HST287: Reading Notes, 11/03/2004
Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the
Politics of History. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.)
Reading notes originally stores as a Journal file, a portion of whcih
is here: notes-11-04.jnt (another
portion of whcih got swallowed up in the great ASD debacle!!)
Review by Linda Gordon with
response by Joan Wallch Scott, Signs,
Summer 1990 p. 853.
Gordon praises Scott's work for its "call for theorizing gender as an
integral category of analysis" but suggests that Scott's work is not
completely pursuasive. She faults Scott for suggesting that theory
means only "French poststructuralism" which has a tendancy to "identify
the theoretical with sentences composed primarily of abstract nouns."
She suggests that "such a conception of theory runs the risk of
recapitulating the exclusion of certain kinds of women's discourse from
the world of scholarship." She disagrees that language is the only
thing to study that will illuminate gender assumptions.
Deconstructionism is not the only way to reach conclusions about
gender.
Gordon says Scott encourages us to focus on "gender as difference in
itself, a kind of paradigm for all other divides, insetad of examining
gender as a system of domination." She argues that focusing on
difference is a way of masking power inequality, i.e. saying
things are "different" is rather like separate but equal: avoiding the
reality that they are not really equal at all.
Scott replies: feminists are political (trying to change preceptions
and assumptions) when they produce theory, they are not just being
"theoretical." So,
Questions
1) Scott characterizes Gordon's critique as "resistance to
poststructuralist theory"
"Why is there such a resistance at a moment in the history of feminism
when--if we are to formulate new kinds of political strategies--we need
to understand how, in all their complexity, collective and individual
differences are constructed, how, that is, hierarchies and inequalities
are produced?" Though the article is 14 years old and she is referring
to feminist theorizing, the idea of the construction of differences
resonates peculiarly well in light of yesterday's election. The
discourse surrounding this election has been one of divides and
polarities. What are we/have we created with this language of
divisiveness? Are we reflecting a reality or creating one? Scott may
find the resistance to theory is a resistance to the most radical
effects of feminism itself and thus evidence of the health of the
"movement" but I wonder is a similar discursive struggle a sign of
health in American democracy?
2) "By positing a distinction between our discursive constructions and
those of other times and places, we establish a certain reflexivity on
out own stakes and intentions. . .In this way, we open ourselves to
history, to the idea and possibility that things have been, and will
be, different from what they are now." (p. 218)
I'm glad Scott ends with this, especially after the discussion of the
shifting definition of sex/gender and all that implies. She speaks of
the fuidity of these definitions and how they reflect societal change.
While that very fluidity/reflection ensures that there will be plenty
of "grist" for historians' mills, I think she is also saying that it is
easier to be aware that terms/ideas are socially constructed when we
can see that process of construction continuing. When definitions
"harden" we have lost some of that awareness.
3) More politics--seems to be unavoidable this week:
"The point is that the physical presence of females is not always a
sure sign that "women" are a separate political category, that they
have been mobilized as women. Yet some of the work that tries to
attribute peculiarly female or feminine motives to women in social
movements assumes exactly that. The projection of a separate women's
interest into a situation where it is not operating naturalizes
"women," since their interest is taken to predate the political context
of the crowd's action and the terms of its mobilization." (p. 212)
A few days ago this paragraph would have made me think of Fred
Lewis Pattee's The Feminine Fifties,
a 1960s vituperative railing against women writers of the 1850s. In it
he conveniently assumes that all women writers are writing with one
voice, for the purpose of denigrating that writing, while he
conveniently ignores similar writing from men of the same period
(including the demi-god "American Renaissance" Hawthorne).
This week, that passage jumps out at me for another reason: while the
Kerry/Bush split among women voters this year stands at 52%/47%, that
47% is a gain for Bush supporters over the last election. I would say
then, that the administration has not just assumed feminine motives on
behalf of those voters and have taken advantage of it, but have
actively strengthened that political category this year. If so,
that should stand as support for Scott's argument that it is necessary
to be aware of this kind of constructing.