Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers

Rethinking Subjectivity

Radha Chakravarty

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317809951
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

This book attempts to deal with the problem of literary subjectivity in theory and practice. The works of six contemporary women writers — Doris Lessing, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Buchi Emecheta, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison — are discussed as potential ways of testing and expanding the theoretical debate. A brief history of subjectivity and subject formation is reviewed in the light of the works of thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Raymond Williams and Stephen Greenblatt, and the work of leading feminists is also seen contributing to the debate substantially.

1
Theoretical Debates

Feminism is the context for this study, but the problem of subjectivity predates feminism by several centuries. In this chapter, I consider the history and conceptual parameters of the debate, so that their implications for feminism can be adequately addressed. I then return to Butler’s question to examine the problem of subjectivity within theories of feminism and the limitations of the various solutions suggested by different theoretical schools of feminism. To think beyond these limitations, I propose in the subsequent chapters to examine subjectivity in the novels of contemporary women writers.

Sources of the Subject

Awareness of subjectivity is not a uniquely ‘western’ phenomenon. Some versions of Buddhism, for example, emphasize introspection. From the eleventh century onwards, aristocratic ladies in Japan wrote memoirs and personal diaries. In India, Babur’s memoirs date back to the sixteenth century, while Chinese scholar-officials and monks often expressed themselves in autobiographical texts and portraits from the middle of the seventeenth century.¹ Different cultures thus offer varying ideas of the self as subject. However, the subject as a linguistic and theoretical construct has acquired a special prominence in Western cultural thought, and its evolving conceptual significance must therefore be traced within that context before attempting to re-frame it in other, more diverse cultural situations.

Raymond Williams traces the etymology of the word ‘subject’, beginning from the Middle English soget, suget or sugiet, derived from the Old French suget, soget, subjet, and the Latin subjectus and subjectum (the root words here being sub, meaning ‘under’ and jacere, meaning ‘throw’ or ‘cast’) (Williams 1983: 308–9). The earliest English meanings, according to Williams, were: (i) person under the dominion of lord or sovereign; (ii) substance; and (iii) matter worked upon. Sense (i), in use from the fourteenth century, and sense (iii), common from the sixteenth century, are still current.

Williams draws attention to the traditional opposition between ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (Williams 1983: 309). In its earliest English senses, ‘object’ implied an opposing point in an argument (as in ‘objection’), or an obstacle, or something seen or observed, or a purpose. From the sixteenth century, ‘object’ could generally imply a ‘thing’. The subject in epistemology generally functions as a counterpoint to the phenomenal object, and is commonly described as the sum of sensations, or ‘consciousness’, in relation to which the external world can be posited (P. Smith 1988: xxvii). Politically, ‘subject’ suggests a sense of domination, as in being ‘subject to’ a superior force. The Authorized Version of the Bible uses the term ‘subject’ in this sense.

From the dialectic of subject/object arises the duality of subjective/objective. Williams charts some radical shifts in the meanings of these terms (Williams 1983: 309–10). In scholastic thought, he asserts, ‘subjective’ refers to things as they are in themselves, and ‘objective’ to things as presented to the consciousness. In medieval writings, the subject is defined in terms of the rationality and immortality of the soul, while the embodied person is associated with Christ’s body as represented in doctrines of the Trinity and transubstantiation (P. Smith 1997: 50). In scholastic philosophy, reason and morality represent general conditions of being, rather than personal attributes: hence, the first person pronoun functions as an impersonal subject in deductive argument. From the seventeenth century, especially with Descartes, there occurs a change in worldview, the thinking self now established as the epistemological starting point from which the independent existence of all other things must be deduced. ‘I think, therefore I am’, declares Descartes, arguing that ‘this I, that is to say, the mind […] is entirely distinct from the body, and […] even if the body were not, it would not cease to be all that it is’ (Descartes 1912: 53–54). Descartes’ ‘I’ is a declaration of individuality, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this ‘I’ often denotes a rhetorical sense rather than the modern principle of consciousness (ibid.: 52). Related to this, we find the use of the ‘subject’ in grammar from the seventeenth century (and ‘object’ from the eighteenth century).

Stephen Greenblatt draws attention to the heightened sense of subjectivity as self-presentation during the Renaissance: ‘there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulative, artful process’ (Greenblatt 1984: 2). Autobiographies and portraits proliferate during this period and a sense of the difference between an inner and an outer self now underscores the importance of fashioning one’s self-image. This tendency may be linked to cultural factors such as increase in travel, rise of towns, religious concepts such as the Protestant/Puritan ‘conscience’ or the Catholic tradition of confession, and availability of ancient models’ both Christian and pagan (Burke 1997: 27).

