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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

MULTIPLICITY IN IDENTITY:
BEYOND THE METAPHYSICS OF SUBSTANCE

presented by

Crista M. Lebens

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

Ph. D . degree in Philosophy

 

 

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MULTIPLICITY IN IDENTITY: BEYOND THE METAPHYSICS OF SUBSTANCE
By

Crista M. Lebens

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Philosophy

2000

ABSTRACT
MULTIPLICITY IN IDENTITY: BEYOND THE METAPHYSICS OF SUBSTANCE
By

Crista M. Lebens

Any theory incorporating ‘identity’ as a central concept must respond to the
criticisms of identity posed by postmodemists. For feminist theorists, the most complete
articulation of such criticisms has been developed by Judith Butler. Butler focuses on
gender identity at the level of subjectivity, how the individual is constructed as a
gendered being. The conception of subjectivity Butler criticizes is one that legitimates
the social order by masking the power dynamics involved in the construction of subjects.

In this dissertation, I argue that the construction of subjectivity developed by
Maria Lugones engages the criticisms of identity raised by Judith Butler. Furthermore,
mestiza, or multiplicitous subjectivity, on Lugones‘ account, can be the basis for political
action. To illustrate this, I analyze the construction of gender identity and racial identity.
Finally, I Show that mestiza subjectivity as a ground for politics, provides a means for

constructing a sustained coalitional identity politics.

This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Patricia Lebens
and to the memory of my father, Nic Lebens Jr, and Terri Jewell

iii

Acknowledgements

I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the support,
encouragement, and critical engagement of many people.

First I want to thank the members of the feminist writing group in Lansing for
careful commentary on many drafts, and for comic relief: Ann Francis, Kimn Carlton-
Smith, Dara Bryant, Kali Mujadar, Teri Swezey, and the organizer of the group, Penny
Gardner.

The path to the completion of this project stretches back to include those who
shaped my politics in Signiﬁcant ways, especially Marcelle L, who introduced me to the
concept of a paradigm and how to move out of one. Susan Amacher and Becky Gunn
introduced me to lesbian-feminist politics. Three teachers who made a profound
difference in my college education are Carol Tauer, Bill Myers, and Mary Alice
Muellerleile. Special thanks go to Rose Sawyer for standing with me through so many
changes, and for being the ﬁrst to tell me I could do philosophy.

Lansing, Michigan is home to many ﬁne women who I am fortunate to count
among my friends: Lisa Sayles, Karen Willis who patiently and carefully worked
through the ﬁnal draft to make editorial comments, Tari Mur’iiz, and Patricia Bryant. 1
thank them for their friendship and their political awareness. They have made Lansing a
second home for me. I also came to know Terri Jewell in Lansing. Her poetry issued a
challenge to me that fuels my work.

At Michigan State University a number of people were especially helpful. My

friends, Allison Wolf, Jen Benson, and Barry De Coster lent their Sharp minds and

iv

cheerful support to help pull me through tough spots. Kim Hall, while teaching at MSU,
worked with me on an independent study which formed the basis for my dissertation.
Amber Katherine and Suparna Bhaskaran blazed a trail and showed me it could be done.
I am grateful to Bill Metcalfe and the members of the dissertation support group for
weekly deadlines. Thanks also go to the members of my doctoral committee, Steve
Esquith, Judy Andre, Bill Lawson, and Liz Mittman, for their support of my work.

I was able to develop important ideas for the ﬁnal chapter through work I did with
the Methodologies of Resistant Negotiation Working Group, at SUNY Binghamton in
December, 1999.

The members of Midwest SWIP have provided me with models of feminist theory
and practice. Thanks especially to Sarah Hoagland, Jackie Anderson, Maria Lugones,
Naomi Scheman, Chris Cuomo, Tabor Fisher, Wendy Lee-Lampshire, and Jean Rumsey.

My family has been a quiet presence throughout my time in graduate school.
They have shown their pride in my accomplishment. When I couldn't do it for myself, I
could still do it for them.

My advisor, Marilyn Frye, has been what the Milan Women's Book Collective
calls an authoritative female interlocutor. As a feminist, as a wordsmith, and as a
teacher, her inﬂuence on me is profound.

Finally, I could not have accomplished this task without the support of my
partner, Anne Courtney. I thank her for her love, her understanding, her intelligence, and

so much more.

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1

Chapter 1

Identity Politics and the Retreat to Idealism .................................................... 13
Identity Politics in a Liberal Society .................................................................. 14
The Combahee River Collective ........................................................................ 17
Patricia Hill Collins ............................................................................................ 21
My Response [Speaking in Relation to Rather Than on Behalf of Combahee] 23
Patricia Hill Collins and the Black Women's Standpoint .................................. 26
A Comparison of Patricia Hill Collins and Combahee ...................................... 29
Jenny Boume and the Project of Building a Jewish Feminist Identity .............. 34
Diana Fuss: Complicating the Notion of Identity ............................................. 41
Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 45

Chapter 2

Judith Butler's Theory of Identity Construction ............................................. 47
The Construction of Male Gender Identity, or Masculinity ............................... 51
The Construction of Female Gender Identity, or F emininity ............................. 57
My Response to Butler ....................................................................................... 68

Chapter 3

Race as a Social Identity ..................................................................................... 75
The Existence of Race: The Debate .................................................................. 79
The Signiﬁcance of Race ................................................................................... 91
Race as a Product of the Racial State ................................................................. 93
Race, Knowledge, Plurality, and Unity .............................................................. 96

Chapter 4

Lugones and Mestiza Subjectivity ....................................................................... 100
Split-Separation and the Uniﬁed Subject ......................................................... 102
Split-Separation and the Fragmented Subject .................................................. 107
Curdled Separation, Beings in the Making ....................................................... 111
Lugones and Subjectivity at the Group Level .................................................. 112
Mestiza Subjectivity ......................................................................................... 115
Lugones vs. Butler on Subjectivity ................................................................... 116
Lugones and Butler on Language and the Symbolic Order .............................. 117
Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 129

Chapter 5

Multiplicity in Identities: Beyond the Metaphysics of Substance ................ 131
Multiplicity in the Realm of Politics ................................................................ 136
Toward a Coalitional Identity Politics .............................................................. 138

Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 14]

vi

Introduction

In the fall of 1995, a woman whom I am honored to have called ‘friend’ took a
gun and shot herself in the head. She was a well-known Black lesbian poet who once
wrote, ‘racism is killing me.’ I believe it did. I believe that what contributed to her pain
was the simultaneously precarious and wearisome phenomenon of having no ‘home.’ She
was without a ‘home’ among lesbians, among Black folks, and perhaps among poets. AS
a white lesbian, I regret that the community in which I found a place could not offer the
same support that ‘home’ could have given to her. Despite the resultant isolation, it was
important to her to claim all of these identities: Black, Lesbian, Poet. The problem was
that she could not bring all of herself, her multiple identities, to any of these
communities. Each community asked her, in some way, to leave behind those identities
that did not “ﬁt." The racism, sexism, and homophobia that led to her death are, at least
in part, a result of the ways in which we understand our identities. A concept of identity
that allows for connection between different social identities would help to alleviate
fragmentation and isolation. Philosophy can help us to imagine new possibilities for
thinking about identity, and to challenge the dynamics of exclusion experienced by many,
including my friend. It is my hope that new concepts of identity can provide a basis for a
kind of identity politics that is inclusive of multiple identities.

In this dissertation I adopt a construction of identity that accounts for multiplicity
in order to develop a new form of identity politics. I argue that any identity politics must

be coalitional in order to be truly liberatory. Maria Lugones develops a theory of

subjectivity, mestiza subjectivity, that I use as the basis of a coalitional identity politics.
My contribution in this dissertation is to defend that concept of identity against political
and philosophical criticisms, and to defend a viable account of coalitional identity
politicsl that ought to be embraced by marginalized groups as well as privileged groups.
I am interested in constructing a philosophical understanding of identity politics, an
account that addresses the construction of identities at the social and individual levels.
The philosophical issues in this politics concern the construction of social identities
around axes of oppression based on race, gender, class, sexuality, etc. The purpose of
this project is to displace those concepts of identity, and the group power dynamics
intertwined with that concept of identity, that foster the relations of domination and
exclusion that killed my friend.

The term ‘identity politics’ conjures up many images: people “identifying as”
members of a group, separatist groups splitting off from mainstream political activity,
and a politics grounded in identities that have been made socially signiﬁcant and
stigmatized by society. Some theorists characterize identity politics as a process of
identifying with a particular marginalized group where ‘identiﬁcation with’ means both
recognizing one’s self as a member of that group and taking up a political agenda
articulated by that group. For example, a woman can understand herself to be female
without taking up an explicit woman-identiﬁed politics. Upon identifying as a woman in
a political sense, She may act on that identity politics by engaging in actions such as

lobbying for reproductive rights or working to maintain separatist spaces. She may also

 

' This is a modiﬁcation of the term ‘coalitional identity’ which I ﬁrst encountered in the
work of JeeYeun Lee, “Beyond Bean Counting” in Listen Up! Voices from the Next
Feminist Generation, edited by Barbara F indlen, Seattle: Seal Press, 1995.

rethink what it means to be a woman, and how that meaning ought to displace current
norms. Identity politics, especially in the latter sense of shaping meaning, names a
process of cultural formation. Those who claim an identity as a member of a
marginalized group are in the process of self-deﬁnition, individually and collectively,
usually in contrast to having a deﬁnition imposed by others outside the group. For those
who contest the norms of group deﬁnition, the statement ‘I am a ’ is replaced
with the question, ‘what does it mean that I am a __?’ This process of self-
deﬁnition is often empowering to those involved in making new meaning. I believe that
self-deﬁnition is an important aspect of identity politics. However, critics of identity
politics have pointed out, identity politics can be practiced in such a way as to set up and
maintain dynamics of exclusion. Some claim an identity but are marginalized within
that group, e.g., women of color marginalized as women and as persons of color. Others,
for whom the identity is not political at all are also marginalized when it comes to self-
deﬁnition or setting a political agenda. For marginalized persons, then, identity politics
instantiates a set of norms to which one must conform in order to claim that identity.
Marginalized members of the group may be excluded by the hegemony that dictates
cultural practices such as dress, music, leisure or political activities, choice of sexual
partners or sexual practices, etc. On this view, identity politics as a cultural practice
serves to empower those who can make central their own views, but marginalizes those
who don’t accept the newly established norms. This criticism of identity politics centers
on the power dynamics that foster domination within a group. While I recognize that this
dynamic exists and is harmful, identity politics so construed is not the form of identity

politics I endorse.

Another concept of identity politics, which I do not hold, comes from those who
see it as the cause of the breakup of the New Left movement of the 19603 and more
recently the fragmentation of the Democratic party. The 19603 witnessed the peak of the
Civil Rights movement and the outgrth of the anti-war movement and liberation
movements for marginalized groups: Chicana/Latinos, Native Americans, Black power,
women, lesbians and gay men. The New Left did not accommodate the demands of these
marginalized groups. Consequently, each group pursued its own agenda. The perception
of many associated with the New Left was (and is) that the identity politics of these
liberation movements is responsible for fragmenting and weakening the New Left, and
has prevented a uniﬁed response to the rise of right wing fundamentalism. This view of
identity politics places the blame for the dissolution of the left on those who, at one time
sought to be represented by it. Though the issue of responding to a right-wing coalition
is crucial, this is not the line of thought I will to pursue, nor do I concur with the criticism
of identity politics that marginalized groups pursuing their own agenda were responsible
for the downfall of the New Left.

Two notions of ‘politics’ broadly construed have been introduced above, ﬁrst, a
cultural politics, including claims about what counts as ‘political,' and second, a more
standard notion of politics as activity in the public sphere, including but not limited to
participation in the electoral process. I wish to argue for a conception of politics that
speaks to the demarcation of what counts as political.

‘Politics’ conventionally understood includes actions taken to effect change in the
public sphere. Advocating for or against changes in policy or laws: signing a petition,

forming coalitions, marching, boycotting, or demonstrating to voice opinion; all are

political activities and all take place in the public sphere. Many of these actions center
around electoral politics, but politics is not limited to these actions.

Furthermore, what counts as political is not limited to action around issues in the
public sphere. Actions and circumstances that are private and seemingly individual can
be political. The division of labor within the home, a “private” matter, is a political issue
insofar as the deﬁnition of ‘work’ usually excludes work done in the home without
compensation—-typically work done by women. Those who wish to broaden the scope of
the political, myself included, argue that actions which support and are supported by
power relations are political acts.

Another way to understand this concept of ‘political’ is in contrast to a liberal
individualist conception of politics. On the latter view, individuals are equal before the
law. Any unequal treatment can be remedied in the public sphere by changes in the law.
What this view does not take into account is the structural inequalities that regulate the
exercise of power. For example, discrimination might be addressed by afﬁrmative action
policies. Such policies are a legislative response to a structural inequality. What this
response does not and cannot account for is the ways in which the dominant construction
of white women and all persons of color serves to undermine the force of legislation.
The following example demonstrates that a narrow deﬁnition of what counts as political
excludes an understanding of those power dynamics which undermine the effectiveness
of political action.

Afﬁrmative action policies are designed to counteract systemic discrimination
which would otherwise keep people of color and white women out of jobs. The fact that
these folks have beneﬁted from afﬁrmative action is used as evidence to argue that, since
they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten the job, they must not be qualiﬁed for the job. (This

criticism ignores the fact that the purpose of afﬁrmative action is to get people hired who,

though they were qualiﬁed, would not otherwise have been hired.) Furthermore, anyone

who is a member of a group that is eligible to beneﬁt from afﬁrmative action is
automatically suspected of being unqualiﬁed. The result is that we have laws that make
discrimination illegal, we have policies in place to remedy the effects of past and present
discrimination, but we see the effect twisted around to once again beneﬁt those who wish
to maintain the status quo. Afﬁrmative action is stigmatized, and anti-discrimination
laws can be used to support the charge of “reverse discrimination."

To understand how such policies are undermined, we need a concept of politics
that includes an account of these power dynamics. A liberal individualist conception of
politics does not provide such an account. Thus, we need an expanded deﬁnition of
politics.

It is also important to clarify the concepts of identity at work in the term ‘identity
politics.' There are two levels of identity at work in my analysis: identity at the group
level, or collective identity; and identity at the individual level, or subjectivity.2 The
former is most commonly associated with identity politics. As a member of a collective,
one has a sense of place, of who one is in relation to others.

The understanding that a collective has of itself as a collective is partly
determined by society and partly by the members of the group. These two
understandings often conﬂict when the group contests the value placed on it by the
dominant culture. For example, one struggle social groups may engage in is that of
developing an identity that acknowledges the humanity of their members. In doing so,

practitioners of identity politics reafﬁrm their own agency. Yet the process of self-

 

2 One sense that will not be used in this project is identity in the logical sense, referring
to a relation between two entities expressed in the proposition, ‘A is identical with B’.
Nor will I address the question of the persistence of personal identity over time.

deﬁnition by social groups can also serve to exclude some members. When those who
hold the power to shape the group self-concept do so in ways that emphasize the
sameness of the members, then differences between the members are erased, and some
members are excluded or marginalized. This dynamic of exclusion leads to some of the
problems with identity politics that will be discussed in this project.

The other concept of identity that is intrinsic to identity politics is that of
individual subjectivity. How does one understand one’s self in relation to others? How
is one constituted by one’s community and by cultural discourses? Two important
concepts intrinsic to subjectivity are adopted here. First, the subject is constituted by,
and is located in a social context. This concept stands in contrast to the concept of an
individual in the Enlightenment sense, where the individual exists prior to the group to
which it belongs. The situated subject does not pre-exist society and is not outside of a
historical context. Second, the subject is complex in two signiﬁcant ways. First, there
are many social identities, acknowledged or not, which construct one’s subjectivity.
Second, the subject is not transparent to itself, but is driven in part by unconscious
motivations. The subject is not a substance, a Cartesian thinking thing, the content of
whose thoughts are transparent to itself.

It is important to connect this concept of subjectivity to the concept of identity at
the collective level. One recognizes one’s own subjectivity by recognizing one’s
membership in a social group. Collective identities are the categories in which we are
placed or in which we place ourselves. The lived experience of these collective identities

Shapes our subjectivities. We may share a common identity, but our choices as

individuals to live out our placement in a discursive construction differ from person to
person.

We cannot have only one of these levels of identity. Theories of subjectivity that
account for the formation of the self as, e.g., gendered, without accounting for the larger
collective structure of gender leave out the context in which one knows one’s self.
Theories that focus on the collective without accounting for individual subjectivity risk
negating differences among members of the collective. Theories of collective identity
that leave subjectivity unanalyzed may import an Enlightenment concept of self as
substance.

Along with including complex, multilayered notions of identity, the construct of
identity politics I develop must be coalitional. An identity politics that is largely focused
on a single identity is problematic and should be rejected. To focus on one identity,
‘lesbian’ for example, is to exercise hegemonic power in ways that replicate power
relations between, e.g., heterosexuals and lesbians. First there is a deﬁnition or concept
of ‘lesbian’ that is implicitly understood to be the measure of what a lesbian is. Because
‘lesbian’ is the only salient identity recognized, other salient marginalized identities are
erased. So the working-class lesbian, the lesbian of color, and, some would argue, the
sex-radical lesbian are all marginalized as lesbians. To put this another way, if a politics
revolves solely around one’s identity as a lesbian, then one’s other identities are not
included.

To further complicate the matter, this dynamic works in other social groups as
well, so that the lesbian of color, e.g., a Latina lesbian, works in solidarity with Latinas

and Latinos who may not acknowledge their own heterosexual privilege, thus erasing her

lesbian identity. (Or they may knowingly assert their heterosexual privilege in order to
suppress expression of her lesbian identity.) Both communities, lesbian and Latina, may
believe that inclusion of the “other” community’s interests is a watering-down of their
own political power. Thus, the lesbian of color is marginalized in both (already
marginalized) groups.

The construct of identity politics I am developing requires a political agenda that
comes from one’s social identities as positions where one can claim agency. The
meaning of ‘politics’ is expanded in ways that break down the public/private dichotomy.
Identity is understood collectively and individually as multiple. One can make salient
many identities in this politics. This identity politics fosters coalition that comes from a
theory of subjectivity that recognizes the self as multiple, thus acknowledging the various
ways in which one is privileged as well as the ways in which one is marginalized. Thus
this politics can integrate gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, and other socially
salient differences, and can lead to connection and coalition.

Using this construct of identity politics, one can also account for the co-optation
of identity politics by such right wing groups as the Christian Identity movement and
white supremacist groups. Such groups lack an account of their own privilege, and thus
focus on a single aspect of what they perceive to be oppression on the basis of their
beliefs. A macroscopic analysis would reveal that the barrier they wish to point to does
not, in fact, work structurally to constitute oppression, though individuals may suffer for

their beliefs. 3

 

3 Frye, Marilyn. “Oppression,” from Politics of Reality, by Marilyn Frye. Crossing
Press, 1983, pp. 4-7.

Why do we need a philosophical account of identity politics? We need an
account of such an identity politics in order to conceptualize a way to register rather than
dissolve distinctions between social groups, and to form coalitions among social groups.
It is important to acknowledge that social groups: races, sexualities, genders, classes, do
in fact exist. The alternative is a “melting pot” politics aimed at assimilation. This
account of identity politics can help to create a space where we can acknowledge
multiple identities, both in ourselves and in others.

I take seriously the message that my friend sent with her death. The issues
surrounding identity are philosophical, political, and deeply personal. We can create a
transformational politics that acknowledges identities and social groups and does not
support fragmentation, personal or political.

The theories of individual identity or subjectivity that will be in use in this project
demonstrate that individuals have multiple salient social identities. That multiplicity
must be reﬂected at the macroscopic level by forming a coalitional identity politics. In
order to avoid single-issue politics, a politics that excluded my friend even as she lived it,

identity politics must be coalitional. Multiplicity in identity forms the basis for coalition.

A Brief Overview of the Dissertation
In chapter one I address criticisms raised against identity politics, moving from
the political to the philosophical. I dismiss the criticisms of biological determinism. I
agree that we must not let identity politics become reduced to single-issue politics, or
worse, become devoid of political analysis and activity altogether. Furthermore, I take

seriously the criticism that we replicate exclusion when we rely on identities.

10

In chapter two I take up the issue of identity and exclusion at the philosophical
level. Philosophical criticisms of identity at the individual level draw on Judith Butler’s
concept of gender identity formation, of bodies that are sexed. I consider criticisms of
Butler that highlight her reliance on language as a totalizing system, and the
underdeterrnination of subjectivity respectively. These criticisms show the limits of
Butler’s arguments.

Chapter three turns to a consideration of the construction of racial identities,
centering on Lucius Outlaw’s argument for the importance of an anti-racist concept of
race. Outlaw argues (in contrast to Appiah and Zack) that race has an identiﬁable
biological component. This is an account that could be useful to identity politics insofar
as it provides a construction of racial identity that afﬁnns the existence of race. While I
agree with his argument that we need to assert the importance of the concept of race, I
am concerned that the evidence he uses will lead him into a problematic concept of race.
His reliance on a biological element to race is not necessarily essentialist, but it is
misleading and unuseful. Furthermore, there is a tension between a desire to preserve
social groups and a desire to rely on universal principles. This commitment to liberal
individualism undermines the effectiveness of his politics.

In chapter four I articulate Maria Lugones’ theory of mestiza subjectivity and
show how it responds to the criticisms brought against Butler. I focus here on the
construction of subjectivity within what Lugones calls the logic of purity and Butler
(following Derrida) calls the metaphysics of substance. Lugones’ system is preferable to
Butler’s because Lugones does not take language to be the ubiquitous and totalizing force

governing all discursive constructions that Butler takes it to be. Finally, I consider an

11

objection to Lugones’s model raised by Sue Campbell, namely that the ‘world-traveling’
model is not useful to those who mostly inhabit dominator identities. Campbell rightly
points out the problems that may occur when privileged persons discover their own
‘mestiza subjectivity.’ However, Lugones accounts for this problem in her theory by
directing privileged persons to examine their identities as dominators.

I conclude my analysis in chapter ﬁve where I Show how Lugones’s concept of
identity works at the individual and collective level. Then I explain how mestiza
subjectivity leads to a coalitional politics.

The complete analysis will prove that Lugones’ concept of multiplicitous identity
meets the criticisms, developed by Judith Butler and others, of the concept of identity.

Furthermore, multiplicitous identity can be the basis of a sustainable identity politics.

12

Chapter One: Identity Politics and the Retreat to Idealism
Identity politics has been used by marginalized groups as a tool to ﬁght against
their own oppression. Despite its effectiveness in empowering members of these groups,
it has been criticized and discounted by those who do not recognize the project of
constructing an identity as a political project, and by those who consider organizing
around identity to be exclusionary. “Identity” can refer to a collective social group, e.g.,
‘identity as’ a Black woman, as a lesbian, or it can refer to one’s individual identities, i.e.,
how those collective identities come together to make up one’s subjectivity. Identity
politics takes up the concept of identity at the group level. The ‘identity’ in question is
that of a subordinated group whose members collectively forge an oppositional identity
that contests the construction placed on them by dominant groups. The construction they
resist is one that maintains their subordinated status. The construction articulated by the
group itself promotes a vision of the members as agents acting on their own behalf and
capable of struggle against oppression with the hope of overcoming it. In this respect,
identity politics is political, in that it promotes empowerment through community
building and self-deﬁnition. Theorists who make use of either level of identity, group
identity or subjectivity, have been criticized for conceptualizing identity as an entity that
is ﬁxed, or unchanging over time, and unitary, meaning it is not internally multiple or
divided. Such a concept of identity draws on the notion of the liberal individual, taken to
be outside of and pre-existing culture, a concept that need not be invoked by an identity
politics.
I understand identity politics in this sense to be one kind of liberatory activity

directed to effect social change. Identity politics can take a variety of forms, such as

13

seeking recognition and representation as a group in the public sphere, and seeking to
undermine and overthrow institutions that maintain systems of oppression. “Politics,” in
the sense I ﬁnd most helpful includes an analysis of power dynamics, and aims at
transforming social institutions. A politics of individual representation cannot account
for power dynamics that support exploitation and oppression; such a politics treats
individuals as equals before the law without regard to axes of oppression such as race,
class, sexuality, and gender. As such, a politics of individual representation forecloses.

any analysis of oppression, thus limiting its potential for progressive change.

Identity Politics in a Liberal Society

Any politics organized around identity can appear to be special interest politics
within a liberal framework. I have given reasons for why one might reject a liberal
political framework, but, for those who work within a liberal context, it is possible to
meet this criticism within the context of liberal individualist politics.

Linda Nicholson takes up this question in the context of examining the increasing
role that ‘feelings’ play in political decisions. Especially since the 19505 and 19605,
people more often ask the question, ‘how do I feel about it?’ rather than, or in addition to
‘what is the right action?’ According to Nicholson, the extent to which feelings inﬂuence
politics has led to criticisms by political conservatives and liberals alike:

. . . even political liberals frequently attack such a view of [feeling-

motivated] decision making, which they often associate with identity

politics. The argument here is that these political movements rely too

heavily on group-speciﬁc feelings and too little on rational consideration
of the common good (Nicholson, 146).

14

On this view, feelings, like interests, represent a subjective dimension outside the bounds
of rationality. To include feelings in decision-making, in the eyes of critics, is to include
an element of irrationality.

Nicholson disagrees. She cites instances where the inclusion of emotion has led
to progressive change. One important example comes out of the social justice
movements of the New Left. In addition to an analysis of oppression in political and
economic terms, the growing emphasis on self-analysis led to consideration of the impact
of oppression on the psyche (Nicholson, 158). This move led to charges that such
movements focused only on their own interests:

According to the white, male, leftist story of what supposedly went wrong

in the 19603, the civil rights and women’s movement became too focused

on group-speciﬁc issues and too little focused on the problems humans

share (Nicholson, 158).

