Partial Visions

Partial Visions Utopianism—the belief that reality not only must but can be changed—is one of the most vital impulses of feminist politics. Angelika Bammer traces the articulation of this impulse in literary texts produced within the context of the American, French and German women’s movements of the 1970s. Partial Visions provides a conceptual framework within which to approach the history of western feminism during this formative period. At the same time, the book’s comparative approach emphasizes the need to distinguish the particular- ities of different feminisms. Bammer argues that in terms of a radical utopianism, western feminism not only continued where the Left foundered, but went a decisive step further by reconceptualizing what both “political” and “utopian” could mean. Through simultaneously close and contextualized read- ings of texts published in the United States, France and the two Germanics between 1969 and 1979, it examines the transformative potential as well as the ideological blindspots of this utopianism. It is this double edge that Partial Visions emphasizes. Feminist utopianism, it argues, is not just visionary, but myopic (i.e. time and culture-bound) as well. As a cross-cultural study of a formative period in this history of western feminism and an investigation of feminist textual politics, Partial Visions addresses readers in the fields of women’s studies, comparative literature and contemporary cultural studies. Angelika Bammer is Assistant Professor of German and Women’s Studies at Emory University. This page intentionally left blank. Partial Visions Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s Angelika Bammer New York and London First published 1991 by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE © 1991 Angelika Bammer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bammer, Angelika. Partial visions: feminism and utopianism in the 1970s/Angelika Bammer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Feminism and literature. 2. Utopias in literature. 3. European fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. 4. European fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 5. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 6. American fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. I. Title. PN3401.B36 1991 809.3′0082–dc20 91–9513 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Bammer, Angelika Partial visions: feminism and utopianism in the 1970s. 1. Feminism, related to politics I. Title 305.421. ISBN 0-203-16914-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26454-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-01518-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-01519-7 (pbk) To the women of my 1970s and our abiding belief in a world that needs much changing Es ist auch mir gewiß, daß wir in der Ordnung bleiben müssen, daß es den Austritt aus der Gesellschaft nicht gibt und wir uns aneinander prüfen müssen. Innerhalb der Grenzen aber haben wir den Blick gerichtet auf das Vol- lkommene, das Unmögliche, Unerreichbare, sei es der Liebe, der Freiheit oder jeder reinen Größe. Im Widerspiel des Unmöglichen mit dem Möglichen erweitern wir unsere Möglichkeiten. Daß wir es erzeugen, dieses Span- nungsverhältnis, an dem wir wachsen, darauf, meine ich, kommt es an[.] I too know that we must stay within the given order, that it is not possible to remove oneself from society and that we must test ourselves against and with one another. Within these boundaries, however, we have always looked toward that which is perfect, impossible, unattainable… As the impossible and the possible play into and off of one another, our own possibilities expand. That we create this movement, this state of tension through which we grow, that, I think, is what matters[.] Ingeborg Bachmann, ‘Die Wahrheit ist dem Menschen zumutbar’ (1959) Contents Introduction 1 1 ‘Wild wishes…’: women and the history of utopia 9 2 Utopia and/as ideology: feminist utopias in nineteenth-century America 27 3 Rewriting the future: the utopian impulse in 1970s’ feminism 46 4 Worlds apart: utopian visions and separate spheres’ feminism 65 5 The end(s) of struggle: the dream of utopia and the call to action 90 6 Writing toward the Not-Yet: utopia as process 115 7 Conclusion 149 Notes 158 Bibliography 176 Index 191 This page intentionally left blank. Introduction Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. (Adrienne Rich 1971) The tradition of utopian thought in western culture has been a long and weighty one. Some trace it back as far as classical Antiquity, others date it from the Renaissance. But whether it is said to have originated with Plato or with Thomas More, utopianism1 has been a staple, if not bedrock, of the western cultural tradition. By the late 1970s, however, some of its most eminent historians were proclaiming its demise. With a nostalgic look backward at the great utopian classics of the past, Frank and Fritzie Manuel’s monumental study Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979), concluded that the utopian imagination seemed finally to have exhausted itself, to have run its historical course. Social analysts also weighed in with their verdict, announc- ing that the counter-cultural and rebellious dreamers of the 1960s were finally waking up to reality. While these various assessments of the relationship between utopianism and the so-called “real world” differed in terms of the way they framed history (some, like the Manuels, spanned millennia, while others dealt in decades), in Realpolitik terms they amounted to more or Jess the same thing. Conservation, not change, was the proposed order of the day. Utopia—the vision of the radically better world that our world could poten- tially be—was declared dead along with the movements for change that had inscribed it on their banners. It is my contention that this verdict was only partially true. In particular, I believe, it ignores the emergence of political and cultural movements at the time for which a utopian dimension was critical. Central among these was feminism. At the very time that the dream of utopia was being pronounced dead, it was vibrantly alive in the emergent American and western European women’s movements. Inasmuch as the various feminisms that took shape in 1 2 PARTIAL VISIONS the 1970s called for new ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling, new ways of living, loving, and working, new ways of experiencing the body, using lan- guage, and defining power, their cumulative vision encompassed nothing short of a complete transformation of the very reality that the erstwhile dreamers of the 1960s were supposedly learning to accept. Indeed, to the extent that feminism was—and is—based on the principle of women’s liberation, a principle that is not reducible to a simple matter of equal rights, it was—and is—not only revolutionary but radically utopian. Moreover, as feminists not only expressed the belief that “reality” should and could be changed, but acted on the basis of that assumption, the very concepts “revolutionary” and “utopian” were transformed. Revolution was defined in terms of process. And the con- cept of utopia became concrete. This is the story that I want to tell: not the demise of utopian thought, but its dynamic articulation within the context of 1970s’ feminisms. This book is not about feminist utopias. Others have ably and amply begun to cover that ground and are continuing to do so.2 Rather, it is a study of the relationship between feminism and utopianism—two ways of seeing the world and respond- ing to the need for change that converged in particular ways in this decade. The initial impulse behind this project was a contentious one: I wanted to counter two positions that I thought were not only wrong but at least poten- tially harmful. The first was the claim that “utopia was dead”; the second was the counter-claim that “utopia was imminent.” The irony, of course, was that these contending claims were simultaneously true and false. The feminist claim that utopia was imminent was based on the very fact ignored by the claim that utopia was dead: the vitality of feminist utopianism. At the same time, to claim that utopia was imminent was to ignore the very fact on which the “utopia is dead” claim was based: the oppressive weight of material and ideological realities. This project, however, was not impelled solely by my need to argue against positions with which I disagreed. It was also prompted by my desire to assert a position of my own, namely my belief in the importance of utopian thinking for a progressive politics. This position, in turn, hinges on a premise that is central to this book: the need to reconceptualize the utopian in historical, this- worldly terms, as a process that involves human agency. Those who declared that utopia was dead were, of course, in a structural sense, right. In that sense, utopia had always been dead. Rather than describe a vital impulse toward change, utopia as it has traditionally been defined repre- sents a static and, in the most literal sense, reactionary stance: a place which, being “perfect,” does not need to—and will not—change.

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