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8/17/2019 Ahmed Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism (2)
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Hypatia, Inc.
Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist PracticeAuthor(s): Sara AhmedSource: Hypatia, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1996), pp. 71-93Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.
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Beyond
Humanism
nd
Postmodernism:
Theorizing
Feminist
Practice
SARA AHMED
The model
of feminism
as humanist
n
practice
and
postmodem
n
theory
s
inadequate.
Feminist
ractice
nd
theorydirectlynform
achother o
displace
oth
humanist nd
postmodern
onceptions f
the
subject.
An
examination
f
feminism's
use
of
rights
discourse
uggests
hat
eminist
practice
uestions
he
humanist
oncep-
tion
of
the
subject
as
a
self-identity.
Likewise,
eminist theory
undermines he
postmodernmphasisn theconstitutivenstabilityndindeterminacyf thesubject.
In this
essay,
I
discuss
he
relationship
between
feminist
theory
and
practice.
I
consider the
implications
of a
model of feminist
practice
that creates a
necessarydisjunction
or contradiction
between it and feminist
theory.
This
contradiction relates to
a
perceived
split
between
humanist and
postmodem
elements within
feminism. Feminism
has been viewed as
split
between the
practicalneed forhumanismand the theoreticalattractionof postmoderism.
In
other
words,
eminismhas been
seen
as
straddling
he
disjunction
between
humanism
(in
its need for a
discoursebased
on
women's
rights
as
sovereign
subjects)
and
postmodernism
in
its
theoretical
critique
of
any
such
discourse
of
rights
and
sovereignty).
A
disjunction
is
constructed between
feminist
humanist
practice
and feminist
postmodem
theory
and
is
implicitly
under-
stood in
terms of an
inherent
contradiction between the
demandsof
practice
and
theory
(feminist
practice
s
necessarily
humanist,
eminist
theory
is
neces-
sarilypostmoder).
The
construction of
feminism as
inherently
contradictory,
as
based on
realist,
affirmativeand
humanist
aspirations
s well as on
postmodem
formsof
resistance,
s
readily
apparent
n
recent
feminist cultural
criticism and
philos-
ophy.
Jean
Grimshaw in her article
Autonomy
and
Identity
in
Feminist
Thinking
(1988),
for
example, argues
that feminism
needs to
engage
with
those
theories which
deconstructthe
distinction between the
'individual'
and
the
'social,'
which
recognize
the
power
of desire
and
fantasy
and
the
problem
Hypatia
ol.
11,
no.
2
(Spring
996)
?
by
SaraAhmed
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Hypatia
of
supposing
any 'original'unity
in
the
self,
while at the same time
preserving
its concern with lived experienceand the practicaland materialstrugglesof
women
to
achieve more
autonomy
and
control
in their lives
(1988,
105).
Here,
feminism
is constructed as
having
a dual
agenda
that
derives
from
alternative
and
contradictory
attitudes
towards the
subject,
and
there
is no
attempt
made
to
pose
the
problem
of
reconciling
these
agendas
and attitudes
into
a
single position.
Likewise,
Regina
Gagnier
in FeministPostmodernism:
The
End
of Feminism
or
the
Ends
of
Theory
(1990)
argues
that feminism
cannot undermine
its normative
ground
in humanism
given
that
it
presup-
posesthat the oppressionof women exists and that its projectis to makethe
world better
for women.
Yet,
at
the same
time,
Gagnier argues
hat
feminism
is
pushed
toward
a
postmoder
ethics
and
politics
via its
very
critique
of
gender
identity,
its
emphasis
on the
culturally
overdetermined
constitution
of
the
gendered
subject
(Gagnier
1990, 24).
I think what
we
have
in
these
represen-
tations of
feminism is
a
demand
for
a limit
to
be
imposed
to the
process
of
postmodern
critique
in order that feminism
can maintain an
unproblematic
relation
to social
reality,
and
in
order
hat feminism
can
practicallyexploit
the
humanistconstructionof the subjectas a knowingagent.Feminismbecomes
then
humanism
with
imits
and
postmodernism
with imits.
These
contradictory
tendencies
take
place
as
a
result of the
very
nature
of this
political program
which
seems
to
practically require
the
stability
of
the
category
(the
sub-
ject/women)
that
it seeks
to
radically
displace.
These
conceptions
of feminism
hence
construct
a
disjunction
between
what
feminism
needs
(the
demands
of
practice)
and its theoretical tendencies.
Understanding
eminism
in
terms
of an inherent
disjunction
between
prac-
tice and theory is problematicinsofaras it underminesthe importanceof
theory
to the articulation
of
political
choice
and,
perhaps
even more
so,
to the
degree
that
it
implies
that
theory
itself
is
uninformed
by
the
problems
and
contingencies
of
practical politics.
Rather
than
accepting
this
disjunction,
I
suggest
that the
co-existence
within
feminism of
(liberal)
humanist
and
postmoder
tendencies
moves towards
an alternative
and constructive
approach,
which transforms
nd
displaces
both
positions
through
he
focus
on
gender
relations
such
that
they
become
an-other
discourse.
This
other
dis-
coursemay involve the simultaneousdisplacementof humanismand post-
modernism
at the level
of
both
practice
and
theory.
As
such,
this
essay
will
construct
a dialectical
relationship
between feminist
practice
and
theory
which
is
based
on an
acceptance
that
a
position
which
foregrounds
he
social
relation
of
gender
will
radically
displace
those
positions
which
are
structurally
indifferent.
n other
words,
eminism's
oncern
with
understanding
nd
trans-
forming
relations
of
gender
inequality
has
both
practical
and
theoretical
implications:
feminism
cannot
simply
inhabit discourses
which
marginalize
the questionof gender.Indeed, the exclusion of genderfromany political or
theoreticaldiscourse
an
exclusion
that often
operates
hrough
he
assumption
72
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Sam Ahmed
of thatdiscourse's
niversality
r
generalizability)
annotbe seen
as
ncidental,
butstructural,o thatdiscourseGatens1991,187).Feminismence hasan
active
role in
displacing
oth
previous onceptualizations
f
the social
world
and modelsof social transformation.
he
difference f feminismdoes
not
negate,
however,
he difference
n feminism:he
way
n which eminism
tself
is an
unstable erm hat
namesdiverse
ractices
ndtheories.The
specificity
andstructuralifference f feminisms
simplydisplayed y
its
inability
o
be
humanistn
practice
r
postmodern
n
theory,
hat
is,
to
inhabit he
terms
f
any
other
particular
iscourse. s a
result,
eminist
ractice
nd
theorymerge
together n theirjointde-stabilizationnddisplacementf humanism nd
postmodernism.
In this
essay,
firstdiscuss
ways
n which
eminist
ractice
annotbe seen
as
simply
nhabiting
he discourse f
humanism. then considerhow feminist
theorymayoccupy
relation f critical
ension
with
postmodernism,
owever
muchthe
boundariesf this
discursive
pace
are,themselves,
ontested.
My
argumentmplies
hat
feminism xceedsthe
very
termsof the
disjunction
between
humanism nd
postmodernism,
nd
concurrently,
etween
practice
andtheory.
BEYOND
HUMANISM?:
E-THINKING FEMINIST
RACTICE
Doesfeminism
eedhumanism
t the level of
practice?
s
feminist
ractice
necessarily
umanist? hese
questionsmay
be
slightlymisleading.
t
is
quite
apparent
hat
humanism
as defined he terrain f
intelligibility
or
politics
(the
centering
f the
subject
n
political
discourse)
nd
communicativean-
guagen general thedistinction etween ubject ndobject n speech)and,
as
such,
cannotbe
simply
ranscendedr
negated.
Gayatri
pivak uggests
hat
the
centering
f the
subject
s
irreduciblend
inevitable
Spivak
1990, 11).
This
may
mply
hat
humanismtself s an
irreducible
omponent
f
anygiven
practice.
However,
lthough
umanism
may
be
irreduciblend
unavoidablen
the sense
of
defining
he
terrain f
the
subject,
his s not
to
say
hat t
cannot
be
problematized
r
resisted:
politics
and
language
annot
themselvesbe
reduced o
humanism.
ndeed,
will
try
and
demonstrate
hat,
rather han
simplyneedinghumanism,eministpractice andnot justfeminist heory)
may
actually roblematize
he
humanist
ubject.
