'Divided We Stand': Sex, Gender and Sexual Difference Author(S): Henrietta Moore Reviewed Work(S): Source: Feminist Review, No
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'Divided We Stand': Sex, Gender and Sexual Difference Author(s): Henrietta Moore Reviewed work(s): Source: Feminist Review, No. 47 (Summer, 1994), pp. 78-95 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395255 . Accessed: 05/03/2013 14:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Palgrave Macmillan Journals is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 14:56:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 'DIVIDEDWE STAND': Sex, Gender and Sexual Difference Henrietta Moore Thisarticle was originallypresented as a paper,and sincemuch of what it discussesturns on problemsof position,location, self-representation and representativity,I have decided to leaveit, as far as is possible,in its originalform. Extensive use of thefirst person pronoun is frownedon in the contextsin which I am used to working,but I have deliberately retainedit in this textto tryand conveya senseof particularity, of myself speakingin a specificcontext(s). The use of {we'is a highlypoliticized act bothin anthropologyand in feministcontexts. Its use hereis intendedto conveya senseof audience,that is of myselfspeaking to others.But, and much moreimportantly, it also operatesas a markof interrogation,a fictiveunity that revealsthe lines of fragmentationat the uerymoment whenit claimsaffinity.l The originalimpetus for this paperwas a questionconcerning the way in which feminism had influencedor affected my own work. This perfectlyreasonable request engenderedin me a feeling of intense panic.My first thoughtwas 'OhGod, how has feminisminfluenced my work'?The rootof the anxiety,of course,is one aboutbeing foundout, beingexposed as 'notthe realthing', 'not a properfeminist'. The anxiety of failure and lack is not entirely confinedto feminists. In fact, it is probablyrather a commonparanoia among academics. However, what this anxietyraises for me as a feministis the questionof positionality. Feminist politics and feminist practicehave always requireda clear sense of positionand of the politicsof location.For one thing, there has been the necessity of speaking out, declaringone's feminist politics within the workplaceor the homeor the politicalparty or wherever.In addition, the powerful,sometimes acrimonious,debates within the feministcommunity itself have demandedthat one own up as to where one locates oneself in terms of a variety of carefully drawn and demarcatedinternal divisions: radical feminist or socialistfeminist, for Feminist Reriew No. 47, Summer 1994 This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 14:56:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SexnGender and SexualDifference 79 example?These divisionsare importantbecause they have guidedthe political programmesproposed by differentgroups of feminists, and becausethey bring alreadypoliticized identities into play. They raise, therefore,what I am going to call, after Nancy Miller,the problemof representativity(1991: 20). Who and what do we representwhen we speakout, andhow do we negotiatethe inevitableproblem in the social sciencesof having to speak aboutpeople while trying not to speak for them?The question of whospeaks for whom and on whatbasis has given rise in feministdebate to a numberof very significantdivisions; one of whichis the splitbetween theory and practice. The main issue hereis one abouthow to link theoreticalwork with politicalactivism. Those who have not seen themselves as theorists have demandedto know what purposetheory serves for them and how readily,if at all, theorytakes accountoftheir experiences, concerns and struggles. Feminist theory has seemedto manynot onlyarcane, but elitist, racistand/or patriarchal. Thus, the politics of locationmake two things abundantlyclear. Firstlythat thereis no single,homogeneous body offeminist theory; and secondly,that the divisionsbetween different groups of women, as wellas betweenpractising feminists, make it impossibleto asserta commonality based on shared membershipin a universal category'woman'. Such divisionshave a particularresonance for me becauseI workas a social anthropologist.As it happens,I workwith and acrossdivisions of race, class,sexuality, ethnicity and religion. I questionthe purposeof my work, especiallymy theoretical writing, for the peopleI workwith becauseI do not find it easy to know of what immediateuse it couldbe to them. I frequentlytry to dealwith this problem,at least in part,by grounding my theoreticalthinking in the details of daily life and in the realities of postcolonialpolitical economies. I do not succeedin this as often as I shouldlike, and I tenaciouslyhold on to whatI tryto convincemyselfis an acceptablepolitical position by giving as muchspace and time to working onissues of agriculturalchange, women's labour and nutrition, as I doto writingon theoretical questions. The gross imbalances of power involved in myresearch situation mean that, at everyturn, the veryfact of writing andtalking about other people's lives can never be clearlyseparated from the question of whether or not one is speaking for them. This is a perennial problem for all feminist social scientists, in spite of a commitmentto feminist methodologiesand participatoryresearch. Manyof my feminist colleaguesare very criticalof my involvementin anthropology;often projecting on to me theirown anxieties about how to deal with issues of race and class, and about how to manage the increasinggap between feminist activism and the academy.I inevitably dothe sameto them.The most significant impact that feminismhas had on my workhas been to create a space in which I must continuously engage with these issues of positionalityand representativity.In this paper,I want to take up a very smallpart of this themeand discussthe wayin whichtheoretical treatments of sex, genderand sexual difference are connectedto what it is that unites and what it is that dividesus as womenand as feminists. This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 14:56:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 FeministReview The assertionof the non-universalstatus of the category'woman' is by now almost a commonplace.However, anthropology has had a particularhistorical role in the developmentof feministtheory because of its contributionto the criticalreworking of the category'woman'. In the 1970s, feminists outside anthropologydrew readily on the cross- culturaldata providedby anthropologicalresearch to establish varia- bility in genderand genderroles, and thus providesubstantive content for the feminist positionthat genderwas sociallyconstructed and not biologicallydetermined. However, cross-culturalvariability in the socialconstruction of gendercould not and did not accountfor women's universal subordination,and in order to remedy this, snthropology developedtwo very importantcomparative theories to try and address this issue. The first asserted that womenwere everywhereassociated with nature, partly as a result of their reproductivefunctions, while men were associatedwith culture.It was suggestedthat the devaluingof nature in relationto culture accountedfor the hierarchicalrelations between women and men (see Ortner, 1974). The second theory emphasizedthat womenwere inferiorto menbecause they werelinked to the domestic sphere, once again in consequenceof their role in reproductionand childcare, while men were associatedwith the public sphereof sociallife (see Rosaldo,1974). These comparativetheories of women'ssubordination were not long-lived.The categoriesof nature, culture,public and private were themselves found to be historicallyand culturally variable, and the homologiesposited between these cat- egoriesand the categoriesof genderdifference were revealedto be far from universal.2What is important about these two comparative theories of women'ssubordination is that they attemptedto provide socially,as opposedto biologically,based accountsof women'sposition in societyand of the originsof genderdifference. The preconditionsfor this projectwere, of course,that the biologicaland the socialhad already beenseparated from each other as explanationsfor the originsof gender difference.Whatever role biologywas playing,it was not determining gender. The very fact that these comparativetheories were social rather than biologicalin their determinationsopened them to criticalreinter- pretationby feminists of colour,feminists fromthe developingworld and lesbinn feminists. They challengedthe notion of the universal category'woman', and the assumptionof underlyingcommonalities of existencefor all women.Trans-cultural and trans-historical patterns of female subordinationwere rejected, and theoretical concepts were reformulated.3In the socialsciences, at least, this produceda crisisboth aboutthe politicalpurpose and organizationof a feministpolitics which did not appearto have a coherentconstituency, and aboutthe status of analyticalmodels of gender.In general,it wouldprobably be fair to say that many respondedto the latter crisis by assertingthe necessityfor culturallyand historically specific