Nicholson points out that the “therapeutic turn,” the inclusion of emotions in the
reasoning process led to an uncovering of various forms of oppression. Because these
types of oppression were group-speciﬁc, they were largely discounted by white male
leftists. These theories of oppression posed a direct challenge to the assumption of
common interests:

Prevailing notions of “what humans have in common” tend often to be

insufﬁcient in addressing social injustice Simply because prevailing

notions of “commonality” often assume unjust social patterns (Nicholson,

158)

“Shared” norms often beneﬁt the privileged at the expense of the marginalized. Thus,
the emphasis on a common human good only reinforces oppressive social patterns. For

example, women claimed in the 19603 that housework is necessary labor that deserves

compensation. Men who dismissed this claim as too narrow to ﬁt the notion of a

15

common good were in fact maintaining a system of oppression from which they
beneﬁted.

Though Nicholson supports the inclusion of ‘feelings’ in public reasoning, she
cites instances where such inclusion is detrimental. One example is the claim by some
members of marginalized social groups that one must be a member of that group, e.g.,
must have that experience, in order to understand what it is like to be a member of that
group. Nicholson criticizes this claim for relying on a reiﬁed notion of identity. She
joins the call for more ﬂuidity in deﬁning identities (Nicholson, 159). In keeping with
this move, she supports the articulation of a ‘coalition politics’ that includes an
understanding of identities as contingent and ﬂuid (Nicholson, 160). She does not, in this
essay, develop her understanding of ‘contingent.' It remains to be seen where and what
kind of boundaries are drawn to mark off identities. I wish to develop the potential
articulated by Nicholson in terms of a reformulated identity politics.

Though identity politics has the potential to produce an agenda for liberatory
social change, it has not actualized that potential in recent years. The focus has shifted
from identities of groups in coalition to single-issue politics, and from collective action to
personal expression. But, I believe that identity politics can be repoliticized, especially
by forming coalitions.

In this chapter I will look at a selective history of identity politics and its
critics, beginning with the Combahee River Collective statement, dated 1977, as the ﬁrst
feminist articulation of an identity politics. I will consider the criticism of the collective
raised by Patricia Hill Collins, more than a decade later. Jenny Boume (1987) criticizes

the project of building a Jewish feminist identity. Her piece is signiﬁcant in that she

16

concludes that identity politics is not political. Diana Fuss argues for the importance of
an analysis of personal identity as the basis for collective identity. The development of
these criticisms leads to the topic of the next chapter, which is Judith Butler’s critique of

identity.

The Combahee River Collective

The Combahee River Collective was a Boston-based Black feminist group formed
in 1974. Combahee members took their name from, “. . . the guerrilla action
conceptualized and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of
South Carolina. This action freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military
campaign in American history planned and led by a woman” (Smith, 272). Their
statement, known as the Combahee River Collective Statement, constituted a ground-
breaking articulation of identity politics--a politics located in their identity as Black
women, as feminists, and for many, as lesbians. The ten page document is dated April
1977, and has been repeatedly cited in many discussions of Black feminism and of
identity politics. The statement covers four major topics: (1) the genesis of
contemporary Black feminism; (2) the scope of their politics; (3) the problems in
organizing Black feminists; and (4) Black feminist issues and practices (Smith, 272).
Karen Kahn, editor of a 1995 collection of essays from the feminist periodical Sojourner,
comments on the inﬂuence of the Combahee River Collective:

Combahee’s inﬂuence was strong. In the mid 1970’s, Black women,

particularly Black lesbian feminists, were the ﬁrst to challenge the

narrowness of the feminist agenda (as represented by both mainstream and

radical feminist groups) and the exclusionary nature of the “women’s
community,” (Kahn, 6).

l7

In keeping with the radical position marked out by numerous lesbians within the
women’s movement, Combahee criticized the white, middle-class, heterosexual emphasis
of the movement. The very formation of the collective was a response to the racism of
the women’s movement and the sexism of the Black liberation movement:

It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation

movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left,

that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those

of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men

(Smith, 273).

Their multi-issue approach to politics laid the groundwork for further criticisms of
essentialist notions of race and gender. From the beginning, Combahee members
understood the importance of recognizing multiple identities. (The concept of multiple
identities cannot be accommodated by essentialist notions of identity that take identity to
be unitary-~i.e., one is a woman, and that is the essential characteristic making up the
self.) As Black women they had pressing issues that white women could ignore or
categorize as something other than women’s issues. Combahee members could not
afford a conception of woman or women’s issues that segregated their identities as
women from their identities as Black persons.

The effects of racism could not be ignored in 1979 when 12 Black women were
murdered in Boston. In response, Combahee members produced a pamphlet in Spanish
and English articulating the connections between sexual and racial violence and
economic exploitation. Barbara Smith writes, in 1984, of the pamphlet and the coalition
built around responses to the murders:

It was the ﬁrst published, tangible thing that came out about the murders

that people could use. It was the ﬁrst thing that did not dismiss the

murders or imply that these women deserved to die because “they might
have been prostitutes or runaways.”

l8

We printed 2000 of the pamphlets at ﬁrst, and they were gone
almost immediately. (Even some of you who were involved in that work
may not know that at least 30,000 were distributed by the time we were
ﬁnished: we kept going back to the printer.) The pamphlet was originally
printed in both English and Spanish because we assumed, as Black
feminists, that our concern was not just with Afro-American, English-
speaking people, or with people who could read English. We wanted
every woman to feel some kind of solidarity and some kind of protection.
And there were many other activities around the murders besides the
pamphlet; it was a coalition. I saw people sitting together in rooms who I
didn’t think would ever have anything to do with each other, although I’m
not saying that there weren’t whispers and looks behind people’s backs--
for example, a lot of the people who showed up for the work were, of
course, lesbians, white lesbians. There was an interesting mix . . . (Kahn,
25-26).

Combahee also produced cultural events:

In October 1978, the collective members joined with other women in the
Boston community to sponsor “The Varied Voices of Black Women,” in
which West Coast musicians Mary Watkins, Gwen Avery, and Linda
Tillery and poet Pat Parker demonstrated that white lesbians were not the
only ones creating a new women’s culture. Though the concert was ﬁrst
and foremost a celebration of Black lesbian feminist identity and culture,
it was also an attempt to broaden the white feminist community’s
understanding of feminist and lesbian identity (Kahn, 7).

Though Combahee members invoked a common lesbian identity at the event, they
celebrated difference as well. This was a lesbian event produced on Black lesbians’
terms, and an opportunity for connection across races among lesbians. Nevertheless, the
fact that some white women found these performers threatening demonstrates the
ongoing need to address racism in the lesbian community. The Collective maintained the
claim that the work of eliminating racism in the women’s movement is white women’s

work, echoing the Black Nationalist movement and the later work of Malcolm X. They

continued the call for accountability on this issue (Smith, 281).

19

Combahee members grounded their political analysis in their own identities.
They looked to the material conditions of their own lives and developed a politics that
addressed the complexity of their subjectivities and group identities. Starting from this
point enabled the collective to connect identity and theory, and shape a political agenda
that worked for them as whole persons. This strategy was actually a kind of sustained
coalition politics. Instead of a temporary coalition around a single issue, Combahee
members created an ongoing coalition that recognized and addressed multiple axes of
oppression. Barbara Smith, a member of the collective, writes of Combahee:

The concept of the simultaneity of oppression is still the crux of a Black

feminist understanding of political reality . . . It has also altered the

women’s movement as a whole. As a result of Third World feminist

organizing, the women’s movement now takes much more seriously the

necessity for a multi-issued strategy for changing women’s oppression. . .

A commitment to principled coalitions, based not upon expediency, but

upon our actual need for each other is a second major contribution of

Black feminist struggle (Smith, xxxii-xxxiii).

Both the members of the collective and those outside the collective recognized
Combahee’s desire to foster, not division and exclusion, but understanding of and
acceptance across differences. Certainly the publication of the statement shaped
subsequent feminist analysis to address multiple axes of oppression.

It is important to consider the historical context in which this statement of identity
politics was formed. The politics came out of a need to respond to speciﬁc dynamics of
racism by white women, sexism by Black men, and the homophobia in the Black
community. Since this time, identity politics has moved far beyond the intent of this

Statement. Some of the criticisms of identity politics are aimed at these later

developments, yet purport to be about the Combahee River Collective.

20

Patricia Hill Collins

Criticisms of identity politics often center around charges of essentialism or
biological determinism. Biological determinism is the view that one’s social location,
and hence one’s political needs, are determined by some aspect of one’s make-up
considered to be “biological,” therefore they are deterrninistically caused and
unchangeable. Thus if one has second class status, it is because of one’s race and/or sex
construed as biological givens. Or, one may attribute characteristics to persons
presuming a biological basis. Biological determinism does not recognize the inﬂuence of
culture and socialization on the development of such traits, to whatever extent they may
actually be fairly typical traits within some group of people.

Biological determinism is a form of essentialism. One’s physical nature is taken
to be an essence, the core truth of what one is that remains unchanging, and determines a
great deal of one’s character, talents, style, and developmental possibilities. This form of
essentialism assumes a unitary self that is ontologically prior to culture. That is, one’s
nature is determined by biology and therefore independent from the inﬂuence of culture.

In her book entitled Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins includes a brief
discussion of the Combahee River Collective. Collins formulates a Black feminist
standpoint, trying to negotiate the difﬁcult issue of ‘speaking for’ vs. ‘speaking as’ a
Black woman, especially a Black feminist. The fact that it matters who we are and for
whom we propose to Speak indicates the importance of group identities and boundaries.
Patricia Hill Collins brieﬂy discusses the Combahee River Collective on this point.
Collins acknowledges the importance of the collective, but criticizes their concept of

race. Speciﬁcally, she maintains that Combahee presents race as an immutable category

21

rooted in nature. Such a view of race would mask several important aspects of the social
category, viz., the historical construction of racial categories, the shifting meaning of
race, and the role of politics and ideology in shaping conceptions of the self:

The term Black feminist has also been used to describe selected African-

American women who possess some version of a feminist consciousness .

. . . This usage of the term yields the most restrictive notion of who can be

a Black feminist. . . . by implying that only African-American women can

be Black feminists they [the collective] require a biological prerequisite

for race and gender consciousness (Hill Collins, 20).

Collins criticizes their “materialist” position that supposedly asserts, “that being
Black and/or female generates certain experiences that automatically determine variants
of a Black and/or feminist consciousness. Claims that Black feminist thought is the
exclusive province of African-American women, regardless of the experiences and
worldview of such women, typify this position,” (Hill Collins, 21). Her criticisms of the
Combahee Statement can be summed up as follows: (1) Combahee implies that only
African-American women are Black feminists; (2) Combahee presents race as an
ahistorical category; and (3) Combahee implies that, in virtue of being a member of a
particular race or sex, one necessarily has a corresponding political consciousness,
therefore all African-American women are Black feminists. It is worth noting that
Collins does not call the collective biologically determinist with respect to gender,
though if they are guilty of it with respect to race they would be guilty of it regarding

gender essentialism as well. It would strengthen her analysis to include a brief discussion

of gender essentialism.

.22

My Response [Speaking in Relation to, Rather Than on Behalf of Combahee]

As I consider each criticism, I will ﬁrst look to the text of the statement to
discover what support there might be for each. Collins herself does not offer an analysis
of the text; her criticism is presented in broad brush strokes. However, in response to
Collins, I will be looking more closely at speciﬁc passages.

The ﬁrst criticism that I will address is that Combahee implies that all Black
women are Black feminists, since Black feminist consciousness would follow from one’s
identity as an African-American woman. It is not easy to ﬁnd anything in the text that
supports this claim, but Collins may have thought she saw support for it in the section of
the statement entitled, “The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism.” This section
draws on Black feminism that existed prior to the “second wave,” and the Collective
members seem to name Black women as feminists who perhaps would not have accepted
the label. In response to this, I will point out that Combahee does trace a legacy of strong
Black women, but they do not name this a feminist legacy. Rather, they look to their
foremothers to trace a history of resistance to the combined burdens of racism and
sexism:

There have always been Black women activists--some known, like

Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells

Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands

unknown--who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity

combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and

the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary Black

feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacriﬁce,

militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters (Smith, 273).

One need not be a self-proclaimed feminist to have resisted one’s own oppression as a

woman. Combahee recognized that these women struggled against simultaneous

23

oppressions. They do not claim these women as Black feminists, but as inspirations for
their own Black feminism, and they do not say all Black women have this consciousness.
A related criticism names the implication that only Black women can be Black
feminists. Collins may claim support for this criticism by looking to Combahee’s focus
on the lives of Black women, and the fact that Combahee identiﬁes Black feminism and
its inﬂuences with the work of Black women. Combahee may have been making the
claim that only Black women can be Black feminists, but this does not commit them to
an essentialist notion of identity. For example, the role or “identity” of ‘student activist’
is one that only students (who are also activists) can claim. Presumably the phrase
‘student activism’ in campus conversations refers to engagements of/by/originating with
members of a certain group of people, namely, students. The phrase carries the
suggestion that the activities and values in question are the products of those people’s
situated responses to situated experiences. The phrase seems to imply that only students
can be student activists, but this implication seems harmless enough. Faculty members
can agree with the student activists’ analysis and values, join student rallies in support of
their causes, and contribute through dialogue to the development of student activism
without themselves being students or student activists.‘ Practically, the question of
excluding others from doing Black feminism was otiose--no one else was interested.
Combahee chose to focus on their own experience. Collins interprets this focus as
exclusionary and biologically determinist. Collins’ move from “experience” to “biology”

is not supported by the text of the statement. Thus, the charge of biological determinism,

upon ﬁrst reﬂection, does not hold.

 

' Marilyn Frye suggested this analogy in conversation, April, 2000.

24

Collins offers a more substantive criticism that again points to biological
determinism. The criticism runs as follows: Combahee implies that, in virtue of being a
member of a particular race or sex, one necessarily has corresponding political
consciousness. To support this claim about Combahee, Collins could again look to
Combahee’s focus on the material conditions of Black women’s lives. That focus is
deliberate. Yet, it does not imply that living that experience necessarily generates a
particular political consciousness. The following passage from the statement explains
Combahee’s “materialist” position:

. . . we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual,

heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the

development of integrated analysis and practices based upon the fact that

the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these
oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.

We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and
experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of
these matters has ever been looked at before. No one before has ever
examined the multilayered texture of Black women’s lives. . . We
discovered that all of us, because we were “smart” had also been
considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly.” “Smart-ugly” crystallized the way
in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost
to our “social” lives. (Smith, 276)

There are two elements to their position: that the material conditions of their lives are
shaped by multiple oppressions, and that they chose to theorize about these conditions in
order to understand their own experiences. Nevertheless, they do not claim the existence
of a consciousness that arises from one’s speciﬁc experiences. They reject this move
speciﬁcally in their claim that biological maleness, per se, does not lead to men
oppressing women. (Smith, 277) They speciﬁcally reject the notion of a determined

consciousness in the following passage:

25

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difﬁculty this

presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can

never be underestimated. (Smith, 277)

It is clear that, on their view, oppressive conditions not only may not generate a political
consciousness related to them, the effect of oppression can, in fact, be to block the path to
such consciousness. To have a political consciousness in this context is to have an
analysis of the political structures that are oppressive to a given social group. A politics
articulated from the consciousness of one’s identity as a member of an oppressed group
is presented in the Combahee Statement as a means by which one can resist oppression.
Such a consciousness is an achievement, not a determined or “natural” effect.

Though Collins is off the mark in calling the Collective biologically determinist,
she does raise an important question about who may qualify as a Black feminist. In
articulating her answer to the question, Collins struggles with the tension between
valuing the experience of Black women and recognizing the possible contributions of

other theorists. The key to her articulation is the development of a Black feminist

standpoint.

Patricia Hill Collins and the Black Women’s Standpoint
The Black women’s standpoint, as understood by Collins, has two main
elements: core themes, and the designation of who can speak as a Black feminist.
A standpoint, according to Collins, is the relationship between every day and specialized

thought:

This specialized thought should aim to infuse Black women’s experiences
and everyday thought with new meaning by rearticulating the

26

interdependence of Black women’s experiences and consciousness. (Hill
Collins, 32).

The experiences of Black women form a basis of knowledge that can be rearticulated by
intellectuals. This rearticulation develops a consciousness, a standpoint, which can
stimulate political activism (Hill Collins, 31-32). The rearticulation centers around core
themes found in the work of Black Feminists:
l. The legacy of struggle: Survival in two contradictory worlds, one white and
privileged, one black and exploited; Struggle against racism and sexism.

2. The interlocking nature of race, gender, and class oppression.
3. A call to replace denigrated images of Black womanhood with self-deﬁned images.
4. A belief in Black women’s activism: mothers, teachers, community leaders.
5. Sensitivity to sexual politics. (Hill Collins, 23).

Collins addresses the question of who cantspeak as a Black feminist. Black

‘6

feminist thought must make central the experience of Black women: . . . the primary
responsibility for deﬁning one’s own reality lies with the people who live that reality,
who actually have those experiences.” (Hill Collins, 34) Yet, this experience must, ﬁrst
and foremost, be interpreted and rearticulated by Black women intellectuals: “. . . Black
women intellectuals are central in the production of Black feminist thought because we
alone can create the group autonomy that must precede coalitions with other groups.”
(Hill Collins, 35) Thus the focus is on the lives of Black women.

Black women’s experiences are to be analyzed primarily by Black women

intellectuals who rearticulate a Black women’s consciousness. Only then, for Collins,

can Black women form a standpoint which others may engage in some way:

27

By advocating, reﬁning, and disseminating Black feminist thought, other

groups--such as Black men, white women, white men, and other people of

color--further its development. Black women can produce an attenuated

version of Black feminist thought separated from other groups. Other

groups cannot produce Black feminist thought without African-American

women. Such groups can, however, develop self-deﬁned knowledge

reﬂecting their own standpoints. But the full actualization of Black

feminist thought requires a collaborative enterprise with Black women at

the center of a community based on coalitions among autonomous groups

(Hill Collins, 35-36).
The connection to groups that want to engage with Black feminism is vital, according to
Collins. As Black women and other groups each develop self-deﬁned standpoints, these
groups can collaborate for further development of Black feminist thought and of their
own projects. Without Black women, there would be no Black feminism. Yet without
other groups, the development of Black feminism would be hindered. It seems that Black
feminist theory is still primarily produced by Black women, yet other persons forming
standpoints can engage in productive dialogue with Black feminists in ways that further
the development of Black feminism. Ironically, Collins recognizes the importance of
articulating a Black feminist standpoint, yet criticizes Combahee’s work in doing exactly
that. It is her view, one I do not share, that Combahee does not interact with other
groups. Furthermore, if Collins’ use of the term ‘Black feminist’ demonstrates that the
term does not commit her to a biological deﬁnition of that group, then nor does the
Combahee River Collective’s use of that term necessarily indicate a commitment to a
biological determinism.

bell hooks offers insight on the question of those who are not Black women
engaging Black feminist thought. In Talking Back, she discusses the issue of authority in

the analysis of Black women’s writing. For hooks it is important that the white academic

acknowledge and then disavow the racist, institutional structure that constructs her to be

28

the deﬁnitive authority on Black women’s writing (or writing by people of color in
general). On the other hand, it is equally important that she critically engage the work of
women of color. To do otherwise would be to Shirk the responsibility she has to bridge
the gap between her own experience and that of the woman whose work she studies.
Both the engagement and the recognition of limited authority depend upon an
understanding of the reader/theorist’s social location in relation to the author, and the
power relations that perpetuate these differences (Aguilar, 492). An identity politics that
is responsive to multiple identities must account for identities inﬂation} to other
identities.2 One must understand the politics of one’s own social location.

What we can draw from hooks and Collins is the importance of recognizing the
salience of one’s identities. Therein lies the similarity between the standpoint of Collins
and the identity politics of the Combahee River Collective. In the next section I will

bring out more fully the differences between Collins and Combahee.

A Comparison of Patricia Hill Collins and Combahee

Collins distinguishes herself from Combahee by rejecting their materialist radical
politics. She justiﬁes this rejection by equating materialist radical feminism with
biological determinism in the following way:

Biologically deterministic criteria for the term black and the

accompanying assumption that being of African desccent [sic] somehow

produces a certain consciousness or perspective are inherent in these

deﬁnitions [of Black feminism] (Hill Collins, 20).

Combahee’s deﬁnition of Black feminism, as interpreted by Collins, is both biologically

determinist and said to assert that one’s race (necessarily) produces a certain

 

2 Maria Lugones, Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy, Spring 1994.

29

consciousness. Collins offers no argument for these claims. In the following comment
she suggests a connection between radical feminist thought and biological determinism:

Feminists are seen as ranging from biologically determined--as is the case

in radical feminist thought, which argues that only women can be

feminists-40 notions of feminists as individuals who have undergone

some type of political transformation theoretically achievable by anyone

(Hill Collins, 20).

According to Collins, one is biologically determinist if one suggests that a particular
consciousness, such as a Black feminist consciousness, is only available to those located
in the corresponding social position, namely, the social position occupied by Black
women. The exclusion of others from such a consciousness qualiﬁes, for Collins, as
biological determinism.

But exclusion is not what constitutes biological determinism. Collins assumes
that limiting a particular political consciousness to a particular social group is equivalent
to the claim that everyone in that social group then possesses that particular
consciousness. 3 For example, the fact that only women bear children is not equivalent
to, nor does it imply that all women bear children. Collins wants to imply that exclusion
is a kind of determinism. She makes the following claim regarding any materialist
politics:

A deﬁnition of Black feminist thought is needed that avoids the materialist

position that being Black and/or female generates certain experiences that

automatically determine variants of a Black or feminist consciousness.

Claims that Black feminist thought is the exclusive province of African-

American women, regardless of the experiences and worldview of such
women, typify this position (Hill Collins, 21).

 

3 One may wrongly infer from this discussion that I consider ‘consciousness’ to be a
unitary thing. On the contrary, I assume that there is a multiplicity of ‘consciousnesses’
arising from Black women’s experiences.

30

Collins claims that deﬁnitions asserting that only Black women can be Black feminists
are simultaneously asserting that Black women automatically have a Black feminist
consciousness. She offers no justiﬁcation for this claim. Furthermore, as noted above,
Combahee clearly states that a Black feminist consciousness must be struggled for, it is
not “automatic.”

The distinction that Collins tries to draw between herself and Combahee is the
deﬁnition of who counts as a Black feminist. Collins is concerned about the problem of
exclusion. Either exclusion is a problem in itself, or she avoids it because she (wrongly)
equates it with biological determinism. I think both concerns play a role in her
reasoning. Certainly no contemporary feminist theorist advocates biological
determinism. Nevertheless, Collins’ 1990 analysis of this 1977 text reads this focus on
Black women as biological determinism. This view contributes to a misreading of
identity politics. Beyond that, Collins equates exclusion with separatism--a position she
discredits.

To solve the problem of exclusion, one possibility would be to claim that anyone
can be a Black feminist, but Collins is reluctant to make that assertion. In fact, she labels
such a claim idealist, because such a position completely disregards the role of material
conditions in shaping one’s consciousness:

. . . a deﬁnition of Black feminist thought must also avoid the idealist

position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that

create them. Deﬁnitions claiming that anyone can produce and develop

Black feminist thought risk obscuring the special angle of vision that

Black women bring to the knowledge production process (Hill Collins,

21).

Collins maintains that Black women hold a privileged place in the production and

development of Black feminist thought. Their role must function in coalition with others

31

who do not share that ‘special angle of vision.’ This privileged position is fully
developed in the Black women’s standpoint, which is centered on Black women’s
experiences and articulated by Black women intellectuals.

Collins admits of the necessity of the Black women’s standpoint to Black feminist
thought. There seems to be no signiﬁcant difference between such a ‘standpoint’ and the
‘Black feminist consciousness’ of the Combahee River Collective, except that Collins’
standpoint must be mediated by intellectuals. Combahee does not make such a
stipulation. At the core, then, the two positions are nearly identical.

The question of who, besides Black women, can be a Black feminist is a viable
question for Collins, one to which she devotes a great deal of attention. That question
motivates her dispute with Combahee. The larger question, which feminists have been
Struggling with since the late 19803, is the question of identity. Many feminists have
made the same move as Collins, that of equating a materialist identity politics with
biological determinism. Such a move forces these theorists to give up the concept of
identity--a concept that we need.

This is one of the major issues for contemporary feminist theory. The issue is
framed in terms of identity: who counts as a Black feminist. The question of
membership in a given social identity is a question about social construction, in this
particular discussion, the construction of race, gender, class, and sexuality. In the words
of Maria Lugones, being a member of a subordinated group can mean one is forced to
animate a construction. Lugones writes:

. . . there may be “worlds” that construct me in ways that I do not even

understand or I may not accept the construction as an account of myself, a
construction of myself. And yet, I may be animating such a construction,

32

even though I may not intend my moves, gestures, acts in that way
(Anzaldua, 397).

Thus, by being read as a given gender and race, for example, we are placed in a
construction and our words and actions are given meaning through that construction
whether we like it or not. When Combahee refers to the material conditions of Black
women’s lives, they are referring to conditions that result from inhabiting constructions
that are oppressive. A politics that articulates the analysis of this construction opens up
possibilities for resistance. Regarding the question of who counts as a Black feminist, we
must look at the person’s connection to the material conditions of Black women’s lives.

The question of whether one must inhabit a construction in order to “have” the
knowledge gained from that perspective is the wrong question--one that obscures the
issue. We need not ask who can be a Black feminist. The better question is to ask
whether or not one who is not an African-American woman can contribute to Black
feminism. Then the answer becomes a bit clearer: certainly for anyone engaged in Black
feminist theory, proper respect for, understanding of, and, as Maria Lugones following
Marilyn Frye maintains, a loving perception of African-American women are all deﬁnite
prerequisites.

Collins makes a signiﬁcant contribution to Black feminist theory when she
reiterates the importance of centering it on Black women’s lives, and the importance of
coalitions in developing Black feminist theory. As bell hooks argues, white women and
men of all races can make contributions to Black feminist thought, but this work must
acknowledge the authority of Black women to speak about their own lives. Recognition

of such authority and of the value of coalition can speak to the possibility of formulating

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an identity politics that is politically inclusive and that truly recognizes power dynamics

that maintain oppression.

Jenny Bourne and the Project of Building a Jewish Feminist Identity

Jenny Bourne is looking at developments in identity politics that took place after
the ﬁrst articulation of identity politics by Combahee. Rather than criticizing its
materialism, she condemns identity politics for its lack of a materialist analysis. She
criticizes those who would build a Jewish feminist identity politics for retreating to
idealism. Later developments in identity politics did move away from the
socialist/materialist roots of the Combahee River Collective. For Bourne the movement
is toward idealism. I think Boume’s criticism has some merit, but I do not agree with her
assessment of identity politics as a political project.