But
n
order
o consider
he relation
etween
eminist
ractice
nd
human-
ism,
I
need
firstly
o
delineate
more
precisely
whatI
mean
by
humanism
nd
consider
he
historicalimitsof
its
production.
ost
Enlightenment
umanist
thought,
manifestmost
mportantly
n
liberal
deology,
onstitutes
n
empha-
sis on
the
primacy
f
the
subject
ver
he
objective
orldof
social
relations
(Grosz 990,
64-65).
Liberal
umanism
as
a
definite
nd
mportant
inkwith
a universalistpistemologyndethics, nsofar s it presupposeshatuniversal
rights
have
their
oundationn
the
subject
s a
self-identity
hat s
prior
o
the
73
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Hypatia
contingent
realmsof
history
and culture.The
humanistself is thus a disembod-
ied and unitary categorywhose rightsare guaranteedas natural or intrinsic
properties.
t
may
seem that a
feminist
practice
would
perpetuate
he
assump-
tion
that individual
rights
are
essential and
universal,
nsofaras the normative
project
of
feminism could be described as
the
claiming
of
such
rights
for
women.
But
given
that
liberal feminism reveals
that
the construction
of a
universal,
ntrinsic
right
has
entailed
processes
of
exclusion
and selection
(that
universal
suffrage
quals
male
suffrage)
t
exposes
humanismas an
ideological
legitimation
of
power (perhapsdespite
itself).
A
way
of
analyzing
this is to
theorizeit in terms of the Derrideansupplement(see Derrida1976, 144-45).
Liberal feminism
attempts
to
supplement
liberalism
proper,
by
processes
of
logical
extension
of
the discourseof universal
rights
such
that
they
include
women. But
in
keeping
with the
logic
of the
supplement,
liberal feminism
exposes
the
deficiency
of
the
original.
If
the
concept
of
rights
has to be
extended,
then
its
status
as
universal
and self-evident is called into
question.
Rather than
rights
being
intrinsic,
they
become at
once
historically
produced
and defined
along
exclusive
and
partial
criteria
(in
this case
the
criteria
is
shown to be gendered).Ratherthan the subjectbeingunifiedand transhistori-
cal,
it
becomes
at once divisive or differential
and
historically
embedded.
As a
result,
feminist
practice
may
serve
to de-stabilize he distinction
between the
subject
and what
is
outside
it
(its
historical
situatedness)
which is
essential
to
humanism.
Indeed,
rights
become
productive
of the
very
process
of
group
differentia-
tion,
whereby
the
legitimate
subject
of
rights
(the
subject
who is
proper,
and
has
property)
is
always already
the
subject
of
a
demarcated,
stratifiedsocial
groupthat is exclusiveof others.Within a classical iberal ramework, rights
defined men as
a
group
(or
fraternity )
which excluded
women,
through
the
very
act of
constituting
that
group
as a
universal.
To refuse he universalism
of this
rights
discourse
would be
precisely
to make
visible its role
in the
differentiation
and hierarchization f social
groups.
The focus on the
group
or
the collective
is central to a feminist
discourseof
rights.
A
feminist
focus on
the structural
effects that actual
relations of
inequality
may
have on
the
realization
of
rights
nvolves
a stress on the
way
in which the
mobility
of
subjectsis constituted through the processwhereby rightsdifferentiateone
group
from
another. As
Iris
Marian
Young
has
stressed,
Rights
are not
fruitfully
onceived
as
possessions.Rights
are
relationships
not
things;they
are
institutionally
defined rules
specifying
what
people
can do
in relation to one
another.
Rights
refer
to
doing
ratherthan
having,
to social
relationships
hat
enable or constrain
action
(Young
1990,
23).
The
linkage
of
rights
and
subjectivities
with the hierarchizationof
social
groups may
constitute
in
itself
a refusal of the liberal
politics
of
equality
of
opportunity,which might at first seem to inform feminist practice most
concretely.
The central feature
of
(classical)
liberalism
is its
emphasis
on
74
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SaraAhmed
formal
rights,
that
is,
the
right
to
equal
opportunity
ratherthan
equal
condi-
tions, the latterassuming he actual relationsbetween subjectsas its measure.
But a feminist
concept
of
equality (taking
as
its basis the
understanding
f
the
differential
position
of
subjects)
may displace
his
ideology
of
autonomy,
which
assumes
that the
subject
can be
separated
from the social relations
within
which it
operates
and that
the
degree
of
separation
unctions as
a
measure
of
its freedom.
Instead,
equality
in
this
particular
eminist
discourseconstructs
the
subject
as
relational,
as
existing
in connection with other
subjects
in
a
network of
human relations. A
subject
experiences equality,
not when it
operates
without external influence (as the formal
equality
of
opportunity),
but
only
when
those
external
relations
themselves are
equal.
Therefore
a
feminist
practice ultimately
transforms iberal
humanism
by
pointing
to the
arbitrary
ature of the liberal
formal
self,
and
restoring
o
rights
talk,
and the
struggle
for
equitable
conditions,
the realm of
historically
situated
and
bodily
experience.
This
constitutes
a
major
break with
humanism,
as it
undermines the
concept
of the
subject
as a
self-identity,
as
sealed off
from
external
relations. This
feminist
reworking
of the discourse
of
rights
paral-
lels the
model
offered
by
Michael
Ryan
in
Politicsand
Culture
(1989),
where
the
subject
is
conceived as an elastic
and indeterminate
entity
whose
interiority
can
expand
or
contract
depending
on
its
power
to exercise
its
rights
in an
institutional context that is not
deemed
external to
subjectivity
(Ryan
1989, 163).
But doesn't
feminism's
commitment
to
representing
women
as collective
subjects
perpetuate
the
assumptions
and
practices
of
humanism at an
even
more
basic level?
Doesn't this
very
notion of
representing
women
assume
that there are
women
and that
they
can be
represented,
and
doesn't it
therefore
pre-suppose
humanismas a
politics
of
identity?
But
the
emphasis
on
the collective
qualifies
his
apparent
pre-supposition.By
stressing
collectivity,
feminism is at
once
stressing
that
subject
positions
become
intelligible
only
within
structures f
power
and
that
change requires
politics
of
alliance
which
recognizes
and reveals
structures
of
domination and
subordination.Further-
more,
feminism is
not
necessarily
committed
to
women as a
unity
even if
it is
committed to women ascollective. The acceptanceof differencehas become
a
strategic
as well
as
a
theoretical
choice.
Gender,
as a
social
relation,
intersects
with other
social
relations such
as class
and
race,
such that
women's
experi-
ences of
power
and
disempowerment
re
divergent.
Feminist
positions
that are
committedto
women as a
collective
(a
structure
f social
alliance)
must
accept
their
status as
partial
interventions,
as limited
by
the
personal/social
econo-
mies
that
shape
them. To
do
otherwise,
as
Judith
Butler
points
out in
Gender
Trouble:
Feminism
nd the
Subversion
f Identity,
s
to
misrepresentby
posing
a
false and oppressiveunity, a point that links universalizingdiscourseswith
exclusion and
power
(Butler
1990, 1-6).
75
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Hypatia
The
development
of a
politics
of difference s one
way
of
reconsidering
how
feminismmay displacehumanismat a strategiclevel. For difference is not
something
that
can
simply
be
added
on to a
pre-existing
model of
subjectiv-
ity,
or
to
a
pre-existing
model of
woman
as
subject.
The
way
in
which
differencesmust
displace
a
model
of a
unitary
and
discrete
subject/woman
s
outlined
by
Elizabeth
Spelman.
Spelman
argues
that the notion of
a
generic
woman
unctions
in
feminist
theory
in
much the
way
the notion
of
a
generic
man has
functioned
in
Western
philosophy.
That
is,
the
generic
use
of
woman unctions
to
exclude an
analysis
of the
heterogeneity
that inflects
the category and so cuts off an examination of the significance of such
heterogeneity
for
feminist
theory
and
political
activity
(Spelman
1990,
ix).
Spelman
drawsour attention to
the
dangers
of an additive
analysis
of differ-
ences
(race
+
gender
+
class).
She
calls
for an
approach
hat
is attentive to the
complications
and contradictions that are involved
in the
construction of
social identities
(115).
