Feminist Killjoy K
Notes
The argument:
The basic thesis of this argument is that happiness was constructed as something that women
have to be in order to be deemed “good.” Oftentimes the way to achieve happiness is through
pleasing the people around you—namely men and your family—through doing things like
marrying a good man, having children, taking care of the children, etc. However, through trying
to achieve this “happiness” you are giving up your political consciousness, which is bad for
obvious reasons. So this is where the feminist killjoy comes in. The figure of the feminist killjoy
can be someone who actively resists trying to fulfill this kind of happiness. For example, you
could be standing around with a group of friends and joking around and then when someone
makes a sexist joke you disrupt this happiness in order to point out that what they said was
sexist and messed up. Your disruption of the happiness in this space makes you the feminist
killjoy because you killed their joy in order to point out specific instances of patriarchy/sexism. In
debate we are doing this in the same way by pointing out instances of patriarchy in the 1AC we
can actively resist these forms of sexism and trade in happiness for political consciousness.
In debate:
The 1NC has everything you should need but you should put in specific links to the AFF prior to
the 1NC. Also, if you want you can read rage as a method, I would recommend reading the
Kaplow card in the 1NC as a defense of why your rage is necessary and a good political method
for creating change. There are a few different impacts, but the Ray evidence is good because it
gets in your impacts and impact framing in one card, which is cool. If you want to go the whole
root cause turns case etc. route, you can check out a few more impacts that I cut including one
that says patriarchy causes miscalc and us to strike first (lol).
If you have any questions about the AFF answers you can email Annie at annie.x.jia@gmail.com.
If you have any questions about the cards I cut (basically the NEG stuff and any cards that have
the initials KD at the end) or about the argument in general, feel free to email me at
hdhaliwal@college-prep.org
#yaydebate!
--Kizzy
**NEG**
1NC
The discourse of civil society is structured to maintain a patriarchal
system in which women and their rage are silenced. The strategy of the
status quo exists to reify power structures while simultaneously punishing
marginalized groups. Their use of the USFG provides men and civil society
with the tools to keep on policing politics.
Lonzano-Reich & Cloud 9
Nina M. and Dana, 4/30/2009. Nina M. Lozano-Reich, Ph.D. is a former Carnegie Fellow and an Associate Professor in the
Communication Studies Department, at Loyola Marymount University. Dana L. Cloud is a professor of communication studies at
Syracuse University. “The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric and the Problem of Inequality,” Western Journal of
Communication. // KD
Bone et al. acknowledge that historically,
societal standards of decorum have often¶ been used to
silence groups and keep them in their place. Nowhere is this truer than¶ in the case of women,
told to play nice with their oppressors (Ehrenreich & English,¶ 2005). But the authors contradict this position when
they argue, ‘‘When we adopt an¶ invitational approach and are civil [emphasis added], the potential for grief and¶ violence is
minimized’’ (p. 457). Likewise, they write, ‘‘Civility ... can be understood¶ as an ... integral component of democracy’’ (p. 457). Based
upon historical and contemporary¶ examples, we reject these claims; when theorizing as to how individuals¶ should deal with
‘‘difficult situations,’’ our authors’ call
for adopting an invitational¶ paradigm grounded in civility is not
only antithetical to the goals of invitational¶ rhetoric, but also in combating systems of
oppression.
Historically, dominant
groups have repeatedly enacted civilizing strategies to effectively¶ silence
and punish marginalized groups (e.g., labor; women and people of¶ color; the poor; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender [LGBT] people). Indeed,¶ 19th-century notions of propriety and civility were used as cultural
ideals to place¶ legal, political, and physical restrictions on women—whereby relegating women
to¶ the private sphere (Oravec, 2003). Antifeminists frequently appealed to masculine¶ norms of
‘‘civilization’’ to ‘‘depict women as less civilized than men, less able to¶ contribute to the
advancement of the race’’ (Bederman, 1995, p. 121). Extending this¶ history, women of color have been
silenced through civilizing strategies that deem¶ legitimately angry speech to be ‘‘uppity’’ ‘‘or
‘‘illiterate’’ (Anzaldu´ a, 1999; hooks,¶ 1989). It has taken decades of critical feminist scholarship to resist
politics of civility and overcome oppressive stereotypes so that women of color can be viewed
as¶ speaking subjects, and not as uncivilized subjects needing a firm hand.
Similarly, LGBTQ sexual practices have also been vulnerable to oppressive charges¶ of indecorum. Culturally, dominant sexual ethics
and decorous community standards¶ function to shame queer individuals, and stigmatize nonnormative acts of¶ sexuality (Morris &
Sloop, 2006; Warner, 1999). One need only look to hate crimes¶ enacted upon gays or immigrants, or acts of femicide inflicted upon
women who dare¶ to speak out. Clearly, a
move towards civility in relation to oppressed groups may¶
potentially increase grief and violence.
Bone et al. claim that civility fosters democracy. While voting is indeed civil,¶ radical
social change has not occurred in
voting booths, but results, instead, from¶ democratic grassroots tactics. Protestors inherently do not
operate within the realm¶ of decorum. Indeed, political confrontations up to and including violence have
been¶ perennial resources in struggles for justice (Kirkpatrick, 2008). The civility standard is¶
detrimental to this project. When measured by standards of civility, protesters are¶ framed as wild and
riotous by dominant media, rendering their struggles illegitimate¶ (Gitlin, 2003). In a post-9=11 climate,
moreover, ‘‘uncivil’’ protestors are equated¶ with terrorists (and terrorists cannot be ascribed any rationality whatsoever). ¶
Bederman (1995) asks whether conforming to mainstream standards of civility¶ replaces one kind of exclusion with another. This
paradox holds except in cases of¶ discourses among equals. Discourses
of civilization ‘‘have proven [to be] a
slippery¶ slope for those who dream of a more just society’’ (Bederman, 1995, p. 239).¶ Likewise, Mayo (2002)
argues that ‘‘civility is a form of social discrimination, for¶ it is predicated on making distinctions
that support accepted practices and values,¶ and entails enacting those distinctions to the
detriment of the purportedly uncivil’’¶ (p. 82).
In other words, we view Bone et al.’s argument for invitational civility in situations¶ of conflict as potentially perpetuating
discrimination in the name of peace. Theorizing¶
resistance to oppression requires attention to both
invitation and confrontation,¶ along with criteria enabling critics to evaluate both modes.
Consequently, we believe¶ it is irresponsible to displace more confrontational models for social change
in favor¶ of a politics of civility that has been proven to leave those already.
<insert links of choice>
Vote NEG to kill joy. We use the negative positionality of the feminist killjoy to
disturb the AFF’s fantasy of happiness through pointing out instances of
patriarchy in the 1AC.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Feminism gives time and space to¶ women’s desires that are not assembled around the
reproduction of the family¶ form. Feminists must thus be willing to cause disturbance. Feminists
might¶ even have to be willful. A subject would be described as willful at the point that¶ her will
does not coincide with that of others, those whose will is reified as the¶ general or social will.*^
The figure of the female troublemaker thus shares the same horizon with the figure of the
feminist killjoy. Both figures are intelligible if they are read¶ through the lens of the history of
happiness. Feminists might kill joy simply¶ by not finding the objects that promise happiness to
be quite so promising.¶ The word feminism is thus saturated with unhappiness. Feminists by
declaring¶ themselves as feminists are already read as destroying something that is¶ thought of
by others not only as being good but as the cause of happiness. The¶ feminist killjoy “spoils” the
happiness of others; she is a spoilsport because she¶ refuses to convene, to assemble, or to meet up
over happiness.¶ In the thick sociality of everyday spaces, feminists are thus attributed as¶ the origin of bad
feeling, as the ones who ruin the atmosphere, which is how¶ the atmosphere might be imagined
(retrospectively) as shared. In order to get¶ along, you have to participate in certain forms of solidarity: you have to laugh¶ at the
right points. Feminists are typically represented as grumpy and humorless, ¶ often as a way of
protecting the right to certain forms of social bonding¶ or of holding onto whatever is
perceived to be under threat.*^ Feminists don’t¶ even have to say anything to be read as killing
joy, A feminist colleague says to¶ me that she just has to open her mouth in meetings to witness eyes rolling as¶ if to say “oh here
she goes.”
My experience of being a feminist has taught me much about rolling eyes.¶ This is why when people say the bad feeling is coming
from this person or¶ that person, I am never convinced. My skepticism comes from childhood¶ experiences of being a feminist
daughter in a relatively conventional family,¶ always at odds with the performance of good feeling in the family, always
assumed¶ to be bringing others down, for example, by pointing out sexism in¶ other people’s
talk. Say we are seated at the dinner table. Around this table,¶ the family gathers, having polite conversations, where only certain
things can¶ be brought up. Someone says something that you consider problematic. You¶ respond, carefully, perhaps. You might be
speaking quietly; or you might be¶ getting “wound up,” recognizing with frustration that you are being wound¶ up by someone who
is winding you up. The
violence of what was said or the¶ violence of provocation goes unnoticed.
However she speaks, the feminist is¶ usually the one who is viewed as “causing the argument,”
who is disturbing the¶ fragility of peace.
Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does
the feminist kill¶ other people’s joy by pointing out
moments of sexism? Or does she expose the¶ bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated
under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things,¶ or could anger
be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through¶ objects get brought to the surface in a certain way? Feminist
subjects might¶ bring others down not only by talking about unhappy topics such as sexism but¶
by exposing how happiness is sustained by erasing the very signs of not getting¶ along. Feminists
do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that¶ happiness can be found in
certain places. To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling.¶ It is not just that feminists might not be happily affected by the objects
that¶ are supposed to cause happiness but that their failure to be happy is read as¶ sabotaging the happiness
of others. We can consider the relationship between the negativity of the figure of the feminist killjoy and how certain
bodies are “encountered” as being negative,¶ Marilyn Frye argues that oppression involves the
requirement that you¶ show signs of being happy with the situation in which you find yourself.
As¶ she puts it, “It is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and¶ be cheerful. If
we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our¶ situation” (1983; 2). To be
oppressed requires you to show signs of happiness,¶ as signs of being or having been adjusted. As
a result, for Frye, “anything but¶ the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean,
bitter, angry¶ or dangerous” (2), If an oppressed person does not smile or show signs of being¶ happy, then he or she is
read as being negative: as angry, hostile, unhappy, and¶ so on. Happiness becomes the expected “default
position” for those who are¶ oppressed, such that it comes to define the sphere of neutrality.
You are either¶ happy: or you are not.
To be recognized as a feminist is to be assigned to a difficult category and¶ a category of
difficulty. You are “already read” as “not easy to get along with”¶ when you name yourself as a
feminist. You have to show that you are not difficult¶ through displaying signs of good will and
happiness. Frye alludes to such¶ experiences when she observes that “this means, at the very least, that we may¶ be found
to be ‘difficult’ or unpleasant to work with, which is enough to cost¶ one one’s livelihood” (2-3).
We can also witness an investment in feminist¶ unhappiness (the myth that feminists kill joy because they are
joyless). There¶ is a desire to believe that women become feminists because they are unhappy,¶
perhaps as a displacement of their envy for those who have achieved the happiness¶ they have
failed to achieve.^^ This desire functions as a defense of happiness¶ against feminist critique. This is not to say that feminists
might not be unhappy; we might be unhappy after all with this representation of feminism¶ as caused by unhappiness. My point
here would be that feminists
are read as¶ being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence,
and power are read¶ as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists
are¶ unhappy about.
Violence should be understood as a continuum that functions against all
women. Having permeated even the international sphere such as countries
dominating women as a way of demonstrating their power. This sexual
terrorism has become the norm where women’s bodies are the battlefield.
Prioritize these forms of violence because social biases underrepresent them
and their effects are exponential. Their focus on large scale impacts ignore
these types of low level violence that will continue to happen.
Ray 97
A.E., 1997. “The Shame of It: gender-based terrorism in the former Yugoslavia and the failure of international human rights law to
comprehend the injuries.” The American University Law Review, Vol. 46. // KD
In order to reach all of the violence perpetrated against the women of the former Yugoslavia that is not committed by soldiers or
other officials of the state, human
lights law must move beyond its artificially constructed barriers
between "public" and "private" actions: A feminist perspective on human rights would require a
rethinking of the notions of imputability and state responsibility and in this sense would challenge
the most basic assumptions of international law. If violence against women were considered by
the international legal system to be as shocking as violence against people for their political
ideas, women would have considerable support in their struggle.... The assumption that
underlies all law, including international human rights law, is that the public/private distinction
is real: human society, human lives can be separated into two distinct spheres. This division, however, is an ideological
construct rationalizing the exclusion of women from the sources of power. 2 6 The international
community must recognize that violence against women is always political, regardless of where it
occurs, because it affects the way women view themselves and their role in the world, as well as the
lives they lead in the so-called public sphere. 2 6 ' When women are silenced within the family, their silence is
not restricted to the private realm, but rather affects their voice in the public realm as well,
often assuring their silence in any environment. 262 For women in the former Yugoslavia, as well as for all women,
extension beyond the various public/private barriers is imperative if human rights law "is to have meaning for women brutalized in
less-known theaters of war or in the by-ways of daily life." 63 Because, as currently constructed, human
rights laws can
reach only individual perpetrators during times of war, one alternative is to reconsider our
understanding of what constitutes "war" and what constitutes "peace. " " When it is universally
true that no matter where in the world a woman lives or with what culture she identifies, she is
at grave risk of being beaten, imprisoned, enslaved, raped, prostituted, physically tortured, and
murdered simply because she is a woman, the term "peace" does not describe her existence. 2 5
In addition to being persecuted for being a woman, many women also are persecuted on ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation,
or other grounds. Therefore, it is crucial that our re-conceptualization of human rights is not limited to violations based on gender."
Rather, our definitions of "war" and "peace" in the context of all of the world's persecuted groups should be questioned.
Nevertheless, in
every culture a common risk factor is being a woman, and to describe the
conditions of our lives as "peace" is to deny the effect of sexual terrorism on all women. 6 7
Because we are socialized to think of times of "war" as limited to groups of men fighting over
physical territory or land, we do not immediately consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow definition except in a
metaphorical sense, such as in the expression "the war against poverty." However, the physical violence and sex
discrimination perpetrated against women because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite
the fact that its prevalence makes the violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its
purpose and its effect. Further, its exclusion from international human rights law is no accident,
but rather part of a system politically constructed to exclude and silence women. 2 6 The
appropriation of women's sexuality and women's bodies as representative of men's ownership
over women has been central to this "politically constructed reality. 2 6 9 Women's bodies have
become the objects through which dominance and even ownership are communicated, as well
as the objects through which men's honor is attained or taken away in many cultures.Y Thus,
when a man wants to communicate that he is more powerful than a woman, he may beat her. When a man wants to communicate
that a woman is his to use as he pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The objectification of women is so universal that when
one country ruled by men (Serbia) wants to communicate to another country ruled by men (BosniaHerzegovina or Croatia) that it is superior and more powerful, it rapes, tortures, and prostitutes the
"inferior" country's women. 2 71 The use of the possessive is intentional, for communication among men through the
abuse of women is effective only to the extent that the group of men to whom the message is sent believes they have some right of
possession over the bodies of the women used. Unless they have some claim of right to what is taken, no injury is experienced. Of
course, regardless of whether a group of men sexually terrorizing a group of women is trying to communicate a message to another
group of men,
the universal sexual victimization of women clearly communicates to all women a
message of dominance and ownership over women. As Charlotte Bunch explains, "The physical territory
of [the] political struggle [over female subordination] is women's bodies." 7 2
<insert rage card (Kaplow) if you want>
Links
Link - General
The AFF’s claims to function in a neutral sphere exist under the logic that
happiness is the default position for oppressed groups. The feminist
killjoy exists to present how this sphere is not neutral, but rather
functions on the basis of forcing conformity upon women.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Feminists are typically represented as grumpy and humorless,¶ often as a way of protecting
the right to certain forms of social bonding¶ or of holding onto whatever is perceived to be
under threat.*^ Feminists don’t¶ even have to say anything to be read as killing joy, A feminist
colleague says to¶ me that she just has to open her mouth in meetings to witness eyes rolling as¶ if to say “oh here she goes.”
My experience of being a feminist has taught me much about rolling eyes.¶ This is why when people say the bad feeling is coming
from this person or¶ that person, I am never convinced. My skepticism comes from childhood¶ experiences of being a feminist
daughter in a relatively conventional family,¶ always at odds with the performance of good feeling in the family, always
assumed¶ to be bringing others down, for example, by pointing out sexism in¶ other people’s
talk. Say we are seated at the dinner table. Around this table,¶ the family gathers, having polite conversations, where only certain
things can¶ be brought up. Someone says something that you consider problematic. You¶ respond, carefully, perhaps. You might be
speaking quietly; or you might be¶ getting “wound up,” recognizing with frustration that you are being wound¶ up by someone who
is winding you up. The
violence of what was said or the¶ violence of provocation goes unnoticed.
However she speaks, the feminist is¶ usually the one who is viewed as “causing the argument,”
who is disturbing the¶ fragility of peace.
Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does
the feminist kill¶ other people’s joy by pointing out
moments of sexism? Or does she expose the¶ bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated
under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things,¶ or could anger
be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through¶ objects get brought to the surface in a certain way? Feminist
subjects might¶ bring others down not only by talking about unhappy topics such as sexism but¶
by exposing how happiness is sustained by erasing the very signs of not getting¶ along. Feminists
do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that¶ happiness can be found in
certain places. To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling.¶ It is not just that feminists might not be happily affected by the objects
that¶ are supposed to cause happiness but that their failure to be happy is read as¶ sabotaging the happiness
of others. We can consider the relationship between the negativity of the figure of the feminist killjoy and how certain
bodies are “encountered” as being negative,¶ Marilyn Frye argues that oppression involves the
requirement that you¶ show signs of being happy with the situation in which you find yourself.
As¶ she puts it, “It is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and¶ be cheerful. If
we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our¶ situation” (1983; 2). To be
oppressed requires you to show signs of happiness,¶ as signs of being or having been adjusted. As
a result, for Frye, “anything but¶ the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean,
bitter, angry¶ or dangerous” (2), If an oppressed person does not smile or show signs of being¶ happy, then he or she is
read as being negative: as angry, hostile, unhappy, and¶ so on. Happiness becomes the expected “default
position” for those who are¶ oppressed, such that it comes to define the sphere of neutrality.
You are either¶ happy: or you are not.
To be recognized as a feminist is to be assigned to a difficult category and¶ a category of
difficulty. You are “already read” as “not easy to get along with”¶ when you name yourself as a
feminist. You have to show that you are not difficult¶ through displaying signs of good will and
happiness. Frye alludes to such¶ experiences when she observes that “this means, at the very least, that we may¶ be found
to be ‘difficult’ or unpleasant to work with, which is enough to cost¶ one one’s livelihood” (2-3).
We can also witness an investment in feminist¶ unhappiness (the myth that feminists kill joy because they are
joyless). There¶ is a desire to believe that women become feminists because they are unhappy,¶
perhaps as a displacement of their envy for those who have achieved the happiness¶ they have
failed to achieve.^^ This desire functions as a defense of happiness¶ against feminist critique. This is not to say that feminists
might not be unhappy; we might be unhappy after all with this representation of feminism¶ as caused by unhappiness. My point
here would be that feminists
are read as¶ being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence,
and power are read¶ as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists
are¶ unhappy about.
The AFF’s presumption of political consciousness is not available to women
because in the AFF world, women are expected to sacrifice their political
consciousness for traditional notions of happiness. Only the NEG is able to
inject this reorientation into the debate round and give women political
consciousness. This also means we’re a pre-req.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Consciousness and Unhappiness¶ To
be against forms of power and violence that are concealed under
signs¶ of happiness does not necessarily mean becoming unhappy, even if it does¶ mean refusing to go
along with things by showing signs of getting along. It¶ is striking that Shulamith Firestone’s “dream action” for the women’s
liberation¶ movement is “a smile boycott, at which declaration, all women would¶ instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles,
henceforth only smiling when something¶ pleased them " (1970: 90). To refuse
the promise of happiness is to
refuse¶ the demand that you show signs of happiness. For Firestone, this means a shift¶ of
orientation; it means changing one’s bodily habits: “In my own case, I had to¶ train myself out of the phony smile, which is like a
nervous tic on every teenage¶ girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real¶ smiling, I had less to
smile about” (go). To
refuse to keep smiling for Firestone¶ is not a refusal of joy or any of those good
feelings that are not distributed along¶ accepted paths of happiness. If anything, the false smile
sustains the very psychic¶ and political condition of unhappiness. The feminist who does not
smile¶ when she is not happy wants a more exciting life. Indeed, as Firestone argues:¶ “Eroticism is exciting. Noone wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and¶ routine affair without at least that spark. That’s just the point. Why has all joy¶
and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow difficult-to-find alley of¶ human experience, and all the rest laid waste?”
(155; second emphasis added).¶ Feminism
involves challenging the very “pressure” of happiness, the way
it¶ restricts the possibilities for finding excitement, of being excited.¶ This is not to say that feminism makes
women happy. It is simply that feminism¶ by refusing to go along with public displays of happiness can
participate¶ in the widening of horizons in which it is possible to find things. Feminism does not
guarantee what we will find through this expansion of bodily horizons. It simply opens up the places where we can
look. The fact that any such¶ opening is read as a sign of hostility, or of killing other people’s joy,
tells us¶ something. The public investment in happiness is an investment in a very particular and
narrow model of the good; being happy requires a commitment to¶ find what Firestone brilliantly describes as a “narrow
difficult-to-find alley” of¶ human experience.
I have explored how feminism is represented as causing unhappiness and as¶ caused by unhappiness.
Rather than disregarding the possibility of a link between¶ feminism and unhappiness, I want to consider another way of thinking¶
about it. We
could describe consciousness raising as raising consciousness of¶ unhappiness. As Gayle
Greene argues, “For though education raised women’s¶ expectations, it also made many of them
unhappy, creating ambitions that were¶ frustrated by the rigid domestic ideology that urged
them back into the home”¶ (ig gi: 9; emphasis added). Indeed, you have to experience limitations as limitations;¶ the act
of noticing limitations can actually make life seem more rather¶ than less limited. If the world
does not allow you to embrace the possibilities¶ that are opened up by education, then you
become even more aware of the¶ injustice of such limitations. Opening up the world, or
expanding one’s horizons,¶ can thus mean becoming more conscious of just how much there is
to be¶ unhappy about. Unhappiness might also provide an affective way of sustaining¶ our
attention on the cause of unhappiness. You would be unhappy UJiffi the¶ causes of unhappiness. Consciousnessraising does not turn unhappy housewives¶ into happy feminists, even though sometimes we might wish that
this¶ were the case!
Feminism involves political consciousness of what women are asked to give¶ up for happiness.
Indeed, in even becoming conscious of happiness as loss,¶ feminists have already refused to give up
desire, imagination, and curiosity¶ for happiness. There can be sadness simply in the realization
of what one has¶ given up. Feminist archives are thus full of housewives becoming conscious of¶ unhappiness as a mood
that seems to surround them: think of Virginia Woolf’s¶ Mrs. The feeling is certainly around, almost as a thickness in the air.¶ We
sense the unhappiness seeping through the tasks of the everyday. There she¶ is, about to get flowers, enjoying her walk in London.
During that walk, she¶ disappears: “But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch¶ picture), this body, with all its
capacities, seemed nothing — nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being¶ no
more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing¶ and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond
street, this being¶ Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”¶ ([1925] 1953: 14).
The AFF’s project to create change and focus on solving the problem that they
have presented distracts from the underlying cause of feminine unhappiness
that will still exist post-plan. They obscure certain realities and divert our
political struggle for becoming conscious. Our solidarity in recognizing
alienation from happiness and killing joy is the only way that we can hope for
any true progress.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Some forms of “taking cover” from pain — from not naming the causes of¶ pain in the hope that it will go away — are to protect
those we love from being¶ hurt, or even to protect ourselves from hurt, or are at least meant as a form of¶ protection. If happiness
does provide a way of “taking cover,” it is not always¶ offered to protect us from hurt. It can also work to conceal the causes of hurt¶
or to make others the cause of their own hurt. In The Cancel' Journals, Audre¶ Lorde offers a powerful critique of the politics of
happiness. She writes as a¶ black lesbian feminist who is experiencing breast cancer: Lorde never refuses¶ the power of “writing as"
nor assumes it can abbreviate an experience. Faced¶ with medical discourse that attributes cancer to unhappiness and survival or¶
coping to being happy or optimistic, she suggests: “ Looking on
the bright side¶ of things is a euphemism used
for obscuring certain realities of life, the open¶ consideration of which might prove threatening
or dangerous to the status¶ quo” (1957: 76). To obscure or to take cover by looking on the bright
side is to¶ avoid what might threaten the world as it is. Lorde moves from this observation¶ to a wider critique of
happiness as an obscurant; “ Let us seek ‘joy’ rather than¶ real food and clean air and a saner future on a liveable earth! As if
happiness¶ alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness” (76). Lorde suggests¶ that the
very idea that our first
responsibility is for our own happiness must¶ be resisted by political struggle, which means
resisting the idea that our own¶ resistance is a failure to be responsible for happiness: “Was I really
fighting the¶ spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food,¶ pollution of our environment, the abuse
and psychic destruction of our young,¶ merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility to be happy?”¶ (77).^* I
think Audre Lorde has given us the answer to her question.
We can now see how you
can retrieve a model of false consciousness in critiquing¶ claims to
happiness. You would not be saying “you are wrong, you are¶ not happy, you just think you are as you have a false belief.”
Rather you would¶ be saying there is something false about our consciousness of the world; we¶
learn not to be conscious, not to see what happens right in front of us. Happiness¶ provides as it
were a cover, a way of covering over what resists or is resistant to a view of the world, or a
worldview, as harmonious. It is not that an¶ individual person suffers from false consciousness but that we inherit a
certain¶ false consciousness when we learn to see and not to see things in a certain way.¶
Becoming conscious — refusing to take cover — is a form of political struggle.¶ I have been thinking about the
labor of becoming conscious of racism and¶ what that does to how we inhabit and know the world. It is hard labor,
for¶ sure. I am speaking to a black feminist colleague about racism. We are just¶ talking, recognizing each other, as you do, in how
we recognize racism in those¶ everyday encounters you have with people who can’t handle it, the idea of it.¶ That’s what they
always say, she says to me, that you always reduce everything¶ to racism. Racism becomes your paranoia. Of course, it’s a way of
saying that¶ racism doesn’t really exist in the way you say it does. It
is as if we had to invent¶ racism to explain our
own feeling of exclusion, as if racism provides us with a¶ way of not being responsible for the
places we cannot go. It is a form of racism¶ to say that racism does not exist. We know this.
