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Weedon, Chris. Feminism, Theory, and the Politics of Difference.
Chapter One, "The Question of Difference" Weedon begins by noting that in recent years, "difference" as a concept (and practice) has become a central concern across a variety of institutional disciplines. She identifies numerous reasons for this: social, cultural, political, and economic. In particular, social theories and movements such as feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism have called attention to previously absent or marginalized concerns, and have cast difference in a positive role. Weedon begins by providing a brief history of traditional ideas of gender difference as a key organizing concept of institutions and practices in culture and society. She is careful to note that gender is not an ontological given, but is "an effect of relations of knowledge and power which permeate all areas of life." (p.5) In addition, the forms which this gender organization take are not neutral, but "involve interests which construct the meanings of difference in competing and often contradictory ways." (p.5) Gender, then, is not simply a difference with symmetrical or apolitical configurations, but rather has been developed purposefully with relations of power and discourse. Presently in Western culture gender is informed largely by binary thinking which positions male and female as opposites whose pairing is "natural" and analogous to a variety of other dualisms: mind:body, intellect:body; reason:irrationality, and so forth. Biological theories of difference, which continue to play a large part in constructing relations of gender, are largely concerned with male and female reproductive roles, reducing gender relations and physical, emotional, and intellectual characteristics to questions of genetics or reproductive fitness. Biological theories are also fundamental to notions of race and class. Weedon also touches on psychoanalytic theory. Difference, although ostensibly posited as symmetrical, is grounded here in these theories in hierarchy and constituted as a lack or inferiority. Early feminist responses to the question of difference concerned the extent to which ascribed gender differences limited women's access to social and economic resources. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, identified women's lack of access to education as the source of unequal difference (although she retained the notion of separate spheres for men and women). Women through history, but particularly in the 19th century, rallied around their position as different, often as mothers. However, strategically this approach was and has been limited, in that arguing for separate spheres for males and females without questioning the unequal weight given to those sphere has resulted in replication of the status quo and truncating women's role to a narrow category. Additionally, the privilege accorded to certain forms of difference--women as mothers, for example--has homogenized the experiences of women and provided icons with which most women did not identify or feel an alliance. Thus, the problem for feminists became (and remains) how to think about difference in ways that were not restrictive. One entry into the discussion of difference which seemed fruitful was liberalism. Liberalism provided a way of thinking about social relations that appeared to transcend gender, in that it privileged the role of abstract rights, reason/intellect, and rule of law. Advocates such as Mill argued that since men and women shared the capacity for reason, all that was needed was equal opportunities for men and women to develop this capacity. However, liberalism provided an inadequate frame of analysis for substantial structural problems, not least of which was the very privileging of qualities and spheres which were coded as masculine. The problems inherent in liberalism, as well as the concomitant rise of other social movements such as Marxism, paved the way for more radical forms of feminism and more expansive examinations of difference. However, early forms of engagement with socialism proved likewise problematic. Again, the unequal structural weight accorded to gender (and other) difference was not fully examined, and was generally subsumed under the rubric of class difference. While in theory, socialism provided positive alternatives for women, in practice, hierarchical relations of difference prevailed. Socialist feminists began to examine the difficulties around constituting a hierarchy of oppressions which set class at the top. Radical feminism also seemed like a fruitful avenue of enquiry, as it rejected conventaional theoretical frameworks such as liberalism and traditional Marxism, and argued for a positive re-valuation of difference. One area in which this theory developed was in so-called cultural feminism, which examined, in part, the question of a specifically feminine or female aesthetic. Theorists such as Irigaray worked with the notion of "ecriture feminin", or looked to "women's ways of knowing". Poststructuralism and postmodernism were taken up by feminists who were interested in new ways of conceptualizing difference. Difference within postmodernist and poststructuralist thought is conceptualized as a productive element. However, as Sara Ahmed cautions, postmodernism has tended to reify difference as an idea which has been stripped of its material effects, and does not ask "what differences matter?" or "different for whom?" In addition, postmodernism and poststructuralism's focus on discourse as the site of examination has tended to ignore or erase material conditions, causes, and effects of discursive production.