The
problem
of
assuming
woman as an essential
and
foundational
category
is
precisely
that this
assumption
works
to
exclude
a
pragmatic
analysis
of the
complex
and difficult intersections
that
trouble
as
well asshape subject positions.
The
importance
of
recognizing
he
way
in which
the
existence
of
differences
between women
may
effect our
understanding
of
gendered
subjectivities
in
practice
is evident when
we
consider the
example
of sexual
violence. Catha-
rine MacKinnon
argues
that what women
experience
as
degrading
and
defiling
when
we
are
raped
includes as much that is distinctive to us as
is our
experience
of sex
(MacKinnon 1987, 87).
The use
of us
and
we
uggests
that women
may
experience
rape
collectively
as a violation of a self
beyond
the male and legalisticfocus on penile penetration.But if we considerhow
sexual violence
may
be
dependent upon
race
as well
as
gender,
then
we
may
begin
to
recognize
the
way
in which
a feminist
politics
of
rape
may
work to
complicate
the
category
of
women's
experiences.
Abena
P.A.
Busia,
for
example,
suggests
hat the
raped
woman is
socially
and
culturally
constructed
as
white,
while black
women
are constructed
as
morally
unrapeable,
as
lacking
the
appropriate
eminine virtues which
would make the
concept
of
rape
and violation makesense
(Busia 1993,
288).
VronWare
n
Beyond
hePale
discusses he wayin which vulnerability s both sexed aswoman,andracially
marked
as white: such that the
dominant media construction
of
sexual
vio-
lence is
of a white woman
threatened
by
the
aggression
of black men
(Ware
1992,
7).
The
position
of black women
in relation to sexual violence
is hence
differential
and divided: at
once an
object
of
violence,
they
are also
removed
from
the
conceptualization
of
woman as
a
victim of
violence. Black
women
who
experience rape
hence cannot
be
simply
included within
a
notion
of
women's
collective
experience
of
rape.
The social relations
of sex and race
divideand intersectwitheach other-so preventingthe securingofanyshared
totality
of women's
xperiences.
f feminismwere to
deny
the otheress that
76
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SaraAhmed
divides the
concept
women's
experience
then feminism would
implicitly
supporta racisteconomy,byallowingthe differentialpositionof black women
in reaction to sexual violence
to remain
invisible.
And
yet,
at the same
time,
the
knowledge
of
rape
as a relation of
gender
and
dominance
may
enable
feminism to
forge
connections between
seemingly disparate
social
phenom-
ena: to construct
alliances
through
(rather
han
despite)
differences.
But
despite
the
importance
of
working through
a
politics
of
difference,
doesn't
the
refusal
of humanist
thought,
and the
model of
individual
rights
as
having
essential
foundations,
eave
us
in a situation of a defeatist relativism?
Will it become impossibleto defend one ethical position over another,for
example,
to
defenda
critique
of
sexism,
or a
critique
of racism?
First,
as Chantal
Mouffe
points
out in her article Radical
Democracy:
Modem or Postmodern
(1988),
we can defend the
political
project
of
modernity
while
abandoning
he
notion that it must be based
on a
specific
form of
rationality,
or on
some
ultimate universalist
or
essentialist
oundation
(Mouffe 1988, 32-33).
In other
words,
nonfoundationalist
or
pragmatic
ustifications
o democratic
demands
can be
sought.
This
may
entail
accepting
that the criteria
for
negotiating
between ethical positions are themselves culturallymediatedand that the
validity
of such criteria
can
be measured
nly
in termsof their
practical
effects
and
consequences,
which
points
to the fact that
these criteriamust be
open
to
constant revision.
Second,
although
ethical
disputes
function
superficially
as controversies
over what is
essentially
the case or what is
essentially
valuable,
it is
the
very
undecidability
of what is essential which locates the
dynamics
of
such con-
flicts.
For
example,
the conflict over abortion can be redefined as
a
conflict
over what is essential,that is, over what constitutes a subjectwith proprietal
rights
(Johnson
1987,
193-94).
The abortion conflict
is
characterized
by
competing rights
claims,
based
on either
the notion
of
the
rights
and
autonomy
of the
mother,
or the
rights
and
autonomy
of the fetus. The
conflict,
dealt with
as a
rights
conflict,
becomes
centered
upon
whether the
fetus
constitutes a
subject
with
proprietal
rights.
A feminist
approach
could
argue
that the
sociality
of the
subject,
its constitution within and
through
the social
itself,
means that the
fetus,
attached to the
body
of a social
subject,
does
not
constitute a subject (with rights).A feminist approachcould conclude that
the
argument against
women's choice is
based
on an
illegitimate
model of
rights,
which is
perhaps
how
we can define Rosalind Pollack
Petchesky's
argument
in
Morality
and
Personhood: A Feminist
Perspective
(Petchesky
1992,
419).
Alternatively,
a feminist
approach
could base
itself on
the
undecidability
of
where the
body
of
the woman ends. The
question
of the fetus becomes a
question
of the
integrity
of
the mother
(Is
it inside or
outside
the
body?
s
it
an
aspectof, or externalto, herproperself?).The impossibilityof answering his
question
without
neglecting
the
instability
of
the
boundaries
of
the mother's
77
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Hypatia
body
and statusas a social
subject
does not
simplynegate
the
autonomy
of the
mother.Moreprecisely, he impossibility fdecidingwhether the fetus is inside
or
outside
her
body
establishes that
autonomy
(of
the
mother
or
the
fetus)
cannot
be
the
grounds
for
the
viability
of
abortion,
as the lack of
bodily
integrity
(and
hence the
instability
of the boundariesof the social
subject)
leaves us without a
proper
ubject
o actualize ts
rights
n a
freedom
of will
and
action.
By
showing
how
the
problematic
of
pregnancy
declares
the non-
availability
of
a notion of
autonomy
grounded
on the
integrity
or
rights
of the
subject,
a feminist
approach
could shift the
debate aroundabortionfrom one
of abstractrightsto one of power.
Indeed,
it is
apparent
hat a feminist
approach
does
not
strategically equire
a model of women's
rights
as
true,
essential or
proper.
As
Catharine MacK-
innon and
Mary
Poovey
have
both
pointed
out,
in the
light
of their
interroga-
tion
of
Roe
vs.
Wade
(1973),
the
feminist use of the discourse
of
individual
rights
(the
right
to
choose)
can be
problematic.
This is
because
individual
rights
are framed
n
terms of
privacy
noninterference
rom
public
bodies).
This
concept
of
the
private
s
precisely
hat which conceals
the
political
nature
of the genderedsubject'saccess to resources,uchas informationandguidance
on
contraception,
as well as abortion
procedures
MacKinnon
1992,
358).
As
Poovey
argues,
he
notion of individual
rights
framed
n termsof
the
ideology
of
privacy,
may
actually
exacerbate sexual
oppression
because it
protects
domestic
and maritalrelations rom
scrutiny
and
from
intervention
by
govern-
ment or social
agencies
(Poovey
1992, 290).
The
disruption
of the discourse
of
individual
rights
may
situate the
very potential
of a
feminist
approach.
It shifts the
question
from one of
autonomy
to one of
power,
and could
function by pointing out the various limitations the removal of choice
would
have on women as
a
collective,
in the form of the
appropriation
and
control
of women's bodies.
This
example may
serve
to
suggest
that is not
enough
in
any
pragmatic
context to
simply
defend
one's
position
as
being
basedon
an
essential
truth or
right.
What is
required
s a more
general argument
or
approach
which
justifies
one's own
conception
of
what is essential in the first
place,
or which locates
the effects
of various
models of
essence
on
the
distributiverelation
of
power
between subjects.So if we were to assume a position (such as pro-choiceor
pro-life
in the abortion
conflict)
that has recourse o absolute
foundationsto
be
untenable
and
implausible,
hen this would not lead us to
a
situation
where
the defense of
a
position
is
impossible
or
unlikely.
We would
be,
that
is,
be
in
the same situation of
having
to
justify
our
interpretation.
n
fact,
Nancy
Fraser
argues
hat
we
may
be more able to
argue
or
our
position
precisely
because
we
would
not have
recourse o
any simplistic
and
ultimately
imited
foundations
(Fraser
1989,
181).
