Women's Lives - Feminist Knowledge - Feminist Standpoint As Ideology Critique - Hennessy, Rosemary

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Women's Lives / Feminist Knowledge: Feminist Standpoint as Ideology Critique Author(s): Rosemary Hennessy Source: Hypatia, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 14-34 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810299 . Accessed: 17/10/2013 11:28
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Women's Lives/Feminist Feminist Standpoint Knowledge: as Ideology Critique

ROSEMARYHENNESSY
as a way of conceptualizing Feminist theory standpoint positsfeminism fromthe in current lives.However, workonfeminist the pointof women's vantage standpoint linksbetween livesandknowledges material areoftennotexplained. Thisessayargues marxist tradition thattheradical draws standpoint theory on-specificallytheories of a systemicmode of readingthat can redressthis ideology post-Althusser-offers furtherfeminism'soppositional problemand providethe resourcesto elaborate andcollective subject. practice
I. Feministstandpoint theory occupies a significantplace among materialist Socialist feminists initially appropriated critiquesof Westernepistemology.1 the notion of standpointfromthe insightsof Marx,Engels,Lukacs,and others a morecoherentexplanationof feminism's in orderto formulate who authority, it speaksfor, and the forcesof oppressionand exploitation it contests. Standpoint refersto a position in society, a way of makingsense that is affectedby and can in turn help shape structuresof power,work, and wealth. Feminist standpoint theorists have posited feminism as this sort of position, a way of conceptualizingrealityfromthe vantagepoint of women'slives. Most significantly,in attendingto the complex materialforcesthat structurethe relations between social positioning and waysof knowing,feminist standpointtheories have challenged the assumptionthat simply to be a woman guaranteesa feminist understandingof the world. Instead they argue that the feminist standpointis a socially producedposition and so not necessarilyimmediately not only is there "notypical availableto all women.As SandraHardingasserts, woman'slife," but women'sexperiencesof their lives are not necessarilythe
Hypatia vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 1993) by Rosemary Hennessy
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same as feministknowledgeof women'slives (Harding1991, 10-11). Because women'sexperiencesare often framedin termsof the culturalcommon sense, it cannot be that the things women say alwaysprovide reliable groundsfor feminist claims about social relations (Harding 1991, 123). For feminist standpoint theory, both the representationof a feminist perspectiveand its "truth" arereachedthroughphilosophicaland political struggle(Jaggar 1983,
383-84).2
At the same time standpointtheoristsinsist that the feminist standpointis a socially constructed way of making sense of the world, they also pose "women'slives" as an empiricalpoint of referenceprior to feminism (Jaggar 1983, 387; Smith 1987a). Invariably,however, the material links between feminism as a discourse and women's lives aren't explained. This fraught relationshipbetween knowledgeor discourseand "all the rest"is also echoed in variousarenasof currentfeminist debate that treat shifting culturalconstructionsof "woman"and other social practicesthat define many women's everydayworld,practiceslike exploitation,sexualviolence, or political disenfranchisement.As references to standpoint theory appearmore and more frequentlyin feminist theory acrossthe disciplines,this gap in its logic needs to be redressed. Feministsworkingin many quarters have generallyrecognizedthat basing feminist knowledgein any transparent appealto women'sexperience tends to homogenize"woman"as a universaland obvious category.This sort of expeof feminist epistemologya naturiential analysiscan lock into the structures ralized oppositionbetweenmaleandfemalethat erasesmanyof the othersocial is defined.Appeals to women'sexperience categoriesacrosswhich "woman" have also frequently had the effect of obscuring the distinction between feminist and women-centeredwork (Grant 1987, 111). In claiming women's lives as the basisforits authority, feministstandpointtheoryacknowledges the inadequaciesof an empiricistnotion of experience in which the individual relationshipto her worldis taken to be direct and concrete, unmedisubject's ated by the waysof makingsense historicallyavailableto her. But substituting the moreinchoate "women's lives"for "women's experience"does not in itself explain the materialrelationbetween lives and waysof knowing. More recent work in feminist standpointtheory has advancedthe critique of an empiricistnotion of experience in the name of a much more complex for understandingof women's lives. In Whose Science?Whose Knowledge?, example, SandraHardingcontends that taking women'slives as the foundation for knowledgeis premisedon the claim that women'slives arenecessarily multiple and contradictory (Harding 1991, 173-81). Acknowledging this, Harding argues,implies that feminists need to replace the desire for unity aroundwomen'scommon experienceswith political solidaritybasedon goals shared with other groups struggling against Western hegemony. Clearly Harding's objective in her latest work is to rethink the subjectof knowledge
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differentiatedone without conceptuas a complex and often contradictorily in or individual additive terms. And in this sense she is difference alizing and liberal pluralistapproachesto multiculturalism emphaticallycontesting to is add to dominant culture new aim the not Her knowledges merely diversity. from the experiences of marginalizedgroups, but to disrupt the limits of legitimate knowledge-including its subjects, the kinds of questions it can pose, and their impliedanswers.Butwhile Hardinginsiststhat being a woman doesn'tguaranteeoppositionalknowledge,her argumentoften slides into the ofpeople. by defaultas the basisforknowledgebecomesgroups logic of pluralism that it is an advantageto base knowledgein the everyday contends Harding lives of oppressedand excluded groups.Indeed, a constitutive featureof the many formulationsof feminism is that they "startedtheir analysesfrom the lives of differenthistoricalgroupsof women" (Harding1991, 123). But what is the relationship between lives and group affiliation?Does one or the While Harding other-or both-provide the basisfor a feministperspective? insiststhat for a position to count as a feministstandpointit mustbegin in the objective location of women's lives, she also is quite emphatic that the authorityfor the feministstandpointlies not in women'sauthenticrenditions of their lives but in "the subsequentlyarticulatedobservationsand theory about the rest of nature and social relations-observations and theory that startout from, that look at the worldfrom the perspectiveof, women'slives" (Harding1991, 124). But what exactly is the materialconnection between a feministperspectiveand