In a 1987 article entitled, “Homelands of the Mind: Jewish Feminism and
Identity Politics” Bourne criticizes Jewish feminists for working to construct a uniquely
Jewish feminist identity. She realizes from personal experience that, from the beginning,
Jewish women working in the Women’s Movement were often invisible as Jews,
nevertheless, she is against the identity building meant to counteract this invisibility.
Bourne contends, without justiﬁcation, that such a project implicitly supports the actions
of the state of Israel, most speciﬁcally the 1981-1982 bombing and invasion of Lebanon

and the massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees“. While most feminists

 

" “In July, 1981, Israeli jets bombed Beirut (killing 300 and wounding 800 more); on 9
May 1982 Israel strafed the Lebanese coastal villages; on 4 June Israel invaded Lebanon
with over 100,000 troops; between 16-18 September [1982,] 2,000 Palestinian men,
women, and children were systematically massacred in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

34

condemned this action, including Jewish feminists, Bourne contends that one cannot
engage in the project of building a Jewish identity without supporting, in some way the
idea of a Jewish state. And feminists, along with other progressives, cannot ignore the
reality of the existing Jewish state. So Jewish feminists, according to Bourne, can only
engage in the project of building a speciﬁcally Jewish feminist identity if they ignore the
reality of Palestinian refugees and Israeli state policy, though such ignoring does not
follow from simply favoring the existence of a Jewish state. Hence Bourne’s claim that
Jewish feminist identity politics is a retreat from addressing the material conditions of
women’s lives (speciﬁcally Palestinian, Lebanese, and other Arab women) and an escape
to the idealism of a ‘homeland of the mind.'

I reject Boume’s claim that, following the bombings, building a Jewish feminist
identity and promoting Jewish visibility within radical movements necessarily implies
support of the state of Israel and its policies toward Palestinian, Lebanese, and other Arab
people. Even at that historical moment, one could have worked to build Jewish identity
and supported the commitment to a Jewish State without either supporting Israel’s
actions or being out of touch with political realities. Indeed, as the current negotiations
between Israeli and Palestinian ofﬁcials demonstrate, we must be able to envision
alternatives to present conditions, or we would never be able to effect political change.
While Bourne raises important points regarding the depoliticization of identity politics,
Bourne is not successful in showing that identity politics itself is fatally ﬂawed. And she

does not show that Jewish feminist identity politics in particular is a retreat to idealism.

 

The Women’s Movement unhesitatingly took the side of their Palestinian sisters. Where
did we stand?” (Bourne, 4).

35

Bourne, as a socialist, is solidly located in a materialist theory of social change
that begins with Marx’s criticism of Hegel’s idealism, especially regarding historical
change. Idealism, in brief, is the view that there is no reality independent from some
conception of it. A materialist criticism of an idealist theory of historical change would
attack the view that changing one’s ideas (or the ‘ruling ideas’, the zeitgeist) constitutes
political change.

Marx attacked the position of the Young Hegelians, who sought change

through ‘mental criticism.’ Change will only come about as a result of

developments at the level of the mode of production . . . [i.e., capitalism

collapsing in on itself in a communist revolution] (West, 50).

For Bourne to call identity politics an idealist project is to declare identity politics
politically ineffective. On this view, building identities is a distraction from real political
work. Furthermore, in the case of Israeli policy, it is willfully ignoring the fact that
people’s lives are at stake. This is a serious charge.

The crux of Boume’s argument that identity politics is a form of idealism centers
on the claim that Jewish feminists, in building a speciﬁcally Jewish feminist identity,
must, in some way, support a Jewish State, and in asserting the importance of a Jewish
state, by implication they support the past and current actions and policies of the state of
Israel. For Bourne there seems to be no way to both criticize Israel and support a Jewish
state. She claims that Jewish feminists who do not usually align themselves with

Zionism ultimately defend the idea of a Jewish state when confronted with arguments

against Zionism.5 After noting that the Jewish feminist group Di Vilde Chayes equates

 

5 Zionists share the position that there should be a Jewish state. How this should be
implemented is a matter for discussion. Some Israeli feminists support both a Jewish

36

anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, Bourne summarizes her argument:

. . . such feminists are retreating to basic Zionist positions: Jews are

entitled because of their history of oppression to a homeland, Zionism is a

strategy for Jewish survival, Israel is the main defense against anti—

Semitism. To question Israel, therefore, or the ideology that brought it

into being is to endanger the very existence of the Jews. These feminists

do not try to defend Israel’s domestic or foreign policy (that would,

indeed, be a hard task for any feminist to do); instead, they shift the terms

of debate so that Israel ceases to be a material force and becomes a

metaphor for survival (Bourne, 9).

Bourne claims that a feminist defense of the existence of the state of Israel shifts

attention away from addressing the actual practices of the nation-state to a discussion of
the metaphoric Jewish state disconnected from present politics. She dismisses the
possibility that one can envision other possibilities without denying the political reality of
the situation. This move is a political disengagement, according to Bourne. For her, one
cannot criticize the reality of Israel’s practices, yet support the idea of a non-repressive
Jewish state in the hope of one day bringing the idea to fruition.

This position stands in contradiction to her position as a socialist, given the
history of this century. It seems that Bourne can advocate socialism while condemning
the totalitarianism of the former Soviet Union. Jewish feminists should be able to
support the idea of a Jewish state while condemning the policies and practices of Israel.
We must be able to criticize existent conditions while envisioning liberatory possibilities.

For Bourne, the notion of any Jewish state is indefensible given the racist,

imperialist history of Israeli foreign and domestic policy. On her view, given how

differences of race equate with power differences, any state founded on behalf of one

 

state and a Palestinian state. Most if not all Diaspora Jewish feminists do so as well
(Kaye/Kantrowitz & Klepﬁsz, 245-246, and 254-257 and Felman, iii-iv).

37

group, e.g., a religious afﬁliation or a racial afﬁliation, already sets up patterns of
domination. [This distinguishes her criticism of nationalism from her support of
socialism; the latter is not an idea that builds in hierarchy or domination] But the
question of nationalism is not unique to to Israel, and Israel should not be held to a higher
standard than other nation-states. In this respect, perhaps a religious state is no different
from any other, and all are problematic. Nevertheless, it is important to note that identity
politics does not necessarily imply support of nationalism. Another consideration in the
case of Israel is the issue of US support of Israeli policy. The US. has an interest in
maintaining an -‘inﬂuence’ in the Middle East. It is impossible to know whether or not,
without U.S. backing, Israel would have pursued the same policies in Lebanon. The role
of the United States in such conﬂicts is something all US. feminists must consider.
(Kaye/Kantrowitz & Klepﬁsz, 245-246).

What Bourne seems to be criticizing, really, is the support of nationalism implicit
in the support of a Jewish state. As such, her position seems justiﬁable. It may be
justiﬁable to criticize any feminist who supports nationalist goals. Nation-states, of
political necessity, must employ aggressive practices to survive, and a Jewish state would
incorporate these dynamics. To deny the connection between statehood and aggression is
to retreat to idealism, Bourne is right in that regard. But her criticism is not directed
towards any nationalist tendencies of Jewish feminists. And it is not consistent to
criticize the nationalism of Jewish feminists while supporting the existence of a
Palestinian state. Finally, her implicit assertion that a commitment to identity politics is a
commitment to the existence of nation-states or nationalist goals is unfounded.

Nationalism is not a necessary correlate to an identity politics.

38

I want to conclude my analysis of Bourne with the discussion of a philosophical
question. Bourne interprets the project of Jewish feminist identity politics as a conﬂation
of the political with the metaphysical:

Politics required us [as Jews] to take a stand on the issue [of Israel],

metaphysics allowed us to escape it--but feminism allowed us to conﬂate

the political and the personal, the objective and the subjective, the material

and the metaphysical, and escape into Identity Politics (Bourne, 4).

What I understand Bourne to be saying here is that identity politics allows or encourages
its subjects to reduce politics to personal issues. If, as Bourne claims, identity politics
draws one away from political practices such as, e. g., protesting anti-Semitic attacks, in
favor of pursuing liberal political goals such as increasing visibility for mostly white,
middle-class Jewish feminists, then such a politics is problematic in that it Serves to
extend one’s privilege rather than change oppressive conditions. The same narrowing of
interests can be found in lesbian/bi/gay/transgender agendas that focus exclusively on
domestic partner beneﬁts or lifting the ban on gays in the military. These issues may be
signiﬁcant, but do not represent the full range of issues that an identity politics might
embrace, nor do they address structural issues, especially since this agenda typically does
not include analyses of racism, classism or sexism. Referring speciﬁcally to the
situation in the l/b/g/t communities, Suzanne Pharr calls this ‘single-issue politics.’ She
recognizes the strength of a politics formed around identity, but stresses the importance
of coalitions that extend beyond one’s own identity: a multi-issue politics (Pharr, 489).
To the extent that some versions of identity politics are reduced to self-aggrandizement, I

condemn this phenomenon. It is an exercise of privilege to reduce politics to individual

interests, and I join Bourne and Pharr in criticizing this practice.

39

However, these versions of identity politics do not exemplify the radical,
coalitional politics put forth by the Combahee River Collective. I believe identity
politics can be coalitional, and to make effective use of the concept of identity, politics
must be coalitional.

Furthermore, I disagree with Boume’s assertion that building identity is taking
the metaphysical to be material. I do not agree with Bourne that identity-building is
solely a ‘metaphysical’ project, devoid of a material dimension and political value.
Building an identity, for Bourne, is a purely idealist project, meaning that one changes
one’s thinking but there is no change in social reality. While it may be that some who
engage in a sort of identity politics withdraw from material politics, and this is justiﬁably
criticized, they do not disengage from politics entirely. The project of building an
identity ought to engage with material conditions, and, I would add, must engage in
sustained coalition. To do so would help prevent becoming isolated from social realities
faced by marginalized people. Those who detach from material politics can do so
because they fail to build coalitions that would keep their politics grounded in material
conditions, for example, they work to secure class privilege rather than criticizing
classism. It is ﬁne to have an agenda that begins with the politics of the personal, but it
must be linked to a broader, progressive politics. This point will be addressed at length
in chapter 5.

To return to Boume’s central example, Jewish feminists are engaged in such a
project. In claiming their Jewish identity, they do not deny the signiﬁcance of Israeli

policy, in fact, they may engage it more deeply. As a Jewish woman who takes her

40

Jewish identity very seriously, Jyl Lynn F elman is morally compelled to confront the
actions of other Jewish people in the name of a Jewish State:
I am a Jewish lesbian writer in mourning for a people who have lost the
integrity of their vision. For the ﬁrst time in my life, I am without
metaphor. But because I am a Jewish lesbian writer, I must bear witness.
In their terror my people have lost their minds, but what about their
memories? (Felman, iv).
F elman is not retreating to a homeland of the mind, she is engaging with the realities of

the victims of Israeli aggression. She is taking on the difﬁcult task of recognizing the

political implications of her multiple identities.

Diana Fuss: Complicating the Notion of Identity

Diana Fuss examines Boume’s argument in her analysis of lesbian and gay
identity politics. Fuss recognizes the need oppressed groups have for a working concept
of identity. At the same time, she argues for an account of identity and of politics that
recognizes both as contingent, unstable, changing over time, not unitary. I want to
consider Fuss’s construction of identity insofar as it could lead to a re-politicization of
identity politics. If identities are understood to be multiplicitous and mutable, we may be
able to overcome the current tendency of identity politics to become single issue politics,
or to become separated from materialist politics altogether.

Fuss begins her analysis of identity politics by asserting that it must include an
account of individual identity formation, or subjectivity. This is a signiﬁcant claim in
that Fuss moves from a concept of identity as a group membership phenomenon to
identity at the level of the individual.

What is missing in many of the treatises on lesbian identity is a
recognition of the precarious status of identity and a full awareness of the

41

complicated processes of identity formation, both psychical and social.

What is missing is a concentrated focus upon the very terms which

constitute an identity politics. . . “ (Fuss, 100).

For Fuss, theories of identity must account for subjects within collectives, and do so in a
way that responds to criticisms of concepts of the subject as unitary and as pre-existing
society, in short, the Enlightenment notion of the individual. Fuss recognizes that some
versions of identity politics have relied uncritically on the Enlightenment notion of the
individual (unitary, presocial, transparent to itself) and thus were uncritically essentialist
(Fuss, 102). In her analysis of the essentialism of lesbian and gay theory she claims that
lesbians adhere more closely to some form of essentialism than gay men do. She reasons
it is because lesbians occupy a more precarious subject-position than gay men. Thus it is
not due to a lack of sophistication on the part of lesbian theorists, Fuss adds, but rather
the greater degree of oppression, speciﬁcally oppression as women, perhaps as women of
color, and as lesbians.

The connection of essentialism to oppression is signiﬁcant. Fuss argues that to
struggle against oppression may require a conception of agency that relies on the concept
of the Enlightenment individual, which is a kind of essentialism. Perhaps this is because
some feminist theories of agency assume the conception of subjectivity inherent in the
notion of the liberal individual. Agency, on this view, presupposes the kind of self-
knowledge, self-authorization and “freedom” from social construction that typiﬁes
concepts of the liberal individual. In that case, we must either form a justiﬁable
essentialist position or reconceive agency in terms that do not presuppose this form of

subjectivity. Both projects have been taken up by feminists in recent work.

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If there is a justiﬁable essentialist position, and at ﬁrst Fuss seems to believe there
is, then the concept of identity would be a key element in constructing an acceptable kind
of essentialism. Fuss examines concepts of identity and defends her own view. She
believes any account of identity must respond to Derrida’s deconstruction of the unitary
subject into identity and non-identity. This is one formulation of the criticism of the
enlightenment individual. For Derrida, the problem is that identity can only be asserted
if one excludes the parts of the self that don’t ﬁt that identity. For example, on this
model if one claims an identity as, e.g., a lesbian, that forecloses the possibility of
claiming her identity as a Chicana. Or, in claiming an identity as a lesbian, one might be
measured against some community standard of what a lesbian is or should be, and
exclude the parts of the self that don’t ﬁt that standard. Certainly identity politics as
practiced has involved both forms of exclusion.

For Derrida, and for many others, the point is that identity necessarily involves
exclusion. (Chapter two looks at Judith Butler’s argument for this claim.) Fuss notes
that one response to the problem of the split subject is to propose multiple identities. So
one would have a racial identity, a gender identity, an identity of sexuality, and so forth.
(This is similar to the model of subjectivity developed by Maria Lugones which I address
in chapter four.) Fuss claims that this model does not respond to the problem, that the
same issue of exclusion still applies to each of the multiple identities. Fuss proposes
instead a concept of identity as shifting, and unstable. She disputes the view that stable
identities are necessary to ground a politics, and She thinks that politics itself need not be
stable. (It is not clear what concept of politics Fuss disputes here. Politics changes over

time and is not unitary. The agendas are multiple, allowing for and adapting to changing

43

needs and interests. For example, the various movements within the
lesbian/bi/gay/transgender communities, when not reduced to single issues, include
Queer Nation proponents, gay marriage advocates, anti-racism and anti-classism work,
and coalition building both within the community and with other marginalized groups. It
could be that this community has come to embody Fuss’s conception of politics.)

The question of whether or not agency exists drops out here in her discussion of
politics. She follows Foucault in rejecting the notion of politics as a motor of change.
Instead, politics is an effect (Fuss, 106). Perhaps Fuss means to say politics is an effect
of power relations, rather than the cause of them. In any case, agency, as commonly
understood, is not a viable concept in this picture of politics. Fuss begins by suggesting
that retaining a concept of agency might be worth risking a kind of essentialism. Near
the end of the chapter she criticizes such “political strategy” as a potential tool to
discredit anti-essentialism (Fuss, 107). It seems she is not interested in preserving a
concept of agency, which I ﬁnd problematic. The elimination of agency may be
connected to her call for a theory of subjectivity in identity construction. This is a
serious loss for feminists and others working for liberatory change. Some form of
agency should be preserved, though not one dependent upon the Enlightenment concept
of the self.

To summarize: I see two useful consequences developing from F uss’s analysis of
identity. First, the concept that identities are shifting could offer a way out of the
temptation to construe the identity (practices) of the individual, simpliciter, as a politics.
While a lesbian identity is a politicized identity, I agree with Fuss that simply being a

lesbian is not in itself a politics. Shifting concepts of what it means to be a lesbian could

take our focus off our individual actions and instead encourage shaping a broad-based
politics that accounts for the variety of lesbian lives. When a variety of experiences
“count” in some way as experiences of a particular identity, there is a chance that we may
challenge the hegemony of identity. There will not be the deﬁning experience that every
member must have in order to claim that identity. On the other hand, a second possible
consequence could be that the adoption of an identity that self-consciously shifts
continually could once again put the focus on self to the exclusion of the political,
especially if one is only focused on pushing boundaries for its own sake. If one
continually tracks one’s Shifting identity as a lesbian, for example, one can become
caught up in thinking that simply being a lesbian constitutes one’s politics. Being a
lesbian is a political practice, but one’s actions as a lesbian, including, e.g., trips to the
laundromat, do not always constitute political actions. Thus it is important to be attentive
to the ways in which identities constantly shift without losing track of how these

identities connect to larger political issues.

Conclusion
This chapter has traced a selective history of identity politics and criticisms raised
against it. The beginnings of identity politics held potential that has not yet been fully
achieved. There are criticisms that must be taken into account, but identity politics is not
fatally ﬂawed. I believe we can respond to these criticisms and make identity politics a
viable political option. Indeed, it is crucial to feminist politics and theory that we do so.
We must examine constructions of personal identity and consider models of subjectivity

that build in coalition. That is the task of the remainder of this project.

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In order to understand how identities can be coalitional, it is necessary to examine
theories of identity formation. The following two chapters take up this focus. In chapter
two I examine Judith Butler’s account of gender identity formation and the challenges
she poses to any construction of identity. Chapter three addresses concepts of racial
formation, focusing on the work of Lucius Outlaw. Where Butler’s criticisms focus
largely on the metaphysics of identity, Outlaw focuses more on the politics of identity,
though these two aspects overlap for both theorists. It is necessary to examine both the
metaphysics and the politics of identity since they are mutually constitutive. Each
inﬂuences the construction of the other. The interconnectedness of politics and
metaphysics in the construction of identity and subjectivity becomes most apparent in the

work of Maria Lugones, to be addressed in chapter four.

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Chapter Two: Judith Butler’s Theory of Identity Construction

Any theory incorporating ‘identity’ as a central concept must respond to the
criticisms of identity posed by postmodemists. For feminist theorists, the most complete
articulation of such criticisms has been developed by Judith Butler. Butler focuses on
gender identity at the level of subjectivity, how the individual is constructed as a
gendered being. The conception of subjectivity Butler criticizes is one that legitimates
the social order by masking the power dynamics involved in the construction of subjects.

Subjectivity within modernity is structured by the metaphysics of substance,
sometimes called the metaphysics of presence. On this view, the subject is taken to be a
substance. As such, it is ﬁxed and unchanging, unitary, and pre-cultural, or formed prior
to being enculturated rather than being a product of culture. Beginning with Nietzsche,
Freud and Marx, this concept of subjectivity has been criticized. Each of these three
thinkers has shown how the subject is complex rather than uniﬁed, and is located in and
inﬂuenced by a historical context, and so is not a substance.

Butler links this form of subjectivity to representation, both political
representation and linguistic representation. Political representation of the modern
subject is the representation of an individual who freely consents to be governed by the
state. The concept of the modern subject is one in which the individual is taken to be
precultural, or ontologically prior to the state. These assumptions about subjectivity
mask the forces by which the individual is constructed by the state. Butler, following
Foucault, argues that subjects are constructed by discourse, or language, which connects
linguistic representation with political representation. Within the discourse, the

discursively constructed individual is naturalized, or taken as given. This move

47

legitimates the social order by making the construction of the individual appear to be
natural rather than cultural.

In constructing her argument, Butler looks at common theories of character
formation from Freud, and Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and Riviere who follow him. She takes
Freud’s theory of character formation to be an account of gender formation. She
reconstructs these theories in her analysis of gender formation. She shows that the
various processes these theorists take to be gender formation all presuppose the existence
of pre-cultural dispositions. The core of her explication of gender identity construction
is her argument that gender identities are discursive constructions that rely on naturalized
concepts of homosexuality and bisexuality. To say that homosexuality and bisexuality
are naturalized is to say they are assumed to be pre-cultural dispositions, that they are
shaped by culture, but exist outside of culture. This assumption misses the fact that
‘dispositions’ are constructed by discourses.

Butler makes the following argument: each of the theorists she considers, Levi-
Strauss, Freud, Lacan and Riviere, rely on dispositions either explicitly or implicitly. By
doing so, they reveal, according to Butler, that they do not grasp that these dispositions
are not, in fact, natural, but are constructed by the discourse. Their mistake, and their
subsequent reliance on dispositions, supports the ﬁction that masks the constructedness of
the dispositions. Butler rejects any theory of subjectivity that posits a pre-cultural
substance that is shaped by (and not completely constructed by) culture. She would reject
any theory of subjectivity that presupposes the modern subject. Even Lacan and Riviere,

on Butler’s view, import the modern subject into their theories.

48

The discursive constructions supporting gender identities that Butler identiﬁes in
these theories serve to naturalize the division of bodies into male and female sexes, to
associate masculinity with men and femininity with women, and to contrast the
acceptability of heterosexuality, acknowledged by Freud et al. as a product of culture,
with the deviance of homosexuality and bisexuality--both dispositions seen to be
unfettered and pre-cultural sexuality. In fact, Butler argues that all three forms of
sexuality are discursive constructions, with the former normalized in contrast to the latter
two. She claims that the distinction between normalized heterosexuality and ‘deviant’
homo- and bi- sexuality supports the institution of compulsory heterosexuality.

Butler argues that the use of the term ‘woman’ as a collective or individual
identity reinforces cultural constructions that naturalize sexual dispositions and
normalizes heterosexuality. Such constructions support and maintain compulsory
heterosexuality. Her argument rests on the Derridean position that categories are
constructed only by simultaneous construction of a category that is marginalized. Thus to
use the term ‘woman’ is to both claim an identity that is marginalized and reinforce a
system of compulsory heterosexuality that supports such marginalization.

Butler’s larger project builds on her arguments regarding the role of dispositions
(any construct taken implicitly or explicitly to be natural) in theories of gender identity
formation. By revealing the constructedness of all dispositions she reveals their
contingency. Discursive constructions, unlike that which is taken to be given, can be
contested, either from within the discourse or from outside it:

If there is a sexual domain that is excluded from the Symbolic and can

potentially expose the Symbolic as hegemonic rather than totalizing in its
reach, it must then be possible to locate this excluded domain either within

49

or outside that economy and to strategize its intervention in terms of that
placement (Butler 1990, 41).

The difference between hegemony and a totalizing system is not clear here, but I take
Butler to be saying that a hegemonic system can be displaced, whereas a totalizing
system cannot. Showing that discursive constructions are contingent reveals that they are
hegemonic, or open to “intervention” or contestation. Such intervention can be located
within the Symbolic, the dominant discourse, or outside of it. Irigaray’s project, to
construct a female symbolic, works outside of dominant discourse. Butler rejects the
notion that one can escape the dominant discourse. She works from within, using her
theory of gender performativity as a theory of resistance to established gender norms.

The criticism that Butler raises against gender identity as pre-discursive has
important implications for feminists. If, as Butler claims, political representation
presupposes the modern subject, then Butler’s rejection of modern subjectivity holds
consequences for feminist politics, namely, her criticism undercuts the basis for politics--
the agency of the subject. (Diana Fuss also raises this point, discussed in my chapter 1.)
The situation is further complicated by Butler’s claim that there is no escaping
representational politics, only a ‘critical genealogy of its own practices’ (Butler 1990, 5).
According to Butler, we cannot escape the subj ect-producing forces of linguistic
representation. Any political activity on behalf of women or other oppressed groups must
take place within this network of forces.

It is the latter set of claims that I wish to focus on in my criticism of Butler.
While she presents a compelling account of the discursive construction of the gendered

subject, her argument presupposes a role for language or discourse that is too

50

determining. In the ﬁnal part of this chapter I will look at the effect of this concept of
language on the agency of the subject. I contend that Butler conceptualizes language as
totalizing and that her view of language is too deterministic. When Butler herself
attempts to avoid these problems, she ends up constructing a subject that is
underdeterrnined, which undermines any possible theory of subjectivity. In chapter four I
take up a theory of subjectivity that can respond to this problem. In the ﬁrst and second
parts of this chapter, I will focus on her theory of gender identity formation, in which she

draws extensively on Levi-Strauss, Freud, and Lacan.

The Construction of Male Gender Identity, or Masculinity

In her analysis of theories of male gender identity formation, Butler draws on
Lévi-Strauss’s account of kinship relations and Irigaray’s treatment of his assertion that
such relations are relations between men only, and are based on the exchange of women.
Butler uses these theories to support her claim that the male subjectivity depicted by
Levi—Strauss, heavily inﬂuenced by Freud, is based upon a repressed male homosexuality.

For Levi-Strauss, as for Freud, there is a sexuality that each (wrongly) takes to be
natural. This “natural” sexuality is shaped by culture. On Lévi-Strauss’s account, this
“natural” sexuality is shaped into a nonincestuous heterosexual (male) subject by the
taboo on incest. Even though he claims that heterosexuality is a product of culture,
Butler’s argument demonstrates that Levi-Strauss must be assuming an incestuous
heterosexuality as the pre-cultural form of sexuality shaped by such a taboo. In asking

the question, “How is incestuous heterosexuality constituted as the ostensibly natural and

51

pre-artiﬁcial matrix for desire . . . ?” (Butler 1990, 42), she implies that Levi-Strauss
offers no justiﬁcation for such an assumption. She goes on to state this explicitly:

The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency

are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere

assumed within this founding structuralist frame (Butler 1990, 43).

