Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory 9780231105453, 0231105444, 9780231105446, 0231105452

Citation preview

writing on the body

A G

ender

and

C

ulture

R

eader

A

G en d er an d

C u ltu r e

R ead er

A s e r ie s o f C o lu m b ia U n iv e rsity P ress C aro ly n G. H e ilb ru n ( 1 9 2 6 —2 0 0 3 ) and N an cy K . M ille r, Fou n d in g E d ito rs

For a c o m p le te se r ie s lis t, se e p a g e s 431 —33.

writing on the body Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory

Edited by K atie Conboy, N adia M edina, and Sarah Stanbury

COL UMB I A

UNI VERSI TY

PRESS

NEW Y O R K

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York

Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 1997 Columbia University Press All rights reserved

Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data W riting on the body : female em bodim ent and feminist theory / edited by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury. p.

cm. — (A Gender and culture reader)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-231-10545-3 1.

Feminist literary criticism.

in literature. literature. Katie.

2. Body, Human,

3. Women in literature. 5. Feminism and the arts.

II. Medina, Nadia.

4. Sex in 1. Conboy,

III. Stanbury, Sarah.

IV. Series. P N 98.W 64W 687 305.4— dc21

1997 9 6 -4 8 1 7 7 CIP

© Casebound editions o f Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States o f America c 109 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

r

For our daughters Tania Lydia Mairead Caitriona Siobhan

contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, Sarah Stanbury

PART 1

R ead in g the Body

Woman as a sign o f difference is monstrous. — Rosi Braidotti

1

M edical M etaphors ofWomen’s Bodies: Menstruation and Menopause Emily Martin

2

Rape: On Coercion and Consent Catharine A. MacKinnon

3

Mothers, Monsters, and Machines Rosi Braidotti

4

Corporeal Representation in / and the Body Politic Moira Gatens

The Body an d the Reproduction o f Femininity Susan Bordo

CONTENTS

v iii

PART 2

Bodies in Production

The body o f woman is the site where culture manufactures the blockade o f woman. — Valerie Export

Selling Hot Pussy: Representations o f Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace bell hooks

7

113

Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization o f Patriarchal Power Sandra Lee Bartky

8

On Being the Object o f Property Patricia J. Williams

9

129

ISS

Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator Mary Ann Doane

10

176

The Body and Cinema: Some Problemsfor Feminism Annette Kuhn

11

195

Cinema and the Dark Continent: Race and Gender in Popular Film Tania Modleski

208

Contents

p art

3

The Body Speaks

Your body must be heard. — Helene Cixous

12

A in ’t I a Woman? Sojourner Truth

13

L a conciencia de la m estizo: Towards a New Consciousness Gloria Anzaldua

14

This Sex Which Is N ot One Luce Irigaray

15

H ysteria, Psychoanalysis, an d Feminism: The Case o f Anna 0 . Dianne Hunter

16

Uses o f the Erotic: The Erotic as Power Audre Lorde

17

The Persistence ofVision Donna Haraway

18

C arn al Acts Nancy Mairs

CO N T EN T S

PA RT 4

Body on Stage

The opposite sex— is neither! — Kate Bornstein

19

One Is Not Bom a Woman Monique Wittig

20

Female Grotesques: C arnival andTheory Mary Russo

21

309

318

The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto Sandy Stone

22

337

A Provoking Agent:The Pornography and Performance Art o f Annie Sprinkle Linda Williams

23

Tracking the Vampire Sue-Ellen Case

24

360

380

Performative Acts an d Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology an d Feminist Theory Judith Butler

401

Suggestionsfo r Further Reading

419

About the Contributors

427

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge the gener­ ous support o f the Committee on Fellowships, Research, and Publication at The College of the Holy Cross, as well as the offices o f the academic dean and the president at Stonehill College.

w riting on the body

introduction

I f . . . we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we mustJace the question: what is a woman?

A t first glan ce, the answ er to Sim on e de B eauvoir’s question— “W hat is a w om an?”— appears sim ple, for is the fem ale body not the m arker o f w om anhood? The body has, how ­ ever, been at the cen ter o f fem in ist theory

— Simone de Beauvoir

precisely because it o ffers no such “n atu ral”

Ain’t I a woman?

tions about femininity. Indeed, there is a ten ­

— Sojourner Truth

sion betw een w o m en ’s lived b odily e x p e r i­ ences and the cultural m eanings inscribed on

foundation for our pervasive cultural assu m p­

the fem ale body that alw ays m ed iate those It is compatible to suggest

ex p erien ces. H istorically, w om en have been

that 'women’ don't exist—

d eterm in ed by their b od ies: their individual

while maintaining a politics

aw akenings and actio n s, their p leasu re and

of as i f they existed.’

their pain co m p ete w ith re p re se n tatio n s o f

— Denise Riley

the fem ale body in larger social fram ew orks. W hen we ask, “ W hat is a w o m an ,” we are really asking questions about ideology: about how discourse has contoured the category o f “w om an” and about what is at stake— p o liti­ cally, econom ically, and so cially — in m ain ­ taining or dism issing that category. That Sim one de Beauvoir articu lates this question in 1949 is especially im p o rtan t, for

2

IN TRO D UCTIO N

h er w ork an ticipates the lengthy d eb ates w ithin the fem in ist m ovem en t ab ou t w hether w om en have som e “ essen tial” shared ch aracteristics or w hether the whole idea o f woman is a social construct. The Second Sex clearly lays the groundw ork for our understanding o f the “cultural construction” o f w om an: as de Beauvoir argues, woman is not born , but m ade. In fact, de B eau voir’s crucial con tribu tion to fem inist theory em erges from her application o f the philosophical categories o f Self and O ther to the divisions o f gender— an application that reveals the sexual politics at w ork in a system that fashions man as Self/S u b ject and w om an as O th er/O b je c t. As de Beauvoir explains, men “profit . . . from the o therness, the alterity o f w om an.” 1 Specifically, she recognizes that the Self has been im agined as tran­ scendent (associated with m ind, it is an entity that floats free o f a body or appears superior to bodily functions), while the O th er is trapped in im m a­ nence, defined and evaluated by its bodily shape, size, and functions. D e B eau voir ultim ately dem o n strates that the s e lf/o th e r, m a n /w o m an , m in d /b o d y division provides the basis for all the binary oppositions so fam il­ iar to W estern culture. For w om an, this en trapm en t is p articu larly cen tered in the biological p ro cesses o f childbirth that have delineated her productivity and circu m ­ scribed her m ovem ents. W hile w om an, de Beauvoir argues, is fenced in by the details o f her biology, man rem ains free o f such lim itations only because he “superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they also secrete h orm o n es. H e thinks o f his body as a direct and norm al connection with the w orld, which he believes he ap pre­ hends objectively.”2 Men have created a concept o f w om an’s “nature,” but in doing so, they project their own am bivalent relationship to external “N ature” onto the fem ale body. Ju st as m an’s civilizing im petus transform s w ildlife, land, and vegetation into territo ries to tam e and control, so too does it render woman a form o f nature to apprehend, dom inate, and defeat. In fact, culture has, variously, valued supposedly “natural” feminine bodily characteristics (narrow w aists, small feet, long hair, for exam ple), which have required the m ost unnatural m aintenance (co rsets, foot-binding, prod u cts for straightening or de-tangling). D e Beauvoir m asterfully dem onstrates that “In w om an dressed and ad orn ed, nature is present but under restraint. . . . A w om an is rendered m ore desirable to the extent that nature is m ore highly developed in her and m ore rigorou sly confined.”3 Judith W illiam son clarifies how insidious this con struction can be in the advertising field, w here w om en o f co lo r often function visually as nature waiting to be colonized (dressed in leopard skins,

Introduction

3

surrounded by exotic trees and animals, linked with verdant islands). Yet the m o d e ls’ bodies are always already enculturated, displaying the lightest o f dark skin and the m ost European o f features. To m ake the tran sition from nature to culture w om an m ust deny her potentially “dangerous” appetites and continuously shape what Foucault calls a non-threatening “docile” body.4 Women are encouraged to internalize and em body all the values o f domesticity. In W illiam son’s w ords, “W omen, the guardians o f ‘personal life,’ becom e a dum ping ground for all the values soci­ ety wants off its back but m ust be perceived to cherish: a function rather like a zoo, or nature reserve, whereby a culture can proudly proclaim its inclu­ sion o f precisely what it has excluded ”s To guarantee our m an-m ade place in culture, we are still exhorted to “becom e” women through increasingly com ­ plex regulatory practices o f ornam entation such as weight control, skin and hair care, attention to fashion, and, above all, resistance to aging. But we con­ tinue to ask, “What is a woman?” Perhaps the question itself is problem atic, for it seem s to imply an answer. De Beauvoir nam es the problem : she exposes the constructedness o f fem i­ ninity and substantiates both how women are oppressed and how men reap benefits from that arrangem ent. She establishes a foundation on which con­ tem porary fem inists have built an architecture o f difference by m apping the ways o p p ressio n varies for w om en in different racial, ethnic, and social groups and for w om en who are am biguously gendered. Partly in an attem pt to achieve political con sen su s, fem inists have often assum ed a universal fem ale body, an assu m p tion that has usually left som e w om en silen ced, inhabiting the borderlands. Clearly, any definition o f the category woman necessarily produces exclusions and leads to divisions am ong women. This is the point emphasized by Sojourner Truth in her well-known ques­ tion , “A in ’t I a w om an?” In fact, T ru th ’s im prom ptu speech at the Akron w om en’s suffrage convention in 1851 can, in retrospect, be seen to prefigure the very issues o f bodily construction that pervade late twentieth-century fem inism . An em ancipated slave and field hand,Truth invited her listeners to interrogate m onolithic m ale constructions o f femininity that divide women against one another and against themselves. Truth recognizes that men have produced and enforced a representation o f the female body as passive, help­ less, or in danger o f violation. (Ironically, she does not acknow ledge that slave w om en, not white w om en, were at greatest risk for such abuse.) She insists that her audience turn its gaze on a black fem ale body it has delib­ erately disregarded. “Look at m e,” she says. “Look at my arm ” (p. 2 3 1). Chal­ lenging popular stereotypes surrounding the female body, Truth openly dis­

4

IN T R O D U C T I O N

played what a contem porary called her “trem endous muscular power” and her “almost Amazon form , which stood nearly six feet high.” Sojourner Truth’s question is ultimately m ore aggressive than de Beauvoir’s, for she demonstrates the fragility o f the very category woman by inviting pub­ lic scrutiny o f her particular female body, thus showing how issues of race and class permeate the supposedly “natural” grouping o f women. The simple facts ofT ru th ’s physique— black, robust, substantial— contradict the pale, weak, dainty image of “true womanhood” popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Her physical presence invites questions about the similarities between women who are so differently em bodied.Truth’s speech exposes how the chivalric promises o f protections and privileges men offer white heterosexual women in lieu o f rights are unequally distributed; in fact, these privileges have, historically, depended on the labor o f culture’s un-women— slaves, prostitutes, lesbians. The elevated place man claims to reserve for woman is closed to some who are embodied female. As Truth puts it, “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” (231). This position is elaborated through T ruth’s exam ples o f how the trad i­ tional division o f labor— so often justified by the biblical injunctions offered to Adam and Eve in Genesis— was never employed to determ ine the work o f women like herself, who were forced to com pete with and indeed to out­ perform men in plowing, planting, and gathering. And even childbirth, that preem inently celebrated function o f the female body, has been treated dif­ ferently for black wom en.Truth claims to have “borne thirteen children, and seen them m ost all sold o ff to slavery” (2 3 1 ); maternity could not have been seen as her proper sphere, for both she and her children were considered, in Patricia W illiam s’s phrase, “objects o f property” (155). Truth’s exam ples express what feminist theorists still argue today: that the category woman is entirely constructed, but it is not constructed evenly. As Jane Flax suggests, “Unlike women o f color, white women have the ‘privi­ lege’ o f ‘forgetting’ or not noticing the operations o f race and many socially sanctioned opportunities for doing so.”6 Asking “Ain’t I a woman?” Truth queries the roles o f race and class in gender arrangem ents, but her question opens possibilities for other differences am ong women to deconstruct the category o f woman. Certainly, we can see how social discom fort with female sexuality is p ro ­ jected onto the bodies o f women o f color, as Sander Gilman convincingly dem onstrates. He argues that “by the eighteenth century, the sexuality o f the black, both m ale and fem ale, becom es an icon for deviant sexuality” in artis­ tic representation, but by the nineteenth century, he contends, the black

Introduction

5

fem ale represents all black sexuality as “prim itive” and appetitive.7 Furth er­ m ore, as bell hooks points out, such representations o f black w om en’s se x ­ uality com m odify the black body through a form o f “racialized fascination” (1 1 5 ). N or are African-Am erican wom en the only ones fram ed as sexualized “others” : rep o rts o f Asian “brides for sale” and o f state-supported p ro s­ titu tion in Thailand u n d erscore that there are m ultip le con stru ction s o f fem ale sexuality. Like race, social class affects our ways o f understanding the differences am ong w om en. In m edical constructions o f wom anhood, for exam ple, ideas about “feminine needs” were based on the experiences o f upper-class w o­ m en. W orking-class wom en m ade it possible for upper-class white women to enjoy certain advantages, such as lying down when they m enstruated or rest­ ing fo r long p erio d s after childbirth. O f co u rse, such “advantages,” once accepted, have paradoxically had the effect o f excluding som e women from equal participation in w ork. In som e institutions, even worker com pensation rules still categorize m aternity leave as a “tem porary disability.” M oreover, sexu al orien tatio n has raised further questio ns for our as­ sum ptions about femininity. Even today, if we com e out as lesbian, we can be dism issed as unnatural— as a threat to social order so great that we m ust anticipate, if we have children, that they may be taken from us. If we refuse to have children, wc are likew ise categorized as aberrant. And as NanCy Mairs so pow erfully indicates in an essay (included in this volum e) about her battle with m ultiple sclerosis, disability also destroys established “standards o f feminine grace” (3 0 5 ). In all these cases, external factors clearly have a role in determ ining who the culture sees as a “real” wom an. O ne can hear so many voices em erging from bodies o f color, from unclassed bodies, from lesbian bodies, from disabled bodies, from the bodies o f transsexuals: a ver­ itable chorus o f “Ain’t I a w om an?” Thus while it is clear that women have been oppressed as a class— in vari­ ous cultures they have been denied the right to vote, to own property, to speak in public, to live out their own sexual orientation— every culture also subdivides this class when it elevates as “natural” only certain feminine char­ acteristics. In other w ord s, when m en deny w om en rights, the category woman applies to all who are clearly em bodied female, but when men offer privileges, the very entitlements that appear to be rooted in female anatomy can be shown to em erge from the grounds o f race and class, heterosexual ori­ entation and physical ability. Such prerogatives serve only to separate women from one another, which is why Monique W ittig argues that we m ust destroy the category woman: “ For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to

6

IN TRODUCTION

a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude, a relationship which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (316).” We can see then that the advantages offered to white, upper-class, het­ erosexual women, for exam ple, are purchased through the subjugation of w om en who are defined as outside the category. All wom en may be oppressed, but they are not equally oppressed.T ruth’s speech reminds us, in ways valuable to contem porary feminist theory, that m em bership in the cult o f true womanhood, reserved for the few, is procured through the exclusion o f the m any But contem porary theorists point out that som e women them ­ selves refuse to participate in traditional gender binaries. Judith Butler, for exam ple, argues that the body is a site for play with categories. Gender, she argues, “is not passively scripted on the body” but rather “put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure” (415). And Kathleen Woodward, in her work on aging, corroborates that even conven­ tional fem ininity has always been a perform ative act as she illustrates w om an’s burden to embody eternal youth. Youthfulness, she points out, is itself a masquerade that many older women are grateful to be free of, what­ ever other ambivalence they may have about the aging process.8 These theorists expand our understanding o f the cultural construction of wom an. Yet we are left with a question: how can w om en recognize and respect the differences that problem atize the category w om an but also employ the category to unite for political action? De Beauvoir recognizes this difficulty when she argues that women have had problem s organizing because “they have no past, no history, no religion o f their own” ; nor do they have the “solidarity o f work,” or the “community feeling” that com es from being part o f a racial or class group. The fact that “they live dispersed am ong the males” com prom ises, she suggests, their rela­ tionship to other w om en.9 Sojourner Truth, too, implies that if women could unite, they would have great force; celebrating Mother Eve, she claims, “if the first woman God ever m ade was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again”(232). Contem porary theory has asked whether such unity is even desirable. Once the category has been called into question, how can any group o f women assume that the issues they want to organize around are even shared by others? Denise Riley suggests that we maintain “a politics o f ‘as if . . . [women] existed.’ ” 10 As we work to discover such possibilities, though, we must, in Butler’s words, “do so in a way that does not distort and reify the very collectivity the theory is supposed to emancipate” (414). The issues raised in the work o f de Beauvoir andTruth correspond in man-

Introduction

7

ifold ways to the debates in contem porary discourse about the female body. D e Beauvoir defines the problem : women have been m ade the O ther and the other is inferior— the “second sex,” always defined by a “lack” o f m asculine qualities that m en assum e results from natural defectiveness. Truth focuses on political stru ggle, both the extern alized stru ggle (against m en ) for w om en’s rights and the internalized struggle (the inability o f som e women to organize because they d on ’t fit even the category as it has been defined). C urrent debates about the female body articulate a sim ilar tension between defining and challenging the category o f w om an: m ore specifically, these debates inquire about the physical features that m ark a body as female and about the attributes and practices that make that body “feminine.” Suggesting that gender itself may be perform ative act, these theorists dem onstrate that bodies and genders are not necessarily coterm inous.They amplify the reco g­ nition that “one is not b orn a woman” to explore specific ways in which indi­ viduals act out gender possibilities— for exam ple, by literally altering their bodies in an attem pt to repair what they perceive as an incom patible rela­ tionship between the body and the self or by playing with the boundaries o f gender as it is com m only understood. As Butler argues, we can treat gender “as a corporeal style, an ‘ act,’ as it were, which is both intentional and perfor­ m ative, where ‘perform ative’ itself carries the double meaning o f ‘dram atic’ and ‘n on -referential’ ” (4 0 4 ). These essays challenge not only the assum ed fixedness o f gender identification but also the preservation o f heterosexist presum ptions.

,

This combination o f exploration and challenge characterizes our volum e; We have organized twenty-four essays around the idea o f the fem ale body, even as assum ptions about that body are radically destabilized in many o f the rep ­ resented texts. Through a range o f theoretical essays, we attem pt to illustrate inclusively ways o f thinking through fem ale em bodim ent. All the essays have in com m on an understanding o f the fem ale body as a contested site— a bat­ tleground for com peting ideologies. Teaching, reading, and writing in a variety o f fields, we becam e aware o f the need for such a volum e during the last few years when each o f us— inde­ pendently designing courses in feminist theory— decided to use “the female body” as the organizing principle for our courses. In many academ ic fields the body is the topic generating the m ost exciting new research and the m ost interdisciplinary theoretical inquiry. Such diverse areas as gender and queer studies, cultural and literary studies, fine arts, and film are now exploring how our understanding o f the body— particularly the fem ale body— is con­

8

IN TROD UCTION

structed through ideologies, discourses, and practices. A focus on the body offers a creative alternative to a historical overview o f fem inist and gender theories because the body, that space where gender difference seem s m ate­ rially inscribed, has always been central to fem inist investigations o f re p re ­ sentation. While recognizing that the volum e m ight be organized in many ways for teaching p u rp o se s, we chose a stru ctu re that creates a dialogue am ong som e o f the m ajor issues in contem porary gender theory: language, com m odification, sexuality, and perform ance. The essays in part 1, Reading the Body, articulate the relationship o f the body to language. Several articles exam ine the term s in which the fem ale body is a text to be read— as inferior, sick, or even m onstrous— by law, m ed ­ icine, and technology. Essays by C atharine M acKinnon and Em ily M artin scrutinize the differences betw een accounts o f the fem ale body in legal and m edical texts and w om en ’s actual experiences o f rape or m enstruation or m enopause. Rosi Braidotti explores the association o f femininity, especially maternity, with m onstrosity. M oira G atens argues that the m odel o f the body politic is actually that o f a m asculine body parading as a hum an body, an im age that derives from the liberal notion that humans speak with “one voice, one reason” (8 6 ). Such a construction displaces the fem ale body as an other and m akes that body’s speech inarticulate. Expressions o f fem ale desire can thus be m isread as inhuman: “the language o f an hysteric, the wails o f a hyena, the jabbering o f a savage” (86). Susan Bordo also translates the language o f the body, showing how, in cer­ tain pathologies, the fem ale becom es a perform ance artist, acting o u t and giving voice to dram as o f social oppression. In anorexia, agoraphobia, and hysteria, for exam ple, bodily “conditions that are objectively (and on one level, experientially) constraining, enslaving, and even m urderous, com e to be experienced as liberating, transform ing, and life-giving” (9 3 ). The body, as she reads it, is “a tex t o f culture” (90) but also a site o f social control. Thus the essays in this section both reveal the cultural m etaphors that have been im posed on the body and decipher w om en’s internalization o f those signs. The essays included in p art 2, Bodies in Production, chart the pervasive com m odification o f wom en in W estern culture in m arketplaces from slavery to body-building, from fine art to m usic videos. So m aterial are w om en ’s bodies to the reproduction o f capitalism that they can be sold— or used to sell other com m odities or products. D em onstrating the m ateriality o f the fem ale body, bell hooks exam ines representations o f black w om en in film and advertising to show how percep tion s o f black fem ale sexu ality today derive directly from the apparatus o f racism . W hereas hooks exp lores cul­

Introduction

9

tu re ’s sellin g o f the fem ale body, Sandra Lee Bartky iden tifies the ways wom en com e to participate in their own com m odification by adopting sys­ tem s o f self-surveillance in which they constantly m easure their individual attributes against valued cultural norm s. As she argues, “M odern technolo­ gies o f behavior are thus oriented toward the production o f isolated and self­ policing subjects” (1 4 7 —4-8). Patricia J. W illiam s pow erfully dem onstrates the conflicts that occur when a single body incorporates the contradictions betw een the dom inant white culture and the colonized “other” culture in a kind o f split subjectivity. O u r selections on women in film represent what might be called the vis­ ibility politics o f the female body by investigating the ways in which film ver­ sions o f that body reinforce social codes about looking— often forcing the fem ale viewer to position herself against herself. In an essay inform ed by the ongoing dialogue in psychoanalytic fem inist film theory, Mary Ann Doane considers the space carved out for the female spectator o f Hollywood film. This spectator is caught in a system o f production in which the female body is a fetish for m ale hegem onic desire. How that body can be shaped, and shaped to resist system s o f desire, however, is addressed, albeit differently, by Annette Kuhn. H er essay interrogates differences in female bodies— specif­ ically am ong w om en body-builders— to widen questions o f representation. She fram es her questions in this way: “ What is a w om an’s body? Is there a point at which a w om an’s body becom es som ething else? W hat is the rela­ tionship betw een a certain type o f body and ‘fem ininity’ ?” (1 9 9 ). Returning to issues o f race with sim ilar questions,Tania M odleski, in a kind o f dialogue with bell hooks, exam ines the m echanism s through which, in H ollywood film and in fem inist theory, the black woman has com e to signify em bodi­ m ent, both sexual and maternal. From the sites o f resistan ce rep resen ted in B od ies in P rodu ction , we m ove, in part 3 ,The Body Speaks, to essays that attem pt to reinterpret the struggle or even to discover powerful new form s o f speech and writing. One such form is articulated by G loria Anzaldua, who argues that the bilingual, bicultural body is a battleground— a “bord erland” both for the culture to appropriate and name, and for the individual to “read” and understand. This struggle, however, can produce a new consciousness, what Anzaldua calls the consciousness o f the “m estiza” (233). O ne might say that many o f these essays grow out o f the same revisionist attitude Mary Ann D oane playfully exp resses when she nam es woman “A Lass But N ot A Lack” (180). Indeed, the w ork o f Luce Irigaray rew rites the Freudian and Lacanian paradigm , suggesting that rather than a lack, w om an’s

10

IN TROD UCTION

sexuality is, “always at least double, go es even further: it is plural. . . . [W]oman has sex organs m ore or less everywhere. She finds pleasure alm ost anywhere” (252). Irigaray urges us to understand how w om an’s sexuality can be translated into a language which might seem to operate in a nonlinear, antilogical way. A language o f the body is not always easily understood, as Dianne Hunter makes clear in her analysis o f Freud’s treatm ent o f Anna O. Like the exp res­ sion o f the anorexic body interpreted by Susan Bordo, the hysteric finds her way o f literalizing through her body her felt psychic condition. But several w riters in this section are optim istic that women can effect change— on the personal level by taking back their own eroticism (Lorde) and on a cultural level by influencing change even in scientific w riting. Science, D onna Haraway suggests, needs to drop the pretense o f objective vision, what she calls “the god trick,” and instead join “partial views and halting voices in a collective subject position that prom ises a vision o f the means o f ongoing, finite em bodim ents” (2 9 2 ). Nancy Mairs dem onstrates how her own body has resisted external m isconception. Her “story,” which uses Irigaray for a m odel, maps the way from passive acceptance o f the rules o f femininity to an active reconstruction o f the relationship between body and voice: “The voice is the creature o f the body that produces it. I speak as a crip p led wom an. At the sam e tim e, in the utterance I redeem both ‘ c rip p le ’ and ‘wom an’ from the shameful silences by which I have often felt surrounded, contained, set apart” (3 0 5 ). In part 4, Body on Stage, we include essays that explode the boundaries o f traditionally gen d ered bodies. If “w om an is a dark con tin en t,” these essays explore newly discovered countries— map huge continental drifts. Evolving out o f M onique W ittig’s deconstruction o f the “myth” o f woman, several essays trace the world o f gender play— a world in which the unruly woman erupts from the docile body in which culture has im prisoned her. Mary Russo, drawing on the work o f Bakhtin and Mary D ouglas, offers ver­ sions o f such bodies, “grotesqu e” bodies that challenge the rules o f fem i­ nine containm ent; she hopes this “category” o f the gro tesq u e “m ight be used affirm atively to destabilize the idealizations o f fem ale beauty, or to realign the m echanism o f desire” (3 2 7 ). In challenging bodily boundaries, transsexuals might be understood as em bracing— albeit in very different ways— term s sim ilar to those explored by Russo, who sees the possibilities inherent in a “grotesqu e body . . . [ , ] the body o f becom ing, process, and change” (3 2 5 ). Feeling w rongfully em bodied as m ale, tran ssexu als have challenged gender assignations and, through surgical alterations, claim ed

Introduction

m em bersh ip under the category o f wom an. But, as Sandy Stone argues in her m anifesto, “The Em pire Strikes Back,” transsexuals “m ust take resp o n ­ sibility for all o f their history” (3 5 4 ) and claim a cyborg space for a new configuration o f gender identity. In the act o f redefining gender, som e o f these essays decon struct cate­ gories and celebrate fluidity. Refusing the role o f object scripted for women by pornography, Annie Sprinkle, perform ance artist and the subject o f Linda W illiam s’s essay, seizes the spotlight and displaces m ale pleasure, taking it for h erself. T hus, W illiam s proposes, even pornography— the arena in which w om en have been m ost graphically com m odified— can be reclaim ed. SueEllen Case explores queer desire by recuperating the vampire as trope for “the queer in its lesbian m ode” (3 8 8 ).This reclam ation, she suggests, “punc­ tures the life/d eath and gen eration/destructive bipolarities that enclose the heterosexist notion o f being” (384). Judith B utler’s essay is broadly theoretical in accounting for the dramatic consequences o f gender acts. Arguing that the gender identities we take to be natural are m erely reifications o f particular bodily perform ances, she dem on­ strates that buying into traditional gender binaries guarantees the reproduc­ tion o f a culture in which “there are strict punishments for contesting the scrip t by p erform in g out o f turn o r through unw arranted im provisation” (415). Indeed, such perform ances break social codes that, even if unwritten, are thoroughly inscribed and make o f the perform ers what Kate Bornstein m ight call “gender outlaws.” 11 Mary Russo suggests, however, that women have nothing to lose in such transgressions, especially since it is clear that “cer­ tain bodies, in certain public fram ings, in certain public spaces, are always already transgressive, dangerous and in danger” (323). Thus, in spite o f the threat o f punishm ent, every dram atic exp erim en t illum inates a woman unafraid to make a spectacle o f herself.

NOTES

The epigraph from Simone de Beauvoir comes from The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1974), p. xvii. The epigraph from Sojourner Truth is the title commonly given to her impromptu speech from the Akron Women’s Suffrage Convention in 1851. We have reprinted Miriam Schneier’s modernized version from Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972).

INTRODUCTION

12

The epigraph quoted from D enise Riley appears in “Am I That Name?"Feminism and the Category o f “Women” in History (M inneapolis: U niversity o f M innesota Press, 1988), p. 105. N otes in this introduction refer to books and essays not published in this volum e. Parenthetical page references indicate quotations from essays included in the text.

1. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. x xix. 2. Ibid., p. xviii. 3. Ibid., p. 179. 4. M ichel F o u cau lt, Discipline and Punish: The Birth o f the Prison (N e w York: Penguin, 1979), pp. 135—69. 5. Judith W illiam son, “W oman Is an Island,” in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, ed . Tania M o dleski (B lo o m in g to n : Indiana U n iversity P ress), p. 106. 6. Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (Berkeley: University o f C alifornia Press, 19 9 0 ), p. 175. 7. Sand er Gilman^ “ B lack B o d ies, W hite B od ies: Tow ard an Icon ograp hy o f Fem ale Sexuality in Late N in eteen th -C en tu ry A rt, M edicine, and L iteratu re,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. H enry Louis G ates (C hicago: U niversity o f Chicago Press, 19 8 5 ), pp. 2 2 8 - 3 1 . 8. K athleen W o od w ard , “ Y outhfulness as M asq u erad e,” Discourse 11, n o .2 ( 1 9 8 8 - 8 9 ): 119—4-2. 9. de Beauvoir, p. xxii. 10. Riley, “Am IThat Name?,’’ p. 105. 11. K ate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest o f Us (N ew York: R outledge, 1994).

Reading the Body Woman as a sign o f difference is monstrous. — Rosi Braidotti

1

M ed ica l M etaphors o f Women's Bodies M ENSTRUATION AND MENOPAUSE

E m ily M artin

Lavoisier makes experiments with substances in his labora­ tory and now he concluded that this and that takes place

It is difficult to see how o u r cu rren t scientific ideas are infused by cultu ral assu m p tio n s; it is easier to see how scientific ideas fro m the p ast, id e as th at now se e m w ro n g o r to o sim p le , m ight have b een affected by cultu ral ideas o f an

when there is burning. He does

earlier tim e. To lay the g rou n d w ork fo r a look

not say that it might happen

at co n tem p o rary scientific view s o f m e n stru a­

otherwise another time. He has got hold o f a definite worldpicture— not o f course one that he invented: he learned it

tion and m en op au se, I begin w ith the past. It w as an accep ted notion in m edical lite ra­ tu re fro m the an cien t G re e k s un til the late eighteenth cen tury that m ale and fem ale b o d ies w ere structurally sim ilar. As N e m e siu s, bishop

as a child. I say world-picture

o f E m esa, Syria, in the fou rth century, p u t it,

and not hypothesis, because it

“w om en have the sam e gen itals as m en , e x c e p t

is the matter-of-coursefounda­

that th eirs are inside the b ody and n ot ou tsid e

tionfo r his research and as such also goes unmentioned. — Ludw ig W ittgenstein,

it.” A lth ough in creasingly d e tailed an atom ical u n d e rstan d in g (su ch as the d isc o v e ry o f the n ature o f the ovaries in the last h alf o f the sev ­ enteenth cen tury) changed the d etails, m edical

On Certainty Em ily M artin , “ M edical M e tap h o rs o f W o m en ’s B o d ies: M enstruation and M enopause.” From The Woman in the Body by Emily M artin. C o p y rig h t© 1987, 1992 by Em ily M artin. R eprin ted by perm ission o f Beacon Press.

16

EM ILY M A R T I N

scholars from Galen in second-century G reece to H arvey in seventeenthcentury Britain all assum ed that w om en’s internal organs were structurally analogous to m en ’s external o n e s.1 Although the genders were structurally similar, they were not equal. For one thing, what could be seen o f m en’s bodies was assumed as the pattern for what could not be seen o f w om en’s. For another, just as humans as a species possessed m ore “heat” than other animals, and hence were considered m ore perfect, so men possessed m ore “heat” than women and hence were considered m ore perfect. The relative coolness o f the female prevented her reproductive organs from extruding outside the body but, happily for the species, kept them inside where they provided a protected place for conception and gestation.2 D urin g the centuries when m ale and fem ale bodies were seen as c o m ­ p o sed o f analogous stru ctu res, a connected set o f m etaphors was used to convey how the p arts o f m ale and fem ale b o d ies functioned. T h ese m etaph ors w ere dom inant in classical m edicine and continued to operate through the nineteenth century: The body was seen, metaphorically, as a system o f dynamic interactions with its environment. Health or disease resulted from a cumulative inter­ action between constitutional endowment and environmental circum ­ stance. One could not well live without food and air and water; one had to live in a particular climate, subject one’s body to a particular style of life and work. Each o f these factors implied a necessary and continuing phys­ iological adjustment. The body was always in a state o f becoming— and thus always in jeopardy.3 Two subsidiary assumptions governed this interaction: first, that “every part o f the body was related inevitably and inextricably with every other” and, second, that “the body was seen as a system o f intake and outgo— a system which had, necessarily, to remain in balance if the individual were to remain healthy.”4 Given these assum ptions, changes in the relationship o f body functions occurred constantly throughout life, though m ore acutely at som e tim es than at others. In Edward T ilt’s influential m id-nineteenth-century account, for e xam p le, after the m enopause blood that once flowed out o f the body as m enstruation was then turned into fat: Fat accumulates in women after the change o f life, as it accumulates in ani­ mals from whom the ovaries have been rem oved. The withdrawal o f the

Medical Metaphors ojWomen’s Bodies

17

sexual stimulus from the ganglionic nervous system, enables it to turn into fat and self-aggrandisement that blood which might otherwise have per­ petuated the race.s D uring the transition to m enopause, or the “dodging tim e,” the blood could not be turned into fat, so it was either discharged as hem orrhage or through other com pensating m echanism s, the m ost im portant o f which was “the flush” : As for thirty-two years it had been habitual for women to lose about 3 oz. o f blood every month, so it would have been indeed singular, if there did not exist som e well-continued compensating discharges acting as wastegates to protect the system , until/health could be permanently re-estab­ lished by striking new balances in the allotment o f blood to the various parts . . .The flushes determ ine the perspirations. Both evidence a strong effect o f conservative power, and as they constitute the m ost im portant and habitual safety-valve o f the system at the change o f life, it is worth while studying them .6 In this account, com pensating m echanism s like the “flush” are seen as having the positive function o f keeping intake and outgo in balance. T hese balancing acts had exact analogues in m en. In H ip p ocrates’ view o f purification, one that w as still current in the seventeenth century, women were o f colder and less active disposition than men, so that while m en could sweat in order to remove the impurities from their blood, the colder dispositions o f women did not allow them to be purified in that way. Females m enstruated to rid their bodies o f im purities.7 O r in an oth er view, ex p o u n d e d by G alen in the secon d cen tury and still accepted into the eighteenth century, m enstruation w as the shedding o f an e x ce ss o f b lo o d , a p le th o ra.8 But what w om en did through m en stru atio n m en could do in other ways, such as by having blood le t.9 In either view o f the m echanism o f m enstruation, the process itself not only had analogues in m en, it w as seen as inherently health-maintaining. M enstrual b lo o d , to be sure, w as often seen as foul and u n clean ,10 but the process o f excretin g it was not intrinsically pathological. In fact, failure to excrete w as taken as a sign o f disease, and a great variety o f rem edies existed even into the nineteenth cen ­ tury specifically to reestablish m enstrual flow if it sto p p e d .11

18

E M IL Y M A R T I N

By 1800, according to Laqu eu r’s im portant recent study, this long-established tradition that saw m ale and fem ale bodies as sim ilar both in structure and in function began to com e “under devastating attack. W riters o f all sorts were determ ined to base what they insisted w ere fundamental differences betw een m ale and fem ale sexuality, and thus betw een man and wom an, on discoverable biological distinctions.” 12 Laqueur argues that this attem pt to ground differences betw een the genders in biology grew out o f the cru m ­ bling o f old ideas about the existing o rder o f politics and society as laid down by the order o f nature. In the old ideas, m en dom inated the public world and the w orld o f m orality and order by virtue o f their greater perfection, a result o f their excess heat. Men and wom en w ere arranged in a hierarchy in which they differed by degree o f heat. They were not different in k in d .13 The new liberal claim s o f Hobbes and Locke in the seventeenth century and the French Revolution were factors that led to a loss o f certainty that the social order could be grounded in the natural order. If the social order were m erely convention, it cou ld not provide a secu re enough basis to hold w om en and men in their places. But after 1800 the social and biological sci­ ences were brought to the rescue o f m ale superiority. “Scientists in areas as diverse as zoology, em bryology, physiology, heredity, anthropology, and psy­ chology had little difficulty in proving that the pattern o f m ale-fem ale rela­ tions that characterized the English m iddle classes was natural, inevitable, and progressive.” 14 The assertion was that m en ’s and w om en ’s social roles them selves were grounded in nature, by virtue o f the dictates o f their bodies. In the w ords o f one nineteenth-century theorist, “the attem pt to alter the present relations o f the sexes is not a rebellio n against so m e arbitrary law in stituted by a despot or a m ajority— not an attem pt to break the yoke o f a m ere conven­ tion; it is a struggle against N ature; a w ar undertaken to reverse the very con­ ditions under which not man alone, but all m am m alian species have reached their p resen t developm en t.” 15 The d o ctrin e o f the tw o spheres— m en as w orkers in the public, w age-earning sphere outside the hom e and wom en (except for the lower classes) as wives and m others in the private, dom estic sphere o f kinship and m orality inside the hom e— replaced the old hierarchy based on body heat. D u rin g the latter p art o f the nineteenth century, new m etaph ors that posited fundam ental differences betw een the sexes began to appear. O ne nineteenth-century biologist, Patrick G eddes, perceived two opposite kinds o f p ro cesses at the level o f the cell: “upbuildin g, co n stru ctiv e, synthetic processes "su m m e d up as anabolism , and a “disruptive, descending series o f

Medical Metaphors ofWomen’s Bodies

19

chemical changes,” sum m ed up as katabolism. 16The relationship between the two processes was described in frankly econom ic term s: The processes o f income and expenditure must balance, but only to the usual extent, that expenditure must not altogether outrun income, else the cell’s capital of living matter will be lost,— a fate which is often not successfully avoided . . . Just as our expenditure and income should bal­ ance at the year’s end, but may vastly outstrip each other at particular times, so it is with the cell of the body. Income too may continuously pre­ ponderate, and we increase in wealth, or similarly, in weight, or in anabolism. Conversely, expenditure may predominate, but business may be prosecuted at a loss; and similarly, we may live on for a while with loss of weight, or in katabolism. This losing game of life is what we call a katabolic habit.17 G eddes saw these processes not only at the level o f the cell, but also at the level o f entire organism s. In the human species, as well as in alm ost all higher animals, fem ales were predominantly anabolic, m ales katabolic. Although in the term s o f his saving-spending m etaphor it is not at all clear w hether katab­ olism w ould be an asset, when G eddes presents m ale-fem ale differences, there is no doubt which he thought preferable: It is generally true that the males are more active, energetic, eager, pas­ sionate, and variable; the females more passive, conservative, sluggish, and stable . . . The m ore active m ales, with a consequently w ider range of experience, may have bigger brains and m ore intelligence; but the females, especially as mothers, have indubitably a larger and more habit­ ual share of the altruistic emotions. The males being usually stronger, have greater independence and courage; the females excel in constancy o f affection and in sympathy.18 In G eddes, the doctrine o f separate spheres was laid on a foundation o f separate and fundamentally different biology in men and w om en, at the level o f the cell. O ne o f the striking contradictions in his account is that he did not carry over the im plications o f his econom ic m etaphors to his discussion o f m ale-fem ale differences. If he had, fem ales might have com e o ff as wisely conserving their energy and never spending beyond their m eans, m ales as in the “losing gam e o f life,” letting expenditures outrun incom e. G eddes may have failed to draw the logical conclusions from his m eta­

20

E M IL Y M A R T I N

phor, but we have to acknowledge that m etaphors were never m eant to be logical. O ther nineteenth-century w riters developed m etaphors in exactly opposite directions: w om en spent and men saved. The Rev. John Todd saw w om en as voracious spenders in the m arketplace, and so consum ers o f all that a man could earn. If unchecked, a w om an would ruin a m an, by her own extravagant spending, by her dem ands on him to spend, or, in another realm , by her excessive dem ands on him for sex. Losing too much sperm m eant lo s­ ing that which sperm was believed to m anufacture: a m an’s lifeb lood .19 Todd and Geddes were not alone in the nineteenth century in using im ages o f business loss and gain to describe physiological processes. Susan Sontag has suggested that nineteenth-century fantasies about disease, especially tubercu­ losis, “echo the attitudes o f early capitalist accumulation. O ne has a limited am ount o f energy, which m ust be properly spent . . . Energy, like savings, can be depleted, can run out or be used up, through reckless expenditure. The body will s ta r t ‘ consum ing’ itself, the patient will ‘w aste away.’ ”20 D esp ite the variety o f ways that spen din g-savin g m etap h o rs could be related to gender, the radical difference betw een these m etaphors and the earlier intake-outgo m etaphor is key. W hereas in the earlier m odel, m ale and fem ale ways o f secreting w ere not only analogous but desirable, now the way becam e open to denigrate, as G eddes overtly did, functions that for the first tim e w ere seen as uniquely fem ale, w ithout analogue in m ales. For our p u r­ poses, what happened to accounts o f m enstruation is m ost interesting: by the nineteenth century, the process itself was seen as soundly pathological. In G e d d e s’s term s, it yet evidently lies on the borders o f pathological change, as is evidenced not only by the pain which so frequently accompanies it, and the local and constitutional disorders which so frequently arise in this connection, but by the general system ic disturbance and local histological changes o f which the discharge is merely the outward expression and result.21 W h ereas in earlier accoun ts the b lo o d itse lf may have been con sidered im pure, now the process itself is seen as a disorder. N ineteenth-century w riters were extrem ely prone to stress the debilitat­ ing nature o f menstruation and its adverse im pact on the lives and activities o f w om en .22 Medical im ages o f m enstruation as pathological were rem ark­ ably vivid by the end o f the century. For W alter H eape, the m ilitant antisuf­ fragist and Cam bridge zoologist, in m enstruation the entire epithelium was torn away,

Medical Metaphors ojWomen's Bodies

21

leaving behind a ragged wreck o f tissue, torn glands, ruptured vessels, jagged edges o f strom a, and masses o f blood corpuscles, which it would seem hardly possible to heal satisfactorily without the aid o f surgical treatm ent.23 A few years later, H avelock Ellis could see w om en as being “periodically wounded” in their m ost sensitive spot and “emphasize the fact that even in the healthiest wom an, a w orm however harm less and unperceived, gnaws peri­ odically at the roots o f life.”24 If m enstruation was consistently seen as pathological, m enopause, another function which by this time was regarded as without analogue in m en, often was too: many nineteenth-century medical accounts o f m enopause saw it as a crisis likely to bring on an increase o f disease.25 Som etim es the m etaphor o f the body as a sm all business that is either winning or losing was applied to menopause too. A late-nineteenth-century account specifically argued against Tilt’s earlier adjustm ent m odel: “When the period o f fruitfulness is ended the activity o f the tissues has reached its culmination, the secreting pow er of* the glandular organs begins to diminish, the epithelium becom es less sensitive and less susceptible to infectious influences, and atrophy and degeneration take the place o f the active up-building processes.”26 But there were other sides to the picture. M ost practitioners felt the “clim acteric disease,” a m ore general disease o f old age, was far worse for men than for w om en.27 And som e regarded the period after menopause far m ore positively than it is being seen medically in our century, as the “Indian sum m er’ o f a w om an’s life— a period o f increased vigor, optim ism , and even o f physical beauty.” ’ 28 Perhaps the nineteenth century’s concern with con servin g energy and lim iting expenditure can help account for the seem ing anom aly o f at least som e positive m edical views o f m enopause and the clim acteric. As an earlytwentieth-century popular health account put it, [Menopause] is merely a conservative process o f nature to provide for a higher and more stable phase of existence, an economic lopping off o f a function no longer needed, preparing the individual for different form s of activity, but is in no sense pathologic. It is not sexual or physical decrepi­ tude, but belongs to the age o f invigoration, marking the fullness of the bodily and mental pow ers.29 Those few w riters who saw m enopause as an “econom ic” physiological func­ tion might have drawn very positive conclusions from G edd es’s description

22

E M IL Y M A R T I N

o f fem ales as anabolic, stressing their “thriftiness” instead o f their passivity, their “grow ing bank accounts” instead o f their sluggishness. If the shift from the body as an in take-ou tgo system to the body as a sm all business trying to spend, save, or balance its accounts is a radical one, w ith d e e p im p o rta n c e fo r m ed ical m o d e ls o f fe m ale b o d ie s, so to o is another shift that began in the twentieth century with the developm ent o f scientific m edicine. O ne o f the early-tw entieth-century en gineers o f our sy stem o f scien tific m edicine, F red erick T. G a te s, who advised John D. R o ck efeller on how to use his philanthropies to aid scien tific m edicine, developed a series o f interrelated m etaphors to explain the scientific view o f how the body w orks: It is interesting to note the striking comparisons between the human body and the safety and hygienic appliances of a great city: Just as in the streets o f a great city we have “white angels” posted everywhere to gather up poi­ sonous materials from the streets, so in the great streets and avenues o f the body, namely the arteries and the blood vessels, there are brigades o f cor­ puscles, white in color like the “white angels,” whose function it is to gather up into sacks, formed by their own bodies, and disinfect or elimi­ nate all poisonous substances found in the blood.The body has a network o f insulated nerves, like telephone wires, which transmit instantaneous alarms at every point o f danger. The body is furnished with the most elab­ orate police system, with hundreds o f police stations to which the crim i­ nal elements are carried by the police and jailed. I refer to the great num­ bers o f sanitary glands, skilfully placed at points where vicious germ s find entrance, especially about the mouth and throat. The body has a m ost com plete and elaborate sewer system. There are wonderful laboratories placed at convenient points for a subtle brewing of skillful medicines . . . The fact is that the human body is made up o f an infinite number o f m icro­ scopic cells. Each one o f these cells is a small chemical laboratory, into which its own appropriate raw material is constantly being introduced, the processes o f chemical separation and combination are constantly tak­ ing place automatically, and its own appropriate finished product being necessary for the life and health o f the body. Not only is this so, but the great organs o f the body like the liver, stomach, pancreas, kidneys, gall bladder are great local manufacturing centers, form ed of groups o f cells in infinite num bers, manufacturing the sam e sorts o f products, just as industries o f the same kind are often grouped in specific districts.30

Medical Metaphors ofWomen’s Bodies

23

Although such a full-blown description o f the body as a m odel o f an indus­ trial society is not often found in contem porary accounts o f physiology, ele­ m ents o f the im ages that o ccurred to G ates are com m onplace. In recent years, the “im agery o f the biochem istry o f the cell [has] been that o f the fac­ tory, where functions [are] specialized for the conversion o f energy into par­ ticular products and which [has] its own part to play in the econom y o f the organism as a whole.”31 There is no doubt that the basic im age o f cells as fac­ tories is carried into popular imagination, and not only through college tex t­ books: an illustration from the April 30, 1984, copy o f Time magazine depicts cells explicitly as factories (and

a id s

virus cells as m anufacturing arm ored

tanks! [p. 67]). Still m ore recently, econom ic functions o f greater com plexity have been added:

atp

is seen as the b ody’s “energy currency” : “Produced in particular

cellular regions, it [is] placed in an ‘energy bank’ in which it [is] maintained in two form s, those o f ‘current account’ and ‘deposit account.’ Ultimately, the cell’s and the b ody’s energy books m ust balance by an appropriate m ix o f m on etary and fiscal p o licie s.”32 H ere we have not ju st the sim pler nine­ teenth-century saving and spending, but two distinct form s o f money in the bank, presum ably invested at different levels o f profit. D evelopm ent o f the new m olecular biology brought additional m etaphors based on inform ation science, m anagem ent, and control. In this m odel, flow o f inform ation betw een

dna

and

rna

leads to the production o f protein .33

M olecular biologists conceive o f the cell as “an assembly line factory in which the d n a blueprints are interpreted and raw m aterials fabricated to produce the protein end products in response to a series o f regulated requirem ents.”34 The cell is still seen as a factory, but, com pared to G ates’s description, there is enorm ous elaboration o f the flow o f information from one “departm ent” o f the body to another and exaggeration o f the am ount o f control exerted by the center. For exam ple, from a college physiology text: All the systems o f the body, if they are to function effectively, must be sub­ jected to some form o f control . . . The precise control of body function is brought about by means of the operation o f the nervous system and o f the hormonal or endocrine system . . .The most important thing to note about any control system is that before it can control anything it must be supplied with information . . .Therefore the first essential in any control system is an adequate system of collecting information about the state of the body . . . Once the

cns

[central nervous system] knows what is happening, it must

24

EMILY MARTIN

then have a means for rectifying the situation if something is going wrong. There are two available methods for doing this, by using nerve fibres and by using horm ones.The m otor nerve fibres . . . carry instructions from the

cns

to the muscles and glands throughout the body . . . As far as hormones are concerned the brain acts via the pituitary gland . . . the pituitary secretes a large number o f horm ones . . . the rate of secretion o f each one of these is under the direct control o f the brain.35 A lth ough th ere is in creasin g atten tio n to d e sc rib in g p h y sio lo gical p ro cesses as positive and negative feed back loop s so that like a therm ostat sy stem no sin g le e le m e n t has p re em in e n t co n tro l o ver any other, m o st description s o f specific p rocesses give preem inent con trol to the brain, as we w ill see below.

M etaphors in Descriptions o f Female Reproduction In overall d escrip tion s o f fem ale rep rod u ction , the dom inant im age is that o f a signaling system . Lein, in a tex tb o o k designed fo r ju n io r co lleges, spells it out in detail: H orm ones are chemical signals to which distant tissues or organs are able to respond. W hereas the nervous system has characteristics in com m on with a telephone netw ork, the endocrine glands p erform in a m anner somewhat analogous to radio transmission. A radio transm itter may blan­ ket an entire region with its signal, but a response occurs only if a radio receiver is turned on and tuned to the prop er frequency . . . the radio receiver in biological system s is a tissue whose cells possess active recep­ tor sites for a particular horm one or h orm ones.36 Th e sign al-resp o n se m etap h o r is found alm o st universally in cu rren t tex ts fo r p re m e d ic a l and m e d ical stu d e n ts (e m p h asis in the fo llo w in g q u o te s is ad d ed ): The hypothalamus receives signals from alm ost all possible sources in the nervous system .37 The en dom etrium responds directly to stim ulation or withdrawal o f estrogen and progesterone. In turn, regulation o f the secretion o f these steroids involves a w ell-integrated, highly structured series o f activities by

25

Medical Metaphors qfWomen’s Bodies

the hypothalamus and the anterior lobe of the pituitary. Although the ovaries do not function autonomously, they influence, through feedback mechanisms, the level of performance programmed by the hypothalamicpituitary axis.38 As a result o f strong stimulation of

fsh

,

a number of follicles respond

with grow th.39 And the sam e idea is found, m ore obviously, in popular health books: Each month from menarche on, [the hypothalamus] acts as elegant inter­ preter o f the body’s rhythms, transmitting messages to the pituitary gland that set the menstrual cycle in motion.40 Each month, in response to a message from the pituitary gland, one of the unripe egg cells develops inside a tiny m icroscopic ring o f cells, which gradually increases to form a little balloon or cyst called the Graafian follicle.41 Although m ost accounts stress signals or stimuli traveling in a “loop” from hypothalamus to pituitary to ovary and back again, carrying positive or neg­ ative feed back, one elem ent in the loop, the hypothalam us, a p art o f the brain, is often seen as predom inant.The female brain-horm one-ovary system is usually described not as a feedback loop like a therm ostat system but as a hierarchy, in which the “directions” or “o rd ers” o f one elem ent dom inate (em phasis in the following quotes from m edical texts is ad d ed ): Both positive and negative feedback control must be invoked, together with superimposition o f control by the

cn s

through neurotransm itters

released into the hypophyseal portal circulation.42 Almost all secretion by the pituitary is controlled by either hormonal or nervous signals from the hypothalamus.43 The hypothalamus is a collecting center for information concerned with the internal well-being o f the body, and in turn much o f this infor­ mation is used to control secretions of the many globally important pitu­ itary horm ones.44 As Lein puts it into ordinary language, “The cerebrum , that p art o f the brain that provides awareness and m ood , can play a significant role in the control o f the m enstrual cycle. As explained before, it seem s evident that these higher regio n s o f the brain ex e rt their influence by m odifyin g the

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actions o f the hypothalamus. So even though the hypothalamus is a kind o f m aster gland dom inating the anterior pituitary, and through it the ovaries also, it does not act with com plete independence or without influence from outside itself . . . there are also pathways o f control from the higher centers o f the brain.”45 So this is a communication system organized hierarchically, not a com ­ mittee reaching decisions by mutual influence.46The hierarchical nature o f the organization is reflected in som e popular literature meant to explain the nature o f menstruation simply: “From first m enstrual cycle to m enopause, the hypothalamus acts as the conductor o f a highly trained orchestra. Once its baton signals the downbeat to the pituitary, the hypothalamus-pituitaryovarian axis is united in purpose and begins to play its symphonic m essage, preparing a wom an’s body for conception and child-bearing.” Carrying the metaphor further, the follicles vie with each other for the role o f producing the egg like violinists trying for the position o f concertm aster; a burst o f estrogen is em itted from the follicle like a “clap o f tympani.”47 The basic images chosen here— an information-transmitting system with a hierarchical structure— have an obvious relation to the dom inant form o f organization in our society.48 What I want to show is how this set o f m eta­ phors, once chosen as the basis for the description o f physiological events, has profound implications for the way in which a change in the basic organization o f the system will be perceived. In term s o f female reproduction, this basic change is o f course menopause. Many criticisms have been made o f the m ed­ ical propensity to see menopause as a pathological state.49 I would like to sug­ gest that the tenacity o f this view comes not only from the negative stereotypes associated with aging women in our society, but as a logical outgrowth o f see­ ing the body as a hierarchical information-processing system in the first place. (Another part o f the reason m enopause is seen so negatively is related to metaphors o f production, which I discuss later in this essay.) What is the language in which m enopause is described? In menopause, according to a college text, the ovaries becom e “unresponsive” to stimulation from the go nadotrop in s, to which they used to respond . As a result the ovaries “regress.” On the other end o f the cycle, the hypothalamus has gotten estrogen “addiction” from all those years o f menstruating. As a result o f the “withdrawal” o f estrogen at m enopause, the hypothalamus begins to give “inappropriate orders.”50 In a m ore popular account, “the pituitary gland during the change o f life becom es disturbed when the ovaries fail to respond to its secretions, which tends to affect its control over other glands. This results in a tem porary imbalance existing am ong all the endocrine glands o f

Medical Metaphors ojWomen’s Bodies

27

the body, which could very well lead to disturbances that may involve a p er­ son ’s nervous system ”S1 In both m edical texts and popular books, what is being described is the breakdow n o f a system o f authority. The cause o f ovarian “decline” is the “d ecreasin g

ability

o f the

aging

ovaries

to

resp o n d

to

pituitary

gonadotropins.”52 At every point in this system , functions “fail” and falter. Follicles “fail to m uster the strength” to reach ovulation.53 As functions fail, so do the m em bers o f the system decline: “breasts and genital organs gradu­ ally atrophy,”54 “w ither,” 55 and becom e “senile.”56 D im inished, atrophied relics o f their form er vigorous, functioning selves, the “senile ovaries” are an exam ple o f the vivid im agery brought to this process. A text whose detailed illustrations make it a prim ary resource for medical students despite its early date describes the ovaries this way: the senile ovary is a shrunken and puckered organ, containing few if any fol­ licles, and made up for the most part of old corpora albincantia and cor­ pora atretica, the bleached and functionless remainders o f corpora lutia s and follicles embedded in a dense connective tissue strom a.57 O v aries cease to respo n d and fail to produ ce. E veryw here else t h e r e is regression, decline, atrophy, shrinkage, and disturbance. The key to the problem connoted by these descriptions is functionlessness. Susan Sontag has w ritten o f our obsessive fear o f cancer, a disease that we see as entailing a nightmare o f excessive growth and ram pant production. These im ages frighten us in part because in our stage o f advanced capitalism , they are close to a reality we find difficult to see clearly: broken-down hier­ archy and organization m em bers who no longer play their designated parts represent nightmare im ages for us. One woman I have talked to said her d o c­ to r gave her tw o choices for treatm ent o f her m enopause: she could take estrogen and get cancer or she could not take it and have her bones dissolve. Like this woman, our im agery o f the body as a hierarchical organization gives us no go od choice when the basis o f the organization seem s to us to have changed drastically. We are left with breakdown, decay, and atrophy. Bad as they are, these m ight be preferable to continued activity, which because it is not properly hierarchically controlled, leads to chaos, unm anaged grow th, and disaster. But let us return to the m etaphor o f the factory producing substances, which dom inates the im agery used to describe cells. At the cellular level com m unicates with

r n a

,

dna

all for the purpose o f the cell’s production o f p ro ­

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EM IL Y M A RT IN

teins. In a similar way, the system of communication involving female rep ro­ duction is thought to be geared toward production o f various things. My dis­ cussion in this essay is confined to the norm al process of the m enstrual cycle. It is clear that the system is thought to produce many good things: the ovaries produce estrogen, the pituitary produces

fsh

and

lh

,

and so on. Follicles also

produce eggs in a sense, although this is usually described as “maturing” them since the entire set o f eggs a woman has for her lifetime is known to be p re­ sent at birth. Beyond all this the system is seen as organized for a single p re­ eminent purpose: “transport” o f the egg along its journey from the ovary to the uterus58 and preparation o f an appropriate place for the egg to grow if it is fertilized. In a chapter titled “Prepregnancy Reproductive Functions o f the Female, and the Female H orm ones,” Guyton puts it all together: “Female reproductive functions can be divided into two m ajor phases: first, prepara­ tion o f the female body for conception and gestation, and second, the period o f gestation itself.”59This view may seem commonsensical and entirely ju sti­ fied by the evolutionary developm ent o f the species, with its need for rep ro­ duction to ensure survival. Yet I suggest that assuming this view o f the purpose for the process slants our description and understanding o f the female cycle unnecessarily. Let us look at how medical textbooks describe m enstruation.They see the action o f progesterone and estrogen on the lining o f the uterus as “ideally suited to provide a hospitable environm ent for im plantation and survival o f the em bryo”60 or as intended to lead to “the monthly renewal o f the tissue that will cradle [the ovum].”61 As Guyton sum m arizes, “The whole purpose o f all these endom etrial changes is to produce a highly secretory endom etrium containing large am ounts o f stored nutrients that can provide appropriate conditions for implantation o f a fertilized ovum during the latter half o f the monthly cycle.”62 Given this teleological interpretation o f the purpose o f the increased am ount o f endom etrial tissue, it should be no surprise that when a fertilized egg does not implant, these texts describe the next event in very negative term s. The fall in blood progesterone and estrogen “deprives” the “highly developed endom etrial lining o f its horm onal supp ort,” “ con stric­ tion” o f blood vessels leads to a “diminished” supply o f oxygen and nutrients, and finally “disintegration starts, the entire lining begins to slough, and the menstrual flow begins.” Blood vessels in the endom etrium “hem orrhage” and the menstrual flow “consists o f this blood m ixed with endom etrial debris.”63 The “loss” of hormonal stimulation causes “necrosis” (death o f tissu e).64 The construction o f these events in term s o f a purpose that has failed is beautifully captured in a standard text for medical students (a text otherwise

Medical Metaphors ojWomen 's Bodies

29

noteworthy for its extrem ely objective, factual descriptions) in which a dis­ cussion o f the events covered in the last paragraph (sloughing, hem orrhaging) ends with the statem ent “When fertilization fails to occur, the endom etrium is shed, and a new cycle starts. This is why it used to be taught that ‘m enstru­ ation is the uterus crying for lack o f a baby.’ 1,65 I am arguing that ju st as seein g m en opause as a kind o f failure o f the authority structure in the body contributes to our negative view o f it, so does seeing m enstruation as failed production contribute to our negative view o f it. We have seen how Sontag describes our horror o f production gone out o f control. But another kind o f horror for us is lack o f production: the disused factory, the failed business, the idle machine. In his analysis o f industrial civ­ ilization, W inner term s the stopping and breakdow n o f technological sys­ tem s in m odern society “apraxia” and describes it as “the ultim ate horror, a con dition to be avoided at all co sts.”66 This h o rro r o f idle w orkers or machines seem s to have been present even at earlier stages o f industrializa­ tion. A nineteenth-century inventor, Thom as Ewbank, elaborated his view that the whole w orld “was designed for a Factory.”67 “ It is only as a Factory, a General Factory, that the whole m aterials and influences o f the earth are to be brought into play.”68 In this great w orkshop, hum ans’ role is to produce: “G od em ploys no idlers— creates none.”69 Like artificial m o to rs, we are created for the w ork we can do— for the useful and productive ideas we can stam p upon matter. Engines running daily w ithout doing any w ork resem ble m en who live w ithout labor; both are spendthrifts dissipating m eans that would be productive if given to others.70 M enstruation not only carries with it the connotation o f a productive sys­ tem that has failed to produce, it also carries the idea o f production gone awry, m aking products o f no use, not to specification, unsalable, w asted, scrap. H ow ever disgustin g it may be, m en stru al blood w ill com e out. Production gone awry is also an image that fills us with dismay and horror. Amid the glorification o f machinery com m on in the nineteenth century were also fears o f what machines could do if they went out o f control. Capturing this fear, one satirist w rote o f a steam -operated shaving machine that “sliced the noses o ff too many custom ers.”71 This image is close to the one Melville created in “The B e ll-T o w e rin which an inventor, who can be seen as an alle­ gory o f Am erica, is killed by his mechanical slave,72 as well as to M u m ford’s so rcerer’s apprentice applied to m odern m achinery:73 O ur civilization has cleverly found a magic formula for setting both indus­ trial and academic brooms and pails o f water to work by themselves, in

30

E M IL Y M A R T I N

ever-increasing quantities at an ever-increasing speed. But we have lost the Master Magician’s spell for altering the tem po of this process, or halting it when it ceases to serve human functions and purposes.74 O f course, how much one is gripped by the need to produce go ods effi­ ciently and properly depends on o n e ’s relationship to those go ods. W hile packing pickles on an assembly line, I rem em ber the foreman often holding up im properly packed bottles to us w orkers and trying to elicit shame at the bad job we were doing. But his job depended on efficient production, which m eant many bottles filled right the first tim e. This factory did not yet have any effective m ethod o f quality control, and as soon as our supervisor was out o f sight, our efforts went tow ard filling as few bottles as we could while still concealing who had filled which b ottle. In other factories, w orkers seem to express a certain grim pleasure when they can register objections to co m ­ pany policy by enacting im agery o f m achinery out o f control. N oble rep o rts an incident in which w orkers resented a su p erv iso r’s o rder to “shut dow n their m achines, pick up broom s, and get to w ork cleaning the area. But he forgot to tell them to stop. So, like the so rce rer’s apprentice, diligently and obediently w orking to rule, they continued sweeping up all day long.”75 Perhaps one reason the negative im age o f failed production is attached to m enstruation is precisely that w om en are in som e sinister sense out o f con ­ trol when they m enstruate. They are not reproducing, not continuing the species, not preparing to stay at hom e with the baby, not providing a safe, w arm womb to nurture a m an ’s sperm . I think it is plain that the negative p ow er behind the im age o f failure to p ro d u ce can be con siderable when applied m etaphorically to w om en ’s bodies. Vern Bullough com m ents o p ti­ m istically that “no reputable scientist today would regard m enstruation as pathological,”76 but this paragraph from a recent college text belies his hope: If fertilization and pregnancy do not occur, the corpus luteum degenerates and the levels o f estrogens and progesterone decline. As the levels o f these horm ones decrease and their stimulatory effects are withdrawn, blood vessels o f the endometrium undergo prolonged spasms (contractions) that reduce the bloodflow to the area o f the endometrium supplied by the ves­ sels. The resulting lack o f blood causes the tissues of the affected region to degenerate. After some time, the vessels relax, which allows blood to flow through them again. However, capillaries in the area have becom e so weakened that blood leaks through them .This blood and the deteriorating endometrial tissue are discharged from the uterus as the menstrual flow.