But I am thinking more about paranoia, and the good reasons for bad feelings.¶ I guess the problem is that I do feel paranoid even if
I know that this¶ paranoia is reasonable. I do have a kind of paranoid anxiety about things that¶ do and could happen. I am never
sure, when x happens, whether x is about¶ racism or is a result of racism. I am never sure. And because I am never sure,¶ then X is
lived as possibly about racism, as being what explains how you inhabit¶ the world you do. Racism creates paranoia, that’s what
racism does. Whiteness¶ is reproduced both by the fantasy of paranoia (it doesn’t “really” exist) and by¶ the effect of the fantasy of
paranoia, which is to make us paranoid. Our feelings¶ become its truth. And when we scream the truth, we are the sore points.
Some¶ people describe the struggle against racism as hitting your head against a brick¶ wall. The wall keeps its place, so it is you
that gets sore.
One of the best literary descriptions of how consciousness of racism puts¶ you in a different world is offered in Andrea Levy's Frui'f
of the Lemon (1999).¶ The novel tells the story of Faith Jackson, a black British girl whose parents¶ migrated to England from
Jamaica. She is getting along with her life, doing her¶ own thing. She moves out of home, into a share house with her white
friends.¶ Her parents let her go: “ Ah Faith, what can we do with you? You just go your¶ own sweet way,’ my parents had decided a
long time before. ‘Your own sweet¶ way’” (19). I will return to this idea of the children of immigrant families being allowed to go on
their “own sweet way" in chapter 4. What follows here is a¶ powerful description of a girl experiencing blackness, as something that
jolts¶ her consciousness and puts her into a different world.¶ Again, there is an event. Something happens. Faith and her flatmate
Simon¶ witness a violent attack on a black woman. He runs after the attackers, and¶ they are caught. Events are what catch you out
and catch you up. We witness¶ the event through Faith’s eyes: “A black woman was standing in the doorway¶ of a bookshop. She
looked composed, although she had a startled stare — like¶ she’s just won the pools and couldn’t quite believe it. But sliding slowly
down¶ one side of her face were several strings of blood— thick, bright, red blood. I¶ stood in front of her and asked, ‘Are you all
right?’ and felt stupid when she¶ collapsed onto the ground" (150), They return to tell the story of the event.¶ The story creates a
certain kind of drama, in which Simon becomes not¶ simply witness or participant but also the savior, the hero, and even the
victim.¶ The housemates gather around him as if this has happened to him, as if¶ what made the event an event was how it
affected him; “Simon’s hands shook¶ as he lifted his cigarette to his mouth — he couldn’t hold it steady, Marion put¶ her hand over
his hand to support it. I think you’re in shock.’ Sweet tea is¶ what you need,’ she said looking closely into Simon’s face. ‘Mick, put
the kettle¶ on’” (156). Faith watches the black woman disappear as they gather around¶ him. She interrupts the gathering. “I
interrupted the story twice. ‘She was a¶ black woman,’ I said. Simon had just called her the woman who worked there.¶ Twice I had
to tell them this woman was black like me. And both times Simon¶ and Mick had looked at me and nodded” (156). Faith identifies
with the black¶ woman who has been hurt; she says she was black, she says she was blacfc [ifee¶ me. The point of political
identification rests on this recognition of another’s¶ hurt.
But they keep going with their story, as if her blackness was just a detail¶ that can be passed over. They fuss over Simon: giggling,
full of the drama of¶ an event. And then Faith can’t bear it anymore. She can’t bear the violence of¶ the event, as a violence that
acquires its force by being directed against a black¶ woman, to be passed over: “But then I tipped my cup of tea slowly over the¶
table. ‘Will you all just shut up. Just fucking shut up. Its not funny!’ And there¶ was complete silence as they stopped and stared at
me I left the house” (158).¶ To speak of racism, to name racism, to be conscious of racism, puts Faith in¶ a different world, a world
where blackness cannot be passed over. The black woman shouts to be heard. And in shouting, the black woman is the one who¶
becomes the origin of bad feeling. So it is she who must leave. Although she¶ returns, she has been undone. She cannot look at her
friends; she cannot bear¶ her own reflection in the mirror, as if what the mirror reflects back to her, her¶ black face, is something
she can now see and thus can no longer bear. How¶ can one be disturbed by one’s own arrival? The familiar is that which recedes¶
to those who inhabit it. To become estranged from the familiar is thus to have¶ it revealed to you. The familiar is disclosed in the
revelation of your estrangement.¶ You learn to see yourself as you are seen by those who can inhabit the¶ familiar, because they
can recede into its form as Frantz Fanon demonstrated¶ so powerfully in Black Sfein, White Masfes ([1553] 1986).
What follows is a story of Faith going home, as a home that she has never¶ been to, going back to where her parents are from, back
to Jamaica, In a way¶ the plot of this novel is simple, as if going home, discovering your roots, can be¶ the solution. It can be read
that w ay— but that’s not how I would read it. Consciousness¶ of racism becomes consciousness of being out of place in a world¶
oriented around whiteness. For Faith, finding her place means learning of her¶ parents’ arrival, which means learning about where
they are from, her own¶ coming into being, an inheritance of displacement. This is not a story of her¶ becoming happy. But it is a
story of becoming black as an act of resistance to¶ being passed over, where becoming black means restoring family connections,¶
of hearing family stories. White feminist consciousness novels tend to involve¶ freedom-from-family and its narrow scripts of duty
and obligation. Black
feminist¶ consciousness novels may involve freedom-to-family, as family is
what is¶ lost through unfolding histories of displacement and dispossession.¶ Feminist
consciousness can thus be thought of as consciousness of the violence¶ and power that are
concealed under the languages of civility and love,¶ rather than simply consciousness of gender
as a site of restriction of possibility.¶ We learn from this so much, too much. We learn to see what is
concealed¶ by signs of happiness. You can cause unhappiness merely by noticing something,¶
And if it can cause unhappiness simply to notice something, you realize¶ that the world you are
in is not the world you thought you were in. Feminism¶ becomes a kind of estrangement from
the world and thus involves moments¶ of self-estrangement. Our feminist archive is an archive
of unhappiness even¶ though the threads of unhappiness do not weave our stories together.¶ In
calling for us to recognize how feminist politics involves killing joy, I am also asking us to turn
back, to return to feminist histories, as a history of those¶ who have struggled against happiness.
I am thus uncertain what it means to¶ call for a more affirmative feminism in our present time.^® Rosi Braidotti has¶ suggested that
the focus on negativity has become a problem within feminism.¶ She offers a rather bleak reading of bleakness: “I actively yearn for
a more joyful¶ and empowering concept of desire and for a political economy that foregrounds¶ positivity, not gloom” (2002: 57).
The call for affirmation rather than¶ negativity in her work involves an explicit turn to happiness. As she argues:¶ “I consider
happiness a political issue, as are well-being, self-confidence and¶ a sense of empowerment. These are fundamentally ethical
concerns. . . , The¶ feminist movement has played the historical role of placing these items at the¶ centre of the social and political
agenda: happiness as a fundamental human¶ right and hence a political question” (2006a: 230), My desire is to revitalize¶ the
feminist critique of happiness as a human right and as the appropriate language¶ for politics.
To revitalize the critique of happiness is to be willing to be proximate to¶ unhappiness. I have
suggested that feminist consciousness involves consciousness¶ of unhappiness that might even
increase our unhappiness, or at least create¶ this impression. Happiness can work to cover over
unhappiness, in part¶ by covering over its causes, such that to refuse to take cover can allow
unhappiness¶ to emerge. This process of consciousness raising involves not simply¶ becoming
conscious of unhappiness but also achieving (with others) better¶ ways of understanding
unhappiness. We can recognize that unhappiness is¶ structured, and that what happens to us might be connected in some way
to¶ what happens to others. We can recognize not only that we are not the cause¶ of the unhappiness
that has been attributed to us but also the effects of being¶ attributed as the cause. We can talk
about being angry black women or feminist¶ killjoys; we can claim those figures back; we can talk
about those conversations¶ we have had at dinner tables or in seminars or meetings; we can laugh¶ in recognition of the familiarity
of inhabiting that place. There
is solidarity in¶ recognizing our alienation from happiness, even if we do
not inhabit the same¶ place (as we do not). There can even be joy in killing joy. And kill joy, we must¶
and we do.
Link – International Relations
Studies of international relations reproduce an uneven hierarchal world order
in which women and their experiences are ignored. Their focus on conflict,
strategy, competition, and fear ignores the structural violence that underpins it,
which will continue to recreate these same forms of violence.
True et. Al. 09
Jacqui True, Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, Terry Nardin, Matthew Paterson, Christian ReusSmit, 2009. Theories of International Relations, Palgrave Macmillan. // KD
Focusing on politics at the margins dispels the assumption that power is what comes out of the barrel of a gun or ensues from the
declarations of world leaders. Indeed, feminist efforts to reinterpret power suggest that International
Relations scholars
have underestimated the pervasiveness of power and precisely what it takes, at every level and
every day, to reproduce a grossly uneven and hierarchal world order (Enloe 1997). Feminist
reconceptualizations of power and attention to the margins of global politics have allowed International
Relations scholars to recognize and comprehend new political phenomena and, importantly, from new
angles, the experience of non-elites.
A first generation of feminist
International Relations in the late 1980s challenged the conventional focus of
the field, engaging in the ‘third debate’ about the impossibility of objectivity in International
Relations and the embeddedness of scholarship in global power relations discussed in the Introduction,
Chapter 8 (post-structuralism) and Chapter 9 (constructivism). In this debate, feminist scholars contested the exclusionary, statecentric and positivist nature of the discipline primarily at a meta-theoretical level. Many of these feminist contributions sought to
deconstruct and subvert realism, the dominant ‘power politics’ explanation of post-war International Relations. Often implicit
in
their concern with gender relations was the assumption of a feminist standpoint epistemology.
Such a standpoint maintains that women’s lives on the margins International Relations content that
women’s lives and experiences have been, and still are, often excluded from the study of
international relations. This ‘sexist ‘exclusion has resulted in research that presents only a
partial, masculine view in a field in which the dominant theories claim to explain the reality of
world politics (Halliday 1988b). Empirical feminism corrects the denial or misrepresentation of women
in world politics due to false assumptions that male experiences can count for both men and
women, and that women are either absent from international political activities or not relevant
to global processes. It is not that women have not been present or their experiences relevant to international relations.
Rather, as Cynthia Enloe’s (1989, 1994, 2000) scholarship demonstrates, women are and have always been part of
international relations – if we choose to see them there. Moreover, it is in part because women’s lives and
experiences have not been empirically researched in the context of world politics, as Grant and Newland (1991: 5) argue, that
International Relations has been largely ‘focused on conflict and anarchy and a way of practicing
statecraft and formulating strategy that is excessively focused on competition and fear’. Studies
of the norms and ideas that make the reproduction of the state system possible and of the
structural violence (poverty, environmental injustice, socio-political inequality) that underpins direct statesanctioned violence are seen as secondary to the ‘manly’ study of war and conflict in
international relations due to their association with domestic ‘soft’ (read: feminine) politics. As a
result, neo-realist and neo-liberal International Relations scholars theorize politics and the
international realm ‘in a way that guarantees that women will be absent from their inquiry, and
that their research agendas remain unaltered’ (Steurnagel 1990: 79-80).
Link – Globalization
An increase in globalization increases the world-wide inequality between men
and women. This “feminization of poverty” shifts from a largely domestic state
to a global market provision of services that has imposed a disproportionate
burden on women.
True et. Al. 09
Jacqui True, Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, Terry Nardin, Matthew Paterson, Christian ReusSmit, 2009. Theories of International Relations, Palgrave Macmillan. // KD
Economic globalization has intensified social and economic polarization, both within and across states.
Feminist International Relations scholars document how globalization processes have increased the world-wide
inequality between men and women. Their research has revealed the ‘feminization of poverty’, that
is, the disproportionate numbers of women compared with men in poverty – due to Third World
debt and financial crises, structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in the South and state restructuring in the North
(Afshar and Dennis 1992; Sparr 1994; Porter and Judd 2000). As economic policy has become increasingly
governed by the global imperatives of export earnings, financial markets and comparative
labour costs, states have struggled to meet their commitments to full employment and citizen
well-being. Empirical feminist research shows how this shift from a largely domestic state to global market
provision of services has imposed a disproportionate burden on women to pick up the slack of
the state (United Nations Development Programme 1999; Marchand and Runyan 2000; Hoskyns and Rai 2007).
In the global context also, an
internationalized gender division of labour has been created by the
disproportionate employment of migrant Third World women as a cheap and flexible source of
labor for multi-national corporations in free trade zones (Mitter 1986; Standing 1992; Ong 1997). Saskia
Sassen’s (1991, 1998a, b) research on global cities shows how they have become the nodal points for global
financial markets and economic transactions, dependent on a class of women workers. Like
‘intimate others’ of economic globalization, domestic workers, typically immigrant women of colour, service the masculinized
corporate elite in these urban centres (Boris and Prugl 1996; Stasilius and Bakan 1997; Chin 1998; Chang and Ling 2000). Feminist
research reveals an even darker ‘underside’ of globalization, however, in the prize) that seek to
leverage women leaders’ collective strengths to bring about global peace and security (Stiehm
2006). Feminist scholars analyse the persistent ‘gender gap’ in the foreign policy beliefs of men and women foreign-policy-making
elites and citizens; women
leaders and citizens in Western states are consistently more likely to
oppose the use of force in international actions and are typically more supportive of
humanitarian interventions (Rosenau and Holsti 1982; Tessler, Nachtwey and Grant 1999). Peoples’ attitudes
toward gender equality and sexual liberty also affect their attitudes toward tolerance, human
rights and democracy and are good predictors of more pacific attitudes to international conflict
(Tessler and Warriner 1997).
Link - Progress
The AFF’s claims to progress represent a kind of solemn progress that marks the
loss of possibility. Suffering enters as a heightening of consciousness in which
the suffering of those who do not belong disturbs the atmosphere.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Becoming Mrs. Dalloway is itself a form of disappearance: to
follow the¶ paths of life {marriage, reproduction) is to feel
that what is before you is a kind¶ of solemn progress, as if you are living somebody else s life,
simply going the¶ same way others are going. It is as if you have left the point of life behind you,¶
as if your life is going through motions that were already in motion before you¶ even arrived. As I
argued in Queer Phenomenology (2006), for a life to count as a¶ good life, it must take on the direction promised as a social good,
which means¶ imagining one’s futurity in terms of reaching certain points along a life course.¶ If happiness is what allows us to reach
certain points, it is not necessarily how¶ you feel when you get there. For Mrs. Dalloway, to reach these points is to disappear. ¶ The
point of reaching these points seems to be a certain disappearance,¶ a loss of possibility, a
certain failure to make use of the body’s capacities, to find¶ out what it is that her body can do.^®
To become conscious of possibility can¶ involve mourning for its loss.
For Clarissa this rather uncanny sensation of
becoming Mrs. Dalloway as¶ a loss of possibility, as an
unbecoming, or becoming “nothing at all” does not¶ enter her consciousness in the form of
sadness about something.™ The sadness¶ of the book— and it is a sad book — is not one expressed as a point of view.¶
Instead, each sentence of the book takes thoughts and feelings as if they are¶ objects in a shared world: the streets of London, the
very oddness of the occasion¶ of passing others by, a feeling of that oddness. Sometimes it can feel like¶ a coincidence, how one
coincides with others. To say “it is just a coincidence”¶ can create the impression that the absence of a causal relation between
events¶ is the absence of any connection. But feeling a coincidence might mean recognizing¶ that to fall in the same time and place
as others, to happen with others¶ or to happen upon others, is a kind of connection. As Clarissa goes out with¶ her task in mind (she
has to buy her flowers for her party), she walks into a¶ world with others. You might be in your world (with your own tasks, your
own¶ recollections) and yet you share the world of the street, if only for a moment,¶ a fleeting moment, a moment that flees. Things
appear as modes of attention:¶ the plane above that writes letters in the sky, the plane that is seen by those who pass each other
by. Questions unfold as shared questions: What letter is¶ that? What word is that? “ ‘What are they looking at?’ said Clarissa
Dalloway”¶ (42). It is as if the mere direction of a glance is enough to create a shared world.¶ Although each brings to the street a
certain kind of moodiness, a preoccupa^¶ tion with this or with that, the street itself can become moody, when an object¶ grabs
attention, like the plane that creates words in the sky above, although for¶ each person who looks up, what is seen might be quite
different.¶ If unhappiness becomes a collective impression, then it too is made up of¶ fragments that only loosely attach to points of
view. In particular, the proximity¶ between Mrs. Dalloway and the character Septimus is what allows unhappi^¶ ness to be shared
even if it is not passed between them; two characters who do¶ not know each other, though they pass each other, but whose worlds
are connected¶ by the very jolt of unhappiness. We have the immanence of the shock¶ of how one person’s suffering can have an
effect on the life world of another,¶ Septimus suffers from shell shock; and we feel his feelings with him, the panic¶ and sadness as
the horror of war intrudes as memory. His suffering brings the¶ past into the time of the present, the long time of war, its
persistence on the¶ skin as aftermath, its refusal of an after. To those who observe him from a distance,¶ those who share the street
on this day, he appears as a madman, at the¶ edge of respectable sociality, a spectacle. To encounter him on the street, you ¶ would
not know the story behind his suffering. To be near to suffering does not¶ necessarily bring suffering near.
Clarissa and Septimus, as characters who do not meet, thus achieve an odd¶ intimacy: the not-just-private suffering of the housewife
and the not-quitepublic¶ suffering of the returned soldier are interwoven. Importantly, their sadness¶ is proximate but not
contagious. They do not catch sadness from each¶ other; their sadness
is what keeps alive histories that are not
shared, that cannot¶ be shared, as they pass by on the street. And yet something is shared,¶ perhaps those
very things that cannot simply be revealed. Clarissa, thinking¶ of her “odd affinities” with strangers “she had never spoken to," sits
on the bus¶ and wonders whether the “unseen part of us” might provide a point of attachment¶ to others and might even be how
we survive through others, “perhaps —¶ perhaps” (231-32).
It is Septimus’s wife, Rezia, whose musings reflect most directly on the difficulty¶ of experiencing emotions that are simply revealed
to proximate others.¶ Rezia is so anxious to reveal her own unhappiness that she “almost felt some­times that she must stop people
in the street, if they looked like good, kind,¶ kind people just to say to them ‘I am unhappy’” (125). She is conscious of how¶ her
feelings and Septimus’s feelings cannot simply be revealed to passers by:¶ “was there, after all, anything to draw attention to them,
anything to make a¶ passer-by suspect here is a young man who carries in him the greatest message¶ in the world, and is, moreover,
the happiest man in the world, and the most¶ miserable?” (126). To
inhabit a feeling world does not create a
world out of¶ feeling.
Much of the novel is about an event that will happen. For Mrs. Dalloway is¶ planning a party. To some feminist readers, the
preoccupation with the party¶ makes the book disappointing. Simone de Beauvoir reads Mrs. Dalloway’s enjoyment¶ of parties as a
sign that she is trying to turn her “prison into glory,” as¶ if as a hostess she can be “the bestower of happiness and gaiety” ([1949]
1997:¶ 554). For de Beauvoir, the gift of the party turns quickly into duty; such that¶ Mrs. Dalloway, “who loved these triumphs,
these semblances,” still “felt their¶ hollowness” (555). For Kate Millett, Mrs, Dalloway is a rather disappointing¶ figure; she exposes
Woolf’s failure to turn her own unhappiness into a politics:¶ “Virginia glorified two housewives, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsey,
recorded¶ the suicidal misery of Rhoda in The Waues without ever explaining its causes”¶ (1970: 37). We might say that it is
because Mrs. Dalloway is planning a party¶ that we do not have much revealed about her unhappiness, other than the sadness¶ of
recalling lost intimacies with Peter and with Sally, who both turn up,¶ unexpectedly during her day, in a way, it is implied, that does
not just happen¶ but bears some relation to Mrs, Dalloway’s own thoughts: “all day she had been¶ thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of
Sally” (280). Such lost intimacies become lost¶ possibilities, hints of a life she might have lived, if things had not turned out¶ the way
they did.
If Mrs, Dalloway is distracted from the causes of unhappiness by the party¶ (and we can have some sympathy with the necessity of
distractions), the party¶ is also the event in which unhappiness comes to life. For Mrs. Dalloway, her¶ party is life; it is how she can
make things happen; it a gift, a happening (185).¶ What happens? That this question is a question is a preservation of the gift.¶ And
something does happen. For it is in the party that Septimus’s life “touches”¶ Mrs. Dalloway most directly. It touches her through
death. Lady Bradshaw says¶ to hen “ ‘Just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone,¶ a very sad case. A
young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had been in the army.’ Oh! Thought Clarissa, in¶
the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” (275). In the middle of the¶ party, words accumulate as a narrative, telling the
story of a death. A young¶ man kills himself, and the death itself (and not just the narrating of the death)¶ takes place in the middle
of the party, in the middle of the life of the party. The¶ soul of the party is death. The reader has already read about this death; we
have¶ witnessed it. Now, we witness the ripples of this death; how it acquires a life of¶ its own, how it takes place somewhere in the
middle. For Mrs. Dalloway, this¶ death becomes something to imagine, to bring to life by thought:¶ What business had the
Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man¶ had killed himself And they talked of it at her part)' — the Bradshaws,
talked¶ of death. He had killed himself—but how? Always her body went through it¶ first, when she was told, suddenly, of an
accident; her dress flamed, her body¶ burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground;¶ through him,
blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a¶ thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So
she saw¶ it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her partyf¶ She had once thrown a shilling into the
Serpentine, never anything more.¶ But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the¶ rooms were still
crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she has been¶ thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing
there was¶ that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her¶ own life, let drop every day in corruption,
lies, chatter. This he had preserved.¶ Death was
defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people
feeling¶ the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness¶ drew
apart; rapture faded; one vras alone. There was an embrace in death.¶ (280-81)
Septimus’s death becomes a question that takes Mrs. Dalloway away from the¶ party; she attends to his death, wonders about it;
she becomes a retrospective¶ witness even though she was not and could not have been there. The shudder:¶ the sounds of it; the
thud, thud, thud of it; the ground that flashes; the rusty¶ spikes. His death becomes material, becomes fleshy through her thoughts.
His¶ death announces not only that sadness can be unbearable but that we don’t¶ have to bear
it, that you can fling it away. And in this moment, when death¶ intervenes in the life of the party, life becomes chatter,
becomes what goes on. “they went on living ” what comes and goes, “people kept on coming.” Death¶ comes to embody
the suffering that persists when life becomes chatter.
What is striking about Mrs. Dalloway is how suffering has to enter her consciousness¶ from the edges, through the arrival of
another, another who is an¶ intruder, who has not been invited to the party. It is the suffering of an intruder¶ that exposes the
emptiness of life’s chatter. Suffering
enters not as selfconsciousness—¶ as a consciousness of one’s own
suffering—but as a heightening¶ of consciousness, a world-conscious ness in which the suffering
of those¶ who do not belong is allowed to disturb an atmosphere. Even when unhappiness¶ is a familiar
feeling, it can arrive like a stranger, to disturb the familiar or¶ to reveal what is disturbing in the familiar.
The AFF’s project to create change and focus on solving the problem that they
have presented distracts from the underlying cause of feminine unhappiness
that will still exist post-plan. They obscure certain realities and divert our
political struggle for becoming conscious. Our solidarity in recognizing
alienation from happiness and killing joy is the only way that we can hope for
any true progress.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Some forms of “taking cover” from pain — from not naming the causes of¶ pain in the hope that it will go away — are to protect
those we love from being¶ hurt, or even to protect ourselves from hurt, or are at least meant as a form of¶ protection. If happiness
does provide a way of “taking cover,” it is not always¶ offered to protect us from hurt. It can also work to conceal the causes of hurt¶
or to make others the cause of their own hurt. In The Cancel' Journals, Audre¶ Lorde offers a powerful critique of the politics of
happiness. She writes as a¶ black lesbian feminist who is experiencing breast cancer: Lorde never refuses¶ the power of “writing as"
nor assumes it can abbreviate an experience. Faced¶ with medical discourse that attributes cancer to unhappiness and survival or¶
coping to being happy or optimistic, she suggests: “ Looking on
the bright side¶ of things is a euphemism used
for obscuring certain realities of life, the open¶ consideration of which might prove threatening
or dangerous to the status¶ quo” (1957: 76). To obscure or to take cover by looking on the bright
side is to¶ avoid what might threaten the world as it is. Lorde moves from this observation¶ to a wider critique of
happiness as an obscurant; “ Let us seek ‘joy’ rather than¶ real food and clean air and a saner future on a liveable earth! As if
happiness¶ alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness” (76). Lorde suggests¶ that the
very idea that our first
responsibility is for our own happiness must¶ be resisted by political struggle, which means
resisting the idea that our own¶ resistance is a failure to be responsible for happiness: “Was I really
fighting the¶ spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food,¶ pollution of our environment, the abuse
and psychic destruction of our young,¶ merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility to be happy?”¶ (77).^* I
think Audre Lorde has given us the answer to her question.
We can now see how you
can retrieve a model of false consciousness in critiquing¶ claims to
happiness. You would not be saying “you are wrong, you are¶ not happy, you just think you are as you have a false belief.”
Rather you would¶ be saying there is something false about our consciousness of the world; we¶
learn not to be conscious, not to see what happens right in front of us. Happiness¶ provides as it
were a cover, a way of covering over what resists or is resistant to a view of the world, or a
worldview, as harmonious. It is not that an¶ individual person suffers from false consciousness but that we inherit a
certain¶ false consciousness when we learn to see and not to see things in a certain way.¶
Becoming conscious — refusing to take cover — is a form of political struggle.¶ I have been thinking about the
labor of becoming conscious of racism and¶ what that does to how we inhabit and know the world. It is hard labor,
for¶ sure. I am speaking to a black feminist colleague about racism. We are just¶ talking, recognizing each other, as you do, in how
we recognize racism in those¶ everyday encounters you have with people who can’t handle it, the idea of it.¶ That’s what they
always say, she says to me, that you always reduce everything¶ to racism. Racism becomes your paranoia. Of course, it’s a way of
saying that¶ racism doesn’t really exist in the way you say it does. It
is as if we had to invent¶ racism to explain our
own feeling of exclusion, as if racism provides us with a¶ way of not being responsible for the
places we cannot go. It is a form of racism¶ to say that racism does not exist. We know this.