Thus, Levi-Strauss in his analysis assumes the existence of an unfettered sexuality (his
ﬁrst mistake, according to Butler) that is in actuality an incestuous heterosexuality,
though he himself does not recognize it as such (his second mistake, according to Butler).
For subjectivity to be constructed solely by the incest taboo, the so-called natural
disposition that is shaped by culture is, in fact, incestuous heterosexuality, not an
“unfettered” sexuality at all. The assertion that the incest taboo is the sole process of
enculturation that shapes subjectivity is a claim that naturalizes heterosexuality. Butler
reveals that he does not justify such an assertion. Furthermore, Butler shows that the
account he gives of enculturation is not based on the incest taboo, but on an
unacknowledged taboo on male homosexuality.

Butler shows that homosexuality (again, not an “unfettered” sexuality) functions
for Levi-Strauss as an underlying disposition that is shaped by culture into an acceptable
heterosexuality. In doing so she has challenged the assertion by Levi-Strauss that the
incest taboo is the organizing principle of kinship relations. She asserts that kinship
relations are formed as a result of the taboo on homosexuality rather than the taboo on
incest.

To make the case that, in Lévi-Strauss’ theory, kinship systems are constructed

on a repressed male homosexuality, Butler ﬁrst establishes that, for Levi-Strauss,

following Freud, the subject, the one who desires, is masculine and heterosexual. For

52

Freud, desire, the libido, is masculine. Women on this construction feel desire to the
extent that they have not fully repressed the masculine in them: “She must ﬁnd a
substitute pleasure in the genitals of her husband and eventually in the having of his
child. To this end, the girl’s masculinity--that is, her sexuality--must be repressed . . . ”
(Nye, 123). This theory of female sexuality causes problems for Freud in his later work,
since he cannot adequately explain character development in girls (Nye, 122-123).
Nevertheless, Levi-Strauss imports this theory and it’s attendant problems into his
account of kinship systems where women are objects to be exchanged and men are the
exchangers. Men, being subjects and having libido, desire women. Women’s desire is
not acknowledged as such. Perhaps it is not acknowledged as a desire that initiates the
relation of exchange, so it is discounted in Lévi-Strauss’s theory. What is obvious is that
for Levi-Strauss, the subject, the one who feels desire, is masculine and heterosexual.
Implicit in this claim is that there is no female sexuality. Butler will use both of these
points to support her claim that kinship systems are organized around male
homosexuality.

The strongest support for her argument is the connection she makes between Lévi-
Strauss and Irigaray. Levi-Strauss describes kinship relations as relations that bind men
together. The relation is a kind of Hegelian reciprocity. Signiﬁcantly, the relation
between men and women is not salient on his account, i.e., there is no reciprocity
between men and women, nor is there any acknowledged relation between women (Butler
1990, 41). Women are solely the objects of exchange in this system. Here Butler turns to
Irigaray’s analysis of this relation of reciprocity between men and the position of women
in it.

53

Butler asks, “What relation instates women as the object of exchange . . . ?”
(Butler 1990, 40). The answer is the relation of hom(m)osexuality, a repressed sexuality
dependent upon the exchange of women (Butler 1990, 40-41). Butler is a bit too sketchy
in her argument here.

In Speculum of the Other Woman, Irigaray describes the lack of a female
homosexual economy and the consequent effect that lack has on women left only to the
male economy. Without a female homosexual economy women have only one place:

. . . a hommo-sexuality in which women will be involved in the process of

specularizing the phallus, begged to maintain the desire for the same that

man has, and will ensure at the same time, elsewhere and in

complementary and contradictory fashion, the perpetuation in the couple

of the pole of “matter”. (Irigaray, 103)

Women’s “desire” is directed toward the phallus as the expression of the repressed desire
men have for each other. In so doing, women maintain the construction of themselves as
object, the excluded pole, the “matter” upon which the subject is constructed. Finally,
Irigaray notes that female sexuality is acknowledged only insofar as it is viewed as
masculine. Women’s homosexuality is attributed to physical or psychical
hermaphrodism--i.e., she can only become a lesbian if she resembles a man in some way.
Once again desire is constructed as male and heterosexual (Irigaray, 103, note 106).

Margaret Whitford’s analysis of Irigaray provides the background for
understanding the concept of hom(m)osexuality. She provides an overview of Irigaray’s
Derridean criticism of metaphysics as a set of binary oppositions:

Derrida shows that metaphysics is constructed upon a system of

differences. These differences are not positivities, but positions, effects of

a play of difference which may be called dzﬂ'erance. One of the two poles

is always privileged at the expense of the other, the intelligible over the
sensible, for example, or man over woman. The main point is that

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metaphysics is based upon a process of exclusion and hierarchies. The

practice of deconstruction then begins by privileging the subordinate term.

(Whitford, 126)

Irigaray holds to a deconstructionist concept of metaphysics as a system comprised of
hierarchies and exclusions. In relation to the subject, as described above, man is
privileged over woman, and, as Butler claims, heterosexual is privileged over
homosexual. Irigaray is a deconstructionist insofar as she intends to privilege the once
excluded pole. A further investigation reveals the dependency of the privileged pole on
the excluded pole. In effect, the “existence” of the masculine depends upon the feminine,
speciﬁcally the exclusion of the feminine.

This assertion of dependence and exclusion is bound up with Irigaray’s
characterization of western metaphysics as a “metaphysics of the Same” (Whitford, 104).
For example, Irigaray’s reading of Plato describes the platonic realm of the F orms as the
realm of the Same:

The realm of the Same is the hom(m)osexual economy of men, in which

women are simply objects of exchange. . . relations between men are

governed by love of the same, love between men is masked, and

homosexuality as a practice is subject to prohibition. (Whitford, 104).

There is an underlying love between men which is overtly repressed, but covertly
expressed through the exchange of women. The ontology of this relation is the structure
that recognizes only men as subj ects--the metaphysics of the same. Only the privileged
pole of the binary, in this case, men, is acknowledged in the metaphysics of the Same.

To summarize Irigaray’s position, the homosocial bond between men is a bond

that is structured by the metaphysics of the Same, or the symbolic order. Irigaray

deve10ps this concept from the deconstructive move of taking apart hierarchical

55

differences and privileging the previously subordinated pole in order to disrupt the
symbolic order. There is difference in this order, but the subordinated half is
unacknowledged--hence Irigaray’s term, metaphysics of the same. In this respect, the
economy of men is mediated by women, but women are unaclmowledged. This
interpretation ﬁts with Lévi-Strauss’s claim that women carry identity, but do not possess
identity (Butler 1990, 39).

The underlying homosexual relations in kinship systems are bound up with
reciprocity between men, mentioned above. As Butler points out, men have reciprocity
with each other, but not with women. She does not articulate the signiﬁcance of this
claim. I understand this to mean that men have reciprocity with one another only because
there is non-reciprocity with women, and because there are no (acknowledged) relations
between women. Men can recognize other men as subjects without jeopardizing their
own status as subjects. In fact, men require such recognition from other men in order to
be subjects. But for men to recognize women as subjects would be to call into question
the woman’s role as signiﬁer of his masculinity. Such recognition would threaten the
subjectivity of men, since their subjectivity depends upon the exchange of women. To be
able to exchange women is a sign of masculinity, of subjectivity. If the “goods got
together,” in Irigaray’s terms, and were recognized as subjects, they would not signify
subjectivity for men. Thus male subjectivity is the only kind of subjectivity there is, on
this view, and it depends upon the construction of women as objects of exchange, i.e.,
depends upon the exclusion of women ﬁ'om subjectivity.

Furthermore, on this view, the female, the feminine, relations between women,

and lesbian sexuality cannot be acknowledged in the male economy, since the feminine is

56

not a subject position and desire is constructed as masculine. These positions are
inarticulable in a male economy.

Male subjectivity is dependent upon a lack of reciprocity between men and
women. The relationship of exchange binds men together through women. A man’s
desire for men is displaced onto women. His love for another man is prohibited, but can
be expressed through the exchange of women, or sublimated into the possession of
women, as Butler points out in her discussion of Freud. These dynamics support Butler’s
claims that, according to Levi-Strauss, kinship relations rely on an underlying male
homosexuality, and that, for Levi-Strauss, the masculine, heterosexual, desiring subject
appears to be natural--pre-discursive, with only the incest taboo as a form of
enculturation, but it is in fact a discursive construction.

I ﬁnd Butler’s account to be justiﬁed. Levi-Strauss obviously emphasizes the role
men play as subjects, as agents, and as arbiters of the exchange of women. The “lack”
that deﬁnes women’s roles, except in linking men, is also signiﬁcant. Irigaray’s
argument that male subjectivity depends upon the lack of women’s subjectivity ﬁts with
Lévi-Strauss’s accounts of kinship, and makes sense of Lévi-Strauss’s assumption of

heterosexuality.

The Construction of Female Gender Identity, or Femininity
In her analysis of female gender identity, Butler draws on two theories of female
sexuality developed by Lacan and Riviere respectively. These theories draw on the
Freudian notion of melancholy, a type of ego formation; both use the concept of

masquerade, a form of melancholy. Though each theorist rejects the notion of pre-

57

cultural dispositions in sexual development, Butler argues that each theory relies upon an
unanalyzed “primary” sexuality. This conclusion contributes to Butler’s overall
argument in chapter 2 of Gender Trouble that so-called pre-cultural identities are in fact
discursive constructions: theoretical entities produced by a discourse and whose
constructedness is hidden by the discourse, naturalizing the identity or making it appear
to be a given. In this section, I reconstruct Butler’s argument that the structure of
masquerade, as an account of female identity, in Lacan and Riviere relies on an
unacknowledged discursive construction.

Central to the concept of masquerade is the concept of melancholy, a term Freud
used in his theory of character development. Melancholia, or melancholy, is an ego
formation that results from a series of losses where the lost object or lost Other becomes
internalized as a part of the ego. Butler applies this concept to gender identity formation.
As identity formation, melancholy is the process of Coping with the (symbolic) loss of the
parent. The child intemalizes that loss by becoming the other in some way, perhaps by
taking on characteristics of the loved one. These intemalizations become a permanent
part of the child’s ego (Butler 1990, 58). This process takes place in both male and
female identity formation, but the subsequent developments follow different paths.
Butler ﬁrst pursues the development of female identity as an example of melancholy.

Masquerade, an ambiguously used concept, is a form of melancholy. For Lacan,
masquerade is an undeﬁned “lack,” characteristic of women, that is masked. He uses the
concept of masquerade in conjunction with his appropriation of the Freudian Oedipal
conﬂict, especially centering on the symbolic role of the Phallus as signiﬁer of

subjectivity. For Lacan the subject comes into being through the process of repressing

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pre-individuated desires for the maternal body (Butler 1990, 45). The subject is formed
by excluding the possibility of an incestuous relationship with the mother. Women stand
in place of the maternal body. Thus women, as objects of male desire, serve to deﬁne
male identity:

The masculine subject only appears to originate meanings and thereby to

signify. His seemingly self-grounded autonomy attempts to conceal the

repression which is both its ground and the perpetual possibility of its own

ungrounding. But that process of meaning-constitution requires that

women reﬂect that masculine power and everywhere reassure that power

of the reality of its illusory autonomy (Butler 1990, 45).

Only men are subjects, thus men are said to, in a sense, “have” the Phallus, or have the
power of language. Women, as on Lévi-Strauss’s account, signify the subjectivity of men
to whom they are attached. Thus, women are said to “be” the Phallus, the signiﬁcation of
male identity, possessed by men. The apparent lack on the part of women “embodies and
afﬁrms” the Phallus, the subjectivity of men (Butler 1990, 46). The process of
afﬁrmation is called masquerade. Lacan does not specify what is lacking. This lack may
be the absence of the phallus symbolically or physiologically, or it may be a lack born of
the refusal of sexuality. In any case, Butler notes that for Lacan, this “lack” requires
masking and is connected with women’s “need for protection,” (Butler 1990, 46).
Protection is necessary for one who has no linguistic agency. I think the lack is a
construction of female sexuality as the absence that deﬁnes male subjectivity. Female
desire is not repressed, it is refused--its existence denied rather than redirected. The

“absence” of desire parallels the “absence” of female subjectivity.

The role of refusal becomes crucial in the formation of female identity:

59

. . . the mask is part of an incorporative strategy of melancholy, the taking

on of attributes of that object/Other that is lost, where loss is the

consequence of a refusal of love (Butler 1990, 48).
Butler notes that Lacan links the mask and the act of refusal to a discussion of female
homosexuality. A “founding disappointment” purportedly underlies female
homosexuality, according to Lacan. Butler comments on this assertion:

. we can understand this conclusion to be the necessary result of a

heterosexualized and masculine observational point of view that takes

lesbian sexuality to be a refusal of sexuality per se, only because sexuality

is presumed to be heterosexual, and the observer, here constructed as the

heterosexual male, is clearly being refused (Butler 1990, 49).
Female sexuality is, according to Lacan, a result of refusals, presumably disappointed
love. As Butler points out, Lacan reads lesbian sexuality as a consequence of a
disappointed heterosexuality only because he presumes that desire is heterosexual.
Heterosexual desire could also be the result of a disappointed homosexuality (Butler
1990, 49). Lacan is working on the same assumption as Freud and Levi-Strauss: desire
is heterosexual and male. This assumption has consequences for his theory, namely, such
an assumption predetennines his account of the process of gender development.

Butler summarizes the role of “refusal” in Lacan’s theory of female sexuality:

In a characteristic gliding over pronomial locations, Lacan fails to make

clear who refuses whom. As readers, we are meant, however, to

understand that this free-ﬂoating “refusal” is linked in a signiﬁcant way to

the mask. If every refusal is, ﬁnally, a loyalty to some other bond in the

present or the past, refusal is simultaneously preservation as well. The

mask thus conceals this loss, but preserves (and negates) this loss through

its concealment. The mask has a double function which is the double
function of melancholy (Butler 1990, 49-50).

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The mask works to conceal the loss, but the loss is still preserved. Thus,
unacknowledged loss, characterized by Freud as melancholy, is a central characteristic of
female sexuality.

The second theory of masquerade Butler analyzes is developed by Joan Riviere in
an essay entitled, “Womanliness and Masquerade,” published in 1929. Riviere analyzes
seemingly heterosexual persons who display characteristics of the opposite sex. On her
account, refusal is a result of anxiety. Butler notes, “Femininity is taken on by a woman
who ‘wishes for masculinity,’ but fears the retributive consequences of taking on the
public appearance of masculinity,” (Butler 1990, 51). The mask of femininity is used for
protection from the dangers associated with seeking the privilegesof masculinity. With
respect to identifying behavior as masculine or feminine, Butler rightly criticizes
Riviere’s assumption that the observer can “know” the sexuality of the subject:

This perception or observation not only assumes a correlation among

characteristics, desires, and “orientations,” but creates that unity through

the perceptual act itself (Butler 1990, 50).

Though Riviere’s reliance on observation serves to reinforce a taxonomy of sexuality in
which a subject must be located, the value of her analysis is her criticism of such
constructions. Rather than posit innate dispositions, Riviere argues that sexuality is, “
produced through the resolution of conﬂicts that have as their aim the suppression of
anxiety,” (Butler 1990, 50-51). Butler pursues the challenge Riviere presents to a theory
of sexuality that relies on “tendencies.” Riviere’s argument supports Butler’s contention
that these “tendencies” are, in fact, products of culture.

A signiﬁcant feature of Riviere’s theory of sexuality is the absence of sexual

desire in lesbian sexuality. “. . . the woman who ‘wishes for masculinity’ is homosexual

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only in terms of sustaining a masculine identiﬁcation, but not in terms of a sexual
orientation or desire,” (Butler 1990, 52). Butler points out the parallel to Lacan in
positing the lesbian as one who refuses sexuality, and suggests an interpretation of this
account:

. . . the woman in masquerade wishes for masculinity in order to engage in

public discourse with men and as a man as part of a homoerotic exchange.

And precisely because that male homoerotic exchange would signify

[male] castration, she fears . . . retribution . . . .” (Butler 1990, 52)

The woman in question, rather than desiring other women, desires participation in the
male economy, as outlined by Irigaray above. But to do so, especially to do so “as a
man,” would threaten other men with their own castration. I understand this to mean that
any woman who does not play the role of signifying male subjectivity is necessarily
denying his subjectivity, or, castrating him. The woman who “acts like a man” is, in
short, a castrating bitch. The lesbian, on this view, does not mask her desire for
participation in the male economy and does not don the trappings of femininity. Of
course this view conﬂates ‘lesbian’ with ‘butch lesbian’ and erases the existence of
femme lesbians.

Riviere claims that the mask is synonymous with womanliness or femininity. On
her account, authentic womanliness is a masquerade. Butler cites an interpretation by
Stephen Heath who claims that womanliness as masquerade relies, once again, upon a
concept of desire as masculine and heterosexual. Desire is the prerequisite for
subjectivity. Since desire (on this view) is masculine and heterosexual, desire is always

desire for women. Womanliness (or femininity) is taken on as a mask to deny/refuse

masculine desire (for women). Butler responds to Heath’s interpretation:

62

Femininity [or womanliness] becomes a mask that dominates/resolves a
masculine identiﬁcation, for a masculine identiﬁcation would, within the
presumed heterosexual matrix of desire, produce a desire for a female

object, the [woman as] Phallus, hence the donning of femininity as mask

may reveal a refusal of female homosexuality and, at the same time, the

hyperbolic incorporation of that female Other who is refused--an odd form

of protecting that love within the circle of the melancholic and negative .

narcissism that results from the psychic inculcation of compulsory

heterosexuality, (Butler 1990, 53).

Since subjectivity is masculine, desire for subjectivity implies a masculine identiﬁcation.
For a woman to have a masculine identiﬁcation would mean she desires women. Her
masculine identiﬁcation manifests as desire directed toward other women who can
signify her “masculinity”. Under compulsory heterosexuality, she is penalized unless she
refuses this so-called lesbian desire. The refusal takes the form of donning the mask of
femininity, which is both rejection of the desire for women and incorporation into the ego
of the Other (the woman) who is lost as a consequence of refusal. She becomes feminine.
Thus Riviere’s account provides information about that which is masked in masquerade:
“lesbian” desire resulting ﬁ'om a desire for subjectivity where subjectivity is construed as
a primary masculine identiﬁcation.

Butler rejects the reliance on any primary disposition (here masculine
identiﬁcation), yet she does not offer a conclusive assessment of Riviere’s account.
Butler’s reconstruction of Riviere’s theory highlights useful aspects of the theory, yet a
theory dependent upon dispositions, however veiled, is a theory Butler would reject. She
does not help us determine the ultimate value of Riviere’s theory, she merely uses it as an
example of a theory of sexuality that eschews dispositions yet relies on them. She returns

to Lacan in order to make a similar point regarding the reliance on unanalyzed

assumptions.

63

Though Lacan does not posit a pre-cultural disposition in his account, Butler
argues that his theory implicitly relies on structures that condition his account of gender
development. Lacan’s theory centers on the notion of a divide, a “fall into twoness,” the
purpose of which Butler questions (Butler 1990, 54-55). To answer her own question,
Butler turns to Jacqueline Rose’s criticism of Lacan. Rose points out that the necessary
identiﬁcatory failure of both sexes, i.e., the failure to fully identify with one’s appropriate
gender, “. . . suggests the duplicity which undermines its ﬁurdamental divide,” (Butler
1990, 55). The failure to identify with one’s gender reveals that the split into two genders
and the univocality of each gender is a structural element of the theory which relies, yet
again, on an unacknowledged inherent bisexuality, which, in resisting the split, reveals
the division as artiﬁcial (Butler 1990, 55). The split is artiﬁcial because the division into
two genders is never fully achieved. Rose attributes this “resistance” to splitting to an
inherent bisexuality.

Butler interprets Rose’s criticism of Lacan:

If prohibition creates the “fundamental divide” of sexuality, and if this

“divide” is shown to be duplicitous precisely because of the artiﬁciality of

its division, then there must be a division that resists division, a psychic

doubleness or inherent bisexuality that comes to undermine every effort of

severing. To consider this psychic doubleness as the eﬂ'ect of the Law is

Lacan’s stated purpose, but the point of resistance within his theory as

well (Butler 1990, 55).

Resistance to the division into two genders is the support Butler gives for the claim that
there is an inherent bisexuality as an element of Lacan’s theory. I contend that her
argument that Lacan relies on an inherent psychic bisexuality needs further support.

Resistance to division into two genders could be explained in other ways not explored by

Butler. One need not resort to the positing of an inherent bisexuality. If we accept

64

Butler’s interpretation, we need further information. What is the nature of this
bisexuality? Is it better named “polysexuality,” a sexuality not predetermined by cultural
associations attached to the ‘bi’ preﬁx? Or is it an example of the “twoness” that Lacan
adopts and Butler criticizes? If it is another instance of a binary, Butler needs to make
this explicit.

In the paragraph following Rose’s criticism of Lacan, Butler refers to the divide
between the Real and the Symbolic:

Any psychoanalytic theory that prescribes a developmental process that

presupposes the accomplishment of a given father-son or mother-daughter

identiﬁcation mistakenly conﬂates the Symbolic with the real and misses

the critical point of incommensurability that exposes “identiﬁcation” and

the drama of “being” and “having” the Phallus as invariably phantasmatic

(Butler 1990, 55).

Butler does not explain the connection between her discussion of binary gender
and the move to a discussion of the Real and the Symbolic. I interpret the connection in
the following way: For Lacan, there is a divide between the real and the Symbolic. This
divide is insurmountable, though all desire is directed toward bridging it and returning to
the real, the feeling of oneness with the mother experienced by the prelinguistic child.
The process of separation from the real is the process of gender formation. The
insurmountability of the gap between the real and the Symbolic is connected to the failure
of identiﬁcation--the failure to be fully feminine or fully masculine.

Though Butler does not fully articulate this connection, she reads the gap between
the real and the Symbolic as indicative of a Law (the Symbolic) that is simultaneously

prohibitive and generative, that is, repression serves to produce the very constructs it

limits:

65

That the language of physiology or disposition does not appear here is

welcome news, but binary restrictions nevertheless still operate to frame

and formulate sexuality and delimit in advance the forms of its resistance

to the “real,” (Butler 1990, 55).

Lacan does not make reference to a pre-cultural disposition, but he does frame his theory
in binaries such as the divide between the Symbolic and the real (the role of the
imaginary is omitted from Butler’s reading), and the divide between masculinity and
femininity. These binaries act as dispositions insofar as they are presupposed and
unanalyzed, yet serve to condition sexuality. Binaries are constructions of the Symbolic,
yet their constructedness is masked by the Symbolic.

Butler needs to clarify the connection between gender and the division between
the real and the Symbolic. Are these two instances of Lacan’s falling into binary
oppositions, or are they mutually constitutive binaries? Either way, Butler leaves the
reader to draw her own conclusions.

Butler concludes this section of chapter two with a ﬁnal assessment of Lacan and
Riviere. Theories of sexuality read through the lens of gender, when constructed as rooted
in melancholic refusal/domination of homosexuality, depend upon the implicit positing of
a primary sexuality. For Lacan this primary sexuality is bisexuality, for Riviere it is
masculine desire. These primacies, in the process of socialization, are shaped by culture.
Repression of these primacies results in the production of gender. Butler criticizes this
model of sexuality:

From the start, however, the binary restriction on sexuality shows clearly

that culture in no way postdates the bisexuality that it purports to repress:

It constitutes the matrix of intelligibility through which primary
bisexuality itself becomes thinkable (Butler 1990, 54).

66

 

 

 

 

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Sexuality is constructed as a binary: masculine or feminine. It is posited or it functions
within the Symbolic as if it were pre-cultural. Butler rightly points out that the binary
structure reveals that it cannot predate culture, since, to be understood as a binary, it must
be located within culture.

Butler’s analysis of Lacan and Riviere is useful insofar as it reveals hidden
assumptions masked as “givens” which are in fact discursive constructions produced by
culture. This indicates that theorists who eschew recourse to such entities as
“dispositions” may, nevertheless, import them into their theories.

In the last two sections of chapter two of Gender Trouble Butler argues that
treating homosexuality and bisexuality as dispositions supports the construction, in these
theories, of heterosexuality as a product of culture. She demonstrates that both
homosexuality and bisexuality are constructed to be marginal and perverse in order to
support the naturalization and normalization of heterosexuality. Her argument returns to
the original problem of the use of the term ‘women’. On Butler’s view, any feminist re-
appropriation of the term is problematic in that it supports the normalization of
heterosexuality. The goal of articulating or achieving a subjectivity for women takes as a
given the entire discourse that constructs subjectivity as male. This discourse also serves
to depict heterosexuality as natural and homosexuality and bisexuality as deviant. Thus
working for female subjectivity is supporting the very discourse that constructs us to be
excluded from subjectivity, and supports the discourse that marginalizes any sexuality
other than heterosexuality.

Butler’s argument poses a serious challenge to an identity politics that relies on

the term ‘women’. The force of Butler’s argument relies on the role of language, or the

67

symbolic. In the next section I will consider challenges to Butler’s assumptions

regarding language and its role in identity formation.

My Response to Butler

Butler argues that sexual identity is discursively constructed. We assume a sex
within a context of compulsory heterosexuality (Butler 1993, 12). As subjects, we are
formed through ‘subjection’ to the norm of sex. The process of becoming a subject
requires the (compelled) assumption of this norm (Butler, 1993, 13). The norm is
reinforced through repetition or “citation”:

The norm of sex takes hold to the extent that it is “cited” as such a norm,

but it also derives power through the citations that it compels (Butler

1993, 13).
Compulsory “assumption of sexual identity is a kind of citation that reinforces the norm.
Another kind of citation is resistance to the norm. By contesting the norm, attempts to
resist it actually demonstrate and reiterate its power,” (Butler 1990, 77). Instead of
resistance, Butler advocates a different production of the norm, or law; this alternative
production would co-opt the power of the law, expose the heterosexual matrix, and
displace the effect of its necessity (Butler 1993, 15). There are two consequences of this
theory for identity politics, the ﬁrst has to do with identity, the second pertains to agency.

As a result of her argument regarding sexual identity, Butler claims that, “. . .
‘identity,’ as a point of departure, can never hold as the solidifying ground of a feminist
movement.” (Butler 1995, 49). She contends that any identity formulation is necessarily

exclusionary. But she can only hold this view if she takes ‘identity’ to be synonymous

with ‘subjectivity’ where the latter signiﬁes the liberal subject or the male subject.

