Postmodern, Poststructural, and Critical Theories from the Research and the Social World As Inde- As They Are Taken up by Feminist Researchers

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POSTMODERN,POSTSTRUCTURAL, AND CRITICAL THEORIES

SUSANNE GANNON BRONWYN DAVIES

WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF no reality, only representations. These characteri- zations are variously imputed to postmodernism POSTMODERN,POSTSTRUCTURAL, or poststructuralism, which are conflated with AND CRITICAL THEORIES? each other and sometimes understood as an indis- criminate assemblage of French feminism, decon- In this chapter, we explore postmodern, post- struction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucaultian structural, and critical theories and discuss how analysis, Rorty’s conversationalism and cultural they affect feminist research. These labels are studies. (p. 4) sometimes taken to refer to the same thing and are sometimes taken up in oppositional ways. Postmodernism is a term often used by critics Further, what each of these names refers to is who believe postmodernism is undermining the not an orderly, agreed on, and internally consis- most fundamental assumptions necessary for tent set of ideas. What they mean depends on the social science and feminist research. Against vantage point from which the speaking or writ- this monster they try “to shore up the primary ing is being done. Among those who wear each premises, to establish in advance that any theory of these labels there are many interesting and of politics requires a subject, needs from the productive divisions, which are ignored when start to presume its subject, the referentiality they are lumped together under one collective of language, the integrity of the institutional noun. Butler (1992) points out, description it provides” (Butler, 1992, p. 3). Through exploring these commonalities and A number of positions are ascribed to postmod- oppositionalities, we will make visible some of ernism, as if it were the kind of thing that could be the ideas and practices that emerge in the writing the bearer of a set of positions: discourse is all and research to which these names are given. We there is, as if discourse were some kind of monis- will extract a set of principles that characterize tic stuff out of which all things are composed; the these paradigms and set them apart from different subject is dead, I can never say “I” again; there is understandings of research and the world. Our

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account of these perspectives is written neither simultaneously, to the possibilities that such work from a distance, informed by a positivist ideal of opens up. objectivity, nor as if they can be defined once and Like many other feminist researchers in the for all. Every definition creates exclusions that 1980s and early 1990s, Patti Lather (1991) com- might (and should) be contested. Among feminist bined what she called a critical approach with concepts, for example, sisterhood was an impor- postmodern and poststructural approaches. In tant concept for feminist activism for much of the envisaging the task she was undertaking, she 20th century, but it underpinned the policing of located these three approaches along with femi- behavior and the exclusion of those who did not nism within the overarching social science display appropriate sisterhood: “As bad as it is for framework in terms of the analytic work that a woman to be bullied into submission by a patri- social scientists took themselves to be doing in arch’s unitary truth, it is even worse for her to be their analyses (p. 7). (See the table below.) judged as not a real feminist by a matriarch’s In this representation, earlier forms of unitary truth” (Tong, 1998, p. 279). We will, with research characterized as positivist and interpre- this caveat on categorizing, attempt to create tive adopted a naturalistic or realist approach in some coherent storying of the interconnections of which the researcher is understood as separate postmodern, poststructural, and critical theories from the research and the social world as inde- as they are taken up by feminist researchers. It is pendent of the researcher’s gaze. This is in a principle of critical, poststructural, and post- marked contrast to work that sets out to make a modern approaches to feminism that objectivity difference to that social world, to emancipate must be carefully rethought. An account, from subordinated groups from oppressive versions these perspectives, is always situated. It is an of reality. account from somewhere, and some time, and The deconstructive or poststructuralist/post- some one (or two in this case), written for some modern movement will be the main topic of this purpose and with a particular audience in mind. chapter. In this section, we will adopt the short- It is always therefore a partial and particular hand “deconstructive” to refer to postmodern account, an account that has its own power to and poststructural approaches and we will sub- produce new ways of seeing and that should sume the “critical,” for the moment, inside that always be open to contestation. In this view of term. Our account is not offered as a grand nar- feminism, we do not rely on objective truth but rative of the progress of feminist theory from on “being accountable for what and how we have one approach to another. Such grand narratives the power to see” (Castor, 1991, p. 64). The par- exclude other ways of seeing, privilege accounts ticular position from which we write this chapter from those with power, and promote falsely lin- is as feminist poststructuralists looking back, as ear versions of history. In what follows, we will we trace the emergence of that field and its influ- point out how, and on what grounds, some fem- ences on feminist work, and looking forward, inists have been alarmed by the effects of

Postpositivist Inquiry

Predict Understand Emancipate Deconstruct

Positivism Interpretive Critical Poststructural Naturalistic Neo-Marxist Postmodern Constructivist Feminist Postparadigmatic Diaspora Phenomenological Praxis oriented Hermeneutic Educative Freirian Participatory Action research 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 73

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“deconstructive” ways of thinking on feminist Weedon, 1997). Feminists working in poststruc- action and on our research and writing practices. tural paradigms seek to reconfigure agency so We will provide some responses to these cri- that we still might claim it as a possibility, albeit tiques, while reminding readers that neither contingent and situated, that will assist us to the criticisms nor our responses to them are conceptualize and bring about change. intended to be taken as the final word. You will notice that some of the theorists we This chapter—and indeed the practices of the mention in this chapter are men, who do not research to be discussed here—can be read as a position themselves (and are not offered the simultaneous and constant weaving and unweav- position) as “feminist.” Their positioning in the ing of how we think and what we do and say in world as “men” may be seen by some radical feminist research. This is a second principle. feminists as negating their value for feminism Particular attention must be paid to the mode of because male theorists cannot know how one writing, to the discursive strategies through would think when positioned as a woman. From which particular versions of the world are a deconstructive point of view, one can, rather, accomplished, especially in the present moment examine the nature of the “binary” division of writing. In the figure of the weaver, simulta- being discursively constructed in this concern: neously weaving and unweaving who she is, we “Identity categories are never merely descrip- ask you to consider the stuff of her weaving as tive, but always normative, and as such exclu- the discursive threads of what is possible (name- sionary” (Butler, 1992, p. 16). Binary modes able, seeable, doable, speakable, writeable) at of thought limit and constrain thinking in ways any particular moment in time and place, and that are oppositional and hierarchical. These from a particular situated position. Feminist binary categories—such as man/woman and writers such as Laurel Richardson (1997) and good/evil—are implicated in dividing and con- Trinh Minh-Ha (1989, 1991, 1992) draw atten- straining the world in ways that may be violent tion to the weft and weave of research texts and in their effects. So too, the category feminist, if the subjectivities realized within them. Acute understood in binary terms, implies the exis- reflexivity—especially at the very moment of tence of an imagined and oppositional category writing—is necessary for researchers working that contains those items, people, or ideas that within critical, postmodern, and poststructural are “not-feminist” or even “antifeminist” (mobi- frameworks. lizing the divisive logic of “if you are not with A further principle of these theoretical us you are against us”). Detecting these binary frameworks has to do with questions of power, or oppositional and hierarchical modes of think- emancipation, freedom, and agency. Our third ing, where categories emerge to structure principle is that relations of power are under- thought on axes of this/not-this and good/bad, is stood as established and maintained through of particular interest to researchers working discourse and through positions taken up and within deconstructive frameworks. The binaries made possible within particular discourses are implicated in relations of power and in (Davies & Harré, 2000). Power is seen as com- maintaining the status quo. Despite the apparent plex and unstable and possibilities for agency, orderliness of binary thought, categories tend resistance, “freedom,” and emancipation as con- to slip around and to glue themselves onto tingent and limited. These concepts are treated other binaries, conflating one with another. For differently within critical, postmodern, and example, feminist may be conflated with “woman” poststructural theories: Indeed, their different (and, conversely, not-feminist with “man”). The takes on power, freedom, and agency act as conflation of not-feminist with misogyny or distinguishing features between them. Further- patriarchy is a further binary move. Some of the more, feminist poststructuralism insists on a binaries found glued to each other in Western particular position on agency that tends to differ traditions of mythology and that continue to from the works of other poststructuralists inform our cultures and social practices are as (Davies, 2000a; Davies & Gannon, 2005, 2006; follows (Wilshire, 1989, pp. 95–96): 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 74

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KNOWLEDGE (accepted wisdom)/IGNORANCE (the occult and taboo) higher (up)/lower (down) good, positive/negative, bad mind (ideas), head, spirit/body (flesh), womb (blood), Nature (Earth) reason (the rational)/emotions and feelings (the irrational) cool/hot order/chaos control/letting be, allowing, spontaneity objective (outside, “out there”)/subjective (inside, immanent) literal truth, fact/poetic truth metaphor, art goals/process light/darkness written text, Logos/oral tradition, enactment, Myth Apollo as sky-sun/Sophia as earth-cave-moon public sphere/private sphere seeing, detached/listening, attached secular/holy and sacred linear/cyclical permanence, ideal (fixed) forms/change, fluctuations, evolution “changeless and immortal”/process, ephemeras (performance) hard/soft independent, individual, isolated/dependent, social, interconnected, shared dualistic/whole MALE/FEMALE

The binary metaphors through which our of meaning in the language and the ideas that we narratives and storylines are constructed and our might use. In pondering the nature of decon- identities as men and women are made real are structive thinking and the concern that it might recognizable here. It is possible to recognize not be useful for feminists because it has been one’s gendered identity (who you are or believe produced by men, it is fascinating to run down you should be or are seen to be) by looking at the female side of Wilshire’s table. Most of the appropriate side of the table (the one you these metaphors can be used to characterize the have been “assigned” to). But it is also possible theorizing that is done by deconstructive writers to claim characteristics from the other side. whether male or female. We might ask then: Nevertheless, the binaries act as an ordering Is poststructural and postmodern theorizing device, defining what is appropriately “male” or female even when it is produced by men? We “female” in terms of their opposition from one can use such questions and observations to another. They rule out multiplicity and differ- begin the work of deconstructing the male/ ences to create order, social coherence, and female binary. We can ask, How are such cate- predictability around the idea of two opposite gories constructed and maintained? What exclu- hierarchical categories (Davies, 1994). sions and inclusions mark such sites? How are By drawing attention to the way binaries social identities, the iterations of sex/gender, insert themselves into thought, deconstructive performed and sedimented in the particularities writers provoke us to think differently and more of people’s lives? How are they lodged in their carefully about the nuances and the possibilities bodies? How are the unstable borders of these 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 75

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sites policed by individuals and institutions the language we have. The terms and the cate- through oppositional and moralistic discourses gories that we wish to question are nonetheless and regimes of truth? As Cixous (1986) writes, powerful categories that have a great deal of political purchase. They can and do accomplish a Men and women are caught up in a web of age-old great deal within our personal and social worlds cultural determinations that are almost unanalyz- whether we choose to mobilize them for political able in their complexity. One can no more speak ends or not. In drawing attention to their consti- of “woman” than of “man” without being trapped tutive power, a deconstructive approach does not within an ideological theatre where the prolifera- foreclose the use of constituted categories on tion of representations, images, reflections, myths, behalf of those who are subordinated by them. In identifications transform, deform, constantly a double move characteristic of deconstructive change everyone’s Imaginary and invalidate in writing, we continue to use particular categories, advance any conceptualization. (p. 83) like feminist, but work to destabilize some of the category’s certainties. We put them “sous rature” Feminist deconstructive writing searches for or “under erasure,” following Derrida (1976), ways to disrupt the grip that binaries have on using a textual reminder to stand as a permanent thought and on identity. Such deconstructive writ- reminder that we continue to need the concept but ing draws not only on rational argument but also are also wary of some of its dangers. A fifth and on poetic writing, on fiction, on music, and on important principle of thought is this deep skepti- the performing arts. Sometimes it rewrites figures cism toward assumed truths and taken-for- from the past (e.g., Cixous, 1991; Clément, 1989). granted knowledges, because they are generated Through play with language and alternative forms through language, combined with a pragmatic of narrative and representation such writing can understanding of the power of those categories to blur the gender binaries, making a deconstructive effect powerful positionalities and actions within move from either/or to both/and, disrupting, the social world. deconstructing, and troubling the clichés and The history of feminism can be read as a series stereotypes of everyday thought and practice in of moments in which wins against patriarchal which we are enmeshed. This is a fourth princi- structures and practices have been achieved, and ple: The binaries within discourse limit and con- then subtly undermined by a shifting ground of strain modes of thought and the possibilities of resistance that negates the wins that have been identity. They disguise them as natural and give made and keeps women’s subordinate status care- us only one option—of mimicking one part and fully locked in place. Deconstructive approaches abjecting the other. It is vital, life-giving work to to feminism eschew simple recipes and actions in play with and find ways of disrupting those lin- favor of a complex and continuous reflection on guistic forms, the binary oppositions, and the the ways in which identities, realities, and desires identities and meanings they hold in place. The are established and maintained. This does not power of language must be understood and mean that they are prevented from action. language itself opened up for revision. Feminists are capable of working within multiple It is here that we run into one of the deepest discourses, depending on the social and interac- divisions within the approaches we are writing tive contexts in which they find themselves, the about in this chapter. The disruptive and decon- particular moment in history, and the particular structive work on the categories through which task in hand. we know ourselves and through which we argue for change is read by some who work within the HOW HAV E CRITICAL THEORY, critical framework to destroy the categories and to make them unusable for the work of changing POSTMODERNISM, AND society. Others do not see deconstructive play as POSTSTRUCTURALISM BEEN TAKEN UP destruction. Butler (2004a), for example, sug- WITHIN FEMINIST RESEARCH? gests that calling terms into question doesn’t mean debunking them but leads, rather, to their In this section, we will separate critical, post- revitalization (p. 178). From a deconstructive modern, and poststructural theories and elaborate perspective it is clear that we must work within some of the key concepts within them. We then 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 76

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elaborate the ways in which approaches, con- pp. 7–30; Zima, 2002, pp. 194–198). For the cepts, and strategies derived from each theor- critical social theorists of the Frankfurt School etical framework have been taken up and emancipation was part of their goal. This aspect developed within feminist research. of their work has threaded through into the liber- atory discourses of contemporary critical theory. Critical Theory, Postmodernism, and Critical theorists continue to be influential in Poststructuralism: Their Emergence qualitative research in diverse disciplines and in different geographic locations. Current critical and Interconnections theory uses discourses of equity, inclusion, and social justice that are familiar and compatible Critical Theory with feminist agendas. Lincoln and Denzin Many poststructural and postmodern femi- (2003) note, nist writers began as critical theorists and maintain a strong critical edge in their writing (e.g., The critique and concern of the critical theorists Haug et al., 1987; Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, has been an effort to design a pedagogy of resis- Venn, & Walkerdine, 1998; Lather, 1991; tance within communities of difference. The ped- Walkerdine, 1990). Critical theory, as a formal agogy of resistance, of taking back “voice,” of description of a particular mode of research and reclaiming narrative for one’s own rather than analysis, first emerged in the Frankfurt School adapting to the narratives of a dominant major- of Social Research in Germany in the 1920s and ity...[aims at] overturning oppression and 1930s through the work of Adorno, Horkheimer, achieving social justice through empowerment of Marcuse, and, later, Habermas. These philoso- the marginalized, the poor, the nameless, the pher-sociologists rejected fixed notions of hier- voiceless. (pp. 625–626) archies of social domination, such as might be found in Marxism, although Marxism was an Critical theorists make grand claims for the important influence. They disrupted disciplinary potential of such work to change the world. authority by critiquing the supposedly objective Kincheloe and McLaren (2003), for instance, “view from nowhere” of a positivist social claim that critical theory produces “dangerous science that had been modeled on the natural knowledge, the kind of information and insight sciences and that had emerged from Enlighten- that upsets institutions and threatens to over- ment beliefs in universal reason and objective turn sovereign regimes of truth” (p. 433). They thought. Critical theorists brought philosophical characterize the current “criticalist” as any questions into the arena of empirical social researcher who believes research. They developed a reflexive and critical social inquiry that saw social scientific knowl- that all thought is fundamentally mediated by edge itself as implicated in complex modes of power relations that are social and historically production and regimes of truth. In so doing, constituted, [that] facts can never be isolated from they historicized and contextualized social the domain of values or removed from ideological science for the first time. Their work highlighted inscription, [that the] relationship between con- the logocentrism of Western rationalist and lib- cept and object and between signifier and signi- eral humanist thought—questioning the belief fied is never stable or fixed and is often mediated that reason is universal, disinterested, and dis- by social relations of capitalist production/con- passionate and that it can set us free. However, sumption; that language is central to the formation they did not abandon the tenets of Enlighten- of subjectivity;...that certain groups in society ment thought—the belief in reason and the are privileged over others. (p. 453) rational subject. Rather than dismantle them, they reconstructed them as sociocultural forms. This description could also include many In contrast to some of their successors, they theorists who are called postmodernists or post- resisted the lure of relativism and remained structuralists. With language like “ideological” committed to the belief that truth is possible and and “social relations of capitalist production/ can ground social action (McCarthy, 1994, consumption,” the authors also reference the 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 77

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traces of Marxism in current critical theory. relations of power. Freedom from oppression is However, their claim that “institutions” and a central goal of critical theorists. In pursuit of “sovereign regimes of truth” might be over- this outcome, discursive analyses of sexism, turned implies a more rigid and hierarchical homophobia, racism, religious, and cultural conception of power and its operations than that oppressions in everyday life and institutional to be found in poststructural theory (e.g., Butler, practices are part of their methodological arse- 1997b; Foucault, 1980). nal though they may not take up postmodern or Although few feminists overtly cling to the poststructural positions on truth or subjectivity. founding fathers of critical theory, there is much Two prominent feminist exponents of critical sympathy with these positions particularly in theory have been philosophers Seyla Benhabib our longing for emancipatory agendas. Indeed, and Nancy Fraser. In their influential and recent critical theory is sometimes called new polemical collection Feminist Contentions left theory or neo-Marxism1 and it informs crit- (Benhabib, Butler, Cornell, & Fraser, 1995), ical race theory, critical multiculturalism, criti- they defend the tenets of critical social feminist cal psychology, critical feminist theory, and theory against the effects of poststructuralism, critical pedagogy. In Getting Smart, Lather’s represented in the collection in two papers by (1991) early synthesis of feminist and critical Butler.2 Benhabib and Fraser see value in some pedagogies, she articulates her indebtedness to postmodernist ideas but they are wary of critical theory and continuing affinity with its theories that they see as radical and dangerously emancipatory objectives, but she critiques relativist. Benhabib grounds her critique in three aspects of critical theory from a postmodern principles that she argues must not be aban- perspective. Although it can also be claimed that doned by feminism and that, she claims, are critical theory has “largely mutated into post- weakened within a deconstructive approach. structuralism” (Boler, 2000, p. 362), authors and First, feminists must be able to assume an areas of study that thematize the “critical” tend autonomous feminist subject who remains capa- to insist that, unlike those working with post- ble of self-reflection and agency. Second, she modern and poststructural approaches, the out- argues that large-scale narratives have their come they envisage is “real” social change, with purposes, and feminists need to maintain some the implication that this must entail subjects distance from social contexts they critique to who have agency in the world. As we will argue develop objective perspectives and contribute to later, these agendas are not as absent from the new narratives. Third, she insists that utopian work of postmodern and poststructural femi- ideals, abandoned by postmodernism, are neces- nists as some critical theorists claim, though the sary for feminist ethics and social and political concept of agency is carefully revised by these activism (Benhabib, 1995, p. 30). In Feminist feminists as a “radically conditioned” form Contentions, Fraser is less resistant than of agency (Butler, 1997b, p. 15). In Judith Benhabib to postmodern feminism. She argues Butler’s view, for example, the social subject is that feminism can benefit from incorporation of a site of ambivalence where power acts to con- “weak” versions of postmodern ideas, but that stitute these subjects (who might elsewhere be feminist work must enable political action called “individuals”) in certain limiting ways (Fraser, 1995a, 1995b). Benhabib and Fraser but where, at the same time, and through the acknowledge some of the contributions of post- same effects of power, possibilities to act (albeit modernism to feminism, including the constitu- constrained and limited) also emerge. Critical tive effects of language and the rejection of theorists are committed to a more straightfor- abstract (and masculine) universal reason. Their ward concept of emancipation, and of the free- commitment remains, however, with critical dom of individuals to strive toward it, as a theory, which they read as emancipatory and as necessary and permanent possibility. Power enabling political activism in a way that they tends to be seen within critical theory as oppres- perceive postmodernism does not. The goal of sive and unilinear, and it is enacted by certain critical theorists, they say, is not only to inter- groups on other groups. Emancipatory potential pret social life but also to transform it. This lies in the radical overturning of those hierarchical transformation, like any theory of liberation, 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 78