But I am thinking more about paranoia, and the good reasons for bad feelings.¶ I guess the problem is that I do feel paranoid even if
I know that this¶ paranoia is reasonable. I do have a kind of paranoid anxiety about things that¶ do and could happen. I am never
sure, when x happens, whether x is about¶ racism or is a result of racism. I am never sure. And because I am never sure,¶ then X is
lived as possibly about racism, as being what explains how you inhabit¶ the world you do. Racism creates paranoia, that’s what
racism does. Whiteness¶ is reproduced both by the fantasy of paranoia (it doesn’t “really” exist) and by¶ the effect of the fantasy of
paranoia, which is to make us paranoid. Our feelings¶ become its truth. And when we scream the truth, we are the sore points.
Some¶ people describe the struggle against racism as hitting your head against a brick¶ wall. The wall keeps its place, so it is you
that gets sore.
One of the best literary descriptions of how consciousness of racism puts¶ you in a different world is offered in Andrea Levy's Frui'f
of the Lemon (1999).¶ The novel tells the story of Faith Jackson, a black British girl whose parents¶ migrated to England from
Jamaica. She is getting along with her life, doing her¶ own thing. She moves out of home, into a share house with her white
friends.¶ Her parents let her go: “ Ah Faith, what can we do with you? You just go your¶ own sweet way,’ my parents had decided a
long time before. ‘Your own sweet¶ way’” (19). I will return to this idea of the children of immigrant families being allowed to go on
their “own sweet way" in chapter 4. What follows here is a¶ powerful description of a girl experiencing blackness, as something that
jolts¶ her consciousness and puts her into a different world.¶ Again, there is an event. Something happens. Faith and her flatmate
Simon¶ witness a violent attack on a black woman. He runs after the attackers, and¶ they are caught. Events are what catch you out
and catch you up. We witness¶ the event through Faith’s eyes: “A black woman was standing in the doorway¶ of a bookshop. She
looked composed, although she had a startled stare — like¶ she’s just won the pools and couldn’t quite believe it. But sliding slowly
down¶ one side of her face were several strings of blood— thick, bright, red blood. I¶ stood in front of her and asked, ‘Are you all
right?’ and felt stupid when she¶ collapsed onto the ground" (150), They return to tell the story of the event.¶ The story creates a
certain kind of drama, in which Simon becomes not¶ simply witness or participant but also the savior, the hero, and even the
victim.¶ The housemates gather around him as if this has happened to him, as if¶ what made the event an event was how it
affected him; “Simon’s hands shook¶ as he lifted his cigarette to his mouth — he couldn’t hold it steady, Marion put¶ her hand over
his hand to support it. I think you’re in shock.’ Sweet tea is¶ what you need,’ she said looking closely into Simon’s face. ‘Mick, put
the kettle¶ on’” (156). Faith watches the black woman disappear as they gather around¶ him. She interrupts the gathering. “I
interrupted the story twice. ‘She was a¶ black woman,’ I said. Simon had just called her the woman who worked there.¶ Twice I had
to tell them this woman was black like me. And both times Simon¶ and Mick had looked at me and nodded” (156). Faith identifies
with the black¶ woman who has been hurt; she says she was black, she says she was blacfc [ifee¶ me. The point of political
identification rests on this recognition of another’s¶ hurt.
But they keep going with their story, as if her blackness was just a detail¶ that can be passed over. They fuss over Simon: giggling,
full of the drama of¶ an event. And then Faith can’t bear it anymore. She can’t bear the violence of¶ the event, as a violence that
acquires its force by being directed against a black¶ woman, to be passed over: “But then I tipped my cup of tea slowly over the¶
table. ‘Will you all just shut up. Just fucking shut up. Its not funny!’ And there¶ was complete silence as they stopped and stared at
me I left the house” (158).¶ To speak of racism, to name racism, to be conscious of racism, puts Faith in¶ a different world, a world
where blackness cannot be passed over. The black woman shouts to be heard. And in shouting, the black woman is the one who¶
becomes the origin of bad feeling. So it is she who must leave. Although she¶ returns, she has been undone. She cannot look at her
friends; she cannot bear¶ her own reflection in the mirror, as if what the mirror reflects back to her, her¶ black face, is something
she can now see and thus can no longer bear. How¶ can one be disturbed by one’s own arrival? The familiar is that which recedes¶
to those who inhabit it. To become estranged from the familiar is thus to have¶ it revealed to you. The familiar is disclosed in the
revelation of your estrangement.¶ You learn to see yourself as you are seen by those who can inhabit the¶ familiar, because they
can recede into its form as Frantz Fanon demonstrated¶ so powerfully in Black Sfein, White Masfes ([1553] 1986).
What follows is a story of Faith going home, as a home that she has never¶ been to, going back to where her parents are from, back
to Jamaica, In a way¶ the plot of this novel is simple, as if going home, discovering your roots, can be¶ the solution. It can be read
that w ay— but that’s not how I would read it. Consciousness¶ of racism becomes consciousness of being out of place in a world¶
oriented around whiteness. For Faith, finding her place means learning of her¶ parents’ arrival, which means learning about where
they are from, her own¶ coming into being, an inheritance of displacement. This is not a story of her¶ becoming happy. But it is a
story of becoming black as an act of resistance to¶ being passed over, where becoming black means restoring family connections,¶
of hearing family stories. White feminist consciousness novels tend to involve¶ freedom-from-family and its narrow scripts of duty
and obligation. Black
feminist¶ consciousness novels may involve freedom-to-family, as family is
what is¶ lost through unfolding histories of displacement and dispossession.¶ Feminist
consciousness can thus be thought of as consciousness of the violence¶ and power that are
concealed under the languages of civility and love,¶ rather than simply consciousness of gender
as a site of restriction of possibility.¶ We learn from this so much, too much. We learn to see what is
concealed¶ by signs of happiness. You can cause unhappiness merely by noticing something,¶
And if it can cause unhappiness simply to notice something, you realize¶ that the world you are
in is not the world you thought you were in. Feminism¶ becomes a kind of estrangement from
the world and thus involves moments¶ of self-estrangement. Our feminist archive is an archive
of unhappiness even¶ though the threads of unhappiness do not weave our stories together.¶ In
calling for us to recognize how feminist politics involves killing joy, I am also asking us to turn
back, to return to feminist histories, as a history of those¶ who have struggled against happiness.
I am thus uncertain what it means to¶ call for a more affirmative feminism in our present time.^® Rosi Braidotti has¶ suggested that
the focus on negativity has become a problem within feminism.¶ She offers a rather bleak reading of bleakness: “I actively yearn for
a more joyful¶ and empowering concept of desire and for a political economy that foregrounds¶ positivity, not gloom” (2002: 57).
The call for affirmation rather than¶ negativity in her work involves an explicit turn to happiness. As she argues:¶ “I consider
happiness a political issue, as are well-being, self-confidence and¶ a sense of empowerment. These are fundamentally ethical
concerns. . . , The¶ feminist movement has played the historical role of placing these items at the¶ centre of the social and political
agenda: happiness as a fundamental human¶ right and hence a political question” (2006a: 230), My desire is to revitalize¶ the
feminist critique of happiness as a human right and as the appropriate language¶ for politics.
To revitalize the critique of happiness is to be willing to be proximate to¶ unhappiness. I have
suggested that feminist consciousness involves consciousness¶ of unhappiness that might even
increase our unhappiness, or at least create¶ this impression. Happiness can work to cover over
unhappiness, in part¶ by covering over its causes, such that to refuse to take cover can allow
unhappiness¶ to emerge. This process of consciousness raising involves not simply¶ becoming
conscious of unhappiness but also achieving (with others) better¶ ways of understanding
unhappiness. We can recognize that unhappiness is¶ structured, and that what happens to us might be connected in some way
to¶ what happens to others. We can recognize not only that we are not the cause¶ of the unhappiness
that has been attributed to us but also the effects of being¶ attributed as the cause. We can talk
about being angry black women or feminist¶ killjoys; we can claim those figures back; we can talk
about those conversations¶ we have had at dinner tables or in seminars or meetings; we can laugh¶ in recognition of the familiarity
of inhabiting that place. There
is solidarity in¶ recognizing our alienation from happiness, even if we do
not inhabit the same¶ place (as we do not). There can even be joy in killing joy. And kill joy, we must¶
and we do.
Link - Neutrality
Traditional notions of happiness are constructed in opposition to the female
subject. Even the category of “women” refers us back to a male genealogy.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
To read for the habits of happiness thus involves reading philosophy. How do¶ I read philosophy? We could contrast my method
with Darrin M. McMahon’s¶ Happiness: A History, a book that gives us so many threads to unravel. He begins¶ vi^ith the question
“How to write a history of something so elusive, so¶ intangible — of this ‘thing’ that is not a thing, this hope, this yearning, this¶
dream?" (2006: x.i). This is a good question with which to begin. We can also¶ ask: what
does it mean to think of
happiness as having a history? How or why¶ would we write such a history? Who or what would
belong in this history?¶ McMahon’s history of happiness is premised on the belief that thinking about¶ happiness means
thinking about how different ideas of happiness have been¶ conceptualized over time. He calls his history of happiness an
“intellectual¶ history” (xiv).¶ It is useful to note that Darrin McMahon describes him self as being for¶ “methodological plurahsm”
(xv), suggesting that his
history is one history of¶ happiness that should exist alongside others: “there are
infinite histories of¶ happiness to be written” (xiii). He implies that such histories would be told¶ from more
specific viewing points as “histories not only of the struggles and¶ pursuits of the peasants,
slaves, and apostates mentioned by Freud — but of¶ early-modern women and late-modern
aristocrats, nineteenth-century bourgeois¶ and twentieth century-workers, conservatives and
radicals, consumers¶ and crusaders, immigrants and natives, gentiles and Jews” (xiii). Different
histories,¶ we might imagine, unfold from the struggles of such groups.¶ The Promise of Happiness does not supplement M cM
ahon’s history with a history¶ told from a specific viewing point, as a particular history within a general¶ history. I
want to think
about how the intellectual history of happiness — as a¶ history of an idea— can be challenged by
considering what gets erased if we¶ take a general viewing point, where to see what is erased would change
the¶ view you see from this point. In other words, this general history of happiness¶ could itself be considered rather particular. Just
note how women appear or¶ don’t
appear in McMahon's intellectual history. In the index, we have one
reference¶ to women, which turns out to be a reference to John Stuart M ill’s The¶ Subjection 0 /Women. Even the category of
“women” refers us back to a male¶ genealogy, to philosophy as white male European
inheritance. Treating happi¶ ness as an intellectual history amounts to becoming indifferent to
how differences¶ matter within that history, troubling the very form of its coherence.¶
Unhappiness remains the unthought in much philosophical literature, as¶ well as in happiness
studies.^^ Its neglect can partly be explained by the assumed¶ transparency of the “un” : the presumption that
unhappiness is simply¶ not, not happy, defined only by the lack of happiness, as the absence of
its¶ presence. I aim to give a history to unhappiness?^ The history of the word unhappy¶ might teach us about the unhappiness
of the history of happiness. In its¶ earliest uses, unhappy meant “causing misfortune or trouble.” Only later, did it¶ come to
mean “ miserable in lot or circumstances” or “wretched in mind.” The¶ word wretched also has a
suggestive genealogy, coming from wretch, referring¶ to a stranger, exile, or banished person. The
wretch is not only the one driven¶ out of his or her native country but is also defined as one who is “sunk in deep¶ distress,
sorrow, misfortune, or poverty,” “a miserable, unhappy, or unfortunate¶ person,” “a poor or
hapless being,” and even “a vile, sorry, or despicable person.”¶ ^"* Can we rewrite the history of
happiness from the point of view of the¶ wretch? If we listen to those who are cast as wretched, perhaps their
wretchedness¶ would no longer belong to them. The sorrow of the stranger might give us¶ a different angle on
happiness not because it teaches us what it is like or must¶ be like to be a stranger, but because it might estrange us
from the very happiness¶ of the familiar. I thus offer an alternative historyofhappiness not simply by
offering different¶ readings of its intellectual history but by considering those who are banished¶ from it, or who
enter this history only as troublemakers, dissenters, killers of¶ joy. In the first chapter of the book, I draw on the intellectual history
of happiness¶ as a resource to consider how happiness is attributed to objects. My
aim¶ is not to offer an account of
different philosophies of happiness but to develop¶ my own approach to how happiness makes
some things and not others seem¶ promising. What I call “unhappy archives” emerge from feminist (chapter 2),¶
queer (chapter 3), and antiracist histories (chapter 4), as well as in socialist¶ and revolutionary modes of political engagement
(chapter 5). The first three of¶ these chapters take the negativity of a political figure as their organizing trope: ¶ the feminist killjoy,
unhappy queer, and melancholic migrant. These figures¶ have their own political histories, which are unfinished, leaky, and shared.
The¶ figure of the angry black woman, for instance, must appear and does appear in¶ the chapters on feminist killjoys and
melancholic migrants. There are risks in organizing a book around figures, as if the intelligibility of the figure preserves¶ the
coherence of a history. Chapter 5 is framed differently, taking “the future” ¶ as its opening question, and considers the significance of
what I call “happiness¶ dystopias” for the imagining of alternative futures. I could have taken the¶ figure of the “raging
revolutionary” as my title, but didn’t. That figure seems to¶ gather too much, thus saying too little.¶ I call the archives that I draw on
in these chapters “unhappy archives.” It is¶ not simply a question of finding unhappiness in such archives. Rather, these¶ archives
take shape through the circulation of cultural objects that articulate¶ unhappiness with the history of happiness. An unhappy archive
is one assembled¶ around the struggle against happiness. We have inherited already so¶ much from authors who have challenged
the very appeal of happiness — and¶ yet these authors are never or rarely cited by the literatures of happiness. These¶ archives do
not simply supplement philosophy and its happiness archive. They¶ challenge it. My aim is to follow the v/eave of unhappiness, as a
kind of unraveling¶ of happiness, and the threads of its appeal.
The happy woman is a fantasy figure that erases the signs of labor under the
signs of happiness in order to justify gendered forms of labor and create a
façade of liberation. This notion of “liberation” is often made at the expense of
other women in order to uphold the traditional social order.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Justify gendered labor and consent under the guise of good feeling¶ BETTY FRIEDAN IN The
feminine Mystique identifies
a problem that has no¶ name by evoking what lies behind the image of the happy American
housewife¶ (1965: 19 -20 ). What lies behind this image bursts through, like a boil, exposing¶ an
infection underneath her beaming smile. Friedan proceeds by exposing¶ the limits of this public
fantasy of happiness. The happy housewife is a fantasy¶ figure that erases the signs of labor
under the sign of happiness. The claim that¶ women are happy and that this happiness is
behind the work they do functions¶ to justify gendered forms of labor, not as a product of
nature, law, or duty,¶ but as an expression of a collective wish and desire. How better to justify an¶
unequal distribution of labor than to say that such labor makes people happy?¶ How better to secure consent
to unpaid or poorly paid labor than to describe¶ such consent as the origin of good feeling?
And yet, who or what do we see in this image of the happy housewife? She¶ is, as Friedan points out, a fantasy. Even as fantasy,
however, she evokes the¶ embodied situation of some women more than others. After all, many women¶ at this time were not
housewives: for some women to work at home would¶ be an aspiration rather than situation, bell hooks in Feminist Theory points ¶
to this exclusivity of the happy housewife, even when understood as fantasy: “When Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more
than one^third of all women¶ were in the workforce. Although
many women longed to be housewives, only¶
women with leisure time and money could actually shape their identities on¶ the model of the
feminine mystique” (2000: 2). Friedan’s solution to the unhappiness¶ of housewives —that they
should be liberated from the house — has¶ consequences for those women who could not shape
their identities around¶ the feminine mystique. As hooks points out, “She did not discuss who would¶
be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women¶ like herself were
freed from their house labor and given equal access with¶ white men to the professions” (1-2).
While the fantasy of the happy housewife¶ conceals the signs of domestic labor under the sign
of happiness, the fantasy of¶ the housewife becoming happy through being liberated from the
home might¶ also conceal the labor of other women, who might be required to take over “the¶
foaming dishpans.”
When we track this figure of the happy housewife, we need to think of what¶ the figure does, and how that figure works to secure
not just ideas of happiness¶ but ideas of who is entitled to happiness. White liberal feminists such as Betty¶ Friedan taught us that
proximity to the fantasy of the good life does not mean¶ proximity to happiness. Sheila Rowbotham describes how “
in the
writing of¶ the early years there is a struggle to assert a separate identity and challenge the¶
house as a fantasy of happiness" (1989: 3). Black feminists such as bell hooks¶ teach us that some women — black
and working-class women — are not even¶ entitled to be proximate to the fantasy, though they
may be instrumental in¶ enabling others to approximate its form. We can consider not so much how¶
happiness as such is distributed (this would forget what was important about¶ the second-wave critique of the unhappiness
concealed by the figure of the¶ happy housewife) but the distribution of relative proximity to ideas o/happiness. ¶ Or we
might
speculate that what is unequally distributed is the feeling that you¶ have what should make you
happy, a distribution of the promise of a feeling, or¶ the feeling of a promise, rather than the
distribution of happiness, as such.¶ Have images of happy housewives been replaced by rather more desperate¶ ones?
While there is a diversification of affects tied to the figure of the happy¶ housewife, which gives her a more complex affective life, it
does not necessarily¶ dislodge the happiness that is presumed to reside in “what” she does,¶ even in descriptions of relative
unhappiness. Unhappiness
can function as a¶ sign of frustration, of being “held back" or “held up”
from doing what makes¶ her happy. Explanations of relative unhappiness can function to restore
the¶ power of an image of the good life in the form of nostalgia or regret for what¶ has been lost.
The happy housewife retains its force as a place holder for women’s desires¶ and could even be said to
be making a return. Take the following passage from¶ Darla Shine’s Happy Housewives: “Being home in a warm, comfy house
floating¶ around in your pajamas and furry slippers whiles sipping coffee as your babies¶ play on the floor and your hubby works
hard to pay for it all is not desperation.¶ Grow up! Shut up! Count your blessings!” (2005: 15). Shine conjures for the¶ reader a very
specific image of what makes housewives happy. In conjuring this¶ image — of leisure, comfort, and ease — she calls for us to return
to a certain¶ kind of life, as if this was the kind of life that women gave up in embracing¶ feminism: her
fantasy of the happy
housewife is as much a white bourgeois¶ fantasy of the past, a nostalgia for a past that was never possible as a
present¶ for most women, let alone being available in the present. Shine argues that¶ women have become invested in “being
desperate” and have been betrayed by¶ the feminist movement that has “dropped the ball for women at home" (ig).¶ Alluding to the
program Desperate Housewives as an example of what women¶ do not want. Shine encourages us to adopt a new image: “I want
mothers every^¶ where to dismiss this horrible image of desperation and come together to promote¶ the image of the happy
housewife” (6). This new image comes with a¶ commitment to specific values: “respect; pride; confidence; passion; friendship;¶ a
clean beautiful home; and, most importantly, a close relationship with¶ your children” (2). While mothering is a crucial element here
in this manual¶ for happiness, so tools marriage, as an institution described in terms of heterosexual¶ intimacy: Shine suggests that
“you will never be a happy housewife if¶ you're not intimate with your husband” (53).
Shine’s book is unexceptional. On the Internet, we witness a new generation¶ of bloggers who take on this identity of “the happy
housewife.” These bloggers¶ use the opportunity of the public space generated by new technologies to make¶ public their claim of
happiness. This claim is also an insistence on the error of¶ feminism and on the importance of instructing women on how to be
happy;¶ happiness is being good at being a housewife, as well as what follows being¶ good. Such blogs typically include recipes, tips
on doing housework, thoughts¶ on mothering, as well as belief statements that register the happy housewife as an important social
role and duty that must be defended, as if the speech act¶ (“I am a happy housewife” ) is itself a rebellion against a social orthodoxy.
The¶ image
of the happy housewife is repeated and accumulates affective power in¶ the very
narration of her as a minority subject who has to reclaim something¶ that has been taken from
her. This affective power not only presses against¶ feminist claims that behind the image of the
happy housewife was an unspoken¶ collective unhappiness but also involves a counterclaim that
happiness is¶ not so much what the housewife has but what she does: her duty is to generate¶
happiness by the very act of embracing this image.
In this political context, it is not surprising that research in happiness¶ studies has “shown” that traditional housewives are happier
than their wording¶ counterparts, as the American journalist Meghan O’Rourke explores in¶ her aptly named article “ Desperate
Feminist Wives” (2006). By implication,¶ it is feminism that gives women the desires that have made them unhappy.
This chapter will offer a different way of understanding the relationship between¶ feminism and unhappiness. I begin by reflecting
on how happiness
was¶ used historically as an argument for sustaining a gendered division of
labor,¶ taking as a starting point the work of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau on¶ education. M y argument challenges
Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd s claim¶ that the happy housewife was a feminist myth — what they call “a myth of a¶ myth" —
through which the feminist subject could generate the housewife as¶ “the other” (2004; 2). I suggest that the happy housewife has a
very long genealogy,¶ and that she emerges as a figure at least in part as a response to feminist¶ claims.
By providing a genealogy of the happy housewife, we can reflect on the political¶ landscape in
which the figures of the unhappy housewife and the feminist¶ killjoy emerge. My suggestion is that we
can reread the negativity of such¶ figures in terms of the challenge they offer to the
assumption that happiness¶ follows relative proximity to a social ideal. I focus not only on the
affective¶ power of these figures but also on feminist consciousness as a form of unhappiness,¶
suggesting that earlier feminist languages of “consciousness-raising” and¶ even “false consciousness” may be useful in an
exploration of the limitations¶ of happiness as a horizon of experience.
The struggle over happiness forms the political horizon in which feminist
claims are made. Generations upon generations of women continue to
inherit this horizon as they are relegated to the same logic through which
our happiness is constructed as contingent.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
For her to¶ be happy, she must be good, as being good is what makes them happy, and she¶ can
only be happy if they are happy.¶ Statements on the conditionality of happiness — how one
persons happiness¶ is made conditional upon another’s — ensure that happiness is directive:
happiness¶ becomes what is given by being given as a shared orientation toward¶ what is good. It might seem that what I am calling
“conditional
happiness” involves¶ a relationship of care and reciprocity: as if to say, I will not have a share¶
certain people come first —
we might say those who are already in¶ place (such as parents, hosts, or citizens) — then their happiness comes first.¶
in a happiness that cannot be shared. And yet, the terms of conditionality are¶ unequal."* If
For those who are positioned as coming after, happiness means/ollouJing somebody¶ elses goods.
The concept of conditional happiness allows me to develop my argument¶ about the sociality of happiness. I suggested in the
previous chapter that we¶ might have a social bond if the same objects make us happy. I am suggesting¶ here that happiness
itself can become the shared object. Or to be more precise,¶ if one person’s happiness is made
conditional on another person’s happiness,¶ such that the other person’s happiness comes first,
then the other persons happiness¶ becomes a shared object. Max Scheler’s differentiation between
communities¶ of feeling and fellow-feeling might help explain the significance of this¶ argument. In communities of feeling,
we share feelings because we share the¶ same object of feeling (so we might feel sorrow at the loss of
someone whom¶ we both love; our sorrow would be directed toward an object that is shared).
Fellow-feeling would be when I feel sorrow about your grief although I do not¶ share your object
of grief; “all fellow-feeling involves intenrionaJ reference of the feeling of joy or sorrow to the other person’s experience" (Scheler
[1913] 2008:¶ 13). In this case, your grief is what grieves me; your grief is the object of my¶ grief. I would speculate that in everyday
life these different forms of shared¶ feeling can be confused because the object of feeling is sometimes but not¶ always exterior to
the feeling that is shared.¶ Say I am happy about your happiness. Your happiness is with x. If I share x,¶ then your happiness and my
happiness is not only shared but can accumulate¶ through being returned. Or I can simply disregard x: if my happiness is¶ directed
“just” toward your happiness, and you are happy about x, the exteriority¶ of X can disappear or cease to matter (although it can
reappear). Alternatively,¶ because
I experience happiness in your happiness, I could wish that¶ our
feeling of fellowship in happiness amounts to being happy about the same¶ things (a community of
happiness), such that x becomes shared as a happiness¶ wish. Of course, if the object that makes you happy is my happiness wish,
then¶ this would be precarious basis for sharing something (as wishing to be happy¶ about X can also be an admission that one is not
simply happy about x ) . In¶ cases where I am also affected by s, and I do not share your happiness with x, I¶ might become uneasy
and ambivalent, as I am made happy by your happiness¶ but I am not made happy by what makes you happy. The exteriority of x
would¶ then announce itself as a point of crisis I want your happiness to be what¶ makes me happy, but I am reminded that even if
my happiness is conditional¶ on yours, your happiness is conditional on x and I am not happy with x. In such¶ occasions,
conditional happiness would require that I take up what makes you¶ happy as what makes me
happy, which may involve compromising my own¶ idea of happiness (so I w ill go along with x in order to
make you happy even¶ if X does not “really” make me happy).^ In order to preserve the happiness of¶ all, we might even conceal
from ourselves our unhappiness with x, or try to¶ persuade ourselves that x matters less than the happiness of the other who is¶
made happy by x,^
We have a hint of the rather uneasy dynamics of conditional happiness in¶ Emile. For Sophy, wanting to make her parents happy
commits her in a certain¶ direction, regardless of what she might or might not want. If she can only be¶ happy if they are happy, then
she must do what makes them happy. In one¶ episode, the father speaks to the daughter about becoming a woman: “You are¶ a big
girl now, Sophy, you will soon be a woman. We want you to be happy, for¶ our sakes as well as yours, for our happiness depends on
yours. A good girl finds her own happiness in the happiness of a good man” (434). Sophy’s father¶ offers a happiness
commandment: it
is for the sake of her own happiness and¶ the happiness of her parents that she
must find happiness in the right place,¶ which is in the happiness of a good man. So it is not simply that
groups cohere¶ by taking up the same objects as the causes of happiness; some subjects are¶ required to take up the happiness
causes of others. In this case, for the daughter¶ not to go along with the parents’ desire for her marriage would not only¶ cause her
parents unhappiness but would threaten the very reproduction of¶ social form. The daughter has a duty to reproduce the form of
the family, which¶ means tafein^up the cause of parental happiness as her own.¶ In this case, Sophy “happily” does what her parents
want her to do. We might¶ imagine that she wishes to be made happy by the same things and receives¶ some comfort by the
realization of a happiness wish. O f course, we do not¶ “really” know if Sophy gets what she wants. The book can give us a happy
ending¶ by not giving us an account of Sophie’s desires beyond the articulation of a¶ wish to make her parents happy. The narrator
declares triumphantly: “At last I¶ see the happy day approaching, the happiest day of Emile’s life and my own; I¶ see the crown of my
labours, I begin to appreciate their results. The noble pair¶ are united till death do part; heart and lips confirm no empty vows; they
are¶ man and w ife” (526-27). The happy ending involves not simply the alignment¶ of desire but the willingness of the daughter to
align her desire with the parental¶ desire for happiness.