As
Emesto Laclau
points
out
in
Politics
and the Limitsof
Moderity, the discourseof equality and rights . . ., need not rely on a
common
human essence as their
foundation,
it
suffices
to
posit
an
egalitarian
78
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Sara Ahmed
logic
whose limits
of
operation
are
given by
the
concrete
argumentative
practices
existing
in a
society
(Laclau 1988, 81).
Furthermore,
a
pragmatically
oriented
feminist
practice,
disclaiming any
disinterested
knowledge
or
ethics,
needs
to remain attentive to the
interests
that structure
all forms of
discursive
exchange.
We
need to consider
the
empirical
ssue
of
who
organizes
or
dominates,
and what effects
are
implied
by,
each
intervention
in the
public sphere.
Such
a considerationwould restorean
awarenessof
the
importance
of
institutions,
ethical
procedures,
and
group
dynamics
o
any
radicalized
model of
political
action.
Indeed,
a
radical
politics
needs to acknowledge hat thelinguisticmarketcan be no more a 'free'one
than
any
other
market,
or verbal
agents
do not
characteristically
nter
it
from
positions
of
equal advantage
or
conduct their transactions on
equal
footing
(Herrnstein
Smith
1988, 17).
Such an
approach
has immediate
practical
implications:
egalitarianism
may
be
possible only
when
space
is
allocated
institutionally
for those
subjects/groups
who have less
discursive
or
material
power
in
order
that their interests can
become heard within the
public
sphere.
A feminist
practice
does not then
necessarily ely
on a humanist
assumption
of
absolute foundations to
individual
rights
as the intrinsic
property
of a
unitarysubject.
Instead,
eminism
moves towarda
pragmatic
historicismwhich
Nancy
Fraser
defines as an insistence on
the social
context and
practice
of
all
truth
positions,
and
the
plurality
of
historically
changing
discursivesites
and
practices
(Fraser1990, 100).
Such
a
pragmatist
erspective
s not
linked to
the
school of
thought
identified with Richard
Rorty,
which is
shaped by
a belief
that
the
only
constraints to
linguistic
practice
are
conversational
ones,
thereforeassuming hat suchpracticescan in themselvesguaranteeand legit-
imate ethical
choice
(Rorty
1982, 165).
Rather a feminist
pragmatic
histori-
cism
points
to the fact that
social and
linguistic
practices
and
conceptual
systems
are
sites of contestation
and are overdetermined
by
an
unequal
distri-
bution of
power.
As
such,
feminism is
committed to
interrogating
he
ways
in
which
gender
inequality
is
produced
within
linguistic
practices
and
institu-
tional
norms,
and to
affirming
alternative,
more
egalitarian
distributionsof
power
and
resources.Feminism
tself can be
understoodas a
body
of theoretical
workwhich is, at once, a form of praxis-it interprets he multiplicityof sites
that
constitute social
relations as
being organized
around the
dominance of
men over
women,
and it
intervenes
in
these
sites with a
variety
of
interpre-
tative and
communicative
strategies
in
order
to
engage
the
possibility
of
social
change.
It can
be
concluded that the
contingencies
of
feminist
practice
entail a
displacement
of
humanism,
n
particular,
y
exposing
that the
liberal
humanist
model of the self
reifiesthe
culturally pecific,
differential tatusof the
subject.
Feminismseemsto be committed to refusinga model of the subjectashaving
intrinsic
properties,
and
is so
pushed
towarda
seeminglypostmoder recogni-
79
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Hypatia
tion
of the
textual
or
constructednatureof
subjectivity.
But in fact the
feminist
displacementof liberalhumanism can be linked to the
displacement
of the
postmodem subject.
I will
argue
hat the
subject
of
postmodernism
ends to
be
undifferentiatedand
undetermined,
hence
repeating
some of the
problems
of
the
liberal humanist
position.
It
must
be
stressed
hat to
argue
that
feminism
displaces
some of
the
assumptions
f
postmodernism
does
not
mean that there
are no continuities between
their theories of the
subject.
Both feminists
and
postmoderists
have
argued
or
the textual and
constructed
nature of
subjec-
tivity.
To
displacepostmodernism
s
not
necessarily
hen to return
o a formof
humanism.The subjectcan be textualized n manydifferentwayswith differ-
ent
political
implications.
I
will,
throughmy
critique
of
some
paradigmatic ostmodern
exts,
point
out
analogies
between
postmoderism
and
other
political ideologies
such as liber-
alism,
in an
attempt
to ask
what the discourseof
postmodernism
does,
rather
than
simply
ask what it means
or
what
it
is. This is the
sort
of
question
raised
by
Steven Connor
in
Postmodernist
ultures
(1989).
Such
a
question,
he
suggests,
will
help
us
to
focus
on the
very
conditions
which
determine
that a
particular erm be circulated for debate and, therefore,to engage with that
term's
conditions of
production
and
its
practical
effects
(Connor 1989, 10).
By
asking
the
question
whatdoes the discourseof
postmodernism
do?
I
will be
able
to
theorize
postmoderism
as a
discursive
space
which
has boundaries
(however
much
they
are unstable and
contested).
The
problem
with the
nomenclature of
postmoderism
is
that
it
implies
a
unity
or sameness
between
all critical
readings
of
modernity
and humanism.
Critiques
of moder-
nity,
and humanist
thought
in
particular,
unction
within
specific
fields
of
utterance.That is, a need to see postmodernismthat is, texts which become
cited
as
typical
of the
postmodern
or which
argue
for the
peculiarity
of a
postmodern
condition )
as
a
specific
way
of
critiquing
the
moder,
rather
than as an umbrella term
for all such
critiques.
This
approach
may
protect
the
alterity
of
other discursive
formations that are
structured
by
an ambiv-
alence to humanism
and
modernity,
such as
feminism
and
post-colonial
theory.
My
analysis
will
help
undermine
postmodemism's
problematic
ten-
dency
of
encompassing
and
containing many
differential,
antagonistic
politics under the unity of its name, so emptying them of the potential for
a radical
difference.
BEYONDPOSTMODERNISM?:EADINGSEDUCTION
AND
THEORIZING
HESEXED
SUBJECT
Jean
Baudrillard
as
been
read as the ultimate
postmodern.
ndeed,
the
Notes
to Contributors
rom
Body
Invaders:
exuality
nd the
Postmodern
ondi-
tion describe Baudrillardas himself the postmodernscene (Krokerand
Kroker
1988, 276).
Baudrillard's
exts are hence
very important
o
any
articu-
80
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Sara
Ahmed
lation
of the
political
limits
of
postmodernism
as
a
theoretical
discourse.
The
crucial text by Baudrillardor feminist readers s Seduction 1990) which is
explicitly
concerned with
theorizing
the sexed
subject.
Seduction
begins:
Nothing
is less certain
today
than
sex,
behind the liberationof its discourse
(1990,
5).
Baudrillard
rgues
here that
the
proliferation
of
images
of sex s
approaching
otal
loss,
and that the
principle
of
uncertainty
has extended from
political
and economic
reason to sexual reason
(5).
He
suggests
hat we are
immersed
in
a sexual indetermination
where there
is
no
more
want,
no
more
prohibitions,
and no
more limits: it
is
the loss
of
every
referential
principle
(5). The
passage
romdeterminationto
general
ndetermination
and to the
neutralization
of structure
entails,
in his
thesis,
a flotation
of
the
law that
regulates
he differencebetween the sexes
(6).
Such
a
flotation
is
represented
as a
passage
toward
seduction.
Seduction
becomes a
metaphor
or that which resistsnatureand
essentialism,
or
artifice,
appearance,
and the
dispersal
of
truth
ideologies.
Seduction continues to
appear
to all orthodoxies as malefice and
artifice,
a black
magic
for
the
deviation of all
truths,
an exaltation
of
the
malicioususe of
signs,
a
conspiracy
of
signs
(Baudrillard
1990,
2).
Seduction
is
associated with
the
feminine,
which rather han
being
considered
he
negation
or
opposite
of
masculinity,
s
defined in terms
of
the deconstruction of
the
masculine/feminine
sexual
hierarchy.
It becomes a
sign
for the indeterminable and undifferentiated
subject,
the
subject
in and
of
free
play.
Baudrillard ence
rejects ideologies
which
argue
that
the
subject
is deter-
mined
in
the last instance.
