Susanne Lettow
From
Revolution to Repetition. Time and Change in Feminist Theory.
As individuals with the capacity
to act we always have a relationship to time, that is to say, to the present,
the past and the future. The way in which we understand the arrangement of
these temporal dimensions has an effect on how we relate to ourselves and to
the world. It is a constitutive moment of agency and subjectivity. As for
feminists, it is essential for us to have an understanding, implicitly or
explicitly, of the present as being transformable toward a better future. But
in re-reading some of the paradigmatic texts of the second and third waves of
feminism of the last thirty years, one can notice a displacement in the
understanding of time and change. The hallmark of this conceptual
transformation which I will reconstruct and discuss below, is the shift from
>revolution< to >repetition<. The texts of second wave feminism,
such as those of Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone, envision emphatically a >sexual
revolution,< >cultural revolution< (Millett), or >feminist
revolution< (Firestone). Since the postmodernist critique of progress
however, we find that the concept of revolution is replaced by that of
repetition. This is the case in Luce Irigaray and in Judith Butler. Before I
discuss the different uses of the concept of repetition by Irigaray and Butler,
I will sum up the ideas of Millett and Firestone because I think that working
through the past, even on the level of theoretical projects, is a precondition
to developing future perspectives.
In 1969 and 1970, practically at
the same time, Kate Millett book Sexual
Politics and Shulamith Firestone book The
Dialectic of Sex appeared. Millett and Firestone situated themselves historically
in a process of social transformation which they identified as being in a
second stage or >second wave< of a sexual revolution. They both clearly
referred to a first phase which Millett dates from 1830 to 1930 and Firestone
dates from the mid-nineteenth century until the >the cultural backlash<
(1975, 29) began the 1920s. Considering the >sad decade< of the fifties,
this historical consciousness recovers the >memory of the goals of the
feminist movement< (30). It is, in my opinion, one of the strengths of these
texts which are for the most part like topographies of patriarchal domination,
tracing oppression in all spheres of lifeistorical, social, cultural,
individual and even biological.?
However, the metaphor of aves?suggests an impersonal flow or tidal
movement which partially obscures a reflection on the historical and social
conditions of the emergence of the second wave of feminism. Millett stresses
the >emergence of a new feminist movement< but also states that >it is
difficult to explain just why such a development occured when it did< (1981,
362).
Firestone, on the other hand,
bases the possibility of a feminist revolution in technological progress, that
is, in the development of reproductive technology and cybernetics.
Consequently, the feminist revolution as Firestone conceptualizes it is only
possible in the >technologically most advanced countries< (1975, 204).
There, > for the first time in history ... a real human life is possible<
(189). This perspective seems to be strangely restricted when one considers the
supposed niversal?approach of the theory which claims to expose patriarchal
domination in the whole of human history and even within the animal kingdom.
Firestone uses a concept of progress which has a Eurocentric bias and is based
on the idea that when nature is dominated progress emerges quasi-automatically
out of technological development. It is also connected to a concept of
revolution adopted from Marxist-Leninist discourse. According to the model of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, Firestone articulates the feminist
revolution as a >seizure of the control of reproduction by women< (17).
This includes the >possession of property rights of one own body< and
the temporary control over reproductive technologies >as well as over the
social institutions which are related to birth and the education of
children< (17). The problem here is the idea of a centre from which, once
controlled, all necessary transformations then begin to the point of annulling
the social significance of sexual differences.
At first glance, Millett
understanding of revolution seems to be much more adequate for conceptualizing
a feminst transformation of society.?
Because the goal of the sexual revolution is >a far more radical alteration
in the quality of life than that of most political revolutions,< Millett
argues that >it is easy to comprehend how this type of revolution, basic and
cultural as it is, has proceeded fitfully and slowly, more on the pattern of
the gradual but fundamental metamorphosis which the industrial revolution or
the rise of the middle class accomplished, than on the model of spasmodic
rebellion ... one observes in the French Revolution< (1981, 63). But
Millett view of the sexual revolution also proves to be problematic because
she conceptualizes it as a reversal of the pattern of the base and
superstructure, as >basically a matter of altered consciousness<
(362).?This then leads to
>abolishing racial caste and economic class< (363). It seems as if the
main function of the concept of revolution is to articularte the need for
radical change, but it does not include concrete situations and problematics.
It does not adequately address the various logistics and temporalities of
different forms of oppression or different social spheres. Millett concept of
feminist revolution has the tendency to leap over the present in anticipating
the future.
