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TOWARDS A NEW RADICAL FEMINIST VISION:
NAVIGATING THE PASSAGE FROM OPPRESSION TO
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TOWARDS A NEW RADICAL FEMINIST VISION: NAVIGATING THE PASSAGE
FROM OPPRESSION TO FREEDOM

By

Jennifer Lynn Benson

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Philosophy

2005

ABSTRACT

TOWARDS A NEW RADICAL FEMINIST VISION: NAVIGATING THE PASSAGE
FROM OPPRESSION TO FREEDOM

By
Jennifer Lynn Benson

What would it mean to speak of a radical feminist conception of freedom? I ask
this question amid the writings of Maria Lugones, Mary Daly, Sarah Hoagland, and
Marilyn Frye. Their projects aim to theorize oppression and resistance, as well as
liberatory feminist futures that are not characterized by forms of oppression. While these
authors are not always writing with each others” work in mind, when taken together they
form what is, I think, an extremely fruitfiJl intersection. Yet, one thing that is
conspicuously absent from the intersection is the concept of freedom. These philosophers
are writing about oppression, resistance, liberation, world-traveling, and feminist
communities—yet they do not articulate a radical feminist conception of freedom. It is a
curious absence. After all, it would seem that the appropriate counter-concept of
oppression is freedom. And we would surely think that a radical feminist future would be
characterized by freedom.

In this dissertation I argue that the radical feminist focus on oppression and
resistance yields a conceptual and political landscape wrought of resistance and
incremental moves toward existence that is not characterized by oppression. As
feminists. it is crucial that we are able to understand the operation of oppression and able
to understand and formulate resistant action. Oppression and resistance are necessary
categories of analysis because feminism currently functions within interlocking systems

of oppression. Yet as feminists. we also require positive conceptions of existence beyond

the frameworks of oppression. By developing such positive conceptions we prepare
ourselves for radical feminist futures. futures that are no so extensively configured by
oppression.

In developing a radical feminist conception of freedom I first explore conceptions
of subjectivity offered by Lugones and Daly. From Lugones I adopt the idea that subjects
are inherently multiple, having literally many selves that exist in curdled relation to each
other. From Daly I adopt the idea that subjects create themselves through their own
ongoing ontological activity. I weave connections across these two conceptions of
subjectivity and argue that curdled multiplicity can become a resource for ontological
invention—ffor be-ing free. Radical feminist freedom is not a utopian construct. Rather,
freedom is an ontological activity. I understand freedom as a specific mode of be-ing in
which one works from cultivated curdled-multiplicity, opening possibilities for action
while navigating our many social worlds. As subjects navigate their many social worlds.
they are able to cultivate this curdled multiplicity and enact feminist projects that escape
the reductive confines of patriarchal existence. Aided by my conception of freedom.

radical feminists are in a better position to invent worlds that are not characterized by

oppression.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the help and support of my dear friends and family. I own much to
Joseph Totherow, who loved and traveled with me through the fierce personal struggles
that accompanied the last ten years and especially the writing of this dissertation. My
parents, Barbara and Vernon Benson, were an unfailing source of love and support
throughout the unexpected twists and turns of graduate school and the dissertation
process. I thank Allison Wolf, Barry Decoster, Sonya Charles, Tricha Shivas, Crista
Lebens, and Annie Courtney, all of whom know how to attend in the best tradition of

Hoagland land. Finally, I thank Marilyn Frye, mentor and friend—I never imagined that

writing a dissertation could be a creative joy.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
A Note About Terms and Style ............................................................. 4

CHAPTER 1

OPPRESSION. RESISTANCE, AND FREEDOM.. ......................................................... 7
Introduction .................................................................................. 7
A Context of Oppression ................................................................... 7
Oppression and Resistance ............................................................... 11
Total and Inescapable ...................................................................... 18
The Problem and the Preview ............................................................. 21
Retrieving Freedom ........................................................................ 23
A Radical Feminist Conception of Freedom ........................................... 29
Conclusion .................................................................................. 31

CHAPTER 2

RADICAL FEMINIST DEPARTURES FROM LIBERALISM ............................. 33
Introduction ................................................................................. 33
It is Best to Start at the Beginning ....................................................... 34
Lesbian Agency .............................................. . .............................. 41
Be-ing Free vs. Static Freedom ........................................................... 54
The Logic of Curdling and the Logic of Purity ........................................ 58
Conclusion .................................................................................. 68

CHAPTER 3

LIBERATORY SUBJECTIVITY ................................................................ 70
Introduction ................................................................................. 70
Theories of Subjectivity ................................................................... 71
Method and Be-ing Feminist ............................................................. 76
“Ontological Dividedness" ............................................................... 80
Multiplicity and Experience .............................................................. 84
Metaphors of Separation .................................................................. 89
Multiplicity in Experience ................................................................ 91
Day-to-day Multiplicity ................................................................... 96
Liminal Insight .............................................................................. 99
Conclusion ................................................................................. 1 04

CHAPTER 4

INITIATING THE INQUIRY INTO A RADICAL FEMINIST CONCEPTION OF

FREEDOM ......................................................................................... 106
Introduction ................................................................................ 1 06
Utopia Forestalled ........................................................................ 107
The Subject Who Can Be Free ......................................................... 108
Freedom and Resistance as Ontological Activity .................................... 111

Resistance, Freedom, and Integrity ............................................ 1 18

Freedom Without First Principles ............................................. 119
Further Inscribing Radical Feminist Value ................................... 121
Concluding Remarks ............................................................ 123
WORKS CITED ................................................................................... 125

vi

Introduction

What would it mean to speak of a radical feminist conception of freedom? I ask
this question amid the writings of Maria Lugones, Mary Daly, Sarah Hoagland, and
Marilyn Frye. Their projects aim to theorize oppression and resistance, as well as
liberatory feminist futures that are not characterized by forms of oppression. While these
authors are not always writing with each others’ work in mind, when taken together they
form what is, I think, an extremely fruitful intersection. Yet. one thing that is
conspicuously absent from the intersection is the concept of freedom. These philosophers
are writing about oppression, resistance, liberation, world-traveling. and feminist
communities—yet they do not articulate a radical feminist conception offi'eedom. It is a
curious absence. After all, it would seem that the appropriate counter-concept of
oppression is freedom. And we would surely think that a radical feminist future would be
characterized by freedom.

This dissertation initiates a new conception of freedom: radical feminist freedom.
In Chapter One, I will explore the landscape of radical feminism, especially the
conceptions of oppression and resistance that figure prominently in the landscape. The
geography of radical feminism contains signposts, where foresisters have specifically
guided the radical feminist tradition away from conceptions of freedom available in the
intellectual tradition of western patriarchy. I begin to conceptualize freedom while
noting the warnings provided be earlier radical feminists. My initial characterization of
radical feminist freedom will be brief in Chapter One, only enough to suggest the path of

this dissertation project.

In Chapter Two, I will ward off some potential misunderstanding of radical
feminist freedom. I view the liberal tradition as a potential distraction, a vast and highly
seasoned tradition that might divert the reader from my own project. In order to forestall
the distraction, I will specify key differences between the traditions of radical feminism
and liberal political philosophy. As I will show, radical feminists departed from the older
liberal tradition for important reasons. They depart because radical feminist projects
locate women within a context of oppression. This starting place necessitates feminist
theory and practical activity that understands agency as a feature of the oppressed.
Meanwhile the classical liberal authors saw agency and freedom as linked features of
rational men [sic]. Radical feminists also demonstrate a marked preference for
existentialist styles of thought that allow one to reforrnulate the women’s ontology as a
process of ongoing invention. rather than remaining wedded to a liberal conception of
man‘s inherent nature.

My own radical feminist conception of freedom will emerge from within a
confluence of radical feminist ideas. I begin with a certain approach to metaphysics and
subjectivity. In Chapter Three. I argue that the key concept for retaining libratory
potential. an insight from Lugones, is that radical feminist theory and practical activity
should operate in a framework of ontological multiplicity, “curdled multiplicity” to be
exact. In this framework, categories are never pure, reality is continual shifting, and any
discernible boundaries are temporary landmarks. Most importantly, subjects are
themselves understood to be curdled multiplicities; they experience ever-shifting

identities that may be simultaneously empowered and oppressed, serious and playful.

IQ

reckless and pragmatic. An ontology ofcurdled multiplicity makes resistance and
invention both possibilities for daily existence and metaphysical reality.

My question becomes this: What is freedom for subjects who are curdled and
always in process? I ask about freedom from within a framework of curdled multiplicity.
Here, any one subject is inherently multiple, fashioned of multiple selves that are
palpably distinct yet never fully separated from each other. Curdled multiplicitous
subjects are formed and reformed in the many complex worlds they navigate.

In this radical feminist conception of freedom, freedom will be explored as a
mode of activity, ontological activity. The activity is the creative work of cultivating
multiplicity and possibilities for action while navigating our many social worlds. Daly,
Frye, Lugones and Hoagland do not use the term 'freedom.’ But Daly and Hoagland do
employ an existentialist metaphysics. Daly, as will be clear in Chapter Three. uses the
concept of ‘be-ing’ to help envision feminist realities and futures that are not
characterized by oppression. She uses the term ‘be-ing’ to help conceptualize the project
of inventing the fixture of radical feminism. It is reality understood as dynamic and
creative process. By the end of Chapter Three, it will be clear that the combination of
existentialist metaphysics and ontological multiplicity open radical feminists toward an as
yet barely theorized conception of freedom.

Chapter Four will explore be-ing free. a positive conception of freedom that helps
radical feminism move towards worlds that are not characterized by oppression. Such
future worlds are remote, obscured by patriarchal practices and even our own attempts at
forward thinking. As a consequence. We are not well served by drawing up plans for a

radical feminist utopia. Yet we are in need of conceptual tools that will help foster a

La)

positive conception of life beyond the frameworks and mind-binds of patriarchy. As
radical feminists, we shall be well served by a conception of be-ing free that provides a
positive account of existence apart from patriarchy. I will argue for a mode of
ontological activity—be-ing free. The activity is the daily work of radical feminism.
Be-ing offers the capacity to create paths out of the patriarchal foreground experience in
which women are defined, reduced, fragmented, and alienated from each other by the
oppressive customs. institutional practices, and languages of patriarchy. Be-ing free is
the activity of opening possibilities for existence while not targeting a final and specific
goal. Instead, be-ing free is an ongoing process that is both a matter of practical activity
and metaphysical disposition. Radical feminist freedom is an activity, and the axis of
value around which freedom is organized is one of feminist process. not permanence or

certain utopia.

A Note about Terms and Style

I am focusing on a specific domain within contemporary radical feminist
activism and theory. The principal figures that mark the landscape of this inquiry are
Marilyn Frye, Maria Lugones, Sarah Hoagland, and Mary Daly, though I also rely upon
Simone de Beauvoir, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, and Wanda Warren Berry. These
four are members of the large network of radical feminist activists and scholars and they
are crucial figures for my project. Their writings on oppression, resistance, and feminist
futures frame my own examination of freedom. When I use the term ‘radical feminist’

one may assume it is shorthand for the intersecting ideas of these four philosophers.

Exploring and articulating a radical feminist conception of freedom is tricky
work. It requires acknowledgement that 'freedom’ has been largely “owned” by liberal
theory. But more importantly. it requires a feminist conviction that the language of
‘freedom’ need not be restricted to the domain of liberal politics. One has to remake
‘freedom’ such that it is not irrevocably tied to liberal politics and theory. The tradition
of radical feminism has been extensively developed and refined over the last few
decades. but the concept of ‘freedom’ is new to this tradition. I will demonstrate that an
inchoate conception of freedom has lingered within the writings of radical feminist since
the 1970’s. I will show that radical feminist freedom is emerging from its own tradition.
One should expect chapters of this dissertation to reveal a budding conception of
freedom, one with promise of stature. However, this dissertation alone is but the early
story. 1 will not endeavor to demonstrate how a radical feminist conception of freedom
should displace liberal conceptions of freedom or justice.

As I articulate a radical feminist conception of freedom, metaphor and analogy
each serves as a medium for analysis. Carefully chosen metaphors often convey the tone
of a chapter or section. They communicate my interests and occasionally hint at humor.
Analogies are my preferred device, however. A well-placed analogy mediates the

distance between experience and incisive conceptual frameworks and back again. This is
not a new idea: it is merely a statement about how thought develops. We use detailed
analogies to illustrate ideas, adding richness and depth to the explanation at hand.
Certainly no analogy is perfect and their imperfections are often helpful as well. The best

use of an analogy involves describing the points of likeness and the points of contrast.

Noting the details of an imperfect analogy helps unpack an idea or concept in its richness
and detail.

Radical feminists have a knack for metaphor and analogy, particularly analogies
grown of the commonplace. One marker of radical feminism, and feminism generally, is
that the discipline has great confidence in the mundane experiences of women as sources
for knowledge. New analytical concepts are cultivated from the hands-on experience of
living a woman’s life. Feminists have learned self-reliance in the production of
knowledge. The nuts and bolts, yeast and flour, of daily life are a source for developing
frameworks of analysis uniquely suited to addressing and remaking worlds of sense.

In my writing and in the writing of many feminists, metaphor and analogy are
used to good effect when they are explored even to their boundaries. Though I confess to
finding many analogies irresistible. and I willingly spend pages on certain analogies, my
expansive treatment is justified. Analogies are at their most instructive when they convey
a new idea and when we see them in rich detail, and especially when we see where they
leave off. Thus, one should expect analogies and metaphors in the pages that follow—

analogy and metaphor in abundant detail.

Chapter One
Oppression, Resistance,'and Freedom

Introduction

In this chapter, I will examine the prevalence of ‘oppression’ and ‘resistance’ as
concepts that have framed much radical feminist literature. Why are oppression and
resistance the concepts that have been privileged with such extensive analysis? In the
process of answering this question, I will show why it is also necessary to have a radical
feminist conception of freedom that complements the analysis of oppression and
resistance.
A Context of Oppression

Living amid convoluted and immense oppressive structures, immersed in the
absolute necessity for resistance—this is the place where feminism begins. Living.
surviving. even thriving is possible when we know our environment and its dangers.
Thus, one of the tasks in feminism has been to articulate the contexts in which women
live. Audre Lorde knew this when she wrote of the silence and fear that characterize the
lives of those who live “in the mouth of this dragon,” whether they are black women or
not (42). Sarah Hoagland knew this as she worked to explain dominance and
subordination. the bone structure that sustains heterosexism (21). Simone de Beauvoir
knew this when, in the Second Sex, she detailed the ways women are not born but made.

The opening chapter of The Second Sex details the context of women in fierce
and painful terms. Beauvoir describes how white. Anglo, and European women exist in a
context of thoroughgoing exploitation and domination. These women and virtually all
feminine characteristics found in this complex of related anglo-European cultures stand

in contrast with men and masculinity. Beauvoir finds that masculinity carries the vast

majority of social virtues. Meanwhile femininity is a liability, an automatic form of
weakness, a quality that disadvantages women in social and political arenas where
femininity is presumed to mean one lacks reason and thus access to rights of full
citizenship. The result. notes Beauvoir. is that women are subject to men. Men position
women so they can be dominated and exploited by men. It is a condition that pervades
public life. home life, the gynecologist’s office, and especially the intimate relationships
of husbands and wives. Beauvoir does not mince words; rather, she generates a distilled
account of the totalizing injustices and brutality imposed on women by men. Though it
was written in 1950’s France, The Second Sex continues to be influential. It is a rousing
critique of contemporary middle-class relations between anglo-European men and
women.

The Second Sex interests me because it offers such a clear example of how
contemporary feminism makes certain methodological moves. Living, surviving. and
thriving are possible if one knows one’s surroundings. Thus, the first move is to become
conscious of and articulate the complex character and scope of oppression. The goal is to
understand oppression in order to prepare the imagination for resistance. survival, and
even the thriving of feminist communities. The preferred method for accomplishing this
is to begin with an analysis of oppression. To see this methodological step more clearly.
consider a contrasting methodology found in liberal political theory. Classical liberalism
and the contemporary tradition initiated by Rawls both assume freedom as a starting
place. The goal of liberal theory is to argue for social organization that is appropriate to
the character of free men. The classical device was an imaginative exploration of the

state of nature, a mythic domain where men [sic] live without the mitigation of social

convention or governmental regulation. If one reads classical liberal reflections on the
state of nature, one finds a romantic allegory that describes negative freedom. Further,
one can decipher important instructions on method and on basic human nature. For
classical liberals, negative freedom marks the essential character of men. The appropriate
method for locating a social order suited to such beings will necessarily begin with an
analysis of man’s natural freedom.

Rawls’ use of the veil of ignorance (136-140) delivers a similar methodological
message: start with freedom. Behind the veil of ignorance one occupies a position of
freedom from any specific social and economic position. To conduct the experiment
behind the veil. one is urged to imagine becoming a person who faces a variety of social
challenges, yet to imagine being completely uncertain about the social goods one might
possess after the veil is lifted. In presenting and exploring this thought experiment.
Rawls argues that one would naturally avoid reasoning from specific interests except for
preserving freedom and fair treatment of the citizenry. The method begins by
disengaging one from the contextual burdens of life that might foster support for social
privileges and might even allow the exploitation of other citizens. One is asked to reason
out the sort of social order that would maximize fairness. As with the more classical state
of nature, the veil of ignorance announces method and then describes individuals as
reasonable, able to freely choose the appropriate social order. We are instructed to begin
without presuming anything of social location, yet all who follow through with the
experiment are assumed to be essentially reasonable and free.

What of Beauvoir’s starting place and method? “Women are not born but made.”

Beauvoir‘s initial statement of this problem is followed by a detailed description of how

women are positioned in the fundamental dichotomy of consciousness: Self and Other
(xxii). Women, femininity, weakness, irrationality, these compose the Other for that
which is Self: Men, masculinity, strength, and reason. Given this situation, Beauvoir sets
to work investigating how women have come to be ‘Other,’ how this subordination has
been held in place, how it might be overcome. She argues that, unlike colonized peoples.
women have no memory of a time in which they, as a group. directed their own destiny.
She traces this lack of memory back to the very prehistoryl of human existence, where
she lingers over the fundamental dichotomy of consciousness. Self and Other. the
invention of private property. and the patriarchal family. These three ancient factors
conspired. and conspire still, to reinforce women’s positions as subservient, focused on
the production of the family rather than pursuit of transcendence.

Men have no actual memories of the state of nature; however, the mythology of
unmitigated freedom has been an influential device in the imagination of patriarchal
liberal thinkers. Women have no memories of unmitigated freedom either. But the
interesting difference is that we have found the liberal’s state of nature mythology
unpersuasive. The mythology of unmitigated freedom has proven inadequate for the
challenge of moving women to transcend their position as Other. Effecting social change
requires a consciousness of ones situation, and for Beauvoir, this means a consciousness
of women’s subordination. The method for accomplishing social change requires that

one first investigate women’s lives and imaginations within oppression.

 

' One might argue that Beauvoir is doing her own version of the state of nature when she writes of a
prehistory and the early development of Self and Other. Yet if one offers such an argument. the crucial
issue to remember is that Beauvoir thinks women cannot posit themselves as ‘originally' free. By
contrasts, in the classical approach, positing ‘original’ freedom is the primarily methodological step for
justifying the move towards a liberal social order. Therefore one misunderstands Beauvoir in claiming that
her investigation of pre-history is analogous to classical investigations into the state of nature. The two
imagined contexts are precisely dissimilar.

10

The starting place of theory is important. The memory of freedom, the myth of
freedom—such classical devices are not incomprehensible to feminists. They are simply
ill-suited to the work at hand. Taking oppression as the starting place means radical
feminists ask different questions than those asked in tradition of liberal political theory. I
highlight this difference because it partially explains why radical feminists, and feminists
generally. have been particularly conscious of oppression as an analytical concept.

Radical feminism begins with the challenge of oppression.

Oppression and Resistance
For radical feminism the starting place of theory is oppression. 1n the early 70’s
Marilyn Frye began writing the essay "Oppression.” The essay remains a staple in
feminist classes, discussion groups, and the libraries of English-reading feminists. It is
indispensable because it provides a clear and incisive means~ of defining oppression and
locating the operation of oppression in social worlds. I
In Frye’s article, oppression is uncovered and articulated through a combination
of linguistic analysis. empirical examples, metaphors, and abstractions. Taking each
experience of being thwarted individually, from a microscopic and myopic perspective,
one can examine the extent to which it operates as a seemingly small inconvenience, an
isolated obstacle, an accidental trauma. a sad bit of experience. The careful investigation
of each incident never reveals the actual nature of any sort of oppressive social world.
The question becomes: What does it mean to speak of oppression? Frye explains it thus:
The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life
is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not

accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are
systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one

11

between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any

direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in

every direction, are blocked or booby-trapped (4).
She suggests the metaphor of a bird in a cage. We might be tempted to think that the
barriers and forces that form the cage of oppression are violent and visceral forms of
control. Sometimes oppressors do inflict violence. But barriers can be subtle and often
take the form of a nagging double bind.

Consider the situation of a young black feminist faculty member in a department
committee meeting. The agenda item under discussion is the need to increase minority
enrollments in a school that is largely white. Although there is plenty of money for
scholarships, and the school has been willing to provide lucrative offers to students of
color, few students of color choose to enroll. During the meeting several senior faculty
members have already offered their exasperation and concluded that there must not be
that many qualified students of color. The young black feminist faculty member
recognizes that this is a cop-out. especially in a context where the school supports only a
limited amount of “progressive” content in the classroom and only occasionally invites
visiting speakers to lecture on “diversity.” Does she point out their racism or not? There
are really two options here, neither of them all that good. She can, as Audre Lorde says.
betray herself into this small silence (41 ). Although silence might keep her out of trouble
in this meeting, she must swallow the racism. Further, her silence may be interpreted to
mean the other committee members are behaving acceptably because she has not offered
an objection. For her, this small silence is revolting. By contrast, she can speak
forcefully about how the school is engaged in institutional racism and that the faculty

members present are complicit in this malfeasance. It is dangerous to be a troublemaker,

12

especially as a junior faculty member without a community of allies, whether they are
black women or not. She risks being seen as hostile, disloyal to the school, a “lawsuit
waiting to happen” and she still has tenure to worry about.2 This is a double bind.
Double binds are often small features of daily life. Interestingly, they exhibit a
feature of oppression, namely that one can be caught between systematically related
outcomes. Here. I am focusing on the double binds in women’s lives. If we only look at
individual double binds that happen to appear in our daily lives, one after another. we
might never finish the examination. More importantly we might never learn how
oppression works. To examine one double bind is to examine an individual wire. under a
microscope, as it were. We might notice that the double bind presents two bad outcomes.
Yet, this one bind doesn’t seem like a barrier. just a small inconvenience that one can
negotiate around. Oppression is not- visible at this microscopic level of analysis. As Frye
notes.
...people can fail to see the oppression of women because they fail
to see macroscopically and hence fail to see the various elements
of the situation as systematically related in larger schemes. ...But
when you look macroscopically you can see it—a network of
forces and barriers which are systematically related and which
conspire to the immobilization, reduction. and molding of women
and the lives we live (7). Mold. Immobilize. Reduce (4).
I’m interested in reductions. We mold and reduce the size of a thing, changing its

shape in the process. We rework the significance of a thing by pressing it into a less

obtrusive location. We minimize the range of effects or actions possible for a thing by

 

2 Upon reading this case it may seem that double binds are the same as ethical dilemmas. Though the two
may occasionally overlap. double binds may not necessarily involve the conflicting ethical principles
characteristic of ethical dilemmas. A double bind could be faced by a woman who has only the choice of
being bored in the available form of “women’s work” or being bored by keeping a house for one’s husband.
There don’t seem to be conflicting ethical principles here, but neither choice holds much appeal.