its startingpoint, between theory and lives? To my mind, feminist standpoint theory has the conceptual resourcesto explain the connections between lives and knowledges-in the materialist from the radicalmarxisttradition.Starting theory of ideology it appropriates can lives women's from exposethe waysin which womenareoppressed thought and often consent to both, and how they how resist and exploited, they and one sometimesoppress another;it can explain the contradictions exploit in the distributionof resourcesand the waysprevailingknowledgesshore up of exploitation that bind women and men in suburband ghetto, the structures that metropole and periphery.But only if thisprojectissuesfrom a perspective Of it is not in understands socialrelations thesesystemicterms. course, popular these daysto understandideologyin its relation to classand state power (that is, as more than the culturalreproductionof ideas), to maintain that social relationsarenot merelydiscursive,or to insist that social analysisexplain why (not just how) hierarchicalsystemsof powerpersisteven as they arereconfigured under the more flexible regimesof late capitalism.As a result, systemic analysisis a limit term of sortsin feministthinking. By systemic analysisI mean a perspectivethat addressessocial systemsstructuresof power like capitalism, patriarchy,or colonialism-and posits usefulnessfor feminismis connections between and among them. Marxism's that it understandsthe social in precisely these terms-as an ensemble of
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And it is this systemic economic, political, and ideological arrangements. that informs some of most marxism's problematic powerfulconceptual assets for feminism: concepts like exploitation, materiality,and ideology. While feminist standpoint theory does not reject the notion of social totalities, systemicanalysisof them is more often than not merelygesturedtowardand then displaced.As such, it marksan all-but-suppressed a limit alterna(rra)tive, that signals both a site of struggleand a story worth pursuingin the work of severaltheoristsof feministknowledgeand women'slives. Donna Haraway'snow widely read "Manifesto for Cyborgs"radically rewritesany stablenotion of identity as the basisfor feministknowledge,even as it details "the actual situation of women" in terms of "their integraand comtion/exploitation into the worldsystemof production/reproduction munication called the informatics of domination" (Haraway 1985, 82). Harawayacknowledgesat the startthat a transparent identity as women has become historically unavailable for Westernfeminists. Her proposalfor an "ironicpolitical myth faithfulto feminism,socialism,materialism" (Haraway 1985, 65) outlines an alternativefeminist politics rooted in the changes that have transformed Westernindustrial societies into polymorphous information Out of this she offers the of the as the new "self systems. history figure cyborg feministsmust code" (1985, 82). Haraway's manifestois framedin a dazzling catalog of the multiformand globallyexpansivefeaturesof the technological revolutionof late capitalism.She brilliantlydetailstheireffectson the mobility of capital, divisions of labor, and women'shistorical locations in advanced industrialsocieties. Forall the subtletyand scope of her accounting,however, there is a tension in this essaybetween two waysof formulating what amounts to the feminist standpoint.At times Harawayrepresentsthe feminist standpoint through the antimyth of the cyborg-a position on the boundariesof establishedculturalcategories.But at other times she figuresit in termsof the distinctly differentlogic of women in the integratedcircuit-a story of rearsocial relations. In one instance, the rangementsin worldwidepostindustrial for feminist authority standpoint derives from cultural identities based on reconfiguredgroupaffinities;in the other, it dependson a particularway of makingsense of the world. For Haraway,"women of color" constitute the prototypical instance of both-"a potent subjectivitysynthesizedfrom fusions of outsideridentities" (1985, 93). Although her analysis makes visible the racism on which the cyborgean "preferredlabor force" for science-based industrial societies depends,the analogybetween cyborgand "womenof color"does not explain the relationshipbetween two differentwaysof understanding identity.One of them is foundedon an appealto groupaffiliation-the SisterOutsiderswhom "U.S. workers, femaleandfeminized,aresupposed to regardas the enemy,"the "youngKoreanwomen"hired in the sex industryor in electronics assembly, or African-Americanwomen who have risked death to teach reading and
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writing. The other is imagined as an articulateddiscursivepositioning, "a potential amid the races and ethnic identities of women manipulatedfor division, competition, and exploitation"(1985, 93)-in the wordsof Cheyla Sandoval, "an oppositionalconsciousness"(Haraway1985, 73). Despite the defiance of naturaloriginsor culturalcategorieslike man-womanor cyborg's human-animal on which traditional Western notions of identity depend, conception of "womenof color"as a conflationof outsideridentities Haraway's often suggeststhat a feminist standpointappealsin some basic way to a logic At other points in the essay,however,she impliesthat the of groupaffiliation.3 units feministstandpointis an effect of waysof knowing-either "elementary of socialist feminist analysis" (Haraway 1985, 91) or a "powerfulinfidel (1985, 101). heteroglossia" The second of these two versions of standpoint characterizesHaraway's of dominationwhereshe argues for"apoliticsrooted analysisof the informatics in fundamentalchanges in the natureof class,race and genderin an emerging system of world order"(11985, 79-80). In this narrativethe feminist subject issuesnot froman appealto empiricalgroupidentities but ratherfroma story that presentsthe social world as a historicalsystemdependingon structured relationsamongpeople. It is a storythat resistsa totalizingvision and yet does not forfeita systemicone. This formulationof feministknowledgeis eclipsed, however,by the version of feminist standpointin the essay'sclosing section. Here Harawaystressesthe culturaland discursivedimensions of the cyborg myth and presents feminist resistancein terms of the image of a "powerful infidel heteroglossia."Certainly the image of women speaking in tongues of a common language"and exposes the subvertsfeminism'sonetime "dream that supportedthis desirefor sameness.But celebrating totalizingmythology within culturalsignification is also suspiciously differenceas border-crossing like those postmodern discourses whose textualizations of difference as heteroglossia,play, and pleasureunhinge culturefrom the historical "system assertsthat "some that structures it. Earlyin the essayHaraway of worldorder" differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of is aboutknowingthe domination"(1985, 79). If, as she claims,"epistemology for manifesto the difference" (1985, 79), displacesthis knowledgewith cyborgs an ironic vision. By "holdingincompatiblethings togetherbecauseboth or all are necessaryor true"(1985, 65), irony relinquishesa way of thinking about and systemicallyfor the playful logic of both/and, the differencehistorically of logic differance. In contrastto Donna Haraway's ultimatelyironic and play-fullpostmodern contributions to feministstandpointtheoryconcepSmith's analysis,Dorothy tualizemodesof knowingwithin a muchmoreemphaticallysystemicanalytic.4 Smith's critique of the patriarchalpower relations inscribed in the social the waysin which the discipliningof knowledgeoperates sciences foregrounds much like the logic of the commodity.She makesvisible the ways academic
