the minnesota review n.s. 41-42 (1995)Devoney LooserThis Feminism Which Is Not One: Women, Generations, InstitutionsBecause the last decade has seen such widespread disagreements among feminists, trying to come to terms with the "field" of feminist studies today presents a daunting task. Comparisons, juxtapositions, and "mappings" have been attempted, as feminisms have garnered a share of institutional cache. To those just entering the fray, charting this territory may seem a never-ending task, and sifting through "authoritative" versions of second-wave feminist "triumphs" or "conflicts" often becomes a dizzying process. But there is more to these versions than simply providing neophytes with much-needed summary. What is at issue in these classificatory negotiations is, as Jane Gallop has noted, precisely "whose version of [feminist] history is going to be told to the next generation"(Gallop et al. 362). This is no small question. In the ongoing institutionalization of feminist studies, particularly in the humanities, generational conflict is one "version" of feminist history that is currently being drafted. Who will be included in that next feminist generation (or furthermore, if there will even "be" a next one) has been registered as an anxiety, especially among established feminist scholars. These speculations have led some feminists to conclude that "we" are now at an impasse (Fuss xii)-that "we" as feminists are "dissolving" (or have dissolved) as a "we." As "young" feminists, however, our provisional feminist "we" has been inundated with very particular versions of this so-called impasse. These versions usually seek to implicate our "generation" in the academy (whom I would identify as feminist graduate students and junior faculty) as the problem or as the solution. If consciousness of exclusion through naming is now acute, as Donna Haraway claims (155), so is consciousness of who or what will constitute "Feminists: The Next Generation." In what follows, I will consider the ways in which generations of feminisms have been represented and what these models imply for those of us dubbed "young turks"("Conference Call" 75). In the late 80s, it seemed that generational anxieties would take hold in the guise of a theory versus feminism debate. "Young" feminists practiced theory, so the stereotype went, and "older" feminists did not-nor would they want to. For Nina Baym, the phrase "feminist theorist" was written up as a virtual contradiction in terms. Baym wrote that feminist theory succeeds only when it "ignores or dismisses the earlier paths of feminist literary study as 'naive' and grounds its own theories in those currently in vogue with the men who make theory"(45). Baym suggested that feminists who used theory wallowed in male-identified esoteric luxury and were ruining the sisterhood that she and other feminists created in the 70s. There would be no future for a commonality of women, Baym claimed, if we could not "traverse the generations"(58). Baym suggested that she was a pluralist who lamented the "musts" and "shoulds" of recent feminist criticism (59). Theorists, however, "must" and "should" be expelled from Baym's own sisterhood, it seems. Such examples of feminists who would prefer to leave each other off the proverbial map could be listed ad infinitum. Some have suggested that former feminist politics have been supplanted by a yuppiedom in which studying feminism is now being "used" by graduate students. Annette Kolodny has lamented that "the seminar in feminist theory [has become] solely a means to professional advancement"(30). Donna Landry, in her important article about the institutionalization/commodification of feminisms, also claims that she is "unnerved" by "young feminist critics whose introduction to feminism has been a course in graduate school, usually one in 'French Feminist Theory'"(160). At this point, we might be tempted to ask who are the absent professors introducing these unnerving young feminists to the field? How are these more senior members of our field complicitous with the institutionalization of feminisms they may (or may not) lament? In many of these versions of events, however, the focus is not on tenured feminists but on academic daughters who have gone wrong, swayed by fashion, careerism or political apathy. The daughters have either killed their mothers or loved their fathers to excess-or so it is claimed. Blaming academic feminist "mothers" or "daughters" does little to further discussions of the so-called impasse. To be sure, such "blaming" frames identities that are often not even the case. The linkage of youth with trendy or apathetic theories and age with dyed-in-the-wool activist feminisms is in itself a problem: there are theorists who were active in the feminist movements of the 60s and 70s, and there are young feminists who don't do critical theory. There are even feminist theorists who are activitists and non-theoretical feminists who don't do activism either. The appropriateness of any of these assumed divisions is not, finally, what I would like to take issue with here. The widespread assumption by many about the next generation of feminists is that we have been "infected" by theory. In the last several years, theory/feminism antagonisms have continued to surface but seem to have been reconfigured into generational anxieties more generally. Even among those feminists who have aligned themselves-and not just males-with theory, generational speculations surface. In Conflicts in Feminism (1990), Marianne Hirsch claimed that feminists today have "somehow not been able to raise a generation that builds on what came before," and she lamented the