Happiness is how the given becomes given. In Emile happiness is linked to¶ nature; as being what follows naturally
from how things are, or how things are¶ if they are allowed to flourish. As Rousseau explains: “ I kept to the path of nature,¶ until
she should show me the path of happiness. And lo! their paths were¶ the same, and without knowing it this was the path I trod"
(487). Happiness¶ becomes
what follows nature’s paths. Deviations from nature become
deviations¶ from the common good. For women to be educated to be anything other¶ than wives
for men would hence take them away from nature, and from what¶ can promise happiness.
It should be no surprise that Rousseau’s treatment of Sophy was a crucial¶ object of feminist critique. Mary Wollstonecraft in her
Vindication of the Rights¶ of Women spoke out against Rousseau’s vision of what makes women happy.^¶ She comments wryly
about his treatment of Sophy: “ I have probably had an¶ opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than J. J. Rousseau"
([1792.] 1975: 43). The political plea of Vindication is against the right of men to decide¶ what happiness means for women. As
Wollstonecraft argues; “Consider, I
address¶ you as a legislator, whether, when men contend for their
freedom, and¶ to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not¶
inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe¶ that you are acting
in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness?Ӧ (5). The struggle over happiness
forms the political horizon in which feminist¶ claims are made, my argument is simple: we
inherit this horizon.
Link – Capitalism
The andocentric and etatist foundations of capitalism function to subvert the
role of women and decenter the gendered division of labor.
Funk 12
Nanette, 2012. Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College, CUNY: Visiting Felllow, NYU Center for European Studies,Cocoordinator,
GenderEurope. “Contra Fraser on Feminism and Neoliberalism,” Hypatia. // KD
This same overstatement of the prevalence of Marxist and socialist feminism in¶ second-wave feminism appears in Fraser’s account
that second-wave feminism
criticized¶ the “androcentrism” and “etatism” of state-based capitalism
and the political¶ economy. “Etatism” is a term for extensive state control, direction, and
intervention¶ in a country’s economy. Using categories she had earlier adopted, Fraser interprets¶ early second-wave
feminism as having challenged capitalism on grounds of distributive¶ injustice, failure of
recognition, and representation (Fraser 2009, 104). By “representation”¶ Fraser means the representation of an issue,
that is, the descriptive,¶ normative, and sociopolitical understanding of social, political, and economic issues,¶ what Margaret Keck
and Kathryn Sikkink call “framing” (Keck and Sikkink 1998).
Fraser argues that early second-wave feminism
criticized the androcentrism of capitalism¶ for
“decentering,” that is, ignoring the central role of the gendered division of¶ labor in capitalism.
The latter ignored the economic value of women’s unpaid care¶ work and valorized paid work,
and focused instead on the male worker and presumed¶ a male head of household working for
a family wage. The claim is made that early second-wave¶ feminism also criticized the androcentrism of a welfare system that
deemed¶ the absence of a man in the home as a prerequisite for receiving welfare benefits.
Feminism, Fraser further claims, criticized the “etatism” of the welfare system, that¶ is, the way the welfare system looked to the
state both to determine women’s needs¶ and to heavily police and monitor the families of those on welfare (Fraser 2009,¶ 105).
Early second-wave feminism, she claims, thereby showed that women’s
subordination¶ was “grounded in the
deep structure” of a top-down, Fordist, production-based,¶ capitalist political economy. Such a
system relied on just such hierarchical oversight¶ by a managerial elite to maximize efficiency, output, and profit in the case of
assembly-line work. Second-wave feminism claimed that this
capitalist political economy¶ was also based on a
gendered division of labor that was presumed to be “natural,”¶ and that led to distributive
injustices. Feminists, according to Fraser, also¶ criticized this “bureaucratic–managerial ethos of state
organized capitalism in which¶ citizens were treated as clients, consumers” (Fraser 2009, 105). Fraser
thus presents¶ early second-wave feminism as challenging the basic structure of capitalism.
But, contrary to Fraser, such a criticism of the welfare system neither entailed nor¶ presupposed a broad-based criticism of a
hierarachical production-based capitalism,¶ and feminists did not generally claim to be making such a fundamental criticism of¶
“state organized capitalism.” To assume otherwise is to over-generalize from socialist¶ feminism and the welfare rights movement to
early second-wave feminism generally.¶ Second-wave feminism
did generally criticize the androcentrism of
capitalism on various¶ grounds: for not providing white, middle- class women a choice as to whether to¶ enter the paid
work force; for presupposing that it was “natural” for women to stay in¶ the home; for men having
better pay, higher paying jobs, and more powerful positions.¶ But the self-understanding of mainstream
liberal feminism was that the needed¶ corrections could be made within capitalism. Liberal feminism, the
overwhelming¶ majority of the movement, held that the gendered division of labor could be
transformed¶ by legislation, such as anti-discrimination and harassment laws and mechanisms¶
for their enforcement. In addition, the mainstream feminist movement often¶ focused on gender relations in the private
sphere and unequal decision-making in the¶ home; domestic violence, harassment and rape; women’s voices not being heard; and¶
discrimination in education and employment. It was only socialist
Rosa della Costa, and Joan Tronto, among others,¶ who linked
feminists, including¶ Ann Ferguson, Nancy Folbre, Maria
criticism of androcentrism to criticism of the
fundamental nature of¶ mid-twentieth-century capitalism. It was only socialist feminists who
addressed the¶ concatenation of paid work, the gendered division of labor, the welfare system,
and¶ the privileged position of paid labor. Within this minority position only some made¶ further, stronger claims
that care work should be recognized as work and should be¶ paid, or even further, that paid work should not have the privileged
normative position¶ it had under capitalism, and that adequately paid care work was incompatible¶ with capitalism. Fraser speaks as
though these positions were held by second-wave¶ feminism generally, which was not the case. Most second-wave feminists who
did discuss¶ care work argued for a redistribution of care work and gender hierarchy in the¶ home, rather than that care work should
be paid. It is not obvious that the former¶ set of demands challenges the deep structure of capitalism, and Fraser provides no¶
argument that they do. Even pay for care work in itself does not challenge capitalism¶ if it is privatized, that is, if individual families
that can afford to do so hire a care¶ worker.
Link – Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism coopts feminist movements in order to legitimate its exploitive
behavior towards women.
Funk 12
Nanette, 2012. Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College, CUNY: Visiting Fellow, NYU Center for European Studies, Cocoordinator,
GenderEurope. “Contra Fraser on Feminism and Neoliberalism,” Hypatia. // KD
It is true that some feminist intellectuals, including those in developing countries,¶ argued that women’s employment in Walmarts,
export processing zones, and maquiladoras¶ gave rural and poor urban women opportunities to break out of traditional gender¶
roles, freedom from patriarchal families, and higher status within the family. In¶ societies forcibly changed from non-monetary to
monetary economies, what gave one¶ status had changed. But these were feminist accounts to explain to women in the¶ “global
North” the impact of such employment on women, so that they would avoid¶ simplistic criticisms of such employment and instead
take into account the benefits¶ to women, as well as the harm, of such employment. But explanations and legitimation, that is,
normative justification, are not the same. These accounts were¶ not legitimations of such employment or justification of low-wage,
unstable jobs under¶ extremely poor work conditions. Neoliberals, as opposed to feminists, may have
coopted¶
feminist arguments in an attempt to legitimate to the world at large their¶ exploitive
employment of women and use of women as targets of microlending programs,¶ but, as stated above,
it is not such arguments that legitimated paid employment¶ to women workers themselves.
There is also a difference between legitimation and cooptation. Neoliberalism¶
exploited, distorted, and coopted
feminist arguments, as capitalism has long done¶ with progressive movements it is unable to
defeat, justifying microcredit loans as¶ empowering women to start their own small businesses. Such cynical arguments are¶ not
evidence of a “romance” or “elective affinity” between feminism and militarism,¶ capitalism, or neoliberalism. Weber did not mean
that it was a cynical, unwarranted¶ cooptation of Protestantism and the Calvinist notion of a “calling” that made them¶ the spirit of
capitalism. Cynical,
unsound arguments relying on a purported commitment¶ to feminist premises,
belied in action, conjoined with false empirical claims, or¶ invalidly drawn conclusions from
those premises, thereby fail to legitimate neoliberalism.¶ Microcredit loans did not empower
women, and there were no good grounds to¶ expect that they would. Instead, such loans led
some women, as well as men, to¶ become pulled ever deeper into a spiral of debt and multiple
loans, leading some to¶ suicide.
Microcredit lending programs did serve neoliberalism by making women responsible¶ for their own economic well-being, relieving
the state of its responsibility to¶ address poverty and unemployment. But microcredit programs are particularly problematic¶ and do
not justify the general conclusion that the feminist demand for¶ women’s empowerment, women’s NGOs, and global feminism
legitimated neoliberalism.¶ Although some feminists supported microcredit lending programs, and in doing¶ so legitimated
neoliberalism, many others did not, and even strongly criticized those¶ programs, denying that they empowered women.
Microcredit lending programs were¶ also not equally widespread in all regions. In post-communist European countries, microcredit¶
loans were not common, appearing more in Bosnia than elsewhere in this¶ region. Such loans were more common in other regions
than in post-communist¶ areas. Many feminists in post-communist regions, as in other regions, also criticized¶ those programs.
Link - Education
The AFF’s affective orientation presumes happiness and only a reorientation in
terms of education can change societal standards of who can be deemed
“good.”
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
In the previous chapter, I argued that happiness functions as a promise that¶ directs you toward certain objects, as if they provide
you with the necessary¶ ingredients for a good life. Happiness
involves a form of orientation: the very¶ hope for
happiness means vi^e get directed in specific ways, as happiness is¶ assumed to follow from some life choices
and not others.¶ If happiness is an affective form of orientation, then happiness is crucial to¶
education, which can be considered an orientation device. The child—who¶ we might recall is considered by
John Locke as a blank slate — is the site of¶ potential. What happens to the child will shape what the child can
become;¶ the child’s presumed emptiness becomes an imperative to shape its becoming.¶
Education becomes about directing such potentiality; about steering the child¶ in the right direction. Or to use a metaphor from
horticulture, education is¶ about cultivation, whereby, through tending the soil, you encourage the plants¶ to grow in some ways
rather than others. To
educate is to orient, which is¶ why education plays a central role in debates
about happiness. Nel Noddings¶ describes how “ happiness should be an aim of education, and a good edu^¶ cation should
contribute significantly to personal and collective happinessӦ (2003: i).^
Since classical times, the role of education as a form of orientation has been¶ explicit. In Republic education is described as “the art
of orientation" (1998:¶ 245). Education
should “devise the simplest and most effective methods of¶
turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ,¶ but should proceed on the understanding
that the organ already has the capacity,¶ but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way” (245-46; emphasis¶ added).
Education provides a way of getting the would-be subject to¶ face the right way such that they
can receive the right impressions. Education¶ involves being directed not only by being turned around but by being
turned¶ “the right way” round. To turn minds around is an educational imperative only¶ given the presumption that the would-be
subject is improperly aligned.
The promise of happiness involves being “turned around.” We can see how¶ happiness involves turning in
Rousseau’s Emi!e ([1762] 1993), a book which¶ has been described as “haunted” by Plato: Rousseau him self considered Republic¶
“the most beautiful book on education that had yet been written” (Strong 2002: 135)? Emile is told in the first person, by a narrator
whose duty is to¶ instruct a young orphan named Emile, in order that he can take up his place¶ in the world. Education for Emile is
about becoming a good man. Within this¶ book, happiness plays a crucial role: the good man does not seek happiness¶ but achieves
happiness as a consequence of virtue. This book had considerable¶ influence on European thought and became a key reference
point within feminist¶ debates? Rousseau offers a model of what a good education would do for¶ his Emile, but also for Emile’s
would-be wife Sophy, whom he introduces in the¶ fifth book, Rousseau’s
argument was that women and men
should be educated¶ in different ways that enabled them to fulfill their specific duties as
gendered¶ beings.
In this book, education
for Sophy is about what she must become in order¶ to be a good wife for
Emile. Happiness provides a script for her becoming. As¶ Rousseau explains, the aim for woman is “to
be pleasing in his sight, to win¶ his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in
manhood, to¶ councel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties¶ of
women for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young.¶ The further we depart
from this principle, the further we shall be from our¶ goal, and all our precepts will fail to secure her happiness or our own” ([1762]¶
1993: 393). Any
deviation from gender roles defined in terras of women being¶ trained to make
men happy is a deviation from the happiness of all.¶ For Rousseau the good woman has a duty to keep the family
together, to¶ preserve the integrity of its form. Rousseau
asks us to “ imagine a virtuous and¶ charming wife,
adorned with such accomplishments and devoting them to her¶ husband’s amusement; will she
not add to his happiness? When he leaves his¶ office worn out with the day’s work, will she not prevent him seeking
recreation¶ elsewhere? Have we not all beheld happy families gathered together,¶ each contributing to the general amusement?”
(404). Subjects do not participate¶ equally in the “general amusement,” Women must learn to
make men¶ happy in
order to keep families together, in order to prevent recreation from¶ taking place elsewhere. It is
women’s duty to keep happiness in house.¶ The good woman is good in part because of what
she judges to be good,¶ and hence how she aligns her happiness with the happiness of others.
The¶ good woman is made happy by what is good. As Rousseau describes: “She¶ loves virtue
because there is nothing fairer in itself, she loves it because it is a¶ woman’s glory and because a
virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees
nothing but¶ poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame, and disgrace in the life of a bad woman;¶ she loves virtue because it is dear to
her revered father, and to her tender and¶ worthy mother; they are not content to be happy in their own virtue, they¶ desire hers;
and she finds her chief happiness in the hope of just making them¶ happy” (431). The complexity of this statement should not be
underestimated.¶ She loves virtue as it is the road to happiness; unhappiness and disgrace follow¶ from being bad. The good woman
wants to be happy and hence wants what is¶ good. The good woman also loves what is good because this is what is loved by¶ her
parents. The parents desire not only what is good; they desire their daughter to be good. The daughter is good to give them what
they desire.
Link - Consciousness
The AFF’s attempt to raise our consciousness through telling us to just be
happy is antithetical to the figure of the feminist killjoy because it refuses
denies our shift of orientation.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Consciousness and Unhappiness¶ To
be against forms of power and violence that are concealed under
signs¶ of happiness does not necessarily mean becoming unhappy, even if it does¶ mean refusing to go
along with things by showing signs of getting along. It¶ is striking that Shulamith Firestone’s “dream action” for the women’s
liberation¶ movement is “a smile boycott, at which declaration, all women would¶ instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles,
henceforth only smiling when something¶ pleased them " (1970: 90). To refuse
the promise of happiness is to
refuse¶ the demand that you show signs of happiness. For Firestone, this means a shift¶ of
orientation; it means changing one’s bodily habits: “In my own case, I had to¶ train myself out of the phony smile, which is like a
nervous tic on every teenage¶ girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real¶ smiling, I had less to
smile about” (go). To
refuse to keep smiling for Firestone¶ is not a refusal of joy or any of those good
feelings that are not distributed along¶ accepted paths of happiness. If anything, the false smile
sustains the very psychic¶ and political condition of unhappiness. The feminist who does not
smile¶ when she is not happy wants a more exciting life. Indeed, as Firestone argues:¶ “Eroticism is exciting. Noone wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and¶ routine affair without at least that spark. That’s just the point. Why has all joy¶
and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow difficult-to-find alley of¶ human experience, and all the rest laid waste?”
(155; second emphasis added).¶ Feminism
involves challenging the very “pressure” of happiness, the way
it¶ restricts the possibilities for finding excitement, of being excited.¶ This is not to say that feminism makes
women happy. It is simply that feminism¶ by refusing to go along with public displays of happiness can
participate¶ in the widening of horizons in which it is possible to find things. Feminism does not
guarantee what we will find through this expansion of bodily horizons. It simply opens up the places where we can
look. The fact that any such¶ opening is read as a sign of hostility, or of killing other people’s joy,
tells us¶ something. The public investment in happiness is an investment in a very particular and
narrow model of the good; being happy requires a commitment to¶ find what Firestone brilliantly describes as a “narrow
difficult-to-find alley” of¶ human experience.
I have explored how feminism is represented as causing unhappiness and as¶ caused by unhappiness.
Rather than disregarding the possibility of a link between¶ feminism and unhappiness, I want to consider another way of thinking¶
about it. We
could describe consciousness raising as raising consciousness of¶ unhappiness. As Gayle
Greene argues, “For though education raised women’s¶ expectations, it also made many of them
unhappy, creating ambitions that were¶ frustrated by the rigid domestic ideology that urged
them back into the home”¶ (ig gi: 9; emphasis added). Indeed, you have to experience limitations as limitations;¶ the act
of noticing limitations can actually make life seem more rather¶ than less limited. If the world
does not allow you to embrace the possibilities¶ that are opened up by education, then you
become even more aware of the¶ injustice of such limitations. Opening up the world, or
expanding one’s horizons,¶ can thus mean becoming more conscious of just how much there is
to be¶ unhappy about. Unhappiness might also provide an affective way of sustaining¶ our
attention on the cause of unhappiness. You would be unhappy UJiffi the¶ causes of unhappiness. Consciousnessraising does not turn unhappy housewives¶ into happy feminists, even though sometimes we might wish that
this¶ were the case!
Feminism involves political consciousness of what women are asked to give¶ up for happiness.
Indeed, in even becoming conscious of happiness as loss,¶ feminists have already refused to give up
desire, imagination, and curiosity¶ for happiness. There can be sadness simply in the realization
of what one has¶ given up. Feminist archives are thus full of housewives becoming conscious of¶ unhappiness as a mood
that seems to surround them: think of Virginia Woolf’s¶ Mrs. The feeling is certainly around, almost as a thickness in the air.¶ We
sense the unhappiness seeping through the tasks of the everyday. There she¶ is, about to get flowers, enjoying her walk in London.
During that walk, she¶ disappears: “But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch¶ picture), this body, with all its
capacities, seemed nothing — nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being¶ no
more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing¶ and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond
street, this being¶ Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”¶ ([1925] 1953: 14).
Framework
Censorship
Their framework is an act of patriarchal censorship in the debate space.
This act of silencing is another link and is an independent voter.
Mojab 02
Shahrzad, 2002. Shahrzad Mojab, Professor, is an academic-activist, teaching at the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult
Education and Women and Gender Studies Institute, at the University of Toronto. “Information, Censorship, and Gender
Relations in Global Capitalism.” http://libr.org/isc/articles/14-Mojab.html // KD
While the market and the state are the main organs of censorship, control is embedded in other institutions, from the church to
education to family. Religion,
race, ethnicity, nationality, language, age, and certainly gender all act as
sources, agents, or perpetrators of censorship. Let us look at the gender dimension. The first major communication
revolution, writing, and the second one, printing, were male enterprises. It took women thousands of years after the
advent of writing to have access to literate communication (primarily in Western Europe, North America and
the former Soviet bloc).¶ By contrast with much of Asia, Africa and other regions of the developing world, women in the West have
had more access to writing, literacy, printing, and education. They have also achieved legal equality with males. As already
mentioned, however, "access to information" alone does not eliminate censorship. To give an example, feminist
knowledge
has seriously challenged the deep-rooted androcentrism of modern knowledge. However, in spite of
progress in female literacy and access to higher education, feminist consciousness is still limited, and patriarchy
is still intact, and is constantly reproduced in innumerable ways.¶ It is important to know more
about the ties that bind censorship to gender. Even when one barrier is removed, others emerge
to ensure the reproduction of the status quo. For instance, after decades of struggle, beginning in late nineteenth
century, legal barriers to women's access to parliament and political office were removed in the West and, later, in many nonWestern states. This was achieved, not simply through access to information, but rather due to women's determination to create
knowledge and consciousness, and engage in mobilizing and organizing (sit-ins, demonstrations, picketing, leafleting, singing, etc.) in
schools, homes, streets, churches, and university campuses. However, states
and state-centred politics continue to
be male-centred. Even when women have a proportionate participation in the parliament, there is no guarantee
that they would all advocate feminist alternatives to an androcentric agenda; and this is the case for the
simple reason that women can be as patriarchal in their politics as some men are.¶ A more adequate
approach to the understanding of censorship is, I believe, to see it not as an irrational practice, as a mischievous attitude, or a
technical problem of obstructing channels of communication. Censorship
is an integral part of the exercise of
gender power, class power, and the powers of the nation, ethnicity, religion and governance.
Not only does it deny women access to information, but also limits their participation in the
creation of knowledge, and denies them the power to utilize knowledge.¶ If in pre-modern times the
church was the major player in creating knowledge, today the market produces, disseminates, and utilizes much of the knowledge,
which has achieved the status of a commodity. Knowledge is "intellectual property." Even the knowledge created in public and semipublic institutions such as universities is increasingly geared to the agenda of the market, and serves the promotion of market
interests. Moreover, Western states primarily entertain the market as the lifeline of economy, culture and society. They increasingly
aim at giving all the power to the market. In dictatorial regimes, however, the state still plays a prominent role in censoring the
creation and dissemination of knowledge. From Peru to Turkey, to Iran and to China, states suppress activists, journalists, libraries,
bookstores, print and broadcast media, satellite dishes and the Internet. They often do so by committing violence against the
citizens and the communication systems they use.¶ Although we may find much gender-based subtlety in the techniques of limiting
the subtlest censorship is denying feminist knowledge a visible
role in the exercise of power. The state, Western and non-Western, rules through privileging
androcentric knowledge as the basis for governance. The conduct of national censuses, for instance, continues
women's access to information, I believe that
to be based on androcentric worldviews in spite of devastating feminist critique. To give another example, women are now recruited
into Western armies in combat functions, but states continue to ignore feminist and pacifist knowledge that challenges the very
phenomenon of war and violence (Cynthia Enloe, 2000).¶ Women themselves can be and, often, are part of the problem. In the
absence of feminist consciousness, they generally act as participants in the reproduction of patriarchal gender relations. In Islamic
societies, when men engage in the "honour" killing of their wives, daughters or sisters, sometimes mothers participate in or tolerate
the horrendous crime (Mojab, 2002).¶ The
democratisation of gender relations is a conscious intervention
in a power structure that is closely interlocked with the powers of the state, class, race,
ethnicity, religion and tradition. For both women and men, challenging patriarchy means defying one's
own values, worldviews, emotions, and traditions. At the same time, it involves risk taking including, in some
situations, loss of life.¶ Women's full access to androcentric knowledge will not disturb the status quo. I
argue that, in the absence of feminist consciousness, women may even act as ministers of propaganda and censorship. They will
not be in a position to exercise the democratic right to revolt against oppressive rule.¶ In the West,
feminist knowledge cannot be suppressed through book-burning, jailing, torture, and assassination. Censorship is
conducted, much more effectively, by stigmatizing and marginalising feminist knowledge as "special
interest," while androcentrism is promoted as the norm, the canon, and "human nature." That is
why, I contend, that if we fill all the media institutions with female managers and staff, if we give all educational institutions to
women, or hand over all high-rank military positions to women, the androcentric world order with its violence, war, poverty, and
degenerating environment will continue to function.¶ Globalization, as it is understood in mainstream media and in state discourses,
is nothing new; it emerged with the rise of capitalism; the main engine of globalization is the capitalist market, and it is promoted
and planned by capitalist states through various organs such as the G8, World Bank, European Union, World Trade Organization,
International Monetary Fund, etc. The impact of this globalization on women has been largely negative, especially in the developing
world. Millions of girls aged 5 to 15 are recruited into the global prostitution market. Millions more leave their families and countries
to raise some income as maids. However, other forms of globalization or, rather, internationalization have been in the making. For
instance, feminism has evolved as an international movement in spite of the opposition of conservatives in many parts of the world.