68

Returning to her analysis of Lacan and Irigaray, subjectivity in that system is solely the
province of males. Female subjectivity is nonexistent. If an attempt to gain subjectivity
for women is an attempt to gain the kind of subjectivity men have, then it would be
exclusionary. Male subjectivity is predicated on exclusion--speciﬁcally the exclusion of
women. Butler admits of the existence only of this form of subjectivity. Hence, any
attempt to gain subjectivity for women, either within the “system” or from outside of it,
necessarily entails exclusion.

An analogous problem exists with respect to agency. The concept of agency that
Butler discusses, a “voluntarist” agency, again presupposes the liberal subject. There is
some justiﬁcation for this assumption. To the extent we function in a liberal society it is
as liberal subjects. But if we reject that kind of subjectivity, we must reject that notion of
agency. Butler is consistent in this respect.

Butler does not admit of the possibility of alternative subj ectivities with
corresponding powers of agency. She acknowledges the existence of the dominant world
of meaning, operating roughly as postmodernists/poststructuralists say it operates, and no
other. Any attempt to articulate other worlds of meaning is discounted as an attempt to
escape to a precultural “originary” subjectivity. One who makes such an attempt has
been taken in by the discursive ﬁction. Allison Weir criticizes Butler for this move.

Weir takes issue with Butler’s account of the construction of (gender) identity.
According to Butler, gender is constructed through a series of repetitions, only deviating
from the norm by accidental variations. These deviations reveal the “given-mess” of
gender to be an illusion. The performance of gender, or the failure to perform according

to the norm, is not an ‘act’ attributable to an ‘agent’ on Butler’s view. In rejecting the

69

notion of the pre-discursive subject, Butler rejects any account of an abiding subject that
persists over time. That is where Weir focuses her criticism of Butler. Weir points out
the contradiction between the claim that gender is a performance according to norms, and
the denial of a subject to which we attribute agency and intention. Weir asks, if gender
can be exposed as an illusion, the illusion is revealed to whom? There must be some
knowing subject to whom the illusion is exposed (Weir, 126).

Furthermore, the denial of a prediscursive subject is right, according to Weir, yet
Butler goes too far in rejecting any account of experience of a self persisting over time.
Weir points out that this-view has consequences Butler may not want to accept.
Speciﬁcally, the rejection of the “doer behind the deed” is a Nietzchean argument.
Nietzsche himself used it to justify a kind of essentialism that allowed for the denial of
moral culpability. Since the strong were acting out their nature, it was not wrong that
they dominate the weak; it is simply their nature. Even if Butler does not accept this
argument, she opens herself up to this critique, according to Weir. Butler’s move from
the rejection of a pre-discursive subject to the claim that any account of subjective,
reﬂective experience necessarily invokes the pre-discursive subject is an unjustiﬁed leap,
according to Weir. Butler loses an account of agency, reﬂection, and intention. Weir
suggests a view that allows for the subject partially constituting herself. That would
acknowledge the role of discourse as well as personal agency in the constitution of the
subject.

Weir is correct to criticize Butler’s narrow view of subjectivity. Butler assumes
that such a subjectivity is the only one available to women. Butler does not admit of the

possibility that the ability of women (and marginalized people in general) to gain

70

subjectivity at all must change the nature of subjectivity. Even if women aspire to
subjectivity on the male model, to do so is to shift the meaning of subjectivity.

Kathy Weeks develops a slightly different criticism of Butler on agency. The
criticism raised by Weeks is that Butler, in trying to construct a subject that is
indeterminate--neither “free” nor completely “deterrnined”--ends up constructing a
subject that is underdetermined. Butler claims that the subject is a result of a series of
‘truth-effects’ which I think are produced by practices. Weeks asks, what is the
ontological status of a truth effect? (Weeks, 130). In rejecting any account of subjectivity
that posits a “doer” behind the deed, Butler rejects any ground for subjectivity. If we are
constituted by our actions, there is no persisting “I” that continues on through time.

Weir, as noted above, points out the problems this raises for agency and accountability.
Weeks pursues a different line of criticism. She looks at the dichotomy Butler poses
between contingency and necessity in the construction of the subject.

For Butler, according to Weeks, a constructed subject implies contingency
(Weeks, 132). This is Butler’s great contribution to feminist theory according to Weeks.
Nevertheless, we need an account of a constructed subject (rather than a subject which
acts from its essence as a woman, for example), and we need an account of social
construction that does not eliminate the possibility of agency (rather than a subject wholly
determined by social forces).

Butler’s rejection of necessity does not, according to Weeks, capture the
“baggage” of compulsory gender norms. Again, it seems she is leaving out the

embeddedness of gender practices and the difﬁculty of resisting them. Weeks suggests

71

that one can adopt a model of the subject as contingent without rejecting necessity
completely.

The subject constituted in and through an accrunulation of enactments, the

subjectivity that coheres around the relative stability of practices and is

manifest in the relative continuity of memories, habits, desires, and

interests, is both limiting and enabling. Unlike the anti-ontological

performative model, the laboring [or acting] subject accumulates

ontological weight without acquiring a transcendental stability (Weeks,

133).

Weeks is saying that there can be an enduring subject constituted by practices, but also by
memory and habit, etc. The weight of the past is a kind of necessity or constraint on
contingency, but not one which confers an essence on the subject, and not one which
completely determines the subject.

The preceding criticisms point out an important aspect of Butler’s work, namely,
that she holds a too narrow conception of subjectivity linked to too deterministic a picture
of language. In this respect they have shown the limits of her arguments on subjectivity.

To recapitulate this argument, she has shown, using Irigaray and Derrida, that
subjectivity, for Freud, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and Riviere, is founded on exclusion.
Speciﬁcally subjectivity is founded on the exclusion of women, which makes subjectivity
male.

She has also shown that subjectivity appears to be an effect of norms acting upon
pre-cultural dispositions. Using Foucauldian analysis she reveals that this appearance is a
ﬁction. Subjectivity is a discursive construction whose constructedness is masked by

cultural ﬁctions. Following Nietzsche, she claims that subjectivity, rather than being a

substantial and enduring core self, is an effect of cultural productions.

72

 

 

 

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112
for
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The consequences for feminists are ﬁrst that we should not seek to gain
subjectivity since, in doing so, we only reinforce the cultural ﬁction that maintains our
own exclusion. Second, since our concept of agency as an ‘I’ that acts voluntarily
presupposes this form of subjectivity, we must reject agency as well.

There are two senses of ‘exclusion’ in Butler’s work, one which I will call
empirical exclusion, and one which is metaphysical. Empirical exclusion is the exclusion
those members of a category for which the “defmition” of the category does not account.
For example, deﬁning women as mothers excludes those women who are not mothers.
Metaphysical exclusion takes place when the very structure of a concept is based on
exclusion. Butler would argue that subjectivity works structurally to exclude women in
this respect. However, she makes the stronger claim that any category for which there is
a deﬁnition, in other words, any identity at all, is exclusionary in that it places a limit on
the endless possibilities that could fall under that category. Weir takes issue with this
concept of identity as repression of difference. Here she criticizes Butler for following
Derrida too closely in his assertion that all identity is repression. Derrida argues that this
dynamic is a necessary effect of the structure of language. Weir argues that language also
serves as a means of communication. Derrida’s narrow view of language, in focusing on
it as repressive and deceptive, does not allow for the ways in which language serves as a
force for connection (Weir, 117-122). F urtherrnore, it is not clear, according to Weir, that
identities carry such ontological weight. She argues that social categories such as
‘women’ can be contingent (Weir, 119). I think Weir is right. If Butler can argue that
identities are discursive constructions, that argument reinforces the fact of their

contingency, however entrenched in social practice they may be. As Weeks has pointed

73

out, their entrenchment is not a necessary effect of the structure of the concept, rather, it
is the effect of long-established social practice. Thus we can dismiss the argument that
identity is necessarily repressive of difference. However, there is still a structural
exclusion that can take place that needs to be addressed.

Given the double-bind women are in, according to Butler, and given that seeking
subjectivity for women only serves to bar us from it, it becomes useful to hypothesize
how the attempt to gain subjectivity would work in this system.

Either women can gain subjectivity or not. If it is possible, Butler might argue,
following other feminists, then so doing supports the discursive ﬁction in the following
way: women, to become subjects, must become male subjects, that is, women must
become “men”. That move, to the extent it is possible, leaves out women who do not or
cannot become “men”. Women, as women, cannot be subjects. The exclusionary
dynamic still functions even if some women gain subjectivity. Therefore, if women can
become subjects only by becoming “men”, Butler is right to say that women are still
excluded from subjectivity. For women to seek subjectivity on these terms is to leave
this dynamic unchallenged, and may serve to support it.

But women cannot become men and still remain women. Female to male
transsexuals (FTMS) prove this point. FTMS are viewed as men to the extent that they are
not viewed as women. Thus women cannot function as men and still remain women.
Butler’s point is supported.

However, Butler is only right about subjectivity being barred to women if there is
only one kind of subjectivity. As Weir and Weeks point out, Butler does not justify this

assumption. If an alternative subjectivity can be constructed that is not founded on

74

exclusion, then Butler’s argument would not hold. In chapter four I address such a form

of subjectivity.

75

Chapter Three: Race as a Social Identity

Just as some feminists argue that we cannot rightly use the concept ‘woman’ or
that we cannot generalize about women, some philosophers of race argue that we cannot
use the concept ‘race’ to mean all we want it to mean. These arguments must be taken
note of and responded to, but in the ﬁnal analysis, there are compelling reasons for those
of us ﬁghting sexism and racism to hang onto both the concepts of ‘woman’ and of
‘race’.1 In this chapter, I will focus on the latter.

It is important to consider the construction of race as a social category for several
reasons: ﬁrst, the project of constructing a coalitional identity politics requires attention
to at least several signiﬁcant identities, and race is one of them. The type of coalition I
advocate is one in which racial categories (as well as other categories) are recognized as
categories that are constructed by power relations. The attempt to dismantle hierarchical
power relations does not require that we dismantle these categories. It is important to
deal with the speciﬁcity of race in itself as well as its intersection with other axes of
oppression. Furthermore, it is important to consider the issues that give rise to arguments
that the concept of race is only a tool of oppression. Finally, it is useful to consider the
arguments about race as they parallel and differ from arguments about gender.

Race and gender parallel each other in that each category has a history of relations
of dominance and subordination. They differ in terms of how these relations structure
social life. With respect to race, whole communities of people may share racial ties that

can work to consolidate power (maintaining domination) or promote solidarity and

 

' Although ‘gender’ and not ‘women’ is analogous to ‘race’ I choose to use the term
‘woman’ since the arguments addressed in chapter two and throughout the dissertation
are problems raised about the category ‘women’ rather than gender as a whole.

75

resistance to oppression. Gender, as a category, does not result in the physical grouping
of people in such exclusive ways, except insofar as women have been, by law and in
practice, excluded from many parts of the public sphere. For this reason, women as a
group are frequently not viewed as a class in the way one considers race to be a class
(Frye, 8-9). The structure of race is different from the structure of gender, and the
oppressions that occur on the basis of each differ as well.2 A coalitional politics must be
able to account for these differences.

In the US, and in the world as a whole, there exist many cultures with different
values and practices. T o the extent that these cultures come in contact with each other,
there must be means for negotiating these differences. In some cases, where several
cultures coexist, hierarchies are formed that privilege one or more groups over the rest.
Such is the case with race, both in the US and in the world. People of color are generally
disempowered by many institutions, practices, and belief systems set up by and for white
people. The challenge in a pluralist society is to be able to acknowledge the signiﬁcance
of different social groups without instituting power relations that stigmatize some groups
and beneﬁt others. Some who envision new possibilities are concerned with balancing a
respect for culture with an acknowledgment of the importance of individual rights. One
way to characterize this tension is as a desire to seek a balance between communitarian

values and liberal individualist values. The former, as a system of political organization,

 

2 See Marilyn Frye, “Oppression” (1983) for a discussion of the structure of oppression.
See Iris Marion Young, “Five Faces of Oppression” (1990) for an analysis of oppression
based on racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, ageism, etc.

76

takes the community to be prior to the individual, that is, the community shapes its
members by inculcating the values held by that community. “The good,” rather than
individual rights based on justice, is pursued in the manner this community sees ﬁt. A
liberal society, on the other hand, takes the individual to be prior to the community. A
community is nothing more than a collection of individuals who have consented to live
together. In this system primary value is placed on the rights of each individual. One can
do as she wills, provided her actions do not inﬁinge upon the rights of another.
Adjudication between conﬂicting rights is made by appealing to governing principles to

which all consent. Each person is free to pursue the good life as she sees ﬁt.

There are, of course, problems with both systems. Brieﬂy, critics of
communitarianism call it totalitarian, since individual rights can be superceded by the
needs of the community. Critics of liberalism cite the failure of liberals to acknowledge
the system of values that functions in a liberal society. Based on the right of the
individual to pursue the good life as he understands it, the liberal state still reﬂects a
common sense of the good--a communitarian value. Other critics of liberalism cite as
problematic the model of the individual, as the universal person. The model person is
supposed to stand for any person in the state. Thus the model person is considered to be
without race, gender, or other particulars, since such characteristics are deemed
accidental. The model person is the abstract concept of a person--the universal person.
But, critics say, this model individual does have a race (white), a gender (male), a
sexuality (heterosexual) etc. To act as if this model stands for everyone, regardless of

race, class, gender, etc. is to disenfranchise those who do not ﬁt the model.

77

The debate over liberalism and communitarianism has gone on for some time,
with both sides marshaling arguments for their own position and against the opposing
one. There are those who try to take the best from both approaches. Communitarianism
offers an account of how culture works to shape an individual. Liberalism brings with it
a tolerance of individual differences. For those who wish to combine these approaches,
the task is to allow for cultural and individual differences. They understandably want the
strengths of each position while eliminating the weaknesses. I believe that many
philosophers who address issues of race take up this project since it is easy to see a race
(as opposed to, say, a gender) as a distinct culture with values one would want to
preserve. Yet, in a pluralistic society, one must also adjudicate between different and
sometimes opposing cultural values, hence the desire to develop a communitarian/liberal
theory of political organization. Though I respect the motivations that set them on this
project, I think that the project will not get us to the kind of society we want: one that is
tolerant, even appreciative, of difference. The communitarian model is right in its
acknowledgment of the role of culture, but it lacks the structure to handle differences
within a culture or between cultures. Trying to amend this lack by importing liberal
ideals is wrong headed. The problem lies in the desire to retain the liberal notion of
individualism.

In this paper, I will consider the argument regarding the need for such a
combination of political values as presented by Lucius Outlaw. While I support Outlaw’s
goal of preserving race as a concept, I do not agree with his larger project of combining

communitarian and liberal political theories to achieve unity in plurality.

78

The Existence of Race: The Debate

When addressing arguments regarding the existence of race, two kinds of
existence are at work. First, there is its existence as a concept that structures social life.
No one engaged in these debates questions the existence of race in social reality. That is,
no one disputes the fact that there is racial discrimination. The dispute is over the actual
existence of racial distinctions as physical properties. That is, races have material
physical existence if we can point to some physical characteristic that correlates with
social distinctions.

Naomi Zack offers a summary of what she calls the ‘folk meaning of race’:

Roughly there is an assumption that there are three main human racial

groups . . . : white, black, and Asian. These races are not distinct as

species, because interbreeding is possible, and they are something like

breeds, i.e., natural, biological groupings of human beings into which all

individuals can be sorted, based on traits like skin color, hair texture, and

body structure. Although different races have different histories and

cultures, their histories and cultures are not part of the biological

foundation of racial differences. This biological foundation has value-

neutral or factual support from science, and if a racial term is attributed to

an individual, then something factual is said about her. In other words, the

term ‘race’ refers to something [materially and pre-socially] real. (Zack

1997,30)
The material reality of race on this view is independent of its social history. Proponents
of this view may hold that race caused social differences, as opposed to the view that
social differences constitute the meaning of differences in physical attributes. I take the
latter view to be one that Zack would hold. When I refer to arguments that race is real, I
will refer to the view that holds race as a pre-social, material reality.

Those who argue that race does not have such reality draw on empirical research

and on the history of the concept of race. As Zack points out, the meaning of race has

79

changed throughout European history: for Greeks and Romans, race referred to one’s
group or culture. In the middle ages one’s race was one’s family lineage. By the
seventeenth century, with the emergence of nation-states, race was associated with
cultures and civilizations in geographic locations. In the eighteenth century, race was
associated with skin color, but racial divisions were based on culture and religion rather
than human biology. (Zack 1998, 2). Zack’s history of the concept of race continues as

she shows how scientists manipulated the deﬁnition of race to justify slavery:

By the second half of the nineteenth century . . . race came to mean a
distinct biological group of human beings who were not all members of
the same family but who shared inherited physical and cultural traits that
were different from those shared within other races. This meaning of race
was constructed by American scientists during slavery and segregation.
The claims of these scientists of race were used as justiﬁcations for black
chattel slavery and white social and economic dominance over Negroes.
Based on reports of empirical ﬁndings that were often incomplete or even
falsiﬁed, hierarchies of human races were postulated. Always the black
race was on the bottom and the white race on the top, with Asians and
Indians in the middle. (Zack 1998, 2)

The nineteenth century concept of race made race into an essence which was thought to
determine not only physical characteristics, but moral and intellectual abilities as well.
The folk concept of race, then, is a fairly new concept invented by racists using fraudulent
evidence. To continue to use the folk concept of race would be to perpetuate this racist
ﬁction.

Not only does this concept perpetuate harm, those who argue against the physical
existence of race point out that there is no evidence to support the claim that race
physically exists. So, leaving aside the falsiﬁed evidence of the nineteenth century,

current research does not support the claim that race is real.

80

Anthony Kwarne Appiah discusses the claim that race is a concept that invokes a
biological foundation which in fact does not exist. Empirical research shows that there is
no signiﬁcant increase in the correlation of genetic characteristics between two members
of the same race as compared with two randomly selected members of the general
population (Appiah, 30-31). For example, there may be a greater range of hair color
among those considered to be blond than among any two persons selected randomly from
the general population across races.3

Appiah acknowledges the shared history and social location of groups of people,
but rather than call this race, the better term is culture. According to Appiah, similarities
among people thought to be attributable to a shared history based on skin color are not
easily reducible to race:

What exists “out there” in the world--communities of meaning, shading

variously into each other in the rich structure of the social world--is the

province not of biology but of hermeneutic understanding (Appiah 1986,

36).

These communities of meaning exist--Appiah does not deny that. And he fully
understands the social implications of membership in a community of meaning
speciﬁcally organized, in part, by a common African lineage. However, Appiah rejects
the biological connotations that the term ‘race’ implies, and so argues that we must
replace this term with the word ‘culture’.

Zack addresses the question of the existence of race from a philosophical

perspective. Two arguments that I will consider here are the argument of race as family

resemblance, or a cluster concept, and race as a natural kind.

 

3 Thanks to Jen Benson who suggested this example.

81

The family resemblance argument is an acknowledgment that there are no
necessary and sufﬁcient conditions that deﬁne racial distinctions. Nevertheless,
proponents of this view could maintain that there is a set of individuals,

. . . who share different amounts of those physical traits considered by be

racial, family relations with other people in the same racial group, and self

identiﬁcation as members of that group-mot to mention self identiﬁcation

by members of other racial groups. (Zack 1997, 36).

Zack notes that Appiah considers this a formulation of the ‘folk conception’ of race.
They disagree on what they think is the ‘folk conception of race.’ What constitutes that
which ordinary English-speaking folk call a race, for Appiah, is what he ﬁrst calls
culture, and later calls ‘ethical identity’ described as the following:

. . . the experience of a life as a member of a group of people who

experience themselves as--and are held by others to be--a community in

virtue of their mutual recognition--and their recognition by others-~as a

people of a common descent. (Appiah 1997, 79)

While Appiah ﬁnds it acceptable to describe the folk concept of race as if it were an
‘ethical identity’ to make it non-biological, Zack rejects this option on the basis that this
formulation does not capture the meaning of the folk notion. If the family resemblance
model of race, rather than the biological model, was intended by those who use the folk
conception of race, then we would indicate of someone designated black, “ . . . what kind
of black the individual in question was.” (Zack 1997 36). Since we do not do this for

black folks, Zack maintains that the farme resemblance model of race is different from

and therefore not a defensible interpretation of the folk concept of race.4 Therefore, the

 

" Zack notes that we judge Native American heritage according to blood quanta. We also
ask about the speciﬁc ethnicity of European Americans, though the latter she suspects
may still refer to ‘bloodlines’. I agree with her hunch, having grown up identifying as,
among other things, 1/8 Irish.

82

family resemblance model does not stand as evidence for the claim that race is materially
and pre-socially real.

One may wish to argue that race is real insofar as it is a natural kind. Zack
categorically rejects this proposition since it has been established that there is no racial
essence nor are there necessary and sufﬁcient conditions with which to deﬁne race.
Zack’s main support for the claim that race is not a natural kind is that, while there are
physical traits that have been designated as indicators of race at a certain time and place,
“. . . there is no purely racial sub-structure per se, to which morphology that is perceived
or judged to be racial on a folk level, can be necessarily or (even contingently)
connected.” (Zack 1997, 37). She compares the physical traits considered to be racial
with physical traits taken to indicate biological sex. Acknowledging that the assertion of
sexual dimorphism is an oversimpliﬁcation, nevertheless she points out that bodily
characteristics indicative of sex have a correlative chromosomal structure, namely, XX,
XY, or some variation. In contrast, the physical traits associated with racial distinctions
have no such correlative chromosomal structure. There is no “race gene”:

. . . the sexual identiﬁcation paradigm is objective or real in a scientiﬁc

way, while the racial part of clusters of racial traits are solely “in the

head.” Race is a social construction imposed on human biological

differences which are not themselves racial--because nothing is racial

which is not “in the head.” Again, the genes for these traits deemed racial

are scientiﬁcally real but there is no racial aspect of these genes which is

scientiﬁcally real. And yet, on a ﬂesh and blood level, the prevailing

assumption is that race itself is physically real. (Zack 1997, 37)

In the face of these arguments it becomes apparent that the folk concept of race as real is

indefensible. Both Zack and Appiah seem to accept the concept of race as family

resemblance, which, as Zack maintains, differs signiﬁcantly from the folk concept of

83

race. Zack does not explicitly state that she thinks we ought to give up the term ‘race’.
She does acknowledge disagreement on this point and seems to ﬁnd some uses of the

term to be acceptable.

In contrast to the preceding arguments, Outlaw defends the use of the word ‘race’
as a term that has a biological component. In the face of arguments against the existence
of race, Outlaw answers simply, that we must preserve this concept as a matter of social
justice:

. . . it has not come to pass that physical and cultural differences among

groups of peoples in terms of which they continue to be identiﬁed, and to

identify themselves, as races and ethnies have either ceased to exist or

ceased to be taken as highly important in the organization of society,

especially in situations where there is competition for resources thought

vital to lives organized, to signiﬁcant extents, through racial and/or ethnic
identities (Outlaw, 10-11).

In short, race and ethnicity (as well as other differences) are made signiﬁcant by forces
that serve to marginalize groups. The marginalized group, in using and analyzing the
concept of race, is not thereby responsible for its being socially salient. Outlaw seeks an
understanding of race that, unlike racist and invidious ethnocentric concepts of race,
seeks to end justiﬁcation of exploitation, marginalization, and oppression on the basis of
race. One of the strengths of Outlaw’s position is this argument in favor of continuing to
use the concept of race. Yet it is not clear that theorists such as Zack and Appiah deny
the social relevance of race. Their argument is aimed at biological justiﬁcation for racial
classiﬁcation. So Outlaw is responding to a claim they are not making. Nevertheless, his
reasoning could be justiﬁcation for preserving the term ‘race’ by adopting the family

resemblance model in place of the natural kinds model.

84

To the argument against the existence of race as a natural kind, Outlaw has two
responses. First, he cites Aristotle’s claim that, “for any given science or systematic
attempt to achieve certiﬁed knowledge one should seek no more precision than the
subject matter allows.” (Outlaw, 11). Thus we can cite statistical studies which outline
the general characteristics of a race without having to specify necessary and sufﬁcient
conditions. This response implies that Outlaw wants to defend some notion of a
biological substructure for race, though not a notion of biological essences deﬁning races.
His goal may best be explained by considering his larger project. Outlaw
takes up the question posed by Carleton Coon, namely, when two races meet, why is
there not sufﬁcient interrningling such that over time the two blend? Instead, while there
arises a group of biracial persons, generally the races remain distinct. The answer that
Coon poses is a racist speculation about the role of genetics in determining superiority.
(Outlaw, 3). Outlaw takes up the issue with the intention of seeking an antiracist
explanation. The problem can be summed up by the question Outlaw takes ﬁ'om Coon,
Why are we not all light khaki? (Outlaw, 13).

Starting from the fact that there are observable distinctions between human beings
such that it is possible to sort persons generally into groups, Outlaw turns to W. E. B. Du
Bois’ speculation on the persistence of racial distinctions. Both Outlaw and Appiah draw
from the work of Du Bois on race. They come to different conclusions on the question of
whether Du Bois believed in the existence of races as biologically real. Outlaw focuses
on Du Bois’ earlier work, “The Conservation of Races,” to support his claim that there
are actual racial distinctions. Appiah argues that Du Bois’ later work demonstrates a

move away from this early position to a concept of race as social construction, to use

85

contemporary terminology. Du Bois struggled to explain the basis for connection among
African peoples and their descendants. With so much diversity among African and
African-descent peoples, he concludes, in his later work, that the connection of race is not
sufﬁcient, yet Appiah notes his reluctance to relinquish the concept. Appiah concludes
that Du Bois’s use of the term ‘civilization’ where we now speak of ‘race’ is strong
support for his own argument for the use of the term ‘culture’ (Appiah, 35).

Outlaw, in contrast, supports the use of the concept ‘race’. In doing so, he draws
on a number of factors, biological and social, in his argument of race as a bio-social
collectivity. He makes reference to the earlier work of Du Bois, especially on the cultural
aspect of race. While race has a biological dimension, demonstrated by distinctions in
physical features, race is also a cultural institution. According to Du Bois, the main
structural organizing force, besides common blood, is the message it gives to the world.
Following the scholarship of the day, Du Bois identiﬁes eight different races, and
indicates their respective messages. This classiﬁcation system is problematic in two
ways, ﬁrst in the divisions he imposes in the name of race, and second in the messages
and consequent values he attaches to each race:

. . . the sociological and historical races of men [sic] began to approximate

the present division of races as indicated by physical researches. At the

same time, the spiritual or physical differences of race groups became

deep and decisive. The English nation stood for constitutional liberty and

commercial freedom; the German nation for science and philosophy; the

Romance nations for literature and art, and the other race groups are

Striving, each in its own way, to develop for civilization its particular

message, its particular ideal, which shall help to guide the world . . . (Du
Bois, 23-24).