passing of a feminist community in which it used to be a pleasure to work (Gallop et al. 365). Though Hirsch herself and many others have since questioned whether the "community" of 70s feminism was as unified and halcyon a sisterhood as many now claim, nostalgia for early second-wave feminist practices has proliferated. Much of this nostalgia (and its subsequent generational implications) has circulated informally-I've seen it in countless conference question-and-answer sessions, for instance-but some of it can be documented in print as well. Nancy K. Miller expresses such sentiments in her article "Decades"(1992). In her now trademark style of "personal criticism," Miller writes of the importance of constructing a feminist archives and collects anecdotes from her feminist coming-to-consciousness in the 1960s to the present. She concludes: "I confess: I look back wishfully to the 1970s . . . I miss the passion of community (what we took for community), and our belief that things would change"(80). Miller then links feminism's movement into middle age (characterized by retrospection and self-criticism) with what she calls the "panic" of her own aging. She asks, "Is there life for a female academic after the feminist plot of tenure and promotion?" Miller's article, in its adept mixing of the personal/professional/political/historical, raises many important questions for feminist studies. However, some of the questions it raises are not the ones Miller asks. For instance, are tenure and promotion worth excessive worry in the frame of reference of job-seeking feminists, whose "plots" wallow in the "before" section? Are we, who are not yet fully institutionalized, part of this middle aging of feminism as well? To what "age" of feminism do we belong? Furthermore, to what "age" of feminism do graduate students and junior faculty who are now experiencing "middle age" belong? In addition to the difficulties of feminist nostalgia and aging, there is the troubling use of the descriptor "passion." A repeatedly invoked characterization of "the next generation" of feminists is that we may well be passionless where our predecessors were full of passion. Our dearth of passion has often been linked to an abundance of "theory." In "Passion and Politics in Women's Studies in the Nineties"(1991), Renate Klein argues that the early years of second-wave feminism were actually years of solidarity and inclusiveness and that 70s feminism wanted to, as she puts it, liberate all women (125). Many women of color, lesbians, and non-Western women have begged to differ, but these feminists are not explicitly among those skewered in Klein's article. Rather, poststructuralist feminisms are seen as "passionless," inorganic, unreal, and horrific.
Klein links these feminisms to what she concludes are parallel horrifying developments in reproductive and genetic technology. Klein's preferred politics, as she outlines them, would not highlight divisions but commonalities. Her final section shows what this would mean for "the next generation." She concludes:
In yet another example of documentable horrors, in The Knowledge Explosion: Generations of Feminist Scholarship (1992), Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender suggest that their anthology contains a virtual absence of young feminists because there are so few. They write, "Another issue we would want to pursue now is, where are all the young women? They are virtually invisible in these pages"(15). Where, then, are the "generations" of their title? This dearth of "young feminists" may well be the case in larger circles.1 It hardly seems to hold true in the academy, however, particularly in graduate study in the humanities and social sciences. For Kramarae and Spender, a so-called lack of young feminists is traced back to the possibilities of ageism and, again, to the difficulties facing established feminists who are trying to transmit information to the next generation (15). Examples of feminists who would prefer to write up certain factions as more properly feminist might be listed ad infinitum as well. It is tempting to ask who is at fault when generations of feminists don't see eye to eye. Putting aside the issue of blame to some degree, we must concede that part of the "fault" is with the framing of the question itself. Blaming the "impasse" of feminisms on passionless graduate students who are misbehaving children or just plain "bad" daughters-or, on the other hand, on jealous or territorial mothers-becomes dangerous and reductive. Such familial models keep feminist struggles from being viewed in larger contexts, for one. If and how various interpretations of "feminism" will "traverse the generations" involves social and institutional questions not limited to age- or role-bound understandings of feminisms and generations. If our field has seen a preponderance of feminist mapping of differences, many feminists are now calling for a truce as a result of the oft-cited backlash. Calls for community continue to surface. Kolodny stated that it was important for us to tell our history so that others don't tell it for us, but she sought out a problematic "authentic intellectual [feminist] voice" to do so (36). She wanted to recover "the full diversity of our history as we lived it-and not as some cursory overview homogenized it" (36). Her wished-for harmony of feminist voices suggested that we could create a composite feminist picture if only we had enough "true stories" piled on top of each other. For Baym, it was not so much a matter of telling "our own" story but of finding a way to enforce the retelling of an earlier story: feminists once got along well and now