It has been able to put women's demands on the agenda of states and international organs such as the United Nations.¶ Media are
also important actors in globalisation. Women have had more presence in the media both as producers and as targets or sources of
entertainment and information programming. There is considerable progress, for instance, in the production of women and feminist
press in many developing countries. The Internet and desktop publishing present new opportunities for more media activism. Egypt
has a women's television channel. Focusing on the question of censorship, the crucial issue is freedom of speech not only for women
but also more significantly, for feminists and feminist knowledge. Feminist
knowledge and consciousness is the
primary target of censorship. Do the globalizing media allow women of the developing countries to learn about the
achievements of Western women in fighting patriarchy? Do women of the West learn from the struggles of women in India, Jamaica
or Saudi Arabia? Do the global media allow women everywhere to know about the Beijing Conference and its aftermath? Do they
disseminate adequate and accurate information about the World March of Women? My answers are rather in the negative. The
cyberspace is much like the realspace that creates it. The fact that many individual women or groups can set up their websites does
not change power relations in the realspace. The negative stereotyping of women, for instance, cannot change without the
dissemination of feminist consciousness among both men and women. Even if stereotyping is eliminated, gender inequality will
persist.¶ "Gender-based
censorship" cannot be overcome as long as gender relations remain
unequal and oppressive. It can, however, be reduced or made less effective. While the concept "gender-based censorship"
is useful, it should be broadened to include "censorship of feminist knowledge." ¶
Pre-req
Our criticism is necessary to resolve the structural antagonisms that formulate
law – even the most progressive left legal reforms recreate those problems and
attempt to disentangle the complexities of gender issues – your framework
results in serial policy failure – Our aff is a prerequisite
Wendy Brown & Janet Halley, 2002 (Left Legalism/Left Critique, Wendy Brown is First Professor of
Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also affiliated with the Department of Rhetoric,
and where she is a core faculty member in the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. Janet Halley is the Royall
Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. p. 18-25 //aj) *green highlighting is optional
Left legalistic projects, entwined as they are with the regulatory tugs of liberalism and legalism,
are going to produce unintended consequences. We want a critical theoretical engagement with left legalism in part because we want to
apprehend these side effects. To see and to evaluate them, we need to step back from our legalism, to open up the space
for politics that can put legalism under a viewfinder, and to examine both politics and legalism
with the attitude of critique. Legalism's Political Outside Is there such a thing as nonlegalistic political practice, a politics even a few degrees outside
legalism, especially if legalism is not defined simply in reference to the state and law, but no less institutionally codified practices and effects? So saturated by
legalism is contemporary political life that it is often difficult to imagine alternative ways of
deliberating about and pursuing justice. Yet the legal realist point that law is politics by other means should not commit us to its converse: that
all endeavors to shape and order collective Iife are legalistic. Legalism not only carries a politics (and liberal legalism carries
a very specific politics) but also incessantly translates wide-ranging political questions into
more narrowly framed legal questions. Thus politics conceived and practiced
legalistically bears a certain hostility to discursively open-ended, multigenre, and polyvocal
political conversations about how we should live, what we should value and what we should
prohibit, and what is possible in collective life. The preemptive conversion of
political questions into legal questions can displace open-ended discursive contestation: adversarial and
yes/no structures can quash exploration; expert and specialized languages can preclude
democratic participation; a pretense that deontological grounds can and must always be
found masks the historical embeddedness of many political questions; the covertness of
norms and political power within legal spaces repeatedly divests political questions of their
most crucial concerns. When the available range of legal remedies preempts exploration of the deep constitutive causes of an injury (think hate speech and
the racial order that makes it sting), when the question of which rights pertain overrides attention to what occasions the urgently felt need for the right (think abortion and
the way reproductive work is organized, valued and [un]remunerated in male-dominant orders), we sacrifice our chance to
be deliberative, inventive political beings who create our collective life form. Legalism that draws
its parameters of justice from liberalism standards of fairness when we might need a public
argument about what constitutes fairness; its formulas for equality when we may need to
reconsider all the powers that must be negotiated in the making of an egalitarian order; its
definitions of liberty at the price of an exploratory argument about the constituent elements of
freedom. As we incessantly refer our political life to the law, we not only sacrifice opportunities
to take our inherited political condition into our own hands, we sacrifice as well the chance to
address at a more fundamental or at least far-reaching level various troubling conditions which
appear to require redress. Consider: What if some of the disturbing aspects of contemporary sex harassment doctrine, in which redress of
gender subordination has been increasingly usurped by greater sexual regulation, can be traced to a certain
failure on the part of second-wave feminism actually to effect a significant transformation in the social construction of women and men, a project that was once deeply
the tendency toward ever more intensive legal regulation of
gender and sexuality is a compensatory response to that failure, a response that effectively
gives up on the project of transforming gender in favor of protecting a historically subordinated
group from some of the most severe effects of that subordination, even as it tacitly defines
women through those effects? If feminism once aimed to make women the sexual equals of
men, this aim entails the complex social, psychological, and political project of making gender
differently, and not simply the legal one of protecting (historically and culturally produced)
vulnerable women from (historically and culturally produced) rapacious men. Indeed, the legal
project, in its instantiation of sexuality as subordinating, especially of women, may
be substantially at odds with the political project of fashioning women as men's substantive
equals, that is, as people who cannot be "reduced to their gender" through an unwanted
sexualizing gesture or word. This is not to argue that there is some pure left political space independent of legalism, nor that left political projects
constitutive of that political and cultural enterprise? And what if
implicated in legalism inevitably sacrifice their aims and values. Rather, it is to assert the possibility of political life and political projects not fully saturated by legalistic
constraints and aims. It is to recover radically democratic political aims from legalism's grip in order to cultivate collective political and cultural deliberation about governing
values and practices. We remember a mode of activism among anti-pornography feminists that was more political than legalistic. Women walked into porn shops and trashed
the pornography, shamed the customers, and mock-shamed themselves. They also led tours through the porn districts, offering feminist interpretations of pornographic
representations and marketing of women, interpretations which others could and sometimes did argue with. The anti-porn activists worked in the name of feminism, and
though all feminists did not condone the stance toward porn and the depiction of women that this activism represented, our dissension itself was not monolithic or fully
codified. This mode of anti-porn activism thus provoked argument and reflection among and across feminists and nonfeminists alike. This political mode presupposed an
interlocutory relationship between those who valued pornography and those who condemned it, indeed between porn and its consumers or audiences. In that interlocutory
relationship, many women encountered and studied pornography for the first time. As this occurred, women found themselves having all kinds of responses to porn that could
not simply be classified as for or against: some were distressed by it but grasped their distress as an index of the sexual shame their gender construction entailed; others were
drawn to it and flatly delighted to be let into a sexual order previously designated for men; others were more ambivalent, liking the idea of porn or liking bits of it but troubled or
turned off by the misogynistic (or racist or colonial) strains in it (some were confusingly turned on by these very same strains); still others were inspired to try to make good porn
for women. What was the political cache of this rich array of responses? It produced a wave old new feminist work on sexuality: new questions, new theories, new domains of
research, new practices, new arguments, new positions in every sense of the word. Hence followed as well new possibilities of alliances with gay men as well as new forms of
alliance across a presumed heterosexual-homosexual divide, the possibility of queer thought, and the invention of new sexual subjectivities and identities through a proliferation
of cultural discourses of and cultural struggles over sexuality. "Feminism" so constituted was a field of widely divergent values, beliefs, and practices, all of which had to contest
with one another over the question of "the good" for women. Compare this marvelously fertile political contestation and intellectual exploration with the social and ideological
concomitants of anti-pornography activists' turn to the state. Anti-pornography activism took a legalistic turn with the invention of a tort claim for damages arising from the
injury to women's sexual status supposedly inflicted by pornography (rights legalism) and the deployment of zoning ordinances to shut down the public space devoted to sex
commerce (governance legalism). Wherever feminists took this turn, the politics of sexuality in feminism and feminist communities, and the form of feminist internal critique,
changed dramatically. Defining porn narrowly (and badly) as "the graphic sexual subordination of women," the legalists promulgated local ordinances establishing porn as a
violation of women's civil rights. This move brought into play local governments and judges as authoritative decision makers. And the arguments that could then be addressed to
those decision makers were as flat and impoverished as the arguments characteristic of the political struggle were multidimensional and rich: to participate in the legalistic
moment, feminists had to declare themselves for or against porn, and even for or against sex, as they took a position on the ordinances.4 The debate about porn became framed
by the terms of free speech, censorship, and privacy rights. In short, it became consolidated by a narrow rights framework: Should your right not to be violated/offended trump
my right to consume what I want? Does Larry Flynt's free speech silence Catharine MacKinnon's? In this consolidation, all the complexities of sexual representation, of the
imbrication of sexuality and gender, of the relation of fantasy to reality, and above all, of the extraordinary and detailed range in the sexual construction and desires of women
and men were eclipsed. The adversarial structure of rights legalism as deployed by all the parties meant that the stakes were now "winner takes all." In that context on, or
differentiation of positions along a continuum. Hence the debates produced a new form of internal silencing of each side's constituents; solidarity and a united front became
mandatory. Above all, neither side could afford to break with liberalism (a notoriously impoverished discourse on the subject of sexuality) in its arguments: the terms of the new
debate were set not only by established definitions of equality, civil rights, and free speech, but by sexuality, and representation. And this debate, desiccated because it adopted
rather than contested the terms of liberal legalism, was the form in which the feminist question about pornography hit the mainstream. To be sure, the porn wars in their
political mode had their brutal and punitive dimensions; open-ended political contestation in unbounded spaces and unregulated by settled rules of engagement can be an
arena for raw aggressions and un-self-knowing posturing of the most grandiose sort. Thus, in the political struggle, women accused each other of false consciousness, mocked
the political
mode had several virtues that the legalistic mode distinctively lacked: it was open-ended in the
questioning and conversations it incited; it was accessible to a wide variety of participants (and was
probably the most interracial, cross-class, and intersexual political moment second-wave feminism had); and it occurred in a range of different idioms,
from analytic position papers to poetry to biography. Perhaps most important, because the arguments were
about sex, gender, and representation rather than free speech, censorship, and civil rights, the
political mode incited a substantial body of rich new political, cultural, and psychological
inquiry and political understandings that were both valuable in themselves and gave new life to
the social movements that bred them.
each other's sexual desires, set themselves up as sexually righteous, and denounced each other viciously for their positions in these battles. But
Education
The AFF’s affective orientation presumes happiness and only a reorientation in
terms of education can change societal standards of who can be deemed
“good.”
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
In the previous chapter, I argued that happiness functions as a promise that¶ directs you toward certain objects, as if they provide
you with the necessary¶ ingredients for a good life. Happiness
involves a form of orientation: the very¶ hope for
happiness means vi^e get directed in specific ways, as happiness is¶ assumed to follow from some life choices
and not others.¶ If happiness is an affective form of orientation, then happiness is crucial to¶
education, which can be considered an orientation device. The child—who¶ we might recall is considered by
John Locke as a blank slate — is the site of¶ potential. What happens to the child will shape what the child can
become;¶ the child’s presumed emptiness becomes an imperative to shape its becoming.¶
Education becomes about directing such potentiality; about steering the child¶ in the right direction. Or to use a metaphor from
horticulture, education is¶ about cultivation, whereby, through tending the soil, you encourage the plants¶ to grow in some ways
rather than others. To
educate is to orient, which is¶ why education plays a central role in debates
about happiness. Nel Noddings¶ describes how “ happiness should be an aim of education, and a good edu^¶ cation should
contribute significantly to personal and collective happinessӦ (2003: i).^
Since classical times, the role of education as a form of orientation has been¶ explicit. In Republic education is described as “the art
of orientation" (1998:¶ 245). Education
should “devise the simplest and most effective methods of¶
turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ,¶ but should proceed on the understanding
that the organ already has the capacity,¶ but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way” (245-46; emphasis¶ added).
Education provides a way of getting the would-be subject to¶ face the right way such that they
can receive the right impressions. Education¶ involves being directed not only by being turned around but by being
turned¶ “the right way” round. To turn minds around is an educational imperative only¶ given the presumption that the would-be
subject is improperly aligned.
The promise of happiness involves being “turned around.” We can see how¶ happiness involves turning in
Rousseau’s Emi!e ([1762] 1993), a book which¶ has been described as “haunted” by Plato: Rousseau him self considered Republic¶
“the most beautiful book on education that had yet been written” (Strong 2002: 135)? Emile is told in the first person, by a narrator
whose duty is to¶ instruct a young orphan named Emile, in order that he can take up his place¶ in the world. Education for Emile is
about becoming a good man. Within this¶ book, happiness plays a crucial role: the good man does not seek happiness¶ but achieves
happiness as a consequence of virtue. This book had considerable¶ influence on European thought and became a key reference
point within feminist¶ debates? Rousseau offers a model of what a good education would do for¶ his Emile, but also for Emile’s
would-be wife Sophy, whom he introduces in the¶ fifth book, Rousseau’s
argument was that women and men
should be educated¶ in different ways that enabled them to fulfill their specific duties as
gendered¶ beings.
In this book, education
for Sophy is about what she must become in order¶ to be a good wife for
Emile. Happiness provides a script for her becoming. As¶ Rousseau explains, the aim for woman is “to
be pleasing in his sight, to win¶ his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in
manhood, to¶ councel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties¶ of
women for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young.¶ The further we depart
from this principle, the further we shall be from our¶ goal, and all our precepts will fail to secure her happiness or our own” ([1762]¶
1993: 393). Any
deviation from gender roles defined in terras of women being¶ trained to make
men happy is a deviation from the happiness of all.¶ For Rousseau the good woman has a duty to keep the family
together, to¶ preserve the integrity of its form. Rousseau
asks us to “ imagine a virtuous and¶ charming wife,
adorned with such accomplishments and devoting them to her¶ husband’s amusement; will she
not add to his happiness? When he leaves his¶ office worn out with the day’s work, will she not prevent him seeking
recreation¶ elsewhere? Have we not all beheld happy families gathered together,¶ each contributing to the general amusement?”
(404). Subjects do not participate¶ equally in the “general amusement,” Women must learn to
make men¶ happy in
order to keep families together, in order to prevent recreation from¶ taking place elsewhere. It is
women’s duty to keep happiness in house.¶ The good woman is good in part because of what
she judges to be good,¶ and hence how she aligns her happiness with the happiness of others.
The¶ good woman is made happy by what is good. As Rousseau describes: “She¶ loves virtue
because there is nothing fairer in itself, she loves it because it is a¶ woman’s glory and because a
virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees
nothing but¶ poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame, and disgrace in the life of a bad woman;¶ she loves virtue because it is dear to
her revered father, and to her tender and¶ worthy mother; they are not content to be happy in their own virtue, they¶ desire hers;
and she finds her chief happiness in the hope of just making them¶ happy” (431). The complexity of this statement should not be
underestimated.¶ She loves virtue as it is the road to happiness; unhappiness and disgrace follow¶ from being bad. The good woman
wants to be happy and hence wants what is¶ good. The good woman also loves what is good because this is what is loved by¶ her
parents. The parents desire not only what is good; they desire their daughter to be good. The daughter is good to give them what
they desire.
Impacts
Gendered Violence
Violence should be understood as a continuum that functions against all
women. Having permeated even the international sphere such as countries
dominating women as a way of demonstrating their power. This sexual
terrorism has become the norm where women’s bodies are the battlefield.
Prioritize these forms of violence because social biases underestimate them
and their effects are exponential. Their focus on large scale impacts ignore
these types of low level violence that will continue to happen.
Ray 97
A.E., 1997. “The Shame of It: gender-based terrorism in the former Yugoslavia and the failure of international human rights law to
comprehend the injuries.” The American University Law Review, Vol. 46. // KD
In order to reach all of the violence perpetrated against the women of the former Yugoslavia that is not committed by soldiers or
other officials of the state, human
lights law must move beyond its artificially constructed barriers
between "public" and "private" actions: A feminist perspective on human rights would require a
rethinking of the notions of imputability and state responsibility and in this sense would challenge
the most basic assumptions of international law. If violence against women were considered by
the international legal system to be as shocking as violence against people for their political
ideas, women would have considerable support in their struggle.... The assumption that
underlies all law, including international human rights law, is that the public/private distinction
is real: human society, human lives can be separated into two distinct spheres. This division, however, is an ideological
construct rationalizing the exclusion of women from the sources of power. 2 6 The international
community must recognize that violence against women is always political, regardless of where it
occurs, because it affects the way women view themselves and their role in the world, as well as the
lives they lead in the so-called public sphere. 2 6 ' When women are silenced within the family, their silence is
not restricted to the private realm, but rather affects their voice in the public realm as well,
often assuring their silence in any environment. 262 For women in the former Yugoslavia, as well as for all women,
extension beyond the various public/private barriers is imperative if human rights law "is to have meaning for women brutalized in
less-known theaters of war or in the by-ways of daily life." 63 Because, as currently constructed, human
rights laws can
reach only individual perpetrators during times of war, one alternative is to reconsider our
understanding of what constitutes "war" and what constitutes "peace. " " When it is universally
true that no matter where in the world a woman lives or with what culture she identifies, she is
at grave risk of being beaten, imprisoned, enslaved, raped, prostituted, physically tortured, and
murdered simply because she is a woman, the term "peace" does not describe her existence. 2 5
In addition to being persecuted for being a woman, many women also are persecuted on ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation,
or other grounds. Therefore, it is crucial that our re-conceptualization of human rights is not limited to violations based on gender."
Rather, our definitions of "war" and "peace" in the context of all of the world's persecuted groups should be questioned.
Nevertheless, in
every culture a common risk factor is being a woman, and to describe the
conditions of our lives as "peace" is to deny the effect of sexual terrorism on all women. 6 7
Because we are socialized to think of times of "war" as limited to groups of men fighting over
physical territory or land, we do not immediately consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow definition except in a
metaphorical sense, such as in the expression "the war against poverty." However, the physical violence and sex
discrimination perpetrated against women because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite
the fact that its prevalence makes the violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its
purpose and its effect. Further, its exclusion from international human rights law is no accident,
but rather part of a system politically constructed to exclude and silence women. 2 6 The
appropriation of women's sexuality and women's bodies as representative of men's ownership
over women has been central to this "politically constructed reality. 2 6 9 Women's bodies have
become the objects through which dominance and even ownership are communicated, as well
as the objects through which men's honor is attained or taken away in many cultures.Y Thus,
when a man wants to communicate that he is more powerful than a woman, he may beat her. When a man wants to communicate
that a woman is his to use as he pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The objectification of women is so universal that when
one country ruled by men (Serbia) wants to communicate to another country ruled by men (BosniaHerzegovina or Croatia) that it is superior and more powerful, it rapes, tortures, and prostitutes the
"inferior" country's women. 2 71 The use of the possessive is intentional, for communication among men through the
abuse of women is effective only to the extent that the group of men to whom the message is sent believes they have some right of
possession over the bodies of the women used. Unless they have some claim of right to what is taken, no injury is experienced. Of
course, regardless of whether a group of men sexually terrorizing a group of women is trying to communicate a message to another
group of men,
the universal sexual victimization of women clearly communicates to all women a
message of dominance and ownership over women. As Charlotte Bunch explains, "The physical territory
of [the] political struggle [over female subordination] is women's bodies." 7 2
War/Escalation
States with greater gender inequality are more likely to go to war or engage in
state-sanctioned violence. Decreasing gender inequality decreases the
likelihood that they will strike first, escalate violence, and have severe violence
during times of international crisis.
True et. Al. 09
Jacqui True, Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, Terry Nardin, Matthew Paterson, Christian ReusSmit, 2009. Theories of International Relations, Palgrave Macmillan. // KD
Like ‘intimate others’ of economic globalization, domestic workers, typically immigrant women of colour, service the masculinized
corporate elite in these urban centres (Boris and Prugl 1996; Stasilius and Bakan 1997; Chin 1998; Chang and Ling 2000). Feminist
research reveals an even darker ‘underside’ of globalization, however, in the prize) that seek to
leverage women leaders’ collective strengths to bring about global peace and security (Stiehm
2006). Feminist scholars analyse the persistent ‘gender gap’ in the foreign policy beliefs of men and women foreign-policy-making
elites and citizens; women
leaders and citizens in Western states are consistently more likely to
oppose the use of force in international actions and are typically more supportive of
humanitarian interventions (Rosenau and Holsti 1982; Tessler, Nachtwey and Grant 1999). Peoples’ attitudes
toward gender equality and sexual liberty also affect their attitudes toward tolerance, human
rights and democracy and are good predictors of more pacific attitudes to international conflict
(Tessler and Warriner 1997).
States with greater domestic gender inequality are also more likely to go to war or to engage
in state-sanctioned violence according to feminist International Relations scholars (Goldstein 2001). Domestic
gender equality also reduces the likelihood that a state will use force first in inter-state
disputes, limits the escalation of violence and decreases the severity of violence during
international crises (Caprioli 2000; Caprioli and Boyer 2001). By the same token, those states that come closest to
gender parity also tend to be more pacific in their relations, more generous aid donors and
generally good citizens in the international realm (Regan and Paskeviciute 2003). However, our preoccupation
with states can prevent us from seeing the multiple non-state actors who also play significant roles in foreign policy making. Feminist
researches such as Enloe (1989, 2000) make visible the women who provide support services for military activities (domestic,
psychological, medical and sexual). If we see militarization as a social process consisting of many gendered assignments that make
possible those ultimate acts of state violence then, she argues, the official provision of sexual services on military bases for instance
can be seen as a central factor in a foreign intervention. In Sex Among Allies, Katherine Moon (1997) argues that the exploitative
sexual alliances between Korean prostitues (kijich’on women) and US soldiers defined and supported the similarly unequal military
alliance between the United States and South Korea in the post-war era. Among other things, under the Nixon Doctrine, kijich’on
women as personal ambassadors became the main indicator of Seoul’s willingness to accommodate US military interests (see also
Zimelis 2009).
Free Will/Political Consciousness
To be deemed “good” as a girl is to give up free will. At the moment when
happiness is associated with the renunciation of desire, acting upon free
will relegates women to a position of lacking the qualities deemed
necessary for a happy ending.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
It is Sophy’s imagination that threatens to get in the way of her happiness, ¶ and thus of the happiness of all. Imagination
is
what allows girls to question¶ the wisdom they have received and to ask whether what is good
for all is necessarily¶ good for them. We could describe one episode of The MiU on the Fhss¶ as Maggie becoming
Sophy (or becoming the Sophy that Sophy must be in¶ order to fulfil her narrative function). Maggie has an epiphany: the answer¶ to
her troubles is to become happy and good: “ it flashed through her like the¶ suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all
the miseries of her young¶ life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleasure as if that were the¶ central necessity of the
universe" (306). From the point of view of the parents,¶ their daughter has become good because she has submitted to their will:¶
“Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of puzzled wonder that Maggie¶ should be ‘growing up so good'; it was amazing that
this once ‘contrairy’ child¶ was becoming so submissive, so backward to assert her own will" (309). To¶ be
good as a girl is
to give up having a will of one’s own. The mother can thus love the daughter who is becoming
like furniture, who can support the family¶ by staying in the background: “The mother was getting fond of
her tall, brown¶ girl, the only bit of furniture now in which she could bestow her anxiety and¶ pride” (309).
It is as if Maggie has chosen between happiness and life, by giving up life for¶ happiness: ‘“ I’ve been a great deal happier,’ she said
at last timidly, ‘since I have¶ given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being discontented because¶ I couldn’t have my
own will. Our
life is determined for us — and it makes¶ the mind very free when we give up wishing
and only think of bearing what is¶ laid upon us and doing what is given us to do’” (317). Happiness
is associated¶ here with the renunciation of desire.^ It is her friend Philip whom Maggie is¶ addressing at this
point. It is Philip who refuses to allow Maggie to give up her¶ life for happiness in this way. He says impatiently: “ ‘But I can’t give up
wishing¶ , , , It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing while we are¶ thoroughly alive’” (317).
It is Philip who loves Maggie for her aliveness, who gives her books that¶ rekindle her sense of interest and curiosity about the
world. He gives her one¶ book that she cannot finish as she reads in this book the injustice of happiness,¶ which is given to some and
not others, those deemed worthy of love. “ ‘I didn’t¶ finish the book,’ said ivlaggie. ‘As soon as I came to the blond-haired young girl¶
reading in the park, I shut it up and determined to read no further, I foresaw¶ that that light-complexioned girl would win away all
the love from Corinne and¶ make her miserable. I’m determined to read no more books where the blondhaired ¶ women carry away
all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice¶ against them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman¶
triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca, and Flora¶ Maclvor, and Minna, and all the rest of the dark
unhappy ones’” (348-45).¶ Exercising a racialized vocabulary, Maggie exposes how darkness
becomes a¶ form of
unhappiness, as lacking the qualities deemed necessary for being given¶ a happy ending.*^
Maggie gives up on giving up her life for happiness by speaking¶ out against the injustice of
happiness and how it is given to some and not¶ others. The novel relies on contrasting the cousins Lucy and
Maggie in terms of¶ their capacity to be happy and dutiful. Maggie admits her unhappiness to Lucy:¶ “One gets a bad habit of being
unhappy” (389). For Lucy, being happy is a way of not being trouble; she cannot live with the reality of getting into trouble:¶ as she
says, “I’ve always been happy, I don’t know whether I could bear much¶ trouble” (389). Happiness
involves a way of
avoiding what one cannot bear.¶ The climactic moment of the novel comes when Stephen, who is betrothed¶ to Lucy,
announces his desire for Maggie, who is swept away by it. She almost¶ goes along with him but realizes that she cannot: “Many
things are difficult and¶ dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly: that I
must not, cannot, seek my¶ own
happiness by sacrificing others” (471). Maggie chooses duty as if without¶ duty there would be only the inclination of the
moment. As a good Kantian¶ subject, she says: “If the past is not to bind us, where can duty be? We should¶ have no law but the
inclination of the moment” (499), to which Stephen replies,¶ “But it weighs nothing with you that you are robbing me of my
happinessӦ (500-501).*'* By choosing duty, Maggie
does not avoid causing unhappiness.¶ She must pay for
her moment of transgression. Having deviated from the path¶ of happiness, she has fulfilled her destiny as trouble. As
she says in one letter:¶ “Oh God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget their pain” ¶ (528). Death as a result of a
natural disaster (a flood) thus liberates Maggie¶ from the unhappy consequences of causing trouble, of
deviating from the paths¶ of happiness. The injustice of her loss of life is how the novel speaks against¶ happiness,
which itself is narrated as the renunciation of life, imagination, and¶ desire.
Even if books like The Mill on the Floss seem to punish their heroines for¶ their transgressions, they also evoke the injustice of
happiness, showing what¶ and whom happiness gives up. In
giving up on those who seem to give up¶ on
happiness, happiness acquires its coherence. We could describe happiness¶ quite simply as a convention, such that
to deviate from the paths of happiness¶ is to challenge convention. What is a convention? The word
conviction comes¶ from the verb “to convene.” To convene is to gather, to assemble, or to meet¶ up, A convention is a point around
which we gather. To follow a convention is¶ to gather in the right way, to be assembled.
Only our shift of orientation is able to refuse the promise of happiness because
we must sacrifice happiness for political consciousness.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Consciousness and Unhappiness¶ To
be against forms of power and violence that are concealed under
signs¶ of happiness does not necessarily mean becoming unhappy, even if it does¶ mean refusing to go
along with things by showing signs of getting along. It¶ is striking that Shulamith Firestone’s “dream action” for the women’s
liberation¶ movement is “a smile boycott, at which declaration, all women would¶ instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles,
henceforth only smiling when something¶ pleased them " (1970: 90). To refuse
the promise of happiness is to
refuse¶ the demand that you show signs of happiness. For Firestone, this means a shift¶ of
orientation; it means changing one’s bodily habits: “In my own case, I had to¶ train myself out of the phony smile, which is like a
nervous tic on every teenage¶ girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real¶ smiling, I had less to
smile about” (go). To
refuse to keep smiling for Firestone¶ is not a refusal of joy or any of those good
feelings that are not distributed along¶ accepted paths of happiness. If anything, the false smile
sustains the very psychic¶ and political condition of unhappiness. The feminist who does not
smile¶ when she is not happy wants a more exciting life. Indeed, as Firestone argues:¶ “Eroticism is exciting. Noone wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and¶ routine affair without at least that spark. That’s just the point. Why has all joy¶
and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow difficult-to-find alley of¶ human experience, and all the rest laid waste?”
(155; second emphasis added).¶ Feminism
involves challenging the very “pressure” of happiness, the way
it¶ restricts the possibilities for finding excitement, of being excited.¶ This is not to say that feminism makes
women happy. It is simply that feminism¶ by refusing to go along with public displays of happiness can
participate¶ in the widening of horizons in which it is possible to find things. Feminism does not
guarantee what we will find through this expansion of bodily horizons. It simply opens up the places where we can
look. The fact that any such¶ opening is read as a sign of hostility, or of killing other people’s joy,
tells us¶ something. The public investment in happiness is an investment in a very particular and
narrow model of the good; being happy requires a commitment to¶ find what Firestone brilliantly describes as a “narrow
difficult-to-find alley” of¶ human experience.
I have explored how feminism is represented as causing unhappiness and as¶ caused by unhappiness.
