and steals someone else's toys, breaks them into unrecognizable pieces, magic markers his name all over them, and hogs them away from other children.

How, then, might feminists intervene in this problematic relation, since, as Ahmed argues, the symbolic exclusion of real women is akin to symbolic violence. "The violence of such othering demonstrates what is at stake in the assumption that woman has an essential and stable meaning."(p.89) Furthermore, "[t]he war of signification takes place at the level of embodiment"(p.92), so that it is here that feminists much begin to launch their challenge. Ahmed mentions Irigaray as one such example of textual practice located firmly in experiential and lived embodiment.

Chapter Four, "Subjects"

In this chapter, Ahmed engages with psychoanalytic, postmodern, and feminist challenges to the subject, to ask "how is the subject produced within this theoretical frame"? This approach does not presume that the so-called crisis of the subject has one point of entry and exit, but rather that there are many ways to skin a subject, and postmodernism is not fully responsible for the "destruction of the onto-theological subject per se."(p.95) In fact, argues Ahmed, it is more useful to ask here, "how is postmodernism produced through the announcement of a crisis in the subject?"(p.95) Thus, although postmodernism ostensibly does away with "the subject", Ahmed proposes here that postmodernist discourses re-produce new kinds of subjects despite their apparent disavowal of such projects.

Ahmed begins with a brief account of Lacanian psychonanalysis, in which "subjectivity is understood as a primary act of identification."(p.96) The subject develops from self-misrecognition, and continually brings her resulting alienated self into being through identification and language, though this process is largely concealed from her. Although this may be read as a model for erasing the subject, Ahmed argues that "an analysis of the gaps and divisions which structure Lacanian psychoanalysis may help us to re-negotiate its movements as a textual and performative operation which is constructing its own subject."(p.100) Fundamental to the logos of the subject, for Lacan, is the phallus as a signifier, the singularity of which Ahmed seizes upon as directly contradicting his notions of continually sliding and shifting signifiers. As Jane Gallop, quoted in Ahmed, pointedly remarks on this score: "[A]s long as psychoanalysts maintain the separability of 'phallus' from 'penis', they can hold on to their 'phallus' in the belief that their discourse has no relation to sexual inequality, no relation to politics."(p.102) Ahmed argues that to link phallus and penis in both discursive and embodied relation makes visible the workings of gender and power, in which the signifier of the phallus comes to assume a privileged semiotic status.

Ahmed then turns to Baudrillard, who "deals with the issue of subjectivity and sexual difference within the context of a thesis on postmodernism as the loss of the real."(p.105) The metaphor of seduction is used to indicate "the feminine" which, again, represents "the passage towards indetermination, neutralisation, and flotation."(p.105) Though in this model "the feminine" is not explicitly positioned in relation to the male subject, it nevertheless "becomes a sign for the indeterminable and undifferentiated subject, the subject in and of free play."(p.105) The subject here is not bounded by relations of power, but "governed only by the radical free play of its existence."(p.106) The subject exists as continually unrealized potential. Even with minimal knowledge of the concerns of real women, this ascription seems ridiculous in the extreme. "Determination", argues Ahmed, "takes place pragmatically, in stratified discursive (rhetorical/syntactical), political, and ethical situations."(p.107) Thus material relations are intrinsic to subjectivity (perhaps Baudrillard should have read more Marx!), and this holds true for both privilege and subordination. As Ahmed writes, "[w]hich differences matter more than others is determined by the formation of relations of power through which embodied subjects are constituted."(p.111)

In the work of Kroker and Cook, Ahmed is critical of the "disappearing body" of postmodernism, in that "the disappearing postmodern body is a body without material limits or constraints. The body which knows no limits—which appears unmarked as such—conceals the mark of the masculine."(p.112) A postmodern body is thus "no-body", which erases the discursive and material workings of power for real, embodied subjects. Ahmed is critical of all technological theories which promise bodily transcendence for this reason.