13

creating barriers to action. I’m interested in the processes through which one affects a
reduction. The reduction process has ontological significance.

Consider practices that reduce a thing’s size and altering its shape. When we
press things—clothes, fall leaves, grilled cheese sandwiches—we cage a particular
substance between related barriers and thus reduce the size and alter the shape of the
object. When I was young, one of the first things I was allowed to cook on a stove was a
grilled cheese sandwich. My mother had a set of irons that would make perfectly round
grilled sandwiches. In retrospect, the grilling process is a useful comparison for seeing
how a reduction in size and shape is an important component of oppression.

Two long handles attach to a pair of hinged iron plates. Because the plates are
dished out slightly in the center and positioned to face each other, they close to form a
seal as soon as one clamps the hinge shut. My mother would allow me to lightly butter
two pieces of bread, lay one piece of bread on the iron plate, layer the cheese and second
piece of bread, fasten the irons shut, cut away the scraps of bread pinched nearly in two
by the pressure, and lay the irons on the stove burner. Since the handle was always a
good twelve inches from the actual iron plates, this was pretty safe stove work for a kid.

There were many advantages to using the irons for making a grilled cheese
sandwich. The iron plates, because of their shape, would clamp the hot cheese tightly
within the sandwich. The sandwich would be effectively sealed shut through the pressing
and heating processes. Once it was cooked, the sandwich could be tipped out and
handled with little risk of getting burned by the molten cheese. The edges would be stiff,

seared to a slight crispy from the butter. The grilled cheese irons had aesthetic benefits

14

too. They created a pattern of concentric scorch marks radiating out to the edge of the
round sandwich. It was all quite delightful to the hands and eyes of a six-year old.

The act of pressing molds, reduces, shapes the substance under pressure. Floppy
square pieces of bread, cheese that might escape its sandwich—these are reworked
through opposing forces that compress, seal, and render useless the excess scraps of crust.
The reduction that one effects in this instance not only shapes the material pressed within
the irons, is also changes the material so as to make it more manageable and appealing.
The reduction process is a necessary component of ontological reconfiguration.

Frye only briefly notes the significance of reductions in the process of oppression.
Dwelling on images of reduction has helped me to understand something about
oppression. In the process of living within oppressive social structures, women are
reduced. It is an ontological reduction. Patriarchal values. tools. and practices reduce
women’s possibilities for existence. The point I make is not merely that women can be
subject to a reduction that reconfigures their agency so they only have a range of actions
that facilitate their own exploitation. I’m asserting that there is a necessary link between
the reduction and oppression. In the logic of oppression, the reduction is a necessary
condition. Oppression requires that an otherwise crafty, inventive creature be reduced to
a “grafted” substance (Frye 65), a conduit for bringing about patriarchal realities.

One obvious reduction example is the American/anglo obsession with women’s
bodies having particular qualities and a particular physical shape. For many women the
social demand for thinness or “fitness” influences diet regardless of whether the diet may
damage one’s health. regardless of how one’s metabolism works, regardless of how one

may be made miserable through the dieting process. regardless of how the intended

15

physical shape may endanger one’s life, and regardless of how rarely the intended effect
is achieved and maintained. In the case of women’s bodies, the reductions are literal—on
a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis, women are urged, ridiculed, chastised, coaxed to
shrink. The much-anticipated result is a body that meets with social perceptions of
feminine beauty and “health.” This is a patriarchal standard of feminine beauty and
health. Certainly there could be other current standards for patriarchal beauty and health.
One could be reduced to a plump sex object. Obesity too could be a patriarchal standard
of feminine beauty and health. The problem is not that thinness is the required bodily
configuration; the problem is patriarchal configuration of women through ontological
reductions. This is one component of a larger pattern in which women are crafted into
objects for patriarchal use. As Mary Daly explains, women are reduced to patriarchal
vessels, emptied of their own possibilities so they may be more effective for men who use
them (Gyn/Ecology, xxvi).

I am also interested in less obvious forms of reduction. Consider how one’s
significance, choices, available forms of action may be reduced through structurally
related barriers. How do we constrain or reduce the importance of a particular group of
people? One common method is to repeatedly de-legitimize demands and claims; as
when Woodrow Wilson patronizingly remarked that women were intelligent enough not
to want the vote, though plenty were demanding it; as when a woman makes a feminist
remark at work and her boss immediately cuts across her conversation to say, “We are
not getting into that here;” as when a woman is told she can’t complain about being raped
since she asked for it by wearing “that sort of skirt;” as when a woman is chastised for

being publicly rude to a man who has abused her. as if she owed him such public respect

l6

but he need not respect her in private. A pattern of undercutting the claims of one group
on the basis that they cannot be authorities on their own experience is one way to effect
an ontological reduction.

A second method for reducing the ontological status of a group is to erase or
punish specific cultural practices that are deemed central to the community’s identity.
This has been a historical favorite in contexts of imperialism: as when a border state (like
Texas) or an immigrant state (like Florida) insists on English only public schools: as
when US. government paid physicians are permitted and encouraged to “provide”
hysterectomies to Native American women once they have been anesthetized or just after
they have given birth: as when housing projects close people of color off from more
affluent communities so as to turn the communities’ righteous anger. and potential civil
disobedience, back on itself and thus cultivate internal, horizontal violence.

Oppression as a social phenomenon is a system of related barriers. The barriers
are arranged by oppressors to capture a category of people who are identifiable in virtue
of some perceived trait. This category of people ‘is then made to live surrounded by
barriers, many barriers, systematically related so as to restrict their choices. reduce their
options. and facilitate their exploitation. My argument here is that these affect an
ontological reduction. a reduction of options and possibilities for existence, and that such
reduction is a necessary component of effective oppression.

Double binds are important clues in the attempt to locate and understand
oppression. Certainly double binds are experienced on a daily basis and may be merely

frustrating.3 Yet if one locates a double bind that is shared by others who are similarly

 

3 The mere experience of an occasional double bind does not indicate that one lives within an oppressive
context. If this were true, then fully employed. white, upper class reasonably happy men would be

17

situated, this is a clue to a widespread social barrier that reduces the options of a specific
group of people. Recognizing the existence of such barriers is important because it is
how one begins to gauge the potential operation of oppression. Double binds. when they
constitute a larger pattern, when they capture and reduce the options of a specific group
of people, are the signature of oppression. After spotting double binds. the questions to
ask are: Is this double bind part of a pattern? Does the pattern foster one group’s
mobility while restricting another groups mobility? Who is served and who in injured by
such double binds? Is something being extracted from the immobilized group and
consumed by the other groups?

One of the most important features of F rye’s account of oppression is its ability to
facilitate the examination of small barriers as strategically coordinated parts of a
comprehensive system. The cage of oppression becomes visible in its complete and
totalizing character. It is a USCfiJl analytical tool. The ability to explain and articulate the
structure of oppression in its most thorough instantiation is the means by which one may

analyze and critique forms of social life.

Total and Inescapable
From this radical feminist analysis we learn that oppression is designed to be
highly effective and also inescapable. Through the elaborate molding of women’s

existence, women are to be engineered to become purely reduced beings. Oppression is.

 

oppressed merely by the fact that they too are asked to comment on whether a friend’s ridiculous new
affectation is supposedly the best thing since sliced bread. But such men are clearly not oppressed, argues
Frye. “If one is looking for an excuse to dilute the word ‘oppression.’ one can use the fact of social
structure as an excuse and say that everyone is oppressed. But if one would rather get clear about what
oppression is and is not, one needs to sort out the sufferings harms and limitations and figure out which are
elements of oppression and which are not” (IO).

18

structurally, a totalizing machinery. Women are to become appendages of men.
Understanding oppression in a sophisticated analytical way is a valuable step towards
combating and dismantling oppression. Through such analytical tools women have the
ability to shift their perception, trace the cage of oppression. and develop an incisive
feminist critique. This is why Frye’s analysis of oppression has proven so useful in
feminist analysis. This is also why Frye’s analysis has been used in so many Women’s
Studies classrooms. The article helps reveal the operation of oppression.

Interestingly, Maria Lugones points out, this much-needed understanding of
oppression is a critical tool that simultaneously obscures the possibility of liberation.
Drawing from her own life, and the lives of other people of color who have struggled
against forms of oppression, Lugones remains aware that in addition to the crush of
oppression, resistance is plentiful. Further, one has but to note Frye’s writings on
separatism to find her working towards the idea of not being oppressed.4 Both Frye and
Lugones practice resistance. Nevertheless. the analysis of oppression reveals that
oppression is intended as inescapable for those totalized beings who live within the cage.
Liberation isn’t just experientially remote, as Beauvoir finds when she explores why
women have no memory of existence before oppression. What we learn through Frye’s
analysis is that robust oppression erases the possibility of liberation.

That sexist oppression is structured to be inescapable. Lugones notes with
ambivalence. She is similarly troubled by Marx’s investigations of oppression. Marx’s

analysis of class oppression portrays the capitalist exploitation as inexorable. Both

 

4 See Frye. “In and Out of Harms Way” Politics of Reality page 52-53. She writes of the instructive clues
gleaned from understanding how women are shaped by the machinations of patriarchal exploitation. One
gains clues for thinking about characteristics that would not be present were it not for the imposition of
oppression. From such clues may the imagination struggle towards feminist vision. Later in the same text,
“Some Reflections on Separatism and Power” describes resistant possibilities inherent in separatism.

l9

convinced of the reality of thoroughgoing oppression, and convinced of the simultaneous
and contradictory reality of ever-present resistance. Lugones argues that the contradictory
realities must both be acknowledged. She writes:

It is a desideratum of oppression theory that it portray
oppression in its full force, as inescapable. if that is its full
force. I shall not critique Marx's account of class
oppression or F rye’s account of sexist oppression because
they depict these forms of oppression as inescapable. I
think much of the explanatory power of these theories of
oppression resides in their depiction of the oppressions as
inescapable.

But I also consider it a desideratum of oppression theory
that the theory be liberatory. The ontological or
metaphysical possibility of liberation remains to be argued.
explained, uncovered. If oppression theory is not
liberatory. it is useless from the point of view of the
oppressed person. It is discouraging. demoralizing.

So 1 recommend contradictory desiderata for oppression
theory. This recommendation, as well as the ontological
possibility of oppression, depends on embracing
ontological pluralism (55).

Hoagland, Daly, Frye and Lugones are all intimately aware of resistance. They
know that the cage of oppression seldom perfectly captures and perfectly reconfigures
women into appendages of men. They know this because they are themselves stubborn
and resourceful feminists with similarly inventive compafieras. Out of this knowledge.
they each write of the various strategies and ways of living that resist oppression. A
concept of oppression facilitates social criticism; however, Lugones argues that we must

also have a theoretical framework that allows one to see that resistance is always

possible. We require both frameworks, though the resistant framework may not

adequately represent the perspective of domination and the framework of oppression may
never countenance resistance.

Lugones moves from the personal insight that there is always resistance; that
resistance is real, commonplace, and exists in a fantastic abundance. Notice that this is a
hopeful and stubborn stance. Wrapped within extensive systems of oppression. the
recalcitrant activity of resistant women keeps alive the notion of existence that is more
than that of a reduced being configured as a mere tool in the oppressive social order.
Resistance is invented from within the ordinary lives of stubbomly resourceful women.
Knowledge of this reality helps motivate Lugones’ willingness to have two contradictory

claims—that real oppression is totalizing and that resistance is almost always at hand.

The Problem and the Preview

Why have ‘resistance’ and ‘oppression’ been the dominant concepts in radical
feminism? Why these concepts but not the concept of freedom? As I have argued,
oppression and resistance have taken center stage with good reason. Radical feminists
needed and continue to need a concept of ‘oppression’ as part of an incisive feminist
critique. Meanwhile, ‘resistance’ is a necessary concept because as feminists we must be
able to complement our social critique with liberatory strategies.

The focus on resistance. in particular resistance as understood by Lugones. puts
forward a specific type of feminist future. The imagination remains riveted on the
immediate necessity of resistance and the ground before us, as far as one can imagine
possibilities, is a landscape to be negotiated by resistance and slow steps towards an

existence that is not characterized by oppression. In so far as resistance remains

21

analytically related to oppression. oppression continues to be a constitutive factor in the
landscape. Analytically, we might note that the concept of ‘resistance’ always references
something to stand against. In the current context. that something is oppression. If one
lived in a world for which systematic oppression were not a political problem, then
‘resistance’ would likely take on a different meaning. From my perspective, the
emphasis on ‘resistance’ is immensely important and yet inadequate. Something is
missing when our attention is drawn mainly to ‘resistance.’ We obscure the possibility of
imagining a world, of living in a world, which is not characterized by oppression. An
existence without oppression, a world of be-ing free, is never contemplated. For this
reason I think it is important that radical feminist writing and practice draw the possibility
of freedom into the foreground. This is my project—drawing a radical feminist
conception of freedom into focus, into the foreground of theory and activism.

As feminists, we cannot write of oppression without tacitly believing there is an
alternative. To describe oppression without ever believing there is another option is to
solidify the hierarchies of the fathers and to disable our own politics. Frye, Lugones,
Hoagland. and Daly all recognize this. Each figures resistance as a prominent part of her
feminist work. Ultimately. the emphasis on ‘oppression’ and ‘resistance’ is thoroughly
necessary to radical feminist critique. However. radical feminism requires a third term, a
term that offers a positive analytical account of existence beyond the frameworks of
oppression. Therefore. I initiate the development of a radical feminist conception of

freedom.

Retrieving Freedom

In this dissertation, ‘freedom’ names a mode of ontological activity possible for a
certain kind of social being. It is not a conception that is readily available in the writings
of radical feminists. At best, freedom exists in a nascent state. compounded with other
radical feminist concerns. Freedom receives no extended treatment in its own right.
When the term ‘freedom’ occurs at all in radical feminist writing. it is being used in
specific ways. First, the term ‘freedom’ may be used in the negative sense. asfrecdom
from the familiar grind of oppression. Second, ‘freedom’ is occasionally subjected to a
detailed critique. The target of criticism is often a liberal and individualistic form of
freedom awarded to those in positions of privilege and held in place by systems of
domination. Third, ‘freedom’ occasionally appears like a hopeful darting glance.
Radical feminists are remarkably disciplined in their avoidance of utopian fantasies.
Meanwhile, they are working to bring about feminist realities that are not characterized
by oppression. In rare instances. the adjective ‘free’ appears as part of a fleeting
description of what may yet become possible.

The phrase ‘negative freedom’ was coined by Isaiah Berlin’s explorations of
freedom in the liberal tradition.5 Negative freedom names the absence of external social
restriction on an agent. External restrictions include enforced laws, physical barriers,
social etiquette. and even the mere frustration that sometimes accompanies social
interference. The imagined state of nature is a context where there are no limits on one’s
freedom other than forces of nature and internal factors of the agent, say common sense.
and one’s bodily strength. The myth of the state of nature is powerful in the western

intellectual tradition. Though the experience of absolute negative freedom may not occur

 

5 Berlin treats these concepts of negative and positive freedom in detail in “Two Concepts of Liberty.”

23

in the lives of Americans, negative freedom has functioned as a founding concept in US.
political practice. Consider the First Amendment of the United States Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press. or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to
petition the Govemment for redress of grievances.
The amendment establishes freedomfrom governmental interference on individual rights.
Young male college students manage to cite their right to negative freedom when they
want to wear a Hooters t-shirt to class: It’s a free country and I can wear whatever I want.
The concept of negative freedom is referenced in radical feminism. too.
Sometimes it is used in passing to help articulate differences between seemingly related,
but very different experiences of oppression vs. social frustrations. Altemately, negative
freedom may be used as a contrast device for oppression. As she develops a feminist
conception of oppression, Frye distinguishes the conception of oppression from
encounters with frustrating social limits and from negative freedom. This move
addresses a potential criticism from those who would see a strong conception of
oppression undermined.
Since we are a social species, almost all of our behavior and activities are
structured by more than individual inclination and the conditions of the
planet and its atmosphere. No human is free of social structures. nor
(perhaps) would happiness consist in such freedom. Structure consists of
boundaries, limits. and barriers; a structured whole, some motions and
changes are possible and others are not. If one is looking for an excuse to
dilute the word ‘oppression’, one can use the fact of social structure as an
excuse and say that everyone is oppressed (10).
In this passage, Frye is not developing a concept of freedom. Rather. she is using the

common concept of negative freedom and the fact of social structures to advance the

more important discussion of oppression. People may like to talk of negative freedom, as

though they are familiar with it, as though it is missing from their lives. and as though the
lack of it means they too are oppressed. But the idea that nobody lives free of social and
legal restraint is turned aside before it can be mistakenly used to attribute oppression to
everyone’s existence. Frye is not exploring the concept of ‘freedom’ but rather exploring
the reality of harmful social barriers. double binds. She mentionsfrecdomfrom social
limitations to address a potential criticism and clarify her own work.

Negative freedom appears again in F rye’s writings on loving women. In this case
it is the idea of freedomfrom subordination that she l'lOpc“ Mill help one think beyond the
cage of oppression.

We who would love women, and well. who would change ourselves and

change the world so that it is possible to love women well. we need to

imagine the possibilities for what women might be if we lived lives free of

the material and perceptual forces which subordinate women to men (76).
Interestingly. negative freedom is used here as a contrast point and a cautious enticement.
Negative freedom might springboard the imagination towards alternatives to the current
situation in which women’s love for each other is conditioned by forces of patriarchal
culture. Freedom/ram patriarchal culture is certainly an attractive prospect.

In other passages. references to ‘freedom’ are accompanied by criticism.

Freedom is sketched as a privilege acquired through unjust social practices. Those who
have freedom (freedom from harm and freedom to be agents) have often acquired it
through exploitation or domination. Frye writes:
A set of social and economic barriers and forces separating two groups
may be felt, even painfully, by members of both groups and yet may mean
confinement to on and liberty and enlargement of opportunity to the other

(12).

And a paragraph later:

But that barrier is erected and maintained by men, for the benefit of men.
It consists of cultural and economic forces and pressures in a culture and
economy controlled by men in which. at every economic level and in all
racial and ethnic subcultures, economy, tradition—and even ideologies of
liberation—work to keep at least local culture and economy in male
control (13 ).

In these passages, ‘freedom’ is not being developed as a radical feminist concept.
Instead, the language of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’ are noted for their association with the
liberal tradition and especially the failings of the liberal tradition. Frye criticizes forms of
freedom that result from privilege acquired by men throus‘h patriarchal domination.
Sarah Hoagland’s writings suggest a similar critique of a liberal conception of freedom.
Her rejection of traditional ethics is built on the argument that such ethics contain
master/slave values. She writes:

For much of what we call ethics in our culture involves. not the integrity
and moral culpability of an individual, but rather the extent to which she
participates in the structural hierarchy of a social group or organization by
adhering to its rules. The ethical virtues as we know them are
master/ slave virtues (1 3).
Though her target is not liberal theory in this passage, her criticism of habitual
subordination is suggestive, especially when applied to liberal political organization.
Political hierarchies replicate master/slave behaviors in a similar way to patriarchal
ethics. In so far as freedom is acquired through constructing laws and acquiescing to
their authority, freedom further normalizes master/slave virtues.

Although radical feminists are often averse to using the language of ‘freedom’ in

their constructions of feminist possibilities and realities, suggestive passages piqued my

curiosity. Consider how Frye uses the notion of freedom in this passage:

The forces which we want to imagine ourselves free of are a guide to what
we might be when free of them. They mark the shape they mold us to. but

they also suggest by implication the shape we might have been without
that molding (76). ‘

This is a fleeting glance at freedom. It is suggestive because negative freedom acts as a
springboard concept. It directs one towards something scarcely thinkable. yet exciting in
its possibilities. What would it mean to speak of radical feminist freedom? For those
who would look for freedom. the passage is marked, repeatedly. with cautionary notes.
Again Frye:
When we try to think ourselves independent. to think ourselves women not
mediated by men or Man. what we attempt is both prodigious and
terrifying. since by our own wills we would be led to that fringe of the
world where language and meaning let go their hold on our lives (78).
Hoagland is similarly cautious as she considers freedom and free will as concepts central
to patriarchal ethics. “‘Freedom’ is an abstract concept. and we should thus be wary
when working with it” (202). Later she elaborates on why she guides her own inquiry
away from the concept of freedom:
...the concept of ‘freedom’ as presented in the problem of free will is far
too unclear and unwieldy. For my purposes, considerations about
‘freedom’ as it relates to ‘moral agency’ involve considerations about our
day-to-day moral choices from where we stand—as finite beings who will
die (who will end this life) and who live within the boundaries of a finite
world as well as under significant restrictions. including oppression. That
is, my interest concerns what we as lesbians face, as we make choices,
given the parameters of this life. And it is from such a day-to-day,
mundane perspective. rather than from the grandiose theory of free will
that I wish to proceed (203-204).
Thus, Hoagland sets aside the language of freedom as she moves deeper into her project
of exploring lesbian agency within contexts of oppression.
Mary Daly’s writings present an exuberant form of exploration. In her efforts to

cast off patriarchal forms, Daly leaves behind the language of liberalism and the virtues

of master/slave relationships. She takes the leap into uncharted feminist possibilities,

27

 

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inventing as she goes. She doesn’t bother to reference the term ‘freedom.’ Nevertheless.
her writings on feminist creativity and hope are suggestive of freedom, if I impose the
term upon her. She writes:
Hope and despair are sharpened by Righteous Rage. Furies dispense with
potted hopes, such as hopes for equality within patriarchy, recognizing this
to be a contradiction in terms. In this sense we despair, that is. turn our
energies away from what had formerly been perceived as “good” and
which was an illusion. Rage at having been deceived/duped into
expending energy in the pursuit of false hopes emboldens women to
reach/hope for more arduous and ultimately more real Goods. Rage. then.
as a forceful reaction to realistic assessment of our caste’s conditions,
releases pent up gynergy which can then express itself as original, creative
hope (Pure Lust 258).
What are these feminist “Goods”? Might they involve freedom. as conceived in radical
feminism? These suggestive passages, brought into proximity with each other. offer a
teasing hint of what I take to be a radical feminist conception of freedom. It is inchoate,
under-theorized, and long'awaited by hopeful and headstrong feminists. Much of Daly’s
writing is marked by energetic reclaiming of language, renaming of women’s
possibilities. and retrieval of goddess mythology from the putrid graveyards of
patriarchy. Yet she is also methodic. She habituates herself to invention and the
overthrow of patriarchy. It is a study in courage and self-discipline. She writes:
The exorcism itself of the phallic presence of absence within women’s
psyches is accomplished largely by the acquiring of new operative habits.
Websters weaving our way into the Pyrospheres unweave old behavior
patterns and create new ones. This creation does not happen through
wishful thinking but through arduous practice. through repeated acts (Pure
Lust 261 ).

I am interested in new habits. More specifically, I’m interested in ways that radical

feminists can habituate themselves to be-ing free. This is the “macro-mutation”6 I will

 

b . . . . . . .
Daly 5 term, see Pure Lust 314 In reference to the dis-covering of new languages to usher In be-mg
feminist.

28

 

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investigate in this dissertation. I aim to retrieve the concept of ‘freedom’ for radical
feminist use. In my work, freedom names the activity of be-ing that moves from

ontological multiplicity and seeks to perpetuate such multiplicity.

