;... X""","ltQl t - t"' rl!l.li ....WlIIJI ... 'M'1'O' Jr.-.-.

,
@n7'::.'-!
Edited by
Ruth Behar
and
DeborahA. Gordon
Univenity of
ulifornia
Press
Berkeley
LO! Angeles
London
1.
RuthBehar dedicatesthis bookto herteachers
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
HildredGeertzand James W.Fernandez
DeborahGordondedicatesthis booktoher teachers
University of California Press, Ltd.
DonnaHarawayand James Clifford
London,England
1995 byThe Regents oftheUniversity of California
Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Women writingcultureI edited byRuth Beharand DeborahA.Gordon.
p. em.
Includes bibliographicalreferences and index.
ISBN 0-510-20207-4 (alk. paper). -ISBN0-520-20208-2 (pbk. alk.
paper)
1. Women anthropologists-Attitudes. 2. Ethnology-Authorship.
3. Ethnology-Philosophy. 4. Feminist anthropology. 5. Women's
writings. 6. Feminist literary criticism. 1. Behar, Ruth, 1956- .
Il. Gordon,DeborahA., 1956-
GN27w66 1995
30542-dno 95-36791
CIP
The ornamentalmotif isfrom rbewoodcut "ExchangeValue" by
Pamela Terry.
Primed in the United States of America
9 876543
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed LibraryMaterials,ANSI z39.48-1984.
7
0
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/LaFrontera:The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters!
Aunt Lute, 1987),78-79.
71. Pat Mora, Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of
New MexicoPress, 1993),6.
72.. Behar,Translated Woman, 2.33-34
73. For aperceptive discussion ofphotography"andcolonialism,seeIrvin Schick,"Represent-
ingMiddleEasternWomen: Feminism and Colonial Discourse," FeministStudies 16, no.
2. (1990): 345- 80.
74. Kendall, Lifeand HardTimes of aKoreanShaman.
75. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking ofSocial Analysis (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1989),2.17
76. Lila Abu-Lughod, "Can There Bea Feminist Ethnography?" Women and Performance:
A]ournalofFeministTheory 5, no. 1(1990): 2.6.
BARBARA TEDLOCK
EXCERPT FROM an (unsuccessful) application
to theSpencerFoundation,August1992:
Weareapplyingto the Spencer Foundation
forsupportwhichwouldenable usto com-
plete acollaborative, cross-disciplinaryinves-
tigationof the comparativeimpacton radical
academicmenof thegoals andperspectives
associatedwith Women'sandEthnicStudies.
Combiningtextualcriticism withoralhistory
andparticipant-observation,our projecttakes
asthe objectof itsinvestigationour subjects'
scholarshipaswell astheir teaching, their col-
legialrelations, their institutionalpractice and
behaviors,the developmentof their cultural
knowledge, the intellectualand political
milieusinwhichtheymove,andtheir per- '1
sonal liues.
Instudyingthe complexways thatradical
academicmales have assimilated, translated
and/orevadedcriticalperspectivesongender,
race,andsexualidentity,ourstudysheds light
uponthe unevenandcomplicatedways in
whichdifferentkindsofprivileged"others"
come, anddo notcome, to take on knowl-
edgesandgOals whichinsomewaychallenge
their ownprivilege. Ourprojectfocuses, that
is,on the conditionswhichproduce"traitor-
ous identities,"awillingnessto betraythe tra-..
ditionalprivileges of one's groupand one's
..l..
2.86

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own position. An investigation of this kind, it seems to us, has insights of partic-
ular importance to offer at the present time, when U.S. society itself is rapidly
becoming racially and ethnically more diverse, when race and gender tensions
are on the rise, when economic resources are shrinking (for all but the elite),
when "multiculturalism" in higher education is under attack, and when affirma-
tive action policies, in particular, are the subject of intense debate. As scholars
invested in equality and justice, we feel that careful, ethnographic investigation
of changing discourse and practice in relation to race and gender and of the
processes by which such changes have taken place are key to developing further
strategies for democratizing not just the academy but U.S. society as a whole.
This is, for us, the central contribution our project makes to new knowledge
about education.
Changing Our Story
Like most feminist scholars, during the past two decades we have spent the
greater part of our intellectual energies gathering and interpreting material about
women.' Part of this work, to be sure, involved us in studying men, but when it did
so, our goal was less to understand them than to better know ourselves and other
women. The current political and intellectual context has prompted us to shift this
focus somewhat. First, the general backlash against feminism, multiculturalism, and
affirmative action provokes stock-taking about what second-wave feminism and
multiculturalism have actually accomplished. Secondly, the proliferation of various
species of men's movements (from feminist, to spiritual, to antifeminist) challenges
us to think about ways in which men are and want to be changing and about what
feminisms have had to do with these efforts to reinvent masculinity.
More broadly, the conservative backlash against political correctness positions
academic feminists, antiracist men of color, and gay academic men alongside white
straight men of almost any critical intellectual stripe, attacking us all as if we were
disloyal to civilization in the same way. On the other end of the political spectrum,
cultural studies, the academic signifier of the 1990S, offers to embrace us under its
own conceptual and institutional umbrella, while the emergence of a conservative
Congress suggests a renewed need for political alliance and activism that extend
well beyond the academy. Together these developments generate important ques-
tions about our relationship as feminists to left-leaning and antiracist academic rnen
and to collective political action as a whole. It seems more urgent than before to
define the kinds and forms of alliances that are desirable and os' e. For this rea-
son, among or ers, we ave egun to stu y men in a different way.
The Postrnodern Fix
Studying men, however, with an eye to alliance rather than surveillance or self-
knowledge raises dilemmas which even the current priorities and frameworks of
288
JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
academic feminism seem ill suited to handle. One formulation of the difficulties we
have encountered is something we call "the postmodern fix." Mainstream academic
feminism, as is well known, has undergone a series of transformations in the last
fifteen years, which have opened it to new forms of dialogue and exchange. Unified
categories like "women" have come into question; gender has come to be seen as
multiple and various, as coconstructed with race, class, and sexual and national
identity. Identity politics, as the politics of the "same," has given way, as a domi-
nant mode of conceptualizing feminist community, to a politics involving multiple
alliances, alliances across identities, alliances with those whose lives and identities
are in a sense "wrong." 2 These are the transformations, often referred to as post-
modern, in which we situate our own "border crossings" in this project.
Ironically, however, for all its identification with the fluid and the multiple, post-
modernism has (inevitably) taken on some unifying and homogenizing functions.