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they argue, is dependent on a notion of subjec- Criticism consists in uncovering that thought tivity that allows some agency and incorporates and trying to change it; showing that things are not possibilities for choice and for freedom to act in as obvious as people believe, making it so that the world. what is taken for granted is no longer taken for Within postmodern and poststructural granted. To do criticism is to make harder those approaches to feminist research, in contrast, “lib- acts which are now too easy. eration” is made problematic, because one can Understood in these terms, criticism (and never stand outside of discourse, agency is always radical criticism) is utterly indispensable for any radically conditioned by the positions made avail- transformation. For a transformation that would able to the acting, agentic subject, and subjectiv- remain within the same mode of thought, a trans- ity is always also subjection to the available ways formation that would only be a certain way of of being. Further, absolute moral or ethical truth better adjusting the same thought to the reality of claims are regarded with a measure of skepticism, things, would only be a superficial transformation. though that does not prevent feminists who take On the other hand, as soon as people begin to up these approaches from passionate attachments have trouble thinking things the way they have to both morality and action. Nevertheless, critical been thought, transformation becomes at the same theorists are wary of postmodernism and post- time very urgent, very difficult, and entirely possi- structuralism because of the obstacles they see in ble. (pp. 456–457) such positions for political, social, or economic transformation. If critiquing the foundations of The project for any critical theory, Foucault radical thought and activism leads to their col- argues, is to make it possible to think differently lapse, then how are we to move on? How might and thus to open the possibility for acting dif- we, they ask, effect change in the world? How ferently. This has profound implications for might we “work the ruins” of what we had and social practice and for social research. In this knew (St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000)? Accusations of sense, critical theory, poststructural theory, and ethical paralysis and apoliticism as the inevitable postmodern theory can work together rather consequences of poststructuralist thought are than in antagonism with each other. common but they rest on an assumption that criticism and transformation are binary, irreconcil- Postmodern Theory able opposites that cannot work together in a “both/and” kind of way. In such feminist dis- The terms postmodern and poststructural missals of poststructuralism, criticism is allied have at times been used interchangeably in the with “theory,” transformation with “praxis,” and United States, both terms signaling a “crisis each side of the pair is positioned as oppositional; of confidence in western conceptual systems” that is, as mutually exclusive. Michel Foucault (Lather, 1991, p. 159). Postmodernism is “an (2000a) argued, in contrast, that critique and American term” (St. Pierre, 2004, p. 348) that transformation are necessarily implicated in each has been used in diverse arenas of social and others’ operations, indeed that radical transforma- cultural life and that was in the early 1990s tion can only emerge from radical critique: inclusive of poststructuralism. In a recent anthology of postmodernism, Bertens and I don’t think that criticism can be set against Natoli (2002) trace three aggregations of this transformation, “ideal” criticism against “real” “protean” term: first, as a set of literary and transformation. artistic practices; second, as “a set of philosoph- A critique does not consist in saying that ical traditions centered on the rejection of real- things aren’t good the way they are. It consists in ist epistemology and the Enlightenment project” seeing on what type of assumptions, of familiar mostly associated with French poststructural notions, of established, unexamined ways of thought (p. xii); and, third, in its most “ambi- thinking the accepted practices are based.... tious” form, as a term that seeks to describe “a There is always a little thought occurring even new sociocultural formation and/or economic in the most stupid institutions; there is always dispensation...an aggressive entrepreneurialist thought even in silent habits. capitalism” (pp. xiii–xv). 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 79

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In architecture and the arts, in general, post- rooted in the modernist project. Critique of the modern aesthetics are marked by the collapse of institutions and social practices that routinely distinctions between high and popular culture, excluded women became possible because of by self-referential reflexivity, by irony, parody, modernist thought. Yet many feminists have pastiche, appropriation, and surprising juxtapo- noted that the tenets of modernism have not sitions of images and ideas. Postmodernism is been friendly to women. They argue that the viewed in other domains, such as economics, modernist subject, able to act autonomously in often with alarm. It sometimes stands as a syn- the world, his actions driven by scientific, objec- onym for “post-Fordist,” “late,” or “fast” capi- tive knowledge and by will, is always already a talism, signaling the rise of Western consumer masculine subject, an individual subject more or culture, multinationalism, and the globalization less separate from the social world and free of corporate culture, capital, and labor. The to act on it. As Hekman (1990) notes, the femi- postmodern logic underpinning the movement nist position on “the modernist-postmodernist of global capital challenges the work of femi- debate” is “anomalous” (p. 2). Modernism is nists who have fought long and hard for more part of our legacy, and as the humanist ideals of equitable distribution of income, labor, and social justice and equity that remain important other resources. Global corporate culture can for feminism emerge from modernism, its be understood as a new form of colonialism. vocabulary and politics continue, inevitably, to Neoliberal approaches to management empha- work through us (St. Pierre, 2000a, p. 478). sizing the flexibility of workforces and work- Nevertheless, both feminists and postmodernists places—thus the instability of subjects and the have been critical of the modernist project and relations of power and knowledge within which these critiques signaled a shift toward different they are located—are underpinned by these ver- conceptions of the subject and of society and its sions of postmodern culture. Regardless of the signifying systems. Postmodern approaches in context or ideological intent, discourses that art and social analysis “privileged aesthetics, deploy postmodernism “seek to distance us language and singularity over the analysis of from and make us skeptical about beliefs con- social institutions and social structures, and in cerning truth, knowledge, power, the self and their more extreme and polemical form declared language that are often taken for granted within the social to be dead” (Baudrillard, 1983, cited and serve as legitimation for contemporary in Gane, 2004, p. 4). Postmodernists argue that western culture” (Flax, 1990, p. 41). The turn knowledge is contextual, historically situated, from critical theory to postmodernism is thus and discursively produced; that subjects are marked by a profound skepticism toward taken- constituted within networks of power and for-granted foundational concepts, including knowledge. Yet postmodernism, like feminism, those that underpin emancipatory agendas. is not uncontested. Bauman (2004) explains In its very naming, postmodernism is pro- why he gave up the term: duced both in opposition to and as a continua- tion of some aspects of modernism. While gurus “The postmodern” was flawed from the begin- of postmodernity, like Lyotard (1984) and ning: all disclaimers notwithstanding, it did sug- Bauman (2004), have claimed that postmoder- gest that modernity was over...In time more nity was very modernist, postmodernity is more flaws became clearer to me—I’ll mention but two usually characterized as replacing modernity, of them. One was, so to speak, objective: “post- which is the era of social and cultural life and modern” barred the much needed break or rupture aesthetics that spans the latter half of the 20th ...“Postmodern thinking” could not but adhere to century in the West. Modernity—emerging from the “modernity grid”...The second was subjec- the Enlightenment overturning of church and tive. I prefer to select my bedfellows and affinities king as the origins of truth—validates reason, myself. Ascription to the “postmodernist” camp logic, and universal truth as the foundation for grew more and more unsavory and unpalatable by action in the world. The emancipatory impulses the day as the “postmodern” writings went further of liberal humanism and Marxism, both of and further astray and “postmodernism” came to which have influenced feminist movements, are mean, more than anything else, singing praise of 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 80

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the brave new world of ultimate liberation rather work that might be done with ideas emanating than subjecting it to critical scrutiny. (p. 18) from these modes of thought. The semantic puz- zles prompted by the naming of theoretical Foucault (1998) also drew attention to cate- positions—and the seductions of theoretical gorical problems when he asked “What are we progress narratives and successor regimes— calling postmodernity? I’m not up to date” have led us to a moment when we are variously (p. 447), and, he continued, “I’ve never clearly faced with “post-postmodern theory,” “posthu- understood what was meant in France by manist theory,” “postfeminist theory,” and even modernity...I do not grasp clearly what that “post-theory theory.” Rather than becoming might mean, though the word itself is unimpor- entangled in these confabulations, and having tant; we can always use any arbitrary label” alerted readers to some of the problems with (p. 448). He goes on, nevertheless, to name the such labels, we go on to explore in more detail “recasting of the subject” as the central problem poststructuralism and what that might be said to that allied those who had been working in what entail. Because many feminist authors who orig- might be called postmodern theory up to that inally used the term postmodern have since time. Of his own work he says, vacated the term and moved toward poststructural, we will devote the remainder of this sec- The goal of my work during the last twenty tion to an exploration of poststructural theory years . . . has not been to analyze the phenomena and the concepts that have been taken up within of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such it by feminist researchers. an analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, Poststructural Theory in our culture, human beings are made subjects. (Foucault, 2000b, p. 326) While the postmodern label was initially used to cover both the postmodern and the It is this task of resituating the human subject poststructural, the term poststructural has not as the central heroic and active agent who subsequently become more common. The post- shapes her own destiny but as the subject who is structural label signals in particular the “linguis- constituted through particular discourses in partic turn,” although many theorists who would ticular historical moments that is central to the see themselves as responding to this turn would postmodern approach to research. Butler also not describe themselves as poststructuralists and traces the splits and contradictions that are may or may not see themselves as postmod- elided by the abstract collective noun postmodernists or critical theorists. The turn to language ernism. Like Foucault and Bauman, Butler marked by poststructuralism is a recognition of (1992) rejects the name: “I don’t know about the the constitutive power of language and of dis- term ‘postmodern’ but...[I know that] power course, particularly as introduced through the pervades the very conceptual apparatus that work of Michel Foucault (1997b) where dis- seeks to negotiate its terms, including the courses are seen to “articulate what we think, subject position of the critic” (p. 6), and again, say and do” and to be historically contingent “I don’t know what postmodernism is, but I do (p. 315). The subject is discursively produced have some sense of what it might mean to and the very body and its desires are material- subject notions of the body and materiality to a ized through discourse. Thus, the linguistic turn deconstructive critique” (p. 17). The subject, of poststructuralism is, more accurately, a “dis- power, and the body—and deconstruction as a cursive” turn. Poststructural theory turns to dis- strategy for critique—are issues that they both course as the primary site for analysis and signal and that are at the core of our theoretical brings a deep skepticism to realist approaches conversations in this chapter. where the task of social science is to discover Although categories are useful in academic and describe real worlds, which are taken to work, and we use them and are here engaged in exist independent of their observations and their their perpetuation, we are less concerned with subjects. It troubles the individualism of human- policing their borders than with exploring the ist approaches, seeing the humanist individual 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 81

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as a (sometimes) troubling and fictional accom- Though poststructuralism does not provide a plishment of social and discursive practices clear set of practices that might be taken up and (Davies & Gannon, 2005, 2006). In this sense, ossified as a “method,” it does provide a new set poststructuralism, in marked contrast to post- of approaches that might be made use of in analy- modernism, might be seen as the antithesis of sis to provoke the sort of estrangement that Butler global capitalism and of neoliberalism in which speaks of and to allow for new thought. In addi- the individual is emphasized and the social is tion, methodologies themselves are made strange proclaimed as dead. Humanist psychology and as “thinking technologies” that are also, always, some aspects of psychoanalysis are among the subject to critical scrutiny (Haraway, 2000). metanarratives that have been brought into ques- Within a poststructural research paradigm it tion by poststructuralism, though many feminist becomes difficult to define discrete methods for poststructural researchers find aspects of psy- research. Indeed, Barthes (1989) suggests that we choanalysis useful (e.g., Britzman, 1998; Butler, need to “turn against Method...regard it with- 1997b, 2004b; Clément, 1989, 1994; Flax, out any founding privilege, as one of the voices 1990, 1993; Grosz, 1990, 1994a; Ussher, 1997; of plurality: as a view ...a spectacle, mounted Walkerdine, 1990). These theorists use psycho- within the text” (p. 319). It is more useful to think analysis to theorize desire and to explore the of strategies, approaches, and tactics that defy changes individual subjects must engage in to definition or closure. Poststructuralism promotes bring about new patterns of desire and thus new close textual analysis as a central strategy but the ways of being. idea of a text encompasses far more than conven- The focus of poststructural thinking is on tional written or spoken data. It allows for macro- cultural life as the production and reading of texts like “capitalism” (or Marxism, humanism, texts and on the deconstruction of those texts. Its feminism, postmodernism), and it allows for work is in marked contrast to the realist and more familiar “micro” level texts like interview naturalistic modes of thought in which the task transcripts or literary texts. Strategies for post- was to “understand” or to make predictions structural analysis have nomadic tendencies and about what was already there (Lather, 1991, p. cross over disciplinary boundaries. Texts go 7). This poststructural work, which Butler beyond the conventional perceptions of literary (2003) describes as the work of critical intellec- or linguistic texts and might include bodies in tuals, is often a difficult and painful process of space, spaces without bodies, or texts comprising making strange that which we take for granted: nonlinguistic semiotic systems. In poststructural research, the shift of interpre- I believe it has to be the case (certainly since tive focus is from language as a tool for describ- Marx it has been the case) that becoming a criti- ing real worlds to discourse, as constitutive of cal intellectual involves working hard on difficult those worlds. There are no “right” research meth- texts. From Marx through Adorno, we learned ods that will produce a reality that lies outside of that capitalism is an extremely difficult text: it the texts produced in the research process because does not show itself as transparent; it gives itself reality does not preexist the discursive and consti- in enigmatic ways; it calls for interpretive tutive work that is of interest to poststructural hermeneutic effort. There is no question about it. writers. This is important for feminist researchers We think things are the way they must be in that it makes visible the historical, cultural, because they’ve become naturalized. The life of social, and discursive patterns through which cur- the commodity structures our world in ways that rent oppressive or dominant realities are held in we take for granted. And what was Marx’s point? place. What might have been taken for granted as Precisely to make the taken-for-granted world natural, even essential to the human condition, seem spectral, strange. And how does that work? and therefore unable to be questioned in any sys- It only works by taking received opinion and tematic way, is no longer taken to be inevitable, received doxa and really working through it. It no longer left invisible. The structures and prac- means undergoing something painful and diffi- tices of everyday life are opened to scrutiny. cult: an estrangement from what is most familiar. Inevitabilities are reviewed as constituted realities (p. 46) (which have the possibility within themselves of 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 82

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their own reconstitution or collapse). In its focus are in constant flux and often contradictory. on discourse and discursive and regulatory prac- They are always located on temporal and spatial tices, poststructural analysis seeks to transcend axes, thus they are historically and culturally the individual or social divide and to find the ways specific. We are always already constituted in which the social worlds we inhabit, and the within discourse and discourses operate on and possibilities for existence within them, are in us simultaneously at the levels of desire as actively spoken into existence by individuals and well as reason. The concept of discourse is used collectives. The individual in this way of thinking by poststructuralists to bring language into the is not separate from the social landscape, but con- material world where what can be understood tinuous with it (Davies, 2000b). and what can be said and done is seen as histor- An important focus of feminist poststructural ically, socially, and culturally constituted. The theorizing is on the processes of subjectification range of possible ways of thinking are encom- and the discursive regimes through which we passed within (in)finite discursive possibilities become gendered subjects. In this way it breaks that open thought up to us and close thought with theoretical frameworks in which gender down. Discourse “can never be just linguistic and sexuality are understood as inevitable, as since it organizes a way of thinking into a way determined through structures of language, of acting in the world” (St. Pierre, 2000a, p. social structure, cognition, or biology. It rejects 485). We do not have a prediscursive rational the essentialism that attributes the experiences self, existing outside of or apart from discourse, of women to “an underlying essence of woman- we are ourselves constituted within discursive ness, an essence contained in bodies and regimes, some of which are more powerful and expressed in culture,” or that universalizes more readily available than others. Discourses women’s experiences (Ferguson, 1993, p. 81). are not fixed but subject to constant revision and Thus, it rejects conventional elements of radical contestation to flux and flow. The concept of and liberal feminisms. It also breaks with theo- discourse serves to denaturalize what seems retical frameworks that define power as that “natural,” and to interrupt essentialist thought. It which is held in hierarchical and institutional links together “power, knowledge, institutions, frameworks by certain groups and individuals intellectuals, the control of populations, and the (Foucault, 1980). The question for poststruc- modern state as these intersect in the functions tural feminism then becomes that of agency and of systems of thought” (Bové, 1990, pp. 54–55). what possibilities there are for us to act. This Influential discourses related to femininity, het- agency does not presume freedom from discur- erosexuality, fertility, and maternity have struc- sive constitution and regulation of self (Davies, tured the conditions of women’s lives. Feminists 2000a, 2000b) but rather lies in the capacity to have worked to reform these structures. That recognize that constitution as historically spe- reformation became possible through rethinking cific and socially regulated through particular discursive regimes of truth about the essential games of truth, and thus as able to be called into qualities of women at particular moments in question and changed. Meaning and intention time. The suffragettes worked to make it possi- are not stable across times, places, interactive ble to think about women differently—as ratio- contexts, and discourses. Individual subjects nal and intelligent beings—at a time when take up their existence in specific moments and women were excluded from citizenry. As it are always located historically, politically, and became possible to think differently, discourses discursively in contexts from which they are not about democracy and the institutions within separate (Davies, 2000b). In what follows we which these discourses of citizenry were regu- will elaborate each of these concepts of dis- lated and disseminated shifted until, quite course, subjectivity, agency, power, and truth. rapidly, it became impossible to think that women were not capable of voting. The discourses of equity and women’s rights that came Poststructural Concepts to be called feminism in the West did not arise Discourses are complex interconnected webs independently—outside of space and time—but of modes of being, thinking, and acting. They from an intersection of historically situated 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 83

