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Room to Maneuver (f)or a Room of One's Own? Practice Theory and Feminist Practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1989
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I am grateful to David Trubek for urging me to write this comment and to present an earlier version of it at a colloquium held at the University of Wisconsin and sponsored by the Institute for Legal Studies. 1 would also like to express my appreciation to Martha Fineman, Dirk Hartog, Allen Hunter, and Stephanie Phillips for their specific commentary and more general conversation and care. Among others, these people have taught me that community and (self-)criticism are not mutually exclusive. Finally, I would like to thank Lisa Bower. My continuing conversation with her over the past two years has helped me clarify my thoughts on the difficult subjects addressed in this commentGoogle Scholar
1 As a perspective from which to comment on Coombe's paper, I adopt the point of view of a feminist scholar and activist whose primary concern is contributing toward mobilizing people to feminism as a personal and political struggle, a way of life. This, of course, is not the only perspective from which one could review Coombe's paper. But, in a day and age when the term “postfeminism” is being used by some to describe (and create) a state of social reality, it seems important to begin a dialogue about how practice theory fits into the project of asserting (and creating) a counter-reality. Throughout this comment, I rely exclusively on Coombe's representation of practice theory; I attempt no independent evaluation of the body of work she identifies as part of that theoretical tradition.Google Scholar
2 Examples of work in women's history that proceed from and reflect these insights include Ellen Carol DuBois & Linda Gordon, “Seeking Ecstacy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth-Century Feminist Sexual Thought,”in Carol S. Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984) (“Vance, Pleasure”); Gordon, Linda,”Family Violence, Feminism and Social Control,” 12 Feminist Stud. 453– (1986); and Scott, Joan W.,”Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism,” 14 Feminist Stud. 33 (1988). The distinction between this sort of work-which gives content to the concepts of “structure” and “subjectivity” and their interrelation implicitly in the course of interpreting concrete historical events-and the work cited and relied on by Coombe-which theorizes these concepts explicitly and in no particular context-is parallel to the distinction Hartog makes between “paradigmatic” and “programmatic” work, respectively. See Hartog, Hendrik, “The End(s) of Critical Empiricism,” 14 Law & Soc. Inq. 53 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 For examples of such work by feminist scholars in various different disciplines, see Alcoff, Linda, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” 13 Signs 405 (1988) (philosophy); Teresa de Lauretis, “Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms and Contexts,” in Teresa de Lauretis, ed., Feminist Studies/Critical Studies 5 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) (“De Lauretis, ‘Feminist Studies'”; id., Technologies of Gender esp. 1–30 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) (“De Lauretis, Technologies”) (film studies and literary theory); Scott, Joan W., “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 91 Am. Hist. Rev. 1053 (1986) (history); Wendy Holloway, “Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity,” in Julian Henriques, Wendy Holloway, Cathy Urwin, Couze Venn, & Valerie Walkerdine, Changing the Subject: Social Regulation and Subjectivity (London: Methuen, 1984) (“Holloway, ‘Gender Difference'”) (psychology); and Ortner, Sherry B., “Theory in Anthropology Since the 1960's,” 26 Comp. Stud. Soc'y & Hist. 126 (1984) (anthropology). There are inherent difficulties in drawing boundaries between theoretical traditions and, for reasons which I hope I make more clear below, particular difficulties in distinguishing between the strands of social theory Coombe represents as “poststructuralism” and “practice theory.” Thus, I do not mean to suggest that any of the works cited here fall squarely into one camp or the other, but only that their authors wrestle seriously with the same sorts of problems and move toward similar resolutions as does CoombeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Horkheimer and Adorno provide a general account of how the instrumental rationality associated with the Enlightenment suppresses human particularity into a universalized, abstract conception of the individual. This is accomplished through the concept of” equivalence,” which” makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract qualities.” Max Horkheimer & Theodore W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment 3–14, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1982). Feminists have extended this analysis by pointing out the (masculinist) partiality of a scientific rationality that purports to be objective and universal. See, e. g., Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); Sandra Harding & Merrill Hintikka, eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Boston: D. Reidel, 1983)Google Scholar