Medical Metaphors ofWomen’s Bodies

31

As a new ovarian cycle begins and the level o f estrogens rises, the func­ tional layer o f the endom etrium undergoes repair and once again begins to proliferate.77 In rapid su ccession the re ad e r is con fron ted with “d egen erate,” “declin e,” “w ithdrawn,’’“spasm s,’’“lack,’’“degenerate,” “w eakened,” “leak,’’“deteriorate,” “discharge,” and, after all that, “repair.” In another standard tex t, we read: The sudden lack o f these tw o horm ones [estrogen and progesterone] Causes the blood vessels o f the endom etrium to becom e spastic so that blood flow to the surface layers o f the endometrium alm ost ceases. As a result, much o f the endometrial tissue dies and sloughs into the uterine cavity. Then, small amounts o f blood ooze from the denuded endometrial wall, causing a blood loss o f about 50 ml during the next few days. The sloughed endometrial tissue plus the blood and much serous exudate from the denuded uterine surface, all together called the menstrum, is gradually; expelled by interm ittent contractions o f the uterine muscle for about 3 to 5 days. This process is called menstruation ,78 The illustration that accom panies this tex t captures very well the im agery o f catastro p h ic d isin te gratio n : “ceasin g,” “dying,” “lo sin g,” “ d en u d in g,” and “expelling.” Th ese are n ot n eutral te rm s; rather, they convey failure and d issolution . O f c o u rse , not all tex ts contain such a plethora o f negative term s in their d escrip tio n s o f m en stru atio n . But unacknow ledged cultu ral attitu d es can seep into scientific w ritin g through evaluative w ords. C o m in g at this point fro m a sligh tly d iffe re n t an g le, c o n sid e r this e x tra c t fro m a te x t that describ es m ale rep rod u ctive ph y siology “The m echanism s which gu id e the remarkable cellular tran sform ation from sperm atid to m ature sp erm rem ain un certain . . . Perhaps the m o st amazing characteristic o f sp erm ato gen esis is its sheer magnitude: the n orm al hum an m ale may m anufacture several hun ­ dred m illion sp erm p e r day (em phasis ad ded).”79 As we w ill see, this tex t has no parallel ap p reciation o f fem ale p ro cesses such as m en stru atio n or o v u latio n , and it is su rely no accid en t that this “ re m a rk ab le ” p ro c e ss involves precisely w hat m en struation does not in the m edical view : p ro d u c ­ tion o f som eth in g d eem ed valuable. Although this te x t sees such m assive sp e rm p rod u ctio n as unabashedly positiv e, in fact, only ab ou t on e ou t o f every 100 billion sp e rm ever m akes it to fertilize an e gg : fro m the very

32

EMILY M A RTIN

sam e poin t o f view that sees m en stru atio n as a w aste p ro du ct, surely here is som eth in g really w orth crying about! W hen this tex t turns to fem ale rep ro d u ctio n , it describes m en struation in the sam e term s o f failed production we saw earlier. The fall in blood progesterone and estrogen, which results from regression o f the corpus luteum, deprives the highly developed endometrial lining o f its hormonal support; the immediate result is prtfound constriction o f the uterine blood vessels due to production o f vasoconstrictor prostaglandins, which leads to diminished supply o f oxygen and nutrients. Disintegration starts, and the entire lining (except for a thin, deep layer which will regen­ erate the endom etrium in the n ext cycle) begin s to slough . . . The endom etrial arterioles dilate, resulting in hemorrhage through the w eak­ ened capillary walls; the m enstrual flow consists o f this blood m ixed with endom etrial debris . . . The m enstrual flow ceases as the endom etrium repairs itself and then grow s under the influence o f rising blood estrogen concentration. [Emphasis added.]80 And ovulation fares no better. In fact p a rt o f the reason ovulation d oes n ot m e rit the enthusiasm that sp erm ato gen esis d o es m ay be that all the ovarian follicles containing ova are already p resen t at birth . Far from being produced as sp erm is, they seem to m erely sit on the shelf, as it w ere, slow ly d ege n e r­ ating and aging like overstocked inventory. At birth, norm al human ovaries contain an estim ated one million follicles, and no new ones appear after birth.Thus, in marked contrast to the male, the newborn female already has all the germ cells she will ever have. Only a few, perhaps four hundred, are destined to reach full maturity during her active productive life. All the others degenerate at som e point in their developm ent so that few, if any, remain by the time she reaches m enopause at approxim ately fifty years o f age. One result o f this is that the ova which are released (ovulated) near m enopause are thirty to thirty-five years older than those ovulated just after puberty; it has been suggested that cer­ tain congenital defects, m uch co m m o n er am ong children o f old er wom en, are the result o f aging changes in the ovum .81 H ow different it w ould sound if tex ts like this one stressed the vast ex cess o f fo llicle s p ro d u ced in a fem ale fe tu s, c o m p are d to the n u m b er she w ill actually n eed. In addition, m ales are also b o rn w ith a com plem en t o f ge rm

Medical Metaphors ofWomen’s Bodies

33

cells (sperm atogonia) that divide from time to tim e, and m ost o f which will eventually differentiate into sperm .T h is text could easily discuss the fact that these male germ cells and their progeny are also subject to aging, much as female germ cells are. Although we would still be operating within the term s o f the production m etaphor, at least it would be applied in an evenhanded way to both m ales and females. One response to my argum ent would be that m enstruation ju st is in som e objective sense a process o f breakdow n and deterioration . The particular w ords are chosen to describe it because they best fit the reality o f what is happening. My counterargum ent is to look at other processes in the body that are fundamentally analogous to m enstruation in that they involve the shedding o f a lining to see whether they also are described in term s o f break­ down and deterioration. The lining o f the stom ach, for exam ple, is shed and replaced regularly, and seminal fluid picks up shedded cellular m aterial as it goes through the various m ale ducts. The lining o f the stom ach m ust protect itself against being digested by the hydrochloric acid produced in digestion. In the several texts quoted above, emphasis is on the secretion o f m ucus,82 the barrier that m ucous cells present to stom ach acid,83 and— in a phrase that gives the story away— the periodic renewal o f the lining o f the stom ach .84There is no reference to degenerating, w eakening, d eterio ratin g, or repair, or even the m ore neutral shedding, sloughing, or replacem ent. The primary function of the gastric secretions is to begin the digestion of proteins. Unfortunately, though, the wall of the stomach is itself con­ structed mainly o f sm ooth m uscle, which itself is mainly protein. Therefore, the surface o f the stomach must be exceptionally well p ro ­ tected at all times against its own digestion. This function is performed mainly by mucus that is secreted in great abundance in all parts o f the stomach. The entire surface of the stomach is covered by a layer o f very small mucous cells, which themselves are com posed alm ost entirely o f mucus; this mucus prevents gastric secretions from ever touching the deeper layers of the stomach wall.85 In this account from an introductory physiology tex t, the emphasis is on production o f m ucus and protection o f the stomach wall. It is not even m en­ tioned, although it is analogous to m enstruation, that the m ucous cell layers m ust be continually sloughed o ff (and digested). Although all the general physiology texts I consulted describe m enstruation as a process o f disinte­

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EM ILY M A RT IN

gration needing repair, only specialized texts for medical students describe the stomach lining in the m ore neutral term s o f “sloughing” and “renewal.”86 One can choose to look at what happens to the lining o f stom achs and uteruses negatively as breakdown and decay needing repair or positively as continual production and replenishm ent. O f these two sides o f the sam e coin, stom achs, which wom en and men have, fall on the positive side; uteruses, which only women have, fall on the negative. One other analogous process is not handled negatively in the general phys­ iology texts. Although it is well known to those researchers who work with male ejaculates that a very large proportion o f the ejaculate is com posed of shedded cellular material, the texts make no mention o f a shedding process let alone processes of deterioration and repair in the male reproductive tract.87 What applies to menstruation once a month applies to menopause once in every lifetime. As we have seen, part o f the current imagery attached to m enopause is that o f a breakdown o f central control. Inextricably connected to this imagery is another aspect o f failed production. Recall the m etaphors o f balanced intake and outgo that were applied to menopause up to the m id­ nineteenth century, later to be replaced by m etaphors o f degeneration. In the early 1960s new research on the role o f estrogens in heart disease led to argum ents that failure o f female reproductive organs to produce much estro­ gen after menopause was debilitating to health. This change is marked unmistakably in successive editions o f a m ajor gyne­ cology text. In the 1940s and 1950s menopause was described as usually not entailing “any very profound alteration in the woman’s life current.”88 By the 1965 edition dramatic changes had occurred: “In the past few years there has been a radical change in viewpoint and som e would regard the menopause as a possible pathological state rather than a physiological one and discuss thera­ peutic prevention rather than the amelioration o f symptoms.”89 In many current accounts m enopause is described as a state in which ovaries fail to produce estro gen .90The 1981 World Health O rganization rep o rt defines m enopause as an estrogen-deficiency disease.91 Failure to produce estrogen is the leitm otif o f another current text: “This period dur­ ing which the cycles cease and the female sex hormones diminish rapidly to alm ost none at all is called the menopause. The cause o f the menopause is the ‘burning o u t’ o f the ovaries . . . Estrogens are produced in subcritical quan­ tities for a short time after the m enopause, but over a few years, as the final remaining prim ordial follicles becom e atretic, the production o f estrogens by the ovaries falls almost to zero.” Loss o f ability to produce estrogen is seen as central to a wom an’s life: “At the time o f the menopause a woman must

Medical Metaphors ofWomen’s Bodies

35

readjust her life from one that has been physiologically stim ulated by estro­ gen and progesterone production to one devoid o f those horm ones.”92 O f course, I am not implying that the ovaries do not indeed produce much less estrogen than b efo re. I am pointing to the choice o f these tex tb o o k authors to emphasize above all else the negative aspects o f ovaries failing to produce female horm ones. By contrast, one current text shows us a positive view o f the decline in estrogen production: “It would seem that although m enopausal wom en do have an estrogen milieu which is lower than that nec­ essary for reproductive function, it is not negligible or absent but is perhaps satisfactory for maintenance o f support tissues. The m enopause could then be regarded as a physiologic phenom enon which is protective in nature— p ro ­ tective from undesirable reproduction and the associated grow th stim uli.”93 I have presented the underlying m etaphors contained in medical descrip­ tions o f m enopause and m enstruation to show that these ways o f describing events are but one m ethod o f fitting an interpretation to the facts. Yet seeing that female organs are im agined to function within a hierarchical order whose m em bers signal each other to produce various substances, all for the purpose o f transporting eggs to a place where they can be fertilized and then grown, may not provide us with enough o f a jo lt to begin to see the contingent nature o f these descriptions. Even seeing that the m etaphors we choose fit very well with traditional roles assigned to women may still not be enough to make us question whether there might be another way to represent the sam e biologi­ cal phenomena. In my other writings I exam ine w om en’s ordinary experience o f m enstruation and m enopause looking for alternative visions.94 Here I sug­ gest som e other ways that these physiological events could be described. First, consider the teleological nature o f the system , its assum ed goal o f im planting a fertilized egg. W hat if a w om an has done everything in her pow er to avoid having an egg im plant in her uterus, such as birth control or abstinence from heterosexual sex. Is it still appropriate to speak o f the single p u rp o se o f her m en stru al cycle as dedicated to im plantation? From the w om an’s vantage point, it might capture the sense o f events better to say the purpose o f the cycle is the production o f m enstrual flow. Think for a m om ent how that might change the description in medical texts: “A drop in the fo r­ merly high levels o f progesterone and estrogen creates the appropriate envi­ ronm ent for reducing the excess layers o f endom etrial tissue. Constriction o f capillary blood vessels causes a lower level o f oxygen and nutrients and paves the way for a vigorous production o f menstrual fluids. As a part o f the renewal o f the rem aining endom etrium , the capillaries begin to reopen, con­ tributing som e blood and serous fluid to the volume o f endom etrial m ater­

36

E M IL Y M A R T I N

ial already beginning to flow.” I can see no reason why- the m enstrual blood itself could not be seen as the desired “product” o f the female cycle, except when the woman intends to becom e pregnant. W ould it be similarly possible to change the nature o f the relationships assum ed am ong the m em bers o f the organization— the hypothalamus, pitu­ itary, ovaries, and so on? Why not, instead o f an organization with a con ­ troller, a team playing a gam e? W hen a w om an w ants to get pregnant, it w ould be appropriate to describe her pituitary, ovaries, and so on as com bin­ ing together, com m unicating with each other, to get the ball, so to speak, into the basket. The im age o f hierarchical control could give way to special­ ized function, the way a basketball team needs a center as well as a defense. W hen she did not want to becom e pregn an t, the pu rp ose o f this activity could be considered the production o f m enstrual flow. Eliminating the hierarchical organization and the idea o f a single purpose to the m enstrual cycle also greatly enlarges the ways we could think o f m en o­ pause. A team which in its youth played vigorous soccer might, in advancing years, decide to enjoy a quieter “new gam e” where players still interact with each other in satisfying ways but where gentle interaction itselfis the point o f the gam e, not getting the ball into the basket— or the flow into the vagina.

NOTES

1. Thomas Laqueur, “ Female Orgasm , Generation, and the Politics o f Reproductive Biology.” Representations 14 (Spring 1986): 1-82. 2. Ibid., p. 10. 3. Charles E. Rosenberg, “TheTherapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning, and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America.” In Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg, ed., The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine, p. 5 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979). 4. Ibid., pp. 5-6. 5. Edward John Tilt, The Change of Life in Health and Disease (London: John Churchill, 1857), p. 54. 6. Ibid., pp. 54, 57. 7. Patricia Crawford, “Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England.” Past and Present 91 (1981): 50. 8. Ibid., p. 50. 9. William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 45-4-9.

M edical M etaphors o fW o m en ’s Bodies

37

10. C ra w fo rd ,Attitudes to Menstruation, p. 63. 11. See K risten Lukcr, Abortion and the Politics ojMotherhood (Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 1984), p. 18; Craw ford, Attitudes to Menstruation, pp. 53—54; and Vieda Skultans, “The Sym bolic Significance o f M enstruation and the M enopause,” Man 5, no. 4 (1 9 7 0 ): 6 3 9 — 51. 12. Laqueur, “ Female O rgasm ,” p. 4. 13. Ibid., p. 8. 14. Elizabeth Fee, “ Science and the Woman Problem : H istorical Perspectives. In Michael S.Teitelbaum , e d ., Sex Difference:Social and Biological Perspectives, (N ew Y ork: Doubleday, 1976), p. 190. 15. W alter Bagehot, qu o ted in Fee, Science, p. 190. 16. Patrick G ed d es and J. A rthur T h om p son , The Evolution o f Sex (N ew York: Scribner and W ilford, 1890). p. 122. 17. Ibid., p. 123. 18. Ibid., pp. 2 7 0 - 7 1 . 19. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors o f the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (N ew York: H a rp e r and Row, 1976), pp. 1 9 5 -9 6 . 20. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (N ew York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 61 —62. 21. G ed d es and T h o m p so n , Evolution o f Sex, p. 2 4 4 ; see also C arro ll SmithR o sen b erg, “ P u b erty to M en op au se: The C ycle o f Fem ininity in N ineteenthC entury A m erica.” In M ary H artm an and Lois W. Bonner, e d ., Clio’s Consciousness Raised (N ew Y ork: H arper and Row, 1974), pp. 28—29. 22. Sm ith-R osenberg, “ Puberty to M enopause,” pp. 2 5 -2 7 . 23. Q u oted in Laqueur, “ Fem ale O rgasm ,” p. 32. 24. H avelock Ellis, Men andWomen (London: W alter Scott, 1904), pp. 284, 293, quoted in Laqueur, “ Fem ale O rgasm ,” p. 32. 25. Sm ith-Rosenberg, “Puberty to Menopause,” pp. 30—31; Joel W ilbush, “ W hat’s in a N am e? Som e Linguistic Aspects o f the Clim acteric.” Maturitas 3 (1 9 8 1 ): 5. 26. Andrew F. C urrier, The Menopause (N ewYork: A ppleton, 1897), pp. 25—26. 27. C aro le H aber, Beyond Sixty-Five: The Dilemma o f Old Age in America’s Past (C am bridge: C am bridge U niversity Press, 1983), p. 69. See John M ason G oo d, The Study o f Medicine, vol. 2 (N ew York: H arper and Row, 1843), pp. 23—25 for an ex p la­ nation o f why the clim acteric affects men m ore severely than w om en. 28. Sm ith-R osenberg, “ Puberty to M enopause,” p. 30. 29. J. M adison Taylor, “The Conservation o f Energy in Those o f AdvancingYears,” Popular Science Monthly 6 4 (1 9 0 4 ), p. 41 3. 30 . Q u o te d in H o w ard B erlin er, “ M edical M o d es o f P ro d u c tio n .” In Peter W right and A ndrew Treacher, e d ., The Problem o f Medical Knowledge: Examining the

38

EMILY MARTIN

Social Construction o f Medicine, pp. 1 70—71 (E d in b u rg h : E d in b u rgh U n iv ersity P ress, 1982). 31. R. C . Lew ontin, Steven R ose, and-Leon J. K am in, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, p. 58 (N ew York: Pantheon, 1984). 32. Lewontin et a l., Not in Our Genes, p. 5 9 ; see also A rthur C . G uyton, Textbook o f Medical Physiology, 7th. ed. (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1986), pp. 23—24. 33. In an extrem ely im portant series o f p ap ers, D onna Haraway has traced the replacem ent o f organic functional views in biology by cybernetic system s views and shown the perm eation o f genetics and population biology by m etaph ors o f invest­ m ent, quality con trol, and m axim ization o f profit. See Haraway, “Animal Sociology and a N atu ral E conom y o f the Body P o litic,” Signs 4 (1 9 7 8 ): 2 1 —3 6 , and “ The B io lo g ical E n te rp rise: S e x , M ind, and P ro fit fro m H um an E n g in eerin g to Sociobiology,” Radical History Review 20 (1 9 7 9 ): 2 06—37. 34. Lewontin et a l., Not in Our Genes, p. 59. 35. D avid F. H o rro b in , Introduction to Human Physiology (Philadelphia: D avis, 1 973), pp. 7 —8. See also G uyton, Physiology o f the Human Body, 6th. ed. (Philadelphia: S a u n d e rs, 1 9 8 4 ), p. 7. In g e n e ra l, m o re so p h isticated ad van ced te x ts such as G uyton, Textbook, p. 87 9 give m ore attention to feedback loops. 36. Allen Lein, The Cycling Female:Her Menstrual Rhythm (San Francisco: Freem an, 1 979), p. 14. 37. G uyton, Textbook, p. 885. 38. Ralph C. Benson, Current Obstetric and Gynecologic Diagnosis andTreatment (L os A ltos, C alif.: Lange, 1982), p. 129. 39. Frank H. N etter, A Compilation ofPaintings on the Normal and Pathologic Anatomy o f the Reproductive System (T he CIBA C o llectio n o f M edical Illu stratio n s, vol. 2) (Sum m it, N .J.: CIBA , 1965), p. 115. 4 0 . R onald V. N o r ris, PMS: Premenstrual Syndrome (N ew York: Berkeley, 1984), p. 6. 4 1 . K ath arina

D alto n

and

R aym on d

G ree n e ,

“T h e

P rem en stru al

Syndrom e,"British Medical Journal (May 1983): 6. 4 2 . Vernon B. M ountcastle, Medical Physiology, 14th. ed, vol. 2 (St. Louis, M o.: Mosby, 1980), p. 1615. 4 3 . G uyton, Textbook, p. 885. 4 4 . Ibid. 4 5 . Lein, The Cycling Female, p. 84. 4 6 . Evelyn Fox Keller docum ents the pervasiveness o f hierarchical m odels at the cellular level in Refections on Gender and Science (N ew Haven:Yale University Press, 1 985), pp. 1 5 4 -5 6 . 4 7 . N o rris, PMS, p. 6.

M ed ica l M eta p h o rs o fW o m e n ’s Bodies

39

4 8 . A nthony G id d e n s, The Class Structure o j the Advanced Societies (N e w York: H arp er and Row, 19 7 5 ), p. 185. 4 9 . F ran ces B. M c C re a , “T h e P o litics o f M e n o p au se : T h e ‘ D isc o v e r y ’ o f a D eficien cy D isease,” Social Problems 31 (1 9 8 3 ): 1 1 1—23. 5 0. Lein, The Cycling Female, pp. 7 9 , 97. 5 1. D aniel J. O ’N eill 1 9 8 2 :1 1 . 5 2 . A rth u r J. V ander, Ja m e s H. S h erm an , and D o ro th y S. L u c ian o , Human Physiology :The Mechanisms o f Body Functions, 4th. ed. (N ew York: M cG raw H ill, 1 985), p. 5 9 7 . 53. N o r ris, PMS, p. 181. 54. Vander et al., Human Physiology, p. 598. 55. N o rris, PMS, p. 181. 56. N etter, A Compilation, p. 121. 57. Ib id ., p. 116. 5 8. Vander et a l., Human Physiology, p. 580. 5 9. G u y ton , Textbook, p .9 6 8 . 6 0 . Vander et a l ., Human Physiology, p. 576. 6 1 . Lein , The Cycling Female, p. 4 3 . 6 2 . G u yton , Textbook, p. 9 7 6 . 6 3 . Vander et a l., Human Physiology, p. 577. 6 4 . G u y to n , Textbook, p. 9 7 6 ; see very sim ila r ac c o u n ts in L e in , The Cycling Female, p. 6 9 ; M o u n tc astle , Medical Physiology, p. 1 6 1 2 ; E llio t B. M aso n , Human Physiology (M e n lo P ark , C a lif.: 1 9 8 3 ), p. 5 1 8 ; B e n so n , Current Obstetric, pp. 128-29. 6 5 . W illiam F. G an on g, Review o f Medical Physiology, 1 1th. ed. (L o s A lto s, C alif.: Lange, 1 9 8 5 ), p. 6 3. 6 6 . Langdon W inner, Autonomous Technology:Technics-out-oJ-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (C am b rid g e : M IT Press, 19 7 7 ), pp. 185, 187. 6 7. T h o m as E w bank, TheWorld as a Workshop, or:The Physical Relationship o f Man to the Earth (N ew Y ork : A p p leto n , 1 855), pp. 21—22. 6 8 . Ib id ., p. 23. 6 9 . Ib id ., p. 27. 7 0 . Ib id ., p. 141; on E w bank, see John F. K asson , Civilizing the Machine:Technology and RepublicanValues in America, 1 7 9 6 —1900 (N ew York: Penguin, 1 9 7 6 ), pp. 148—51. 7 1 . M arvin Fisher, Workshops in the Wilderness: The European Response to American Industrialization, 1830—1 8 6 0 (N ew Y ork: O x fo rd U niversity P ress, 1 9 6 7 ), p. 153. 7 2 . Ib id ., p. 1 5 3 ; see also Fisher, “M e lv ille ’s ‘ B ell-T ow er’ : A D o u b le T h ru st.” American Quarterly 18 (1 9 6 6 ): 2 0 0 —7.

40

EM ILY

M A RT IN

7 3 . Lew is M u m fo rd , The Myth o j the Machine: Technics and Human Development, vol. 1 (N ew Y ork: H arco u rt, B race, and W orld, 19 6 7 ), p. 282. 7 4 . M um ford, The Myth o f the Machine:The Pentagon o j Power, vol. 2 (N ew York: H arcourt, Brace, and W orld, 1970), p. 180. 75. David N oble, The Forces ojProduction (N ew Y ork: K n opf, 1984), p. 312. 76. Vern Bullough, “Sex and the M edical M odel,” The Journal o j Sex Research 11, no. 4 ( 1 9 7 5 ) : 298. 77. M ason, Human Physiology, p. 525. 78. G uyton, Physiology, p. 62 4 . 79. Arthur J. Vander et al., Human Physiology, 3d. ed. (1 9 8 0 ), pp. 4 8 3 —84. The latest (4 th .) edition o f this tex t has rem oved the first o f these sentences but kept the second (see 4th. ed. [1985], p. 557). 80. Vander et al., Human Physiology, 4th. e d ., p. 577. 81. Ibid., pp. 5 6 7 ,5 6 8 . 82. M ason, Human Physiology, p. 4 1 9 ; Vander et al. Human Physiology, 4th. e d ., p. 4 8 3 . 83. G anong, Review, p. 77 6 . 84. M ason, Human Physiology, p. 4 2 3 . 85. G uyton, Physiology, pp. 4 9 8 —99. 86. Thom as Sernka and Eugene Jacobson , Gastrointestinal Physiology:The Essentials (B altim ore: W illiam s and W ilkins, 1983), p. 7. 8 7 . V ander et a l., Human Physiology, 4 th . e d ., pp. 5 5 7 —5 8 ; G an o n g, Review, p. 356. 88. Em il N ovak, Textbook o j Gynecology, 2d. ed. (Baltim ore: W illiam s and W ilkins 1 9 4 4 ), p .5 3 6 ; N ovak and E dm und N ovak, Textbook o j Gynecology (B a ltim o re : W illiam s and W ilkins, 1952), p. 600. 89. Edm und N ovak, G eorgeanna Seegar Jo n es, and H ow ard W. Jo n es, Textbook o j Gynecology, 7th. ed. (B altim ore: W illiam s and W ilkins, 1965), p. 64 2 . 9 0 . See Frances B. M cC rea and G erald E. M arkle, “The Estrogen R eplacem ent Controversy in the USA and U K : Different A nsw ers to the Sam e Q u e stio n ?” Social Studies o j Science 14 (1 9 8 4 ): 1—26, for the very different clinical treatm ent for this lack in the United States and the United K ingdom . 9 1 . P atricia A. K au fe rt and Penny G ilb e rt, “W o m en, M en o p au se, and M ed icalization ,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 10, no. 1 (1 9 8 6 ): 7 —2 1 ; W orld H ealth O rgan izatio n S cien tific G ro u p , Research on the Menopause, W orld H ealth O rganization Technical R e p o rt Series 6 7 0 (G en eva: W orld H ealth O rgan izatio n, 1981): 74. 92. G uyton, Textbook, p. 979.

M edical M etaphors o fW o m en ’s Bodies

41

93. H ow ard Jo n es and G eorgeanna Seegar Jo n es, Novak’s Textbook o f Gynecoloy, 10th. ed. (Baltim ore: W illiam s and W ilkins, 1981), p. 799. 94. Sadly enough, even the w om en ’s health m ovem ent literature contains the sam e negative view o f m enstruation— failed production— as does scientific m edi­ cine. See B oston W o m en ’s H ealth B ook C ollective. The New Our Bodies Ourselves (N ew York: Sim on and Schuster, 1984), p. 217 and Federation o f Feminist W om en’s Health C en ters, A NewView i f aWoman’s Body (N ew Y ork: Sim on and Schuster, 1981), p. 74. As in the case o f prepared childbirth literature, this is evidence o f the invisi­ ble pow er o f the ideology o f the dom inant culture.

2

Rape: On Coercion and Consent

Catharine A. MacKinnon

N e g o tia tio n sjo r sex are not carried on like th o sefo r the rent o j a house. There is ojten no defin ite sta te on which it can be sa id th a t the two have agreed to sexual intercourse. They proceed by touching,Jeeling,Jum bling,by signs a n d words which are not generally in th e jo rm o j a Roman stipu lation . — H onore, twentieth-century British legal scholar and philosopher

If sexuality is central to women’s definition and forced sex is central to sexuality, rape is indige­ nous, not exceptional, to wom en’s social con­ dition. In feminist analysis, a rape is not an iso­ lated event or moral transgression or individual interchange gone wrong but an act o f terror­ ism and torture within a system ic context o f group subjection, like lynching. The fact that the state calls rape a crim e opens an inquiry into the state’s treatment o f rape as an index to its stance on the status o f the sexes. Under law, rape is a sex crim e that is not regarded as a crime when it looks like sex. The law, speaking generally, defines rape as inter­ course with force or coercion and without con­ sent. 1 Like sexuality under male supremacy, this

I j y o u ’re livin g w ith a man,

definition assumes the sadomasochistic defini­

what are y o u doin g running

tion o f sex: intercourse with force or coercion

around the streets g e ttin g raped? — Edward H arrington, defense attorney in N ew Bedford gang rape case

Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Rape: On Coercion and Consent.” From Toward a Feminist Theory o f the State by Catharine A. M acKinnon. Copyright © 1989 by Catharine M acKinnon. Reprinted by permission o f Harvard University Press.

Rape: O n Coercion a n d Consent

43

Rape is an extension o f

can be or become consensual. It assumes p or­

sexism in some ways, and that’s

nography’s positive-outcom e-rape scenario: dominance plus submission is force plus con­ sent. This equals sex, not rape. Under male su­

an extension o f dealing with a woman as an object. .. Stinky

premacy, this is too often the reality. In a critique

[her rapist] seemed to me as

o f male supremacy, the elements “with force and

though he were only a step

without consent” appear redundant. Force is

fu rth er away, a step awayfrom the guys who sought me on the streets, who insist, my mother

present because consent is absent. Like heterosexuality, male suprem acy’s par­ adigm o f sex, the crim e o f rape centers on pen­

could have died, I could be

etration.2 The law to protect w om en’s sexual­ ity from forcible violation and expropriation

walking down the street and i j

defines that protection in male genital term s.

1 don’t answer their rap, they

Women do resent forced penetration. But p e­

got to go get angry and get all

nile invasion o f the vagina may be less pivotal to w om en ’s sexuality, pleasure, or violation,

hostile and stu jf as though I walk down the street as a . . .

than it is to male sexuality. This definitive ele­ m ent o f rape centers upon a male-defined loss.

that my whole being is there to

It also centers upon one way men define loss o f

please men in the streets. But

exclusive access. In this light, rape, as legally

Stinky only seemed like some­

defined, appears m ore a crim e against female

one who had taken it a step Ju rth er . . . hefe lt like an extension, hefe lt so common, hefe lt so ordinary, hefe lt so fam iliar, and it was maybe that whatfrightened me the most was that how similar to

monogamy (exclusive access by one man) than against w om en’s sexual dignity or intimate in­ tegrity. Analysis o f rape in term s o f concepts o f property, often invoked in Marxian analysis to criticize this disparity, fail to encom pass the realities o f rap e .3 W om en’s sexuality is, s o ­ cially, a thing to be stolen, sold, bought, b ar­ tered , or exchanged by others. But women never own or possess it, and men never treat it,

other men he seemed. They

in law or in life, with the solicitude with which

don’t comefrom Mars,folks.

they treat property. To be property would be

— Carolyn Craven, reporter

an im provement. The m om ent women “have” it— “have se x ” in the dual g en d er/sex u ality sense— it is lost as theirs. To have it is to have it taken away. This may explain the male incom ­ prehension that, once a woman has had sex, she loses anything when subsequently raped.

44

CATH ARIN E A . M A C K IN N O N

To them w om en have nothing to lose. It is true that dignitary h arm s, because nonm aterial, are ephem eral to the legal m ind. But w om en ’s loss through rape is not only less tangible; it is seen as unreal. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that penetration itse lf is considered a violation from the m ale poin t o f view, w hich is both why it is the cen terp iece o f se x and why w om en’s sexuality, w om en’s gen der definition, is stigm atic.The question for social explanation becom es not why som e women tolerate rape but how any wom en m anage to resent it. Rape cases finding insufficient evidence o f force reveal that acceptable sex, in the legal perspective, can entail a lot o f force. This is both a result o f the way specific facts are perceived and interpreted within the legal system and the way the injury is defined by law. The level o f acceptable force is adjudicated starting just above the level set by what is seen as norm al male sexual behav­ ior, including the norm al level o f force, rath er than at the v ic tim ’s, or w om en’s, point o f violation.4 In this context, to seek to define rape as violent not sexual is as understandable as it is futile. Som e fem inists have rein ter­ preted rape as an act o f violence, not sexuality, the threat o f which intimidates all w om en.5 O thers see rape, including its violence, as an expression o f male sexuality, the social im peratives o f which define as well as threaten all w om en .6 The first, epistem ologically in the liberal tradition, com prehends rape as a displacem ent o f pow er based on physical force onto sexuality, a p re ­ existing natural sphere to which domination is alien. Susan Brownm iller, for exam ple, exam ines rape in rio ts, w ars, p ogrom s, and revolutions; rape by police, parents, prison guards; and rape m otivated by racism . Rape in norm al circumstances,, in everyday life, in ordinary relationships, by m en as m en, is barely m en tion ed .7 W omen are raped by guns, age, white suprem acy, the state— only derivatively by the penis. The view that derives m ost directly from victim s’ experiences, rather than from their denial, construes sexuality as a social sphere o f m ale pow er to which forced sex is paradigm atic. Rape is not less sexual for being violent.To the extent that coercion has b ecom e inte­ gral to m ale sexuality, rap e may even be sexual to the d egree that, and because, it is violent. The poin t o f defining rape as “violence not se x ” has b een to claim an ungendered and nonsexual ground for affirm ing sex (heterosexuality) while rejectin g violence (rap e). The p roblem rem ains what it has alw ays been : telling the difference. The convergence o f sexuality with violence j long used at law to deny the reality o f w om en ’s violation, is recognized by rape su r­ vivors with a difference: w here the legal system has seen the intercou rse in rape, victim s see the rape in intercourse. The uncoerced context for sexual

Rape: On Coercion and Consent

45

expression becom es as elusive as the physical acts com e to feel indistinguish­ able. Instead o f asking what is the violation o f rape, their experience suggests that the m ore relevant question is, what is the nonviolation o f intercourse? To know what is wrong with rape, know what is right about sex. If this, in turn, proves difficult, the difficulty is as instructive as the difficulty men have in telling the difference when women see one. Perhaps the w rong o f rape has proved so difficult to define because the unquestionable starting point has been that rape is defined as distinct from in tercou rse,8 while for women it is difficult to distinguish the two under conditions o f male dominance. In the name o f the distinction between sex and violence, reform o f rape statutes has sought to redefine rape as sexual assault.9 Usually, assault is not consented to in law; either it cannot be consented to, or consensual assault rem ains assau lt.10Yet sexual assault consented to is intercourse, no m atter how much force was used. The substantive reference point im plicit in exist­ ing legal standards is the sexually norm ative level o f force. Until this norm is confronted as such, no distinction between violence and sexuality will p ro ­ hibit m ore instances o f w om en’s experienced violation than does the exist­ ing definition. Conviction rates have not increased under the reform statu tes.11 The question remains what is seen as force, hence as violence, in the sexual aren a.12 M ost rapes, as women live them , will not be seen to vio­ late w om en until sex and violence are con fron ted as m utually definitive rather than as mutually exclusive. It is not only m en convicted o f rape who believe that the only thing they did that was different from what men do all the tim e is get caught. C onsent is supposed to be w om en’s fo rm o f control over intercou rse, different from but equal to the custom o f m ale initiative. Man p ro p o ses, w om an disposes. Even the ideal in it is not m utual. A part from the disparate consequences o f refusal, this m odel does not envision a situation the woman controls being placed in, or choices she fram es. Yet the consequences are attributed to her as if the sexes began at arm ’s length, on equal terrain, as in the contract fiction. Am biguous cases o f consent in law are archetypically referred to as “half won argum ents in parked cars.” 13Why not half lost? Why isn ’t half enough? Why is it an argum ent? Why do men still want “it,” feel entitled to “it,” when women do not want them? The law o f rape presents consent as free exercise o f sexual choice under conditions o f equality o f pow er w ithout exposing the underlying structure o f constraint and dispar­ ity. Fundam entally, d esirability to m en is su p p osed a w o m an ’s fo rm o f pow er because she can both arouse it and deny its fulfillm ent. To w om an is attributed both the cause o f m an’s initiative and the denial o f his satisfaction.

46

CATH ARIN E A . M A C K IN N O N

This rationalizes force. C onsent in this m odel becom es m ore a m etaphysi­ cal quality o f a w om an’s being than a choice she m akes and com m unicates. Exercise o f w om en’s so-called pow er presu pposes m ore fundam ental social pow erlessn ess.14 The law o f rape d ivides w om en into sph eres o f con sent acco rd in g to indices o f relationship to m en . W hich category o f p resu m ed co n sen t a w om an is in depends upon who she is relative to a man who wants her, not what she says or does.T h ese categories tell men whom they can legally fuck, who is open season, and who is o ff lim its, not how to listen to w om en. The paradigm categories are the virginal daughter and other young girls, with w hom all sex is proscribed, and the whorelike wives and prostitutes, with w hom no sex is proscribed. D aughters may not consent; wives and p rosti­ tutes are assum ed to, and cannot b u t.15 Actual consent or nonconsent, far less actual desire, is com paratively irrelevant. If rape laws existed to enforce w o m en ’s control over access to their sexuality, as the con sent defense im plies, no would mean no, m arital rape would not be a w idespread ex ce p ­ tio n ,16 and it would not be effectively legal to rape a prostitute. All wom en are divided into parallel provinces, their actual consent coun t­ ing to the degree that they diverge from the paradigm case in their category. V irtu ou s w om en, like young g irls, are unconsenting, virgin al, rapable. Unvirtuous w om en, like wives and prostitutes, are consenting, w hores, unrapable.The age line under which girls are presum ed disabled from consent­ ing to se x , w hatever they say, rationalizes a condition o f sexu al coercion which women never outgrow. O ne day they cannot say yes, and the n ext day they cannot say no. The law takes the m ost aggravated case for fem ale p ow ­ erlessness based on gender and age com bined and, by form ally prohibiting all sex as rape, makes consent irrelevant on the basis o f an assum ption o f p o w ­ erlessness. This defines those above the age line as pow erful, whether they actually have pow er to con sent or not. The vulnerability girls share with boys— age— dissip ates with tim e. The vulnerability girls share w ith w o ­ m en— gender— does not. As with protective labor laws for w om en only, dividing and protecting the m ost vulnerable becom es a device for not p ro ­ tecting everyone who needs it, and also may function to target those singled out for special protection for special abuse. Such protectio n has not p re ­ vented high rates o f sexual abuse o f children and may contribute to eroticiz­ ing young girls as forbidden. As to adult w om en, to the exten t an accused knows a w om an and they have sex, her consent is in ferred.T h e exem ption for rape in m arriage is con ­ sistent with the assum ption underlying m ost adjudications o f forcible rape:

Rape: On Coercion and Consent

47

to the extent the parties relate, it was not really rape, it was p erso n al.17 As m arital exem ptions erode, preclusions for cohabitants and voluntary social com panions may expand. As a m atter o f fact, for this purpose one can be acquainted with an accused by friendship or by m eeting him for the first time at a bar or a party or by hitchhiking. In this light, the partial erosion o f the m arital rape exem ption looks less like a change in the equation betw een w om en’s experience o f sexual violation and m en’s experience o f intimacy, and m ore like a legal adjustm ent to the social fact that acceptable h eterosex­ ual sex is increasingly not limited to the legal family. So although the rape law may not now always assum e that the woman consented simply because the parties are legally one, indices o f closeness, o f relationship ranging from nod­ ding acquaintance to living together, still contraindicate rape. In marital rape cases, courts look for even greater atrocities than usual to underm ine their assum ption that if sex happened, she wanted i t .18 This approach reflects m en ’s experience that women they know do m ean­ ingfully consent to sex with them . That cannot be rape; rape m ust be by som eone else, som eone unknown.They do not rape women they know. Men and w om en are unequally socially situated with regard to the experience of rape. Men are a good deal m ore likely to rape than to be raped. This form s their experience, the m aterial conditions o f their epistem ological position. Alm ost half o f all w om en, by contrast, are raped or victim s o f attem pted rape at least once in their lives. Alm ost 4 0 percent are victims o f sexual abuse in childhood.19 W omen are m ore likely to be raped than to rape and are m ost often raped by men whom they know.20 Men often say that it is less awful for a woman to be raped by som eone she is close to: “The em otional traum a suffered by a person victimized by an indi­ vidual with whom sexual intimacy is shared as a norm al part o f an ongoing m arital relationship is not nearly as severe as that suffered by a person who is victim ized by one with whom that intimacy is not shared.”21 Women often feel as or m ore traum atized from being raped by som eone known or trusted, som eone with whom at least an illusion o f mutuality has been shared, than by som e stranger. In whose interest is it to believe that it is not so bad to be raped by som eone who has fucked you before as by som eone who has not? Disallowing charges o f rape in m arriage may, depending upon o n e’s view o f norm alcy, “rem ove a substantial obstacle to the resum ption o f norm al m ari­ tal relationships.”22 N ote that the obstacle is not the rape but the law against it. Apparently som eone besides feminists finds sexual victimization and se x ­ ual intimacy not all that contradictory under current conditions. Som etim es it seem s as though women and men live in different cultures.

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Having defined rape in m ale sexu al te rm s, the law ’s prob lem , w hich b eco m es the victim ’s problem , is distinguishing rape from sex in specific cases. The adjudicated line betw een rape and intercourse com m only centers on som e assessm ent o f the w om an ’s “w ill.” But how should the law or the accused know a w om an’s will? The answer com bines aspects o f force with aspects o f nonconsent with elem ents o f resistan ce, still effective in som e states.23 Even when nonconsent is not a legal elem ent o f the offense, juries tend to infer rape from evidence o f force or resistance. In Michigan, under its reform rape law, consent was judicially held to be a defense even though it was not included in the statu te.24 The deeper problem is that w om en are socialized to passive receptivity; may have or perceive no alternative to acquiescence; may prefer it to the escalated risk o f injury and the humiliation o f a lost fight; subm it to survive. Also, force and desire are not mutually exclusive under male supremacy. So long as dom inance is eroticized, they never will be. Som e wom en eroticize dom inance and subm ission; it beats feeling forced. Sexual intercourse may be deeply unwanted, the woman would never have initiated it, yet no force may be present. So much force may have been used that the woman never risked saying no. Force may be used, yet the woman may prefer the sex— to avoid m ore force or because she, too, eroticizes dom inance. W omen and m en know this. C onsidering rape as violence not sex evades, at the m om en t it m ost seem s to confront, the issue o f who controls w om en’s sexuality and the d o m in an ce/su bm ission dynam ic that has defined it. W hen se x is violen t, w om en may have lost control over what is done to them , but absence o f force does not ensure the presence o f that control. Nor, under conditions o f m ale dom inance, does the presence o f force make an interaction nonsexual. If sex is norm ally som ething m en do to w om en, the issue is less whether there was force than whether consent is a m eaningful con cept.2S To explain w om en’s gen der status on a rape theory, Susan Brow nm iller argues that the threat o f rape benefits all m e n .26 How is unspecified. Perhaps it benefits them sexually, hence as a gender: male initiatives toward w om en carry the fear o f rape as su pp o rt for persuading com pliance, the resulting appearance o f which has been considered seduction and term ed consent. H ere the victim s’ p ersp ectiv e g rasp s w hat liberalism applied to w om en denies: that forced sex as sexuality is not exceptional in relations betw een the sex es but constitutes the social m eaning o f gender. “R ape is a m an ’s act, whether it is a male or a fem ale man and whether it is a man relatively p e r­ m anently or relatively tem porarily; and being raped is a w om an’s e x p e r i­ ence, whether it is a fem ale or a m ale w om an and whether it is a w om an rel­

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atively perm anently or relatively tem porarily.”27To be rapable, a position that is social not biological, defines what a woman is. Marital rape and battery o f wives have been separated by law. A feminist analysis suggests that assault by a m an ’s fist is not so different from assault by a penis, not because both are violent but because both are sexual. Battery is often precipitated by w om en ’s noncom pliance with gender requirem ents.28 N early all incidents occu r in the hom e, m ost in the kitchen or bedroom . M ost m urdered women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends, usually in the bedroom . The battery cycle accords with the rhythms o f heterosexual se x .29The rhythm o f lesbian sadom asochism is the sam e.30 Perhaps violent interchanges, especially between genders, make sense in sexual term s. The larger issue raised by sexual aggression for the interpretation o f the relation between sexuality and gender is: what is heterosexuality? If it is the erotization o f dom inance and subm ission, altering the participants’ gender does not elim inate the sexual, or even gendered, content o f aggression. If heterosexuality is m ales over fem ales, gender m atters independently. A rgu­ ably, heterosexuality is a fusion o f the two, with gender a social outcom e, such that the acted upon is fem inized, is the “girl” regardless o f sex, the actor correspondingly m asculinized. W henever women are victimized, regardless o f the biology o f the perpetrator, this system is at work. But it is equally true that whenever pow erlessness and ascribed inferiority are sexually exploited or enjoyed— based on age, race, physical stature or appearance or ability, or socially reviled or stigm atized status— the system is at work. Battery thus appears sexual on a deeper level. Stated in boldest term s, sexuality is violent, so perhaps violence is sexual. Violence against women is sexual on both counts, doubly sexy. If this is so, wives are beaten, as well as raped, as wom en— as the acted upon, as gender, meaning sexual, objects. It further follow s that acts by anyone which treat a woman according to her object label, wom an, are in a sense sexual acts. The extent to which sexual acts are acts o f objectification rem ains a question o f o n e’s account o f w o­ m en ’s freedom to live their own meanings as other than illusions, o f individ­ uals’ ability to resist or escape, even momentarily, prescribed social m ean­ ings short o f political change. Clearly, centering sexuality upon genitality distinguishes battery from rape at exactly the juncture that both existing law, and seeing rape as violence not sex, do. M ost w om en get the m essage that the law against rape is virtually unen­ forceable as applied to them . W om en’s experience is m ore often d elegiti­ m ated by this than the law is. W omen, as realists, distinguish betw een rape and experiences o f sexual violation by concluding that they have not “really”

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been raped if they have ever seen or dated or slept with or been m arried to the man, if they were fashionably dressed or not provably virgin, if they are prostitutes, if they put up with it or tried to get it over with, if they were force-fucked for years. The im plicit social standard becom es: if a woman probably could not prove it in court, it was not rape. The distance between m ost intimate violations o f women and the legally perfect rape m easures the imposition o f an alien definition. From wom en’s point o f view, rape is not prohibited; it is regulated. Even women who know they have been raped do not believe that the legal system will see it the way they do. Often they are not wrong. Rather than deterring or avenging rape, the state, in many victim s’ experiences, perpetuates it. Women who charge rape say they were raped twice, the second time in court. Under a male state, the boundary violation, humiliation, and indignity o f being a public sexual spectacle makes this m ore than a figure o f speech.31 Rape, like many other crim es, requires that the accused possess a crim i­ nal mind (mens rea) for his acts to be criminal. The m an’s mental state refers to what he actually u nderstood at the tim e or to what a reasonable man should have understood under the circum stances. The problem is that the injury o f rape lies in the meaning o f the act to its victim, but the standard for its criminality lies in he meaning o f the act to the assailant. Rape is only an injury from w om en’s point o f view. It is only a crim e from the male point o f view, explicitly including that o f the accused. The crim e o f rape is defined and adjudicated from the male standpoint, presum ing that forced sex is sex and that consent to a man is freely given by a w om an. U nder m ale suprem acist stan dards, o f cou rse, they are. Doctrinally, this means that the m an’s perceptions o f the w om an’s desires deter­ mine whether she is deem ed violated.This might be like other crim es o f sub­ jective intent if rape were like other crim es. With rape, because sexuality defines gen der n o rm s, the only differen ce betw een assault and what is socially defined as a noninjury is the m eaning o f the encounter to the w om an. Interpreted this way, the legal problem has been to determ in e w hose view o f that m eaning constitutes what really happened, as if what happened objectively exists to be objectively determ ined.This task has been assum ed to be separable from the gender o f the participants and the gen­ dered nature o f their exchange, when the objective norm s and the assailant’s perspective are identical. As a result, although the rape law oscillates between subjective tests and objective standards invoking social reasonableness, it uniformly presum es a single underlying reality, rather than a reality split by the divergent meanings

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inequality produces. Many women are raped by men who know the m eaning o f their acts to their victims perfectly well and proceed anyway.32 But women are also violated every day by men who have no idea o f the m eaning o f their acts to the w om en. To them it is sex. T herefore, to the law it is sex. That becom es the single reality o f what happened. When a rape prosecution is lost because a woman fails to prove that she did not consent, she is not consid­ ered to have been injured at all. It is as if a robbery victim , finding him self unable to prove he was not engaged in philanthropy, is told he still has his money. H erm eneutically unpacked, the law assum es that, because the rapist did not perceive that the woman did not want him, she was not violated. She had sex. Sex itself cannot be an injury. Women have sex every day. Sex makes a woman a woman. Sex is what women are for. Men set sexual m ores ideologically and behaviorally, define rape as they imagine women to be sexually violated through distinguishing that from their im age o f what they norm ally do, and sit in judgm ent in m ost accusations o f sex crim es. So rape com es to mean a strange (read Black) man who does not know his victim but does know she does not want sex with him, going ahead anyway. But m en are system atically conditioned not even to notice what w om en want. Especially if they consume pornography, they may have not a glim m er o f w om en’s indifference or revulsion, including when wom en say no explicitly. Rapists typically believe the woman loved it. “Probably the single m ost used cry o f rapist to victim is ‘You bitch . . . s lu t . . . you know you want it. You all want it’ and afterw ard, ‘ there now, you really enjoyed it, didn ’t you ?’ ” 33 W om en, as a survival strategy, m ust ignore or devalue or m ute desires, particularly lack o f them , to convey the im pression that the man will get what he wants regardless o f what they want. In this context, to m easure the genuineness o f consent from the individual assailant’s point o f view is to adopt as law the point o f view which creates the problem . M easuring consent from the socially reasonable, meaning objective m an’s, point o f view rep ro ­ duces the sam e problem under a m ore elevated label.34 M en’s pervasive b elief that women fabricate rape charges after consenting to sex m akes sense in this light.To them, the accusations are false because, to them , the facts describe sex. To interpret such events as rapes d istorts their experience. Since they seldom consider that their experience o f the real is anything other than reality, they can only explain the w om an’s version as m aliciously invented. Similarly, the m ale anxiety that rape is easy to charge and difficult to disprove, also widely believed in the face o f overwhelm ing evidence to the contrary, arises because rape accusations express one thing m en cannot seem to control: the meaning to women o f sexual encounters.

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Thus do legal d o c trin e s, in coheren t o r puzzling as sy llo gistic lo g ic, becom e coherent as ideology. For exam ple, when an accused w rongly but sincerely believes that a woman he sexually forced consented, he may have a defense o f mistaken belief in consent o r fail to satisfy the m ental requirem ent o f knowingly proceeding against her w ill.35 Som etim es his knowing disre­ gard is m easured by what a reasonable man w ould disregard. This is consid­ ered an objective test. Som etim es the disregard need not be reasonable so long as it is sincere. This is considered a subjective test. A feminist inquiry into the distinction between rape and intercourse, by contrast, would inquire into the m eaning o f the act from w om en ’s point o f view, which is neither. W hat is w rong with rape in this view is that it is an act o f subordination o f wom en to men. It expresses and reinforces w om en’s inequality to men. Rape with legal impunity m akes w om en second-class citizens. This analysis reveals the way the social con ception o f rape is shaped to in terp ret particular encounters and the way the legal con ception o f rape authoritatively shapes that social con ception . W hen perspective is bound up w ith situ ation , and situation is u n equ al, w hether o r n ot a co n tested interaction is authoritatively con sidered rape com es dow n to w hose m ean ­ ing w ins. If sexuality is relation al, specifically if it is a pow er relation o f gender, consent is a com m unication under conditions o f inequality. It tran ­ spires som ew here betw een what the w om an actually w anted, what she was able to exp ress about what she w anted, and what the man com prehended she w anted. D iscussing the conceptually sim ilar issue o f revocation o f p rio r consent, on the issue o f the conditions under which w om en are allow ed to control access to their sexuality from one penetration to the next, one com m entator n otes: “ Even where a w om an revokes prio r consent, such is the m ale ego that, seized o f an exaggerated assessm ent o f his sexual prow ess, a man might genuinely believe her still to be consenting; resistance may be m isinterpreted as enthusiastic cooperation; protestations o f pain or disinclination, a spur to m ore sophisticated or m ore ardent love-m aking; a clear statem ent to stop, taken as referrin g to a particu lar intim acy rath er than the entire p e r fo r­ m ance.” 36 This vividly captures com m on m ale readings o f w om en’s indica­ tions o f disinclination under many circum stances37 and the perceptions that determ ine whether a rape occurred. The specific defense o f m istaken belief in consent merely carries this to its logical apex. From whose standpoint, and in w hose in terest, is a law that allow s one p e r so n ’s con dition ed u n co n ­ sciousness to contraindicate another’s violation? In conceiving a cognizable injury from the viewpoint o f the reasonable rapist, the rape law affirmatively

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rew ards men with acquittals for not com prehending w om en’s point o f view on sexual encounters. W hether the law calls this coerced consent or defense o f m istaken belief in consent, the m ore the sexual violation o f w om en is routine, the m ore porn ograp hy exists in the w orld the m ore legitim ately, the m ore beliefs equating sexuality with violation becom e reasonable, and the m ore honestly w om en can be defined in term s o f their fuckability. It w ould be com para­ tively sim ple if the legal problem were limited to avoiding retroactive falsifi­ cation o f the accused’s state o f m ind. Surely there are incentives to lie. The deeper problem is the rape law’s assum ption that a single, objective state o f affairs existed, one that merely needs to be determ ined by evidence, when so many rapes involve honest men and violated w om en. W hen the reality is split, is the woman raped but not by a rapist? U nder these conditions, the law is designed to conclude that a rape did not occur. To attem pt to solve this problem by adopting reasonable belief as a standard w ithout asking, on a sub­ stantive social basis, to whom the belief is reasonable and why— meaning, what conditions make it reasonable— is onesided: m ale-sided.38 W hat is it reasonable for a man to believe concerning a w om an’s desire for sex when heterosexuality is com pulsory? What is it reasonable for a man (accused or juror) to believe concerning a w om an’s consent when he has been viewing positive-outcom e-rape pornography?39The one w hose subjectivity becom es the objectivity o f “what happened” is a m atter o f social m eaning, that is, a m atter o f sexual politics. One-sidedly erasing w om en’s violation or dissolv­ ing presum ptions into the subjectivity o f either side are the alternatives dic­ tated by the term s o f the ob ject/su b ject split, respectively. These alternatives will only retrace that split to w om en’s detrim ent until its term s are con ­ fronted as gendered to the ground.

NOTES

1. W. LaFave and A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law (St. Paul: West, 1986), sec. 5.11 (pp. 68 8 -9 ); R. M. Perkins and R. N. Boyce, Criminal Law (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1980), p. 210. 2. One component of Sec. 213.0 of the Model Penal Code (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1980) defines rape as sexual intercourse with a female not the wife of the perpetrator, “with some penetration however slight.” Most states fol­ low. New York requires penetration (sec. 130.00 [I]). Michigan’s gender-neutral sexual assault statute includes penetration by objects (sec. 750.520 a[h];

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7 2 0 .5 2 0 [b ]).T h e 1980 Annotation to M odel Penal C o d e (O fficial D raft and Revised C om m en ts, sec. 213.1 [d]) questions and discusses the penetration requirem ent at 34 6 —4-8. For illustrative case law, see Liptroth v. State, 335 So.2d 683 (Ala. C rim . App. 19 7 6 ), cert, denied 4 2 9 U .S. 963 (1 9 7 6 ); State v. Kidw ell, 556 P.2d 20, 27 Ariz. App. 4 6 6 (A riz. C t. App. 1976); People v. O ’ N eal, 50 III. App. 3d 9 0 0 , 365 N .E . 2d 1 333 (III. App. C t. 19 7 7 ); C om m onw ealth v. Usher, 371 A-2d 995 (Pa. Super. C t. 1977); C om m onw ealth v. Grassm yer, 237 Pa. Super. 39 4 , 352 A .2d 178 (Pa. Super. C t. 1975) (statu tory rape conviction reversed because defend an t’s claim that fiveyear-old ch ild ’s vaginal w ound was inflicted with a b ro o m stick cou ld not be d is­ proved and com m onw ealth could therefore not prove requisite penetration; inde­ cent assault conviction su stain ed ). Im potence is som etim es a defense and can su p ­ p o rt laws that prevent charging underage boys with rape o r attem pted rape; Foster v. Com m onw ealth, 31 S.E . 50 3 , 96 Va. 306 (1 8 9 6 ) (boy under fourteen cannot be guilty o f attem pt to com m it offense that he is legally assum ed physically im potent to p erp etrate). 3. In the m anner o f many socialist-fem inist adaptations o f m arxian categories to w om en ’s situation, to analyze sexuality as prop erty short-circuits analysis o f rape as m ale sex u ality and p re su m e s rather than d ev elo p s links betw een se x and class. C on cepts o f p roperty need to be rethought in light o f sexuality as a form o f o b jec­ tification. In som e ways, for w om en legally to be considered p roperty w ould be an im provem ent, although it is not recom m ended. 4 . For contrast b etw een the perspectives o f the victim s and the co u rts, see Rusk v. State, 43 Md. App. 4 7 6 , 4 0 6 A .2d 6 2 4 (M d. C t. Spec. App. 1979) (en banc banc), rev’d , 289 M d. 2 3 0 , 4 2 4 A .2d 7 2 0 (1 9 8 1 ); G onzales v. State, 516 P.2d 592 (1 9 7 3 ). 5. Susan Brow nm iller, Against OurWill: Men,Women, and Rape (N ew York: Sim on and Schuster, 1975), p. 15. 6. Diana E. H. R ussell, The Politics o f Rape:TheVictim’s Perspective (N ew Y ork: Stein and Day, 1 977); Andrea M edea and Kathleen T h om p so n , Against Rape (N ew York: Farrar, Straus and G iro u x, 1974); Lorenne M . G. C lark and D ebra Lew is, Rape-.The Price o j Coercive Sexuality (Toronto: W om en’s P ress, 1977); Susan G riffin, “ R ape: The A ll-A m erican C rim e,” Ramparts (Septem ber 19 7 1 ), pp. 26—35. T i-G race Atkinson connects rape with “the institution o f sexual in tercou rse,” Amazon Odyssey: The First Collection o f Writings by the Political Pioneer o f the Women’s Movement (N ew York: Links B ooks, 1 9 7 4 ), pp. 13—23. Kalam u ya Salaam , “ R ap e: A R adical Analysis from the A frican -A m erican P ersp ectiv e,” in Our Women Keep Our Skies Jrom Falling (N ew O rleans: N ko m bo , 1980), pp. 25—40. 7. Racism is clearly everyday life. Racism in the U nited States, by singling out Black m en for allegations o f rape o f white w om en, has helped obscure the fact that it is m en w ho rape w om en, disproportionately w om en o f color.

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8. Pam ela Foa, “W h at’s W rong with Rape?” in Feminism and Philosophy, ed. Mary V etterlin g-B raggin , F re d e ric k A. E lliston , and Jan e English (T otow a, N .J.: Littlefield, A dam s, 1977), pp. 3 4 7 - 5 9 ; Michael Davis, “W hat’s So Bad about Rape?” (Paper presented at the annual m eeting o f the Academy o f C rim inal Ju stice Sciences, Louisville, Ky., M arch 1982). “Since we would not want to say that there is anything m orally w rong with sexual intercourse per se, we conclude that the w rongness o f rape rests with the m atter o f the w om an’s consent” ; Carolyn M. Shafer and Marilyn Frye, “ Rape and R espect,” in Vetterling-Braggin, Elliston, and English, Feminism and Philosophy, p. 334. “ Sexual contact is not inherently harm ful, insulting o r provoking. Indeed, ordinarily it is som ething o f which we are quite fond. The difference is [that] ordinary sexual in tercou rse is m ore o r less consented to while rape is not” ; Davis, “W hat’s So Bad?” p. 12. 9. Liegh B ien en , “ R ap e III— N ation al D ev elo p m e n ts in R ap e R efo rm Legislation,” 6 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 170 (1 9 8 0 ). See also Cam ille LeG rande, “ R ape and R ape Law s: Sexism in Society and Law,” 61 California Law Review 919 (May 1973). 10 People v. Sam uels, 58 Cal. Rptr. 4 3 9 , 4 4 7 (1 9 6 7 ).

*.