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discourses relating to emancipation and revolu- of cultural and political relations, if not a relation tionary changes in France and the United States that can be turned against itself, reworked, resisted that questioned what it is to be a human subject . . . In a sense, the epistemological model that in a democracy. They arose in part from the new offers us a pregiven subject or agent is one that thinking that became possible at these intersec- refuses to acknowledge that agency is always and tions for individual subjects and from the strate- only a political prerogative. As such it seems cru- gic alliances that these women made with others cial to question the conditions of its possibility, who had begun this deconstructive thinking. not to take it for granted as an a priori guarantee. Poststructuralists, however, are suspicious of (p. 13) successor regimes and victory narratives. They prefer to trace how a certain mode of thought Subjectivity is an ongoing construction tak- became possible at a particular juncture, and ing place through an ongoing process of subjec- how it became a dominant discourse or regime tification, in which one is both subjected to of truth that can itself be subjected to retracings available regimes of truth and regulatory frame- and retellings. Butler (1992) sees such question- works and at the same time and through the ing of democracy as central to radical, decon- same processes becomes an active subject. As structive politics: we are imbricated within discourse, we become complicit in our own subjection, simultaneously A social theory committed to democratic contes- seeking submission and mastery (Butler, tation within a postcolonial horizon needs to find 1997b). a way to bring into question the foundations it is In contrast to the poststructural interest in sub- compelled to lay down. It is this movement of jectification, both radical and liberal feminisms interrogating that ruse of authority that seeks to relied on a humanist conception of the individual close itself off from contest that is, in my view, at subject as separate from and outside of language, the heart of any radical political project. (p. 8) as autonomous and capable of rationality. However, because individualism and realism have Possibilities for shifting discourses, for tak- been opened up to question by critical theory and ing up new ways of thinking and being, that is, the wider effects of postmodern and poststruc- for agency in the world, become possible in the tural thinking, many of the strong claims made contradictions and mo(ve)ments3 within discur- from within liberal feminist and radical feminist sive regimes (Davies & Gannon, 2006). In con- frameworks can no longer be counted as absolute trast to the humanist essentialist more or less certainties (Clough, 1994; Davies, 2000a; Moi, fixed version of identity, poststructuralism 1985; Tong, 1998). These essentializing claims proposes a subjectivity that is “precarious, were already under challenge because feminists contradictory and in process, constantly being of color (other than white) queried their invisibil- reconstituted in discourse each time we speak” ity—or their objectification—and these so-called (Weedon, 1997, p. 32). Some feminists have third world women challenged the commonsense worried that the idea of doing away with the of Western feminism. subject (i.e., the humanist, essentialized subject) The question of the ongoing formation of the has meant an abandoning of the possibility of subject in everyday practices draws attention to agency and so of social change. Theorizing the poststructuralist concepts of power/knowl- agency has thus become one of the most impor- edge. Foucault (2000b) attended very closely to tant tasks for feminists working within post- the micropractices of power relations and their structural perspectives (Butler, 1997b; Davies, effects in the creation of subjects: 2000a). In “Contingent Foundations,” Butler (1992) makes a strong argument for subjection This form of power that applies itself to immedi- being a precondition of agency: ate everyday life categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his The constituted character of the subject is the very own identity, imposes a law of truth on him that he precondition of its agency. For what is it that must recognize and others have to recognize in enables a purposive and significant reconfiguration him. It is a form of power that makes individuals 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 84

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subjects. There are two meanings of the word The concept of power in Foucault’s (2000c) “subject”: subject to someone else by control and work then circles back, inevitably to the concept dependence, and tied to his own identity by a con- of discourse that he developed in his early work science or self knowledge. Both meanings suggest as he struggled to analyze power and its quotid- a form of power that subjugates and makes subject ian operations. Political thought from neither to. (p. 331) the Right nor the Left gave him the tools with which to think about power: Power is not hierarchical, for Foucault (1980), but it proceeds in every direction at The way power was exercised—concretely and in once: It is capillary. It is not a possession that we detail—with its specificity, its techniques and have (or do not have) and that we can deploy to tactics, was something that no one attempted oppress (or to liberate) ourselves or others. to ascertain; they contented themselves with Power is productive rather than oppressive, pro- denouncing it in a polemical or global fashion . . . ductive of subjects and of nets of domination the mechanics of power in themselves were never and subjection within which subjects are always analyzed. This task could only begin after 1968, in motion. Subjects are constituted within power that is to say, on the basis of daily struggles at relations: They are not prior to or apart from grass-roots levels, among those whose fight was them, nor can they be delivered from them. The located in the fine meshes of the web of power. rational, autonomous subject of some critical This is where the concrete nature of power theory is a subject generated with a masculinist became visible. (p. 117) discourse. Foucault talks more often about power relations; that is, about how power is The concrete nature of power is materialized operationalized in interactions between individ- in women’s desires, in their bodies, and in social uals and institutions, than about power as some- relations and institutional structures, and these thing apart or prior to the discursive regimes areas remain the focus of much feminist post- within which power is in continual circulation. structural empirical research (Davies & Gannon, Indeed, we are always within relations of power, 2005, 2006; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000). because we are always within discourse. In his Foucault’s work provides concepts with work on power, beginning with his early work which we might think differently through what on asylums and prisons through to his later work we still call “data” (though that term belongs on the care of the self, Foucault explored how squarely in positivist regimes of thought), about the disciplinary power that was exercised in the truth games within which disciplinary and institutions became part of the humanist subject. other knowledge is produced and reified. He Disciplinary power shifted from something provides us with a toolbox of strategies: archae- brought on the individual, from outside the self, ology, genealogy, and technologies of the self. to a form of power relations taken up and inter- Rather than distinct methods for analysis, these nalized by individuals as their own responsibil- are intertwined modes of thought that make pos- ity. Similarly, women have sometimes been seen sible particular inquiries into games of truth, within feminism as complicit in their own as sets of possibilities that we might take up oppression, though those feminisms assumed because they are useful to us. Foucault’s initial that once “false consciousness” was revealed, strategy of archaeology studies the conditions of women would be free. Within poststructuralist possibility through which disciplinary knowl- conceptions of power, and the knowledge that edge is formed and becomes sedimented. It power produces, there is no freedom from looks at discursive formations, at historical power relations, nor is there any place outside archives; it searches for subjugated knowledges. discourse. But just as within discourse we might Rather than the human subject as the source of find the possibilities for deploying new dis- knowledge, which Foucault called “anthropo- courses, power relations also contain their own logical” history, archeology works in the possibilities for resistance, albeit resistance that labyrinth of the archive, in “the domain of is “local, unpredictable and constant” (St. things said” (Foucault, cited in Eribon, 1992, Pierre, 2000a, p. 492). p. 191). Archeology interrogates the edifices of 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 85

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the disciplines, tracing how knowledge has spots” (p. 7). Deleuze (1988) argued that we come to define a particular domain, and to should see Foucault not as a guru but as some- underpin its associated regimes of truth. It ana- one whose work might be useful in our everyday lyzes groups of statements to ascertain how they lives. Following Foucault, feminists might work achieved “unity as a science, a theory or a text”; with the cracks and fissures of dominant dis- beneath the surface continuities we find “discourses, and the contradictory detail of the continuities, displacements and transforma- everyday, to multiply and enable alternative dis- tions” (Smart, 2002, p. 38). Foucault (1984) is courses. We might keep in mind, as we take up interested in the modes of transformation of dis- those aspects of Foucauldian thought that might cursive practices and his strategy of genealogy be useful to us, that “a truly Foucauldian read- is directed at interrogating knowledge and ing or method is one that moves beyond power relations particularly as they operate at Foucault’s writing and thinking” (Mills, 2003, the level of the body, where the body is the p. 31). The potent pleasures for feminists in object of the operations and technologies of poststructural deconstructive work lies in the power. The body is understood as potential for finding the means to undo sedimented truths through which they might other- The inscribed surface of events (traced by lan- wise be held captive. guage and dissolved by ideas), the locus of a dis- sociated self (adopting the illusion of a substantial Poststructural Analytic unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration. and Textual Strategies Genealogy as an analysis of descent is thus situated within the articulation of the body and In our discussion of the work of Foucault, history. (p. 83) whose troubling of concept—including truth, power, knowledge, discourse, and the subject— Foucault (1984) talks about genealogy as underpinned the emergence of poststructural “gray, meticulous and patiently documentary” thinking, we have already introduced some of (p. 76). It has been taken up by researchers in the analytic strategies that feminist poststruc- many different ways—including as a contempo- turalists have found useful. The generic term rary catchall phrase for any sort of historical discourse analysis is sometimes used to signal analysis—thus, how the subject is treated within the close textual work that researchers are genealogical studies differs greatly (Hekman, engaged in, and reflects the turn to language as 1990). But it is in his final work on the care of the a constitutive force that underpins poststruc- self that Foucault (1985, 1997b, 1997c, 1997d, turalism; however, it is imprecise and applied 1999, 2005) turns his attention most explicitly to within a wide range of theoretically incompati- individual subjects rather than larger systems of ble paradigms. In the remainder of this section, thought and relations of power. we will focus on explicitly poststructural Although we sketch out some component approaches and strategies that have been impor- parts of what Foucault called his “little tool- tant in feminist work. boxes” (Foucault, cited in Mills, 2003, p. 7), it is important to note that Foucault was not dog- Deconstruction matic. His whole corpus was dedicated to the dismantling of dogma, of received and sedi- The term deconstruction has also migrated mented “truth.” This included others’ use of his into populist discourse but, more precisely, it own work: “A discourse is a reality which can emerged from the work of Jacques Derrida. His be transformed infinitely. Thus, he who writes analytic strategies work into the inconsistencies has not the right to give orders as to the use of and weaknesses in meaning that are inherent his writings” (Foucault, cited in Carrette, 1999, within any text. Deconstruction was rapidly pop- p. 111). Mills (2003) suggests that “we should ularized in American literary studies partly draw on his work as a resource for thinking, because of its complementarity with the work without slavish adherence, and we should be of the Yale New Critics (Royle, 2000, p. 5). very aware of Foucault’s weaknesses and blind Meaning is to be found within the text for literary 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 86

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deconstructionists, but that meaning will always principle that captures both “difference” and be multiple, shifting, and deferred. The text can “deferral.” Deconstruction attends to the spec- be provoked to reveal its own contradictions and tral logic of absences that haunt the text. It is (im)possibilities through deconstructive analysis. productive, inventive, and creative, concerned Analysis does not produce definitive new read- with excess and ceaseless iteration. It “opens a ings of a text but is oriented toward the continu- passageway, it marches ahead and leaves a trail” ous deferral and displacement of meaning, which (Derrida, 1989, p. 42), and the trails crisscross Derrida (1976) calls différance. Derrida’s work to create new trails and surprising openings and began from the linguist Saussure’s separation of closings. Deconstruction can, perhaps, be any- the signified (the concept) from the signifier (the thing: “and indeed, one starts laughing, and I’m word representing the concept). Derrida argued tempted to add ‘deconstruction and me, and me, that the relationship between word and meaning and me...,’to parody the parody of a famous is arbitrary. Rather than being fixed or transcen- French song—‘50 million Chinese and me and dental, meaning emerges in specific temporal and me and me” (Derrida, 2000, p. 283). Parody is discursive contexts. As we suggested in the first one of numerous strategies that Derrida—and section of this chapter, deconstruction pays par- those who have found his work useful—have ticular attention to detecting and displacing taken up to dislodge the fixity of meaning in a binary pairs. In its narrowest application, decon- text (see Kamuf, 1981; Spivak, 1976). Gayatri struction is a strategy for identifying and disrupt- Spivak (1976), translator of Of Grammatology, ing binary pairs. As Royle (2000) describes it, describes the difficulties of capturing his work this form “took hold (like a virus or parasite)” in language: and could be “stupidly formalistic” (p. 5). On the other hand, in its widest context, deconstruction The movement of “difference-itself,” precariously has come to mean almost any analytical opera- saved by its resident “contradiction” has many tion on any sort of text. McQuillan (2001) defines nicknames...trace,différance, reserve, supple- deconstruction as “an act of reading which allows ment, dissemination, hymen, . . . and so on. They the other to speak”; that is, as a practice that form a chain where each may be substituted for resists closure, a “situation or event of reading” the other, but not exactly (of course, even two uses rather than a method applied to a text (p. 6). of the same word would not be exactly the same): Derrida prefers to consider “deconstructions,” “no concept overlaps with any other”...Each and he stresses that it has “never named a project, substitution is also a displacement and carries a a method, or a system” (Derrida & Ewald, 1995, metaphoric change (p. lxx). p. 283). Although Derrida’s work can be usefully applied to specific texts, which may be its most Although Derrida has used particular figures prolific application, deconstruction is applicable to work as “hinges”—as analytic devices to to social institutions and discursive regimes that double and displace meaning—in particular exceed a single text or set of texts. Deconstruction texts under analysis, the figures available to as it is useful for feminist poststructural research feminist researchers for this sort of work are can be applied as an everyday everywhere prac- limited only by our imaginations and the texts tice, something we might use in our lives, some- we take up. Along with Spivak, who has used thing active that might help us “make sense” of deconstruction to take on the fields of cultural lived experience but that is most likely to trouble studies (2000) and politics (2001), literary theo- our sense making, even to reach “into the bare rists Diane Elam and Peggy Kamuf have found bones” of who we see ourselves to be (Lenz- Derridean strategies particularly fruitful for Taguchi, 2004). deconstructing “feminism” (Elam, 2000), “sex- Whatever its object or its scope, or its partic- ual difference” (Elam, 2001), “love” (Kamuf, ular strategy, deconstructive work aims to unfix 2000), and “critique” itself (Kamuf, 2001). Yet meaning so that it remains incessantly at play, deconstruction as an analytic approach exceeds mobile, fluid, unable to come to rest or ossify its origins and its originator. Judith Butler (1990, into any rigid structures of meaning. Derridean 1993, 1997a, 2004b), for instance, makes only deconstruction opens language to différance, a passing reference to Derrida in the articulation of 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 87

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her radically deconstructive theory of gender feminist nomadic subject “critiques liberal indi- performativity. vidualism and promotes instead the positivity of multiple connections”; it emphasizes “the role of passions, empathy and desire as non-self- Rhizoanalysis and Nomadism aggrandizing modes of relation to one’s social The rhizoanalytic work of Deleuze and and human habitat” (p. 266). The sort of femi- Guattari (1972, 1987) has also been of great nist subjectivity that Braidotti theorizes emerges interest to feminists working within poststruc- from an “empathic proximity and intensive tural paradigms. In contrast with the linear, sys- interconnectedness” (p. 8) rather than from any tematic branching of tree roots, the rhizome is a independent, separate, or selfish mode of being secret, unseen, underground, creeping, multi- human. In contrast to theories of the self that plying growth that can strangle the tree or the emphasize individualism, subjectivity is always root of conventional thought, that “plots a point, already a “socially mediated process” (p. 7). fixes an order” from beneath (Deleuze & Feminists who think through Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 7). Rhizomatic plants, like Guattari also attend to questions about imagina- heliconias, are knobbly, unpredictable, unstable, tion and creativity in their search for ways to vigorous, prolific, extending in multiple direc- think differently, and playfully, against the grain tions at once, moving underground, splitting off, of dominant discourses and sedimented truths. and springing up anew in unexpected places. Another feminist figuration, analogous to Thought modeled on the rhizome links unex- Braidotti’s nomad, is Donna Haraway’s (1991) pected texts and events to make surprising new cyborg, a type of nonsentimental Deleuzean connections and unpredictable, unreplicable, BwO, neither girl nor woman, human nor ani- insights. Such analysis is also concerned with mal, nature nor culture, corporeal nor techno- the dissolution of the transcendental and unitary logical but composite of all of them, becoming rational subject, of he who “knows.” Deleuze all of them. Yet the cyborg is a material and and Guattari modeled many strategies—cartog- political figure as well, representing the human raphy, rhizomatic analysis, assemblages, figura- exploitation of underpaid workers, the invisible tions, becomings, flows, and intensities—that underclass of white capitalist production. have been taken up and extended in interesting Haraway brings Deleuzian thought together with and provocative work by feminists (Braidotti, an update of Foucault’s conception of bio-power, 1991, 1994, 2002; Colebrook, 2002; Gatens, showing that “contemporary power does not 2000; Grosz, 1994a, 1994b; Probyn, 2000; St. work by normalized heterogeneity any more, but Pierre, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c). This provocative rather by networking, communication redesigns philosophical shift has also been critiqued by and by multiple interconnections” (Braidotti, feminist scholars. For example, provocative 2002, p. 242). Haraway’s dissolution of the concepts, such as “bodies without organs” binary of subject/object through the figuration of (BwO), emphasizing the corporeal as “non- the cyborg is a call for a feminist poststructural- stratified, unformed, intense matter” (Deleuze & ism that entails both pleasure and responsibility. Guattari, 1987, p. 153), as intensity and energy In Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz (1994a) also rather than matter, have been both vehemently brings Deleuzian and Foucauldian concepts rejected by feminists concerned about the era- together to develop a deconstructive corporeal sure of the materiality of embodied experience feminism. The body is the inscribed surface of (Irigaray, 1977, cited in Braidotti, 2002, p. 76), events—as Foucault theorized—but in her car- and taken up by other feminists as productive tography of the female body she theorizes a ways to rethink female corporeality. Rosi fleshy volatile body, subject to flows and intensi- Braidotti (1994, 2002) has used the figuration of ties of desire and of substances, particularly flu- the nomad to generate a feminist nomadic sub- ids (e.g., blood, milk, vomit). She deconstructs jectivity that emphases “flows of connection” inside/outside to show that the female body is “an and “becomings” that rely on “affinities and the assemblage of organs, processes, pleasures, pas- capacity both to sustain and generate inter- sions, activities, behaviors linked by fine lines connectedness” (Braidotti, 2002, p. 8). The and unpredictable networks to other elements, 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 88