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disciplines produce both economic and ideological value by occluding the dependence of their dominant conceptual modes and their administering subjectson the work of invisible subservientgroups-women, blacks, working-classpeople. These are the workerswho feed and care for administrators and clean their workplaceseven as their experiences are excluded from the regimesof truth their laborsupports(Smith 1987b). She arguesfor an alternative sociology that begins in a knowledge community outside academic disciplines,in the experiencesof those who have formerlybeen the objectsof the notion of experienceas a self-evistudy.Even thoughSmith problematizes dent groundfor knowledge,more often than not she relies on an empiricist division between the subjectand object of knowledge.While she appropriates Foucault's conception of discourse,Smith frequentlyrefersto women's"direct experience"(Smith 1990) as the basisforfeministknowledge.She justifiesher retreatfromthe radicalcritiqueof empiricismin Foucaultas an effortto resist what she sees as his overtextualizingof social relations. But her analysisof women's"directexperience" asthe basisforfeministknowledgetendsto jockey betweenthe objectiveconditionsof women'slives andthe discursive construction of the feminineratherthan explainingmorefullythe materialrelationship between the discursiveand the nondiscursive.5 LindaAlcoff's arguments forpositionalityin her often-cited essay"Cultural FeminismversusPost-structuralism: The Identity Crisis in FeministTheory" (Alcoff 1988) are importantto considerin light of Smith'sskepticismabout the risksof overtextualizing. Although she has not identifiedher own workas feminist standpoint theory per se, Alcoff's discussionof identity in terms of positionality,discourse,and location is worth examining because it resonates with Foucauldianinflections of feminist analysisthat characterize a growing bodyof culturalcritique.Likefeministstandpointtheory,Alcoff'sseeswomen's lives as a necessarypoint of departure for feministknowledge,but she understands this referent in terms of a discursivelypositioned rather than an materialism experientialsubject.Alcoff espousesa Foucauldian (a la Teresade Lauretis)in which subjectivityis the effect of habits and practicesincluding language.But she also promotes the virtues of identity politics in order to maintainfor the subjecta level of agency that poststructuralist theories have means matter,the dispelled.As Alcoff sees it, in identity politics materialism "fleshymaterialidentity that will influenceand passjudgmenton all political claims" (Alcoff 1988, 433). However, combining this concept of identity politics with the notion of positionality, as Alcoff proceeds to do in the remainder of the essay,bringsinto tension severalsortsof "materiality": of the flesh or matter,of the "externalcontext within which a person is situated," andof "socialcritiqueand analysis" (1988, 434). Here,once again,we confront feminist inquirythat addresses women'slives and knowledges(and also their bodies) as materialbut without explaining the connections between them. Unlike Smith-or even Haraway-Alcoff barely gestures toward systemic
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analysis, relying instead on a more diffused Foucauldiannotion of social relations that includes discursive and nondiscursive practices but resists explaining their materialrelation to one another. One consequence of this noncorrespondencetends to be an overriding nondisemphasison culturalanalysiswith only glancingreferencesto "other" of a voluntaristsubject cursivematerialities.Another effect is the appearance as the agent of social change.Traversing flesh, context, and meaning,woman's positionality becomes a matter of choice: she is a subject who can "choose" the discursivepositions she occupies."Beinga 'woman,'"Alcoff argues,"isto take up a position within a moving historicalcontext and to be able to choose whatwe makeof this position andhow we alterthis context" ( 1988, 435; italics added).Alcoff's formulationof agencyin termsof choice indicatesone of the ways in which postmodernfeminismhelps to producea subject that is more fluid and mobile-socially constructedand so not rooted in the historical universalself-but that risks an empiricist-humanist conditionsthat supported re-enactingsome of the key featuresof that culturalproject.As Alcoff herself concedes, some women arehistoricallysituatedso that their ability to choose what they make of their position or even their abilityto alterit at all is highly compromisedor even nonexistent, while other women have many options. Likeidentity and experience,the notion of "choice,"so embeddedhistorically in the humanist ideology of the "free"individual,cannot be simply invoked within a postmodernfeminist framework. Along with other categorieslinked to the free individual,it has to be rewrittenso as to make visible the systems of exploitation and oppressionthat affect the historicalavailabilityof particularpositionsto some subjectsandnot othersas well as the possiblemovement of social subjectsacrossand between them. Workingon the limits of an only vaguelyrelatedconnection between the discursiveand the nondiscursive,between feministperspectivesand women's lives, can bring into relief the ways in which invocations of historical "context," even when the rhetoric of a postmodern subject is invoked, often reiteratethe empiricistdualityof self-world.Historicalmaterialism's theoryof these issues to another about our shifts problematicentirely, thinking ideology one in which the subjectandknowledgearesituatedin the often contradictory relations among knowledge, resources,and power. In promoting historical nor I am not calling fora returnto a reductivetotalizingmarxism, materialism, do I think we need to forfeitthe rich and importantinsightsinto the nuanced workingsof power in specific locations that feminist cultural critique has radicalvision developedin the past ten years.But I am arguingthat feminism's of possibilityfor full democracyrequiresthat our analysesbe able to explain connections-between what we mean by lives and knowledges, between instancesand largersocial arrangesubjectsand contexts, between particular ments. The radical traditionof historical materialismin standpoint theory's history makes this possible. But holding onto it is no mean task right now.