86

Clearly Du Bois is working with a nineteenth century understanding of anthropology, yet
he is trying to come to an understanding about the conservation of races. His notion of
the ‘message’ of each race, according to Outlaw, is a move away from biology toward a
cultural understanding of ties that explain the place that a people holds in relation to other
races. Further, he is arguing in favor of the conservation of races within a pluralist
society. Du Bois is against assimilation, but he is also against separatism. This position
is taken up by Outlaw, who wants to incorporate communitarian and liberal principles in

his model of social organization.
Du Bois deﬁned race in the following way:

. . . a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and
language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are
both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the
accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life
(Du Bois, 21). . '

Race, then, for Du Bois, has two components, the biological (blood)5 and the cultural,
shared history-shared striving. It is the cultural element that Du Bois highlights in his
claim that each race has a “message” to give to the world, since that would be how the
message is carried through to subsequent generations, and to the world as a whole. The
biological component is not part of this message, but may, instead, reinforce divisions
among peOples that culture reproduces.

Du Bois does not identify a distinct contribution made by Africans, so he places

the African race in the schema as one of the races whose message is incomplete. The

 

5 By biology and “blood” I take DuBois to be referring to a combination of kinship
relations and physical resemblance that is not fully articulated (Du Bois, 21). The
reference to biology should not be understood as making any claims regarding a genetic

87

completion of this message is one task that Outlaw takes up. The message is both
substantive, a body of knowledge, and formal, as one among many “messages” in a
pluralistic society.

The message becomes a basis, for Outlaw, of a cultural knowledge which he
ultimately links to broad, universal knowledge. His argument has some parallels with
standpoint epistemology, but his desire to authorize knowledge through universal
principles takes him away from that approach. Outlaw argues that race as an organizing
principle serves to bring together social groups by reason of shared history, reﬂecting a
biological as well as a cultural connection. His goal is to develop a non-racist concept of
race--one which does not replicate or support racist arguments for the existence of race as
a category that is then used to justify exploitation and oppression. For example, race can
be used against groups by those who make pseudoscientiﬁc “correlations” between race
and intelligence, or in stereotypes that attribute negative, seemingly “natural”
characteristics to people on the basis of race. In this respect the concept of race is a tool
of racism, and racists defend the existence of race as a biological term. Thus, Outlaw, in
wanting to construct a non-racist concept of race, is taking on an important task. A
second project that is related to the ﬁrst is to sketch out a framework for social relations
that is both situated, or culturally speciﬁc, and pluralist, i.e., respectful of individual and
cultural differences. These two arguments are related--the construction of race that
Outlaw develops is an integral part of his sketch of a political framework in which an

egalitarian concept of race can function.

 

basis for racial difference. I take Outlaw to be following Du Bois in this concept of
biology.

88

Returning to the question of race as a natural kind, Outlaw translates Du Bois’
concept of race into contemporary language:

. . . human populations and their sub-groupings are better understood as

social-natural kinds: that is, groupings of humans that are formed and

named under contingent socio-historical, cultural conditions, according to

social conventions . . . (Outlaw, 12).
In calling race a social-natural kind he preserves the sense in which biology is a factor,
but always inﬂuenced by culture. One way of understanding this mutual inﬂuence is
through Outlaw’s account of how a social group survives over time without dying out or
assimilating:

As with other species of living organisms, so too with humans in the long

run: only those populations and/or subgroups survive across generations

and in various environments who are successﬁrl in building up, storing,

reﬁning and mediating to contemporaries and successors life-sustaining,

order producing collections of knowledge and practices of particular kinds

(Outlaw, 17).
“Knowledge” as Outlaw uses the term here is a broad category ranging ﬁ'om that needed
for survival to that which constitutes a distinct culture. The knowledge he speaks of
ultimately comes under the care of that population’s philosophers (Outlaw, 18). That
knowledge is the message each race has to give to the world. He equivocates on the
meaning of ‘survival’ sometimes referring to biological survival, but also seeming to
refer to cultural survival. Outlaw links the importance of racial differentiation with the
importance of bio-diversity. Different knowledges are as important to our cultural
survival as bio-diversity is to physical survival. Outlaw never makes clear exactly what
the biological component is. If it is simply a common ancestry, then he could hold the

family resemblance model of race. Since he persists in calling race some sort of a natural

kind, it seems he would reject the model that Zack presents.

89

I ﬁnd Outlaw’s reliance on biology problematic. He can maintain the argument
above without relying on a biological foundation for race. Yet, in turning to biology,
Outlaw again follows Du Bois’s early work. I question this attachment to the biological
element. It is possible to defend a concept of cultural knowledge based on shared
material conditions--a shared history. Witness the many accounts of standpoint
epistemology, which do not rely on an explicit biological dimension. It seems that these
accounts would sufﬁce for Outlaw’s knowledge project without raising the problematic
issues ushered in by a reliance on biology. Furthermore, Outlaw makes reference to the
‘natural’ in ways that imply race is a ‘given’. Since Outlaw does not make clear his
understanding of how human knowledge shapes our perception of what counts as
‘natural’ this concept is problematic. It is crucial to Outlaw’s account of race that he
recognize the way in which the ‘natural’ is always mediated by culture.

Nevertheless, I do not stand with Appiah in reducing race to culture. Some
important element is lost in that reduction. What is lost is better described as material
conditions or kinship rather than biology. Embodied subjects make distinctions
according to race as well as culture. As long as some subjects hold power to marginalize
other subjects on the basis of race, that concept must be available for use by those of us
seeking to dismantle structures that maintain white privilege. I ﬁnd Naomi Zack’s
formulation of race as family resemblance a model that does not replicate racist and
inaccurate beliefs about biology, nor does it lose the sense in which race is socially very
real.

With respect to his larger project, Outlaw does not want a completely liberal

individualist society where race, class, gender, etc. are dismissed as secondary or

90

accidental characteristics. Nor does he want a completely communitarian society where
the group dominates the individual. Finally, he does not want a society where there are
no universal principles for adjudicating between conﬂicting needs of different groups (not
to mention intra-group disputes). Thus, he wants the universalism of a liberal framework
with the situatedness of a communitarian framework. Though I agree with Outlaw in
arguing for the continued use of the concept of race, I do not support his conception of
race, nor do I support his argument regarding the relationship of situated knowledge to
more “universal” knowledge. Overall I ﬁnd his commitment to liberal principles

untenable in the light of his desire for a situated subjectivity.

The Signiﬁcance of Race
The debate over the existence of race as a social category is part of a move in
postmodern theory against totalizing theories, or meta-narratives.“ Social categories such
as race and gender are rejected because the category, construed as a set or a Venn
diagram, erases the signiﬁcance of differences among members of the category. The
failure to acknowledge difference results from the imposition of a certain kind of
deﬁnition. Recall the previous discussion of identity in the work of Judith Butler (chapter

2 above). The imposition of an identity on the Derridean view squelches the possibilities

 

‘5 Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson described the way in which some feminist theories
in some way constitute a metanarrative:
. . . the feminist theories we have in mind here are not pure metanarratives;
they are not ahistorical normative theories about the transcultural nature of
rationality or justice. Rather, they are very large social theories-theories
of history, society, culture, and psychology--which claim, for example, to
identify causes and constitutive features of sexism that operate cross-
culturally (Fraser & Nicholson, 26-27).

91

that exist in an undifferentiated plenum. In response to arguments such as these, Delia
Aguilar writes about the move against overarching theories of social phenomena such as

oppression, and the corresponding interest in ‘difference’:

We should be pleased that many feminists now refrain from using the
totalizing plural “we,” and instead take care to give attention to other
social relations like class, race, nationality and so on.

The problem that I see, however, is that the approach of the “politics of
difference” as this is called, at its very best fails to take into account
asymmetries of power. That is, in its zeal to acknowledge the existence of
a plurality of differences--presumably to celebrate these in the age of
multiculturalism--the relations of power that have produced those
differences are obscured or ignored. So, for example, class--which is the
result of power relations and often irresolvable conﬂicts between the haves
and the have nots--becomes interpreted as a matter of lifestyle and is
frequently interchanged with “classism,” presumably meaning there is a
celebration of difference (and the list of differences can be very lengthy),
we never really get to understand how the differences came to exist
(Aguilar, 492).

Aguilar points out the danger in acknowledging difference detached from the systems of
oppression that caused the difference to become socially salient. This move eliminates
acknowledgment of the power differences that maintain these social groups. When
Appiah names race “the badge of insult,” he wants to say that it is a cultural difference
rather than a racial mark (Appiah, 35). This move does not capture all that is salient
about such differences. Racism is not reducible to different cultural experiences. In

response to Appiah, I maintain that ‘culture’ cannot do all he asks it to do.

What makes race socially salient in a way that, e.g., “handedness” is not, is the
ability of one race to enforce a conceptual scheme in which it is privileged over other

races. The scheme is so embedded that social values and social institutions replicate it.

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Even when these values are challenged and rejected by many, their social embeddedness
perpetuates the system of oppression.

Thus Appiah’s move from ‘race’ to ‘culture’ risks a detachment ﬁ'om the larger
social structures which perpetuate the differential valuing of cultures. It is not merely a
difference in culture, it is a difference in the power to attach social meaning to that
culture. Though Appiah is aware of this power differential, he does not include an
account of it in his discussion of race and culture. Aguilar, without the need to refer to
biology, gives us further reason to preserve concepts such as race, class, gender, etc.,

even while we understand such concepts to be social constructions.

Race as a Product of the Racial State

In contrast to the debate between Outlaw and Appiah, Aguilar and other theorists
have developed concepts of race which do not rely on biological connection, yet do not
argue to eliminate the use of the term ‘race.’ It is useful to consider views of race which
focus on power dynamics and the way in which relations of domination serve to construct
racial categories.

Maria Lugones, in response to work on race by Michael Omi and Howard Winant,
developed the following outline of a theory of the racial state as a system of white
privilege:

i. It produces a classiﬁcation of people that gives rise to race.

ii. The classiﬁcation is not a rational ordering based on any ‘natural’
phenomena.

iii. The classiﬁcation is historically variable.

iv. The classiﬁcation has a strong normative force in the form of custom
or in the form of positive law.

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v. The classiﬁcation is presupposed (explicitly or not) by many other
legal and customary norms.

vi. The classiﬁcation imposes on people a false identity and arrogates the
power of self-deﬁnition, even though the history of the classiﬁcation
may include the search and the hegemonical struggle for identity and
self-deﬁnition by particular groups.

vii. The classiﬁcation is given meaning by particular organizations of
social, political and economic interaction that regulate relations among
people who are differently classiﬁed. 1

viii.The racial state also produces ideologies that create the illusion that
both the classiﬁcation and the organization of life that accompany and
give meaning to it are justiﬁed.

[ . . . I think that Omi and Winant would ﬁnd fault in my formulation of

(vi) because it does not give enough attention to competing racially

deﬁned political projects. My intent in formulating (vi) is to take these

projects into account . . . ] (Lugones 1990, 49, note).

Lugones, following Omi and Winant, explicitly claims that there is no basis in natural
phenomena for the classiﬁcation of race in the racial state. Rather, the effect of
classiﬁcation, supported by custom, law, and other norms, is the production of races.
This classiﬁcation is given meaning not by differences in skin color and hair texture, but
by differences in social, political, and economic interaction. In other words, groups of
people who are racialized live that out in terms of social, political, and economic sanction
against them. To deny that is to deny the reality of race--the extreme liberal
individualism characterized by libertarianism. Lugones, in short, rejects any claim to a
biological basis for race. In this respect, it may appear that she agrees with Appiah, but
that is not the case, since she does not advocate eliminating the use of the term ‘race’ to
refer to an oppressive classiﬁcation system.

Lugones makes the following claim that distinguishes race from ethnicity or
culture:

The existence of races as the products of racialization presupposes the
presence of racism, but the existence of different ethnicities does not

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presuppose ethnocentrism, even if etlmocentrism is universal. So we
should conclude that ethnicity is not the same as race and etlmocentrism is
not the same as racism (Lugones 1990, 48).

Race, as the product of racialization, is a product of a classiﬁcation system which
institutionalizes a particular form of domination. Race, by deﬁnition, invokes this
relation. Ethnicity, cultural difference, does not carry with it the logical necessity of
relations of dominance. Even if ethnocentrism is imbedded in all relations between
different ethnicities, that does not mean that domination is an inherent part of ethnicity as

it is an inherent part of race.

On this point, then, Lugones differs from Appiah who would argue that race
should drop out of the picture in favor of culture. Lugones preserves the concept as a

means of naming relations of domination that structure race.

I suspect that Lugones’ answer to Outlaw’s question, ‘why are we not all khaki?’
would be some reference to customs, norms and laws that racialize folks. Once the racial
classiﬁcation seems normal and natural, then custom, laws, and norms perpetuate it.

This is in accordance with a view of groups that suggests members hang together because
of shared customs and history, a dynamic that can take place independently of
racialization. In contrast, Outlaw takes common blood and common history as the basis
of a “social-natural” kind, and argues from that point to the notion of a shared body of
knowledge. Ultimately he seeks recognition of that knowledge by the authority of
western philosophy. This epistemology parallels his ideal social structure, which is

something like cultural plurality or standpoint liberalism.7

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Race, Knowledge, Plurality, and Unity

A further aspect of Outlaw’s concept of race is the link between ‘group-speciﬁc’
knowledge and knowledge as a whole. His discussion of race and cultural knowledge
takes place in a larger discussion about race and philosophy. Outlaw criticizes
philosophical approaches which favor abstract, universalistic knowledge. Joining the
growing number of theorists who argue that knowledge is situated, Outlaw argues that

race-situated knowledge is one such example.

I ﬁnd the development of Du Bois’s work in this respect to be useful in
connecting arguments about situated knowledge with arguments about the existence of
social categories. Unfortunately Outlaw is still committed to the authority of universal
principles in the justiﬁcation of knowledge. Outlaw argues that the speciﬁc cultural
knowledge ought to both remain connected to the people who generated it, e. g., Africans
and persons of African descent, and also be made accessible to the human community as
a whole. This is also in keeping with standpoint epistemology which argues that
knowledge generated from a particular standpoint is not limited to those who share that
standpoint, though it has signiﬁcance to those who share those material conditions. Thus,
knowledge can translate across cultures. For Outlaw, philosophy is the medium of
translation; philosophy seeks to bring reason to all forms of social life. Under this
framework, social groups are considered insofar as they form a broader unity. Conﬂicts

between groups can be mediated by appeal to universal principles (Outlaw, 29).

I have two main concerns with this social/epistemological framework. First, in

appealing to universal principles, it is possible that intragroup differences can be erased

 

7 Marilyn Frye suggested the latter term.

96

by seeking unity at the macro level. Second, the presumed authority of universal
principles calls into question the validity of situated knowledge. It seems that the
universal supersedes and undercuts the strength of situated knowledge. The level of
generality that Outlaw seeks could lead to an erasure of difference in much the same way
as assimilation into white culture undercuts the ground for a distinctive Aﬁicana
philosophy. Within the race, Outlaw acknowledges differences among Black folks when
he cautions Black intellectuals to avoid generalizing solely from their own experiences.
But in general he abstracts from these differences, which results in a concept of race
where every member shares the same goals and interests. This view stands in contrast to
the views of the Combahee River Collective, and Patricia Hill Collins. The latter two

vigorously defend the preservation of individual differences within racial groupings.

In appealing to universal principles, Outlaw is arguing for the philosophical value
of his project. He turns to Horkheimer and Marcuse to do so (Outlaw, 29). Horkheimer
and Marcuse argue that philosophy is about human relations in its most general, total
form. Outlaw seeks this same level of generality. But such a strong commitment to the
universal jeopardizes his commitment to situated knowledge. He could consider the
arguments of standpoint epistemologists in this regard, who have varying commitments
to objectivity, yet none so strong as Outlaw’s (c.f. Harding, Collins). Contrary to
Outlaw’s assertion that Black intellectuals have been assimilated into white culture, there
is a large body of work by Black feminists, for example that he does not acknowledge.
There is a serious lack of attention to the work of, especially Collins who, as a Black

intellectual is developing a distinct, Black feminist approach to knowledge. This lack

97

may be a result of Outlaw’s own privileging of mainstream philosophical discourse.
Outlaw seems to argue that if the source of philosophy is humanity in general, then any
knowledge claimed as philosophical must speak to all of humanity. This move seems to

discount the role of situated knowledge in his framework.

The connection between political organization, epistemology and metaphysics
becomes crucial at this point. One may be marginalized politically because of racist (and
sexist) notions of personhood. So one can create inclusive notions of personhood within
a social group. Such a construction would not abstract from individual differences, but
would build into the notion of personhood the recognition that such differences exist.
That project of knowledge production can ultimately change the politics, since political
power of all types depends upon recognition by others. The question is, on whose terms
does this change happen? If the dominant group must approve the knowledge of the
subgroup, such acknowledgment will only be given to projects that maintain the status
quo, not to projects that threaten it. Thus recognition of inclusive concepts of
personhood, for example, cannot be sought from the larger society. That is why the
appeal to universal principles ultimately undercuts Outlaw’s project. The commitment to
such principles of reason masks an underlying assumption that without such principles
we will live in chaos. Contemporary theorists who articulate the ways in which
knowledge is situated argue that the move away from universal principles is not

necessarily a move toward relativism.8

There is a parallel argument for the more explicit political issue. Outlaw seems to

move between a liberal individualism, to preserve plurality, and a communitarian view

98

that gives priority to groups. He wants plurality, unity, and situated knowledge. This is
the project of many political theorists.’ Yet the task should not be to universalize, and
abstract from Black philosophy 30 as to make it somehow applicable to everyone. The
task is rather to extend the theories that focus on the relevance of a particular experience
so that someone outside that experience can take on that standpoint. The particular ways
of extending knowledge to outsiders is a project taken up by standpoint theorists. Finally,

it is important to remember that all knowledge is situated knowledge.

To summarize, Outlaw captures an important debate among contemporary
political theorists, namely, the question of how to adjudicate between the sometimes
conﬂicting needs of diverse social groups. Yet in turning once again to liberal
individualist principles to provide an overarching political framework, he advocates a
system that maintains structures of domination. In the next chapter, I will address a
theory of subjectivity that provides a context in which identities/ groups thrive and one

can resist structures of domination.

 

8 See, for example, Lorraine Code and Lynn Hankinson Nelson.
9 This is the project Uma Narayan outlined in her talk at the Eastern APA, 12/1999.

99

Chapter Four: Lugones and Mestiza Subjectivity

In previous chapters I have considered several problems related to political and
social identity: in chapter one I looked at criticisms of identity politics; chapters two and
three addressed issues of gender and racial identity. Chapter two focused speciﬁcally on
Butler’s account of identity formation. Chapter three focused on Outlaw’s construction
of race as it ﬁts in a political framework. In chapter four I examine a theory of
subjectivity developed by Maria Lugones. After sketching out this theory I will address
the concerns of identity formation raised by Judith Butler. Finally I will address a
criticism raised against one part of Lugones’ theory.

Lugones theorizes three different types of subjectivity. Depending upon one’s
social location, one is constructed as a uniﬁed subject, a fragmented subject, or a
multiplicitous subject. She places each type of subjectivity into one of two frameworks:
the uniﬁed and the fragmented subjects in the logic of purity, which is the logic of
traditional categories, and the multiplicitous subjects in the logic of impurity, which is the
logic of resistance. In the logic of purity one is split-separated: either fragmented into
pure parts for the purposes of control, or having the appearance of being uniﬁed, having
no parts, being completely pure. In the logic of impurity, or curdled logic, resistance to
fragmentation is resistance to purity, i.e., separation is separation as curdling rather than a
splitting to preserve purity, and though one is not uniﬁed, one is also not fragmented--
rather, one is multiplicitous (Lugones, 458-460, 463). The key distinction Lugones
makes is that between split-separation and multiplicity. The multiplicitous subject is the
kind of subjectivity Lugones proposes to resist domination. I contend that this

subjectivity provides the basis for a coalitional politics of identity.

100

On Lugones’ theory of subjectivity, a subject can be constructed within the logic
of purity, which fosters separation and domination through fragmentation, or within the
logic of impurity, which resists fragmentation in favor of multiplicity. The logic of purity
is the logic of strict dichotomies, of categories which are necessary and sufﬁcient. The
‘one drop’ rule of the historic American South ﬁts such logic. This rule deﬁned any
person as a Negro if they had even so much as one drop of Negro blood. The emphasis
on purity has a distinct racial element, as demonstrated by this rule meant to protect the
“purity” of the white race. Under this logic, the subject is fragmented, split into parts:
the assimilated and the Other. The logic of impurity resists such neat categorization. The
mestizaje is the metaphor for this logic. The mestizaje lives in several cultures and, in
some contexts she can move easily among them. Instead of dichotomy, there is some
ﬂuidity and inclusiveness. The mestizaje as characterized by Gloria Anzaldr'ra is the
embodiment of multiplicitous subjectivity. Lugones argues for the adoption of the logic
of impurity as a means of fostering multiplicitous subjectivity.

The key to Lugones’ theory of subjectivity is the acknowledgment that subjectivity is a
communal construction. Rather than being split between a Latina self, a lesbian self and
an angla self, for example, the subject can move between them or call on them
simultaneously in a context which allows for multiplicity. This movement can only take
place in contexts where multiple subjectivity is recognized and valued. It is this concept
of multiplicitous subjectivity which will counter Butler’s criticism of the ontological
construction of identity, and will provide a framework for a politics that responds to the

problems faced by Outlaw’s reliance on liberal individualism (chapter 5).

101

Split-Separation and the Unified subject

To develop these claims, I begin by looking closely at Lugones’ analysis of the
uniﬁed subject, in contrast to which stand the fragmented subject and the multiplicitous
subject. The uniﬁed subject is a result of a series of ﬁctions which reduces multiplicity to
a unity:

[The subject in the logic of purity] must himself be pure, uniﬁed, and

simple so as to occupy the vantage point and perceive unity amid

multiplicity. He must not himself be pulled in all or several perceptual

directions; he must not perceive richly. Reason, including its normative

aspect, is the uniﬁed subject. It is what characterizes the subject as a unity

(Lugones, 465).
The subject is pure, meaning he ﬁts neatly into established social categories of race, class,
gender, etc. The subject is uniﬁed, meaning there is apparently no split separation into
the assimilable part and the rejected other. That has the further implication that the
subject occupies the dominant side of any hierarchy, white, male, christian, etc. From
this vantage point, the subject can impose unity on others, thus imposing and maintaining
the framework that constructs subjects as uniﬁed, like himself, or split-separated into
fragments.

' This concept of the subject draws upon constructions of the individual under
modernity who holds the objective ‘view ﬁom nowhere’ which reduces multiplicity to
order and categories. In developing this concept, Lugones draws on Iris Marion Young
who criticizes the notion of impartiality. Young deve10ps a criticism of this concept of
subjectivity upon which Lugones can build.

Young traces the liberal notion of subjectivity as it supports the concept of

impartiality, which she rejects. Impartiality, Young points out, is supposed to prevent

102

egoism--choosing solely on the basis of one’s own interests and desires. The knowing
subject is abstracted from the concrete situation in three ways: 1) from particulars of the
situation, 2) from feelings and emotions, and 3) from other subj ectivities in order to
create a point of view that any and all rational subjects can adopt by abstracting from all
of their particulars (Young, 100). This leads to one moral transcendent subjectivity,
“Because it already takes all perspectives into account, the impartial subject need
acknowledge no subjects other than itself to whose interests, opinions, and desires it
should attend” (Young, 101). Relying on principles such as impartiality risks importing
this notion of subjectivity into one’s theoretical framework. Lugones takes up Young’s
rejection of this notion of subjectivity, focusing on the separation from other subjects that
is inherent in this construction.

In articulating the logic of purity Lugones focuses on the separation of subjects
from other subjects, and separation from parts of the self that do not support the ﬁction of
unity and purity. So the modern subject must dissociate from those parts of himself
which are embodied and particular:

The modern subject must be masked as standing separate from his own

multiplicity and what commits him to multiplicity. So, his own

puriﬁcation into someone who can step squarely onto the vantage point of

unity requires that his remainder become of no consequence to his own

sense of himself as someone who justiﬁably exercises control over

multiplicity. So his needs must be taken care of by others hidden in spaces

relegated outside of public view, where he parades himself as pure.

(Lugones 1994, 466)

Lugones is making several important points here. First of all, every subject is multiple,

but the modern subject masks his own multiplicity, or particularity. In other words, to the

extent that the modern subject does not hold the disembodied, universal, rational

103

viewpoint, that part is masked. The masked part, the remainder, is disavowed--it
becomes of no importance. This is split-separation, where the embodied particulars of
the modern subject are separated off from those parts which lay claim to abstract
universality. In this way the modern subject controls multiplicity, or embodiment. Under
the logic of purity, characterized by split separation, no subject is multiple, rather, all
subjects are split-separated. The logic of purity works to make some subjects appear to
be uniﬁed. Those who do not or cannot participate in the ﬁctional construct of unity
function as fragmented beings. In order to live out this ﬁction of purity, the modern
subject must have maintenance work done by others, e.g., cooking, cleaning, laundry,
garbage removal, etc. The ‘others,’ people of color, white women, poor people, who
perform this work, to the extent they are associated with tasks pertaining to particular
needs and desires, are not recognized as full, modern subjects. Their work and
subjectivity is relegated to the private sphere. Those who remain embedded in a culture,
“Mexicans” for example, are likewise denied full subjectivity. The modern subject is
viewed as “postcultural”. In this sense, then, the modern, uniﬁed, pure subject is also
separated off from those who do not/cannot take on the impartial, universal viewpoint of
the modern subject.