Chapter Two, "Challenging Patriarchy, Decentring Heterosexuality: Radical and Revolutionary Feminisms" In this chapter, Weedon examines radical feminism in more depth. In radical feminist analysis, patriarchy is accorded theoretical primacy. Radical feminism challenged the notions of public and private sphere which had informed traditional liberalism, arguing that the personal was political. Radical feminism also raised issues around male control of women's bodies. As Weedon notes, "[in] early radical feminist thought, women's bodies are given a foundational status: they are both the focus of women's oppression on the basis of women's positive difference from men."(p.29) Since patriarchy was seen in early radical feminist work as the central source of oppression, strategy was organized around reclaiming women's bodies and often some degree of separatism, such as what Weedon terms "political lesbianism" (p.36). Radical feminism, rather than privileging abstracted rational consciousness like liberal feminism, argued for the importance of working from women's experiences since institutional knowledge was male-defined. Heterosexuality was regarded as a social construct and an institution designed to police narrow definitions of appropriate social and sexual organization. However, as many feminists, particularly feminists of colour, later pointed out, the universalizing of patriarchy made invisible the heterogeneity of women's experiences. Thus, although radical feminism engaged with questions of difference, its privileging of gender as the difference, and focus on differences between women and men (as opposed to differences among women themselves), erased the agency and diversity of women. Later radical theory has attempted to take up these problems in articulating a politics of global feminism. In addition, some feminists were critical of radical feminism's conception of heterosexuality as an oppressive and compulsory institution, arguing for a move away from viewing heterosexuality as a tool of patriarchy and towards an analysis of how heterosexuality has causes and effects in a variety of material and discursive sites. In doing so, attention can be given to the way in which heterosexuality has a variety of incarnations and implications for diverse groups and individual women. Ecofeminism, which grew from a radical feminist ascription of connections between women and nature, particularly in the sense of being dominated by patriarchy, provided another site of radical feminist activism. Again, difference was conceptualized as a positive source of strength. Women's innate physical relation to the body of the planet allowed them to conceive (pardon the pun) of political action that was grounded in a quasi-maternal concerns for the caretaking of the environment. Radical feminism has a contradictory legacy and presence in feminist history, being both empowering and limiting in its valuation of difference. It paved the way for other evaluative reversals and new entries into the discussion around difference as a positive attribute.
Chapter Three, "Lesbian Difference, Feminism, and Queer Theory" Like relations of gender difference which are asymmetrical in their valuation, relations of sexuality have historically privileged heterosexuality, situating it as the norm against which other forms of sexuality have been constituted as deviant. Lesbian feminists in the mid to late 20th century reacted to this theoretical construct by engaging in a variety of ways with the issue of difference. There is a continuum between theories which view lesbianism as a biological imperative, and lesbianism (for that matter, all forms of sexuality) as a social and historical construct. Lesbianism signifies a diverse range of practices, ideologies, and identities. In the second wave of feminism, lesbians took up the question of sexual difference to argue that their sexualities were fundamental to challenging both relations of gender and sexual difference, in that "the institution of heterosexuality is the central political question for all women [, and lesbian] women stand in a position of radical otherness vis-à-vis heterosexuality." (p.59) Furthermore, "to become woman-identified is "a question of political choice", although political lesbianism is not entirely charitable towards "woman-identification" which is appropriated by heterosexual women. (p.61) Thus difference is not merely an indication of "not-like-us/them" but rather an active oppositional consciousness and practice. Some lesbian feminists in the 1970s and 80s developed both the notion of separatism and cultural feminism. In this instance, difference became a visible marker of political consciousness; however, in defining a radical alternative, women within the separatist movement found it necessary to define the boundaries of what constituted "authentic" forms of difference. This kind of difference was about exclusion as well as inclusion. Effort was made in lesbian cultural feminism to uncover and create lesbian traditions within cultural production. Lesbian politics of lifestyle also examined sexual practices, attempting to find a kind of quintessential lesbian aesthetic or lifestyle. As with early radical feminists, lesbian feminist privileging of only one kind of difference led to homogenization of women's experiences and the alienation of women whose configuration did not fit the alternative ideal. However, later queer theory began to engage more positively with issues of difference and diversity, conceptualizing difference not just as heterosexual vs. lesbian, but as encompassing a wide variety of practices and discourses. In this, the critique of heterosexuality develops into a critique of all things considered normal or natural, and stresses "the arbitrariness and unnaturalness of traditional signifiers of gender difference."(p.73) The emphasis here has shifted from the difference to differences. Part of the reason for this shift was the theoretical influence of postmodernism and its repudiation of fixed notions of difference. Still, issues such as transgenderism continue to present theoretical difficulties within queer theory. The theoretical and practical success of queer theory remains in dispute. Despite its emphasis on transgression and destabilization, the question about its practical efficacy continues to haunt feminist politics. Assigning a shifting field of signification to sexuality can erase the power relations which continue to maintain and police heterosexuality as a social institution, and the specific oppressions which lesbians face are made invisible. Thus conceptions of difference are not de facto politically useful, particularly if they do not acknowledge structural relations of power.