According
to Baudrillard's
eading,
Freudian
psy-
choanalysis
assumes hat
anatomyfully
determinesthe
subject'sdestiny(as
in
anatomy
s
destiny ). Concurrently,
he
suggests
hat Marxism akes
class to
be
fully determining,
and
that
feminism
takes
gender
to be
fully determining.
But it is
here that
the
postmodern gesture
can
itself be
problematized.
For
rather than
refusing
the
concept
of
destiny,
the
concept
of
determination
n
the last
instance,
Baudrillard ffers an alternative.
He
argues
hat
seduction
is
destiny
(Baudrillard
1990,
180).
That
is,
the
very
structureof free
play
becomes the normative account of
subjectivity.
The
subject
is
determined
by
indeterminacy(ratherthan anatomy,class,or gender).As such, Baudrillard's
postmodernism
an
be read as a normative
and
positive
reading
of the
subject,
ratherthan as a
rejection
of its
limits,
a
reading
which
refuses o
recognize
he
determining
nfluence of
structures f
power,
but
sees the
subject
as
governed
only by
the
radical free
play
of its
own
(in)difference.
The
subject
is deter-
mined
(it
has a
destiny),
but
by nothing
positive
which exceeds it
or
is
beyond
it.
The
subject
s
determined hen
by
its own
undetermined
possibilities,by
its
own limitless
potential
for
dispersal
and
betrayal.
Rather than
recognizing
he
subject as an effect of discourseand power (and in this sense as being posi-
tioned and
relational)
this
approachontologizes
and
autonomizes he
subject
81
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Hypatia
by rendering
t
primary
at the same
time
as
emptying
it of
any
determinate
content.
Baudrillard's
nterpretation
of
transvestism,
or
example,
as
the
exposureby
the male of the
artifice
of
femininity
(not
the female
subject
but that
non-ref-
erential other of
sexuality
and
production),
refuses o
recognize
actual
power
as
operative
within the
determination of
subjectivity
(Baudrillard
1990,
12-
17).
The
transvestite
s radical
and
powerful
nsofaras
it
retrieves he
symbolic
power
of
the feminine
(for
Baudrillard,
atriarchy
s a mere trivialand
pathetic
defense
against
the austere
power
of the
feminine to
disperse
and
betray
truth
itself). The transvestiteradicallyrefuses he regimesof truth and production
and hence
signifies
the free
floating
of
the
sign.
Baudrillard
writes:
What transvestites ove
is
this
game
of
signs,
what excites them
is to
seduce
the
signs
themselves.
With
them
everything
is
makeup,
theater,
and
seduction.
They appear
obsessed with
games
of
sex,
but
they
are
obsessed,
irst of
all,
with
play
itself;
and if their lives
appear
more
sexually
endowed than our
own,
it is because
they
make
sex into
total, gestural,sensual,
and
ritual
game,
an exalted but ironic
invocation.
(Baudrillard
1990,
12-13)
In
Baudrillard's
rgument
transvestism
nvolves the seduction of
the
sign
itself:
a
process
hat
leaves the
sign
indeterminate ather han referential.
Now,
I will not
disagree
with
the
analysis
of
transvestism
or
sexuality
more
broadly)
as a
signifyingsystem
rather
than
as referential.
I am
quite
in
agreement
with
this textualization
of the sexual
subject.
But the
opposition implied
here,
between indeterminacyandreferentialitys, itself,a false one. The absenceof
a referentdoes not
mean that
signs
arenot
determined,
however
pragmatically,
in stratifieddiscursive
rhetorical/syntactical),
olitical,
and
ethical situations
(Derrida1988,
148).
In contrast to
Baudrillard,
argue
that the
signs
intrinsic
to
the
production
of the transvestite
subject
are material and
determined.
They
form
part
of
a
generalized
discursive
economy
that stabilizes
meanings
n
the form
of the delimitation
of
subject
positions.
The
signs
used
by
the
transvestite
subject
(as
the
signs
of
a
fully
negotiated, although
unstable,
femininity), hence entail the delimitation of the play of their meaning via
their
occupation
in an
already
determined
cultural
space.
Given
this,
one
may
ask
why
the transvestite
s
a man
playing
at
being
a
woman
as women are
produced
under
patriarchy.
For
what Baudrillardnter-
prets
as
radical
artifice
(makeup,pretense) represents
he
production
of femi-
ninity
by
the
symbolic
and
political
order:
he
man is
mimicking
what
women
become
and are
within
patriarchy.
f
the feminine as artifice and
women as
artificial
onnect,
then
what
Baudrillard
s
celebrating
in
his
idealization
of
the transvestitesubject) is preciselywomen'sstatus as signsand commodities
circulated
by
and
for male
spectators
and
consumers. n this
sense,
the
dynam-
82
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SaraAhmed
ics of the transvestite
subject occupy
and
repeat
the
power
divisions
within
which the gendered subject is always already negotiated. This is not to
argue
that
the transvestite
subject
is
necessarily
conservative,
as
obvious
forms of
disruption
and
displacement
from the commodified structure
of
woman as
sign
could take
place
in
specific
negotiations.
I
simply
want
to
suggest
that the transvestite
subject's
performance
is overdetermined
by
a
broader
signifying system,
from
which
its
politics
cannot
be
simply
disasso-
ciated,
and which
hence delimits
or
constrains the
play
and
significance
of
its
performance.
In contrast,in a feministanalysis,transvestismmaybe shown to be func-
tioning
at the level of the material
dynamic
of the
sign, overdetermining
he
subject
effects
produced by
a
signifying system,
rather
than
functioning
at
another order
suspended
rom material
effects and determinate
meanings.
A
feminist
analysis
may interpret
he
system
of
gender
as
relatively
stable,
with
the
genderedsubject
constitutedwithin
an
overdetermined
tructure
perhaps
named
as
patriarchy,
ntailing
the
negotiated hierarchy
masculine/feminine)
from which
a
play
in
its terms s made
possible.
Indeed,
it
is
interesting
o
note
the shift inJudithButler'sworkfroma model of transvestism s a quasi-volun-
taristic
performance
hat
disrupts
a
system
of
differences in
GenderTrouble:
Feminism nd the
Subversion
f Identity
1990)
to an
emphasis
on
the
regulatory
and
normativemechanisms
hrough
which
subjects
are
identifiedas sexed and
which
may
delimit
the
potential
for
transgression
hrough
he
reincorporation
of
difference nto
systematicity
n
BodiesThat
Matter:
On the
Discursive
Limits
of
Sex
(1993).
The absence of
a referent to secure
the
regime
of sexual
difference
(as
the
sign
of
gender),
does
not
lead, here,
to a mere
flotation of
the law regulatingsexual difference.That law maynot be a referent,but its
stabilization is
pragmatically
and
normatively regulated
through
the
very
structures
of
identification
(woman, man,
Black, white,
working
class,
middle
class)
implicit
to the
sexing,
racializing,
and
classing
of
subjects.
Baudrillard's
se
of
transvestism
uggests
hat his
version of
postmodemism
workswithin
the
ideology
of
liberalism.
ndeed,
his
postmodemsubject
repeats
rather than
transforms
he status
of the
subject
under liberal
ideology,
in
its
freedom rom
determination
by regimes
of truthand
power
to determine
reely
the conspiracyof signs(one could addcommoditiesto completethe analogy).
Also in his
text
the
circulation of
signs
is
reified;
it
is
separated
rom social
relations
via the
very
stresson
indeterminacy.
n
fact,
Baudrillard's
ostmodem
vision of
signs
as
proliferating
nd
neutralizing
onnects with
the
very
nature
of
money
as
a
signifier
which
can
only
quantify,
and as
such idealizes
he
very
symbolic
power
of
capital
itself to
displace
the
possibilities
of value
and
utility.
It is
quite
cear that the
signs
in
the
postmodern
world of the
simulacra re
not
free-floating; they
are
attached to
determinate
subject
positions
and
invested interests via their status as commodities.This attachment is most
aptly
reflected in the
use of female
bodies
as
vehicles
for
advertising
products.
83
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Hypatia
A
feminist
reading
of
Baudrillard,
which
may
share the
assumption
that
sexualityinvolves the textualnegotiation of
meanings,
maywant to
critique
his
model
of
sex as indetermination
by showing
how
this model disassociates
sexual difference rom the
reproduction
of
power inequalities.
