Feminism and agency

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
-Audre Lorde

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
-Sally Kempton

I somehow managed to do all the readings for my Feminist Theory and Rhetorical Criticism class this week and it has made me think a lot about things I've had an ongoing discourse with others about for the past two years. One thing I consistently find is that I have a real problem with the ideology of individualism so common to our society, because I think it's essentially an appeal to selfishness and I'm kind of a Buddhist so that's not cool to me. This shows up in our articles this week and is nicely responded to by Barbara Biesecker and Dana Cloud (who, along with Josh Gunn, make up the trio of communication scholars I think are usually right).

Here's where I'm coming from:

I approach these problems from a critical perspective that views partiarchy, racism and capitalism as all part of the same hegemonic order. My theoretical perspective is informed by Marxist, psychoanalytic, Foucauldian and Deluezian theory. Huzzah.

So: I think appeals to selfishness are just another way of interpellating us as consumers. Which means we're colonized.

I believe that one of the ways 21st century hegemony works is by telling us that it's ok to objectify ourselves and others, thus robbing us of a position as a speaking subject. Objects don't have agency. Subjects do. Sort of (as subjects are formed by discourse). I believe this is part of our colonialization under late capitalism, where our identities are commodified and we're just another product on the market. From a psychoanalytic perspective, we become fetishes and fetishize(?) others to maintain them as "other" and reconstruct our identities as paranoid egos. Love has no place in hegemony. Love is consubstantial and breaks down barriers. We need barriers to sell shit.

So like, there are these theories of "empowerment" that I believe are just ways of buying into patriarchy from a different angle. They tell you others are selfish if their lives don't revolve around you. That others only have value inasmuch as they exist to serve you in some way. Doesn't anyone else see the irony there? This shit runs deep and many people probably don't even know it informs their perspectives. Once feminism deterritorialized sexuality, for example, capitalism responded by reterritorializing it.

Feminism reclaims sexuality by saying women can enjoy sex without being whores. Partiarchy/capitalism responds by saying "ok, but sex is still an economic exchange, whether you're a man or a woman. Women, you can have the currency, but you're still going to have to buy or sell." so we go out to the club and buy each other drinks to get each other drunk to fuck and think we're empowered (but you can't play a playa!). By reifying the mind/body binary and trying to seperate emotion from sexuality, capitalism wins because others just become another object to consume (also: you, mass-produced and marketed. We'll take your surplus).

Your body and mind are the same damn thing!

If you don't approach relationships from a basis of equality you're just becoming another tool in the system. If you think empowerment comes from manipulating others, it's because there are "outposts in your head." I don't think true empowerment comes at the expense of another. I think if you try to use the master's tools you end up becoming part of the problem. So there's that.

In Foss and Griffin's article about invitational rhetoric they say one of the fundamental principles of feminism is "self-determination" and my question is "what the fuck does that mean?" Does this assume an independent, rational subject? This, again, is a capitalist construction that makes us love our oppressors. We do what they want thinking it's what we want because, you know, we're colonized. Are we supposed to ignore the discourses that construct our subjectivity? Are we supposed to ignore the structures in our society that constrain our agency? Believing that if we do what we want we're doing what's best? What?!! What about other people?

There's a whole industry dedicated to constructing the illusion of self. "Self-help" books, "The Secret," "The Game" etc are all there to make us think more about what we want than what is good for society as a whole. Because if we start thinking socially we might question capitalism and they don't want that. But these are all parts of the discourses that construct our subjectivity and constrain our agency by determining our desires. You do what you want because it's what they tell you you want. Fuck everyone else. That's fucked up.

My answer of course is the doctrine of 'No-Self' and the Four Noble Truths. Desire causes suffering. That kind of thing. It is desire that chains us to our oppressors and makes us love it, making us another cog in a machine that is destroying the environment and keeping women, GLBT folks, people of color and the poor marginalized.

Which leads to another point I wonder about. In my master's program there were a couple people who insisted (by fiat, not really making an argument but saying it as if it's true and if I didn't believe it I was oppressing them) THAT only those on the margin can REALLY see the system. So automatically, I as a white middle-class male heterosexual should be taken as reinforcing the system with everything I say because, um, I'm not sure why. While I recognize that it took a lot for me to start (START) to understand my own privilege, I also have to wonder if my position as "master" doesn't give me some kind of insight into the master's tools. And perhaps on how they work on the colonized. Because while I obviously am wrong about a lot of stuff, I recognize that I can be seen as the "colonizer" rather than the "colonized." So, like, I'm sorry, but sometimes I look at people and just wonder how they can't be aware of how they are embodying angloamerican hegemony or whatever. I'm just saying. This isn't an idea I'm attached to. It's just something I've been wondering about.

mm