A Radical Feminist Conception of Freedom

Radical feminists have spent substantial energy conceptualizing oppression,
locating the large scale social barriers that form the cage of oppression, enacting
resistance, inventing resistant communities, and inventing ways of sustaining such
communities. Practical feminist experimentation has taken place and continues to take
place in discussion groups, friendships, anti-racist workshops, women’s shelters.
women’s music festivals. across kitchen tables. and at formal conferences.

Though oppression and resistance have received and continue to receive thorough
treatment, we also need positive accounts of life outside oppression and resistance.
Radical feminists are not merely interested in the critique of and resistance within
patriarchy. The goal is existence outside of oppression. Because the absence of
oppression is experientially and temporally remote, we need positive accounts of feminist
existence in order to continue moving forward. These positive accounts are crucial
because they tell us about values and modes of existence that bring feminist worlds of
sense into existence. Positive accounts help guide current feminist practice in discussion
groups, friendships and love relationships, and activist organizations.

Hoagland, refusing to keep her gaze riveted on the evils of patriarchy, offers
positive accounts of lesbian values. Her work aims to identify values that will sustain

women centered communities while undercutting habits of domination. Daly, after

29

 

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vigorous criticism of men’s global domination of women, turns her attention to radical
feminist virtues like courage, lust for happiness, lust for change, and lust for community.
Yet a radical feminist conception of freedom has not been forthcoming. We are overdue
for such a concept.

In the following chapters 1 will offer a conception of freedom and integrity.
These are related concepts and styled to the current work of being a radical feminist. In
brief. freedom names a class of activity that arises from non-substantial and curdled
multiplicitous subjects. This class of activity, available in contemporary day-to-day
contexts. is marked by the opening of possibilities. Curdled multiplicitous subjects aim
to integrate their multiplicity such that it forms a resource for imagination and action.
Subjects who act from integrated multiplicity are not internally homogenized wholes. but
rather internally complex and unevenly blended. Be-ing free works from curdled
multiplicity, opening possibilities for action as one navigates social worlds.

1 describe the subject as non-substantial because I move from the existentialist
insight that subjectivity is produced through actions and choices. I do not posit the
existence of an essentialistic entity to which one attributes qualities like “rational.” “free-
willed,” “humorous,” etc. The activity of freedom. however. has ontological
significance—it shapes the subject as acts of freedom are performed. Be-ing free is an
activity undertaken by non-substantial subjects.

I also view freedom is an activity practiced by radical feminists. and other
feminists, in the here and now. I am specifically seeking a mundane conception of
freedom, one that is not utOpist. Perhaps one might think this conception of freedom is

lofty, in the way that anyone may say that all ontological claims are lofiy. Whether

30

ontological talk is lofty or not, we both intentionally and inadvertently make
metaphysical assumptions all the time. Further, because I assume no substantial subject.
individuals and communities are ever engaged in ontological creation as a matter of daily
life. Ontology happens!

Radical feminist freedom names the ontological activity in which subjects work
from their inherent multiplicity, opening possibilities, and seek to sustain that multiplicity
as they make choices and navigate their world. This is a positive conception of freedom.
As the dissertation develops, I will show how this is a more tangible and motivating than
‘not being oppressed.’ Further, I do not think of freedom as an activity that must await
worlds absent of oppression. Multiplicitous subjects can practice freedom in the here and

now as part of daily life.

Conclusion

The radical feminist attention to oppression and resistance has been entirely
necessary. In particular, radical feminists analysis has been advanced by discovering and
analyzing the ways that oppression is intended as a closed system. However the
conceptual understanding of oppression and resistance cannot provide adequate help for
radical feminists seeking to imagine forms of feminist life that are not characterized by
oppression. The practical and theoretical work of moving beyond frameworks of
oppression requires positive concepts of feminist life.

Radical feminists like Hoagland, Daly, Lugones, and Frye have worked to provide
conceptions of feminist existence and feminist values that do not replicate patterns of

domination and subordination. This work too is entirely necessary. We must have

31

concepts that help the imagination gain traction as we seek the promise of not being
oppressed. As I have shown, ‘freedom’ is a term that has remained under-theorized in
the tradition of radical feminism. Instead one finds a disciplined explication of
oppression and the myriad ways resistance takes place in spite of oppression.

Where it is used at all, the term ‘freedom’ receives cautious handling. It may be
used in a negative sense when radical feminists grapple with the possibility of life that is
without oppression. On other occasions, ‘freedom’ is restricted to a narrow usage
referencing liberal tradition. Here it is accompanied by criticism. Liberal political
freedom is viewed as the purview of a privileged few and the concept is ill-suited to
radical feminist work. At best ‘freedom’ is a term used in brief suggestive passages
about what might be possible in a feminist future. Certainly ‘freedom’ receives no
sustained treatment in these passages. Radical feminists have felt obliged to leave
freedom in a decidedly forlorn state. The time has arrived for a radical feminist

conception of freedom, a positive conception of freedom.

Chapter 2
Radical Feminist Departures from Liberalism

Introduction

In Chapter One, 1 demonstrated that radical feminists, though clearly interested in
both oppression and the creation of a world that does not include oppression. also need a
conception of freedom. In this chapter I will turn to liberal conceptions of freedom that
have been so influential in western political thought. For the purposes of my project, one
of the interesting features of liberalism is that it has a great deal to say about the topic of
freedom. Yet, radical feminists have not chosen to borrow the notions of freedom
developed within the extensive history of liberal political theory. The inattention to
liberal conceptions of freedom is evident in the simple fact that radical feminists are often
unconcerned about the current trends of liberal feminism, never mind the short shrift
given to more classical forms of the liberal tradition.

I will explain how this indifference is motivated by specific moments of departure
where the radical feminist tradition moves away from the older liberal tradition. In fact,
the starting points of liberal theory and radical feminism mark the first moment of
departure. As I will show, the two traditions begin with different assumptions about the
availability of freedom and the efficacy of oppression. The second moment of departure
takes place because radical feminists need a conception of agency specifically suited to
navigating the passage from oppression to freedom. Out of theoretical and practical
need, they invent both ‘lesbian agency’ and the activity of lesbian agency.7 The third

moment of departure takes place as Mary Daly’s writings draw on and formulate

 

7 Later in this chapter I will explain Hoagland’s use of ‘lesbian’ and ‘lesbian agency.’ For the moment it

will be useful to avoid interpreting ‘Iesbian’ to mean women whose primary sexual interest if for other
women.

33

existentialist feminism. Existential feminism is marked by a commitment to
understanding the ontological category of existence as an ongoing project, a commitment
that is not evident in the classical liberal tradition.8 After reviewing these three major
points of departure, it will be clear that radical feminists have never adopted obviously
liberal notions of freedom, and that liberal notions of freedom are largely unsuited to
radical feminist goals. In the final pages of this chapter I will also offer a reconstructed
history of these radical feminist departures. As I will show, Lugones’s writings on the
logics of purity and curdling are helpful in understanding why radical feminism has

necessitated departures from liberalism and necessitated the invention of new resistant

categories.

It is Best to Start at the Beginning

The starting place of theory receives a privileged place in my analysis because it
reveals that radical feminists discern specific problems, problems of oppression and
potential resistance. These problems are not the same as those familiar to the classical
liberal tradition. Thus, the resulting trajectories of radical feminism and classical
liberalism are quite different. Consider the quintessential liberal thought experiment: the

state of nature. For classical liberals. the state of nature is a product of the imagination

 

8 This chapter will focus mainly on radical feminist departures from the classical liberal tradition. The
focus on classical elements of the tradition, as opposed to contemporary liberalism, is necessary because I
am tracing specific historical moments in radical feminism. Radical feminism began to develop out of the
Black power, Marxist, and anarchist movements of the l960’s and 1970’s. From this context, radical
feminists initiated their own trajectories. This was precisely the moment when Rawls and other
contemporary liberals were beginning to refonnulate the classical tradition. Regardless of the co-occurring
reformulation of liberalism, radical feminism had already gained momentum. Even given those feminists
who undertook a critique of the newly developing liberal discourse, radical feminism was moving on its
own distinctive trajectories. These trajectories did not intersect with contemporary liberalism. This chapter
aims to forestall potential misunderstandings of ‘freedom’ influenced by liberal assumptions. It is not
intended as a radical feminist critique of liberal thought.

34

that allows one to contemplate the metaphysical character of man [sic]. We are given a
description of a world wherein there is not necessarily much contact among men, where
utterly independent adult male individuals are able to use their ability to reason
practically to gain desired ends, where individuals are able to claim whatever their will
and muscle can hold, where social involvement is a possibility but not necessarily a fixed
feature of existence.

The specific descriptions of the state of nature typically differ in terms of whether
the context is largely brutal or fairly pastoral. For Hobbes, the state of nature is a
singularly unpleasant context. best left behind in favor of an orderly and stable
authoritarian government. Yet the state of nature in Hobbes’s work allows one to view
man [sic] as essentially free, independent both materially and ontologically, and
potentially reasonableg It is a context riddled with so much danger and aggravation. one
is urged to conclude as Hobbes does: we are better off subject to one stable authority
rather than subject to the rampages of nature and other people’s fits of nastiness. He

writes:

Nature hath made men so equal. in the faculties of body, and mind; as that
though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or
of quicker mind than another. yet when all is reckoned together, the
difference between man, and man, is not so considerable From this
equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends.
And therefore. if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless
they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies Hereby it is manifest.
that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in
awe. they are in that condition which is called Warre In such a
condition, there is no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of
Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all continual]

 

(’1 say “potentially reasonable” because Hobbes offers a lengthy analysis (in chapter 13) of the various
msecurities and moods that dominate individual action. Because of “diffidence” and other manifestations
of insecurity, social life is marked by unpleasantness. Yet men can act reasonably rather than on emotional
insecurity and impulse, if they are forced to act with maturity and forethought, thinks Hobbes.

35

feare, and danger of violent death: And the life of man. solitary. poore.
nasty. brutish, and short (183-186).

By contrast, Locke offers a more benign notion of the state of nature wherein individuals
are likely to behave in reasonable ways and are capable of living in relative proximity
without immediately becoming caustic to those around them. Like Hobbes, Locke finds
that the state of nature reveals the metaphysical nature of man [sic]. In Locke’s view,
man [sic] is able to use reason. is free to make choices. and is free to seek the dictates of
the will. Again, freedom is figured as innately part of existence. Locke writes:
...we must consider what state all men are naturally in. and that is a state
of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions
and person as they think fit, within the bonds of the law of nature. without
asking leave or depending on the will of any other man (4).
And further.
But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license. The
state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one;
and reason. which is that law. teaches all mankind who will but consult it
that. being all equal and independent. no one ought to harm another in his
life. health, liberty, or possessions... (5).
Rousseau is similarly disposed in his views of man’s [sic] nature. In exploring the
natural laws of existence. we find his account also cites freedom and rationality as
immutable characteristics of men [sic]. He writes:
This common liberty is a consequence of man’s nature. Man’s first law is
to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes himself; and as
soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the
best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master (50).

In each of these passages, the state of nature thought experiment invokes a conception of

perfect freedom. Man’s [sic] nature is that of a free and potentially rational being.

36

Natural man [man] is free from social and legal restraint. free to follow or ignore the
practical dictates of reason, free to take up with others or treat them with violence. The
only limitations on freedom in the state of nature are material: the muscles and weapons
of others. and environmental forces.

The Classical Liberal investigations demonstrate something important about the
European male political imagination in the 16th and 17“1 centuries. For them. the concept
of freedom is a starting place for theory. The state of nature is a device that allows them
to articulate the metaphysical character of men. And in their natural character, men (or at
least European males) are properly understood as free beings. capable of reasoned action,
having a natural right to govern their own action, and having a natural right to choose
whether or not and how they may be governed. '0

Certainly the liberal political theorists of the 17’h and 18’h centuries were
inventing far-reaching critiques of surrounding political orders founded on hereditary
rulers and divine right. Certainly they were surrounded by grave abuses of what they
took to be the natural rights of individuals including the rights to create and authorize
their own form of civil state. Yet, notice that the concept of freedom, the imaginary of
freedom, is readily available from where they stand. “Man is born free and yet he is
everywhere in chains” (Rousseau 49). It is this sort of free being that is the topic of
interest, whose nature must be complemented and perhaps enriched by an appropriate

form of social life and legitimate authority structure. It is impressive, I think. that their

 

'0 In the above paragraphs l have emphasized that Classical Liberal writers are using the state of nature to
expound upon the nature of men, not humans, not women. not children. None of the liberals cited here
manages a sustained conception of women as existing naturally in a state of perfect freedom and retaining
such freedom in the transition to a civil state. Classical Liberals may flirt briefly with the idea that women
in the state of nature are moderately capable of practical reason and perhaps capable of self-defense.
However this is not a position they carry forward to the more advanced elaborations of the state and
appropriate use of legislation in public and private domains. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau are decidedly
patriarchal in their reflections on women, if they reflect on them at all.

37

imaginations could be so thoroughly suffused with the idea that humans (at least
European men) are naturally free. More impressive still, this idea that “man is free” was
deemed plausible enough to found the invention of a new political order.

Classical liberals like Locke and Rousseau were not content to acknowledge the
rational, independent, and free existence of men [sic] as a mere point of critique against
existing political orders. They proceeded to explain how men [sic] could be free beings.
yet choose to leave the state of nature. enter civil society, and retain a their natural right
to freedom. They develop detailed answers to questions like: What sort of political order
will allow a free. rational. ontologically independent being to retain a maximal amount of
freedom while also benefiting from the security of organized social life? The answers to
these questions often go on to articulate the form or forms of freedom that ought to be
available, in fact guaranteed, in civil society. I

I have chosen to belabor the starting point of liberalism because it stands in
contrast with the work of many feminists, radical feminists in particular.II To read the
work of radical feminists, to engage in activism with other radical feminists. is to become
aware that we do not start from a presumption of original freedom. They also do not
begin with an ontologically independent subject. Rather, most radical feminists find
women’s lives ordered by systemic oppression that pervades public and private life. The
analysis of women begins with existence in a context of oppression. The inquiry is

attuned to social beings and social frameworks. There is no move to grasp humans as

 

” Not all feminists have the same relationship to the liberal tradition. As most are aware, liberal feminism
adopts the position that freedom is characteristic of all humans. Further. liberal feminists often maintain
that genuine political freedom is near to hand—provided that the patriarchal culture is subjected to a
thoroughgoing feminist crackdown involving critical examinations of social and political institutions and
feminist reform of these institutions. I am not focusing on liberal feminism here. My emphasis remains on
radical feminism.

38

basic and independent in their ontological makeup. Instead of theorizing ontologically
independent beings, many radical feminists focus on how women continue to exist in a
context of crushing oppression. I find Audre Lorde’s writing especially pointed in this
matter. In her speeches and essays she describes a starting place of struggle, of living
amid the interwoven social practices of oppression—racism, sexism, and homophobia.
...Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on
the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization
of racism. Even within the women’s movement, we have had to fight, and
still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable. our
Blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we
have had to learn this first and most vital lesson—that we were never
meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you
here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most
vulnerable is that which is also the source of our greatest strength (42).
The place where radical feminism begins is one where many of us were never
meant to survive. “In the mouth of this dragon,” survival itself can be understood as
resistant action, where women empower themselves to care for their bodies rather than
being treated by the misogynistic gynecological industry. where women fight to take
back the night from rape, domestic violence, and incest. Theory that grows from resistant
lives is radical because it does not begin with the received View handed down from
existing intellectual traditions. It comes from women’s lives and cultures, as they exist
and resist reduction, subordination, and eradication in contexts of hetero-patriarchy,
racism, and imperialism. In her autobiographical reflections of growing up in Maori
fashion, becoming a lesbian, academic, and radical feminist, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
writes about the context of her activism and feminist theorizing:
I am still conscious of what, and who, encircles me: my own community
of women. Maori Lesbians—tribals. urbans, moving as graciously as one

can to an elderly women—crone—Kuia status. And we call ourselves
Kuia 2000—organized to share our knowledge, prepare for the ritualistic

39

expectations of tribal ageing, take care of ourselves. our finances, our
burgeoning needs, this group. rough and very ready. always resilient,
celebrates our survival. To our straight contemporaries, such action—so
many ageing tribal women so visibly without men—is radical indeed. So
much has happened. So much more will, I am sure. And I look forward
to it. Oh yes. Ido (61).
The difference of starting place is important for my project because it marks a striking
difference of imagination. Liberal freedom. as a meaningful and practical possibility, is
not on hand in the worlds where radical feminists have lived. died, loved, and invented.
Perfect freedom is experientially remote from the daily practice and knowledge of living
as an oppressed resistant woman. “In the mouth of this dragon,” what seems
anachronistic and unconvincing is the prospect of initiating theory from imagined
negative freedom. Starting places are important. Perfect freedom is compelling in the
Classical Liberal imagination where it is understood as the essential feature of
ontologically independent'subjects. For radical feminists. starting with oppressed
resistant beings is both realistic and strategic. Thus, radical feminists have not bothered
to invest energy and time in the consuming task of resuscitating liberal conceptions of
freedom and refitting such ideas for radical feminist use. From the very beginning,
radical feminists have turned away from liberal theory, and this has made all the

difference. '2

 

'2 In the broad scope of radical feminism. many important feminists have taken up the tradition of
liberalism, both classical and contemporary forms, and found it wanting. Such figures as Alison Jagger,
Katherin McKinnon, and Andrea Dworkin come to mind. To be clear. my project focuses on one thread in
radical feminism, a thread that has acknowledged the critiques of liberalism wrought by sister theorists. yet
moves in differing directions of analysis.

40

Lesbian Agency

Instead of reworking liberalism, radical feminists have invented their own
communities, theories, discourses, and strategies. Living within the standpoint of
oppression has made it possible to see resistance as a practical possibility. While
oppression tells a story of totalizing and inescapable barriers, most peOple who
experience oppression have also been crafty enough to resist in minuscule and sometimes
flagrant ways. Remembering and recognizing the activities of resistance is valuable.
Examining the many ways feminists and subordinated peoples manage to resist proves a
rich vein for expanding the awareness that one can act though one may be extensively
hemmed in by the structurally related barriers. In fact, this recognition of resistance has
led radical feminists to analyze the activity of resistance as agency. Throughout the
project, oppression and resistance have been the crucial categories of analysis.

In contrast, the liberal tradition focuses on natural freedom as the primary
category of analysis. It is the free subject pursuing self-appointed goals who is
understood as an agent. The liberal tradition has its own conception of oppression.
However it is a conception of oppression figured within a framework where power lives
primarily in the hands of the state. The problem of oppression, as it is understood in
liberalism, occurs when the state exercises its power to support inequality in the public
domain of rights and legislative action. As we saw in Chapter One, the conception of
oppression used in radical feminism is quite different. The cage of oppression is formed
by a multitude of interwoven barriers that include the public and private social

expressions of racism. heterosexism, and patriarchy. Institutions like patriarchy.

41

however, are not primarily legislated institutions and the agency that motivates
oppression is diffuse.

Radical feminists have found the liberal tradition inadequate to the task of
addressing oppression and have thus invented their own approach. A clear example of
this is available in Sarah Hoagland’s Lesbian Ethics. Lesbian agency is creative activity
negotiated within a context of oppression. The formation of lesbian communities, lesbian
culture, and lesbian activism all happens within the larger social context of oppression.
Conceptualizing agency mainly as resistance is productive for radical feminist seeking to
escape the totalizing mind binds of patriarchy: particularly since these mind binds often
work to naturalize oppression and safeguard patriarchy from the mere idea patriarchy
merits critique. But this same focus on resistance inhibits our radical feminist attempts to
move beyond patriarchy and into positive conceptions of feminist worlds.

Hoagland’s conception of lesbian agency has proven valuable to my project. In
this analysis of agency, Hoagland moves away from the liberal and enlightenment anglo-
European tradition in an effort to provide a conception of agency suited to local lesbians
struggling to remake their communities in non-patriarchal ways. One of her primary
goals in Lesbian Ethics is to provide a conception of agency that empowers radical
lesbians to move out of oppression. As I develop a radical feminist conception of
freedom, it is crucial that I work from a conception of women’s subjectivity that
acknowledges oppression and affirms the ability to break away from the purity of
patriarchal constructs.

Hoagland begins Lesbian Ethics with the recognition that lesbians are creating

communities all over the globe. yet many of these communities struggle to remain vital.

42

In her estimation it is not only the crush of patriarchy and heterosexism that is weakening
lesbian relationships and communities. The persistent external aggression has been
augmented by certain assumptions and patterns of behavior fostered in enlightenment and
liberal traditions of anglo-european philosophy. For the moment. I will address only one
of the noteworthy assumptions contained within the traditional analysis of political and
ethical agency. That is. given that humans are free. rational. and able to determine their
will, they are ethical and political agents with the relevant capacities to perform as
principled neighbors and responsible citizens.

Of course there are numerous criticisms of this assumption. Many have offered
extensive arguments demonstrating that this assumed agency has been a privelage
enjoyed primarily by affluent, white. able-minded males who have achieved the age of
reason. I will not undertake an exploration of these various critiques or recovery efforts
here, as that would not be my project. But there is one compelling concem—we might
wonder what Hoagland could possibly find offensive in this bedrock and reputable
assumption, provided that it is scoured free of racist, sexist, ableist residue. Hoagland
argues, and I agree, western philosophy has not provided adequate conceptual tools to
understand how women can be ethical and political agentsfor liberation while starting in
a place of oppression. i. e. when they are notfree. and their understanding, their
deliberation. and their wills are compromised by living under oppression since birth.

Instead of agency that negotiates the treacherous waters of oppression, the liberal
and enlightenment traditions assume beings with inherent freedom. reason, and the ability
to weigh options and choose the most appropriate action. Since such beings are free and

they can make their will concrete in the world, we are justified in naming them agents.

43

When these agents weigh options and make choices based on pragmatic and altruistic
concerns, then they are moral agents. When such beings live in a political structure that
affords expression of one’s will in social discourse and decision-making. then they are
free political agents. It is an elegant set of ideas leading to a commonsensical conclusion.
Hoagland regards it as a tempting trap: one that radical feminists may lapse into if they
do not prepare an alternate conception of agency. '3

Enlightenment agency, as described above. implicitly assumes one is free,
rational, and thus able to make moral decisions. One can make decisions as an individual
or as a member of groups in order to bring about helpful changes for one’s life and the
vitality of the community. It is a useful conception of agency if one is actually free from
oppression. However, if one is not free from oppression, if one’s life is so constructed
that it is difficult to enact any sort of self-authored action that is not co-opted by the
oppressors, if one cannot even imagine freedom, then it becomes impossible to see how
one could be an agent for change.

In order to see the enlightenment conception of agency as unserviceable for
radical feminists, consider this: What does it mean to begin, not with a hypothetical
position. but with the reality of being constructed as feminine? The context in which
feminists work is one wrought of multiple forms of oppression. Sexism, homophobia,

heterosexism. racism. ageism. ableism—these and many additional forms of social

 

'3 Hoagland does not maintain that these are overt assumptions that every anglo—european philosopher
acknowledges and accepts. Though I think it is true that this concept of agency resonates most clearly in
classical liberals, notably Locke and Rousseau. Hoagland thinks the assumptions are often implicit in the
modern and contemporary conceptions of agency. Further, this set of assumptions does occupy many US
minds. as it is evident in social policy, legal precedent, and our classrooms. It is a tricky assumption that
undermines the activity of radical feminism. (Frye suggests an example involving women in prostitution.
The patriarchal claptrap goes like this: A woman is free. so she must have chosen to become a prostitute.
Prostitution is illegal. Thus it obvious that she is the appropriate target of criminal law).