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Layingclaim to a systemicperspectivemeansgoing againstthe grainof much workin culturaland political theory that equatesanalysisof social structures andsystemswith a reductivetotalizinglogic. It meansconfrontingthe interests of those postmoderndiscoursesthat militate againstmakingdeterminateand of social totalcausalconnections or that contend the hierarchicalstructures ities have evaporatedin the wake of a critiqueof foundationsin which social And it means insisting that reality is alwaysopen to the play of differance.6 exploitation-is explainingsocial systemsof power-patriarchy, imperialism, as necessaryand urgent as ever becausethose regimesof power that regulate even if they have been knowledge and people's lives have not disappeared reformed. They persistin partpreciselybecausethe variousfacetsof the social remain unconnected in our knowledges, even as the triumph of capitalist hegemonycontinues to rely on an interdependentworld-system. II. Some of the most useful advances in theorizing the material relations between knowledgeand people'slives have arisenout of elaborationsof Louis Althusser'swork on ideology.7 the materialand productive By foregrounding role of ideology in social arrangements, Althusser'stheory of ideologystimulatedpostmoder marxistandfeministformulations of the discursive construcAlthusser's tion of the subject.As is now commonly acknowledged, theoryof has also been and for several reasons. His ideology widelycritiqued important of in role social has been seen as understanding ideology's reproduction overly functionalist,andhis concept of interpellation-which explainsthe formation of subjects as an effect of the summons of ideology-has made theorizing subversiveagency difficult.These problemshave been compoundedby questions from feminist quartersabout the adequacyof Althusserian marxism's movementsthat arenot organized homogenousclasssubjectforemancipatory around class. primarily There are, however,some importantfeaturesof post-Althusserian theories of ideologythat have been usefulto materialist feministeffortsto rethinkwhat is meant by standpoint.Chief amongthem is the concept of the materiality of In historical it is what to know formation, knowledge. any particular possible is both shapedby and in turnhelps delimit the contradictory developmentand displacementof economic and political forces.Under capitalism,the prevailing ideologies or ways of knowing mystify exploitation and oppressionby as the waythingsnaturally presentingthese arrangements oughtto be. Ideology is a materialforce becauseit (re)produces what gets to count as "reality," but at the sametime other materialforces,both economic andpolitical, areshaped by-not merelyreflectedin-ideology. The materialityof the social, then, is not based in an objective reality outside knowledge or social discoursebut rather includes all of a culture'smodes of intelligibility within a complex
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ensembleof economic, political, and ideologicalpractices.Fromthe vantage point of ideology,the materialcan be understoodas that which intervenesin productionof the social real by being madeintelligible.At the same time, the that constitutethe material structures discourses throughwhich ideologyworks are shaped by the materialrelations that comprise economic and political practices.This meansthat reality,whetherin the formof women'slives or the feminist standpoint,is alwaysaffectedby this ensemble of social relations.It areunevenly and contradictorily is an ideologicalconstructwhose parameters in of labor and relations historical moments divisions shaped specific by between state and civil society. Women'slives, then, can never be separated fromthe variousand often contestingwaysof makingsense of them;but at the same time, these lives arenot exclusivelyideological. In developingtheoriesof ideologybeyondthe limits of Althusser's problematic, neo-marxists,and feministsamong them, have recognizedthe usefulness of Gramsci's concept of hegemony for conceptualizingthe complex relations betweenknowledgeandpower.Gramsci's concept of hegemonyseemsto avoid in work of Althusser's while still maintainingthe distinthe impasses many social of historical materialism. logic According to Gramsci, guishingglobal is the a comes to dominate by process whereby ruling group hegemony common that values the cultural those and beliefs that is, sense, establishing the is not simply The cultural of common sense without power go saying. is from the down but and contested exercised top negotiated througha process The concept of articulationis a crucial featureof of discursivearticulation.8 hegemony because it makespossible analysisof very specific discursivepractices but without relinquishing an explanatory frameworkthat can make visible their connections to largersocial totalities. Gramsciemphasizesthat the coherent hegemonic discoursethat comprises the common sense is forged out of ideological struggle. The objective of the common sense in times of social crisis ideologicalstruggleis to reconfigure the of an elements ideologicalformationand highlighting by sifting through those that can serve the interestsof a new ruling groupor hegemonic bloc (Mouffe 1979, 192). The universalappeal that unifies any hegemonic bloc includes ideological elements from varyingdiscourses,but its culturalpower stemsfroman articulating principlethat is alwaysshapedby,at the same time it serves to it helps shape, the prevailingcontradictorysocial arrangements a hegemonic ideologyor the prevailing maintain.The struggleto reconfigure principle regimesof truthis, then, both a processof contestingthe articulating discoursesfrom one frame within a hegemonic formationand disarticulating of intelligibility in orderto rearticulatethem in another.But this struggleis not simplya matterof contesting constructionsof social reality-that is, it is not just a struggleover words.At issueis the entire ensembleof social relations the constructionof realitymaintains.
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The concept of hegemony and the systemictheory of the social on which it is premised offer a useful way to addressthe unexplained relationship between women's lives and perspectiveson them, between knowledgesand their context. Firstof all, no perspectiveon women'slives ever capturesthem in all of their authenticity.Perspectiveson women'slives, includingfeminist ones, are situatedboth within and againsthegemonic knowledge.Feminism's authorityas a perspectivewith a claim to truth and a vision of possibilityfor women rests on its opposition to the social arrangements hegemonic culture sustains. This counterhegemonicstance assertsthat patriarchalregimes of powerdo give men dominanceover women, that they have succeededhistorthis dominationand by eliciting the consent of ically in part by naturalizing the dominated, and that these regimesof power are not exclusively gender specificbut aretraversed by and embeddedin other social categories.Fromthe vantage point of a theory of hegemony, the dualist notion of subject and context is supersededby a whole new-dialectical-logic in which lives fromthe complex social structures cannot be separated shapingthem, includof labor,boundaries of stateandnation that shapeactions ing the appropriation and beliefs, and the systemsof meaningthat makesense of social relations. The theory of ideology implicit in the concept of hegemony is "critical" in the sense that ideologyis no longera monolithic determiningforce but rather an articulatedensembleof contesting discourses that produceswhat comes to count as "the way it is." In a system of social relations where resourcesand laboraredividedso that somebenefitat the expenseof the few,the dominating ideologycan neverdominatewithoutcontradiction.Becauseit cannot exhaust all social experience, hegemonic discourseinvariablyhas slips or cracksin its coherence. As a result, it contains space for other discoursesthat are not yet recognizedas a social institution or even project.9It is the potentiallysubversive force of these slips and alternativediscoursesthat constitutes the epistemologicalbasisor authorityfor ideologycritique. "Articulation"is a useful concept for explaining the complex relations between an oppositional discourselike feminismand the prevailingor commonsense ways of making sense of women's lives. Michel Pecheux's postAlthusseriantheory of discourseelaboratesthe dynamicsof how articulation occurswithin hegemonic culture.Drawingupon Gramsci,Pecheux contends that the discoursesin which words are used and in which subjects take up positions are antagonisticas a result of strugglesthat traversethem but that also extend outside them. The systemof differencesthat constitute meaning and out of which subjectivitiesareforgedis the effect of collective contests in which the stakes are not just wordsor discoursesbut the entire ensemble of social arrangements. capitalistand patriarchal Pecheux devises the concept of the interdiscourse to explain the textuality of hegemony.This is a very importantconcept because it allows us to understand in much more specific termsthe discursiveprocessesby means of which