Post modern as a category, for example, is often employed in order to fix the hetero-
geneity of theoretical and political genealogies into the grand narrative of itself.
Thus the fragmentation of unitary assumptions about gender, which is often glossed
as postrnodern, was introduced into feminist discourse as early as the 1970S through
the work of feminists of color and lesbians, who did not then identify themselves
with that term.' Dominant forms of feminist postrnodernisrn, moreover, seem them-
selves to run in some well-worn grooves. (We are familiar with these grooves. This
is our fix too.) The most dominant form of postmodern feminism, for example,
signifies aJliance across identities and rightly privileges some alliances over others. It
privileges alliance between women, most particularly now across racial and ethnic
lines. As white feminists we feel, without question, that women of color are currently
the "other" of most pressing concern, and on our own campus we have worked
hard to build a women's studies program that is fully multicultural and that aims at
mutually constructed agendas and shared power. We would raise the question,
nonetheless, of whether a postrnodern feminism can afford, any more than mod-
ernist feminism, to be a project for women only. Feminists of color have almost
always claimed some alliance with progressive men in their own racial or ethnic
communities, but for most white feminisms men (often unified as a single category)
have been the most "other" of all "others." The shift within academic mainstream
feminism from identity politics to politics across identities challenges us to move
more fully across this divide as well, challenges feminists in general to at least inves-
tigate the possibilities of alliance with progressive men, including white men, who
have signaled the desire and potential for a politics beyond their own interests.'
Although most academic feminists tend to assume, in good postmodern fashion,
that their identities are contradictory and divided, that it is possible, for example, to
be a white antiracisr or a heterosexual woman of color who is antihomophobic,
men are more likely to be rns.represented as somewhat fixed. (Or, like Cathy in the
cartoon, feminists may complain: "Why is it the only time men really change, it's
into something totally aggravating?") There is something to the complaint raised by
critics of political correctness (and critics writing for the New Criterion intersect
MS.REPRESENTATIONS
28
9

here with those writing for Socialist Review) thatcertain feminist categories-the
Western subject, white middle-class male, dead white men-lackcomplexity and
nuance.' These critics of political correctness, moreover, intersect with the mild-
mannered complaint of an African American male scholar we interviewed who
reportedthat"I get impatientwithfeminists whorepresentmen ofcoloras perpet-
ually underdeveloped. You know-'youmen can't get it right!' We need dialogue
withfeminists aboutthis. Maybewe can't do iton yourtermsalone."
Postmodern feminisms assume that identities are constructed in multiple, shift-
ing, contradictory discourses, andyet the most dominantfeminist modeof writing
about male others isthatof confidentlyreadingtheir race and gender politics, and
sometimestheir psychologiesandcharacters,outoftheirpublishedtexts. (Weshould
know. Wehave contributedto thisgenre.)"Butpublishedtexts,whichare peculiarly
subject to the norms governingcareer advance-such as displays of mastery over
one'sown turf-maybenot only partial but also misleading indices of whatsome
male others are up to when our backs are turned. Perhaps there are more multi-
layered,more "postmodern"ways ofreadingthese academicothers,withwhomour
intellectual,political,andsocial livesare often entwined.
Althoughmostcurrentfeminisms assumethesituated,partialnatureofallknowl-
edge, acknowledgmentof the partiality,the limitations, the possible night blindness
of one's own critique,seems almosteasierto come bythese days, in whitefeminist
texts atleast, whenthey are writtenfrom the positionofthe whitefeminist'sgreater
power(inrelationto womenofcolor, for example)thanwhenthey are writtenfrom
the positionof her/oursubordination (in relation to men andespecially thosewho
are white and heterosexual).' And here again, although we are committed to the
radical revision of race and genderpowerrelations in the academy andbeyond,we
have to acknowledgethatthere are positionswhichappearto presentthemselvesas
beyond criticism. (Someofthem are ourown,when we write withthe rectitudeand
moralauthorityofsubordinates, whenwe knowwe'reright.)It isin the contextof
this fixon postmodernismthatwe also situateourstudyof radicalacademicmen. It
isinthecontextofthis postmodernfix-andofotherfixesaswell-thatweattempt
inthe following pages tothinkaboutrethinkingmen, thatwe attemptto reflect on
the positions, discourses, and paradigms with which we began, which we were to
encounter, andthrough which we sometimes moved as we began ourwork on this
project.
But,Judy ...
Excerpts from three responses to our first paper, which focused on white male
culturalcritics:
1. (A WHITE FEMINIST) "I enjoyedreadingthis immensely, arid/buritmade me
slightly nervous. WhatIam curiousand worriedaboutisthatthe attentionto
[theseguys] reproducesacelebrationandauthorityyou are tryingto question
2.90 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
andcombat.Imean, they'lllove it, no? And won'titkeep them center-stage
despiteyourcritique?Well,that'sa basic, overallconcernIhave."
2. (A FEMIN1ST 0 F COL0 R) "Couldyourfocus on twowhitemale theoristsat
this particularhistoricalmomentberead as akindof displacementof the cri-
tiques feminists ofcolorhave been makingaboutretaininggenderat the center
offeministtheorizing? ...Isthere also awayin whichyou retain'men'as the
'other'of feminism ratherthanaddressingtherangeof theoreticalresponsesof
'other'womencurrentlycontestingand refiguring feminist epistemology?"

'.'
3(A WHITE, PROFEMINIST MAN) "I wonderifyou bend over backwardstoo
much. Youtake8pp to get going, and some of the latertext toosounds,not
nagging, but veryapologetic,asifyou are notsure you have the right to say all
this. Ithinkweshouldinsist thatallthe membersof the rainbowdo have aright
to robustspeech,andifthey get itwrongthenthey turnaroundand correct
themselvesand go forward."
Excerpt from a taped "conversation about race and class" between bell hooks
and MaryChilders:
HOOKS: It isimportantto rememberthatvictimization bymen has been the pri-
mary categoryofoppressioninfeminism.
CHILDERS: ThoughIcertainlydon'twantto let men off the hook,itisworth-
while to lookoutfor examplesof howoftenanexclusivefocus on male/female
conflictserves asadistractionfrom otherkinds ofconflict.'
Tania Modleskion the dangersofadialogicapproachto writingaboutmen:
While terms like "dialogism" ...are commonly evoked in the rationale for
these volumes it is hard to see how such a term functions as anything more than
a euphemism for "dialogue" -a concept that in eliding the question of power
asymmetry has rather conservative implications.'
