Rational Woman

RATIONAL WOMAN To feminists and some postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman represent two fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our languages, and two sets of hierarchical power relations in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik challenges the tradition of dualism and argues that ‘rational woman’ need no longer be a contradiction in terms. Prokhovnik examines in turn: • the nature of dichotomy, its problems and an alternative • the reason/emotion dichotomy • dichotomies central to the man/woman dualism, such as sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm. She argues for new ‘relational’ conceptions of all the terms involved, emphasizing the relationship or interdependence of reason and emotion, man and woman, rather than placing these terms at opposite poles. Prokhovnik then moves from the abstract to the practical by placing her thesis in the context of recent feminist theory and practice, including the backlash against feminism. She concludes that the second wave of feminism was still tied to a mind/body dichotomy, but that a third wave of feminism is emerging, bringing with it a relational non-dichotomous alternative. Rational Woman offers a clear survey and evaluation of epistemological and ontological debates, but more importantly shows how these debates pertain to current political developments. This work makes a significant contribution to the literature of gender politics, political and feminist theory, sociology and philosophy. Raia Prokhovnik lectures in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She has written on feminist theory, the concept of sovereignty, Hobbes, Spinoza and early-modern political thought. ROUTLEDGE INNOVATIONS IN POLITICAL THEORY 1 A RADICAL GREEN POLITICAL THEORY Alan Carter 2 RATIONAL WOMAN A feminist critique of dichotomy Raia Prokhovnik 3 RETHINKING STATE THEORY Mark J. Smith RATIONAL WOMAN A feminist critique of dichotomy Raia Prokhovnik London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 1999 Raia Prokhovnik All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised 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. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Prokhovnik, Raia. Rational woman: a feminist critique of dichotomy / Raia Prokhovnik. 208 p. 156 x 234 mm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Dualism. 2. Reason. 3. Emotion. 4. Feminist theory. I. Title. BB12.P77 1999 305.4’01——dc21 98—47963 CIP ISBN 0-415-14618-6 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-02448-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17489-5 (Glassbook Format) For Kathy, Anna and Rona and to the memory of Simon CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction 1 1 Dichotomy: from the dichotomous either/or to 20 the relational both-and The features of dichotomy 23 Problems with dichotomy 31 An alternative to dichotomy 38 2 Reason and emotion 50 The links between reason and emotion in theorizing 58 The social construction of emotion 90 Conclusion 102 3 Sex and gender: beyond the sex/gender dichotomy 103 to corporeal subjectivity The (recent) history of sex and gender 110 The critique of sex and gender 113 Towards ‘corporeal subjectivity’ 137 4 Conclusion. The third wave: the future of feminism 152 The end of the second wave 153 The future of feminism: the third wave 166 Notes 171 Bibliography 176 Index 192 vii PREFACE Some books bite so deep that their impact becomes almost invisible. It then becomes difficult to acknowledge their significance through specific references. Genevieve Lloyd’s The Man of Reason, Elizabeth Grosz’s Volatile Bodies, and Moira Gatens’s Imaginary Bodies have been like this for me. My work is greatly indebted, not just to these three books, but to all the work of these three outstanding Australian feminists. These three splendid, robust, sound and imaginative thinkers make me feel that my birthplace has something to offer after all. They almost make me regret having left Sydney behind twenty-three years ago. My interest in feminism derives from a background of strong but unreflective demotic egalitarianism, imbibed in a Marxist family upbringing with strong European and Yiddish, along with Methodist, cultural ties, set in the context of Australian 1950s suburbia, juxtaposed with the gradual realization of the insidiousness of the English class system which still ensures that the notion of privilege maps on to and so reinforces a range of power inequalities in British society. This book also owes an enormous intellectual debt to Conal Condren, Michael Oakeshott and Quentin Skinner. My interest in dichotomy stems from the analysis of the presuppositions upon which the history of political thought rests, and the examination of its rhetorical dimensions in styles of argumentation and uses of language, which Condren