44

domination work to cageI4 women. Of course, the labyrinth is not merely a set of
external barriers. Patriarchal machinations extend beyond tissue and into the ways
women think about possibilities for living and loving. Women’s options are reduced to a
pathetic few, none of them very good options'5 Further, the options available are
typically ones that serve to reinscribe their positions as members of the dominated class.l6
Her own feminist will to help another woman or girl-child is interwoven with patriarchal
brainwashing and even cruelty. To make “autonomous” decisions and act on their own
aspirations is largely impossible. Given conceptual framework of the liberal tradition.
and a consciousness of the reality of being constructed as feminine, we are left to
conclude that women who live within the labyrinth of oppression are not agents in the
sense crafted by liberalism or the enlightenment tradition.

The comprehensive character of oppression also dominates the past and future.
Women, as Beauvoir and Daly have noted, have no history of their own. Our
imaginations have been strategically starved by generations of misogyny, the active effort
to write women out of history, and the destruction of women’s attempts to found their
own cultures. The prospect of absolute freedom is at best incongruous with women’s
experiences. The liberal conception of agency is abstract and analytically suited to liberal
political orders in which freedom is a feature of existence. Women do not properly
inhabit that political order. F urther, the liberal and enlightenment conception of agency
is uncomfortably inappropriate, as though it were someone else’s story—which it is.

Even more distressing, it often seems impossible that women, of our own doing, could

achieve a future in which we exhibit the liberal form of agency necessary to create social

 

'4 ' 99
Frye, “Oppressron.
'5 Frye, “Oppression”
'° Frye, “In and Out of Harms Way.”

45

change within the liberal orders. The way is shut and the conceptual door barred against
our use.

From the liberal and enlightenment traditions. we have learned that moral agents
are identifiable as such beings, provided that they meet specific conditions. They must be
capable of rational reflection, able to determine their will, and be free to pursue the
chosen action. In the case of an oppressed group whose daily existence is confined to a
narrow range of structured and exploitable activity. who have no history through which to
remember and imagine existence absent such oppression, who labor largely within the
mind—binds of patriarchy. and who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieving
freedom. we are left to conclude that members of such a group do not meet the definition
of moral or political agents. In this context. changing from oppressed subject to political
agent is no easy matter. It. seems that “the oppressed” may need to wait for help from
those who do have the liberal form of political agency to affect social revisions allowing
women to be agents in their own right. This theoretical and political conclusion, in which
women must wait/Or real agents to help them, is clearly unsatisfactory.

The concept of femininity is an artifact of hetero-patriarchy. an oppressed subject
position that is in definitional contrast with the privileged agent position of masculinity.
Hoagland describes femininity and the impossibility of feminine agency in the following
way:

The concept of femininity provides a basic model for oppression in anglo-
european thinking. A feminine being is by nature passive and dependent.
It follows that those to whom the label is applied must by their very nature
seek protection (domination) and should be subjected to authority “for
their own good.” ‘F emininity’ portrays those not in power as those
needing and wanting to be controlled. It is a matter of logic. then, that

those who refuse to be controlled are abnormal [unnatural, females who
are not feminine] (41-42).

46

And moving to the heart of the matter. she also explains:
Yet if we stop to reflect. it becomes clear that within the confines of the
feminine stereotype no behavior counts as resistance to male domination.
And if nothing we can point to or even imagine counts as proof against the
claim that all (normal) women are feminine and accept male domination.
then we are working within a closed coercive conceptual system (40).
The problem is this: once constructed as oppressed. dominated. and incapable of being
resistant, the coherence of these categories forecloses the possibility of resistant women
changing into beings with agency. Those women. abnormal and non-feminine, may
engage in acts of sabotage against patriarchy. but these and other acts of resistance are
interpreted merely as incompetence, ironic comment. stupid error or insanity. It is
decidedly not the work of a free and rational agent. This is why Hoagland sets to work
on lesbian agency. Radical feminism must have its own conception of agency developed
and suited to the project of moving from worlds of crushing oppression to worlds that are
not characterized by oppression.

Hoagland chooses the term ‘lesbian agency’ out of an interest in accuracy. She is
theorizing the agency of women who break from the subject position of hetero-patriarchal
feminine women. To break away from this subject position is a thoroughly lesbian act—
an unfeminine act that casts one beyond “decent” hetero-patriarchal worlds of sense. The
term ‘lesbian’ provides the accurate name for a radical feminist mode of agency.
regardless of ones choice or absence of lovers. Hoagland is also careful to keep the

definition of lesbian open to ongoing invention. It is valuable to have a conception of .

agency that allows one to think beyond the patriarchal conception of woman as feminine

47

and subject to men.'7 The concept of the lesbian continuum helps one understand lesbian
agency. As Adriane Rich pointed out, living on the lesbian continuum means we do not
have a closed definition of lesbian and that the definition will shift as we move deeper
into feminist modes of existence. Living on the continuum means women choose their
location. shift their position, and name themselves lesbian agents in virtue of their many
ways of abandoning patriarchy. For example. this dissertation is the act ofa lesbian. It
helps to understand my work as that of a lesbian agent and to understand myself as a
lesbian. Such understanding accurately portrays the fact that I work within a radical
feminist domain; I do not work towards limited modifications internal to the operation of
patriarchy.
The problematic conception of liberal and enlightenment agency isn’t specific to
just one theorist, nor does Hoagland simplistically assume that she can provide a blanket
indictment that will soundly dispense with the liberal and enlightenment thinkers. The
target of her criticism is any explicit or implicit use of assumptions woven together in the
following way: F irst, humans are fundamentally free. Subjects are first theorized within
a context of negative freedom. An example:
By Liberty, is understood. according to the proper signification of the
word. the absence of external lmpediments: which Impediments. may oft
take away part of a mans power to do what hee would; but cannot hinder
him from using the power left him, according to his judgment, and reason
shall dictate to him (Hobbes 189).

Second, once in a social context, this freedom is inalienable; it is an aspect of one’s

natural essence. The form of freedom available in the abstract state of nature remains

available in social contexts because humans are able to reflect on their options, determine

 

' Monique Wittlg IS a formative influence as well. She argued that a lesbian IS not a woman because in
refusing to serve men (in psychological. sexual. and material ways). the lesbian removes herself from the
position of feminine subject to masculine designs.

48

their will, and then pursue that willed action. Third, this ability to reason and choose
one’s course of action is the foundation for ethical agency and political agency. Even in
cases where one is compelled by force to do as someone bids, one retains free will.
though the action in question does not reflect ones freedom. As Rousseau explains:
Force is a physical power; I do not see how its effects could produce
morality. To yield to force is an act of necessity. not of will; it is at best
an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a moral duty? (52).
Wherever these assumptions are woven together, radical feminists will be left without
conceptual help. In fact, they are left to settle for the notion that freedom, agency, and a
better life will come when the oppressors (men) realize that oppression isn’t nice and that
generous oppressors (men) should lift women from their patient knees.

The vital question in classical liberal theory is. what sort of political existence is
best suited to beings that are ontological independent, free, and capable agents? Or in its
more classical form: what sort of political order would allow humans to retain as much
freedom as possible yet avoid the hardships of the state of nature? By contrast, many
feminists. radical feminists in particular. direct their inquiry by asking: How do we
become agents of change when, for our entire remembered existence. our imaginations
and wills have been channeled and conditioned by the social structures of patriarchy?

In Lesbian Ethics, Hoagland faces the challenge of explaining how those who are
oppressed may create paths out of oppression and also be understood as having moral
agency. With this as her project, she invents conceptions of both subjectivity and

concrete ethical action. Lesbian feminists require a conception of subjectivity and ethical

action that figures lesbian agency as power exercised with other lesbians and within

49

variously oppressive social worlds. Such agency is crucial not only to resistance but also
to the invention of non-oppressive worlds.

Hoagland’s project is extensive and carefully elaborated with an abundance of
examples. For our purposes we will begin with a brief sketch of lesbian agency. Her
explicit assumptions include the idea that the invention of lesbian feminist value will take
place largely in contexts where women do not have control over their surroundings.
Subjects arise in the midst ofa social world where we have little or no voice in public
discourse, few historical or mythic figures to nurture the idea of our own agency, limited
access to social resources. even more limited access to control of social resources. subject
to steady inundation of hetero-patriarchal propaganda. It is a subject position crafted of
ontological reductions. The mind-binds of hetero-patriarchy suffuse us. undermining
even wishful dreams of a post-patriarchal reality.

From these ontologically reduced positions. positions of subordination. women
lack the power to be rational ethical agents in the tradition of liberal and enlightenment
agency. It is impossible to be rational and ethical agents of the liberal and enlightenment
sort precisely because ontologically reduced and subordinate beings cannot will certain
ends, and act so as to bring about those ends, and most especially bring about an end to
their own subordination. Lesbian ethics must grow from a different sort of agency.
Hoagland begins with the narrow forms of action available to women yet dismissed as
inconsequential by men. Though the context of oppression is chiefly scoured of
opportunities for lesbians to exhibit enlightenment and liberal agency, it is still possible
to act. and a lesbian’s actions do affect other people and her own context. Hoagland

develops a conception of agency predicated on the insight that lesbians can often exert

50

power with other lesbians and within a context of oppression, though women do not
exercise power over patriarchal oppression. Lesbian agency is social and does not rest on
a foundation of ontological independence. Further, exerting this form of agency fosters
lesbian engagements with each other as they act to affect the worlds in which they live.

The aim of lesbian ethics is to promote engagement among individuals and to
create forms of interaction that will sustain relationships without repeating habits of
domination and subordination. We must learn to recognize our capacity to exercise
power with rather than being disappointed that we cannot exercise power over a situation
and fix an ethical problem. But it is a difficult project because living within hetero-
patriarchy means domination and subordination permeate our modes of interaction and
our imagination of what is possible. Domination and subordination are practiced from
cradle to grave. Consider just a few contexts where domination and subordination are
repeated: a father who exercises power over his family. an older sister who exercises
power over her siblings, a teacher who exercises power over her students, a CEO who
exercises power over his employees, an administrator who exercises power over her
faculty. a president who exercises power over his fellow democratically elected
representatives. The sheer range of contexts in which we are taught to practice
domination and subordination yields a normalization of the practice. ‘Power over’ seems
like the only power by which to effect change. It becomes commonplace. unquestioned.
and makes it difficult to see that other forms of social interaction are possible. and even
practical.

The practice of domination functions in concert with the expectation that the

person doing the dominating has substantial power over the situation. Interestingly.

51

domination and subordination serve to keep individuals separate rather than encouraging
them to engage substantively with each other. If faced with an ethical problem, the
person elevated by the hierarchy can intervene and fix the problem or create a lasting
change. ‘Fixing’ is an activity of privilege, one that actually maintains distance between
fixer and the fixed. For example, a tearful student once visited me in office hours
because she was pregnant. She was a sophomore. scared. overwhelmed, and she didn’t
know if she “believed in abortion.” Nevertheless. she had scheduled an appointment with
Planned Parenthood for a few hours later that day. She visited me, ostensibly because
she had missed a quiz and a homework assignment. Faced with this poor soul I rushed to
ease the situation by removing the quiz and homework from her grade and recalculated to
her advantage. I was able to do this and send her on her way feeling good about my
power to intervene. What. the student and I did not do was engage as anything other than
people negotiating a grade. No lesbian feminist engagement was created in this
exchange. Of course I did have the privilege of feeling good about myself, remaining
distant enough to feel superior, and creating an image of myself as a capable fixer.

In order to break the spell of domination. subordination and the distance it seals
between women who might have been engaged allies, Hoagland avoids reliance on power
over situations and people. She instead analyzes the values of power within contexts.
One seeks to affect a situation. Lesbian value does not rely on or necessitate choices that
remove the ethical problem or fix the unethical situation. Thus lesbian agency can be
expressed in multiple worlds—worlds where mere survival and obstinacy destabilize the
subject position of subordination. worlds where one is policed but still able to steal food

for a women’s shelter. worlds where one has loving. supportive partners determined to

52

foster lesbian values including ongoing evaluation of relationship patterns so as to avoid
domination. Here one might consider a concrete example drawn from Hoagland’s own
eXperience. Having been denied tenure for being a dyke. and being unable to force the
university to reverse this hetero-patriarchal practice. Dr. Hoagland engaged in
demonstrations with other women. This activity reinforced the fact that lesbians do in
fact exist, that people can disrupt the smooth operation of sexism and homophobia, and
that women. lesbians in particular, can fight back. All of this is an example of lesbian
agency. Yet in more traditional ethics and political theory this protracted resistance may
simply look ineffective because it does not have the power to create substantial change.

In Hoagland’s analysis. agency is not a matter of being able to choose the
ethically correct action and make that action concrete in the world. Agency develops
from a process of creating moments where one influences the surrounding context, one
experiments and tries new kind of action to test the effect and one ultimately participates
in a community effort of inventing feminist engagement and non-domination.

To experience life as part of an oppressed group means that one often navigates
multiple social contexts. Some contexts fostering one’s agency and others do not even
recognize one as an agent. In lesbian ethics.there is no single correct ethical action.
Ethically appropriate choices and responses will differ depending on whether one is in a
context with other similarly situated and similarly ethical folks or whether one stands in a
world that is distinctly perilous and has no interest in promoting one’s agency.
Furthermore, the process of moving out of oppression means that the possibilities for
action, the very possibilities for ethical action, will change as women move beyond

contexts of unfreedom. Webs of non-patriarchal cultures and values as well as the

53

provisional goal to create engagement and non-domination through one’s choices mark

this phase of movement.

Be-ing Free vs. Static Freedom

The third important moment where radical feminism departs from the liberal
tradition takes place as a result of recurrent feminist use of existentialism. This trend of
conceptualizing subjectivity from an existentialist perspective begins with Beauvoir,
though my focus will be on the more recent feminist existentialism of Mary Daly. The
ontological character of subjectivity is important because Daly’s turn to existentialism
dominates the background theory of Gyn/Ecology and Pure Lust. These texts are central
to the body of radical feminist work that allows for radical feminist conceptions of
freedom. Thus. this aspect of radical feminism is important to my project of inventing a
radical feminist conception of freedom.

In attempting to think about how we would make a transition towards radical
feminist futures, I have found it useful to compare Rousseau’s conception of civil
freedom and Daly’s conception of be-ing. This exercise reveals important distinctions
between a radical feminist and a liberal approach to the concept of freedom. Both Daly
and Rousseau write of freedom; however. the term ‘freedom’ is not one that Daly
employs in her writings and the translations of Rousseau typically use the term ‘liberty.’
In spite of the differing terminology, these thinkers address something that, in our
ordinary pre-theoretical usage. we might call freedom. The differences prove interesting.

As I have said, Daly doesn’t use the term ‘freedom,’ nor is this a much-used term

in radical feminist literature. Yet Daly is clearly working to envision and create a radical

54

feminist present and future that is not characterized by Oppression. More revealing are
Daly’s writings about Be-ing. I maintain that her use of the term ‘Be-ing’ suggests a
conception of freedom. though Daly herself does not explicitly make such connections.

A few terminological notes will be helpful: When Daly uses the term ‘Be-ing’
with the upper case. she is referring to existence on a grand scale, the unfolding
elaboration of the Goddess.'8 Individuals and communities can participate in Be-ing
through their own local activities of invention. These local forms of creation are not
capitalized; they are activities of be-ing. The hyphenation is used to mark the fact that
Daly is thinking of an activity, a verb. She does not mean the traditional noun usage of
the word ‘being.’ Rather, she employs an existentialist notion in which Be-ing is
existence understood in terms of ongoing projects or activities of creation.

As Wanda Warren Berry points out, Be-ing isn’t a reified thing, it isn’t a static
abstract category, nor is it an essentialist metaphysical substance. It is reality understood
as dynamic and creative process. Daly wants to understand existence. especially
women’s existence. in this way because it is a path by which we will have greater
opportunities to create our own non-patriarchal practices and identities (41-42). Be-ing
offers the capacity to create a path out of the patriarchal foreground experience in which
women are defined, reduced. fragmented, and alienated from each other by the
oppressive customs. institutional practices, and languages of patriarchy. I would argue
that freedom, if we impose this term on Daly, is what we do. It is an activity. a way of

doing existence. In many ways. Daly is an existentialist. She sees women as

 

'3 One could substitute the idea of ‘reality’ or ‘existence’ if one found the notion of the ‘Goddess’
unpalatable. However it is a mark of Daly’s commitment to women’s culture and feminist invention that
she does not shy from this language.

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tremendously capable of invention. such fabulous invention that they can completely

remake their existence and their subject position. She writes:
...feminism is a verb; it is female be-ing. Unlike sado-pseudofeminism
fabricated by the fathers. which is a thing. a reified state. feminism as
Realizing is constant unfolding process. It was/is inevitable that women
who conceive of feminism as a thing. a state. would come at some point to
believe themselves to have moved “beyond feminism.” But if one
understands feminism to mean the radical. ontological process of
Realizing female Elemental potency. one does not move “beyond” it. One
moves with it. Feminism is a Name for our moving/movement into
Metabeing (Pure Lust 194)

One of the crucial points here is that Daly has criticized western linguistic
traditions for ‘noun naming.’ Francis Gray argues that when working with Daly. we have
to keep in mind that language is the condition for ontology (230-231). A particular
language can set limits on the kind of ontological commitments available to us. The
ways we use language affects the ontological assumptions and frameworks we develop.
Noun naming is a method typical of eurocentric western patriarchal traditions. It has
been a necessary step in the construction of ontological frameworks employing static
essences. Daly argues at length against the dangerous mistake of treating Be-ing as a
static substance. In fact she argues that we must throw off the habit of noun naming and
adopt the practice of verb naming. This change in thinking and language marks an
ontological shift into a radical, existential, feminist universe. It is in this context that
women will create and recreate themselves without the patriarchal interventions that have
destroyed. mortified, and fixed women for centuries of global patriarchy.

The point is. it is not just ‘Be-ing’ that has been used as a noun. Liberals like

Rousseau have treated ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’ as a noun. Rousseau sees freedom. within

the State, as the product of a legislative process. Civil freedom is created as a product of

56

choosing to enter a republic, engaging as part of the general will in the democratic
legislative process, and thus defining the scope of existence. For Rousseau’s liberal
individuals. freedom is a thing. a possession. It is an artifact ofthe populace’s work to
give itself laws. Citizens define the scope of their freedom and then live within that
defined range. In this way, civil freedom is the end product of the general will. This
difference between Daly and Rousseau isn’t just a point of tension: it is a thoroughgoing
difference in method.

One might be tempted to object that Rousseau’s approach really doesn’t result in
civil freedom that. once defined through legislation. retains one static definition. After
all, the democratic process has provisions for revision and amendment. This reply is
inadequate. The potential for amendment and revision does not remove the incongruity
between Daly and Rousseau’s conceptions of freedom. The problem is that the goal of
Rousseau’s liberal democratic legislation is to make definite. lasting laws and policies.
Even the revision or amendment of laws and policies aims at definite and lasting
boundaries and fixed modes of existence. The result of Rousseau’s democratic
lawrnaking is freedom within fixed margins. Altemately. be-ing is not an activity that
aims to overthrow the patterns of patriarchy merely to set into place a new variety of
stable and abiding patterns. Be-ing is an ongoing. unbounded, unfolding that breaks
static patterns and creates its own unpredictable path. Be-ing. and the concept of freedom
that accompanies it. cannot without contradiction operate alongside Rousseau’s liberal
conception of freedom.

Daly’s writings on be-ing mark an important move in radical feminism. The

choice to understand existence in terms of ongoing creative process grows out of a

57

context where women have been fixed by the machinations of patriarchal domination.
Breaking towards an existence where women are able to invent themselves requires new
practices and methods of resistance. Daly writes:
One of the most important characteristics of caste systems is that they are
extremely difficult, though not impossible, to change. In other words,
caste systems are rigid, like plaster casts. Moreover. women are cast into
fixed roles within the sexual caste system. Escape from these requires that
we cast our Selves outward, inward, Wierdward, into other dimensions.
refusing castration (Pure Lust 232).
The practice of noun naming is inadequate for the task of breaking out of the strategic
ontological reductions and patriarchal erasure of possibilities. It is necessary to
understand be-ing as a process, and thus it is necessary to understand freedom as an
ongoing activity. Freedom, in a radical feminist context, cannot be a form of existence
where one participates in creation of laws and then lives within the fixed law. Such

behavior returns women to a fixed existence. the precise form of reduced life we seek to

move beyond.

The Logic of Curdling and the Logic of Purity

Thus far we have seen three important points of departure from Classical
Liberalism, points where the radical feminist tradition has moved to different ground as a
consequence of developing feminism suited to the lives of women. First, radical
feminists have begun their theories and activism from a starting place of oppressed yet
resistant lives and experiences. Second, this starting place has required a conception of
agency. lesbian agency, which is not founded on assumptions of fundamentally free

beings. Third, Daly’s conception of be-ing free is organized around the principle of

58

ongoing creation. rather than civil freedom within the limits of the State. In retrospect.
some more recent developments in feminist theory help to make visible a certain pattern
underneath the simultaneous creation of radical feminism and the departures from
liberalism. In contemporary radical feminism, significant contributions have been
generated by the work of Maria Lugones. Of particular import are her analyses of
“logics” that facilitate domination and resistance. Theorizing these logics is an ongoing
and feature of Lugones’s current work. I introduce these logics here for two reasons.
First, these logics are a reference point for my radical feminist conception of freedom.
Second, when we use these logics and revisit the earlier work by radical feminists, it is
possible to see that radical feminists have moved away from liberalism in a consistent
way. They have moved away from theories and concepts that are complicit with logics
that foster domination. Meanwhile radical feminists have been inventing theories,
concepts. practices. and communities that employ what Lugones would call a logic of
resistance. -

Lugones writes of the logic of purity and the logic of curdling. By ‘logic’ she
means a set of practices and assumptions about reality that allow one to understand and
organize the world, people. experience. So one understands how things relate to each
other by using a particular logic or framework of understanding. The logics of purity and
curdling operate in thought. language. and action such that they shape the world and our
experiences. '9 In the most basic terms. the logic of purity is associated with domination.

Meanwhile the logic of curdling is associated with resistance to domination. One may

 

9 “ . ,. . . . “ . ,, . .

' The use of logic lS Ironic too. We often use the word logic when we mean practices of rational
argument construction. However. Lugones’s use of “logic” allows for ideas and practices to be associated
with madness. The irrational logic of “mutually assured destruction” is one example.

59

think of them as frames through which we understand our lives and the possibilities
available within the scope of practical agency.

Lugones is providing an explanation of what she takes to be existing patterns of
thought and action that constitute reality. Thus the logics of purity and curdling name
ontologically constitutive processes through which reality is crafted and experienced.
The logics of purity and curdling are frameworks that constitute reality and organize
experience.

The logic of purity is a framework through which experience is organized and by
which we construct patterns of action. It is a logic that relies on a particular kind of
separation, clean separation. Lugones introduces the logic of purity through an image of
an egg, cracked, opened, and gently split into yolk and white. The goal is a pure
separation in which the white slides away from the yolk and each can be placed in
separate bowls. If one breaks a bit of the yolk into the white. then one may still complete
the exercise; the pattern of action is just harder and messier. One has to fumble about
with a spoon, chasing the yolk around the bowl in an effort to extract this impurity from
the white (121). The logic or purity operates as a framework through which to know the
world, to conceive of social groups, and to understanding the possibilities and restrictions
on human agency. In this logic. the world, individuals, and categories are understood to
be composed of pure constituents that are split-separated from each other.