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segments and assemblages” (p. 120). Where mean?” (St. Pierre, cited in Richardson & St. poststructural philosophy had been accused of Pierre, 2005). With this shift, writing is no abstraction and elision of bodies, Grosz writes longer “a tracing of thought already thought” the fleshy carnality of the body back into that but a provocation to différance (St. Pierre, cited domain and addresses both the “somataphobia” in Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005). Trinh T. of Western philosophy (p. 5) and the “universal, Minh-Ha is a filmmaker whose writing has been innate, nonhistoric” subject of biology (p. 187). particularly important for postcolonial and All the feminists we have discussed here have feminist poststructural scholars. Her films appropriated and furthered the ideas generated by problematize the Eurocentric ethnographic gaze Deleuze and Guattari to open up new ways to on the Other as “native” and as “woman” and think through the body in feminist theory. her writing enacts a textual practice where Otherness is retained and given voice. Writing itself is the site of theorizing, and of interrogat- Deconstructive Writing ing theory through displacement and disintegra- The feminist poststructuralists we have dis- tion of the subject writing, the reader, of writing. cussed thus far take up theoretical concepts Trinh (1989) claims a “hyphenated” textual creatively and put them to new uses but, for the space, a space where writing is both one thing most part, their writing remains clearly on the and another, as the site for women’s writing: side of theory. Other feminist writers take “So where do you go from here? where do I go? the deconstructive challenge into radical play and where does a committed woman writer go? with form and genre, defying binaries that orga- Finding a voice, searching for words and sen- nize writing into either analytical or creative tences: say some thing, one thing, or no thing; writing and disregarding categories like theory, tie/untie, read/unread.” (p. 20). prose, poetry, drama, and film. As we have sug- Her writing brings together theory and gested earlier in this chapter, critical, postmod- fiction, analysis and creativity. Trinh (1992) ern, and particularly poststructural paradigms develops a “politics of form” of “irrespectfully bring with them a hypervigilance to the politics, mixing . . . theoretical, militant and poetical effects, and rhetorical tropes of language. modes of writing” (p. 154). She provokes a col- Language is not a transparent tool for transmit- lision where “theorizing and practices of repre- ting some truth that exists elsewhere, apart from sentation [are brought] into the same space each the text. A text is never innocent but is constitu- to bring the other into crisis” (Clough, 1994, tive of certain truths and exclusive of others, and p. 118). Trinh (1999) refuses the separation of thus must always be placed under interrogation. theoretical and creative linguistic practice: Language within poststructural frameworks tends to draw attention to its constructedness Word as idea and word as word. These two move- and to its multiplicity. The writers whose work ments of language are interdependent and always we explore in the following paragraphs push at work in the space of writing. When the telling language to the brink, using its creative possi- and the told remain inseparable, the dichotomy bilities to do highly original feminist textual between form and content radically loses its perti- work that is authorized by postmodern or post- nence. That is the way I would try to describe the structural paradigms. way I proceed in writing. The way a thought, a Writing itself is a method of inquiry, as feeling, an argument, a theory, or a story takes Laurel Richardson (1997) has demonstrated, shape on paper is at the same time “accidental” rather than a transparent medium for re-present- and very precise, very situated, just like a throw of ing data. Richardson re-presents interview tran- the dice...if language is subjected to being a scripts and other research “data” in poetic form, vehicle for thought and feeling, or if the focus is shifting the epistemological and ontological ter- only laid on the told, the message, or the object of rain in the process. With Richardson, Elizabeth analysis, then the work will never resonate. And St. Pierre theorizes writing as a “nomadic” prac- without resonance, writing becomes primarily a tice, as a Deleuzian “line of flight” that asks the form of information retrieval or of administrative question: “What else might writing do except inquisition. (p. 35) 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 89

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Trinh’s work plays with the aesthetics and (Cixous & Calle-Gruber, 1997, p. 88). Language effects of language, and is simultaneously emerges in zones between earth and conscious- intensely and provocatively political. ness, deep in the body and memory (Davies, Hélène Cixous, likewise, works in another 2000b). highly original textual location. Although she Cixous (1991) reads her body as a text. She has been positioned for English readers as a sources the “truths” of life and of writing within theorist, she refuses that name. She writes fic- the body, which always mediates every experi- tion, criticism, psychoanalysis, and philosophy ence and which is itself the ultimate text (of life): “without enclosing herself in any of them” (Conley, 1991, p. 12) and often within the same History, love, violence, time, work, desire inscribe texts. In conversation with Conley, she locates [life] in my body. I go where the “fundamental lan- her work in relation to “theory”: guage” is spoken, the body language into which all the tongues of things, acts and beings, translate I am obviously not without a minimum of philo- themselves, in my own breast, the whole of reality sophical and analytical knowledge, simply worked upon in my flesh, intercepted by my nerves, because I am part of a historical period. I cannot by my sense, by the labor of all my cells, projected, act as if I were not a contemporary of myself. analyzed, recomposed into a book. (p. 52) Neither do I think that I must wage a mortal war against a certain type of discourse...I do have The body is the fundament of writing, and knowledge of theoretical discourses. Yet the part the poetic writing practice that Cixous devel- that represses women is a part which I quickly oped derives from the body and reverberates learned to detect and from which I keep my dis- with the body and with other bodies. It resonates tance. One leaves these parts aside. (Cixous, in in and with the body—like music or like blood. Conley, 1991, p. 147) Bodies are texts of lives and can be written within an embodied writing practice of écriture Cixous’s (1981, 1986) explication and prac- feminine, a writing that seeks to preserve tice of écriture feminine, of a feminine writing Otherness. It was in theater that Cixous found that exceeds the phallogocentrism of rational the medium where the writer, as ego, could let thought, has influenced diverse feminists, go and make space for the multiplicity of the including Trinh. Écriture féminine is a practice other: “In the theater one can only work with a of writing that Cixous (1986) says “will never self that has almost evaporated, that has trans- be able to be theorized, enclosed, coded, which formed itself into space” (Cixous, cited in does not mean it does not exist” (p. 92). Sellers, 1996, p. xiv). In the space of theater, the Nevertheless, Cixous’s work can be understood writer must imagine and create and be everyone. within a theoretical landscape. Cixous’s texts She can encounter and inscribe the other, and in are dense, enigmatic, intensely lyrical texts of writing the other she puts herself under erasure. desire, and of loss that might be understood as It is in writing for theater that the self will “contexts of bliss (Barthes, 1975). sent to erase itself and to make space, to Cixous’s (1991) writing is deeply metaphor- become, not the hero of the scene, but the scene ical. Her writing shimmers with “signifiers that itself: the site, the occasion of the other” flash with a thousand meanings” (p. 46). Her (Cixous, cited in Sellers, 1996, p. xv). She sees writing entails careful attention to the possibili- her writing for theater as a critical component of ties of language, sensitivity to the multiplicity, her scholarly practice and as the place where an and excess of language. Like Trinh she shows ethics of writing becomes possible. that the simple truth (if such a thing can be said These authors, as well as ourselves, have also to exist) is neither desirable nor possible. She been influenced by Roland Barthes who, like attends to other sources of language beyond the other French “founding fathers” of contempo- conscious, beyond reason. She locates her rary theory, marked the movement from struc- imagery and understanding of the corporeal turalism into poststructuralism through his body effects of language in dreams, in the unconscious, of work. Barthes (1989) explicitly rejected the and in what she calls zones in(terre)conscious binary of science and literature in academia: 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 90

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Science will become literature, insofar as productive site. Although some readings of the literature—subject moreover to a growing collapse debates suggest that poststructuralism has of traditional genres (poem, narrative, criticism, closed off possibilities for feminist work, vigor- essay)—is already, has always been, science; for ous new fields such as queer theory and feminist what the human sciences are discovering today, in postcolonial theory have emerged in part from whatever realm: sociological, psychological, psy- this collision. We have already explored some of chiatric, linguistic, etc., literature has always the new work done by feminists and have dis- known; the only difference is that literature has not cussed some of the concerns. In this final sec- said what it knows, it has written it. (p. 10) tion of the chapter, we will further delineate feminist criticisms of these paradigms. Many of In his later works, Barthes (1977, 1978) trou- the accusations with which poststructural and bled the category of the individual writer and postmodernist work have been charged by fem- the practices of writing the self. His work, with inists hinge on their apparent relativism, explic- that of the other writers in this section, has been itly their rejection of fixed truths and certainties. inspirational in our own writing, provoking In contrast, researchers who locate their work as Gannon (2001, 2002, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, “critical theory,” who claim emancipatory agen- 2005, in press) to develop a poststructural prac- das and privilege praxis over (or alongside) tice of autoethnography, and to (re)work data as theory, are not generally subjected to this cri- fiction, drama, and poetry in a range of feminist tique. Accusations of relativism work along textual interventions. This work has also been various axes in critiques of poststructural theo- concerned to disrupt the binary of academia and rizing. Each axis rests on a binary way of think- the world, so that a text that began as a research ing that asserts particular possibilities and project in a feminist academic context reemer- impossibilities entailed in poststructuralism. ges as a fictional play on a public stage and vice versa (Gannon, 2004b, 2005), and memory Relativism and Social Action becomes the site for collectively theorizing a feminist poststructuralism (Davies, 2000a, The first axis relates to action. The history of 2000b; Davies & Gannon, 2005, 2006). the feminist movement, as “women’s libera- The writers we discuss in this section aim to tion,” was characterized by individual and col- bring language into crisis, to push at the bound- lective action directed at political and social aries of understanding so that multiple mean- change. The relativism of poststructural femi- ings can be provoked and multiple readings nism is seen by some critics as incapable of invited through a politics of form that disre- provoking any action to improve the lives of spects generic integrity and disciplinary bound- women. If “women” as a coherent category has aries. They work at the limits of language been deconstructed, and “power” is seen as a where, as Trinh (1991) says, the aim is capillary and localized operation, then how and where can feminists work to improve social to listen, to see like a stranger in one’s own land; to worlds? And who is a feminist anyway in these fare like a foreigner across one’s own language . . . times? Delmar (1986) suggested, It is, to borrow a metaphor by Toni Morrison “what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it At the very least a feminist is someone who holds appeared. And a rush of imagination is our flood- that women suffer discrimination because of their ing.” “What she wishes to leave the reader/viewer sex, that they have specific needs which remain with, finally, is not so much a strong message, nor a negated and unsatisfied, and that the satisfaction singular story, but “the fire and the song.” (p. 199) of these needs would require a radical change . . . in the social, economic and political order. (Delmar, cited in Beasley, 1999, pp. 27–28) CONTROVERSIES AND GAPS,CRITIQUES Appropriate feminisms, and feminists, are The intersection of feminist and poststructural driven by the imperative for social critique and theories has been a vehemently contested but the possibility of radical social change. Social 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 91

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theory that does not foreground radical social are seen to be forever and necessarily precluded action is suspect for feminist purposes. This from social action. As we have previewed in our position is evident in critiques of postmodern or earlier discussions of Foucault, Derrida, and poststructural feminism, where the focus on dis- Butler, we do not see this to be the case. The course is seen as inconsistent with an orienta- problem, rather, if there is a problem, lies in how tion to social change. Waugh (1998), for we might bring together postmodernism and example, parodies this with: poststructuralism with all that they entail (including a deconstructive stance toward language and Rather than searching for scientific proof or meta- the social world) together with the action orienta- physical certainty, or a structural analysis of tion of feminist politics. economic or social inequality, we should now rec- Of course, the dismissal of postmodern and ognize that the way to understand and to change poststructural thought from the arena of our world is through the artificial mutation and “action” in the critique we have just discussed manipulation of vocabularies. (p. 183) relies on the definitions of social activism and of emancipation that are used and on the scale on Not surprisingly, she goes on to claim that (her which they are imagined. Waugh and Francis version of) what she calls a “strong” postmodern assert that worthwhile social action is under- position “raises enormous difficulties for any pinned by grand narratives (such as the relent- emancipatory collective movement concerned less oppression of women by patriarchy) that with profound economic and social inequalities” imply large-scale social action as the ideal goal (p. 183). This “emancipatory collective move- for feminists. We do not see this as the only pos- ment” stands in for “feminism” in the sentence sibility. Neither do we see a necessary dilution and in her argument. Differences between and of the “purity” of the paradigm—an idea that we within feminism(s) are elided to allow femi- find antithetical to these paradigms—as result- nism—as a collective and unitary movement—to ing from moments of social critique, action, or right the wrongs of patriarchy. Feminism is of agency. Although it does not provide broad or equated with and defined by its action orienta- simple answers to social problems, poststruc- tion, much as an orientation to praxis and social tural critique does enable close analysis of the transformation is definitive of Marxist, socialist, operations of power. It enables us to examine and critical theories. The argument rests on a set how power operates to construct our desires, our of binary oppositions whereby postmodernism or thoughts, our ways of being in the world—our poststructuralism is set on one side of a binary subjectivities—in ways that can make us uncon- against feminism, and the former is associated sciously complicit in our own oppression. primarily with language and the latter with Poststructural analysis of subjectification—that action. Each side of the binary excludes the other is, of how power works on bodies to produce us and is defined by that exclusion. as subjects—enables individuals and groups to Taking a similar line through the axis of social undertake close readings of lived experience action, Francis (1999) critiques deconstructive (Davies & Gannon, 2005, 2006). With subjecti- paradigms in educational research by imagining fication, we focus on the processes through what she calls a “pure poststructuralism” that which the subject is produced, on subjectivities might be set against the sort of “applied that are “precarious, contradictory and in poststructuralism” that she sees in Davies’s process, constantly being reconstituted in dis- deconstructive work with children and gendered course each time we speak” (Weedon, 1997, identities (Davies, 1989, 2003; Davies & pp. 32—33). The poststructural research and Kasama, 2003). The binary that Francis con- writing strategy of collective biography that we structs does not hold, in our view, within have developed from the memory work of Haug poststructuralism where thinking differently nec- et al. (1987) works at this level to map the oper- essarily and inevitably leads to acting differently ations of power on bodies (Davies, 1994, 2000b; in the world. Her argument seems to be that if it Davies & Gannon, 2005, 2006). can be applied in social worlds, then theory isn’t As critics like Waugh have noted, the dis- “pure” or “true.” Thus, deconstructive paradigms lodging of habitual ways of thinking and being 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 92

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that underpins poststructural work also entails (and others) take will be subjected to rigorous the dislodging of fixed notions of the subject. and continual reflexive examination rather than This abandonment of the stable subject as the accepted as taken-for-granted truths or emanci- foundation for agency is seen as detrimental to patory programs. The social transformation of action, as potentially paralyzing for feminists. gender relations remains the focus of feminism However, the contrary has been the case for and, as Butler (2004b) has recently argued, some feminists working with poststructuralist though “theory is itself transformative,” it is not notions of the subject. For example, one woman “sufficient for social and political transforma- tells how poststructuralist thought provides “a tion” (p. 205). map through a crisis” when she discovers that her fiancée has sexually abused her daughter (in Relativism and Politics Davies, 1994). In the subsequent weeks, inter- secting discourses of “legality, brotherhood, Obviously then, related to the charge that the childhood, sexuality and psychology” work supposed relativism of poststructuralism is detri- against each other to construct the woman and mental for social action is the charge that her daughter in ways that are disempowering. poststructuralism is apolitical, or politically con- The analysis enables her to see by “pulling out servative. Braidotti (2000) argues that rather than the discursive frameworks why [she feels] so being apolititical, “post-structuralists are politi- crazy and [how she is] being pulled to pieces” cally to the far Left of the spectrum. They decon- (p. 34). Reconstructing the way she thinks about struct, build genealogical approaches that clash the event is itself a powerful action and provides with the dogma of historical materialism” though a clearer way forward into further action. She is they emphasize the continuous “process of able to move more easily between those dis- ‘becoming,’ that is the social, political and per- courses within which she felt trapped and can sonal pursuit [italics added] of radical change and better “judge when she could resist and when transformation” rather than any utopian achieve- she had little realistic choice but to comply” ment of transformation (p. 717). The subject is (p. 34). Feminist work that takes deconstruction always in motion and it is in this movement, these seriously puts it to use in everyday social life. mo(ve)ments of becoming, that the imperatives Social change cannot be held apart from of political activism will call us into action. transformation that becomes possible at the Braidotti sees that the radicalism of poststruc- levels of individuals and groups. Yet the social turalism lies in the very qualities that some femi- and personal transformation that might be possi- nist critics have claimed make it useless for ble in these paradigms is an ongoing and con- political activism: “This radicality consists in tinuous process of self and societal critique and unhinging the very foundations of the subject, engagement rather than a step forward in a lin- freeing him/her from the linearity of a telos ear progress narrative toward something we where reason, justice and revolution always end might recognize as “emancipation,” into which up playing the last hand” (p. 717). we might relax with satisfaction as though we Nevertheless, no theory can be purely “left” have achieved the social changes we desired. As or “right” or any other category. Nor is sophisti- we suggested earlier in this chapter, at the cated theoretical work necessarily distant from beginning of this millennium the achievements praxis. Foucault’s (1977) analysis of prisons in of second-wave liberal feminism are proving Discipline and Punish was accompanied by his remarkably fragile in the face of neoconserva- active involvement in the establishment of a tive discursive regimes. We do not see that an prison reform movement (Mills, 2003, p. 76). interest in deconstructive philosophies of the Nevertheless, it is imaginable that fragments of subject prevent us from participating in large- Foucault’s work could be used to justify fascism scale social activism, nor from seeking social or deny the Holocaust (p. 7). This is not to sug- justice in all the arenas of our lives. Never- gest that theory can be inherently good or evil. theless, within this paradigm, the claims we Rather, we should ceaselessly interrogate the (and others) make about our projects, the lan- political use to which theory is put, we must guage we (and others) use, and the actions we situate our own with care and continuous 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 93

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attention. For example, the radically disruptive might critique repressive systems of thought and works of Butler (1990, 1993) have influenced collaborate with practitioners to change institu- diverse fields. In her early works, she unhinged tional practices? The work of the specific intel- the sex/gender distinction and theorized the per- lectual who talks about an area of specific formativity of gender in ways that have been knowledge is also a form of “action” that might useful for queer politics. The questions she have a transformative effect in the social world. raises in Undoing Gender (Butler, 2004b) about Theory and praxis cannot be understood as the conditions of normativity that produce unin- mutually exclusive binaries, indeed they might telligible and unviable subjects, precluding rather be understood as mutually constitutive. some from the very category of the human, reverberate across current neoconservative Relativism, Morality, and Ethics domains of social and political life. In the different spheres of global politics, beginning with Another axis for critiques of postmodern and her discussion of the first war in Iraq (Butler, poststructural theories rests on the question of 1992) through to Precarious Life (Butler, morality. Although these paradigms—like any 2004a), she has continued her relentless interro- theoretical model—are not in themselves gation of the practices of Othering that underpin “moral” or “immoral,” they do question the Western neocolonialism as it plays out from the absolutist foundations of any system of moral- bloody arena of the Middle East to the indefinite ity. This is the work that postmodern and post- detention of prisoners held by the U.S. military structural researchers set out to do. Entangled in Guantanamo Bay. In an earlier work, Butler with the idea of morality are questions of ethics, (1995) describes the work of herself and her fel- what makes some behavior more moral or ethi- low philosophers as though it was removed from cal than other behavior.4 In humanist philoso- the world: phy, ethics operates as an appeal to autonomous, rational subjects who are able to act impartially We toil in the domain of philosophy and its critique, to choose their actions. Rather than relying on and in that way dwell within a presupposed sense an autonomous subject or promoting any set of that theoretical reflection matters. As a result, absolute rules, approaches to ethics or morality though, the important questions raised concerning within a poststructural framework will shift to the rarefied status of theoretical language, the place analysis of the forms of thought and action that of narrative in or as theory, the possibility of a the- are made possible in any particular context. oretical activism, the tension between theory and Multiple readings of a particular event might empiricism . . . are not interrogated. (p. 132) elaborate different discursive effects and operations within that event. If feminist morality and Nevertheless, we believe that it is necessary ethics are contingent on absolutisms, then post- to have different thoughts to work the world dif- structuralist approaches are problematic for ferently, and, as an exemplar, the work of Butler feminism. But if feminists take up and further has been useful for particular domains of social poststructural interrogations of these concepts, life. This highlights another issue for feminists then inventive and radical work becomes possi- who are working in densely theoretical arenas. ble. Early feminist work in this field theorized Academic intellectual thought is marginalized an ethics that was based on “mothering” and in the English speaking world. If we see the role was characterized by “caring and interpersonal of “public intellectuals” as part of our responsi- relations” (see McNay, 1992, p. 93). In this bility as feminists then how are we to cross back framework, characterized by the work of Carol and forth between the academy and the world? Gilligan (1982), morality and questions of right How might we increase our communicative behavior are relativized within a network of repertoires without sliding into a simplistic relationships and responsibilities but they tend reductionism of complex ideas? How are we to to rest on ahistorical and acultural essentialist act and speak in the world, as well as work to notions of the feminine that are incompatible think it differently? How might we be “specific with the antifoundationalism of poststructural intellectuals” (Foucault, 2000d, p. 384) who thinking. The work of reconfiguring ethics for 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 94