Chapter Four, "Psychoanalysis and Difference" In this chapter Weedon examines the role of psychoanalytic theory in feminist theories of difference. As she notes, "[t]he appeal of psychoanalysis for feminism lies in its claims to see gender as a psychic and social construct rather than as the natural expression of biological differences between the sexes."(p.77) Language is a central concern here, as it appears to provide a site of resistance. Feminist appropriations of psychoanalytic theories tend to indicate the maternal body as the significant locus of gender differentiation, as well as a challenge to traditional psychoanalytic theories which privilege the phallus and view femaleness as a lack or inferiority. Weedon begins with a cursory examination of classical Freudian psychoanalysis, which, although it seemed promising in its rejection of biological determinism and its proposition of gender as a psychic construct, ultimately re-encoded unequal relations of difference in that femininity/femaleness was seen as embodying a lack or void. Though second-wave feminists initially rejected Freudian psychoanalysis, the 1970s and 80s saw a resurgence of interest in psychoanalytic projects. The theoretical promise of gender as acquired rather than inborn was attractive for feminists, and they took up the challenge in a number of ways. The feminists who took up Lacanian psychoanalysis engaged with the notion of phallus as primary signifier, which defines all subjectivity as masculine-identified (Ahmed takes up the question of the relation of the phallus to the penis in Chapter Four of her book). On this point, feminist theory argues that this kind of male-defined subjectivity structures social relations and language as phallogocentric, such that women, defined again as lack, cannot participate fully. Feminist attention is then shifted to reclaiming the pre-Oedipal phase in which the child exists in a mutual relationship with the mother/maternal body. Feminist object relations theory is primarily concerned with this mothering relationship, and posits women's primary role in caregiving as the reason for reproduction of gender roles, as male and female children identify in different ways with the maternal body. Change is possible here through the re-organization of the domestic sphere. Post-Lacanian feminism takes this set of relations further, arguing that the "maternal feminine" can be a site of oppositional consciousness and symbolic exchange. These theories call for a reclamation of the symbolic dimension which is associated with the maternal body, and argue that the subject is always in process, constituted through the relations of discursive exchange and production. What women lack is not the phallus but self-defined terms of representation and communication. As in classical Freudianism, where the elements of the unconscious and irrational aspects of the psyche are explored, feminist psychoanalysis works in the field of desire, the imaginary, the pre-linguistic, and so forth. Here again difference is reclaimed as a positive source of conscious resistance for women, though its location and effects are somewhat dissimilar (though not unrelated) to radical feminism. In addition, feminist reworkings of psychoanalytic theory have drawn on lesbian theory to examine how sexual relations are structured, refusing to "structure it with reference to a singular signified, the phallus, and… [enabling] desire to be understood not just as feeling or affect, but also as doing and making". (p.95) Sexuality is then opened up for examination as both discourse and process, and psychoanalytic conceptions of polyvalent sexualities become useful ways of thinking through diversity and difference. This feminist rewriting of psychoanalysis is not without its critics. Difference valued in its own abstraction, again, can erase relations of power. Some feminists argue that a sexuality of multiplicity makes invisible the strategic utility of claims of sexual specificity. Embracing polymorphous perversity has its dangers, particularly with regard to the structures of power which continue to exist and affect concrete sexual practices, as well as in terms of finding a strategic standpoint from which to make feminist praxis.
