Inauguraldissertation Zur Erlangung Des Akademischen Grades Eines
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Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald vorgelegt von Christiane Kollenberg Greifswald im April 2003 Name des Dekans: Prof. Dr. Manfred Bornewasser Name des Erstgutachters: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Lutz Name des Zweitgutachters: Prof. Dr. em. Rolf Meyn Datum der Disputation: 21. November 2003 2 “The Real Invisible Man”: Women of Color, Their Texts and Postwar America (1945-1960) 3 1. Introduction: The Postwar Era, Women of Color and Contemporary Society 6 2. Institutional Studies and Women of the Postwar Era 15 2.1. Postwar Women in Historical Perspective 15 2.1.1. Theories of Continuous Domesticity 16 2.1.2. The Discovery of Complexity and Social Change in the Postwar Period 19 2.2. Cultural Studies and the Postwar Era 23 2.3. Summary 36 3. Structural Sources of Social Diversity 38 3.1. Women of Color and the State 39 3.1.1. Immigration, Deportation and Displacement: Mexican American Women in a Hostile Environment 39 3.1.2. Segregation and Discrimination: African American Women Organizing Resistance 41 3.1.3. Asian American Women in the Middle of International Conflicts 44 3.2. Women of Color in the Labor Market 48 3.2.1. Persistent Marginality of Mexican American Women Workers 49 3.2.2. Progress and Deterioration: African American Women and Wage Labor 51 3.2.3. Tangible Changes: Enlarging Employment Possibilities for Asian American Women 55 3.3. Educational Opportunities for Women of Color 57 3.3.1. Limiting Variables in Mexican American Women’s Education 58 3.3.2. African American Women and the Educational Obstacle Course 61 3.3.3. Small Gains in the Long Struggle: Asian American Women and Their Educational Choices 65 4. Constructions of Womanhood 68 4.1. Plumbing the Depths of Sexual Difference 69 4.2. Designating the Particularities of Women’s Nature 76 4.3. Prescriptions on Education and Work 83 4.4. The Exploration of Women in History 90 4.5. The Power of Scientific Models of Womanhood 94 5. Rethinking Disciplinary Boundaries 101 5.1. The Interdependence of History and Literature 101 5.2. Possibilities and Limits of “Experience“ 106 5.3. Theorizing Experiences of Difference 116 4 6. Alternative Ways of Understanding Postwar Society 124 6.1. Occupying the Spaces of Silence: The Literary Production of Women of Color 125 6.2. The Investigation of Asymmetrical Power Relations 135 6.2.1. Josephina Niggli’s Step Down, Elder Brother (1947) 136 6.2.2. Diana Chang’s The Frontiers of Love (1956) 149 6.2.3. Summary 161 6.3. Exploring the Opportunities for Self-Development 162 6.3.1. Sadie Mae Rosebrough’s Wasted Travail (1951) 163 6.3.2. Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter (1953) 170 6.3.3. Summary 182 6.4. Constituent Elements in the Search for Autonomy 183 6.4.1. Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945) 184 6.4.2. Elizabeth Wallace’s Scandal at Daybreak (1954) 195 6.4.3. Summary 204 6.5. Claiming Ownership of the Past 206 6.5.1. Fabiola Cabeza de Baca’s The Good Life (1949) 208 6.5.2. Katherine Dunham’s A Touch of Innocence (1959) 215 6.5.3. Summary 233 6.6. The Representation of Ruptured Experiences 234 7. Conclusion: Contours of a Multifaceted Postwar History 239 8. Bibliography 244 5 As feminist critics, . we speak of making our knowledge of history, choosing to see it not as a tale of individual and inevitable suffering, but a story of struggle and relations of power. We speak of making our notion of literary texts, choosing to read them not as meditations upon themselves but as gestures toward history and gestures with political effect. Finally, we speak of making our model of literary criticism, choosing to see it not an ostensibly objective reading of a text but an act of political intervention, a mode of shaping the cultural use to which men’s and women’s writings will be put. Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt. 1. Introduction: The Postwar Era, Women of Color and Contemporary Society American Studies has always had to engage the problem of definition and especially self-definition. Not long ago, the answers to the question "Who are we?" were liable to define American identity as white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, middle class and male. In contrast to this image, most recent controversies and discussions within American Studies indicate that the concept of a homogeneous culture, history and identity has lost its exclusive status and hegemonic function and is beginning to be replaced by diverse and disparate images. The reassessment of American Studies occurs both along horizontal and vertical axes, both in terms of topics and time. Women, African Americans and members of other minority groups both inside and outside academy have criticized the elitist, exclusionary and essentializing character of this model of unity. They have most systematically originated new or neglected subjects, perspectives, and methods with the aim to weave their experiences and identities into the “dominant” discourse on culture and history. This reconceptualization of American Studies is based on the assumption that the idea of a unified, harmonious American society has been abstracted from dynamic categories like gender, race, class and so on. The final product, American culture, which served exclusively those who had the economic, 6 political and social power in their hands, has been unmasked as a privileged white masculinist preserve. In the last decade, women’s studies gave many impulses to focus on the category “woman” and the female half of human experience. Still challenging explicatory models of culture, history, society, and politics, most recent analyses however cease to look at women alone and highlight instead the category gender which embraces female- as well as male-specific experiences. Feminist critics have rightly argued that women’s studies bears the danger of separatism by defining itself as a marginal field related to a more central field that is conceded a more universal status. It is not enough, as feminist critics have demonstrated, simply to add women’s experiences and perspectives to American Studies. Rather, the future of American Studies contains several tasks of which the most important seems to be to expose the central position of gender in culture, society and history. The importance of the category of gender in American Studies is based on its constitutive function within social organization. The proposition of gender as the most constitutive among multiple factors has aroused increasing resistance in the last 15 -20 years. Especially African American and Chicana feminist critics have revealed the limitations of the idea of gender as the fundamental principle of social organization. Because gender intersects with other social determinants, like race, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, and religion among others, an exclusive attention to gender distorts analyses of power relations. Each of these factors has to be viewed “multifocally, conflictually and over time.” 1 The extension of feminist theories shows that critics are stepping beyond isolating gender by exploring the impact and meanings of gender contextually. 2 The present changes promise to be of revisionist character. Not only do they comprise a radical “shift from seeing women in history to seeing all history from the perspective of women ,” 3 but they also reveal internal fractures and contradictions of ostensibly simple, consistent categories. Instead of universal human essence and objectivity, the construction of subjectivity becomes the focus of attention. 1 Rachel Blau DuPlessis. “Power, Judgment, and Narrative in a Work of Zora Neale Hurston: Feminist Cultural Studies”. New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 99. 2 See for example Gloria Anzaldúa. Borderlands: the New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987; or Cheryl A. Wall (ed.). Changing Our Own Words. Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women . London: Routledge, 1990. 3 Kathryn Kish Sklar. “Engendering Women's History: New Paradigms and Interpretations in American History”. Amerikastudien/American Studies . 41.2 (1996): 208. 7 The new models and theories about the contents of American Studies have a considerable impact on studies of American history. Scholars of various disciplines, but again particularly feminist thinkers, are engaged in revising previous versions of historical periodization by readdressing historical epochs and challenging earlier accounts. 4 In response to innovative feminist theories, critics have returned to historical phases which formerly appeared to be sufficiently researched and have initiated a process of questioning standard historical accounts and categories. Already in the 1970s, feminist criticism posed the irritating question “Whose history is it?” or asked what history was going to mean to future generations. 5 These first efforts to challenge the male-centered historiography were occasionally undermined by their underlying traditional, male categories and values. 6 However, the realization that women’s historical experiences were unlike men’s, and the acknowledgment of differences among women along class and racial lines, pushed (feminist) historians into reexamining accepted periodizations, divisions and images of history. Even though developments in rethinking culture and history should not be separate, but inextricably intertwined, an almost invisible border frequently seems to separate those disciplines which are contributing to the field of American Studies. True, historians adopt new perspectives and feminists try to apply recent theoretical findings to diverse fields. But while revisionists of American history use various sources to rewrite history, feminist critics of American culture often reveal in their works a strong proclivity to analyze contemporary culture more than past culture. The following inquiry into the American postwar era, which springs from the wave of rethinking American culture and history, wants to help to compensate for some of these insufficiencies.