\JI
Amale participantinthe MarxistLiteraryGroup'sSummerInstituteafter hear-
ing a draftof our paper on two male culturalcritics and on learning that we were
planningnotonly to interviewthem but to showthemthe paperwewere writing:
Dothat and you're dead in the water.
AconversationbetweenJudys:
JUDY: There'sno end of thingswe ca!"! becriticizedfor; how aboutheterosexual
presumption?
JUDY: Ofcourse,we can raise allthese issuesovertly, but thenwe'llbevulnerable
to the chargeof having includedan "inoculatingcritique"of ourown blind
spots"so as to allowbusinessto proceedas usual."to
MS.REPRESENTATIONS 2.9 1

JUDY: Great! We'regoingto alienateeveryone.
Excerptfromourrisk-to-human-subjectsprotocol:
Myco-investigator [udith Newton and I are convinced that the potential bene-
fits of this project far outweigh the small risk it poses to interviewees. Indeed,
we believe that this project may place our own scholarly output and reputations
at greater risk than that of our subjects. Fear ofoffending cooperating colleagues
may hamper our own critical expression, and if we do offend any subjects,
they are well-positioned to "retaliate" in print. Perhaps, Judith Newton and
I are the principal human subjects at risk in this study.
The Return oftheSuppressed
Despite our desire to hear the discourse of progressive male others in a more
multivalent, less self-righteous way, ourinitial efforts to knowthese potential allies
took a familiar shape-s-ms.representing men's stories through critical readings of
their written texts. We did adopt, to besure, a less sarcastic, more self-critical tone
than in our previous efforts to write about men-a tone which will inevitably sit
betterwithmale academics than withfemale feminists, butwhich will, we are con-
vinced,activelypleaseno one. In spite of these cosmeticchanges, however, whatwe
achieved in the end was a more moderateversion of SOme familiar modes, the well-
meaningfeministreportcard,the gentlynaggingrexr."
In keeping with our focus on cultural studies and on the politics of academic
men, we choseas subjects two well-known,whitecultural studiesscholars, bothof
whom had written on the colonizing nature ofWestern discourse on "the other."
Somewhat serendipitously-we happened to see Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning
Dances with Wolves while working on our subjects' latest books-we adopted a
strategy familiar to cultural studies itself, that of reading across cultural texts and
juxtaposinghigh andlow.Weused the insightsofoursubjects'textsasgridsthrough
which to read the colonizing strategies ofDances with Wolves, an officially anti-
imperialistfilm, and thenemployedourenhancedreadingofCostner'sfilm to inves-
tigate the ways in which our subjects reinscribe some of the same colonizing
strategies in their own anti-imperialist texts. Finally, we drew on our own insights
to read the genderpoliticsof all threeworksand to suggest somerelations between
theirgender andracial narratives.
In the texts of Costner and of the cultural studiesscholars,for example, issues
havingto do with the politics of knowledge and authorityare criticallyentertained
in relation to strategically distanced male native others.These same narratives,we
felt, might also be read as implicit, displaced responses to feminist and domestic
antiracistcritique-responsesthatstruckus as radicallyabstractedfrom overtcon-
siderations of gender politics, in particular,and as reinforcing sexual hierarchies."
Ourinitial explanation for what seemed to us displaced responses to genderchal-
lenge was a fairlyegocentricone-thatfeministchallengesweretoo threateningfor
men to engage with head on. Thisat least ishowwe initially rns.represented men's
stories,inevitablyprojectingontothem perspectivesfrom ourown."
-IvI! rs.
Ethnographic EncountersoftheUnsettlingKind
If the majorconceit of the erhnographicenterpriseis its capacity to disruptcul-
turalprejudice,wewerenottobedisappointed.Itdid nor take longbeforefieldwork
began to complicate the analysis about male responses to gender and race chal-
lengesthatwe had derived from men'stexts."Assoonas we initiated the processof
conductingoral histories on malecultural critics, we elicited self-representationsof
the impact that feminism has had on their lives and work that are at once more
deflatingand moreflatteringthanwe hadanticipated."
ENCOUNTER I
JU D Y: You know,you wereliving in an area thatwas a majorcenterfor feminism
then;did you knowthat?
A MALE CULTURAL CRITIC: Of course!
JUDY: You knewit then?
HIM: Ofcourse.
JUDY: Like what?Was it noticeable?
HIM [pause): No.Idon'tthinkso.
JUDY: Do you have any memories?
HIM: No.
J U D Y: Any personallife, any sociallife,things happening,incidents,soundings?
HIM: Feminismwasa minimalkind of thing.
JUDY: Whatdo you rememberat all?
HIM: Nothing.
JUDY: Mediastuff,orwhat?
HIM: Nothing,zero [laughing], Imeanit's really, I'mgoingto have to say thatin
lieu of having,ImeanifIdon'thave a strongmemory,ImeanIcouldprobably,
well let me put that,norhing,gooseegg.WhatI'msayingisthatwithoutany-
thingcomingimmediatelytomind,Iwould have to thinkaboutit,andthat-ells
you something.
JUDY: But that'simportant.
HIM: Yeah.
JU D Y: Thisisa very importantquestionfor me. Imeanit'snot acriticism,it's not
aquestion of, why didn'tyou?
292 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
MS.REPRESENTATIONS
293

HIM: No,it's just me, whatcan Isay?
JUDY: But it's notjust you, because it's amilieu you were partof.
HIM: Oh yeah.
JUDY: I'mnoteven asking how you feltaboutit. Ijust wonderhowand whenit
entered. -
ENCOUNTER 2
ANOTHER MALE CULTURAL CRITIC: Newhistoricismisapatheticphenome-
non comparedwith feminism; itcouldonly makeany sense inthe kind of
groundthat's been broken byfeminism, for alot ofdifferentreasons. SoIfeel
goodabouthaving been pressuredintohaving donethis work.Feminismis,it
seems to me, akind ofsublimemodelfor whatitisthatany intellectualfor-
mationmighthope to do.
JUDY: Whatdo you mean bythat?
HIM: Well,it's sublimebecause it's notapproachablebysomethinglikedecon-
structionismor new historicism,since it actually, since feminismhas apresence
inthe real worldthatno academictheory, whateverthegame is,will have. ButI
thinkthatfeminism isnotonly havingthis presencein the world,includinga
politicalpresence, but also to have changedboththe theoreticaland objectland-
scape andthat'sallthatan academiccan possiblyhope to do. So
it's the model. Idon'tfeelrivalrousat all. At least I'mnotawareoffeeling rival-
rous, inthatIthink there'splenty ofroomfor allkindsof things ...But inany
case, Ithinkoffeminism as avastly bigger,moreimportantfieldthanmine.