BEYOND
POSTMODERNISM?:
OWER,
PRAGMATICS ND ETHICS N
THE POSTMODERN
ONDITION
AND THE
DIFFEREND
Jean-FrancoisLyotard's
The
Postmoder Condition
1989)
represents
one of
the most influential theses on what constitutes
postmodernism.
As a
report
on
knowledge Lyotard's
ext
describes
phenomena
within a
particular
histor-
ical
period.
This mode
of discourse
haracterizes
he bulk of the
first
part
of the
text and
situates
his thesis on
the
postmodern
condition.
Hence,
Lyotard's
opening
sentences
begin:
The
object
of this
study
is the condition
of knowl-
edge
in
the
most
highly
developed
societies.
I
have decided
to use
the word
postmodern
to describe that condition
(1989, xxiii).
Lyotard's eport
on
knowledge
is concerned
with what he defines as a crisis
of
legitimation-a
crisis in modem
philosophy.
The term moder is used to
designate
any
science
that
legitimates
itself with reference to a metadiscourse
of this
kind,
making
an
explicit
appeal
to some
grand
narrative,
such
as the dialectics
of
Spirit,
the
hermeneutics
of
meaning,
the
emancipation
of the rational
or
working
subject,
or
the creation
of
wealth
(xxiii).
The term
postmodern
s
used
to
designate
an
incredulity
toward
metanarratives
which is simulta-
neously
a
product
of,
and
presupposed y, progress
n the sciences
(xxiv).
Here,
the narrative
unction
is
losing
its
functors,
its
great
hero,
its
great dangers,
its greatvoyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed n clouds of narrative
language
elements
(xxiv).
Lyotard
onstructs
wo versionsof science
in a
postmodem
age,
the relation
between
them
being
somewhat
unclear. In the first
version,
discourses
are
legitimated
according
to
the
criterion
of
utility
which
is at
once
the criterion
of
capital.
Knowledges
are
perpetuated
only
if
they
are
economically
viable
propositions.
Lyotard
comments at an
earlier
point
that
knowledge
n the
form
of
an informational
commodity indispensable
to
productive
power
is
already,and will continue to be, a major-perhaps the major-stake n the
worldwide
competition
for
power (Lyotard
1989, 5).
So the criterion
of
performance
s the
goal
of an
optimal
contribution
of
higher
educationto
the
best
performativity
of the social
system
(48)
functions
as the
discourse
of
power.
But
Lyotard
hen
argues
that
performance
cannot be
considered
a
post-
moder
form
of
legitimation
because
it
assumes
he
stability
and
predictability
of
the
system
as
a
positivist
philosophy (Lyotard
1989,
54).
He concludes
that a trulypostmodernegitimation sonlypossiblewhenscience is conceived
as
operating
within
a
paralogic
context,
where
the
structure
t inhabits is not
84
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SaraAhmed
intact
or
stable,
but is
continually
transformed
y
the introductionof new
and
antagonisticclaims. Science is not determinedby anything other than the
transforming
oundariesof its
own
production;
concepts
of
performance
and
power
become,
at one and the
same
time,
impossible.
As
such,
postmodem
legitimation
is local or
context-immanent;
t
can
only emerge
from within a
given
linguistic practice
and communicational
nteraction
(41),
like the
nar-
ration
by
the
Cashinahua
toryteller
which
obeysonly
the rules hat define the
pragmatics
of
its transmission
20).
What
are the
problems
in
Lyotard's
ejection
of the idea of
power
as
determinate n favorfor a postmodernpragmatics? irst,one couldargue hat
power may
still be
a
motive
or
operational principle
even
if
knowledge
production
and
transmissionare
problematized
y
contradiction
and indeter-
minacy. Knowledgemay
still be tied to certain
concrete social interests
(and
therefore
the intent or criteria of
efficiency),
even
if
its
own
boundaries
are
indeterminate
or
undecidable. So
although
performancemay
contradict
the
heterogeneity
of
languagegames,
it
may
still function to
regulate
hat hetero-
geneity
as a form of
power
legitimation.
Performance
may
still function to
overdetermine the production of scientific knowledge in the postmodem
world.
It could be
argued
n
defense
of
Lyotard
hat
this
criticism
is a false
one,
as
it
takes a
prescriptive
mode of address or
a
descriptive
one-that
Lyotard's
model
of
the
paralogic
unctions
as
a
preferred
trategy
of
legitimation
rather
than as a
characterization
f what
strategies
are
in
use.
This
points,
in
fact,
to
a
problem
n
Lyotard's
ext,
which
is the
tendency
to confuse these two modes.
Certainly,
at
times
postmodernism
s
used to
designate
a state
of
affairs
pro-
duced in particularby the impactof certain technologieson knowledgeand
the content of
certain sciences such
as
quantumphysics)
while
elsewhere
it
is
used
quite
clearly
to define a new ethics based
on
paralogy.
So in
arguing
against
performance
and for
paralogy
he dimension is
simultaneously
thical
and normative
or
descriptive.
As
such,
his
final
designation
of
performance
and
power
as
nonpostmodem
or
antipostmodem
carries
he
implication
that
they
are not
determining
forms
of
legitimation
in the
contemporary
produc-
tion
of
knowledge.
Second,Lyotard'sonceptofparalogyasan internal ormof legitimationcan
provide
a rationale
for
the
perpetuation
of such
power
interests.
Indeed,
this
concept
of
paralogy
repeats
the liberal
concept
of
the free
market,
where
antagonistic
and
competing
interests are defined as the
only
basis for human
relations within an
unstructuredand
undetermined
context. The
problem
with
Lyotard's
aralogy
s thus the same
problem
with free market
heories. In
its
very
aestheticismand
formalism
t
fails to
recognize
hat local
situationsor
events are
overdeterminedwithin
broader tructuresor
social
relations char-
acterizedby systematic nequality, uch asrepresentedbythe genderdivision.
It refuses
to
recognize,
and even
conceals,
that
subjects
are
always already
85
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Hypatia
differentiated
rom each other in termsof
power
and
resources,
and that local
formsof legitimationwill be determinedby,and hence reinforce, uchinequal-
ities.
Lyotard's
model
of
paralogy negates
the
(gendered) power
imbalance
under
which all formsof human
activity
are
already
determined.
Furthermore,
it could be
argued
hat if ethical
policy
and
political practice
were
merely
to
follow the
principle
of
the
paralogic
then there would be no means for
countering
the
prevailing
hierarchical
systems.
As Boris Frankel
argues
in
The
CulturalContradictionsof
Postmodemity,
he resourcesand structures
needed to
mediate, facilitate,
and
strengthen
the values
and
practices
which
maximizedemocracyand socialist pluralismcannot springsolely from the
boundaries
of
local communities ormedon a loose alliance
(Frankel1990, 98).
Such
social
change
would both
presuppose
nd entail the
emergence
of
larger
political
structuresand
movements,
which would necessitate
collecting
sub-
jects
together
under
the
recognition
of shared
and
(relatively)
stable
or
determinate
positions
of
inequality,
such as
represented
by
the
categories
of
gender,
race,
and class.
In
contrast,
feminist
philosophers
of science have
engaged
in their
critique
of scientific rationalismby focusingon the way in which the productionof
knowledge
is overdetermined
by
the
social
positions
and interestsof scientists.
This involves a
recognition
that
it
does matter who
defines the boundaries
of scientific
knowledge.
In
the
light
of
the work
by
Sandra
Harding
(1986),
Donna
Haraway
1990),
ElizabethFee
(1983),
and
Evelyn
Fox Keller
(1982),
Lyotard's
ostmoder
paralogy
can
also be considered to
ignore
the
relation
between scientific
knowledge
and structuresof
patriarchy.
That
is,
Lyotard's
postmoder paralogy
can be seen to
neglect
the
way
in which science
legiti-
mates the exclusionandrepression f the feminine and womenvia the ideals
of
impartiality
nd
objectivity,
the
very
metanarrative
f
scientific
rationalism
itself.
As Sandra
Harding
establishes
in The Science
Question
in
Feminism
(1986)
such ideals
function
ideologically
to
conceal
or
disguise
the
status
of
science as
a social institution
with a division
of labor hat
marginalizes
women,
and
a set of interestsand
values that tend
to
reflect
and
justify
such
a
division.