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feminists within poststructuralism entails insist- Foucault’s (1978, 1985, 1997b, 1997c, ing on responsibility and on judgment, but at the 1997d, 1999, 2005) work on the technologies of same time destabilizing the subject and the social the self looked at how journal and letter writing, contexts within which she is constituted and con- verbal self-criticism, and confession were taken stitutes herself. In a poststructural feminist ethics, up as reflexive and ethical strategies that con- the subject is “neither sovereign nor autonomous tributed to the constitution of subjects in classi- but always caught up in a network of responsibil- cal societies. However, his work set out to ity to others” (Elam, 1994, p. 105). explore the formation of men as subjects in clas- Ethics and morality are necessarily closely sical and premodern Western societies. Women entwined in poststructural analyses. Foucault (as well as children, slaves, and others) were attempts to disentangle them by describing explicitly excluded from the processes of sub- morality as having two elements—prescriptive jectification that would have made them free codes of moral behavior that are externally and ethical subjects. In its implication that imposed (though they may be taken up as our “questions of moral self-regulation were not rel- own desires) and ethical projects of the self on evant to women” (Grosz, 1994a, p. 159), femi- the self (Foucault, 1985). The second form of nists might have been tempted to reject this morality is intimately connected with the “bio- work as patriarchal or exclusionary. However, it graphical project of self-realization” (Rose, has been more productive for feminists to view 1991, p. 12). Rather than a revelation (or an these gaps and omissions as invitations for fem- imposition) of right thought, poststructural con- inist interventions and reconfigurations. St. Pierre ceptions of morality imply that we must engage (2004), for example, uses Foucault’s work to constantly in the project of “self-reflection, self- interrogate the category “older woman” in ethno- knowledge, self-examination . . . the decipherment graphic fieldwork in her home town in the rural of the self by oneself,...the transformations American south. She uses his theories on the care that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as of the self to examine how through their daily object” (Foucault, 1985, p. 29). The process of lives the women she interviewed enact “a partic- seeking to behave “morally” entails the inter- ular aesthetics of existence in ethical relations section and effects of both of these sets of moral with oneself and others” (p. 333). The subject of practices. The poststructural interest in morality women, she theorized (of these women in this lies particularly in these reflexive processes, place), is constituted in practice, realized in the unconscious as well as conscious, which details of everyday interactions, through friend- Foucault calls “technologies of the self.” These ships that are played out in intimate neighbor- are the everyday practices through which we hood spaces and in each others’ homes. These shape our bodies into particular bodies, histori- private spaces act as “loopholes . . . that encour- cally and culturally specific bodies. Thus, we age subversive citation and the disruption of the are simultaneously governed and govern our- fierce moral codes that aim to keep women in selves. We are individualized and totalized their place . . . Christianity, patriarchy, racism and through the same processes. Through continu- . . . the ‘white southern woman’s code’” (p. 342). ous reflection and adjustment—unconscious St. Pierre describes the practices she examines in and conscious—we shape ourselves appropri- Foucauldian terms as representing “the mode of ately for our contexts. In his examination of the subjection—the way in which one is invited to history of sexuality, Foucault (1980, 1997b, become ethical . . . to have a beautiful existence” 1997c, 1997d) traced technologies of the self and as manifesting in attention to detail and in a through two conflicting imperatives—the oblig- particular “care for others” (p. 343). In poststruc- ation to “care for the self” and the obligation to tural practice, morality is manifest in part through “know the self.” Morality lies in “the kind of these arts of existence and practices of the self. relationship you ought to have with yourself, From the perspective of Derridean decon- rapport à soi, which I call ethics, and which struction, Bennington (2000) claims that determines how the individual is supposed to “ethics” is impossible. As a metaphysical con- constitute himself as a moral subject of his own cept—one of those which has been put under actions” (Foucault, 1997b, p. 263). erasure by poststructuralism—ethics must be “a 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 95

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theme and object of deconstruction” rather than of the self, society and its modes of cultural something that can “simply be assumed or representation...[that] results in a radical new affirmed” (p. 64). He warns against any illusion ethics of enfleshed, sustainable subjects. (p. 75) that sharp-eyed deconstruction might deliver us “into the clear light of ethical felicity and self- The work of reconfiguring ethics in which righteousness” (p. 64). Nevertheless, he argues feminist poststructuralists are interested destabi- that “deconstructive thought will have specific lizes both the subject—who is always already interventions to make in the traditional metaphys- caught up in networks of responsibility to ical vocabulary of ethics, around concepts such as others—and the social world. It rejects essen- responsibility, decision, law and duty” (p. 65). tialist categories and foundational assumptions The core of any system of ethics, in philosophy as and attends to the constant work of becoming in the small southern U.S. town where St. Pierre that an ethical life entails. As Elam (1994) did her research, is located in relations to others. points out, this can seem paralyzing because Bennington differentiates between ethic and duty: “the words that the patriarchy have left us for this are anarchy and chaos” (p. 109). For Simply following one’s duty, looking up the feminist ethics, poststructuralism offers the appropriate action in a book of laws or rules, as it possibility of a “groundless solidarity” with were, is anything but ethical—at best this is an the “possibility of a community which is not administration of right and duties, a bureaucracy grounded in the truth of a presocial identity” but of ethics. In this sense an ethical act worthy of its in a contingent, precarious, and vital solidarity name is always inventive, not at all in expressing that “forms the basis, although not the founda- the “subjective” freedom of the agent, but in tion, for political action and ethical responsibil- response and responsibility to the other” (p. 68). ity” (p. 108). Thus, in community, we “try to do the right thing, here, now, where we are . . . in Rather than poststructural thought having aban- our pragmatic context” with no “transcendental doned ethical practice, Derrida’s work locates it alibi to save us” (p. 108). within social relations: Male Theory/Patriarchal Theory The other has a radical prior claim on me, or even allows ‘me’ to exist as essentially responsible to Some feminists claim that postmodern and and for the other. I do not exist first, and then poststructural theories are patriarchal white encounter the other: rather the (always singular) male theories (e.g., Brodribb, 1992). The influ- other calls me into being as always already ence of male theorists on contemporary feminist responsible for him. (Bennington, 2000, p. 69) theory is clear throughout this chapter but we have argued that this is irrelevant to the uses to Feminist poststructuralists have also found which feminists might put their ideas to critique the work of Deleuze productive in reconceptual- gender. Critiques of the canonical “French fem- izing questions of ethics within the social. Bray inists” also assert the primacy of sex in polic- and Colebrook (1998), for instance, argue that ing what can be considered feminist. Kristeva, appropriation of his work opens the possibility Irigaray, and Cixous—packaged in the early for positive, active, and affirmative ethics with 1980s for English readers as the triumvirate of the potential to vitalize feminism. Braidotti feminist poststructural theorists (Marks & de (2002) describes the Deleuzean reconceptual- Coutrivon, 1981; Moi, 1985)—rely primarily on ization of the self as male theorists—Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida. Cixous (1981) insists that the poetic practices of A relay-point for many sets of intensive intersec- écriture féminine are as available to men as they tions and encounters with multiple others, a self are to women. Kristeva’s (1984) avant-garde that “can envisage forms of resistance and politi- poetic writers are all men. But, as happens with cal agency that are multilayered and complex . . . poststructural thought, categories slip about, an empirical transcendental site of becoming . . . become unstable, canons tend to topple over. The [that] actively desires processes of metamorphosis French feminists are not feminists, according to 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 96

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Moses’s (1998) history of French feminism; Derrida, 2001), he uses male circumcision as the nor are they French—but “Belgian, Algerian figure that defers and displaces the integrity of and Bulgarian-born” as Rosi Braidotti (2000, the text and the speaking self. The sex of the p. 720) reminds us, nor are they necessarily figure is less important than the work it might be poststructuralist. Moses and Braidotti each pro- put to displace the truth claims in a text. duce a careful rereading of their emergence and Nevertheless, it is relevant here to note that the commodification for the English-speaking poststructural theories and theorists we have dis- world illustrating the use to which feminists cussed in this chapter also tend to be “Western” might put their skepticism of familiar stories and “white.” Although categories of cultural and and the attention to detail that characterizes geographic location are themselves complex and genealogical work. They draw attention to the contradictory, feminist postcolonial theory discursive regimes of consumption and circula- emerges in part from the work of important post- tion within which knowledge and power are structuralist thinkers (e.g., Spivak) and is dis- produced and commodified in postmodern cussed in detail elsewhere in this volume. times. Retracing histories for cracks and rup- tures is important work but what matters most is Lack of Relevance not the origin of an idea but the use to which it might be put and the resonance it has with Poststructural feminists have been accused your own work. Whether we turn to Foucault, of irrelevance, as though relevance is some pure Deleuze, or Butler—or any other theorist—is state of moral value. Some critics claim that determined by the moment and creative poten- these ivory tower feminists—spinning language tial that we find in a concept and that provokes renowned more for its opacity than for its us to think differently about our data. sense—rarely leave “their blissful surroundings, Feminists have taken Derrida to task for his and as time passes their sayings become appropriation of figures from women’s bodies to increasingly irrelevant to the majority of use as deconstructive tools, such as “hymen” and women” (Tong, 1998, p. 207). Of course, such “invagination.” Derrida has been characterized as criticisms are predicated on the existence of misogynistic and overtly antifeminist. Yet a cohesive “majority of women” who can be Derrida has claimed that feminism that remains neatly positioned in opposition to the academic committed to Enlightenment ideals and positivist feminists. Who are these women and who paradigms is implicated in phallogocentric decides what is relevant or irrelevant, or what thought: “Feminism . . . is the operation through these terms mean, what discursive regimes of which a woman desires to be like a man, like a truth they re-present? dogmatic philosopher, demanding truth, science, A similar criticism of poststructuralist femi- objectivity; that is to say, with all masculine illu- nist theory in terms of irrelevance or relevance sions” (Derrida, 1978, cited in Elam, 1994, pp. harnesses the Other women of the world to con- 15–16). Elam carefully evaluates the charges and struct a sort of moral hierarchy. The final para- finds that, despite cautions, there are diverse graph of a recent book on feminist methodology points of intersection between them, indeed states that “for many women around the world, “there is a sense in which feminism already ‘is’ caught up in struggles to survive, raise children, deconstruction, and deconstruction already ‘is’ cope with poverty, natural disasters, corrupt feminism” (p. 19). Nevertheless, it is true that “if regimes or varieties of social exclusion, Derrida is positioned ‘as a woman’ in philosophy, resources for thinking are irrelevant luxuries” he is still not a woman” (p. 64). The question (Ramazanoglu, 2002, p. 169). The work of post- then, for feminists, is to what extent does this colonial feminist theorists (e.g., Alexander & matter? Derrida might even be applauded for his Mohanty, Trinh, Spivak) alerts us to the dangers figurative use of the materiality of the body to of assuming that any women in the privileged achieve the displacements and deferral of mean- West might be able to speak for these “many ings that characterize textual deconstruction. In women” who are placed as abject others to those “Circumfession” (Bennington & Derrida, 1993) of us who peddle the “irrelevant luxuries” and “A silkworm of one’s own” (Cixous & of critical thought. Although Ramazanoglu’s 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 97

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criticism rests on an unsustainable essentialist p. 541). Familiar research practices in the social view of all non-white and non-Western women sciences, such as ethnographic research, become as too poor and too busy to theorize, it implies sites of doubt rather than certainty (Britzman, the more important critique that these theories 2000; St. Pierre, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c). are grounded in assumptions of the white, non- Another criticism locates poststructural indigenous subject as the unmarked subject of thought as an exclusionary mechanism within the feminism. Postcolonial feminists are ambivalent power/knowledge regimes of the academy. about the effects of postmodern thought for Ramazanoglu (2002) claims that these paradigms women other than those in the hegemonic West. are intellectually elitist and disadvantage many Although liberal humanist feminism simultane- feminists: “The difficulties and abstractions of so ously appropriated and marginalized women of much postmodern thought have coincided with a color, postmodernism generates “epistemologi- period of competitive career pressures in higher cal confusions regarding the interconnections education so that only certain kinds of feminist between location, identity and the construction thought are deemed worthy of respect, funding of knowledge,” according to Jacqui Alexander or promotion” (p. 166). She describes scenarios and Chandra Mohanty (1997, p. xvii). They where “terms such as ‘empiricist,’ ‘essentialist,’ explain how global realignments and fluid ‘foundationalist’ . . . are fashionable weapons for movements of capital in postmodernity have led trashing traces of modern thinking . . . (Pity the to “processes of recolonization” (1997, p. xvii) unsuspecting empiricist caught in a circle of con- that have been particularly destructive in the temptuous postmodern thinkers—and vice lives of women.5 versa)” (p. 166). Apart from its implicit denigra- The charge of irrelevance is implied in the tion of the intellectual capacities and flexibilities metaphor of the “garden of intellectual delights” of women, and its assumptions that different fem- as a retreat from the world for feminist post- inisms must necessarily be combative, this claim structuralists (Tong, 1998, p. 207). Dense lan- rests on a rhetorical strategy of generalization guage, replete with language games and that is difficult to uphold within deconstructive strategies intended to destabilize and displace paradigms. It assumes a monolithic, even con- meaning, is an irritant to many critics. Calls for spiratorial, new feminist oppression that disre- “clarity” assume that transparency is possible gards the specificity and capillary operations of and that simplicity is desirable (Lather, 1996; power/knowledge. Poststructural analysis would St. Pierre, 2000b). Lather (1996) claims that seek out the particularities and specificities of clarity forecloses thought: social sites—faculty meetings, interview panels, corridor conversations—to interrogate and to Rather than resolution, our task is to live out the challenge the local practices shaping academic ambivalent limits of research as we move towards feminism. something more productive of an enabling viola- tion of its disciplining effects. Inhabiting the Erasure of Body and Materiality practices of its rearticulation, “citing, twisting, queering” to use Judith Butler’s words (1993, Another criticism of philosophically oriented p. 237), we occupy the very space opened up by theoretical frameworks is that they valorize dis- the (im)possibilities of ethnographic representa- course at the expense of the carnal body. How tion. (p. 541) can postmodern or poststructural theory account for the corporeal enfleshed events that impact Thus, poststructural work entails a politics on women’s lives? How can theory help to and practice of writing differently. It is through explain menstruation, birth, rape, breast cancer writing differently that thinking differently and how these are lived in the flesh of women’s becomes possible. Neither comes prior to the bodies? Does this theoretical work inevitably other but they are simultaneously realized entail a degree of “somatophobia” (Grosz, through the folds and hinges of language. 1994a; Kirby, 1991) that is unhelpful for femi- Poststructural theory can be “of use in a time nists? Although for Foucault (1984) “the body is when the old stories will not do” (Lather, 1996, the inscribed surface of events” (p. 83), it is 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 98

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feminist poststructuralists who have brought the in or unconvinced about the relevance of corporeal sexed body into poststructural theory. refocusing on bodies in accounts of subjectiv- This can be a risky strategy for poststructural ity” (p. vii). Her work on inverting the work in that sex, gender, and desire are put under inside/outside dichotomy to characterize female erasure and troubled by deconstructive work bodies as corporeal flows and intensities began (e.g., Butler, 1990, 2004b). Feminists who attend to move poststructural feminists beyond this to the body can risk slippage into an essentialism impasse. Elspeth Probyn (1991, 1993, 2000) has that would be disavowed within poststructuralist also brought the lived body to the foreground to paradigms. Yet some of the most sophisticated explore the nexus of body and theory. She and subtle poststructuralist work has come from describes how reconfiguring her (anorexic) feminists rethinking the body theoretically within body with theory made “postmodernists ner- poststructural philosophical paradigms. For vous” and “feminists angry” (Probyn, 1991, example, Susan Bordo (1993) uses Foucauldian p. 113). Vicki Kirby (1997) describes how post- language and ideas to refine her readings of structural feminists, despite their disavowals of women’s bodies in Western culture. Moira binary thought, have inadvertently reified the Gatens (1991) deconstructs the sex/gender dis- central Cartesian binary: tinction of liberal feminism that served to separate biological and social dimensions of women’s Perhaps commerce with the body is considered lives, and centers a corporeal feminism in her risky business because the split between mind and feminist approach to ethics (Gatens, 1996). Vicki body, the border across which interpretations of Kirby (1991, 1997) interrogates essentialist the body might be negotiated, just cannot be thinking and further disrupts the nature/culture secured. This fear of being discovered unwittingly binary as she theorizes the material body at the behind enemy lines, caught in the suffocating (as the) scene of writing. Elizabeth Grosz, in par- embrace of that carnal envelope, menaces all con- ticular, has been influential in her theorizing of a ciliatory efforts. (p. 73) corporeal feminism. Grosz (1994a) argues that there has been “a Indeed, it has been argued that the body is conceptual blind spot” in both philosophy and only glimpsed, in much feminist poststructural feminism and argues that feminism is “com- work, just as it is disappearing from view plicit in the misogyny that characterizes Western (Somerville, 2004). Nevertheless, we suggest reason” (p. 3) in uncritically adopting philo- that it is here that much potential exists for fem- sophical assumptions about the implicitly mas- inism. The works of Grosz and others enable a culine rational body of Enlightenment thought. theoretical engagement with the messiness of The female body is abject and expelled from the lived corporeal body. The fleshy body is nei- (male) normativity as “unruly, disruptive, in ther separate from nor inferior to a discursive need of direction and judgement” (p. 3). Grosz’ poststructural body, but is the inscribed surface project is feminist because that universal body of discourse, the material effect of discursive has, she suggests, always functioned as “a practices made manifest in the flesh. The body veiled representation and projection of a mascu- for Grosz (1995) is “concrete, material, animate line which takes itself as the unquestioned organization of flesh, organs, nerves, and skele- norm, the ideal representative without any idea tal structure, which are given a unity, cohesive- of the violence that this representational posi- ness, and form through the psychical and social tioning does to its others” (p. 188). Although inscription of the body’s surface” (p. 104). Grosz admits that her program is a preliminary Rather than absented through poststructural one and does not neatly provide “materials theory, the body might be privileged by it. Bell directly useful for women’s self-representation” (1994), for example, claims that the body is the outside of patriarchy (p. 188), she does begin the “only irreducible in Foucault’s theorizing... hard work of rethinking what has been impossi- simultaneously a biophysical given and a ble to think in ways that other feminists have cultural construct” (p. 12). Bodies are also criti- been able to work with. Prior to this work, femi- cal to Judith Butler’s theorizing because: nist philosophy had generally been “uninterested “Discourses do actually live in bodies. They 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 99