Ahmed then turns to a feminist theory of the subject "as constituted through identificatory practices".(p.113) Her first caveat is that we avoid reducing all difference to sexual difference. Using an example drawn from personal experience, Ahmed suggests a paradigm of subjectivity which I shall quote at length:

Chapter Five, "Authorship"

Continuing to work with the ascribed postmodern crisis of the subject, Ahmed works in this chapter with the critique of the author as primary originator of creative works. Postmodernism, in response to the discourses of modernity, announces the "death of the author". As has been previously discussed with regard to the subject, however, postmodernism re-inscribes the author "through the narrativization of the author's death".(p.119) Ahmed juxtaposes feminist and postmodernist critical readings to compare and contrast their approach to the question of authorship, and argues, in part, that "despite a shared critical ambivalence to the tradition of authorship as a recoverable intentionality, a feminist intervention departs from these postmodern narratives precisely through its enquiry into the gendering of the authorship function and effect."(p.120)

Ahmed begins by reading Barthes, who, according to Ahmed, proposes that "a critical refusal of the ideology of authorship is necessary in order to open up the text to a plurality of interpretations."(p.120-1) The author's intent in the work becomes irrelevant, and although the issue of sexual difference is introduced, ultimately it makes no difference. However, argues Ahmed, the attention given to 'woman' as literary signifier indicates that it does matter very much who is writing, and that "the written text is implicated in broader relationships of power predicated on distinctions between the subject and object of a discursive formation."(p.122) The identity of the author can only be said not to matter when the text is completely isolated from the context of its production. In this sense, the "author-god" is really no different from the "invisible author", in that both presume the epistemological privilege and universality of the author. Ahmed suggests instead that "what is required is a historicization and contextualization of the author as an embodied subject."(p.123) This approach would not seek to reduce the complexity of interpretation, but rather to add to it.

How, then, can sexual difference "be theorized as a critical difference, as a difference that matters, within the structure of authorship, without relying on a foundational, ontological, and biological authorial identity?"(p.125) Ahmed notes that relying on women's writing as transparent or unmediated is problematic, in that it does not address structural relations of power, or diversity among women. She argues that rather than focusing on "reading as a woman" and "writing as a woman", feminists should focus their attention on the interstices between these two positions. In addition, Ahmed examines the relation between "authorship, writing, and empire" to argue that women's writing is not politically innocent, but situated within power relations that inscribe class, race, and ethnicity as well as gender.

Chapter Six, "(Meta)Fictions"

In this chapter, Ahmed argues that despite its protestations about constituting a body of writings, postmodernism actually is representative of a way of reading. Postmodern literary theory is not descriptive, then, but prescriptive in how it makes meaning from texts and designates them as postmodern.

Ahmed applies this thesis to a reading of a work which contains sexualized violence. A postmodern reading argues in favour of ignoring this content while focusing on the narrative structure, a theoretical act which Ahmed finds, in itself, violent. Moreover, this focus on structure and active repudiation of concern with content belies the notion of postmodernism as part of radical politics, in that it re-affirms the status quo through ways that are quite reminiscent of modernism in their "enforcement of ways of reading and ways of not reading certain privileged texts." (p.143) Therefore, Ahmed argues, postmodernism is allowed to elide issues of asymmetrically privileged sexual difference in its "assumption that to address issues of sexual violence in such texts [means that] one must be working with a naïve model of representation… [and] an assumption that certain kinds of texts, which experiment with literary form, disallow readings which focus on questions that have traditionally been seen as a matter of 'content'." (p.144) Politics, in the postmodern model, is reduced to stylistic considerations.

Chapter Seven, "Screens"

In this chapter, Ahmed uses the same perspective in the previous chapter to examine cinema, arguing that postmodernism constitutes a "way of seeing" rather than a particular body of work.

One point of interest in film theory which is not apparent in literary criticism is the hegemony of psychoanalytic theory as the dominant mode of critique. Although ostensibly psychoanalysis and postmodernism are at odds, the dominance of psychoanalysis "may define the terms under which postmodernism can come into existence within film studies."(p.168) Both theories are concerned with "transgression", and both posit classical/realist cinema as inherently conservative, so that postmodernism easily aligns itself with the avant-garde of psychoanalysis as radical and transgressive.

"Conclusion: Events that Move Us"

In her conclusion, Ahmed returns to her originally stated concerns of "which differences matter?" In moving from speaking about difference (ironically, as undifferentiated) to speaking about difference as diverse and constituted within power relations, her argument constitutes a substantial break from many earlier postmodernist theories, although it is contiguous with feminist challenges.

Difference as undifferentiated, points out Ahmed, "prevents any articulation of contradictions between regimes of difference in the form of antagonistic relations of power… postmodernism is predicated on the refusal or erasure of differences that matter."(p.192) We must resist designating "difference" and "differences" as static categories, and rather think of them always in a relational sense, such that identities are constituted in the interstices between a variety of structural relations.