11. Ju lia R . Sch w en d in ger and H erm an Schew endinger, Rape and Inequality (Berkeley: Sage Library o f Social Research, 1983), p. 4 4 ; K. Polk, “ Rape R eform and C rim inal Ju stice Processing,” Crime and Delinquency 31 (April 1985): 191—05. “What can be concluded about the achievem ent o f the underlying goals o f the rape reform m o v e m e n t?. . . If a m ajor goal is to increase the probability o f convictions, then the results are slight at b e s t . . . or even negligible” (p. 199) (C alifornia data). See also P. B art and P. O ’ B rien . Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies (E lm sfo rd , N .Y .: Pergam on, 1985). pp. 129—31. 12. See State v. A lston, 310 N .C . 399, 312 S.E . 2d 4 7 0 (1 9 8 4 ) and discussion in Susan Estrich, Real Rape (C am bridge: Harvard U niversity Press, 1987), pp. 6 0 - 6 2 . 13. N o te, “Forcible and Statutory R ape: An Exploration o f the O peration and O bjectives o f the C onsent Standard,” 62 Yale Law Journal 55 (1 9 5 2 ). 14. A sim ilar analysis o f sexu al h arassm ent su g g ests that w om en have such “pow er” only so long as they behave according to m ale definitions o f fem ale desir­ ability, that is, only so long as they accede to the definition o f their sexuality (hence, them selves, as ge n d e r fem ale) on m ale term s. W omen have this pow er, in other w ords, only so long as they rem ain pow erless. 15. See C o m m e n t, “ R ape and Battery betw een H usband and W ife,” 6 Stanford Law Review 7 1 9 (1 9 5 4 ). O n rape o f p rostitu tes, see, e .g ., People v. M cC lu re, 42 111. App. 9 5 2 , 356 N .E . 2d 89 9 (1 st D ist. 3d Div. 1976) (on indictm ent for rape and arm ed ro bbery o f p ro stitu te w here sex was ad m itted to have o ccu rred , defendant acquitted o f rap e but “gu ilty o f robbing her while arm ed w ith a knife”); M agnum

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v. State, ITenn. C rim . App. 155, 43 2 S.W. 2d 4 9 7 (Tenn. C rim . App. 1968) (no conviction for rap e ; conviction fo r sexual violation o f age o f con sent o vertu rn ed on grou n d that failure to in stru ct jury to d eterm in e if com plainan t w as “a baw d, lew d o r kept fem ale” w as reversible e rro r; “ A baw d fem ale is a fem ale w ho keeps a h ou se o f p ro stitu tio n , and co n d u cts illicit in te rc o u rse . A lew d fem ale is one given to unlaw ful indulgence o f lu st, either fo r sexual indulgence or profit . . . A kept fem ale is one w ho is su p p o rted and kept by a man for his ow n illicit in ter­ c o u rse ” ; com plainan t “ frequ en ted the Blue M oon Tavern; she had been there the night before . . . she kept com pany with . . . a m arried m an separated from his w ife . . . T h e re is so m e p r o o f o f h er bad re p u ta tio n fo r tru th and v e racity ” ). Johnson v. State, 598 S.W. 2d 803 (Tenn. C rim . App. 197 9 ) (unsuccessful defense to charge o f rap e that “even [if] technically a p ro stitu te can be rap ed . . . the act o f the rape itse lf w as no trau m a w hatever to this type o f unchaste w om an”); People v. G o n z ales, 96 M isc. 2d 6 3 9 , 4 0 9 N .Y .S. 2d 4 9 7 (C r m . C rt. N.Y. C ity 1978) (p ro stitu te can be rap ed if “it can be proven beyond a reason able dou b t that she revoked her con sent p rio r to sexual in terco u rse becau se the defendant . . . used the coercive force o f a p isto l). 16. Peop le v. L ib e rta, 6 4 N.Y. 2d 152, 4 7 4 N .E . 2d 5 6 7 , 4 8 5 N .Y .S. 2d 20 7 (1 9 8 4 ) (m arital rape recognized, contrary precedents discussed). For a sum m ary o f the cu rren t state o f the m arital exem ption , see Joanne Schulm an, “State-by-State In form ation on M arital R ap e E xem p tion Law s,” in D iana E. H . R u ssell, Rape in Marriage (N ew York: M acm illan, 19 8 2 ), pp. 3 7 5 —8 1 ; Patricia Searles and Ronald Berger, “The C u rren t Status o f Rape R eform Legislation: An Exam ination o f State Statutes,” 10 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 25 (1 9 8 7 ). 17. O n “ social interaction as an elem ent o f consent” in a voluntary social c o m ­ panion co n text, see M odel Penal C o d e, sec. 2 1 3 .1 . “The p rio r social interaction is an indicator o f consent in addition to acto r’s and victim ’s behavioral interaction d u r­ ing the com m issio n o f the o ffen se” ; Wallace Loh , “Q : W hat Has R efo rm o f Rape Legislation W rought? A :T ruth in Crim inal Labeling,’" Journal o f Social Issues 37, no. 4 (1 9 8 1 ): 4 7 . 18. E .g ., People v. Burnham , 176 Cal. App. 3d 1134, 222 C al. Rptr. 6 3 0 (C al. App. 1986). 19. D iana E. H. R u ssell and N ancy H o w ell, “The P revalen ce o f R ap e in the U nited S tates R evisited ,” Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society 8 (Su m m er 1983): 6 6 8 —9 5 ; and D. R ussell, The Secret Trauma: Incestuous Abuse ofWomen and Girls (N ew Y ork: Basic B ooks, 1986). 20. Pauline Bart found that w om en w ere m ore likely to be raped— that is, less able to sto p a rape in p ro gress— when they knew their assailant, particularly when they had a p rio r o r current sexual relationship; “A Study ofW om en W ho Both Were

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R aped and A voided R ap e,” Journal o f Social Issues 37 (1 9 8 1 ): 132. See also Linda B elden , “ W hy W om en D o N o t R e p o rt Sexual A ssau lt” (P o rtlan d , O r e .: C ity o f Portlan d Public Serv ice E m ploym en t P ro gram , Portlan d W o m en ’s C risis Line, M arch 1 9 7 9 ); M enachem Am ir, Patterns in Forcible Rape (C h icago : U niversity o f Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 22 9 —52. 21. Answ er B rief for Plaintiff-Appellee, People v. Brow n, Sup. C t. C o lo ., Case N o. 8 ISA 102 (1 9 8 1 ): 10. 22. N o t e ,“ Forcible and Statutory Rape,” p. 55. 23. La. Rev. Stat. 1 4 .42. D elaware law requires that the victim resist, but “only to the exten t that it is reasonably necessary to make the victim ’s refusal to consent known to the defendant” ; II D el. C ode 7 6 1 (g). See also Sue Bessm er, The Laws o f Rape (N ew Y ork: Praeger, 1984). 24. See People v. T h o m p so n , 117 M ich. App. 5 2 2 , 5 2 4 , 32 4 N.W . 2d 2 2 , 24 (M ich. App. 19 8 2 ); People v. H earn, 100 Mich. App. 7 4 9 , 300 N.W . 2d 396 (Mich. App. 1980). 25. See C arol Patem an, “W omen and C onsent,” Political Theory 8 (May 1980): 1 4 9 -6 8 : “C on sen t as ideology cannot be distinguished from habitual acquiescence, assent, silent dissen t, subm ission, o r even enforced subm ission. U nless refusal o f consent or w ithdrawal o f consent are real possibilities, we can no longer speak o f ‘con sent’ in any genuine sense . . .W om en exem plify the individuals whom consent th eo rists d eclared are incapable o f consenting. Yet, sim ultaneously, w om en have been presented as always consenting, and their explicit non-consent has been treated as irrelevant o r has been reinterpreted as ‘consent” ’ (p. 150). 26. Brow nm iller, Against OurWill, p. 5. 27. Shafer and Frye, “ Rape and R espect,” p. 334. 28. See R. E m erson D obash and Russell D obash, Violence against Wives: A Case against the Patriarchy (N ew Y ork: Free Press, 1979), pp. 14—21. 29. O n the cycle o f battering, see Lenore Walker, The BatteredWoman (N ew York: H arper and Row, 1979). 30. Sam ois, Coming to Power (Palo Alto, C alif.: Alyson Publications, 1983). 31. If accounts o f sexual violation are a form o f sex, as argued in Chapter 11, vic­ tim testim ony in rape cases is a form o f live oral pornography. 32. This is apparently tru e o f undetected as well as convicted rapists. Sam uel David Sm ithym an’s sam ple, com posed largely o f the form er, contained self-selected resp o n d en ts to his ad, which read: “Are you a rapist? R esearch ers Interview ing Anonym ously by Phone to Protect Your Identity. Call . . .” Presum ably those who chose to call defin ed their acts as rapes, at least at the tim e o f respo n d in g; “The U ndetected R apist” (P h . D. d iss., Clarem ont G raduate Sch ool, 19 7 8 ), pp. 54—60, 6 3 - 7 6 ,8 0 - 9 0 ,9 7 - 1 0 7 .

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33. Nancy Gager and Cathleen Schurr, Sexual Assault: Confronting Rape in America (NewYork: Grosset and Dunlap, 1976), p. 244. 34. Susan Estrich proposes this; Real Rape, pp. 102—103. Her lack o f inquiry into social determinants o f perspective (such as pornography) may explain her faith in reasonableness as a legally workable standard for raped women. 35. See Director o f Public Prosecutions v. Morgan, 2 All E .R .H .L . 347 (1975) [England]; Pappajohn v.The Q ueen, 111 D .L .R . 3d 1 (19 8 0 ) [Canada]; People v. Mayberry, 542 P. 2d 1337 (Cal. 1975). 36. Richard H. S.Tur, “ Rape: Reasonableness andTim e,” 3 OxfordJournal of Legal Studies 4 3 2 , 441 (W inter 1981).Tur, in the context o f the Morgan and Pappajohn cases, says the “law ought not to be astute to equate wickedness and wishful, albeit mistaken, thinking” (p. 437). Rape victims are typically less concerned with wicked­ ness than with injury. 37. See Silke Vogelmann-Sine, Ellen D. Ervin, Reenie Christensen, Carolyn H. Warmsun, and Leonard P. Ullmann, “Sex Differences in Feelings Attributed to a Woman in Situations Involving Coercion and Sexual Advances,” Journal o f Personality 47 (Septem ber 1979): 429—30. 38. Estrich has this problem in Real Rape. 39. E. Donnerstein, “ Pornography: Its Effect on Violence against Women,” in Pornography and Sexual Aggression, ed. N. Malamuth and E. Donnerstein (O rlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984), pp. 65—70. Readers who worry that this could become an argum ent for defending accused rapists should understand that the reality to which it points already provides a basis for defending accused rapists. The solution is to attack the pornography directly, not to be silent about its exonerating effects, legal or social, potential or actual.

3 Mothers, Monsters, and Machines

Rosi Braidotti

Figuring Out I would like to approach the sequence “m oth­ ers, m onsters, and m achines” both thematically and m ethodologically, so as to w ork out possi­ ble connections betw een these term s. Because w om en, the biological sciences, and technol­ ogy are conceptu ally in terrelated , there can not be only one correct connection but, rather, many, h eterogen eous and potentially co n tra­ dictory ones. The q u est for m u ltip le con n ection s— or conjunctions— can also be rendered m ethod­ ologically in term s o f D onna Haraway ^ “figura­ tions.” 1The term refers to ways o f expressing fem inist fo rm s o f kn o w ledge that are not caught in a m im etic relationship to dom inant scientific discourse. This is a way o f m arking my own difference: as an intellectual woman who

R osi B ra id o tti, “ M o th e rs, M o n ste rs, and M ach in es.” From Nomadic Subjects by R o si B ra id o tti. C o p y r igh t © 1994 by C o lu m b ia U n iversity P ress. R e p rin ted w ith p e rm issio n o f the publisher.

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has acquired and earned the right to speak publicly in an academ ic context, I have also inherited a tradition o f fem ale silence. C enturies o f exclusion o f wom en from the exercise o f discursive pow er are ringing through my words. In speaking the language o f m an, I also intend to let the silence o f woman echo gently but firm ly; I shall not conform to the phallogocentric m o d e .2 I want to question the status o f feminist theory in term s not only o f the con ­ ceptual tools and the gender-specific perceptions that govern the production o f fem inist research but also o f the form our perceptions take. The “nom adic” style is the best suited to the quest for fem inist figurations, in the sense o f adequate representations o f fem ale experience as that which cannot easily be fitted within the param eters o f phallogocentric language. The con figu ration o f ideas I am trying to set up: m o th ers, m o n sters, machines, is therefore a case study— not only in term s o f its propositional content but also in defining my place o f enunciation and, therefore, my rela­ tionship to the readers who are my partners in this discursive gam e. It is a new figuration o f fem inist subjectivity. Q uoting D eleu ze,3 1 would like to define this relationship as “rhizom atic” ; that is to say not only cerebral, but related to experience, which im plies a strengthened connection betw een thought and life, a renewed proxim ity o f the thinking p ro c e ss to existen tial reality.4 In my thinking, “rh izom atic” thinking leads to what I call a “nom adic” style. M oreover, a “nom adic” connection is not a dualistic o r oppositional way o f thinking5 but rather one that views discourse as a positive, m ultilayered net­ work o f pow er relations.6 L et m e develop the term s o f my nom adic n etw ork by referen ce to Foucauldian critiques o f the pow er o f discourse: he argues that the produc­ tion o f scientific know ledge w orks as a com plex, interrelated n etw ork o f truth, power, and desire, centered On the subject as a bodily entity. In a d ou ­ ble m ovem ent that 1 find m ost politically useful, Foucault highlights both the norm ative foundations o f theoretical reason and also the rational m odel o f power. “ Power” thus becom es the name for a com plex set o f interconnec­ tions, betw een the spaces where truth and knowledge are produced and the system s o f control and dom ination. I shall unw rap my three in terrelated notions in the light o f this definition o f power. Last, but not least, this style im plies the sim ultaneous dislocation not only o f my place o f enunciation as a fem inist intellectual but also accordingly o f the position o f my readers. As my interlocutors I am constructing those read­ ers to be “ not ju st” traditional intellectuals and academ ics but also active, interested, and concerned participants in a project o f research and e x p e ri­

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mentation for new ways o f thinking about human subjectivity in general and fem ale subjectivity in particular. 1 mean to appeal therefore not only to a requirem ent for passionless truth but also to a passionate engagem ent in the recognition o f the theoretical and discursive im plications o f sexual differ­ ence. In this choice o f a theoretical style that leaves am ple room for the exploration o f subjectivity, I am following the lead o f Donna Haraway, whose plea for “passionate detachm ent” in theory making I fully share.7 Let us now turn to the thematic or propositional content o f my constella­ tion o f ideas: m others, m onsters and machines. For the sake o f clarity, let m e define them: “m others” refers to the m ater­ nal function o f w om en. By WOMEN I m ean not only the biocultural entities thus represented, as the em pirical subjects o f sociopolitical realities, but also a discursive field: fem inist theory. The kind o f fem inism I want to defend rests on the presence and the experience o f real-life wom en whose political consciousness is bent on changing the institution o f pow er in our society. Feminist theory is a two-layered project involving the critique o f existing definitions, representations as well as the elaboration o f alternative theories about w om en . Fem inism is the m ovem ent that brin gs into practice the dim ension o f sexual difference through the critique o f gender as a power institution. Feminism is the question; the affirm ation o f sexual difference is the answer. This point is particularly im portant in the light o f m odernity’s imperative to think differently about ou r historical con dition . The central question seem s to be here: how can we affirm the positivity o f fem ale subjectivity at a tim e in history when our acquired perceptions o f “the subject” are being rad­ ically questioned? How can we reconcile the recognition o f the problem atic nature o f the notion and the construction o f the subject with the political necessity to posit female subjectivity? By MACHINES I m ean the scientific, political, and discursive field o f tech­ nology in the broadest sense o f the term . Ever since H eidegger the philoso­ phy o f m odernity has been trying to com e to term s with technological rea­ son. The Frankfurt School refers to it as “instru m ental reason” : one that places the end o f its endeavors well above the means and suspends all ju d g­ m ent on its inner logic. In my work, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, I approach the technology issue from within the French tradition, following the m aterialism o f Bachelard, Canguilhem , and Foucault. By MONSTERS I mean a third kind o f discourse: the history and philoso­ phy o f the biological sciences, and their relation to difference and to differ­ ent bodies. M onsters are human beings who are born with congenital m al­

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form ations o f their bodily organ ism . They also represent the in betw een, the m ix ed , the am bivalent as im plied in the ancient G reek ro o t o f the w ord “m onsters,” teras, which m eans both horrible and w onderful, object o f aber­ ration and adoration. Since the nineteenth century, following the classifica­ tion system o f m onstrosity by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, bodily m alform ations have been defined in term s o f “excess,” “lack,” or “displacem ent o f o rgan s.8 Before any such scientific classification was reached, however, natural phi­ losophy had struggled to com e to term s with these objects o f abjection. The constitution o f teratology as a science offers a paradigm atic exam ple o f the ways in which scientific rationality dealt with differences o f the bodily kind. The discourse on m onsters as a case study highlights a question that seem s to m e very im portan t for fem inist theory: the status o f difference within rational thought. Follow ing the analysis o f the philosophical ratio suggested by D errida9 and other contem porary French philosophers, it can be argued that W estern thought has a logic o f binary oppositions that treats difference as that which is other-than the accepted norm . The question then becom es: can we free difference from these norm ative connotations? Can we learn to think differently about difference?10 The m onster is the bodily incarnation o f difference from the basic human n orm ; it is a deviant, an a-nom aly; it is abnorm al. As G eorges Canguilhem points out, the very notion o f the human body rests upon an im age that is intrinsically prescriptive: a norm ally form ed human being is the zero-degree o f monstrosity. Given the special status o f the m onster, what light does he throw on the structures o f scientific discourse? How w as the difference o f/in the m onster perceived within this discourse? When set alongside each other, m oth ers/m o n sters/m ach in es may seem puzzling. There is no apparent connection am ong these three term s and yet the link soon becom es obvious if I add that recent developm ents in the field o f biotech no logy, particu larly artificial p ro creatio n , have exten d ed the pow er o f science over the m aternal body o f w om en. The possibility o f m ech ­ anizing the m aternal function is by now well within our reach; the m anipu­ lation o f life through differen t com bin ation s o f gen etic en gin eerin g has allowed for the creation o f new artificial m onsters in the high-tech labs o f our biochem ists. There is therefore a political urgency about the future o f w om en in the new reproductive technology debate, which gives a polem ical force to my constellation o f ideas— m others, m onsters, and machines. The legal, econom ic, and political repercussions o f the new reproductive technologies are far-reaching. The recent stand taken by the Rom an Catholic church and by innum erable “bioeth ics co m m itte e s” all across W estern

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Europe against experim entation and genetic manipulations may appear fair enough. They all invariably shift the debate, however, far from the pow er o f science over the w om en’s body in favor o f placing increasing emphasis on the rights o f the fetus or o f em bryos. This emphasis is played against the rights o f the m other— and therefore o f the w om an— and we have been w itnessing system atic slippages betw een the discourse against genetic m anipulations and the rhetoric o f the antiabortion cam paigners. N o area o f contem porary technological developm ent is m ore crucial to the construction o f gender than the new reproductive technologies. The central thematic link I want to exp lo re betw een m others, m on sters, and m achines is therefore my argu ­ m ent that contem porary biotechnology displaces women by making p rocre­ ation a high-tech affair.

Conjunction 1: Woman / Mother as Monster As part o f the discursive gam e o f nom adic networking 1 am attem pting here, let us start by associating two o f these term s: let us superim pose the image o f the w om an /m oth er onto that o f the m onstrous body. In other w ords, let us take the case study o f m onsters, deviants, or anom alous entities as being paradigm atic o f how differences are dealt with within scientific rationality. Why this association o f femininity with monstrosity? The association o f w om en with m onsters go es as far back as A ristotle who, in The Generation o fAnimals, posits the human norm in term s o f bodily organization based on a m ale m odel.Th us, in reproduction, when everything goes according to the n orm a boy is produced; the female only happens when som ething go es w rong or fails to occur in the reproductive process. The fem ale is therefore an anomaly, a variation on the main them e o f man-kind. The emphasis A ristotle places on the masculinity o f the human norm is also reflected in his theory o f conception: he argues that the principle o f life is carried exclusively by the sperm , the female genital apparatus providing only the passive receptacle for human life. The sperm -centered nature o f this early theory o f procreation is thus connected to a massive m asculine bias in the general A ristotelian theory o f subjectivity. For A ristotle, not surprisingly, wom en are not endowed with a rational so u l.11 The topos o f w om en as a sign o f abnormality, and therefore o f difference as a m ark o f inferiority, rem ained a constant in W estern scientific discourse. This association has produced, am ong other things, a style o f m isogynist lit­ erature with which anyone who has read Gulliver’s Travels m ust be familiar: the

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horror o f the female body. The interconnection o f women as m onsters with the literary text is particularly significant and rich in the genre o f satire. In a sense, the satirical text is implicitly m onstrous, it is a deviant, an aberration in itself. Eminently transgressive, it can afford to express a degree o f misogyny that might shock in other literary genres. Outside the literary tradition, however, the association of femininity with monstrosity points to a system o f pej oration that is implicit in the binary logic o f oppositions that characterizes the phallogocentric discursive order. The m onstrous as the negative pole, the pole o f pejoration, is structurally analogous to the feminine as that which is other-than the established norm , whatever the norm may be. The actual propositional content o f the term s o f opposition is less significant for me than its logic. Within this dualistic system, monsters are, just like bodily female subjects, a figure o f devalued difference; as such, it pro­ vides the fuel for the production o f norm ative discourse. If the position o f women and monsters as logical operators in discursive production is com pa­ rable within the dualistic logic, it follows that the misogyny o f discourse is not an irrational exception but rather a tightly constructed system that requires difference as pejoration in order to erect the positivity o f the norm . In this respect, misogyny is not a hazard but rather the structural necessity o f a system that can only represent “otherness” as negativity. The them e o f wom an as devalued difference rem ained a constant in W estern thought; in philosophy especially, “she” is forever associated to unholy, disorderly, subhuman, and unsightly phenomena. It is as if “she” car­ ried within herself som ething that m akes her prone to being an enemy o f mankind, an outsider in her civilization, an “other.” It is im portant to stress the light that psychoanalytic theory has cast upon this hatred for the feminine and the traditional patriarchal association o f women with monstrosity. The wom an’s body can change shape in pregnancy and childbearing; it is therefore capable o f defeating the notion o f fixed bodilyform, o f visible, rec­ ognizable, clear, and distinct shapes as that which marks the contour o f the body. She is m orphologically dubious. The fact that the fem ale body can change shape so drastically is troublesom e in the eyes o f the logocentric economy within which to see is the prim ary act o f knowledge and the gaze the basis o f all epistem ic aw areness.12 The fact that the male sexual organ does, o f course, change shape in the lim ited time span o f the erection and that this operation— however precarious— is not exactly unrelated to the changes o f shape undergone by the fem ale body during pregnancy consti­ tutes, in psychoanalytic theory, one o f the fundamental axes o f fantasy about sexual difference.

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The appearance o f sym m etry in the way the two sexes work in rep rodu c­ tion m erely brings out, however, the separateness and the specificity o f each sexual organization. What looks to the naked eye like a com parable pattern: erection /pregn an cy, betrays the ineluctable difference. As psychoanalysis successfully dem onstrates, reproduction does not encom pass the w hole o f human sexuality and for this reason alone anatomy is not destiny. M oreover, this partial analogy also leads to a sense o f (false) anatom ical com plem entar­ ity between the sexes that contrasts with the com plexity o f the psychic rep ­ resentations o f sexual difference. This double recognition o f both proxim ity and separation is the breeding ground for the rich and varied netw ork o f m is­ understandings, identifications, interconnections, and m utual dem ands that is what sexual human relationships are all about. Precisely this paradoxical m ixture o f “the same and yet other” betw een the sexes generates a drive to denigrate woman in so far as she is “other-than” the male norm . In this respect hatred for the feminine constitutes the phallogo­ centric econom y by inducing in both sexes the desire to achieve order, by means o f a one-way pattern for both. As long as the law o f the O ne is o p er­ ative, so will be the denigration o f the feminine, and o f w om en with i t .13 Woman as a sign o f difference is m onstrous. If we define the m onster as a bodily entity that is anom alous and deviant vis-a-vis the norm , then we can argue that the fem ale body shares with the m onster the privilege o f bringing out a unique blend offascination and horror. This logic o f attraction and rep ul­ sion is extrem ely significant; psychoanalytic theory takes it as the fundam en­ tal structure o f the mechanism o f desire and, as such, o f the constitution o f the neurotic sym ptom : the spasm o f the hysteric turns to nausea, displacing itself from its object. Julia Kristeva, drawing extensively on the research o f Mary D ouglas, con­ nects this m ixtu re14 to the maternal body as the site o f the origin o f life and consequently also o f the insertion into m ortality and death. We are all o f w om an born , and the m o th er’s body as the threshold o f existence is both sacred and soiled, holy and hellish; it is attractive and repulsive, all-powerful and therefore im possible to live with. Kristeva speaks o f it in term s o f “abjec­ tion” ; the abject arises in that gray, in between area o f the m ixed, the am bigu­ ous. The m onstrous or deviant is a figure o f abjection in so far as it trespasses and transgresses the barriers between recognizable norm s or definitions. Significantly, the abject approxim ates the sacred because it ap p ears to contain within itself a constitutive ambivalence where life and death are rec­ onciled. Kristeva emphasizes the dual function o f the m aternal site as both life- and death-giver, as object o f worship and o f terror. The notion o f the

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sacred is generated precisely by this blend o f fascination and horror, which prom pts an intense play o f the imaginary, o f fantasies and often nightmares about the ever-shifting boundaries between life and death, night and day, masculine and feminine, active and passive, and so forth. In a remarkable essay about the head o f the M edusa, Freud connected this logic o f attraction and repulsion to the sight o f female genitalia; because there is nothing to see. in that dark and m ysterious region, the imagination goes haywire. Short o f losing his head, the male gazer is certainly struck by castration anxiety. For fear o f losing the thread o f his thought, Freud then turns his distress into the m ost overdeterm ined o f all questions: “what does woman want?” A post-Freudian reading o f this text perm its us to see how the question about female desire em erges out o f male anxiety about the representation o f sexual difference. In a m ore Lacanian vein, K risteva adds an im portan t insight: the female sex as the site o f origin also inspires awe because o f the psychic and cultural imperative to separate from the m other and accept the Law o f the Father. The incest taboo, the fundamental law o f our social sys­ tem , builds on the mixture o f fascination and horror that characterizes the fem inine/m aternal object o f abjection. As the site o f prim ary repression, and therefore that which escapes from representation , the m oth er’s body becom es a turbulent area o f psychic life. Obviously, this analysis merely describes the mechanisms at work in our cultural system ; no absolute necessity surrounds the sym bolic absence o f Woman. On the contrary, feminists have been working precisely to put into images that which escapes phallogocentric m odes o f representation. Thus, in her critique o f psychoanalysis, Luce Irigaray points out that the dark conti­ nent o f all dark continents is the m other-daughter relationship. She also sug­ gests that, instead o f this logic o f attraction and repulsion, sexual difference may be thought out in term s o f recognition and wonder. The latter is one o f the fundamental passions in D escartes’ treatise about human affectivity: he values it as the forem ost o f human passions, that which makes everything else possible. Why Western culture did not adopt this way o f conceptualizing and experiencing difference and opted instead for difference as a sign of negativ­ ity rem ains a critical question for me. It is because o f this phallogocentric perversion that femininity and m on ­ strosity can be seen as isomorphic. W om an/m other is m onstrous by excess; she transcends established norm s and transgresses boundaries. She is m on­ strous by lack: w om an/m other does not possess the substantive unity o f the masculine subject. Most im portant, through her identification with the fem ­

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inine she is m onstrous by displacem ent: as sign o f the in between areas, o f the indefinite, the am biguous, the m ixed, w om an/m other is subjected to a con ­ stant process o f m etaphorization as “other-than.” In the binary structure o f the logocentric system , “wom an,” as the eternal pole o f opposition, the “other,” can be assigned to the m ost varied and often contradictory term s. The only constant remains her “becom ing-m etaphor,” w hether o f the sacred o r the profane, o f heaven or hell, o f life o r death. “ W oman” is that w hich is assign ed and has no pow er o f self-definition. “Woman” is the anomaly that confirm s the positivity o f the norm .

Conjunction 2 -.Teratology and the Feminine The history o f teratology, or the science o f m onsters, dem onstrates clearly the ways in which the body in general and the female body in particular have been conceptualized in W estern scientific discourse, progressin g from the fantastic dim ension o f the bodily organism to a m ore rationalistic construc­ tion o f the body-machine. The m onster as a human being born with congen­ ital m alform ations undergoes a series o f successive representations histori­ cally, before it gives rise, in the latter part o f the eighteenth century, to an acceptable, scientific discourse. The work o f French epistem ologist and philosopher o f science G eorges Canguilhem and o f his disciple Michel Foucault is extrem ely useful in study­ ing the m odes o f interaction o f the norm al and the pathological, the n orm a­ tive and the transgressive in W estern philosophy. For Canguilhem , the stakes in theory o f m onstrosity are the questions o f reproduction, o f origins: “how can such m onstrous creatures be conceived?” The conception o f m onsters is what really haunts the scientific im agination. W hereas psychoanalysts like Lacan and Irigaray argue that the epistem (ophil)ic question o f the origin lies at the heart o f all scientific investigation, Canguilhem is interested in p ro ­ viding the historical perspective on how the scientific discourse about m on ­ sters em erged. He argues that teratology becam e constituted as a discipline when it required the conceptual and technological means o f m astering the pro/rep ro d u ction o f m onsters. In other w ords, the scientific and technolog­ ical know-how necessary for the artificial reproduction o f human anom alies is the precondition for the establishment o f a scientific discipline concerned with abnorm al beings. This means that on the discursive level, the m onster points out the m ajor epistem ological function played by anom alies, abnorm alities, and pathology

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in the constitution o f biological sciences. Historically, biologists have privi­ leged phenom ena that deviate from the n o rm , in o rder to exem plify the n o r­ mal structure o f developm ent. In this respect the study o f m onstrous births is a forerunner o f m odern embryology. Biologists have set up abnorm al cases in ord er to elucidate norm al behavior; psychoanalysis will follow exactly the sam e logic for m ental disorders. The proxim ity o f the norm al and the patho­ logical dem onstrates the point Foucault m ade in relation to m adness and rea­ son: scientific rationality is im plicitly n orm ative, it functions by exclusion and disqualification according to a dualistic logic. The history o f discourse about m on sters conventionally falls into three chron ological perio ds. In the first, the G reek s and R om ans m aintained a notion o f a “race” o f m onsters, an ethnic entity possessing specific character­ istics. They also relied on the notion o f “abjection,” seeing the m onster not only as the sign o f m arvel but also o f disord er and divine wrath. The practice o f exposing m onstrous children as unnatural creatures was inaugurated by the G reeks. Thus O edipus him self— “swollen foot”— was not “norm al,” and his destruction should have been in the o rder o f things. M ore generally, classical mythology represents no founding hero, no main divine creature or dem igod as being o f w om an born . In fact, one o f the con ­ stan t them es in the m aking o f a go d is his “u n n atu ral” birth : his ability, through subterfuges such as im m aculate con ception s and other tricks, to short-circuit the orifice through which m ost hum ans beings pop into the spatio-tem poral realm o f existence. The fantastic dim ension o f classical m ytho­ logical discourse about m onsters illustrates the paradox o f aberration and adoration that I m entioned earlier, and it therefore inscribes an antimaternal dim ension at the very heart o f the matter. We can make a further distinction betw een the baroque and enlightened or “scientific” discourses on m onsters. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­ tu ries, the m onster still possesses the classical sense o f som ething w onder­ ful, fantastic, rare, and precious. Ju st like the m adm an, the dw arf and other m arvels, it participates in the life o f h is/h e r town and enjoys certain privi­ leges. For instance, dw arves as cou rt je ste rs and fools can transgress social conventions, can say and do things that “n orm al” human beings cannot afford to say or do. The im agination o f the tim es runs w ild as to the origins o f m onsters as objects o f horror and fascination, as som ething both exceptional and o m i­ nous. The question o f the origins o f m on sters accom panies the developm ent o f the m edical sciences in the prescientific im agination; it conveys an in ter­ esting m ixture o f traditional superstition s and elem ents o f reflection that

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will lead to a m ore scientific m ethod o f enquiry. O ut o f the m ass o f docu­ m entary evidence on this point, I will concentrate on one aspect that throws light on my question about the connection between m onstrosity and the fem ­ inine. Am broise P are s treatise15 on wondrous beings lists am ong the causes for their conception various form s o f unnatural copulation ranging from bes­ tiality to everyday form s o f immorality, such as having sexual intercourse too often, or on a Sunday night (sic), or on the night o f any m ajor religious hol­ iday. As a m atter o f fact, all sexual practices other than those leading to healthy reproduction are suspected to be conducive to m onstrous events. Food can also play a m ajor role; the regulation o f diet is extrem ely im portant and im plicitly connected to religious regulations concerning tim e, season and cycles o f life .16 Bad weather can adversely affect procreation, as can an excess or a lack o f sem en; the devil also plays an im portant role, and he definitely interferes with norm al human reproduction. Well may we laugh at such beliefs; many still circulate in rural areas ofW estern Europe. Besides, the whole fantastic discourse about the origins o f m onsters becom es considerably less am using when we consider that w om en paid a heavy price for these wild notions. The history o f w om en’s relationship to “the devil” in W estern Europe is a history too full o f horrors for us to take these notions lightly. It is not surprising, therefore, that the baroque mind gave a m ajor role to the maternal im agination in procreation generally and in the conception o f m onsters particularly. 17The m other was said to have the actual pow er o f p ro ­ ducing a m onstrous baby simply by: (a) thinking about awful things during in tercou rse ( it’s the close-your-eyes-and-think-of-England prin ciple); (b) dreaming very intensely about something or som ebody; or (c) looking at ani­ m als o r evil-looking creatu res (this is the X erox-m achin e co m p lex : if a woman looked at a dog, for instance, with a certain look in her eyes, then she would have the pow er o f transm itting that image to the fetus and rep roduc­ ing it exactly, thus creating a dog-faced baby). I let you im agine the intense em otion that struck a village in N orthern France in the seventeenth century when a baby w as born w ho looked remarkably like the local bishop. The woman defended h erself by claiming gazing rights: she argued that she had stared at the m ale character in church with such intense devotion that ... she xeroxed him away! She saved her life and proved the fem inist theory that female gaze as the expression o f female desire is always perceived as a dangerous, if not deadly, thing. In other w ord s, the m o th e r’s im agination is as stro n g as the fo rce o f nature; in order to assess this, one needs to appreciate the special role that

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the imagination plays in the seventeenth century theories o f knowledge. It is a fundamental element in the classical worldview, and yet it is caught in great ambivalence: the imagination is the capacity to draw connections and conse­ quently to construct ideas and yet it is potentially antirational. The Cartesian Meditations are the clearest exam ple o f this ambivalence, which we find projected massively onto the pow er o f the mother. She can direct the fetus to normal developm ent or she can de-form it, un-do it, d e­ humanize it. It is as if the mother, as a desiring agent, has the power to undo the work o f legitim ate procreation through the sheer force o f her im agination. By deform ing the product o f the father, she cancels what psychoanalytic theory calls “the Name-of-the-Father.” The female “signature” o f the reproductive pact is unholy, inhuman, illegitim ate, and it rem ains the m ere pre-text to horrors to com e. Isn’t the product o f w om an’s creativity always so? This belief is astonishing however, when it is contextualized historically: consider that the debate between the Aristotelian theory o f conception, with its sperm -centered view o f things, and m other-centered notions o f procre­ ation, has a long history. The seventeenth century seem s to have reached a paroxysm of hatred for the feminine; it inaugurated a flight from the female body in a desire to m aster the w om an’s generative powers. Very often feminist scholars have taken this point as a criticism o f classi­ cal rationalism , especially in the C artesian 18 form , far too provocatively.The feminist line has been “I think therefore he is,” thus emphasizing the malecentered view o f human nature that is at work in this discourse. Whatever D e sc a rte s’ responsibility for the flight from w om anhood may be— and I m aintain that it should be carefully assessed^— for the purpose o f my re ­ search what m atters is the particular form that this flight took in the seven­ teenth century.

Conjunction 3:The Fantasy o f Male-Born Children The flight from and rejection o f the feminine can also be analyzed from a dif­ ferent angle: the history o f the biological sciences in the prescientific era, especially the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I argue that the flight from the feminine, and particularly from the m onstrous power o f the m ater­ nal imagination and desire, lies at the heart o f the recurring fantasy o f a child born from man alone. We find, for instance, alchem ists busy at w ork to try to produce the

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philosopher’s son— the homunculus, a man-m ade tiny man popping out o f the alchem ists’ laboratories, fully form ed and endowed with language. The alchem ists’ imagination pushes the prem ises o f the Aristotelian view o f p ro ­ creation to an extrem e, stressing the male role in reproduction and m inim iz­ ing the female function to the role o f a m ere carrier. Alchemy is a reductio ad absurdum o f the male fantasy o f self-reproduction. How can a child be o f man born ? In a recen t article, S. G. Allen and J. H ubbs19 argue that alchemical symbolism rests on a sim ple process— the appropriation o f the womb by male “art,” that is to say the artifact o f m ale techniques. Paracelsus, the m aster theoretician o f alchemy, is certain that a man should and could be born outside a w om an’s body. W omb envy, alias the envy for the m atrix or the uterus, reaches paradoxical dim ensions in these texts— art being m ore powerful than nature itself. The recipe is quite sim ple, as any reader o f Tristram Shandy will know. It consists o f a m ixture o f sperm and something to replace the uterus, such as the alch em ist’s jars and other containers so efficiently d escribed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. At other tim es the m atrix is replaced by an ox-hide,;.or by a m ere heap o f co m p o st or m anure. The basic assu m p tion is that the alchemists can not only imitate the work o f woman, they can also do it much better because the artifact, the artificial process o f science and technique, perfects the im perfection o f the natural course o f events and thus avoids m is­ takes. O nce rep rodu ction beco m es the pure resu lt o f m ental effo rts, the appropriation o f the feminine is com plete. On the im aginary level, therefore, the test-tube babies o f today m ark the long-term trium ph o f the alchem ists’ dream o f dom inating nature through their self-insem inating, m asturbatory practices. W hat is happening with the new reproductive technologies today is the final chapter in a long history o f fantasy o f self-generation by and for the men them selves— men o f science, but men o f the m ale kind, capable o f producing new m onsters and fascinated by their power. Ever since the mid nineteenth century, the abnorm al m onstrous beings, which had been objects o f wonder, have fallen prey to the massive medicalization o f scientific discourse. The m arvelous, im aginary dim ension o f the m onster is forgotten in the light o f the new technologies o f the body. Michel Foucault’s analysis o f m odern rationality describes the fundamental shift that has taken place in scientific discourse o f the m odern era. By the late eighteenth century, the m onster has been transferred to hos­ pital or rather, to the newly established institution o f the anatom y clinic, where it could be analyzed in the context o f the newly evolved practice o f

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comparative anatomy and experim ental biomedicine. Thus is born the sci­ ence o f teratology. Founded by G. Saint-Hilaire, by the end o f the century it had becom e an experim ental science. Its aim was to study m alform ations o f the embryo so as to understand in the light o f evolutionary theory the gene­ sis o f m onstrous beings. Notice that the initial curiosity as to the origin o f such horrendous creatures remains, but it is expressed differently. The experim ental study o f the conditions that would lead to the produc­ tion o f anom alous or m onstrous beings provides the basic epistem ological structure o f m odern embryology. Foucault’s analysis o f modernity em pha­ sizes the epistem ological shifts betw een the norm al and the pathological, reason and madness, in term s o f the understanding o f the body, the bodily roots o f human subjectivity. The biomedical sciences occupy a very signifi­ cant place in the discursive context o f modernity. Two institutions o f learning appear in the m odern era— the clinic and the hospital. The appearance o f these structures is in turn related to a m ajor the­ oretical breakthrough— the m edical practice o f anatomy. In Fou cault’s archaeological m ode, for comparative clinical anatomy to com e into being as a scientific discourse, a century-old taboo had to be lifted, the one that for­ bade the dissection o f corpses for the purpose o f scientific investigation. Western culture had respected a fundamental taboo o f the body up until then— the m edical gaze could not explore the inside o f the human body because the bodily container was considered as a metaphysical entity, marked by the secrets o f life and death that pertain to the divine being. The anatom ­ ical study o f the body was therefore forbidden until the fifteenth century and after then was strictly controlled. The nineteenth century sprang open the doors o f bodily perception; clinical anatomy thus implies a radical transfor­ mation in the epistem ological status o f the body. It is a practice that consists in deciphering the body, transforming the organism into a text to be read and interpreted by a knowledgeable medical gaze. Anatomy as a theoretical representation o f the body im plies that the lat­ ter is a clear and distinct configuration, a visible and intelligible structure. The dead body, the corpse, becom es the m easure o f the living being, and death thus becom es one o f the factors epistem ologically integrated into sci­ entific knowledge. Today, the right to scrutinize the inside o f the body for scientific p u r­ poses is taken for granted, although dissections and the transferal o f organs as a practice are strictly regulated by law. As a m atter o f fact, contem porary m olecu lar biology is m aking visible the m ost intim ate and m inute fires o f life.

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Where has the Cartesian passion o f wonder gone? When com pared to the earlier tradition, the medicalization o f the body in the age o f modernity and its corollary, the perfectibility of the living organism and the gradual aboli­ tion of anomalies, can also be seen— though not exclusively— as a form of denial o f the sense o f wonder, o f the fantastic, o f that m ixture o f fascination and horror 1 have already mentioned. It marks the loss o f fascination about the living organism, its mysteries and functions. Psychoanalytic theory has explained this loss of fascination as the necessary toll that rational theory takes on human understanding. In the psychoanalytic perspective, o f Freudian and Lacanian inspiration, the initial curiosity that prompts the drive and the will to know is first and forem ost desire, which takes knowledge as its object. The desire to know is, like all desires, related to the problem o f repre­ senting one’s origin, o f answering the m ost childish and consequently funda­ mental o f questions: “where did I come from?”This curiosity, as I stated in the previous chapter, is the m atrix for all form s o f thinking and conceptualiza­ tion. Know ledge is always the desire to know about desire, that is to say about things o f the body as a sexual entity. Scientific know ledge beco m es, in this perspective, an extrem ely p e r­ verted version o f that original question. The desire to go and see how things work is related to prim itive sadistic drives, so that, som ew here along-the line, the scientist is like the anxious little child who pulls apart his favorite toy to see how it’s made inside. Knowing in this m ode is the result o f the scopophilic drive— to go and see, and the sadistic one— to rip it apart phys­ ically so as to m aster it intellectually. All this is related to the incestuous drive, to the web o f curiosity and taboos surrounding the one site o f certain origin— the m other’s body. From a psychoanalytic perspective the establishment o f clinical com para­ tive anatomy in the m odern era is very significant because it points out the rationalistic obsession with visibility, which I have analyzed earlier. Seeing is the prototype o f knowing. By elaborating a scientific technique for analyzing the bodily organs, Western sciences put forward the assumption that a body is precisely that which can be seen and looked at, no more than the sum of its parts. Modern scientific rationality slipped from the emphasis on visibil­ ity to the mirage of absolute transparence of the living organism, as I have argued previously. C ontem porary biological sciences, particularly m olecular biology, have pushed to the extrem e these assumptions that were implicit in the discourse o f W estern sciences. When com pared to the clinical anatomy o f the nine­

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teenth century, contem porary biomedical sciences have acquired the right and the know-how necessary to act on the very structure o f the living m at­ ter, on an infinitely small scale. Foucault defined the m odern era as that o f biopower; power over life and death in a worldwide extension o f m an’s control o f outer space, o f the bot­ tom o f the oceans as well as o f the depths o f the maternal body. There are no lim its today for what can be shown, photographed, reproduced— even a technique such as echography perpetuates this pornographic re-presentation o f bodily parts, externalizing the interior of the womb and its content. The proliferation o f im ages is such that the very notion o f the body, o f its boundaries and its inner structure is being split open in an everregressing vision. We seem to be hell bent on xeroxing even the invisible particles o f matter. Philosophers o f science, such as Kuhn and Fayarabend, have stressed the m odern predicam ent in scientific discourse. Kuhn points out the paradoxi­ cal coincidence o f extrem e rationalism o f the scientific and technological kind, with a persisting subtext o f wild fantastic concoctions. In the discourse o f monstrosity, rational enquiries about their origin and structure continue to coexist with superstitious beliefs and fictional representations o f “creeps.” The two registers o f the rational and the totally nonrational seem to run alongside each other, never quite joined together. The question nevertheless remains— where has the wonder gone? What has happened to the fantastic dimension, to the horror and the fascination o f dif­ ference? What images were created o f the bodily marks o f difference, after they became locked up in the electronic laboratories o f the m odern alchemists? Was there another way, other than the phallogocentric incom petence with, and antipathy to, differences— its willful reduction o f otherness, to negativity? Is there another way out, still?

Conjunction 4:TheAge o f Freaks As the Latin etymology o f the term monstrum points out, m alform ed human beings have always been the object o f display, subjected to the public gaze. In his classic study, Freaks, Leslie Fiedler20 analyses the exploitation o f m onsters for p u rposes o f entertainm ent. From the county fairs, right across rural Europe to the Coney Island sideshows, freaks have always been entertaining. Both Fiedler and Bogdan21 stress two interrelated aspects o f the display o f freaks since the turn o f the century. The first is that their exhibition displays

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racist and orientalist undertones: abnormally form ed people were exhibited alongside tribal people o f norm al stature and bodily configuration, as well as exotic animals. Seco n d , the m edical profession benefited considerably by exam ining these human exhibits. Although the freak is presented as belonging to the realm o f zoology or anthropology, doctors and physicians exam ined them regularly and w rote scientific rep orts about them. Significantly, totalitarian regim es such as H itler’s Germ any or the Stalinist Soviet Union prohibited the exhibition o f freaks as being degenerate speci­ m ens o f the human species. They also dealt with them in their campaigns for eugenics and race or ethnic hygiene, by preventing them from breeding. Fiedler sees a connection between the twentieth-century medicalization o f m onsters, the scientific appropriation o f their generative secrets, and an in­ creased commodification o f the m onster as freak, that is, the object o f display. C o n tem p o ra ry cu ltu re d eals w ith an om alies by a fascination for the freaky. The film Freaks by Tod Browning (1 9 3 2 ) w arns us that m on sters are an endangered species. Since the sixties a w hole youth culture has devel­ oped around freaks, with special em phasis on genetic m utation as a sign o f n onconform ism and social rebellion. W hole popular culture genres such as scien ce fictio n , h o rro r, r o c k ’ n ’ro ll co m ics, and cy berp u n k are about m utants. Today, the freaks are science fiction androids, cyborgs, bionic women and m en, com parable to the grotesque o f form er tim es; the whole ro ck ’n ’roll scene is a huge theater o f the grotesque, combining freaks, androgynes, satanies, ugliness, and insanity, as well as violence. In other w ords, in the early part o f our century we w atch the sim ulta­ n eo u s fo rm alizatio n o f a scien tific d isco u rse ab o u t m o n sters and their elim ination as a p rob lem . This p ro cess, which falls under the rationalist aggression o f scientific discourse, also operates a shift at the level o f rep re­ sentation, and o f the cultural imaginary. The dim ension o f the “fantastic,” that m ixtu re o f aberration and adoration, loathing and attraction, which for cen turies has esco rted the existence o f strange and difficult bodies, is now displaced. The “becom ing freaks” o f m onsters both deflates the fantas­ tic pro jectio n s that have surrounded them and expands them to a w ider cultural field. The w hole o f contem porary popular culture is about freaks, ju st as the last o f the physical freaks have disappeared. The last m etaph ori­ cal shift in the status o f m onsters— their becom ing freaks— coincides with their elim ination. In order not to be to o pessim istic about this aspect o f the problem , how ­

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ever, I wish to point out that the age o f the commodification o f freaks is also the period that has resulted in another significant shift: abnormally form ed people have organized themselves in the handicapped political m ovem ent, thereby claiming not only a renewed sense o f dignity but also wider social and political rights.22

In Transit; or,for Nomadism M oth ers, m on sters, and m achines. W hat is the connection, then? W hat con/dis-junctions can we make in telling the tale o f feminism, science, and technology? How do feminist fabulations or figurations help in figuring out alternative paradigms? To what extent do they speak the language o f sexual difference? Where do we situate ourselves in order to create links, construct theories, elaborate hypotheses? Which way do we look to try and see the p o s­ sible impact m odern science will have on the status o f women? How do we assess the status o f difference as an ontological category at the end o f the twentieth century? How do we think about all this? The term “trandisciplinary” can describe one position taken by feminists. Passing in between different discursive fields, and through diverse spheres o f intellectual discourse. The feminist theoretician today can only be “in tran­ sit,” moving on, passing through, creating connections where things were previously dis-connected or seem ed un-related, where there seem ed to be “nothing to see.” In transit, moving, dis-placing— this is the grain o f hysteria without which there is no theorization at all.23 In a feminist context it also im plies the effort to move on to the invention o f new ways o f relating, o f building footbridges between notions. The epistemic nomadism I am advo­ cating can only work, in fact, if it is properly situated, securely anchored in the “in between” zones. I am assuming here a definition o f “rigor” away from the linear Aristotelian logic that dominated it for so long. It seem s to me that the rigor feminists are after is o f a different kind— it is the rigor o f a project that emphasizes the n ecessary interconnection-connections betw een the theoretical and the political, which insists on putting real-life experience first and forem ost as a criterion for the validation o f truth. It is the rigor o f passionate investment in a project and in the quest o f the discursive means to realize it. In this respect fem inism acts as a rem in der that in the po stm o d ern predicam ent, rationality in its classical m ode can no longer be taken as rep­

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resenting the totality o f human reason or even o f the all-too-human activity o f thinking. By criticizing the single-mindedness and the masculine bias o f rationality I do not intend to fall into the opposite and plead for easy ready-m ade irra­ tionalism . Patriarchal thought has for too long confined women in the irra­ tional for me to claim such a non-quality. What we need instead is a redefin­ ition o f what we have learned to recognize as being the structure and the aim s o f human subjectivity in its relationship to difference, to the “other.” In claiming that feminists are attem pting to redefine the very meaning o f thought, I am also suggesting that in tim e the rules o f the discursive gam e will have to change. Academ ics will have to agree that thinking adequately ab ou t ou r h istorical con dition im plies the transcendence o f disciplinary boundaries and intellectual categories. M ore im portan t, for fem inist epistem ologists, the task o f thinking ad e­ quately about the historical conditions that affect the m edicalization o f the m aternal function forces upon us the need to reconsider the inextricable interconnection o f the bodily with the technological. The shifts that have taken place in the perception and the representation o f the em bodied sub­ je c t, in fact, make it im perative to think the unity o f body and m achine, flesh and m etal. Although many factors point to the danger o f com m od ifi­ cation o f the body that such a m ixture m akes possible, and although this p ro cess o f com m odification conceals racist and sexist dangers that m ust n ot be underestim ated, this is not the whole story. There is also a positive side to the new interconnection o f m others, m on sters, and m achines, and this has to do with the loss o f any essentialized definition o f w om anhood— o r indeed even o f m otherhood. In the age o f biotechnological pow er m oth ­ erhood is split open into a variety o f possible physiological, cultural, and social functions. If this w ere the best o f all possible w orlds, one could c e l­ ebrate the decline o f one consensual way o f experiencing m otherhood as a sign o f increased freedom for w om en. O u r world being as m ale-dom inated as it is, however, the best option is to construct a nomadic style o f fem inism that will allow w om en to rethink their position in a postindustrial, p o st­ m etaphysical w orld, w ithout nostalgia, paranoia, or false sentim entalism . The relevance and political urgency o f the configuration “m oth ers, m on ­ sters and m achines” m akes it all the m ore urgent for the fem inist nom adic thin kers o f the w orld to con n ect and to n egotiate new b o u n d arie s for fem ale id en tity in a w orld w here p ow er over the body has reach ed an im plosive peak.

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N O TES

I w ish to thank M argaret R. H igo n n et, o f the C e n te r fo r E u ro p ean S tu d ies at H arvard, and Sissel Lie, o f the W om en’s R esearch C en ter atTronheim , Norway, for their helpful com m ents on an earlier draft o f this paper.

1. D onna Haraway, “ ‘ G e n d e r’ fo r a M arxist D iction ary :T h e Sexual Politics o f a W o rd,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, pp. 1 27—4 8 (L o n d o n : Free A sso ciatio n B ooks, 1991). 2. For an enlightening and strategic usage o f the notion o f “m im esis,” see Luce Irigaray, Ce sexe qui n ’en est pas un (Paris: M inuit, 1977). 3. To refer to the concept elaborated by the French philosopher o f difference, see Gilles Deleuze in collaboration with Felix G uattari, Rhizome (Paris: Minuit, 1976). 4 . The notion o f “experien ce” has been the object o f intense debates in fem inist theory. See for ex am p le, Teresa de L au retis, Alice. Doesn’t (B lo o m in gto n : Indiana University Press, 1984); Sandra H arding, The Science Question in Feminism (London: O pen University, 1986), and Feminism and Methodology (London: O pen University, 1 9 8 7 ); Jo an S co tt, “ E x p e rie n ce ,” in Jo an S co tt and Ju dith Butler, e d s ., Feminists Theorize the Political (London and N ew York: R outledge, 1992), pp. 22—40. 5. Genevieve Lloyd, The Man o f Reason (London: M ethuen, 1985). 6. C f. Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours (Paris: G allim ard, 1971); Surveiller et punir (Paris: G allim ard, 1 9 7 5 );“ Les intellectuels et le pouvoir,” L’Arc, no. 4 9 (1 9 7 2 ). 7. T his e xpressio n , originally coin ed by Laura M ulvey in film c riticism , has been taken up and developed by D onna Haraway in a stunning exploration o f this intellectual m ode; see “ Situated K n ow ledges: The Science Q u estio n in Fem inism and the P rivilege o f Partial P e rsp e ctiv e ,” and “ A C y b o rg M an ifesto: S cien ce, Technology, and S ocialist-F em in ism in the Late T w entieth C en tury,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, pp. 183—202 and 127—4-8. 8. I explored this notion o f m onstrosity at som e length in a sem inar held jointly with M arie-Jo D havernas at the C o lle ge in ternational de Philosophic in Paris in 1984—1 9 8 5 . T he re p o rt o f the se ssio n s w as published in Cahier du College Inter­ national de Philosophic, no. 1 (1 9 8 5 ): 4 2 —45. 9. See Jacques D errid a, L’ecriture et al difference (Paris: Seuil, 1967); Marges de la philosophie (Paris: M inuit, 1972); La carte postale (Paris: Flam m arion, 1980). 10. O n this point, see Alice Jardin e, Gynesis: Configurations perceptions o f reality. His decision to create the wild black woman was per­ fectly compatible with prevailing representations o f black female sexuality in a white supremacist society. O f course theTinaTurner story reveals that she was anything but a wild woman; she was fearful o f sexuality, abused, humiliated, fucked, and fucked over.Turner’s friends and colleagues docum ent the myriad ways she suffered about the experience o f being brutally physically beaten p rior to appearing on stage to perform , yet there is no account o f how she coped with the contradiction (this story is told by witnesses in I, Tina). She was on one hand in excruciating pain inflicted by a misogynist man who dominated her life and her sexuality, and on the other hand projecting in every perfor­ mance the image o f a wild tough sexually liberated woman. N ot unlike the lead character in the novel Story o f 0 by Pauline Reage, Turner must act as though she glories in her submission, that she delights in being a slave o f love. Leaving Ike, after many years o f forced marital rape and physical abuse, because his vio­ lence is utterly uncontrollable,Turner takes with her the “image” he created. D espite her experience o f abuse rooted in sexist and racist objectification, Turner appropriated the “wild w om an” im age, using it for career advance­

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m en t. Always fascinated with w igs and lon g hair, she created the blonde lioness m ane to appear all the m ore savage and animalistic. Blondeness links her to jungle im agery even as it serves as an endorsem ent o f a racist aesthet­ ics which sees blonde hair as the epitom e o f beauty. W ithout Ike, T u rn er’s career has soared to new heights, particularly as she w orks harder to exploit the visual representation o f woman (and particularly black wom an) as sexual savage. N o longer caught in the sadom asochistic sexual iconography o f black fem ale in erotic war with her m ate that was the subtext o f the Ike and Tina Turner show, she is now portrayed as the autonom ous black woman whose sexuality is solely a way to e x e rt power. Inverting old imagery, she places h erself in the role o f dominator. Playing the role o f Aunty Entity in the film Mad Max: Beyond, the Thunder dome, released in 1 9 8 5 ,T u rn er’s character evokes two ra c ist/se x ist ste reo ­ types, that o f the black “m am m y” turned pow er hungry and the sexual savage who uses her body to seduce and conquer m en. Portrayed as lusting after the white m ale hero who will both conquer and reject her, Aunty Entity is the contem porary reenactm ent o f that mythic black female in slavery who su p ­ posedly “vam ped” and seduced virtuous white m ale slave ow ners. O f course the contem porary white m ale hero o f Mad Max is stronger than his colonial forefathers. He does not succum b to the dangerous lure o f the deadly black seductress who rules over a mini-nation whose pow er is based on the use o f shit. Turner is the bad black woman in this film , an im age she will continue to exploit. T u rn er’s video “ W hat’s Love G ot to D o with It” also highlights the con ­ vergence o f sexuality and power. H ere, the black w om an’s body is re p re ­ sented as potential w eapon. In the video, she walks down rough city streets, strutting her stuff, in a way that declares desirability, allure, while denying access. It is not that she is no longer represented as available; she is “open” only to those whom she chooses. A ssum ing the role o f hunter, she is the sexualized woman who m akes men and wom en her prey (in the alluring gaze o f the video, the body m oves in the direction o f both sexes). This tough black wom an has no tim e for w om an bonding, she is out to “catch.’’T u rn er’s fictive m odel o f black fem ale sexual agency rem ains rooted in m isogynist notions. R ather than being a pleasu re-based ero ticism , it is ru th less, violen t; it is about wom en using sexual pow er to do violence to the m ale Other. A ppropriating the wild w om an pornographic myth o f black fem ale se x u ­ ality created by men in a white suprem acist patriarchy, Turner exploits it for her own ends to achieve econom ic self-sufficiency. W hen she left Ike, she was broke and in serious debt. The new Turner image conveys the m essage that

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happiness and pow er com e to women who learn to beat men at their own gam e, to throw o ff any investment in romance and get down to the real dogeat-dog thing. “W h at’s Love G ot to D o with It” sung by Turner evokes im ages o f the strong bitchified black woman who is on the make. Subordinating the idea o f rom antic love and praising the use o f sex for pleasure as com m odity to exchange, the song had great appeal for contem porary postm odern cul­ ture. It equates pleasure with materiality, making it an object to be sought after, taken, acquired by any means necessary. When sung by black women sin gers, “W h at’s Love G ot to D o with It” called to mind old stereo types which make the assertion o f black female sexuality and prostitution synony­ m ous. Ju st as black fem ale prostitutes in the 1940s and 1950s actively sought clients in the streets to make money to survive, thereby publicly linking p ro s­ titution with black fem ale sexuality, contem porary black female sexuality is fictively constructed in popular rap and R&B songs solely as com m odity— sexual service for m oney and power, pleasure is secondary. C on trasted with the representation o f wild anim alistic sexuality, black fem ale singers like Aretha Franklin and younger contem poraries like Anita Baker fundamentally link romance and sexual pleasure. Aretha, though seen as a victim o f no-good m en, the classic “woman who loves too much” and leaves the lyrics to prove it, also sang songs o f resistance. “R espect” was heard by many black folks, especially black w om en, as a song challenging black m ale sexism and fem ale victimization while evoking notions o f mutual care and support. In a recent p b s special highlighting individual m usicians, Aretha Franklin was featured. Much space was given in the docum entary to white m ale p ro d u cers who shaped her public im age. In the docum entary, she describes the fun o f adding the words “sock it to m e” to “R espect” as a pow ­ erful refrain. O ne o f the white male producers, Jerry W exler, offers his inter­ pretation o f its m eaning, claiming that it was a call for “sexual attention o f the highest o rd er.” H is sexu alized in terp retation s o f the son g seem ed far rem oved from the way it was heard and celebrated in black com m unities. L ookin g at this docum entary, which was supp osed ly a tribu te to Aretha Franklin’s power, it w as im possiblenot to have on e’s attention deflected away from the m usic by the subtext o f the film, which can be seen as a visual nar­ rative docum enting her obsessive concern with the body and achieving a look suggesting desirability.To achieve this end, Franklin constantly struggles with her weight, and the im ages in the film chronicle her various shifts in body size and shape. As though m ocking this concern with her body, throughout m ost o f the docum entary Aretha appears in what seem s to be a household setting, a living room m aybe, w earing a strapless evening dress, much too small for

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her breast size, so her breasts appear like two balloons filled with water about to burst. With no idea who shaped and controlled this image, 1 can only reit­ erate that it underm ined the insistence in the film that she has overcome sex­ ual victimization and remained a powerful singer; the latter seem ed more likely than the former. Black fem ale singers who project a sexualized persona are as obsessed with hair as they are with body size and body parts. As with nineteenth-cen­ tury sexual iconography, specific parts o f the anatomy are designated more sexual and worthy o f attention than others. Today much o f the sexualized imagery for black female stars seem s to be fixated on hair; it and not buttocks signifies animalistic sexuality. This is quintessentially so for Tina Turner and Diana Ross. It is ironically appropriate that much o f this hair is synthetic and man-made, artificially constructed as is the sexualized image it is meant to evoke. Within a patriarchal culture where women over forty are not repre­ sented as sexually desirable, it is understandable that singers exploiting sex­ ualized representations who are near the age o f fifty place less emphasis on body parts that may reflect aging while focusing on hair. In a course I teach on “The Politics o f Sexuality,” where we often examine connections between race and sex, we once critically analyzed a Vanity Fair cover depicting Diana Ross. Posed on a white background, apparently naked with the exception o f white cloth draped loosely around her body, the m ost striking elem ent in the portrait was the long mane o f jet black hair cascading down. There was so much hair that it seem ed to be consum ing her body (which looked frail and anorexic), negating the possibility that this naked flesh could represent active female sexual agency.The white diaper-like cloth reinforced the idea that this was a portrait o f an adult female who wanted to be seen as childlike and innocent. Symbolically, the hair that is alm ost a cov­ ering hearkens back to early pictorial images o f Eve in the garden. It evokes wildness, a sense o f the “natural” world, even as it shrouds the body, repress­ ing it, keeping it from the gaze o f a culture that does not invite women to be sexual subjects. Concurrently, this cover contrasts whiteness and blackness. W hiteness dominates the page, obscuring and erasing the possibility o f any assertion o f black power. The longing that is m ost visible in this cover is that o f the black woman to embody and be encircled by whiteness, personified by the possession o f long straight hair. Since the hair is produced as commodity and purchased, it affirms contem porary notions o f female beauty and desir­ ability as that which can be acquired. According to postm odern analyses o f fashion, this is a time when com ­ modities produce bodies, as this image o f Ross suggests. In her essay “Fashion

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and the Cultural Logic o f P o stm o d e rn ity G ail Faurshou explains that beauty is no longer seen as a sustained “category o f precapitalist culture.” Instead, “the colonization and the ap propriation o f the body as its ow n p ro d u c ­ tio n / consum ption machine in late capitalism is a fundamental theme o f con­ tem p o rary so cialization .” This cultural shift enables the b o d ies o f black women to be represented in certain domains o f the “beautiful” where they were once denied entry, i.e ., high fashion magazines. Reinscribed as specta­ cle, once again on display, the bodies o f black wom en appearing in these m ag­ azines are not there to docum ent the beauty o f black skin, o f black bodies, but rather to call attention to other concerns. They are represented so read­ ers will notice that the magazine is racially inclusive even though their fea­ tures are often d isto rted , their bodies con to rted into strange and bizarre postures that make the images appear m onstrous or grotesqu e. They seem to represent an anti-aesthetic, one that m ocks the very notion o f beauty. Often black female m odels appear in portraits that make them look less like humans and m ore like mannequins or robots. Currently, black m odels whose hair is not straightened are often photographed w earing straight w igs; this seem s to be especially the case if the m odels’ features are unconventional, i.e., if she has large lips or particularly dark skin, which is not often featured in the magazine. The O ctober 1989 issue o f Elle presented a short profile o f designer Azzedine Alaia. He stands at a distance from a black female body holding the sleeves o f her dress. Wearing a ridiculous straight hair-do, she appears naked holding the dress in front o f her body. The caption reads, a r e n

’ t t h e y !”

