Essay:

Feminist theory is faced with two strategic choices: either to encourage the toleration of ‘ambiguity, ambivalence, and multiplicity’ (Flax) or, to develop coherent analyses of the structures of power in society.

Feminist theory is faced with two strategic choices: either to encourage the toleration of ‘ambiguity, ambivalence, and multiplicity’ (Flax) or, to develop coherent analyses of the structures of power in society.

Flax’s assessment of feminist theory as encouraging toleration of ‘ambiguity, ambivalence and multiplicity’ is partly the outcome of feminists reaction to the generalised view of women’s universal inferiority, which came out of Enlightenment thinking. Respect for rationality and reason, the search for universals, result in arguments of the type: ‘my sex does not matter for I am human just like you ’1 This apology only turns to the assertive ‘I am a woman, and that does not make me less equal’ argument at a much later stage in the development of feminist theory.[Scott:142]

Both arguments make claims for rights, yet the type of ‘equality versus difference’ arguments which they represent appear mutually exclusive. Scott has pointed out the necessity of both

and a new combination of these are necessary to make a feminist theory truly powerful However both are excluding issues which make up the areas of power and oppression other than gender. To say ‘I am human just like you’ excludes the differences in racial, sexuality, class or economic status which might exist and may matter more to the person addressed than gender. To say ‘I am a woman’ leaves open not only the previous differences, but others such as place, time.

It is the attempt to clarify supposed universals such as ‘human’ and woman’ which has led to attempts to differentiate between types of women, and in doing so has at times appeared to weaken arguments for women’s equality with men. If woman is not one category but many, where any theory makes claims which ask for universality, it lays itself wide open not only to criticism from every part of Woman which feels left out, but to accusations of using theory only for its own political ends. However, to attempt to be all inclusive

leads to a complexity which makes the possibility of the political difficult.

Theory can only go so far: it can analyse, but cannot remedy. This calls for political action, whether resistance or revolution, where theory has to be available as a tool. Even those who are willing, in pursuit of their own theory, to deconstruct ‘woman’ not just to multiplicity but to invisibility

admit that when faced with the structures of power in their everyday forms, the only way to achieve concrete results is by ignoring the multiplicities which are Woman and uniting as women

Taking on the structures of power is obviously not the same as forming coherent analyses of them; as Benhabib has pointed out,

With the exception of patriarchy, the structures of power themselves, as opposed to the gender relations between and within them, are not addressed. Flax feels that the task of feminist theory should be aimed towards considering how our thinking may be influenced by and implicated in ‘existing power/knowledge relationships’ rather than analysis of the structures [Flax:1990:54]. In any case, the scientific reasoning which has been the claim of most structural analysis which has examined power would for feminism mean deferring again to the male ideas arising from the Enlightenment. Flax points out that among other issues, the acceptance as truth of knowledge acquired from reason depends again on accepting reason as a basis, and knowledge as neutral. [Flax:1990:41]

To analyse structures of power, there has to be some acceptance of universality, if only in that ‘power’ itself has to be defined in an abstract way, in that it must be the same definition in all situations, not ‘power’ is x when that of a parent compared to a child, or y when that of a ruler compared to a subject race. For this to be so, the language used has to be consistent and transparent, and the ‘parent’, ‘child’ ‘ruler’ ‘subject race’ the same regardless of factors such as time, culture, class or gender.

Any coherent structure has to face the issue of language: there are no neutral concepts which enable us to deal with ‘power’. Our ideas of neutrality lie hidden behind the masculine, the ‘scientific’. Irigaray has argued, for example, that women lack a language that enables them to come to selfhood without being mediated through men: any attempt to define the ‘real’ is again back in the Enlightenment issues. Woman is always at base the Other; a ‘lack’ ,whether of penis, or power.

Creating an ‘artificially neutral’ voice is pointless in this context, especially when trying to uncover the truth about power. Reasoning such as

clearly shows the male self-interest, but the emphasis placed on reason and rationality itself in that ‘neutral’ voice is a masculine emphasis. So if, as Flax points out, reason and autonomy and freedom are linked together, and freedom in Enlightenment terms includes the obedience to laws based on reason, and if reason is universally masculine, then all laws, all freedom will also be skewed. Similarly the power which comes from equality is illusory, in that when we (as women) want to be equal- it is equal with men in that ‘the norm is sexually specific’[Phillips :20], so that whether we are claiming equality with it, or asking for our needs(=lacks, deficiencies) to be compensated for, it is in reference to men. Whether this norm is universal is not necessarily an issue — it is usually at a local level (whether the workplace, an industry, a country) that the equality is sought.

But much postmodern, as well as feminist, writing has been at pains to emphasise that there are no universals, that the search for ‘coherent structures’ is itself not a valid one. Lovibond sees the main forces of postmodernism as having as their common preoccupation the ‘aversion to the idea of universality.’ This might seem to come closer to ‘reality’, in that it becomes acceptable to examine ‘local self-contained discursive communities’[Lovibond in Boyne and Rattansi: 169], where power itself may also be broken down, but the possibility of achieving universal truths from these is slim. For, as Walby points out, the dispersal of both power and identity makes it more difficult to see even the ‘extent to which one social group is oppressed by another’.[Walby:34] At this level, the mechanisms of power are totally obscured. She claims that the multiplicities into which postmodernism and postmodernist feminism has fragmented class, race and gender have produced an appearance of disorganisation and lack of structure. She argues that by using an ‘international dimension’[Walby:43], rather than a national or local one, a clearer view of not only patriarchy, but gender, ethnicity and class can be seen, thus enabling a more effective analysis.

Power, whether viewed as a structure, as in the ‘old’ Marxist traditions, or a discourse based on knowledge, as in Foucault’s analysis, is a concept which cannot be analysed at any level without acknowledging the interactions of the ‘multiplicities’ which make up not only groups but individuals. To attempt to disguise the multiplicities is the equivalent of suppressing the differences, but to concentrate on only these would make any theorising impossible. Perhaps more important is the completion of Flax’s quotation — that not only should we ‘tolerate and interpret’ the ambivalence, ambiguity, and multiplicity’ but we should also be looking at why we continue to feel the need ‘for imposing order and structure no matter how arbitrary and oppressive these needs may be’[Flax:56]. In that this was for so long the key aim of (male) philosophers, and both natural and social scientists, the key issue may be why feminists are still partly caught up in the project of the Enlightenment, while decrying its authors.

© 1995 Franni Vincent