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

xxivcharges that political feminism is “essentialist”, Modleski points out: “But surely formany women the phrase ‘women’s experience’ is shorthand for ‘women’sexperience of political oppression’, and it is around this experience that they haveorganized and out of this experience that they have developed a sense of solidarity,commonality and community” (1991, p. 17). Indeed, the writing of bell hooks is aprofound examination of the obstacles to, but potentials for, female solidarity. It isgrounded in black, female experience. Hooks illuminates race differences and racistprocesses, and reconceptualizes female community and solidarity. She charges thatessentialism is perpetuated by white hetero-patriarchy, while marginalized groupsbeginning from their own standpoint are targeted by an “apolitical” postmodernism.In a review of Diana Fuss’s Essentially Speaking, she writes: “Identity politicsemerges out of the struggles of…exploited groups to have a standpoint on which tocritique dominant structures, a position that gives purpose…to struggle. Criticalpedagogies of liberation…necessarily embrace experience, confession and testimonyas relevant ways of knowing” (1991a, p. 180). Resisting the notion that race andexperience do not matter, P.Gabrielle Foreman shows that “[r]ace, and the habits ofsurviving we’ve developed to resist its American deployment, is material in a racistculture which so staunchly refuses to admit it is so. This we know but find almosttoo obvious to write down. Yet our silent space is rapidly being filled with postmodern,post-Thurgood Marshall concepts of the declining significance of race”(1991, p. 13).There is an identity politics to feminist poststructuralism: an identification withthe (white) male text. Elizabeth Meese, for example, writes: “When gender is thefocus for examining difference, deconstructive criticism might even be said to beidentical with the feminist project” (1986, p. xi). Others spend time cataloguingfeminism’s convergences with and divergences from this masculine point ofreference. Alice Jardine (1985) does this in Gynesis, 11 and Hekman (1990) inGender and Knowledge. Some insist that feminism belongs to postmodernism. In“The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,” Craig Owens 12mistakenly tries to improve the status of feminism by arguing that it is part ofpostmodernism:The absence of discussions of sexual difference in writings aboutpostmodernism, as well as the fact that few women have engaged in the10. cont. from previous page many feminists of colour and lesbian feminists are complex enough tobe easily misread as both essentialist and deconstructionist by those who reject dialecticalpossibilities… Today, it is not hard to see diverse, heroic and exciting, practice among ever widergroups of women who are consciously and collectively claiming the right to define themselves/theiridentity, to speak for themselves, and to name their world; who are articulating their own values andvisions; who are committed to building solidarity/sisterhood as they articulate their differences.Nevertheless, postmodern feminists choose not to see the new dialectical possibilities this practicecreates and reveals. Their theory remains impervious to the lessons as well as the imperatives ofpractice.”11. See Toril Moi (1988) for a critique of Jardine’s work as a postfeminism which never really had afeminist stage.12. See Elspeth Probyn’s (1987) critique of Craig Owens and Donna Haraway.