“t h e y a r e b e a u t if u l

His critical gaze is on the m odel and not the dress. As com ­

mentary it suggests that even black women can look beautiful in the right out­ fit. O f course when you read the piece, this statement is not referring to the m odel, but is a statem ent Alaia makes about his clothes. In contem porary post­ m odern fashion sense, the black female is the best m edium for the showing of clothes because her image does not detract from the outfit; it is subordinated. Years ago, when m uch fuss was made about the reluctance o f fashion m ag­ azines to include im ages o f black women, it was assum ed that the presence o f such representations would in and o f themselves challenge racist stereo­ types that imply black women are not beautiful. Now adays, black wom en are included in m agazines in a manner that tends to reinscribe prevailing stereo ­ types. D arker-skin n ed m odels are m o st likely to ap p ear in ph otograph s where their features are distorted. Biracial women tend to appear in sexual­ ized im ages. Trendy catalogues like Tweeds and J. Crew make use o f a racialized subtext in their layout and advertisem ents. Usually they are em phasizing the connection betw een a white European and Am erican style. W hen they began

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to include darker-skinned m odels, they chose biracial or fair-skinned black w om en, particularly with blonde or light brow n lon g hair. The non white m odels appearing in these catalogues m ust resem ble as closely as possible their white counterparts so as not to detract from the racialized subtext. A recent cover o f Tweeds carried this statem ent: Color is, perhaps, one of the most important barom eters of character and self-assurance. It is as much a part o f the international language o f clothes as silhouette. The message colors convey, however, should never over­ whelm. They should speak as eloquently and intelligently as the wearer. Whenever colors have that intelligence, subtlety, and nuance we tend to call them European. Given the racialized term inology evoked in this copy, it follow s that when flesh is exposed in attire that is m eant to evoke sexual desirability it is worn by a non white m odel. As se x ist/racist sexual m ythology w ould have it, she is the em bodim ent o f the best o f the black fem ale savage tem p ered by those elem ents o f w hiteness that soften this im age, giving it an aura o f virtue and innocence. In the racialized porn ograp hic im agination , she is the perfect com bination o f virgin and w hore, the ultim ate vam p. The im pact o f this im age is so intense that Iman, a highly paid black fashion m odel who once received w orldw ide acclaim because she w as the p erfect black clone o f a white ice goddess beauty, has had to change. Postm odern notions that black fem ale beauty is constructed, not innate or inherent, are personified by the career o f Im an. N o ted in the past for featu res this cu ltu re sees as “ Caucasian”— thin nose, lips, and lim bs— Iman appears in the O ctober 1989 issue o f Vogue “m ade over.” H er lips and breasts are suddenly full. Having once had her “look” destroyed by a car accident and then rem ade, Iman now goes a step further. Displayed as the em bodim ent o f a heightened sexuality, she now looks like the ra c ia l/se x u a l stereo ty p e. In one full-page shot, she is naked, w earing only a pair o f brocade bo o ts, looking as though she is ready to stand on any street corn er and turn a trick, or w orse yet, as though she just walked o ff one o f the pages o f Players (a porn magazine for blacks). Im an’s new im age appeals to a culture that is eager to reinscribe the im age o f black wom an as sexual prim itive. This new representation is a respo nse to con ­ tem p o rary fascination with an ethnic lo o k , w ith the e x o tic O th er w ho p ro m ises to fulfill racial and sexual ste reo ty p e s, to satisfy lon gin gs. This im age is but an extension o f the edible black tit. C urrently, in the fashion w orld the new black fem ale icon who is also

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gaining greater notoriety, as she assum es both the persona o f sexually hot “savage” and white-identified black girl, is the Caribbean-born m odel Naom i Cam pbell. Im ported beauty, she, like Iman, is alm ost constantly visually p o r­ trayed nearly nude against a sexualized background. Abandoning her “nat­ ural” hair for blonde wigs or everlengthening weaves, she has great crossover appeal. Labeled by fashion critics as the black Briget Bardot, she em bodies an aesthetic that su ggests black w om en, while appealingly “differen t,” m ust resem ble white wom en to be considered really beautiful. Within literature and early film, this sanitized ethnic image was defined as that o f the “tragic m ulatto.” Appearing in film , she was the vamp that white men feared. As Julie Burchill puts it outrageously in Girls On Film: In the mature Forties, Hollywood decided to get to grips with the meaty and messy topic o f multiracial romance, but it was a morbid business. Even when the girls were gorgeous white girls— multiracial romance brought tears, traumas, and suicide.The message was clear: you intelligent white men suffer enough guilt because o f what your grandaddy did— you.j. want to suffer some more! Keep away from those girls. C ontem porary films portraying biracial stars convey this sam e m essage.The w arning for w om en is different from that given m en— we are given m es­ sages about the danger o f asserting sexual desire. Clearly the m essage from Imitation o f Life was that attem pting to define on eself as sexual subject would lead to rejection and abandonment. In the film Choose Me, Rae Dawn Chong plays the role o f the highly sexual black w om an chasing and seducing the white m an who does not desire her (as was first im plied in Imitation o j Life) but instead uses her sexually, beats her, then discards her. The biracial black w om an is constantly “gaslighted” in contem porary film .The m essage her s e x ­ ualized im age conveys does not change even as she continues to chase the white man as if only he had the power to affirm that she is truly desirable. European films like Mephisto and the m ore recent Mona Lisa also portray the alm ost white, black woman as tragically sexual. The wom en in the films can only respond to constructions o f their reality created by the m ore pow ­ erful. They are trap ped. Mona L isa’s stru ggle to be sexually self-defining leads her to choose lesbianism, even though she is desired by the white male hero. Yet her choice o f a female partner does not mean sexual fulfillment as the object o f her lust is a drug-addicted young white woman who is always too m essed up to be sexual. Mona Lisa nurses and protects her. Rather than asserting sexual agency, she is once again in the role o f mammy.

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In a m ore recent film, TheVirgin Machine, a white Germ an woman obsessed by the longing to understand desire goes to California where she hopes to find a “paradise o f black Amazons.” However, when she arrives and checks out the lesbian scene, the black w om en she encounters are portrayed as m ean fat grotesques, lewd and licentious. Contem porary films continue to place black women in two categories, mammy or slut, and occasionally a combination o f the two. In Mona Lisa, one scene serves as powerful com m entary on the way black sexuality is perceived in a racist and imperialist social context.T he white m ale who desires the black prostitute Mona Lisa is depicted as a victim o f romantic love who wishes to rescue her from a life o f ruin. Yet he is also the conqueror, the colonizer, and this is m ost evident in the scene w here he watches a video wherein she engages in fellatio with the black male pim p who torm ents her. Both the black man and the black woman are presented as avail­ able for the white m ale’s sexual consumption. In the context o f postm odern sexual practice, the m asturbatory voyeuristic technologically based fulfillment o f desire is m ore exciting than actually possessing any real Other. There are few film s or television shows that attem pt to challenge assum p­ tions that sexual relationships betw een black w om en and white m en are not based solely on pow er relationships which m irror m aster/slave paradigm s. Years ago, when soap operas first tried to portray ro m an tic/sex u al involve­ m ent between a black w om an and a white man, the station received so many letters o f protest from outraged viewers that they dropped this plot. Today many viewers are glued to the television screen w atching the soap opera All My Children prim arily to see if the black woman played by D ebbie M organ will win the white m an she so desperately loves. These two lovers are never portrayed in bedroom scenes so com m on now in daytime soaps. M organ ’s character is com peting not ju st with an old white w om an flam e to get her white m an, she is com peting with a notion o f family. And the story poses the question o f whether w hite m ale desire for black flesh will prevail over com ­ m itm ents to blood and family loyalty. D espite this plot o f interracial sexual rom ance on the soaps, there is little public discussion o f the connections between race and sexuality. In real life, it was the Miss Am erica pageant where a black woman was chosen to represent beauty and therefore desirability which forced a public discussion o f race and sex. W hen it was revealed that Vanessa W illiam s, the fair-skinned straight ened-hair “beauty,” had violated the representation o f the M iss Am erica girl as pure and virtuous by having posed nude in a series o f photographs showing her engaged in sexual play with a white w om an, she lost her crown but gained a different status. After her public “disgrace,” she was able to rem ain in the

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lim elight by appropriating the im age o f sexualized vam p and playing sexy roles in films. Unmasked by a virtuous white public, she assum ed (according to their standards) the rightful erotic place set aside for black women in the p o p u lar im agination. The Am erican public that had so brutally critiqued W illiam s and rejected her had no difficulty accepting and applauding her when she accepted the image o f fallen woman. Again, as in the case o f Tina Turner, W illiam s’s bid for continued success necessitated her acceptance o f conventional racist/sexist representations o f black female sexuality. The contem porary film that has m ost attem pted to address the issue o f black fem ale sexual agency is Spike L e e ’s She’s Gotta Have It. Sad to say, the black woman does not get “it.” By the end o f the film, she is still unable to answ er the critical question, posed by one o f her lovers as he rapes her, “whose pussy is this?” Rew orded the question might be: How and when will black fem ales assert sexual agency in ways that liberate us from the confines o f colonized desire, o f ra cist/sex ist im agery and practice? Had N ola Darling been able to claim her sexuality and name its power, the film would have had a very different impact. There are few films that explore issues o f black female sexuality in ways that intervene and disrupt conventional representations. The short film Dreaming Rivers, by the British black film collective Sankofa, juxtaposes the idealized rep ­ resentation o f black woman as m other with that o f sexual subject, showing adult children facing their narrow notions o f black female identity. The film highlights the autonom ous sexual identity o f a m ature black woman which exists apart from her role as m other and caregiver. Passion o f Remembrance, another film by Sankofa, offers exciting new representations o f the black fem ale body and black fem ale sexuality. In one playfully erotic scene, two young black women, a lesbian couple, get dressed to go out. As part o f their celebratory preparations they dance together, painting their lips, looking at their images in the mirror, exulting in their black female bodies. They shake to a song that repeats the refrain “let’s get loose” without conjuring images o f a rotgut colonized sexuality on display for the racist/sexist imagination. Their pleasure, the film suggests, em erges in a decolonized erotic context rooted in com m itm ents to feminist and antiracist politics. When they look in the m irror and focus on specific body parts (their full thick lips and buttocks), the gaze is one o f recognition. We see their pleasure and delight in themselves. Films by African Am erican women film m akers also offer the m ost o p p o ­ sitional im ages o f black female sexuality. Seeing for a second tim e Kathleen C ollin ’s film Losing Ground, 1 was im pressed by her daring, the way she p o r­ trays black fem ale sexuality in a way that is fresh and exciting. Like Passion o j

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Remembrance it is in a dom estic setting, where black wom en face one another (in C o llin ’s film — as m other and d au gh ter), that ero tic im ages o f black fem ale sexuality surface outside a context o f dom ination and exploitation. When daughter and m other share a m eal, the audience watches as a radical sexual aesthetics em erges as the cam era m oves from w om an to w om an, focusing on the shades and textu res o f their skin, the shapes o f their bodies, and the way their delight and pleasure in them selves is evident in their envi­ ronm ent. Both black women discreetly flaunt a rich sensual erotic energy that is not directed outw ard, it is not there to allure or entrap; it is a pow er­ ful declaration o f black fem ale sexual subjectivity. W hen black wom en relate to our bodies, ou r sexuality, in ways that place e ro tic recogn ition , d esire, p leasu re, and fu lfillm en t at the cen ter o f ou r efforts to create radical black fem ale subjectivity, we can make new and dif­ ferent representations o f ourselves as sexual subjects. To do so we m ust be w illing to transgress traditional boundaries. We m ust no lon ger shy away from the critical project o f openly interrogating and exploring representa­ tions o f black fem ale sexuality as they appear everyw here, especially in p o p ­ ular culture. In The Power o f the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality, Annette Kuhn offers a critical m anifesto for fem inist thinkers who long to explore gender and representation: In order to challenge dominant representations, it is necessary first o f all to understand how they work, and thus where to seek points o f possible productive transformation. From such understanding flow various politics and practices of oppositional cultural production, among which may be counted feminist interventions . . . there is another justification for a fem ­ inist analysis of mainstream images of women: may it not teach us to rec­ ognize inconsistencies and contradictions within dominant traditions of representation, to identify points o f leverage for our own intervention: cracks and fissures through which may be captured glimpses o f what in other circum stance might be possible, visions o f “a world outside the order not normally seen or thought about?” This is certainly the challenge facing black wom en, who m ust confront the old painful representations o f ou r sexuality as a burden we m ust suffer, re p ­ resentations still haunting the present. We m ust make the oppositional space w here ou r sexuality can be nam ed and rep resen ted, where we are sexual subjects-—no longer bound and trapped.

7

Foucault, Femininity, and the M odernization o f Patriarchal Power

San d ra Lee Bartky

I In a striking critique o f m odern society, M ichel Foucault has argued that the rise o f parliam en ­ tary in stitu tio n s and o f new c o n ce p tio n s o f political liberty w as accom panied by a darker counterm ovem ent, by the em ergen ce o f a new and unprecedented discipline directed against the body. M o re is req u ired o f the body now than m ere political allegiance o r the ap p ro p ri­ ation o f the products o f its labor: The new d is­ cipline invades the body and seeks to regulate its very fo rc e s and o p e ratio n s, the econ om y and efficiency o f its m ovem ents. The disciplinary practices Foucault describes are tied to peculiarly m odern form s o f the army, the sch oo l, the h ospital, the p riso n , and the m anufactory; the aim o f these disciplines is to increase the utility o f the body, to augm ent its forces: Sandra Lee Bartky, “ Foucault, Femininity, and the M od ern iza­ tion o f Patriarchal Power.” From Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed ited by Irene D iam ond and L ee Quinby. C o p y ­ right 1988 by Irene D iam ond and L ee Quinby. R ep rin ted with the perm ission o f N orth eastern U niversity P ress, Boston.

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What was then being form ed was a policy o f coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery o f power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A “political anatomy,” which was also a “mechanics of power,” was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determ ines. Thus, discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, “docile” bodies.1 The production o f “docile bodies” requires that an uninterrupted coercion be directed to the very processes o f bodily activity, not ju st their resu lt; this “m icrophysics o f pow er” fragm ents and partitions the body’s tim e, its space, and its m ovem ents.2 The student, then, is enclosed within a classroom and assigned to a desk he cannot leave; his ranking in the class can be read o ff the position o f his desk in the serially ordered and segm ented space o f the classroom itself. Foucault tells us th at“Jean-Baptiste de la Salle dream t o f a classroom in which the sp a­ tial distribution m ight provide a whole series o f distinctions at once, accord­ ing to the p u p il’s p ro gress, w orth, character, application, cleanliness, and p aren ts’ fortune.”3 The student m ust sit upright, feet upon the floor, head erect; he may not slouch or fidget; his anim ate body is brought into a fixed correlation with the inanimate desk. The m inute breakdown o f gestures and m ovem ents required o f soldiers at drill is far m ore relentless: Bring the weapon forward. In three stages. Raise the rifle with the right hand, bringing it close to the body so as to hold it perpendicular with the right knee, the end o f the barrel at eye level, grasping it by striking it with the right hand, the arm held close to the body at waist height. At the second stage, bring the rifle in front o f you with the left hand, the barrel in the m iddle betw een the two eyes, vertical, the right hand grasping it at the small o f the butt, the arm outstretched, the triggerguard resting on the first finger, the left hand at the height o f the notch, the thumb lying along the barrel against the moulding. At the third stage. . . . 4 These “body-object articulations” o f the soldier and his w eapon, the student and his desk, effect a “coercive link with the apparatus o f production .’’We are

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far indeed from older form s o f control that “dem anded o f the body only signs or products, form s o f expression or the result o f labor.”5 The body’s tim e, in these regim es o f power, is as rigidly controlled as its space: The factory whistle and the school bell mark a division o f tim e into dis­ crete and segm ented units that regulate the various activities o f the day. The following tim etable, sim ilar in spirit to the ordering o f my gram m ar school classroom , was suggested for French “ecoles m utuelles” o f the early nine­ teenth century: 8:45 entrance o f the monitor, 8:52 the m onitor’s summons, 8:56 entrance o f the children and prayer, 9:00 the children go to their benches, 9:04 first slate, 9:08 end o f dictation, 9:12 second slate, etc.6 C ontrol this rigid and precise cannot be maintained without a minute and relentless surveillance. Jerem y Bentham ’s design for the Panopticon, a m odel prison, captures for Foucault the essence o f the disciplinary society. At the periphery o f the Panopticon, a circular structure; at the center, a tower with wide windows that open onto the inner side o f the ring. The structure on the periphery is divided into cells, each with two windows, one facing the w indows o f the tower, the other facing the ou tsid e, allow ing an effect o f backlighting to make any figure visible within the cell. “All that is needed, then, is to place a su p erv iso r in a c e n tral tow er and to shut up in each cell a m adm an, a patient, a condem ned m an, a w orker or a schoolboy.”7 Each inmate is alone, shut o ff from effective com m unication with his fellows, but constantly visi­ ble from the tower. The effect o f this is “to induce in the inmate a state o f conscious and perm anent visibility that assures the autom atic functioning o f pow er” ; each becom es to him self his own jailer.8This “state o f conscious and perm anent visibility” is a sign that the tight, disciplinary control o f the body has gotten a hold on the mind as well. In the perpetual self-surveillance o f the inmate lies the genesis o f the celebrated “individualism” and heightened self-consciousness which are hallmarks o f m odern tim es. For Foucault, the structure and effects o f the Panopticon resonate throughout society: Is it su rp risin g that “p riso n s resem b le facto ries, sch oo ls, b arrack s, h ospitals, which all resem ble prisons?”9 Foucault’s account in Discipline and Punish o f the disciplinary practices that produce the “docile bodies” o f m odernity is a genuine tour de force, incor­ porating a rich theoretical account o f the ways in which instrum ental reason takes hold o f the body with a m ass o f historical detail. But Foucault treats the

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body throughout as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences o f men and w om en did not differ and as if m en and w om en bore the sam e relationship to the characteristic institutions o f m odern life. W here is the account o f the disciplinary practices that engender the “docile bodies” o f w om en, bodies m ore docile than the bodies o f m en? W om en, like men, are subject to many o f the sam e disciplinary practices Foucault describes. But he is blind to those disciplines that produce a m odality o f em bodim ent that is peculiarly fem i­ nine. To overlook the form s o f subjection that engender the feminine body is to perpetuate the silence and pow erlessness o f those upon whom these dis­ ciplines have been im posed. Hence, even though a liberatory note is sounded in Foucault’s critique o f power, his analysis as a whole reproduces that se x ­ ism which is endem ic throughout W estern political theory. We are born m ale or fem ale, but not m asculine or feminine. Femininity is an artifice, an achievem ent, “a m ode o f enacting and reenacting received gender n orm s which surface as so many styles o f the flesh.” 10 In what fol­ low s, 1 shall exam ine those disciplinary practices that produce a body which in gestu re and appearance is recognizably fem inine. I consider three cate­ go ries o f such practices: those that aim to produce a body o f a certain size and general configuration; those that bring forth from this body a specific rep erto ire o f gestu res, postures, and m ovem ents; and those directed toward the display o f this body as an ornam ented surface. I shall exam ine the nature o f these disciplines, how they are im posed, and by w hom . I shall probe the effects o f the im position o f such discipline on fem ale identity and subjectiv­ ity. In the final section I shall argue that these disciplinary practices m ust be un derstood in the light o f the m odernization o f patriarchal dom ination, a m od ern izatio n that unfolds h istorically accordin g to the gen eral pattern described by Foucault.

II Styles o f the fem ale figure vary over tim e and across cultures: they reflect cultural obsessions and preoccupations in ways that are still poorly under­ sto od . Today, m assiveness, power, or abundance in a w om an’s body is m et with distaste. The current body o f fashion is taut, sm all-breasted, narrow ­ h ipped, and o f a slim ness b o rd erin g on em aciation; it is a silhouette that seem s m ore appropriate to an adolescent boy or a newly pubescent girl than to an adult w om an. Since ordinary w om en have norm ally quite different dim ensions, they m ust o f course diet.

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M ass-circulation w om en’s magazines run articles on dieting in virtually every issu e.Th e Ladies’ Home Journal o f February 1986 carries a “Fat-Burning Exercise G uide,” while Mademoiselle offers to “H elp Stam p O ut C ellulite” with “Six Sleek-Dow n Strategies.” After the diet-busting Christm as holidays and later, before sum m er bikini season, the titles o f these features becom e shriller and m ore arresting. The reader is now addressed in the imperative m ode: Ju m p into shape for sum m er! Shed ugly winter fat with the all-new G rapefruit D iet! M ore w om en than men visit diet d o cto rs, while women greatly outnum ber m en in self-help grou p s such as Weight W atchers and O vereaters Anonym ous— in the case o f the latter, by well over 90 p ercen t.11 Dieting disciplines the body’s hungers: Appetite m ust be m onitored at all tim es and governed by an iron will. Since the innocent need o f the organism for food will not be denied, the body becom es on e’s enemy, an alien being bent on thwarting the disciplinary project. Anorexia nervosa, which has now assum ed epidem ic proportion s, is to wom en o f the late twentieth century what hysteria was to w om en o f an earlier day: the crystallization in a patho­ logical m ode o f a w idespread cultural obsession .12 A survey taken recently at u cla

is astoun din g: O f 2 6 0 stud ents in terview ed, 2 7 .3 p ercen t o f the

women but only 5.8 percent o f men said they were “terrified” o f getting fat: 2 8 .7 percent o f w om en and only 7.5 percent o f men said they were obsessed or “totally preoccupied” with food. The body images o f women and men are strikingly different as well: 35 percent o f women but only 12.5 percent of men said they felt fat though other people told them they were thin. Women in the survey w anted to weigh ten pounds less than their average weight; men felt they were within a pound o f their ideal weight. A total o f 5 .9 percent o f women and no men m et the psychiatric criteria for anorexia or bulim ia.13 Dieting is one discipline im posed upon a body subject to the “tyranny o f slenderness” ; exercise is another.14 Since men as well as women exercise, it is not always easy in the case o f women to distinguish what is done for the sake o f physical fitness from what is done in obedience to the requirem ents o f fem ­ ininity Men as well as w om en lift weights, do yoga, calisthenics, and aerobics, though “jazzercise” is a largely female pursuit. Men and women alike engage themselves with a variety o f machines, each designed to call forth from the body a different exertion : There are N autilus machines, rowing m achines, ordinary and m otorized exercycles, portable hip and leg cycles, belt massag ers, tram p olin es; tread m ills, arm and leg pulleys. However, given the w idespread female obsession with weight, one suspects that many women are working out with these apparatuses in the health club or at the gym with a different aim in mind and in quite a different spirit than the men.

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But there are classes o f exercises m eant for w om en alone, these designed not to firm or to reduce the b ody’s size overall, but to resculpture its various p arts on the cu rren t m odel. M . J. Saffon , “ in ternational beauty e x p e r t,” assures us that his twelve basic facial exercises can erase frown lines, sm ooth the forehead, raise hollow cheeks, banish cro w ’s feet, and tighten the m us­ cles under the ch in .15 There are exercises to build the breasts and exercises to banish “ cellulite,” said by “figure consultants” to be a special type o f female fat. There is “spot-reducing,” an um brella term that covers dozens o f punish­ ing exercises designed to reduce “problem areas” like thick ankles or “sad­ dlebag” thighs. The very idea o f “spot-reducing” is both scientifically unsound and cruel, for it raises expectations in w om en that can never be realized:The p attern in which fat is d ep o sited o r rem o ved is known to be genetically determ ined. It is not only her natural appetite or unreconstructed contours that pose a danger to wom en: The very expressions o f her face can subvert the disci­ plinary p ro ject o f bodily perfection . An ex p ressiv e face lines and creases m ore readily than an inexpressive one. H ence, if w om en are unable to su p ­ press strong em otions, they can at least learn to inhibit the tendency o f the face to register them . Sophia Loren recom m ends a unique solution to this problem : A piece o f tape applied to the forehead or betw een the brow s will tug at the skin when one frowns and act as a rem inder to relax the face. l6The tape is to be worn whenever a woman is hom e alone.

Ill There are significant gender differences in gesture, posture, m ovem ent, and general bodily com po rtm ent: W omen are far m ore restricted than men in their m anner o f m ovem ent and in their lived spatiality. In her classic paper on the subject, Iris Young observes that a space seem s to surround wom en in im agination which they are hesitant to m ove beyond: This m anifests itself both in a reluctance to reach, stretch, and exten d the body to m eet resis­ tances o f m atter in m otion— as in sp o rt or in the perform ance o f physical tasks— and in a typically constricted posture and general style o f m ovem ent. W om an’s space is not a field in which her bodily intentionality can be freely realized but an enclosure in which she feels h erself positioned and by which she is con fin ed.17The “loose w om an” violates these norm s: H er looseness is m anifest not only in her m orals, but in her m anner o f speech, and quite lit­ erally in the free and easy way she moves.

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In an extraordinary series o f over two thousand photographs, many candid shots taken in the street, the Germ an photographer Marianne Wex has docu­ m ented differences in typical masculine and feminine body posture. Women sit waiting for trains with arm s close to the body, hands folded together in their laps, toes pointing straight ahead or turned inward, and legs pressed together.18The wom en in these photographs make themselves small and nar­ row, harm less; they seem tense; they take up little space. M en, on the other hand, expand into the available space; they sit with legs far apart and arm s flung out at som e distance from the body. Most com m on in these sitting male figures is what W ex calls the “proferrin g position” : the m en sit with legs thrown wide apart, crotch visible, feet pointing outward, often with an arm and casually dangling hand resting comfortably on an open, spread thigh. In proportion to total body size, a m an’s stride is longer than a w om an’s. The man has m ore spring and rhythm to his step; he walks with toes pointed outw ard, holds his arm s at a greater distance from his body, and swings them farther; he tends to point the whole hand in the direction he is moving. The woman holds her arm s closer to her body, palms against her sides; her walk is circum spect. If she has subjected h erself to the additional constraint o f high-heeled shoes, her body is thrown forward and off-balance:The struggle to walk under these conditions shortens her stride still m o re .19 But w om en’s m ovem ent is subjected to a still finer discipline. Feminine faces, as well as bodies, are trained to the expression o f deference. U nder m ale scrutiny, w om en will avert their eyes or cast them dow n w ard ; the fem ale gaze is trained to abandon its claim to the sovereign status o f seer. The “nice” girl learn s to avoid the bold and un fettered starin g o f the “ lo o se ” w om an who look s at w hatever and w hom ever she p leases. W om en are trained to sm ile m ore than m en, too. In the economy o f sm iles, as elsew here, there is evidence that wom en are exploited, for they give m ore than they receive in return; in a sm ile elicitation study, one researcher found that the rate o f sm ile return by w om en was 93 percent, by men only 67 percen t.20 In many typical w om en ’s jo b s, graciousness, deference, and the readiness to serve are part o f the w ork; this requires the worker to fix a sm ile on her face for a good part o f the working day, whatever her inner state.21 The economy o f touching is out o f balance, too: men touch women m ore often and on m ore parts o f the body than women touch men: female secretaries, factory w orkers, and w aitresses rep ort that such liberties are taken routinely with their b od ies.22 Feminine m ovem ent, gestu re, and posture m ust exhibit not only co n ­ striction, but grace as well, and a certain eroticism restrained by m odesty:

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all three. Here is field for the operation for a whole new training: A woman must stand with stom ach pulled in, shoulders thrown slightly back, and chest out, this to display her bosom to m axim um advantage. W hile she m ust walk in the confined fashion appropriate to w om en, her m ovem ents m ust, at the sam e tim e, be com bined with a subtle but provocative hip-roll. But too much display is taboo: Women in short, low -cut dresses are told to avoid bending over at all, but if they m ust, great care m ust be taken to avoid an unseemly display o f breast or rum p. From tim e to tim e, fashion magazines offer quite precise instructions on the proper way o f getting in and out o f cars. These instructions com bine all three im peratives o f w om en ’s movem ent: A woman m ust not allow her arm s and legs to flail about in all directions; she m ust try to m anage her m ovem ents with the appearance o f grace— no small accom ­ plishm ent when one is climbing out o f the back seat o f a Fiat— and she is well advised to use the opportunity for a certain display o f leg. All the m ovem ents we have describ ed so far are self-m ovem ents; they arise from within the w om an’s own body. But in a way that norm ally goes unn oticed, m ales in couples may literally ste e r a w om an everyw here she go es: down the street, around co rn ers, into elevators, through doorw ays, into her chair at the dinner table, around the dance-floor. The m an’s m ove­ m ent “is not necessarily heavy and pushy or physical in an ugly way; it is light and gentle but firm in the way o f the m ost confident equestrians with the best trained horses.”23

IV We have exam ined som e o f the disciplinary practices a woman m ust m aster in pursuit o f a body o f the right size and shape that also displays the proper styles o f feminine motility. But w om an’s body is an ornam ented surface too, and there is much discipline involved in this production as well. H ere, esp e­ cially in the application o f m ake-up and the selection o f clothes, art and dis­ cipline converge, though, as I shall argue, there is less art involved than one might suppose. A w o m an ’s skin m ust be so ft, su pp le, h airless, and sm ooth ; ideally, it should betray no sign o f wear, experience, age, or deep thought. Hair m ust be rem oved not only from the face but from large surfaces o f the body as w ell, from legs and thighs, an operation accom plished by shaving, buffing with fine sandpaper, or foul-sm elling d epilatories. W ith the new high-leg bathing suits and leo tard s, a su bstantial am ou n t o f pubic hair m u st be

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rem oved to o .24T h e removal o f facial hair can be m ore specialized. Eyebrows are plucked out by the roots with a tweezer. H ot w ax is som etim es poured onto the m ustache and cheeks and then rip p ed away w hen it cools. The wom an who w ants a m ore p erm an en t resu lt may try electro lysis: This involves the killing o f a hair root by the passage o f an electric current down a needle which has been inserted into its base. The procedure is painful and expensive. The developm ent o f what one “beauty expert” calls “good skin-care habits” requires not only attention to health, the avoidance o f strong facial expres­ sions, and the perform ance o f facial exercises, but the regular use o f skin-care preparations, many to be applied oftener than once a day: cleansing lotions (ordinary soap and water “upsets the skin’s acid and alkaline balance”), washo ff cleansers (m ilder than cleansing lotions), astringents, ton ers, make-up rem overs, night cream s, nourishing cream s, eye cream s, m oisturizers, skin balancers, body lotio n s, hand cream s, lip p om ad es, suntan lotions, sun screens, facial m asks. Provision o f the proper facial mask is com plex: There are sulfur masks for pim ples; hot or oil masks for dry areas; also cold masks for dry areas; tightening m asks; conditioning m asks; peeling m asks; cleansing masks made o f herbs, cornm eal, or almonds; mud packs. Black women may wish to use “fade cream s” to “even skin tone.” Skin-care preparations are never just sloshed onto the skin, but applied according to precise rules: Eye cream is dabbed on gently in m ovem ents toward, never away from , the nose; cleans­ ing cream is applied in outward directions only, straight across the forehead, the upper lip, and the chin, never up but straight down the nose and up and out on the cheeks.25 The norm alizing discourse o f m odern m edicine is enlisted by the c o s­ m etics industry to gain credibility for its claim s. Dr. C hristiaan Barnard lends his enorm ous prestige to the Glycel line o f “cellular treatm ent activa­ to rs” ; these contain “glycosphingolipids” that can “m ake older skin behave and look like younger skin.’’The Clinique com puter at any Clinique counter will select a com bination o f preparations just right for you. U ltim a 11 con­ tains “procollagen” in its anti-aging eye cream that “provides hydration” to “dem oralizing lines.” “Biotherm ” eye cream dram atically im proves the “bio­ mechanical properties o f the skin ”26 The Park Avenue clinic o f Dr. Zizm or, “ch ief o f d erm atology at one o f N ew York’s leading h ospitals,” offers not only m edical treatm en t such as d erm abrasion and chem ical p eelin g but “total deep skin cleansing” as w ell.27 R eally go o d skin -care habits req u ire the use o f a variety o f aids and devices: facial ste am e rs; faucet filters to collect im pu rities in the w ater;

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borax to soften it; a hum idifier for the b ed ro o m ; electric m assagers; backbrush es; com plexion brushes; loofahs; pum ice sto nes; blackhead rem overs. I w ill not detail the im plem en ts o r techniques involved in the m anicure o r pedicure. The ordinary circum stances o f life as well as a wide variety o f activities cause a crisis in skin-care and require a stepping up o f the regim en as well as an additional laying on o f preparations. Skin-care discipline requires a spe­ cialized know ledge: A woman m ust know what to do if she has been skiing, taking m edication, doing vigorous exercise, boating, o r swim m ing in chlori­ nated poo ls; if she has been exposed to pollution, heated room s, cold, sun, harsh weather, the pressurized cabins on airplanes, saunas or steam room s, fatigue o r stress. Like the schoolchild or prison er, the w om an m asterin g good skin-care habits is put on a tim etable: G eorgette Klinger requires that a shorter or longer period o f attention be paid to the com plexion at least four tim es a day.28 Hair-care, like skin-care, requires a sim ilar investm ent o f tim e, the use o f a wide variety o f preparations, the m astery o f a set o f techniques and again, the acquisition o f a specialized knowledge. The crown and pinnacle o f good hair care and skin care is, o f course, the arrangem ent o f the hair and the application o f cosm etics. Here the regim en o f hair care, skin care, m anicure, and pedicure is recapitulated in another m ode. A w om an m ust learn the proper m anipulation o f a large num ber o f d ev ices— the blow dryer, styling bru sh , curlin g iron , hot cu rle rs, w ire cu rlers, eye-liner, lipliner, lipstick brush, eyelash curler, m ascara brush— and the correct m anner o f application o f a w ide variety o f products— foun­ dation, toner, covering stick, m ascara, eye shadow, eye glo ss, blusher, lip­ stick, rouge, lip gloss, hair dye, hair rinse, hair lightener, hair “relaxer,” etc. In the language o f fashion magazines and cosm etic ads, m aking up is typi­ cally portrayed as an aesthetic activity in which a woman can express her individuality. In reality, while cosm etic styles change every decade or so and while som e variation in m ake-up is perm itted depending on the occasion, m aking u p the face is, in fact, a highly stylized activity that gives little rein to self-expression . Painting the face is not like painting a p ictu re; at b est, it m ight be described as painting the sam e pictu re over and over again with m inor variations. Little latitude is perm itted in what is considered appropri­ ate m ake-up for the office and for m ost social occasions; indeed, the woman who uses cosm etics in a genuinely novel and imaginative way is liable to be seen not as an artist but as an eccentric. Furth erm ore, since a properly madeup face is, if not a card o f entree, at least a badge o f acceptability in m ost social and professional con texts, the woman who chooses not to wear cos­

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m etics at all faces sanctions o f a sort which will never be applied to som eone who chooses not to paint a watercolor.

V Are we dealing in all this m erely with sexual difference? Scarcely. The discipli­ nary practices I have described are p art o f the process by which the ideal body o f femininity— and hence the feminine body-subject— is constructed; in doing this, they produce a “practiced and subjected” body, i.e ., a body on which an inferior status has been inscribed. A w om an’s face m ust be made up, that is to say, m ade over, and so m ust her body: she is ten pounds over­ w eight; her lips m ust be m ade m ore kissable; her com plexion dew ier; her eyes m ore m ysterious. The “art” o f make-up is the art o f disguise, but this presupposes that a w om an’s face, unpainted, is defective. Soap and water, a shave, and routine attention to hygiene may be enough for him; for her they are not. The strategy o f m uch beauty-related advertising is to suggest -to w om en that their bodies are deficient, but even without such m ore or less explicit teaching, the m edia im ages o f perfect female beauty which bom bard us daily leave no doubt in the minds o f m ost wom en that they fail to m easure up. The tech n ologies o f fem ininity are taken up and practiced by women against the b ack gro u n d o f a pervasive sense o f bodily deficien cy: This accounts for what is often their com pulsive or even ritualistic character. The disciplinary project o f femininity is a “set-up” : It requires such radi­ cal and exten sive m easu res o f bodily tran sform ation that virtually every woman who gives h erself to it is destined in som e degree to fail.Thus, a m ea­ sure o f shame is added to a w om an’s sense that the body she inhabits is defi­ cient: she ought to take better care o f herself; she might after all have jogged that last m ile. Many w om en are without the tim e or resources to provide them selves with even the minimum o f what such a regim en requires, e.g., a decent diet. H ere is an additional source o f shame for p oo r w om en who m ust bear what our society regards as the m ore general shame o f poverty. The bur­ dens p o o r w om en b ear in this regard are not m erely psychological, since conform ity to the prevailing standards o f bodily acceptability is a known fac­ tor in econom ic mobility. The larger disciplines that construct a “feminine” body out o f a female one are by no m eans race- or class-specific. There is little evidence that women o f color or w orking-class women are in general less com m itted to the incar­ nation o f an ideal femininity than their m ore privileged sisters. This is not to

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deny the many ways in which factors o f race, class, locality, ethnicity, or p e r­ sonal taste can be expressed within the kinds o f practices I have described. The rising young corp orate executive may buy her cosm etics at BergdorfG oodm an while the counter-server at M cD on ald’s gets hers at the K -M art; the one may join an expensive “upscale” health club, while the other may have to make do with the $9 .4 9

g fx

Body-Flex II H om e-G ym advertised in the

National Enquirer: Both are aiming at the sam e general re su lt.29 In the regim e o f institutionalized heterosexuality woman m ust make h er­ se lf “object and prey” for the m an: It is for him that these eyes are lim pid p o o ls, this cheek b ab y -sm o o th .30 In co n tem p o rary patriarch al cu ltu re, a pan optical m ale co n n oisseu r resid es within' the co n scio u sn ess o f m o st w om en: They stand perpetually b efore his gaze and under his ju d gm en t. W oman lives h er body as seen by another, by an anonym ous patriarch al Other. We are often told that “w om en dress for other w om en.”There is som e truth in this: W ho but som eone engaged in a p roject sim ilar to my own can appreciate the panache with which I bring it off? But w om en know for whom this gam e is played: They know that a pretty young w om an is likelier to becom e a flight attendant than a plain one and that a w ell-preserved older woman has a better chance o f holding onto her husband than one who has “let h erself go.” Here it might be objected that perform ance for another in no way signals the inferiority o f the p erfo rm er to the one for w hom the p erform an ce is intended: The actor, for exam ple, depends on his audience but is in no way inferior to it; he is not dem eaned by his dependency. W hile fem ininity is surely som ething enacted, the analogy to theater breaks dow n in a num ber o f ways. First, as I argued earlier, the self-determ ination we think o f as re q ­ uisite to an artistic career is lacking here: Femininity as spectacle is so m e­ thing in which virtually every w om an is required to participate. Second, the p recise nature o f the c riteria by which w om en are ju d g e d , n o t only the in escapability o f ju d gm en t itself, reflects g ro ss im balan ces in the social pow er o f the sexes that do not m ark the relationship o f artists and their audi­ ences. An aesthetic o f femininity, for exam ple, that m andates fragility and a lack o f m uscular strength produces fem ale bodies that can offer little resis­ tance to physical abuse, and the physical abuse o f w om en by m en , as we know, is w idespread. It is true that the current fitness m ovem ent has p e r­ m itted w om en to develop m ore m uscular strength and endurance than was heretofore allow ed; indeed, im ages o f w om en have begun to appear in the m ass m edia that seem to eroticize this new muscularity. But a w om an may by no m eans develop m ore m uscular strength than her partner; the bride who

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would tenderly carry her groom across the threshold is a figure o f comedy, not ro m an ce.31 U n d er the cu rren t “tyranny o f slen d ern ess” w om en are forbidden to becom e large or m assive; they m ust take up as little space as possible. The very contours a w om an’s body takes on as she m atures— the fuller breasts and rounded hips— have becom e distasteful. The body by which a woman feels h erself judged and which by rigorous discipline she m ust try to assume is the body o f early adolescence, slight and unform ed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the im age o f im m aturity has been inscribed.The requirem ent that a woman maintain a sm ooth and hairless skin carrie s fu rth er the them e o f in exp erien ce, for an infantilized face m ust accom pany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrow s its brow in thought. The face o f the ideally feminine woman m ust never display the m arks o f character, w isdom , and experience that we so adm ire in men. To succeed in the provision o f a beautiful or sexy body gains a woman attention and som e adm iration but little real respect and rarely any social power. A w om an’s effort to m aster feminine body discipline will lack im por­ tance just because she does it: Her activity partakes o f the general deprecia­ tion o f everything fem ale. In spite o f unrelenting pressure to “make the m ost o f what they have,” women are ridiculed and dism issed for the triviality o f their interest in such “trivial” things as clothes and make-up. Further, the nar­ row identification o f woman with sexuality and the body in a society that has for centuries displayed profound suspicion tow ard both does little to raise her status. Even the m ost adored female bodies complain routinely o f their situation in ways that reveal an implicit understanding that there is som ething dem eaning in the kind o f attention they receive. Marilyn M onroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Farrah Fawcett have all wanted passionately to becom e actressesartists and not just “sex objects.” But it is perhaps in their m ore restricted motility and com portm ent that the inferiorization o f w om en’s bodies is m ost evident: W om en’s typical body language, a language o f relative tension and constriction, is understood to be a language o f subordination when it is enacted by men in male status hierar­ chies. In groups o f m en, those with higher status typically assum e looser and m ore relaxed postures: The boss lounges comfortably behind the desk while the applicant sits tense and rigid on the edge o f his seat. Higher-status indi­ viduals may touch their subordinates m ore than they themselves get touched; they initiate m ore eye contact and are smiled at by their inferiors m ore than they are observed to smile in return .32 What is announced in the com p o rt­ m en t o f su p erio rs is confidence and ease, especially ease o f access to the

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Other. Female constraint in posture and movement is no doubt overdeter­ mined: The fact that women tend to sit and stand with legs, feet, and knees close or touching may well be a coded declaration o f sexual circumspection in a society that still maintains a double standard, or an effort, albeit uncon­ scious, to guard the genital area. In the latter case, a w om an’s tight and con­ stricted posture must be seen as the expression o f her need to ward o ff real or symbolic sexual attack. Whatever proportions must be assigned in the final display to fear or deference, one thing is clear: W oman’s body language speaks eloquently, though silently, o f her subordinate status in a hierarchy o f gender.

VI If what we have described is a genuine discipline— a “system o f m icropower that is essentially non-egalitarian and asym m etrical”— who then are the dis­ ciplinarians?33 Who is the top sergeant in the disciplinary regim e o f feminin­ ity? Historically, the law has had som e responsibility for enforcem ent: In times gone by, for exam ple, individuals who appeared in public in the clothes o f the other sex could be arrested. While cross-dressers are still liable to som e harassment, the kind o f discipline we are considering is not the busi­ ness o f the police or the courts. Parents and teachers, o f course, have exten ­ sive influence, admonishing girls to be dem ure and ladylike, to “smile pretty,” to sit with their legs together. The influence o f the m edia is pervasive, too, constructing as it does an image o f the female body as spectacle, nor can we ignore the role played by “beauty experts” or by emblem atic public person ­ ages such as Jane Fonda and Lynn Redgrave. But none o f these individuals— the skin-care consultant, the parent, the policem an— does in fact wield the kind o f authority that is typically invested in those who manage m ore straightforward disciplinary institutions.The dis­ ciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular. Women regarded as overweight, for exam ple, report that they are regularly admonished to diet, som etim es by people they scarcely know. These intru­ sions are often softened by reference to the natural prettiness just waiting to em erge: “People have always said that I had a beautiful face and ‘if you’d only lose weight you’d be really beautiful.” ’ 34 Here, “people”— friends and casual acquaintances alike— act to enforce prevailing standards o f body size. Foucault tends to identify the imposition o f discipline upon the body with the operation o f specific institutions, e.g., the school, the factory, the prison.

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To do this, however, however, is to overlook the extent to which discipline can be institutionally unbound as well as institutionally b o u n d .35 The anonymity o f disciplinary pow er and its wide dispersion have consequences which are crucial to a proper understanding o f the subordination o f w om en. The absence o f a form al institutional structure and o f authorities invested with the pow er to carry out institutional directives creates the im pression that the production o f femininity is either entirely voluntary or natural. The several senses o f “discipline” are instructive here. On the one hand, discipline is som ething im posed on subjects o f an “essentially inegalitarian and asym ­ m etrical” system o f authority. Schoolchildren, convicts, and draftees are sub­ ject to discipline in this sense. But discipline can be sought voluntarily as well, as, for exam ple, when an individual seeks initiation into the spiritual discipline o f Zen Buddhism. Discipline can, o f course, be both at once: The volunteer may seek the physical and occupational training offered by the army without the arm y’s ceasing in any way to be the instrum ent by which he and other m em b ers o f his class are kept in discip lin ed su bjectio n. Feminine bodily discipline has this dual character: On the one hand, no one is m arched off for electrolysis at the end o f a rifle, nor can we fail to ap pre­ ciate the initiative and ingenuity displayed by countless wom en in an-attempt to m aster the rituals o f beauty. N evertheless, insofar as the disciplinary prac­ tices o f femininity produce a “subjected and practiced,” an inferiorized, body, they m ust be understood as aspects o f a far larger discipline, an oppressive and inegalitarian system o f sexual subordination. This system aims at turning wom en into the docile and com pliant com panions o f m en just as surely as the army aims to turn its raw recruits into soldiers. Now the transform ation o f oneself into a properly feminine body may be any or all o f the following: a rite o f passage into adulthood; the adoption and celebration o f a particular aesthetic; a way o f announcing o n e ’s econom ic level and social status; a way to triumph over other women in the com peti­ tion for men or job s; or an opportunity for massive narcissistic indulgence.36 The social construction o f the feminine body is all these things, but it is at base discipline, too, and discipline o f the inegalitarian sort. The absence o f form ally identifiable disciplinarians and o f a public schedule o f sanctions serves only to disguise the extent to which the imperative to be “feminine” serves the interest o f domination. This is a lie in which all concur: Making up is m erely artful play; o n e ’s first pair o f high-heeled shoes is an innocent part o f grow ing up and not the m odern equivalent o f foot-binding. Why aren ’t all women feminists? In m odern industrial societies, wom en are not kept in line by fear o f retaliatory m ale violence; their victimization is

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not that o f the South African black. N o r will it suffice to say that a false con ­ sciousness engendered in w om en by patriarchal ideology is at the basis o f fem ale subordination.This is not to deny the fact that wom en are often su b­ je ct to gross m ale violence or that wom en and men alike are ideologically m ystified by the dom inant gen d er arran gem en ts. W hat 1 wish to su gg est instead is that an adequate understanding o f w om en’s oppression will require an appreciation o f the extent to which not only w om en’s lives but their very subjectivities are structured within an ensem ble o f systematically duplicitous practices. The feminine discipline o f the body is a case in point: The practices which co n stru ct this body have an overt aim and character far rem o ved, indeed radically distinct, from their covert function. In this regard, the sys­ tem o f gender subordination, like the wage-bargain under capitalism , illus­ trates in its own way the ancient tension, betw een what is and what appears: The phenom enal form s in which it is m anifested are often quite different from the real relations which form its deeper structure.

VII The lack o f form al public sanctions d o es not m ean that a w om an w ho is unable or unwilling to subm it h erself to the appropriate body discipline will face no sanctions at all. O n the contrary, she faces a very severe sanction indeed in a w orld dom inated by m en: the refusal o f m ale patronage. For the heterosexual w om an, this may mean the loss o f a badly needed intim acy; for both h eterosexual w om en and lesbians, it may well m ean the refusal o f a decent livelihood. As noted earlier, w om en punish them selves too for the failure to co n ­ form . The growing literature on w om en’s body size is filled with w renching confessions o f shame from the overweight: I felt clumsy and huge. I felt that I would knock over furniture, bump into things, tip over chairs, not fit into v w ’s, especially when people were try­ ing to crowd into the back seat. I felt like I was taking over the whole room . . . . I felt disgusting and like a slob. In the summer I felt hot and sweaty and I knew people saw my sweat as evidence that I was too fat. I feel so terrible about the way I look that I cut off connection with my body. I operate from the neck up. I do not look in m irrors. I do not want to spend time buying clothes. I do not want to spend time with make-up because it’s painful for me to look at m yself.37

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I can no longer bear to look at myself. Whenever I have to stand in front o f a m irror to comb my hair 1 tie a large towel around my neck. Even at night I slip my nightgown on before I take off my blouse and pants. But all this has only made it worse and worse. It’s been so long since I’ve really looked at my body.38 The depth o f these w om en’s shame is a m easure o f the extent to which all w om en have in tern alized patriarchal standards o f bodily acceptability. A fuller exam ination o f what is m eant here by “internalization” may shed light on a question posed earlier: Why isn’t every woman a feminist? Som ething is “internalized” when it gets incorporated into the structure o f the self. By “structure o f the s e lf” I refer to those m odes o f perception and o f self-perception which allow a se lf to distinguish itself both from other selves and from things which are not selves. I have described elsew here how a generalized m ale w itness com es to structure w om an’s consciousness o f h erself as a bodily being. 39This, then, is one meaning o f “internalization .’’The sense o f oneself as a distinct and valuable individual is tied not only to the sense o f how one is perceived, but also to what one know s, especially to what one knows how to d o; this is a second sense o f “internalization .’’W hat­ ever its ultim ate effect, discipline can provide the individual upon w hom it is im posed with a sense o f m astery as well as a secure sense o f identity. There is a certain contradiction here: W hile its im position may prom ote a larger disem pow erm ent, discipline may bring with it a certain developm ent o f a p erso n ’s pow ers. W omen, then, like other skilled individuals, have a stake in the perpetuation o f their skills, whatever it may have cost to acquire them and quite ap art from the question whether, as a gender, they w ould have been better off had they never had to acquire them in the first place. H ence, fem inism , especially a genuinely radical feminism that questions the patriar­ chal construction o f the fem ale body, threatens women with a certain d e­ skilling, som ething people norm ally resist: Beyond this, it calls into question that aspect o f personal identity which is tied to the developm ent o f a sense o f com petence. Resistance from this source may be joined by a reluctance to part with the rew ards o f com pliance; further, many women will resist the abandonm ent o f an aesthetic that defines what they take to be beautiful. But there is still another source o f resistance, one m ore subtle perhaps, but tied once again to questions o f identity and internalization. To have a body felt to be “ fem i­ nine”— a body socially constructed through the appropriate practices— is in m ost cases crucial to a w om an’s sense o f herself as female and, since persons

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currently can be only as m ale or fem ale, to her sense o f herself as an existing individual. To possess such a body may also be essential to her sense o f h er­ se lf as a sexually desiring and desirable subject. Hence, any political project which aim s to dism antle the m achinery that turns a fem ale body into a fem ­ inine one may well be apprehended by a w om an as som ething that threatens her with desexualization, if not outright annihilation. The categories o f masculinity and fem ininity do m ore than assist in the construction o f personal identities; they are critical elem ents in our inform al social ontology. This may account to som e degree for the otherwise puzzling phenom enon o f hom ophobia and for the revulsion felt by many at the sight o f fem ale bodybuilders; neither the hom osexual nor the m uscular w om an can be assim ilated easily into the categories that structure everyday life. The radical fem inist critique o f femininity, then, may pose a threat not only to a w om an’s sense o f her own identity and desirability but to the very structure o f her social universe. O f course, many women are feminists, favoring a program o f political and econ om ic reform in the stru ggle to gain equality with m en .40 But many “reform ” or liberal feminists, indeed, many orthodox M arxists, are com m itted to the idea that the preservation o f a w om an’s femininity is quite com patible with her struggle for liberation.41 These thinkers have rejected a norm ative femininity based upon the notion o f “separate spheres” and the traditional se x ­ ual division o f labor while accepting at the sam e tim e conventional standards o f feminine body display. If my analysis is correct, such a feminism is incoher­ ent. Foucault has argued that m odern bourgeois dem ocracy is deeply flawed in that it seeks political rights for individuals constituted as unfree by a variety o f disciplinary m icropow ers that lie beyond the realm o f what is ordinarily defined as the “political.” “The man described for us whom we are invited to free,” he says, “is already in him self the effect o f a subjection much m ore pro­ found than himself.”42 If, as I have argued, female subjectivity is constituted in any significant m easure in and through the.disciplinary practices that construct the feminine body, what Foucault says here o f “man” is perhaps even truer o f “woman.” Marxists have maintained from the first the inadequacy o f a purely liberal fem inism : We have reached the sam e conclusion through a different route, casting doubt at the same tim e on the adequacy of traditional M arxist prescriptions for w om en’s liberation as well. Liberals call for equal rights for w om en, traditional M arxists for the entry o f women into production on an equal footing with men, the socialization o f housework and proletarian revo­ lution: neither calls for the deconstruction o f the categories o f masculinity and femininity.43 Femininity as a certain “style o f the flesh” will have to be surpassed

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in the direction o f something quite different, not masculinity, which is in many ways only its m irror opposite, but a radical and as yet unimagined transform a­ tion o f the female body.

VIII Foucault has argued that the transition from traditional to m odern societies has been characterized by a profoun d tran sform ation in the e x e rcise o f pow er, by what he calls “a reversal o f the political axis o f in dividualiza­ tion.”44 In older authoritarian system s, power was em bodied in the person o f the m onarch and exercised upon a largely anonymous body o f subjects; violation o f the law was seen as an insult to the royal individual. W hile the m ethods em ployed to enforce com pliance in the past w ere often quite b ru ­ tal, involving gro ss assaults against the body, pow er in such a system o p e r­ ated in a haphazard and discontinuous fashion; much in the social totality lay beyond its reach. By contrast, m odern society has seen the em ergence o f increasingly inva­ sive apparatuses o f pow er: These exercise a far m ore restrictive social and psychological control than w as heretofore possible. In m odern societies, effects o f pow er “circulate through progressively finer channels, gaining access to individuals them selves, to their bodies, their gestures and all their daily actions.”45 Power now seeks to transform the minds o f those individu­ als who might be tem pted to resist it, not merely to punish or im prison their bodies. This requires two things: a finer control o f the b ody’s tim e and its m ovem ents— a control that cannot be achieved without ceaseless surveil­ lance and a better understanding o f the specific person, o f the genesis and nature o f his “case.” The pow er these new apparatuses seek to ex ercise requires a new knowledge o f the individual: M odern psychology and sociol­ ogy are born. W hether the new m odes o f control have charge o f correction, pro d u ctio n , edu cation , or the provision o f w elfare, they resem b le one another; they exercise pow er in a bureaucratic m ode— faceless, centralized, and pervasive. A reversal has occurred: Power has now becom e anonym ous, while the project o f control has brought into being a new individuality. In fact, Foucault believes that the operation o f power constitutes the very sub­ jectivity o f the subject. H ere, the image o f the Panopticon returns: Knowing that he may be observed from the tower at any tim e, the inmate takes over the job o f policing him self. The gaze which is inscribed in the very structure o f the disciplinary institution is internalized by the inm ate: M odern tech ­

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nologies o f behavior are thus oriented tow ard the production o f isolated and self-policing subjects.46 W omen have their own experien ce o f the m odernization o f power, one w hich begin s later but follow s in m any re sp e c ts the co u rse outlined by Foucault. In im portant ways, a w om an ’s behavior is less regulated now than it w as in the past. She has m ore m obility and is less confined to dom estic space. She enjoys what to previou s gen eratio n s w ould have been an u n ­ im aginable sexual liberty. D ivorce, access to paid w ork outside the hom e, and the increasing secularization o f m o d e rn life have loosen ed the hold over her o f the traditional family and, in spite o f the current fundam ental­ ist revival, o f the church. Power in these institutions was w ielded by indi­ viduals known to her. Husbands and fathers enforced patriarchal authority in the family. As in the ancien regim e a w om an ’s body was subject to san c­ tio n s if she d iso b eyed . N ot F o u c a u lt’s royal in dividual but the D ivine Individual d ecreed that her desire be always “unto her husband,” while the p erso n o f the priest m ade known to h er G o d ’s m ore specific intentions concerning her place and duties. In the days when civil and ecclesiastical authority w ere still con joined, individuals form ally invested with pow er w ere charged with the correction o f recalcitran t w om en w hom the family had som ehow failed to constrain. By contrast, the disciplinary pow er that is increasingly charged with the production o f a properly em bodied femininity is dispersed and anonym ous; there are no individuals form ally em pow ered to w ield it;-it is, as we have seen , invested in everyone and in no on e in particular. This disciplinary pow er is peculiarly m odern: It does not rely upon violent or public san c­ tions, nor does it seek to restrain the freedom o f the fem ale body to move from place to place. For all that, its invasion o f the body is well-nigh total: The fem ale body enters “a m achinery o f pow er that explores it, breaks it dow n and rearran ges it.” The d isciplin ary tech n iques through which the “docile bodies” o f w om en are constructed aim at a regulation which is p e r­ petu al and exh austive— a regulatio n o f the b o d y ’s size and co n to u rs, its ap p etite, po stu re, g e stu re s, and gen eral co m p o rtm e n t in space and the appearance o f each o f its visible parts. As m odern industrial societies change and as w om en them selves offer resistan ce to patriarchy, old er fo rm s o f dom ination are erod ed . But new fo rm s arise, spread , and b eco m e co n so lid ated . W om en are no lo n ger required to be chaste or m od est, to restrict their sphere o f activity to the h om e, or even to realize their p ro perly fem inine destiny in m atern ity: N orm ative femininity is com ing m ore and m ore to be centered on w om an’s

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body— not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, m ore precisely, its presum ed heterosexuality and its ap pear­ ance. There is, o f course, nothing new in w om en’s preoccupation with youth and beauty. W hat is new is the grow in g pow er o f the im age in a society increasingly oriented toward the visual m edia. Images o f norm ative fem inin­ ity, it might be ventured, have replaced the religiously oriented tracts o f the past. N ew too is the spread o f this discipline to all classes o f w om en and its deploym ent throughout the life cycle. What was form erly the speciality o f the aristocrat or courtesan is now the routine obligation o f every w om an, be she a grandm other or a barely pubescent girl. To subject on eself to the new disciplinary power is to be up-to-date, to be “with-it”; as I have argued, it is presented to us in ways that are regularly dis­ guised. It is fully com patible with the current need for w om en’s wage labor, the cult o f youth and fitness, and the need o f advanced capitalism to maintain high levels o f consum ption. Further, it represents a saving in the econom y o f enforcem ent: Since it is women themselves who practice this discipline on and against their own bodies, men get o ff scot-free.

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The woman who checks her make-up half a dozen tim es a day to see if her foundation has caked or her m ascara run, who w orries that the wind or rain may spoil her h airdo, w ho looks frequently to see if her sto ck in gs have bagged at the ankle, or who, feeling fat, m onitors everything she eats, has becom e, just as surely as the inmate o f Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self com m itted to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form o f obedience to patriarchy. It is also the reflection in w om an ’s con ­ sciousness o f the fact that she is under surveillance in ways that he is not, that whatever else she may becom e, she is importantly a body designed to please or to excite. There has been induced in many w om en, then, in Foucault’s w ords, “a state o f conscious and perm anent visibility that assures the au to­ matic functioning o f power.”48 Since the standards o f female bodily accept­ ability are im possible fully to realize, requiring as they do a virtual transcen­ dence o f nature, a w om an may live much o f her life with a pervasive feeling o f bodily deficiency. Hence, a tighter control o f the body has gained a new kind o f hold over the m ind. Foucault often w rites as if pow er constitutes the very individuals upon whom it operates: The individual is not to be conceived as a sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple and inert material on which power com es to fasten or against which it happens to strike. . . . In fact, it is already one

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o f the prim e effects o f power that certain bodies, certain gestures, cer­ tain discourses, certain desires, com e to be identified and constituted as individuals.49 N evertheless, if individuals were wholly constituted by the p o w er/k n o w l­ edge regim e Foucault describes, it w ould m ake no sense to speak o f resis­ tance to discipline at all. Foucault seem s som etim es on the verge o f depriv­ ing us o f a vocabulary in which to conceptualize the nature and meaning o f those periodic refusals o f control which, just as much as the im position o f control, m ark the course o f human history. Peter D ew s accuses Foucault o f lacking a theory o f the “libidinal body,” i.e ., the body upon which discipline is im posed and w hose bedrock im pulse tow ard spontaneity and pleasure m ight perhaps becom e the locus o f resis­ tan ce.50 D o w om en’s “libidinal” bodies, then, not rebel against the pain, con ­ striction , tedium , sem istarvation, and constant self-surveillance to which they are currently condem ned? C ertainly they d o, but the rebellion is put dow n every tim e a woman picks up her eyebrow tw eezers or em barks upon a new diet.T h e harshness o f a regim en alone does n ot guarantee its rejection, for hardships can be endured if they are thought to be necessary o r inevitable. While “ nature,” in the form o f a “libidinal” body, may not be the origin o f a revolt against “culture,” dom ination and the discipline it requires are never im posed w ithout som e cost. Historically, the form s and occasions o f resis­ tance are manifold. Som etim es, instances o f resistance appear to spring from the introduction o f new and conflicting factors into the lives o f the d o m i­ nated: T h e ju xtaposition o f old and new and the resulting incoherence or “con trad ictio n ” may m ake subm ission to the old ways seem increasingly unnecessary. In the present instance, what may be a m ajor factor in the relent­ less and escalating objectification o f w o m e n ’s b o d ies— namely, w o m en ’s grow ing independence— produces in many w om en a sense o f incoherence that calls into question the m eaning and necessity o f the current discipline. As w om en (albeit a small m inority o f wom en) begin to realize an unprecedented political, econom ic, and sexual self-determ ination, they fall ever m ore co m ­ pletely under the dom inating gaze o f patriarchy. It is this paradox, not the “libidinal body,” that produces, here and there, pockets o f resistance. In the cu rren t political clim ate, there is no reason to anticipate either w idespread resistance to currently fashionable m odes o f feminine em bodi­ m ent or joyous experim entation with new “styles o f the flesh” ; m oreover, such novelties would face profound opp osition from m aterial and psycho­ logical sources identified earlier in this essay (see section VII). In spite o f this,

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a n um ber o f opp osition al discou rses and practices have ap peared in recent years. An increasing n um ber o f w om en are “pum ping iron,” a few with little concern for the lim its o f body developm ent im posed by curren t canons o f femininity. W om en in radical lesbian com m unities have also rejected h ege­ m onic im ages o f fem ininity and are struggling to develop a new fem ale aes­ thetic. A striking featu re o f such com m unities is the ex ten t to w hich they have overcom e the opp ressive identification o f fem ale beauty and desirabil­ ity with youth: H ere, the physical features o f aging— “character” lines and graying hair— n ot only d o not diminish a w om an’s attractiveness, they may even enhance it. A pop u lar literature o f resistance is grow in g, som e o f it ana­ lytical and reflective, like Kim C h ern in ’s The Obsession, som e o rien ted tow ard practical self-help, like M arcia H utchinson’s recent Transforming Body Image: Learning to Love the Body You Have. This literature reflects a m ood akin in som e ways to that o th er and earlier m o o d o f qu iet d esp eratio n to w hich Betty Friedan gave voice in The Feminine Mystique. N or should we fo rg et that a m assbased w om en ’s m ovem ent is in place in this country, which has begun a crit­ ical questioning o f the m eaning o f femininity, if n ot yet in this, then in other dom ains o f life. We w om en cannot begin the re-vision o f ou r own bodies until we learn to read the cultural m essages we inscribe upon them daily and until we com e to see that even when the m astery o f the disciplines o f fem i­ ninity p roduce a trium phant result, we are still only w om en.

r

N O TES

1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (NewYork: Vintage, 1979), p. 138. 2. Ibid., p. 28. 3. Ibid., p. 147. 4. Ibid., p. 153. Foucault is citing an eighteenth-century military manual, “Ordonnance du ler janvier 1766 . . ., titre XI, article 2.” 5. Ibid., p. 153. 6. Ibid., p. 150. 7. Ibid., p. 200. 8. Ibid., p. 201. 9. Ibid., p. 228. 10.

Judith Butler, “Embodied Identity in De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex” unpub­

lished manuscript, p. 11, presented to American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, March 22, 1985. See also Butler’s recent m onograph Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o j Identity (NewYork: Routledge, 1990).

