SCALING THE THEORETICAL BRICK WALL OF THE POSTSTRUCTURALIST-MODERN IMPASSE THROUGH AN ANALYSIS OF THE WOMAN RETURNER AS `EXILE' AND `NOMAD'
Christina Hughes, University of Warwick, UK
This is an earlier version of Beyond the Poststructuralist-Modern Impasse: the woman returner as `exile' and `nomad', published in Gender and Education, 2002, 14, 4
Abstract
This paper speaks to two articles that have been published in Gender and Education. The first, and most obvious, is that of Tett (2000). Lynn Tett's paper is concerned with an analysis of community activists `returning' to education. I offer a complementary reading of Tett (2000) in the hope of illustrating the saliency of postcolonial perspectives for developing theorisation in the field of `women returners'. I do this by drawing on the metaphors of `exile' (Benhabib, 1992) and `nomad' (Braidotti, 1994) in order to explore the issues of location and transition that form part of the material and subjective experiences of the returning woman. More immanent, however, is a conversation with Francis (1999). Becky Francis explores the relations between poststructuralism and the modernist emancipatory project of feminism. She illustrates the tensions in the binary of post-structural/modern and makes an appeal that we need to continue to worry away at the `theoretical brick wall' (p 391) of this binary. My purpose is to contribute to Francis' appeal through the analysis that I present of the multiply located subject-in-process that is the woman returner. Specifically I argue that if we seriously wish to worry away at the binaries in academic debate we need to develop practices of critical literacy that recognise the reader as similarly multiply located and subjectively-in-process. As it is much of the contemporary literature continues to set up the reader as the humanist subject who can rationally choose, and is willing to be fixed by, some form of `correct' intellectual position.
Introduction
With its hierarchical structuring, the binaried nature of Western language is a central feminist concern. This is because such binaries reinforce and recreate the normatively privileged subjects that feminism's long history has so well documented, theorised and critiqued. Yet paradoxically much feminist writing continues to reinforce dichotomous ways of knowing. One, perhaps classic, example of this is the debate that Francis (1999) very usefully sets out that have occurred between proponents and opponents of post-structural perspectives in educational research. In particular, she highlights the tensions that arise between a deconstructive approach to truth narratives and the emancipatory projects of feminism. As Francis indicates these positions are often viewed not simply as uncomplementary but as absolutely incompatible. This is because it is argued that, theoretically and morally, one cannot be seen to hold a position that deconstructs the `Truth' of oppression whilst at the same time maintaining one's commitment to a progressive and emancipatory cause that is based upon such a `Truth'.
Francis' description of these debates illustrates a key theme that I wish to explore here. In particular, I argue that the oppositional nature of this debate and its consequent urging for us to name our position sets up the reader as the humanist subject who can exercise rational choice. Thus through a careful, detached, appraisal of the weight of evidence and warrantability of the arguments presented we are asked, as intellectual feminists, to make a judgement about the saliency of each position. We are then expected to make a rational choice and fix ourselves on one side or the other.
Unfortunately the very nature of oppositional debate of this kind reinforces and reinstates the hierarchical ordering of knowledge that feminism has been so concerned to deconstruct. For example, Francis' paper gives us evidence of how the continued privileging of the rational over the emotional is achieved in this particular feminist argument by the way that it works on the subject. Here, Francis distinguishes between the implications of abstract theory and the everyday practices and realities of a feminist academic. She notes that `while we may agree theoretically that the self is constituted through discourse, we still feel ourselves to have agency, moral obligation, and preferences for different kinds of discourse' (p 391). Francis' response to this dissonance reflects for me the struggle between the affective, feeling states of the emotional and the detached scientism of rationality that occur as we strive to come to a reasoned view. She remarks: "I still feel that the feminist argument is valid, despite my recognition that it is a modernist grand narrative, based on (probably over-) essentialist generalisations concerning `males' and `females'" (p ibid).
However the very dilemma that Francis speaks of does not appear to be satisfied simply through a recognition that there is disjunction or in simply maintaining that `feeling and emotion do count in our thoughts and expressions' (ibid, emphasis in text). Rather there is discomfort at finding ourselves at the juncture of competing and disagreeing discourses and here the nature of debate appeals to the `choosing' subject within us as a resolution to such contradiction. Thus if choice of one position or the other is not possible, perhaps because one can still see the credibility of both sides of the argument, or indeed if one continues to disagree with both sides, we might appeal for a third/alternative/new location where incompatibilities are resolved. It is this latter approach that Francis takes when she says that there remains `a question mark ... over the use of post-structuralist discourse analysis in feminist emancipatory projects [and] I appeal for suggestions which might enable us to scale this theoretical brick wall' (p ibid).