To be raised in the logic of purity means that thinking of the world in terms of
easily separable substances is more habitual than thinking of mixed up multiplicity. It
seems a straightforward practice to think in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.

pure groupings, analysis of wholes into atomic constituents. cleanly fragmented

6O

components of an ordered unity, and tidy borders that demarcate separate groupings. In
some cases an exercise of purity may be relatively innocent. as when one separates junk
mail from the bills. Here one employs the logic of purity quite without reflection. In
contrast to such relatively innocent time saving exercises in purity. one can also engage
in the construction of split separations that are not so innocent.

One overt example of purity is the assumption is that there are two basic
biological kinds of humans—one is born male or female. It is in virtue of presumed
clearly distinct physiological attributes that one is marked as male or female on a birth
certificate, encouraged to embody certain sex specific gender characteristics. tracked on
medical charts, social security roles, driver’s license, college admission materials. etc. In
fact, it is easy to innumerate instances in which language and social practice organize
around the assumption of this pure separation within the human population. Meanwhile,
there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that human physiology is quite varied and that
a fairly standard statistical portion of the human population has neither XX nor XY
chromosome pairs. The existence of intersexed people with chromosomal composition
XXY, XYY, and X0 is well documented. There is plenty of anthropological evidence to
show that sexual characteristics are not automatically tied to specific gender patterns.
There are plenty of people who are born with ambiguous sexual organs. Yet the two pure
categories of male and female remain overtly assumed as the only categories. The
categories continue to be enforced as unchangeable fixtures of human experience.

The logic of purity is at work in the concepts of male and female. Instances of
sexual variety are often erased and actively i gnored—a process that involves describing

intersexed individuals as abnormal and in need of medical reconstruction to fix birth

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defects. Parents who do not elect to follow medical advice and have their child
constructed as male or female are viewed as negligent. inflicting psychological damage
on an otherwise redeemable child (Dreger 24-35). An intersexed adult may find that s/he
cannot get reliable healthcare because doctors refuse to provide preventative care. For
example, intersexed individuals have reported that doctors refuse to give gynecological
exams or breast exams in instances where one’s genitalia are ambiguous. Thus living on
the boundary between strictly constructed categories of “male” and “female” is analyzed
as a personal choice where the individual should expected to suffer awkwardness.
rejection and perhaps brutality at the hands of “normal” people. The pure categories of
‘male’ and ‘female’ are revealed to be constructs maintained and policed through
repetition, coercion, brutality. and surgical intrusion. The logic of purity. which
underwrites and stabilizes these categories, is far from harmless.

The logic of purity is also typically available in abstract reasoning, especially the
style of reasoning seen in western philosophy. One of the first things taught in an
introductory logic course is that logic helps one to reason correctly. Logic courses. and
many other philosophy courses. are organized around the goal of helping students to

reason correctly, helping them to make distinctions. and helping them to arrive at
Qonclusions without drifting into contradiction or other confusion. I learned about
“ eccssary and sufficient conditions in just this kind of early philosophy course. The
Ciategory ‘triangle’ is bounded by specific conditions. One necessary condition for
n, embers of the category ‘triangle’ is being a three-sided figure. The category ‘triangle’
13 strictly bounded such that there is no possibility of a figure that passes into and out of

“WE category. Something is a triangle or not a triangle. But nothing can be somewhat of a

triangle and somewhat ofa square. Nothing can shift from triangle to square and retain
membership in the category ‘triangle.’ Learning to make distinctions and becoming
practiced at articulating such distinctions is a skill philosophers are trained to exercise.
We often use the logic of purity to good effect when we explore a complex phenomenon
and manage to tease apart the complexity until the phenomenon can be more easily
observedgand manipulated. We often live years incontexts where efficient use of the
logic of purity is a skill for which we are rewarded. What we are not so often trained to
do is to recognize that the logic of purity is easily abused. We are not so often trained to
see the logic of purity as an integral tool in social domination.

A second logic highlighted by Lugones is the logic of curdling. Often, Lugones
will use the phrase ‘logic of curdling’ interchangeably with ‘logic of impurity.’ The lens
of curdling fosters understanding of the surrounding world and our selves as
multiplicitous. internally complex. even contradictory. The metaphor used to introduce
this notion of curdling is that of making an emulsion. Emulsions are inherently unstable
because the ingredients may both cohere with and repel each other. Homemade

mayonnaise is a tricky business, and Lugones uses its creation as a metaphor for
i ntroducing curdling:

I place the yolk in a bowl, add a few drops of water, stir. and then add oil
drop by drop, very slowly, as I continue stirring. If I add too much oil at
once, the mixture se separa. it separates. In English, one might say that
the mayonnaise curdled. When an emulsion curdles, the ingredients
become separate from each other. But that is not altogether an accurate
description: rather, they coalesce toward oil or toward water, most of the

water becomes separate from the oil—it is instead, a matter of different
degrees of coalescence (122).

63

The metaphor of curdled mayonnaise is an instructive reminder. We are in fact familiar
with frameworks of understanding where impurity is a recognizable and commonplace
event. Unstable emulsions are as common as sandwiches. The logic of purity has
enormous influence on our thinking and action. Yet the logic of purity does not
completely dominate experience. We experience mixed up ambiguities that cannot be
settled into dichotomies. hierarchies, discrete parts that exist in easy split-separation.
When we approach the world through the logic of curdling we engage in:

Going back to mestizje, in the middle of either/or, ambiguity. and thinking

of acts that belong in lives in mestizo ways,

thinking of all forms of mestizaje,

thinking of breaching and abandoning dichotomies.

thinking of being anomalous willfully or unwillfully in the world of

precise, hard edged schema,

thinking of resistance,

resistance to a world ofpurity, of domination, of control over our

possibilities,

is separation not at the crux of mestizaje, ambiguity, and resistance?

Is it not at the crux both of its necessity and its possibility? Separation as

in the separation of the white from the yolk or separation as curdling?

(Lugones 122-123)

The logic of curdling is important because it is a form of understanding that
accommodates resistance. By contrast, the logic of purity facilitates ontological
reductions that advance the cause of domination. Yet in the logic of curdling, it is always
possible to find ways in which clean-cut, strict categories are avoidable or escapable. It
becomes possible to see both metaphors and lived realities of being intersexed.
transgendered, transexed, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, a hybrid, a border-dweller.

In retrospect, we can see that Daly treads on similar “curdled” ground when she

writes of radical feminism as a movement, an ongoing process, where one never rests

with one set of permanent guides, concepts, or borders. Notice how Lugones’ writing

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can be helpful in understanding the details of Daly’s feminist project. One of the
recurrent themes in Daly’s writing is the emphasis of breaking free from the patriarchal
confines that reduce women to fixed vessels serving the needs of men. In order to move
beyond this emptiness. women are urged to transgress the boundaries laid and enforced
by patriarchy. This is not surprising. as the transgression of patriarchal boundaries is
certainly to be expected in the invention of a feminist reality. For Daly. activities of
transgression have ontological import as well as being a practical feature of feminist
activism. In the logic of purity, where oppression may take on its most forceful aspect.
the possibility of another reality is obscured, even erased. The logic of curdling makes it
easier to see transgression as possible. There are no pure categories, no women emptied
and purified of gyn/ecological power. In the logic of curdling, categories are fluid and
invention is expected. Nobody is pure. including a “purely” oppressed person.
Transgressing women go beyond limits set/fixed by lechers’ laws. We
pass beyond bore-ocracy’s boundaries. While in certain dimensions of our
activities we live “on the boundaries” of patriarchal institutions, in our
deepest dimensions of be-ing, we pass beyond these boundaries. We pass
beyond our own former limits” (Pure Lust 244).
Yet the transgression is not merely accomplished once. as if one may break with tradition
and hop into a feminist world. The voyage is one in which women remain conflicted.
partially constructed by the mind-binds of patriarchy even as we invent new realities.
“No woman is/has completely Realized” (Pure Lust, 163) because our minds and habits
remain “contaminated/laminated” by the strategic manipulations of domination.
Furthermore, in Daly’s ontology, women are not Realized because the project of

feminism is never complete. “Pure Lust, then, is not a suddenly arrived at state: it is

unfolding. questioning, realizing (Pure Lust, 164).

65

It is useful to read Lugones backward into Daly. However I do not mean to say
that Daly has anticipated Lugones’ analysis of curdling. Rather, I mean to show that
there is a confluence of methodology. Daly and Lugones are both aware that masters of
domination carefully erase the possibility of resistance, especially effective resistance.
Patriarchs empty women of possibility and define reality in a way that domination is
inescapable and all resistance is visible only as pathology or nonsense. Both Daly and
Lugones are keenly aware that we must be able to see the possibility of resistance and
experience resistance as it is acted out in ones immediate surroundings. What is
interesting is that both analyze domination and resistance as 3 simultaneously practical
and ontological movement. Further, they both explore ways in which we can understand
resistance, growth and change as integral parts of feminist ontological context. We need
feminist tools for this project, not tools of patriarchy that make a fixed reality and exclude
possibilities for invention. In this way, it is enlightening to read Lugones in conjunction
with Daly. The logic of curdling suggests the system of order through which Be-ing
unfolds.

It is similarly useful to read Hoagland and Lugones together. The task of
generating a lesbian context is accomplished in a curdled logic. Consider Hoagland’s
conception of ‘lesbian.’ One might assume that a lesbian context or lesbian ethics
pertains only to those women who choose to engage sexually only with other women—
this would be an oversimplification and misunderstanding of Hoagland’s project. The
meaning of ‘lesbian’ is not developed with the use of a strict definition, a drawing of
boundaries. Rather, a lesbian context is invented and sustained by women loving and

caring for other women, investing their energy in each other. connecting with each other,

66

enabling each other to be agents. creating meaning together. The meaning of the word
‘lesbian’ is left open for development just as the lesbian context is a place of
development. It is not a club for which specific rules restrict membership and access.
Hoagland argues against the attempt to create a strict (pure) definition. Hoagland writes:
We feel we must define what a lesbian is so we can determine who is a
lesbian and thereby defend our borders from invasion. Even if we had a
firm and theoretically coherent definition which articulated the borders of
lesbian community, it would not serve us in the way we have imagined.
So I let go of the urge to define. And I begin to think of lesbian
community in a different way (8).
I think of contexts. I think of lesbian context, and I do not think of
defining its borders. . .. I think of lesbian community as a ground of
lesbian be-ing. a ground of possibility, a context in which we perceive
. 7 . . . .
each other essentially“0 as lesbrans, a context in Wthl‘l we create lesbran
meaning (7).
Reading Hoagland with Lugones in mind proves useful because it allows one to interpret
the lesbian context in instructive ways. For example, we find that Hoagland’s project is
one of persistently shaping a reality through activities and personal engagement that do
not foster domination and exclusion. That project is a developing one. not a project
founded upon stable definitions or foundational first principles. In this way, the lesbian
context may be understood as a curdled context. It continues to shift in the
developmental process. It is also useful to see that Hoagland resists. from the moment
she begins explaining the possibilities of a lesbian context, using tools of purity that have
been common to patriarchal contexts of domination and subordination. The project of

inventing feminist realities is not served by strictly bounded concepts governed by the

logic of purity.

 

‘0 The use of “essentially” might suggest a misinterpretation, namely that Hoagland is inventing an
essentialistic definition of ‘lesbian.’ What she is actually doing here is emphasizing that the lesbian context
is created on lesbian terms. without bothering to describe the contrast with heterosexism. Why doesn’t she
bother to contrast lesbian reality with heterosexist reality? Because her project isn’t about heterosexism.

67

Conclusion

In this chapter I have indicated some of the major forms of divergence separating
the radical feminist tradition and the liberal political tradition. There are of course many
differences; however, the ones I address are crucial to avoiding misunderstanding radical
feminist freedom. These key differences occur in three places. First. rather than
beginning with the assumption that humans are essentially free and in need of an
appropriate state that will guarantee natural rights, radical feminists assume that women
find themselves surrounded by pervasive and insidious oppression and the lived
experience of resistance. It is from the context of oppression that radical feminists begin.
The liberal conception of absolute negative freedom is disregarded in favor of theorizing
the immediate challenges of oppression and resistance. Second. radical feminists seek to
value the reality and potentiality of resistance. For this reason. they have invented a
conception of agency that permits conceiving of navigating oppression while also
inventing modes of existence that avoid perpetuating the existing patriarchal patterns of
domination and subordination. Lesbian agency contrasts with enlightenment conceptions
of agency that assume that free and rational beings are able to exert a considerable
measure of control within liberal political and ethical orders. Finally, radical feminists
focused on conceptions of existence, activism, and engagement that assume reality is an
invented unfolding process. The activity of be-ing free is a possibility even in contexts
where oppression typically dominates. These three moments of departure indicate the
conceptual distance that separates the liberal tradition and the radical feminist tradition.
It will be important to keep these differences in mind as the radical feminist conception

of freedom develops in later chapters.

68

To be clear, this chapter is not intended to show that the liberal tradition.
including contemporary forms. is fundamentally flawed. It is true that some radical
feminists have made this type of extensive and carefully researched critique of classical
and contemporary liberalism. However my project aims to explain and invent a radical
feminist conception of freedom. To accomplish this goal, I have briefly addressed liberal
theory so [as to avoid misunderstandings whereby liberal assumptions could misdirect
one’s understanding of radical feminist freedom.

In the final section of this chapter I began the process of organizing the works of
radical feminists as projects that anticipate Lugones’ introduction of “the logic of
curdling.” This exercise is not merely a descriptive. I have place the distinction between
logics of curdling and the logic of purity here because the logic of curdling will continue
to be a theme in later chapters. As will become clear, the radical feminist conception of

freedom I invent is one that operates within the logic of curdling.

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Chapter 3
Liberatory Subjectivity

Introduction

In the following pages I will explore the ontological accounts of subjectivity
available in the work of Daly and Lugones. The radical feminist conception of freedom
being developed in this dissertation is the activity of a subject. However the subject is
unlike much of what we see in the history of philosophy. It is not a substantial subject.
Instead the subject is in flux—a shifting, curdling, interacting existence. In the effort to
articulate freedom, it has been crucial to understand the ontology of the subject that will
be free. Daly and Lugones are resources for understanding subjectivity in a radical
feminist framework. These two philosophers are at odds in certain moments and yet
clearly compatible in others. I want to retain insights from both in order to facilitate my
own conception of radical feminist freedom. Daly explores both oppressed subjectivity
and a radical feminist subjectivity that fosters the ongoing project of be-ing feminist. I
will use her conception of radical feminist subjectivity as a starting point for analysis.
Careful attention to Daly’s feminist existentialism will help highlight the organic ever-
evolving nature of this radical feminist conception of subjectivity. Although Daly’s
conception of subjectivity is compelling, I will argue that Daly’s account requires certain
modifications in order to provide a more ontologically efficacious free subject. Lugones
offers an instructive account of how we may view ontological separation as products of
patriarchy and how separation can also be viewed as a feature of resistant existence. She
offers an account of subjectivity as ontologically multiplicitous. Here, the self is
understood as internally complex, plural, and never unified. By contrast. Daly does not

take up a multiplicitous, non-unified subjectivity as a vision of feminist overcoming. Yet

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Lugones’ conception of multiplicitous subjectivity, with its lack of unity, marks an
important advance for my radical feminist ontology of freedom. It allows one to
conceptualize the subject as shaped by totalizing oppression yet retaining the inherent
possibility of innovative feminist action. In this chapter, I will aim to weave

connections through and across the space that separates Daly and Lugones.

Theories of Subjectivity

In the history of European and North American philosophy we can find a variety
of ways by which to understand subjectivity, often described as theories of identity.
There are two major trends relevant to the matter at hand. First is an approach that
understands the subject or self as a single stable substance that exists, endures through
time and change, is a unified whole, and may be known through careful reflection. The
second major trend of analysis understands subjectivity as a multiplicity of elements that
are not bound together by a substantial self. I

Descartes provides an example of the first approach, where. the self is a single and
unified substance. Under his analysis, there are two metaphysical substances that
compose all of reality: res cogitans and res extensa. Res cogitans is literally thinking
substance. Res extensa is literally extended substance. In the Second Meditation, at the
height of hyperbolic doubt, Descartes arrives at the conclusion that though all else may
be questioned, at least he is certain that he exists. But what is the ‘1’ that exists? When
analyzing his own subjectivity, Descartes finds he is most essentially a thing that thinks.

He writes:

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But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that
doubts. understands, affirms, denies, is willing. is unwilling, and also
imagines and has sensory perceptions (19).
Later, in Meditation Six, Descartes acknowledges that the mind is linked with the body in
a compound unity. However he is careful to emphasize the distinctness of mind from the
body. There are no divisions. subdivisions. or parts outside of parts for the non-material
res cogitans; Descartes concludes that his subjectivity is singular and unified. He writes:
...there is a great difference between the mind and body, inasmuch as the
body is by its very nature always divisible. while the mind is utterly
indivisible. For when I consider the mind or myself in so far as I am
merely a thinking thing. I am unable to distinguish any parts within
myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete
(59).
Descartes is further convinced that although the mind and body are intimately tied, he is
essentially res cogitans.
Although the whole mind seems to be unified to the whole body, I
recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off,
nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind (59).
Descartes concludes that as a subject he is essentially a thinking thing, though he does
draw mind and body together in later Meditations. In fact he offers an account of how
embodied humans have been granted a bridge, the pineal gland, which links the extended
body, with all its experiences and motions. to the thinking substance of mind. with all its
willing and reflection. Later critics of mind body dualism have argued that Descartes and
other dualists are unable to provide a satisfactory account of how a thinking, non-material

substance could affect the material substance of a body. Descartes had attributed the

location of interface to the pineal gland and the sustaining efforts of a benevolent creator,

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though his remarks on this gland never had the epistemic strength of clear and certain
ideas. In retrospect one might say that Descartes offered an account of unified
subjectivity, but an unsuccessful account of embodiment.

Far earlier, in the very founding centuries of western philosophy, a version of the
unified self is available in Plato’s Phaedrus. Interestingly, Plato does conceptualize
component parts of the subject, yet concludes that their proper alignment renders a
unified being. He characterizes the soul as tripartite in structure. It is composed of an
intelligent part, a courageous and willing part. and finally an appetitive part. The soul of
an individual allows for the possibility of knowledge, making reasoned choices. and
making choices based on appetites and desires. Though the soul is internally complex
and even in potential conflict, the complexity and differentiation is choreographed by the
rational element into a disciplined unity. Ultimately, for Plato, it is the rational element
that is capable of guiding the soul towards knowledge of self, truth. beauty. and justice.
In fact. unity established by the dominating hand of reason is the only path to knowledge
and certainty. The tripartite structure also allows Plato to address some questions of
embodied subjectivity." The Phaedrus dialogue describes how a well-ordered soul has
ground for epistemic certainty in answering questions of self-knowledge. knowledge of
others. knowledge of one’s place in the social order. knowledge of justice. truth. beauty.
etc.

Readers of Descartes and Plato have gone on to question the accounts of
subjectivity: What knowledge is possible for human subjectivity? How does the rational
soul or res cogitans provide conditions for the possibility of persistence through the

changes of time and body? How does embodied existence affect the soul? How is it

 

2' See Plato’s Phaedrus. margin numbers 246a through 257a.

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possible to know others and to share knowledge with them? These types of questions
problematize claims about the nature of subjectivity and embodiment. These lines of
inquiry are part of the long history of personal identity theory.

The second major analysis of subjectivity describes a multiplicity of parts that are
not bound together by any substantial self. David Hume is a familiar representative of
this approach. As an empiricist, Hume is deeply troubled by the suggestion of a
metaphysical substance, the rational soul or res cogitans, that is not a feature of
experience. Though he might note familiarity with the feeling of reflection and
remembering. he doubts the existence of a thinking substance. Upon careful review of
his memories and experience he can locate nothing other than a bundle of experiences
and memories arising from different moments and phases of his life. He finds no
enduring substance present in all the memories or experiences. Although he is not privy
to the experiences of others, Hume is confident that unprejudiced empiricists will reach
the same conclusions and will dispense with the idea of a metaphysical substance or soul
that transcends the many alterations of life. The only conception of self that is warranted
by empirical experience is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions... in a
perpetual flux of movement” (252). This bundle-like self is simply a collection of
memories and experiences: There is no legitimate reason to pose the idea of substantial
identity that endures through time and change. Certainly there is no metaphysical
substance to identify as the mind or soul. Certainly there is no unified internally complex
soul that can explain. as Plato sought to do, ones position in the order of the mortal and

immortal world.

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The examples from Descartes, Plato, and Hume are noted here for several
reasons. First, it is useful to keep in mind that the western and anglo tradition of
philosophy has argued for both a unified self or subject and a self or subject that is not
characterized by a metaphysical principle of unity. I use these two traditions to preface
my exploration of Lugones and Daly. Conceptions of multiplicitous subjectivity, like the
one Lugones offers, are not unknown to philosophers, although I grant that they are less
common in a culture that is deeply influenced by the Christian idea of individuals who
have souls and by conceptions of soul as substance. Second, I want to distinguish
traditional metaphysical problems about the identity of the subject from more recent
philosophical debates about the political implications of various formations of
subjectivity. Rather than working to reconcile seemingly conflicting metaphysical
principles like mind and body, change and permanence. variety and unity, I want to focus
on the subject as a site of liberatory possibility. The questions germane to this area of
investigation are, for example, if the subject is situated in a world that is dangerous or
oppressive, how does this world of domination influence the subject? When one
compares the subjectivity of oppressed and ‘free’ women, is there an ontological
difference wrought by the dominance, submission. and exploitation? Under what
conditions is it possible for an oppressed subjectivity to become free? I situate my
current discussion of subjectivity within this simultaneously metaphysical and political
domain. I will discuss ways in which subjectivity is shaped by domination and discuss

some forms of subjectivity that allow for feminist becoming in spite of domination.

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Method and Be—ing Feminist

Women are situated in a world that is dangerous and oppressive: How can we
conceptualize subjectivity so that it is capable of change; in particular, change that is
liberatory? And how must our subjectivity change in order that we may move towards
feminist forms of existence? Daly takes up these questions in her work. She argues that
the form of subjectivity needed is one that actualizes unity and transcendence. Daly
makes such a move when she explains processes of exorcism through which women may
be divested of their broken patriarchal selves and empowered with an authentic biophilic
self.

This biophilic self is not a thing-like substance that supplants the prior self. In
fact, Daly specifically rejects the use of ‘being’ as a noun.22 Instead she understands the
self as an ongoing project or activity. In the activity of be-ing, the self is created. She
provides generous explorations of specific forms of be-ing. Consider be-ing biophilic—
one specific form of be-ing explored in Pure Lust. Biophilia names a way women may
comport themselves in the world. Biophilia carries the obvious suggestion of being “life-
loving.”

Daly’s quest for biophilic be-ing results from two of her primary methods for
feminist discovery and invention—the mining of patriarchy for reversals and the
invention of reversals of reversals. In one of her early texts, Beyond God the Father.
Daly argues that patriarchal practitioners use “reversals” as one method by which to

assure patriarchal domination.23 Daly advocates for feminist research that mines history.

 

2‘ See Chapter Two, specifically the section of Be-ing Free vs. Static Freedom, for an explanation of Daly’s
treatment of ‘being’ as a noun and ‘be-ing’ as a verb.

2" The first reference to “reversal” takes place in Beyond God the Father, pages 95-97. However later texts
are replete with Daly’s examples of reversals and the feminist method of reversing the reversals

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literature, and anthropological evidence for patriarchal reversals; i.e. the removal of any
available form of female power and accompanying substitution of male power that
dominates women. The reversals must be located and illustrated so that feminists are
able to trace the mind-binds of patriarchy and so that feminists can access ancient sources
of inspiration that predate the patriarchal reversal.