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11. M arcia M illm an, Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America (N ew York: N o rto n , 1980), p. 46. 12. Susan Bordo, “A norexia N ervo sa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization o f C ulture,” Philosophical Forum 17, no. 2 (W inter 1985—8 6 ): 7 3 —104. See also B o rd o ’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (B erkeley: U n iversity o f California Press, 1993). 13. USA Today, May 30, 1985. 14. Phrase taken from the title o f Kim C h ernin’s The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny o f Slenderness (N ew York: H arper and Row, 1 9 8 1 ), an exam ination from a fem inist persp ective o f w om en’s eating disord ers and o f the current fem ale p re o c ­ cupation with body size. 15. M. J. Saffon, The 1 S-Minute-a-Day Natural Face Lift (N ew Y ork: W arner Books, 1981). 16. Sophia L oren, Women and Beauty (N ew Y ork: W illiam M orrow, 1984), p. 57. 17. Iris Y oung, “T h ro w in g Like a G irl: A P h en om en ology o f Fem inine Body C o m p o rtm en t, Motility, and Spatiality,” Human Studies 3, (1 9 8 0 ): 137—56. 18. M arianne W ex, Let’s Take Back Our Space:“Female” and “Male”Body Language as a Result o f Patriarchal Structures (Berlin: Frauenliteratu rverlag H erm ine Fees, 1979). W ex claim s that Japanese w om en are still taught to position their feet so that the toes point inw ard, a traditional sign o f subm issiveness (p. 23). 19. In heels, the “fem ale foot and leg are turned into ornam ental objects and the im practical shoe, which offers little protection against d u st, rain and snow, induces h elplessness and dependence. . . .T h e extra w iggle in the hips, exaggerating a slight natural tendency, is seen as sexually flirtatious while the sm aller steps and tentative, insecure tread su ggest daintiness, m odesty and refinem ent. Finally, the overall h ob­ bling effect with its sadom asochistic tinge is suggestive o f the restraining leg irons and ankle chains endured by captive anim als, p riso n ers and slaves w ho w ere also fes­ toon ed with decorative sym bols o f their bon dage.” Susan Brow nm iller, Femininity (N ew Y ork: Sim on and Schuster, 1984), p. 184. 20. N ancy Henley, Body Politics (Englew ood C liffs, N .J .: Prentice-H all, 1977), p. 176. 21. For an account o f the som etim es devastating effects on w orkers, like flight atten d an ts, w hose con dition s o f em p loy m en t req u ire the display o f a p erp etu al friendliness, see Arlie H ochschild, The Managed Heart:The Commercialization o f Human Feeling (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1983). 22. Henley, Body Politics, p. 108. 23. Ibid ., p. 149. 24. C lairol has ju st introduced a sm all electric shaver, the “ Bikini,” apparently intended for ju st such use.

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2 5. G e o rg e tte K lin ger and Barbara R ow es, Georgette Klinger’s Skincare (N ew Y ork: W illiam M orrow , 1 9 7 8 ), pp. 102, 105, 151, 188, and passim . 2 6. Chicago Magazine, M arch 1986, pp. 4 3 , 10, 18, and 6 2 . 2 7. Essence, A pril 19 8 6 , p. 2 5. I am indebted to Laurie Shrage fo r calling this to m y attention and fo r providing m ost o f these exam ples. 2 8. K linger, Skincare, pp. 137—4 0. 2 9. In light o f this, one is su rp rised to see a tw o-ounce jar o f “Skin R egeneration F o rm u la,” a “ P ro teo ly tic Enzym e C ream w ith B rom elain and Papain,” sellin g for $ 2 3 .9 5 in the tabloid Globe (A pril 8 , 1986, p. 29) and an unidentified am ount ofTova B o rgn in e’s “am azing new form u la from Beverly H ills” (oth erw ise unnam ed) go in g fo r $ 4 1 .7 5 in the National Enquirer (A pril 8, 1986, p. 15). 30. “It is req u ired o f w om an that in o rd er to realize her fem ininity she m ust m ake h e rse lf o b jec t and prey, which is to say that she m u st ren oun ce her claim s as sover­ eign su b ject.” Sim on e D e Beauvoir, The Second Sex (N ew Y ork: Bantam B oo ks, 19 6 8 ), p. 6 4 2 . 31. T h e film Pumping Iron II portrays very clearly the tension fo r fem ale b o d y ­ b u ild ers (a ten sion that en ters into form al ju d gin g in the sp o rt) betw een m uscular d evelop m en t and a properly fem inine appearance. 32. H enley, Body Politics, p. 101, 153, and passim . 33. Fou cau lt, Discipline and Punish, p. 222. 34. M illm an, Such a Pretty Face, p. 80. These so rts o f rem ark s are m ade so c o m ­ m only to heavy w om en that so cio lo gist M illm an takes the m o st cliched as title o f her study o f the lives o f the overw eight. 35. I am in debted to N ancy Fraser for the form u lation o f this point. 36. See Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology o f Oppression (N ew York: R o u tle d ge , 1 9 9 0 ), chap. 3. 37. M illm an, Such a Pretty Face, pp. 80 and 195. 38. C h ern in, The Obsession, p. 53. 39. See Femininity and Domination, chap. 3. 4 0 . F or a claim that the p ro ject o f liberal o r “m ain stream ” fem inism is covertly racist, see bell h o o k s, Ain’t I Woman: Black Women and Feminism (B o sto n : South End P ress, 1 9 8 1 ), chap. 4 . For an authoritative general critique o f liberal fem in ism , see A lison Ja g g ar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (T o to w a, N .J .: R o w m an and A llanheld, 1 9 8 3 ), chaps. 3 and 7. 4 1 . S e e , fo r e x a m p le , M ih ailo M ark o v ic, “ W o m en ’s L ib e ratio n and H um an E m an cipation ,” in Women and Philosophy, ed. C arol C . G ou ld and M arx W. W artofsky (N ew Y ork : Pu tnam , 1 9 7 6 ), pp. 165—66. 4 2 . Fou cault, Discipline and Punish, p. 30. 4 3 . S o m e radical fem in ists have called fo r ju st such a d eco n stru ctio n . See espe-

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d ally M onique W ittig, The Lesbian Body (N ew Y ork: Avon, 1976), and Butler, Gender Trouble. 4 4 . Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 4 4 . 4 5 . Foucault, Colin G ordon , e d ., Power/ Knowledge (N ew Y ork: Pantheon, 1980), p. 151. Q u oted in Peter D ew s, “ Power and Subjectivity in Foucault,” New Left Review 144 (M arch -A p ril 1984): 17. 4 6 . D ew s, “ Power and Subjectivity,” p. 77. 4 7 . Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 1 38. 4 8 . Ibid., p. 201. 4 9 . Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 98. In fact, Foucault is not entirely consistent on this point. For an excellent discussion o f contending Foucault interpretations and for the difficulty o f deriving a consistent set o f claim s from Foucault’s w ork gen er­ ally, see Nancy Fraser, “Michel Foucault: A ‘Young C on servative’ ?” Ethics 9 6 , no. 9 (O cto b er 1985): 1 6 5 -8 4 . 50. D ew s, “ Power and Subjectivity,” p. 92. 51. See Marcia Hutchinson, Tranjorming Body Image: Learning to Love the Body You Have (T ru m an sb u rg, N .Y .: C ro ssin g P ress, 1 9 8 5 ). See also B o rd o , “ A n o rex ia N ervo sa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization o f C ulture.”

8

On Being the Object o f Property

P atricia J.W illiam s

On B ein g In visib le R E F L E C T IO N S

For som e tim e I have been w ritin g about my great-great-grandm other. I have considered the significance o f her history and that o f slavery from a variety o f viewpoints on a variety o f occa­ sions: in every speech, in every conversation, even in my com m ercial transactions class. I have talked so much about her that I finally had to ask m y self w hat it w as I w as looking fo r in this d ogged p u rsu it o f fam ily history. Was I being m erely indulgent, looking for roots in the p u r­ suit o f som e genetic heraldry, seeking the inher­ itance o f being special, different, unique in all that prim ogeniture hath w rought? I d ecid ed that my search w as based in the utility o f such a q u est, not m ere in dulgen ce,

Patricia J. W illiam s, “ O n Being the O b je c t o f Property.” O r ig i­ nally app eared in Signs: Journal ofWomen in Culture and Society 14:1 (1 9 8 8 ) and is reprin ted with p e rm issio n fro m the U n i­ versity o f C hicago Press and the author.

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but a recapturing o f that which had escaped historical scrutiny, which had been overlooked and underseen. I, like so many blacks, have been trying to pin m yself down in history, place m yself in the stream o f tim e as significant, evolved, present in the past, continuing into the future. To be w ithout d ocu ­ m entation is too unsustaining, too spontaneously ahistorical, too d an ger­ ously m alleable in the hands o f those who would rew rite not m erely the past but my future as well. So I have been picking through the ruins for my roots. What I know o f my m other’s side o f the family begins with my great-greatgrandmother. Her name was Sophie and she lived in Tennessee. In 1850, she was about twelve years old. I know that she was purchased when she was elev­ en by a white lawyer named Austin Miller and was immediately im pregnated by him. She gave birth to my great-grandm other Mary, who was taken away from her to be raised as a house servan t.1 I know nothing m ore o f Sophie (she was, after all, a black single m other— in today’s term s— suffering the anonym ­ ity o f yet another statistical teenage pregnancy). While I don ’t rem em ber what I was told about Austin Miller before I decided to go to law school, I do rem em ­ ber that just before my first day o f class, my m other said, in a voice full o f secre­ tive reassurance, “The Millers were lawyers, so you have it in your blood.”2 When my m other told m e that I had nothing to fear in law school, that law was “in my blood,” she meant it in a very, com plex sense. First and forem ost, she m eant it defiantly; she m eant that no one should make m e feel inferior because som eone e lse ’s father was a judge. She wanted m e to reclaim that part o f my heritage from which I had been disinherited, and she w anted m e to use it as a source o f strength and self-confidence. At the sam e tim e, she was asking me to claim a part o f m yself that was the dispossessor o f another part o f m yself; she was asking m e to deny that disenfranchised little black girl o f m yself that felt pow erless, vulnerable and, moreover, rightly felt so. In som ew hat the same vein, M other was asking m e not to look to her as a role m odel. She was devaluing that part o f h erself that was not H arvard and refocusing my vision to that part o f h erself that was hard-edged, proficient, and W estern. She hid the lonely, black, defiled-fem ale part o f h erse lf and pushed m e forw ard as the projection o f a com petent self, a cool rather than despairing self, a m asculine rather than a feminine self. I took this secret o f my blood into the Harvard m ilieu with both the pride and the sham e with which my m other had passed it along to m e. I found m yself in the situation described by M arguerite D uras, in her novel The Lover: “ W e’re united in a fundamental shame at having to live. It’s here we are at the heart o f our com m on fate, the fact that [we] are our m oth er’s children, the children o f a candid creature m urdered by society. W e’re on the side o f soci­

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ety which has reduced her to despair. Because o f w hat’s been done to our m other, so amiable, so trusting, we hate life, we hate ourselves.” 3 R eclaim ing that from which one has been disinherited is a go od thing. Self-possession in the full sense o f that expression is the com panion to selfknowledge. Yet claiming for m yself a heritage the weft o f whose genesis is my own disinheritance is a profoundly troubling paradox.

IM A G ES

A friend o f mine practices law in rural Florida. His office is in Belle Glade, an extrem ely d ep ressed area w here the sugar industry reigns su prem e, where blacks live pretty much as they did in slavery tim es, in dorm itories called slave ships. They are penniless and illiterate and have both a high birth rate and a high death rate. My friend told me about a client o f his, a fifteen-year-old young woman pregnant with her third child, who cam e seeking advice because her m other had advised a hysterectom y— not even a tubal ligation— as a means o f birth control. The young w om an’s mother, in turn, had been advised o f the p ro ­ priety o f such a course in her own case by a white doctor som e years before. Listening to this, I was rem inded o f a case I worked on when I was working for the W estern Center on Law and Poverty about eight years ago. Ten black H ispanic w om en had been sterilized by the U niversity o f Southern California— Los Angeles County General Medical Center, allegedly without proper consent, and in m ost instances without even their know ledge.4 M ost o f them found out what had been done to them upon inquiry, after a muchpublicized news story in which an intern charged that the chief o f obstetrics at the hospital pursued a policy o f recom m ending Caesarian delivery and sim ultaneous sterilization for any pregnant woman with three or m ore chil­ dren and who was on welfare. In the course o f researching the appeal in that case, I rem em ber learning that one-quarter o f all Navajo women o f child­ bearing age— literally all those o f childbearing age ever adm itted to a hospi­ tal— have been sterilized.5 As I reflected on all this, I realized that one o f the things passed on from slavery, which continues in the oppression o f people o f color, is a belief struc­ ture rooted in a concept o f black (or brown, or red) anti-will, the antithetical em bodim ent o f pure will. We live in a society in which the closest equivalent o f nobility is the display o f unremittingly controlled will-fulness. To be p er­ ceived as unremittingly will-less is to be imbued with an alm ost lethal trait.

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Many sch olars have explain ed this phenom enon in term s o f total and infantilizing in terdependency o f dom inant and o p p re sse d .6 C onsider, for exam ple, Mark Tushnet’s distinction betw een slave law ’s totalistic view o f personality and the bourgeois “pure will” theory o f personality: “ Social rela­ tion s in slave society rest upon the in teraction o f ow ner w ith slave; the owner, having total dom inion over the slave. In contrast, bou rgeois social relations rest upon the paradigm atic instance o f m arket relations, the p u r­ chase by a capitalist o f a w ork er’s labor pow er; that transaction im plicates only a part o f the w orker’s personality. Slave relations are total, engaging the m aster and slave in exchanges in which each m ust take account o f the entire range o f belief, feeling, and interest em bodied by the other; bourgeois social relations are partial, requiring only that participants in a m arket evaluate their general productive characteristics w ithout regard to aspects o f perso n ­ ality unrelated to production.”7 Although such an analysis is not objectionable in som e general sense, the description o f m aster-slave relations as “total” is, to m e, quite troubling. Such a choice o f w ords reflects and accepts— at a very subtle level, perhaps— a historical rationalization that whites had to, could do, and did do everything for these sim ple, above-animal subhum ans. It is a choice o f vocabulary that fails to acknowledge blacks as having needs beyond those that even the m ost “hum ane” or “sentim ental” white slavem aster could provide.8 In tryin g to d escrib e the provision al asp ect o f slave law, I w ould choose w ords that revealed its structure as rooted in a concept of, again, black anti-w ill, the polar opposite o f pure will. I would characterize the treatm ent o f blacks by whites in w hites’ law as defining blacks as those who had no w ill. I w ould characterize that treatm ent not as total interdependency, but as a relation in which partializing judgm en ts, em ploying partializing standards o f humanity, im pose generalized inadequacy on a race: if pure will or total control equals the perfect white person, then im pure will and total lack o f control equals the perfect black man or wom an. T herefore, to define slave law as co m p re­ hending a “total” view o f personality implicitly accepts that the provision o f food, shelter, and clothing (again assum ing the very best o f circum stances) is the whole requirem ent o f humanity. It assum es also either that psychic care was provided by slave ow ners (as though a slave or an owned psyche could ever be reconciled with m ental health) or that psyche is not a significant part o f a w hole human. M arket theory indeed focuses attention away from the full range o f human potential in its pursuit o f a divinely w illed, invisibly handed econom ic actor. M aster-slave relations, however, focused attention away from the full range

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o f black human potential in a som ew hat different way: it pursued a vision o f blacks as sim ple-m ind ed , stro n g-b o d ied econom ic actan ts.9 T h us, while blacks had an indisputable generative force in the m arketplace, their p res­ ence could not be called activity; they had no active role in the m arket. To say, therefore, that “m arket relations disregard the peculiarities o f individu­ als, w hereas slave relations rest on the mutual recognition o f the humanity o f m aster and slave” 10 (no m atter how dialectical or abstracted a definition of humanity one adopts) is to posit an inaccurate equation: if “disregard for the peculiarities o f individuals” and “m utual recognition o f humanity” are polar­ ized by a “w hereas,” then som ehow regard for peculiarities o f individuals m ust equal recognition o f humanity. In the context o f slavery this equation m istakes w hites’ overzealous and oppressive obsession with projected sp e­ cific peculiarities o f blacks for actual holistic regard for the individual. It overlooks the fact that m o st definitions o f hum anity req uire som ething beyond m ere b io lo gical susten an ce, som e healthy m easure o f autonom y beyond that o f which slavery could institutionally or otherw ise conceive. Fu rth erm o re, it overlooks the fact that both slave and bourgeois system s regarded certain attributes as im portant and disregarded certain others, and that such regard and disregard can occur in the same glance, like the wearing o f horseblinders to focus attention simultaneously toward and away from . The experiential blinders o f m arket actor and slave are focused in different directions, yet the partializing ideologies o f each makes the act o f not seeing an unconscious, alienating com ponent o f seeing. R estoring a unified social vision w ill, I think, require broader and m ore scattered resolutions than the sim ple sym m etry o f ideological bipolarity. Thus, it is im portant to undo whatever words obscure the fact that slave law w as at least as fragm en tin g and fragm ented as the b ou rgeois w o rld ­ view— in a way that has persisted to this day, cutting across all ideological boundaries. As “pure w ill” signifies the whole bourgeois personality in the bourgeois worldview, so w isdom , control, and aesthetic beauty signify the whole white personality in slave law. The form er and the latter, the slavem aster and the burgerm eister, are not so very different when expressed in those term s. The reconciling difference is that in slave law the emphasis is really on the inverse rationale: that irrationality, lack o f control, and ugliness signify the whole slave personality. “Total” interdependence is at best a polite way o f rationalizing such personality splintering; it creates a bizarre so rt o f yin-yang from the dross o f an oppressive schizophrenia o f biblical dim en­ sion. I would ju st call it schizophrenic, with all the baggage that that con ­ notes. That is what sounds right to me. Truly total relationships (as opposed

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to totalitarianism ) call up im ages o f w hole people dependent on w hole p e o ­ ple; an interdependence that is both providing and laissez-faire at the sam e tim e. N either the historical inheritance o f slave law nor so-called bourgeois law m eets that definition. N one o f this, perhaps, is particularly new. N evertheless, as precedent to anything I do as a lawyer, the greatest challenge is to allow the full truth o f partializing social constructions to be felt for their overwhelm ing reality— reality that otherwise I might rationally try to avoid facing. In my search for ro o ts, I m ust assum e, not ju st as history but as an ongoing psychological force, that, in the eyes o f white culture, irrationality, lack o f con trol, and ugliness signify not just the w hole slave personality, not just the w hole black personality, but m e.

V ISIO N

R eflecting on my roots m akes m e think again and again o f the young w om an in Belle G lade, Florida. She told the story o f her im pending sterilization, according to my friend, while keeping her eyes on the ground at all tim es. My friend, who is white, asked why she w ouldn’t look up, speak with him eye to eye.The young w om an answered that she didn’t like white people see­ ing inside her. My frien d’s story m ade m e think o f my own childhood and adolescence: my parents were always telling m e to look up at the w orld; to look straight at people, particularly white peop le; not to let them stare m e dow n; to hold my ground; to insist on the right to my presence no m atter what. They told m e that in this culture you have to look people in the eye because that’s how you tell them you’re their equal. My frien d ’s story also rem inded m e how very difficult I had found that looking-back to be. What was hardest was not ju st that white p eo p le saw m e, as my frie n d ’s client put it, but that they looked through m e, that they treated m e as though I were transparent. By itself, seeing into m e would be to see my substance, my anger, my vul­ nerability, and my wild ragin g despair— and that alone is hard enough to show, to share. But to uncover it and to have it devalued by ignore-ance, to hold it up bravely in the organ o f my eyes and to have it greeted by an im pas­ sive stare that passes right through all that which is m e, an im passive stare that m oves on and attaches itself to my left earlobe or to the dust caught in the rusty vertical geysers o f my wiry hair or to the breadth o f my freckled brown nose— this is deeply humiliating. It re-w ounds, relives the early child­

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hood anguish o f uncensored seeing, the fullness o f vision that is the p erm a­ nent turning-away point for m ost blacks. The cold gam e o f eq u ality -starin g m akes m e feel like a thin sheet o f glass: white peop le see all the w orlds beyond me but not m e. They com e trotting at m e with force and speed; they do not see m e. I could force my presence, the real m e contained in those eyes, upon them , but I would be sm ashed in the process. If I deflect, if I m ove out o f the way, they will never know I existed. M arguerite D uras, again in The Lover, places the heroine in relation to her family. “ Every day we try to kill one another, to kill. N ot only do we not talk to one another, we d o n ’t even look at one another. W hen y o u ’re being looked at you can ’t look. To look is to feel curiou s, to be interested, to low er yourself.” 11 To look is also to make m yself vulnerable; yet not to look is to neutralize the p art o f m yself which is vulnerable. I look in order to see, and so I m ust look. W ithout that directness o f vision, I am afraid I will will my own blind­ ness, disinherit my own creativity, and sterilize my own perspective o f its em battled, passionate insight.

On Ardor THE CHILD

O ne Saturday afternoon not long ago, I sat am ong a litter o f family ph o­ tographs telling a South African friend about M arjorie, my godm other and my m oth er’s cousin. She was given away by her light-skinned m other when she was only six. She was given to my grandm other and my great-aunts to be raised am ong her darker-skinned cousins, for M arjorie was very dark indeed. H er m other left the family to “pass,” to m arry a white man— Uncle Frederick, we called him with trepidatious presum ption yet without his ever knowing of our existence— an heir to a m eat-packing fortune. When Uncle Frederick died thirty years later and the fortune was lost, M arjorie’s m other rejoined the race, as the royalty o f resentful fascination— Lady Bountiful, my sister called her— to regale us with tales o f gracious upper-class living. My friend said that my story rem inded him o f a case in which a swarthy, crisp-haired child was born, in Durban, to white parents.The Afrikaner gov­ ernm ent quickly intervened, rem oved the child from its birth hom e, and placed it to be raised with a “m ore suitable,” brow ner family.

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When my friend and I had shared these sto ries, we grew em barrassed somehow, and our conversation trickled away into a discussion o f laissezfaire econom ics and governm ental interventionism . O ur w ords becam e a clear line, a railroad upon which all other ideas and events were tied down and sacrificed.

THE MARKET

As a teacher o f com m ercial transactions, one o f the things that has always im pressed me m ost about the law o f contract is a certain deadening power it exercises by reducing the parties to the passive. It constrains the lively involvement o f its signatories by positioning enforcem ent in such a way that parties find themselves in a passive relationship to a document: it is the con­ tract that governs, that “does” everything, that absorbs all responsibility and deflects all other recourse. Contract law reduces life to fairy tale. The four corners o f the agreem ent becom e parent. Performance is the equivalent o f obedience to the parent. Obedience is dutifully passive. Passivity is valued as good contract-socialized behavior; activity is caged in retrospective hypotheses about states o f mind at the m agic m om ent o f contracting. Individuals are judged by the contract unfolding rather than by the actors acting autonomously. Nonperform ance is disobedience; disobedience is active; activity becom es evil in contrast to the childlike passivity o f contract conformity. One o f the m ost powerful exam ples o f all this is the case o f Mary Beth Whitehead, m other o f Sara— o f so-called Baby M. Ms. Whitehead becam e a vividly original actor after the creation o f her contract with William Stern; unfortunately for her, there can be no greater civil sin. It was in this upsidedown context, in the picaresque unboundedness o f breachor, that her ener­ getic g r ie f becam e hysteria and her passionate creativity was funneled, whorled, and reconstructed as highly im perm issible. Mary Beth W hitehead thus em erged as the evil stepsister who deserved nothing. Some time ago, Charles Reich visited a class o f m ine.12 He discussed with my students a proposal for a new form o f bargain by which em otional “item s”— such as praise, flattery, acting happy or sad— might be contracted for explicitly. One student, not alone in her sentiment, said, “Oh, but then you’ll just feel obligated.” Only the week before, however (when we were discussing the contract which posited that Ms. Whitehead “will not form or attem pt to form a parent-child relationship with any child or children”), this

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sam e student had insisted that Ms. Whitehead m ust give up her child, because she had said she w ould: “She was obligated!” I was confounded by the degree to which what the student took to be self-evident, inalienable gut reactions could be governed by illusions o f passive conventionality and form . It w as that in cid en t, m oreover, that gave m e insight into how Ju d g e H arvey Sorkow, o f N ew Jersey Su p erio r C o u rt, could conclude that the contract that p u rp o rted to term inate Ms. W hitehead’s parental rights was “not illusory.” 13 (As background, I should say that I think that, within the fram ework o f contract law itself, the agreem ent betw een Ms. Whitehead and Mr. Stern was clearly illusory.14 On the one hand, Ju d ge Sorkow ’s opinion said that Ms. W hitehead was seeking to avoid her obligations. In other w ords, giving up her child becam e an actual obligation. O n the other hand, according to the logic o f the judge, this was a service contract, not really a sale o f a child; therefore delivering the child to the Sterns was an “obligation” for which there was no consideration, for which Mr. Stern was not paying her.) Ju dge Sorkow ’s finding the contract “not illusory” is suggestive not just o f the doctrine by that name, but o f illusion in general, and delusion, and the righteousness with which social constructions are conceived, acted on, and delivered up into the realm o f the real as “right,” while all else is devoured from m em ory as “w rong.” From this persp ective, the rhetorical tricks by w hich Sara W hitehead becam e M elissa Stern seem very like the heavyw orded legalities by which my great-great-grandm other was pacified and parted from her child. In both situations, the real m other had no say, no pow er; her pow erlessness was im posed by state law that m ade her and her child helpless in relation to the father. My great-great-grandm other’s pow ­ erlessness cam e about as the result o f a contract to which she was not a party; Mary Beth W hitehead’s pow erlessness cam e about as a result o f a contract that she signed at a discrete point o f tim e— yet which, over tim e, enslaved her.The contract-reality in both instances was no less than m agic: it was illu­ sion transform ed into not-illusion. Furtherm ore, it m asterfully disguised the brutality o f enforced arrangem ents in which these w om en’s autonomy, their flesh and their blood, were locked away in word vaults, w ithout room to reconsider— ever. In the months since Judge Sorkow ’s opinion, I have reflected on the sim i­ larities o f fortune between my own social positioning and that o f Sara Melissa Stern Whitehead. I have com e to realize that an im portant part o f the com ­ plex m agic that Judge Sorkow w rote into his opinion was a supposition that it is “natural” for people to want children “like” themselves. What this reasoning

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raised for me was an issue o f what, exactly, constituted this “likeness”? (What would have happened, for exam ple, if Ms. W hitehead had turned out to have been the “passed” descendant o f my “failed” godm other M arjorie’s m other? What if the child she bore had turned out to be recessively and visibly black? Would the sperm o f Mr. Stern have been so pow erful as to make this child “his” with the exclusivity that Ju dge Sorkow originally assigned?) What con ­ stitutes, m oreover, the collective understanding o f “un-likeness”? These questions turn, perhaps, on not-so-subtle im ages o f which m others should be bearing which children. Is there not som ething unseemly, in our society, about the spectacle o f a white w om an m othering a black child? A white woman giving totally to a black child; a black child totally and demandingly dependent for everything, for sustenance itself, from a white woman. The im age o f a white woman suckling a black child; the im age o f a black child sucking for its life from the bosom o f a white w om an. The utter interdepen­ dence o f such an im age; the selflessness, the m erging it im plies; the giving up o f boundary; the encom passing o f other within self; the unbounded gen ­ erosity, the interconnectedness o f such an im age. Such a picture says that there is no difference; it places the hope o f continuous generation, o f im m or­ tality o f the white self in a little black face. W hen Ju dge Sorkow declared that it was only to be expected that parents w ould want to breed children “like” them selves, he sim ultaneously created a legal right to the sam e. With the creation o f such a “right,” he encased the children con form in g to “likeliness” in protective custody, far from w hole ranges o f taboo. Taboo about touch and sm ell and intim acy and boundary. Taboo about ardor, possession, license, equivocation, equanimity, indiffer­ ence, intolerance, rancor, dispossession, innocence, exile, and candor. Taboo about death.Taboos that am ount to death. Death and sacredness, the valuing o f body, o f self, o f other, o f rem ains. The handling lovingly in life, as in life; the question o f the intimacy versus the dispassion o f death. In effect, these taboos describe boundaries o f valuation. W hether so m e­ thing is inside or outside the m arketplace o f rights has always been a way o f valuing it. When a valued object is located outside the m arket, it is generally un derstood to be too “priceless” to be accom m odated by ordinary exchange relationships; when, in contrast, the prize is located within the m arketplace, all o b jec ts outsid e b eco m e “v alu eless.” Traditionally, the M ona Lisa and human life have been the sorts o f subjects rem oved from the fungibility o f com m odification, as “priceless.” Thus when black people w ere bought and sold as slaves, they were placed beyond the bounds o f humanity. And thus, in the tw istedness o f our brave new w orld, when blacks have been thrust out o f

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the m arket and it is white children who are bought and sold, black babies have becom e “w orthless” currency to adoption agents— “surplus” in the sal­ vage heaps o f H arlem hospitals.

THE IM A G IN A TIO N

.

“Familiar though his name may be to us, the storyteller in his living im m edi­ acy is by no means a present force. He has already becom e something rem ote from us and something that is getting even m ore distant. . . . Less and less fre­ quently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. . . . It is as if som ething that seem ed inalienable to us, the securest am ong our p o s­ sessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.” 15 My m other’s cousin M arjorie was a storyteller. From time to time I would press her to tell m e the details o f her youth, and she would tell m e instead about a child who wandered into a world o f polar bears, who was prayed over by polar bears, and in the end eaten.The child’s life was not in vain because the polar bears had been m ade holy by its suffering. The child had been a test, a message from god for polar bears. In the polar bear universe, she would tell m e, the prim ary object o f creation was polar bears, and the rest o f the living world was fashioned to serve polar bears. The clouds took their shape from polar bears, trees were designed to give shelter and shade to polar bears, and humans were ideally designed to provide polar bears with m eat.16 The truth, the truth, I would laughingly insist as we sat in her apartm ent eating canned fruit and heavy roasts, mashed potatoes, pickles and vanilla pudding, cocoa, Sprite, or tea. W hat about roots and all that, I coaxed. But the voracity o f her am nesia would disclaim and disclaim and disclaim ; and she would go on telling me about the polar bears until our plates were full o f em ptiness and I becam e large in the space which described her em ptiness and I gave in to the em ptiness o f words.

On Life and Death S IG H IN G IN TO SPACE

There are m om ents in my life when I feel as though a part o f me is missing. There are days when I feel so invisible that I can’t rem em ber what day o f the week it is, when I feel so m anipulated that I can’t rem em ber my own name,

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when I feel so lost and angry that I can’t speak a civil w ord to the people who love m e best. Those are the tim es when I catch sight o f my reflection in store w indows and am surprised to see a whole person looking back.T h ose are the tim es when my skin becom es gum m y as clay and my nose slides around on my face and my eyes drip down to my chin. I have to close my eyes at such tim es and rem em b er m yself, draw an internal pictu re that is sm ooth and w hole; when all else fails, I reach for a m irror and stare m yself down until the features reassem ble them selves like lost sheep. Two years ago, my godm other M arjorie suffered a massive stroke. As she lay dying, I would com e to the hospital to give her her m eals. My feeding her who had so often fed m e becam e a com plex ritu al o f m irrorin g and selfassembly. The physical act o f holding the spoon to her lips was not only a rite o f n urture and o f sacrifice, it was the return o f a gift. It was a quiet bowing to the passage o f tim e and the doubling back o f all things. The quiet woman who listened to my woes about work and school required now that I bend my head dow n close to her and listen for m outhed w ord fragm ents, sentence crum bs. I bent dow n to give m eaning to her silence, her w andering search for w ords. She w ould eat what I brought to the hospital with relish; she w ould reject what I brought with a turn o f her head. I brought fruit and yogurt, ice cream and vegetable juice. Slowly, over tim e, she stopped swallowing. The m ashed potatoes would sit in her m outh like cotton, the pudding would slip to her chin in slow sad stream s. W hen she lost not only her speech but the pow er to ingest, they put a tube into her nose and down to her stom ach, and I lost even that m edium by which to com m unicate. N o longer was there the odd but reassuring com m union over taste. N o longer was there som e echo o f co m ­ fort in being able to nurture one who nurtured me. This increm ent o f decay was like a little new born death. W ith the tube, she stared up at m e with im ploring eyes, and I tried to guess what it was that she w ould like. I read to her aim lessly and in desperation. We entertained each other with the strange em barrassed flickering o f our eyes. I told her sto ­ ries to fill the em ptiness, the loneliness, o f the w hite-walled hospital room . I told her stories about who I had becom e, about how I had grow n up to know all about exchange system s, and theories o f contract, and m onetary fictions. I spun tales about blue-sky laws and prom issory estoppel, the wispyfeath ered com plexity o f undue influence and dark-h earted th eories o f unconscionability. I told her about m arket n orm s and gift econom y and the thin ra zo r’s edge o f the bartering ethic. O nce upon a tim e, I ram bled, som e neighbors o f m ine included me in their circle o f barter. They w ere in the

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habit o f exchanging eggs and driving lessons, hand-knit sweaters and com ­ puter program m ing, plumbing and calligraphy. I accepted the generosity o f their inclusion with gratitude. At first, 1 felt that, as a lawyer, I was w orth­ less, that I had no barterable skills and nothing to contribute. What I cam e to realize with tim e, however, was that my value to the group w as not calculated by the physical item s I brought to it. These people included m e because they w anted me to be part o f their circle, they valued my participation apart from the m aterial things I could offer. So I gave o f m yself to them , and they gave m e fruit cakes and dandelion wine and sm oked salm on, and in their giving, their goods becam e provisions. Cradled in this com m unity whose currency was a relational ethic, my stock in m yself soared. My value depended on the glorious intangibility, the eloquent invisibility o f my ju st being part o f the col­ lective; and in direct response I grew spacious and happy and gentle. My gentle godm other. The fragility o f life; the cold m ortuary shelf.

V

D ISPA SSIO N A TE DEATHS

The hospital in which my go dm other died is now filled to capacity with a id s

patients. O ne in sixty-one babies born there, as in N ew Y ork City gen ­

erally, is infected with

a id s

an tibo dies.17 A lm ost all are black or Hispanic.

In the Bron x, the rate is one in fo rty-th ree.18 In C entral Africa, exp erts esti­ m ate that, o f children receiving transfusions for m alaria-related anem ia, “about 1000 may have been infected with the a i d s virus in each o f the last five years.” 19 In C ongo, 5 percent o f the entire population is in fected .20The NewYorkTimes rep orts that “the profile o f C o n g o ’s population seem s to gu ar­ antee the continued spread o f a i d s .”21 In the Congolese city o f Pointe Noir, “the annual budget o f the sole pub­ lic health hospital is estim ated at about $ 2 0 0,000— roughly the am ount o f m oney spent in the United States to care for four

a id s

patients.”22

The week in which my godm other died is littered with bad m em ories. In my jou rn al, I m ade note o f the following: Good Friday: Phil Donahue has a special program on

a id s.

The segues are:

a. from Martha, who weeps at the prospect of not watching her children grow up b. to Jim , who is not conscious enough to speak just now, who coughs convulsively, who recognizes no one in his family any m ore

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W ILLIA M S

c. to Hugh who, at 85 pounds, thinks he has five years but whose doctor says he has weeks d. to an advertisem ent for denture polish (“If you love your Folident G reen /th en gim m eeya

s m il e

!” )

e. and then one for a plastic surgery salon on Park Avenue (“ The only thing that’s expensive is our address”) f. and then one for what’s com ing up on the five o ’clock news (Linda Lovelace, o f Deep Throat fame, “still recovering from a double m astectom y and complications from silicone injections” is being adm itted to a New York hospital for a liver transplant) g. and finally one for the miracle properties o f all-purpose house cleaner (“Mr. C leeean /is the m an/behind the shin e/is it wet or is it dry?” I note that Mr. Clean, with his gleam ing bald head, puffy musculature and fever-bright eyes, looks like he is under­ going radiation therapy). Now back to our show. h. “We are back now with Martha,” (who is crying harder than before, sobbing uncontrollably, each jerking inhalation a deep unearthly groan). Phil says, “Oh honey, I hope we didn’t make it worse for you.” Easter Saturday: O ver lunch, I watch another funeral. My office w indows overlook a graveyard as crow ded and still as a rush-hour freeway. As I savor pizza and m ilk, I notice that one o f the m ourners is w earing an outfit featured in the window o f Bloom ingdale’s (59th Street store) only since last w eekend. This thread o f recognition jolts m e, and I am drawn to her in sorrow ; the details o f my own shopping history flash before my eyes as I reflect upon the sober spree that brought her to the rim o f this earthly chasm , her slim suede heels sinking into the soft silt o f the graveside. Resurrection Sunday: John D., the bookkeeper where I used to work, died, hit on the head by a stray but forcefully propelled hockcy puck. I cried copiously at his memorial service, only to discover, later that afternoon when I saw a black rim m ed ph oto­ graph, that I had been m ourning the w rong person. I had cried because the man I thought had died is John D. the office m essenger, a bitter unfriendly man who treats me with disdain; once I bought an old electric typew riter from him which never w orked.Though he prom ised nothing, I have harbored deep dislike since then; death by hockey puck is only one o f the fates I had imagined for

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him. I washed clean my guilt with buckets o f tears at the news o f what I thought was his demise. The man who did die was small, shy, anonymously sweet-fea­ tured and innocent. In som e odd way I was relieved; no seriously obligatory mourning to be done here. A quiet impassivity settled over m e and I forgot my grief.

H OLY C O M M U N IO N

A few m onths after my go d m o th er d ied , my G reat Aunt Ja g p assed away in C am b rid g e , at nin ety-six the y ou n gest and the last o f h er siblin gs, all o f w hom died at ninety-seven. She collap sed on her way hom e from the p o ll­ ing p lace, having go tten in her vote fo r “yet an oth er Kennedy.” H er wake w as m uch like the last family gath erin g at w hich I had seen her, tw o T h anks­ givin gs ago. She w as a little hard o f hearing then and she stayed on the o u ter ed ge o f the con versation , brightly, loudly* and ran dom ly assertin g en jo y­ m en t o f her m eal. At the w ake, cousin s, neph ew s, daughters-in-law , first w iv es, secon d husbands, great-gran d -n ieces gath ered round her casket and g o t acquainted all over again. It w as p o u rin g rain o u tsid e.T h e funeral hom e w as d ry and w arm , faintly spicily c le an -sm e llin g ; the w alls w ere so lid , d ark, resp ectab le w ood; the flo o rs w ere cool sto ne tile. O n the d o o r o f a ro o m m arked “N o A dm ittance” w as a sign that rem in d ed w ork ers therein o f the reverence w ith which each body w as held by its fam ily and prayed em p lo y ees handle the rem ains w ith sim ilar love and care. Aunt Ja g w ore yellow chiffon; everyone agreed that laying her ou t w ith her glasses on was a nice touch. A fterw ard , we all w ent to Legal Seafood s, her favorite restaurant, and ate m any o f her favorite foods.

On Candor ME

I have never been able to determ ine my h oroscope with any d egree o f accu ­ racy. Born at B o sto n ’s now -defunct Lying-In H ospital, I am a V irgo, despite a q u ite p o e tic sou l. K n ow led ge o f the h our o f my b irth , how ever, w ould d e term in e n ot ju st my sun sign but my m o o n s and all the m o re intim ate

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specificities o f my destiny. O nce upon a tim e, I sent for my birth certificate, which was retrieved from the oblivion o f M assachusetts m icrofiche. Said d o cu m en t revealed that an infant nam ed Patricia Jo y ce, b o rn o f paren ts n am ed W illiam s, was d elivered into the w orld “co lo red .” Since no one thought to put down the hour o f my birth, 1 suppose that I will never know my true fate. In the m eantim e, I read what text there is o f me. My name, Patricia, m eans patrician. Patricias are noble, lofty, elite, exclu ­ sively educated, and well m annered despite them selves. I was on the cusp o f being Pam ela, but my parents knew that such a m e would require lawns, estates, and hunting dogs too. I am also a W illiam s. O fW illiam , w hoever he was: an anonym ous white man who owned my father’s people and from whom som e escaped.T h at ru p ­ ture is m arked by the dark-m ooned m ystery o f utter silence. W illiam s is the secon d m o st com m on su rn am e in the U n ited States; Patricia is the m ost com m on prenam e am ong women born in 1951, the year o f my birth.

THEM

In the law, rights are islands o f em pow erm ent. To be un-righted is to be disem pow ered, and the line betw een rights and no rights is m ost often the line betw een dom inators and op p ressors. Rights contain im ages o f power, and manipulating those im ages, either visually or linguistically, is central in the m aking and maintenance o f rights! In principle, therefore, the m ore dizzyingly diverse the im ages that are propagated, the m ore em pow ered we will be as a society. In reality, it was a lovely polar bear afternoon. The gentle force o f the earth. A wide w ilderness o f islands. A conspiracy o f polar bears lost in tim e­ less forgetting. A gentleness o f polar bears, a fruitfulness o f p olar b ears, a silen t black-eyed in terest o f p o lar b e ars, a b ristled ex p ectan cy o f p o lar b ears. W ith the w isdom o f in n ocen ce, a child threw sto n es at the p o lar bears. Hungry, they rose from their nests, inquisitive, dark-souled* patient with foreboding, fearful in trem endous awakening. The instinctual ferocity o f the hunter reflected upon the hunted. Then, proud teeth and w arrio r claws took innocence for w ild ern ess and raging insubstantiality for tender rabbit breath. In the new spapers the n ext day, it was rep orted that two polar bears in the

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Brooklyn Z oo m auled to death an eleven-year-old boy who had entered their cage to swim in the m oat.The police were called and the bears were killed.23 In the public debate that ensued, many levels o f m eaning em erged. The rhetoric firmly established that the bears were innocent, naturally territo r­ ial, unfairly im prisoned, and guilty.The dead child (born into the urban ju n ­ gle o f a black, welfare m other and a Hispanic alcoholic father who had died literally in the gu tter only six weeks before) was held to a similarly stern standard.T he police were captured, in a widely dissem inated photograph,24 shooting helplessly, desperately, into the cage, through three levels o f bars, at a pieta o f bears; since this im age, conveying much pathos, cam e neverthe­ less not in tim e to save the child, it was generally felt that the bears had died in vain.25 In the egalitarianism o f exile, pluralists rose up as one body, with a call to buy m ore bears, control juvenile delinquency, eliminate all zoos, and confine future p o lice.26 In the plenary session o f the national m eetin g o f the Law and Society Association, the keynote speaker unpacked the whole incident as a veritable laboratory o f em ergent rights discourse. Ju st seeing that these com plex levels o f meaning exist, she exulted, should advance rights discourse significantly.27 At the funeral o f the child, the presiding priest pronounced the death o f Juan Perez not in vain, since he was saved from grow ing into “a lifetim e o f crim e.” Ju an ’s H ispanic-w elfare-black-w idow -of-an-alcoholic m other d e ­ cided then and there to sue.

The Universe Between How I ended up at D artm outh C ollege for the sum m er is too long a story to tell. Anyway, there I was, sharing the town o f Hanover, N ew Hampshire, with about two hundred prepubescent m ales enrolled in D artm ou th ’s sum m er basketball cam p, an all-white, very expensive, affirmative action program for the street-deprived. O ne fragrant evening, I was walking down East W heelock Street when I encountered about a hundred o f these adolescents, fresh from the courts, w et, lanky, big-footed, with fuzzy yellow crew cuts, loping toward Thayer Hall and food. In platoons o f twenty-five o r so, they descended upon m e, jostling m e, sm acking m e, and pushing m e from the sidewalk into the gutter. In a thoughtless instant, I snatched o ff my brow n silk headrag, my flag o f African femininity and propriety, my sign o f m eek and supplicatory place and

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presentation. I released the arm ored rage o f my short nappy hair (the scalp gleam ing bare between the angry wire spikes) and hissed: “D o n ’t I exist for you?! See Me! And deflect, go dam m it!” (The quaint professionalism o f my form al English never allowed the rage in my head to rise so high as to over­ flow the edges o f my tex t.) They gave m e wide berth. They clearly had no idea, however, that I was talking to them or about them . They skirted me sheepishly, suddenly polite, because they did know, when a crazed black person com es crashing into o n e ’s field o f vision, that it is im polite to laugh. I stood tall and spoke loudly into their ranks: “1 have my rig h ts!’’ The D artm outh Sum m er Basketball C am p raised its collective eyebrows and exhaled, with a certain tested nobility o f exhaustion and solidarity. I

pursued my way, m anum itted back into silence. I put distance betw een

them and m e, gave m yself over to polar bear musings. I allowed m yself to be watched over by bear spirits. Clean white wind and strong bear sm ells. The shadowed am nesia; the absence o f being; the presence o f polar bears. W hite w ilderness o f icy m eat-eaters heavy with rem em brance; leaden with un d o­ ing; shaggy with the effort o f hunting for silence; frozen in a web o f inten­ tion and intuition. A lunacy o f polar bears. A history o f polar bears. A pride o f polar bears. A consistency o f polar bears. In those m eandering pastel polar bear m om ents, I found cool fragm ents o f white-fur invisibility. Solid, blackgu m m ed, intent, observant. Hungry and patient, impassive and exquisitely tim ed. The brilliant bursts o f exclusive territoriality. A com plexity o f m e s­ sages im plied in our being.

N O T ES

1. For a more detailed account of the family history to this point, see Patricia J. Williams, “Grandmother Sophie,” Harvard Blackletter 3 (1986): 79. 2. Patricia J. Williams, “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,” Harvard Civil Rights— Civil Liberties Law Review 22 (1987): 418. 3. Marguerite Duras, The Lover (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 55. 4. Madrigal v. Quilligan, U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, Docket no. 783187, October 1979. 5. This was the testimony of one of the witnesses. It is hard to find official con­ firmation or this or any other sterilization statistic involving Native American women. Official statistics kept by the U.S. Public Health Service, through the

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C en ters for D isease C ontrol in Atlanta, com e from data gathered by the National H o sp ital D isch arge Survey, which covers neither federal h ospitals n or p e n ite n ­ tiaries. Serv ices to N ative A m erican w om en living on reserv ation s are provided alm ost exclusively by federal hospitals. In addition, the U .S. Public Health Service b reak s dow n its in fo rm ation into only three catego ries: “ W hite,” “ B lack,” and “ O th er.” N ev erth eless, in 1988 the W om en o f All R ed N ation s C o llectiv e o f M inneapolis, M innesota, distributed a fact sheet entitled “Sterilization Studies o f N ative Am erican W om en,” which claim ed that as many as 50 percent o f all Native Am erican w om en o f child-bearing age have been sterilized. According to “Surgical Sterilization Surveillance: Tubal Sterilization and H ysterectom y in W omen Aged 15—44, 1979—1980,” issued by the C en ters for D isease C ontrol in 1983, “In 1980, the tubal sterilization rate for black w om en . . . was 45 percent greater than that for w hite w om en ” (7 ). F u rth e rm o re , a study released in 1984 by the D ivision o f Reproductive Health o f the C enter for Health Prom otion and Education (one o f the C en ters for D isease C ontrol) found that, as o f 1982, 4 8 .8 percent o f Puerto Rican w om en betw een the ages o f 15 and 4 4 had been sterilized. 6. See, generally, Stanley Elkins, Slavery (NewYork: G rosset and Dunlap, 1963); K enneth Stam p p , The Peculiar Institution (N ew York: V intage, 1 9 5 6 ): W inthrop Jo rdan , White over Black (Baltim ore: Penguin, 1968). 7. M ark Tu shnet, The American Law o f Slavery (P rin ceto n , N .J.: Princeton U niversity Press, 1981), p. 6 .There is danger, in the analysis that follow s, o f appear­ ing to “pick” on Tushnet. That is not my intention, nor is it to im pugn the body o f his research, m ost o f which I greatly adm ire. The choice o f this passage for analysis has m ore to do with the random ness o f my reading habits; the fact that he is one o f the few legal w riters to attem pt, in the con text o f slavery, a juxtaposition o f political theory with psychoanalytic theories o f personality; and the fact that he is perceived to be o f the political left, which sim plifies my analysis in term s o f its presum ption o f sympathy, i.e ., that the constructions o f thought revealed are socially derived and unconscious rather than idiosyncratic and intentional. 8. In an oth er p assage, Tushnet o b se rv e s: “The co u rt thus d em o n strated its appreciation o f the ties o f sentim ent that slavery could generate betw een m aster and slave and sim ultaneously denied that those ties were relevant in the law” (6 7 ). What is notew orthy about the reference to “sentim ent” is that it assum es that the fact that em otions could grow up betw een slave and m aster is itself w orth rem arking: slightly surprising, slightly com m endable for the cou rt to note (i.e ., in its “appreciation”)— although “sim ultaneously” with, and presum ably in contradistinction to, the co u rt’s inability to take official cognizance o f the fact. Yet, if one really looks at the ties that bound m aster and slave, one has to flesh out the description o f m aster-slave with the ties o f father-son, father-daughter, half-sister, half-brother, uncle, aunt, cousin, and

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a variety o f de facto foster relationships. And if one starts to see those ties as m ore often than not intim ate family ties, then the term in ology “appreciation o f . . . senti­ m ent . . . betw een m aster and slave” b eco m es a horrifying m ockery o f any tru e sense o f fam ily sen tim en t, which is utterly, utterly lacking. The c o u r t’s “ appreciation ,” from this enhanced p e rsp e ctiv e , sou n d s blindly c ru e l, sarcastic at b e st. And to observe that cou rts suffused in such “appreciation ” could sim ultaneously deny its legal relevance seem s not only a tru ism ; it m isses the point entirely. 9.

“ Actants have a kind o f phonem ic, rather than a phonetic role: they operate

on the level o f function, rather than content. That is, an actant may em body itself in a particular character (term ed an acteur) o r it may reside in the function o f m ore than one character in respect o f their com m on role in the sto ry ’s underlying ‘o p p o ­ sitional’ structure. In short, the deep structure o f the narrative generates and defines its actants at a level beyond that o f the sto ry ’s surface content” (Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics [Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 1977], p. 89). 10. Tushnet, p. 69. 11. D uras, p. 54. 12. Charles Reich is author o f The Greening o fAmerica (N ew York: Random H ouse, 1970) and professor o f law at the University o f San Francisco Law School. 13. S e e , gen erally, In the M atte r o f Baby “ M ,” A P seudo n ym fo r an A ctual Person, Su perior C o u rt o f N ew Jersey, C hancery D ivision, D ocket no. FM -2531486 E , M arch 3 1 , 1987. This decision w as ap pealed , and on February 3, 19 8 8 , the N ew Je rsey Suprem e C o u rt ru led that su rrogate con tracts were illegal and against pu b lic policy. In ad dition to the c o n tra c t issu e, how ever, the ap p e llate c o u rt decided the custody issue in favor o f the Stern s but gran ted visitation rights to M ary Beth W hitehead. 14. “ An illu sory p ro m ise is an e x p re ssio n cloak ed in p ro m isso ry te r m s, but which, upon closer exam ination, reveals that the prom isor has com m itted h im self not at all” (J. C alam ari and J. Perillo, Contracts, 3d ed. [St. Paul: W est Publishing, 1987], p. 228). 15. W alter B enjam in, “T h e S to ry te lle r,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah A ren dt (N ew Y ork: Schocken, 19 6 9 ), p. 83. 16. For an analysis o f sim ilar sto ries, see Richard Levins and Richard Lew ontin, The Dialectical Biologist (C am brid ge: H arvard University Press, 1985), p. 66. 17. L am b ert, “Study Finds A n tibodies fo r

a id s

in 1 in 61 Babies in N ew York

City,” NewYork Times (January 1 3, 19 8 8 ), sec. A. 18. Ibid. 19. “ Study Traces sec. A.

a id s

in African C hildren,” NewYork Times (January 2 2 , 1988),

On B eing th e O bject o f P roperty

20. B rooke, “N ew Surge o f

1 75

a id s

in C o n g o May Be an O m en fo r A frica,” NewYork

Times (January 2 2 , 1 9 8 8 ), sec. A. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 2 3. Barron , “ Polar B ears Kill a Child at Prospect Park Z o o ,” NewYork Times (M ay 2 0 , 1 9 8 7 ), sec. A. 2 4. NewYork Post (May 2 2 , 1 9 8 7 ), p. 1. 2 5. B arron , “ O fficials W eigh T ig h ter Secu rity at Z o o s in Parks,” NewYork Times (M ay 2 2 , 1 9 8 7 ), sec. B. 2 6. Ibid. 27. Patricia J. W illiam s, “The M eaning o f R ights” (ad d ress to the annual m eetin g o f the Law and Society A ssociation , W ashington, D .C ., Ju n e 6 , 1 987).

9

Film and the Masquerade T H EO R IZ IN G THE FEMALE SPECTATOR

M ary Ann D oane

Heads in Hieroglyphic Bonnets In his lecture on “Femininity,” Freud forcefully inscribes the absence o f the female spectator o f theory in his notorious statem ent, “to those of you who are w om en this will not apply— you are you rselves the p ro b lem .” 1 Sim ultaneous with this exclusion operated upon the fem ale m em bers o f his audience, he invokes, as a rather strange prop, a poem by Heine. Introduced by F reud’s claim concerning the im portance and elusiveness o f his topic— “Throughout history people have knocked their heads against the rid ­ dle o f the nature o f femininity”— are four lines o f H eine’s poem : Heads in hieroglyphic bonnets, Heads in turbans and black birettas, Heads in wigs and thousand other W retched, sweating heads of humans2

M ary Ann D o an e, “Film and the M asqu erade: T h eorizin g the Fem ale S pectato r.” Screen 23 (1 9 8 2 ): 7 8 - 8 7 . R ep rin ted with perm ission from the author and the publisher.

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The effects o f the appeal to this poem are subject to the work o f overde­ term ination Freud isolated in the text o f the dream . The sheer proliferation o f heads and hats (and hence, through a metonymic slippage, m inds), which are presum ed to have confronted this intimidating riddle before Freud, confers on his discourse the weight o f an intellectual history, o f a tradition o f interro­ gation. Furtherm ore, the image o f hieroglyphics strengthens the association made between femininity and the enigmatic, the undecipherable, that which is “other.” And yet Freud practices a slight deception here, concealing what is elided by rem oving the lines from their context, castrating, as it were, the stanza. For the question over which H eine’s heads brood is not the same as Freud’s— it is not “What is Woman?,” but instead, “what signifies Man?” The quote is taken from the seventh section (entitled “Q uestions”) o f the second cycle o f The North Sea.T h e full stanza, presented as the w ords o f “a young m an ,/H is breast full o f sorrow, his head full o f doubt,” reads as follows: O solve me the riddle of life, The teasingly time-old riddle, Over which many heads already have brooded, Heads in hats o f hieroglyphics, Turbaned heads and heads in black skull-caps,

.

Heads in perrukes and a thousand other Poor, perspiring human heads— Tell me, what signifies Man? Whence does he come? Whither does he go? Who lives up there upon golden stars?3 The question in Freud’s text is thus a disguise and a displacement o f that other question, which in the pretext is both humanistic and theological.The claim to investigate an otherness is a pretense, haunted by the m irror-effect by means o f which the question o f the woman reflects only the m an’s own ontological doubts. Yet what interests me m ost in this inter textual misrepresentation is that the riddle o f femininity is initiated from the beginning in Freud’s text as a ques­ tion in masquerade. But 1 will return to the issue o f masquerade later. M ore pertinently, as far as the cinem a is concerned, it is not accidental that Freud’s eviction o f the female spectator/au d ito r is copresent with the invocation o f a hieroglyphic language. The wom an, the enigm a, the hiero­ glyphic, the pictu re, the im age— the m etonym ic chain connects with an­ other: the cinem a, the theatre o f pictures, a w riting in im ages o f the woman

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but not fo r her. For she is the problem . The semantic valence attributed to a hieroglyphic language is two-edged. In fact, there is a sense in which the term is inhabited by a contradiction. On the one hand, the hieroglyphic is sum ­ m oned, particularly when it m erges with a discourse on the woman, to con­ note an indecipherable language, a signifying system which denies its own function by failing to signify anything to the uninitiated, to those who do not hold the key. In this sense, the hieroglyphic, like the woman, harbors a mys­ tery, an inaccessible though desirable otherness. O n the other hand, the hieroglyphic is the m ost readable o f languages. Its immediacy, its accessibility are functions o f its status as a pictorial language, a w riting in images. For the image is theorized in term s o f a certain closeness, the lack o f a distance or gap between sign and referent. Given its iconic characteristics, the relationship between signifier and signified is understood as less arbitrary in imagistic sys­ tem s o f representation than in language “proper.” The intimacy o f signifier and signified in the iconic sign negates the distance which defines phonetic language. And it is the absence o f this crucial distance or gap which also, simultaneously, specifies both the hieroglyphic and the female. This is pre­ cisely why Freud evicted the woman from his lecture on femininity. Too close to herself, entangled in her own enigma, she could not step back, could not achieve the necessary distance o f a second look.4 Thus, while the hieroglyphic is an indecipherable or at least enigmatic lan­ guage, it is also and at the same time potentially the m ost universally under­ standable, com prehensible, appropriable o f sign s.5 And the woman shares this contradictory status. But it is here that the analogy slips. For hieroglyphic languages are not perfectly iconic. They would not achieve the status o f lan­ guages if they were— due to whatTodorov and D ucrot refer to as a certain non-generalizability of the iconic sign: Now it is the impossibility of generalizing this principle of representation that has introduced even into fundamentally morphemographic writing systems such as Chinese, Egyptian, and Sumerian, the phonographic prin­ ciple. We might almost conclude that every logography [the graphic sys­ tem of language notation] grows out of the impossibility ofa generalized iconic representation-, proper nouns and abstract notions (including inflections) are then the ones that will be noted phonetically.6 The iconic system o f representation is inherently deficient— it cannot disen­ gage itself from the “real,” from the concrete; it lacks the gap necessary for generalizability (for Saussure, this is the idea that, “Signs which are arbitrary

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realize b etter than others the ideal o f the sem iotic p r o c e ss”).T h e wom an, too, is defined by such an insufficiency. My insistence upon the congruence betw een certain th eo ries o f the im age and theories o f fem ininity is an attem pt to dissect the episteme which assigns to the woman a special place in cinem atic representation while denying her access to that system . The cinem atic apparatus inherits a theory o f the im age which is not con­ ceived outside o f sexual specifications. And historically, there has always been a certain im brication o f the cinematic image and the representation o f the w om an. The w om an’s relation to the cam era and the scopic regim e is quite different from that o f the m ale. As N oel Burch points out, the early silent cin­ em a, through its insistent inscription o f scenarios o f voyeurism , conceives o f its spectator’s viewing pleasure in term s o f that o f the Peeping Tom, behind the screen, reduplicating the spectator’s position in relation to the woman as screen.7 Spectatorial desire, in contem porary film theory, is generally delin­ eated as either voyeurism or fetishism, as precisely a pleasure in seeing what is prohibited in relation to the female body. The im age orchestrates a gaze, a lim it, and its pleasurable transgression.The w om an’s beauty, her very desir­ ability, becom es a function o f certain practices o f im aging— framing, light­ ing, cam era m ovem ent, angle. She is thus, as Laura Mulvey has pointed out, m ore closely associated with the surface o f the image than its illusory depths, its constructed three-dim ensional space which the man is destined to inhabit and hence c o n tro l.8 In Now Voyager, for instance, a single im age signals the m om entous transform ation o f the Bette Davis character from ugly spinster aunt to glam orous single woman. Charles Affron describes the specifically cinem atic aspect o f this operation as a “stroke o f genius’ : The radical shadow bisecting the face in w hite/dark/w hite strata creates a visual phenomenon quite distinct from the makeup transformation of lipstick and plucked eyebrows. . . .This shot does not reveal what we com ­ monly call acting, especially after the most recent exhibition of that activ­ ity, but the sense o f face belongs to a plastique pertinent to the camera. The viewer is allowed a different perceptual referent, a chance to come down from the nerve-jarring, first sequence and to use his eyes anew.9 A “plastique pertinent to the cam era” constitutes the woman not only as the im age o f d esire b u t as the desirous im age— one which the devoted cinephile can cherish and em brace. To “have” the cinema is, in som e sense, to “have” the woman. But NowVoyager is, in Affron’s term s, a “tear-jerker,” in oth­ e rs, a “w om an’s picture,” that is, a film purportedly produced for a female

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audience. W hat, then, o f the fem ale spectator? W hat can one say about her desire in relation to this process o f im aging? It would seem that what the cinem atic institution has in com m on with Freu d ’s gesture is the eviction o f the fem ale spectator from a discourse purportedly about her (the cinem a, psychoanalysis)— one which, in fact, narrativizes her again and again.