5 As I argue in a forthcoming article, this way of thinking creates a dynamic in which women's culturally enforced disadvantage is viewed exclusively as the expression of our own freely chosen cultural autonomy. See Vicki Schultz, “Legal Constructions of Women's Agency at Work: Title VII and the ‘Lack of Interest' Defense” (“Schultz, ‘Legal Constructions'”) (manuscript on file with author, Nov. 1988). The “choice” explanation currently operates as a discursive barrier to achieving concrete changes for women, and also one feminists have difficulty refuting within the terms of the prevailing liberal discourse. Women's “choice” has become a slogan to rationalize all sorts of existing arrangements which operate to disadvantage women. At the level of specific social arrangements, for example, the fact that women tend to hold the lowest-paying, lowest-status, most dead-end jobs in our society is interpreted by people from various different disciplines as a function of women's choosing to place a higher priority on family responsibilities than on wage work. See, e. g., Solomon Polachek, “Occupational Segregation Among Women: Theory, Evidence and a Prognosis,” in Cynthia Lloyd, Emily Andrews, & Curtis Gilroy, eds., Women in the Labor Market 137–57 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979) (economics); EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N. D. III. 1986), aff'd, 839 F. 2d 302 (7th Cir. 1988) (law); Offer of Proof Concerning the Testimony of Dr. Rosalind Rosenberg, in EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., Civil Action No. 79-C-4373, U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Chicago, reprinted in 11 Signs 757 (1986) (history). At a more general level, the fact that women constitute a numerical majority is used to deny women strict judicial scrutiny of even sexually discriminatory laws. Such laws must express women's own choice, it is asserted, or else women would exercise their voting strength to change them. See, e. g., John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review 169–70 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) (“[1]f women don't protect themselves from sex discrimination in the future, it won't be because they can't. It will rather be because for one reason or another-substantive disagreement or more likely the assignment of a low priority to the issue-they don't choose to”). My colleague Neil Komesar pointed out to me that, of course, statements about women's “choice” are often taken out of context and mobilized to justify the status quo, even though the original authors of the statements may not have intended them to be used that way.Google Scholar
6 A classic legal example of this way of thinking is found in Gilberr v. General Electric Co., 429 U. S. 125 (1976). There the Supreme Court upheld the validity under Title VII of an employer's disability benefits insurance plan which excluded pregnancy (but covered sexspecific illnesses, such as prostatitis, unique to men). The Court reasoned that because men do not face the risk of pregnancy, differentiating on the basis of pregnancy does not discriminate against women on the basis of their sex. The Court also emphasized that not all women become pregnant and that pregnancy is thus a voluntary undertaking. Id. at 496–97 & n. 20. The lesson of Gilbert, then, might be interpreted as follows: Only women who do not become pregnant are sufficiently similar to men in the context of the workplace to warrant legal comparison; and precisely to the extent of their similarity to men, these women have no need of pregnancy benefits. Women who do become pregnant do so with full knowledge of the consequences in the workplace, and thus they have chosen to place family considerations over work; it follows that they, too, have no need of pregnancy benefits (or else they would not have gotten pregnant in the first place, knowing that, if they did, they would not receive any benefits). This line of reasoning is circular, for it assumes that in “deciding” whether to become pregnant, women must take as a given that they are not entitled to pregnancy benefits, which is, of course, the very lack of entitlement they wish to challenge.Google Scholar
7 This is paraphrased from a statement made by Catharine A. MacKinnon, during a lecture entitled “Difference and Domination,” given at Georgetown University School of Law (March 1986) (notes on file with author).Google Scholar
8 This question is, of course, de Beauvoir's. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex xv, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage, 1974).Google Scholar