Ourinitial constructionofthe troublingtextualsilence on genderissues in many
ofoursubjects'work(thatgendercritiquewas too threateningtohandle),while not
entirely discredited by ourethnographic encounters, was at least radically decen-
teredoAsagroupour subjectswere far from uniformin their reported responses to
early feminist critique,and asindividualstheir sensitivityto, and practiceof, gender
criticism were unevenly developed. Subjects who did engage with gender issues in
their publishedworkwere often alreadymarginalizedbyethnicityor sexualidentity
or bythe employmentof "feminized" discourses such as psychoanalysis. Some had
been in long relationships with feminists or hadhad deep and often painful ties to
female relatives. StilIotherswere youngenoughto have had feminist teachers or at
least feminist cohorts in graduate school. A younger white scholar, for example,
who is now in men's studies, reports that he entered the field in part because he
received "strokes"for doinggenderfromhisfeministcollege teachers.
In the case of manyothers, however, their published work, as the area of their
lives most open to public scrutiny and most crucial to their career advance, often
the least imprinting by critical gender Registering the keenly
294 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
competitiveand hierarchicalnatureofacademicscholarship,somesubjectsrecorded
anxieties about "losing one's edge" if they did gender criticism, while others
expressed fear of not being seen as serious by other men or of being perceived as
soft on feminism.
StilIothersmentionedfear of offendinggendered and racial othersas a primary
motivationfor excludinggenderandrace issues from their publishedwork: "IfI'm
wrong, the person who's upsetis across the table." They talked of notwanting to
be a "tourist" in relation togender issues or cited anxiety (at times justified) over
-being chargedwith appropriatingand usurpingethnic and/orwomen'sstudies ter-
!
rain. Oneprominentwhiteculturecritic, for example,recountsan incidentinwhich
h;gavewhathe meantto beaprofeminisrtalk on the workofVirginia Woolf, only
to be met withfeminist charges of encroachment, an experiencewhich he refers to
asthe damnedifyou do, anddamnedifyou don'tconundrum.
Our subjects' teaching, however, and their academic politics were more often
reflective of serious engagement with gender and racial issues. In classrooms, for
example, which are more private spaces and where an audience of graduate stu-
dents, in particular, is likely to insist on hearing the perspectives of a full range of
historically marginalized groups, critical perspectives on gender are more likely to
be included by both white men and men of color. As one African American male
scholarexplained:
Ihad two T.A.'swhowerefeminists ineverysenseofthe word, T.A.'s ofcolor.
It'sacoursethat I've taught on "TheBlack Experience,"and wegot into quite
afewdiscussions aboutthequestionof genderand itsrelationship to difference
and multiculturalism,andallthesekinds ofissues.Andagain,having to con-
front the deep ways inwhich akindof masculinity{itsinmy ownway of seeing ,
.1;
the world and having itchallenged,andexpandedand elaborated upon bythese
graduate studentshasbeenveryhelpful. It's beenfrustrating and contentious
attimes, but it'salsobeenincredibly helpfulinterms ofconfrontingjust whatI
wastalkingabout,howdo you makeitbecome anactive partofone's work
withouttakingitover,withoutbeingatourist, withouttrying tospeak for,from
aplacethat you reallycan't.
To some degree, then, ourconfidentassumptionthatsilence on genderissues in
oursubject'sscholarshipmightbeascribedto genderthreatcame to seem to usideo-
logical. Specifically, it began to seem a product, at leastin part, of ourcontinuing
immersion in early white feminist understandings of the world, understandings
forged inaperiodofrevolutionaryfervor and inaperiodof(understandablyegocen-
tric) anger and disbelief that what was world shaking to us was not passionately
cathected by ourmale comrades."These were notthe only assumptions, however,
thatourethnographicencounterswere tochallenge. Ourinitial constructionof the
politicaland methodologicaldifficulties thatour projectposedhad been deeply and
consciouslyinformedbylaterdiscoursesaswell, mostparticularlybycontemporary
295 MS.REPRESENTATIONS

feminist/postmodernist understandings about the politics and dynamics of knowing
"others." Our excursions into the "field" were also to complicate and decenter these
understandings.
Colonization Revisited
The governing premise of most current critical discourse on ethnographic
authority, for example, is that ethnographers inescapably exercise and exploit tex-
tual and social authority over the people they study, people who characteristically
occupy subordinate social positions. Astute critique and self-critique of the coloniz-
ing impulses, practices, and effects of ethnography dominate this literature. Much
feminist discussion of ethnographic practice has been preoccupied with fieldwork
and rhetorical strategies that attempt to disrupt these asymmetrical authority rela-
tions, presuming, reasonably enough, that most of the "others" of feminist ethno-
graphic research are less powerful women and/or, occasionally, subordinated men."
Our first move in relation to these formulations was to see our own project as a
replication in reverse of the usual script. As women studying men, that is, we were,
in erhnographic parlance, "studying up," at least in relationship to the men who
are white and heterosexual, while our political goals committed us to try to "study
across" as well. Although, as white, heterosexual, academic women, we share with
the majority of our subjects diverse forms of privilege, most of them are more privi-
leged still. Not only do they occupy the dominant gender position, but most are
prodigious achievers with fame, status, and ready access to print and to institu-
tional and cultural authority worldwide. Thus the inequalities between researchers
and researched sometimes seem pronounced, even in some instances in which our
gender "handicap" is offset by our racial or sexual privileges or by our status as rep-
resentarives of institutionalized feminism. Yet the culture wars and our own politics
also position our research subjects with us against threatening defenders of tradi-
tional privilege inside the academy and beyond. after all, are "tenured radi-
Thus, from an at least partially subordinate location, we are studying
"domin " 0 are also otential, and desired, allies-men whose capacity for,
and commitment to, "traitorous" gender identities we seek to investigate and foster.
Our paradoxical location we felt posed ethical, political, social, and emotional chal-
lenges rarely encountered by, indeed often the inverse of those troubled,
many feminist or other postmodern ethnographers.