The relationship of the apparently uniﬁed subject to those who function as
fragmented subjects is one of dependence. The uniﬁed subject, the ‘impartial reasoner,’
depends upon others for physical maintenance and for the maintenance of the ﬁction of
unity. These two tasks are bound together.

His production as pure, as the impartial reasoner, requires that others

produce him. He is a ﬁction of his own imagination, but his imagination
is mediated by the labor of others. He controls those who produce him,

104

who to his eyes require his control because they are emneshed in

multiplicity and thus unable to occupy the vantage point of control. They

are marked as other than himself, as lacking the relevant unity (Lugones,

467)

Production of the modern subject occurs on the material level and the ideological level.
The subject-position of the impartial reasoner is the position of control over those
enmeshed in material production or in culture. They lack the relevant unity because they
are unable or unwilling to adopt the position of impartial reasoner who has no connection
to the particular.

The ‘other’ is constructed as such within this framework as one who is tainted by
need, emotion, and the body (Lugones, 467). In the logic of purity, uniﬁed subjects are
constructed as pure through separation from bodily concerns:

To the extent that he is ﬁctional, the tainting is ﬁctional: seeing us as

tainted depends upon a need for purity that requires that we become

“parts,” “addenda” of the bodies of modern subj ects--Christian white

bourgeois men--and make their purity possible. We become sides of

ﬁctitious dichotomies. To the extent that we are ambiguous--non-

dichotomous--we threaten the ﬁction and can be rendered unﬁt only by

decrying ambiguity as nonexistent--that is, by halving us, splitting us.

Thus we exist only as incomplete, unﬁt beings, and they exist as complete

only to the extent that what we are, and what is absolutely necessary for

them, is declared worthless.

The other is tainted by association with the body. Split-separation coalesces into
dichotomies, such as the mind/body split. The other is associated with that part of the
dichotomy deemed worthless, woman, Black, body, had. The part of the dichotomy that
is valued is the part that appears to be “pure”. The ambiguity of the multiplicitous reveals
as ﬁction the purity of the uniﬁed subject and the dichotomy which upholds the ﬁction of
purity. Thus ambiguity is ignored. Subjects are split-separated into parts which maintain

the ﬁction of purity. That which is tainted is rejected. Thus some subjects under the

105

logic of purity become fragmented beings while others appear to be uniﬁed. All are split-
separated.

In the formulation of the uniﬁed subject, Lugones develops a framework which
includes the construction of fragmented subjects. While this framework may echo the
Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic, one important difference is the role of conﬂict. For
Hegel, conﬂict seems to be inherent in the Master-Slave relationship, where for Lugones,
conﬂict is produced only by the desire of the uniﬁed subject to exert control over the
others. Thus, for Lugones, conﬂict is not a necessary part of self-formation and
recognition. This is a signiﬁcant difference and a useful departure from the Hegelian
model. While recognition is inherent to self-formation and social relationships,
recognition can incorporate a range of power dynamics. The uniﬁed subject recognizes
the other only for the purposes of control. That is a relationship of domination. But
Lugones offers the possibility of other relationships as well. That will be pursued further
in the section on multiplicity.

A second point to make is the parallel in this section of Lugones’ article to the
section in Butler regarding the construction of the dominant subjectivity in relation to the
other. For both, the dominant subjectivity involves a dependence upon the other for self
deﬁnition, and a simultaneous exclusion of the other (Whatever I am, I am not that). In
both, the other is the “remainder,” the negated side of the dominant subject--the queer in
relation to the heterosexual, the woman in relation to the man, and the person of color in
relation to the white person. While there is this parallel, the two for the most part diverge

on the issue of identity. Both criticize the view of identity as monolithic, atemporal, and

exclusive. From that point, their views diverge. Butler holds to the view that identity can

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only be characterized in such terms, and so rejects the use of identity (except insofar as
we use identity for ease of reference). Lugones chooses to reconceptualize identity as
something that can “move”. This characterization will be explored more fully in the next
section.

Split-Separation and the Fragmented Subject

Lugones pr0poses the fragmented subject as the alternative to the uniﬁed subject
within the logic of purity. In contrast to the uniﬁed subject, split off ﬁ'om any impurity
that would characterize him as other, the fragmented subject is constructed as a split, dual
subjectivity. She takes as an example the experience of the rural Chicano. Lugones
points out that ‘Chicano’ is a curdled, or mestizo person. That is, ‘Chicano’ is a
multiplicitous subject rather than a fragmented subject. The Chicano lives in the logic of
impurity. But within the logic of purity, the Chicano is characterized as
‘mexican/american’ (Lugones 1994, 470). Lugones does not hyphenate the two terms,
since, if the split were successful, there would be no possibility of ‘living on the hyphen’
as Sonia Salvidar-Hull has remarked (Lugones 1994, 470, note 11). Lugones intends to
emphasize the split in subjectivity.

In the construction of fragmented subjectivity for the ‘mexican/american,’ two
aspects are especially important: the experience of the split, and the role of culture in
deﬁning the other. Lugones points out that both are products of the anglo imagination, a
continuation of the ﬁction which produces the uniﬁed subject:

The rural mexican/american is a product of the anglo imagination,

sometimes enacted by persons who are the targets of ethnocentric racism

in an unwillful parody of themselves. The anglo imagines each rural

mexican/american as having a dual personality: the authentic mexican
cultural self and the arnerican self. In this notion, there is no hybrid self.

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The selves are conceptually different, apparently contradictory but

complementary; one cannot be found without the other. The anglo

philosophy is that mexican/americans should both keep their culture (so as

to be different and not full citizens) and assimilate (so as to be

exploitable), a position whose contradictoriness is obvious. But as a split

dual personality, the authentic mexican can assimilate without ceasing to

be “cultured,” the two selves complementary, the ornamental nature of the

mexican self resolving the contradiction (Lugones 1994, 470).

The mexican/american is an example of fragmented subjectivity because there is a split
imposed by the dominant (anglo) discourse. The mexican/american is both reduced to
culture (mexican) and stripped of culture (arnerican) but only in such a way as to beneﬁt
anglos. The fragmented subject lives an impossible subjectivity, one organized by and
for the uniﬁed subject.

The mark of traditional mexican culture places the mexican/american in a static
relationship to culture. The mexican/american is caught in history, in the anglo
construction of ‘authentic mexican culture’:

This authentic mexican culture bears a relation to traditional culture. It is

tradition ﬁltered through anglo eyes for the purposes of ornamentation.

What is anglo, authentically american, is also appealing: it represents

progress, the future, efﬁciency, material well being. As american, one

moves; as mexican, one is static. As american, one is beyond culture; as

mexican, one is culture personiﬁed. The culturally split self is a character

for the theatrics of racism (Lugones 1994, 471).

The distinction Lugones makes here is between two selves and their relation to culture.

The mexican self is caught in an anglo-constructed, unchanging, ornamental, traditional

culture, to which the self will always be reduced. The arnerican self is beyond culture, is

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moving rather than static. As a ﬁ'agmented subject, the mexican/american lives out this

dual subjectivity.‘

The split subjectivity of the mexican/american mirrors a split between public life
and private life imposed by the logic of purity. The uniﬁed subject rules the public

realm, where individuals stand equally before the law. The mexican/american cannot

participate fully in the public realm:

As split, mexican/americans cannot participate in public life because of
their difference, except omamentally in the dramatization of equality. If
we retreat and accept the “between raza” nonpublic status of our concerns,
to be resolved in the privacy of our communities, we participate in the
logic of the split. Our communities are rendered private space in the
public/private distinction. Crossing to the anglo domain only in their
terms is not an option either, as if follows the logic of the split without the
terms ever becoming our own, that is the nature of this--if not all--

assimilation (Lugones 1994, 471).

Here Lugones highlights the predicament of marginalized subjectivity in liberal society,
or, in Lugones’ terms, the problem faced by fragmented subjects in the logic of purity.
One is both relegated to the private sphere and assimilated into the public sphere.
Recalling Young’s analysis of impartiality, which is a stance only available to the modem

(or uniﬁed) subject, the realm of impartiality is the realm of the public sphere. One can

 

' This model works for other fragmented beings as well. The experience of fragmentation
for women of color is to be split between the assimilable part, and those parts not
assimilable, for example, one’s culture and one’s sex. One may be fragmented on the
basis of one’s sexuality, one’s age, one’s ability, etc. For white women it seems that
there is not a reduction to culture because part of being white is beneﬁting from the
ﬁction that one has no culture--that one is universal. To the extent that a white woman
universalizes her own culture, she is participating in this ﬁction as a uniﬁed subject. Yet,
there is a part of white women that is not universal. The ﬁction of unity is revealed in
contexts where she, as a woman, is deﬁned as Other. Fragmentation and unity are not
Static--rather, they can change somewhat according to context. To account for this
relational shift, Lugones uses the concepts of ‘thickness’ and ‘transparency,’ which will

be discussed below.

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only participate in the public sphere on these terms. But, fragmented beings have a
subjectivity that is not impartial or pure. To the extent that their concerns are deemed not
universal, their concerns are relegated to the private sphere. Either their concerns do not
become a part of public discourse, or when they do, are considered to be matters of self-
interest rather than “impartial” concerns.

The debate over afﬁrmative action is a good example of this dynamic. In the
interest of promoting equality, afﬁrmative action policies have been instituted to increase
opportunities for underrepresented groups. Those who oppose such policies, and other
civil rights policies, label them “special rights” since marginalized folks are singled out
for “special treatment” not available to everyone. Opponents of afﬁrmative action ﬁrst
deny the racism, sexism and ablism of the marketplace. The difﬁculties faced by these
marginalized groups become their own problem--discrimination is relegated to the private
sphere. Any policy which singles out persons according to race, gender, ability, etc. is
bringing in a private, special interest. To compete in the marketplace, marginalized
people are forced to assimilate. But as marked “others” assimilation is also difﬁcult, if
not impossible, and destructive as well.

To summarize: both the uniﬁed subject and the fragmented subject are split-
separated. That means that they have multiple social identities that are “isolated” from
each other. One is split-separated under the logic of purity as a fragmented being when
one is reduced to one often stereotypical identity. One is split-separated as a uniﬁed
being when only those parts which qualify one as universal are acknowledged. Split-

separation, or the logic of purity, stands in contrast to multiplicity, or the logic of

curdling. One is multiplicitous when one’s identities exist in relation to each other.

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Lugones bridges ontology and political philosophy in this argument. The problem
of representation in the public sphere has been addressed by many political philosophers,
some of whom try to reformulate liberal principles, while others try to create a synthesis
of communitarian values in a liberal framework. Lugones takes the issue to the realm of
metaphysics, arguing that the problem stems from the construction of subjectivity
inherent in the liberal political framework. Her solution comes from metaphysics as well.
The multiplicitous, or mestizaje subject is a better explanatory model in terms of
characterizing the dynamics of marginalization, and as a result it offers a better solution

than liberalism or communitarianism.

Curdled Separation, Beings in the Making
Those who resist split-separation, who resist the logic of purity, for Lugones, are
living out a subjectivity characterized by the mestiza, the border-dweller, who is neither
here nor there. Living out this subjectivity is an ongoing process, hence Lugones at times
refers to such subjects as ‘beings in the making,’ (Lugones, 1994, 477). What is being
made is new forms of subjectivity and new worlds of sense. If reason and sense belong to
the logic of purity, then the actions of curdled beings are nonsensical (Lugones 1994,
476). To create new meaning, outside of and in resistance to the logic of purity, mestiza
subjects must stay connected.
The basis for this connection is not sameness. That would replicate the logic of
purity by focusing on the essential attribute and separating it off from the remainder.
Instead, Lugones suggests that commonality, “our people” be recognized as shared

practice:

lll

I don’t think we can consider “our own” only those who reject the same
dichotomies as we do. It is the impulse to reject dichotomies and to live
and embody that rejection that gives us some hope of standing together as
people who recognize each other in our complexity. . . . A more solid
ground because it is a more positive ground is the one that afﬁrms the lack
of constraint of our creativity that is at the center of curdling; that holds on
to our own lack of script, to our being beings in the making . . . (Lugones
1994,477)
What brings curdled beings together is not a common race or sexuality, but a common
resistance to all such dichotomies, the “impulse to reject” such dichotomies. The link is a

refusal to uphold the logic of purity and split separation.

Lugones and Subjectivity at the Group Level

Having articulated Lugones’ theory of subjectivity at the individual level, I wish
to conclude this analysis of Lugones by considering how, in her system, subjectivity
functions at the group level. The logic of purity is a framework that constructs groups as
well as individual subjects. Within the logic of purity, members of a given social group
stand in speciﬁc power relations with respect to each other. Some group members are
more central, others are marginalized within the group. Lugones uses the terms
‘transparent’ and ‘thick’ to account for such differences.

Lugones develops a framework for subjectivity that accounts for multiplicity and
the conﬂicts that arise from multiple membership:

Thickness and transparency are group relative. Individuals are transparent

with respect to their group if they perceive their needs, interests, ways, as

those of the group and if this perception becomes dominant or

hegemonical in the group. Individuals are thick if they are aware of their

otherness in the group, of their needs, interests, ways, being relegated to
the margins in the politics of intragroup contestation.

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. . . Thick members of several oppressed groups become composites of the

transparent members of those groups. . . The interlocking of memberships

in oppressed groups is not seen as changing one's needs, interests, and

ways qualitatively in any group but, rather, one's needs, interests, and

ways are understood as the addition of those of the transparent members

(Lugones 1994, 474).

Transparent members are those whose interests are best represented by the group.
Lugones refers to the title of an anthology by and about Black women, entitled, All the
Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave. The title illustrates
that transparent members of the group 'women' are those members who are white.
Transparent members of the group ’Black' are those members who are male. Persons who
are members of both groups, i.e., Black women, are left out of the picture--their interests
are not represented except insofar as they are included in the interests of transparent
members (Lugones 1994, 474). In the group of Blacks, their interests as women are
“special” or “additional,” and in the group of women their interests as Blacks are
“special” or “additional.”

Thick members have ties to several social groups. They become fragmented
when the interests of each group, to the extent that they do not overlap, pull thick
members in different directions. Furthermore, as Lugones points out, thick members are
seen only as the sum of discrete interests. One or two aspects of their identities may
become salient in a social context, but the interests thus framed are those of the
transparent members of each social group to which the thick member belongs. The
political interests of that individual are not recognized by the transparent members of

either group. The thick members of the group are fragmented by the structure of the

group imposed by transparent members.

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Lugones points out that the logic of purity separates and constructs group
members as transparent or thick members. The logic of purity does not allow for
multiplicitous subjectivity, which is excluded in the following way: Fragmented subjects
(members of several oppressed groups), are fragmented when transparent members, in
assuming their interests encompass those of the entire group, enforce the logic of purity
which splits the fragmented beings into the pieces of their various identities. Each piece
is a part of a different social group. The groups, organized according to the logic of
purity, each reﬂect the interests of the transparent (central) members. If thick members
introduce interests of other groups, the issues tend to be, again, interests of the transparent
members of those other groups. For example, a latina lesbian discussing her issues with a
group of mostly white lesbians may be interpreted as bringing in issues deﬁned as Latina
(and as issues of “transparent” latinas), which are separate from lesbian issues. The
group may not recognize her unique issues as a latina and a lesbian. Thus, the
fragmented subject is not allowed to express, or make salient, her own unique interests.
Transparent members of the group also have ties to other groups, but these ties are
suppressed, giving the transparent members the illusion of "purity" or, a singular identity,
e.g., 'white'.

Lugones calls for a rejection of the logic of purity. Since unity is a ﬁction for
“transparent” members, this would mean embracing those aspects of subjectivity
previously suppressed, that is, acknowledging, in each social context, the power relations
in which we are given privilege, and in which we act as dominators. Transparency (the
fragmentation of a “uniﬁed” subject) should then disappear as these persons acknowledge

their connection to marginalized group members. Those who are constructed as thick

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(fragmentation of a marginalized subject) members of the group are recognized as whole
selves as well. The result would be a subjectivity that acknowledges multiplicity. The
self is not encapsulated by one’s privilege or domination, rather, all of these relation of

power are acknowledged.

Mestiza Subjectivity

In sum, Lugones provides an analysis and criticism of modern subjectivity
constructed by and within a liberal political framework. She exposes the relations of
domination inherent in the position of the uniﬁed subject over the fragmented subject.
Her proposal is resistance to the logic of purity that supports and maintains this
framework of domination, and the means of resistance is to adopt the practice of curdling.
The multiplicitous subject is one who lives in the logic of curdling--the logic of impurity.

Lugones offers a few concrete practices as suggestions for living out the logic of
curdling. She calls this method “a practice of festive resistance” which includes:

Bi and multilingual experimentation; code-switching; categorical blurring

and confusion; caricaturing the selves we are in the worlds of our

oppressors, infusing them with ambiguity; . . . revealing the process of

producing order if we cannot help producing it; undermining the

orderliness of the social ordering; marking our cultural mixtures as we

move . . . etc. (Lugones 1994, 478).
The general practice is that of disruption of the social order that enables domination. It is
important to recognize that one cannot engage in such resistance in isolation. One needs

a world of meaning in which the resistance makes sense. Lugones includes an analysis of

sociality in her work. I will address that aspect of her theoretical framework in a later

115

section of this chapter. First I wish to compare and contrast the theory of subjectivity

developed by Lugones with Butler’s concept of subjectivity.

Lugones vs. Butler on Subjectivity

Lugones advocates a theory of subjectivity that acknowledges and afﬁrms
multiple simultaneous identities. Identities, per se, are preserved unproblematically. In
contrast, Butler supports only a narrow conception of identity; an identity must remain in
ﬂux and cannot serve as the ground of a politics. Nevertheless, there are similarities
between Lugones and Butler.

Butler’s theory of identity formation, or subjectivity, centers on the subject as a
discursive construction. The subject is constructed by language and power relations. In
this respect, Butler and Lugones are in agreement. It will be useful to reconsider Butler
in terms of the framework Lugones has developed.

The subject constructed by discourse, in Butler’s terms, is the subject constructed
by the logic of purity in Lugones’ terms. For Butler, the heterosexual male is the subject
that can only be constructed by the denial of the other, the female, and the homosexual.
The other constitutes the background against which the subject is deﬁned. For Lugones,
the analogue is the uniﬁed subject and the fragmented subject. The fragmented subject
is tainted, in contrast to which stands the purity of the uniﬁed subject. In both Butler’s
and Lugones’ frameworks the subject is deﬁned by the rejected other. Fixed categories
deﬁne an individual as a subject or as an other. For Butler and for Lugones, the system of

categories is a system of domination.

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Butler and Lugones also agree on the response to domination: disrupt the
categories. In some instances, they advocate exactly the same strategies, such as gender-
fucking. Overall, both advocate local and contingent tactics for resistance. The
similarities between them are signiﬁcant, but at this point the similarities end.

Lugones provides a theoretical space within her framework ﬁ'om which to form a
resistance. This is a place where alternative worlds of sense can be constructed. 2
Butler does not allow for any alternative constructions outside of the symbolic order, or
the logic of purity. If language is constitutive of the social world, then there is no getting
out of language. This is a point on which Butler and Lugones disagree. It will be useﬁrl

to look more closely at the arguments on both sides.

Lugones and Butler on Language and the Symbolic Order

As discussed in chapter 2, Butler follows Derrida in arguing that language as a
symbolic order is inescapable. There is no getting outside the symbolic order that
constructs one as a woman or as a mexican/american. Therefore, for Butler, there is no
alternative symbolic order from which one can theorize resistance to the symbolic order.
Resistance comes from within the symbolic order, and not for any purpose other than
disruption of the categories.

For Lugones, language does not play the same role. While the subject is still
discursively constructed, for Lugones there are other worlds of sense, perhaps not
recognized by the dominant social order, but worlds that exist nonetheless. In this respect

Lugones allows for more materialism than Butler. Lugones looks to material conditions

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of life as one aspect that structures a world. On the other hand, Lugones does not
discount the role of discourse in the production of the subj ect--the framework she names
the logic of purity is an example of discourse in this respect.

The criticism posed by Allison Weir, discussed in chapter 2, demonstrated that
Butler takes language to be too encompassing. Lugones does not make this mistake.
Lugones does not give language the power over subjectivity that Butler does. This is a
strength in Lugones’ work.

In order to show how language plays a role in Lugones’ work, and how alternative
symbolics are possible in her theoretical framework, it is necessary to explore
Lugones’ concept of a ‘world.’ This is a concept that is developed throughout her work,
beginning with the essay, “Playfulness, World-Traveling, and Loving Perception”. This
notion of a world is incorporated into her theory of subjectivity in more recent work.

A ‘world’ for Lugones, is a conceptual space within which there is a set of
meanings that constitute its inhabitants and structure relationships. Lugones herself
resists a ﬁxed deﬁnition of the concept:

I can explain some of what I mean by a “world.” I do not want the ﬁxity

of a deﬁnition because I think the term is suggestive and I do not want to

lose this. A “world” has to be presently inhabited by ﬂesh and blood

people. That is why it cannot be a utopia. It may also be inhabited by

some imaginary people. It may be inhabited by people who are dead or

people that the inhabitants of this “world” met in some other “world” and

now have in this “world” in imagination (Lugones 1990, 395).

A ‘world’ is constructed of symbolic and material elements. That the ‘world’ must be

inhabited by living persons grounds this concept in the material conditions of people’s

lives. That the world can be occupied by imaginary inhabitants indicates that there is an

 

2 Marilyn Frye ﬁrst introduced me to this important concept.
1 18

important symbolic dimension. Also, inhabitants of a world are able, in some instances,
to shape their ‘worlds’ by bringing in such imaginary people.

This concept of a ‘world’ is signiﬁcantly different from Butler’s symbolic order.
For Butler, there is no concern given to actual persons and their location in the symbolic.
Instead of persons, there are subj ect-positions constructed by language.

Lugones introduces the concept of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling’ as a further
development of Marilyn Frye’s essay, “In and Out of Harm’s Way,” (1983), in which
Frye introduces the concepts of loving perception and arrogant perception. In the
following passage, Frye characterizes arrogant perception:

The arrogating perceiver is a teleologist, a believer that everything exists

and happens for some purpose, and he tends to animate things, imagining

attitudes toward himself as the animating motives. Everything is either

“for me” or “against me.” This is the kind of vision that interprets the

rock one trips on as hostile, the bolt one cannot loosen as stubborn, the

woman who makes meatloaf instead of spaghetti as “bad” (though he

didn’t say what he wanted). The arrogant perceiver does not countenance

the possibility that the Other is independent, indifferent (Frye 1983, 67).

The arrogant perceiver creates a world of meaning, in Lugones’ sense. Within this world,
everything exists to meet or ﬁustrate the needs, wants, and interests of the arrogant
perceiver. In Lugones’ later work, she transforms the concept of the arrogant perceiver
into the uniﬁed subject, placed into the framework of the logic of purity.

Frye introduced a correlate to arrogant perception, which is loving perception:

The loving eye knows the independence of the other. It is the eye of a seer

who knows that nature is indifferent. It is the eye of one who knows that

to know the seen, one must consult something other than one’s own will

and interests and fears and imagination. One must look at the thing. One

must look and listen and check and question.

The loving eye is one that pays a certain sort of attention. This attention
can require a discipline, but not a self-denial. The discipline is one of self-

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knowledge, knowledge of the scope and boundary of the self. . . In

particular it is a matter of being able to tell one’s own interests from those

of others and of knowing where one’s self leaves off and another begins

(Frye 1983, 75).

Loving perception, in the context of Lugones’ work, is characterized by being able to
distinguish the conceptual framework, or ‘world’ one might impose on another, ﬁ'om the
world that person chooses to inhabit. Loving perception truly requires that one travel to
another’s world.

Loving perception is related to sociality,3 a relationship between people that
fosters ongoing political engagement. The nature of the relationship is one of attending.‘
What that means is paying a special kind of attention to each other: attention that is
supportive and engaging, but not uncritical. The loving eye takes the subject on her own
terms, meaning is developed through difference, not from a suspension of difference.
This relation can create new worlds of meaning. This is a context in which new meaning
can be created and recognized. Loving perception is contrasted with arrogant perception.
From the point of view of the arrogant perceiver, everything exists to serve him. Only his
world of meaning exists, everything is determined by that meaning. If it does not work in
accordance with that logic, it is incomprehensible. Crazy. Meaningless.

Frye and Lugones get at the making of new meaning as a form of resistance.
Lugones and Hoagland get at the relationships that foster new worlds of meaning. What

is necessary for resistance to make sense as resistance is this relationship of attending

known as sociality.

 

3 Rosaldo’s term
" Sarah Hoagland’s term.

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Sociality creates worlds of meaning through the attention given to one another.
The ‘loving eye’ is turned toward each other as subjects, and each is understood on her or
his own terms. There may be shared meaning, but the shared meaning comes about
through the relationship--both or all participate in it, rather than there being a dominant
meaning imposed. Yet this meaning is not formed in isolation--there is no private
language here. That is the importance of relation.

For example, a woman who, in many ways conforms to traditional notions of
gender and family roles may appear to be compliant. Yet she chooses, for example, to
paint her house in bright colors--bright trim on the exterior and vivid ﬂoor and wall
colors on the inside. The arrogant eye would look at this action within the dominant
world of sense and would judge it as meaningless except in an aesthetic sense, and then it
would be labeled tacky, if it was noticed at all.

The loving eye, the person having entered into relationship with the woman,
would come to know her history, to recognize, perhaps, the pattern in her choice of colors
expressed through her house, her clothing, and the ﬂowers in her garden. Connnenting
on one of these examples, the woman might disclose that her love of bright colors is a
reminder of her native country which she left many years ago. Her use of color is both a
connection to a world of meaning and a resistance to a dominant world of meaning. The
loving eye has entered that world of meaning through loving perception.

Furthermore, a ‘world’ varies in scope, including anywhere from a portion of
society to a few individuals, and may be “incomplete:”

A “world” may be incomplete in that things in it may not be altogether

constructed or some things may be constructed negatively (they are not
what ‘they’ are in some other “world”). Or the “world” may be

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incomplete because it may have references to things that do not quite exist

in it, references to things like Brazil. Given lesbian feminism, the

construction of ‘lesbian’ in ‘lesbian community’ (a world in my sense) is

purposeﬁrlly and healthily up in the air, in the process of becoming

(Lugones 1990, 395).