In a different vein, Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651), describes the human being as a natural machine, aggressive and competitive, driven by the desire for power and self-preservation. The subject here is a corporeal entity, mind being regarded as simply another body in motion, and all thoughts and representations perceived as rooted in the senses. The role of the subject in the social contract that forms the basis of the state is also discussed by Locke, but with a very different emphasis. An empiricist like Bacon, Locke rejects the concept of innate ideas, describing the mind of the child at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa) on which experience writes its script. He sees the subject as having two types of identity, as an organism and as a person, each functioning as a continuity in time. Identity as organism consists in the same continued life in the same organic body, while identity as person consists in a thinking, intelligent being capable of self-recognition in different times and places. Personal identity is thus seen as consciousness of a permanent self, not just a series perceptions, as Hume would suggest.

The mind for empiricists represents the passive recipient of sense impressions, while rationalists perceive it as endowed with innate ideas. Rejecting both formulations, Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) describes the mind as an active force, creating the physical world as we experience it. Kant thus distinguishes between the phenomenal/empirical self, passive and subject to natural laws, and the transcendental/noumenal self, subject of moral and rational agency. Arguing for a universal moral ethic based on a priori principles, Kant posits two categorical imperatives: to treat humans, including oneself, as important in themselves, and to act on the belief that all actions have universal validity.

Kant, however, retains the traditional epistemological distinction between consciousness and reality. Challenging this tendency, Hegel seeks a phenomenology of the mind, a view of the consciousness as it turns on itself, perceiving itself, and not the objective world, as its object of inquiry. In Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), he describes this as a developing process, the individual mind being a ‘moment’ in the development of the spirit or geist (human culture). Dismissing the idea of an individual self as a pure abstraction, Hegel insists that the existence of others is essential to self-consciousness. However, he charts the growth of the human spirit not in terms of mutuality, but within a framework of conflict and domination. Conscious being as well as active agent, the subject overcomes dialectically the dichotomy between subjective and objective.

Though critical of Hegel, Schopenhauer also seeks to transcend this dichotomy, asserting that the world as idea or representation (vorstellung) comprises both the subject and the material world (Schopenhauer 1969: 31). In his dualistic vision, the human subject has a phenomenal aspect, the body and mind embedded in space, time and causality, and a noumenal aspect, the will, which resembles the Kantian ‘thing-in-itself’ or the Platonic realm of ideas. The will is the essence of the world, a blind force of nature manifesting itself in a wide range of empirical phenomena. Although Schopenhauer speaks of the affirmative will to live, he describes the human condition as bleak, meaningless and full of pain. Making knowledge subservient to the will, Schopenhauer gives this dichotomy a gendered dimension, associating the male sex with the will and the female with the intellect.

For Karl Marx, the essence of humans is that they are social beings, but he rejects the antithesis between nature and history, insisting on the interdependence of man in history and the world of nature. Man is both a thinking and active being, and through labor, he creatively produces his own condition of life. The mode of production of material life is seen to condition social, political, and intellectual life processes. Through praxis (labor), the subject/object dichotomy can be overcome. ‘Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life’ (Marx 1998: 253).

For Nietzsche, the subject is not a unique, separate entity, but a ‘species-being’ in an ascending or descending line of the evolutionary process of life. Agency does not imply a doer behind the deed, for ‘no such agent exists, there is no “being” behind the doing, acting, becoming […] the doing is everything’ (Nietzsche 1956: 178–79). Consciousness is not an individual attribute, but a feature of collective life, developed through social interaction. The figure of the superman represents Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power, the energy of the universe as it manifests itself in living beings. Although Nietzsche sees human relations in terms of power and control, his ideal of the super-man seems less a warrior than a creative artist or religious prophet.

Reacting against abstract intellectualism and positivism, existentialism takes as its starting point the human subject, rather than epistemology, logic, or knowledge of the natural world. The Cartesian model of the thinking subject is called into question, and existence is given priority over rational thought, which entails an emphasis on freedom, choice and responsibility as characteristics of the self as agent. A philosophical attitude that came into prominence after World War II, existentialism is fraught with a deep sense of tragedy, regarding life as fragmented, meaningless and riddled with guilt, anxiety and despair. Existence, the living experience of the subject, overrides essence, contained in the abstract laws of objective reality. The uniqueness of the human existent is asserted, though the reality of the social and external world is not denied.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the co-existence of multiple senses of the term ‘subject’ has proved to be confusing. Political discourse identifies the subject as the person/citizen subjected to domination while psychoanalysis describes it in terms of the constitution of the human psyche in relation to language. Epistemologically, the subject signifies the consciousness traditionally thought of as the source of knowledge, but more recently, perceived as constituted by discourse. All these usages retain some of the etymological sense of the subject as something subjugated, thrown beneath.

Also common to these usages is the attempt to dismantle the traditional idea of the ‘individual’. The individual is supposedly whole and undivided, coherent, unified, autonomous and unique, regarded also as source of meaning and agent of conscious action. The last two decades, however, have witnessed a questioning of the role of the subject as source of meaning and actions, and therefore as ‘intending and knowing manipulator of the object’ (P. Smith 1988: xxviii). Marx and Freud are the two most important influences here, Marx in reclaiming the ontological primacy of the material world, and Freud in inventing the unconscious (ibid.: xxviii). The poststructuralist questioning of the sovereignty of the subject has led to an increased emphasis on language and representation, as in Lacan’s account of the role of language in the formation of the unconscious and Althusser’s account of the role of ideology in subject constitution.