Anthropological. historical, and artistic evidence attest to the fact that the current
forms of thoroughgoing patriarchy did not always organize social life. The goal of a
patriarchal reversal is to strip women of power, both real and symbolic. Man supplants
Woman by altering the meaning of a myth or symbol so as to gamer and solidify social
power over women. For example. it common knowledge that the European and the
Mediterranean regions hosted cultures for whom goddesses were central sacred figures;
however, these cultures were replaced by or evolved into patriarchal cultures. The
goddess-centric cultures predate Greek and Roman civilization as well as the later
Christian tradition. Consider the reversal crystallized in the comparison of the ancient
Minoan fertility goddess.24 who lifts snakes in triumph, contrasted with a “reverse” image
on the Sistine chapel ceiling frescos, where Eve and Adam are cast from paradise after
Eve converses with a snake and condemns humanity with original sin.

One of Daly’s own explorations of reversal focuses on the simple fact of women
giving birth and the Christian explanation of humanity being created by a male god who

further creates woman from the body of Adam. She writes:

 

2’ In archeological and anthropological circles the figure is called The Minoan Snake Goddess and is from
Knossos, Crete. circa 1600 BC E. The figure stands a little over 13 inches tall with large exposed breasts,
an apron that accentuates her hips and pelvis. She holds a snake in each upraised hand. Other related
figures of goddesses have snakes coiled about their arms and waist. The received view of anthropologists
is that snakes are associated with women and fertility because snakes undergo a form of rebirth each time
they shed their skin.

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The absurd story of Eve’s birth is an excellent example of a process
prevalent in men’s treatment of women and their accomplishments
throughout the history of patriarchy. I shall simply call this phenomenon
reversal. In some cases it is blatantly silly. as in the case of insistence that
a male was the original mother. and that “God” (a male) revealed this
(Bgvond God the Father. 95).
Reversals are not negations. It would be inaccurate to interpret Daly to mean that Man
and Woman are fundamental categories like ~A and A. where men create only negations
and women create propositions. When she cites a reversal, Daly is not referencing a
logical contradiction. Rather, she is citing an elaborate deception used to mislead women
from locating resources for crafting her own existence. The image of female power or
value is reversed and replaced with an image of male power and women’s weakness. The
replacement is a theft of symbolic meaning and a redrafting of the salient components so
feminine connections with power and the divine are severed. The replacement features
power or the divine in masculine form. For example. the power to create life is heady.
Rather than deny the significance ofcreating life, the reversal attributes the creation of
life to men. Later the original image or narrative or women’s power is erased and
eventually said to be a myth. but not actually something that people believed. In this way
the reversal becomes part of patriarchal reality. With no evidence at hand that challenges
this claim, it seems as though patriarchal reality is all that has been or could be.
Reversals are thus revealed as a method used to normalize patriarchy. The term
‘reversal’ intentionally reminds feminists that patriarchy was not always normal, that
there have been other forms of existence. that women are not essentially powerless.
Reversals are important to the current discussion primarily as an introduction to

the method of reversing reversals. a method for feminist creation. The task of inventing a

feminist reality involves divesting women of the woman-hating myths and practices

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learned from patriarchy. The method suited to such work is that of reversing the
reversals. The exploration and creation of biophilia is an example of Daly’s method.
reversing a reversal. The move towards ‘biophilia’ is a reversal of patriarchal
existentialism. Existentialism, as the fathers teach it. urges that one contemplate death in
order to grasp the nature of existence. It is by contemplating one’s non-being that one
may learn about being. In Pure Lust Daly notes that “existential courage” is a potted
passion found in traditional existentialism (223). In Tillich (and I would add Heidegger
and Sartre too), the final analysis is so abstract that there are only two categories, being
and non-being. Existential courage amounts to courage in the face of non-being.
However radical feminist existentialism goes far beyond courage in the face of non-
being. Daly reverses the necrophilia of patriarchal existentialism. She chooses instead to
explore elaborate and day-to-day expressions of biophilia. The goal is to create feminist
forms of being. not to remain fixed on non-being. A philosophical system focused on
non-being is necrophilic. Be-ing feminist involves reversing necrophilia and
wholeheartedly embracing biophilia. A more detailed description of this activity of
biophilia includes the passionate striving for diverse and benevolent forms of social
organization and personal creation. Note that biophilia is also female identified; that is.
identified with the invention of women’s lives and the proliferation of life on the planet.

Daly’s conception of biophilia is intended to facilitate the invention of be-ing:
women will create their own identities, communities, relationships to nature and all the
while privileging diversity; privileging a lust for relationships with other life-loving
women; privileging the courageous social endeavor of forging a feminist world.

Biophilia names a way of be-ing. This form of be-ing is then further explored in

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Quintessence, where Daly spins an allegorical tale of one would-be feminist final cause.
time travel, psychic and physiological recovery from the poisons of patriarchal
capitalism, and daily life of kangaroo watching and composting. Be-ing biophilic, in
Daly’s analysis, represents a first order change in subjectivity, a needed step through
which women may exit the oppressed subject position. Be-ing biophilic overthrows the

blocked and frozen form of subjectivity characteristic of patriarchal beings.

“Ontological Dividedness”

How is the subject situated and held in place by patriarchy? Daly argues that
within the context of patriarchy. women are fragmented,25 living in “ontological
dividedness.” They are divided in the sense that they may be unable to express anger or
outrage on their own behalf when subjected day-to-day to abuse or injustices of
patriarchy (370). They are divided from their own bodies by a culture that repeatedly
degrades feminine forms and represents body parts. like vaginas, as disgusting. They are
divided from other women by the threat of appearing biased. as women-oriented instead
of human-oriented.26 These daily modes of fragmentation have ontological ramifications
for women’s subjectivities. Women’s identities are broken.

One of the characteristic features of patriarchal culture27 is that men possess

women. not just in material ways. but also in the very form of women’s subjectivity.

 

:SCut to pieces, Pure Lust 233. Fearful fragmentation In the fatherland, 345 Pure Lust.

2:Of course human-oriented really means oriented so that women never disregard white men.

7Daly has a detailed analysis of the major lynchpins of patriarchal culture. Principal lynchpins include I)
Deception, convincing women that patriarchal culture IS normal/natural while simultaneously destroying
the possibilities and realities of women centered culture. 2) Day to day system maintenance, wherein
murder, torture. and threat of torture are used by men to keep women from resisting oppression, 3) Shaping
women into patriarchal vessels. where women are taught only those forms of life that serve patriarchal
needs. Each of these three lynchpins receives a detailed analysis in Gyn/ Ecology and Pure Lust. As a point
of reference. the possession of women takes place within the “foreground” and is an example of how
women are inculcated with systems of patriarchal meaning and deployed for men’s use.

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Women are reduced and ontologically reconfigured so that they are appendages of men.
Oppression is effective when women and their options have been successfully reduced
such that even when women seek to accomplish their own desires, they do so while
benefiting their oppressors. Frye names the practice ‘grafting.’28 Daly explores the ways
grafted women live and how it generates ontological dividedness.

A_ divided subjectivity is created through the reduction of women’s choices such
that they may only animate forms of subjectivity deemed acceptable to patriarchy. For a
reduced and reconfigured subject, the available expressions of her will result in
patriarchal practices. As women, we come to see ourselves through the eyes of our
oppressors, and we come to behave as our oppressors need us to behave. It is frustrating
to know that one would like to effect some change but that one’s will invariably
reinforces a patriarchal practice. It creates an internal two-ness.29 Women’s fragmented
subjectivities are lived in various ways. Within a middle class hetero-community,
women’s fragmentation may be experienced as an inability to have social relationships
that are without taint of cruelty. In fact, as Daly argues. this is a patriarchal strategy
designed to block women’s abilities to be productively social with each other. For
example, men position women such that women take on the roles and activities of
patriarchal abusers; they become token torturers. Many little white girls with long hair

are treated to the nightly agony of having tangled heads washed and combed. Certainly.

 

2’ See the essay In And Out of Harm ’s Way in Politics of Reality for an extensive exploration of “grafiing.”
‘9 In The Souls of Blaglt Folk. Dubois wrote at length about a form of ontological dividedness. double
consciousness. is a feature of life for black Americans. In Dubois’ account. recognizing the contradiction
between one’s identity as a black person and one’s identity as an American brings about the internal split.
He wrote: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self
through the eyes of others. of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American. a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it fiom being torn
asunder” (45).

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this was a ritual for me and many other girls my age. For little black girls the ritual
involves chemical straighteners and irons can burn fingers and scalp. Interestingly, I
have known and still know young girls who keep their long hair. in spite of painful
rituals, because their fathers adore their longhaired daughters. Yet it is not their fathers
who struggle to manage the tangles, apply straighteners. and hold the irons. It is mothers.
aunts, and grandmothers who cultivate long tresses and sooth sore scalps. This is what a
mother must do if she loves her daughters and wants to help them grow up to be loved in
return.

A little girl’s ‘development’ is a conditioning process that falls to the mothers.
aunts. grandmothers and older sisters. Men charge older women with making the little
girl a fit being for use in hetero-patriarchy. Meanwhile women learn that loving and
nurturing other women invariably involves cruelty: the will to love is contorted and
brought to serve patriarchy. This is ontological fragmentation. It takes place twice in this
example. First, women’s wills are turned against themselves, an internal dividedness.
Second, the will to care and connect across generations results in division and alienation
in women’s potential communities. Women’s abilities to pursue their own will and to
connect with each other are shom away while men pretend it’s all women’s business and
nothing to do with men.

What change is wrought by be-ing biophilic? The reversal of brokenness, thinks
Daly, is to be accomplished through activity, be-ing. In this activity. a woman becomes
wholly present to her Self in and through her individual and social projects of biophilic
creation. Note that the move to biophilia is a reversal of a reversal. Daly does not think

that women are inherently divided. In fact. she sees ontological dividedness as a

colonization of women’s subjectivities created by patriarchs. The original patriarchal
reversal takes place when women’s subjectivity is structured such that expressions of her
will ultimately serve the oppressor. This structuring renders women ontologically
broken. The reversal of the reversal. be-ing biophilic. entails a return of the will to the
agent. The change is significant. It allows a woman to be “wholly present to her Self.”
She is able to engage her will in feminist projects of her own creation. rather than being a
grafted conduit for patriarchal use, rather than having her energy channeled to support
patriarchal practices.

Daly maintains be-ing biophilic is a goal for radical feminist forms oflife because
it reverses the structure of existence perpetuated by patriarchy. The form of subjectivity
sought by Daly is one in which women break through fragmentation and create
themselves as unified. yet ever-unfolding beings. Women will certainly be complex and
always in a process of realization, as opposed to simple and complete. But more
interestingly for my own analysis. Daly specifically argues that the Self will be unified.
In Pure Lust. she writes:

There are not many Selves in one woman, but rather, one Self, wholly
present in that woman. I am not asserting here that the Self and soul are
precisely equivalent terms; in fact, they are not. My point is that one
obvious consequence of the idea that a woman has a soul wholly present
in all of her “parts” is that there is an essential integrity at the very core of
her Self (345).

It is Realized as a woman becomes wholly Present in all of her activities.
The phenomenological manifestation of this integrity and pervasive
Presence of her soul is a radical consistency in her behavior. She does not
seem to be “one person one day and someone else the next” (346).

These passages are significant. Although Daly clearly rejects the logic of static

substances and ontological permanence. and thus she is unlike both Plato and Descartes.

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through the reversal of a reversal. she returns to unity as an ideal. Just as Plato’s unified
and carefully ordered tripartite soul is better able to reach heights of enlightenment.
Daly’s woman who is wholly present to herself. The will of a woman is woven
throughout all aspects of her be-ing and she achieves the ideal form of life, one of
feminist integrity.

Daly is reaching for a language and a positive account of life outside patriarchal
frameworks. She seeks an ontological account of women’s existence in a radical feminist
world of sense. This has been an important clue in my own investigations of freedom.
We need a positive account of feminist realities and possibilities. I am showing that a
radical feminist conception of freedom is needed and that a distinctively radical feminist
account of freedom is possible. But in crafting this conception of freedom I cannot adopt
the language of biophilia. unity and integrity whole cloth. The language and ontology

must become impure.

Multiplicity and Experience

The unified subject. like one articulated by Daly, provides a point of contrast with
the work of Maria Lugones. Lugones acknowledges that much work has been done in an
effort of conceptualize subjects as unified beings. One of the principle ways this has
been accomplished is through organizing the self as split-separated into various
components that stand in a ranked order. Daly too suggests “parts” woven together in
wholly Present be-ing. Yet Lugones chooses to reject the concept of a unified subject as
philosophically, practically, or even experientially ideal. She rejects the singular unity, as

well as the split-separated and hierarchally organized forms of subjectivity. Like Hume.

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Lugones finds no experience of a single enduring metaphysical substance upon which to
theorize subjectivity. Like Daly, Lugones notes the damage done to women as their
identities are fragmented into split-separations that serve the interests of oppressors.
However, Lugones takes a different path in her analysis of subjectivity. She starts from a
conception of subjectivity that is multiplicitous. She offers a thoroughgoing analysis of
being multiple. She is explicit in her move away from any ontology of enduring unified
substance. She writes: “I am giving up the claim that the subject is unified. Instead, I am
understanding each person as many” (57).

Ultimately there are two major reasons she pursues the idea of multiplicitous
subjectivity. The first is that multiplicity is a feature of experience for many who
experience oppression. Second, she maintains that multiplicitous subjectivity facilitates
resistant potential. Lugones argues-for the multiplicitous conception of subjectivity
because it approximates the experience of people of color in racist and ethnocentric
orders. It is an approach grounded in the day-to-day experiences of bicultural people
who navigate contexts of subordination. rich ancestral cultures, and environments of
neglect. She writes:

In giving up the unified self, I am guided by the experiences of bicultural
people who are also victims of ethnocentric racism in a society that has
one of those cultures as subordinate and the other as dominant. These
cases provide me with examples of people who are very familiar with
experiencing themselves as more than one: having desires, character. and
personality traits that are different in one reality than in the other ( 57).
Multiplicity is a feature of existence for many people who must navigate two or more
cultures. In such cases. the self is not experienced as unified and thus there is no

practical motivation to formulate a metaphysical explanation of unity. Instead, one has

multiple selves that form and reform in relation to the surrounding social worlds. These

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selves are exercised in the navigation of the many, sometimes contradictory. and
hierarchically related social worlds (53-54, 127, 130). Some social worlds are highly
structured and policed whereas others are specifically ignored—ignored the way a pow
wow is ignored by white culture. ignored the way a remote and impoverished community
is ignored by affluent neighbors. Each is ignored so long as they create no disruption in
the surrounding social hierarchies. Environments of neglect appear useless from the
perspectives of the oppressors, yet they are simultaneously zones of resistant possibility.
Lugones is herself a woman familiar with multiple selves and the sensation of

separation. She is familiar with the feeling of sharp ontological dividedness. But she
also explores the meanings of separation available to her as a native speaker of Spanish.
In this analysis she recalls being an impatient child charged kitchen chores, one of which
happens to be the making mayonnaise. She remembers watching her own work separate
in the mixing bowl and turning to her mother: “Mamci, la mayonesa se separo " (122).
The recollection features the use of separation as curdling. Living in the US. Lugones is
aware that Spanish-speaking communities are often environments of neglect. And it is
from her life as a Spanish speaker that she draws out a new way to conceptualize
‘separations.’ When mayonnaise curdles the mix of oil and egg coalesce towards oily-
egg and eggy-oil. It is a messy separation, and helps conceptualize separation in a way
that defies the logic of purity. This is the path to understanding subjectivity as multiple.
internally complex, shifting, and irregular. The path of this heterogeneous subjectivity
leads away from the ideal of a unified entity. Unlike Daly, Lugones moves towards

multiplicity as an ideal.

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Gloria Anzaldua offers an account of her experience as a multiplicitous being in
Borderlands / La F rontera. In some cases she wrestles with her multiple identities as
sources of painful internal and social conflicts. She writes:

For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her
native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral
prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality. Being lesbian and raised
Catholic. indoctrinated as strait, I made the choice to be queer (for some it
is genetically inherent). It is an interesting path, one that continually slips
in and out of the white, the catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous. the
instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for loqueria. the crazies. It is a
path of knowledge—one of knowing) and of learning the history of
oppression of our raza. It is a way of balancing. of mitigating duality (18).
In this passage Anzaldua traces a path through multiple expressions of self. Sometimes
she is a lesbian able to choose and create her identity. Sometimes she is a sexual and
instinctive being deplored and pressed to shape shift towards straight. Sometimes, when
recognizable as a woman of color, she is whitewashed and simultaneously rendered alien.
Multiplicity is the ontological reality underlying “the crazies.” Of course it is not a
fruitless multiplicity. Anzaldt'ra recognizes that multiplicity is also a source of
knowledge, if she can find the means to balance the selves.

Lugones herself notes that the multiplicity of experience, while not always a
source of comfort, is a resource for navigating various social worlds in which one has
differential levels ofefficacy. Certainly it could be possible to be thoroughly processed
and reduced to a mere appendage of oppressive social orders. But the advantage of
needing to navigate multiple social worlds results in access to resources that have
escaped the attention of oppressors. Multiplicity is experiential and potentially valuable.

Anzaldt'ra writes of multiplicity as a simultaneous discomfort and source for crafting

resistant identities:

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Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not
acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for
psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity—we don’t identify with the
Anglo-American cultural values and we don’t totally identify with the
Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various
degrees with Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the
borderland conflict that sometimes I feel one cancels out the other and we
are a zero, no one. A veces no soy nada di nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo
soy, lo soy (63)
When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing. we call
ourselves Mexican. referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirming
both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestry);
Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in
the US; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos
from Texas (63)
In the second passage. Anzaldua is working to understand the path of knowledge within
her multiplicitous identity. Lugones appeals to these forms of experience when she
rejects the ideal of the unified purified subject. The experience of occupying two or more
cultures and moving through numerous stratified social worlds is the manifestation of
separate and palpably distinct identities. This conspicuous separation is the experience
from which Lugones begins to theorize an ontological account of subjectivity that
comprehends multiplicity as natural and resistant.

What I have offered here is an explication designed to show an interesting
divergence in the writings of Daly and Lugones. Daly and Lugones arrive at different
conclusions regarding the status of multiplicity. Clearly both recognize “fragmentation”
and “split-separation” as forms of subjectivity created by and for the oppressor’s benefit.
Women are fragmented and separated from themselves and other women. Much western
analysis regards the split-separation and efficiently rendered hierarchy as a necessary

feature of ‘normal’ social existence. Daly and Lugones reject a reduced, fragmented

subject as inadequate for the task of resistant feminist invention. Yet it is curious that

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Lugones and Daly are in contradiction on the issue ofmultiple selves. Daly views
separations as toxic products of patriarchal machinations. Lugones, however. sees two
senses of multiplicity, purely fragmented beings and impure curdled beings.
corresponding to the two senses of separo’. It is the impure, curdled subject that is
potentially inventive and resistant, thinks Lugones. Daly continues to have pure
thoughts. The fact that she does not accomplish the sin of impure thoughts is perhaps
symptom of her reliance on reversals of reversals.30 Because she is seeking to reverse the
patriarchal reversal that creates women as broken subjects, her feminist reversal moves
towards the antonym of brokenness, a lively unified subject.

Daly obviously has a conception of multiplicity generated through fragmentation.
In fact. she even uses the example of multiple personality disorders. But Daly does not
have a conception of curdled logic. Thus she has no impure thoughts of multiplicitous
subjectivity be-ing feminist. The divergence of Daly and Lugones amounts to the full-
blown ontological gap between logic of purity and the logic of curdling. The existential

feminism of Daly remains within the domain of purity.

Metaphors of Separation

As Daly and Lugones both note. fragmentation. where it amounts to a pure or
split-separated subject. is problematic. Plato. as we have seen. offers an example of pure
separation. Plato uses the metaphor of a chariot team to describe the soul. The charioteer
is reasonable, one horse is devoted to bodily pleasures. and the second horse is
characterized by boldness of spirit (Phaedrus 246 a-c). On Plato’s analysis, reason is the

most important component of the soul. Reason unifies otherwise unruly parts and makes

 

’0 I owe the language of ‘impure thoughts” to Frye. who knows the craft of a wordsmith (June 29'“, 2005).

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it possible for a person to act correctly. It is reason that is the best guide to action and the
only guide to truth, beauty and justice (248d). Those whose chariots are led by reason are
the valuable and worthy elite. suited to being civic leaders (248 d-e). and suited to
governing those who would otherwise devote themselves to ill-advised acts of boldness
or wallowing in bodily pleasures. Plato’s subject is unified and made into a coherent3 '
agent through an internal hierarchy of substances.

A hierarchally unified subject of the sort described above is an ideal for Plato:
however it is completely unacceptable for Daly’s feminist project. Plato uses the
separations in the soul to understand the subject and the subjects place in the social order.
Those who are guided by bodily concerns are the least worthy of respect on Plato’s
account. This type of soul is to be expected of manual laborers (248 e), women, and
slaves. The rational elite appropriately governs these lesser beings. A social hierarchy of
types of individuals matches the hierarchy in the soul. In the Platonic account, the logic
of purity operates in such a way that an individual subject is split-separated into discrete
characteristics of reason, boldness. and bodily appetites. The split-separation is then
repeated at the social level to explain unavoidable social hierarchies. Daly discards the
idea of a split-separated subject as a product of patriarchal machinations. Split-separation
is not a form of unity and no split-separated woman is wholly present to her Self. For
Daly, split-separation is synonymous with patriarchal fragmentation.

When developing an ontological account of subj ectivity, Lugones does not pursue

conceptions of a unified subject generated from within the logic of purity. First. as we

g

3' When I say coherent I am thinking about how subjects could have their history, their current activities,
and their future plans organized by specific and consistent goals. So one might decide to become a
graduate student and then organize one’s life around this for years to come, and be able to look back at the
Past to locate specific events and plans that were instrumental to entering grad school. etc. The subject is
coherent in terms of a narrative that is meaningful and could be articulated with thoughtful reflection.

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have already seen, the accounts ofa unified subject do not match with experiences of
those who are bicultural and live in contexts where one at least one culture is
subordinated, exploited. and maligned. Second, the logic of purity fosters conceptions of
subjects who have been reduced to a purely oppressed being.32 Third, the logic of purity
also aids in arranging social organization that is hierarchal and ultimately oppressive
(Purity, Impurity, and Separation 460, 463-464). What the logic of purity does not offer
is subjectivity that has resistant potential. Lugones turns away from conceptions of
subjectivity afforded within the logic of purity. Instead she opts to analyze multiplicitous
subjectivity within the logic of curdling. Daly, although she is interested in the idea that
the subject has many parts, even after she has moved beyond the fixed fragmentation of
patriarchy, continues to see unity as a goal. She does not see that multiplicity can take
the form of curdled separation that is thoroughly impure. Daly does not see curdled

multiplicity as a form of subjectivity that is valuable for be-ing feminist.

Multiplicity in Lived Experience

What are the metaphors by which we can begin to theorize the multiplicitous
subjectivity? Lugones uses the metaphor of an emulsion as one way in which to begin
thinking about multiplicity that does not easily suggest an image of parts that are
themselves pure. Depending on the environmental conditions, an emulsion might curdle
in differing ways. Particular globs might coalesce, break down, reorganize, etc. In any
case, the emulsion is never pure. If we start with the assumption of impure multiplicity
when we focus on subjects, we are able to attune to the ways in which they are multiple.

One has multiple selves in virtue of the numerous, long-terrn and inculcating experiences

 

3' As I argued in the first chapter, ontological reductions are a necessary step in effective oppression.