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lodge in bodies; bodies in fact carry discourses At the ethnographic coalface, many feminist as part of their own lifeblood” (Butler, cited in researchers working with girls and women use Meijer & Prins, 1998, p. 282). Butler (1997a) corporeal feminism and poststructural approaches rejects the binary opposition between discursive to female bodies to think their data differently. In construction and the lived body in part by turn, their work, theoretically informed and politi- emphasizing the “fundamentally dramatic”; the cally oriented, feeds back into theory. A sampling body is not of recent feminist empirical research shows how poststructural research interrogates the fleshy Merely matter but a continual and incessant mate- subjectivities of girls and women. Working with rializing of possibilities. One is not simply a body, preteens, Gonick (2003) analyzes the discourses but, in some very key sense, one does one’s body and practices of feminine sexuality, embodi- and indeed, one does one’s body differently from ment, desire, and relationship to others through one’s contemporaries and from one’s embodied which these girls imaginatively and corporeally predecessors and successors as well. (p. 404) construct femininity. Pillow (2000, 2004) takes up the body as a “deconstructive practice” in Despite claims that these paradigms elide the her study of pregnant teenager mothers and body, work that foregrounds and simultaneously schooling. In a study of Danish university deconstructs the body as the foundation for students, Søndergaard (2002) examines enact- knowledge can be found in much critical and ments of desire in the “signs on the body” poststructurally oriented feminist research. The inscribed by sexual and romantic storylines. work of Haug et al. (1987), using memories of Malson (1998) deconstructs the ideal of lived experience to unpack how the female body “the thin woman” underpinning anorexia ner- is materially inscribed by discourses of appro- vosa. Each of these empirical investigations priate feminine deportment, demonstrates how thinks back into theory from enfleshed female critical theory can be held to account by female bodies. corporeality. In our own adaptations of this Feminist theoretical and empirical work must work (Davies, 1994; Davies & Gannon, 2005, engage with sexed bodies in one way or another. 2006; Gannon, 2001, 2004c), we generate texts We are inclined to agree with Grosz (1994a) that of the body to interrupt poststructural theory corporeal interventions into theory—across the with our own flesh and expand theory in direc- mind and body split—will bring theory toward tions that are amenable to feminist readings of new and productive horizons because, after all, bodies and the world. Lather and Smithies “bodies have all the explanatory power of (1997) conduct poststructurally inflected ethno- minds” (p. vii) and vice versa. We might go fur- graphic research in a community of women who ther in deconstructing this split by claiming that are HIV positive producing a textual mosaic that “theory-making is a labor of the body” (Zita, is concerned to retain “the weight and density” 1998, p. 204). Feminist appropriations of criti- of the women and to resist the allure of the cal, postmodern, and poststructural theories “comfort text” by using a range of disruptive foreground the body and make use of it as the textual strategies to trouble any easy reading volatile, unstable, and inventive ground for the- (Lather, 2001, p. 212). Sedgwick (1999) takes orizing around the discursive production of what she calls an “adventure in applied decon- sexed corporeal subjects. struction” in writing of her own experience with breast cancer within a poststructural analytical framework. Acknowledging the astonishment CONCLUSION that some readers might have at the possibility “that deconstruction can offer critical resources In closing, we would like to reiterate the strengths of thought for survival under duress,” Sedgwick of feminist postmodern, poststructuralist, and responds that she encountered breast cancer “as critical discourses. Rather than conceive of someone who needed all the cognitive skills she this work as nihilistic, excessively relativist, could get,” including “some good and relevant amoral, or apolitical, we hold that poststructural- ones from my deconstructive training” (p. 156). ist thought opens us into new futures. When 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 100

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dominant discourses that hold us in place and become able to think different, even contradic- lock us into sedimented ways of thinking and tory, thoughts simultaneously. Taking up the being are dislodged, then we might shift into poststructuralist dissolution of the subject as our other—more hopeful and often more radical— project, what feminist poststructuralism allows modes of thought and existence. How we might for is a “new” subject of feminism who is “not relate this work to feminist research in other par- Woman as the complementary and specular other adigms is an ongoing and irresolvable question. of man but rather a complex and multi-layered We might argue, in contrast to the implications of embodied subject who has taken her distance the critics, that feminism and critical, postmod- from the institution of femininity . . . a subject-in- ern, and poststructural paradigms have much in process” (Braidotti, 2002, p. 11). common to begin with in that they share a How might we conclude this chapter on post- “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Braidotti, 2002, p. modern, poststructural, and critical theories and 68). Feminist work has been characterized as cel- their sometimes uneasy relation to feminism? ebrating interdisciplinarity; indeed, it is likely Early in this chapter, we introduced the figure that a “disciplinary approach to feminist theoriz- of the woman weaver, engaged in the constant ing is untenable” (Clough, 1994, p. 168). Beasley and simultaneous processes of weaving and (1999) describes contemporary feminism “as a unweaving herself in the discursive texts of the kind of empty shell into which may be poured wor(l)d. This figure recalls Penelope, the wife any number of different concerns, details and of Odysseus, from Greek mythology, who for 20 explanations” (p. 28). In the academy, despite the years, wove in daylight and unpicked her work academic institutionalization of women’s stud- by moonlight.6 Through this tactic she was able ies—“contemporary feminist scholarship is not to fend off the suitors who would replace the [engaged] in mass group conversation but is, missing king in her bed and on the throne. rather, engaged with respective disciplines, or Resolution of her work—completion of the bodies of theory, that are themselves rarely cloth she wove—was stalled, deferred, post- engaged with each other” (Brown, 2001, p. 33). poned, undone. In the endless iteration of her We suggest, as savvy bricoleurs, that disciplinary daily and nightly work, she came to it each time borders should be treated by feminists with some anew. Each time, no doubt, it changed. She disdain. They are not pure states or bodies of changed. The threads would fade and thin and knowledge but, as archaeological analysis would twist, as did her fingers. One day the light would demonstrate, they are inventions of the commod- draw to her attention a tiny part of the design ification of knowledge and of thought emanating that might be better. Another day the particular from the Enlightenment. It is in the interstices blue of the sky, the dark of clouds, or her own between disciplines, as between discourses, that longings, would provoke a subtle variation. The new thought might fruitfully be generated. themes of the work would change as time Additionally, we would stress that we do not passed, or would change in response to the com- intend to locate critical, postmodern, and post- pany she kept. There may have been as many structural paradigms as successor regimes within versions as there were days. Penelope is usually a history of feminist ideas. Rather than abandon- read as the quintessential devoted wife; indeed, ing discourses emanating from liberal or radical her story is shaped by her responsibility to this feminisms—those allied with humanist Enlight- other, her husband. But she managed the estates enment ideals—we would hold onto what we can and the nation in his absence. She was trapped of the “ruins” of such thought. There are many in a patriarchal system, the wife whose only discourses of feminism in circulation and we likely option was a change in husbands, a need, at times, to deploy them all. We cannot woman trapped in a tale told by a man. Not even abandon discourses, like humanism, that have a central character. Yet she found the possibility shaped how we know and live in the world to make something her own, something new, (Foucault, 1997a; St. Pierre, 2000a). Rather than something that was not an answer, not freedom, rejecting them we need to become adept at mobi- not escape, not truth, but a way to live in the lizing these discourses alongside and within a place and time where she found herself, a way poststructural postpositivist skepticism, aiming to to live that had integrity, which was hers. 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 101

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NOTES In M. J. Alexander & C. T. Mohanty (Eds.), Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democ- 1. Or “neonmarxism” in Lather (1998, p. 487). ratic futures (pp. xiii–xlii). New York: 2. Butler’s chapter “Contingent Foundations” Routledge. appears in both Butler and Scott (1992) and in Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of the text Benhabib et al. (1995). Butler’s “For a Careful (R. Miller, Trans.). New York: Noonday Press. Reading” appears only in the 1995 edition, along (Original work published 1973) with the essays by Fraser and Benhabib that we refer Barthes, R. (1977). Roland Barthes (R. Howard, to in this chapter. Trans.). Berkeley: University of California 3. The formulation “mo(ve)ments” brings together Press. (Original work published 1975) “movement” and “moment” to stress that opportunities Barthes, R. (1978). A lover’s discourse: Fragments for agency, for ways of moving into different discursive (R. Howard, Trans.). London: Penguin. frameworks, open and close in unexpected and transi- (Original work published 1977) tory spaces. We use “mo(ve)ment” also to signify the Barthes, R. (1989). The rustle of language simultaneity of memory and movement in the method- (R. Howard, Trans.). Berkeley: University of ology of collective biography through which we shift California Press. (Original work published in analysis of lived experience from individual biography 1984) toward collective readings of discursive regimes, and Bauman, Z. (2004). Liquid sociality. In N. Gane through which we aim to dislodge habitual ways of (Ed.), The future of social theory (pp. 17–46). thinking (Davies & Gannon, 2006). London: Continuum. 4. Hoffmann (2003) suggests that while in every- Beasley, C. (1999). What is feminism, anyway? day language morals and ethics are used interchange- Understanding contemporary feminist thought. ably, in philosophy they slightly differ: St. Leonards, New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin. moral is typically used to refer to specific, pre- Bell, S. (1994). Reading, writing and rewriting scriptive rules, principles or behaviours, whereas the prostitute body. Bloomington: Indiana “ethics” is used in a more general sense to University Press. describe entire theories, codes and systems of Benhabib, S. (1995). Feminism and postmodernism. conduct, both prescriptive and descriptive. But In S. Benhabib, J. Butler, D. Cornell, & this distinction is not absolutely hard and fast, and N. Fraser (Eds.), Feminist contentions: A philo- little turns on demarcating strictly between these sophical exchange (pp. 17–34). New York: two words. (p. 104) Routledge. Benhabib, S., Butler, J., Cornell, D., & Fraser, N. 5. See, for example, The Globalised Woman (1995). Feminist contentions: A philosophical (Wichterich, 2000). exchange. New York: Routledge. 6. It also recalls and appropriates the trope of Bennington, G. (2000). Deconstruction and ethics. In weaving that Derrida uses in “A Silkworm of One’s N. Royle (Ed.), Deconstructions: A user’s guide Own” (Cixous & Derrida, 2001). The weaving he (pp. 64–82). New York: Palgrave. talks of here is within a male ordered system of Bennington, G., & Derrida, J. (1993). Jacques Jewish law where the silk tallith, the men’s prayer Derrida (G. Bennington, Trans.). Chicago: shawl, is the text that he unravels or ravels. It refer- University of Chicago Press. (Original work ences also Barthes’s (1989) view of text as “tissue” published 1991) where “lost in this tissue—this texture—the subject Bertens, H., & Natoli, J. (Eds.). (2002). Post- unmakes himself, like a spider dissolving in the con- modernism: The key figures. Martens, MA: structive secretions of its web” (p. 64). Blackwell. Boler, M. (2000). An epoch of difference: Hearing voices in the 90s. Educational Theory, 50(3), REFERENCES 357–381. Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Alexander, M. J., & Mohanty, C. T. (1997). western culture and the body. Berkeley: Introduction: Genealogies, legacies, movements. University of California Press. 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 102

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Leonards, New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Derrida, J., & Ewald, F. (1995). A certain “madness” Unwin. must watch over thinking. Educational Theory, Davies, B. (1994). Poststructuralist theory and class- 45(3), 273–291. room practice. Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Elam, D. (1994). Feminism and deconstruction. Deakin University Press. Ms. en abyme. London: Routledge. Davies, B. (2000a). A body of writing. Walnut Creek, Elam, D. (2000). Deconstruction and feminism. In CA: AltaMira Press. N. Royle (Ed.), Deconstructions: A user’s guide Davies, B. (2000b). (In)scribing body/landscape (pp. 83–104). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. relations. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Elam, D. (2001). Unnecessary introductions. In Davies, B. (2003). Shards of glass. Children reading M. McQuillan (Ed.), Deconstruction: A reader and writing beyond gendered identities (2nd (pp. 275–282). New York: Routledge. ed.). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Eribon, D. (1992). Michel Foucault (B. Wing, Trans.). Davies, B., & Gannon, S. (2005). Feminism/ London: Faber & Faber. (Original work pub- poststructuralism. In C. Lewin & B. Somekh lished 1989) (Eds.), Research methods in the social sciences Ferguson, K. (1993). The man question: Visions (pp. 318–325). London: Sage. of subjectivity in feminist theory. Berkeley: Davies, B., & Gannon, S. (2006). Doing collective University of California Press. biography: Investigating the production of sub- Flax, J. (1990). Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis, jectivity. Berkshire, UK: Open University feminism and postmodernism in the contempo- Press/McGraw-Hill. rary west. Berkeley: University of California Davies, B., & Harré, R. (2000). Positioning: The dis- Press. cursive production of selves. In B. Davies (Ed.), Flax, J. (1993). Disputed subjects: Essays on psycho- A body of writing (pp. 87–106). Walnut Creek, analysis, politics, and philosophy. New York: CA: AltaMira Press. Routledge. Davies, B., & Kasama, H. (2003). Japanese Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth preschool children and gender. Frogs and snails of the prison. New York: Pantheon. and feminist tales in Japan. Creskill, NJ: Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: Vol. 1. Hampton Press. An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans). London: Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault. London: Athlone Penguin. (Original work published 1976) Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1972). Anti-Oedipus: interviews and other writings. Brighton, UK: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Athlone Harvester Press. Press. Foucault, M. (1984). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: (pp. 76–120). New York: Pantheon. Athlone Press. Foucault, M. (1985). The history of sexuality: Vol. 2. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Spivak, The use of pleasure (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Trans.). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Penguin. (Original work published 1984) Press. (Original work published 1967) Foucault, M. (1997a). What is enlightenment? In Derrida, J. (1978). Spurs: Nietzsche’s styles/Éperons: P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics: les styles de Nietzsche (B. Harlow, Trans.). Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (C. Porter, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original Trans., Vol. 1, pp. 303–320). London: Penguin. work published 1976) Foucault, M. (1997b). On the genealogy of ethics: An Derrida, J. (1989). Psyche: Inventions of the other overview of work in progress. In P. Rabinow (C. Porter, Trans.). In L. Waters & W. Godzich (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics: Essential works (Eds.), Reading de Man reading. Minneapolis: of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 253–280). University of Minneapolis Press. (Original work London: Penguin. published 1987) Foucault, M. (1997c). Technologies of the self. In Derrida, J. (2000). Et cetera. In N. Royle (Ed.), P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics: Deconstructions: A user’s guide (pp. 282–305). Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, New York: Palgrave. pp. 223–252). London: Penguin. 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 104

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Foucault, M. (1997d). The ethics of the concern for Gane, N. (2004). Introduction: Rethinking social the self as a practice of freedom (P. Aranov & theory. In N. Gane (Ed.), The future of social D. McGrawth, Trans.). In P. Rabinow (Ed.), theory (pp. 1–16). London: Continuum. Michel Foucault. Ethics. Essential works of Gannon, S. (2001). (Re)presenting the collective girl. Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 281–301). Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 787–800. London: Penguin. (Original work published Gannon, S. (2002). “Picking at the scabs”: A post- 1994) structuralist/feminist writing project. Qualitative Foucault, M. (1998). Structuralism and poststruc- Inquiry, 8(5), 670–682. turalism. In P. Rabinow (Ed.). Michel Foucault: Gannon, S. (2004a). Dream(e)scapes: A poetic exper- Aesthetics: Essential works of Foucault iment in writing a self. Auto/Biography, 12, 1954–1984 (Vol. 2, pp. 433–458). New York: 107–125. New Press. Gannon, S. (2004b). Out/performing in the academy: Foucault, M. (1999). About the beginnings of the Writing “The Breast Project.” International hermeneutics of the self (T. Keenan & Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, M. Blasius, Trans.). In J. R. Carrette (Ed.), 17(1), 65–81. Religion and culture (pp. 158–181). New York: Gannon, S. (2004c). Crossing “boundaries” with the Routledge. (Original work published 1978) collective girl: A poetic intervention into sex Foucault, M. (2000a). So is it important to think? In education. Sex Education, 4(1), 81–99. J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power: Gannon, S. (2005). “The tumbler”: Writing an/other Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 3, in fiction and ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, pp. 454–458). New York: New Press. 11, 622–627. Foucault, M. (2000b). The subject and power. In Gannon, S. (in press). The (im)possibilities of writing J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power: the self: French poststructural theory and Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 3, autoethnography. Cultural Studies: Critical pp. 326–348). New York: New Press. Methodologies, 6(3). Foucault, M. (2000c). Truth and power. In Gatens, M. (1991). A critique of the sex/gender dis- J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power: tinction. In S. Gunew (Ed.), A reader in feminist Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 3, knowledge (pp. 139–157). London: Routledge. pp. 111–133). New York: New Press. Gatens, M. (1996). Imaginary bodies: Ethics, power Foucault, M. (2000d). What is called punishing? In and corporeality. London: Routledge. J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power: Gatens, M. (2000). Feminism as “password”: Re- Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 3, thinking the “possible” with Spinoza and pp. 382–393). New York: New Press. Deleuze. Hypatia, 15(2), 59–75. Foucault, M. (2005). The hermeneutics of the subject: Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982 MA: Harvard University Press. (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Gonick, M. (2003). Between femininities: Ambiva- Macmillan. lence, identity and the education of girls. Francis, B. (1999). Modernist reductionism or post- Albany: State University of New York Press. structural relativism: Can we move on? An eval- Grosz, E. (1990). Jacques Lacan: A feminist intro- uation of the arguments in relation to feminist duction. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: educational research. Gender and Education, Allen & Unwin. 11(4), 381–393. Grosz, E. (1994a). Volatile bodies: Towards a corpo- Fraser, N. (1995a). False antitheses. In S. Benhabib, real feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University J. Butler, D. Cornell, & N. Fraser (Eds.), Press. Feminist contentions: A philosophical exchange Grosz, E. (1994b). A thousand tiny sexes: Feminism (pp. 59–74). New York: Routledge. and rhizomatics. In C. V. Boundas & D.Olkowski Fraser, N. (1995b). Pragmatism, feminism and (Eds.), Gilles Deleuze and the theatre of philoso- the linguistic turn. In S. Benhabib, J. Butler, phy (pp. 187–210). London: Routledge D. Cornell, & N. Fraser (Eds.). Feminist Grosz, E. (1995). Space, time and perversion: The contentions: A philosophical exchange (pp. 157– politics of bodies. Sydney, New South Wales, 172). New York: Routledge. Australia: Allen & Unwin. 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 105