Chapter Five, "The Production and Subversion of Gender: Postmodern Approaches" In this chapter Weedon takes up the role of postmodern theory in feminist work, particuarly in relation to the body. Postmodern/poststructuralist (Weedon conflates them) theory calls into question the notion of a body which is foundational to various forms of difference. In addition, this body of theory challenges conceptions of "fixed meaning, unified subjectivity, and centred theories of power."(p.100) Language here is of central importance. The foundation of this challenge is "the assumption that there is no such thing as natural or given meaning in the world. Language does not reflect reality but gives it meaning." (p.102) Poststructuralist theory is largely concerned with how meaning and subjectivity are constructed and given power. Since this happens through language, discourse and subjectivity is seen as the site of political resistance, since discourse is more than mere conversation, in its representation of an intersection of practices, institutions, and ideologies. Identity, in poststructuralism, is produced rather than given ontologically, and produced as "a precarious and temporary effect of difference."(p.104) These relations of difference are continually shifting and changing according to a variety of contextual conditions. Thus, presumably, poststructuralism (and feminist poststructuralism) moves beyond a binary and hierarchical notion of difference towards a plural and fluid one, arguing that binary thinking is not a natural way of viewing the world, but is rather produced to serve a particular social agenda. Moreover, feminist poststructuralism challenges many of the core tenets of other kinds of feminism, such as certain forms of identity politics, arguing instead that the basis for shared politics (if such a position is articulated) should be in shared forms of oppression rather than shared identities. This notion of plurality of the subject has been challenged within feminism by theorists such as Nancy Hartsock, who argue that endless division of the subject eliminates the possibility of meaningful political action. However, Weedon argues that agency is produced "in the social interactions between culturally produced, contradictory subjects." (p.107) Subjectivity and agency do not exist prior to language and discursive practices, so that while one must be mindful of material relations, this stance is "rather to insist that the meanings of the material world are produced within discourse." (p.107) Furthermore, to engage with plurality is not to slip into endless relativism which is politically paralyzing. Rather, poststructuralist theory "can offer partial and located theory and practice…[it] is grounded by the specificity of the phenomenon or practice which it seeks to explain." (p.111) One point of interest, which other theorists such as Modleski and Ahmed take up, is that of the role of "the feminine" as the signifier of difference. Many theorists argue that in fact the so-called crisis of the subject is merely a crisis of the masculine subject as its unitary normativity is called into question by feminist and poststructuralist critique. "Woman" or "the feminine" is thus used by (usually male) writers to stand for difference, an inarticulable catachresis, and/or a symbolic figuration which cannot be named. Yet this use of "the feminine" is predicated on not acknowledging material relations which affect real women, and as such is a highly problematic trope. The work of Foucault has provided another entry for feminist theorists, and numerous feminist concerns are present in his work: "the body as a site of power central to the constitution of subjectivity, the dispersed, discursive nature of power, and power's link with knowledge."(p.116) While Foucault's theories of power have provided many useful ways of analyzing patriarchy and subjectivity, they also remain the most problematic aspects of his work. Some feminists argue that Foucault's plural theory of power does not account for differentially weighted structural relations. While Foucault's model provides a nuanced analysis of power as both repressive and productive, it elides certain forms of positionality which are predicated on hegemonic frameworks of power. Resistance is reduced to microlevel intervention even though power is understood on a structural level. Many feminists have found poststructuralism to be a useful paradigm. Feminist work with poststructuralism has taken up the issue of embodiment and lived relations of the body as a source of subjectivity. Some, for example, argue for an examination of the kinds of "bodily performance" which both reify and subvert traditional conceptions of sex and gender. Others, like Haraway, find poststructuralism a helpful point of departure for thinking through new forms of hybrid identities which allow for a variety of strategic locations. However, feminists have also been critical of poststructuralism, objecting to the privileging of discourse over material relations, and the potential erasure of some kind of stable subjectivity from which to develop a coherent political practice.
In this chapter, Weedon takes up the issue of class in the context of feminist theorizing around difference. She notes that class-based analyses have fallen out of fashion in many circles, for three reasons: the proclaimed "failure of socialism" based on the experiences in Asia and the Eastern block European countries; the demise of working class identification with particular kinds of politics; and the development of postmodern theory which casts Marxist theory as a totalizing metanarrative. Thus, argues Weedon, the question for feminists at this point in time is how to theorize class within a postmodern context. One tension in theorizing is how to understand class. In classical Marxism, class tends to be used primarily an economic category derived from degree of access to control of the means of production. However, Marx also used class to connote cultural and social as well as economic differences. As Weedon notes, "class is an economic category which also has crucial ideological dimensions."(p.136) It is important to make the distinction between a class "in itself" (as a group which shares a certain economic status and the resulting sociocultural factors) and a class "for itself" (a group as a self-conscious political entity). Second wave feminist work in the 1970s concerned itself largely with the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism, examining both paid and unpaid forms of women's labour. Nodding to radical feminism which was involved in issues around the body, Marxist/socialist feminism began to work with both material relations and ideology in attempts to theorize women's experiences within particular structures. In examining various practices, Marxist/socialist feminists "argued the need for the practice in question to be seen as a capitalist industry as well as a key site for the exploitation of women's bodies and the patriarchal construction of sexuality."(p.145) However, by the 1980s critiques were raised by feminists of colour around the invisibility of race in the Marxist/socialist feminist analysis, as well as the absence of analyses of colonialism and imperialism. Lesbians raised the question of sexuality. Thus, in its engagement with these and other critical discourses, Marxist feminism began to redefine itself as socialist feminism, and to further develop its paradigm. Difference remained a material condition, and relations of difference were conceptualized as "relations of inequality and exploitation" which appear "innocuous" in much of the "postmodern market place." (p.147) Weedon traces the link between this new socialist feminism and the development of feminist standpoint theories, such as that of Nancy Hartsock. The basis for feminist standpoint theory is the situatedness of knowledge. This acknowledgement of knowledge as situated in material relations allowed socialist feminism to engage with both theory/epistemology and lived relations, to critique global narratives without endorsing endless relativism. This kind of theory project is similar in some ways to the poststructuralist feminist concern with embodiment, but it insists on engaging with the body on primarily a material and concrete level. Arguably, socialist feminism remains the form of feminism most concerned with concrete material change for women.