In postmodern feminism, where the
question arises how to think of the future and change, the concept of
repetition steps in to respond. In spite of the antithetical nature of their
theoretical projects, Irigaray and Butler meet at this point. For Irigaray, it
is the >effect of playful repetition< (1979, 78).?which reveals what has had to remain
concealed: the function of the feminine in language. She conceives of a mythic
origin and aims at >finding anew< what has been hidden. The function of
mimesis consists in opening up the authenticity for the - in the singular form
articulated - woman (81). It is an authenticity which consists in >never
pausing in a possible self-identity of any form< (81). The concept of
authenticity is borrowed from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger which as Ellen
Mortensen has stated >constitutes the veiled sub-text< of Irigaray (1994,
16). From Heidegger, Irigaray takes over the idea of the eturn to the origin?
which structures his whole philosophy. >Like Heidegger,< Mortensen
writes, >she believes that the coming of a new age of thinking necessitates
a re-turn to the questions raised by the Pre-socratics, and in ancient
mythology< (11). The ethic of sexual difference demands, as Irigaray puts
it, >de faire entrer dans listoire lnterpr彋ation de lubli des
g幯嶧logies f幦inines et dn r彋ablir lconomie< (1989, 121). Irigaray
articulates the relation to the past with the concept of forgetting. What
Heidegger calls the >forgottenness of being<, is for Irigaray the
forgetting of the maternal origin. In her book Ethique da la diff廨ence sexuelle, Irigaray sums up her reading and
critique of Heidegger. The element of air is articulated as female and
maternal. >Dans lubli de l?皻re,< Irigaray states, >aurait lieu
lubli de lir, de ce premier fluide qui se donne gratuitement et sans retour
avec le sang de la m鋨e< (1984, 122). One could take from Heidegger愀
philosophy that there is, as Irigaray puts it a >deuil jamais accompli de la
nidation intra-ut廨ine< (123). However, Irigaray goes so far as to take this
for a diagnosis of our age. She argues that >la fondamentale d廨幨iction de
notre 廧oque pourrait snterpr彋er comme oubli et m廧ris de cet 幨ement
indispensable ?la vie en toutes ses manifestations< (123). Here, an
abstraction developed in the feminist critique of Heidegger, replaces any real
analysis of the present. It also consitutes Irigaray愀 notion of the future
which is integrated in the narration of the return to a maternal origin. The
concept with which Irigaray envisions the future is that of >parousia<.
On the one hand >parousia< means the return of Christ on the Day of
Judgement, on the other hand, in Plato it means the presence of ideas in
things. With the concept of parousia, Irigaray articulates >le retour ou la
r嶧pparition de dieu ou de lutre< (139). She situates herself explicitly
in the Christian tradition. >^Je reviendrai ?la fin des temps^^, dit le
Christ,< and Irigaray reads this as an anticipation of a >Nouvelle
Pentec矌e, ou le feu - m瘭?au vent? - sera redonn?au f幦inin pour
lccomplissement dn monde encore ?venir?< (139). This future is never
really open because it is always tied to something primordial and Irigaray
concept of the future proves to be Eurocentric and fixated on heterosexuality
when she calls the future >la troisi鋗e 鋨e de lccident ..., celle du
couple: lsprit et lpouse< (140).
Judith Butler has critically cut
in on these points by questioning the >^elsewhere^^ of Irigaray愀
^elsewhere^^< (1993, 49). >If the feminine,< Butler argues, >is not
the only or primary kind of being that is excluded from the economy of masculinist
reason, what and who is excluded in the course of Irigaray analysis?<
(49). With the critique of the concept of the feminine, the whole myth of the
origin is at stake. In Butler approach the Heideggerian movement back to a
primordial past has no place. Butler argues against any construction of an
origin, against >the postulation of the efore?... [which]constrains the
future to materialize an idealized notion of the past< (1990, 36). In
opposition to this, Butler emphazises the openness of the future. >The culturally
constructed body will then be liberated, neither to its atural?past, nor to
its original pleasures, but to an open future of cultural possibilities<
(93). This future-orientated change is conceptualized as an effect of repetition.
Butler understands the temporal process in which the construction of gender
takes place as a >reiteration of norms< which at the same time implicates
the possibility of subversion and change. >As a sedimented effect of a
reiterative or ritual practice, sex acquires its naturalized effect, and, yet,
it is also by virtue of this reiteration that gaps and fissures are opened up
as the constitutive instabilities in such constructions, as that which escapes
or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by the
repetitive labor of that norm.?This
instability is the deconstituting possibility in the very process of
repetition< (1993, 10). Butler emphasizes the failure of the repetition,
since each repetition implies a displacement and an alienation effect. The
parodic repetition >reveals the original to be nothing other than a parody
of the idea of the natural and the original< (1990, 31). To understand this
displacement, Butler introduces the concepts of hegemony and articulation.?Repetition implies the possibility of
>spawn[ing] rearticulations< (1993, 2) and calling hegemony into
question.
