Thursday, February 14, 2013

Introduction to Major Feminists: from Woolf to Cixous



Background
            Feminism is an academic and political movement that attempts to establish women as equal to men in the world. Though mainstream political and literary history of feminism began in the nineteenth and twentieth century; struggles against patriarchy in literature can be seen earlier too. Mary Wollstonecraft's resistance against patriarchal ideology in 1792 with her 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' is an example (Tyson 93).
            Feminism's history is generally divided into three phases – as the first, second and third waves. Each of the waves involves some academic pioneers whose ideas led other activists. Below are introductions to few of those theorists who led development of the first and second wave feminisms.   
1.      Virginia Woolf
In addition to Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)'s recognition as an essayist and fiction writer, her 'A Room of One's Own' (1929) has given her an identity of – in Mary Eagleton's phrase - "the founding mother of the contemporary debate" (qtd. in Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 128). She was concerned with women's material disadvantages compared to men, women's literary productions and the relations between male powers and the professions. She demanded mothers' allowances, divorce law reforms, a women's college and a women's newspapers among many others. Selden, Widdowson and Brooker write that she also argued that women's writing should explore female experience in its own right and not form a comparative assessment of women's experience in relation to men's (128).
Woolf thinks women can't write because they are imprisoned and constrained by dominant ideologies of womanhood and the taboo of female body/sex. But optimistically she believes if women achieve social and economic equality with men, nothing will prevent them from developing their artistic talents.
2.      Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)'s 'The Second Sex' (1949), in its title and contents is
manifesto of whole history of feminism. It marks the transition from the first to the second wave feminism, since it is preoccupied with the materialism of the first wave and also recognizes vast difference between the two sexes and assaults men's discrimination against women, which belongs to the second wave.  The most famous claims of her book are "woman is not born but made" and "he is the One, she is the Other." In 'Woman as Other', a chapter from 'The Second Sex', Beauvoir writes, " … humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being…He is the Subject, he is the Absolute- she is the Other" (209-10).
      Beauvoir says when a woman tries to define herself, she begins by saying 'I am a woman'; but no man would introduce himself by saying 'I am a man.' She also recognizes that women have no separate history, no natural solidarity; nor have they combined as other oppressed groups have. "…she herself fails to bring about this change. Proletarians say "We"; Negroes also. Regarding themselves as subjects, they transform the bourgeois, the whites, into "others." But women do not say "We," except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say "women" and women use the same word in referring to themselves" (Beauvoir 213). She further asks the women to break out of their objectification in order to deconstruct patriarchy.
3.      Kate Millett
Kate Millett (b. 1934) is a radical feminist from the United States. Her 'Sexual Politics' (1969) is perhaps the best known and most influential book of its period and still remains as a monument of a highly visible, self aware and activist movement of the second wave (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 133).   
Millett recognizes ideological indoctrination as much as economic inequality as the cause of women's oppression. Selden, Widdowson and Brooker opine that she finds patriarchy so pervasive that it treats the female as an inferior male and this power is exerted, directly or indirectly, in civil and domestic life to constrain women (133). She then names 'sexual politics' to acting-out of culturally constructed gender roles in unequal and repressive relations of domination and subordination.
Millett has analysed literatures written by men and women, particularly focusing on images of women there. Finally she found that literature has historically been masculine. Literary values and conventions have been shaped by men and women have found those literary values inappropriate to express their concerns. She further claims that from history to today's mass culture, authors have thought that their readers are only male. However, her literary analyses have been criticised widely that she is so selective and partial to choose literary works and her selection can not represent the world sufficiently. Cora Kaplan, for example, has suggested that Millett sees "ideology as the universal penile club which men of all classes use to beat women with" (qtd. in Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 134).      