We were, we reflected, in little danger of colonizing most of our subjects. Spared
the temptation of humanist illusions about "giving voice to the voiceless," we could
evade the snares of Western feminist ethnographic romanticism." The subjects we
are studying are masters of representation, consummate storytellers, often sophisti-
cated ethnographers themselves. Their rhetorical expertise enables them to generate
ethnographic "data" even more self-serving and difficult to decode than that gener-
ally produced by less self-conscious narrators. What is more, their facility with and
access to academic and print media assure that they can command more than "equal
29 6
JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
time" to respond to any "ms.representations" of their narratives or work on our
part they find offensive. As our "risk to human subjects" protocol joked, fear of
such retaliatory maneuvers well might inhibit our legitimate, critical impulses and
expression.
Indeed, there seemed a significant risk that some of these informants would colo-
nize their ethnographers! Our very choice of male cultural critics as subjects, as
several feminist colleagues warned, might reinforce the colonization of the ethnog-
raphers and other women by recentering the very male authority we seek to challenge
and revise. Our political commitment to potential alliance-the "studymg across"
component of our project-intensified the danger by fostering a dialogic approach
which, as Tania Modleski points out, easily elides questions of power-the "study-
ing up" dimension here. In avoiding the mode of the feminist report card, the scold,
nag, or meter maid, we saw ourselves as flirting with our own domestication.
Ethnographic empathy, we concluded, compounded by conventional herero-
codes, magnified these hazards and threw our dialogic pretensions
into question. Ethnographic research necessitates a capacity for, indeed a flirtation
with, "going native" -occupying the cultural and emotional space of "the other."
As heterosexual women, we uneasily observed, we were all too practiced in the con-
ventional forms such flirtation takes with men-empathic listening, conversational
and social deference, drawing men out, decoding their moods, words, and silences,
encouraging, reassuring, and pleasing them-the myriad tactics of feminine social
sensitivity, solicitousness, and seduction.
Fieldwork, we felt compelled to confess, had begun to mimic, perhaps to parody,
heterosexual dating conventions and to erect surprising constraints on our capacity
for critical analyses of the Jives and the texts of our subjects. Having initiated a series
of intensive, often intimate, often pleasurable, conversations with our male infor-
mants (who were sometimes also friends), we found ourselves genuinely worried
about later wounding or offending even the less known and more powerful figures.
Betrayal, abandonment, and guilt are endemic to ethnographic research, as one of
us has discussed elsewhere," but here their symbolic loadings and effects were over-
burdened and distorted by heterosexual cultural codes. Intriguingly, our anxiety
over broken relationships and the guilt and regret we might experience by publicly
"betraying" male subjects seemed far more inhibiting than did any concerns about
public, academic forms of reprisal.
The social anxiety we began to experience was not simply a symptom of femi-
nine paranoia. Almost all of the oral histories we had conducted indicated male vul-
nerability to feminist critique and female judgment. In the words of one cultural
critic, whose work has engaged deeply and powerfully with feminist theory: "I feel
more on the line when I foreground gender than when I write in any other voice.
From direct and indirect experience, I feeT scrutinized, held accountable by femi-
nists. I worry about becoming a target of their hostility or ridicule. Of course, these
feelings articulate with old issues like a desire for female approval, which, I suspect,
drove my very interest in gender analysis to begin with." His accounts of the "skit-
MS.REI'RESENTATIONS 297

tishness" he feels about assuming a feminist voice are echoed in almost all of the
narratives, by men who have and those who have not braved the effort. "I've always
been afraid, I was very nervous about teaching that feminist theory class," confided
one who has. "I'm afraid to talk about feminism; that's where the PC policing is
done," declared one who has not. And while a third claimed that his published
work had received so much feminist criticism that he has "developed a thick skin,"
the rhetoric he employed-"See, that's where I got busted, not only for excluding
but also for including" women's texts-hinted, to us, of a less callused epidermis.
Moreover, our earliest forays into this ethnographic terrain provoked evidence
that despite our most cautious use of fieldwork "data," some informants will prove
easy to offend. For example, we sent an early conference version of this paper to the
anonymous cultural critic who narrates his minimal early awareness of feminism in
the first excerpt from interview transcripts above. We had, we thought, employed
this data at our own expense, to expose the feminist narcissism implicit in our
preethnographic male "displacement" thesis. The postcard we received back from
our "dialogic subject," while good-naturedly ironic, suggests that he read our use of
his words differently:
Dear Judy,
As our late President, a star, said, "Where's the rest of me?" Ginny loved the
use you made of me - I was less enamored, but I do understand the value of
good material in a pinch. Speaking as a victim, I think you should familiarize
yourself with the literature on what you can and can't get from interviews.
By return post we hastened to reassure our "victim" of our benevolent intentions,
displaying some deference by requesting more specific remedial reading suggestions.
In a second, more ethically confusing example, we interviewed two men after we
had already drafted a paper we meant to be both appreciative and critical of their
published work and then tried to honor our dialogic commitments by providing each
an opportunity to respond to a prepublication copy of the text-based critique.
While one claimed to have read our paper "with enormous pleasure and interest,"
and then to wonder if, "maybe I've been snookered," the other prefaced his lengthy,
far less enthusiastic reactions to our readings of his work with the acknowledgment
that "it would take a while, and several readings, to get beyond a 'reactive,' defen-
sive response. That's where I'd like to be, but as you'll see, I'm not there yet." Our
response, a cross between apology and debate, promised to make editorial changes
in our paper.
Such experiences left us uncertain whether to read the kinds of self-censorship
we began to find ourselves practicing as signs of political maturIty or as capitula-
~ Might we be succumbing to the seductive dangers of ovendentltymg with a
male elite cultural vanguard who possess the power, again in hallowed heterosexual
tradition, to confer on us vicarious cultural capital? We hoped it was "too soon to
start worrying yet," as a character from To Kill a Mockingbird might say, but we
~ 9 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
remained uneasily aware that our project had the capacity to foster our own traitor-
ous gender identities as well as those of our often-ingratiating, male "subjects."
