Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism

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simplistic, words like oppression, exploitation, and domination” (1990, pp. 51–52).
Kathleen Barry also criticizes the academic marketplace, the de-funding of analyses
of racism, sexism and class oppression, and the “defeminism of women’s studies”
(1991, p. 83). “Immense political energy is devoted to seeing that alternatives are
nipped in the bud, rendered ridiculous, and never adequately funded,” charges Mary
O’Brien with reference to women and health care (1989, p. 213).
In her introduction to Feminism/Postmodernism, Nicholson defines
postmodernists as critical of objectivity and neutrality and this is, she claims, “even
more radical” (1990, p. 3) than the work of scholars involved in “other” political
movements, including feminism, Marxism, Black and gay liberation. It is
postmodernists, not feminists, who “have extended the field where power has
traditionally been viewed as operating, for example, from the state and the economy
to such domains as sexuality and mental health” (1990, p. 4). Thus, at least one
century of diverse feminist scholarship and practice is unrecognized, ignored,
rewritten, trivialized. It appears that a certain authoritative consensus is being
promoted and recirculated, a somewhat totalizing postmodern feminist metanarrative
about the history and the potential of feminism. Curious how the critical practice is
not situated in a study of the culture or the epistemology of postmodernism.
Nicholson believes that postmodernism deconstructs the “God’s eye view” (1990,
p. 2, 3) bias of an Enlightenment methodology. I believe that Nicholson has read
Derrida, but did not recognize him. Yet Nicholson’s book has been well-received by
Enlightenment misogynists; as Modleski points out, “postmodern feminists might
well wish to ponder how they wound up in this new ‘alliance’ with anti-feminist
humanism” (1991, p. 14).
Gender and Knowledge, Elements of a Postmodern Feminism goes one step
beyond the presentation of feminism as an aspect of postmodernism, and portrays
postmodernism as the ultimate (post) feminism. But then, “Consent”, as Mary
O’Brien ironizes, “relies on a perception by the public that, imperfect though a
system may be, it is the only game in town” (1989, p. 213). And the game here is the
absorption of all critical space by postmodernism. Hekman’s project is to
postmodernize feminism; hers is not a feminist critique of postmodernism, but a
“postmodern approach to feminism” (1990, p. 3). It is no longer a question of
extending postmodernism by adding gender; it is feminism which must be purged by
postmodernism of Enlightenment, essentialist, absolutist and foundationalist
tendencies. Cartesian epistemology, not class or heterosexuality, is the main enemy
here, and Foucault, Derrida and Gadamer are brought forward to critique feminism.
Indeed, Hekman’s major target is not the sexism of social and political thought, but
the “women’s way of knowing” literature. Daly, Ruddick, Gilligan, Chodorow,
Lorde, feminist standpoint theory, the “Marxist feminist camp” (1990, p. 40), the
“contradictory” (1990, p. 30) radical feminists, the maternal thinkers, all are
distinctly less perfect than Derrida and Foucault: “The strongest case for a
postmodern feminism can be made through an examination of the work of Derrida
and Foucault” (1990, p. 155). Hekman proposes a “conversation of mankind”
[sic] (1990, p. 9) between feminism and postmodernism (1990, p. 123). In this
Taming of the Shrew it seems that only man may speak of woman and not be a