Gender, Embodiment and Cultural Practice: Towards a Relational
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1 Gender, Embodiment and Cultural Practice: Towards a Relational Feminist Approach Carolyn Pedwell Gender Institute, London School of Economics Submitted for PhD 2 Abstract Establishing similarities between embodied practices typically posed as fundamentally distinct (such as 'African' female genital cutting and 'Western' cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common within feminist literatures. Cross-cultural comparisons can reveal the instability of essentialist binaries constructed to distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally 'different'. These strategies, however, are also problematic. In their emphasis on cross-cultural commonalities between practices, they often efface historical, social and embodied particularities, while reifying problematic notions of 'culture'. When employed by privileged 'Western' feminist theorists, such strategies can involve appropriations which affirm, rather than challenge, dominant discursive hierarchies. Consequently, the crucial links between violent histories of embodied differentiation and contemporary relations of power are not effectively interrogated and problematic binaries remain intact. This thesis thus seeks to develop a more historically-grounded, relational and politically accountable feminist approach to addressing essentialist constructions of embodied 'cultural practice'. Mapping feminist and other critical literatures, I identify three main approaches to linking embodied practices: the 'continuum', 'analogue' and 'subset' models. Through three case study chapters, I conduct a comprehensive analysis of these models, ,and their potential discursive-material effects. Each case study focuses on a different set of practices which have been linked: 'African' female genital cutting and.-`Western' body modifications; Muslim veiling and anorexia; and 'passing' practices associated with the categories of race, gender and sexuality. I argue that rather than illustrating how particular practices or their imagined subjects are fundamentally similar, we should examine how they are constructed relationally in and through one another. This is possible through genealogically tracing how their historical trajectories of production intersect and inform one another. As an alternative to commonality-based comparative approaches, I advocate a 'relational web model' which traces multiple constitutive connections within a network of differently situated embodied practices or figures. 3 `I Carolyn Pedwell, hereby state that this thesis is my own work and that all sources used are made explicit in the text' 4 Contents Acknowledgements 7 Chapter 1 Feminist Approaches to Embodied Cultural Practices: Cross-Cultural Comparison, (Anti)Essentialism and (Anti)Humanism 8 Crossing Cultures: Comparative Feminist Approaches .14 The feminist anti-cultural essentialist project .16 Problematic Effects of Comparative Feminist Approaches .21 Anti-cultural essentialism and recourse to 'sameness' .24 Cultural Commonality and the 'Unfinished' Humanist Project ..30 Epistemological and Methodological Issues .38 Conclusions and Outline of Chapters .41 Chapter 2 Theorising Intersectionality, Relationality and Embodiment: Developing a Critical Feminist Framework .44 Intersectionality: Black Feminist Thought 45 Relationality: Postcolonial and Queer Perspectives 53 Embodiment: Critical Feminist Approaches 64 Intersectionality strikes back .72 Conclusions: Fleshing out a Critical Framework 78 Chapter 3 Theorising 'African' Female Genital Cutting and `Western' Body Modifications: A Critique of the Continuum and Analogue Approaches 81 Mapping the Continuum and Analogue Approaches 85 Discussion .92 Erasing Race, Erasing History .95 From binary to continuum or analogue .103 5 Empathy, Location and the 'Right' to Represent .105 Conclusions: Ways Forward .112 Chapter 4 Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Passing: A Critique of the Subset Approach .114 Passing and the Subset Model: Too Wide, Too Narrow 119 Expansion and slippage .122 Particularity and the 'social mobility framework' . 124 The Politics of Passing .130 Passing as subversive 130 `We are all passing' . 135 Passing, (in)visibility and fetishisation . 