9 Recent attempts to describe and classify the various traditions within contemporary feminism include Hester Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983) (“Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought”); Josephine Donovan, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism (New York: Ungar, 1985); and West, Robin, “Jurisprudence and Gender,” 55 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 This phrase is Sandra Harding's. My description of structuralist feminism overlaps with her description of the “feminist standpoint.” See Sandra Harding, ed., Feminism and Methodology 185 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987)Google Scholar
11 MacKinnon, Catharine A., “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory,” 7 Signs 515, 535 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Alcoff, 13 Signs at 408–14 (cited in note 3). Alcoff cites as her primary examples of cultural feminists Mary Daly and Adrienne Rich. Id. at 408. Alcoff's critique of cultural feminism draws on that of Alice Echols. See Alice Echols. “The New Feminism of Ying and Yang,” in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, & Sharon Thompson, eds., Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality 439–59 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983) (“Snitow, Stansell, & Thompson, Powers of Desire”), and “The Taming of the Id: Feminist Sexual Politics, 1968-83,”in Vance, Pleasure 50–72 (cited in note 2). For a more favorable evaluation of cultural feminism, see Josephine Donovan, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism 31-63, 171-86 (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985)Google Scholar
13 Alcoff, 13 Signs at 409–10.Google Scholar
14 Id. at 411–12.Google Scholar
15 Id. at 413.Google Scholar
16 See, e. g., West, Robin, “The Difference in Women's Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal Theory,” 3 Wis. Women's L. J. 81 (1987) (characterizing MacKinnon as a radical feminist)Google Scholar
17 Scott, 91 Am. Hist. Rev. at 1058–59 (cited in note 3)Google Scholar
18 The quoted passage is taken from Clavir, Judith, “Choosing Either/Or: A Critique of Metaphysical Feminism,” 5 Feminist Stud. 404 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Both Alcoff and Scott make this sort of criticism, though not exactly in these termsGoogle Scholar
20 Structuralist feminists attempt to resolve this question, maintaining a tension between the “external” and the” internal,” the “subjective” and the” objective,” through the concept of” consciousness-raising.” For two different descriptions of consciousness-raising, see MacKinnon, 7 Signs at 536–37, 543–44 (cited in note 11); and Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought at 35–41 (cited in note 9)Google Scholar
21 Scott, 91 Am. Hist. Rev. at 1059Google Scholar
22 Clavir, 5 Feminist Stud. (cited in note 19)Google Scholar
23 Alcoff, 13 Signs at 414 (cited in note 3)Google Scholar
24 Eisenstein, for example, criticizes the consolidation of radical feminism into what she calls” metaphysical feminism” as a retreat from active political struggle. Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought at 135Google Scholar
25 See, e. g., Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center esp. 17–65 (Boston: South End Press, 1984) (“Hooks, Feminist Theory”); Spelmann, Elizabeth V., “Theories of Race and Gender: The Erasure of Black Women,” 4 Quest: A Feminist Q. 36 (1982); Judit Moschkivich, “-But I Know You, American Women,” in Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 83 (Water town, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981)Google Scholar
26 See, e. g., Marks, Elaine, “Feminism's Wake,” 12 Boundary II 99 (1984); Lisa Bower, “Legal Judgment: An Analysis of Its Historicity and Indeterminancy” 49–51 (unpublished manuscript on file with author, Aug. 1987); Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought at 132–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 This debate around this set of issues is explored in Vance, Pleasure (cited in note 2). This conflict has manifested itself in the split in the feminist community on the pornography issue. Compare, e. g., MacKinnon, Catharine A., “Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech,” 20 Harv. C. R. -C. L. L. Rev. 1 (1985), with Ellen Willis, “Feminism, Moralism and Pornography,”in Snitow, Stansell, & Thompson, Powers of Desire 460–67 (cited in note 12). The charge of dogmatism has also been leveled at structuralist feminists in a more general way, extending beyond the context of women's sexuality. See, e. g., Mary Dunlop's criticisms of Catharine MacKinnon, in Mitchell, J. M. Lecture, “Feminist Discourse, Moral Values, and the Law-A Conversation,” 34 Buffalo L. Rev. 11, 30–33 & esp. 75–76 (1985)Google Scholar
28 See de Lauretis, Technologies at 10–11 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
29 See, e. g., Hooks, Feminist Theory at 43–65.Google Scholar