Meanings are not fully determined. Social categories, such as ‘lesbian’ may be
deliberately left somewhat indeterminate. Within a world the meaning of a term may be
in some dispute, but is clear enough to be used without being pinned down to some
solidiﬁed deﬁnition.

An important aspect of this framework is that Lugones argues one can inhabit
more than one world simultaneously, and one can inhabit a world unknowingly or
unwillingly:

Some of the inhabitants of a “world” may not understand or accept the

way in which they are constructed in it. So, for example, a recent Latin-

Arnerican immigrant may not understand how she is constructed in

White/Anglo “worlds.” So, there may be “worlds” that construct me in

ways I do not even understand or I may not accept the construction as an

account of myself, a construction of myself. And yet, I may be animating

such a construction, even though I may not intend my moves, gestures,

acts in that way (Lugones 1990, 395-396).

The concept of ‘animating a construction’ is important. This is the link between
subjectivity and ‘worlds’. One becomes split-separated in situations where one is
animating a construction, where one is living out a construction imposed by the dominant
system of meaning, the logic of purity. The fragmented subject does not agree to this
construction--it is set up to preserve the ﬁction of purity for the uniﬁed subjects.
Although both uniﬁed and fragmented subjects can animate constructions, the effect of

doing so is different for each, much like the barriers of oppression affect the oppressor

and the oppressed in signiﬁcantly different ways (Frye 1983, 10-13). Though the

122

experience of animating a construction can be harmful to both in that it maintains split-
separation, the consequence for each differs. For a uniﬁed subject it serves to maintain
the ﬁction of unity, thus consolidating her power as a white person (and/or heterosexual,
christian, etc.) while the same structure serves to reinforce the fragmentation of the
fragmented person, thus reinforcing her marginalization as a woman (and/or person of
color, lesbian, disabled person, etc.) So, while both animate a construction, the
consequences differ signiﬁcantly.

The construction of subjectivity is directly connected to the worlds one inhabits,
or is forced to inhabit. Both “uniﬁed” subjects and marginalized subjects are split-
separated within the logic of purity. The split-separation of a "uniﬁed" person occurs as
a result of the denial of some identities that the person lives out. As a uniﬁed subject, the
person is refusing to acknowledge some self that is a part of herself. (The ability to deny
parts of one’s self one does not wish to acknowledge differs from the experience of
having one aspect of herself taken as the whole, which characterizes the experience of
marginalized people.) To exemplify this denial, Lugones points out the way that some
people act around persons they have hired as maids:

. . . many times people act in front of their maids as if there were no one in

the room. They say firings and behave in ways that one can imagine as

said or done only in private. When people behave this way, they do not

see themselves as the maid sees them and they do not want to remember or

recognize the persons who are seen by the maids, of whom the maids are

witnesses. The maids can testify only in the world of the dominated, the

only world where that testimony is understood and recognized. There are

many reasons why the employers do not remember themselves as maids

know them. One of these reasons concerns their own sense of moral

integrity since, as they are witnessed by the'maids, they lack it (Lugones
1990b, 304).

123

The employers treat the maid as if she is not human by ignoring the presence of the maid
in the room. They behave in a public space as if it were private. The maid is both
dehumanized and delegitimized as a reporter of the employer's actions, since, according
to the employer, the maid was never there to act as a witness. That is how the
fragmentation of the maid occurs.

The split-separation of the employer occurs as a result of the denial of the self
witnessed by the maid. The employer cannot "see" the self that the maid sees. Thus,
certain selves of the employer do not exist for the employer, and s/he can foster the
appearance of unity. The perception of the maid doesn't count. In order for one's
perception to be accepted as legitimate, one must participate in the ﬁction that creates the
appearance of unity.

Thus both the maid and the employer are split-separated in this situation, but only
the maid carries the weight of fragmentation. The employer, having the power to impose
her world of meaning onto the situation, is then constructed as uniﬁed. In the world of
the dominated, the maid can perceive the hypocrisy of the employer, the self whose
existence is denied, but perceptions in this world do not count.

Though Lugones herself does not wish to analyze the concept of a world, it is
useful to sketch out some elements of what constitutes a world in order to compare this
framework to Butler’s framework. Worlds, according to Lugones, are constituted by
relations between persons. One may participate in constituting a world, or one may be
forced into occupying a world, “animating a construction.” Relations between persons

are structured by language, material conditions, and the power to either convey to or

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enforce one’s perceptions upon another. Language plays an important role in terms of
naming worlds one might occupy:

One can be at the same time in a “world” that constructs one as

stereotypically latin, for example, and in a “world” that constructs one as

latin. Being stereotypically latin and being simply latin are different

simultaneous constructions of persons that are part of different “worlds.”

One animates one or the other or both at the same time without necessarily

confusing them, though simultaneous enactment can be confusing to

oneself (Lugones 1990, 396).

‘Latin’ for many anglos, connotes the world of the stereotypical latin, and at the same
time can connote, for the latina herself, the world of being simply latin. Being labeled
‘latin’ places one into at least two different worlds. Such is the power of naming.
Language constructs worlds, but there is some ambiguity as to which worlds one means--
e.g., latin, or stereotypically latin.

There seems to be a distinction between the worlds of the dominators and the
worlds of the dominated. Dominators have the power to impose their worlds on others,
while the dominated have the power to construct their own marginalized worlds, some of
which may be imposed on those members of the group who are ﬁrrther marginalized,
such as latina women, and latina lesbians. Worlds, then are also constructed by those
who have the power to create a community of meaning.

Such communities of meaning, in addition to their symbolic value, have direct
material consequences. Within the logic of purity, the marginalized person is constructed
in such a way that closes down possibilities: the job is ﬁlled, the apartment is rented, the

victim of violence is targeted. These consequences also support and enforce the

construction of a world.

125

The preceding analysis demonstrates the ways in which ‘worlds’ on Lugones’
framework, are constructed by social relations involving language, power and material
conditions. This is a far richer framework than the symbolic offered by Butler. For
Lugones, language is not the only determining factor in the creation and maintenance of a
world. Butler, in relying almost exclusively on language, leaves out important factors
that inﬂuence social constructions. Lugones’ theoretical framework is preferable to
Butler’s.

Sue Campbell raises a criticism of Lugones’ theory of subjectivity. As a means of
developing an anti-racist consciousness, Lugones argues for a process of identity
transformation. One must call on one’s own multiplicity in order to travel to another
‘world.’ Such travel gives one knowledge of the other, and one can recognize how she is
constructed in the world of the other. For those who lay claim to dominant identities, this
knowledge is necessary in order to adopt an antiracist politics.

Campbell’s objection pertains to the assumption that members of dominant social
groups have multiplicitous subj ectivities. Though exploring one’s multiplicity may work
as a strategy for marginalized persons, that model is not helpful for those with dominant
identities (Campbell, 229). In the latter case, instead of asserting the prior multiplicity of
the subject, Campbell advocates a process of unsettling dominant expectations, which
facilitates the construction of multiple selves:

Unsettling expectations helps deconstruct the unquestioned normativity of

dominance. Moreover, settled expectations are such an important part of

dominant identities that their unsettling is not (like playfulness) a change

in attitude prior to the shift in self, but helps to constitute the shift
(Campbell, 222).

126

Rather than calling on an assumed multiplicity, Campbell argues that multiplicity can be
constructed by the process of unsettling expectations. Campbell is right to emphasize the
extent to which ones expectations, when they reﬂect the norm, can close off avenues of
awareness--can close off awareness of ones own dominant identity.

Campbell is also correct to point out that a focus on ones own multiplicity by
those with dominant identities can distract from the work of antiracism:

Those with dominant identities have considerable power to order

environments through what they attend to; thus, their environments do not

impinge on them or change them. This fact should give us reasonable

caution about appeals to fragmentation and multiplicity in the self as aids

to the political transformations that those with dominant social identities

need to undertake. Those with dominant identities must take

responsibility for the often racist patterns of interpretation through which

they understand the world. To regard one’s identity as multiple and

providing diverse standpoints can turn attention away from the

responsibility of identifying how systematically distorted one’s

perspective of others is (Campbell, 229).
Campbell points out an important problem that arises when persons with dominant
identities consider their own multiplicity. That is, they can turn the focus back onto
themselves, focusing on those selves which are marginalized and ignoring those selves
which are dominant. A white lesbian who explores her own multiplicity by focusing on
the ‘lesbian’ and ‘woman’ marginalized selves, and ignoring the ‘white’ and perhaps
‘middle-class’ selves, is not transforming her identity in ways that undermine racism. In
fact, this possibility reintroduces the criticism of identity politics raised by Suzanne Pharr
(chapter 1), namely, that focus solely on one’s identity as a marginalized person leads to a
single-issue politics. Those with dominant identities can and do reappropriate the

concept of multiplicity to authorize their own marginality and exonerate themselves for

any aspect in which they are dominant. The extreme version of this, as noted by Delia

127

Aguilar, can be found in postmodern celebrations of “difference” where the power
relations that construct difference are completely excluded (see my discussion of this
point in chapter 3). Campbell is right in pointing out that a focus on multiplicity by those
with dominant identities can distract them from political work. However, Lugones
accounts for this in her discussion of the uniﬁed subject.

The uniﬁed subject is fragmented, but the fragmentation is masked by ﬁctitious
unity. This is not to say that one who appears to hold a dominant identity in fact is
multiplicitous, and ought to focus on those identities that are marginalized. That is not
what Lugones advocates. Instead, one who holds a dominant identity must recognize the
ways in which she is constructed in other worlds, in the worlds of the marginalized.
Those worlds reveal a self that is not benevolent, benign, well-intentioned, and other
qualities we’d like to attribute to ourselves. The worlds of marginalized peoples reveal,
for example, the ways in which white people can be ‘whitely’ as Marilyn Frye explains.
‘Whiteliness’ is analogous to ‘masculinity’ insofar as both connote characteristics that
assert and maintain dominance, seemingly attributable to some innate characteristic
attached to race or sex, but which are in fact socially constructed. White people are not
necessarily whitely, just as men do not necessarily participate in the construction of
masculinity. But many white people are whitely. (Frye 1992, 151-163). Consider again
the example of the maid that Lugones analyzes. The employers recognize themselves as
uniﬁed subjects, good, well-meaning people who pay their maid a decent wage. The
maid sees the selves they present only to her, as well as the selves they acknowledge.
She sees the fragments, and she sees the ﬁctional unity, and sees that it is ﬁctional. For

the employers to acknowledge their own fragmentation would require them to travel to

128

the world of the maid. Such travel would entail the loving perception described above.
Such travel would require a profound shift in consciousness on the part of the employers.
Thus, the realization of their own multiplicity, or fragmentation as constructed in the
logic of purity, would bring about the transformation required for antiracist work. Simple
awareness of fragmentation (or multiplicity) is not what Lugones is calling for. Of those
who have dominant identities, she requires an awareness of one’s fragmentation as a
uniﬁed subject and an acknowledgment of the ways in which one beneﬁts from such
fragmentation. Thus, Lugones’ model, properly understood, is sufficient for bringing

about a transformational change in identity awareness.

Conclusion

Lugones develops a theory of subjectivity which responds to serious concerns
raised by feminist theorists. The subject positions she proposes link the present system
with a vision of transformed subjectivity. Her vision is not utopian, in fact, it exists at
this moment. Her argument is that we need to extend this vision-to bring it out of the
worlds of the marginalized in order to resist the forces which serve to maintain their
domination.

Lugones’ project is both descriptive and normative. It is descriptive insofar as she
is capturing elements of modern society which lead to the construction of uniﬁed and
fragmented subjects. She is capturing something about social reality that had not been
named or described, at least in ways that make the connections she makes. The task of

naming is an important part of any politics/theory of resistance.

129

There is a normative dimension to her work as well. Lugones urges those of us
who condemn racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, etc. to resist the forces of
domination and exploitation. The particular means of resistance that she advocates is
world traveling. A form of loving perception that requires us to recognize our own
fragmentation and the ways in which we contribute to the fragmentation of others. Only
through world-traveling can we develop the kind of social ontology that Lugones
recognizes as resistant, even liberatory. That social ontology is the logic of curdling,
wherein we can move at ease between worlds of our own construction, accommodating
all of our multiple identities. Without the logic of purity, there are no worlds where we
exist only as stereotypes. When we adopt the logic of curdling, the logic of impurity, we
can occupy that space as multiplicitous, mestiza subjects.

In the next chapter I will address speciﬁc ways we can take these concepts to form
a coalitional identity politics. One of the most important practices that stems from the
concept of world-traveling and curdled logic is a rejection of the theory/practice
dichotomy. To this end, it is important that Lugones’ work not be taken as a theory

separate from action.

130

Chapter Five: Multiplicity in Identities: Beyond the Metaphysics of Substance'

The form of subjectivity developed by Lugones is one that allows for a political
framework that does not rely on a liberal individualist subjectivity and politics. That is a
strength because a liberal individualist subjectivity is part of a political theory that relies
on the public/private dichotomy to structure social life. This dichotomy helps to
construct individuals who are split between particular interests, relegated to the private
domain, and universal interests which are made public. Only interests which pertain to
the whole can be admitted into the public sphere. Interests which pertain to a subgroup of
the whole are not universalizable. Claims on behalf of particular groups are labeled
‘special interest’ claims, and are rendered suspect in the public sphere. As a result, those
individuals who belong to marginalized subgroups of society, and as a result have an
explicit interest in seeing structural inequities addressed, ﬁnd their claims dismissed as a
ploy to gain ‘special rights’. Thus the liberal individualist construction of subjectivity is
not helpful to marginalized groups.

The liberal individualist commitment to universalistic principles such as
impartiality is also problematic. Iris Marion Young’s argument, discussed in chapter
four, points out that a reliance on impartiality will not eliminate bias. In fact, by
appealing to impartiality, we serve instead to instantiate the bias of dominant groups such

as males, heterosexuals and white people. Outlaw’s appeal to such principles to

 

' Much of the thinking for this chapter has been worked out in response to the work done
in a conference, the Second Dialogue on Methodologies of Resistant Negotiation, held at
SUNY Binghamton, December, 1999. I appreciate the honesty and the generosity of the
working group. They embody the concept of political sociality.

131

adjudicate between competing interests will serve to marginalize the interests of exploited
and oppressed groups and will uphold the interests of oppressors.

The two objections I have just addressed name consequences of an adherence to
the logic of purity. Mestiza subjectivity does not cany these consequences. Lugones
presents a model for relations within groups that can be extended to relations among
groups. That model is the basis of a coalitional identity politics.

To return to the story presented in the introduction to this project, I wish to
address the question of how the construction of identity developed by Lugones (Chapter
4) can support an identity politics that does not result in the kind of ﬁ'agmentation and
isolation experienced by my friend, as described in the introduction to this dissertation.
Subjectivity in the logic of purity is split-separated, even in community. Split-separation
is a result of the denial of the relationship of one’s multiple identities. If one is forced
into a “pop bead logic” 3 in a particular situation or in a particular culture she is reduced
to caricatures of those identities recognized by the dominant culture. One result of the
construction of identities as multiple is that the pop bead logic, split separation, is
rejected. Identities are preserved as important locations for the subject. Yet there is a
context in which multiple enmeshed identities are recognized.

Identities within a logic of curdling, a mestiza logic, support a politics of identity
insofar as identities are preserved and remain foci of analysis and organization. Though
lines dividing identities cease to separate one identity from another, resistance to the logic
of purity is not a rejection of categories per se. Rather, resistance to the logic of purity is

resistance to the form of domination that is enabled by selective enforcement of

132

categories within the logic of purity. When social categories or identities are split-
separated in ways that construct uniﬁed subjects and fragmented subjects, then categories
facilitate domination. It is possible to keep categories more or less intact while
recognizing interplay between categories. For example, a latina remains a latina even if
the stereotypical understanding of ‘latina’ is no longer invoked. Over time the meaning
of ‘latina’ will change as the identity is no longer associated with the stereotype. She
remains a latina in the multiplicitous sense, in that she is still a woman of a certain age,
class, sexual orientation, level of ability or disability, etc. That is, her identity as a latina
is inﬂected by her membership in other social categories. The liberatory effect of the
logic of curdling is to allow the mingling of social categories without destroying the
categories. This move can offer a response to the problem of the metaphysics of
substance.

One major criticism of identity constructions within the framework of the
metaphysics of substance is that such identities reinforce the structures that produce them.
Even oppositional identities do so because they stand in opposition to, and are therefore
deﬁned by the original construction. Construing identities as multiplicitous involves
making new meaning for identities. One may ask whether new meaning is always
deﬁned in terms of what it opposes. The creation of new meaning could be construed as
merely the reversal of dominant meaning, “double-double-unthink.”3 One example of
this is the reversal of racist dominant meaning by the Civil Rights Movement and Black

Power. The value of Aﬁican-American identity changed from negative to positive by the

 

3 Elizabeth Spelman’s term.
3 Andrea Dworkin’s term.

133

adoption of the ideology expressed in the phrase, “Black is Beautiful”. 4 That is an
example of a reversal in opposition to the dominant meaning. The meaning of “Black” is
contested. An identity politics arose around the struggle to value Black identity.

But this move is not only a reversal of dominant meaning. For example, new
meaning is created in the articulation of the ideology, “Black is Beautiful”. Distinctly
African hairstyles were adopted by Black folks (and later by white folks) as a cultural
expression and a practical acknowledgment that these styles were especially suited to the
texture of hair of many people of African origin. The political ramiﬁcations were present
as well. Black folks who adopted such styles were censured for being “political”.

Only the arrogant eye would see the act of adopting such hairstyles as strictly
oppositional. The loving eye would see it in the context of a new or different world of
meaning. That is not to say that the loving eye would not perceive the relationship
between both worlds of meaning and appreciate the resistance to the dominant world that
adoption of such styles expresses. The loving eye would grasp all that, but would not
reduce the meaning of that action to merely an opposition to the dominant world. The
loving eye acknowledges multiple interpretations of this action. The arrogant eye
acknowledges only the interpretation which places the arrogant perceiver in the center.

Acknowledgment of multiplicity in social identity changes the way group
members interact. For example, the lesbian community must (and does to a great extent)
take into account issues of racism, classism, dis/ability, anti-semitism, and so on. These
become issues for every member of the community, not only for those who directly suffer

their deleterious effects. The logic of curdling will eliminate the distinction between

 

" Bill Lawson’s example in conversation, 9/99.

134

‘thick’ and ‘transparent’ members of social groups because transparent members, in
recognizing their own multiple identities must, to remain consistent, recognize the
concerns of thick members. Social groups become a microcosm of the larger society in
that many issues would be taken up that might not otherwise be recognized by otherwise
transparent members. In the context of a smaller social group, such as the lesbian
community, these issues become more “real” to transparent members because they are
issues faced by friends and loved ones, and are issues in which everyone is involved or
implicated. In this respect, loving perception and world traveling has the potential to
foster understanding and concern across differences that otherwise might divide.

Critics of the distinction between transparent and thick membership have pointed
out that, in a group of people with many forms of marginalization, it is not clear whose
interests get represented as marginal and whose interests as central.3 One’s status as a
thick or transparent member is context-dependent, as Lugones points out (Lugones 1994,
474). Within a group, though, members can be marginalized, or made ‘thick’ in different
ways. Are marginalized interests in competition with each other in this situation? For
example, early second-wave feminists quickly learned that, in addition to ﬁghting sexism,
they would also need to address racism, homophobia, classism, anti-semitism, etc. I

understand the question raised to ask who gets to be marginal in this context. For

 

3 I ﬁrst became aware of this question in the discussion period following a presentation
by Uma Narayan entitled, “Feminist Politics and Cross-Cultural Analyses” (Eastern
APA, December 1999). In response to my suggestion that the framework of ‘thickness’
and ‘transparency’ might be useful in understanding and recognizing the issues of
marginalized groups Narayan suggested that the reduction to two positions is “not
sufﬁcient” to capture the problem and suggest an avenue for change. In a private
conversation with Lisa Tessman regarding this point, Tessman suggested that it would be

135

example, an Asian, disabled, middle-class married woman, stands as both oppressor and
oppressed in relation to an able-bodied working class, bisexual Jewish woman. Within
the logic of purity one might want to call upon a “hierarchy of oppressions” to determine
who is thick and who is transparent. The logic of purity fosters separation and
fragmentation. But such thinking is wrongheaded.

The logic of curdling resists taxonomies of oppression. There are many ways in
which one can be marginalized in a group. In concrete situations, it is not useful to try to
sort out and classify the thick members and the transparent members. What is useful is a
commitment by each member to be attentive to other members. If each member is
engaged in loving perception, and is attuned to the need for world-travelling, the
thickness of thick members will cease to function as a source of fragmentation.
Transparent members will recognize the ﬁction of their seeming unity, there seeming
commitment to one identity, for example. Both thick members and transparent members
will recognize their own split-separation. Through world-travelling and loving
perception, split-separation can become multiplicity. The crucial commitment must be

made to consider the many worlds each member carries with her. ’

Multiplicity in the Realm of Politics
The framework of mestiza subjectivity can function as a politics insofar as it
suggests ways of organizing society and how power ought to ﬂow among all sectors of

society. This framework also functions as a politics insofar as it designates methods of

 

difﬁcult in a group to know who counts as ‘thick’ and ‘who counts as ‘transparent’. I
wish to respond to the latter concern here.

136

bringing about progressive change, or at the very least, methods of resisting present
forces of domination. Thus, this framework is a politics of liberation.

The framework of sociality created by the logic of curdling has the potential to
transform relations between social groups as well as within social groups. The ties that
connect members of a group serve to incline each to take up interests not directly their
own. Such ties may not appear to exist between different social groups. However, since
group members have already come to terms with their own fragmentation and their
participation in the fragmentation of others, they are already accustomed to world-
travelling. And since they recognize the importance of interests they do not directly
share, it is likely that such members would be able to extend that recognition beyond the
immediate social group in question. Group members who share a common culture have
already learned to take into account the other ‘worlds’ brought to that world by various
members. Outside of that group, they may encounter folks whose world they have
already come to know. If, as a lesbian, I am concerned about other lesbians, I will, as a
world-traveller, become interested in lesbians of races, abilities, and religious upbringings
different ﬁom my own. So I will become acquainted withthese worlds when I meet
people from them who may not recognize in me the common bond of lesbian life.

Identity politics has been criticized for being self-centered in focusing on one’s
own interests, say, as a lesbian, and only taking up those concerns pertaining to lesbians.
I do not accept that interpretation of the motives behind identity politics. Focusing on
one’s identity as a marginalized person is a means of survival, not a means of self-
aggrandizement. The necessary correlate to an identity politics is an awareness of one’s

identity as a dominator. In comparison to those who reject identity politics, but cluster

137

among members of their own race and class to further their own interests, a coalitional

identity politics is much less self serving.

Toward a Coalitional Identity Politics

If we understand politics to be a sustained, concerted movement that seeks to
intervene and endure,‘5 we have a concept of a politics that connects with sociality. The
relations between persons fostered by sociality are developed in a political context. The
loving eye perceives the relations of power in which the subject is enmeshed, and
perceives the contexts in which the subject creates new meaning-~a meaning that contests
power relations or that creates or is a kind of agency.

To link power relations to identity is to repoliticize identity. The Combahee River
Collective, in 1977, made links between their identities and their politics. Much of
identity politics since then has become depoliticized. Concurrently, in larger discussions
of feminist theory, talk of identity gave way to talk about power relations, at least in some
circles. This change was beneﬁcial to feminist theory in at least two ways. Since one’s
identities had largely been reduced to consideration of a single identity, the language of
power relations offered a more nuanced, complex analysis of oppression than can be had
by a theory considering only one identity. Namely, the language of power relations
captures the ways in which we act as oppressors as well as oppressed. This offered a link
to considerations of multiple identities. Second, this analysis captures the diffuse nature
of Oppression, that it is in the minds and bodies of the oppressed as well as in the actions

of the oppressors.

138

However, the diffuseness and complexity led some away from talk about
oppression altogether, since it was difﬁcult if not impossible to unequivocally name
oppressors or oppressed persons. I think this difﬁculty led some theorists away from
politics and political action as surely as did the reduction of identity politics to single-
issue narcissistic “politics”. The theorists retreated to theory, and the practitioners of
identity politics retreated to identity—-both became apolitical in signiﬁcant ways.

This depoliticization is countered by the reconnection of politics to identity in
sociality. Identity cannot be reduced to single-issue politics when understood in the
context of the logic of curdling. Likewise, power relations cannot be separated from the
concrete situations in which power functions. Grounding identity and power relations in
a politics centered on sociality is an important aspect of a relational coalition identity
politics.

Adopting the model of mestiza subjectivity necessarily leads to a coalitional
identity politics. By adopting a mestiza theory of subjectivity, we recognize our
connection to others across “differences” that heretofore were divisive. For example, I
would not only recognize my identities as a woman and as a lesbian, but my identities as
a white, christian-raised person. I recognize the unearned privilege given to me even as I
recognize the harm that comes to me, and I recognize the harm that comes to my friends
as a result of a power structure that does not harm me in the same way. As I politicize the
harms that come to me, through an identity politics, I must, within the logic of curdling,
politicize the harms that come to those to whom I am connected-mot through shared

oppression, but through shared resistance to oppression. By politicizing (and recognizing

 

° Methodologies of Resistant Negotiation, Working Group.
139

the politicization of) other harms, I participate in building a movement that addresses
multiple oppressions, yet is still an identity politics. Such a politics is coalitional in that
it takes up many interconnected issues. Yet it is not a temporary coalition, but a
sustained effort that comes from the sociality of the logic of curdling and loving
perception. Coalitional politics is useful because it is a recognition of the
interconnectedness of multiple oppressions. It does not seek to redress the harms of one
group at the expense of another group.

This model of identity politics also employs a construction of identity which does
not reproduce or rely on a metaphysics of substance. If the articulation of an identity is
the drawing of a boundary marking off what is not that identity, then this theory of
subjectivity moves away from the metaphysics of substance by constantly considering
what it is not, and how that serves to construct what is. The metaphysics of substance
relies on the logic of purity to function. But the multiplicitous identity necessarily
involves a relational element that connects one to others in the group, and allows for
change over time. Both of these elements work to disrupt the substantial unity of the
subject. Unlike the subject constructed in Butler’s metaphysics, on this construction, the
subject is connected to the concrete world and can identify issues on which to act. This

subject has political agency.

140

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141

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