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Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: Lather, P., & Smithies, C. (1997). Troubling the The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. angels: Women living with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, Haraway, D. (2000). “There are always more things CO: Westview. going on than you thought!” Methodologies Lenz-Taguchi, H. (2004). In på bara benet. [Into the as thinking technologies. Kvinder, Køn & bare bones. Introduction to feminist poststruc- Forskning, 4, 53–60. turalism.] Stockholm: HLS Forlag. Haug, F. et al. (1987). Female sexualization: A col- Lincoln, Y. S., & Denzin, N. K. (2003). The seventh lective work of memory (E. Carter, Trans.). moment: Out of the past. In N. K. Denzin & London: Verso. (Original work published 1983) Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualita- Hekman, S. J. (1990). Gender and knowledge: tive research (2nd ed., pp. 611–640). Thousand Elements of a postmodern feminism. Boston: Oaks, CA: Sage. Northeastern University Press. Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The postmodern condition. Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., & Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Walkerdine, V. (1998). Changing the subject. Malson, H. (1998). The thin woman: Feminism, post- Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. structuralism and the social psychology of London: Methuen. anorexia nervosa. London: Routledge. Hoffmann, P. (2003). Nothing so absurd: An invita- Marks, E., & de Coutrivon, I. (Eds.). (1981). New tion to philosophy. Peterborough, Ontario, French feminisms: An introduction. New York: Canada: Broadview Press. Schocken Books. Kamuf, P. (Ed.). (1981). A Derrida reader: Between the McCarthy, T. (1994). Philosophy and critical theory: blinds. New York: Columbia University Press. A reprise. In D. Couzens Hoy & T. McCarthy Kamuf, P. (2000). Deconstruction and love. In (Eds.), Critical theory (pp. 5–100). Oxford, UK: N. Royle (Ed.), Deconstructions: A user’s guide Blackwell. (pp. 151–170). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. McNay, L. (1992). Foucault and feminism. Kamuf, P. (2001). The ghosts of critique and decon- Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. struction. In M. McQuillan (Ed.), Deconstruction: McQuillan, M. (2001). Introduction: Five strategies A reader (pp. 198–213). New York: Routledge. for deconstruction. In M. McQuillan (Ed.), Kincheloe, J., & McLaren, P. (2003). Rethinking Deconstruction: A reader (pp. 1–43). New York: critical theory and qualitative research. In Routledge. N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The land- Meijer, I. C., & Prins, B. (1998). How bodies come to scape of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. matter: An interview with Judith Butler. Signs: 433–488). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23(2), Kirby, V. (1991). Corporeal habits: Addressing essen- 275–286. tialism differently. Hypatia, 6(3), 4–24. Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault. London: Kirby, V. (1997). Telling flesh: The substance of the Routledge. corporeal. New York: Routledge. Moi, T. (1985). Sexual/textual politics: Feminist liter- Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language ary theory. London: Methuen. (M. Waller, Trans.). New York: Columbia Univer- Moses, C. Goldberg (1998). Made in America: sity Press. (Original work published 1974) French feminism in academia. Feminist Studies, Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research 24(2), 241–274. and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. New Pillow, W. (2000). Exposed methodology: The body York: Routledge. as a deconstructive practice. In E. St. Pierre & Lather, P. (1996). Troubling clarity: The politics of W. Pillow (Eds.), Working the ruins: Feminist accessible language. Harvard Educational poststructural theory and method in education Review, 66(3), 525–545. (pp. 199–219). New York: Routledge. Lather, P. (1998). Critical pedagogy and its complici- Pillow, W. (2004). Unfit subjects: Educational policy ties: A praxis of stuck places. Educational and the teen mother. New York: Routledge Theory, 48(4), 487–497. Falmer. Lather, P. (2001). Postbook: Working the ruins of Probyn, E. (1991). This body which is not one: feminist ethnography. Signs: Journal of Women Speaking an embodied self. Hypatia, 6(3), in Culture and Society, 27(1), 199–227. 111–124. 04-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:13 PM Page 106

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Probyn, E. (1993). Sexing the self: Gendered posi- St. Pierre, E. A. (1997c). An introduction to figurations: tions in cultural studies. London: Routledge. A poststructural practice of inquiry. Qualitative Probyn, E. (2000). Carnal appetites: FoodSexIdentit- Studies in Education, 10(3), 279–284. ies. London: Routledge. St. Pierre, E. (2000a). Poststructural feminism in Ramazanoglu, C. (with Holland, J.). (2002). Feminist education: An overview. Qualitative Studies in methodology: Challenges and choices. London: Education, 13(5), 477–515. Sage. St. Pierre, E. (2000b). The call for intelligibility. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing Educational Researcher, 29(5), 25–28. an academic life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers St. Pierre, E. A. (2004). Care of the self: The subject University Press. and freedom. In B. Baker & K. Heyning (Eds.), Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: Dangerous coagulations? The use of Foucault in A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & the study of education (pp. 325–358). New York: Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative Peter Lang. research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Thousand St. Pierre, E. A., & Pillow, W. S. (Eds.). (2000). Oaks, CA: Sage. Working the ruin:. Feminist poststructural theory Rose, N. (1991). Governing the soul: The shaping of and methods in education. New York: Routledge. the private self. London: Routledge. Tong, R. P. (1998). Feminist thought: A more com- Royle, N. (2000). What is deconstruction? In prehensive introduction (2nd ed.). New York: N. Royle (Ed.), Deconstructions: A user’s guide Westview Press. (pp. 1–13). New York: Palgrave. Trinh, Minh-Ha. (1989). Woman, native, other. Sedgwick, E. Kosofky (1999). Breast cancer: An Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. adventure in applied deconstruction. In J. Price & Trinh, Minh-Ha. (1991). When the moon waxes red. M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist theory and the body: New York: Routledge. A reader (pp. 153–156). New York: Routledge Trinh, Minh-Ha. (1992). Framer framed. New York: Sellers, S. (1996). Hélène Cixous: Authorship, autobi- Routledge. ography and love. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Trinh, Minh-Ha. (1999). Cinema-interval. London: Smart, B. (2002). Michel Foucault (Rev. ed.). Routledge. London: Routledge. Ussher, J. M. (1997). Body talk: The material and Somerville, M. (2004). Tracing bodylines: The discursive regulation of sexuality, madness and body in feminist poststructuralist research. reproduction. London: Routledge. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Walkerdine, V. (1990). Schoolgirl fictions. London: Education, 17(1), 47–63. Verso. Søndergaard, D. M. (2002). Poststructuralist Waugh, P. (1998). Postmodernism and feminism. approaches to empirical analysis. International In S. Jackson & J. Jones (Eds.), Contemporary Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, feminist theories (pp. 177–193). New York: New 15(2), 187–204. York University Press. Spivak, G. C. (1976). Translator’s preface. In J.Derrida Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststruc- (Ed.), Of grammatology (pp. ix–lxxxiix). tural theory (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Wichterich, C. (2000). The globalised woman. New Spivak, G. C. (2000). Deconstruction and cultural York: Zed Books. studies: Arguments for a deconstructive cultural Wilshire, D. (1989). The uses of myth, image and studies. In N. Royle (Ed.), Deconstructions: A the female body in revisioning knowledge. In user’s guide (pp. 14–43). New York: Palgrave. A. M. Jagger & S. R. Bordo (Eds.), Gender/ Spivak, G. C. (2001). Practical politics of the open body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of end. In M. McQuillan (Ed.), Deconstruction: A being and knowing (pp. 92–114). New Brunswick, reader (pp. 397–404). New York: Routledge. NJ: Rutgers University Press. St. Pierre, E. A. (1997a). Circling the text: Nomadic writ- Zima, P. V. (2002). Deconstruction and critical ing practices. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(4), 403–417. theory. London: Continuum. St. Pierre, E. A. (1997b). Methodology in the fold and Zita, J. (1998). Body talk: Philosophical reflections the irruption of data. Qualitative Studies in on sex and gender. New York: Columbia Education, 10(2), 175–189. University Press. Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 715

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kum-Kum Bhavnani is Professor of Sociology nonprofit educational organization serving at the University of California at Santa Barbara inner-city youth. and chairs the program in Women Culture Sharon Brisolara is a program evaluator, and and Development in Global and International she founded and owns Evaluation Solutions, an Studies. She has written books, articles, and evaluation organization operating in Northern essays on several topics, including feminist California. Her areas of expertise include femi- methodologies, women in prison and feminist nist evaluation, participatory evaluation, qualita- theory. She has also been studying the relation- tive methodology, and mixed-method studies. ships between and interconnected configura- She is an active member of the American tions of “race”/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and Evaluation Association and of the Feminist class. She now conducts research on women in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG), and she the Third World where she, along with coau- is currently serving as the group’s program chair. thors Peter Chua, John Foran, Priya Kurian, and She coedited Feminist Evaluation: Explorations Debashish Munshi, has been developing a new and Experiences: New Directions for Evaluation approach to development studies—the women, (2002) with Dr. Denise Seigart and has written culture development paradigm. From that theo- and presented in various forums on feminist eval- retical frame, she has recently completed a 2006 uation and feminist theory. She received her documentary, The Shape of Water (www.the- doctorate from Cornell University in program shapeofwatermovie.com), which centers women evaluation and planning with concentrations in making change in Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and women’s studies and rural sociology. Senegal. Abigail Brooks is a PhD candidate in sociology Katherine Borland is Associate Professor of at Boston College. Her areas of interest include Comparative Studies in the Humanities at Ohio feminist theory, sociology of gender, critical State University at Newark, where she teaches gerontology and feminist age studies, sociology Folklore, World Literature, and Post-Develop- of the body, science and technology studies, ment Theory. She has published articles in the and social theory. Her dissertation investigates Radical History Review, the Journal of American women’s lived experiences and interpretations of Folklore, and in several edited collections. growing older against the contextual backdrop She has also published two ethnographically of growing prevalence, acceptance, and approval grounded, book-length studies: Unmasking Class, of cosmetic surgery. She recently published an Gender and Sexuality in Nicaraguan Festival article titled “‘Under the Knife and Proud of it:’ (2006) and Creating Community: Hispanic An Analysis of the Normalization of Cosmetic Migration to Southern Delaware (2001). She is Surgery” in the Journal of Critical Sociology. currently embarking on an ethnography of the salsa scene in North Jersey. Outside the academy, she has Kathy Charmaz is Professor of Sociology and worked as a public folklorist and as director of a Coordinator of the Faculty Writing Program at

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Sonoma State University, a program to assist She earned her BA from Boston University and faculty in writing for publication. She has received her doctorate in psychology from the written or coedited six books, including her University of Michigan. Her research focuses on 2006 volume, Constructing Grounded Theory: how individuals’ sense of themselves as con- A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis nected to social groups (such as race, gender, or (Sage, London) and Good Days, Bad Days: social class) is related to how they understand The Self in Chronic Illness and Time, which won their social environments, issues of public con- awards from the Pacific Sociological Associa- cern (such as abortion or affirmative action), and tion and the Society for the Study of Symbolic their choices about political participation. Interaction. She has also written numerous Judith A. Cook is a professor of psychiatry at papers on grounded theory methods as well as the University of Illinois at Chicago. She directs on medical sociology and social psychology. the Center on Mental Health Services Research She serves as vice president of Alpha Kappa and Policy, and her recent research explores the Delta, the international honorary society for lives of women with psychiatric disabilities and sociology, and she has served as president of the those living with HIV/AIDS. She is also focus- Pacific Sociological Association, vice president ing much of her research on the intersection of of the Society for the Study of Symbolic gender, class, and race in health and human Interaction, editor of Symbolic Interaction, and services public policy. chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Erzulie Coquillon holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Boston College Adele E. Clarke is Professor of Sociology and and a BA in history from Harvard College. Adjunct Professor of History of Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her Bronwyn Davies is Professor and chair of the work centers on studies of science, technology, Narrative Discourse and Pedagogy Research and medicine (with special emphasis on medical Group at the University of Western Sydney. Her technologies and women’s health) and qualitative publications include Poststructural Theory and research methods. Her latest book is Situational Classroom Practice (1994), (In)scribing Body Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Landscape Relations (2000), A Body of Writing Turn (Sage, 2005). She is best known for her (2000), Gender in Japanese Preschools: Frogs study of the reproductive sciences in biology, and Snails and Feminist Tales in Japan (2004), medicine, and agriculture, Disciplining Reproduc- and she also published second editions of tion: American Life Scientists and the “Problem Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales (2003) and of Sex” (1998). She coedited Revisioning Women, Shards of Glass (2003). She coauthored the Health and Healing: Cultural, Feminist and chapter on “Feminism/Poststructuralism” in the Technoscience Perspectives (1999) with Virginia Sage Research Methods in the Social Sciences Oleson and anticipates her forthcoming book, (2005) with Susanne Gannon, and they also Biomedicalization: Technoscience and the coedited the book Doing Collective Biography Transformation of Health and Illness in the U.S, (2006). which she coedited with Janet Shim, Laura Marjorie L. DeVault is Professor of Sociology Mamo, Jennifer Fosket, and Jennifer Fishman and a member of the Women’s Studies Program (2006). at Syracuse University. She has been learning Elizabeth R. Cole is Associate Professor of about institutional ethnography from Dorothy Women’s Studies and Afro-American and Smith and others in the “IE network” since the African Studies at the University of Michigan. 1980s, and she currently works with graduate She coauthored Speaking of Abortion: Television students on IE projects. Her research has and Authority in the Lives of Women with Andrea explored women’s “invisible work” in families Press (1999). She and Joan Ostrove coedited an and in the historically female field of dietetics issue of the Journal of Social Issues (Vol. 59, and nutrition education. Trained in the Chicago- No. 4, 2003) that focused on the psychological School fieldwork tradition and deeply influ- meanings of social class in educational contexts. enced by the feminism of the 1970s, she has Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 717

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written extensively on qualitative and feminist (2004, with L. Weis, L. Powell Pruitt, & methodologies. She also maintains an IE web- A. Burns), Brown v. Board of Education (2004), site at http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault. and Changing Minds: The Impact of College in She is the author of Feeding the Family: The Prison (2001, with Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, Work (1991) and Liberating Method: Feminism “Missy,” Rosemarie Roberts, Pamela Smart, and Social Research (1999). Maria Torre, & Debora Upegui). Bonnie Thornton Dill is Professor and Chair of Mary Margaret Fonow is Professor and the Women’s Studies Department and Program Director of the Women and Gender Studies and Director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, Program at Arizona State University. Her and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland. research areas include global unions, feminist Her research focuses on intersections of race, methodology, and social movements. She is the class, and gender with an emphasis on African author of Union Women: Forging Feminism in American women and families and has been the United Steelworkers of America (2003), and reprinted in numerous collections and edited vol- she is currently writing a book about feminists’ umes. Before coming to Maryland in 1991, she roles within global union networks as advocates was professor of sociology at the University of for women’s transnational labor rights. Memphis, where she founded and directed the Susanne Gannon lectures in the School of Center for Research on Women. Under her lead- Education at the University of Western Sydney. ership, this organization gained national promi- She is a founding member of the Narrative nence for outstanding work on the intersections Discourse and Pedagogy Research Group. Her of race, class, and gender. Her more recent publi- research has examined writing practices through cations include “Disparities in Latina Health: An feminist poststructural theory. She has published Intersectional Analysis” (with R. E. Zambrana) in studies on research methodology and feminist A. Schulz and L. Mullings, Gender, Race, Class approaches to embodiment and writing in a range & Health (2006), “Between a Rock and a Hard of journals, including Sex Education, Qualitative Place: Motherhood, Choice and Welfare in Inquiry, Qualitative Studies in Education, and the Rural South” (with T. Johnson), in Sharon Auto/Biography. She coauthored the chapter Harley et al. (Eds.), Sister Circle: Black Women on “Feminism/Poststructuralism” in the Sage and Work (2002), and “Poverty in the Rural Research Methods in the Social Sciences (2005) U.S.: Implications for Children, Families and with Bronwyn Davies, and they also coedited the Communities,” in Judith Blau (Ed.), Blackwell book Doing Collective Biography (2006). Companion to Sociology (2001). Her work has also been published in journals, including Signs, Glenda Gross is a Doctoral student in sociol- Feminist Studies, The Journal of Family History, ogy at Syracuse University. Her research inter- and The Journal of Comparative Family Studies, ests include feminist theory; qualitative methods and these articles are widely reprinted. She has and feminist methodologies; race, class, gender, received several prestigious awards, including the and work; studies in the social organization Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award of knowledge; institutional ethnography; and and the Jessie Bernard Award for research in antiracist feminist pedagogies. Her work explores gender studies. These were both given by the the social organization of antiracist feminist American Sociological Association. educators’ work in U.S. colleges and univer- sities. She earned her MA in sociology, with Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of a certificate of advanced studies (CAS) in Social Psychology, Women’s Studies and women’s studies. Urban Education at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), has taught at Sandra Harding teaches Philosophy of Social CUNY since 1990. Her recent publications Science and Postcolonial and Feminist Studies at include Working Method: Social Research and University of California at Los Angeles. She has Social Injustice (2004, with L. Weis), Off White: written or edited 14 books and special issues of Essays on Race, Privilege and Contestation journals that focus on feminist and postcolonial Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 718

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epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of Debra Renee Kaufman is the former founder science. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: and Director of Women’s Studies, a Matthews Intellectual and Political Controversies was pub- Distinguished Professor, and Professor of lished in 2004 and Science and Social Inequality: Sociology at Northeastern University. Among Feminist and Postcolonial Issues appeared in her award nominated and selected books are April 2006. She coedited Signs: Journal of Women Achievement and Women (coauthored with in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005 and she Barbara Richardson, honorable mention, C. W. is currently working on Women, Science, and Mills Award), Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Modernity. Orthodox Jewish Women (nominated for three awards), and an invited guest-edited edition of Mary Hawkesworth is Professor of Women’s Contemporary Jewry titled Women and the and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her Holocaust. Her commitment to feminist scholar- teaching and research interests include feminist ship is evident in her published articles and theory, women and politics, contemporary chapters on post-Holocaust Jewish identity poli- political philosophy, philosophy of science, and tics and her forthcoming books From the social policy. Her major works include Protocols of Zion to Holocaust Denial: Challeng- Globalization and Feminist Activism (2006); ing the Media, the Law and the Academy Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to (coedited with G. Herman, J. Ross, and D. Phillips) Methodological Innovation (2006); Beyond and Post Holocaust Identity and an Ever-Dying Oppression: Feminist Theory and Political People: Contemporary Narratives. She is cur- Strategy (1990); Theoretical Issues in Policy rently researching intergenerational ties among Analysis (1988); and The Encyclopedia of adult Jewish daughters and their mothers. Government and Politics (1992; 2nd revised edition, 2003). She is currently the editor of Hyun Sook Kim is Chair and Professor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Sociology at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She teaches a range of courses in sociology, Catherine Hundleby is Assistant Professor in women’s studies, and Asian/American studies. Philosophy and cross-appointed with Women’s Her research and publications have focused on Studies at the University of Windsor, Canada. postcolonial and transnational feminist studies She focuses on feminist naturalism and feminist of nation/state violence, gender, ethnic con- standpoint theory, with special attention to the flicts, nationalism, and history writing. She relationships between cognitive and sociopoliti- recently coedited a special issue (April, 2005) of cal values. Her papers on these topics have Gender & Society that calls for retheorization of appeared in Hypatia, Social Epistemology, and the linkages between “Gender-Sexuality-State- Women & Politics. She received her doctorate in Nation” and the development of transnational philosophy from the University of Western feminist sociology. Ontario, and her research focuses on feminist Sally L. Kitch is Professor and Vice Chair in epistemology from an analytical perspective. the Department of Women’s Studies at Ohio Toby Epstein Jayaratne is currently a research State University, where she was Chair from psychologist at the University of Michigan 1992 to 2000. Her research focuses on the and directs the Beliefs and Understanding of mechanisms by which women in various histor- Genetics Project, a study exploring Americans’ ical and cultural contexts have exerted pressure perceptions about possible genetic influences on on gendered expectations and developed their perceived gender, class, and race differences own strategies of resistance. She has published and on sexual orientation. Her academic inter- numerous articles and three books of interdisci- ests focus on the use of genetic explanations to plinary scholarship analyzing gender, feminism, justify and support various social and political and utopianism: Chaste Liberation: Celibacy ideologies. She has written and presented sev- and Female Cultural Status; This Strange eral papers on the topic of feminist methodol- Society of Women: Reading the Lives and ogy. She received her PhD in developmental Letters of the Woman’s Commonwealth; and psychology from the University of Michigan. Higher Ground: From Utopianism to Realism in Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 719