A Lass B u t N o t a Lack Theories o f fem ale spectatorship are thus rare, and when they are produced, seem inevitably to confront certain blockages in conceptualization. The dif­ ficulties in thinking fem ale spectatorship dem and consideration. After all, even if it is adm itted that the woman is frequently the object o f the voyeuris­ tic or fetishistic gaze in the cinem a, what is there to prevent her from revers­ ing the relation and appropriating the gaze for her own pleasure? Precisely the fact that the reversal itself rem ains locked within the sam e logic. The male striptease, the gigolo— both inevitably signify the m echanism o f rever­ sal itself, con stitutin g them selves as aberration s w hose ackn ow ledgm en t simply reinforces the dom inant system o f aligning sexual difference with a su b je c t/o b je ct dichotomy. And an essential attribute o f that dom inant sys­ tem is the matching o f m ale subjectivity with the agency o f the look. The supportive binary opposition at w ork here is not only that utilized by Laura M ulvey— an opposition betw een passivity and activity, but perhaps m ore im portantly, an opposition betw een proxim ity and distance in relation to the im ag e .10 It is in this sense that the very logic behind the structure o f the gaze dem ands a sexual division. W hile the distance betw een im age and signified (o r even referent) is theorized as m inim al, if not nonexistent, that betw een the film and the spectator m ust be m aintained, even m easured. One need only think o f N oel Burch’s m apping o f spectatorship as a perfect dis­ tance from the screen (tw o tim es the width o f the im age)— a point in space from which the filmic discourse is m ost accessib le.11 But the m ost explicit representation o f this opposition betw een pro xim ­ ity and d istan ce is con tain ed in C h ristian M e tz’s analysis o f voy eu ristic desire in term s o f a kind o f social hierarchy o f the senses: “It is no accident that the main socially acceptable arts are based on the senses at a distance, and that those which depend on the senses o f contact are often regarded as ‘ m in o r’ arts ( = culinary a rts, art o f p e rfu m e s, e tc .) .” 12 The voyeur, a c ­ cording to M etz, m ust maintain a distance betw een him self and the im age— the cinephile needs the gap which represents for him the very distance b e ­

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tween desire and its object. In this sense, voyeurism is theorized as a type o f m etadesire: If it is true of all desire that it depends on the infinite pursuit of its absent object, voyeuristic desire, along with certain forms o f sadism, is the only desire whose principle o f distance symbolically and spatially evokes this fundamental ren t.13 Yet even this status as m etadesire does not fully characterize the cinem a for it is a feature shared by other arts as well (painting, theatre, op era, e tc.). M etz thus adds another reinscription o f this necessary distance. W hat speci­ fies the cinem a is a further reduplication o f the lack which prom pts desire. The cinem a is characterized by an illusory sensory plenitude (there is “so much to see”) and yet haunted by the absence o f those very objects which are there to be seen. Absence is an absolute and irrecoverable distance. In other w ords, N oel Burch is quite right in aligning spectatorial desire with a certain spatial configuration.The viewer must not sit either too close or too far from the screen. The result o f both would be the same— he would lose the image o f his desire. It is precisely this opposition between proxim ity and distance, control o f the im age and its loss, which locates the possibilities o f spectatorship within the problem atic o f sexual difference. For the female spectator there is a cer­ tain overpresence o f the image— she is the image. Given the closeness o f this relationship, the female spectator’s desire can be described only in term s o f a kind o f narcissism — the female look demands a becoming. It thus appears to negate the very distance or gap specified by Metz and Burch as the essen­ tial precondition for voyeurism . From this perspective, it is im portan t to note the constant recurrence o f the m otif o f proxim ity in fem inist theorist (especially those labeled “new French fem inism s”) which p u rp ort to describe a feminine specificity. For Luce Irigaray, female anatomy is readable as a con­ stant relation o f the self to itself, as an autoeroticism based on the em brace o f the two lips which allow the woman to touch h erself w ithout m ediation. Furth erm ore, the very notion o f property, and hence possession o f som e­ thing which can be con stitu ted as other, is antithetical to the w om an: “ Nearness however, is not foreign to woman, a nearness so close that any iden­ tification o f one or the other, and therefore any form o f property, is im pos­ sible. Woman enjoys a closeness with the other that is so near she cannot possess it any more than she can possess herself.” 14 Or, in the case o f fem ale m adness or delirium , “wom en do not manage to articulate their m adness: they suffer it

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directly in their body.” 15 The distance necessary to detach the signifiers o f m adness from the body in the construction o f even a discourse which exceeds the boundaries o f sense is lacking. In the words o f Helene Cixous, “M ore so than men who are coaxed toward social success, toward sublim a­ tion, women are body.” 16 This theme o f the overwhelming presence-to-itself o f the female body is elaborated by Sarah Kofm an and M ichele M ontrelay as w ell. Kofm an describes how Freudian psychoanalysis outlines a scenario whereby the sub­ je c t’s passage from the mother to the father is simultaneous with a passage from the senses to reason, nostalgia for the m other henceforth signifying a longing for a different positioning in relation to the sensory or the som atic, and the degree o f civilization m easured by the very distance from the body.17 Similarly, Montrelay argues that while the male has the possibility o f displac­ ing the first object o f desire (the m other), the fem ale m ust becom e that object o f desire: Recovering herself as maternal body (and also as phallus), the woman can no longer repress, “lose,” the first stake of representation. . . . From now on, anxiety, tied to the presence of this body, can only be insistent, con­ tinuous.This body, so close, which she has to occupy, is an object in excess which must be “lost,” that is to say, repressed, in order to be symbolised.18 This body so close, so excessive, prevents the woman from assuming a posi­ tion similar to the m an’s in relation to signifying system s. For she is haunted by the loss o f a loss, the lack o f that lack so essential for the realization o f the ideals o f sem iotic systems. Female specificity is thus theorized in term s o f spatial proximity. In oppo­ sition to this “closeness” to the body, a spatial distance in the m ale’s relation to his body rapidly becom es a tem poral distance in the service o f knowledge. This is presented quite explicitly in Freud’s analysis o f the construction o f the “subject supposed to know.”The knowledge involved here is a knowledge o f sexual difference as it is organized in relation to the structure o f the look, turning on the visibility o f the penis. For the little girl in Freud’s description, seeing and knowing are sim ultaneous— there is no tem poral gap between them. In “Som e Psychological Consequences o f the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes,” Freud claims that the girl, upon seeing the penis for the first tim e, “makes her judgm ent and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it.” 19 In the lecture on “ Femininity” Freud repeats this gesture, m erging perception and intellec­

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tion: “They [girls] at once notice the difference and, it m ust be adm itted, its significance too.”20 The little boy, on the other hand, does not share this im m ediacy o f under­ standing. W hen he first sees the w om an ’s gen itals he “begin s by showing irresolu tion and lack o f interest; he sees nothing or disow ns what he has seen, he softens it down or looks about for expedients for bringing it into line with his expectations.”21 A second event, the threat o f castration, is nec­ essary to prom pt a rereading o f the im age, endow ing it with a meaning in relation to the boy’s own subjectivity. It is in the distance betw een the look and the threat that the b o y ’s relation to knowledge o f sexual difference is for­ m ulated. The boy, unlike the girl in Freud’s description, is capable o f a revi­ sion o f earlier events, a retrospective understanding which invests the events with a significance which is in no way linked to an im m ediacy o f sight. This gap betw een the visible and the knowable, the very possibility o f disowning what is seen, prepares the ground for fetishism. In a sense, the m ale specta­ to r is destined to be a fetishist, balancing knowledge and belief. The fem ale, on the other hand, m ust find it extrem ely difficult, if not im possible, to assum e the position o f fetishist. That body which is so close continually rem inds her o f the castration which cannot be “fetishized away.” The lack o f a distance betw een seeing and understanding, the m ode o f ju d g ­ ing “in a flash,” is conducive to what might be term ed as “overidentification” with the im age. The association o f tears and “ w et w asted aftern oon s” (in Molly H askell’s w ords)22 with genres specified as feminine (the soap opera, the “w om an’s picture”) points very precisely to this type o f overidentifica­ tion , this abolition o f a distance, in sh o rt, this inability to fetishize. The w om an is co n stru cted differently in relation to p ro cesses o f looking. For Irigaray, this dichotom y between distance and proxim ity is described as the fact that: The masculine can partly look at itself, speculate about itself, represent itself and describe itself for what it is, whilst the feminine can try to speak to itself through a new language, but cannot describe itself from outside or in formal term s, except by identifying itself with the masculine, thus by losing itself.23 Irigaray goes even further: the woman always has a problem atic relation to the visible, to form , to structures o f seeing. She is much m ore com fortable with, closer to, the sense o f touch. The pervasiveness, in theories o f the feminine, o f descriptions o f such a

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claustrophobic closeness, a deficiency in relation to structures o f seeing and the visible, m ust clearly have consequences for attem pts to theorize female spectatorship. And, in fact, the result is a tendency to view the fem ale spec­ tator as the site o f an oscillation between a feminine position and a masculine position, invoking the m etaphor o f the transvestite. Given the structures o f cinem atic narrative, the w om an who identifies with a fem ale character m ust adopt a passive or m asochistic position, while identification with the active hero necessarily entails an acceptance o f what Laura Mulvey refers to as a certain “m asculinization” o f spectatorship: “As desire is given cultural m ate­ riality in a tex t, for wom en (from childhood onw ards) trans-sex identifica­ tion is a habit that very easily becom es second Nature. However, this Nature does not sit easily and shifts restlessly in its borrow ed transvestite clothes.”24 The transvestite w ears clothes which signify a different sexuality, a se x u ­ ality which, for the w om an, allows a m astery over the im age and the very possibility o f attaching the gaze to desire. Clothes make the m an, as they say. Perhaps this explains the ease with which wom en can slip into m ale clothing. As both Freud and C ixous point out, the woman seem s to be more bisexual than the m an. A scene from C u k o r’s Adam’s Rib graphically dem onstrates this ease o f fem ale transvestism . As Katharine H epburn asks the jury to imagine the sex role reversal o f the three m ajor characters involved in the case, there are three d issolves linking each o f the ch aracters successively to shots in which they are dressed in the clothes o f the opposite sex. What characterizes the sequence is the m arked facility o f the transform ation o f the tw o wom en into men in contradistinction to a certain resistance in the case o f the man. The acceptability o f the fem ale reversal is quite distinctly o p p osed to the male reversal which seem s capable o f representation only in term s o f farce. M ale tran svestism is an occasion for lau gh ter; fem ale tran sv estism only another occasion for desire. Thus, while the m ale is locked into sexual identity, the fem ale can at least pretend that she is other— in fact, sexual m obility w ould seem to be a dis­ tinguishing feature o f femininity in its cultural construction. H ence, trans­ vestism would be fully recuperable. The idea seem s to be this: it is un der­ standable that w om en would want to be m en, for everyone wants to b e else­ where than in the feminine position. What is not understandable within the given term s is why a w om an m ight flaunt her femininity, produce h erself as an e x cess o f fem ininity, in oth er w o rd s, fo regro u n d the m asq u erad e. M asquerade is not as recuperable as transvestism precisely because it consti­ tutes an acknow ledgem ent that it is femininity itself which is constructed as m ask— as the d eco rativ e layer which con ceals a nonidentity. For Jo an

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Riviere, the first to theorize the concept, the m asquerade o f femininity is a kind o f reaction-form ation against the w om an’s trans-sex identification, her transvestism . After assum ing the position o f the subject o f discourse rather than its object, the intellectual woman whom Riviere analyzes felt com pelled to com pensate for this theft o f masculinity by overdoing the gestures o f fem ­ inine flirtation. Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession o f masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it— much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove that he has not the stolen goods. The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the line between gen­ uine womanliness and the masquerade. My suggestion is not, however, that there is any such difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing.25 The m asquerade, in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance. Womanliness is a m ask which can be w orn or rem oved. The m asq uerade’s resistance to patriarchal positioning would therefore lie in its denial o f the production o f fem ininity as closen ess, as presen ce-to-itself, as, precisely, im agistic. The transvestite adopts the sexuality o f the other— the woman becom es a man in order to attain the necessary distance from the image. M asquerade, on the other hand, involves a realignm ent o f femininity, the recovery, or m ore accu­ rately, sim ulation, o f the m issing gap or distance. To m asquerade is to m anu­ facture a lack in the form o f a certain distance betw een on eself and o n e’s im age. If, as M oustafa Safouan points out, “to wish to include in oneself as an object the cause o f the desire o f the O ther is a form ula for the structure o f hysteria,”26 then m asquerade is antihysterical for it works to effect a separa­ tion betw een the cause o f desire and oneself. In M ontrelay’s w ords, “the woman uses her own body as a disguise.”27 The very fact that we can speak o f a woman “using” her sex or “using” her body for particular gains is highly significant— it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to.T he m asquerade doubles re p ­ resentation; it is constituted by a hyperbolization o f the accoutrem ents o f fem ininity. Apropos o f a recent perform an ce by M arlene D ietrich , Sylvia Bovenschen claim s, “ we are watching a woman dem onstrate the representa­ tion o f a w om an’s body.”28 This type o f m asquerade, an excess o f femininity, is aligned with the femme fatale and, as M ontrelay explain s, is necessarily regarded by m en as evil incarnate: “It is this evil which scandalises whenever

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woman plays out her sex in order to evade the word and the law. Each time she subverts a law or a w ord which relies on the predom inantly masculine structure o f the look.”29 By destabilizing the im age, the m asquerade co n ­ founds this m asculine structure o f the look. It effects a defam iliarization o f fem ale iconography. N evertheless, the precedin g account sim ply specifies m asquerade as a type o f representation which carries a threat, disarticulating male system s o f viewing. Yet, it specifies nothing with respect to fem ale spec­ tatorship. What m ight it m ean to m asquerade as spectator? To assum e the m ask in order to see in a different way?

“Men Seldom Make Passes at GirlsWhoWear Glasses” T h e first scene in Now Voyager d e p ic ts the B ette D avis c h a ra c te r as r e ­ p ressed , unattractive, and undesirable or, in her ow n w ords, as the spin ster aunt o f the family. (“ Every fam ily has one.”) She has heavy eyebrow s, keeps her hair bound tightly in a bun, and w ears glasses, a drab dress, and heavy shoes. By the tim e o f the shot discussed earlier, signalling her tran sfo rm a­ tion into beauty, the glasses have disappeared , along with the other signifiers o f unattractiveness. Betw een these tw o m om ents there is a scene in which the d o cto r who cures her actually confiscates her glasses (as a part o f the cu re). The w om an who w ears glasses con stitu tes one o f the m o st intense visual cliches o f the cinem a. The im age is a heavily m arked con den ­ sation o f m otifs con cern ed with rep ressed sexuality, know ledge, visibility and vision, intellectuality, and desire. The w om an with glasses signifies si­ m ultaneously in tellectu ality and undesirability; but the m o m en t she r e ­ m oves h er glasses (a m om en t which, it seem s, m ust alm o st always be shown and which is itse lf linked with a certain sensual quality), she is tran sform ed into spectacle, the very pictu re o f desire. Now, it m ust be rem em b ered that the clich e is a heavily lo a d e d m o m en t o f sign ificatio n , a so cial kn o t o f m eaning. It is characterized by an effect o f ease and naturalness. Yet, the cliche has a binding pow er so strong that it indicates a precise m om en t o f ideological danger o r threat— in this case, the w om an’s ap pro priation o f the gaze. G lasses w orn by a w om an in the cinem a do not generally signify a deficiency in seeing but an active looking, o r even sim ply the fact o f se e ­ ing as opp osed to being seen. The intellectual w om an looks and analyzes, and in usurping the gaze she poses a threat to an entire system o f rep resen ­ tation. It is as if the w om an had forcefully m oved to the other side o f the specular. The overdeterm in ation o f the im age o f the w om an with glasses,

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its status as a cliche, is a crucial aspect o f the cinem atic alignm ent o f stru c­ tures o f seeing and being seen with sexual difference. The cliche, in assu m ­ ing an im m ediacy o f understanding, acts as a m echanism for the natural­ ization o f sexual difference. But the figure o f the woman with glasses is only an extrem e m om ent o f a m ore generalized logic. There is always a certain excessiveness, a difficulty associated with w om en who appropriate the gaze, who insist upon looking. Linda W illiams has dem onstrated how, in the genre o f the horror film , the w om an’s active looking is ultimately punished. And what she sees, the m on­ ster, is only a m irror o f herself— both woman and m onster are freakish in their difference— defined by either “too m uch” or “too little.”30 Ju st as the dom inant narrative cinem a repetitively inscribes scenarios o f voyeurism , internalizing or narrativizing the film -spectator relationship (in film s like Psycho, Rear Window, Peeping Tom), taboos in seeing are insistently form ulated in relation to the female spectator as well. The man with binoculars is coun­ tered by the woman with glasses. The gaze m ust be dissociated from mastery. In Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945), the fem ale p ro tago n ist’s (G ene T iern ey ’s) excessive desire and overpossessiveness are signaled from the very beginning o f the film by her intense and sustained stare at the m ajor male character, a stranger she first encounters on a train.The discom fort her look causes is graphically d ep icted . The G ene T iern ey ch aracter is ultim ately revealed to be the epitom e o f evil— killing her husband’s crippled younger brother, her unborn child, and ultimately h erself in an attem pt to brand her cousin as a m urderess in order to ensure her husband’s future fidelity. In Humoresque (Jean N egulesco, 1946), Joan C raw ford’s problem atic status is a result o f her continual attem pts to assum e the position o f spectator— fixing John Garfield with her gaze. Her transform ation from spectator to spectacle is signified repetitively by the gesture o f rem oving her glasses. R osa, the character played by Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, 1949), walks to the station every day simply to watch the train departing for Chicago. Her fascination with the train is a fascination with its phallic pow er to transport her to “another place .’’ This character is also specified as having a “go o d eye”— she can shoot, both pool and guns. In all three films the woman is con ­ structed as the site o f an excessive and dangerous desire. This desire m obi­ lizes extrem e efforts o f containment and unveils the sadistic aspect o f narra­ tive. In all three films the woman dies. As Claire Johnston points out, death is the “location o f all im possible signs,” 31 and film s dem on strate that the woman as subject o f the gaze is clearly an im possible sign.T here is a perverse rew riting o f this logic o f the gaze in Dark Victory (Edm und Goulding, 1939),

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where the w om an’s story achieves heroic and tragic proportions not only in blindness, but in a blindness which m im es sight— when the woman pretends to be able to see.

Out o f the Cinema and into the Streets: The Censorship o f the Female Gaze This process o f narrativizing the negation o f the fem ale gaze in the classical Hollywood cinema finds its perfect encapsulation in a still photograph taken in 1948 by Robert Doisneau, Un Regard Oblique. Ju st as the Hollywood narratives discussed above p u rp o rt to center a fem ale protagon ist, the photograph appears to give a certain prominence to a w om an’s look. Yet, both the title o f the photograph and its organization o f space indicate that the real site o f scopophiliac pow er is on the margins o f the frame. The man is not centered; in fact, he occupies a very narrow space on the extrem e right o f the picture. Nevertheless, it is his gaze which defines the problem atic o f the photographs: it is his gaze which effectively erases that o f the woman. Indeed, as subject o f the gaze, the woman looks intently. But not only is the object o f her look con­ cealed from the spectator, her gaze is encased by the two poles defining the masculine axis o f vision. Fascinated by nothing visible— a blankness or void for the spectator— unanchored by a “sight” (there is nothing “p ro p er” to her vision— save, perhaps, the m irror), the female gaze is left free-floating, vul­ nerable to subjection. The faint reflection in the shop window o f only the frame o f the picture at which she is looking serves merely to rearticulate, en abyme the emptiness o f her gaze, the absence o f her desire in representation. On the other hand, the object o f the m ale gaze is fully present, there for the spectator. The fetishistic representation o f the nude fem ale body, fully in view, insures a m asculinization o f the spectatorial position. The w o m an ’s look is literally outside the triangle which traces a com plicity betw een the m an, the nude, and the spectator.T he feminine presence in the photograph, despite a diegetic centering o f the fem ale subject o f the gaze, is taken over by the picture as object. And, as if to doubly “fram e” her in the ic t o f looking, the painting situates its fem ale figure as a spectator (although it is not clear whether she is looking at h erself in a m irror o r peering through a doo r or window). W hile this dram a o f seeing is played out at the surface o f the pho­ tograph, its deep space is activated by several young boys, out-of-focus, in front o f a belt shop. The opposition ou t-of-focus/in -focus reinforces the su p ­ posed clarity accorded to the representation o f the w om an’s “non-vision.”

Furtherm ore, since this out-of-focus area constitutes the precise literal cen­ ter o f the image, it also dem onstrates how the photograph makes figurative the operation o f centering— draining the actual center point o f significance in order to deposit meaning on the margins. The male gaze is centered, in control— although it is exercised from the periphery. The spectator’s pleasure is thus produced through the fram ing/negation o f the female gaze. The woman is there as the butt o f a joke— a “dirty joke” which, as Freud has dem onstrated, is always constructed at the expense o f a w oman. In order for a dirty joke to em erge in its specificity in Freu d ’s description, the object o f desire— the woman— must be absent and a third person (another man) must be present as witness to the joke-

“so that grad­

ually, in place o f the w oman, the onlooker, now the listener, becom es the person to whom the sm ut is addressed ” 32 The term s o f the photograph’s address as joke once again ensure a masculinization o f the place o f the spec­ tator. The operation o f the dirty joke is also inextricably linked by Freud to scopophilia and the exposure o f the female body:

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Smut is like an exposure o f the sexually different person to whom it is directed. By the utterance of the obscene words it compels the person who is assailed to imagine the part o f the body or the procedure in ques­ tion and shows her that the assailant is himself imagining it. It cannot be doubted that the desire to see what is sexual exposed is the original motive of sm ut.33 From this perspective, the photograph lays bare the very mechanics o f the joke through its depiction o f sexual exposure and a surreptitious act o f see­ ing (and desiring). Freud’s description o f the joke-w ork appears to constitute a perfect analysis o f the photograph’s orchestration o f the gaze. There is a “voice-off” o f the photographic discourse, however— a com ponent o f the image which is beyond the frame o f this little scenario of voyeurism. On the far left-hand side o f the photograph, behind the wall holding the painting of the nude, is the barely detectable painting o f a woman imaged differently, in darkness— out ofsight for the male, blocked by his fetish. Yet, to point to this alm ost invisible alternative in imaging is also only to reveal once again the analyst’s own perpetual desire to find a not-seen that might break the hold o f representation. O r to laugh last. There is a sense in which the photograph’s delineation o f a sexual politics o f looking is alm ost uncanny. But, to counteract the very possibility o f such a perception, the language o f the art critic effects a naturalization o f this joke on the woman. The art-critical reception o f the picture emphasizes a natural but at the same time “imaginative” relation between photography and life, ultim ately subordinating any form al relations to a referential ground: “ D oisneau’s lines move from right to left, directed by the m an’s glance; the wom an’s gaze creates a line o f energy like a hole in space. . . .The creation o f these relationships from life itself is im agination in photography.”34 “ Life itself,” then, presents the material for an “artistic” organization o f vision along the lines o f sexual difference. Furtherm ore, the critic would have us believe that chance events and arbitrary clicks o f the shutter cannot be the agents of a generalized sexism because they are particular, unique— “ K ertesz and Doisneau depend entirely upon our recognition that they were present at the instant o f the unique intersection o f events.” 35 R ealism seem s always to reside in the streets and, indeed, the out-of-focus boys across the street, at the center o f the photograph, appear to act as a guarantee o f the “chance” nature o f the event, its arbitrariness, in short— its realism. Thus, in the dis­ course o f the art critic the photograph, in capturing a m om ent, does not con­ struct it; the camera finds a naturally given series o f subject and object posi­

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tions. What the critic d oes not consider are the conditions o f reception o f photography as an art form , its situation within a much larger netw ork o f representation. W hat is it that makes the photograph not only readable but pleasurable— at the expen se o f the wom an? The critic does not ask what makes the photograph a negotiable item in a market o f signification.

The Missing Look The photograph displays insistently, in m icrocosm , the structure o f the cin­ ematic inscription o f a sexual differentiation in m odes o f looking. Its process o f fram ing the fem ale gaze repeats that o f the cinematic narratives described above, from Leave Her to Heaven to Dark Victory. Films play out scenarios o f looking in order to outline the term s o f their own understanding. And given the divergence betw een m asculine and fem inine scen ario s, those term s would seem to be explicitly negotiated as m arkers o f sexual difference. Both the theory o f the im age and its apparatus, the cinema, produce a position for the fem ale spectator— a position which is ultimately untenable because it lacks the attribute o f distance so necessary for an adequate reading o f the image. The entire elaboration o f femininity as a closeness, a nearness, as present-to-itself is not the definition o f an essence but the delineation o f a place culturally assigned to the w om an. Above and beyond a sim ple adoption o f the masculine position in relation to the cinematic sign, the female spectator is given tw o options: the m asochism o f overidentification or the narcissism entailed in b ecom ing o n e’s own object o f desire, in assum ing the im age in the m ost radical way. The effectivity o f m asquerade lies precisely in its potential to manufacture a distance from the im age, to generate a problem atic within which the im age is m anipulable, producible, and readable by the woman. D oisneau’s photograph is not readable by the female spectator— it can give her pleasure only in m asochism . In order to “get” the joke, she m ust once again assum e the position o f transvestite. It is quite tem pting to foreclose entirely the possibility o f fem ale spectatorship, to repeat at the level o f theory the gesture o f the photograph, given the history o f a cinem a which relies so heavily on voyeurism , fetishism , and identification with an ego ideal conceivable only in m asculine term s. And, in fact, there has been a tendency to theorize femininity and hence the feminine gaze as repressed, and in its repression somehow irretrievable, the enigma constituted by Freu d ’s question. Yet, as Michel Foucault has dem onstrated, the repressive hypothesis on its own entails a very lim ited and sim plistic

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notion o f the working o f pow er.36 The “no” o f the father, the prohibition, is its only technique. In theories o f repression there is no sense o f the produc­ tiveness and positivity o f power. Femininity is produced very precisely as a position within a network o f power relations. And the growing insistence upon the elaboration o f a theory o f female spectatorship is indicative o f the crucial necessity o f understanding that position in order to dislocate it.

NO TES

1. Sigm und Freud, “ Femininity,” The Standard Edition o f the Complete Psychological Works o j Sigmund Freud, ed. Jam es Strachey (L o n d on :T h e H ogarth Press and the Insti­ tute o f Psycho-analysis, 1961), p. 113. 2. T his is the translation given in a footnote in The Standard Edition, p. 113. 3. H ein rich H ein e, The North Sea, tran s. V ernon W atkins (N e w Y o rk : N ew D irection Books, 1951), p. 77. 4 . In other w ords, the wom an can never ask her own ontological qu estio n.T h e absurdity o f such a situation within traditional discursive conventions can be d em o n ­ strated by substituting a “young w om an” for the “ young m an” o f H eine’s poem . 5. As O sw ald D ucrot andTzvetanTodorov point out in Encyclopedic Dictionary o f the Science o f Language, trans. C ath erin e P o rte r (B a ltim o re and Lon don : John s H opkins U niversity Press, 1979), p. 195, the potentially universal understandability o f the hieroglyphic is highly theoretical arid can only be thought as the unattain­ able ideal o f an im agistic system : “It is im portan t o f cou rse not to exaggerate either the resem blance o f the im age with the o bject— the design is stylized very rapidly— o r the “natural” and “universal” character o f the signs: Sum erian, Chinese, Egyptian, and H ittite hieroglyphics for the sam e object have nothing in com m on.” 6. Ibid ., p. 194. Emphasis mine. 7. See N oel Burch’s film , Correction Please, or Flow We Got Into Pictures. 8. Laura M ulvey, “ V isual P leasu re and N arrativ e C in em a,” Screen 16, no. 3 (A utum n 1975): 12—13. 9. C harles Affron, Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis (N ew Y ork, E. P. D utton, 1977), pp. 2 8 1 - 8 2 . 10.

T his argum ent focuses on the im age to the exclusion o f any consideration o f

the soundtrack prim arily because it is the p rocess o f im aging which seem s to con ­ stitute the m ajor difficulty in theorizing fem ale spectatorship.The im age is also p o p ­ ularly u n d erstood as m etonym ic signifier for the cinem a as a w hole and for go od rea­ son: historically, sound has been subordinate to the im age within the dom inant clas­ sical sy ste m . For m o re on the im a g e /so u n d distin ction in relation to sex u al

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difference see my article, “The Voice in the Cinem a: The A rticulation o f Body and Space,” Yale French Studies, no. 60: 33—50. 11. N o el B urch, Theory o f Film Practice, trans. H elen R . Lane (N ew Y o rk and W ashington: Praeger, 1973), p. 35. 12. Christian M etz,“The Imaginary Signifier,” Screen 16, no. 2 (Sum m er 1975): 60. 13. Ibid., p. 61. 14. Luce Irigaray, “This Sex Which Is N ot O ne,” New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine M arks and Isabelle de C o u rtiv ro n (A m herst: U niversity o f M assachu setts Press, 1980), pp. 1 0 4 -1 0 5 . 15. Irigaray, “ W om en’s E xile,” Ideology and Consciousness, no. 1 (May 1977): 74. 16. Helene C ixou s, “The Laugh o f the M edusa,” New French Feminisms, p. 257. 17. Sarah Kofm an, “ Ex: The W om an’s Enigma” Enclitic 4 , no. 2 (Fall 1980): 20. 18. M ichele Montrelay, “ Inquiry into Femininity,” m lf no. 1 (1 9 7 8 ): 91—92. 19. Freud, “So m e Psychological C onsequences o f the A natom ical D istinction Between the Sexes,” Sexuality and the Psychology o f Love, ed. Philip RiefF (N ew Y ork: Collier, 1963), pp. 187—88. 20. Freud, “ Femininity,” p. 125. 21. Freud, “Som e Psychological Consequences,” p. 187.

^

22. Molly H askell, From Reverence to Rape (Baltim ore: Penguin, 1 974), p. 154. 23. Irigaray, “ W om en’s Exile,” p. 65. 24. Mulvey, “A fterthoughts . . . inspired by Duel in the Sun ” Framework (Sum m er 1981): 13. 25. Joan R iv iere, “ W om anliness as a M asquerade,” Psychoanalysis and Female Sexuality, ed. H endrik M. Ruitenbeek (N ew Haven: C ollege and U niversity Press, 1 9 6 6 ) ,p. 213. My analysis o f the concept o f m asquerade differs m arkedly from that o f Luce Irigaray. See Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un (Paris: Les Editions de M inuit, 1977), pp. 131—32. It also diverges to a great extent from the very im portant analysis o f m asquerade presented by Claire Johnston in “ Femininity and the M asquerade: Anne o f the Indies,” Jacques Tourneur (London: British Film Institute, 1975), pp. 36—44. I am indebted to her for the reference to R iviere’s article. 26. M oustala Safouan, “ Is the O edipus C om p lex U niversal?” m / f 5—6 (1 9 8 1 ): 84—85. 27. Montrelay, “Inquiry into Femininity,” p. 93. 28. Silvia Bovenschen, “IsThere a Feminine Aesthetic?” New German Critique, no. 10 (W inter 1977): 129. 29. Montrelay, p. 93. 30. Linda W illiam s, “ W hen the Woman Looks . . .,” in Revision: Feminist Essays in Film Analysis, ed. M ary Ann D oane, Pat M ellencam p, and Linda W illiam s (Frederick, M d .: AFI-University Publications, 1984).

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31. Johnston, “ Femininity and the M asquerade,” p. 4 0 . 32. Freud, Jokes andTheir Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Jam es Strachey (N ew York: N o rto n , 19 6 0 ), p. 99. 33. Ibid ., p. 98. 34. W eston J. N aef, Counterparts: Form and Emotion in Photographs (N ew Y o rk : D utton and the M etropolitan M useum o f A rt, 19 8 2 ), pp. 48-4-9. 35. Ibid. 36. M ichel Foucault, The Flistory o f Sexuality, trans. R o b ert H urley (N ew Y ork: Pantheon, 1978).

10

The B o d y a n d C in e m a SO M E P R O B LE M S F O R F E M IN IS M

Annette Kuhn

Critique doesn ’t have to be

It m ust be clear by now that representation—

the premise o f a deduction

and visual representation in particular— poses

which concludes: this then is what needs to be done. It

certain p rob lem s fo r bo th fem in ist thinking and fem inist politics. I want to take a look at one o r tw o o f these p ro b le m s as they p r e ­

should be an instrumentf o r

sented them selves to m e in the c o n te x t o f a

those whofig h t, those who

recen t cin em a-goin g e x p e rie n ce . Early in

resist and refuse what is.

1986 I atten ded a co m m ercial screen in g in

— Michel Foucault,

London o f a film called Pum ping Iron II— The Women.' The screening w as organ ized for an

Ideology and Consciousness

all-wom en audience and was follow ed by a d is­ cussion betw een the audien ce and a p an el, con sistin g o f tw o film critic s and a b o d y ­ builder. It is possible there w ere m ore critics and bodybuilders in the audience, but m ost o f the women present apparently fell into neither category.Though, being m ostly fem inists, they were not the “ordinary w om en” o f the populist Imaginary, either.

Annette Kuhn, “The Body and Cinema: Some Problems for Feminism.” Appeared in Grafts: Feminist Cultural Criticism, edited by Susan Sheridan, 1988, and is reprinted with permission from the author.

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Few “ordinary wom en”— if such beings exist— w ould in any case have the opportunity to see Pumping Iron II. Although the film received an enthusias­ tic critical reception on its U .S. and British releases, it has had no general release, nor as far as I know has it been shown on television in Britain. And the video version circulating in Britain for a while has now been withdrawn. N one o f this m atters very much in the present con text, since the film figures here largely as a peg or point o f departure for a set o f general observations on visual representation and fem inism . My argu m en t, in other w ords, is applicable to m ore than this one film : and an argum ent based on Pumping Iron II m ight even shed som e light on cinem a in general. N evertheless, a sum m ary o f the storyline o f Pumping Iron II is probably in order here. The film is about a w om en’s bodybuilding championship held in Las Vegas in 1984. It may be called “sem i-docum entary,” in that while all the characters play “them selves,” they are placed in situations set up expressly for the cam era. Indeed, the contest was proposed in the first place by the film ’s director, G eorge Butler: its initial raison d ’ etre, therefore, was that a film would be m ade o f it. Suffice it to say— w ithout entering into debates about “truth” and “fiction” in cinem a— that a certain fictionality underlies the film ’s cinem a verite appearance.This double status m akes it entirely appropriate to look at the film as a narrative in the classic m old. The m ain pro tago n ists are real-life b odybuildin g cham pions R achel M cLish, C arla D unlap (the only black con testan t), and Australian weightlifter-turned-bodybuilder Bev Francis. The first part o f the film shows these and other women in the run-up to the contest— their training, their rela­ tionships with their (m ale) coaches and with each other. The film ’s clim ax is the com petition itself, held in the plush surroundings o f C aesar’s Palace. The narrative hook is sim ple: W ho will win? But there is m ore to the story than that: the com petition and its outcom e turn upon the question o f what so rt o f body a fem ale bodybuilder ought to have. Before the 1984 cham pionship, w om en bodybuilders had produced lithe and sinewy, as opposed to overtly m uscular, physiques. But in the film , Bev Francis’s entry into com petition challenges this order o f things. For hers is a body so extrem ely m uscular that it can only be seen as “m asculine’ by judges and contestants accustom ed to previous com petition “form .” Francis clearly has m ore m uscles than any o f the other wom en in the contest: the question is, can she win on these grounds? This question, which becom es crucial to the progress o f the narrative, is addressed quite explicitly in the film . W hen all the contestants are assem bled in Las Vegas for their final few days o f training before the cham pionship, sev­ eral discussions on this very issue take place. First o f all, a group o f com peti­

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tors— all m inor characters— relax together in the pool at C aesar’s Palace, surrounded by classical statuary. They are all m ore or less in agreem ent that the judges should stick with the “feminine look.” This is follow ed by a scene in which these very ju d ges— all but one m ale— confer on “the official [Inter­ national Federation o f Bodybuilding] analysis” o f the w o rd “femininity.’’Then, follow ing a short scene in which Carla Dunlap, under the gaze o f a facsimile W inged Victory, does som e synchroswimming practice alone in the pool, she and Bev chat about the judging o f the contest, m uscles, and, again, “feminin­ ity.” Finally, Rachel M cLish is seen expressing doubt to an interview er that the w orld is yet ready for Bev Francis. But although the question “W ho will win?” is duly answered at the end o f the film, the conundrum o f the appro­ priate body for a fem ale bodybuilder is never really resolved— a point to which I shall return. On its British release, Pumping Iron II was hailed by som e as the feminist film o f the year, on the grounds that it holds up conventional notions about the relationship betw een fem aleness, femininity, and the body not only to scrutiny, but also to a certain am ount o f ridicule: this fem inist reading sanc­ tioned the w om en-only screening which I atten ded. A side from the all­ fem ale audience, this was an extraordinary event in a num ber o f respects. M ost un usual, p erh ap s, w as the packed au d itoriu m . And the audience behaved not in the custom ary (in Britain, at least) m anner as a gathering o f individuals, couples or sm all groups o f friends on their separate night out at the pictures, but as a single social group: talking back to characters on the screen, cheering on the “goodies,” booing the “baddies,” and so on. All the viewers, it seem ed , w ere having a wonderful tim e, enjoying both the film and the circum stances in which they were watching it. Although the potential o f female or fem inist audiences as communities is an issue o f obvious relevance to qu estio ns o f fem inism and re p re se n tatio n ,2 I w ant to con cen trate m ore specifically here on the question o f what is involved for audiences o f this sort in the reception o f a film like Pumping Iron II. This question was raised quite forcefully after the screening was over, dur­ ing discussion o f the film. Many o f those who spoke were critical o f the film. C riticism ten d ed to be exp ressed in term s o f the nature and value o f w om en’s bodybuilding as a sport. In particular, the view was put forward that aside from being com petitive (A Bad Thing), the sport was narcissistic (An Even W orse Th in g). If criticism from this fem inist audience was not directed at the sorts o f things that preoccupy film theorists (the film tex t, the specifically cinem atic, the spectator-text relationship, and so on), it did in a way highlight som e key problem s— not ju st for fem inist thinking around

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cinem a and visual representation in general, but for other fem inist practices as well. The apparently inconsistent responses o f this audience— en joym en t d u r­ ing, negative criticism after, the screening— m ight well betoken a certain discom fort with the pleasures evoked by the film. In this context, view ers’ references to narcissism could be regarded as sym ptom atic. In relation to activities represented on the screen, this invocation o f narcissism assum es a certain transparency on behalf o f the cinem atic im age: a “naive” reading from which critics and theorists o f cinem a w ould undoubtedly hasten to dissoci­ ate them selves. Yet narcissism also describes a potential m ode o f relation to the film te x t, and its invocation in this d isplaced m anner may well be an expression o f the difficulty o f such a relation, highly foregrounded, perhaps, in this particular tex t, but by no m eans confined to it. O ne o f the central and m ost productive insights o f fem inist film theory concerns the ways in which sexual difference is constructed, and spectators ad d ressed as m ale /m ascu lin e and fe m ale /fe m in in e , within the cinem atic apparatus. To sum m arize and grossly oversim plify a substantial body o f w ork, it m ight be argued that the options on offer to spectators in cinem a are b asi­ cally either to take up a m asculine subject position as, so the argum ent go es, is proposed by the huge num ber o f film s in which the enunciating instance is m a le /m asc u lin e ; or to subm it to a m asochism o f over identification, as is evoked, for exam ple, by the Hollywood “w om en’s picture” ; or to adopt the narcissistic position o f taking the screen as m irror and becom ing on e’s own object o f d e sire .3 In their in scription within a co m p lex and unstable libidinal econom y, these spectator-text relations are not mutually exclusive; each is, in theory, available to all spectators, regardless o f gender. However, in the social, his­ to rical, and ideological space inhabited and produ ced by cinem a, certain c o n strain ts are im p o sed upon such polym orphy. For ex am p le, the Hollyw ood w om en’s m elodram a o f the 194 0 s and 19 5 0 s, proposing a m ode o f identification culturally m arked as characteristically feminine, was delib­ erately m arketed to fem ale audiences: in this instance, social relations and psychic relation s in tersect in the actual reception o f film s. N everth eless, while the pleasures o f cinema are obviously available to w om en as well as to m en, I would contend that for women there is an additional degree o f insta­ bility in the relations o f subjectivity upon which these pleasures depend. In Pumping Iron II, for instance, an im portant source o f pleasure for fem ale spectators m ust lie in its construction o f the fem ale body not only as strong but also as capable o f being shaped and defined by w om en them selves. And

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yet while this film might evoke such new and technological narcissistic iden­ tifications, the pleasure o f this position may at the same tim e be undercut in at least two ways: first o f all, by a construction o f the fem ale body as poten­ tially m o n stro u s; and secondly, as a con sequen ce, by the fact that, for a w om an , assen tin g to the pleasures afford ed by cinem a is tantam ount to becom ing caught up (to use Foucauldian term inology, on which I shall elab­ orate later4) in certain relations o f power, held in place by these relations and by the constructs o f sexuality they inscribe. T h ese pow er relation s and their associated instabilities characterize a go od deal o f classical cinem a. Pumping Iron II is exceptional only in that it brings such contradictions to the fore at the levels o f both narrative and spec­ tacle. For exam ple, on both these levels the film is quite clearly “about” the fem ale body in ways that m ost films are not. That is to say, while— as fem i­ nist film theorists have argued— the female body may figure crucially in the production o f both meaning and pleasure in classical cinem a, Pumping Iron II transcends this inscription o f the female body to interrogate that body and its limits. The film ’s narrative, I have suggested, is governed by the question o f who will win the contest. But since in this context “who?” m ust mean “which body?,” the trajectory o f the narrative is harnessed to a further set o f ques­ tions: W hat is a w om an’s body? Is there a point at which a w om an’s body becom es som ething else? W hat is the relationship betw een a certain type o f body and “femininity”? These are challenging questions in a cultural context in which the body figures as an irreducible sign o f the natural, the given, the unquestionable. Forem ost am ong these cultural effectivities o f the body is its function as a signifier o f sexual difference. But the concept o f sexual difference is itself an id eological battlegrou n d: it holds togeth er— or tries to — a range o f d is­ c o u rse s and m eanings centering on biological sex , social gender, gender identity, and sexual object choice. The encapsulation o f all these within con­ stru cts o f sexual difference is a historically groun ded ideological p roject which w orks to set up a heterogeneous and variably determ inate set o f bio­ logical, physical, social, psychological, and psychic constructs as a unitary, fixed, and unproblem atic attribute o f human subjectivity. O ne o f the effects o f this is that, at a social level at least, every human being gets defined as either m ale or fem ale. From this fundamental difference flows a succession o f d isco u rse s and pow ers cen terin g upon identification and sexuality. Pumping Iron II can be read if not as actually unraveling this discursive form a­ tion, certainly as unpicking it a little around the edges. The film does this m ost distinctively by constructing the body in a partic­

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ular m anner as performance. Perform ance is an activity that con n otes p re ­ tense, dissim ulation, “putting on an act,” assum ing a role. In other w ords, in the notion o f perform ance a distance o f som e sort is im plied betw een the “act” and the “real se lf” concealed behind it. Perform ance proposes a subject which is at once both fixed in, and called into question by, this very distinc­ tion betw een assum ed perso na and authentic self. Perform ance, in other w ords, poses the possibility o f a mutable self, o f a fluid subjectivity. If p e r­ form ance proposes fluidity and the body connotes fixity, the com bination o f the tw o in the instance o f bodybuilding con fers a distinctly contradictory quality on the activity. For bodybuilding involves m ore than placing the body on display, m ore than simply passive exhibition.The fact that bodybuilding is an active production o f the body, a process o f acting upon and determ ining its con tours, is im possible to ignore. In Pumping Iron II, for exam ple, innu­ m erable scenes emphasize the sheer hard w ork involved in the production o f the w om en’s bodies. In bodybuilding— the w illed construction o f a certain physique— nature becom es culture. Perform ance and the body are instrum ental in the operations o f classical cinem a as well; but rarely in ways which in the final instance challenge the natural ord er o f the body and its inscription o f sexual difference. For in cin­ em a, perform ance is usually appropriated to the self-evidently cultural and m utable instances o f clothing and g e stu re .5 In bodybuilding, m uscles func­ tion in m uch the sam e way as clothing does in other types o f perform an ce. But m u scles, unlike cloth es, are su p p o sed to be natural. W hat happen s, then, when m uscles enter the cultural dom ain? In a sense, o f co u rse, they already d o inhabit it, for m uscles carry a heavy burden o f cultural m eanings. N ot least am ong these are m eanings centered upon sexual difference and its n aturaln ess. W ithin such a d isc o u rse , m u scles are con stitu ted as “ e ssen ­ tially” m asculine. Thus when women enter the arena o f bodybuilding, a twofold challenge to the natural order is posed. N ot only is the naturalness o f the body called into question by its inscription within a certain kind o f perform ance: but when w om en have the m uscles, the natural order o f gender is under threat as well. M uscles are rather like drag, for fem ale bodybuilders especially: while m us­ cles can be assum ed, like clothing, w om en’s assum ption o f m uscles im plies a transgression o f the proper boundaries o f sexual difference. In Pumping Iron II the limits o f the female body are the object o f obsessive concern, to the extent that the opposite poles o f the issue are represented in the “feminine” body o f Rachel McLish against the “m asculine” body o f Bev Francis. The w om an’s body as m uscular may also be regarded as tantam ount to a

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f

*

Carla Dunlap poses down in the final round.

fetish, a point which brings me back to the question o f cinema. For it is an axiom o f feminist film theory that one o f the masculine subject positions available to the spectator in cinema is constructed through a fetishistic look, a look which effects a disavowal o f the threat o f castration posed by woman. The phallic woman imaged in this process o f disavowal is either overvalued as a glam orous figure, or punished as a monstrosity.6 Such an operation, it is argued, is characteristic o f the spectator-text relations proposed by classical cinema. Again, this operation is foregrounded in Pumping Iron II. In particu­ lar, Bev Francis’s body can only, within the term s o f the b o d y /g e n d er/cu l­ ture problematic, be seen as “masculine,” or at least as “n o t-fe m in in e H o w is such a disturbing body to be looked at when translated on to the cinema screen? Indeed, can it be looked at?7 At the level o f spectacle, then, the threatening quality o f Bev’s body can be neutralized by its construction— in a fetishistic look— as m onstrous. And yet at the level o f narrative, Bev figures as a key character— indeed as a sym ­ pathetic character— in the film. Whether she will receive her just narrative deserts as a “good person” or her just, “specular” deserts as a phallic woman is a question entirely central to the suspenseful trajectory o f Pumping Iron II.

Bev Francis: the challenger.

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In the end, Bev loses the cham pionship, com ing in at a humiliating eighth place. But ultrafeminine Rachel McLish does not win, either: and o f these two it is Bev who, by her magnanimity in defeat, scores the m oral victory. First prize, in fact, goes to Carla Dunlap, whose body is represented in the film as a m idpoint betw een Bev’s and R achel’s. But there is m ore to this res­ olution than m ere com prom ise. Carla is set up as an outsider, as different from the other contestants— and not ju st by virtue o f race: she is the m ost articulate o f the group, a self-sufficient loner, the only one with no man to coach her and provide m oral supp ort. C arla’s dea ex machina win does not so much answer the film ’s central question, then, as sidestep it.T h e issue o f the appropriate body for a fem ale bodybuilder is not actually resolved: rather it is displaced on to a set o f discourses centering on— but also skirting— race, femininity, and the body, a com plex o f discourses which the film can­ not acknowledge, let alone handle. In Pumping Iron II's term s. C arla’s body can be “read” only as a com prom ise: other m ajor issues are left dangling. These contradictions overdeterm in e the ways in which Pumping Iron II foregrounds a num ber o f dilem m as facing female spectators at the cinema. M ost especially, the film m akes it clear that to adopt a narcissistic position in relation to the cinem atic im age is to run the risks o f identifying with womanas-fetish: o f identifying with her overid ealization , certainly— and, m ore commonly, perhaps, in the cinem a o f the 1980s— with her victimization and punishm ent. The difficulties o f such a m od e o f identification effectively becom e a topic o f Pumping Iron II, so that the instability o f femininity as a sub­ ject position, and the d iscom fort involved in identification with it, are liable to becom e evident in looking at this film in ways they are not when such rela­ tions are m ore em bedded, m ore subm erged in the text. This brings m e back to the question o f the pow ers at w ork in cinem a’s relation o f spectatorship: pow ers through which, it is argued, sexual differ­ ence— and indeed perhaps other kinds o f difference, to o 8— are constructed. To take pleasure in cinem a is to be seduced by these operations; to be sub­ ject to, to subm it to, the pow ers they inscribe.The spectator becom es caught up in, and con stitu ted by, a se t o f pow ers which produ ce (am on g other things) discursive constructs o f femininity and masculinity. Sh e/h e is posi­ tioned, defined, set in place, within these powers and constructs. The gen­ dered subjectivities so produced are not interchangeable, however. This is one reason— and a very im portant one— why visual representation presents special problem s for feminist politics. In this context two questions present them selves: Is it possible for w om en /fem inists to take pleasure in visual rep ­ resentation, particularly in cinema? And, m ore generally, what is to be done

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about the problem s all this poses for feminism? Before tackling these issues, however, 1 want to subject the notion o f the instrumentality o f representa­ tion to a little m ore scrutiny, with a view to understanding it better in rela­ tion to women, to the feminine, indeed to feminism. Representation, as I have suggested, sets in play certain relations o f power through which, am ong other things, discourses around sexual difference and subjects in and for those discourses are ongoingly produced. In this sense, representation may be regarded, once m ore to adopt Foucauldian term inol­ ogy, as a strategy o f norm alization. Representation participates in the various relations o f power with which we are surrounded and in which we are always in one way or another implicated. Representation can be understood, then, as a form of regulation. This theoretical position suggests that no one, no social group, no struc­ ture, can stand outside the powers and the norm alizing instrumentality o f representation. Therefore if “women” are positioned and produced through these powers in specific ways as social subjects, it follows that they are not exclu ded from these pow ers. N or, in the classic sense o f the term , can women be regarded as “oppressed” by them. For power, in this m odel, is not a thing, is not im posed from outside its subjects, but is rather a process, the outcom e o f a series o f interacting and potentially contradictory relations in which these subjects are necessarily involved. If power operates in this way as a network o f countervailing “force relations,” then resistance becom es an integral part o f processes o f power. Given this, what kinds o f resistance to the normalizing effectivities o f representation are available to feminism? In current circumstances, three sets o f feminist strategies o f resistance present them selves: censorship, fem inist practices o f representation, and fem inist critical practice. My main concern here is with feminist critical practice, but a few words on the other two are perhaps in order first. If censorship deserves attention, this is not because (at least in its legal or quasilegal m anifestations) it constitutes an im portant fem inist strategy o f resistance to the norm alizing pow ers o f representation: on the contrary, gen­ erally speaking it does not. However, since feminist protests against visual representations o f women are often appropriated (in Britain and the U .S ., at least) in support o f prefeminist and even antifeminist arguments in favor o f censorship, it might be worthwhile m aking a few distinctions here. While censorship— to the extent that it seeks to repress certain representations— can be regarded as a prohibitive operation, it can also be seen as productive.9 At the m ost basic level, for exam ple, it produces the “unrepresentable” pre­ cisely as a set o f images that should not be seen. What censorship both pro ­

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hibits and produces is m ost especially that category o f representations named the “obscene.” However, con stru cts o f fem ininity produced by representation cannot simply be m apped directly on to constructs o f the obscene produced by cen­ sorship. On the contrary, in fact: in both psychic and econom ic term s, “fem ­ ininity” may be regarded as exactly a condition o f representation. If feminists and censors seem to be at one in objecting to certain im ages o f w om en, the objects o f their objections are in fact com pletely different. It might be added, m oreover, that censorship, in inciting desire for the unrepresentable, in the final instance acknow ledges and reinforces the power o f the im age. To this extent, censorship is com plicit in those very norm alizing processes which feminism seeks to resist. Feminist practices o f representation, on the other hand, em body— in the quest for a “new voice,” a transform ation o f vision— a wholly understandable desire to stand outside these pow ers. This is not necessarily an essentialist project, though given the appeals often m ade to an authentic feminine voice, “w riting the body” and suchlike, it certainly looks like it at tim es. A good deal o f exciting and valuable work in film, as in other areas o f cultural production, has appeared in recent years, som e o f it indeed claiming to speak a “feminine voice.” N evertheless, the search for new form s o f expression is m ore p ro ­ ductively seen in term s o f resistance to the powers o f representation than as taking place outside their “field o f force.” This argum ent is m ore than just a corollary o f the notion that pow er is allpervasive: it also registers a discom fort with a distinction between feminist cultural production on the one hand and feminist theory and criticism on the other. Such a polarization perpetuates the assumption that while theory and criticism are o f necessity im plicated in “discourses which negate or objectify [women] through their representations,” 10 fem inist cultural production is som ehow capable o f transcending these limitations. At stake here, o f course, is a separation o f theory and practices: precisely one o f the dualisms o f patri­ archal thought which fem inist thinking seeks to challenge. This brings m e to the third and final strategy o f resistance, strategically term ed in this context fem inist critical practice. Feminist critics and theo­ rists am ong my readers may be relieved to hear that, in arguing that criticism can be a political practice in its own right, I have masculine authority on my side. I refer here to the quotation from Foucault which heads this essay. If fem inist critics can place themselves am ong those who, in Foucault’s w ords, “resist and refuse what is,” we might well then ask: W here lies the specificity o f fem inist as against other form s o f oppositional cultural practice? Perhaps

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it resides in the possibility that fem inist critical practice may constitute not only a resistance to the pow ers o f visual representation, but also an attem pt to bridge the gap betw een w om an as spectacle, as object o f the look, and women as historical subjects. Alongside fem inist cultural production, then, fem inist critical practice can be a fundamentally deconstructive strategy which questions the pos­ sibility of universals or absolute meanings and exposes the constitution o f power at stake in their assertion ." However, I shall not end with any fanfares, for one further question remains unanswered: can feminists (and indeed wom en in general) take pleasure in visual representations, and if so, how? I have suggested that the feminist audi­ ence at the screening o f Pumping Iron 11 was uncom fortable with its own plea­ sure in the film . If this is so, then their d isco m fo rt was sim ultaneously expressed and dealt with in a process o f disavowal. This is evident in the nega­ tive criticisms directed at— but actually missing— the film: and it may be seen in itself as a form o f resistance to the film ’s powers o f seduction and subjection. The question remains, though: Can there be a feminist critical position which neither refuses nor disavows the pleasures o f cinema? Because I love cinema, I want to answer yes. In the end, though, perhaps a feminist critical practice can do no m ore than offer the— not inconsiderable— pleasure o f resistance?

N O TES

1.

Pumping Iron 11— TheWomen

(U .S., 1985). Directed by George Butler; British

distributor Blue Dolphin; video distributor Virgin. For commentary on the produc­ tion of the film see

American Cinem atographer

65, no. 7 (1984): 76—81;

Film Comment

21, no. 4 (1985): 60-64. 2. In “Illicit Pleasures: Feminist Spectators and

Personal Best,"W ide Angle

8, no. 2

(1986): 4 5 -5 6 , Elizabeth Ellsworth considers how the audience of another film about women’s sport may behave as a community. 3. Judith Mayne, in “Feminist Film Theory and Criticism,”

S ig n s

11, no. 1

(1985): 81-100, offers the nonspecialist reader a lucid introduction to, and exposi­ tion of, these ideas. 4. See Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, M ichel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism a n d H erm eneutics

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), chapter 5, for an

account of the Foucauldian understanding of power.

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5. Annette Kuhn, “ Sexual D isguise and Cinem a,” in The Power o f the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality (L o n d o n :R o u tle d g e and K egan Paul, 1 9 8 S ), pp. 4 8 - 7 3 , addresses the them e o f cross-dressing in Hollywood film s as a potential chal­ lenge to the “natural” o rd er o f sexual difference proposed by cinem a. 6. Sigm und Freud, “ Fetishism ” (1 9 2 7 ), in The Standard Edition o f the Complete Psychological Works o f Sigmund Freud, vol. 21 (London: H ogarth Press, 1953—7 4 ), pp. 152—7 ; Laura Mulvey, “V isual P leasure and N arrative C in em a,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1 9 7 5 ): 6—18; Linda W illiam s, “ When the Woman Looks,” in M ary Anne D oane et a l., ed s, Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (F re d e ric k , M d .: U niversity Publications o f A m erica, Los A ngeles, C alif., in association with the A m erican Film Institute, 1984), pp. 8 3 - 9 9 . 7. It is significant that neither Bev nor— interestingly— C arla, are am ong the wom en featured on the p o ster for Pumping Iron II. 8. Teresa de Lauretis, in “Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking W om en’s Cinem a,” New German Critique, no. 34 (1 9 8 5 ): 1 5 4 -7 5 , discusses differences o f race and class in this context. Both o f these— but especially considerations o f race— are o f relevance to a reading o f Pumping Iron II. 9. The productive potential o f censorship is discussed in Annette Kuhn, Cinema, Censorship, and Sexuality, 1909—1925 (London: Routledge, 1988), chapter 8. 10. D e Lauretis, p. 154. 11. Biddy M artin, “Fem inist C riticism and Foucault,” New German Critique no. 27 (1 9 8 2 ): 1 2 -1 3 .

11

Cinema a n d the D ark C ontinent RACE AN D G EN D ER IN PO P U LA R FILM

Tania M odleski

Issues o f ra c e , gen der, and ethnicity com e together in an especially bizarre m anner in one o f the earliest sound film s, TheJa zz Singer, at the end o f w hich the Jew ish so n , played by Al Jo lso n , donning black face for a theatrical p e r­ form ance, hears “the call o f the ages— the cry o f my race,” sings “M am m y” to his m other, and ru shes hom e to his dying father, prom isin g to take up m om entarily the father’s role as cantor. Su b seq u en tly — and the cod a is ad d ed to the film version o f the stage play— the son return s to his show -business career, thus being p e rm it­ ted the best o f both w orlds, old and new. H ere, o f c o u rse , are the fam iliar o ed ipal th em es o f H ollyw ood cinem a: the so n ’s accession to the role o f the father entails a m odification o f the stern and unyielding patriarchal attitude, th ere­ by, in the case o f The Ja zz Singer, accom m od at­ ing the assim ilationist ideologies o f the p erio d .

Tania M o d lesk i, “ C in em a and the D ark C o n tin e n t: R ace and G en d er in Popular F il m R e p r in t e d from Feminism Without Wo­ men: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist”Age by Tania M odleski (1 9 9 1 ), by p erm issio n o f the publisher R o utled ge, N ew Y ork.

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The m other is a key figure in the process o f the h ero’s grow th and accultura­ tion, since in her unconditional love for her child she can serve as the m edi­ ating force between father and son, old world and new, the desire for cultural difference and the desire for cultural integration.1 But the m other in the film is not the only m ediator, not the only person whose sole significance lies in the meaning she holds for the white man and his dram a; the other such figure is, o f course, the black m an, metonymically sum m oned to represent the unalterable fact o f “race,” and thus to form one pole o f the assim ilationist continuum , at the other end o f which stands the Jolson character’s shiksa girlfriend. It is ironic, if utterly characteristic, that the essentialist notion o f race the film draws upon is asserted through m as­ querade and in a space o f illusionism , i.e ., the theatre.That is to say, the jazz singer recognizes his supposed racial authenticity as a Sem ite in the process o f miming another race— assum ing black skin and black voice— so that the film is situated squarely in the realm o f the fetish, whereby the notion o f inerad­ icable racial difference (one which defies history and calls out across “the ages”) is sim ultaneously affirm ed and negated. Recent work by H om i Bhabha has shown how colonialist discourse as a w hole involves a process o f m im icry that is related psychoanalytically to the m echanism o f fetishization, the play o f presence and absence. By m imicry, I take Bhabha to be referring to an im position by one nation o f its structures, values, and language upon the colonized nation, an im position that rather than com pletely obliterating difference speaks o f “a desire for a subject o f a difference that is alm ost the sam e, but not quite” and hence is, Bhabha con ­ tinually em phasizes, ambivalent.2 Although Bhabha’s term s o f reference con ­ cern the British Em pire, they apply equally to the Am erican situation, for, as Thom as C rip ps points out in his som ew hat dated but still useful study o f blacks in Am erican film , the position o f blacks in relation to the dominant culture and its rep resentation s has been an “am bivalent” one: blacks had “absorbed A m erican culture but could not exp ect to be absorbed by it.”3 M oreover, C rip p s h im self poin ts out that the British colon ial system “resem bled Am erican racial arrangem ents” in the way “it encouraged cul­ tural assim ilation while denying social integration” (p. 313). O ne fairly ludi­ crous result o f such “arrangem ents” was that, for exam ple, in cinem a what used to be called “race m o v ies” often had to do w ith out w hite p eo p le. “ W ithout w h ites, the req u irem en ts o f dram atic co n stru ctio n created a world in which black characters acceded to the white ideal o f segregation, and unreal black cops, crooks, ju d ges, and ju ries interacted in such a way as

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to blame black victims for their social plight.” But the lack o f verisim ilitude, which C ripps sees as a problem , can cut two ways: for it is easy to see how how such copies o f white cinem a could easily reflect back on the m odel itself, m ocking it, defamiliarizing it, casting doubt upon its accuracy as, in the w ords o f one film concerned with the perennial theme o f “passing,” an “imitation o f life” (pp. 322—23). Eddie M urphy’s Coming to America furnishes a contem porary exam ple o f a movie in which black mimicry o f whites is both a source o f humor and a fun­ dam ental structurin g principle o f the tex t. In this m ovie, Prince Akeem leaves Africa to come to Am erica— to Queens— in order to find a queen of his own choosing, one with a “mind o f her own” rather than the woman d es­ tined and trained from birth to be his wife. Although on his arrival Prince Akeem discovers a world where black poverty seem s to be the rule, the film rapidly moves beyond this world to enter middle-class black society, repre­ sented by the owner o f a ham burger stand called M cD ow ell’s. The owner, whose daughter becom es Akeem ’s choice for a wife, explains the differences betw een his business and the M cD on ald’s franchise: “they have golden arches, we have golden arcs. . . . Their rolls have sesam e seeds, ours don ’t, etc.”— distinctions, in other words, without a difference. The joke here, in which mimicry itself is foregrounded, may be said to cut a variety o f ways, potentially m ocking the white m odel for black m iddle-class am bitions but also, at least in the eyes o f prejudiced white audiences, affirming white cap­ italism as the “real thing” and appearing to expose black aspirations as ridicu­ lous and pathetic. There is also another sense in which m im icry operates throughout the text. Insofar as the film may be said to belong to a recognizable genre, the screwball comedy, the film participates in, m im es, a fantasy unreal enough when it concerns whites and doubly so in relation to blacks. In a gesture rem ­ iniscent o f the classic screwball hero Godfrey o f My Man Godfrey, Akeem dis­ guises him self as a penniless floor-washer in order to win over the father o f the (m otherless) woman he loves. As the barber advises, “ If you want to get in good with the daughter, you got to get in good with the father.”The film is clearly situated squarely within the bounds o f the oedipal dram a, the only twist being that the arrival o f Akeem ’s real father is the decisive event in win­ ning over the future father-in-law, who is bow led over on discovering the richness and royalty o f his daughter’s suitor. The film ’s m ajor conflict thus turns out to be not an interracial or class conflict but one betw een the wealthy black A m ericans and the even w ealthier Africans. That the film resolves its conflict according to the traditional dictates o f the genre by end­

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ing with a w edding (betw een Burger Q ueen and future African king) that prom ises the harm onious union o f two w orlds— a black imitation o f white corporate Am erica, represented by M cD ow ell’s, and a black African nation represented by its royal family— takes on a particularly sinister irony in light o f the role played by Am erican corporations in the destruction o f the envi­ ronm ent o f Third W orld peoples. The ending o f Coming to America may be seen as an attem pt to resolve at the level o f fantasy the ambivalence or doubleness Bhabha sees operating in representations o f race: the black man as alien, African other (an otherness always already denied because it is the familiar, Am ericanized Eddie Murphy who plays the lead ro le) and the black man as assim ilated dream er o f the Am erican dream . Such an am bivalence, according to Bhabha, is explosive; there is an incipient m enace in mimicry, and from “a difference that is alm ost nothing but not quite” it is but a step to a “difference that is alm ost total but not quite.”4 Switching genres, from com edy to horror, we may note that the film Alien Nation provides a vivid illustration o f the thesis. In this film a group o f aliens from an oth er plan et have been residin g in Los A n geles as an oppressed minority, clearly m eant to serve as allegorical figures for blacks. (H ere we see vividly illustrated the dominant cultu re’s tendency to collapse all racial groups into one undifferentiated m ass which serves as the “ O ther” o f white society. For, clearly, the notion o f an alien nation draws on the exis­ tence o f the Latino population o f illegal “aliens.”) The aliens are alm ost like whites but “not quite” (they get drunk on sour m ilk; the m ales have larger penises than the A m ericans; their heads are strangely shaped, hairless, and m o ttle d ),5 and in the liberal surface tex t, the bigoted white cop m ust learn to accept his new alien partner, Sam Francisco, as som eone w hose differ­ ences are in fact insignificant in the face o f the m en ’s overriding com m on hum anity.The two are involved in tracing down a deadly dru g that has nearly destroyed the people on the alien planet, and at one point Sam forces his partn er to w itness the hideous physical transform ation o f a victim who has overdosed so that he may see “just how m onstrous” his people “are capable o f becom ing.”Yet, plot details aside, is it not the case that the threat o f m on­ strosity— that is, o f black m onstrosity— has been present all along in the film as a consequence o f the decision to make it an allegory rather than to treat the situation o f blacks directly? And has not the tendency o f film s from the very early days o f cinem a to cast white people in blackface served a sim ­ ilar function— i .e ., to suggest that blackness may be so m onstrous it can only be signified but not directly represented? When in Birth o f a Nation we watch the lecherous man in blackface pursuing the young white girl to her death,

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do we need to know about, in order to feel the force of, G riffith ’s reason for casting m ostly white actors in the film : i.e ., to protect the purity o f white w om anhood on the set?6 We need, then, not ju st to analyze the function o f m im icry on the part o f the colonized peop le, but to understand its role in the life and art o f the colonizer— to u nderstand, that is, the function o f m instrelsy. Bhabha w rites o f the way the “not q u ite /n o t w hite” elem ent o f difference displayed by co l­ onized races is related to the psychoanalytic notion o f the fetish: “black skin sp lits u n der the racist g aze, d isp laced into sign s o f bestiality, gen italia, gro tesq u erie, which reveal the phobic myth o f the undifferentiated whole w hite skin.”7 M instrelsy w ould be a m ethod by which the white man may disavow— acknow ledge and at the sam e tim e deny— difference at the level o f the body; as a process o f fetishism , it seeks, like all fetishes, to restore the w holeness and unity threatened by the sight o f difference, yet because it en ters into the gam e o f m im icry it is condem ned to keep alive the possibil­ ity that there may be “no presence or identity behind the m ask.”8The con ­ cept o f fetishism enables us to understand why m instrelsy has never really died out— why it lives in a different form in the “trading places” and “black like m e” plots with which H ollyw ood is enam ored, the m o st recent ex am ­ p le b ein g Paul M azu rsk y ’s Moon Over Parador (actu ally an in stan ce o f “b ro w n face ”), in w hich the R ichard D rey fu s ch aracter, an un em ployed H ollyw ood actor, is pressed into m asquerading as the leader o f a C entral A m erican cou n try and in effect w inds up playing the “T o o tsie ” o f Latin A m erican dictators. Som e o f Bhabha’s discussion covers fam iliar te rrito ry fo r a fem inist reader, since he draws on m aterial elaborated in fem inist theory. The prob­ lem atics o f difference and sam eness have, for exam ple, been brilliantly ana­ lyzed by Luce Irigaray in her readings o f F reud’s essay “ O n Femininity” and P lato’s Republic. Irigaray shows that for all W estern cultu re’s em phasis on the difference between the sexes, there is an underlying negation o f the differ­ ence— and the threat— posed by the fem ale sex, a negation evidenced for exam ple in Freu d ’s theorizing o f the w om an as an inferior m an, as bearer o f the “lack.”9 In Freudian theory, o f course, the fetish is precisely the m eans whereby “ lack” and difference are disavowed— accepted and negated sim ul­ taneously. It is the m eans, in other w ords, whereby “a m ultiple b e lie f” may be m aintained and hence serves to su pp ort the wildly divergent stereotypi­ cal associations that accrue around the fetishized body. For it is not just the black who is m arked in the dom inant discourse as, in H om i Bhabha’s w ords, “both savage . . . and yet the m ost obedient and dignified o f servants; . . . the

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em bodim ent o f ram pant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; . . . mystical, prim itive, sim ple-m inded and yet the m ost worldly and accom plished liar, and m anipulator o f social forces.” 10 Much o f this description also applies to the representation o f woman, who in the male Imaginary undergoes a prim al splitting into virgin and whore. The im portance o f Bhabha’s w ork, like Fanon’s before him , lies partly, for m e, in the way it insists on understanding the psychosocial dynam ics o f colonialism and racism , bringing psychoanalysis to bear on questions that have unfortunately all too often been viewed as not susceptible to a psy­ choanalytic understanding. Yet, unaccountably, although Bhabha utilizes the very con cepts originally developed in the theorization o f sexual difference, he alm ost entirely neglects the issue o f gender and slights fem inist work. In virtually ignoring the “w om an question,” while retaining the term s in which it has been p osed , Bhabha com m its the sam e kind o f erro r for which Freud can be and has been criticized. The latter w as undou btedly being both racist and sexist in designating “w om an” as the dark continent. But the answ er is surely not to reverse the p ro p o sitio n and im plicitly p o sit the “dark continent” as w om an— not, at the very least, w ithout carefully theo­ rizing the relation. Although he does not exam ine how race and gender in tersect, Bhabha nevertheless notes at one point, “Darkness signifies at once both birth and death; it is in all cases a desire to return to the fullness o f the mother, a desire for an unbroken and undifferentiated line o f vision and origin.” 11 For the heart o f the matter, the heart o f darkness, is, after all, “M ammy”— she who, absent in her own right, is spoken by man as guarantor o f his origin and iden­ tity. In the face o f the m ale desire to collapse sexual and racial difference into oceanic plenitude, feminism needs to insist on the com plex, “m ultiple and cross-cutting” nature o f identity and to ask: how do we rid ourselves o f the desire for a “line o f origin,” how avoid positing either sexuality or race as the­ oretically prim ary, while we at the same time undertake to understand the vicious circularity o f patriarchal thought whereby darkness signifies fem i­ ninity and femininity darkness? I would like in this essay to address this ques­ tion by exam ining first the way ou r cultu re through its rep resen tation s e x p lo re s the highly charged taboo relationships betw een black m en and white wom en (specifically focusing on Gorillas in the Mist and a scene from an early film , Blonde Venus) and then to focus on the representations o f black wom en in popular film , looking especially at the ways in which the black woman functions as the site o f the displacem ent of white culture’s (includ­ ing white w om en’s) fears and anxieties.