It is this appeal that I take up here. How might we scale this theoretical brick wall with its appearance of fixed, locked and antithetical positions? May it be that we need to more fully celebrate, the ambiguities, pain and pleasure of dislocations that arise from being positioned/positioning oneself at the intersections of contradictory disourses? Specifically, I believe we should more fully explore the contention, central to post-structuralism, that `the fact that the subject is a process lies the possibility of transformation' (Belsey, 1997: 661, emphasis in text). The political potential of the subject-as-process is seen to lie within an analytical framework that can be described as both/and rather than either/or. In the paradigm wars outlined above an either/or positionality is invoked through the impetus to `choose'. By comparison central to a both/and framework is an acceptance of multiple, competing, contradictory positions that are both simultaneously and separately invoked within the subject. Thus, rather than seeking to resolve the binary by fixing one's position within one or the other side of poststructuralism/ modernism or to find an alternative fixed third position a both/and framework seeks to recognise the fluidity and flux of each and all of these locations. What I want to suggest, therefore, is that if we are going to scale walls or deconstruct the appearance of fixity we need to change the nature of debate away from positions and perspectives with their resonances of paradigmatic rigidity that assume us to be humanistic subjects who should make rational choices. To do this, I will suggest that we need to more fully take up one of the tasks that Davies (1994, 1996, 1997, 2000) has set out for us in terms of the development of critical literacy. This is to speak, read and write ourselves into the possibilities of different discourses and contexts (see also Hughes, 2002a and b). As it is, much contemporary feminist debate, with its oppositional flavour, continues to write us into the very rational humanism that we have sought emancipation from.
Through this paper I offer one way of thinking about the possibilities and indeed problems of my proposition. Specifically, I draw on the work of Benhabib (1992) and Braidotti (1994). Benhabib and Braidotti represent alternative positions in the language games that operate at the interstices of modern/post-structural positions. Benhabib positions herself as a `soft' post-structuralist who offers a conceptualisation of the development of critical consciousness through `exile'. Through her configuration of nomadism Braidotti positions herself fully within a celebration of the potentiality of processual subjectivities. Davis and Lutz (2000) comment on how Benhabib and Braidotti have made important contributions to feminist debates that surround women in transition and the associated processes of border crossing and migration. Drawing on aspects of migration, their respective metaphors of `exile' and `nomad' have enabled feminists to think critically and creatively about the politics of location that journeying and transition give rise to. In this, therefore, they help us to understand the multi-axial nature of dislocation with its attendant discomforts and disagreements. To explore these issues more fully I apply the metaphors of `exile' and `nomad' to the literature on women `returners'. This is because I believe the woman `returner' offers an exemplary case for the study of the subject-as-process in terms of these metaphors and the meanings of dislocation. In this paper, therefore, I am attempting to undertake two simultaneous analyses. One of these is to illustrate the saliency of these metaphors for developments within the substantive field of women's re-engagement in formal education. The other is to use these metaphors to illustrate the potential and problematic elements of the transformatory qualities of the subject-as-process that we might begin to write ourselves into and write for. I turn to this latter issue in the concluding discussion of this paper.
The Transitional Nature of Exiles and Nomads
The development of criticality is central to Benhabib's (1992) analysis of `exile' as a suitable metaphor for feminist subjectivity. Benhabib's depiction of the `exile' draws on the postmodern/modern debates that Francis' (1999) paper outlines so well. Thus, Benhabib notes that philosophy has been critiqued as providing a metadiscourse of legitimation because it claims to provide superior tools of epistemological judgement. One of the debates that has arisen from this critique has focused on the future role of philosophy as providing a framework for social critique. Benhabib also notes that generally feminists have sought to avoid these debates by not taking sides. Benhabib's case is that feminists must take sides and the side they must choose is to argue for the retention of the superiority of (some) philosophical methods. Thus Behabib argues strongly both for the need to retain universal categories and for the critical potential of being outside one's culture of origin. She argues that at minimum, and when faced with conflictual and irreconcilable narratives, philosophy provides a framework for the ordering of one's normative statements. It provides a statement of methodological assumptions and helps clarify principles of judgement.
In using the metaphor `exile' Benhabib draws on historical images of the intellectual to convey its political imperative as a critique of postmodern tendencies that celebrate the loss of boundaries and a withdrawal from the political. Given that we do not have a place of `nowhere', location `beyond the walls' provides the best vantage point we have at the moment from which to judge the everyday and taken for granted of one's native culture. It may also provide better or more superior knowledge. Thus in taking up a place `beyond the walls', the `exile' aims to gain a critical perspective on the cultural milieu left behind. The political reasons for `exile' are associated with the ways in which such knowledge will contribute to social change. Though she might not necessarily do so physically, in a metaphoric sense the exile `returns' or revisits her culture of origin with this new knowledge to work for change from within.
There are three related critiques that surround Benhabib's metaphor of `exile' that are important to the analysis of this paper. The first concerns Brah's (1996) point that locating oneself outside the city gates or crossing borders is not, of itself, sufficient to raise critical consciousness or provide a vantage point from which privileged insight can be gained. This is because such places remain sites of multiple intersections of identification and disidentification and `the probability of certain forms of consciousness emerging are subject to the play of political power and psychic investments in the maintenance or erosion of the status quo' (Brah, 1996: 208). The second critique concerns the idea that the `exile' can sufficiently distance herself from her everyday certitudes to `return' with a higher level of analysis. This underplays the difficulties involved in discarding aspects of one's past in terms of the identifications and investments that one has made with it. The third critique relates to the implications for social change that would form the political project of those who seek `exile'. Whilst post-colonial migrants may act as colonisation in reverse as Wisker (2000: 16) also points out `Some critics see post-colonialism as not always resistant but collusive; a state of being and thinking which involves siding with the forces of imperialism'.
With resonances of Lorde's (1994) contention that `The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house', Braidotti (1994) contrasts her position to Benhabib in terms of the possibilities of negotiating with and repairing the problems of phallogocentric regimes. In this respect Braidotti comments that for her such regimes are beyond repair. She therefore offers the metaphor of nomad as a `gesture of nonconfidence in the capacity of the polis to undo the power foundations on which it rests' (p 32). It is of course an open question as to whether the `nomad' could accomplish such a task.