She
suggests
that what
we
took
to be
humanly
nclusive
problematics,
con-
cepts,
theories,
objective
methodologies,
and transcendental
ruths
do
in
fact
bear he markof their collective and individualcreators,and the creators n
turn have
been
distinctively
marked as
to
gender,
class,
race
and
culture
(Harding
1986, 15).
A
feminist
interpretation
may
stressthat the
production
of scientific
knowledge
is
stabilized
by
its
immersion
in
dynamics
of
power,
entailing
the
gendering,
classing,
and
racializing
of what is
knowable within
and
beyond
science.
This
departs
roma
postmodern
model
of
paralogy
n
that
science
is
positioned
as
over
determined
by
broader structural
and
power
relations.
The variousproblemsassociatedwith Lyotard'soncept of paralogyare also
implicit
to his
analysis
of narrative
pragmatics,
which will lead us
finally
to
the
86
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Sara Ahmed
issueof ethics.
At one
point
in The Postmodern
ondition
Lyotard istinguishes
a pragmatic analysisof the narrativefunction from one which focuses on
extrinsic
details such as
the
institutional
assignment
of
subject
positions
(Lyotard
1989,
20).
The
pragmatics
of the Cashinahua
narratives,
he
argues,
are intrinsic o
them. Details such as the
assignment
of the role of the
narrator
to
certain
categories
on
the basisof
age,
sex,
or
family
or
professional
group
are hence excluded
from his model of the
pragmatics
of
the
transmis-
sion
of narratives
20).
The
contrast
or
opposition
that this
passage
rom
The Postmodern ondition
sets up is between the intrinsicand the extrinsic (as institutional). However,
the
passage
tself works o
complicate
the termsof such
an
opposition.
Lyotard
links
the
authority
of the narratoror
story-teller
to the
priorpost
of
being
a
listener: The narrator's
nly
claim to
competence
for
telling
the
story
is the
fact that
he
has heard it himself.
The
currentnarratee
gains
potential
access
to the same
authoritysimply by
listening (Lyotard
1989, 20).
Lyotard
omes
to this
position by
focusing
on the
naming
function
of the
narrative.
The
story
is introduced
with
the
name of its
hero,
and it is ended with the name of the
narrator.This identifies the hero with the narratorand implies a possible
interchange:
In
fact,
he is
necessarily
such a hero because he bearsa
name,
declined
at
the end
of
his
narration,
and that name was
given
to him in
conformity
with the canonic narrative
legitimating
the
assignment
of
patronyms
among
the Cashinahua
21).
Lyotard's nterpretation
of the
naming
process
as intrinsic to the canonic
narrative
can,
I
think,
be
problematized.
The
assignment
of
patronyms
nam-
ing
from
the
father)
brings
into
play
the narrative'sconstitution within a
broadersocial structureorganizedaround the authorityof the father. In this
sense,
the
positions
of the
narratorand the hero are not
fluid,
open,
or
determined
simply y
the
pragmatics
f the narrative's
ransmission;
hey
are
overdetermined
by
the social divisions of
power
which
assign
the
proper
name
(as
transcendental
ignifier)
to the male. This
closureor delimitation
simulta-
neously
takes
place
in
narrative
(the
assignment
of
patronyms)
and
beyond
narrative
(in
the
gendering
of
subject
positions
within institutional
struc-
tures).
The transmissionof the narrative takes
place
then
within a
social
context that becomes intrinsic to its effect. This blurs he distinction between
the
intrinsic and extrinsic that
Lyotard
uses to exclude an
analysis
of social
structures
(age,
sex,
family, professional
group)
from
his model of
narrative
pragmatics.
Such
contradictions
enable us to consider how
The Postmodern
Condition
eparates inguistic
exchanges
from broader
tructuresof social dif-
ferentiation. The
authority
of
the
storyteller
becomes
inseparable
rom
(even
if it
remains rreducible
o)
the
authority
of the father and
the transmission
f
the father'sname.
This autonomizationof the narrative unction from the socialorganization
of
power
has
quite
clear
ideological
implications.
It
neutralizes he
political
87
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Hypatia
effects of
discourse and
implies
the
fluidity
of
narrative
in
the form of the
interchangeability fpositionsof discursiveauthority. tconcealshowpostsin
language
are overdetermined
by
prior
and
relatively
stable
social
assign-
ments such as
representedby
those
groups
the
text
itself
identifies:
age,
sex,
family, professional group.
The
pragmatics
of
a narrative's
ransmission
are
therefore
inseparable
from the divisions
of
power
that
give
certain
subjects
or social
groups authority
to
speak.
Such
authority
cannot be seen as
intrinsic
to
narratives,
but
complicates
the
very
separation
of narratives
rom
institutions.
It is interesting o considerthat in his text concerned less with postmodem-
ism but
more
explicitly
with
questions
of
justice
and
ethics,
The
Differend
(1988),
Lyotard
also attends to the
example
of the
Cashinahua narratives.
Here,
the
example
is
used
in
order o elaboratea
theory
of the incommensura-
bility
of
phrase
regimes.
Such an
incommensurability,
refusal
of one
phrase
to
translate
nto the termsof
another,
is defined
as a
differend:
a conflict that
cannot be
resolved
due to the lack of
a rule
of
judgment applicable
to
both
arguments
1988, xi).
Lyotardargues
hat a
wrong
occurs
when
a
single
rule
of judgment is applied in the case of a differend. His basic point is that a
universal
rule of
judgment
between
heterogeneous
games
s
lacking
in
general
(xi).
In
relation
to
the Cashinahua
narratives,
Lyotard
points
out that author-
ity
within
these narrativesrests
on a
paradox:
he
subject
that is named has
authority,
and the
subject
with
authority
has the
power
to name
(156).
The
self-determining
nature
of
these
small
narratives
annot be reconciled into
universal
(his)story
of man as a
subject
who translates
acrossnarratives.The
differend
occurswhen
the
Cashinahua
ubject
(narrative)
s
judged
n relation
to the universalstoryof man 156).
I have
already
considered
the
problems
implicit
to
Lyotard's
efusal
to
acknowledge
how the
gendering
of
the
Cashinahua'snarratives
may
alter our
understanding
f the
(pragmatic)
relation between narrative
and the institu-
tional
assignment
of
subject
positions.
What
I want to
consider
more
closely
here is the
inadequacy
of
Lyotard's onception
of ethics
(as
the ethics of
the
differend)
for
dealing
with institutional
(and
gendered) power
differences.
First,
I
think we need
to
consider
the fact that
Lyotard's
wn
text still worksas
a narrative hatpositionsor enlists the Cashinahua n acertainway, nvolving
in some sense
the
translation
of the Cashinahua into
an
example
in an
argument.
My
point
here would not
be to accuse
Lyotard
of
wronging
he
Cashinahua
community according
o
the ethics of the differend
he
has
delin-
eated
(to
accuse
him
in
this sense
of
being
a failed
postmodernist).
Rather
I
want
to
argue
that
this
conception
of
an ethical
practice
as
being
a
respect
for
the differend
s
an
impossible
one. The
very
demands
of narrativeand
argu-
ment mean
that
incommensurability
s
already
violated,
even
in
the event
of
taking incommensurabilityas an ethical ideal. Accepting that violence
against
the other is
irreducible
may
alter
how we
relatenarrative
o ethics.
We
88
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SaraAhmed
would
no
longer
work with
an
opposition
between
narratives
which
totalize,
which refuse he otherness f the other(humanistandmodem) ornarratives
which resist
that totalization
by respecting
the
other as
radically
other
(anti-
humanist
and
postmoder).
What
we have instead is an
economy,
an
under-
standing
of
the differencebetween
narratives
as a matterof
degree.
What
follows from an
alternative
analysis
of ethics in relation to an
econ-
omy
of
differences
between narratives
is that
injustice
cannot
simply
be
identified with a violence
against
radicaldifference.