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In Gorillas in the Mist, the question o f origins is posed at the outset by, o f course, a white man— in this case the anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey, who is seen in a large hall lecturing about gorillas: “I want to know who I am , and what it was that m ade m e that way.” As if conjured up by his w ords, Dian Fossey appears, the woman who will journey alone to the heart o f darkest Africa and w hose story may be viewed as a phantasmatic answer to the white m an ’s question. It is an old story, an updated, m iddlebrow version o f the King Kong tale, which itself is part o f a tradition o f animal m ovies that have functioned as thinly disguised “allegories for black brutes.” 12 O f the perennial popularity o f the film King Kong, for exam ple, X . J. Kennedy w rote: A N egro friend from Atlanta tells me that in movies houses in colored neighborhoods throughout the South, Kong does a constant business.They show the thing in Atlanta at least every year, presumably to the same audi­ ences. Perhaps this popularity may simply be due to the fact that Kong is one of the most watchable movies ever constructed, but I wonder whether N egro audiences may not find som e archetypical appeal in this se rio ­ comic tale of a huge black powerful free spirit whom all the hardworking white policemen are out to kill.13 Putting aside the way this passage provides a textbook exam ple o f how white racism gets projected into the psyches o f the black audience, we may note that Kennedy’s rem arks are paradoxically couched in a liberal fram e which tacitly ack n ow ledges the legitim acy o f black political griev an ces w hile em ployin g an ahistorical n otion o f “arch etyp e,” w hich w ould deny the humanity o f blacks (im aged as beasts) and so function to prevent them from achieving social and political equality. T his is not to say that K en n edy ’s respon se is idiosyn cratic: on the contrary, film s like King Kong, m ade by w hites in a racist society, lend them selves to this kind o f in terp retatio n , which is situated in the space o f disavowal characteristic o f colonialist dis­ course (the fetish indeed being a m eans by which two apparently opposed beliefs, “one archaic and one progressive,” may sim ultaneously be h eld).T his is a space, as we shall see, increasingly occupied in a postfem inist, post-civil rights era by a m ass culture that m ust on one level acknow ledge the political struggles o f the last few decades and on another, deeper level w ould w ard o ff the threat these struggles pose to the white m ale pow er structure. Thus, for exam ple, Gorillas in the Mist seem s to respect the notion o f a woman sacrificing the opportunity for a husband and family in o rd er to pu r­

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sue a career, a career that, indeed, involves her living the sort o f adventurous and dangerous life usually reserved for men in popular film s and that also accords her the kind o f single-minded dedication to a cause typically attrib­ uted to the male scientific investigator. But the film takes it all back, as it w ere, by “deprofessionalizing” Fossey, neglecting to m ention her grow th as a scien tist who in the cou rse o f her research in the m ountains o f Rw anda earned a Ph.D. from H arvard.The film further subverts its apparently liberal attitude to w om an’s independence by suggesting that Dian is merely chan­ neling and sublim ating (or should it be c/esublimating, since she goes “b ack” to the apes?) her sexual desires and m aternal instincts into her cause. In the last scene, for exam ple, after her death, the image track shows the son o f the slaughtered gorilla swinging in the trees— clearly Fossey's son, since her tryst with its father, the gorilla Digit (in which the rom antic m usic swells as Dian lies on her back, sm iling blissfully when the gorilla slowly takes her hand, leaving a precious little deposit o f dirt in her palm ) is followed by her co u ­ pling with the National Geographic photographer. The soundtrack records a conversation betw een her and R oz C arr, the plantation owner, in which Fossey rem arks, “1 expected to get m arried and have children,” and her friend replies, “Instead there’s a mountain full o f gorillas who w ouldn’t be alive if it w eren’t for you .’’The titles at the end tell us that Fossey’s work “contributed significantly to the survival o f the species”— w om an’s function, after all, even if it isn’t quite the right species. The transfer o f Fossey’s affection from her fiance to D igit and his “group” is visually m arked by the film through its replacem ent o f the photo o f the fiance, which we see early in the film placed on a little typing table outside D ian’s hut, with photos o f the gorillas (“gorilla porn,” as one o f my friends rem arked) that she passionately kisses right before her m urder, while a song o f Peggy L ee’s (“I’d take a m illion trips to your lips”) plays on the phono­ graph. But p erv erse as all this may sound— and in my view is— the m ost rem arkable aspect o f the film is the way in which it m anages to make its psychosexual dynamics seem innocent. Indeed, the very title o f the film points to a kind o f disavowal, suggesting a tam ed, rom anticized, “m isty” view o f beasts and bestiality: a film w hose own sublim ating efforts work on every level to deny the perversity o f the go rilla/w om an sexual coupling it contin­ ually evokes. Black skin “splits” in this film , to recall H om i Bhabha’s w ords, into im ages o f m onstrosity and bestiality on the one hand and o f nobility and w isdom on the other. Fossey’s tracker, Sem bagare, represents the latter option; he is p re­ sented as a man whose family has been wiped out along with their tribe and

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thus, having no story or plot o f his own, he is free to live a life o f self-sacri­ ficing devotion to the w hite w om an. It is im possible to overestim ate the im portance o f this character— a com m on type in Hollyw ood cinem a— in serving as a guide to the audience’s interpretation and judgm en t o f events, and it is interesting to reflect on the fact that such a character’s possession o f the gaze may be concom itant with a radical dispossession in relation to the narrative. Th rou gh ou t the film , the cam era continually cu ts to sho ts o f Sem bagare, usually gazing approvingly on som e action p erfo rm ed by the heroine, but also, occasionally, registerin g disapproval and dismay. M ostly what Sem bagare cares about is that the heroine’s sexual and rom antic needs be fulfilled, and this is m ade clear from the very outset when he first sees and com m ents on the picture o f the fiance. By attributing a kind o f m aternal con ­ cern to the black m ale as well as granting him a degree o f m oral authority, the film can appear to be, in liberal fashion, em pow ering the character while at the sam e tim e relieving the au diences’ anxieties about the proxim ity o f white w om anhood and black manhood. That fears about the threat posed by the black m ale to white w om an are not far beneath the surface can be seen in the film ’s treatm ent o f all the other b lack m en, who are usually shown in m enacing gro u p s, su rrou n din g ou r heroine, gesturing and m uttering in their “savage” languages, and touching her hair in awe. Early in the film , som e black soldiers com e to Fossey’s hut, destroy her possessio ns, and evict her from their country. The film treats African civil w ars as nothing m ore than a nuisance im peding Fossey’s c ru ­ sade— a crusade aligned with the film ’s project o f substituting a tim eless, pastoral “gorilla nation” for the eminently less im portant struggles o f em erg­ ing black nations. Significantly, as the m en attem pt to force her to leave, Fossey furiously tells them not to touch her, to get their hands o ff her. Now, given that the big love scene with the gorilla involves Fossey holding hands w ith him , and indeed that the love in terest is given the nam e “ D ig it” by Fossey because o f the webbing o f his fingers, and finally that the film is m ost horrified by the castration o f the gorillas’ heads and hands, the latter m ade into curio ashtrays for rich Am ericans, we might be justified in seeing in this m otif o f the hand a condensation o f the film ’s basic conflict: a pitting o f ani­ m als against black m en, with the form er ultimately viewed as less physically and morally repellent than the latter. Here we m ight note that we com e full circle to G riffith’s film Birth o j a Nation, which had intercut shots o f Flora being stalked by Gus with ones o f squirrels fram ed in an iris. The black man thus becom es, as C ripps observes, “a predator about to pounce upon a h arm ­ less animal” (p. 4 8 ). Thus it is that in Gorillas in the Mist, the m ach ete-w ield­

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ing black men who earn their living destroying gorillas are depicted as less truly and movingly human than the tragic and noble gorillas— as was the case in King Kong, as well. O f course, at the level o f its script, the film suggests a m ore com plicated view, and at one point the photographer Bob cautions an angry Fossey that the black men are simply pawns in an econom ic pow er gam e that chiefly ben­ efits rich Am ericans. In this respect too, then, the film operates in the realm o f disavowal, verbally disputing its own visual scapegoating o f the black men and, m oreover, projecting the scapegoating onto the character o f Fossey, who at one point terrorizes a little black boy by pretending to be a witch and at another point conducts a m ock lynching o f a black male poacher. It is the w hite m an, then, who in the end seem s to be the m o st fully human character, while the black m en are either self-sacrificing servants or threaten in g m o n sters, and the w hite w om an is at the sam e tim e both a noble savior o f innocent creatures and a witch whose unholy alliance with the b e asts o f the fo re sts tu rn s her into a raving m on om an iac. In other w ords, into the space hollowed out by the film ’s fetishistic splittings steps the w hite m an, equipp ed with the photographic apparatus which ap p ar­ ently enables him to establish the proper voyeuristic distance from the p e r­ versity that surrounds him. Interestingly, since this is Dian Fossey’s story, and m o st o f the film is from her point o f view, the film gives the point o f view over to Bob on several o ccasion s. I have already re fe rred to one instance— when Bob stares in fascination at D ian’s “m ating” with D igit, the cam era cuttin g to tight close-u p s o f him as he crouches near his p h o to ­ graphic equipm ent and stares intently at the com ing together o f w om an and ape. Another such m om ent occurs when he first arrives on the scene, and we see Dian squatting on the floor, im itating the go rillas’ m ovem ents and noises. So vertiginous does the film ’s play with m im icry becom e that the w om an is constantly shown copying the go rillas, aping the an thropom or­ phized apes; like the blacks, she seem s to occupy a position one step below the anim als, to be not quite capable o f achieving the sam e d egree o f hum an­ ity attained by the beasts. But while an analysis o f the point-of-view structure o f Gorillas in the Mist su gg ests that, like m ost H ollyw ood film s, and despite its biograph ical claim s, this one is largely concerned with white male fears and fantasies and seem s designed to assure the white man o f his full humanity in relation to the anim als, the fem ale sex, and other races, it is im portant to understand that the voyeuristic distance betw een the white m ale and his “others” ulti­ mately collapses. Bob, it turns out, is drawn to gorillas too, and he gets to

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act out his bestial lusts vicariously when he and Dian becom e lovers after he sees her with D igit and during an elaborate verbal play in which references to the beauty o f the anim als serve as double entendres applying to Fossey herself. H ere we encounter the perennial them atics o f hom osocial desire, acco rd in g to which the w om an fu n ction s in a trian gu lar relation ship betw een tw o m ales, the w om an b ecom ing attractive to the second m ale as a result o f being sought after or possessed by the first: a m atter of, in Rene G irard ’s w ords, mimetic desire-—of, in the film ’s case, man im itating b e a st.14 Thus, we might say, by the end o f the twentieth century, hom osocial desire, long the co rn ersto n e o f patriarch al society, has expan ded to include the entire order o f Prim ates. In Gorillas in the Mist, then, w om an serves to initiate man into the secrets o f his origin, whereupon he go es o ff to a new jo b in the w ider w orld, escap­ ing the carnage and destruction visited on the other players. Such violence is m ade to seem an appropriate ending to a film that touches on so many taboo areas, situating itself at the shifting b ord ers betw een man and w om an, w hites and blacks, humans and anim als, nature and society. O ne might exp ect that because o f its unsettling obsession with these taboos, its nearly uncontrol­ lable play o f iteration, audiences would be troubled by the film ’s perversity. Seldom , however, did review ers even m ention the film ’s bizarre psychosocial dynam ics; instead, the main “controversy” surrounding Gorillas in the Mist had to do with its accuracy as representation o f Fossey’s life— a question, once again, o f mimicry, or m im esis. It is tem pting to speculate that this question arises as a response to the disturbances created by the film at a phantasmatic level, instilling in us a longing for an authentic human life to serve as ground and source o f the film ’s m eaning, ju st as the film itself attem pts to foreclose the historical process and establish a natural, pastoral space which w ould p re ­ exist the struggles o f fem inists and black nationalists. Such a question would take on a special urgency precisely because the lines toed by the film are so thin that it com es perilously close to m ocking its own quest, m aking m o n ­ keys o f us all. In his book The Signifying Monkey: A Theory o f Afro-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates praises Jean R en oir’s silent film Sur un air de Charleston for its parody o f the literatu re o f discovery pop u lar in R en aissan ce and Enlightenm ent Europe. In the film , a black man in blackface discovers a p o st­ holocaust Europe and its only survivors, “a scantily clad white W ild Woman . . . and her lascivious com panion, an ape.” G ates sees in this scenario a “m as­ ter trope o f irony,” which operates a “fairly straightforward . . . reversal . . .

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o f com m on European allegations o f the propensity o f African wom en to p re­ fer the com pany o f m ale ap es.” That G ates can see nothing dubious in R en oir’s “surrealistic critique o f — fundamental conventions ofW estern dis­ co u rse on the black” and can entirely neglect to consider the potency o f m yths like King Kong (which long precede the 1933 film ) suggests a very large blind spot indeed— blind, that is, to the way the female Other, regard­ less o f race, has been frequently consigned to categories that put her outside the pale o f the fully hum an.15 (Why, we might inquire, did it not occur to the “m aster” ironist to depict a scantily clad white man lewdly gyrating with his pet ape?) M o st pertinently we need to ask if, given the fetishistic nature o f d is­ courses on race and gender, a politically effective representational strategy can ever operate via “reversal.” G ates’s own lucid discussion o f the com p lex­ ity o f black Am erican “signifying,” which he argues both participates in and subtly underm ines white d isco u rse, im plicitly repudiates the viability o f “straightforward reversal” as political critique. If, as Gates argues, blacks have developed a double-edged discourse capable o f responding to whatW. E .B. D uB ois called the “tw oness” o f their existence in Am erican cultu re, how much m ore pertinent is the theorization o f such a discourse for anyone con ­ cerned with understanding the com plex articulations o f race and gender, in Am erican life and with avoiding the “reversals” that keep us continually veer­ ing betw een the Scylla o f racism and the Charybdis o f sexism . To illustrate this point, I want to return to a scene in a film by a director whose presence is strongly felt at the “originary” m om ent o f fem inist psy­ choanalytic film theory: namely, Jo se f von Sternberg, the auteur who was the focus o f Laura M ulvey’s com m ents on the way popular narrative cinem a tends to fetishize the female body. 16The film— BlondeVenus— has been as riv ­ eting to contem porary theorists o f cinema as the sight o f Dian Fossey lying am ong the apes was to the character Bob in Gorillas in the M ist.17 A still from the scene to which I am referrin g graces the cover o f an issue o f Cinema Journal which includes an article about the subversiveness o f the film ’s treat­ m ent o f female sexuality.18 In the plot leading up to this scene, the heroine H elen, played by Marlene Dietrich, has recently left her humble hom e and her husband and son to return to a career on the stage; in the still, she has ju st em erged from an ape costu m e, although hairy bits o f the costu m e rem ain around her genital area, her shoulders, and her derriere, and she is about to sing “ Hot Voodoo.” On her head is a blonde Afro w ig and behind her stand a group o f women in blackface holding spears and giant m asks painted with large m ouths and teeth.

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N ow here does Stern berg m ore forcefully reveal h im self to be the m as­ te r fetishist o f the fem ale body than in this scene, which for an adequate reading requires us to apply the insights o f both a H om i Bhabha and a Laura Mulvey. Too often fem inist film critics have alluded only parenthetically to the film ’s racism while devoting them selves chiefly to considering w hether the film is “progressive” in its em phasis on perform an ce and spectacle, its subtle visual underm ining o f the dom estic ideal that the narrative p u rp o rts to uphold. Yet the racism is not an incidental, “odd ” m om en t to be b ra ck ­ eted o ff in o rd er to pursue m ore pressing con cern s, but is, in fact, central to the evocation and m an ip u lation o f d e sire that b egin s w ith the H o t V oodoo num ber and continues up to and beyond H elen ’s flight south to increasingly exo tic locales, the last o f which is a Louisiana boarding house run by a black wom an. In the Hot V oodoo seq u en ce, the fetishistic w orking o f presen ce and absence, difference and sam eness, depends, as it does in Gorillas in the Mist, on the interplay o f the elem ents o f white w om an, ape, and blacks. If it can be said that the film draws on the stereotypical association, referred to by G ates, o f apes and black w om en, it can also be that said the white woman is the ape. But then again, o f course, she is not the ape. Part o f the sexual charge o f the spectacle derives from the disavow al, the d o u b len ess, the con trad icto ry belief structure whereby she is posited as simultaneously animal and hum an, as well as sim ultaneously white and not white (suggested by the blonde Afro w ig). Similarly, the white wom en in blackface and black Afro wigs who stand behind D ietrich are also affirm ed and denied as African “savages” (and are fetishized further in that the w ar paint on their faces resem bles the painting on the m asks they carry in front o f the low er halves o f their bodies— the teeth on these masks clearly sym bolizing the vagina dentata). I think we can take this fully theatricalized im age as em blem atic o f som e o f the com plex interrelations o f gender and race in popular representation .19 In doing so, however, we are forced to recognize that while everyone in this scenario (except for the white m ale, played by Cary G rant, who is lo o k ­ ing on) is relegated to “ the id eolo gically appoin ted place o f the s te r e o ­ type”) 20, the black women in the film are in the most m arginalized position. If it is true, to cite Claire John ston ’s fam ous form ulation, woman as w om an has largely been absent from patriarchal cinem a, this has obviously been much m ore literally the case for black w om en than for w hites.21 And if the white woman has usually served as the signifier o f male desire (which is what Johnston m eant when she spoke o f the absence o f woman as w om an), the black wom an, when present at all, has served as a signifier o f (w hite) fem ale

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sexuality or o f the m aternal (“Mammy”). In the last part o f this essay I would like to explore the way in which black w om en in contem porary popular film are reduced to being the signifiers o f signifiers. The use o f the black woman to signify sexuality is vividly illustrated in one o f the m ost recent films in the tradition o f TheJazz Singer. In this case, how ­ ever, the protagonist is a woman who finds herself going back to her Jewish roots. In Crossing Delancey, directed by Joan Micklin Silver, Amy Irving plays Izzy, a thirty-three year-old white w om an who lives alone in Manhattan, w orks in a prestigious bookstore organizing readings by the literati, and, vehem ent disclaim ers to the contrary notwithstanding, is clearly desperate to find a man. Indeed, she is so desperate that after ridding h erself o f an infat­ uation with a self-absorbed and pretentious writer, she overcom es a strong distaste for a Jewish pickle salesm an, who has been chosen for her by a m ar­ riage broker in collusion with Izzy’s grandmother. In a brief scene occurring rather early in the film , Izzy is trying to decide whether or not to call the w riter to ask him out, and she asks the advice o f a friend as the two relax in the sauna after a w orkout in the gym . W hile the women recline in their tow ­ els, the cam cra pans down to reveal two black w om en, one o f whom , a very large w om an w hose am ple flesh spills out o f a tight bathing su it, loudly recounts to her friend an anecdote about love-making in which while p e r­ form ing fellatio (“I’m licking it, I’ m kissing it, he’s m oaning”) she discovers a long— “I mean long”— blonde hair, which the man rather lamely tries to explain away. The cam era tilts back up, as Izzy, having listened intently to the conversation, thoughtfully rem arks, “Maybe I will call him.” Clearly the black w om an, sm all as her role is, represents sexuality and “em bodim ent” in a film that never m entions sex at any other tim e (to be sure, the fact o f sex is hinted at when Izzy spends an occasional night with a m ar­ ried male friend; but it is never shown or discussed). Even the fram ing o f the scene we have been discussing suggests in amazingly exem plary fashion the hierarchical division betw een black and white w om en, with the uptow n M anhattanite p rin cess-“on-her-high-horse” (to quote the gran d m o th er), who will be forced to accept as a lover a Jewish man from lower Manhattan, placed in the upper part o f the frame and the sexualized black fem ales situ­ ated, as always, on the bottom (a spatial m etaphor with both social and psy­ chic dim ensions). The black w om an’s story not only hints at the threat o f m is­ cegenation— for, just as this w om an’s lover has strayed, so too is Izzy stray­ ing from her ro o ts— but rep resen ts directly all those d esires that this postfem inist film is disavowing: both a voracious sexuality and a voracious

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hunger in general, resulting from the deprivations suffered by single m iddleclass white w om en in the m odern w orld.Th us the fact that the one sexual act m entioned in the film (which is about a w om an’s love for a pickle salesm an, no less) is the act o f fellatio is not surprising given the ubiquitous presence o f food in the film (scenes o f Izzy and her friend eating hotdogs on Izzy’s birthday after she lies to her boss about going to a fancy restaurant [obviously w om en cannot nurture them selves or each other]; o f lonely wom en picking at food in salad bars and eating Chinese takeout while watching television; o f a baby nursing at his m other’s breast while the heroine looks on in envy— envy not, it is quite clear, o f the m other but o f the suckling child; and finally, o f the [as the film portrays her] obnoxiously loud fem ale m arriage broker continually gobbling down other p e o p le ’s food , eating with greasy fingers and talking with her mouth cram m ed full). Elsew here, I have w ritten about the horror o f the body expressed in con ­ tem porary culture, the anorexic m entality to which this horror gives rise, and the tendency on the part o f men to deal with these fears by displacing them onto the body o f the fem ale; what we need to note here is the special role played by the woman o f color as receptacle o f these fears. The function o f the fat, sexually voracious black w oman in Crossing Delancey is to enable the white Jew ish subculture, through its h eterosexual love story, to represent itself in a highly sentim entalized, rom anticized, and sublim ated light, while disavowing the desires and discontents underlying the civilization it is p ro ­ moting. (O nce again, then, we see the need for fem inist analysis to consider the ways in which ethnic and racial groups are played off against— and play them selves off against— one another.)22 If in Crossing Delancey— a film w ritten and directed by women— the black fem ale body is the sexualized body, in other film s the black woman functions not only as the sexual other, but as the m aternal body, as psychic surrogate for the w hite m other— in sho rt, as “ Mammy.” R ecent fem inist theory has shown that the n u rsery m aid in F re u d ’s ow n tim e played an im p o rtan t, although largely u n acknow ledged, role in initiating the child into sexual k n o w le d g e.23 In A m erica, as black fem in ists have poin ted o u t, the black w om an has m ore often than not served a sim ilar function in the accultura­ tion o f white children. Clara’s Heart, starring W hoopi G oldberg, provides an unusually stark illustration o f the p rocess w hereby the young w hite m ale achieves m aturity through penetrating the m ystery o f the black w om an— “her w isdom , her w arm th, her secret,” as the poster proclaim s.T hat (retu rn ­ ing to the m etaphor o f the dark continent) we are dealing here alm ost liter­ ally with the “heart o f darkness” is suggested by C lara’s last name, which is

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“H eart”— an organ that turns out to be a euphemism for a m ore libidinally cathected body part. For C la r a ’s se c re t, w hich h er young charge D avid , su fferin g from neglect at the hands o f his narcissistic parents, attem pts to discover, is that she has been raped by her own son. The horror, the horror, indeed. The black m ale thus literalizes the psychic reality o f the b ou rgeois m ale, for the rape is in fact the logical result o f the white boy’s— and the narrative’s— probing. At one poin t, for exam ple, David sits at C lara’s knee and begins slowly and sensually to feel her leg, m oving inexorably upw ard until Clara scream s at him — an “overreaction” explained when we learn o f the so n ’s rape. M oreover, D avid not only continually b ad gers C lara to reveal her story but reads in secret the letters he finds in a suitcase under her bed. A gain , C lara re a c ts furiously, saying he has ru in ed their frien d sh ip , although at other tim es she says he can never do anything to destroy her affection. The intense aggression aroused by the prom ise and w ithholding o f unconditional love ultim ately finds expression in the revelation o f incest and ra p e — a rape that is enacted by the sexually m on strou s black m ale, who is presum ably incapable o f sublim ating such feelings and thus destined to rem ain forever a casualty o f O ed ipu s, while the recognition o f his own desires in the m irro r provided by the black male enables the white boy to rechannel his h ostilities and becom e a m an: previously unathletic, we now see him w in a sw im m in g cham pionship under the ap pro ving eye o f his father! Thus the black man com es to serve as as the w hite m a le ’s oedipal scapegoat, and the black w om an is positioned, as in so many popular re p ­ resentations (like S p ielb erg’s The Color Purple), as sexual victim — not o f the white m an, o f cou rse, the historical record notw ithstanding— but o f black m en, including even their own so n s.24 And black people in general are once again consigned to the level o f bestiality. A m ore recen t, en orm o u sly pop u lar film in which W hoopi G old b erg again has a m ajor role shows yet another way the black w om an serves the function o f em b o d im en t. In Ghost, W hoopi G o ld b erg plays a spiritual m edium , O da Mae Brow n, who stands in for the body o f the white male, Sam , played by Patrick Swayze. Sam has died as a result o f a m ugging, which turns out to have been engineered by a cow orker em bezzling funds. When he learns o f the plot and o f his w ife’s danger at the hands o f the mugger, he seeks out O d a M ae to help him com m unicate to his wife. A fter a great deal o f m utual m istru st betw een the wife and O d a Mae, clim axed by a scene in which O da Mae stands outside the doo r trying to convince the wife o f her “authenticity,” as it w ere, she is allow ed inside the h ouse, and the wife

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expresses a great longing to be able to touch her husband one last tim e. O da Mae offers up her body up for the purpose, and Sam enters into it. The cam ­ era shows a close-up o f the black w om an’s hands as they reach out to take those o f the white w om an, and then it cuts to a shot not o f O da Mae but o f Sam , who in taking over her body has obliterated her presence entirely. This sequence, in which G oldberg turns into a man may be seen as a kind o f logical extension o f all her com edic ro les, for she is always coded in the com edies as m ore m asculine than feminine. For exam ple, there is a scene in Jumping Jack Flash in which she dresses up in a sexy evening dress that nearly gets chewed up by a shredding machine, and, as she clim bs the stairs to her apartm ent at the end o f the evening, she is heard m uttering in anger because the taxi cab driver m istook her for a m ale transvestite. In Fatal Beauty, too, G o ld b e rg ’s donning o f w om en ’s clothes is seen to be a form o f drag— o f black fem ale m im icry o f (w hite) femininity, and when she dresses in such clothes she walks in an exaggeratedly awkward fashion like a man unaccus­ tom ed to fem ale accoutrem ents. Two im portant points need to be m ade here. First, the kind o f “gender trouble” advocated by Judith Butler and others in which gender, anatomy, and perform ance are at odds with one another does not necessarily result in the subversive effects often claim ed for it; on the contrary, in certain cases, such as those involving the woman o f co lo r who has often been con sidered, in Bhabha’s w ords, “not quite” a wom an, this kind o f “play” may have extrem ely con servative im plicatio n s. Secon d, when both e x tre m e s o f the W hoopi G oldberg persona are considered together— those in which she represents the m a te rn a l/fe m ale body (as in C lara’s Heart) and those in which she is coded as m ore or less m ale— we see that we are not all that far from the sit­ uation addressed by Sojourner Truth: The black w om an is seen either as too literally a woman (reduced to her biology and her biological functions) or in crucial ways not really a w om an at all. I m ust acknow ledge, however, although it places m e in an uncom fortable position, that I personally find the G oldberg character in the com edies both attractive and em pow ering (and I know som e young white girls who have m ade G oldberg a kind o f cult heroine), and that part o f this attraction for m e lies in the way she represents a liberating d epartu re from the stifling con ­ ventions o f femininity. Yet I have to recognize as a white w om an the extent to which these im ages are at least in part the creation o f a racist mentality and to acknow ledge how such im ages and my own reaction to them may serve to keep m e and black w om en at odds (although I w ould also argue strongly that G old b erg’s powerful acting allows her frequently to transcend

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som e o f the lim itations o f her m aterial or else to bring ou t the subversive potential buried within the tex t). It is urgent that w hite w om en com e to understand the ways in which they them selves participate in racist structures not only o f patriarchal cinem a— as in Crossing Delancey— but also o f contem porary criticism and theory. In an im p o rta n t artic le su rv eyin g the w ork o f w hite w om en new ly ad d ressin g issu es o f race, V alerie Sm ith points ou t that som e w hite fem inist theorists may be participating in an old tradition o f forcing the black w om an to serve the function o f em bodim en t: It is striking that at precisely the moment when Anglo-American feminists and male Afro-Americanists begin to reconsider the material ground o f their enterprise, they dem onstrate their return to earth, as it were, by invoking the specific experiences o f black women and the w ritings of black w om en. This association o f black wom en with reem bodim ent resem bles rather closely the association, in classic Western philosophy and in nineteenth-century cultural constructions o f womanhood, o f women o f . color with the body and therefore with animal passions and slave labor.25 W hat Sm ith ’s rem ark s clearly su gg est is the black w om an ’s n eed to refuse to function as eith er the m an ’s or the w hite w o m an ’s bodily scap ego at, ju st as so m e w hite w om en are refusing any lon ger to function this way in m ale d isco u rse. I w ould like to en d, however, with a fantasy, which involves reading the scene I have discussed in Ghost against the grain. This may be a fantasy that fo r m any re a so n s b lack w om an w ill n o t fully sh are, sin ce it p o in ts in a utopian direction and w ishes away som e o f the con tradictions I have been analyzing. W ithou t fo r a m o m en t forgetting these co n trad ictio n s, w ithout denying the fo rce o f H azel C arby’s observation that fem inist criticism (to say nothing o f a “w o m an ’s film ” like Crossing Delancey) has to o often ignored “the h ierarch ical stru c tu rin g o f the re latio n s b etw een b lack and w hite w om en and o fte n tak es the co n cern s o f m id d le -c lass, artic u la te w hite w om en as the n o rm ,” I nevertheless want to point to an alternative to the dom inant fantasy ex p ressed in Ghost.26 If in the lilm the black w om an exists solely to facilitate the w hite h eterosexual rom ance, there is a sense in which we can shift o u r focus to read the white m ale as, precisely, the obstacle to the union o f the tw o w om en, a union tentatively su ggested in the im age o f the black and w hite hands as they reach tow ard one another. I like to think that despite the distu rbin g contradictions I have poin ted o u t in this chapter,

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a time will com e when we eliminate the locked door (to recall an image from Ghost) that separates women (a door, as we see in the film , easily pen­ etrated by the white m an), a time when we may join together to overthrow the ideology that, after all, primarily serves the interests o f white hetero­ sexual masculinity and is ultimately responsible for the persecutions suffered by people on account o f their race, class, and gender. But since it is white women who in many cases have locked the door, it is their responsibility to open it up.

N O TES

1. See the discussion o f the film in Patricia E rens, The Jew in American Cinema (B loom ington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 101—6. 2. H o m i K . Bhabha, “ O f M im icry and M an: T h e A m bivalen ce o f C olon ial D iscou rse,” October 28 (Sp rin g 1984): 131. O th er tex ts by Bhabha that I draw on here include: “The O th er Q uestion: D ifference, D iscrim ination, and the D iscourse o f C o lo n ialism ,” in Literature, Politics, and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 197 6 —84, ed. Francis Barker, Peter H ulm e, M argaret Iversen, and D iana Loxley (L o n d o n : M ethu en , 1 9 8 6 ), pp. 1 4 8 - 7 2 ; “T h e C o m m itm e n t to Th eory,” New Formations 5 (S u m m er 1 9 8 8 ): 5—2 4 ; “ Signs Taken fo r W o nd ers: Q u estio n s o f A m bivalen ce and A u th ority U n d er a T ree O u tsid e D elh i, May 1 8 1 7 ,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, e d ., H enry Louis G ates, Jr. (C h icago: U niversity o f Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 1 6 3 -8 4 . 3. T h o m as C rip p s, Slow Fade to Black:The Negro in American Film, 19 0 0 —1942 (N ew Y ork: O x fo rd University Press, 1977), p. 37. 4 . Bhabha, “ O f M im icry and Man,” p. 126. 5. O ne m ight note that for Bhabha m im icry is like cam ouflage, like being “m o t­ tled,” “not harm onising.” Ibid., p. 125. 6. For a discussion o f this scene from the point o f view o f a black spectator, see Manthia D iaw ara, “ Black Spectatorship: Problem s o f Identification and Resistance,” Screen 2 9 , no. 4 (Autum n 1988): 66—79. 7. Bhabha, “ O f M im icry and M an,” p. 132. For o th er artic le s discu ssin g the am bivalent nature o f m instrelsy, see Sylvia Wynter, “Sam bos and M instrels,” Social Text 1 (1 9 7 9 ): 149—56; and Susan W illis “ I Shop T h erefore I Am : Is T here a Place for A fro-A m erican C u ltu re in A m erican C o m m o d ity C u ltu re,” in Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women,ed. C heryl Wall (N ew Brunsw ick, N .J.: R utgers U niversity Press, 19 8 9 ), pp. 1 7 3 -9 5 . 8. Ibid ., p. 128.

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9. See Luce Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. G ill (Ithaca, N.Y.: C orn ell U niversity Press, 1985). 10. Bhabha, “The O ther Q uestion,” p. 179. 11. Ibid., p. 170. 12. C rip ps, Slow Fade to Black, p. 155. 13. X . J. Kennedy, “ W ho Killed King Kong?,” in Focus on the Horror Film, ed. Roy . H uss andT. J. R oss (Englew ood Cliffs, N .J.: Prentice H all, 1972), p. 109. 14. See Rene G irard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Selfand Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (B altim ore, M d .: Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 1972), and Eve Kosofsky Sedgw ick’s discussion o f G irard ’s w ork in term s o f “hom osocial desire,” in her Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (N ew Y ork: Colum bia U niversity Press, 1985), pp. 21—25. 15. H enry Louis G ates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory o f Afro-American Literary Criticism (N ew Y ork: O x ford University Press, 1988), pp. 108—0 9 . 16. L au ra M ulvey, “V isual Pleasure and N arrativ e C in em a,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autum n 1975): 6—18. 17. For exam ples, see Patricia M ellencam p, “M ade in the Fade,” Cine-Tracts 3, no. 3 (Fall 1 9 8 0 ): 13; Bill N ich o ls, Ideology and the Image (B lo o m in g to n : Indiana U niversity Press, 1981), pp. 104—32; and E. Ann K aplan, Women and Film: Both Sides o f the Camera (N ew Y ork and London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 4 9 —59. 18. Lea Jacob s, “The Censorship o f Blonde Venus: Textual Analysis and H istorical M ethods,” Cinema Journal 27, no. 3 (Spring 1988): 21—31. 19. For a controversial discussion o f race, gender, and spectacle, see Sander L. G ilm an , “The H o tten to t and the P ro stitu te: Tow ard an Iconography o f Fem ale Sexuality,” in Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes o f Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y.: C ornell U niversity Press, 1985), pp. 76—108. 20. Isaac Julien and Kobena M ercer, “D e M argin and D e centre,” Screen 29, no. 4 (Autum n 1988): 5. 21. Claire Jo h n ston ,“W om en’s Cinem a as C ounter-C inem a,” in Sexual Strategems: The World ofWomen in Film, ed. Patricia Erens (N ew Y ork: H orizon Press, 1979), p. 136. 22. For a discussion o f the com plex relations betw een racism and anti-Sem itism , see Elly Bulkin, M innie B ruce P ratt, and B arbara Sm ith, Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (N ew Y ork: Long Haul Press, 1984). 23. For an interesting discussion o f this, see Peter Stallybrass and Allon W hite, “ Below Stairs: The Maid and the Family Rom ance,” in their The Politics and Poetics o f Transgression (Ithaca, N.Y.: C ornell University Press, 1986), pp. 1 4 9 -7 0 . 24. Jane G aines, “ W hite Privilege and Looking R elations: Race and G ender in Feminist Film Theory,” Screen 29, no. 4 (Autum n 1988): 12—27. In this article, which

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has a stron g id eological axe to g rin d , since G ain es is attacking psychoanalytic film theory, G aines trie s to prove that psychoanalysis cannot be o f use in d iscu ssin g the issue o f race. I hope 1 have show n that this is n ot n ecessarily the case, even though peop le w ho have used psychoanalysis may be racially biased: such bias is hardly su f­ ficient to d iscredit the entire discipline. 25. V alerie Sm ith * “ B lack F em in ist T h e o ry and the R e p re se n ta tio n o f the ‘ O th e r’ ,” in Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women, ed. Cheryl A. Wall (N ew Brun sw ick, N .J.: R u tgers U niversity P ress, 19 8 9 ), p. 4 5 . 2 6. H azel C arby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence o f the Afro-American Woman Novelist (N ew Y ork : O x fo rd U niversity P ress, 1 9 8 7 ), p. 17.

p art 3

The B o d y S p eaks

Your body must be heard. — Helene Cixous

12

A in 't I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth

W ell, ch ildren , w here there is so m uch rack et th ere m u st be som eth in g o u t o f kilter. I think th at ‘ tw ix t th e n e g r o e s o f th e S o u th an d the w o m en at the N o rth , all talkin g a b o u t rig h ts, the w hite m en w ill b e in a fix p retty so o n . But w h at’s all this here talking about? T h at m an o ver th ere says that w om en need to b e h e lp ed in to c a r r ia g e s , and lifte d o ver d itch es, and to have the b e st place everyw here. N o b o d y ever h elps m e into ca rriag es, o r over m u d -p u d d les, o r gives m e any b e st p lace! And ain ’t 1 a w om an ? L o o k at m e! L o o k at m y arm ! I have plou gh ed and p lan ted , and gath ered into b arn s, and n o m an cou ld head m e! A nd ain ’t I a w om an ? I co u ld w ork as m uch and eat as m uch as a m an— w hen I co u ld g e t it— and b ear the lash as w ell! And ain ’t I a w om an ? I have b orn e th irteen ch ildren , and seen them m o st all sold o ff to slavery, and w hen I c rie d o u t w ith my m o th e r’s g rie f, none but Je su s h eard m e! And ain ’t I a w om an ? S o jo u rn er T ru th , “A in ’t I A W om an?” O rigin ally prin ted in The History o f Woman Suffrage (1881 —1 8 8 6 ). We gratefully ack n o w l­ edge M iriam Sch n eier’s m od ern ized version from Feminism: The Essential HistoricalWritings (1 9 7 2 ).

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TRUTH

Then they talk about this thing in the head; w h at’s this they call it? [Intellect, som eone w h isp ers.]T h at’s it, honey. W hat’s that got to do with w om en’s rights or n e g ro ’s rights? If my cup w on’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, w ouldn’t you be mean not to let m e have my little half­ m easure full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ w asn’t a woman! W here did your Christ com e from? Where did your Christ com e from? From G od and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these w om en together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them. Obliged to you for hearing m e, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing m ore to say.

13

La conciencia de la mestiza TOWARDS A NEW C O N S CIO U SN E SS

Gloria Anzaldua

Por la mujer de mi raza hablara el esplritu

Jose V ascocelos, M exican philosopher, envis­ aged una raza m estiza, una m ezcla de razas afines, una raza de color— la prim era raza sinetesis del globo. He called it a cosm ic race, la raza cosm ic a , a fifth race em b racin g the four m ajo r

races o f the w o rld .1 O pposite to the theory o f the pu re A ryan, and to the p o licy o f racial purity that white A m erica practices, his the­ ory is one o f inclusivity. At the confluence o f two or m ore genetic stream s, with ch rom o­ som es constantly “crossing over,” this m ixture o f races, rather than resultin g in an inferior bein g, p rovid es hybrid progeny, a m u table, m ore m alleable species with a rich gene pool. From this racial, id eo lo g ic a l, cu ltu ra l, and biological cross-pollinization, an “alien” con ­ sciousness is presently in the m aking— a new m estiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer.

It is a consciousness o f the Borderlands.

Gloria Anzaldua, “ La conciencia de la m estiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” From Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza © 1987. Reprinted with permission from Aunt Lute Books.

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Una lucha defronteras / A Struggle o f Borders Because I, a mestiza, continually walk out of one culture and into another, because I am in all cultures at the same time, alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro, me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio. Estoj norteada por todas las voces que me hablan simultaneamente.

The ambivalence from the clash o f voices results in mental and em otional states o f perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. The m estiza’s dual or m ultiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness. In a constant state o f m ental nepantilism , an Aztec w ord m eaning torn betw een ways, la mestiza is a product o f the transfer o f the cultural and sp ir­ itual values o f one group to another. Being tricultural, m onolingual, bilin­ gual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and in a state o f perpetual transition, the mestiza faces the dilem m a o f the m ixed b re e d : which collectivity does the daughter o f a dark-skinned m other listen to? El choque de un alma atrapado entre el mundo del espirituy el mundo de la tecnica a vecas la deja entullada. C radled in one cultu re, sandw iched betw een tw o cultu res, straddling all three cultu res and their value system s, la mes­ tiza u n dergoes a struggle o f flesh, a stru ggle o f b o rd ers, an inner war. Like all p eop le, we perceive the version o f reality that our culture co m m u n i­ cates. Like others having or living in m ore than one culture, we g e t m u lti­ ple, often opposing m essages. The com ing togeth er o f two self-consistent but habitually incom patible fram es o f referen ce2 causes un choque, a c u l­ tural collision. W ithin us and w ithin la cultura chicana, com m only held beliefs o f the white culture attack com m only held beliefs o f the M exican culture, and both attack com m only held beliefs o f the indigenous culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attem pt to block with a counter-stance. But it is not enough to stand on the opposite riverbank, shouting q u es­ tions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counter-stance locks one into a duel o f oppressor and opp ressed ; locked in m ortal com bat, like the cop and the crim inal, both are reduced to a com m on denom inator o f violence. The counter-stance refutes the dom inant cu ltu re’s views and beliefs, and, for

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this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is lim ited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counter-stance stem s from a problem with authority— outer as well as inner— it’s a step toward liberation from cul­ tural domination. But it is not a way o f life. At som e point, on our way to a new co n scio u sn ess, we w ill have to leave the op p o site bank, the split betw een the two m ortal com batants som ehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. O r perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dom inant culture, w rite it o ff alto ­ gether as a lost cause, and cross the bord er into a wholly new and separate territory. O r we m ight go another route.The possibilities are num erous once we decide to act and not react.

A Tolerancef o r Am biguity These num erous possibilities leave la mestizo floundering in uncharted seas. In perceiving conflicting inform ation and points o f view, she is subjected to a swam ping o f her psychological borders. She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and pat­ terns o f behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity m eans death. Only by rem aining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche h or­ izontally and vertically. La mestizo constantly has to shift out o f habitual fo r­ m ations; from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality to m ove tow ard a single goal (a W estern m o d e ), to divergent thinking,3 characterized by m ovem ent away from set patterns and goals and toward a m ore whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes. The new mestizo copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a to l­ erance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point o f view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic m od e— nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. N ot only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the am bivalence into som e­ thing else. She can be jarre d o u t o f am bivalence by an intense, and often painful, em otional event that inverts or resolves the am bivalence. I’ m not sure exactly how. The work takes place underground— subconsciously. It is work that the soul perform s. That focal point or fulcrum , that juncture where the mestizo stands, is where phenom ena tend to collide. It is where the possibil­

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ity o f uniting all that is separate occurs. This assembly is not one where sev­ ered o r separated pieces m erely com e togeth er. N o r is it a balancing o f opposing pow ers. In attem pting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third elem ent which is greater than the sum o f its severed parts. That third elem ent is a new consciousness— a mestiza consciousness— and though it is a source o f intense pain, its energy com es from continual creative m otion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect o f each new paradigm . En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down o f paradigm s, it depends on the strad­ dling o f two or m ore cultures. By creating a new mythos— that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave— la mestiza creates a new consciousness. The work o f mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object dual­ ity that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the im ages in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between m ales and fem ales, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation o f our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting o f dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consciousness is the beginning o f a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end o f rape, o f violence, o f war. La encrucijada / The Crossroads A chicken is being sacrificed at a crossroads, a simple mound of earth a mud shrine for Eshu, Yoruba god of indeterminacy, who blesses her choice o f path. She begins her journey.

Su cuerpo es una bocacalle. La mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becom ing the officiating priestess at the crossroads. As a mestiza I have no country, my hom eland cast m e out; yet all countries are m ine because I am every w om an’s sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim m e; but I am all races because there is the queer o f m e in all races.) I am cultureless because, as a fem inist, I chal­ len ge the collective c u ltu ra l/re lig io u s m ale-d eriv ed b eliefs o f IndoHispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the ere-

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ation o f yet an oth er cu ltu re, a new sto ry to explain the w orld and o u r p a r­ ticipation in it, a n ew value system w ith im ages and sy m bo ls that con n ect us to each oth er and to the plan et. Soy un amasamiento, I am an act o f kneading, o f uniting and jo in in g that n ot only has produ ced both a creatu re o f darkn ess and a creatu re o f light, but also a creature that q u estio n s the definitions o f light and d ark and giv es them new m eanings. We are the p e o p le w h o leap in the dark, we are the p e o p le on the knees o f the go d s. In o u r very flesh, (r)ev olu tion w orks o u t the clash o f cu ltu res. It m akes us crazy constantly, bu t if the cen ter h olds, w e ’ve m ad e so m e kind o f evolution ary step fo rw ard . Nuestra alma el trabajo, the o p u s, the gre at alch em ­ ical w o rk ; sp iritu al mestizaje, a “m o rp h o gen esis,”4 an inevitable unfolding. We have b eco m e the qu ick en in g serp en t m ovem ent. In digen ou s like c o rn , like c o rn , the mestiza is a p ro d u c t o f cro ssb re e d in g , d e sig n e d fo r p r e se r v a tio n u n d e r a variety o f c o n d itio n s. Like an e ar o f c o rn — a fe m ale se e d - b e a rin g o rg an — the mestiza is te n a c io u s, tightly w rap p ed in the husks o f her cultu re. Like kernels she clings to the co b ; with thick stalks and stro n g b race ro o ts, she holds tight to the earth — she w ill su r­ vive the cro ssro ad s. Lavandoy remojando el maiz en agua del cal, despojando el pellejo. Moliendo, mixteando, amasando, haciendo tortillas de m asa.s She ste e p s the c o rn in lim e , it sw ells, soften s. W ith sto n e ro ller on metate, she grin d s the c o rn , then grin d s again. She kneads and m o u ld s the dough , pats the ro u n d balls in to tortillas. We are the p orous rock in the stone metate squatting on the ground. We are the rolling pin, el m aizy agua, la masa harina. Somos el amasijo. Somos lo molido en el metate. We are the comal sizzling hot, the hot tortilla, the hungry mouth. We are the coarse rock. We are the grinding m otion, the m ixed potion, somos el molcajete. We are the pestle, the comino, ajo, pimienta, We are the chile Colorado, the green shoot that cracks the rock. We will abide.

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EL C A M IN O DE LA M ESTIZ A /

THE M ESTIZ A W AY

Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath sucked in and the end­ less space, the brown woman stands still, looks at the sky. She decides to go dow n, digging her way along the ro ots o f trees. Sifting through the bones, she shakes them to see if there is any m arrow in them. Then, touch­ ing the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a few bones, leaves the rest in their burial place. She goes through her backpack, keeps her journal and address book, throws away the muni-bart m etrom aps. The coins are heavy and they go next, then the greenbacks flutter through the air. She keeps her knife, can opener and eyebrow pencil. She puts bones, pieces o f bark, hierbas, eagle feather, snakeskin, tape recorder, the rattle and drum in her pack and she sets out to becom e the com plete tolteca,6 H er first step is to take inventory. Despojando, desgranando, quitando paja. Ju st what did she inherit from her ancestors? This w eight on her back— which is the b aggage fro m the Indian m other, w hich the b aggage from the Spanish father, which the baggage from the Anglo? Veto es dijicil differentiating betw een lo heredado, lo adquirido, lo impuesto. She puts history through a sieve, w innow s out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a ra c e , as w o m en , have been a p a rt o f. Luego bota lo que no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentos, el embrutecimiento. Aguarda el juicio, h ondoj enraizado, de la gente antigua. This step is a conscious ru p tu re w ith all oppressive trad i­ tio n s o f all cu ltu res and religio n s. She co m m u n icates that ru p tu re, d o c u ­ m en ts the stru gg le . She re in terp rets h isto ry an d, usin g new sy m bo ls, she shapes new m yths. She ad opts new p ersp ectiv es tow ard the dark-skinned, w o m en , and q u e e rs. She stren gth en s h er to le ran c e (and in to leran ce) fo r am biguity. She is w illing to share, to m ake h erse lf vulnerable to foreign ways o f seeing and thinking. She su rren d ers all n otio ns o f safety, o f the familiar. D eco n stru ct, con struct. She b eco m es a nahual, able to tran sform h erself into a tree, a coyote, into another perso n. She learn s to tran sfo rm the sm all “I” into the total Self. Se hace moldeadora de su alma. Segun la concepcion que tiene de si misma, asi sera. Que no se nos olvide los bombres “Tu no sirves p a’ nadayou’re good for nothing. Eres pura vieja.”

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“You’re nothing but a w om an” means you are defective. Its opposite is to be un macho. The m odern m eaning o f the word “m achism o,” as well as the con­ cept, is actually an Anglo invention. For men like my father, being “m acho” m eant being strong enough to protect and support my m other and us, yet being able to show love. Today’s macho has doubts about his ability to feed and protect his family. His “m achism o” is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self-esteem . It is the result o f hierarchical m ale dominance. The Anglo, feeling inadequate and inferior and pow erless, displaces or trans­ fers these feelings to the Chicano by shaming him. In the G ringo w orld, the Chicano suffers from excessive humility and self-effacem ent, shame o f self and self-deprecation. A round Latinos he suffers from a sense o f language inadequacy and its accompanying discom fort; with Native Am ericans he suf­ fers from a racial am nesia that ignores our com m on blood, and from guilt because the Spanish p art o f him took their land and oppressed them. He has an excessive com pensatory hubris when around M exicans from the other side. It overlays a deep sense o f racial shame. The loss o f a sense o f dignity and respect in the m acho b reed s a false m achism o that leads him to put down women and even to brutalize them . C o existin g with his se x ist behavior is a love for the m o th er which takes precedence over that o f all others. Devoted son, m acho pig. To wash down the shame o f his acts, o f his very being, and to handle the brute in the m ir­ ror, he takes to the bottle, the snort, the needle, and the fist. Though we “understand” the ro ot causes o f male hatred and fear, and the sub­ sequent w ounding o f w om en, we do not excuse, we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it. From the men o f our race, we dem and the ad m ission /ackn ow ledgm en t/disclosure/testim on y that they wound us, vio­ late us, are afraid o f us and o f our power. We need them to say they will begin to elim inate their h urtful put-dow n ways. But m ore than the w ord s, we dem and acts. We say to them : We will develop equal pow er with you and those who have sham ed us. It is im perative that mestizos support each other in changing the sexist ele­ m ents in the M exican-Indian culture. As long as w om an is put dow n, the Indian and the Black in all o f us is put down. The struggle o f the mestiza is above all a fem inist one. As long as los hombies think they have to chingar mujeres and each other to be m en, as long as men are taught that they are superior and therefore culturally favored over la mujer, as long as to be a vieja is a thing o f derision , there can be no real healing o f o u r psyches. W e’re halfway there— we have such love o f the Mother, the good mother. The first

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step is to unlearn the puta/virgen dichotom y and to see Coatalopeuh-Coatlicue in the M other, Guadalupe. T e n d e rn ess, a sign o f vulnerability, is so feared that it is sh ow ered on w om en w ith verbal abuse and blows. M en, even m o re than w om en, are fet­ tere d to g e n d e r ro les. W om en at le ast have had the gu ts to b reak o u t o f bondage. O nly gay m en have had the cou rage to ex p o se them selves to the w om an inside them and to challenge the cu rren t m asculinity. I’ve encoun­ tered a few scattered and isolated gentle straigh t m en , the beginnings o f a new b reed , but they are confused, and entangled w ith sexist behaviors that they have n ot been able to eradicate. We need a new m asculinity and the new m an n eeds a m ovem ent.

L u m p in g the m ales w ho deviate fro m the g e n e ra l n o rm w ith m an , the o pp ressor, is a gro ss injustice. Asombra pensar que nos hemos quedado en ese pozo oscuro donde el mundo encierra a las lesbianas. Asombra pensar que hemos, como Jem enistasy lesbianas, cerrado nuestros corazones a los hombres, a nuestros hermanos los jotos, desheredados y marginales como nosotros. Being the suprem e crossers o f cu ltu res, h om osexu als have strong bonds w ith the q u eer w hite, Black, Asian, N ative A m erican , Latino, and with the qu eer in Italy, Australia, and the rest o f the planet. We com e from all colo rs, all classes, all races, all tim e periods. O u r ro le is to link p e o p le w ith each o th e r— the B lacks w ith Je w s w ith Indians w ith Asians with w hites with e x traterrestrials. It is to transfer ideas and in fo rm atio n from one cultu re to another. C o lo re d h o m osex u als have m o re k n o w led g e o f o th er cu ltu re s; have alw ays b een at the fo re fro n t (although som etim es in the closet) o f all liberation stru ggles in this country; have su ffe re d m o re in ju stices and have su rv iv ed them d e sp ite all o d d s. C h ican os n eed to ack n ow led ge the p o litical and artistic con trib u tio n s o f their queer. People, listen to what your joteria is saying. The mestizo and the qu eer exist at this tim e and poin t on the evolutionary continuum fo r a pu rpose. We are a blending that proves that all b lood is in tri­ cately woven together, and that we are spaw ned ou t o f sim ilar souls.

Somos una gente Hay tandsimasJronteras que dividen a la gente, pero por cadaJrontera existe tambien un puente. — G in a V aldes

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Divided loyalties. Many wom en and m en o f color do not want to have any dealings with white people. It takes too much time and energy to explain to the downwardly m obile, white middle-class women that it’s okay for us to want to own “possessions,” never having had any nice furniture on our dirt floors or “luxuries” like washing machines. Many feel that whites should help their own people rid themselves o f race hatred and fear first. I, for one, choose to use som e o f my energy to serve as mediator. I think we need to allow whites to be our allies. Through our literature, art, corridos, and folktales we must share o u r history with them so when they set up com m ittees to help Big Mountain Navajos or the Chicano farm workers or los Nicaragiienses they won’t turn people away because o f their racial fears and ignorances. They will come to see that they are not helping us but following our lead. Individually, but also as a racial entity, we need to voice our needs. We need to say to white society: We need you to accept the fact that Chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejection and negation o f us. We need you to own the fact that you looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect. We need you to make public resti­ tution: to say that, to com pensate for your own sense o f defectiveness, you strive for pow er over us, you erase our history and our experience because it m akes you feel guilty— you’d rather forget your brutish acts.To say you’ve split yourself from m inority groups, that you disown us, that your dual con­ sciousness splits o ff parts o f yourself, transferring the “negative” parts onto us. (W here there is persecution o f m inorities, there is shadow projection. W here there is violence and war, there is repression o f shadow.) To say that you are afraid o f us, that to put distance between us, you w ear the m ask of contem pt. Adm it that M exico is your double, that she exists in the shadow o f this country, that we are irrevocably tied to her. G ringo, accept the doppelganger in your psyche. By taking back your collective shadow the intracultural split will heal. And finally, tell us what you need from us.

ByYourTrue FacesWeWill KnowYou I am visible— see this Indian face— yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. T hey’d like to think I have m elted in the pot. But I haven’t, we haven’t. The dom inant white culture is killing us slowly with its ignorance. By taking away our self-determ ination, it has made us weak and empty. As a people we

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have resisted and we have taken expedient positions, but we have never been allowed to develop unencum bered— we have never been allow ed to be fully ourselves. The w hites in pow er want us people o f co lor to barricade o u r­ selves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us o ff one at a tim e with their hidden w eapon s; so they can w hitew ash and d isto rt history. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A m isinform ed people is a subju­ gated people. Before the Chicano and the undocum ented w orker and the M exican from the other side can com e together, before the Chicano can have unity with Native A m ericans and other grou ps, we need to know the history o f their struggle and they need to know ours. O u r m others, our sisters and brothers, the guys who hang out on street corn ers, the children in the playgrounds, each o f us m ust know our Indian lineage, our afro-mestisaje, our history o f resistance. To the im m igrant mexicano and the recent arrivals we m ust teach our his­ tory. The eighty m illion mexicanos and the Latinos from C entral and South A m erica m ust know o f our struggles. Each one o f us m ust know basic facts about N icaragua, Chile, and the rest o f Latin A m erica. The Latinoist m ove­ m ent (Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Spanish-speaking people w orking together to com bat racial discrim ination in the m arketplace) is good but it is not enough. O ther than a com m on culture we will have nothing to hold us together. We need to m eet on a broader com m unal ground. The stru ggle is inner: C hicano, indio, A m erican Indian, mojado, mexicano, im m igrant Latino, Anglo in power, working-class Anglo, Black, Asian— our psyches resem ble the bordertow ns and are populated by the sam e people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness o f o u r situation m ust com e before inner changes, which in turn com e before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” w orld unless it first happens in the im ages in our heads.

El dia de la Chicana I will not be shamed again Nor will I shame myself. I am possessed by a vision: that we Chicanas and Chicanos have taken back or uncovered our true faces, our dignity and self-respect. It’s a validation vision.

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Seeing the Chicana anew in light o f her history. I seek an exoneration, a seeing through the fictions o f white supremacy, a seeing o f ourselves in our true guises and not as the false racial personality that has been given to us and that we have given to ourselves. I seek our w om an’s face, our true features, the positive and the negative seen clearly, free o f the tainted biases o f male dom inance. I seek new im ages o f identity, new beliefs about ourselves, our humanity and w orth no longer in question. Estamos viviendo en la noche de la Raza, un tiempo cuando el trabajo se hace a lo quieto, en el oscuro. El dia cuando aceptamos ta ly como somos y para en donde vamosy porque— ese dia sera el dia de la Raza.Yo tengo el conpromiso de expresar mi vision, mi sensibilidad, mi percepcion de la revalidacion de la gente mexicana, su merito, estimacion, honra, aprecio,y validez. O n D ecem ber 2 when my sun goes into my first house, I celebrate el dia de la Chicanay el Chicano. On that day I clean my altars, light my Coatalopeuh can­ dle, burn sage and copal, take el bano para espantar basura, sweep my house. O n that day. I bare my soul, make m yself vulnerable to friends and family by expressing my feelings. On that day I affirm who we are. O n that day I look inside our conflicts and our basic introverted racial tem peram ent. I identify our needs, voice them. I acknow ledge that the self and the race have been wounded. I recognize the need to take care o f our personh ood , o f our racial self. On that day I gather the splintered and dis­ ow ned parts o f la gente mexicana and hold them in my arm s. Todas las partes de nosotros valen. O n that day I say, “Yes, all you p eop le w ound us when you re je ct us. Rejection strips us o f self-w orth; our vulnerability exposes us to shame. It is our innate identity you find wanting. We are ashamed that we need your good opinion, that we need your acceptance. We can no longer cam ouflage our needs, can no longer let defenses and fences sprout around us. We can no longer withdraw. To rage and look upon you with contem pt is to rage and be con tem p tuous o f ourselves. We can no longer blam e you, nor disow n the white p arts, the m ale parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vul­ nerable parts. H ere we are w eaponless with open arm s, with only our m agic. L e t’s try it our way, the mestiza way, the Chicana way, the woman way. O n that day I search for our essential dignity as a people, a people with a sense o f purpose— to belong and contribute to som ething greater than our pueblo. O n that day I seek to recover and reshape my spiritual identity. Animate! Raza, a celebrar el dia de la Chicana.