developed in undergraduate lectures and seminars at the University of New South Wales. Oakeshott’s seminars at the London School of Economics in the late 1970s, on the character of the philosophy of history, gave me a sense of the way in which a broad range of intellectual inquiry is susceptible to the principles of historical understanding, as opposed to the encroachment of scientific explanation. Quentin Skinner’s in my view marvellous subversiveness, particularly in his brilliant Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, in championing the value of ancient and medieval rhetoric against modern scientific rationalism, is a constant source of pleasure. The faults which the present book contains are in no way attributable to either Lloyd, Grosz and Gatens, or to Condren, Oakeshott and Skinner, and the responsibility for them is wholly mine. ix PREFACE I am grateful to the University of Southampton Social Science Faculty for a grant in 1996–7 to develop the idea of Rational Woman. To Gary, Eleanor and Conal Browning I am deeply grateful, for their indispensable support and encouragement, and for their confidence in me, especially during the completion of this book. Gary’s careful listening, acute comments and invaluable suggestions, engaging critically and openly with the ideas in the book, were always of positive benefit, and our wide-ranging intellectual discussions are the best I have encountered. I would also like to pay tribute to the sustaining warm friendship and wonderful individuality of Lucy Brookes, Ann Marie Legge, Lorraine Foreman- Peck, Angela Radcliffe, Ashka Beckerman, Gabriella Blakey, Caroline Thompson and George Farrelly. I am also very grateful to Ian Forbes, John Horton, and Noel O’Sullivan for their support and encouragement, and to members of the Citizenship panel at the Bern Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in May 1997, including Birte Siim and Jet Bussemaker, and particularly Johannes Andersen for articulating the role of the family in providing the irreplaceable forum for learning love and hate, the crucial elements of care, attachment and independence. It is also a pleasure to record my thanks to colleagues at Southampton – Yvonne Marshall, Waltraud Ernst, Simon Blyth, Pauline Leonard, Sandra Wilkins, Vicky Preece, and Caroline Thomas – who have provided intellectual stimulation and support. x INTRODUCTION The title of this book invokes two implied contrasts. ‘Rational’ suggests a comparison with ‘emotion’, and also with ‘body’, ‘intuition’, ‘passions’, ‘nature’, ‘experience’ and the ‘irrational’. This book is primarily concerned, in this first comparison, with the contrast between reason and emotion, and more particularly with the role of emotion in rationality. The second tacit comparison in the title refers to how the term ‘woman’ is the intimated opposition from ‘man’. Feminists and some other writers make a strong case that reason/emotion and man/woman are not simply innocent contrasts. As Gatens observes, such dichotomies are ‘not a neutral way of dividing up the world into categories’. These dichotomies ‘contain a set of implicit assumptions that assign a prominence and a dominant value to the term in the position of A at the expense of not-A’ (Gatens 1991: 93). Dichotomies such as reason/emotion and man/ woman represent fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our language. The two polarities also represent two expressions of hierarchical power relations expressed in social practices in patriarchal society. It is crucial in feminism’s commitment to praxis to bear in mind both the philosophical and political aspects at work in the operation of these polarities. According to the logic of dichotomous thinking in the Western cultural tradition the term ‘rational woman’ is a disjunction resting on a confusion of categories. The idea of ‘rational woman’ is, in terms of our inherited and still vital cultural assumptions, a paradox. But these cultural assumptions, such as the priority given to mind over body, upon which the self-contradictory nature of the term ‘rational woman’ rests, are not necessary features of the logic of concepts. This book explores the idea that ‘rational woman’, formed linguistically from the valued element of the reason/emotion dichotomy bracketed with the ‘other’, subordinate, element of the man/woman dichotomy, invites a reconceptualization of both sets of terms, to express not just a plausible idea but a coherent and fruitful conjunction. Genevieve Lloyd’s classic work of historical recovery on gender and reason provides the starting point for this book. Her central thesis is expressed inthe recognition that ‘the maleness of the Man of Reason . is not [a] superficial linguistic bias. It lies deep in our philosophical tradition’ (Lloyd 1993: xviii).

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