Rather than disregarding the possibility of a link between¶ feminism and unhappiness, I want to consider another way of thinking¶
about it. We
could describe consciousness raising as raising consciousness of¶ unhappiness. As Gayle
Greene argues, “For though education raised women’s¶ expectations, it also made many of them
unhappy, creating ambitions that were¶ frustrated by the rigid domestic ideology that urged
them back into the home”¶ (ig gi: 9; emphasis added). Indeed, you have to experience limitations as limitations;¶ the act
of noticing limitations can actually make life seem more rather¶ than less limited. If the world
does not allow you to embrace the possibilities¶ that are opened up by education, then you
become even more aware of the¶ injustice of such limitations. Opening up the world, or
expanding one’s horizons,¶ can thus mean becoming more conscious of just how much there is
to be¶ unhappy about. Unhappiness might also provide an affective way of sustaining¶ our
attention on the cause of unhappiness. You would be unhappy UJiffi the¶ causes of unhappiness. Consciousnessraising does not turn unhappy housewives¶ into happy feminists, even though sometimes we might wish that
this¶ were the case!
Feminism involves political consciousness of what women are asked to give¶ up for happiness.
Indeed, in even becoming conscious of happiness as loss,¶ feminists have already refused to give up
desire, imagination, and curiosity¶ for happiness. There can be sadness simply in the realization
of what one has¶ given up. Feminist archives are thus full of housewives becoming conscious of¶ unhappiness as a mood
that seems to surround them: think of Virginia Woolf’s¶ Mrs. The feeling is certainly around, almost as a thickness in the air.¶ We
sense the unhappiness seeping through the tasks of the everyday. There she¶ is, about to get flowers, enjoying her walk in London.
During that walk, she¶ disappears: “But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch¶ picture), this body, with all its
capacities, seemed nothing — nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being¶ no
more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing¶ and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond
street, this being¶ Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”¶ ([1925] 1953: 14).
Suffering and sadness are inherited by feminists because they are relegated to
the position of objects with no life. This state of being relegates us to death and
we must trade in “happiness” for life.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
The arrival of suffering from the edges of social consciousness might teach¶ us about the
difficulty of becoming conscious of suffering or teach us about our¶ own resistances to
recognizing those seemingly “little” uneasy feelings of loss¶ or dissatisfaction as unhappiness
with one’s life. The party might expose the¶ need to keep busy, to keep going in the face of one’s disappearance. So much¶
sadness revealed in the very need to be busy. So much grief expressed in the¶ need not to be overwhelmed by grief. It is hard
labor just to recognize sadness¶ and disappointment, when you are living a life that is meant to
be happy but¶ just isn’t, which is meant to be full, but feels empty. It is difficult to give up an¶ idea of one’s
life, when one has lived a life according to that idea. To recognize¶ loss can mean to be willing to experience an
intensification of the sadness that¶ hopefulness postpones.^^
To inherit feminism can mean to inherit sadness. There is sadness in becoming¶ conscious not
only of gender as the restriction of possibility, but also¶ of how this restriction is not
necessary. After all, we have inherited the book¶ Mrs. Dolloivay; we have passed the book around, and the book itself has
passed¶ into other cultural form s.^ Take the film The Hours (2002, dir. Stephen Daldry),¶ based on M ichael’s Cunningham’s novel
The Hours (iggS), which takes its¶ title from W oolf’s original title for Mrs. Dal!ouJay, The Hours places three generations ¶ of women
alongside each other and follows their life on a single day:¶ we have a fictionalized account of a day in the life of Virginia Woolf
(Nicole¶ Kidman); of Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), an unhappy housewife living in¶ the 1950S as she bakes a cake and reads Mrs.
DaNouJay; and of Clarissa Vaughan¶ (Meryl Streep), who is organizing a party like Mrs, Dalloway, this time for her¶ former lover and
friend Richard (Ed Harriis), who is dying of a id s . Mrs. D(i!iou>o)J the novel is inherited by The Hours in multiple ways; we in^¶ herit
the lost name of the book, the book itself. The Hours also mimics the¶ book: following its orientation, its directionality in time, by
depicting a whole¶ life in a single day. The film attends closely to gestures which bind each gen^¶ eration to the figure of Mrs,
Dalloway: Clarissa, for instance, begins her day by¶ saying she will get the flowers for the party. The gestures or tasks of the
everyday¶ become forms of inheritance,¶ I want to focus in particular on Laura Brown, the unhappy ig so s housewife.¶ She is
reading Mrs. Da!fou>a^, and we hear the voice of Virginia Woolf as she¶ has been evoked by the film, and the voice travels over
time, as a trace of a history¶ that is not gone, of a past that lingers. Laura longs to read the book. She¶ caresses the book; she wants
to stay in bed with it; she wants to keep reading,¶ to read more and more. Her desire for the book is also her desire not to be in¶ her
life, to be suspended from its time and rhythms: she wants to spend time¶ with the book to avoid spending time with her husband
and child.¶ It is a day, one day. It is her husband’s birthday; but Laura wants to say in¶ bed with the book; we imagine that she wants
to be in bed with Virginia. Later,¶ when her husband has gone, her friend Kitty arrives and asks her about the¶ book. Laura talks of
Mrs. Dalloway, as if she was co-present, as if she shares the¶ same space, the same world. She says of Mrs. Dalloway, “ Because she
is confident¶ everyone thinks she is fine. But she isn't.” To
be confident is to convince¶ the world of a happiness
that does exist; it is to pass as happy with what does¶ exist. You work to support the belief that
everything is fine—when it isn’t. The¶ story of Mrs. Dn!Jo\i>a)i becomes Laura’s description of her own present, what¶
surrounds her, her life world. She identifies with Mrs. Dalloway through suffering,¶ by sharing her grief, as a grief that is not
revealed, as if to say; like you,¶ I am not fine, like you, my life is about maintaining the appearance of being¶ fine, an appearance
which is also a disappearance.
What happens when domestic bliss does not create bliss? Laura tries to bake¶ a cake. She cracks an egg. The cracking of the egg
becomes a thematic gesture¶ throughout the film, connecting the domestic labor of women over time. To¶ bake a cake ought to be
a happy endeavor, a labor of love. Instead, the film reveals¶ a sense of oppression that lingers in the very act of breaking the eggs.
If,¶ as I suggested in the last chapter, happiness creates its own horizon, as a horizon¶ of likes, then it is possible to be surrounded by
likes that are not your own,¶ and by promises that haunt you in their emptiness. Not only do such objects not cause your
happiness but they may remind
you of your failure to be made¶ happy; they embody a feeling of
disappointment. The bowl in which you crack¶ the eggs waits for you. You can feel the pressure of its wait. The empty bowl¶
feels like an accusation. Feminist archives are full of scenes of domesticity in¶ which domestic objects, happy objects, become alien,
even menacing.¶ In one very poignant scene in The Hours, when Laura’s family gathers around¶ the table, having their own party
with the cake she has finally baked, the promise¶ of happiness is evoked. Her husband is telling their child the story of how¶ they
met. He says: “I used to think about bringing her to this house. To a life,¶ pretty much like this. And it was the thought of the
happiness, the thought of¶ this woman, the thought of this life, that’s what kept me going. I had an idea¶ about our happiness.” As
he speaks, tears well in Laura’s eyes. Her sadness is¶ with his idea of happiness, with what keeps him going, and the world it creates¶
for her. Laura explains to Clarissa at the end of the film how she came to leave¶ her husband and child: “ It would be wonderful to
say that you regretted it; it¶ would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you¶ had no choice? It is
what you can bear. There it is. No one is going to forgive¶ me. It was death. I choose life,” A
life premised on “an idea
about our happiness,”¶ for Laura, would be unbearable. Such happiness would be death. She¶ does
not leave this life for happiness. She leaves this happiness for life.¶ We might say, why not leave his
happiness for another kind of happiness, a¶ happiness that could be called her own? Couldn’t we understand the creativity¶ of
feminism, its potentiality for generating new horizons, as giving us alternative¶ ideas of happiness? Perhaps what is revealed in
Laura’s sadness is how¶ happiness
is saturated by its own history becoming too hard to separate from¶
an idea, from an idea her husband has for her. For Laura, to leave happiness¶ is to leave everything behind
her; it is to cause unhappiness for those who are¶ left behind, an unhappiness which is inherited
by her child, who, we learn by¶ the end of the film, is Richard, And it is Clarissa who in The Hours cares for¶ Richard and attends
to his unhappiness, who has to pick up the pieces of the¶ happiness that Laura has shattered. Clarissa: who ends up (like Mrs.
Dalloway)¶ organizing a party for her friend, worrying (like Mrs. Dalloway) that her¶ parties are trivial. Clarissa (like Mrs. Dalloway)
tries desperately not to be sad;¶ to use the happy occasion of the party, its celebration of Richard’s award of the¶ Carrouthers Prize
for poetry, to stop herself thinking about the sadness of his¶ imminent death; to avoid being overwhelmed by grief.
Alt/Method
Killjoy
Vote NEG to kill joy. We use the negative positionality of the feminist killjoy to
disturb the AFF’s fantasy of happiness through pointing out problematic
notions
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Feminism gives time and space to¶ women’s desires that are not assembled around the
reproduction of the family¶ form. Feminists must thus be willing to cause disturbance. Feminists
might¶ even have to be willful. A subject would be described as willful at the point that¶ her will
does not coincide with that of others, those whose will is reified as the¶ general or social will.*^
The figure of the female troublemaker thus shares the same horizon with the figure of the
feminist killjoy. Both figures are intelligible if they are read¶ through the lens of the history of
happiness. Feminists might kill joy simply¶ by not finding the objects that promise happiness to
be quite so promising.¶ The word feminism is thus saturated with unhappiness. Feminists by
declaring¶ themselves as feminists are already read as destroying something that is¶ thought of
by others not only as being good but as the cause of happiness. The¶ feminist killjoy “spoils” the
happiness of others; she is a spoilsport because she¶ refuses to convene, to assemble, or to meet up
over happiness.¶ In the thick sociality of everyday spaces, feminists are thus attributed as¶ the origin of bad
feeling, as the ones who ruin the atmosphere, which is how¶ the atmosphere might be imagined
(retrospectively) as shared. In order to get¶ along, you have to participate in certain forms of solidarity: you have to laugh¶ at the
right points. Feminists are typically represented as grumpy and humorless,¶ often as a way of
protecting the right to certain forms of social bonding¶ or of holding onto whatever is
perceived to be under threat.*^ Feminists don’t¶ even have to say anything to be read as killing
joy, A feminist colleague says to¶ me that she just has to open her mouth in meetings to witness eyes rolling as¶ if to say “oh here
she goes.”
My experience of being a feminist has taught me much about rolling eyes.¶ This is why when people say the bad feeling is coming
from this person or¶ that person, I am never convinced. My skepticism comes from childhood¶ experiences of being a feminist
daughter in a relatively conventional family,¶ always at odds with the performance of good feeling in the family, always
assumed¶ to be bringing others down, for example, by pointing out sexism in¶ other people’s
talk. Say we are seated at the dinner table. Around this table,¶ the family gathers, having polite conversations, where only certain
things can¶ be brought up. Someone says something that you consider problematic. You¶ respond, carefully, perhaps. You might be
speaking quietly; or you might be¶ getting “wound up,” recognizing with frustration that you are being wound¶ up by someone who
is winding you up. The
violence of what was said or the¶ violence of provocation goes unnoticed.
However she speaks, the feminist is¶ usually the one who is viewed as “causing the argument,”
who is disturbing the¶ fragility of peace.
Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does
the feminist kill¶ other people’s joy by pointing out
moments of sexism? Or does she expose the¶ bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated
under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things,¶ or could anger
be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through¶ objects get brought to the surface in a certain way? Feminist
subjects might¶ bring others down not only by talking about unhappy topics such as sexism but¶
by exposing how happiness is sustained by erasing the very signs of not getting¶ along. Feminists
do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that¶ happiness can be found in
certain places. To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling.¶ It is not just that feminists might not be happily affected by the objects
that¶ are supposed to cause happiness but that their failure to be happy is read as¶ sabotaging the happiness
of others. We can consider the relationship between the negativity of the figure of the feminist killjoy and how certain
bodies are “encountered” as being negative,¶ Marilyn Frye argues that oppression involves the
requirement that you¶ show signs of being happy with the situation in which you find yourself.
As¶ she puts it, “It is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and¶ be cheerful. If
we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our¶ situation” (1983; 2). To be
oppressed requires you to show signs of happiness,¶ as signs of being or having been adjusted. As
a result, for Frye, “anything but¶ the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean,
bitter, angry¶ or dangerous” (2), If an oppressed person does not smile or show signs of being¶ happy, then he or she is
read as being negative: as angry, hostile, unhappy, and¶ so on. Happiness becomes the expected “default
position” for those who are¶ oppressed, such that it comes to define the sphere of neutrality.
You are either¶ happy: or you are not.
To be recognized as a feminist is to be assigned to a difficult category and¶ a category of
difficulty. You are “already read” as “not easy to get along with”¶ when you name yourself as a
feminist. You have to show that you are not difficult¶ through displaying signs of good will and
happiness. Frye alludes to such¶ experiences when she observes that “this means, at the very least, that we may¶ be found
to be ‘difficult’ or unpleasant to work with, which is enough to cost¶ one one’s livelihood” (2-3).
We can also witness an investment in feminist¶ unhappiness (the myth that feminists kill joy because they are
joyless). There¶ is a desire to believe that women become feminists because they are unhappy,¶
perhaps as a displacement of their envy for those who have achieved the happiness¶ they have
failed to achieve.^^ This desire functions as a defense of happiness¶ against feminist critique. This is not to say that feminists
might not be unhappy; we might be unhappy after all with this representation of feminism¶ as caused by unhappiness. My point
here would be that feminists
are read as¶ being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence,
and power are read¶ as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists
are¶ unhappy about.
Break Gendered Scripts
The gendered “happiness scripts” provide a set of instructions for what
women must do to be happy. The history of feminism presents a history
of troublemaking, a history of women who refuse to try constantly try to
make others happy. Our 1NC speech act is key to breaking down these
gendered scripts through a radical break from the traditional gendered
scripts presented by the 1AC.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
We learn from this history how happiness
is used as a technology or instrument,¶ which allows the
reorientation of individual desire toward a common¶ good.® We also learn from rereading books like Emile
how happiness is not¶ simply used to secure social relations instrumentally but works as an idea or¶ aspiration
within everyday life, shaping the very terms through which individuals¶ share their world with
others, creating “scripts” for how to live well.¶ We can think of gendered scripts as “happiness
scripts” providing a set of¶ instructions for what women and men must do in order to be happy,
whereby¶ happiness is what follows being natural or good. Going along with happiness¶ scripts is
how we get along: to get along is to be willing and able to express¶ happiness in proximity to the
right things. The child thus has a happiness duty.¶ A duty can function as a debt, a way of returning what is owed. In the
previous¶ chapter, I spoke of happiness as involving the logic of deferral: the parents¶ defer their hope for happiness to the next
generation in order to avoid giving¶ up on the idea of happiness as a response to disappointment (you can keep¶ your belief in
happiness while being disappointed as long as you can place¶ your hopes for happiness in another). The obligation of the child to be
happy¶ is a repaying of what the child owes, of what is due to the parents given what¶ they have given up. The duty of the child is to
make the parents happy and to¶ perform this duty happily by being happy or by showing signs of being happy¶ in the right way.
Going along with this duty can mean simply approximating the signs of¶ being happy — passing
as happy — in order to keep things in the right place.¶ Feminist genealogies can be described as
genealogies of women who not only do not place their hopes for happiness in the right things
but who speak out¶ about their unhappiness with the very obligation to be made happy by such¶
things. The history of feminism is thus a history of making trouble,^ a history¶ of women who
refuse to become Sophy, by refusing to follow other people’s¶ goods, or by refusing to make others
happy.
The female troublemaker might be trouble because she gets in the way of¶ the happiness of
others. Judith Butler shows how the figure of the trouble^¶ maker exposes the intimacy of rebellion and
punishment within the law. As¶ she argues in her preface to Gender Trouble. “To make trouble was, within the¶ reigning
discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely¶ because that would get one in trouble. The rebellion and its
reprimand seemed¶ to be caught up in the same terms, a phenomenon that gave rise to my first¶ critical insight into the subtle ruse
of power: The prevailing law threatened¶ one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble” (1950:¶ vii).
Happiness might be what keeps you out of trouble only by evoking the¶ unhappiness of getting
into trouble. We can consider how nineteenth century¶ bildungsroman novels by women writers offered a rebellion against
Emile in¶ the narrativization of the limitations of moral education for girls and its narrow¶ precepts of happiness. Such novels are all
about the intimacy of trouble and¶ happiness.¶ Take, for example, George Eliot’s The Mif! on rhc Floss, which is told from the¶ point
of view of Maggie Tulliver.'^° The early stages of the novel depict Maggie’s¶ childhood, the difficulty of her relationship with her
brother Torn, and her perpetual¶ fear of disappointing her parents. The novel contrasts Tom and Maggie¶ in terms of how they are
judged by their parents: “ Tom never did the same¶ sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment¶ of
what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened that¶ though he was much more willful and inflexible than
Maggie, his mother hardly¶ ever called him naughty” ([i860] 1965: 73). Various incidents occur that contribute¶ to Maggie’s
reputation as a troublemaker: when she lets Tom’s dogs die¶ (37); when she cuts her dark hair (73); when she knocks over Tom’s
building¶ blocks (96); and when she pushes their cousin Lucy into the water (111-12 ).
The novel shows us how trouble
does not simply reside within individuals¶ but involves ways of reading
situations of conflict and struggle. Reading¶ such situations involves locating the cause of trouble,
which is another way of¶ talking about conversion points: the troublemaker is the one who
violates the fragile conditions of peace. If in all these instances Maggie is attributed as the¶ cause of trouble, then
what does not get noticed is the violence that makes her¶ act in the way that she does, as the
violence of provocation that hovers in the¶ background. Even when Tom is told off, it is Maggie who is the
reference point¶ in situations of trouble. Mrs, Tulliver says to Tom: “ 'Then go and fetch her in¶ this minute, you naughty boy. And
how could you think o’ going to pond and¶ taking your sister where there was dirt. You know she’ll do mischief if there’s¶ mischief to
be done.’ It was Mrs. Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his¶ misdemeanor, somehow or other, to Maggie” (114), Maggie
gets into trouble¶ because she is already read as being trouble before anything happens.
Maggie gets into trouble for speaking; to
speak is already a form of defiance¶ if you are supposed to
recede into the background. She speaks out when something¶ happens that she perceives to be wrong. The crisis of the
novel is when¶ her father loses the mill, threatening his ability to look after his family. Maggie¶ is shocked by the lack off sympathy
and care they receive from their extended¶ family, Maggie speaks back out of a sense of care for her parents: “Maggie,¶ having
hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in this way, stood still, with her¶ large dark eyes glaring at them as if she was ready to await
all consequences. . . .¶ ‘You haven’t seen the end o’ your trouble w i’ that child, Bessy,’ said Mrs Pullet;¶ ‘she’s beyond everything for
boldness and unthankfulness. Its dreadful. I might¶ ha’ let alone paying for her schooling, for she’s worse nor ever’” (229). Girls¶
who speak out are bold and thankless. It is important that Maggie is compelled¶ to speak from a sense of injustice.
Already we can witness the relationship between¶ consciousness of injustice and being
attributed as the cause of unhappiness.¶ The novel relates Maggie’s tendency to get into trouble
with her desire, will,¶ and imagination, with her love of new words that bring with them the
promise¶ of unfamiliar worlds. For instance, she loves Latin because “she delighted in¶ new words” (159). For Maggie
“these mysterious sentences, snatched from an¶ unknown context — like strange horns of beasts and leaves of unknown plants,¶
brought from some far-off region—gave boundless scope to her imagination¶ and w ere all the more fascinating because they were
in a peculiar tongue of¶ their own, which she could learn to interpret” (159 -6 0 ), The
association between¶
imagination and trouble is powerful. It teaches us how the happiness¶ duty for women is about
the narrowing of horizons, about giving up an interest¶ in what lies beyond the familiar. Returning to
Emile, it is interesting that the danger of unhappiness is associated precisely with women having too
much curiosity. At one point in the¶ narrative, Sophy gets misdirected. Her imagination and desires are activated¶ by reading
too many books, leading to her becoming an “unhappy girl, over^¶ whelmed with her secret grief” (4.39-40). If Sophy were to
become too imaginative,¶ we would not get our happy ending, premised on Sophy being given to¶ Emile. The narrator says in
response to the threat of such an unhappy ending,¶ “Let us give Emile his Sophy; let us restore this sweet girl to life and provide¶ her
with a less vivid imagination and a happier fate” (441).*^ Being restored¶ to life is here being returned to the straight and narrow.
Imagination is what¶ makes women look beyond the script of happiness to a different fate. Having¶ made Sophy sweet and
unimaginative, the book can end happily.¶ Feminist readers might want to challenge this association between unhappiness¶ and
female imagination, which in the moral economy of happiness, makes¶ female imagination a bad thing. But if we do not operate in
this economy—¶ that is, if we do not assume that happiness is what is good — then we can read¶ the link between female
imagination and unhappiness differently. We
might¶ explore how imagination is what allows women to be
liberated from happiness¶ and the narrowness of its horizons. We might want the girls to read the books¶ that
enable them to be overwhelmed with grief.
1NC = Defiance
Our 1NC speech act is already a form of defiance in a space in which women are
supposed to recede into the background. Only the 1NC imagination can serve as
a form of liberation from traditional notions of happiness.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Going along with this duty can mean simply approximating the signs of¶ being happy — passing
as happy — in order to keep things in the right place.¶ Feminist genealogies can be described as
genealogies of women who not only do not place their hopes for happiness in the right things
but who speak out¶ about their unhappiness with the very obligation to be made happy by such¶
things. The history of feminism is thus a history of making trouble,^ a history¶ of women who
refuse to become Sophy, by refusing to follow other people’s¶ goods, or by refusing to make others
happy.
The female troublemaker might be trouble because she gets in the way of¶ the happiness of
others. Judith Butler shows how the figure of the trouble^¶ maker exposes the intimacy of rebellion and
punishment within the law. As¶ she argues in her preface to Gender Trouble. “To make trouble was, within the¶ reigning
discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely¶ because that would get one in trouble. The rebellion and its
reprimand seemed¶ to be caught up in the same terms, a phenomenon that gave rise to my first¶ critical insight into the subtle ruse
of power: The prevailing law threatened¶ one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble” (1950:¶ vii).
Happiness might be what keeps you out of trouble only by evoking the¶ unhappiness of getting
into trouble. We can consider how nineteenth century¶ bildungsroman novels by women writers offered a rebellion against
Emile in¶ the narrativization of the limitations of moral education for girls and its narrow¶ precepts of happiness. Such novels are all
about the intimacy of trouble and¶ happiness.¶ Take, for example, George Eliot’s The Mif! on rhc Floss, which is told from the¶ point
of view of Maggie Tulliver.'^° The early stages of the novel depict Maggie’s¶ childhood, the difficulty of her relationship with her
brother Torn, and her perpetual¶ fear of disappointing her parents. The novel contrasts Tom and Maggie¶ in terms of how they are
judged by their parents: “ Tom never did the same¶ sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment¶ of
what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened that¶ though he was much more willful and inflexible than
Maggie, his mother hardly¶ ever called him naughty” ([i860] 1965: 73). Various incidents occur that contribute¶ to Maggie’s
reputation as a troublemaker: when she lets Tom’s dogs die¶ (37); when she cuts her dark hair (73); when she knocks over Tom’s
building¶ blocks (96); and when she pushes their cousin Lucy into the water (111-12 ).
The novel shows us how trouble
does not simply reside within individuals¶ but involves ways of reading
situations of conflict and struggle. Reading¶ such situations involves locating the cause of trouble,
which is another way of¶ talking about conversion points: the troublemaker is the one who
violates the fragile conditions of peace. If in all these instances Maggie is attributed as the¶ cause of trouble, then
what does not get noticed is the violence that makes her¶ act in the way that she does, as the
violence of provocation that hovers in the¶ background. Even when Tom is told off, it is Maggie who is the
reference point¶ in situations of trouble. Mrs, Tulliver says to Tom: “ 'Then go and fetch her in¶ this minute, you naughty boy. And
how could you think o’ going to pond and¶ taking your sister where there was dirt. You know she’ll do mischief if there’s¶ mischief to
be done.’ It was Mrs. Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his¶ misdemeanor, somehow or other, to Maggie” (114), Maggie
gets into trouble¶ because she is already read as being trouble before anything happens.
Maggie gets into trouble for speaking; to
speak is already a form of defiance¶ if you are supposed to
recede into the background. She speaks out when something¶ happens that she perceives to be wrong. The crisis of the
novel is when¶ her father loses the mill, threatening his ability to look after his family. Maggie¶ is shocked by the lack off sympathy
and care they receive from their extended¶ family, Maggie speaks back out of a sense of care for her parents: “Maggie,¶ having
hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in this way, stood still, with her¶ large dark eyes glaring at them as if she was ready to await
all consequences. . . .¶ ‘You haven’t seen the end o’ your trouble w i’ that child, Bessy,’ said Mrs Pullet;¶ ‘she’s beyond everything for
boldness and unthankfulness. Its dreadful. I might¶ ha’ let alone paying for her schooling, for she’s worse nor ever’” (229). Girls¶
who speak out are bold and thankless. It is important that Maggie is compelled¶ to speak from a sense of injustice.
Already we can witness the relationship between¶ consciousness of injustice and being
attributed as the cause of unhappiness.¶ The novel relates Maggie’s tendency to get into trouble
with her desire, will,¶ and imagination, with her love of new words that bring with them the
promise¶ of unfamiliar worlds. For instance, she loves Latin because “she delighted in¶ new words” (159). For Maggie
“these mysterious sentences, snatched from an¶ unknown context — like strange horns of beasts and leaves of unknown plants,¶
brought from some far-off region—gave boundless scope to her imagination¶ and w ere all the more fascinating because they were
in a peculiar tongue of¶ their own, which she could learn to interpret” (159 -6 0 ), The
association between¶
imagination and trouble is powerful. It teaches us how the happiness¶ duty for women is about
the narrowing of horizons, about giving up an interest¶ in what lies beyond the familiar. Returning to
Emile, it is interesting that the danger of unhappiness is associated precisely with women having too
much curiosity. At one point in the¶ narrative, Sophy gets misdirected. Her imagination and desires are activated¶ by reading
too many books, leading to her becoming an “unhappy girl, over^¶ whelmed with her secret grief” (4.39-40). If Sophy were to
become too imaginative,¶ we would not get our happy ending, premised on Sophy being given to¶ Emile. The narrator says in
response to the threat of such an unhappy ending,¶ “Let us give Emile his Sophy; let us restore this sweet girl to life and provide¶ her
with a less vivid imagination and a happier fate” (441).*^ Being restored¶ to life is here being returned to the straight and narrow.
