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

xxviiiorthodox. In particular, she targets the work of Showalter, Baym, Marcus, Robinson,and Auerbach in Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship, edited by Shari Benstock.Meese (1990, p. 9) seems to be furious with Showalter 13 who “urges feminist criticsto stick with theory received ‘via the women’s movement and women’s studies’.“Meese takes the position that Father Knows Best, or at least what mother does not,and that deconstruction will force Women’s Studies’ feminism to relinquish itspower and “orthodoxy”. Thus, Meese reenacts the daughter’s rage and rejection ofthe mother, and the turning towards the Father which ironically recreates her as thesame. Luce Irigaray writes the dutiful daughter’s process in “And One Doesn’t StirWithout the Other” (1981, p. 62):I’ll leave you for someone who seems more alive than you. For someone whodoesn’t prepare anything for me to eat. For someone who leaves me empty ofhim, mouth gaping on his truth. I’ll follow him with my eyes, I’ll listen towhat he says, I’ll try to walk behind him.Escape to the House of the Father is not one. It is the path to patriarchal wifehood.Jane Gallop puts the double-cross this way:Postmodernist thinkers are defending against the downfall of patriarchy bytrying to be not male. In drag, they are aping the feminine rather than thinkingtheir place as men in an obsolescent patriarchy. The female postmodernistthinker finds herself in the dilemma of trying to be like Daddy who is trying tobe a woman. The double-cross is intriguing and even fun [sic], but alsotroubling if one suspects that it is the father’s last ruse to seduce the daughterand retain her respect, the very respect that legitimized the father’s rule (1988,p. 100).The real absurdity of postmodernist feminism is its sexist context. For example, at arecent conference the male commentator 14 criticized Nancy Fraser for her sparsereferencing of feminist work. But has he ever spoken against Foucault’s ormasculine theory’s sexism? Those men who do take up feminist texts often onlycomplain that the writer isn’t feminist enough. He didn’t complain that Foucault isnot anti-sexist, which in any case does not involve him in the same political risk as itdoes Fraser.The objections to radical feminism’s break with tradition are particularlyacademic, because it is there in the institution, that we must locate ourselves in thediscourse in order to write credibly. For it is true that if we read/write/speak ofwomen, very few will attend to what we say, even if the women referred to are notfeminists. So that the objection to leaving male theory behind expresses a real fear ofbeing silenced: unless you read/write/speak the boys, no one will listen to you. You13. See Modleski (1991, pp. 3–6) for an account of Elaine Showalter’s switch to gender studies and“gynocidal feminisms”.14. Tom Wartenberg, speaking at the special session on Unruly Practices by Nancy Fraser, at theSociety of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 29th Annual Meeting, October 11, 1990,Valhalla, Pennsylvania.