With the concept of hegemony, the
processes of repetition are situated in the context of present social conflicts
rather than relegating them to an imaginary past. But as Butler speaks of
practice as signifying practice, her perspective of change is limited to the
displacement of significations. It consists of >assisting a radical
resignification of the symbolic domain, deviating the citational chain toward a
more possible future to expand the very meaning of what counts as a valued and
valuable body in the world< (1993, 22). Butler highlights the material
consequences of such resignifications by, for example, the possibilty of
benefitting from the public health system or the possibilty of the legal
recognition of relationships (114). But because she only emphasizes the
material effects of discoursive constructions without recognizing how, in
reverse, discourse is also constituted by practice, then practice and forms of
practice are not considered as fields of change.
Concerning the constitution of
significance, the concepts of displacement and repetition are plausible --
although the element of negation is also important on this level. But
concerning processes of social change, including economic processes and those
of political regulation, the concept of repetition fails. The processes of
social exclusion follow different modes of temporality. They lead, for example,
con- currently to a dispersal of the category of gender because the divisions
among women along ethnic, cultural and class lines increase while also leading
to a reinforcement of gender, for example in the new forms and intensity of the
commercialization of women bodies. Therefore, the change in such processes
cannot be understood by the model of repetition. Rather it calls for developing
an understanding of the historical processes of social change, for instance,
the transformation of Fordism to neo-Liberalism; it calls for a beginning of the
discussion on future perspectives on this level. The concept of repetition as
it is now articulated is linked to a primordial past or has the tendency?-- as Foucault has put it in his review of
Deleuzes?book Diff廨ence et r廧etition
-- to produce a >theatre of now,< a present of >uncontrolled
differences and repetitions without origins< (1977, 12). It may be time to
rethink the >death of history< which was one of the critical points at
the beginning of postmodern thinking, and to recognize that the concept of
repetition is also a construction, which carries a certain philosophy of
history. >But an arrangement built only on the end of historical
meta-narratives< is, as Seyla Benhabib has put it in 1990, >not
sufficient. Beyond such agreements, the difficult questions of the relation to
historigraphy, politics and remembrance begin< (1993, 115).
Beyond the
>death of history<
A new approach to the
relationship of past, present and future which earnestly critiques linear and
homogenizing conceptions of time and history, and which understands the three
dimensions of time in an integral way, could perhaps be developed by taking
Walter Benjamin concept of progress as a starting point. Benjamin
theoretical innovation consists of >founding progress in the idea of
catastrophe< (1977a, 683). It has the effect of saving the concept of
progress from the construction of a one-dimensional automatism. Benjamin brings
to a halt the forward linear movement articulated by the traditional
understanding of progress by introducing >Strindberg idea: Hell is not
what is coming to us -- but this life here< (Benjamin, 1977b, 246).
Understanding >this life here< where the catastrophe exists in normality,
becomes the starting point for projecting the future. Benjamin formulation of
the now in which fragments of messianic time are interspersed (261), keeps the
tension between all the dimensions of time. The present holds elements which
point to a better future. But these elements will not be created from a void;
the past has, as Benjamin puts it, a claim to this >weak messianic power<
and it is not easy to get rid of this claim (261). It gives the assignment to
work through the experiences of the past, the struggles and moments of success
as well as the failures, in a way that opens future perspectives.
Benjamin,
Walter. 1977a. >Zentralpark<. In: Illuminationen.
Ausgew鄣lte Schriften Bd 1. Frankfurt am Main, p. 251 - 261
------, 1977b. >Ueber den
Begriff der Geschichte<. In: loc.cit.
Butler,
Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London
------,
1993. Bodies that Matter.New York
Firestone,
Shulamith. 1975. Frauenbefreiung und
sexuelle Revolution. Frankfurt am Main
Foucault, Michel. 1977. >Der
Ariadnefaden ist gerissen<. In: Deleuze, G. and
Foucault, M. Der Faden ist gerissen. Berlin, p. 7 - 12
Irigaray, Luce, 1979. >Macht
des Diskurses/Unterordnung des Weiblichen<. In: Das Geschlecht das nicht eins ist. Berlin, p. 70 - 88
------, 1984. Ethique de la diff廨ence sexuelle. Paris
------, 1989. Le Temps de la diff廨ence. Paris
Millett, Kate, 1981. Sexual Politics. London