Imagination is what¶ makes women look beyond the script of happiness to a different fate. Having¶ made Sophy sweet and
unimaginative, the book can end happily.¶ Feminist readers might want to challenge this association between unhappiness¶ and
female imagination, which in the moral economy of happiness, makes¶ female imagination a bad thing. But if we do not operate in
this economy—¶ that is, if we do not assume that happiness is what is good — then we can read¶ the link between female
imagination and unhappiness differently. We
might¶ explore how imagination is what allows women to be
liberated from happiness¶ and the narrowness of its horizons. We might want the girls to read the books¶ that
enable them to be overwhelmed with grief.
It is Sophy’s imagination that threatens to get in the way of her happiness, ¶ and thus of the happiness of all. Imagination
is
what allows girls to question¶ the wisdom they have received and to ask whether what is good
for all is necessarily¶ good for them. We could describe one episode of The MiU on the Fhss¶ as Maggie becoming
Sophy (or becoming the Sophy that Sophy must be in¶ order to fulfil her narrative function). Maggie has an epiphany: the answer¶ to
her troubles is to become happy and good: “ it flashed through her like the¶ suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all
the miseries of her young¶ life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleasure as if that were the¶ central necessity of the
universe" (306). From the point of view of the parents,¶ their daughter has become good because she has submitted to their will:¶
“Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of puzzled wonder that Maggie¶ should be ‘growing up so good'; it was amazing that
this once ‘contrairy’ child¶ was becoming so submissive, so backward to assert her own will" (309).
(Intersectional) Rage
Our rage in this debate is critical to fighting patriarchy through providing
women with agency and a way to materially ground our resistance. We
use this as a form of conscious-raising to come together and create new
social forms and structures in which individual changes can come to
fruition. Our anger moves from the personal to the political and becomes
a force for shaping a new world absent patriarchy.
Kaplow 73
Susi, 1973. “Getting Angry” Radical Feminism. http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/kaplow.htm // KD
Two scenarios: An angry man: someone has infringed on his rights, gone against his interests, or harmed a loved one. Or perhaps his
anger is social--against racism or militarism. He holds his anger in check (on the screen we can see the muscles of his face tighten, his
fists clench) and then, at the strategic moment, he lets it go. We see him yelling, shouting his angry phrases with sureness and
confidence--or pushing a fist into his opponent's stomach with equal conviction. In either event, the anger is resolved; our hero has
vented it and is content with success or accepts what he knows to be unmerited defeat.¶ Dissolve to scene two. An angry woman:
angry at her man for cheating on her or (more likely) at the other woman. If we're in the good old days, she stomps up to her man
and begins to scream wildly, he holds her down with his pinky, her anger melts in his embrace. After the fade-out, we find a puzzled
heroine wondering how she could have been angry at such a good man. Or she marches over to the local saloon, hurls a few choice
epithets at her rival, and then the hair-pulling begins. This ludicrous scene is always broken up by the amused and slightly
scandalized gentlemen on the sidelines. In modern dress the same episode would be played differently. Discovering her husband's
or lover's infidelity, the woman would smolder inwardly until the anger had burned down to a bitter resentment or becomes such a
pressurized force that it could only come out in a rage so uncontrollable that the man (and the audience) can dismiss it as irrational.
"I can't talk to you when you're like this." Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.¶ For a woman
in our society is denied
the forthright expression of her healthy anger. Her attempts at physical confrontation seem
ridiculous; "ladies" do a slow burn, letting out their anger indirectly in catty little phrases, often directed against a third party,
especially children. A woman has learned to hold back her anger: It's unseemly, aesthetically displeasing, and
against the sweet, pliant feminine image to be angry. And the woman fears her own anger: She the great
conciliator, the steadier of rocked boats, moves, out of her fear, to quiet not only others' anger
but also her own. Small wonder that when the vacuum-sealed lid bursts off, the angry woman seems
either like a freaked-out nut or a bitch on wheels. Her frenzy is intensified by the shakiness of her
commitment to her own anger. What if she's really wrong? What if the other person is right? -Or worse (and this is the greatest fear) hits back with, "You're crazy, I don't know what you're so mad about."¶ Why
can't women allow themselves the outlet of their contained anger? Why do those around them
find an angry woman so frightening that they must demoralize and deflate her into a degraded,
inauthentic calm? Healthy anger says "I'm a person. I have certain human rights which you can't
deny. I have a right to be treated with fairness and compassion. I have a right to live my life as I
see fit, I have a right to get what I can for myself without hurting you. And if you deprive me of
my rights, I'm not going to thank you, I'm going to say 'fuck off' and fight you if I have to." A
person's anger puts him or her on center stage. It claims attention for itself and demands to be
taken seriously, or else. (Or else I won't talk to you, I won't work with you or be friendly toward you, or else, ultimately, our
association is over.)¶ Expressing anger means risking. Risking that the other person will be angry in return, risking that he or she will
misunderstand the anger or refuse to deal with it, risking that the anger itself is misplaced or misinformed. So you
need
strength to say you're angry--both the courage of your convictions and the ability to accept that your anger may be
unwarranted without feeling crushed into nothingness. You must not have your total worth as a person riding
on the worth of each individual case of anger.¶ Thus anger is self-confident, willing to fight for
itself even at the jeopardy of the status quo, capable of taking a risk and, if necessary, of accepting defeat
without total demise. Above all, anger
is assertive. The traditional woman is the polar opposite of this
description. Lacking confidence in herself and in her own perception, she backs away from a fight or, following the rules of
chivalry, lets someone else do battle for her. Strong emotions disturb her for the disruption they bring to things-as-they-are. So
shaky is her self-image that every criticism is seen as an indictment of her person. She is a living, walking apology for her own
existence--what could be more foreign to self-assertion?¶ Although the reality has changed somewhat, most women will recognize
themselves somewhere in this description. And society
clings to this model as its ideal and calls an angry
woman unfeminine. Because anger takes the woman out of her earth mother role as bastion of
peace and calm, out of her familial role as peacemaker, out of her political role as preserver of
the status quo, out of her economic role as cheap labor, out of her social role as second-class
citizen. It takes her out of roles altogether and makes her a person.¶ It is no accident, then, that the
emotion which accompanies the first steps toward liberation is, for most women, anger.
Whatever sense of self-worth you have been able to emerge with after twenty or thirty years of having your mind messed with,
gives you the vague feeling that your situation is not what it should be and sends you looking tentatively at the world around you for
explanations. Realizations are, at first, halting, and then begin to hit you like a relentless sledge hammer, driving the anger deeper
and deeper into your consciousness with every blow.¶ Your fury focuses on the select group of individuals who have done you the
most damage. You are furious at your parents for having wanted a boy instead; at your mother (and this fury is mixed with
compassion) for having let herself be stifled and having failed to show you another model of female behavior; at your father for
having gotten a cheap bolster to his ego at your and your mother's expense.¶ You are furious at those who groom you to play your
shabby role. At the teachers who demanded less of you because you were a girl. At the doctors who told you birth control was the
woman's responsibility, gave you a Hobson's choice of dangerous and ineffective devices, then refused you an abortion when these
failed to work. At the psychiatrist who called you frigid because you didn't have vaginal orgasms and who told you you were neurotic
for wanting more than the unpaid, unappreciated role of maid, wet nurse, and occasional lay. At employers who paid you less and
kept you in lousy jobs. At the message from the media which you never understood before: "You've come a long way, baby" -- down
the dead-end, pre-fab street we designed for you.¶ Furious, above all, at men. For the grocer who has always called you "honey" you
now have a stiff, curt "don't call me honey." For the men on the street who visit their daily indignities on your body, you have a "fuck
off," or, if you're brave, a knee in the right place. For your male friends (and these get fewer and fewer) who are "all for women's lib"
you reserve a cynical eye and a ready put-down. And for your man (if he's still around), a lot of hostile, angry questions. Is he
different from other men? How? And when he fails to prove himself, your rage explodes readily from just beneath the surface.¶ This
is an uncomfortable period to live through. You are
raw with an anger that seems to have a mind and will of
its own. Your friends, most of whom disagree with you, find you strident and difficult. And you become all the more so because of
your fear that they are right, that you're crazy after all. You yourself get tired of this anger--it's exhausting to be furious all the time-which won't even let you watch a movie or have a conversation in peace.¶ But from
your fury, you are gaining
strength. The exercise of your anger gives you a sense of self and of self-worth. And the more
this sense increases, the angrier you become. The two elements run in a dialectic whirlwind,
smashing idols and myths all around them. You see, too, that you can get angry and it doesn't kill
people, they don't kill you, the world doesn't fall apart.¶ Then this anger, burning white hot against the outside
world, suddenly veers around and turns its flame toward you. Sure, they fucked you up and over, sure, they oppressed you, sure
they continue to degrade and use you. But--why did you let it happen? Why do you continue to let it happen? All of a sudden you
are up against the part you played in your own oppression. You were the indispensible accomplice to the crime. You internalized
your own inferiority, the pressing necessity to be beautiful and seductive, the belief that men are more important than women, the
conviction that marriage is the ultimate goal. Seeing this, you
are violent against yourself for every time you
were afraid to try something for fear of failing, for all the hours lost on make-up and shopping, for every woman
you missed because there was a man in the room, for getting yourself stuck as a housewife or in a job you hate because "marriage is
your career."¶ This phase of anger turned inward is terrifying. You are alone with your own failed responsibilities toward yourself,
however much you can still blame others. It is this phase that some women find unbearable and flee from, returning to the first
phase of anger or dropping out altogether. Because this inturned anger demands action--change--and won't let go until its demands
begin to be satisfied. You can fall back on your inability to control others and their behavior toward you. But you can't comfortably
claim powerlessness over your own conduct. Nor can you, at least for long, go on being furious at others (the forty-five-year-old who
still blames mommy, flounders) if you don't even try to get yourself together.¶ This inturned anger is a constructive or rather
reconstructive catalyst. For what you can do under its impetus is to restructure yourself, putting new images, patterns and
expectations in place of the old, no longer viable ones. As
you use your anger, you also tame it. Anger becomes
a tool which you can control, not only to help you make personal changes but to deal with the
world outside as well. You can mobilize your anger to warn those around you that you're not
having any more bullshit, to underscore your seriousness, to dare to drive your point home. ¶
Through the exercise of your anger, as you see its efficacy and thus your own, you gain strength.
And the growing feeling that you control your anger and not vice versa adds to this strength. As
you gain this control, become surer of yourself, less afraid of being told you're crazy, your anger
is less enraged and, in a sense, calmer. So it becomes discriminating. You reserve it for those individuals and groups
who are messing with your mind--be they men or other women.¶ This progression of anger finds its ultimate meaning as an
experience shared with other women. All
striving to understand their collective situation, women in a
group can help each other through the first, painful phase of outward-directed anger. Through
consciousness-raising each woman can (at least ideally) find sufficient confirmation of her
perceptions to be reassured of her own sanity--and can find growing strength to do without
such confirmation when necessary.¶ In the second phase of inturned anger, women can support one another in their
attempts at self-definition and change, change which others will try to forestall. And, at the same time, they can start to
move together to create new social forms and structures in which individual changes can come
to fruition. Controlled, directed, but nonetheless passionate, anger moves from the personal to
the political and becomes a force for shaping our new destiny.
Rage is a necessary tool to fight against privilege. Although our struggles are
not the same, women of all races and ethnicities can come together through
anger, learning the truths of our situations – refusing to listen to each other can
only hurt the progress in our struggles. Womxn’s rage is beautiful. It is
energizing. We must forefront the different manifestations of rage in order to
produce any change.
Lorde 1981, Audre. The Uses of Anger. Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25,
No. 1/2, Looking Back, Moving Forward: 25 Years of Women's Studies History (Spring Summer, 1997), pp. 278-285. Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of
New York,. URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005441 . *we do not endorse ableist
language
Women respond to racism. My
response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, on that anger, beneath that anger, on
top of that anger,ignoring that anger, feeding upon that anger, learning to use that anger before
it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight of that
anger. My fear of that anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing,
also. Women responding to racism means women responding to anger, the anger of exclusion,
of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness,
misnaming, betrayal, and coopting. My anger is a response to racist attitudes, to the actions and
presumptions that arise out of those attitudes. If in your dealings with other women your
actions have reflected those attitudes, then my anger and your attendant fears, perhaps, are
spotlights that can be used for your growth in the same way I have had to use learning to
express anger for my growth. But for corrective surgery, not guilt. Guilt and defensiveness are
bricks in a wall against which we will all perish, for they serve none of our futures. Because I do not want this to
Racism. The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and implied.
become a theoretical discussion, I am going to give a few examples of interchanges between women that I hope will illustrate the points I am trying to make. In the interest of time, I am going to cut them short. I
want you to know that there were many more. For example: • I speak out of a direct and particular anger at a particular academic conference, and a white woman comes up and says, "Tell me how you feel but
don't say it too harshly or I cannot hear you." But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the message that her life may change? • The Women's Studies Program of a southern university invites a Black
woman to read following a week-long forum on Black and white women. "What has this week given to you?" I ask. The most vocal white woman says, "I think I've gotten a lot. I feel Black women really understand
me a lot better now; they have a better idea of where I'm coming from." As if understanding her lay at the core of the racist problem. These are the bricks that go into the walls against which we will bash our
consciousness, unless we recognize that they can be taken apart. • After fifteen years of a women's movement which professes to address the life concerns and possible futures of all women, I still hear, on
campus after campus. "How can we address the issues of racism? No women of Color attended." Or, the other side of that statement, "We have no one in our department equipped to teach their work." In other
words, racism is a Black women's problem, a problem of women of Color, and only we can discuss it. • After I have read from my work entitled "Poems for Women in Rage" a white woman asks me, "Are you going
to do anything with how we can deal directly with our anger? I feel it's so important." I ask, "How do you use our rage?" And then I have to turn away from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to
participate in her own annihilation. Because I do not exist to feel her anger for her. • White women are beginning to examine their relationships to Black women, yet often I hear you wanting only to deal with the
little colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved nurse- maid, the occasional second-grade classmate; those tender memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral. You avoid the
childhood assumptions formed by the raucous laughter at Rastus and Oatmeal, the acute message of your mommy's handkerchief spread upon the park bench because I had just been sitting there, the indelible
and dehumanizing portraits of Amos and Andy and your Daddy's humorous bedtime stories. I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a super-market in Eastchester in 1967 and a little white
girl riding past in her mother's cart calls out excitedly, "Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!" And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct you. And so, fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can
still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and dis-ease. • At an international cultural gathering of women, a well-known white American woman poet interrupts the reading of the work
of women of Color to read her own poem, and then dashes off to an "important panel." • Do women in the academy truly want a dialogue about racism? It will require recognizing the needs and the living contexts
of other women. When an academic woman says, for instance, "I can't afford it," she may mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available money. But when a woman on welfare says, "I can't afford
it," she means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet the National Women's Studies Association here in 1981 holds a
Convention in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of Color who wished to present and conduct workshops. This has made it
impossible for many women of Color - for instance, Wilmette Brown, of Black Women for Wages for Housework - to participate in this Convention. And so I ask again: Is this to be merely another situation of the
academy discussing life within the closed circuits of the academy? To all the white women here who recognize these attitudes as familiar, but most of all, to all my sisters of Color who live and survive thousands of
to my sisters of Color who like me still tremble their rage under harness, or who sometimes question the expression
of our rage as useless and disruptive (the two most popular accusations), I want to speak about anger, my anger, and what I have learned from my travels through its
dominions. Everything can be used, except what is wasteful. You will need to remember this, when you are accused of destruction. Every woman has a
well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and
institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a
powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not
mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile
or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in all those assumptions underlining
our lives. I have seen situations where white women hear a racist remark, resent what has been said, become filled with fury, and remain silent, because they are afraid. That unexpressed anger lies
within them like an undetonated device, usually to be hurled at the first woman of Color who talks about racism. But anger expressed and translated into action
in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it
is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we
have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies. Anger is loaded with information and
energy. When I speak of women of Color, I do not only mean Black women. We are also Asian
American, Caribbean, Chicana, Latina, Hispanic, Native American, and we have a right to each of
our names. The woman of Color who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that
her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better
learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us. If I participate, knowingly or
otherwise, in my sister's oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only
blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy I need to join with her.
And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman's voice delineate an
agony I do not share, or even one in which I myself may have participated. We speak in this place
removed from the more blatant reminders of our embattlement as women. This need not blind
us to the size and complexities of the forces mounting against us and all that is most human
within our environment. We are not here as women examining racism in a political and social
vacuum. We operate in the teeth of a system for whom racism and sexism are primary,
established, and necessary props of profit. Women responding to racism is a topic so dangerous
that when the local media attempt to discredit this Convention they choose to focus upon the provision of Lesbian housing as a diversionary device - as if the Hartford Courant
dare not mention the topic chosen for discussion here, racism, lest it become apparent that
women are in fact attempting to examine and to alter all the repressive conditions of our lives.
Mainstream communication does not want women, particularly white women, responding to
racism. It wants racism to be accepted as an immutable given in the fabric of existence, like
evening time or the common cold. So we are working in a context of opposition and threat, the
cause of which is certainly not the angers which lie between us, but rather that virulent hatred
leveled against all women, people of Color, Lesbians and gay men, poor people - against all of us
who are seeking to examine the particulars of our lives as we resist our oppressions, moving
toward coalition and effective action. Any discussion among women about racism must include
such encounters -
the recognition and the use of anger. It must be direct and creative, because it is crucial. We
cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor to seduce us into settling for anything less than
the hard work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the choice of this topic
and the angers entwined within it, because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about
their hatred of us and of what we are trying to do here. And while we scrutinize the often
painful face of each other's anger, please remember that it is not our anger which makes me
caution you to lock your doors at night, and not to wander the streets of Hartford alone. It is the hatred which lurks in those streets, that
urge to destroy us all if we truly work for change rather than merely indulge in our academic
rhetoric. This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of those who do not
share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is the grief of distortions between
peers, and its object is change. But our time is getting shorter.
We must not hide our anger to spare feelings, guilt, or answering anger – to do
so swerves back into a trivialization of our efforts. We cannot respond to anger
with guilt or fear; it is cis heteropatriarchy’s way to divide and conquer our
movements and our coalitions. (probably should retag this)
Lorde 1981, Audre. The Uses of Anger. Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25,
No. 1/2, Looking Back, Moving Forward: 25 Years of Women's Studies History (Spring Summer, 1997), pp. 278-285. Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of
New York,. URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005441 . *we do not endorse ableist
language
We have been raised to view any difference other than sex as a reason for destruction,
and for Black women and white women to face each other's angers without denial or
immobilization or silence or guilt is in itself a heretical and generative idea. It implies peers
meeting upon a common basis to examine difference, and to alter those distortions which
history has created around difference. For it is those distortions which separate us. And we must
ask ourselves: Who profits from all this? Women of Color in America have grown up within a
symphony of anguish at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it
is in spite of a whole world out there that takes for granted our lack of humanness, that hates
our very existence, outside of its service. And I say "symphony" rather than "cacophony" because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do
not tear us apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them for strength and force and insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not learn this difficult lesson did not survive.
And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters. Anger is an appropriate reaction to
racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. To those
women here who fear the anger of women of Color more than their own unscrutinized racist
attitudes, I ask: Is our anger more threatening than the woman-hatred that tinges all the aspects
of our lives? It is not the anger of other women that will destroy us, but our refusals to stand
still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to move beyond the manner of presentation to
the substance, to tap that anger as an important source of empowerment. I cannot hide my
anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and
trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or
lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it becomes no longer guilt but the
beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for
defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the
continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. Most women have not
developed tools for facing anger constructively. CR [consciousness-raising] groups in the past, largely white, dealt with how to express anger, usually at the world of men. And these groups were made up of white
women who shared the terms of their oppressions. There was usually little attempt to articulate the genuine differences between women, such as those of race, color, class, and sexual identity. There was no
apparent need at that time to examine the contradictions of self, woman, as oppressor. There was work on expressing anger, but very little on anger directed against each other. No tools were developed to deal
Guilt is only another way of
avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of
the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in
anger, at least I have spoken to you; I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the
street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister's body and asked. "What did she do to deserve
it?" This was the reaction of two white women to Mary Church Terrell's telling of the lynching of a pregnant Black woman whose baby was then torn from her body. That was in 1921 , and Alice Paul had just
refused to publicly endorse the enforcement of the Nineteenth Amendment for all women - excluding the women of Color who had worked to help bring about that amendment. The angers
between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to the
content of what is said with at least as much intensity as we defend ourselves from the manner
of saying. Anger is a source of empowerment we must not fear to tap for energy rather than
guilt. When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, those deadly and safely familiar. I have
tried to learn my anger's usefulness to me, as well as its limitations. For women raised to fear, too often anger threatens
annihilation. In the male construct of brute force, we were taught that our lives depended upon
the good will of patriarchal power. The anger of others was to be avoided at all costs, because
there was nothing to be learned from it but pain, a judgment that we had been bad girls, come
up lacking, not done what we were supposed to do. And if we accept our powerlessness, then of
course any anger can destroy us. But the strength of women lies in recognizing differences
between us as creative, and in standing to those distortions which we inherited without blame
but which are now ours to alter. The angers of women can transform differences through insight
into power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and
sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth. My response to racism is anger. That
with other women's anger except to avoid it, deflect it, or flee from it under a blanket of guilt. I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own.
anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone. It has also served me in classrooms without light or learning, where the work and history of Black women was less than a
my anger
is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your
own actions. When women of Color speak out of the anger that laces so many of our contacts
with white women, we are often told that we are "creating a mood of hopelessness,"
"preventing white women from getting past guilt," or "standing in the way of trusting
communication and action." All these quotes come directly from letters to me from members of this organization within the last two years. One woman wrote, "Because you are
Black and Lesbian, you seem to speak with the moral authority of suffering." Yes, I am Black and Lesbian, and what you hear in my voice is fury, not
suffering. Anger, not moral authority. There is a difference. To turn aside from the anger of
Black women with excuses or the pretexts of intimidation, is to award no one power - it is
merely another way of preserving racial blindness, the power of unaddressed privilege,
unbreached, intact. For guilt is only yet another form of objectification. Oppressed peoples are
always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.
Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people's salvation, other
people's learning. But that time is over. My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant
survival, and before I give it up I'm going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity. What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression, her own
vapor. It has served me as fire in the ice zone of uncomprehending eyes of white women who see in my experience and the experience of my people only new reasons for fear or guilt. And
oppressed status, that she cannot see her feel print upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the
cold winds of self-scrutiny?
Rage is commonality and transcends beyond traditional understandings of
anger to recognize the various lived experiences of other womxn as other faces
of ourselves – we recognize difference and we stand together although our
shackles are very different. We use rage to sustain ourselves, to survive.
Lorde 1981, Audre. The Uses of Anger. Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25,
No. 1/2, Looking Back, Moving Forward: 25 Years of Women's Studies History (Spring Summer, 1997), pp. 278-285. Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of
New York,. URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005441 . *we do not endorse ableist
language
I am a Lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If
their full bellies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose
children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides
are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the Lesbian who chooses
not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is
her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who
is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of
myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the
anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for
evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when
her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color
remains chained. Nor is any one of you. I speak here as a woman of Color who is not bent upon
destruction, but upon survival. No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her
oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman. I have suckled the wolfs lip of anger and I have used it for
illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter . We are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices
of divine forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgment or instruments of flagellation; we are
women always forced back upon our woman's power. We have learned to use anger as we have
learned to use the dead flesh of animals; and bruised, battered, and changing, we have survived
and grown and, in Angela Wilson's words, we are moving on. With or without uncolored women. We use whatever
strengths we have fought for, including anger, to help define and fashion a world where all our
sisters can grow, where our children can love, and where the power of touching and meeting
another woman's difference and wonder will eventually transcend the need for destruction. For
it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid.
It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles
and other agents of war and death, pushes opera singers off rooftops, slaughters children in
cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth. It is not the anger of Black
women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless
we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct,
anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth
to support our choices. We welcome all women who can meet us, face to face, beyond
objectification and beyond guilt.
Intersectional female rage is a pre-requisite to a successful movement against
patriarchy – otherwise, civil society will co-opt and divide the struggle, forcing
the movement underground behind closed doors which keep the conversation
in the domestic sphere.
Lesage 1985 – Julia. Professor at University of Oregon. Women's Rage from Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (Champaign
IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988) from Jump Cut, No. 31 (1985).
Feminism by itself is not the motor of change. Class,
anti-imperialist, and antiracist struggles demand our
participation. Yet how, specifically, does women's consciousness change? How do women move into action? How does change occur? What
political strategies should feminists pursue? How, in our political work, can we constantly challenge sexual inequality when the very social construction
of gender oppresses women? In 1981 I visited Nicaragua with the goal of finding out how and why change occurred there so quickly in women's lives.
"The revolution has given us everything," I was told. "Before the revolution we were totally devalued. We weren't supposed to have a vision beyond
home and children." In fact, many Nicaraguan women first achieved a fully human identity within the revolution. Now they are its most enthusiastic
supporters. For example, they form over 50 percent of the popular militias, the mainstay of Nicaragua's defense against United States-sponsored
invasions from Honduras and Costa Rica. In the block committees, they have virtually eliminated wife and child abuse. Yet in Nicaragua we still see
maids, the double standard sexually, dissatisfaction in marriage, and inadequate childcare. Furthermore, all the women I talked to defined their
participation in the revolution in terms of an extremely idealized notion of motherhood and could not understand the choice not to reproduce. I bring
up this example of Nicaragua because Nicaraguan women are very conscious of the power of their own revolutionary example. They know they have
been influenced by the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions and are very much shaping how Salvadoran women militants are looking at women's role in
the Salvadoran revolution. Because of the urgency and violence of the situation, unity between men and women was and is necessary for their survival,
but the women also want to combat, in an organized and self-conscious way, specific aspects of male supremacy in the workplace, politics, and daily
life. Both
here and in Nicaragua, women's daily conversation is about the politics of daily life. They
talk to each other often, complaining about men and about managing the domestic sphere.
