I’d like to say first off, that I actually spent some time looking at the "other" online resources today and am quite impressed with the huge volume of information there.  I don’t know if I love it, or I hate it, but these pages represent a whole lot of information that I want to learn. 

All of this feminist criticism has made me do some thinking.  I’ve found that I especially enjoy the parts about feminism that point out that men are themselves victims of the patriarchy.  This puts some irony into the whole system and really makes for some interesting interpretations.   It is an easily overlooked point of feminism due to the dismissive attitude that some people have (“feminism is just a bunch of angry chicks who want to castrate all men” kind of attitude).  Not that I think marginalization of women isn’t an important thing to study, this just happens to be the part that hooked me on feminism.

 

I’ve been thinking more and more about feminism lately including some of my past experiences with gender roles.  I was recently in the Chekhov one act play “The Boor” (Miriam was in it too) and this chapter really got me thinking about the gender roles I was portraying and grappling with, without even really being aware.  In studying character motivation and goals, it seems like I was studying feminism in miniature.  This chapter opens up that play a bit more for me.

 

About 8 months ago, my girlfriend asked me if I was a feminist.  I was a bit confused and didn’t know quite how to answer since I had never given it much (or any) thought.  I told her I don’t declare myself many things and I don’t think I would call myself a feminist at all.  She responded that she didn’t think she would be dating me if I wasn’t a feminist.

 

-----------------Arnie's Somewhat Longwinded Reply-----------------

Ironically, I am taking a break from reading the "Working With Feminism" papers to post this.  I really enjoyed reading this series of postings, and not only because Discovering got into the online materials I've been squirreling away all these months.  The kinds of thinking you're all doing suggests that the course's examination of theory as ways of seeing is having the desired effect.  Don't worry if you're not a doctrinaire This or That Kind of Theorist.  To do so would risk descent into the bad old days of debates among Marxists, Feminists, and other politically radicalized critics who wound up attacking others on grounds that they could not claim to be a practicing This or That because they failed to adhere to a particular ideological position or to deploy a specific kind of critical method.  Though they did not use the term "politically correct," that's what they were worrying about. 

     There are basic levels of competent practice.  For instance, no feminist ever made bra-avoidance a theoretically defining feminist practice, nor do current Marxist thinkers advocate a dictatorship of the proletariat.  Feminists do believe that gender is politically determined and that it is a politically determining factor in shaping our consciousness, our cultural products (like literature), and the like.  Marxists do believe that forms of false consciousness are haunting our attempts to make sense of our lives and cultures, and they think class has a lot to do with exposing its existence.  Figuring out what the absurdities of each theory are, and what is salvagable, also is a crucial part of each "Working With" paper's "Part One."  However, the kinds of minutely nuanced definition-mongering that can arise at the top end of the theory-heap do not produce much light, however heated the rhetoric.

     When the question of what theoretical flag I sail under comes up, I prefer to invoke the concept of "overdetermination," which just happens (neither ironically nor coincidentally) to be relevant to this week's discussion of New Historicism and Cultural Criticism.  Freud used the term to describe the complex interrelationships which construct consciousness, a complexity which is belied by the simplified schema of id-ego-superego that often is used to explain Freudian consciousness theory.  Freud, himself, came near to despair as a result the simplifications sought by commentators, teachers and students who tried to find an easier way into his theory.  Louis Althusser swiped the term creatively for Marxists when he described the operations of social systems as overdetermined.  For instance, what U.S. forces in Iraq currently are discovering is that, even though the dictatorial government is gone, there is something resistantly, resolutely "Iraqi" about the remaining social systems which strive with each other and support each other in the process of power negotiation Michel Foucault describes in his "exchange" theory (material goods, people, ideas, all circulating in a non-hierarchical fashion, even out and define distribution positions in the culture).  Similarly, one's gender identity is the product of many discourses, some of which one is aware of, some of which one likes, some of which one considers unspeakable, etc. etc.  The notion of discourses "speaking us into being" may sound "tetched in the head," but it's not a bad way of seeing around the corner of the whole system as it responds to our pokes and prods with little gives and takes that, in their turn, poke and prod us into new shapes of consciousness.  Comparisons to the physics of weightlessness are instructive.  Push hard, intellectually, and you'll go someplace, but you'll also affect the thought in the place to which you are going, as well as the place you left behind (by your absence, the acceleration of your departure, etc.).

     You're probably familiar with the notion of overdetermination via the famous example of the butterfly flapping its wings on one continent and being linked by relatively few connections to the causes of a great storm on another continent.  For a quirky but well-informed guide to some of notions by somebody who's not me, check out Satyananda J. Gabriel's page on the topic.  He's a political economist who does film studies at Mt. Holyoke.  (Egad--what an eclectic Econ Department they must have!)  If you backspace to his home page, beware the whacked-out rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" he's installed on it.  Your roommate may suspect you of drug use.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/overdetermination.htm

He also is lucid, if somewhat jargon-heavy, on the general topic of Post-Structuralism and how it got that way:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/post_structuralism.htm

     Basically, what we're up against in this Post-Structuralist world-view, is the necessity to consider the viewpoint of and to deploy the methods of a wide range of relevant theories if we are to avoid being trapped in the limited perspective of any one of them.  For some situations and purposes, Feminism will perform the necessary "window washing" you'll need to perceive "The Matrix" in operation, and for others, Reader-Response or Marxism or Structuralism (in careful doses!) will do the trick.  Even Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Wimsatt & Beardsley & Hirsch may come in handy!  Combinations, a "theory cocktail" as it were, are the most common form of theoretical practice in use today.  To paraphrase Chairman Mao, "Let a thousand theories bloom!"

--a. (Not that "Arnie" in Gabriel's "Overdetermination" page, but the other one.)