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American Feminist Thought and Theory. Her globalization. Her current research examines articles and book chapters on interdisciplinary the ways in which feminist artists aesthetically feminist scholarship include PhD Programs confront injustices and asymmetries of power and the Research Mission of Women’s Studies: across national, gendered, and racial borders. The Case for Interdisciplinarity (2003) and She holds a master’s degree in education from Disciplined by Disciplines? The Need for an Harvard Graduate School of Education. Interdisciplinary Research Mission in/and for Helen E. Longino is Professor of Philosophy at Women’s Studies (1998, coauthor Judith Allen). Stanford University. Her teaching and research Both articles appeared in Feminist Studies. interests are in philosophy of science, social Noretta Koertge is Professor Emeritus in epistemology, and feminist philosophy. She is History & Philosophy of Science at Indiana the author of Science as Social Knowledge University and has written extensively on the (1990), The Fate of Knowledge (2001), and relationship between scientific research and many articles in the philosophy of science, fem- social values. Her coauthored and edited books inist philosophy, and epistemology. Her many include Professing Feminism (1994, 2003), coedited volumes include Feminism and Science A House Built on Sand (1998), Scrutinizing (with Evelyn Fox Keller, 1996) and Osiris 12: Feminist Epistemology (2003), and Scientific Women, Gender and Science (with Sally Gregory Values and Civic Virtues (2005). After working Kohlstedt, 1997), and the forthcoming Scientific in chemistry, she studied philosophy of science Pluralism (Vol. 19) of the Minnesota Studies in in London during the time when Popper, Philosophy of Science (with Stephen Kellert & Lakatos, and Feyerabend were very influential. C. Kenneth Waters, 2006). She is currently com- Her earlier publications address problems in sci- pleting a book-length comparative analysis of entific methodology and social science with an four approaches in the sciences of human emphasis on the conceptual issues that arise in behavior, focusing on research on aggression the study of homosexuality. Although she has and research on sexual orientation. This analysis taught in Turkey, England, and Canada, she includes both an examination of the logical has spent most of her academic life at Indiana structures and interrelations of these approaches University. After receiving tenure, she published and study of their social and cultural reception two novels that deal with the lesbian experience and uptake. in pre- and post-Stonewall America: Who Was M. Brinton Lykes is Professor of Community- That Masked Woman? (1981) and Valley of the Cultural Psychology at the Lynch School of Amazons (1984). She is the current editor of The Education and Associate Director of the Center New Dictionary of Scientific Biography. for Human Rights and International Justice at Julie Konik is now a Scholar in Residence at Boston College. She is an activist scholar whose Antioch College, where she is continuing her research explores the interstices of indigenous research on social identity and well-being, with a cultural beliefs and practices and those of special focus on sexual minorities. Her recent Western psychology, toward collaborating in the research examines the role of individual differ- design and development of community-based ences in the development of sexual identity and programs that respond to the effects of war in the lived experiences of sexual minorities in a contexts of transition and transformation and in variety of contexts. She completed PhD in psy- the development of training programs and post- chology and women’s studies from the University graduate diplomas for psychosocial trauma of Michigan, where her dissertation focused on workers. She has published extensively about the negative effects of sexual harassment and het- this work in journals and edited volumes and erosexist harassment in the workplace. is also a community activist, cofounder, and participant in many local, national, and interna- Rachel Kulick is currently a doctoral candidate tional NGOs. These organizations include the in sociology at Brandeis University. Her areas of Boston Women’s Fund, Women’s Rights interest include feminist theory and methodol- International, and the Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund ogy, visual sociology, media democracy, and for Mental Health and Human Rights. Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 720

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Sarah Maddison is Lecturer in the School of case study of a Nicaraguan working women’s Politics and International Relations at the organization to demonstrate how globalization University of New South Wales. She is currently affects grassroots advocacy for social justice, working on the focused audits for women and particularly as it relates to the situation of sexual minorities for the Democratic Audit of women maquila workers. She has published Australia (http://democratic.audit.anu.edu.au) articles in Social Problems, Organization, and is engaged in ongoing research on Australian Mobilization, Identities, and other journals. Her Indigenous activism. She has been active in the current work focuses on Latino/a migration to Australian Women’s Movement since 1995, and Williamsburg, Virginia, and explores migrants’ she has served as a national media spokesperson experiences of exclusion and incorporation in for the Women’s Electoral Lobby since 1999. She this new immigration receiving site. has published many works in the areas of young women and feminist activism, social movements, Maria Mies is former Professor of Sociology of nongovernment organizations, and democracy. the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at the Her first book, Activist Wisdom: Practical University of Applied Social Sciences, Cologne. Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social She worked for 5 years as a lecturer of German at Movements (2006, with Sean Scalmer), addresses the Goethe Institute in Pune, India. On her return, important questions concerning the ways that she wrote her PhD dissertation on “Indian activists manage tension and conflict in social Women and Patriarchy” (1972). Her study of movements. Her forthcoming book, Silencing Indian patriarchy helped her discover German Dissent: How the Howard Government Is Eroding patriarchy, and this encouraged her to become Democracy in Australia (coedited with Clive active in the international women’s movement Hamilton) is due in early 2007. and other various social movements. She always combined theoretical work with social activism. Cris Mayo is Associate Professor in the In 1979, she initiated the program “Women and Department of Educational Policy Studies and Development” at the Institute of Social Studies in the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at The Hague, The Netherlands. It is the first of its University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign. kind in the world. She is the author of several Her work includes Disputing the Subject of Sex: works that include Women: The Last Colony, Sexuality and Public School Controversies Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, (2004) as well as articles in the areas of philoso- Ecofeminism (with V. Shiva) and The Subsistence phy of education, sexuality studies, gender Perspective. studies, and multicultural theory. Kathi Miner-Rubino is currently Assistant Amy E. McLaughlin is Associate Director of Professor of Psychology at Western Kentucky the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity University. She teaches courses in social psychol- (CRGE) and works to further the organization’s ogy, psychology of women, and research meth- agenda of theoretical, methodological, and peda- ods. She has published several papers in the areas gogical insights into intersectionality. Her research of gender, social class, and psychological well- agenda uses an intersectional lens to examine the being. Her most recent publications focus on vic- symbolic and physical role that violence plays in arious exposure to the mistreatment (i.e., incivility the lives of women. She also pursues an interest and harassment) of women in work settings. She in processes of institutional change and is cur- received her PhD in psychology and women’s rently working on a life history analysis of faculty studies from the University of Michigan. members who engage in advocacy for social justice on university campuses. Pamela Moss is Professor in the Studies in Policy and Practice Program, Faculty of Human Jennifer Bickham Mendez is Associate and Social Development, University of Victoria, Professor of Sociology at the College of William Canada. Her research coalesces around themes and Mary. She wrote From the Revolution to the of power and body in different contexts— Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor and Globalization feminist methodology, constructs of contested in Nicaragua (2005) and presents an ethnographic illness, and activist practices. She draws on Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 721

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feminism and poststructural thinking to make publication. His scholarly work and activism sense of women’s experiences of changing envi- critically engages with issues of heritage preser- ronments and uses autobiographical writing vation, gender, and nationalism at the intersec- analytically in her empirical and theoretical tions of race and the built environment in the work. She is also active in feminist politics on Global South. issues of chronic illness and invisible or unap- parent disabilities. She edited Placing Autobio- Daphne Patai is Professor of Brazilian Literature graphy in Geography (2001) and Feminist and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature Geography in Practice (2002). She also coau- at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She thored Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity spent 10 years in the Women’s Studies Program in the Everyday Lives of Women With Chronic before deciding to leave it for reasons that are Illness (2003) with Isabel Dyck. explained in her essay in this volume. She is the author and editor of 11 books, including Nancy A. Naples is Professor of Sociology and Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future Women’s Studies at the University of Connecticut of Feminism (1998). Her 1994 critique of acade- where she teaches courses on feminist theory; mic feminism, written with Noretta Koertge, feminist methodology; sexual citizenship; gender, was recently reissued in a new and expanded politics and the state; and women’s activism and edition as Professing Feminism: Education and globalization. She is the author of Feminism and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies (2003). Her Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and latest book, coedited with Will H. Corral, is Feminist Research (2003) and Grassroots Theory’s Empire: An Anthology of Dissent (2005). Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, Many of her essays on academic foibles have and the War on Poverty (1998). She is also the appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. editor of Community Activism and Feminist A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Politics: Organizing Across Race, Class, and Foundation, the National Endowment for the Gender (1998). She is coeditor of Women’s Humanities, and the National Humanities Center Activism and Globalization: Linking Local (all for feminist projects), she has come to appre- Struggles with Transnational Politics and Teaching ciate that education and politics are not the same Feminist Activism. Her next book, Restructuring thing. the Heartland: Racialization and the Social Regulation of Citizenship, focuses on a long-term Deborah Piatelli is an activist and doctoral can- ethnographic study of economic and social didate in sociology at Boston College. She is restructuring in two small towns in Iowa. She is currently writing her dissertation on the chal- currently working on a comparative intersectional lenges contemporary mobilizations for peace analysis of sexual citizenship and immigration and social justice face as they work across race, policies. class, and gender. She works with the Global Justice Project at Boston College (an undergrad- Angel David Nieves is Assistant Professor in uate student-led program) and a local commu- the School of Architecture, Planning, and nity group of the United for Justice With Peace Preservation at the University of Maryland, coalition based in Boston. Taking a feminist, College Park. He is an affiliate faculty member participatory approach, she collaborated with in the Departments of American Studies, activists over a 2-year period and uncovered Women’s Studies, African American Studies, how hidden cultures of privilege were prevent- and Anthropology. He is also an affiliate ing collective work across difference. Through member of the Center for Heritage Resource participatory discussions with activists, this Studies. He completed his doctoral work in work has opened up a space for activists to architectural history and Africana studies at reflect and exchange dialogue to potentially Cornell University in 2001. His book manu- transform their beliefs, practices, and identities. script, “We Gave Our Hearts and Lives To It:” African American Women Reformers and Wanda S. Pillow is Associate Professor in the Nation-Building in the Post-Reconstruction Department of Educational Policy Studies at the South, 1877-1968, is currently being revised for University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign. Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 722

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She is author of Unfit Subjects: Educational Studies Program in the 1990s and founded the Policy and the Teen Mother (2004) and coeditor Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) in 1997 to of Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural develop fresh ways of thinking about Jews and Theory and Methods in Education (2000). gender worldwide. In 2001, she founded the Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) Judith Preissle (formerly Preissle Goetz) is the where research, art, and activism converge. The 2001 Distinguished Aderhold Professor in the WSRC is housed in a 10,000 square feet facility, Qualitative Research Program at the College of which she designed and for which she raised all Education, University of Georgia (UGA), and she the funds. Both the HBI and the WSRC are is an affiliated faculty member of UGA’s Institute members of the National Council for Research for Women’s Studies. Although she began her on Women. Reinharz is the author/editor of 10 career teaching middle grades in 1965, Preissle books, including On Becoming a Social has worked at UGA since 1975 and teaches, Scientist (1979/1984), Qualitative Gerontology researches, and writes in educational anthropol- (1987), Feminist Methods in Social Research ogy, qualitative research, gender studies, and (1992), and American Jewish Women and ethics. She founded the qualitative research pro- the Zionist Enterprise (2005). She is also the gram at UGA that now offers a graduate certifi- chief editor of the Brandeis Series on Jewish cate program. She is the coauthor of Ethnography Women. and Qualitative Design in Educational Research (1984, 1993), which was translated into Spanish Laurel Richardson is Professor Emeritus of in 1988, and coeditor of The Handbook of Sociology at the Ohio State University. She spe- Qualitative Research in Education (1992). Her cializes in the sociology of knowledge, gender, most recent book, coauthored with Xue Lan and qualitative methods. She has been honored Rong, is Educating Immigrant Students (1998). with visiting lectureships in many countries and She and her spouse, a computer network manager has published over 100 articles—many of them at UGA, have two miniature schnauzers and two demonstrating alternative writing formats, Chinese pugs. All five share her interest in philo- including poetic representations. She is the sophical quandaries. coeditor of Feminist Frontiers and author of seven other books, including The New Other Diane Reay is Professor of Education at Woman (translated into seven languages), and Cambridge University. She is a feminist sociol- the Cooley award winning book Fields of ogist working in the area of education but is also Play: Constructing an Academic Life. Her most interested in broader issues of the relationship recent book, Travels With Ernest: Crossing the between the self and society, the affective and Literary/Sociological Divide (2004), was coau- the material. Her priority has been to engage in thored with novelist Ernest Lockridge and mod- research with a strong social justice agenda that els a new writing format that preserves the addresses social inequalities of all kinds. She is individual voice, breaks down hierarchies, and particularly interested in developing theoriza- demonstrates feminist communication strategies tions of social class and the ways in which it is across gender and disciplines. Her current mediated by gender and ethnicity, and she has research expands her interest in alternative read- worked extensively with Pierre Bourdieu’s con- ing/writing practices through an ethnographic ceptual framework. Recent research includes and textual study of Altered Books. understanding white-middle-class identities in multiethnic urban spaces and the experiences of Judith Roof is Professor of English and Film working class students in higher education. Her Studies at Michigan State University. She is most recent book (with S. Ball & M. David) is the author of A Lure of Knowledge: Lesbian Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Sexuality and Theory, Come as You Are: Gender in Higher Education (2005). Narrative and Sexuality, All About Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third Wheels, and the forth- Shulamit Reinharz is the Jacob Potofsky coming The Poetics of DNA. She is coeditor Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. (with Robyn Wiegman) of Who Can Speak? She directed the Brandeis University Women’s Authority and Critical Identity. Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 723

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Sue V. Rosser has served as Dean of the Ivan writing interests focus on the questions of Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech methodology and epistemology, and many since 1999, where she is also Professor of projects were produced with Sue Wise. Public Policy and of History, Technology, and Substantively, her research has been on histori- Society. The author of nine books, Rosser has cal topics for the last two decades, in particular, also written more than 120 refereed journal regarding South Africa. Relevant books include articles on issues of women and feminism in Imperialism, Labour and the New Woman: science, technology, and health. Her most recent Olive Schreiner’s Social Theory (2002), and book is The Science Glass Ceiling: Academic Mourning Becomes...Post/Memory, Commem- Women Scientists and Their Struggle to Succeed oration & the Concentration Camps of the South (2004). African War 1899-1902 (2006). Denise Seigart is Professor in the Health Abigail J. Stewart is Sandra Schwarz Tangri Sciences Department at Mansfield University, Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania, and is currently serving there as the University of Michigan and director of Interim Associate Provost. She has been an active the UM ADVANCE project, supported by the member of the American Evaluation Association NSF ADVANCE program on Institutional and has served as Chair and Program Chair of Transformation. She was director of the Women’s the Feminist Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Studies Program (1989–1995) and the Institute Group. In collaboration with Dr. Sharon for Research on Women and Gender (1995– Brisolara, she edited Feminist Evaluation: Explo- 2002), and she is a former Associate Dean in the rations and Experiences: New Directions for College of Literature Science and the Arts at the Evaluation, a critical work regarding Feminist University of Michigan (2002–2004). She has Evaluation, which was published in December, published many scholarly articles and several 2002. She received her PhD in human service books that focus on the psychology of women’s studies/program evaluation from Cornell Univer- lives, personalities, and adaptations to personal sity in 1999. and social changes. Her current research com- bines qualitative and quantitative methods and Dorothy E. Smith is Professor Emeritus at the includes comparative analyses of longitudinal University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor at studies of educated women’s lives and personali- the University of Victoria. Her published books ties; a collaborative study of race, gender, and include Women Look at Psychiatry: I’m Not Mad, generation in the graduates of a Midwest high I’m Angry (coedited with Sara David, 1975); school; and research and interventions on gender, Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A science, and technology with adolescent girls, Way to Go (1977); El Mundo Silenciado de las undergraduate students, and faculty. Mujeres (1985); The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987); The Lynn Weber is Director of the Women’s Studies Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Program and Professor of Sociology at the Sociology of Knowledge (1990); Texts, Facts, and University of South Carolina. Cofounder of the Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling Center for Research on Women at the University (1990); Eine Soziologie Für Frauen (translated of Memphis, her research and teaching has and edited by Frigga Haug, 1998); Writing the explored the intersections of race, class, gender, Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations and sexuality for over 20 years. Since the publica- (1999); Mothering for Schooling (coauthored tion of Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and with Alison Griffith, 2005); Institutional Sexuality: A Conceptual Framework (2001), her Ethnography: A Sociology for People (2005); and work has focused on bringing the insights of inter- an edited collection of essays by institutional sectional scholarship to the problem of persistent ethnographers, Institutional Ethnography as social inequalities in health. Her recent publica- Practice (2006). tions include “Intersectionality and Women’s Health: Charting a Path to Eliminating Health Liz Stanley is Professor of Sociology at the Disparities,” in Advances in Gender Research, University of Edinburgh. Her main research and and “Reconstructing the Landscape of Health Contributors-Hesse-Biber-3-45053.qxd 6/23/2006 12:59 PM Page 724

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Disparities Research: Promoting Dialogue and press). She also studies the children of Filipino Collaboration Between the Feminist Intersectional and Vietnamese immigrants in California. and Positivist Biomedical Traditions” in Race, Class, Gender and Health, edited by Amy Schulz Alison Wylie is Professor of Philosophy at the and Leith Mullings. She is also coauthor of The University of Washington. She works on epis- American Perception of Class. temic questions raised by archaeological practice and feminist research in the social sciences. Her Sue Wise is Professor of Social Justice at analyses of evidential reasoning and normative Lancaster University, the United Kingdom. She is issues in archaeology are collected in Thinking interested in all aspects of social justice and From Things: Essays in the Philosophy of teaches and writes on social divisions and social Archaeology (2002), and appear in Embedding diversity. The oppression and exploitation of Ethics (2005) and Ethics Issues in Archaeology children is a particular interest. She has written (2000). She coedited Feminist Science Studies many books and articles on feminist epistemol- (2004), and her essays on the philosophical impli- ogy and ontology with Liz Stanley. One of their cations of feminist research practices and feminist most noted collaborations is Breaking Out Again: critiques of science appear in Science and Other Feminist Ontology & Epistemology (1993). Cultures (2003), The Difference Feminism Has Diane L. Wolf is Professor of Sociology at the Made (2001), Primate Encounters (2000), and University of California, Davis. She edited Changing Methods (1995). She has also been Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork (1996) and active on equity issues as organizer of “Women, authored Factory Daughters (1992) and Beyond Work and the Academy” (2005: www.barnard. Anne Frank: Hidden Children, Family Recon- edu/bcrw/womenandwork) and as contributing struction and the State in Post-war Holland coeditor of Breaking Anonymity: The Chilly (2006, in press). With Judith Gerson, she Climate for Women Faculty (1995). She is cur- coedited Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: rently working on a monograph, “Standpoint Identities, Memories and Diasporas (2007, in Matters,” in Feminist Philosophy of Science.