Instead,
what is
required
is a more
pragmatic,
cautious,
and
contingent
model of how different
ethical
practicesdeal with the other in casesof conflict or dispute.I do not think
that
justice
can be
simply
identified with
respecting
the other as
a radical
other. While
it is
important
o
recognize
hat
such
an identification of
justice
and radicalotheress would be a
logical impossibility
the
evaluative demand
implicit
to the
just
may
alreadynegate
the
supposed
adicality
of
otherness),
it is
also
important
to consider that
a
radical
incommensurability
between
discourses
may
not be the
case
in
pragmatic
situations.
Linda Nicholson has
argued
n contrast to
Lyotard
hat the
availability
of
criteria
for
adjudicating
between disputesmaycome fromthe pragmaticand hence contingentfact of
the existence of
cross-cultural
mediating
standardsof
validity
(Nicholson
1992, 85).
This
point
does not exclude the
possibility
that
discourses
may
be
incommensurable.
But it
suggests
hat
incommensurability
may
not
be
radical,
as
the
very
fact that discoursesare
conflicting
or
competing
means that
they
exist in some formof
relationship
o
each other.This
may
imply
that
there will
be some
degree
of
continuity
between
conflicting
discourses,
however much
that
continuity
is
inflected with
otherness
and difference. As Nicholson
argues: It is not as though the abandonmentof the search for foundational
means of
adjudication
entails the admission of no means of
adjudication.
Particularly
when
the communicative conflict occurs between
participants
who share a common
history,
one could
frequently
ind
some
common
belief,
value,
or
criterion
of
adjudication
o resolve the conflict
(88).
It
may
also be
significant
to
recognize
that
some
ways
of
adjudicating
n the case of
dispute
between discourses
may
be less
unjust
than others. So for
example,
we
may
ask:
How
egalitarian
are
the
procedures
or
resolving
conflicts?How
much do
they
attend to structural owerdifferences?Refusingsimplyto conceive of ethics in
terms
of the
respect
for radical
differences
may
allow
us
to
focus more on the
specificities
of
ethical conflicts:
who
they
involve,
whom
adjudicates
hem,
and
whose interestsare
at
stake.
Furthermore,
an
attention
to
the
institutionalized
power
differences
through
which
varying
discourses
ompete
(and
one
can recall here the
power
.structure
hat enables
the Western
ethnographer
o
speak
of
the
Cashinahua
narratives
n the first
place)
may
complicate
the model of
justice
which
equates
wrong with a violence againstdifference.Recognizingthat powerinequali-
ties
alreadyposition
what
can
happen
in
cases of
discursive onflict
meansthat
89
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Hypatia
justice
may only
be made
possible by
varying
procedures
hat
require
the
structuraldelimitationof difference as a value. That is, if differenceis to be
realizable,
hen certain
institutionalor
structural ransformationsn
the distri-
bution
of
resourcesneed
to
take
place.
Those
redistributions
may
entail the
very
compromising
of
difference-they may
entail collective
policy
decisions and
the
formation of
largerpolitical
movements.
Indeed,
we
need to
agree
n
the value of
difference
and this
agreementmay
have the
status of a
pragmatic
onsensus
or
even a
meta-prescription.
or
example,
as
I
discussed
n
the
first
section,
a radical
politics may require
a
policy
decision to
allocateinstitutionalspacesforthose with lesspowerso that their interestscan
be articulated n
the
public
sphere.
Furthermore,
we
need to
acknowledge
he
gap
between
an ethical
principle
and
the
effect-rendering necessarydialogue
and consensus
over
procedure.
The ethic of the differend
cannot
be
sustained,
for it fails
to
acknowledge
he
implications
of
such a
gap
and the
demand
such
a
gap puts
in
place
for
some
form
of
regulative
structure f
any
ethical
effect
is
to be
negotiable.
The
equation
between
justice
and the value of difference
embedded in
Lyotard's
arrativeof the differend s
practically
unsustainable
and requiresdismantlingthroughan understanding f the complicatedrela-
tions between
value,
process,
and
effect.
This
postmodem
ethics
can
only
sustain itself as
being againstany regulative
or
totalizing
structure,
nsofaras it
resists he
complications
that
arise n the
practice
and
negotiation
of
everyday
ethical differences
and
conflict.
The
inadequacy
of
Lyotard's
ostmodem
ethics for
dealing
with structural
power inequalities
s
hence
apparent.
The
existence
of
such
power inequality
would mean that
simply respecting
the
differend could not ensure
or make
possiblea transformationn social relations.Respectingdifferencesand the
otheress
of the other
may
involve both
adjudicating
riteria or
defending
the
value
of difference
in
cases of
dispute,
as well as
developing
institutional
procedures
hat
would make
it
possible
for
various
phrase
egimes
o
con-
front each
otheron
more
equitable
terms.
Here,
the
political
(as
the macro as
well
as
micro
adjudication
of
power
relations)
inflects what can and
cannot be
considered
the domain
of
ethics
and
justice.
CONCLUSION
My readings
of
Baudrillard's
nd
Lyotard's
postmoder
narratives have
suggested
hat
the terms
on which the
postmoder
is
constructed
are
antago-
nistic to the aims
of feminist
theory
and
practice.
Feminism's
constitutive
belief
that
gender
inequality
structures
all
aspects
of social life
(from
which
many
deviations and differences
exist between
feminists)
has certain theoret-
ical
implications.
This
belief
recognizes
the delimitation
of difference and
possibilitiesby structural elationsof powerand constraint.I have suggested
that
both
Baudrillard
nd
Lyotard
tress
the
instability
and
indeterminacy
of
90
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Sara
Ahmed
signifying
structures in
a
way
that makes broad-scale
categories
such
as
gender impossible. In the case of Seduction,I have problematized
Baudrillard'shift
from the
argument
that
sexuality
is nonreferentialto
the
conclusion that sexual difference is indeterminate: a site of
play
that is
unbounded.
In
relation to The Postmodern ondition nd
The
Differend,
have
suggested
hat
Lyotard's
model of
knowledge
as
determined
only by
the
bound-
aries of its own
production (paralogy)
and his model of
ethics as reducible
to
the value of radicaldifferenceand
othemess
(the
differend)
are
inadequate
or
dealing
with
large-scale
nstitutional
and
power inequalities.
My
critical
read-
ingsof Baudrillard ndLyotardmaysuggest hat anyintroductionof feminism
to such
postmodem
narrativeswould effect a
major
shift in their
terms;
it
would
interrupt
or
displace
their stress on
indeterminacy
and
instability.
A
feminist
approach
would
require
an
analysis
of how
power
relations
are stabi-
lized in
specific
historicalmoments
(in
the
empirical
ormof
male
dominance),
however much that
stability
is
relative
or
provisional
and
itself
open
to
contestation and
change
by
the
very
discourseof
feminism,
by
the
force of our
own
strategies,
our
rhetoric,
and
our collective
ambitions.
So feminismcannot be in the last instance either humanistor postmodem
(which
is
not to create
any
absolute
discontinuity
between
feminismand these
discursive
spaces).
The
interrogation
of
gender
inequality
in
linguistic
prac-
tices and
institutional norms involves the
critical transformationof
both
discourses.What
appears
to be a
contradiction between humanist
feminist
practice
and
postmodem
feminist
theory may
not exist.
Feminist
practicemay
not be
humanistand
feminist
theory
may
not be
postmodem,
if we
interrogate
these
discourses for the
historical and
political
limits
of
their
production.
Humanism s displacedvia the focus on the historicaland partialcharacterof
the
subject,
and the
recognition
of
the
ideological
investment in the
construc-
tion of a
universal
subject.
Postmoderism
is
displaced
via
the focus on the
differentiated
and determined
statusof
the social
subject,
and the
recognition
of
the
ideological
investment in the
idea that
subjectivities,
knowledges,
and
values are
free from
determination
by
relations of
power
and
constraint.
Feminist
theories of the
production
of
knowledges
and
subject
positions
are
finally,
then,
at
odds with
these discourses.
They
stress
that
the
(gendered)
subject is alwaysdifferentiatedwithin linguistic practicesand institutional
norms
and that such
structures
epresent
hegemonic
sites of
contestation
and
are
overdetermined
by
an
unequal
distributionof
power.
Feminist
theory
and
practice
affirm
through
their
very
recognition
and
critique
of
such
structures
the
possibility
and
necessity
of
reconstructing
ocial
relationsand
subjectivit-
ies
along
more
egalitarian
or
equitable
lines.
91
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Hypatia
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