30 See, e. g., Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980); id.“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984) (‘Foucault, ‘Nietzsche’”); Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); id., Spurs, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, trans. Jacqueline Rose (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982); Francois Lyotard, The Postmodem Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington & Brian Massami (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).Google Scholar
31 Coombe, at 83, 85–86. Coombe states that she relies for her description of poststructuralism on Heller's, Thomas Structuralism and Critique,” 36 Stan. L. Rev. 127 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Luce Irigaray, “Questions,”This Sex Which Is Not One 20, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) (“Irigaray, ‘Questions'”).Google Scholar
33 Julia Kristeva, “Woman Can Never Be Defined,” in Elaine Marks & Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms (New York: Shocken, 1981).Google Scholar
34 Irigaray, “Questions” at 122.Google Scholar
35 For an interesting series of articles exploring the relationship between feminism and poststructuralism, see vol. 14, no. 1, Feminist Studies (Spring 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 This phrase is Linda Alcoff's, 13 Signs at 415 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
37 Foucault, “Nietzsche” at 83 (cited in note 30).Google Scholar
38 Coombe at 87. Alcoff makes the same criticism of poststructuralism. Alcoff, 13 Signs at 417 (poststructuralists” seem totally to erase any room for maneuver by the individual within a social discourse or set of institutions”). One possible interpretation of Coombe's essay is that she views structuralism as simply the flip side of liberalism, in the following sense. Liberalism posits an individual “subject” which is separate from some objective, constraining” structure,” but then collapses the two into an exaggerated sense of the subject's ability to exercise “choice” by approaching the structure instrumentally. Hence, liberal voluntarism. Structuralism also posits the separation of the “subject” from some objective, constraining” structure,” but then collapses the two into an exaggerated sense of the power of the structure that leaves no room for the exercise of human” agency.” Hence, structuralist determinism. Poststructuralism, then, attempts to create room for “agency” by moving from singular to multiple structures and, hence, positing an internally divided subject. This move is inadequate, however, according to Coombe, because poststructuralism still conceptualizes the subject as being “produced” by these multiple discourses and thus repeats (a perhaps more sophisticated version of) structuralist determinism. In Coombe's view, practice theory avoids this problem by emphasizing the subject's ability to move within the “spaces” created by the multiple structures to project her own meaning and identity. See infra at 136–37.Google Scholar
39 Alcoff, 13 Signs at 418.Google Scholar
40 Id. at 420. Interestingly, some feminists contend that poststructuralist (language) theories end up ironically repeating the structuralist “errors” of reification and essentialism, even as they attempt to “correct” them. Joan Scott, for example, complains that there is” a tendency to reify subjectively originating antagonism between males and females as the central fact of gender. In addition, although there is openness in the concept of how ‘the subject' is constructed, the theory tends to universalize the categories and relationship of male and female.” See Scott, 91 Am. Hist. Rev. at 1064 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
41 There is some ambiguity in Coombe's demarcation between poststructuralism and practice theory. On the one hand, she argues that, like the structuralist image, the” poststructuralist image of subjectivity as merely the locus or incident at which a multiplicity of discourses intersect”” efface[s] the interpreting actor: the intentional, interested and socially situated agent, altogether.”Id. at 83, 87 (emphasis in original). On the other hand, she cites approvingly from writers in the poststructuralist tradition to support her argument that human actors always mediate themselves through these multiple discourses, as well as being mediated by them. See, e. g., id. at n. 49 and accompanying text (citing Lyotard). To some extent, no doubt, this simply reflects the inherent difficulties in drawing clear boundaries between theoretical” traditions.” It may also suggest that Coombe's rendition of practice theory is not as distinguishable from her account of poststructuralism as she may believe.Google Scholar
42 I would like to emphasize again that I am relying exclusively on Coombe's representation of” practice theory” and am not evaluating independently any of the literature she identifies as part of the practice tradition.Google Scholar
43 Anthony Giddens is responsible for the concept of” the duality of structure.” See his Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) (“Giddens, Central Problems”).Google Scholar