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of navigating multiple social worlds (58-59). Anzaldua writes of being willingly attuned

to multiplicity:
The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a
tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in a Mexican culture.
to be Mexican from and Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle
cultures. She has a plural personality. she operates in a pluralistic mode—
nothing is thrust out, not good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected,
nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions. she turns
ambivalence into something else (79).

It is tempting to suppose that the experience of multiplicity is only available for
those who are bicultural or live in dramatically opposed social worlds.33 In fact
Lugones’s approach need not be taken to mean that multiplicitous subjectivity is the rare
ontological condition of those whose lives are characterized by blatant contradiction, the
sort of contradiction envisioned by Dubois who wrote of the contradictory life of being
an American citizen and a Black American citizen. In fact, multiplicity is available as an
ontological condition for those who do not necessarily experience the dramatic
contradictions of being bicultural. For example, a white woman might, for years.
negotiate a range of social contexts: a frustrating and mind-numbing job that occupies a
large part of her energy, occasional trips into a nearby black neighborhood where she is
reminded that she is out of place, a reasonably enjoyable and often empowering home life
where she does have a comfortable place, an exhausting and never-ending battle with
medical professionals on behalf of sick loved ones. the daily anxiety of dealing with a

disturbed, sometimes violent family member. Each social world has its own structure--its

own rules. paths of legitimate behavior. and means of enforcing accepted behavior.

 

’3 This claim could be enriched by an exploration of purity and unity as phenomenological privileges. As a
white woman living preciously close to the top of the hierarchy, the lived experience of unity and purity
may be mistaken for the prized goal of feminism. It is in fact purity/unity crafted through social
domination and the privilege of glossing over multiplicity.

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One’s subjectivity is structured by each of these worlds and the people in them. Thus.

depending on the world, she may be invisible and hemmed in by oppressive barriers, or
constructed as an interloper to be monitored even as she is uncomfortably reminded of
her color. or empowered and respected while at ease and unmonitored among family. or
disciplined into cautious subservience. etc. For each context a specific self is pressed to
coalesce and fit the surrounding social structures. expectations. demands etc. This is
multiplicity, though it may not be experienced as the crazies or as psychological two-
ness.

When developing an understanding of multiplicitous subjectivity, it may be
tempting to think that subjects merely change in and out of various roles and apply
various masks as needed. It is true that we often have experiences in which we apply a
mask and recite a script. However, Lugones intends to draw attention to a different and
far more effectual phenomenon (60). Being inculcated into particular worlds is not a

simple matter of pressing a mask into place and holding this temporary shape and visage.
On Lugones’s, approach the process of being inculcated into various worlds is more like
the process of dealing with runny cake batter that is poured into an intricately punched
bunt pan and then cooked until the very molecules of the batter are changed.34 To claim
that subjectivity is multiple means the various selves are constitutionally different
because the mold and the cooking processes differ from world to world. There is nothing
essential that remains unchanged. By contrast, the language of “masks” and “scripts”

suggests that there is an underlying thing that remains the same in spite of superficial

appearances and actions.

g

34 . . . . . . . .
H ere I am thInkIng about the IrreverSIble denaturing of proteIn molecules as they are subjected to heat.

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The cake metaphor reaches its limit because subjectivity is highly malleable in a
way that cake batter is not. The structuring social world can influence one in substantial
ways. As multiplicitous subjects. we are (unlike cakes) able to coalesce in many different
ways. Thus, it can be hard to understand and sustain the metaphysics of curdled
subjectivity in one’s thinking.

Lugones uses the metaphor ofan emulsion as one way in which to begin thinking
about multiplicity. Emulsions are unstable liquid mixtures. It is possible to carefully
blend ingredients like oil and egg yolk until the oil and yolk form a relatively smooth
texture. However, this blending process is tricky. Particular globs might coalesce. break
down. reorganize, etc. In any case the emulsion is never a single pure substance.35 Given
this insight, when we focus on subjects, Lugones intends that we attune to the ways in
which subjects are multiple. It becomes possible to discern the multiplicity of selves
present in the uneven emulsion of subjectivity.

In addition to thinking about curdled emulsions, it is important to think about how
containers function. They are a clue to thinking about how subjects can be curdled yet be
presented in a particular context as though it were a pure substance. In a multiplicitous
subjectivity particular selves or one self may coalesce into the foreground. This takes
place when a social construct emerges around the subject and as the subject willfully

animates the construct. Imagine the relationship between a container and contents.“

 

’5 A helpful contrast might be a mixture of sugar and water. The sugar dissolves in the water so that one

has a container of pure sugar water. Meanwhile emulsions like yolk and oil are an unstable blend in which
tiny beads of oil are temporarily suspended in the yolk. The mixture is always a muddle (multiple); the oil
doesn’t dissolve in the yolk.

l have not yet noted a specific passage in which Lugones focuses on how containers can function.
Nevertheless, I think it is a helpful way to consider the interplay between social worlds and subjectivities.

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Variously shaped containers can display some or all of what they contain yet also
presents the contents in different ways.

For example, an ice cream cone can prominently display the topmost scoop and
yet hide or contain the dribbling melted bits that are channeled within the narrow part of
the cone. A salad dressing bottle might be purchased with a decorative foil wrapper that
politely covers the long neck of the bottle where a hefty quantity of oil settles in waiting.
A wide, shallow bowl spreads the contents more thinly so that multiple ingredients are
each visible and dispersed across the bottom of the bowl. Differently shaped containers
call attention to the way in which an emulsion can be formed and displayed. Some
containers are duplicitous constructs, designed to coax a specific coalescence into the
foreground. What one sees when purchasing the salad dressing is the flavorful “low fat”
part of the dressing. It looks like pure flavor without guilt. or at least that’s what we are
encouraged to see. The important thing for sustaining a conception of ontological
multiplicity in the subject is to remain attuned to the subtle and even hidden forms of
impurity. The idea of a “construct” or a “container” helps one to Imagine the way in
which a social world can shape an individual by pressuring and coaxing certain
characteristics into the foreground. Yet we need not be fooled into thinking that there are
only pure subjects.

While containers and emulsions are useful images, they do not always remind us
that subjects must be understood as active beings engaged with other subjects. The
image of a container that shapes an emulsion may lead one to think that subjects are
isolated in containers and that they passively occupy the container. Lugones does not

assume an ontologically independent subject of the sort posited in the liberal tradition.

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Further, subjects can be efficacious. A subject can co-deterrnine her identity. She
engages with other subjects and may act upon the material dimensions of her context.
Think of the subject as three-dimensional, like a heavy and unevenly mixed cookie batter
that fills out a space, clings to itself, but is also capable of pressing against and molding
the surrounding context and the other cookies. Lugones is seeking just this sort of
ontological multiplicity and the capacity for liberatory agency. Sustaining her approach
to multiplicity is accomplished by sensitivity to multiplicity, other subjects. containers.

and the ability of the subject to codeterrnine her identity.

Day-to-Day Multiplicity

How does this multiplicity of selves emerge in day-to-day experience? Consider
a woman who goes to work in a busy office. This social context is structured by a
physical building designed for office work, specific duties defined by a job description. a
hierarchy of authority within the office, legal codes that pertain to employers and
employees, rules of etiquette for business settings, the inter-office culture of formality or
familiarity, current office projects and deadlines, etc. These components function
together to define a space that may be inhabited and maintained. The woman who works
in this social construct is urged to coalesce into a particular self (perhaps a couple of
selves) as she negotiates the workday. She is urged (by the space of a cubicle. the
watchful boss, the threat of reprimands for violations of regulations or etiquette) to be
task oriented. deferential, and appropriately mannered. This self wells up as a foreground
identity while the surrounding social structures coax it forward. She is not without her

own imaginative ideas for navigating this familiar social world. Feeling dissatisfied with

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the strictures of her boss but poorly positioned for direct action. she covertly captures a
bug from under her desk and deposits the critter on the desk of her boss. In this example.
the subject is active. The animation and the coaxing co-occur. On Lugones’s account
neither the subject’s agency nor the social world is consistently dominant. Rather the
subject and the surrounding social worlds have shifting levels of efficacy. The subject
herself has shifting levels of efficacy.

Lugones is serious about multiplicity. The above paragraph might be taken to
suggest that subjectivity is multiple but that there are a relatively small number of selves:
a work self. a leisure self, and the occasional authoritative self. Actually, Lugones
suggests no upper limit of selves for multiplicitous subjectivity. Like Daly, Lugones sees
that constant construction and evolution take place in subjectivity. This is the case
because we are continually negotiating shifting social worlds. In the space of a workday
the context changes significantly when one moves from cubicle to break room to
restroom.

I am calling attention to the fact that the workplace can be internally complex and
call for different selves: one that is obsequious before a petty boss, one that is sociable
and lively among co-workers in the break room. one that is focused and diligent in a
cubicle, etc. If one were to look at any one of these selves, the portrait might be quite
detailed. The person who is required to behave deferentially might be devoting all of her
energy and people-reading skills to the task of using exactly the right words, conveying
the right body language. speaking in the right tone, and pushing only the right buttons.
Nevertheless. the foreground deferential employee provides only a limited aspect of the

person. The molding context may fool the observer to seeing one coalesced self. a

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properly dutiful, reduced subject. But this is not necessary. We can remember that she
is a multiplicitous subject. This deferential employee faintly blended with other aspects
of her subjectivity. She retains resistant potential should she animate her multiplicity.

These various structural features of office life may be absent from the same
woman’s home life. She may go home to a house that is her own, designed for leisure
and day-to-day needs. One’s behavior here may be very different than it is at work. Of
course the world is still structured. The spaces of the house are designed for leisure and
practical household work. The kitchen is larger and more outfitted than whatever might
exist at the office, there are more windows to vent the air and stare out of on idle days.
there are comfy chairs for taking a nap. etc. The structure of the house is designed to be
one in which one can even ignore a mess by closing the door. disregard dirty dishes, grill
hotdogs for a midnight snack. etc. The structure of the house coaxes a different self into
the foreground.

This ongoing interaction between subject and construct demonstrates that there is
no static subject-object separation wherein one might define the surrounding world as
external or other than the subject. The objects and the subjects are involved in a process
of codeterrnining each other.37 There is no assumption of an ontologically independent
subject. Radical feminist subjectivity is not outfitted with the forms of ontological
independence familiar from Classical Liberalism; rather. subjects actively co-determining
each other and the contexts of their activities. Subjectivity on Lugones’s analysis is not

an essential substance that is separate and distinct from a surrounding world of objects

 

’7 This is why it is important to think in terms of multiple contexts and the coalescence of multiple selves.
When the woman mentioned above goes home and makes dinner, she coalesces into a different self, one
that is perhaps in contradiction with the work self. She might be messy. leave dishes for days, close doors
and ignore piles of dirty laundry. By contrast. her work identity requires habituated tidiness and a precise
filing system. Thus. she is both a slob and vigilantly tidy.

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and other subjects. Identities are formed amid the convergence of inventive personal
action. interaction with other subjects, and contact with material constructs of one’s

world. The subject codeterrnines its identity.

Liminal Insight

In addition to the account of multiplicitous subjectivity and the various selves.
Lugones writes of liminality. What does it mean to speak of the limen? The limen can
be characterized as that which is in between specific social worlds. It is not a physical
space or place. It is a temporal space in which one experiences the threshold between
one construct and another. The idea that liminality is possible is grounded in the
experience of multiple social worlds. We pass into andlout of various social worlds, each
of which provides a construct that urges the subject to coalesce into a particular identity.
We have the experience of this as we move from the task-oriented cubicle. to the raucous
break room, to an empty home. If we accept the idea of multiple social worlds that coax
subjectivities into becoming different identities or selves in these multiple worlds, then
we can also think of ourselves existing between contexts. We can think of ourselves as
existing on the threshold between social constructions. such that no one world has us full
in its grip.

Liminality is a moment between worlds. We do not necessarily experience
liminality every day or in every transition into another social world. Sometimes
liminality is the jarring shock of realizing that we are perhaps caught between worlds—

perhaps between one that we are trying to enter but another that unexpectedly takes hold.

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In other occasions we cultivate a moment of liminal reflection. Anzaldua offers the
following description:
That focal point of fulcrum, that juncture where the mestiza stands, is
where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the possibility of uniting all
that is separate occurs. This assembly is not one where severed or
separated pieces merely come together. Nor is it a balancing of opposing
powers. In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third
element which is greater than the sum ofits severed parts. That third
element is a new consciousness—a mestiza consciousness—and although
it is a source of pain. its energy comes from continual creative motion that
keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm (79-80).
Here we find Anzaldua coaxing forward the consciousness of multiplicity, noting the
subtle ways a subject admits of various selves—all muddled, contradictory, and
inseparable. She writes of living at the threshold. The idea of threshold between
frameworks encourages one to consider multiplicity, though one may not experience a
similarly sharp realization to that of Anzaldt'ta. The concept of a threshold, the
experience of crossing a social threshold. can be fodder for insight. Subjects are
multiple, though we may have enough social privilege that we experience primarily
structured social words coherent with each other. These coherent worlds may not, in and
of themselves. nurture the idea of multiplicity. But the concept of threshold between
worlds reminds one that there are multiple worlds and multiplicitous subjectivity.

In addition to thinking of liminality as an experience of jarring awkwardness, it is
also important to notice that liminality can be viewed as a moment of integration. My
own work on a radical feminist conception of freedom employs the idea of integration.
We have already seen Daly’s use of ‘integrity.’ For Daly, integrity is achieved by one

who overcomes the fragmentation of her identity. becomes whole and forges a unified

self. I do not propose that integrity or integration is a matter of wholeness or unity. Daly

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views integrity as a form of radical consistency with the self. A woman of integrity is
one who successfully embodies her will in effective action. I imagine something
different. At moments of integration, the many selves, with their complimentary and
contradictory qualities, are left unstructured and able to interrningle. One is still a
socialized being with a history, social relationships. a will, and various futural projects.
But the social pressure to be a single well-defined self that fits a well-defined world is

absent. In this case, the subject is not urged to become singular, coherent, and internally

consistent. It is partially shaped by social history and often a contradictory muddle with
various futural expectations. The liminal absence of structure is what allows the

individual to experience the integrated multiplicity.

 

The experience of integrated multiplicity offers unique possibilities. The logic of
oppression, as it is implemented within hierarchal, exploitive. oppressive social worlds.
functions by reducing the identity of the subject. As I argue in Chapter One, the
ontological reduction of the subject is a necessary step in constituting a servile
subjectivity. Multiplicity is dangerous from the perspective of the .oppressor. Without
multiplicity, we are without intellectual, cognitive and imaginative resources for radical
critique. Living as a reduced being. a being purified of multiplicity, tangled in the mind-
binds of patriarchy, we can perhaps ask for improvement. But we need more resources if
we are to conceive of be-ing feminist and inventing our own freedom.

The experience of integrated multiplicity allows for a conceptual space in which
the imagination is not constrained by a specific set of socially constructed boundaries.
The integration is not a fomr of unity. Instead, it is a form of multiplicity wherein

palpably different selves are in muddled contact with each other. The uneven integration

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gives access to multiple vocabularies, strategies, and modes of thinking all at once. In
most contexts these differing and perhaps contradictory selves would not meet. Breaking
out of the deadly reductions of patriarchal domination is facilitated by awareness of
multiplicity—liminal awareness.

Daly’s language does not include a discussion of liminality. However it is clear
that she sees the need for something akin to liminality. On a day to day basis, in the
grind of patriarchal living, we are coaxed to believe that this structure is all there ever is
and all there ever could be. Patriarchy must project itself as an all encompassing reality.
Daly views this as the guise assumed by the patriarchal “foreground. The foreground is
the “male-centered and mono-dimensional area where fabrication, objectification, and
alienation take place” (Wickedam 76). However. Daly is quick to note that the
foreground. though it captures our attention. is not all there is. She remains aware of the
experience and value of “Boundary Living.” Having evaded the reductions of patriarchy,
even briefly, one acquires resources for radical critique and remaking the self. One can
potentially face the foreground of patriarchy without being a mere vehicle of patriarchal
use. It is the activity of “Presentiating the Background in the midst of the foreground
conditions by communicating contagious Courage, Pride, and other Volcanic Virtues”
(Wickedag: 67). Confounding the foreground and moving into the background is the
philosopher queen’s road to feminist be-ing.

Daly’s remarks on “integrity” are brief. yet suggestive. And it is clear that she
thinks boundary living is valuable for radical feminism. I am interested in developing a
conception of integrity that does not postulate unity as a goal of liberatory subjectivity. I

am interested in using the term ‘integrity’ to name the activity of ongoing integration of

 

multiplicity. To undertake projects with integrity means that we foster a condition in
which we are aware of our multiplicity and the imagination is given as much range to
play as possible. When constrained within a specific social world, the imagination may
lack range because the reduction to one self obscures anything outside of the boundaries
of that social world. Radical feminist be-ing seems impossible for a reduced being
existing within the context of oppression. But awareness of one’s multiplicity means that
the imagination is not forced to work from patriarchal purity. Instead one has a range of
selves and ideas that can be brought into new arrangements. used to create strategies of
resistance, sabotage, and even freedom.

It is in moments of liminality that the multiplicity of subjectivity is most
accessible for the subject. It may be that two distinct and contradictory selves emerge in
a particular instance. For example, one might imagine a middle class white woman who
recognizes her own multiplicity and internally contradictory selves. Perhaps she is made
aware of her simultaneous identities as racist and anti racist. This is one sense of
liminality wherein a small set of identities have curdled into an uneasy company.

The second sense of liminality may be characterized by what I call integration.
One could have an awareness of a small set of curdlings. However, it is also possible to
have the contrasting experience of a hodgepodge of partially suspended identities. Here I
am thinking of the experience in which one is aware of the sheer number of selves that
one can exhibit, the fact that can be present as a confusing muddle. all in suspension and
yet palpable in their variety.

In such moments we don’t experience one identity that has coalesced in such a

way that it forcefully assumes the foreground. Rather, we have a larger number of

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identities partially coalesced and muddled. A woman might recognize multiple identities:
white, privileged, with middle class values and high skill labor abilities: underpaid.
exploited, living only marginally above the poverty line and without insurance; able
bodied and yet often in pain, unable to work strenuously; a defiant intellect, social
activist, sharp tongued even with family members who are less “evolved”; a tired and
deferential employee who just tries to stay below the radar. etc. The subject can see
herself as multiplicitous in such a way that the complexity is integrated and no one clear
and consistent identity exists. No one identity is distinctly foregrounded. Rather, they

are all blended into each other as an integrated curdled mass.

Conclusion

Characterizing the subject as multiply structured is worth the challenges, thinks
Lugones, because it reflects experience and because theorizing multiplicitous subjectivity
can help provide possibilities for resistant action on the part of oppressed and reduced
agents. Both experiential and political reasons recommend the multiplicitous subject.

Many individuals have the daily and hourly experience of navigating a world
which structures them as outsiders. It is also the case that these same individuals may
travel to worlds in which they are insiders. When experience presents seemingly
fractured and contradictory selves, one begins to wonder why there would be so much
focus on theorizing a single, unified, enduring, subjectivity. Such a thing might be
logically possible. But this single, unified, enduring subjectivity isn’t necessarily found

in experience. And more importantly. the single unified and enduring subjectivity

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undermines attempts to subvert oppression. For this reason. Lugones is giving up the
goal of a unified self that is part of experience or political goal for feminism.

In this chapter, I have sought to explore the significance of curdled and pure
separations as these ideas shape our potential understanding of subjectivity. Being
attentive to the way in which one thinks about purity and multiplicity has important
implications for subjectivity. To assert that subjects are multiple but without unity,
hierarchy, or a transcendental ego means that we must think of them as highly malleable.
internally curdled, and able to coalesce into different formations as the social world
makes demands. On this approach. the facets of one’s life need not be seen as completely
separate things, but different coalescences that one is in touch with and remembers, that
one can draw upon, that one can forget or ignore. Such various coalescences are possible
while engaged in a given social world. If we approach subjectivity in this way, we avoid
splitting the subject into internal substances that are organized and unified through a
hierarchy. We leave open the possibility for a subject who might integrate her curdled
multiplicity, making the multiple selves accessible, even as she is pressed to coalesce
towards a particular kind of self. The knowledge of these many selves can then become a
resource for resistance. for imagining possibilities, and for courageous action. In this
way the ongoing act of integrating multiplicity can generate resistance and perhaps

freedom.

Chapter 4
Initiating the Inquiry into a Radical Feminist Conception of Freedom

Introduction

Until now radical feminists have left the concept of freedom under-theorized.
The focus on resistance and oppression, wholly necessary to radical feminism, drew the
radical feminist’s eye and her attention. A careful analysis of oppression and its
operation allows us to see women as a inhabiting a cage, though we may experience
different specific barriers. The analysis of oppression facilitates our survival, our
critiques of domination, and our work to evade thorough capture. Analytically.
‘resistance’ as a concept references the concept of ‘oppression.’ When we speak of
resistance, whether we speak of people or objects, it is resistance against some other
force. The cattails resist the probing hull of a canoe. the wind resistance lowers a car’s
efficiency. the resistance of firm soil allows one to climb a hill, an employee resists the
sexual advances of her boss, and Take Back the Night rallies resist the silence and agent-
deletion that help men commit rape, assault, and incest. In radical feminist activism and
writing, ‘resistance’ as a practice and as a concept is used to reference individual and
community efforts that undermine, or disrupt, or hold off, or call attention to the
operation of oppressive social practices. Many things are possible with analytical
concepts of oppression and resistance. Consider just a few feminist acts that have
developed out of the focus on oppression and resistance: survival, pirate-like theft of
patriarchal resources. feminist separatism. We cannot do without the concepts of
oppression and resistance.

We also need concepts that do not immediately reference oppression. If we lack

concepts that reference worlds that are non-oppressive, then the imagination remains

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within the framework of oppression. The imagination continues to be constricted by said
framework. We give up on the idea that radical feminism might have other work than
resistance and incremental change. ‘Freedom,’ as I understand the concept. is valuable
because it does not necessarily reference oppression. The exploration of be-ing free
facilitates a positive account of existence in which oppression is not the primary
constitutive factor in our lives. ‘Freedom’ is missing when our attention is drawn mainly
to oppression and resistance. The focus on resistance and oppression is crucial but must
be complemented with an understanding and a practice of be-ing free. For this reason it
is important that radical feminist writing and practice draw freedom into the foreground.
In the following pages I will introduce my own account of freedom as mode of be-ing
undertaken by curdled subjects who live in contemporary worlds. I initiate a new

discourse. a radical feminist discourse on freedom.

Utopia Forestalled

In undertaking this project. 1 advance a non-utopian conception of freedom. A
radical feminist conception of freedom must work in the current context of oppression.
Developing radical feminism in this way is a cautious endeavor that walks the line
between the feminist desire to invent ourselves and the wary radical feminist
acknowledgement that utopian dreams are misspent energy. Although some radical
feminist may hope for worlds that are not wrought of oppression. the absence of utopian
fantasies is characteristic of radical feminism. If we were familiar with oppression only
as an abstract concept, rather than a concrete factor of daily life, then perhaps we would

pair the abstract notion of oppression with abstract utopian solution. But of course

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oppression and resistance are concrete features of our lives and so we are cognizant of the
work that must be done in our concrete lives. This awareness is one reason radical
feminists have not ventured into utopian thinking.

