Feminist Theory

Scott, The Uses of Post-Structuralist Theory for Feminism

Deconstructing Equality vs. Difference

Joan W Scott

Post-Structuralism

The Post-Structural Approach

Language (words and other “texts”)

Discourse

Difference

Deconstruction

Language

Language as a meaning-constituting system;

Word or not “just words”

Rather, they signify, codify, perpetuate deeper systems of meaning

Hierarcies, systems of power

Words have no fixed meaning

Thus, post-structuralists ask questions such as,

“how, in what specific contexts, among which specific communities of people, and by what textual and social processes has meaning been acquired?” (Scott 447)

“How do meanings change?”

“How have some meanings emerged as normative and others been eclipsed or disappeared?”

“What do these processes reveal about how power is constituted and operates?” (Scott 447)

Other Texts

Language is “any system…through which meaning is organized and by which, accordingly, people represent and understand their world, including who they are and how they relate to others” (Scott, 447)

Our bodies as texts

As bearing the marks of_____?

Examples of from theorists we’ve read this semester

Of asking these kinds of questions, reading women’s bodies as texts?

Mary Daly

note Daly usually characterized as a Rad-Fem, Second Wave, but I am using her as an example of post-structuralism, deconstruction

A pioneer of this method before it was really recognized as an approach

Mary Daly Language Examples:

Who are bunnies, bitches, beavers, squirrels, chicks, pussycats?

Who are stags and studs?

Creative use of Language to re-case, re-claim original meanings (hags, harpies, furies, Amazing Amazons, lesbians)

Hyphenates – to recall earlier meanings, to make us think about meanings

e.g. re-search

or to invent new meaning

re-cover; the-rapist; stag-nation

AND to consciously begin to change meanings

Capitalizes – sometimes when referring to society wide institution

e.g. Deep Background – where the truth about women’s power/status has receded to – where it waits to be re-discovered by Furious Furies

Breaking the Rules

Reveals them for what they are

Conditional, normative and supportive of patriarchy

Texts

Especially our lives and bodies as texts

Allen

the marks on women’s bodies denoted them as mothers

what marks? How are women marked as mothers?

Discourse

Foucault

A discourse is not a langue or a text but a historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs (Scott 447)

The elaboration of meaning involves conflict and power, meanings are locally contested within

“discursive fields of force”

The power to control a field resides in claims to scientific knowledge embodied in

Writing

Disciplinary and professional organizations

Institutions (hospitals, prisons, schools, factories)

Social relationships (doctor/patient, teacher/student, employer/worker, parent/child, husband/wife)

*Conflicts within discursive fields are framed to follow from rather than question them (447)

thus, even sharply different arguments are based upon a set of shared assumptions

e.g., men and women are different (just how they are different that we argue about)

Once assigned status of objective knowledge, they are beyond dispute

i.e., you appear crazy if you question it

Scott gives examples of Darwinian theory of natural selection

Biological theories of sexual difference

Can you think of other examples?

Difference

Meaning is derived from negation

To be a man is to NOT BE a woman

What is woman, the negation of man

Once made, the same positive and negative serve to encode or establish meanings that are totally unrelated to the body

e.g. hardware with “male” and “female” parts

“Fixed oppositions conceal the extent to which things presented as oppositional are, in fact, interdependent—that is, they derive their meaning from a particularly established contrast rather than from some inherent or pure antithesis” (Scott 448)

Jacques Derrida

Stresses the oppositional nature of the Western philosophical tradition

Esp. BINARY OPPOSITIONS

Unity/diversity

Identity/difference

Presence/Absence

Universality/Specificity

Deconstruction

Derrida as the father (!)

The progenitor (!!) of this approach, method

“Deconstruction involves analyzing the operations of difference in texts, the ways in which meanings are made to work” (Scott 448)

Method: reversal and displacement

Show them to be not natural but constructed oppositions

Constructed for particular purposes in particular contexts

Quote from Barbara Johnson

“differences between entities are shown to be based upon a repression of differences within entities” (In Scott 449)

Examples of this in feminist method, feminist empiricism unit?

**What do feminists try to deconstruct and why? How do they do it?

Equality-versus-Difference

Equality feminists fear arguments based on women’s difference, even their “superiority” will be used to exclude from many of life’s goodies (because they have been)

Scott uses Sears’ discrimination case (women under-rep’d in commission sales jobs) as an example; Sears attorney argued that EEOC was unreasonable to assume male/female sameness; historians representing plaintiffs argued that discrepancy=discrimination (not “natural” difference)

Wal-Mart sex discrimination case pending - discrepancies

Scott argues against “binary construction” that pits “equality feminists” against “difference feminists”

Says feminists must criticize/expose policies, customs based on categorical difference

And at the same time

Seek an equality that rests on difference

Is this possible?

What is an example of a real world opportunity, scenario calling for this approach?