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subjectsareproducedand the common sense maintained.As Pecheux formulates it, the interdiscourseconsists of two features:the preconstructed and The preconstructed is the featureof any discursiveformationthat articulation. producesthe effect of an "alwaysalreadythere,"conveying the sense of what everyone alreadyknows. Articulation is the means by which the subject is constitutedthroughparticular co-references that securethe threadof discourse of a subject(Pecheux 1975, 116). To the extent that it exercises asthe discourse a limit on the formationof subjectivitiesand the social real,the interdiscourse functions as the homogenizingforce of ideology. has a keyrole in helpingto delayand impedethe process The preconstructed of rearticulating Even underthe guiseof reform, existing discursivestructures. it works to maintain traditionalparadigms by means of a symbolic orderof onto which discourses differences arearticulated. The naturalizing effect of the reifies these differencesand so helps to perpetuatecategories preconstructed of alterity as universal givens. The preconstructedthus becomes a useful concept for examining at the level of discoursethe complex interrelations between and among the various nodal points along which alterity is constructed.As the discursivespace where the "alwaysalreadythere" securesa hierarchicalsocial arrangement throughan "obvious" systemof oppositions, servesas an anchor in the symbolicorderfor the articulathe preconstructed tion of subjectivitiesacrossrace, class, and genderdifferences.While specific articulationsof these differenceswill vary within each historical formation, depending on the particulardiscoursescomprising the interdiscourse,the of differencein the preconstructed reificationof the hierarchicalstructuring constitutesa mechanismbywhich hegemonyoperatesacrosssocialformations. Because the preconstructedis a crucial ideological regulator,it is a powerful site for critical intervention. Once the textual ambiguitiesconcealed by its naturalizing operationare explained-not as a propertyof languagebut as the and capidisplacementand condensationof the contradictionsof patriarchal of talist social arrangements-the transformative potential working on the can be unleashed. constructionof the subjectin the interdiscourse Women'slives are shaped by ideology both in the sense that their lived experience is never served up raw but is alwaysmade sense of from a host of vantage points, including those of the woman experiencing the events and those of the feminist critic, scholar,or theoristwho appealsto women'slives as the basisfor her knowledge.Women'slives are only intelligible at all as a result of the ways of making sense of the world available in any historical moment. Understood as alwaysideologicallyconstructed,women'slives can be read in terms of "woman's" contradictoryposition under capitalist and the symbolic economy of an opposition where patriarchal arrangements between masculine and feminine comprisesonly one of the preconstructed anchors and articulatingprinciples of the prevailing truths. The hierarchy the ideological often only thinly concealedwithin this oppositionunderwrites
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constructionof the feminine as excess or lack, and is manifestin a corresponding unequal division of laborand allocation of social resources.The concept of the interdiscourseallows us to consider at the level of textuality the lives"areconstructedacrossa range discursivemechanismswhereby"women's of articulateddiscourses,the effect of a seriesof subjectpositions suturedinto in any historicalformation. or againstthe interdiscourse lives"fromthisvantagepoint makesit possibleto Understanding"women's consider how the patriarchalgender system is imbricatedwith other nodal points on which differenceis articulatedso that the categoriesof genderand sex have not alwaysbeen congruentlyintegratedin a culture'sinterdiscourse. It gives us a critical framework that can addressthe multiple positioning of subjects across a system of differenceswithout reducing these positions to homogenized groups. Finally, it allows us to develop feminist analysis of women'slives that acknowledges the complexityof those lives as they aremade sense of in the texts of culturewithout reducingwomen'slives to texts. Thinking of heterosexualityas one of the nodal points in the interdiscourse of capitalist-patriarchal genderideologymakesit possibleto addressthe ways "theregulatory fiction of heterosexualcoherence"10 is writteninto the culture as a way of making sense of sex difference.Heterosexualitydepends on the assumptionthat sex differencesare binary opposites and the simultaneous function equation of this binarysex differencewith gender.The naturalizing of this equation contributesto the expressivemodel of the individualin that the opposition of the sexes is taken to be substantive,precedingsocial and historical subjectivitiesas an essence that the core of the self manifests.In disguisingitself as a law of nature, this "fiction"regulatesthe sexual field it to describe(Butler 1990b). The fiction of heterosexualcoherence is purports one of the most firmlyentrenched and invisible anchorsfor the ideology of individualism.In naturalizing the organizing principlesof identity,it shoresup the "tyranny of the proper" that individualism relieson and the international division of laborits far-reaching effectsreinforce(Spivak 1985, 86). The heterosexual and patriarchal"familycell" on which the system of alliances depends provides sexuality with permanent support. It is the site where systemsof sexuality,gender,and alliance are articulated.As Foucault puts it, "the familyis the interchangeof sexualityand alliance:it conveys the law . . . and it conveys the economy of pleasure... in the regimeof alliance" embeddedin the articulat(Foucault1980, 108). The heterosexualparadigm discourses of the of and alliance ing regimes sexualityservesto guaranteethat the deployment of sexuality, in itself potentially disruptive of the family alliance, is broughtwithin the range of interestsserved by the family at the same time that alliance is being reformed. The ideological force that the discourseof sexuality exercisedhistorically in the West is specific to the crises posed by the transition to monopoly capitalism-and again, in a different figuration, in the transition to late