have fragmented, according to Baym. As a result, we must re-radicalize or get back to feminist origins in order to "survive" (59). Again, this origin has been called a legend by many who contend that "Feminists have been attacking feminists from the beginning" (Gallop et. al. 365). These examples suggest that if feminisms do embrace a model for collectivity, it cannot be one that assumes or mandates agreement in advance (Shumway 115). Moreover, the very desirability of agreement and disagreement for feminisms could stand rethinking. This "rethinking" has been taking place in various guises that go above and beyond filial piety models and mere nostalgia. The editors of Conflicts in Feminism state the hope that out of these essays will emerge new models for preserving the dynamic possibilities of difference (5). Editors Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller register their complaint that "schematic divisions" among feminisms have "grown stale" (4). It would seem that here one might find new and promising tactics for approaching or engaging in conflict. In a dialogue about the state of criticizing in feminist criticism, Hirsch, Gallop, and Miller informally try to make sense of feminist struggles in the academy. The collective plea, throughout the dialogue, is to stop trashing among feminists and to keep up respectful criticism, using Gallop's critical tactics as a model. All three seem in agreement with Gallop's conclusion to the dialogue. Gallop says: "We've had too much of this debate about whether we should or shouldn't criticize. What we need is an ethics of criticism" (368). Interestingly, earlier in the dialogue, Gallop points to Helene Moglen's and Evelyn Fox Keller's widely-cited article on competition among academic feminists. In that article, Moglen and Keller proposed that established feminists still see themselves as powerless and victimized and that graduate students resent this. Gallop notes that she feels vulnerable when attacked during a lecture, that she "forgets" that the person who is attacking her is a powerless graduate student. She points out that feminists do indeed have power in the world of academic literary criticism. I think it is important to link Gallop's point here, then, to her conclusion to the dialogue: what does it mean that these are the feminists who are calling for an "ethics" of criticism? A 1990 "Conference Call" in differences offers a similar case. The written exchange among three so-called "young turks" of feminism and four established feminists brings up many of the same issues. The discussion is largely productive, and collectively, the dialogue makes some of the most compelling points on the topic of women, generations, and institutions that are currently available in print. Some of the "old guard" rightly criticize the family romance implications of feminist "generational" lore but go on to reject outright the term "generation," calling it a false division. Again, as is the case with an "ethics of criticism," perhaps we should ask if it is easier to reject the very term "generation" from an established position. To call attention to the problematic ways that the term "generation" is constituted and circulated among feminists is one thing-to suggest that as a category it is a "false division" that need not require further scrutiny, another. The differences "Conference Call," like the Conflicts in Feminism dialogue, is most telling in its implicit illustrations of just how necessary a retheorization of generation, competition, and conflict among feminists is and should become. Some might suggest that less conflict and less competition-and not a retheorization of them-offer the answer. In her "Upping the Anti (sic) in Feminist Theory," Teresa De Lauretis problematizes simple feminism/theory divisions. She, like many, expresses exasperation with published feuds among feminist camps. De Lauretis derides Chris Weedon's attempt to "name a winner in the feminist theory contest" (258), suggesting that the answer is to eschew a feminist orthodoxy. De Lauretis outlines and then counts herself among yet another "new" camp, what she calls "non-denominational feminists" (260). These feminists, it would appear, are above and beyond the contest. These sorts of conclusions rankle; on the face of it, many feminists are attempting inclusivity where others have sought divisiveness-trying to mend where others have practiced blatant one-upwomanship. Shouldn't these "inclusive" feminists be credited for trying to smooth the waters, we might ask? Here, however, the focus can't be on good intentions. As Donna Landry has noted, "Feminism looks more homogeneous or heterogeneous depending on where one stands. And as with other commodities, only a committed user can fully experience the fiercer forms of brand loyalty which can make other positions, other brands just disappear" (164). As this comment suggests, we might consider (1) how recent calls for feminist unity and calls for a halt to certain kinds of feminist contest and competition might make some of us "just disappear"; and (2) how to deal with this "commodification" in larger circles-how to ask different questions depending on where "we" stand. On the issue of "just disappearing," I think there is a need for a healthy dose of skepticism about enforcing critical ethics. To be fair, most of the aforementioned critics do not pretend that problems facing feminists in the academy will be solved by a new-and-improved unity. But these unifying strategies beget further questions: Will those who break hypothetical critical codes be relegated to the ground of non-feminist or post-feminist? To what extent does an