44 Allen Hunter pointed out that I may be reproducing gender hierarchy by characterizing the poststructuralist, intersubjective subject as something” less than” the autonomous liberal subject. But, somehow, to characterize the relation between these two conceptions of the subject as merely” different from” each other, rather than in a hierarchical relation to each other, does not seem to capture adequately the nature of the debate to which Coombe is responding. Neither I nor Coombe constructed this debate in this way.Google Scholar
45 Coombe at 104. Here Coombe is describing Bourdieu's notion of” habitus.” See Bourdieu, Pierre, “Structuralism and Theory of Social Knowledge,” 35 Soc. Research 681, 705–6 (1969). This appears to be. alogous to Giddens's concept of” practical knowledge.” See Giddens, Central Problems at 57.Google Scholar
46 I explore this process in another paper which analyzes sex segregation in the workplace. Schultz, “Legal Constructions” (cited in note 5).Google Scholar
47 See Olsen, Frances, “From False Paternalism to False Equality: Judicial Assaults on Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895,” 84 Mich. L. Rev. 1518, 1532–40 and sources cited therein.Google Scholar
48 This phrase is taken from de Lauretis, “Feminist Studies” at 4 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
49 The decision in EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N. D. Ill. 1986), aff'd 839 F.2d 302 (7th Cir. 1988), provides a case in point. There the court held that the underrepresentation of women in Sears's higher-paying commission sales jobs was attributable not to any discriminatory practices by Sears but rather to” women's” own” lack of interest” in those jobs. But as economist Eileen Appelbaum pointed out in her testimony for the EEOC, women who worked at Sears and sought jobs there were relatively unprivileged women whose families depended on their wages. The implication of her testimony is that, given an opportunity to make a fully informed” choice,” these women would have placed a higher value on providing their families with the higher wages associated with commission sales than would more privileged women whose families did not need the income as badly. See Written Testimony of Eileen Applebaum, EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., Civil Action No. 79-C-4373, U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Chicago (on file with author). By engaging in overgeneralized assumptions about “women” and their work” choices,” the court contributed to reproducing the structuration of gender difference around work.Google Scholar
50 It may be that (at least some) practice theorists employ distinctions which avoid the sorts of problems I am pointing out but which Coombe, understandably, does not emphasize and elaborate on in her essay. I am aware that Giddens, for example, distinguishes between “structures” and” social systems.”” Structures exist paradigmatically, as an absent set of differences, temporarily ‘present’ only in their instantiation, in the constituting moments of social systems.” Giddens, Central Problems at 64 (cited in note 43). “Social systems, by contrast to structure, exist in time-space, and are constituted by social practice.”Id. at 73. This conceptual separation between structures and social systems might make possible the kinds of distinctions 1 am calling for, because it would allow us to situate actors within structures that are more or less”‘deeply-layered… in terms of the historical duration of the practices they recursively organise, and the spatial ‘breadth’ of those practices: how widespread they are across a range of interactions.”Id. at 65.Google Scholar
51 It is not clear that Giddens, for example, does this. He retains the double-edged sense of” power both as transformative capacity (the characteristic view held by those treating power in terms of the conduct of agents), and as domination (the main focus of those concentrating upon power as a structural quality).”Id. at 91. He tells us: “Power intervenes conceptually between the broader notions of transformative capacity on the one side, and of domination on the other: power is a relational concept, but only operates as such through the utilisation of transformative capacity as generated by structures of domination.”Id. at 92. Thus, in Giddens, although” power relations… are always two-way,”” structures of domination” do exist and are maintained through” asymmetries of resources employed in the sustaining of power relations in and between systems of interaction.”Id. at 93.Google Scholar
52 My friend Joel Ario refers to embracing this commitment as the” politics of hope.”Google Scholar
53 To use a relatively trivial example, it seems obvious that we should distinguish between the transformative capacity of participating in a Miss America pageant and disrupting one, at least as of 1968 when the latter was part of the women's movement's strategy to call attention to the oppressiveness and exploitation of Miss America as a cultural symbol. See New York Radical Women's statement, “No More Miss Americal” (August, 1968), reprinted in Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Paoerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement 584–88 (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). Today, strategies have become more complex, as some women are simultaneously participating in and subverting such pageants.Google Scholar