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capitalism. Feminist historianshave addressedthe ways the deployment of alliance in the formof the ideologyof separatespheresboundthe nineteenthcentury bourgeoisfamily to a capitalist economy through the role it played both in the transmissionand circulationof wealth and in the extraction of surplus value from women's productive labor in the home. Sexuality, in It affectedthe of these arrangements. contrast,was linked to the reformation subtle relays,"chief among marketeconomy and operatedvia "various "free" them the body that producedand consumed(Foucault1980, 106). It affected the political sphere as discoursesof sexuality articulatedwithin the legal came to providenew mechanismsfor colonizing a host of practices apparatus in previously private spaces-the bedroom, schoolroom, examining room, library. Reading sexuality under capitalism as an ensemble of discourseswhose andheterosexual patriarchal hegemonicarticulationrelieson a preconstructed organizationhas several implications. One of them is the insistence that continue to organize or imperialism totalities like patriarchy, heterosexuality, people'slives in systematicand oppressiveways. Implicit in this assertionis the argumentadvanced by recent feminist work, like that of Sylvia Walby, of relationsof productionunderlate which contends that the reconfiguration has not eroded effectson socialarrangements, capitalism,forall of its atomizing these systemsof domination so much as it has rescriptedthem. We see this modificationnow in new householdarrangements amongthe middleclass.As households,manywomen genderhierarchiesbecome less rigidin middle-class spendfewerhoursof their day as housewivesand aregiven morepermissionto In comparor have childrenwithout marrying. leave their husbands,re-marry, ison with men of a generation ago, many middle-classhusbandsand fathers are given less permissionto take up the traditionalposition of masterof the house and are encouragedto be more "involved"fathers. But even though patriarchaldivisions of laborand controls over reproductionare being more flexibly managedin the domestic sphere,this does not mean that patriarchy Household laborand child care are still devalued.Although is disappearing. womenmayspendlesstime ashousewives,they still perform middle-class many hours of houseworkand child carethan men and earnlowerwages more many market(Folbreand Hartmann1989, 93). As the recruitin a sex-segregated womeninto the labormarketreformulates ment of moreand moremiddle-class betweenpublicandprivate the ideologyof separate spheresandthe boundaries become more porous,one effect has been the productionof new frontiersfor capitalist and patriarchalcolonization. Electronicmedia and the advertising industryareprimetechnologiesfor discipliningthe unconsciousand the body of domination throughthe sexualsaturationof the subject.In the informatics that increasinglydefine our everydaylives, patriarchyis alive and well and continues to rely on a preconstructedheterosexual norm even as it helps of neo-imperialism. boundaries configurethe "postcolonial"
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III. Theorizingdiscourseas ideology implies that the feminist standpoint is a critical practice, an act of reading that intervenes in and rearrangesthe constructionof meaningsand the social relationsthey support.I have resisted an equation of the feminist standpointwith a marginalized identity ("woman of color"or lesbian) in orderto stressthis point. Feministworkin generalhas emphasizedthat reading is a social act. Drawingon a theory of discourseas ideology, materialist feminists have extended the concept of "reading"to include all of those meaning-making practicesthat enable one to act and that one makes how her In doing so, materialist shape way through the world.11 feminists have challenged empiricistconceptions of reading as a processof decoding. However, the increasingappeal of postmodem neo-formalisthermeneuticsthat emphasizethe textualityof cultureand the residualempiricism within new historicistversionsof culturalstudieshave made it quite clearthat a feminist standpoint aimed at radical social transformation needs a more developed (materialist)explanation of the relationshipbetween reading in this sense and feminismas a criticalpractice. Materialist feminism's oppositionalpracticeis critique.As feministpractice, However, unlike critique has historical affinitieswith consciousness-raising. the empiricistnotion of the subjectas experiencingself that servedas the frame of intelligibilityfor much feministconsciousness-raising, critiqueunderstands consciousnessas ideologicallyproducedsubjectivity.This framework breaks out of the empiricistdilemmaof the self'smediatedrelationshipto the world by opening consciousnessup to discourseand history.Derivedfroma marxian theory of ideology,critique is bound to crisis and to ideology in a definitive way. In that the dominant ideologycontinuallyworksto seal over the cracks in the social imaginarygenerated by the contradictions of patriarchaland it is continuallyengagedin crisismanagement. capitalistsocial arrangements, As an ideologicalpractice,critiqueissuesfromthese cracks,historicizesthem, and claims them as the basis for an alternative narrative. Together the of discourseby continually operationsof critique "workon" the subject-form historicizingthe contradictionsin which it is inscribed.12 Once ideology is understoodas alwaysan uneven and contested ensemble of discourses,the space fromwhich critiqueissuesneed not be outside ideology-in science or in a discoursewithout a subject,as Althusserand Pecheux wouldhave it. Instead,the alternativenarrativeof critiquecan be thought of as a counterhegemonicdiscourse,the enabling conditions for which are the contradictions produced by exploitative and oppressive social relations of patriarchal capitalism.These contradictionscomprisethe veryfabricof many women'slived realityand are embeddedin the variousand contesting waysof making sense available to them in any historical moment. They leave their mark in the form of textual incoherences in the narrativesthat form the
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Textual crises-gaps, contradictions, aporias-indicate dominant culture.13 the failureof the hegemonic discourseto seal over or managesuccessfullythe contradictionsdisplaced in the texts of culture. But they also serve as the can inaugural space for critique.Feminism's historyas a critiqueof patriarchy in the be understoodin these terms,as addressing dominant culture's gaps ways of makingsense of women'slives, gapsarisingout of the contradictionbetween the democratic promises of equality and justice in modem societies and women'ssubordinationin all arenasof social life. One of the distinguishingfeaturesof critiqueis that it not only arisesout of crisis, but also causes crises in the narrativityof ideology by pointing to the momentsin a culture's self-contradictory waysof makingsense. However,these not are to throughappeal an "objective"logic or to the logic aporias exposed of signification,but to the historicalcontradictionsthey reveal.In otherwords, critique defetishizes textual contradictions by reading them as ideological of contradictory historicalforces.Critiqueaimsnot to heal over displacements or resolve culturalcrisis,but to demonstratethat internalcontradictionsin a culturaltext are the productof crisesin the largersocial formation,contradictions that cannot be satisfiedby the systemas it is at present.As Seyla Benhabib has argued, critique is "crisis diagnosis"that enables future social change (Benhabib 1986, 109). In this sense, it foments and makesuse of ideological crisisfor social transformation. IV. As a strategyfor intervention in prevailingknowledges,ideology critique offersa way to rethink the feministstandpointas a criticalpractice.Fromthe outset, however, this project must confront the incompatibility between postmodernfeminist theories of a discursivelyconstructedsubject and the group identity that has long served as the basis for feminist practice (Butler 1990a;Ebert 1991; Fuss 1989). Once subjectivityis theorizedas an ensemble of discursivepositions, no monolithic identity can serve as the subject of representationor liberation. But in acknowledgingthis it is important to has broughtto bear on identity rememberthat the pressures postmodernism politics are the product of ideological interventions from a range of counterhegemonic sites within the liberal tradition.'4Postmoder critiques of identityresonatewithin feminismin partforthis reason-because the ideology of representation in which the subject of feminism has itself historically circulated has generated refusalsthat suggest the limits of identity politics (Butler 1990a).'5 Takingher cue from Foucault,Judith Butlerhas arguedthat the notion of groupidentity as the subjectof a political movement ("women,"for example, as the subjectof feminism) is itself the effect of a historicallyspecificjuridical versionof representational politics (Butler 1990a, 2). Becausejuridicalpower