Chapter Seven, "Race, Racism, and the Problem of Whiteness" Much of feminist history involved conceptualizing gender difference as the difference which mattered. While significant critiques have been raised which date back to the beginning of feminist activism (see Hill Collins' discussion of Sojourner Truth), large-scale critical attention began to be given to the question of race as a signifier of difference only in the latter half of the 20th century. One significant problem is the normative function of whiteness, in the same way that maleness functions as a normative category in gender differences. Whiteness existed as both the positive and the neutral category, with "race" being constituted as the problem of "the other". Whiteness was thus never critically interrogated. Weedon identifies three common responses of white feminism to the question of racism: liberal refusal to see difference; guilt which leads to inaction; and a significant problem which affects "other" women. A fourth response which is much less common is "the conscious recognition of racism as a structuring force in both the material practices shaping societies and the production of individual subjectivities, whether white or of colour."(p.156) Only in the last few years has whiteness begun to be seen as a problematic category worthy of critical engagement. Constructions of whiteness vary across history and cultures, and have gender, class, and sexual specificity. Weedon introduces the scholarship of Black feminism, and identifies some key issues in that body of theory:
Weedon indicates the contradictory nature of identity politics, which provided a positive rallying point for many feminists of colour, as well as a problematic system of inclusion/exclusion. Feminists who engage with questions of race have tended to find postmodern theory more useful for thinking through issues of subjectivity, meaning and power, although work with postmodern thought has been moderated by "an awareness of the discrepancy between postmodern theory and actual social practices which continue to reproduce exclusive racist and sexist social relations." (p.170) One model by feminists of colour aims for more specificity in theorizing lived relations for women: "[c]entral here are understandings of place, history, language, and culture--that is questions of ethnic belonging--as well as the broader power structures of class, gender and race." In this model, binary conceptions of race (white:black) are exchanged for a framework of hybridity which calls into question discrete boundaries of identity and allows for the development of plural subjectivities based on lived experience.
Chapter Eight, "Beyond Eurocentrism: Feminism and the Politics of Difference in a Global Frame" In this chapter Weedon addresses the project of global feminism. She notes, as Ahmed does, that feminism continues to articulate a course between modernist conceptions of human rights and postmodern constructions of subjectivity. Like Ahmed, she argues that this model need not be restrictive or fall into a false binary of theory vs. practice; rather "[t]he political importance of discourses of human rights and equality remains compelling even in the face of poststructuralist critiques of sameness and identity, yet any adequate discourse about human rights must remain vigilant about its own partiality and limitations."(p.179) Conceptions of difference provide a creative tension in feminist theory and practice. Weedon, using Haraway, mediates the apparent contradiction between objectivism and relativism by noting that both positions "deny the partial and located position of the knowing subject and it is in this partial and located position… [that one may] locate a new conception of objectivity." (p.182) Relativism allows one to elide responsibility in much the same way that objectivity did, since both are a view-from-nowhere. Equivocating between positions without declaring an interested stance has the same effect as declaring one universal yet neutral position. This caution against difference as being subsumed in the logic of late industrial capitalism, in which play becomes a luxury of those who are presumed to be unmarked, is well taken. A central question for feminists now becomes how to both acknowledge and transcend limitations of positioning, and to come to terms with the profound ambivalences and contradictions of subjectivity. An honest engagement with difference and diversity requires "the ability to acknowledge privileges which come from the structural power relations within which individuals are located" (p.185). A knowledge of hidden histories, such as the effects of colonialism, is thus necessary for ethical theorizing. Furthermore, care must be taken to see that theorizing itself does not reproduce relations of colonialism and domination, as Mohanty cautions (Ahmed refers to this process as '"violence"). One significant, and often unacknowledged problem, is using the West as a normative standard of theorizing. Attention must be given to acknowledging differences in power and material resources between nations, as well as the diversity amongst people and groups, so that "difference can be lived as enriching and valuable rather than as the oppressive effect of hierarchical binary oppositions." (p.195) An example of a fruitful way of thinking through this model of difference is the paradigm of diaspora proposed by some theorists of colour, "a cultural hybridity that can challenge existing binary oppositions and hierarchies"(p.196).
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