140 Conclusions: Thinking Relationally .145 Chapter 5 Tracing 'the Anorexic' and 'the Veiled Woman': A Relational Account .150 Veiling, Anorexia and Beauty Practices: Comparisons and Critiques .155 Cross-cultural comparisons .155 Superficial sameness .159 Flattening intersections .161 Universalising embodiment .163 Fetishising figures .163 Towards a Relational Approach .167 Orientalism, women's travel writing and cross-cultural comparison . .169 Colonialism, (proto)ftminism and `westoxification' 177 Body image, cultural difference and politics .188 Conclusions: Relational Interdependencies .193 6 Chapter 6 Mapping Multiple 'Selves' and 'Others': Weaving a Relational Web .195 Web Weaving .197 Linking numerous imagined subjects 202 Theorising particularity, connection and disruption .212 Political and Ethical Groundings, Effects and Possibilities 215 Location, empathy and 'generous ' encounters ..216 Negotiating anti/new/post humanisms .220 Postscript .227 Bibliography .228 7 Acknowledgements I want to express my gratitude to Clare Hemmings and Anne Phillips for their incredible advice, encouragement and inspiration. Since I joined the Gender Institute as a Masters student in 2001, Clare and Anne's support has been nothing short of phenomenal. I am also indebted to Diane Pen-ons, Angharad Closs, Faith Armitage, Deborah Finding, Rebecca Lawrence, Amy Hinterberger, Joanne Kalogeras and Christina Scharff, all of whom read various chapters and provided extremely useful comments and suggestions. The Gender Institute has provided a wonderful intellectual and social environment which I will very much miss being a part of. I am particularly grateful to Hazel Johnstone for her knowledge and generosity and for never being too busy to help. I also want to acknowledge the members of the Performativities reading group, with whom I have had a great time and from whom I have learned a great deal. Thank you to Jo Brain for sharing her important and compelling research on anorexia, which raised some thought-provoking questions for me in relation to the cultural representation of embodied practices. Special thanks also to Frank Worth for his stellar reference checking. Finally, thank you to my parents, Dave and Laurie Pedwell, both of whom read the entire draft. Without their unconditional support and absolute faith none of this would have been possible. 8 Chapter 1: Feminist Approaches to Embodied Cultural Practices Cross-Cultural Comparison, (Anti)Essentialism and (Anti)Humanism Western women have confronted the same problem of female genital surgeries that African women face today albeit in our own cultural context. Isabelle Gunning, 1991:226 Making links between gendered practices rooted in divergent cultural contexts has become increasingly common within feminist literature on multiculturalism and cultural difference. Such cross-cultural comparisons are predominantly employed as a strategy to counter cultural essentialism — the production of culture-specific generalisations that depend on totalising categories such as 'Western' and 'non-Western', 'First world' and `Third world' or 'the West' and `the Muslim world'. For example, Isabelle Gunning (1991) argues that although African female genital cutting (FGC) 1 has been represented by Western commentators as a 'barbaric' and 'patriarchal' cultural practice of the `other', female circumcision is 'part of our own history' (211). Circumcisions performed on American and English women as a 'cure' for mental illness in the nineteenth century, she suggests, were explained by 'the same kind of rationales' as I have chosen the label 'female genital cutting' (FGC) to refer to the broad group of procedures which are, or have been, practiced (with great variation) within some African and Middle countries (i.e. Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Mali, Kenya and Ethiopia) and their diasporic communities. I have selected the label FGC as it avoids the pejorative tone of the term 'female genital mutilation' as well as the equation with male circumcision that the label 'female circumcision' implies. I also avoid using the terms `clitoridectomy' and 'infibulation', which refer only to more specific forms of FGC. These are value- laden choices, however, as there is much controversy regarding what an appropriate label to identify such practices is, or whether it is appropriate to use one label to identify such a wide variety of practices. Some alternative labels that have been employed include the terms 'female genital surgeries', 'female genital operations' and 'female genital alterations'. 9 African practices of FGC are today, such as a belief in their health benefits (203, 218). African FGC and American clitoridectomies should thus be seen as cultural `analogues', she insists. 2 In a similar vein, Mervat Nasser (1999) argues that Muslim veiling represents a contemporary 'equivalent' to the growing epidemic of anorexia in the industrialised West. Both practices represent strategies on the part of women and girls that respond to 'conflicting cultural messages and contradictory cultural expectations' (407). Feminist critics have also linked Muslim veiling and 'Western' beauty practices, such as the wearing of makeup (Jeffreys, 2005), and fashion trends from Wonderbras' and 'mini-skirts' (Hirschmann, 1998) to the contemporary 'porno- chic' style (Duits and van Zoonen, 2006).