There is a second important reason radical feminists have avoided utopian
thinking. Our remembered existence and our imaginations have been wrought of
patriarchal machinations. We must remain ever-concemed with uncovering the mind-
binds of patriarchy. Knowing that we carry patriarchy with us. in spite of our best
efforts to the contrary. constructing utopias would unavoidably replicate the values and
practices of patriarchy. There are, instead of utopias, cautious moves to consider what
our existence would be like if we were not so thoroughly shaped by oppression. The
crucial point is that such positive theorizing and practice is acknowledged as provisional.

My own work to invent a radical feminist conception of freedom is marked by the
conscious effort to avoid any suggestion of utopia. It is an understanding of freedom
suited to the current context, a context in which we continue to face oppression, continue
to struggle against the mind-binds of patriarchy. and yet we work to prepare the
imagination for positive accounts of non-oppressive worlds. I do offer a conception of
freedom that shall apply today, but not necessarily to some distant and as yet unimagined

future.

The Subject Who Can Be Free
I begin to conceptualize freedom while retaining insights from Lugones and Daly.
From Lugones I retain the idea that subjects are multiple. Each subject encompasses

many selves. From Daly I retain the idea that reality, Be-ing, is an unfolding process in

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which subjects can create their own existence. Fusing these ideas from Daly and
Lugones requires thinking of the subject as engaged in the process of creating itself as
multiple. The subject can be multiple in more than one way. as curdled multiplicity or
fragmented multiplicity. The way of being multiple depends on the structures of the
worlds she navigates. her engagement with other subjects. and her own will. Some of
the worlds she navigates are designed to allow and foster impurity. Other worlds are
constructed to purify and effectively dominate.

In worlds that are constructed for the purpose of domination, the subordinated
subject’s own will is coerced to facilitate efficient exploitation. She is crafty and
inventive, so she must be ontologically altered through strategies that reduce her to a
more manageable form. In particular, her multiplicity must be reduced. She must be
brought to know herself only within-the given context of domination and as having only
the available options presented by the coercive context. Her other selves are excluded.
rendered invisible. and effectively fragmented away. Having lost contact with her
multiplicity, she is more easily led to know only a fragment of herself, to be this one self,
to act in accordance with the limited options given to her by hetero-patriarchy. Thus. she
wills according to what is permitted by the cage of oppression and creates herself as
fragmented. She lives as a purified and frozen being.

By contrast. the subject may be a curdled multiplicity. The selves are not reduced
away or fragmented from each other. Instead the many selves are cultivated to rub edges.
blend, intermingle in potentially disconcerting ways. Be-ing curdled prepares the subject
to better resist oppression. In fact. the very cultivation of curdled multiplicity is

resistance to the purifying forces of oppression. Even more than this. the curdled subject

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has resources to effect change in her surroundings. The curdling of selves allows one to
invent and experiment with resistant strategies. Though the surrounding world may work
to reduce the subject. cultivating and sustaining curdled multiplicity makes resistant
invention possible in ways that are difficult to conceptuali. :e were we to hold fast to
purity.

The work of understand the subject as curdled is strategic. In the first chapter, in
my initial explorations of the ontology of oppression, I showed that the logic of purity
constructs a reduced subject. The ontological reduction is a necessary stage in forging a
reduced subject for patriarchal use. Fighting back requires a conceptual shift to a logic
that facilitates resistance rather than domination. The subject must be re-envisioned
within the logic of curdling. This is one part of the analysis of subjectivity.

The second part of the analysis of subjectivity includes conceptualizing the
subject within a process ontology. Radical feminist realities are understood to be created
through the ontological activity of subjects. The possibility of this approach is obscured
from view in hetero-patriarchy. Effective domination of women requires that women
become frozen. Those dominated must be convinced that no other form of existence is
possible. Breaking out of the frozen forms of patriarchy requires an ontology in which
feminist realities can be created. To understand be-ing as a verb means ones metaphysics
support the idea that feminist imaginations. activism. and ways of living can create
worlds that do not oppress.

My question becomes this: What is freedom for curdled subjects? In opening a
discourse on radical feminist freedom, I frame the study by asking about freedom from

within the logic of curdling and within a process ontology. It is in the logic of curdling

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that we formulate a new conception of subjectivity. It is within a process ontology that
subjects are able to create feminist worlds. It is only in the logic of curdling and process

ontology that a radical feminist conception of freedom can be developed.

Freedom and Resistance as Ontological Activities

Freedom is an ontological activity. I understand freedom as a specific mode of
be-ing in which one works from cultivated curdled-multiplicity. opening possibilities/or
action while navigating our many social worlds. This understanding of freedom is
complex and so I will parse out the various components.

‘Freedom’ names a mode of being. The metaphysical framework I adopt from
Daly describes reality as an unfolding process. Be-ing unfolds partly through the willed
actions of individuals. In particular, social institutions and forms of life are created
through what we do. Of course we do lots of things—wash dishes, carpool to work,
flagrantly ridicule patriarchs, scheme for ways to undermine racist hiring practices.
organize rallies, etc. To speak of modes of be-ing is to acknowledge that we have many
ways of constituting reality. To name these modes of be-ing allows for greater clarity.
Daly herself invents a great many verb names that distinguish differing modes of be-ing.
I’m inventing two verb names. The two modes of be-ing that are important to my work
are be-ing resistant and be-ing free.

Be-ing resistant can be fleetingly enacted or a sustained practice. Consider how
one might briefly engage in a resistant mode of be-ing when one encounters a specific
patriarchal behavior. A woman rarely meets distant relatives. but does chance upon one

in the drug store. Although well schooled to be physically accessible to men and polite in

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social contexts, she opts to resist by pointedly refuse to hug this male relative, pulling
back as he seeks to wrap an arm around her shoulder. She is expected to allow this
physical form of greeting, but she resists being reduced to touchable object. This act is
fleeting: she may not yet have incorporated this refusal into her habits of etiquette. But it
momentarily disrupts the patriarchal expectation that women are physically accessible.
particularly to their male relatives. In this moment she creates herself as resistant.

In contrast to this fleeting moment. be-ing resistant can take the form of sustained
habits. One might consistently refuse to watch popular entertainment in which men
abuse women. Images of women being abused by men are so common that they often
serve as a mere plot device for the arc of male characters. The sustained practice of
changing TV channels and researching movies before purchasing a ticket can take
considerable effort, even if one limits the definition of abuse to physical and especially
sexual violence. Though it takes effort, it can become habitual resistance to patriarchy.

Like be-ing resistant, be-ing free is sometimes fleeting and sometimes part of a
sustained practice. Consider again the woman who refuses to submit to a “polite” hug.
This example is worth investigating further because it can also depict a fleeting moment
of be-ing free. Suppose she is a curdled subject, a muddle of capitalist consumer socially
accustomed to making demands for satisfaction, a frustrated friend struggling to help a
loved one navigate the medical system. and a well schooled female relative coaxed to be
touchable as he approaches her. She is all of these selves and more as she is coaxed to be
polite and receive a hug. As her various selves interact, she remembers her demands for
satisfaction, helping her friend to create boundaries when being treated by doctors,

responding to the current coaxing context in which she is becoming a reasonably polite

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family member who is somewhat interested in her approaching relative. She might
fleetingly invent possibilities for this context: use the hand basket to create a boundary,
boldly meet his eye and extend only a hand in greeting, briskly announce that “I’m not
into hugs.” and then cheerfirlly inquire after his immediate family. She may opt for all or
none of these. The point is. these possibilities are invented by a curdled subject and
would be strategically unavailable were she only the reduced subject encountering a male
relative in public. Be-ing resistant and be-ing free differ in that resistance continues to
reference the coercive forces of oppression while the key achievement of be-ing free is
the opening of possibilities.

A radical feminist conception of freedom, as I am creating it, involves a
component concept—integrity. I require this concept because I move from a particular
view of subjectivity. The curdled subject. not the hierarchally unified subject, is a
starting place. The fact that I begin with a curdled subject must remain before us as we
think about freedom. The radical feminist subject who makes herself free is
simultaneously engaged (necessarily so) in the process of cultivating her multiplicity as
she acts with others. It is an ongoing process that is both a matter of practical activity
and metaphysical disposition. The axis of value around which activity is organized is one
of feminist process. not permanence or certainty.

I will give a more detailed example of a subject who is made uncomfortably
aware of her own multiplicity. She is not purely reduced, though she has sufficient
privilege that she is occasionally caught off guard by her multiplicity. While she could I
seek to manage her multiplicity through fragmentation, she does not. Instead, she seeks

to sustain a curdled integration of selves and to invent possibilities from the resources

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offered by such integration. Suppose we imagine a white woman who is often quite
immersed in one particular world. She works on a campus and is part of the staff for the
university. She spends hours each day engaged in that particular world with all of its
rules, forms of etiquette. and daily rhythms. She knows that world and how to navigate
it. She knows how to help students solve academic problems. She works at being fair
with all the students she sees.

Though she is aware of her skin privilege, she works intentionally and habitually
at being anti-racist. Within the scope of her job, this means that she tries to see that
academic concerns voiced by students of color are addressed promptly. To this end she
has managed to sort through red tape and help some students of color with various kinds
of enrollment problems. She has connected students with campus resources and advisers
that may foster stronger community connections for the student.

For the most part, her work world coaxes her to be focused and diligent about
serving students. For the most part, she is able be anti-racist without experiencing
disharmony among her various selves. However, this world is suddenly disrupted. While
going to her car in the parking garage, she finds herself in a dark stairwell with a couple
of young black men. The situation and encounter construct and coax her coalescence as a
white woman. The young black men are aware of her as a woman and white, mark her
presence with a nod or murmured greeting. But she is not simply a white woman. her
antiracist self find itself at odds with the unexpected emergence of a contradictory self
that is racist and forcefirlly demanding suspicion of these men. She is frustrated to find
herself altering her body and behavior to appear strong and sour tempered, and get out of

the stairwell with all possible speed. In this moment, she experiences her own

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subjectivity as multiple. These selves might argue vigorously. The antiracist self might
argue that the other is paranoid. She might cite statistics about the rarity of stranger rape.
might cite the obvious fact that the two men have noted her presence with but promptly
returned to the pressing issue of a group project in their psychology lab. Nevertheless.
the self that remembers years steeped in stories about white women being the targets of
black men, the danger of dark stairwells, and the social obsession with stranger rape—
this self remains vigorous and demanding. In this instance we have a moment where this
woman might recognize her own multiplicity. Some of her identities have curdled into a
unruly blend.

She could seek to ruthlessly suppress the racist self, seeking to reduce it out of
existence, or at least sharply exclude it from her decision making process. In effect, she
can animate a reduced subjectivity. She might do this and yet also seek to be resistant.
She resists the pull of racism, affects a calm and benign demeanor, and continues to her
car. But notice that she freezes herself in this move to deny contact with her racist self.
She closes a range of possibilities that could be productive for her anti-racist self.

How might it be possible for this multiplicitous subject to lay hold of her
multiplicity and to befree in this small comer of her life? I understand freedom to be a
social activity. One works from curdled multiplicity yet towards engagement with others.
She can invent options. She could find a way to move past being merely caught between
racist and anti-racist or being in denial about her racism. She could extend herself
towards these men, in brief conversation that might develop into an exchange that
complicates their relationship beyond the acknowledgement and passing greeting.

“Psych lab? I know some faculty there. Who’s your professor and what’s the project?”

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Perhaps this becomes a genuine conversation, perhaps not. The point is that she acts
from a position of curdled multiplicity and calls upon this multiplicity as she seeks to
engage with them. Notice that the same brief remarks to the men may satisfy various
selves in different ways. The racist self leaps at the opportunity for collecting proactive
information—determine their identity! The anti-racist asks about their project in similar
ways that she asks about so many students’ lives and worries. The young men, faced
with unexpected conversation from a white woman, engage with her in their own ways.
one perhaps offering brief polite remarks because she presents herself as a university
official. The other young man feigns straitening his stack of books to avoid engagement.
It is an uncertain and brief exchange. She could continue to cultivate this multiplicity and
carry it with her as something to discuss with fi'iends. Over lunch they talk about the
problems of whiteness, how it plays out in her life and the lives of her white fiiends, how
it effects their interactions with people of color, especially students, neighbors, and even
folks out walking their dogs. These types of discussions that draw whiteness forward as a
topic of concern are often helped not merely by being anti-racist, but by remembering
that one is multiple. Integrating this multiplicity into one’s awareness allows for forms of
feminist invention. One invents possibilities that would not be intelligible to the
fragmented subject.

Suppose, that a subject is like this, multiplicitous, formed of many selves that are
often split-separated through the logic of purity. We have been taught to think such
fragmentation is good. Lovers of purity that we are, it is better to have a well ordered self
and suppress our racism. Successfully managing away contradiction has seemed to be a

virtue. In fact. purity and a well-ordered self does not indicate that one is virtuous.

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Fragmentation facilitates domination. When we shift to a logic of curdling we are able to
see subjects engaged in rich resistance. When they break towards each other, when the
racist and the anti-racist self break towards each other, the integration is a rich blend
fraught with internal contradictions, frustrations, passionate devotions, roiling
differences. To become integrated, be-ing free, is an ongoing process of cultivating this
muddled'complexity (in spite of the logic of purity with all its reductions) as one
negotiates worlds that are exciting. dangerous. mundane. oppressive, and occasionally
non-coercive.

If we begin with a conception of multiplicitous subjectivity, and keep the notion
of an ongoing curdled integration in mind, then we do not so easily imagine freedom as
something like a moment of reflection in which all the pieces fit and a single agent is
ontologically and practically able to act upon its choices. The freedom of a multiplicitous
being is not a form of life in which ones actions and decisions are characterized by
consistency with some singular authentic self. Be-ing free, as I want to speak of it here,
is a possibility for the impure. It is a way of be-ing wherein the subject continually
creates her identity as an integration of curdled selves, opening possibilities as a matter of
regular practice. One fosters personal action and social engagement characterized by
impurity and even opposition. In the practice of freedom we engage in ongoing invention
and interplay that is never purified. To live as such a being is to be in motion,
structurally unstable, surrounded by boundaries, but certainly capable of inventing
possibilities for action.

What is freedom for a radical feminist? It is this ontological activity undertaken

by the curdled subject. the creative work of cultivating herself as a curdled integration.

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and opening possibilities while navigating many social worlds. Be-ing curdled can mean
one makes choices, pursues goals and tasks with one’s selves integrated in the given
practice or project. One invents choices where they had not previously existed. The
choices do not come from a purification, or reduction, of one’s multiplicity. Be-ing a
curdled integration of selves means one invents possibilities and pursues projects (poetry,
fiction, music, art, friendships, love, activism. dinner parties. support groups, social
analysis, etc) that are not involved in patterns of reduction, internal or external

domination, internal or external submission.

Resistance, Freedom, and Integrity

Why conceptualize the process of acting from integrated curdled multiplicity as
freedom? After all, other radical feminists who have worked in this area have used the
term resistance. Why do we need to talk about freedom? I want to retain the radical
feminist project of creating a positive account of life in which. although there may be
acknowledged coercion, there are not systematic structures of oppression. To accomplish
this goal. I need to draw freedom into focus where we have primarily attended to
resistance. We need a radical feminist conception of freedom, a concept that specifically
fosters our project of preparing ourselves for worlds that are not systematically
oppressive.

Given the context of oppression we need practical flexibility in order to resist our
immediate interactions with those who would dominate us. The understanding of the
subject as curdle-integrating multiple selves offers unique possibilities for understanding

freedom in the here and now: it also prepares the radical feminist imagination for less

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oppressive social worlds. The logic of oppression as it is implemented within hierarchal
and exploitive social worlds functions by reducing the identity of the subject. Without
ongoing curdled integration, we are reduced and more easily immobilized in various
social worlds. The experience of curdled integration allows for a conceptual space in
which the imagination is not constrained by a specific set of socially constructed
boundaries. It gives access to multiple vocabularies. strategies. and modes of thinking all
at once. In most contexts these differing and perhaps repellant selves would not meet.

Freedom, as I understand it here, opens possibilities from cultivating integrated
multiplicity as one navigates social worlds with others. To undertake projects of freedom
means that we foster a condition in which we are aware of our multiplicity and the
imagination is given as much range to play as possible. When constrained within a
specific social world, the imagination lacks range because the reduction to one self
obscures anything outside of the boundaries of that social world. Be-ing free seems
impossible for a reduced being existing within the context of oppression. But awareness
of one’s multiplicity means that the imagination‘is not forced to work from nothing.
Instead one has a range of selves and ideas that can be brought into new arrangements
and can create strategies of resistance. sabotage, and even a subject who is no longer

wholly subject to oppression.

Freedom without First Principles
In this explanation of freedom, I have moved in a step-by-step fashion, perhaps
suggesting that be-ing free unfolds in a linear way from a foundational metaphysics of

curdling, to a curdled willfiIl subject. to principled decision, to principled feminist action.

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Such linear and foundationalist thinking does not properly fit with process ontology. The
entire metaphysics of my project is better understood if one remembers that Be-ing is in
motion. The challenge is to think of profuse motion without lapsing into thinking there
can be no discemable order. I offer the image of an axis to help clarify the relationship
between be-ing free and the logic of curdling, to subvert the tendency to think of freedom
as arising from a linear and potentially foundationalist account of the metaphysics of
curdling.

The image of stellar bodies that rotate around an axis can be helpful.

Wittgenstein explores the metaphor of an axis. An axis is created as mass begins to move
in a certain kind of pattern. Consider the formation of a planet; a cloud of gas and dust
passes through a phase of accretion in which mass begins to clump together. The mass
begins to rotate. The emergence of this burgeoning organized motion allows one to
locate the axis around which this motion is centered. The axis is a line created by a
pattern of motion. The axis is not formed in advance such that the mass later begins to
move around it. Rather, the axis emerges from a gradually developing pattern.

Feminist realities may be thought of as complexes of practices, cultures. and
social relationships. Feminist realities are not configured by setting out principles and
then working in agreement with fixed principles. Instead, feminist realities emerge over
time as patterns of activity developed through experimentation and invention. A pattern
or practice develops, and as this happens, an axis is drawn and reinforced. The axis
marks a feminist value, but not a first principle or foundational metaphysical
commitment. In radical feminism as I have explored it in this dissertation, I think there is

an emerging axis of value: the metaphysics of curdling-process. The axis is explored and

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investigated at length in the work of Daly and Lugones. But the axis is created by radical
feminist theorizing, activism, and day-to-day feminist living. We create the metaphysics
of curdling-process as a valuable feature of radical feminism as we emerge from the logic
of purity and move into the activity of inventing new ways of relating. creating
knowledge, creating communities. and creating ourselves. When I write of freedom, I am
offering an understanding of freedom as a practice that circles and inscribes the ontology
of curdling-process.

My account of freedom differs from formal accounts of freedom in which laws, or
democratically informed rules for self—regulation, define the scope of one’s possibilities.
In Rousseau’s writing for example, freedom is living within the stable framework of laws
that one has helped to create. Rousseau’s is a formal account of freedom. It is formal
because a society could be “free” regardless of the specific laws, regardless of whether
the population is happy, regardless of whether there is a daily practice of democracy. On
Rousseau’s account, one can remove this sort of concrete detail, values, expression and
still evaluate whether the society is free.38 For him, locating freedom is a matter of

locating formal democratic conditions that organize the society.

Further Inscribing Radical Feminist Value

There are several areas of research that follow from my understanding of radical
feminist freedom. First, what type of political structures would complement be-ing free?
Certainly radical feminist freedom can take place within or alongside what is often

identified as a liberal democratic order. In fact, radical feminist freedom can flourish in

 

’8 Thus for example, we could regard a society as free though it had voted to abide by governmental
intrusion of the Patriot Act.

contexts of significant negative freedom, as within the context defined by the US. Bill of
Rights. However. I would not limit my inquiry to be-ing free in a context of negative
freedom. Freedomfrom patriarchy does provide the suggestion of a starting place but
what formal conditions of social order might develop around the axis of curdling—
process? I suspect that the writings of anarcha-feminists and anarchists generally will
prove useful. My first interest is the anarcha-feminist criticism of hierarchal social
relationships. These types of relationships create subject positions in which the person in
a position of authority is able to open possibilities, but those in the subordinated position
are mainly charged with following the dictates issued by the authority. Hierarchal
relationships normalize domination and subordination. they do not foster large
communities of individuals all interacting and opening possibilities.

My second interest in anarchism arises from the recognition that large scale
communities require systems of organization. Complex tasks, like providing for the
nutritional needs of a community, necessitate careful organization of material resources
and labor. Yet we need ways of thinking about social organization without automatically
relying on the use ofa hierarchy. As I develop a more robust conception of the social
and political structures that might reinforce the axis of curdling-process. I expect these
structures will enrich my radical feminist conception of be-ing free.

In order to locate the radical feminist activity of freedom, one must look to social
practices that take place on a daily basis, not merely the formal conditions that allow for
potential freedom. The advantage of anarchism is that it normalizes non-hierarchal forms
of organization in day-to-day life. Instead of being habituated to deference and

obedience, subjects see themselves as authoritative and act authoritatively where

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appropriate. Further they act as authorities without requiring obedience and
subordination from others in the community. This habitual behavior complements be-ing
free.

My second major research interest includes a deeper investigation of radical
feminist ethics. Hoagland’s Lesbian Ethics has already been a significant influence on
my work. I am interested in exploring ways women can engage with each other so as to
cultivate each other’s curdled multiplicity. A significant portion of Lesbian Ethics aims
to provide ways lesbians may relate to each other and foster each other’s agency in
contexts of oppression. Though she does not pursue a radical feminist virtue ethic, nor
does she think oflesbian ethics as cultivating multiplicity, I think we need a radical
feminist conception of virtue ethics. I mention virtue ethics because be-ing feminist is
partially a matter of habituated behavior. What habits of behavior, habits of engaging
with each other, can evolve around the axis of curdling process? And how might these
habits complement be-ing free? These are questions that enhance the understanding of

opening possibility as a matter of ordinary daily life.

Concluding Remarks

The radical feminist focus on oppression and resistance yields a conceptual and
political landscape wrought of resistance and incremental moves toward existence that is
not characterized by oppression. The ground before us, as far as one can imagine, is a
landscape perceived through the hopeful conceptual lenses of resistance. As feminists. it
is crucial that we are able to understand the operation of oppression and able to

understand and formulate resistant action. Oppression and resistance are necessary

categories of analysis because feminism currently functions within interlocking systems
of oppression like patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, ageism. colonialism, and economic
exploitation. Yet as feminists, we also require positive conceptions of existence beyond
the frameworks of oppression. In developing such positive conceptions we prepare
ourselves for radical feminist futures. futures that are no so extensively configured by
oppression.

The question that motivates my research is: What is freedom for curdled subjects
ever-engaged in creating themselves? Freedom, when it happens in fleeting gestures or
sustained activity. is the invention of that which has escaped temporarily or even left
behind the context of patriarchy. We require a radical feminist conception of freedom
because it fits with a politics that aims to undo oppression. We require a radical feminist
conception of freedom because we need many ways of be-ing in order to continue
inventing and creating feminist realities and feminist futures.

In developing this radical feminist conception of be-ing free. curdled multiplicity
becomes a resource for invention. As subjects navigate their many social worlds, they
are able to cultivate this curdled multiplicity and enact feminist projects that escape the
reductive confines of patriarchal existence. Radical feminists are thus in a better position

to invent worlds that are not characterized by oppression.

I24

Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Secaucus. NJ: The Citadel Press, 1949.
---. The Second Sex. H. M. Parshley, trans. New York: Random House. 1952.
Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia. “Maori—Lesbian—Feminist Radical.” Radically Speaking:
Feminism Reclaimed. Diane Bell and Renate Klein. eds. North Melbourne,

Australia: Spinifex Press, 1997.

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