Weapons of the Weak
A second set of reflections promoted by current theorizing about ethnographic
power relations had to do with the somewhat neglected topic of the powers avail-
able to the weak. Although feminist/postmodernist theory emphasizes the power of
the dominant, we were conscious that not all the structural or cultural advantages
of our project were stacked against us. While we encountered many unusual dilem-
mas in conducting ethnographic work on somewhat more powerful others, at the
same time we found ourselves enjoying a number of unanticipated resources, spon-
taneously deploying various "weapons of the weak." 21 Our research, for example,
struck us as exploiting certain heterosexual conventions that worked to our advan-
tage. The somewhat suspect pleasure in our ethnographic encounters that fueled our
interest in this project, we thought, must attract the cooperation of our male inter-
locutors as well. There was, for example, the seductiveness of the intimate interview
situation in which a rapt, female audience of one or two attended appreciatively to
the male subjects' every word. "There's an erotic side to this," one of our more
forthcoming research subjects acknowledged, "that we aren't talking about, that I'm
sure is going to be true of almost all men that are involved in this issue.... That's
one of the reasons it's fun to talk to you, and a lot comes out."
We were, we realized, also asking men to engage in "rapport talk," the kind of
private, intimate conversation about people, relationships, and emotions, that most
m.c;.!!.,according to Deborah Tannen, find difficult and in which most women exel.
Although sociolinguists find that "masculine" forms of "report talk" characterize
most "mixed" gender conversations, we called on our male informants to talk more
like women." This was difficult for some, who displayed obvious signs of reticence,
but we benefited from decades of practice in facilitating and decoding such male
locutions and often enjoyed the power of a superior facility in this oratorical genre.
At the same time, asking men to serve as our "informants" on their intellectual
work and politics exploits masculine facility with "report talk," as it appeals to
both their didactic and chivalrous impulses.
Courtly etiquette, moreover, seemed to collude with the political climate in left-
liberal circles, which still gives moral privileges to women as subordinates, to foster
male participation in our project. Indeed, one informant predicted that men would
be willing to talk to us "out of not narcissism, but duty." This same weapon of the
weak, we felt, might also shield our eventual ms.representations from suffering ret-
ribution in kind. Men might feel reluctant to "hit" women in public (or so we hoped),
and leftist men might afford feminists special purchase to speak without being retal-
iated against in print. What is more, in some respects our project seemed to empower
us to invert certain courtship rituals. Without waiting for Sadie Hawkins Day, we
~ 9 9 MS.REPRESENTATIONS

could take the initiative, deciding on whom we wished to bestow our ethnographic
attentions and whether or not to call again.
We were surprised, moreover, by the level of receptivity to our ethnographic
overtures. Although several men evinced an initial skittishness, we had a 100 per-
cent "accept" rate for the interviews we requested. Most of the cultural critics we
approached appeared enthusiastic, eager, at times explicitly grateful, to be asked. A
few even volunteered to "subject" themselves to our interrogations before we dared
to ask. Their eagerness to cooperate with our project appeared to overwhelm what-
ever legitimate anxieties they must have had about subjecting themselves to forms
of manipulation, violation, and betrayal that are inherent in ethnographic research
and to the ms.representations of their work and lives we would inevitably commit.
We had imagined that the ethnographic sophistication of our desired informants
would render them exceptionally wary of assuming the position of ethnographic
subject.
Speaking with the "Enemy"
Although these critical reflections on the politics and power relations that our
project involved had been carefully derived from current feminist and postrnod-
ernist models of knowing "others," they did not sit well with us in several ways. First
of all, the consistent focus of these models on unequal power prompted us to cate-
gorize our subjects primarily as "more powerful others," an identification that inter-
sected with the lingering influence of early white feminisms to cast Our publicly
confessed interest in alliance in a negative or at least suspect light. In the language
of some early feminist positions, "more powerful others," especially white "more
powerful others," often translated as "the enemy." In relation to "the enemy" our
more correct, and familiar, position as white feminists was not to fraternize, to expe-
rience pleasure (unless it was the pleasure of critique), or to seek alliance but to
engage in rigorous and often righteous criticism."
Our dutiful focus on unequal power, overlaid once again with the lingering influ-
ence of some early white feminist discourse, also prompted us to reduce the hetero-
sexual energies, which so clearly suffused our encounters, to their strategic uses. For
despite the fact that neither of us had ever ceased speaking with (or sleeping with)
"the enemy," the hold of early feminist discourses had prompted us to some public
reticence about both. Working both consciously and unconsciously within these con-
ceptual parameters, we found ourselves dutifully assessing the heterosexual plea-
sures of many interviews for their tendency to contaminate us further (by suggesting
that we actually enjoyed consorting with "the enemy," by suggesting that we had
engaged in this work out of pleasure rather than mere duty) or for their defensive
usefulness in providing us with "weapons of the weak."
Our work and alliances with feminist women, of course (and now our interviews
with the same), have always been suffused with pleasures of many sorts-sisterly
bonding, passionate friendship, erotic frisson, and the various pleasures of shared
30 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITli STACEY
meals, shared gossip, and shared jokes. We suspect, moreover, that successful politi-
cal alliances are as rooted in personal bonds and mutual pleasures as in agreements
over ideologies and goals. Still, confessing in print to our enjoyment of heterosexual
energies in our interviews with actual or potential male allies, whether our subjects
were white men or men of color, gay or heterosexual, alternatively prompted us to
engage in good-girl queasiness and bad-girl posturing and flouting. (We were not
equally positioned in this dialectic. One of us finds bad-girl posturing more conge-
nial than does the other.)
As we continued to conduct interviews, we found ourselves constructing our
encounters very differently in private than in our public talks (or in early drafts of
this paper). While unequal power relations clearly informed our ethnographic
encounters, our desire to study across, to be open, to take the position of potential
allies set up an uneasy tension with our official focus on unequal power. This ten-
sion, moreover, was significantly augmented by the collegiality and self-critical
spirit displayed by many of our subJects, not to mention the eagerness with which
rna;;;; regarded themselves as seeking alliance too. Although there is no discount-
ing the possibility that we are the ones "being snookered,' most of our subjects
appeared to treat the interviews as opportunities to respond seriously to feminist
criticism in ways that might restore their political credibility and build bridges to
feminist colleagues. Indeed, one subject began his interview by directly expressing
appreciation for the collegial commitments he read in our first work:
There were really important gestures made in the paper, I thought. that I found
very heartening, of moving beyond the feminist response to white male scholar-
ship of the late 70S and 80S . . . without forgoing the notion of critique, but sort
of changing the mode and the tone of the critique. And I thought. as some of us
who've been through some of the wars. I found that very encouraging. Very. . . .
At the same time it was significant to me that the gestures being made were com-
ing from feminists.