54 See, e. g., Holloway, “Gender Difference” at 237 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
55 De Lauretis, Technologies at 18 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
56 But see note 51 supra. Google Scholar
57 De Lauretis, Technologies at 17. De Lauretis draws on the insights of both poststructuralism and practice theory. But it strikes me that she attempts to move beyond both precisely to the extent that she attempts to specify a substantive conception of women's oppression as rooted in the” heterosexual social contract.”Id. at 18.Google Scholar
58 Alcoff, 13 Signs at 432 (cited in note 3).Google Scholar
59 This seems like a particularly plausible interpretation in the context of abortion politics, where some women who self-consciously identify as feminists are beginning to argue that abortion violates what they see as feminist values. See, e. g., Callahan, Sidney, “A Pro-Life Feminist Makes Her Case,” 20 Utne Reader 728 (March/April 1987). See also Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).Google Scholar
60 Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Not by Law Alone: From a Debate with Phyllis Schlafly,”Feminism Unmodified 21–31 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
61 Alcoff makes the opposite statement in the context of defending her concept of as “positionality” as not” undecidable.” Alcoff, 13 Signs at 435: “The concept and the position of women is not ultimately undecidable or arbitrary. It is simply not possible to interpret our society in such a way that women have more power or equal power relative to men.”Google Scholar
62 For a stunning example of the kind of description I have in mind, see Fineman, Martha, “Dominant Discourse, Professional Language, and Legal Change in Child Custody Decisionmaking,” 101 Hav. L. Rev. 727 (1988).Google Scholar
63 Coombe identifies these as important political exercises, in the context of discussing how practice theory” suggests a conception of politics that we might encourage.” According to Coombe, this conception” imagines politics as local practice involving the practical engagement of paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity both within discourses and between them” (Coombe at n.109).Google Scholar
64 In looking at this set of issues from this standpoint, I do not mean to suggest that there are not other important perspectives from which to view them. There are numerous concerns about social theory and methodology that extend beyond the capacity of particular methodological approaches and theoretical traditions to inspire people to political awareness and struggle.Google Scholar
65 Here, unlike Alcoff, I believe it is crucial to distinguish between those feminist accounts (whether called” cultural feminist” or” radical feminist”) that attribute gender difference to “culture” and those that attribute it to” nature.” See supra at 128. By definition, accounts that attribute gender difference to nature do not leave room to challenge the structures through which gender is constructed as themselves sites of power and oppression. By contrast, accounts that attribute difference to culture do leave room for a double-edged strategy, which challenges both the structures through which gender is created as well as the structures through which traits and activities traditionally associated with “women” come to be devalued. In my opinion, the best structuralist feminist accounts emphasize both sets of structures, thus highlighting the need for a double-edged strategy. For an exploration of this set of issues, see Mitchell, J. M. Lecture, “Feminist Discourse, Moral Values, and the Law- A Conversation,” 34 Buffalo L Rev. 11, 370–404 (1985) (dialogue between Catharine MacKinnon and Carol Gilligan about the extent to which the latter's work valorizes female “traits” constructed as such under conditions of oppression).Google Scholar
66 My description of how people react to structuralist feminist and poststructuralist feminist accounts draws on, among other experiences, my experience in teaching a seminar called Feminism and Legal Theory at the University of Wisconsin Law School. I thank my former students for giving me, among other treasures, some insights into how (even the most unlikely) people become politicized as feminists.Google Scholar
67 Of course, feminists (including feminist scholars) too numerous to name are continuing to tell such stories. I believe this is what is keeping the feminist project alive and vibrant and critical, in the face of the many pressures to succumb to the advent of” postfeminism.”Google Scholar
68 Coombe at n. 109 (“Let a thousand language games bloom”) (citing Lyotard).Google Scholar