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El retorno All movements are accomplished in six stages, and the seventh brings return. — I Ching7 Tanto tiempo sin verta casa mia, mi cuna, mi hondo nido de la huerta. — “ S o le d a d " 8

I stand at the river, watch the curving, tw isting serpent, a serpen t nailed to the fence where the m outh o f the Rio Grande em pties into the Gulf. 1 have com e back. Tanto dolor me costo el alejamiento. I shade my eyes and look up. The bone beak o f a hawk slowly circling over m e, checking m e out as potential carrion. In its wake a little bird flickering its w ings, sw im m ing sporadically like a fish. In the distance the expressw ay and the slough o f traf­ fic like an irritated sow. The sudden pull in my gu t, la tierra, los aguaceros. My land, el viento soplando la arena, el lagartijo debajo de un nopalito. Me acuerdo como era antes. Una region desertica de vasta Uanuras, costeras de baja altura, de escasa lluvia, de chaparralesformados por mesquitesy huizaches. If I look real hard I can alm ost see the Spanish fathers who were called “the cavalry o f C hrist” enter this valley riding their burros, see the clash o f cultures com m ence. Tierra natal. This is h om e, the sm all tow ns in the Valley, los pueblitos with chicken pens and goats picketed to m esquite shrubs. En las colonias on the other side o f the tracks, junk cars line the front yards o f hot pink and laven­ der-trim m ed houses— Chicano architecture we call it, self-consciously. I have missed the

tv

shows where hosts speak in half and half, and where awards are

given in the category ofTex-M ex m usic. I have m issed the M exican cem eter­ ies bloom ing with artificial flow ers, the fields o f aloe vera and red pepper, rows o f sugar cane, o f corn hanging on the stalks, the cloud o f polvareda in the dirt roads behind a speeding pickup truck, el sabor de tamales de rezy venado. I have m issed layegua Colorado gnawing the w ooden gate o f her stall, the sm ell o f horse flesh from C arito ’s corrals. He hecho menos las noches calientes sin aire, noches de linternasy lechuzas m aking holes in the night. I still feel the old despair when I look at the unpainted, dilapidated, scrap lum ber houses consisting m ostly o f corrugated alum inum . Som e o f the p o o r­

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est people in the U .S. live in the Low er Rio Grande Valley, an arid and semiarid land o f irrigated farm ing, intense sunlight and heat, citrus groves next to chaparral and cactus. I walk through the elem entary school I attended so long ago, which rem ained segregated until recently. I rem em b er how the white teachers used to punish us for being M exican. How I love this tragic valley o f South Texas, as Ricardo Sanchez calls it; this borderland between the N ueces and the Rio Grande. This land has sur­ vived possession and ill-use by five countries: Spain, M exico, the Republic o f Texas, the U .S ., the Confederacy, and the U .S. again. It has^survived AngloM exican blood feuds, lynchings, burnings, rapes, pillage. Today I see the valley still struggling to survive. W hether it does or not, it will never be as I rem em ber it. The borderlands depression that was set off by the 1982 peso devaluation in M exico resulted in the closure o f hundreds o f valley businesses. Many people lost their hom es, cars, land. Prior to 1982, U .S. store owners thrived on retail sales to Mexicans who came across the bor­ der for groceries and clothes and appliances. While goods on the U .S. side have becom e ten, one hundred, one thousand times m ore expensive for Mexican buyers, goods on the Mexican side have becom e ten, one hundred, one thou­ sand tim es cheaper for Americans. Because the valley is heavily dependent on agriculture and Mexican retail trade, it has the highest unemployment rates along the entire border region; it is the valley that has been hardest hit.9 “It’s been a bad year for corn,” my brother Nune says. As he talks, I rem em ­ ber my father scanning the sky for a rain that would end the drought, look­ ing up into the sky, day after day, while the corn withered on its stalk. My father has been dead for twenty-nine years, having worked him self to death. The life span o f a Mexican farm laborer is fifty-six— he lived to be thirtyeight. It shocks m e that I am older than he. I, too, search the sky for rain. Like the ancients, I worship the rain god and the maize goddess, but unlike my father I have recovered their names. Now for rain (irrigation) one offers not a sacrifice o f blood, but o f money. “Farm ing is in a bad way,” my brother says. “Two to three thousand small and big farm ers went bankrupt in this country last year. Six years ago the price o f corn was $ 8 .0 0 per hundred pounds,” he go es on. “This year it is $ 3.90 per hundred pounds.” And, I think to myself, after taking inflation into account, not planting anything puts you ahead. I walk out to the back yard, stare at los iosales de mama. She wants m e to help her prune the ro se bushes, dig out the carpet grass that is choking them .

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Mamagrande Ramona tambien tenia rosales. H ere every M exican grow s flow ers. If they d o n ’t have a piece o f dirt, they use car tires, jars, cans, shoe b oxes. R oses are the M exican ’s favorite flower. I think, how sym bolic— thorns and all. Yes, the C h ican o and C h ican a have alw ays taken care o f gro w in g things and the land. Again I see the fo u r o f us kids ge ttin g o ff the sch oo l b u s, ch an g­ ing into o u r w o rk clo th es, w alking into the field w ith Papi and M am i, all six o f us b end in g to the gro u n d . Below o u r fe e t, u n der the earth lie the w a te r­ m elon seed s. We cover them w ith p a p e r p late s, pu ttin g terremotes on to p o f the plates to keep them fro m b ein g blow n away by the w in d .T h e p a p e r plates keep the freeze away. N e x t day o r the n e x t, w e rem o v e the plates, b are the tiny g re e n sho ots to the ele m e n ts.T h e y su rv iv e and grow , give fru it h un dreds o f tim e s the size o f the seed . W e w ater them and hoe th em . W e h arv est them . T h e vines dry, ro t, are plow ed under. G ro w th , death , decay, b irth . T h e soil p rep ared again and again, im p reg n ated , w ork ed on . A co n stan t chan gin g o f fo rm s, renacimientos de la tierra madre. This land was M exican once was Indian always and is. And will be again.

N O TES

1. Jo se Vasconcelos, La raza cosmica: Mision de la raza lbero-Americana (Mexico: Aguilar S.A. de Ediciones, 1961). 2. Arthur Koestler term ed this “bisociation.” Albert Rothenberg, The Creative Process in Art, Science, and Other Fields (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1979), p. 12. 3. In part, I derive my definitions for “convergent” and “divergent” thinking ' from Rothenberg, pp. 12—13. 4. To borrow chem ist Ilya P rigogin e’s theory o f “dissipative structures.” Prigogine discovered that substances interact, not in predictable ways as it was taught in science, but in different and fluctuating ways to produce new and more com plex structures, a kind o f birth he called “morphogenesis,” which created unpre­ dictable innovations. Harold Gilliam, “Searching for a New World View,” This World (January 1981): 23. 5. Tortillas de masa harina: corn tortillas are o f two types, the smooth uniform ones made in a tortilla press and usually bought at a tortilla factory or superm arket,

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and gorditas, m ade by m ixing masa with lard or shortening or bu tter (m y m other som etim es puts in bits o f bacon or chicharrones). 6. G ina V aldes, Puentes y fronteras: Coplas Chicanas (L o s A n geles: C astle Lithograph, 1982), p. 2. 7. R ichard W ilh elm , The I Ching, or Book o f Changes, tran s. C ary F. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press, 1950), p. 98. 8. “Soledad” is sung by the grou p, H aciendo Punto en O tro Son. 9. O u t o f the twenty-tw o bord er counties in the four b o rd er states, H idalgo County (nam ed for Father H idalgo, who was shot in 1810 after instigating M exico ’s revolt against Spanish ru le under the banner o f la Virgen de Guadalupe) is the m ost poverty-stricken county in the nation as well as the largest hom e base (along with Im perial in C alifornia) for m igrant farm -w orkers. It was here that I was born and raised. I am am azed that both it and I have survived.

14 This Sex Which Is N ot One

Luce Irigaray

Fem ale sexuality has always been conceptu al­ ized on the basis o f masculine param eters. Thus the o p p o sitio n betw een “m ascu lin e” clitoral activity and “ fem inine” vaginal passivity, an opposition which Freud— and many others— saw as stages, or alternatives, in the d evelop­ m en t o f a sex u ally “ n o rm al” w om an , seem s rather too clearly required by the practice o f m ale sexuality. For the clitoris is conceived as a little pen is pleasan t to m astu rb ate so lon g as castration an xiety d oes not e x ist (fo r the boy c h ild ), and the vagina is valued fo r the “ lo d g in g” it o ffers the m ale organ w hen the forbidden hand has to find a replacem ent for pleasure-giving. In these te rm s, w om an’s erogen ou s zones never am ount to anything but a clitoris-sex that is not com parable to the noble phallic organ, or a hole-envelope that serves to sheathe and mas-

Luce Irigaray, “ This Sex Which Is N ot O ne ” was originally pub­ lished as Ce Sexe que n ’en est pas un, copyright 1977 by Editions de Minuit. An English translation by Claudia Reeder appeared in New French Feminisms, eds. Elaine M arks and Isabelle de C ou rtivon, 1981: 9 9 - 1 0 6 . R eprinted by permission o f Editions de Minuit.

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sage the penis in intercourse: a non-sex, or a masculine organ turned back upon itself, self-embracing. A bou t w om an and h er p leasu re, this view o f the sex u al relation has nothing to say. H er lot is that o f “lack,’’ “atrophy” (o f the sexual organ ), and “penis envy,” the penis being the only sexual organ o f recogn ized value. Thus she attem pts by every m eans available to appropriate that organ for herself: through her som ew hat servile love o f the father-husband capable o f giving her one, through her desire for a child-penis, preferably a boy, through access to the cultural values still reserved by right to m ales alone and therefore always m asculin e, and so on. W oman lives her own desire only as the expectation that she may at last com e to possess an equivalent o f the m ale organ. Yet all this appears quite foreign to her own pleasure, unless it rem ains within the dom inant phallic economy. Thus, for exam ple, w om an’s au to­ ero ticism is very d ifferen t from m an ’s. In o rd er to touch h im self, man needs an instrum ent: his hand, a w om an’s body, language . . . And this selfcaressin g req u ires at least a m inim um o f activity. As fo r w om an , she to u ch es h e rse lf in and o f h e r se lf w ith out any need for m ed iatio n , and b e fo re there is any way to distin gu ish activity from passivity. W om an “touches h erse lf” all the tim e, and m oreover no one can forbid her to do so, fo r her gen itals are fo rm e d o f tw o lips in continuous con tact. Thus, w ithin h erse lf, she is already tw o— but not divisible into o n e (s)— that caress each other. This autoeroticism is disrup ted by a violent break-in: the brutal separation o f the two lips by a violating penis, an intrusion that distracts and deflects the woman from this “ self-caressing” she needs if she is not to incur the dis­ appearance o f her own pleasure in sexual relations. If the vagina is to serve also, but not only, to take over for the little boy’s hand in order to assure an articulation betw een autoeroticism and heteroeroticism in intercourse (the encounter with the totally other always signifying death), how, in the classic rep resen tatio n o f sexuality, can the perpetu ation o f au to ero ticism for w om an be managedPW ill woman not be left with the im possible alternative betw een a defensive virginity, fiercely turned in upon itself, and a body open to penetration that no longer knows, in this “hole” that constitutes its sex, the pleasure o f its own touch? The m ore or less exclusive— and highly anx­ ious— attention paid to erection in W estern sexuality proves to what extent the im aginary that governs it is foreign to the feminine. For the m ost part, this sexuality offers nothing but im peratives dictated by m ale rivalry: the

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“stron gest” being the one who has the b est “hard-on,” the longest, the b ig­ gest, the stiffest penis, or even the one who “pees the farthest” (as in little b oy s’ contests). O r else one finds im peratives dictated by the enactm ent o f sadom asochistic fantasies, these in turn governed by m an ’s relation to his m other: the desire to force entry, to penetrate, to appropriate for him self the m ystery o f this w om b w here he has been conceived, the secret o f his b egettin g, o f his “origin .” D e sire /n e e d , also to m ake blood flow again in o rd er to revive a very old relationship— intrauterine, to be sure, but also prehistoric— to the m aternal. W om an, in this sexual imaginary, is only a m ore o r less obliging prop for the enactm ent o f m an ’s fantasies. That she may find pleasure there in that role, by proxy, is possible, even certain. But such pleasure is above all a m asochis­ tic prostitution o f her body to a desire that is not her ow n, and it leaves her in a fam iliar state o f dependency upon m an. N ot knowing what she w ants, ready for anything, even asking for m ore, so long as he will “take” her as his “o b ject” when he seeks his own pleasu re.T h u s she will not say what she h er­ se lf w ants; m oreover, she d oes not know, o r no lon ger know s, what she w ants. As Freud adm its, the beginnings o f the sexual life o f a girl child are so “obscure,” so “ faded with tim e,” that one w ould have to dig dow n very deep indeed to discover beneath the traces o f this civilization, o f this history, the vestiges o f a m o re archaic civilizatio n that m ight give som e clue to w om an ’s sexuality. That extrem ely ancient civilization w ould undoubtedly have a different alphabet, a different language . . .W om an’s desire w ould not be expected to speak the sam e language as m an ’s; w om an’s desire has do u b t­ less been subm erged by the logic that has dom inated the West since the tim e o f the G reeks. Within this logic, the predom inance o f the visual, and o f the discrim ination and individualization o f fo rm , is particularly foreign to fem ale eroticism . W oman takes pleasure m ore from touching than from looking, and her entry into a dom inant scopic econom y signifies, again, her consignm ent to passiv­ ity: she is to be the beautiful object o f contem plation. While her body finds itself thus eroticized, and called to a double m ovem ent o f exhibition and o f chaste retreat in order to stim ulate the drives o f the “ subject,” her sexual organ represents the horror o f nothing to see. A defect in this system atics o f re p ­ resentation and desire. A “hole” in its scoptophilic lens. It is already evident in G reek statuary that this nothing-to-see has to be excluded, rejected, from

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such a scene o f representation. W oman’s genitals are simply absent, m asked, sewn back up inside their “crack.” This organ which has nothing to show for itself also lacks a form o f its own. And if w om an takes pleasure precisely from this in com pleteness o f form which allows her organ to touch itself over and over again, indefinitely, by itself, that pleasure is denied by a civilization that privileges phallom orphism . The value granted to the only definable form excludes the one that is in play in female autoeroticism . The one o f form , o f the individual, o f the (m ale) se x ­ ual organ, o f the proper nam e, o f the proper meaning . . . supplants, while separating and dividing, that contact o f at least two (lips) which keeps woman in touch with herself, but w ithout any possibility o f distinguishing what is touching from what is touched. W hence the m ystery that woman represents in a culture claiming to count everything, to num ber everything by units, to inventory everything as indi­ vidualities. She is neither one nor two. Rigorously speaking, she cannot be iden­ tified either as one p erso n , or as two. She resists all adequate definition. Further, she has no “p roper” name. And her sexual organ, which is not one organ, is counted as none. The negative, the underside, the reverse o f the only visible and m orph ologically designatable organ (even if the passage from erection to detum escence does pose som e problem s): the penis.

'-*

But the “thickness” o f that “form ,” the layering o f its volum e, its expan­ sions and contractions and even the spacing o f the m om ents in which it p ro ­ duces itself as form — all this the feminine keeps secret. W ithout knowing it. And if woman is asked to sustain, to revive, m an’s desire, the request neglects to spell out what it im plies as to the value o f her own desire. A desire o f which she is not aware, m oreover, at least not explicitly. But one whose force and continuity are capable o f nurturing repeatedly and at length all the m as­ querades o f “feminity” that are expected o f her. It is true that she still has the child, in relation to w hom her appetite for touch, for contact, has free rein, unless it is already lost, alienated by the taboo against touching o f a highly obsessive civilization. O therw ise her plea­ sure will find, in the child, compensations for and diversions from the fru s­ trations that she too often encounters in sexual relations per se.T h u s m ater­ nity fills the gaps in a repressed female sexuality. Perhaps man and woman no longer caress each other except through that mediation betw een them that the child— preferably a boy— rep resents? Man, iden tified w ith his son,

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rediscovers the pleasure o f m aternal fondling; w om an touches h erself again by caressing that part o f her body: her baby-penis-clitoris. W hat this entails for the am orous trio is well known. But the O edipal in te rd ictio n se e m s to be a som ew h at c ate g o ric a l and factitio u s law — although it does provide the m eans for perpetu atin g the authoritarian d is­ co u rse o f fathers— when it is prom u lgated in a cultu re in which sexu al relations are im practicable because m an ’s desire and w om an ’s are stran gers to each other. And in which the tw o desires have to try to m eet through indirect m eans, w hether the archaic one o f a sense-relation to the m o th er’s body, o r the presen t one o f active or passive exten sion o f the law o f the father. T h ese are regressive em otional behaviors, exchanges o f w ords too detached from the sexual arena not to con stitute an exile with respect to it: “m o th er” and “father” dom inate the interaction s o f the cou p le, but as social ro les. The division o f labor prevents them from m aking love. They pro du ce or rep rodu ce. W ithout quite know ing how to use their leisure. Such little as they have, such little indeed as they wish to have. For what are they to do with leisure? W hat substitute for am orous resource are they to invent? Still . . . Perhaps it is tim e to return to that repressed entity, the fem ale imaginary. So w om an does not have a sex organ? She has at least tw o o f them , but they are n ot iden tifiable as on es. Indeed, she has m any m o re. H er sexuality, always at least double, go es even further: it is plural. Is this the way culture is seek in g to ch aracterize itse lf now ? Is this the way te x ts w rite th e m ­ se lv e s/ are w ritten now? W ithout quite knowing what censorship they are evading? Indeed, w om an’s pleasure does not have to choose betw een clitoral activity and vaginal passivity, for exam ple. The pleasure o f the vaginal caress does not have to be substituted for that o f the clitoral caress. They each con ­ trib u te , irreplaceably, to w o m an ’s p le asu re . A m on g oth er care sse s . . . Fondling the b reasts, touching the vulva, spreadin g the lips, stroking the po sterio r wall o f the vagina, brushing against the m outh o f the u teru s, and so on. To evoke only a few o f the m o st specifically fem ale p leasu res. Pleasures which are som ew hat m isun derstood in sexual difference as it is im agin ed— o r not im agined, the other se x bein g only the indispensable com plem en t to the only sex. But woman has sex organs more or less everywhere. She finds pleasure alm ost anywhere. Even if we refrain from invoking the hystericization o f her entire body, the geography o f her pleasure is far m ore diversified, m ore m ultiple in

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its differences, m ore com plex, m ore subtle, than is com m only im agined— in an imaginary rather too narrowly focused on sam eness. “ She” is indefinitely other in herself. This is doubtless why she is said to be whimsical, incomprehensible, agitated, capricious . . . not to mention her lan­ guage, in which “she” sets off in all directions leaving “him” unable to discern the coherence o f any meaning. Hers are contradictory w ords, somewhat mad from the standpoint o f reason, inaudible for w hoever listens to them with ready-made grids, with a fully elaborated code in hand. For in what she says, too, at least when she dares, woman is constantly touching herself. She steps ever so slightly aside from herself with a murmur, an exclamation, a whisper, a sentence left unfinished . . . When she returns, it is to set off again from else­ where. From another point o f pleasure, or o f pain. One would have to listen with another ear, as if hearing an ‘‘other meaning” always in the process o f weaving itself, ofembracing itself with words, but also o fgetting rid o f words in order not to become fixed, congealed in them. For if “she” says som ething, it is not, it is already no longer, identical with what she means. What she says is never identical with any­ thing, m oreover; rather, it is contiguous. It touches (upon). And when it strays too far from that proximity, she breaks off and starts over at “zero” : her body-sex. It is useless, then, to trap w om en in the exact definition o f what they m ean, to make them rep eat (them selves) so that it w ill be clear; they are already elsewhere in that discursive machinery where you expected to su r­ p rise them . They have retu rn ed within them selves. W hich m ust n ot be understood in the sam e way as within yourself. They do not have the interiority that you have, the one you perhaps suppose they have. W ithin them ­ selves m eans within the intimacy o f that silent, multiple, diffuse touch. And if you ask them insistently w hat they are thinking abou t, they can only reply: Nothing. Everything. Thus what they desire is precisely nothing, and at the sam e tim e every­ thing. Always som ething m ore and som ething else besides that one— sexual organ, for exam ple— that you give them, attribute to them . Their desire is often interpreted, and feared, as a sort o f insatiable hunger, a voracity that will swallow you whole. W hereas it really involves a different econom y m ore than anything else, one that upsets the linearity o f a project, underm ines the goal-object o f a desire, diffuses the polarization toward a single pleasure, dis­ concerts fidelity to a single discourse . . . M ust this m ultiplicity o f fem ale desire and female language be un derstood as

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shards, scattered remnants o f a violated sexuality? A sexuality denied? The question has no simple answer. The rejection, the exclusion o f a female im ag­ inary certainly puts woman in the position o f experiencing h erself only fragmentarily, in the little-structured margins o f a dominant ideology, as waste, or excess, what is left o f a m irror invested by the (masculine) “subject” to reflect him self, to copy himself. M oreover, the role o f “femininity” is pre­ scribed by this masculine specula(riza)tion and corresponds scarcely at all to w om an’s desire, which may be recovered only in secret, in hiding, with anx­ iety and guilt. But if the female imaginary were to deploy itself, if it could bring itself into play otherwise than as scraps, uncollected debris, would it represent itself, even so, in the form of one universe? Would it even be volume instead o f surface? No. N ot unless it were understood, yet again, as a privileging of the maternal over the feminine. O f a phallic m aternal, at that. Closed in upon the jealous possession o f its valued product. Rivaling man in his esteem for productive excess. In such a race for power, woman loses the uniqueness o f her pleasure. By closing herself o ff as volum e, she renounces the pleasure that she gets from the nonsuture o f her lips: she is undoubtedly a mother, but a virgin m other; the role was assigned to her by m ythologies long ago. Granting her a certain social power to the extent that she is reduced, with her own complicity, to sexual impotence. (Re-)discovering herself, for a woman, thus could only signify the possibil­ ity o f sacrificing no one o f her pleasures to another, o f identifying herself with none o f them in particular, o f never being simply one. A sort o f expand­ ing universe to which no limits could be fixed and which would not be inco­ herence nonetheless— nor that polym orphous perversion o f the child in which the erogenous zones would lie w aiting to be regrouped under the prim acy o f the phallus. Woman always remains several, but she is kept from dispersion because the other is already within her and is autoerotically familiar to her. Which is not to say that she appropriates the other for herself, that she reduces it to her own property. Ownership and property are doubtless quite foreign to the feminine. At least sexually. But not nearness. N earness so pronounced that it makes all discrimination o f identity, and thus all form s o f property, im pos­ sible. Woman derives pleasure from what is so near that she cannot have it, nor have herself. She herself enters into a ceaseless exchange o f herself with the other without any possibility o f identifying either. This puts into question all prevailing econom ies: their calculations are irrem ediably stym ied by

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w om an’s pleasure, as it increases indefinitely from its passage in and through the other. However, in order for woman to reach the place where she takes pleasure as w om an, a long detou r by way o f the analysis o f the various system s o f oppression brought to bear upon her is assuredly necessary. And claiming to fall back on the single solution o f pleasure risks making her m iss the process o f going back through a social practice that her enjoym ent requires. For w om an is trad itio n ally a u se-value fo r m an, an exch an ge value am on g m en ; in o th e r w o rd s, a com m od ity. As such, she rem ain s the guardian o f m aterial substance, whose price will be established, in term s o f the standard o f their w ork and o f their n e e d /d e sire , by “subjects” : w ork­ e rs, m erchants, con sum ers. W omen are m arked phallicly by their fathers, husbands, p ro cu rers. And this branding d eterm in es their value in sexual com m erce. W oman is never anything but the locus o f a m ore or less co m ­ petitive exch an ge betw een tw o m en, including the co m p etitio n for the p ossession o f m other earth. H ow can this o b ject o f transaction claim a right to p leasu re w ithout rem oving h e r/itse lf from established com m erce? With respect to other m er­ chandise in the m arketplace, how could this com m odity maintain a relation­ ship other than one o f aggressive jealousy? How could m aterial substance enjoy h e r /itse lf w ithout provoking the consum er’s anxiety over the disap­ pearance o f his nurturing ground? How could that exchange— which can in no way be defined in term s “proper” to w om an’s desire— appear as anything but a pure m irage, m ere foolishness, all too readily obscured by a m ore sen­ sible discourse and by a system o f apparently m ore tangible values? A w om an’s developm ent, however radical it may seek to be, would thus not suffice to liberate w om an’s desire. And to date no political theory or politi­ cal practice has resolved, or sufficiently taken into consideration, this histor­ ical p ro b lem , even though M arxism has p roclaim ed its im p o rtan ce. But w om en do not co n stitu te, strictly speaking, a class, and their d ispersion am ong several classes m akes their political struggle com plex, their demands som etim es contradictory. There rem ains, however, the condition o f underdevelopm ent arising from w om en ’s subm ission by and to a culture that opp resses them , uses them , m akes o f them a m edium o f exchange, with very little profit to them. Except in the quasi m onopolies o f masochistic pleasure, the dom estic labor force, and reproduction. The pow ers o f slaves? Which are not negligible pow ers, m oreover. For where pleasure is concerned, the m aster is not necessarily

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well served. Thus to reverse the relation, especially in the econom y o f se x u ­ ality, does not seem a desirable objective. But if w om en are to p reserv e and expan d their au to e ro ticism , their hom o-sexuality, might not the renunciation o f heterosexual pleasure c o rre ­ spon d once again to that discon n ection from pow er that is traditionally theirs? Would it not involve a new prison, a new cloister, built o f their own accord? For w om en to undertake tactical strikes, to keep them selves apart from m en long enough to learn to defend their desire, especially through speech, to discover the love o f other w om en while sheltered from m en ’s im periou s choices that put them in the position o f rival com m o d ities, to forge for them selves a social status that com pels recognition, to earn their living in o rder to escape from the condition o f prostitute . . . these are c e r­ tainly indispensable stages in the escape from their proletarization on the exchange m arket. But if their aim were simply to reverse the ord er o f things, even supposing this to be possible, history w ould repeat itself in the long run, would revert to sam eness: to phallocratism . It w ould leave room neither for w om en ’s sexuality, nor for w om en’s imaginary, nor for w om en’s language to take (their) place.

15

Hysteria, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism THE CAS E OF A N N A O .

Dianne Hunter

We (Breuer and 1) had often

I

compared the symptomatology o f hysteria with a pictographic script which has become intelligible cftei the discovery

The hysteric m ost often named and discussed by Freud, although he never m et her, and never encountered a case like hers, was “ Fraulein

o f afew bilingual inscriptions.

Anna O .,” the inventor o f the “talking cure,” introduced in the first case history o f Studies on

— S ig m u n d F re u d ,

H y steria, published by Freud and Breuer in

Stu d ie s on H y steria

1895. Anna O ., whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim, inspired what may be called the

respects, be considered as a

“legend” o f the origin o f psychoanalysis, and later in her life became an im portant figure in the history o f the G erm an Jew ish w om en’s movement and in the history o f m odern insti­

supreme means o f expression.

tutionalized social work. She lived from 1859

— L o u is A rago n

to 1936, and in 1954, was honored by the R e­

Hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon, and can, in all

and A n d re B re to n ,

public o f West Germ any as a “H elper o f H u­ manity.” Although fem inists have recognized

L a Revolution S u r rea liste

Dianne Hunter, “Hysteria, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism: The Case of Anna O.” Originally appeared in more extensive form in Feminist Studies 9, no. 3 (Fall 1983): 464—88, and was reprinted in The (M )other Tongue: Essays in Fem inist P sych oanalytic Inter­ pretation, edited by Shirley Nelson Garner, Claire Kahane, and Madelon Sprengnether, Cornell University Press, 1985.

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Pappenheim for the philanthropic and political activities o f her public life, we have given less attention to her role as a contributor to psychoanalytic the­ ory and technique.1 The Anna O. described in psychoanalytic writings, an attractive, highly intelligent young woman, suffered an hysterical collapse at the age o f twentyone, during a period when she had been responsible for prolonged day and night nursing o f her father, Siegmund, who was dying o f tuberculosis. For nearly two years, during and after her father’s illness, “Anna” was a patient o f the well-known and respected Viennese physician Jo se f Breuer, who described her case as “the germ -cell o f the whole o f psychoanalysis.”2 Although Dr. Breuer never fully recognized the meaning o f his encounter with Pappenheim , he found the case rem arkable enough to rep ort to his young friend and colleague Freud, who was profoundly im pressed when he heard about Pappenheim’s unusual treatm ent by verbalization and catharsis. That was in Novem ber o f 1882. Three years later, Freud was in Paris observing Jean-M artin C h arcot’s demonstrations o f hypnosis and suggestion at the Salpetriere hospital. At that time, Charcot’s lessons on hysteria were as fashionable as the tirades o f Sarah Bernhardt, and for much the same reason. In the late nineteenth century, hys­ teria was a chief subject in medical publications throughout Europe and in England. What Freud contributed to the work being done at this time in France was the idea of listening to what hysterics had to say. Bertha Pappenheim orig­ inated this technique, and another patient, “Elizabeth von R .” (Ilona Weiss), refined it by suggesting to Freud the method o f free association. Although Breuer edited the story o f Bertha Pappenheim ’s hysteria and suppressed her identity, we know her biography from later sou rces.3 She was born in Vienna, the third child in a family that already had two daughters. (H er two sisters died in childhood.) Her birth was followed by that o f the fam ily’s only son, W ilhelm, whose privileges Pappenheim came to resent. She attended a Catholic school, although her home was traditionally Jewish. Her grandfather, Wolf Pappenheim, a prom inent personality o f the Pressburg ghetto, devoted his fortune to the prom otion o f Jewish orthodoxy. Bertha’s father, a wealthy grain merchant, cofounded the Jewish Schijfschul in Vienna. Bertha Pappenheim’s mother, Recha, nee Goldschm idt, described as rather authoritarian, was originally from Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Germany, where she later returned with her daughter. This city was a center o f charitable activities am ong Bertha’s relatives on her m other’s side.These relatives, con­ nected to artistic circles, included H einrich Heine. Breuer rem arks that

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som e o f Anna’s m ore distant relatives had been psychotic, but she h erself had been consistently healthy until her father’s sickness in July 1880. She had received an education typical for girls o f her class. She spoke perfect English, read French and Italian, and practiced em broidery and lacem aking, which rem ained a lifelong passion. There was a certain m odernism about her train­ ing, however, since she rode horseback with her cousins. A photograph o f Berth a in ridin g co stu m e, dated 1882, K onstanz, G erm any, b ears little resem blance to the patient Breuer describes, although he does m ention that she had used a horsewhip in his presence once when her pet dog attacked a cat. Breuer describes Anna as a willful, energetic, intuitive, and com passion­ ate person, som eone who took pleasure in caring for the poo r and the sick. According to Breuer, Anna could be obstinate, but “sym pathetic kindness” w as one o f her essential character traits. B reuer rep o rts that Anna had a “powerful instinct” toward charity work, but he does not m ention that such w ork was one o f the few form s o f activity w om en were traditionally p er­ m itted outside the hom e. D uring the tim e Bertha Pappenheim nursed her father, she stopped eat­ ing. H er weight loss was such that she was forbidden to continue her nursing duties. She had also developed a cough which resem bled her father’s. At this poin t, Dr. B reuer w as called in for the first tim e. O v er the n ext three m on ths, a very co m p lex hysteria developed. Pappenheim suffered rigid paralyses o f her arm s, legs, and neck m uscles, headaches, and som nam bu­ lism . First her right arm , then her right side, then her entire body suffered contracture. She was interm ittently deaf. She had a convergent squint and severe, inexplicable disturbances o f vision. She had tem per tantrum s during which she would throw things about the ro om , tear the buttons o ff her bed­ clothes, and grow distressed when relatives appeared. Pappenheim in her hysteria experienced a profound disorganization o f speech and, for a tim e, total aphasia. It is Pappenheim ’s aphasia and her use o f her body as a signifier with which I am particularly concerned. Although many o f what Freud refers to as Pappenheim ’s “m useum o f m onum ents” to “hyperaesthetic m em ories” have been richly and repeatedly analyzed, no one has sufficiently studied her unique use o f languages. When she regained her ability to talk, Bertha Pappenheim was unable to understand or speak her native tongue although she proved surprisingly fluent in foreign languages, a circum stance Freud calls “strange” and other com m entators call “bizarre.” I would like to offer a psychoanalytic-feminist reading o f Bertha’s speechless­ ness and her com m unication in translation, gibberish, and pan tom im e. 1

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think it is possible to see a liberating m otive im plicit in Pappenheim ’s lin­ guistic disruptions, for speaking coherent G erm an m eant integration into a cultural identity Bertha Pappenheim w anted to reject. She claim ed to be divided into tw o selves: “a real one and an evil one which forced her to behave badly.”4 Two states o f consciousness w ould alter­ nate, one o f which w ould in terru pt while the other w as speaking. Breuer refers to the pauses in Pappenheim ’s speech by the French term absences.This suggests that for Breuer as well as for Pappenheim , the abnorm al states o f consciousness represented foreign parts o f the self, parts alien to significa­ tion in her native tongue. In the afternoons Pappenheim w ould fall into a som nolent state. A fter sunset she w ould wake up, repeating the w ords “torm en tin g, torm enting.” She w as unable to speak a whole sentence, and her whole body w as p ara­ lyzed. Breuer first noticed that she was at a loss for w ords and then that she had lost her com m and o f gram m ar and syntax as w ell. She no lon ger co n ­ ju g a te d v erb s, and eventually u sed only infinitives, w hich, says B reuer, were “for the m o st p art incorrectly form ed from weak past p articip les.”5 N either infinitives nor participles specify a p erso n ; as Breuer n o tes, “to r­ m enting” is an im person al fo rm . Pappenheim also om itted both the d efi­ nite and the indefinite article. In the p rocess o f tim e she becam e alm o st com pletely at a loss for w ords. W hen w ords failed her, she w ould put them togeth er laboriously out o f four or five languages and becam e nearly unin­ telligib le. H ere is a reco n stru ctio n o f Pap p en h eim ’s linguistic m elan ge: “Jam ais acht nobody bella m io please lieboehn nuit.”6 She tried to w rite the sam e m um bo jum bo. For two weeks Bertha Pappenheim was com pletely silent, and at this point, Dr. Breuer recognized for the first tim e the psychical m echanism o f his patient’s disorder: “She had felt very much offended over som ething and had determ ined not to speak about it.”7 W hen Breuer guessed this and obliged her to talk about it during hypnosis, Pappenheim ’s linguistic inhibition d isap ­ peared, but she spoke only in English. In m om ents o f extrem e anxiety, her pow ers o f speech either deserted her entirely or she used a m ixture o f lan­ guages. At the times when she felt m ost free, Pappenheim spoke French and Italian. She had am nesia between these tim es and the tim es when she spoke English. During her illness, she baffled her family and servants with discourses in languages they did not understand and astonished her doctors by producing a rapid, fluent extem poraneous English translation o f any text in French or Italian she was asked to read aloud. Pappenheim also m ade up w ords: gehaglich for behaglich, m eaning com fortable, and invented nam es in English for the

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process which she and Breuer had begun. She called it “chimney sweeping” when she was joking and “the talking cure” when she was being serious. Freud and Breuer offer an inadequate explanation for Pappenheim ’s lin­ guistic sym ptom s. We are told that one night while she was watching by her father’s sickbed in a torm ent o f anxiety, she fell into a twilight state, while her right arm , which was hanging over the back o f the chair, went to sleep. Pappenheim was so terrified to find her arm paralyzed that she tried to pray, but could find no w ords. At length she rem em b ered a ch ild ’s prayer in English. T h erefo re when her hysteria d evelop ed , she spoke and w rote English. This recollection o f the child’s prayer seem s to bear no relation to Pappenheim ’s determ ination to keep silent. N or does it explain her inventive n o m en clatu res, polylingual jargo n , or am azing speeches in French and Italian. All it tells us is that Bertha was so upset she forgot her m other tongue. Although Breuer does not state what had offended Bertha, it is easy to infer that she resented and rejected her inferior position as a daughter in an o rth o d o x Jew ish family. A lthough h er in tellectual and p oetic g ifts w ere rem arkable, and she was a lively and charm ing person, Bertha Pappenheim at twenty-one was assigned routine and m onotonous household tasks. Her brother, a year y oun ger than she and not nearly as brigh t, had recently en tered the U niversity o fV ien n a, an institution closed to w om en at that tim e. Breuer w rites, “This girl, w ho was bubbling over with intellectual vital­ ity, led an extrem ely m onotonous existence in her puritanically-minded fam ­ ily. She em bellished her life in a m anner which probably influenced her deci­ sively in the direction o f her illness, by indulging in system atic day-dream ­ ing, which she described as her ‘private theatre.” ’8 Speculating on the origin o f “hypnoid” (dissociated, split) states, Breuer and Freud note that these con ­ ditions often seem to grow out o f the daydreams which are com m on even in healthy people, “and to which needlew ork and sim ilar occupations render wom en especially prone.”9 That is, people left to em broidery are bound to em broider fantasies. Pappenheim’s daydreaming and her illness were heavily influenced by the necessity o f spending hours tending her father’s sickbed, a situation that can­ n ot have failed to arouse w ishes in such a lively and im aginative perso n, although Breuer does not mention this and seems not to have thought o f it. H er squint developed while she was straining to see what time it was through her tears after she had waited up all night for a doctor who was late in arriv­ ing. In similar circum stances, Pappenheim hallucinated a black snake coming toward the sick man from the wall to bite him. When she tried to drive away the snake, she found h er arm paralyzed and saw her hands turn into little

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snakes with death’s-heads at the fingertips. H er cough developed when she heard dance music coming from a neighboring house, felt a sudden wish to leave her father’s bedside, and was overcome with self-reproaches.Thereafter, she coughed nervously whenever she heard rhythmical music. Pappenheim hallucinated her father’s face as a death’s-head and then saw her own reflec­ tion in a m irror as the same image. Having lost her sisters to childhood deaths, and apparently wishing for the termination o f her father’s agonizing illness which she imitated with her cough, Pappenheim was preoccupied with skele­ tons. When Siegmund Pappenheim died, his daughter had to be removed to the country to protect her from suicidal impulses. Perhaps she wanted to join him in death, and perhaps she wanted to escape from guilt generated by what must have been a liberation and a relief. She had lost a patient “o f whom she was passionately fond.” Pappenheim’s hysteria arose from sources in her life history typical o f her tim e. It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for the potential o f daughters to be sacrificed while sons were educated and privileged; it was also in keeping with prevailing custom s for young women to be called upon to nurse aging and ill parents. Neither Pappenheim nor Breuer could con­ sciously express the am bivalent em otions such situations w ould arouse. Although Breuer recognized Bertha’s grief for her father’s death as a cause of her sym ptom s, he overlooked the hostility, anger, guilt, and frustrated sexu ­ ality apparent to psychoanalysts.10 Even a nonpsychoanalytic reading o f the case indicates that Pappenheim found her existence lonely and tedious. Late in her life Pappenheim thought o f her lack o f form al education as “ defective spiritual n ourishm ent,” 11 a reference that may illum inate the anorexic sym ptom s o f her hysteria and her way o f literalizing through her body her felt psychic condition. Breuer uses a similar m etaphor o f under­ nourishment to describe Anna O .: “She possessed a powerful intellect which would have been capable o f digesting solid mental pabulum and which stood in need o f it— though without receiving it after she had left school.”12 Once when Dr. Breuer interrupted his visits to her for several days because he had to leave Vienna, Bertha went entirely without food during his absence. At the time she fell ill, Bertha Pappenheim must have wanted som eone to talk with, someone to listen to her elaborate sto ries.13 Breuer provided an audience for her mental creations. He increased by one the attendance at her “private theatre.” Although Breuer had arrived as an old-fashioned physician with black bag in hand to treat Bertha Pappenheim ’s malady, she quickly changed the term s o f the relationship by falling into autohypnosis and co m ­ m encing to m utter in an apparently absent-m inded state. She was clearly

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in trigu ed by the go o d looking and highly cultivated, successful doctor. Although Breuer does not say so, his account o f Bertha Pappenheim ’s behav­ ior suggests that she tried to seduce him, and that in a way she was success­ ful. We are told about the various m assages she received on her head and legs— standard procedures for treating paralysis. What was unusual, and the beginning o f what developed into psychoanalysis, involved the long hours they spent in hypnosis together while Pappenheim told sad and fanciful sto ­ ries and “talked h erself out” until “she was clear in m ind, calm , and cheerful.” Breuer attributed her cheerfulness to the talking, not to his presence on the scene. D u rin g the co u rse o f their treatm en t Breuer spent a m edically unprecedented am ount o f tim e in his patient’s company, visiting her nearly every day betw een the end o f 1880 and the m iddle o f 1882, often m ore than once a day, listening to the m ost minute details o f her present and past life, repeating set phrases from her stories to get her narratives started each ses­ sion. A lthough B reuer states that Bertha Pappenheim w as “astonishingly underdeveloped” sexually, every com m entator has rem arked upon her phys­ ical attractions. The case history suggests that Bertha fantasized a love affair with B reu er; and in d eed , the infatuation seem s to have been m utual, although unconscious on B reuer’s part. Pappenheim failed to recognize her relatives and ignored all unw anted stran gers, but she always had eyes for Breuer. According to Freud, her image o f the treatm ent as “chimney sw eep­ ing” w as a m etaphor for sexual in tercou rse.14 After many months o f hearing rep orts o f this fascinating patient, M rs. Breuer finally grew jealous and angry. Surprised and probably feeling guilty as w ell, Breuer suddenly determ ined to end the treatm ent. He announced his intention to Pappenheim and prepared to depart on a trip to Venice with his wife. According to Freud, Pappenheim responded with an “untoward event.” 15 She staged an hysterical childbirth to sum m on Breuer back for another session. He was shocked to find her in bed w ith abdom inal cram p s, which she explain ed with the w ords “ N ow Dr. B reuer’s child is com ing!” 16 He calm ed her with hypnosis and then fled the house, abandoning her to a colleague. He never saw her again, and later when he heard that she was ill, he wished she would die and so cease to be m iser­ ab le.17 Breuer chose not to rep ort the fantasy childbirth in the published ver­ sion o f the case history o f Anna O ., and he never acknowledged the erotic elem en t in their attachm ent. This supp ression m ight be explain ed by B reu er’s fear o f a scandal; and if he perceived that Pappenheim had been play­ ing a role to allure him , he might have feared that publishing the story would not only com prom ise him , but make him appear foolish as well. However, his private obsession with the case after he had given it up, his reluctance to p re­

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sent any account o f it in public fo rm , and his ultimate rejection o f psycho­ analysis indicate that there were other causes contributing to the absence o f the final scene from his re p o rt in Studies on Hysteria, which gives the false im pression that Anna’s hysteria had disappeared. G eorge Pollock traces B reu er’s anxiety to the loss o f his young and attrac­ tive m other in childbirth when he was three or four years old. She, as well as B reu er’s oldest daughter, about eleven years old at the tim e o f his relation­ ship with the fam ous patient, was nam ed B e rth a.18 When Freud began to uncover the role o f transference love in hypnosis and psychoanalysis, and to stress the im portance o f sexuality in n euroses, Breuer dissociated h im self from his controversial colleague. Although Pappenheim had led the way to the unconscious through her invention o f the “talking cure” and her dram ati­ zation o f transference love in the doctor-patient relation, Breuer resisted the im plications o f their encounter. Freud rep o rts that Breuer repeatedly read to him pieces o f the case history during 1882 and 1883, but ob jected vehe­ mently to publishing the story o f the treatm ent. Freud decided to rep o rt the case to Charcot, who listened but showed no interest. Ten years later Breuer agreed to a joint publication because Freud convinced him that Pierre Jan et’s w ork in French anticipated som e o f his results, such as the tracing back o f h ysterical sym pto m s to events in the p atie n t’s life, and their rem oval by m eans o f hypnotic reproduction.

II Although I think the oedipal configurations in Pappenheim ’s encounter with Breuer are significant, I want to focus for a m om ent on the oral dim en­ sions o f their relationship. Leo Ston e’s discussion o f transference wishes links the unconscious meanings o f the doctor-patient relation to the universal crav­ ing for the om nipotent m other o f early infancy' Janet Malcolm sum m arizes: This craving . . . can be activated by doctors, politicians, clergymen, and teachers as well as by analysts. Stone draws a . . . distinction between the meaning o f the primary transference generated by the physician and that generated by the analyst. While the physician’s direct physical and em o­ tional ministrations correspond to those o f the “omniscient, omnipotent, and unintelligible” mother o f the earliest period o f infancy, the analyst’s activities resemble (in unconscious reverberation) the not so agreeable ones o f the mother in the months when the infant is learning to talk and

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to separate from her— “that period o f life where all the m odalities o f bodily intimacy and direct dependence on the mother are being relin­ quished or attenuated, pari passu with the rapid development o f the great vehicle o f communication by speech.” It is in this state o f “intimate sepa­ ration,” or “deprivation in intimacy,” that analysis is conducted, deriving its mutative power from the tension between verbal closeness and em o­ tional distance.19 In this stage o f psychosexual developm ent, linguistically constituted su b­ jectiv ity (“ I” versu s “you ,” “he” versus “she,” and syntactical relatio n s) is superim p osed upon ou r rhythm ical, corp oreal rap p o rt with the m other. Prior to our accession to the gram m atical order o f language, we exist in a dyadic, sem iotic w orld o f pure sound and body rhythms, oceanically at one with ou r nurturer. O u t o f the infinite potential identities each new born infant brings into the w orld, a single way o f being is activated according to the way the m other behaves in oral sym biosis. The m oth er’s style o f relating com m unicates the unconscious significance the infant has for her. Through her body language— holding, nursing, caressing, bathing, dressin g— and then through m irroring, through the image the child form s o f itself as it sees itself reflected in the m oth er’s face, especially in her eyes, the m other co m ­ municates an identity to the child. As Heinz Lichtenstein describes it, the m other “seduces the child into life,” in the same way that the sun activates tropism in a plant and so shapes its form and directio n.20 O u r sense o f o u r­ selves as separate beings, as “subjects,” is bound up with our entry into the order o f language in which speech becom es a substitute for bodily connec­ tion. The world we as children enter is always already constituted and gov­ erned by language. W hen we accede to the world where com m unication in w ords allows both separation and intimacy, we are relinquishing the im m e­ diacy o f sem iotic and corp oreal rapport with our nurturer, from w hom we recognize our separation. A child reared in a family such as Bertha Pappenheim s m akes her transi­ tion to speech as p art o f a process according to which she recognizes the father’s privileged relation to the mother. In the order o f language, “ I” and “you” conceptualize and m ark separate persons, as “she” and “he,” “m other” and “father,” differentiate genders and roles. Although it is usually the m other who activates an infant’s capacity for speech in the oral, sem iotic stage, sub­ jectivity in the sense o f being a separate, syntactical agent, a gram m atical “su b ject,” com es later in childhood, w hen, in the p atriarch al family, the father’s role is being recognized. Discovery o f the father’s role in the prim al

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scene and recognition o f male dominance in the social world conjoin with the integration o f the patriarchal child into the system atic organization o f language. The interlocking o f linguistic with cultural rules suggests an equa­ tion between the organization o f language and the systematic organization o f patriarchal culture and its sexually differentiated, oedipal subjectivity. In patriarchal socialization, the power to form ulate sentences coincides developmentally with a recognition o f the power o f the father. In this light, Bertha Pappenheim’s linguistic discord and conversion sym p­ tom s, her use o f gibberish and gestures as means o f expression, can be seen as a regression from the cultural order represented by her father as an orth o­ dox patriarch. Bertha Pappenheim failed to speak her native language, but could be fluent in alien form s o f expression. She failed to speak coherent G erm an, but she succeeded in getting Dr. Breuer to speak her language and enter a w orld repressed by patriarchal con sciousness. Breuer literally repeated Pappenheim ’s linguistic form ulas; and in this way he came to an awareness o f the unconscious. Bertha was twenty-one, on the brink o f w om ­ anhood in a role offering little in the way o f satisfaction or developm ent o f her intellectual gifts. When she looked into the m irror she saw a death’shead. Rejecting the cultural identity offered her, she tried to translate herself into another idiom . She regressed from the sym bolic order o f articulate G erm an to the sem iotic level o f the body and the unintelligibility o f foreign tongues. Her communication in signs, m utterings, and m ade-up jargon indi­ cates an attem pt to re-create the special sem iotic babble that exists between an infant and its mother. Pappenheim reached the point o f having to be fed by Breuer. She turned Breuer into a surrogate oral m other; in the sense that she took over his role as doctor, she turned him into an identity-giver as well. H er birth fantasy, which put Breuer to flight, can be read as a wish to bring a new identity and perhaps a new reality into the world. Dr. Breuer was evidently not prepared for the idea that Pappenheim was giving birth to psychoanalysis. But he seem s to have understood her situation admirably. H ere is his analysis o f the predisposing causes o f her hysteria: “ First, her monotonous family life and the absence o f adequate intellectual occupation left her with an unem ployed surplus o f m ental liveliness and energy, and this found an outlet in the constant activity o f her imagination. Second, this led to a habit o f daydreaming (her ‘private theatre’), which laid the foundations for a dissociation o f her m ental personality.”21 In other w ords, Bertha Pappenheim was schizoid because she was bored and needed to both watch and put on shows. She w as alienated, split betw een what Breuer began to call “the unconscious” or “secondary” state and her “norm al”

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state. Breuer adds that although her two states were sharply separated, not only did the “secondary” (o r ‘hypnoid’ ) state intrude into the first one, but also “a clear-sighted and calm observer sat, as she put it, in a corner o f her brain and looked on at all the mad business .’’ Thus, Pappenheim confessed to Breuer the persistence o f clear thinking in the m idst o f her madness. After her conversion sym pto m s had ceased, and while she was passing through what Breuer called a tem porary depression, Pappenheim told him that “the whole business had been sim ulated.” He concludes: I have already described the astonishing fact that from the beginning to the end of the illness all the stimuli arising from the secondary state, together with their consequences, were permanently removed by being given ver­ bal utterance in hypnosis, and I have only to add an assurance that this was not an invention o f mine which I imposed on the patient by suggestion. It took me completely by surprise, and not until symptoms had been got rid o f in this way in a whole series o f instances did I develop a therapeutic technique out o f it.22 Pappenheim actually treated herself, with Breuer as her student. O ne may ask how it was that Bertha Pappenheim m anaged to achieve such a breakthrough. It seem s that she was influenced by the w idespread interest in catharsis that follow ed the publication o f a book by the uncle o f a friend o f hers. This friend was F reud’s future wife, M artha Bernays, whose uncle, Jaco b B ernays, published a study o f the A risto telian co n cep t o f catharsis in 1880. B ern ay s’s b ook w as w idely d iscu ssed by sch o lars and b ecam e an im p o rtan t to p ic o f con versation in V iennese salon s. Perhaps Pappenheim had been introduced to the concept o f catharsis as a m ethod o f dram atizing and expelling em otions, and she then put it to use as a m eans o f capturing and holding the attention o f her scientifically m inded physician.23 Since w om en o f Pappenheim ’s day rem ained outside the official cultural institutions transm itting know ledge, she was lim ited in her form s o f dis­ co u rse. She m ade a sp ectacle o f h e rse lf in o rd e r to reso lv e the tension betw een her gu ilt and her desire to escape fam ilial e x p lo ita tio n .24 H er knowledge o f the unconscious (her “clouds”) was expressed in a distressed and distressing way. This knowledge had then to be theorized by m en. She p resen ted a startlin g and engaging dem on stration o f the p sy ch o lo gical, affective causes o f hysteria, but Dr. Breuer went away still believing in the som atic foundation o f hysterical phenom ena. It was left to Freud to co m ­ plete the shift from physiological to psychological study and to articulate in

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a scientific way the central role o f eros in therapeutic relationships, a m ajor transition in the history o f psychiatry. Bertha Pappenheim invented the “talking cu re” during an epoch that needed to tell itself its troubles. An im portant figure in the history o f con­ sciousness, she expressed in the language o f the body what psychoanalysis says in words. I think we can regard her in the term s Erik H. Erikson has used to describe ideological leaders: “Individuals with an uncom m on depth o f conflict, they also have uncanny gifts, and uncanny luck with which they offer to the crisis o f a generation the solution o f their own crisis.”25 In the process o f talking herself out to Breuer, Pappenheim converted a nonverbal message, expressed in body language or pantomime and called an hysterical sym ptom , into a verbal language.That is, her narratives converted or translated a m essage from one language into another.26 She was a psy­ chodram atist, com plete with appropriate scenic arrangements for the repro­ duction o f crucial events; and she devised the m ethod o f narrating back piece by piece the story o f each symptom to reach its source.27 In a technique com ­ parable to Shakespeare’s in the play-within-the-play in Hamlet, Pappenheim put on a dum b show in distraction, m uttered, and then spoke out the story behind the show. She restaged the origins o f her sym ptom s in order to undo them. This is ritual as catharsis. Breuer said that the patient’s sym ptom s dis­ appeared as soon as the event which had given rise to them was reproduced in a trance, making it “possible to arrive at a therapeutic technical procedure which left nothing to be desired in its logical consistency and system atic application.” Each individual sym ptom in her m useum o f “hyperaesthetic” m em ories w as taken up separately, and the occasions on which it had appeared were described in reverse order, starting before the tim e when she becam e bedridden and going back to the event which had led to its first appearance. According to Breuer, “when this had been described the sym p­ tom was permanently removed.”28 In dramatizing her past, Pappenheim was also dramatizing the unconscious, and she was engaging her audience in an oedipal repetition in the form o f Breuer’s countertransference. I have said that Pappenheim turned Breuer into a substitute oral mother, audience, and identity-giver in order to escape the crisis o f cultural iden­ tity occasioned by her father’s term inal illness, and I have described her as a psychodram atist who enacted the birth to consciousness o f a new psychic reality. Through her clever m anipulations o f languages, she m anaged to avoid the role o f dutiful orthodox daughter and find an intelligent, stim u­ lating, and sym pathetic listener. Pappenheim ’s entry into public life r e ­ mains to be discussed.

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III She becam e a fem inist in an epoch when women felt com pelled to speak up against the abuses that paralyzed their developm ent. In the sam e year that Freud and Breuer published their Studies on Hysteria, Pappenheim at the age o f thirty-six becam e headm istress o f an orphanage in Isenburg, Germ any, near her m oth er’s birthplace. This becam e the central headquarters for her forty-year career in philanthropic social work later com m em orated by the W est G erm an governm ent. She spent her life rescuing and sheltering aban­ doned and abused w om en and children. In linking the tw o phases o f her career, Lucien Israel classifies Pappenheim as one o f a num ber o f celebrated hysterics who later led altruistic public lives, substituting them selves for a m ale m entor who failed them .29 Israel analyzes such women as “successful hysterics,” w hom he sees as founding their vocations on a fantasy o f univer­ sal love and a sense o f rivalry with m en. The Pappenheim case, claims Israel, dem onstrates very clearly that the universal love em bodied in her career as rescuer o f w om en and children was originally directed at a specific person chosen as m entor. But the m entor, or m ore precisely, “m a ste r” (maitre), Breuer, failing to reciprocate her love, becam e an object o f identification who w as replaced by Pappenheim herself. Having discovered that the doctor is not all the patient had hoped, “successful hysterics” decide to incarnate his role as therapist, savior, “helper o f humanity.” Israel’s analysis overlooks the charity work tradition am ong Pappenheim ’s m aternal relatives. Pappenheim chose to make Breuer the gift o f her sym p­ tom s and their treatm ent because o f what he stood for as a doctor. She chose him for a significant encounter involving issues that were bigger than both o f them. H er identification with the role o f savior is consistent with her status as an Eriksonian leader who forged her charisma out o f her post-adolescent identity crisis, for Eriksonian ideological leaders feel that their lives m ust be m ade to count in the great historical movements o f their day. The two great historical m ovem ents o f Pappenheim ’s day were the discovery o f the uncon­ scious and the liberation o f women, and she made h erself heard in both o f them. The range o f her career as a reform er indicates that Bertha Pappenheim was “in love with activity on a large scale,” a phrase Erikson ad opts from W oodrow W ilson to d escrib e the qualities o f which charism atic lead ers are m ad e.30 The nature o f Pappenheim ’s sym ptom s and their treatm ent connect her w ith several o th er rem ark ab le w om en. A lthough it may be tru e that Pappenheim ’s p erfo rm an ces for Breuer w ere inspired by a b ook she had

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read or heard about on catharsis, one m ust speculate about what currents m ight have been at w ork am ong her hysterical coun terparts in Germ any and France throughout the nineteenth century, and slightly later in Sw itzerland when psychoanalysis was introduced into the Burgholzli clinic in Zurich; and one m ust wonder what inspired Ilona Weiss to suggest the free associational m ethod to Freud. As H enri Ellenberger observes, aspects o f Pappenheim ’s hysteria have never been satisfactorily explained. First o f all, betw een D ecem ber 1881 and June 1882, Pappenheim ’s two personal­ ities were sharply distinct, and Breuer was able to effect a shift from one to the other by holding up an orange, the food she had chiefly lived on during the previous year. While one part o f Bertha existed in the present, another p art relived the previous year precisely, day by day. Thanks to a diary Mrs. Pappenheim had kept, Breuer was able to verify that the events Bertha hal­ lucinated had occurred, day by day, exactly one year earlier. Second, cer­ tain o f B e rth a’s sym pto m s supp osed ly o ccu rred w ithout an incubation p erio d and could be m ade to disappear sim ply by recalling the circu m ­ stances under which they had appeared the first tim e. Bertha had to recall each instance when the sym ptom had appeared, whatever the number, in e x act ch ro n o lo gical order, a unique featu re o f her treatm en t. These rem arkable e x e rc ise s in m em ory, and the idea o f the patien t dictating appropriate therapeutic procedures to the physician, although extrao rd i­ nary in the 1880s in Vienna, were not unheard o f in the history o f m edi­ cine. E llen b erger links Pappen h eim ’s case with the gre at exem p lars o f “m agnetic illness” who achieved fam e during the early p art o f the nine­ teenth century. Katharina Em m erich (1 7 7 4 - 1 8 2 4 ), a po o r peasant and fo r­ m er nun from Diilm en, Westphalia, had dream s every night that followed one another in a regular sequence according to the cycle o f the liturgical year, a m nem onic feat com parable to Pappenheim ’s hallucinations recall­ ing each day o f the p reviou s year in e x act sequ en ce. A nother su b ject, F ried erick e H auffe (1801 —1 8 2 9 ), “th e ,S ee re ss o f P re v o rst,” spoke fre ­ quently in an unknown language, and although uneducated and the daugh­ ter o f a gam ekeeper, she delivered recitatives in the purest High Germ an instead o f the Swabian dialect com m only spoken by the people around her. In her m agnetic trances, the “Seeress” often prescribed treatm ents which unfailingly cured her exactly when p red icted , ju st as Pappenheim p r e ­ dicted the date o f her recovery to Breuer. Estelle L’ Hardy (1 8 2 5 —1862), who fell ill upon her father’s death, was cured o f a dual personality through the dictations o f a com fortin g angel appearing to her during “m agnetic”

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sleep. H er d o cto r m anaged a gradual fusion o f her norm al and “m agnetic” states by establishing an em otional rap p o rt that challenged E stelle’s depen ­ dency on her mother. Like Bertha, Estelle relied on a special relationship with her physician for her cure. Ellenberger sees Pappenheim as a kind o f revenant o f the “m agn etic” patients w ho p e rfo rm e d m iracu lou s feats o f m em ory, spoke in tongues, controlled the form s o f their treatm en ts, and predicted the dates o f their “cures.”31 Another analogue to Bertha Pappenheim is her Parisian contem porary Blanche W ittmann, known as “queen o f the hys­ terics” because o f the im pressive sculptural fo rm s o f her p oses and the longevity o f her tenure at the Salpetriere hospital. The experim ents with trau­ matic paralysis and their reproduction under hypnosis which Freud w itnessed at the Salpetriere are today regarded with skepticism , and Ellenberger con­ cludes that Pappenheim ’s treatm ent was a clever trick , Yet her sto ry and C harcot’s seances at the Salpetriere were m ajor inspirations to Freud. D uring her hysteria, Anna O. had taken up w riting in a curious fashion. H er rig h t hand being paralyzed, she w rote with h er left hand and used Rom an printed letters copied from her edition o f Shakespeare. Such incor­ poration o f foreign signifiers might have been linked to her desire for psychic integration and prefigures Pappenheim ’s later role as a translator. She resu r­ rected and tran slated the m em o irs o f her an cesto r G liickel o f H am eln (1 6 4 6 —1724), who was “a born w riter and storyteller.” W ishing to transm it Jew ish culture to a w orld ignorant ofY iddish, Pappenheim translated into G erm an sagas and legends from the Talmud and Midrash, together with folk tales and The Women’s B ib le}2 Special significance adheres to the sundry lan­ guages Pappenheim spoke in her hysteria and in later life because her use of translation as a verbal strategy reverberates in psychoanalytic preoccupation w ith the term and the p rocess. Jacqu es Lacan, for exam p le, calls p sy ­ chotherapy the “repatriation o f alienated signifiers.” Freud refers to the Anna O. case m ore than forty tim es in his collected works and frequently in his letters. The intensity o f interest these references indicate suggests that she emblematized something essential for him. At the tim e he was w orking out his theory o f hysteria, Freud was translating Hippolyte Bernheim and Charcot from French into G erm an; his and Breuer’s “Preliminary Com m unication” on the subject was immediately translated into Spanish, French, and English. Later on Freud conducted several analyses in translation, and psychoanalysis has been a multilingual m ovem ent. Freu d co m p ared the sy m p to m ato lo gy o f h ysteria to a “p icto grap h ic script which has beco m e intelligible after the discovery o f a few bilingual

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in scription s.” 33 Freud uses the w ord “tran slation ” to d iscu ss the w ork o f psychoanalysis and the w ork o f the unconscious. In the “d ream -w o rk,” the latent wish is “translated” into the im agery o f the m anifest content o f the dream . Freud w rites: “The dream -thoughts and the dream -con ten t are p re ­ sented to us like tw o versions o f the sam e su bject-m atter in tw o different languages. O r, m ore properly, the dream -content seem s like a tran scrip t o f the dream -th oughts into another m od e o f e x p re ssio n , w hose ch aracters and syntactic laws it is ou r business to discover by com parin g the original and the translation.”34 In hysteria, says Freud, psychic m essages are “tran s­ lated” into som atic exp ressio n . Analytic interventions he con sidered “tran s­ lation s” o f the u n co n scio u s into the con scio u s. T h e “talkin g c u re ” is the “translation o f affects into w ords.” R epression for Freud w as a “failure o f translation .’’ Thus the fo rm s in which Anna O. com m unicated her distress and h er shifts b etw een lan g u ages to e x p re ss levels o f c o n sc io u sn e ss m etaphorize what developed into what one may call a psychoanalytic con ­ cept o f tran slatio n .35 Aragon and B reton ’s celebration o f nineteenth-century hysterics as fellow artists indicates that the surrealists recognized hysteria as an expressive dis­ co u rse ;36 and we may add, it was a discourse o f femininity addressed to patri­ archal thought. Lucien Israel notes that the question o f w hether or not hys­ teria is an illness has received no answer. H is ow n analysis o f B ertha Pappenheim ventures close to the idea that fem inism is transform ed hyste­ ria, or m ore precisely, that hysteria is fem inism lacking a social netw ork in the outer w orld. In popular culture the w ord “hysterical” has often been used in attem pts to discredit fem inist expression, for both hysterics and fem inists are “out o f control” : neither hysterics nor fem inists cooperate dutifully with patriarchal conventions. A ttem pts to discredit fem inists as “hysterical” derive from a repressive im pulse sim ilar to the defense that creates hysterical sym p­ tom s in the first place: repudiation— o f socially untow ard feelings such as anger and resentm ent. Thus one may call hysteria a self-repudiating form o f feminine discourse in which the body signifies what social conditions make it im possible to state linguistically. Although hysteria had mainly been associated with w om en, Charcot and Freud dem onstrated the existence o f m ale hysteria and opened to analysis the repressed femininity o f m en. If we valorize hysteria as a form o f m aking the unconscious conscious, we can call Bertha Pappenheim a forebear o f psy­ choanalytic fem inism . We note that psychoanalysis entered the history o f consciousness in dialogue with feminine subjectivity, for F reu d ’s discovery o f

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the unconscious was a response to the body language o f nineteenth-century hysterics. Thus, psychoanalysis can be read as a translation into theory o f the language o f hysteria. Both psychoanalysis and hysteria subvert the reigning cultural o rd er by explod in g its linguistic conventions and decom po sin g its fa