Alliance among "Others"
Our ethnographic encounters have suggested in several different ways that a
focus on unequal power, while essential in an ongoing way, is not a sufficient lens
through which to explore our relation to "others," most particularly in an age when
feminism and posrmodernisrn also call for alliance, and alliance specifically across
old relations of unequal power. As Wendy Brown asks, "What if it were possible
to incite a slight shift in the character of political expression and political claims
common to much politicized identity? What if we sought to supplant the language
of 'I am'-with its defensive closure on identity, its insistence on the fixity of posi-
tion, its equation of social with moral positioning-with the language of reflexive
'wanting'?" 24
Perhaps, without forgoing the concepts of "'position' and 'history' as that which
makes the speaking subject intelligible and locatable,"" without forgoing our mem-
MS.REPRESENTATIONS 31

ory ofpast wounds and our critical apprehension ofcontinuing wrongs, without
refusing togive "discreditwhere discredit is due," we mightshift ourfocus some-
whatto include an exploration ofshared desires and potential projects." Perhaps,
we mightforgosomewhatthepracticeofwoundedmemoryin orderto taketherisk
ofmore forgetting and letting go. Perhaps, too, we might consciously enlarge our
critical apparatus for "knowing" "others" to include, and validate, the possible
intersection ofune ual power with alliance, comradeship, likeness, and
Age andourethnographicencounters,at east, avemadeus moreawareof
how continuing conflict, recurring wounds, and missed opportunities are not the
soleproductionsofthemorepowerful.
We beganourprojectwithanunexaminedsenseofrectitudein respectto themale
others who have served most white feminist scholars, perhaps too facilely, as the
generalized objects ofoursuspicion. We are beginning to feel that the rectitude of
this particular, and privileged, subordinate (we do not generalize our analysis of
ourselvesas white,middle-class,heterosexualfeminists todifferentlyandmorerad-
icallysubordinatedgroups)canmakeessentializingimpulseseven moredifficult to
perceive andforgo thandoes the different rectitudeofpoliticallycommitted domi-
nants." We believe there is some truth to the presumption that the potential for
knowledge ofthe subordinate is structurallysuperior to that ofthe dominant, but
like every truth, it is only partial. When ms.representing these partially dominant
others, those at least with whom political alliance seems possible, white feminists
would do well to resist the self-indulgent snares of this partial truth. Reflexive
restraint,atleast,seemsourbesthopeif weareto transcendthepostmodernfix and
build critical alliances, with women and men ofcolor and with progressive white
mentoo,alliancespotentenoughtosurviveandsubvertthenewworlddisorder.
Notes
Wewishto thankRuth Behar,Debbie Gordon,BarbaraLaslett, Michael Rogin, Debby Rosen-
felt,and Patricia Turnerfor their commentson earlier drafts. After wehad titled thisessayand
presentedversions of itpublicly we learned thatfeminist graduatestudents inthe Department
ofEnglishat theUniversity ofCalifornia,Berkeley,had usedMs.representationsasthe titlefor
aparodyofthe journalRepresentationswhich they issued informallyin 199I.
I. Judith Levine, MyEnemy, MyLove: Women, Men and the Dilemmas ofGender (New
York:Doubleday,1992.),2.35, suggests thatfrom 1971 until the mid-I980S"discussionof
men virtually disappeared" in feminist journalismand women'sstudies. Levine's account
isimpressionistic, but wedate our own focus on womenand our immersionincommuni-
tiesofwomen from the late 1970s.
2.. SeeGloria Anzaldua,MakingFace,Making Soul: Haciendo Caras:CreativeandCritical
Perspectivesby Women ofColor(SanFrancisco: Aunt LuteFoundation,1990);bellhooks,
Yearning:Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Sandra
Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives (Ithaca,
N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1991).
3 We are not the only feminists who read the genealogy of postrnodernisr feminism this
way. See Meaghan Morris, The Pirate's Fiance: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism
(London: Verso, 1988); Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories
302.
JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
(Berkeley:University of California Press, 1993); ChandraMohanty, "OnRace and Voice:
Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990S," Cultural Critique, Winter 1990,
179-2.08.
4. For compatibleinitiativesseeHarding, WhoseScience?2.74;bellhooksand Cornel West,
Breaking Bread:Insurgent Black IntellectualLife (Boston:SouthEnd Press, 1991); Elazar
Barkan, "Fin de SiecleCultural Studies," Tikkun 8, no. 4 (July/August 1993): 49-51,
92.-93; Stanley Aronowitz, The Politics ofIdentity: Class, Culture, Social Movements
(New York: Routledge, 1992.).
5. For a left-wing critique of political correctness on the left, see Barbara Epstein, "'Po-
litical Correctness' and Collective Powerlessness," Socialist Review 2.1,nos. 3-4 (July-
December 1991): 13-35.Levinesuggests thatthe constructionof essentialiststereotypes
aboutmen had its rootsinthe expecrations,disappointments,terror, and rage of intimate
relationships. Women's ambivalence about men, therefore, our manhating and manlov-
ing, predated the second wave of the women's movement, where it intersected with and
complicatedfeminist analysis. SeeLevine,MyEnemy, 6, 14, 2.2.7, 396.
6. See,forexample,JudithNewton,"HistoricismsNew and Old: 'CharlesDickens'Encoun-
tersMarxism,Feminism, and 'West CoastFoucault,'''FeministStudies I 6(Summer 1990):
449-70; and Judith Stacey and Linda Collins, "Salvation or Emancipation? Reflections
on the Wright/Burawoy Exchange," Berkeley Journal ofSociology 34 (1989): 51-56.
While there isnothing inherent in textual criticism that necessitates this move, neither is
there anything in this method to impede it. Ethnographic and oral history methods are
more apt tocomplicatesuch acritical strategy.
7. Afeminist historian interviewed bySusan Krieger acknowledgesthis dynamic:
Althoughmen had initially broughtmy useof'we' to my attention, by respondingto
itasexclusive, itwaseasierforme toseeitasaproblemwhen theissuewas raised
aboutexclusionof ethnic minoritywomen. Ethnicminoritywomenarethe centerof
the work,and that exclusionwasboth more hidden from me and more troubling. The
response of themen mostlymade me mad. Considering theethnic minoritywomen's
issuemade me want tochange things.
Here we are quotingnot the historian directly but Krieger's textually experimental, para-
phrased retelling ofthe interviewinSocialScienceand theSelf:PersonalEssaysonan Art
Form(New Brunswick,N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991): 197-98.
8. Marcy Childers and bell hooks, "A ConversationaboutRace and Class," in Conflicts in
Feminism, ed. MarianneHirschand EvelynFox Keller (New York: Routledge, 1990),63
9. Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist"
Age(New York: Routledge, 1991),6.