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inevitablyproduceswhat it aims to represent,the subjectnever truly"stands beforethe law,"that is, before its representationin the law or in discourse. Confrontingthe implicationsof this insight meansthat feministswill continas the ually have to monitor hegemonic articulationsof "woman"/"women" feminism of even as we use this subject group identity strategically.This monitoring requiresmaking visible the materialconnections between lives and knowledges in a new world order in which information, texts, and plurivocal discoursesare valued commodities. But it also dictates critical attention to formulationsof feminist standpointtheory,like those of Donna with the experiences Harawayor FredricJameson,that equate "standpoint" of various groups (Jameson 1988, 665). Positing the "phenomenologically specificway"a groupsees and knowsas the basisfor its standpoint,asJameson does, begs the larger question of what constitutes both a "group"and its "knowing"and in so doing reinscribesthe feminist standpoint back into an empiricistnotion of identity not very differentfromthe liberaljuridicalone. If it is acknowledgedthat the mechanismsof political and social identityare discursiveformationthat sets the ideologicaland that it is an overdetermined termsby which subjectsare formed,feministscan claim that the groundsfor their authoritylie in the aims of their counterhegemonictheory. Put differently, fromthe vantagepoint of ideology,women'slives are never outsidethe orhistoricallyavailablewaysof makingsense andtheir ideologicalperspectives structures of value and belief that circulate in any culture. accompanying Women'slives are articulatedin a culture'ssocial imaginaryand contested in its variouscounterhegemonictruth claims. One of these counter-hegemonic discourses constitutesthe feministstandpoint. Pecheux's concept of "dis-identification" is a useful way to relocate the feminist standpoint from the group identity of a juridical representational politics to the collective subject of ideology critique. "Dis-identification" constitutes a relation to the hegemonic ideology that is distinct from both identificationand counteridentification. The formerdefines the discourseof the good subjectwho "freely" consents to the hegemonic interdiscourse. The latter characterizesthe position of the "badsubject"who rebels against or counteridentifieswith the discursiveformationimposedon her by the interdiscourse.However,becausethe bad subjectis a symmetricalinversionof the of the hegemonic good, she keeps in place throughnegation the framework (The woman-centereddiscoursesof ideology inscribedin the interdiscourse. feminism that merely reverse patriarchy's gender hierarchy,for example, producea counter-identified subject.)The thirdpositionality,that of dis-idenon the subject-form(Pecheux 1975, 158). The tification, consists of working authorityfor a dis-identifiedposition need not be science, as Pecheux argues, but rathera critical discoursethat is distinguishedby its intervention in the preconstructedcategories on which the interdiscoursedepends. A way of does so by virtueof the makingsense that dis-identifieswith the interdiscourse
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is not limited to a reversalof the systemicreach of its critique.This "position" which is based(the categories on the interdiscourse hierarchies preconstructed into but calls male-female,black-white,same-other) question and thenhistoracross which subjectivities icizesthe historicalsystemof differentialrelations areconstructed. The dis-identifying subjectof critiquedoes not claim any one groupidentity as its ground but instead speaks from the position of a counter-hegemonic and its telos produces.The collective subject that its theoretical framework not experience as we are used "place"for the standpointof critique,then, is to thinking of it but "an articulatedsystem of positions" in the historical processand the subject producedout of that system (Althusser 1976, 184). The collective subject of the feminist standpoint is the productof a critical the individualor group discourseor analytic. It is an analytic that supersedes identities of juridicalrepresentationby exposing the historicity of the preon which they depend.In rewritingpolitical constructedsystemof differences but rather,as Cornel identity,this standpointaimsnot to eliminatedifferences are not employedas grounds Westhas argued,"to ensurethat such differences for buttressinghierarchicalsocial relationsand symbolicorders"(West 1988, 26). Unlike the subjectof a groupidentity who strivesfor the reformationof one axis of the symbolicorder,the collective subjectof a counterhegemonic ideologycritiqueemergesfroma discoursethat calls for a sweepingrearrangement of the social imaginaryand the political and economic structuresit as this sortof dis-identiOnce the feministstandpointis formulated supports. fyingcollective subjectof critique,the emphasisin its claimsforauthoritycan for knowledges-women's lives or experishift fromconcer over the grounds of knowledgesas alwaysinvestedwaysof ence-to considerationof the effects makingsense of the world. But if feminismembracesthis sortof collective standpoint,what constitutes its specificity?What distinguishesfeminismfrom any other radicalpolitical The answerto both questionscan be posedfromthe alternativenotion agenda? of the subject I have outlined above. This alternative, however, requiresa willingnessto forfeitthe sense of identitythat a politics lodgedin groupstends to guarantee.If it is understoodthat feminist knowledge is not priorto but rather producedthroughtheoretical inquiry, feminism's specificity can be claimedas a featureof the systemicanalyticthat constitutesits modeof inquiry. This analyticreachesfromthe most local and historicallyspecific to the most abstract level of analysis. And it is this reach that makes it possible to conceptualizealterity at various levels of theoretical abstractionand across of feminist inquiryis defined as multiple modalitiesof difference.If the object the complex ensemble of social relations in which the feminine subject is reproduced,then, likewise, the collective subjectof feminist critique can maintain some specificity-as the subject of a perspective that beginswith underpatriarchy inquiryinto and opposition to the devaluationof "woman"
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in all of the relations of productionit spans. At the same time the feminist standpointmaintainsthe specificityof its startingpoint and special interest, it can also align with the subjects of other political discoursesthat use a systemic analysis of the social production of difference. The specificity of feministcritique,in otherwords,lies in its particular entryinto andarticulation of these variouslevels of analysis.16 In delineatingthese explanatory andmappingout what it means frameworks to be a womanin the integratedcircuitsof late capitalism,the workof feminists like GayatriSpivak, Donna Haraway, DorothySmith, and others displaysits Martin and ChandraMohanty's(1986) reading strength.Biddy dis-identifying of Minnie BrucePratt'sessay"Skin,Blood, Heart"suggeststhat Pratt's narrative offersanother re-writingof the feminist standpoint.In Pratt'srendering, they argue,identity and communityare not the productof essential connections, neither are they the offspringof political urgencyor necessity,but the effectsof "aconstantre-contextualization of the relationshipbetweenpersonal and grouphistory and political priorities"(Martinand Mohanty 1986, 210). It is preciselyin offeringa framework for thinking this "re-contextualization" that a theory of ideology contributes to feminist practice. In situating the historicalconstructionof the feminine subjectin a systemicanalysis,it offers feministsone way to explain morefullyfeminism's own mediatedand uneven froman empiricalgroup, history.In so doing, feminism's subjectis transformed to the collective subjectof a critiquethat pusheson the boundaries "women," of Western individualism.That the force of this critique is fed by other discourses indicatesboth the historicityandthe ideological counterhegemonic limits of a feminist praxisalwaysin the processof re-articulation.