4.      Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter (b. 1941)'s concept of "gynocriticism" is also one of the influential developments for the second wave feminism. She is a key figure of American feminism. Her book 'A Literature for Their Own' (1977) (the title resembles Woolf's primary feminist work 'A Room of One's Own') analyses women's presence in hitherto literature and suggest ways for improvement with what she calls "gynotext", "gynocritics" and a "feminist critique."  She believes women's writing is essentially different from men's, but this whole tradition of women's writing has been neglected by male critics. Thus, she suggests women to develop a different method to write and read literature.
Showalter divides development of women's writing into three phases (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 137). The first one is "feminine" (1840-80), when women writers imitated and internalized dominant male aesthetic standards. The second phase is "feminist" (1880-1920), when female writers protested against male values and advocated for their rights. The third is "female" (1920 onwards), which has added into previous developments ideas of specific female writing, female experiences and self discovery.  She agrees with other feminists' view that women's writing has a multiple receptivity which rejects definite views and opinions, which are "masculine things" for her.
5.      Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (b. 1941) is one of the key figures of French feminism, who defined "semiotic" language for women's writing. Her ideas are influenced by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theories of a child's development and personality formation.  As a key idea of French feminism, her works also focus on aspect of language as a means of struggle against patriarchy.
Her concept of "semiotic" language is associated with Lacan's definition of 'Imaginary Order', when the child feels united with the mother's body, before it enters into the 'Symbolic Order.' Thus, it is in apparent contrast to "symbolic" aspect of language, which is governed by the father / the patriarchy. Since one can feel association with mother in "semiotic" language, it is domain for women, and feminists. "The utterance which most approximates to a semiotic discourse is the pre-Oedipal babble of the child" (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 143).  In this stage, one feels oneness and plentitude as experienced by mother-child dyad, which Kristeva names "semiotic chora."
The shift from semiotic to symbolic involves repression of flowing and rhythmic drives of a language, but some flux of it still remains even in symbolic language. And, Kristeva says a poet is attuned to tapping its resonances. Kristeva believes that use of semiotic in literature leads one to "jouissance" which means delight. And, this is a "poetic revolution", closely linked to political revolution in general and feminist liberation in particular.  
Kristeva further associates her concept with "abjection" which means the horror of being unable to distinguish between 'me' and 'not-me'. A being wants to expel the "abject" in order to achieve an independent identity, but never can.  Abject also stands as a marker bordering the self and the other including the self and the mother.
6.      Helene Cixous
Though Helene Cixous (b. 1937) is also a key French feminist and contemporary of Kristeva, she differs from her in many respects. Her major concept is development of a new language for women's writing, which is named "ecriture feminine." She develops it as a means of positive representation of women and femininity. Explaining the women's writing, in her essay 'The Laugh of the Medusa' (1976), she writes, "Write yourself. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth" (qtd. in Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 145). 'Put your bodies onto pages' is at the heart of 'ecriture feminine.' Cixous opines, women must uncensor herself, recover "her goods, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal" (qtd. in Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 145).   
Cixous criticizes the concept of "neutral sexuality" for balance between men and women as proposed by Virginia Woolf, but she advocates for "the other bisexuality" which celebrates sexual differences. "A woman's body with its thousand and one thresholds of ardor… will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than one language" (qtd. in Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 146). In this respect, her main idea is that since women have multiple centers of sexual pleasure, their literatures too are polysemic, and thus require a new language to express it.   
Cixous rejects theorizing her concept arguing that women's writing will always surpass the discourse (of theory) that regulates the phallocentric system. With 'ecriture feminine', she wants to subvert masculine symbolic language and create new identities for women, which stand beyond theories. However, her own work has theoretical contradictions in many respects. In addition, though her approach is creative and visionary, it has risk of leading women to a political and intellectual silence, and placing them in 'uterine babble.' 
Conclusion
            Each of the above explained theorists have different approaches to fight against patriarchy. Nevertheless, they all have the same mission – to give women equal status of men. These theories, though some are quite impractical, have inspired women to move forward not only in their respective times, but even today.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone de. "Woman as Other." Essays on Western Intellectual Tradition. Ed. Shreedhar Lohani, Krishna Chandra Sharma, Arun Gupto and Anand Sharma. Kathmandu: MK Publishers and Distributors. 2008. 208-16.
Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 5th ed. New Delhi: Pearson, 2005.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.


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