10. Ibid.
II. Morris, Pirate's Fiance,discusses the feminist dilemma of the nagging text. Weseethese
modes as retaining some usefulness in feminist work. Certainly feminist politics should
continuetoemploy manygenres. Ourgoal inthisparticularethnographic,alliance-focused
project,however, was to move beyond these familiar modes for the reasonswedetail.
12..Our subjects engaged with race more than with gender in these instances, although the
raced "others" inquestionwere distantintime or space.
Ourlarger project deals with discourses of gender and race in the workand livesof men
13
ofcoloraswellas ofwhite men. In the course ofworkingon this project,however, itwas
our assumptions about gender and about white men that came to seem to us the most
obviously skewed. (There is no assurance, of course, thatour initial assumptions about
race will prove to be any less vulnerable.) This paper focuses on gender discourses,
largely-though not entirely-asthey appear in the work and narratives of liberal and
3
03
MS.REPRESENTATIONS
;f
i
i

'f

radical white men. Subsequent papers will focus on race in relation to gender discourse
andon the comparativestudyof whitemen andmen of color.
[4. We do not wish to suggest, of course, that ethnographic work is free of distortion, but
ethnographic work, especially when combined with the textual, can range overa larger
number of sites thancan the purely textual. The "in-your-face" nature of ethnographic
investigation, in particular, has the potential to unsettle assumptionsin a way thatpurely
textualwork may not.
'I
IS. At this writing we have conducted in-depth interviews with thirty left-identified male
scholarsin the humanitiesandsocialsciences. Almostall of these subjectsdo interdiscipli-
nary work in cultural criticism. Each initial interview has been two to three hours long,
andin severalcaseswe have conductedfollow-up interviewsof similarlength.We prepare
for each interview by reading selectively from the subject's work. In addition, we have
conducted numerous ethnographic "field trips" to the many conferences and institutes
frequented by our subjects and, not incidentally, by ourselves. A fuller reading of these
initialinterviewsin relation to the themeof whatSandraHardingcalls "traitorousidenti-
ties" will be the subjectof ournextpaper.
!
16. The assumption here that gender critique ought to have had dramatic "impact" on our
white malecolleagues, at least, seemsto be a reflex of ourrace, class, andsex positions.
That is, as white, middle-class, heterosexual women, feminist discourse, the "discovery"
thatwe were subordinatedtoo, came to us as an earth-shaking revelation. The feminists
of colorto whomwe have talkeddo notreportthe samesuddendiscoveryof theirgender
subordination.Theirentries into gendercritiqueseem to have had longer, more gradual
histories.
17. ThusKristina Minister, "A Feminist Framefor the DratHistory Interview," in Women's
Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. ShernaGluck and DaphnePatai (New
York: Routledge, 1991), 27-41,suggests howa feminist oral history frame may nurture
and assist in the interpretation of stories by women for women. Feminists experiment-
ing with fieldwork and textual strategies include Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the
Border with Esperanza's Story (Boston: Beacon, 1933); Abu-Lughod, Writing Women's
Worlds; Trinh Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality and Feminism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989);Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A
Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Dorinne
Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Work-
place (Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress, 1990);andJudithStacey, Brave New Families:
Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth Century America (New York: Basic
Books, 1990). Feministcritiques of ethnographic practice include Kamala Visweswaran,
"DefiningFeministEthnography," Inscriptions 3/4 (1988): 27-46;and DeborahGordon,
"Writing Culture,Writing Feminism:ThePoeticsand Politicsof Experimental Ethnogra-
phy," I.B.D. (1988): 7-24; Judith Stacey, "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?"
Women's Studies International Forum II (January 1988): 163-82; Lila Abu-Lughod,
"Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?" Women and Performance 5, no. I (1990):
7-27
18. Herewemakeironicuseofthe title of areactionarypolemicagainst"politicalcorrectness"
that targeted feminists along with other forms of cultural studies. See Roger Kimball,
Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (NewYork: Harper
& Row, 1990).
19. For feministcritiquesof the pitfalls of Western feminist humanism,see Gordon, "Writing
Culture";Vicky Kirby, "Commenton Mascia-Leeset al.," Signs 16, no. 2 (Winter 1991):
394-400; and Aihwa Ong, "Colonialism and Modernity: Feminist Re-Presentations of
Women in Non-Western Societies," Inscriptions 3/4 (1988): 79-93. Marnia Lazreg
blends a critique of Western feminist imperialism with a defense of a humaniststancein
"Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria,"
3
04 JUDITH NEWTON AND JUDITH STACEY
t
Feminist Studies 14, no. I (Spring 1988): 81-107. Likewise, Abu-Lughod, Wrtting
Women's Worlds, proposesadoptinga "tacticalhumanism," and NancyScheper-Hughes
defendsthe limited humanism of a "good-enoughethnography" in Death without Weep-
ing: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: Universiry of California Press,
1992).
20. Stacey, "CanThereBea FeministEthnography?"
21. The term is particularly identified with peasantstudies. SeeJamesScott, Weapons of the
Weak (NewHaven,Conn.:Yale UniversiryPress, 1985).
22. See Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
(New York: William Morrow, 1990), esp. chap. 3, "'Pur DownThatPaper and Talk to
Me!'Rapport-talkandReport-talk,"and236-37.Minister,on the otherhand,makesthe
somewhat contrary claim that "the standard oral history frame-topic selection deter-
mined by interviewer questions, one person talking at a time, the narrator 'taking the
floor' with referential language that keeps within the boundaries of selected topics,"
imposesa moremasculinerhetorical form on women.Seeher "FeministFrame," 35
23. Noting that the women interested in theory or postcolonial discourse have been more
willing to overlook the sexism and racism of white male thinkerswhose workisdeemed
"important" than they have the sexism of black male thinkers, bell hooks, Yearning, 66,
calls for "complexcritical responses to wriringbymen even ifit issexist."
24. Wendy Brown, "Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Political Forma-
tions," Political Theory (May 1993): 39-4
10.
25. Ibid.,407
~ Levine, My Enemy, 397
27. We wish to underscore our awareness that the particular strategy we are adopting as
white,middle-class, heterosexual feminists in relation to progressive men whoare poren-
tially allies is not necessarily appropriate for others in different relations of domination
and subordination. All such relations have specific histories and developmentsfor which
we would notpresumeto generalizethese reflections.
MS.RPRESNTATIONS
3
05