ethics of criticism comprise censorship rather than camaraderie? To what extent is the "non-denominational" monicker a reinforcing of the already-empowered feminist institutional status quo? There is also a need for skepticism about the "handing down" of feminist knowledge, as if it exists in a pure form and may not be altered in any way but negatively. At root of both of these issues is the desirability of feminist conflict, which-perhaps because of lingering nostalgia for an uncomplicated "sisterhood" or because of its associations with "male" practices-has been largely devalued. Some have attempted to change this. Victoria Davion's article "Do Good Feminists Compete?" attempts to theorize feminist competition and conflict outside of a warlike model. More work in this vein is needed.2 As bell hooks has written, "feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose" (4). Attendant issues that figure into calls for feminist community are the simultaneous mainstreaming of feminism and the emergence of so-called postfeminism. When feminism is simplified and rewritten as monolithic (as many have suggested is the case in the writings of critics Camille Paglia and Katherine Roiphe) conflicts move from a question of degree to one of kind.3 Here, I would suggest, the existence of feminist conflicts provides an "answer" as much as it does an "impasse": these conflicts provide necessary proof that all feminists don't "embrace the feminine" and that all aren't "married to bookworm wimps" (Paglia A39). Conflicts show that not all feminisms adhere to a "victim" model of identity politics. What has seemed damaging, then, also holds possibilities for redeployment as constructive strategy. Seeing "conflict" as strategy, however, does nothing to address the issue of telling feminist "history." Are there ways to sort out competing definitions of feminisms and theories, to "translate" feminisms between generations-or to intragenerationally traverse differences within feminisms? Are these even worthwhile goals? Linda Kauffman has argued, "If feminist criticism is to continue to exert the enormous impact during the next twenty years that it has had in the last twenty, it must constantly renegotiate its relationship to its own history . . . and to the dominant intellectual discourses of the present age" (Kauffman 3). Landry has concluded: "If we don't make academic feminism's uneven histories visible and accessible, no one else will. There can be no going back to a time before commodification, and it is up to us to articulate the historical differences between us, and their institutional effects, productively and not sancti- or acrimoniously" (170). Taking these calls a step further, Mary Childers and bell hooks suggest that the way to deal with our differences is to reconceive feminism itself. They have provided important ways to continue this negotiation with their arguments for viewing feminism as "in motion"-literally as "movement"-rather than as an always already established entity. This certainly provides a beginning for dealing with feminist conflicts, though the emphasis cannot be on the singular "movement." A notion of linear movement is an improvement over one of stasis or needed regression, to be sure, but it, too, has its shortcomings. As part of the "feminism that is not one" in the academy, many next-generation feminists are, of course, painfully aware of the process of "renegotiating" relationships to our histories as feminists and to our espoused feminist histories. Our "renegotiating" is what has many so worried. How far will "we" working with seemingly "unorthodox" feminisms stray from the last twenty years of work in our confrontations with other discourses, including those falling under the rubric "theory"? Who will determine and measure the point(s) from which this supposed straying occurs? One strategy for dealing with these questions involves eschewing versions of feminism that posit a continuous line of heritage. There is no longer-there never was-an uncomplicated unity of feminist thought. As a result, strategies to (re)forge a feminist community, to "get back to our roots," or to succeed in "transmitting" ideas to the next generation must be rendered suspect. To say this is not to deny the importance of second-wave feminist work. Rather, it is to attempt to open the term "feminism" to future possibilities (as theorists such as Denise Riley and Judith Butler have suggested we do with the category "women"). It is no easy task-no innocent task-to pronounce what it is time for emphasizing now, increased feminist collusion or continued differentiation. Haraway has argued that it is time for building coalitions-that at no other time was there greater need for unity to "confront the dominations of 'race,' 'gender,' 'sexuality,' and 'class' and that there has been no other time when this unity could have been possible" (157). Perhaps feminist strategies for integration and cooperation will become increasingly important. But perhaps some calls for unity, especially those seeking linear "solutions" or craving for "returns" will simply provide a way for empowered feminists to reign in the strays. Attempts to institutionalize a feminist community (whether through contesting contests, reforming bad feminist daughters, or returning to mythical origins) may only constitute organized generational stifling. Whatever the case, feminisms should be wary about the making taboo of discord, discontinuity, and conflict. These have proved and may yet prove productive tactics for the renegotiation of feminist generations within the academy.4 Notes
Works Cited
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