Lacan insists that Freud’s observations must be understood symbolically, as an account of the transition of individuals from the realm of the Imaginary (a blissful state of oneness between infant and pre-Oedipal mother) to the realm of the Symbolic (the world of language, of consciousness and of patriarchy). This transition involves a splitting of the self, now constituted as a nameable object. Through absence or lack, the self is known as separate from another. With language comes the symbolic awareness of separation, or ‘castration’, the Name-of-the Father replacing that of the phallic mother. The loss creates a desire for the mother, making the girl aware that she lacks a phallus, and the boy that he cannot compete for the father.²

Althusser (1969) challenges the notion that the social world is created by the intentional agency of human subjects. Arguing that Marx moved away from the ‘empiricism of the subject’, Althusser interprets this as a ‘theoretical anti-humanism’. While Marx wishes to replace the ‘abstract man’ with the ‘real man’, Althusser suggests that the subject is a function of ideology. Ideology, for Althusser, consists of a system of representations, expressing the lived relation between people and their world. The primary function of all ideologies is to constitute individuals as subjects, ensuring their submission to the social order. According to Althusser, subjectivities are produced by Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) in modern capitalism, especially educational institutions and the family. He describes this as a process of ‘interpellation’ or ideological address to the subject. When answered by the subject’s own (mis)recognition, this ensures that the subject accepts his subjection without dispelling the illusion of coherence and agency. Althusser thus postulates that the subject is a cultural construct, rather than a manifestation of the human essence.

Foucault’s idea of regimes of knowledge/power goes beyond the Althusserian model of (mis)recognition and consent. Such regimes, according to Foucault, inscribe identities on the very bodies of those subject to them. In the shift from Althusser to Foucault, the distinction between ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ disappears. In Althusser’s theory, because subjects exist in ideology, subjective accounts are ideological. The knowledge of objective social relations requires no human subject, because it is located in the practices of knowledge production. But Foucauldian poststructuralism rejects the distinction between knowledge and ideology, and thus dissolves the grounds of difference between objectivity and subjectivity in discourse.

In all these recent theories, the subject is determined by, or in conflict with, forces that dominate it in some way or another. This subject is thus a subject-in-crisis, fragmented under external and internal pressure and given to neurosis, anxiety and alienation. The idea of the individual is here exposed as an illusion of coherence, based on belief in a fully enabled and self-conscious power. Subjectivity, in other words, can only always be partial as wholeness or coherence is a theoretical impossibility. Related to this idea of divided subjectivity is the perceived opposition of essentialism and constructionism. As Louis A. Montrose says, the term ‘Subject’ has come to suggest ‘an equivocal process of subjectification: on the one hand, shaping individuals as loci of consciousness and initiators of action—endowing them with subjectivity and the capacity for agency; and on the other, positioning, motivating, and constraining them within—subjecting them to—social networks and cultural codes that ultimately exceed their comprehension or control’ (Montrose 1989: 21). If the traditional individual is seen as unchanging essence, the poststructuralist subject is not identical with the ‘person’, but refers, rather, to the conglomeration of positions which a person is required to inhabit, by the discursive or historical frameworks within which he or she is situated.³

If subjectivity is recognized as a matter of positionality rather than personality, and if this positionality is perceived as determined by external forces rather than by the subject, wherein resides the possibility of initiating meaningful action? In terms of positionality, the human agent would be traditionally seen as the place from which resistance to the ideological is produced (P. Smith 1988: xxxv). Such a position, however, is apparently denied the human subject by recent poststructuralist theories that define the subject as produced by and subjected to forces of domination, and hence unable to intervene in order to alter existing discursive/historical frameworks.

Implications for Feminism

For an emancipatory practice such as feminism, the implications of this theoretical move are disturbing, for it seems to preclude the possibility of social change. Herein lies the challenge of Butler’s question. When feminists question the fixed gender roles prescribed by patriarchal systems, this deconstructive step in itself is not adequate to theorize the possibility of changing existing power relations. It is hard to evolve an identity politics that is not premised upon some sense of a self that needs to be liberated, and difficult to claim rights for ‘women’ if the category cannot be identified or defined. As Rosi Braidotti says, ‘The paradox of feminist theory at the end of this century is that it is based on the very notions of “gender” and “sexual difference”, which it is historically bound to criticize’ (Braidotti 1994b: 61).

From Simone de Beauvoir onwards, the feminist critique of patriarchal formulations of a homogenized, essentialized idea of ‘Woman’ has emphasized that the difference between the sexes is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Subjectivity and the Woman Writer
• 1. Theoretical Debates
• 2. Doris Lessing: Striving for Wholeness
• 3. Anita Desai: Fighting the Current
• 4. Mahasweta Devi: A Luminous Anger
• 5. Buchi Emecheta: Hazardous Border Crossings
• 6. Margaret Atwood: Between Two Worlds
• 7. Toni Morrison: Imagined Grace
• Conclusion: Rethinking Subjectivity
• Bibliography
• Index