NOTES
1.Thisessay is a condensed andrevised of chapter version 3 of mybookMaterialist Linda McAlister andthe anonymous readers at Hypatia fortheirhelpful editorial Lopez comments. 2. As a critique of the empiricist feminist its subject, standpoint theoryshares historical withother feminist andpostimportance epistemologies-cultural, empiricist, Invarious modem. allof thesefeminisms havecalledintoquestion claims to truth ways, in thediscourses of modernity. whilecultural andempiricist feminists tendto However, offera description of reality as it transparently to women, feminist appears standpoint the function of women's in itsreproduction 1983,381). emphasize position (Jaggar 3. JoanScott implicitly underscores that the my contentionin her argument fetishization of skinin Haraway's "women of color" hasthe ringof romantic metaphor attributions to minority women of theauthentic bywhitefeminists oppositional politics (Scott1989,217).
theoriststypicallypresenta systematicexplanation of realityas sociallyconstructedand and thePolitics Feminism (New York: of Discourse Routledge,1992). I want to thank to
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how ideologicalpracticesare relatedto 4. Although Smith does not fullyelaborate other social practices, she does posit a social analytic that supersedesthe marxist model. In discussingthe discourseof femininity,she envisions the base-superstructure and otherproductiverelationsas a "aweb or cats-cradle betweendiscourse relationship the multiplelocal andparticular sitesof the of texts, stringingtogetherandco-ordinating of the fashion,cosmetic, worldsof women and men with the marketprocesses everyday (Smith 1990, 167). She does not, however,move garmentand publishingindustries" level of of femininityin at the social formationto situatethe discourses beyondanalysis the West within the largersphereof productiverelationsthat comprisemultinational capitalism. Hill Collins's(1991) formulation 5. I find a similarshiftingbackandforthin Patricia becauseher theoryof Blackfeminist of feministstandpoint.Collins'sworkis noteworthy the waysin which the lives of Blackwomen oppressed thoughtaddresses by racismand While at timesCollins attendsto sexismarerearticulated by Blackwomen intellectuals. the complex relationshipbetween the specialized knowledgeof Blackfeministthought and Blackwomen as a group(1991, 30-31), at other times she appealsquite directlyto Blackwomen's"concreteexperience"(1991, 208) or uniquelyfemale waysof knowing (1991, 214) as the basisforfeministstandpoint. recentessay(1991) offersan extendedcritiqueof these interests6. Neil Lazarus's of postmoderity mystifythe sustained the waysmanycurrentconceptualizations globality of capitalism. and Reading 7. See Leninand Philosophy Capitalfor the fullest developmentsof Althusser's theoryof ideology. contributionto neo-marxistepistemology, see Mouffe 8. For analysisof Gramsci's (1979) and Wolff (1989). For an elaborationof the uses of this epistemologyfor an politics,see West (1988). emancipatory theoreticaldevelopmentof this point, see Hall (1986, 1988), Pecheux 9. Forfurther (1983), and Williams(1979). 10. This phraseis takenfromJudithButler's verysuggestivecritiqueof heterosexual Trouble coherence in Gender (Butler1990a). 11. Michelle Barrett's definition of ideologyas "a generic term for the processesby transformed" which meaningis produced, (Barrett1980, 97) is challenged,reproduced, here. one exampleof what I meanby "reading" 12. For overviewsof marxiancritique,see Benhabib(1986), Stillman (1983), and Thompson(1984). of the subjectsupersedes the contradiction construction 13.A theoryof the discursive Seyla Benhabib(1986) points to in Marxbetweensystemicanalysisand the perspective that Habermas's of lived experience.While Benhabibsuggests theoryof communicative interactionoffersthe bestwayto theorizethe mediationbetweenthese two perspectives, is premised notion of intersubjectivity the theory of the subjecton which Habermas's retains problematicempiricist assumptionsin its understandingof the relationship and subjectivity. betweenrepresentation 14. For some theorists,these challenges to the integrityof the liberal subjectare as the an argumentthat posits postmodernity inherent in the condition of modernity, within the Enlightenmentratherthan a fulfillmentor continuation of contradictions breakfrom it. Fordebateson this issue,see Foucault(1984), Habermas (1987), Lyotard (1984), and Mouffe(1979).
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from within marxismhave made clear the inadequacy 15. Similar pressures of its in Marx's monolithicsubject.Fora critiqueof the contradictions theoryof the collective singular subject,see Benhabib(1986). is a usefulmodel 16. CornelWest's(1988) analysisof African-American oppression of how to theorize the specificity of a political and ideological standpointwithin a oppressionis systemicanalytic. In suggestingthat the specificityof African-American andto the systemicreachof capitalist linkedboth to a particular problematic inextricably his analysis implies ways to considerhow variouscritical perspectives arrangements, intersect. might
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