Women's talk also encompasses complaints about poor and unstable work conditions, and
about the onerous double day. However, here in the United States that conversation usually
circulates pessimistically, if supportively, around the same themes and may even serve to
reconfirm women's stasis within these unpleasant situations. Here such conversation offers little
sense of social change; yet in our recent political history, feminists have used this pre-existing
social form--women's conversation in the domestic sphere--to create consciousness-raising
groups. But to what degree is consciousness raising sufficient to change women's behavior,
including our self-conception and our own colonized minds? We do not live in a revolutionary situation in the United
States. There is no leftist political organization here providing leadership and a cohesive strategy, and in particular the struggle against women's
oppression is not genuinely integrated into leftist activity and theory. Within such a context, women
need to work on another,
intermediate level, both to shape our revolutionary consciousness and to empower us to act on
our own strategic demands. That is, we need to promote self-conscious, collectively supported,
and politically clear articulations of our anger and rage. Furthermore, we must understand the
different structures behind different women's rage. Black women rage against poverty and
racism at the same time that they rage against sexism. Lesbians rage against heterosexual
privilege, including their denial of civil rights. Nicaraguan women rage against invasions and the
aggressive intentions of the United States. If, in our political work, we know this anger and the structures
that generate it, we can more genuinely encounter each other and more extensively
acknowledge each other's needs, class position, and specific form of oppression. If we do not
understand the unique social conditions shaping our sisters' rage, we run the risk of divisiveness,
of fragmenting our potential solidarity. Such mutual understanding of the different structures
behind different women's anger is the precondition of our finding a way to work together
toward common goals
Alt Solves Political Sphere
The kritik is a necessary theorization and enactment of the [insert method
here].
Lesage 1985 – Julia. Professor at University of Oregon. Women's Rage from Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (Champaign
IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988) from Jump Cut, No. 31 (1985). *we do not
endorse ableist language
I think a lot about the phenomenon of the colonized mind. Everything that I am and want has been shaped within a social process marked by male
dominance and female submission. How can women come to understand and collectively attack this sexist social order? We
all face, and in
various ways incorporate into ourselves, sexist representations, sexist modes of thought.
Institutionally, such representations are propagated throughout culture, law, medicine,
education, and so on. All families come up against and are socially measured by sexist concepts
of what is "natural"--that is, the "natural" roles of mother, children, or the family as a whole. Of
particular concern to me is the fact that I have lived with a man for fifteen years while I acutely understand the degree to which heterosexuality itself is
socially constructed as sexist. That is, I love someone who has more social privilege than me, and he has that privilege because he is male. As an
institution, heterosexuality projects relations of dominance and submission, and it leads to the consequent devaluation of women because of their sex.
The institution of heterosexuality is the central shaping factor of many different social practices at many different levels--which range, for example,
from the dependence of the mass media on manipulating sexuality to the division of labor, the split between the public and private spheres, and the
relations of production under capitalism. Most painfully for women, heterosexuality is a major, a social and psychological mode of organizing,
generating, focusing, and institutionalizing desire, both men's and women's. Literally, I am wedded to my own oppression. Furthermore, the very body
of woman is not her own--it has been constructed by medicine, the law, visual culture, fashion, her mother, her household tasks, her reproductive
capacity, and what Ti-Grace Atkinson has called "the institution of sexual intercourse." When I look in the mirror, I see my flaws; I evaluate the show I
put on to others. How do I break through representations of the female body and gain a more just representation of my body for and of myself? My
social interactions are shaped by nonverbal conventions which we all have learned unconsciously and which are, as it were, the glue of social life. As
Nancy Henley describes it in Body Politics, women's nonverbal language is characterized by shrinking, by taking up as little space as possible. Woman is
accessible to be touched. When she speaks in a mixed group, she is likely to be interrupted or not really listened to seriously, or she may be thought of
as merely emotional. And it is clear that not only does the voyeuristic male look shape most film practice, but this male gaze, with all its power, has a
social analogy in the way eye contact functions to control and threaten women in public space, where women's freedom is constrained by the threat of
rape. We need to articulate these levels of oppression so as to arrive at a collective, shared awareness of these aspects of women's lives. We also need
to understand how we can and already do break through barriers between us. In our personal relations, we often overcome inequalities between us
and establish intimacy. Originally, within the women's movement we approached the task of coming together both personally and politically through
the strategy of the consciousness-raising group, where to articulate our experience as women itself became a collective, transformative experience. But
these groups were often composed mostly of middle-class women, sometimes predominantly young, straight, single, and white. Now we
need to
think more clearly and theoretically about strategies for negotiating the very real power
differences between us. It is not so impossible. Parents do this with children, and vice versa; lovers deal with inequalities all the
time. The aged want to be in communion with the young, and third-world women have constantly extended themselves to their white sisters.
However, when women come together in spite of power differences among them, they feel anxiety and perhaps openly express previously suppressed
hostility. Most likely, such a coming together happens when women work together intensively on a mutual project so that there is time for trust to be
established. Yet
as we seek mutually to articulate the oppression that constrains us, we have found
few conceptual or social structures through which we might authentically express our
rage. Women's anger is pervasive, as pervasive as our oppression, but it frequently lurks
underground. If we added up all of women's depression--all our compulsive smiling, egotending, and sacrifice; all our psychosomatic illness, and all our passivity--we could gauge our
rage's unarticulated, negative force. In the sphere of cultural production there are few dominant
ideological forms that allow us even to think "women's rage." As ideological constructs, these
forms end up containing women. Women's rage is most often seen in the narratives that
surround us. For example: Classically, Medea killed her children because she was betrayed by their father. Now, reverse-slasher movies let the
raped woman pick up the gun and kill the male attacker. It is a similar posture of dead end vengeance. The news showed Patty Hearst standing in a
bank with a gun embodying that manufactured concept "terrorist," and then we saw her marrying her FBI bodyguard long after her comrades went up
in flames. In melodrama and film noir, as well as in pornography, women's
anger is most commonly depicted through
displacement onto images of female insanity or perversity, often onto a grotesque, fearful
parody of lesbianism. These displacements allow reference to and masking of individual
women's rage, and that masked rage is rarely collectively expressed by women or even fully felt.
We have relatively few expressions of women's authentic rage even in women's art. Often on the news
we will see a pained expression of injustice or the exploitative use of an image of a third- world woman's grief. Such images are manipulated purely for
emotional effect without giving analysis or context. Some great feminist writers and speakers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman have provided models by which we can understand ourselves, but too often the very concept of "heroine" means
that we hold up these women and their capacity for angry self-expression as the exception rather than the rule. In Illinois, women chained themselves
together in the state house when it was clear that the ERA would not pass; the women sought to express our collective anger at our legislators'
cowardice and to do so in a conspicuous, public way. But
actions such as these often have little effect beyond their
own time span. We need to think beyond such forms to more socially effective ones. It is a task
open to all our creativity and skill--to tap our anger as a source of energy and to focus it
aesthetically and politically. We may have to combine images of anger with something else--say,
images of how women can construct the collectivity as a whole. It is here that, by their example,
our third-world sisters have often taken the lead. Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, Harriet Tubman leading
slaves to the North, an Angolan mother in uniform carrying a baby and a rifle, a Vietnamese farmer tilling and defending her land, Nicaraguan women in
their block committees turning in wife abusers to the police--these images let us see that women can gain more for themselves than merely negating
the bad that exists. And
it is in their constant need to attack both sexism and racism, as well as poverty
and imperialist aggression, that third-world feminists now make us all see much more clearly
both the urgent need for and the possibility of reconstructing the whole world on new
terms. Artistically, emotionally, and politically women seem to need to glimpse dialectically the
transcendence of our struggle against sexism before we can fully express sexism's total
negation, that is, our own just rage. Sometimes our suppressed rage feels so immense that the
open expression of it threatens to destroy us. So we often do not experience anger directly and
consciously, nor do we accurately aim our rage at its appropriate target. To transcend negation
and to build on it means that we have to see what is beyond our rage. An example of such transcendence was
demonstrated by Nicaraguan mothers of "martyred" soldiers (those killed by U.S.-paid counterrevolutionaries) to Pope John Paul II when he visited
Managua in April 1983. They stood in the rows closest to the podium where the Pope spoke and they all bore large photos of their dead children. As
the events of the day unfolded, the women created an image that stirred the whole people, one that the Pope could not go beyond or even adequately
respond to. Here is what happened: The Pope spoke on and on to the gathered crowd about obeying the hierarchy and not getting involved with the
things of this world. In frustration and anger, the women began to shout, "We want peace," and their chant was taken up by the 400,000 others there.
The women's rage at personal loss was valorized by the Nicaraguan people as a whole, as the grieving mother became a collective symbol of the
demand for peace. The chant, "We want peace," referred simultaneously to national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, religion, and family life. The women
spoke for the whole.
AT
AT Perm
Aliveness is held up as the alternative social value to happiness. The perm
functions as a type of mourning for the ways of life inaccessible to women and
only a refusal of mourning through the alt can open up other possibilities for
living.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
The film might in its dramatization of the unhappiness caused by Laura, the¶ woman who cannot bear the idea of happiness,
withdraw its sympathy from¶ her plight, I think it does. Perhaps we can learn from this withdrawal of sympathy.¶ If
the one
who leaves happiness must cause unhappiness to those who¶ are left behind, then she must
refuse to be sympathetic; she must not return¶ feeling with like feeling (happiness with happiness, love
with love) if she is to¶ escape from the very obligation to return. In other words, to give up happiness¶ is
to become unsympathetic. That Laura’s act is only narratable as extreme,¶ even as violence, as the cause of suffering that
cannot be repaired, shows us¶ just how hard it can be to give up on the idea of happiness because that idea is¶ also bound
up with the impulse to care for the happiness of others. There are, I¶ think we know, many who stay
in situations of unhappiness out of fear of causing¶ unhappiness, out of fear of losing sympathy,
of becoming unsympathetic.¶ It is hard to leave happiness for life. There is always a gap between becoming¶
conscious of what is lost by living according to an idea of happiness and being¶ able to leave happiness for life, a gap where things
happen, where lives are¶ lived and lives are lost. Not
only is there sadness in recognizing gender as the¶ loss of
possibility but there is also the sadness of realizing that recognizing such¶ loss does not
necessarily make things possible.^^ After all, Clarissa in The Hours¶ spends her time, as does Clarissa in Mrs. flafloujaj;,
caring for the happiness of¶ Richard; it is her relationship with Sally that suffers, which does not have her¶ attention.^'*^ Perhaps
the film teaches us that Clarissa’s unhappiness is both her¶ inheritance from Mrs. Dalloway and her failure to inherit from Laura,
from¶ Laura’s act of rebellion, rather than being what she catches from Richard, as¶ the child Laura left behind,^^ In the end it is
Clarissa’s daughter who is sympathetic¶ toward Laura. We learn from this intergenerational sympathy: perhaps¶ it takes more than
one generation to reproduce a feminist inheritance, where¶ we can acquire sympathy (maybe a sympathy for affect aliens or an
alien sympathy)¶ toward those whose acts are publicly remembered without sympathy,¶ as causing unhappiness to others.
To leave happiness for life is to become alive to possibility. The concept of¶ feminism as “becoming alive” was
crucial to second wave feminism even in¶ the mode of its critique of the happy housewife, which seems at one level to¶ deposit
feminist hope in happiness. In The Feminine Mystique, for instance,¶ Friedan recognizes that some women may be happy as
housewives —by saying¶ this, she also implies that making women happy is not the point of feminism. As she argues, “ Surely there
are many women in America who are happy at the¶ moment as housewives, and some whose abilities are fully used in the
housewife¶ role. But happiness
is not the same thing as the aliveness of being fully¶ used” (1965: 223-24).
The concept of aliveness is held up as an alternative¶ social value to happiness. Indeed, Friedan argues
that women who can fit the¶ image of the happy housewife are the ones who are more likely to
adjust to¶ this role and who then give up — without any conscious act of sacrifice — other¶
opportunities for “finding yourself” (310), Behind this argument is a critique¶ of the concept of adjustment, how
happiness demands adjusting your body to a¶ world that has already taken shape. If we take the
shape of what is given (which¶ depends on being able to take this shape), we experience the comfort of being¶
given the right shape. As Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued, “Comfort and happiness¶ are very likely a matter of prolonged
adjustment. We Iike what we are used¶ to” ([1903] 2002: 8; emphasis added). What lies behind this adjustment is
the¶ loss of other possible ways of living, a loss that must remain unmourned if you¶ are to stay
well-adjusted. To even recognize such loss is to mourn, which is why¶ it can be easier to avoid
recognition. Feminist subjects in refusing to be well adjusted¶ not only mourn the losses but in
mourning open up other possibilities¶ for living, as openings that we inherit over generations.
Their own authors prove – the perm fails because society is antithetical to our
radical movement of [insert method here]. Their evidence is not in the context
of our movement.
Schlosberg and Dryzek ‘2—David Schlosberg Poli Sci @ Northern Arizona, and John Dryzek
Social and Political Theory @ Australian Nat’l [Political Strategies of American Environmentalism:
Inclusion and Beyond” Society and Natural Resources 15 p. 796-798]
But this is too easy a conclusion to reach; not
all situations feature a mix of compatibility and contradiction
in the relationship between movement interest and state imperative of the sort that makes a
dual strategy compelling. Let us consider the times when a dual strategy may not be appropriate. First and most obviously,
a movement will not be able to follow a dual strategy if it confronts a truly exclusive state;
oppositional civil society may be the only option. This situation is rare in the United States. While the Reagan
administration in its early years tried to expel environmentalists from the state, the effort failed because of the variety of access
channels (notably to Congress) that the administration did not control. Second, if a movement’s resources are scarce, it may not
have enough to devote adequately to both the long march through the institutions and activism in the public sphere, both of which
can be both demanding and frustrating. Third, if a movement’s defining interest can be attached to an established or emerging state
imperative, then thoroughgoing entry into the state may be a good bargain. So while
we endorse an engagement with
dual strategies, we argue for a more reflective, situational understanding of such engagement.
We are not arguing that everything can be accomplished in civil society, nor are we arguing
that all movements should adopt a dual strategy.4 We are simply noting that movements with limited resources
should examine situations in order to identify where those resources are best spent, on which issues, and at which time. A
blanket exhortation to engage in a dual strategy does not fit all situations equally. If some but not all
of a movement’s defining interest can be attached to an established or emerging state imperative, while other aspects of that
interest challenge an imperative, a dual strategy is clearly desirable.5 The content of these imperatives matters a great deal when it
comes to movement strategy and movement prospects. We next argue that both economic and legitimation imperatives can be
bent in a direction that allows a closer connection between movement interests and state imperatives than has been seen in the
United States since the early 1970s. Interest in pollution control and conservation of material resources can be attached to the
economic imperative via the idea of ecological modernization. Interest in public participation and public health can be linked to the
legitimation imperative through emerging notions of environmental risks and their consequences. However, we also show why such
attachments are currently blocked in the United States in comparison with some Western European countries which helps to explain
why the United States is now something of an environmental policy laggard.
AT You’re White Feminism
The figure of the feminist killjoy represents multiple oppressed groups
because using this political struggle to disrupt public comfort can be done
from multiple positionalities.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Of course, within feminism, some
bodies more than others can be attributed¶ as the cause of
unhappiness. We can place the figure of the feminist killjoy¶ alongside the figure of the angry black woman,*^® explored so
well by writers¶ such as Audre Lorde {1984) and bell hooks (2000). The angry black woman¶ can be described as a
killjoy; she may even kill feminist joy, for example, by¶ pointing out forms of racism within
feminist politics. She might not even have¶ to make any such point to kill joy. You can be affectively alien because
you are¶ affected in the w^rong way by the right things. Or you can be affectively alien¶ because
you affect others in the wrong way: your proximity gets in the way¶ of other people's enjoyment
of the right things, functioning as an unwanted¶ reminder of histories that are disturbing, that
disturb an atmosphere. Listen to¶ the following description from bell hooks: “A group of white feminist activists¶ who do
not know one another maybe present at a meeting to discuss feminist¶ theory. They may feel they are bonded on the basis of
shared womanhood,¶ but the atmosphere will noticeably change when a woman of color enters the¶ room. The white women will
become tense, no longer relaxed, no longer celebratory”¶ (56). It is not just that feelings are “in tension” but that the tension
is
located¶ somewhere: in being felt by some bodies, it is attributed as caused by another¶ body,
who thus comes to be felt as apart from the group, as getting in the way¶ of its organic
enjoyment and solidarity. The body of color is attributed as the¶ cause of becoming tense, which is also the loss of a shared
atmosphere (or we¶ could say that sharing the experience of loss is how the atmosphere is shared).¶ As a feminist of color
you do not even have to say anything to cause tension.¶ The mere proximity of some bodies
involves an affective conversion. To get¶ along you have to go along with things which might
mean for some not even¶ being able to enter the room. We learn from this example how histories are¶
condensed in the very intangibility of an atmosphere, or in the tangibility of¶ the bodies that
seem to get in the way. Perhaps atmospheres are shared if there¶ is an agreement in where we locate the points of tension.
To speak out of anger as a woman of color is to confirm your position as the cause of tension;
your anger is what threatens the social bond. As Audre Lorde¶ describes: “When women of Color speak out of the
anger that laces so many of¶ our contacts with white women, we are often told that we are ‘creating a mood¶ of helplessness,’
preventing white women from getting past guilt,’ or ‘standing¶ in the way of trusting communication and action’” (1984: 131), The
exposure¶ of violence becomes the origin of violence. The woman of color must let go of¶ her anger for the white
woman to move on.
The figure of the angry black woman is also a fantasy figure that produces its¶ own effects. Reasonable
thoughtful
arguments are dismissed as anger (which¶ of course empties anger of its own reason), which makes you angry,
such that¶ your response becomes read as the confirmation of evidence that you are not¶ only
angry but also unreasonable! To make this point in another way, the anger¶ of feminists of color is attributed. So you
might be angry about how racism¶ and sexism diminish life choices for women of color. Your anger is a judgment¶ that
something is wrong. But in being heard as angry, your speech is read as¶ motivated by anger.
Your anger is read as unattributed, as if you are against x¶ because you are angry rather than
being angry because you are against x. You¶ become angry at the injustice of being heard as
motivated by anger, which¶ makes it harder to separate yourself from the object of your anger.
You become¶ entangled with what you are angry about because you are angry about how¶ they
have entangled you in your anger. In becoming angry about that entanglement,¶ you confirm
their commitment to your anger as the truth “behind” your¶ speech, which is what blocks your
anger, stops it from getting through. You are¶ blocked by not getting through. Some bodies become
blockage points, points where smooth communication stops. Consider Ama Ata Aidoo’s wonderful prose poem Our Sister Killjoy, ¶
where the narrator Sissie, as a black woman, has to work to sustain the comfort¶ of others. On a plane, a white hostess invites her to
sit at the back with “her¶ friends,” two black people she does not know. She is about to say that she does¶ not know them, and
hesitates: “But to have refused to join them would have¶ created an awkward situation, wouldn’t it? Considering too that apart from
the¶ air hostess’s obviously civilized upbringing, she had been trained to see to the¶ comfort of all her passengers" (1977: 10).
Power speaks here in this moment of hesitation. Do you go along with it?¶ What does it mean not to go along with it? To create
awkwardness is to be read¶ as being awkward. Maintaining
public comfort requires that certain bodies “go
along with it.” To refuse to go along with it, to refuse the place in which you¶ are placed, is to be
seen as trouble, as causing discomfort for others. There is¶ a political struggle about how we
attribute good and bad feelings, which hesitates¶ around the apparently simple question of who
introduces what feelings¶ to whom. Feelings can get stuck to certain bodies in the very way we describe¶ spaces,
situations, dramas. And bodies can get stuck depending on what feelings¶ they get associated with.
The figure of the feminist killjoy encapsulates the ideas of feminist political
consciousness as intersectional. Often happiness is conflated with whiteness as
well and our performance in the debate space disrupts that, proving that our
criticism functions on numerous levels.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Consciousness and Racism¶ Our feminist archive teaches us about unhappiness and what it can do. Feminism¶ involves a
sociality of unhappiness not only by generating talk about the¶ collective nature of suffering that
is concealed and reproduced by the figure of¶ the happy housewife (which is perhaps how we could
consider consciousnessraising)¶ but also through passing books around. To inherit unhappiness¶ through the
circulation of books is not necessarily to inherit the same thing.¶ It is not simply that feminism coheres around the inheritance of
books such¶ as Mrs. DailouJaj), which offer alternative forms of consciousness of the world¶ in their narration of gender as loss.
After all, if
we were to assume feminist¶ consciousness took the form of consciousness of gender as
the restriction of¶ possibility, then we would be excluding other kinds of political consciousness¶
from our idea of feminism. Black feminists have had a lot to say, after all, about¶ happiness as a
political myth that does things, writing not from the point of view of those who should be happy because they have what
promises happiness¶ but instead of those who are already imagined as being unhappy, as lacking the¶ very qualities and attributes
that would make a life good.¶ Consider Toni M orrison’s The Bluest Eye, which offers us a very different¶ account of unhappiness
than that found in the unhappy housewife novels,¶ though it also critiques the idea of the happy family. The Bluest Eye begins its ¶
critique of the happy fam ily by sentencing it to death: “Here is the house. It is¶ green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.
Here is the family. Mother,¶ Father, Dick and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy”¶ ([1970] 1979: i). By
taking the punctuation out of the sentence until it becomes¶ “hereisthehouseitis” (z), the picture-book story becomes nonsense,
becomes¶ gabble. To
house” requires
disturb the promise of happiness, which has become literalized,¶ such that happiness is “in
disturbing the very technologies¶ through which we make sense.
The novel tells the story of a family that deviates from the social ideal, that¶ cannot be the “they are very happy” of the picture
book. This family is not¶ white, not middle class, where “ being not” means being unhappy. Unhappiness¶ becomes
a kind
of want. In this novel, the family is narrated as wanting,¶ as lacking the qualities or attributes that would
make for a good or happy life.¶ Most powerfully, the novel describes the discourses of happiness in
terms of¶ the conflation of whiteness with beauty and virtue: the happy ones are blue¶ eyed, the blue-eyed
ones are beautiful ones, the beautiful ones are the good¶ ones, the good ones are the happy ones. The “not family,” the Breedloves
are¶ the ugly ones, as if their ugliness is a curse: “You looked at them and wondered¶ why they were so ugly; you looked closely and
you could not find the sourceӦ (28). For some, deviation
from the happiness scripts is itself an inheritance;¶
you inherit unhappiness by not being the blue-eyed ones, as if “the master had¶ said, ‘you are Ugly people’”
(28). The evocation of the master is the evocation¶ of the history of slavery. Unhappiness becomes an inheritance of
the violence¶ of history.
The story of the novel is the story of what happens to the Breedloves, violence,¶ despair, and misery being what follows being not.
The novel offers us¶ different narrators, beginning with the sisters Claudia and Frieda, before¶ switching to the Breedloves: the
mother Pauline, the father Cholly, and their¶ daughter Pecola. In a way, the novel is the story of the unhappiness inherited by¶
Pecola, who is raped by her father and who loses her child, an unwanted black baby conceived through violence, in a miscarriage.
We first witness Pecola’s¶ unhappiness in the opening passage written from the point of view of Claudia:¶ “So deeply concerned
were we with the health and the safe delivery of Pecola’s bnby¶ we could think of nothing but auroiiun magic: if we planted the
seeds, and said the¶ right words over them, they would blossom and everything-would be all right. It was¶ a long time before my
sister and I admitted to ourselves that no green was going to¶ spring from our seeds. Once we ifeneu), ourguiltufas relieved only by
fights and mutual¶ accusations over who was to blame. For years I thought my sister was right: it was¶ my fault. 1 had planted them
too far down in the earth, it never occurred to either of¶ us that the earth might have been unyielding” (3), I have described
happiness as¶ a technology of cultivation; of cultivating subjects “in the right way” so they¶ will flourish. What is so powerful in this
description is how much the
failure¶ to flourish is not the failure of care or orientation but the failure of
the earth¶ to yield. For some, the earth is unyielding, unable to provide the soil in which¶ life can
flourish. The unyielding earth provides the grounds of whiteness, as¶ the restriction of life
possibility, as giving life to some and not others.¶ Our first narrator, Claudia, learns to notice that this earth might
be unyielding.¶ Claudia expresses rage at the world that asks her to love in a certain way:¶ “It had begun with Christmas and the gift
of dolls. The big, the special, the¶ loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll, From the clucking sounds¶ of adults I knew that
the doll represented what they thought was my fondest¶ w ish ,, , , which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in
doing¶ quite the opposite. . . . Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy-blue eyes,¶ twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it.
But I could examine it to see what¶ it was that all the world said was lovable.. , , I destroyed white baby dolls” (13 -¶ 15). By not
experiencing pleasure in the right way, toward the right things, she¶ must destroy things, transferring her hatred and rage from
white baby dolls to¶ white baby girls. To hate what is loved is to recognize your alienation from the¶ beloved.26
In contrast, Pecola, in wanting happiness, wants what is attributed as the¶ cause of happiness: the bluest eyes. For Pecola: “ Long
hours she sat looking in¶ the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made¶ her ignored or despised at
school, by teachers and classmates alike. . . . It had¶ occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the
pictures,¶ and knew the sights — if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say,¶ beautiful, she herself would be different” {34).
In the following paragraph we return to the picture-book family: “Pretty eyes. Pretty blue eyes. Big blue pretty¶ eyes. Run, Jip, run.
Jip runs. Alice runs. Alice has blue eyes. Jerry has blue eyes. Jerry¶ runs. Alice runs. They run UJitfi their blue eyes. Four blue eyes"
(34). The
desire¶ for blue eyes is the desire not to be not white; the double negative does not¶
amount to a positive.
This is a bleak novel, bleak as it shows us that
the consequences of unhappiness¶ can be more
unhappiness.^^ To be conscious of unhappiness is to be conscious¶ of being “not,” or of being
“un,” as lacking the qualities or attributes of¶ happiness. To be not happy is to be not in the eyes
of others, in the world of¶ whiteness, which is the world as it coheres around white bodies.
Consciousness¶ of “being not” involves self-estrangement: you recognize yourself as the¶
stranger. Note that consciousness is already worldly if you are the one whose¶ arrival disturbs an atmosphere. To recognize
yourself as the stranger is to become¶ conscious of the violence directed toward you. Audre Lorde
dramatizes¶ how becoming conscious of being a stranger involves a retrospective renaming¶ of apparently random events as racism:
Tensions on the street were high, as they always are in racially mixed zones of¶ transition. As a very little girl, I remember shrinking
from a particular sound,¶ a hoarsely sharp, guttural rasp, because it often meant a nasty glob of grey¶ spittle upon my coat or shoe
an instant later. My mother wiped it off with¶ the little pieces of nevrepaper she always carried in her purse. Sometimes she¶
fussed about low-class people who had no better sense nor manners than to¶ spit into the wind no matter where they went,
impressing upon me that this¶ humiliation was totally random. It never occurred to me to doubt her. It was¶ not until years later
once in conversation I said to her: “Have you noticed¶ people don’t spit into the wind so much the way they used to?" And the
look¶ on my mother’s face told me that I had blundered into one of those secret¶ places of pain that must never be spoken of again.
But it was so topical of my¶ mother when I was young that if she couldn’t stop white people spitting on¶ her children because they
were Black, she would insist it was something else.¶ (1982: 17-18)
An event happens. And it happens again. The violence is directed from the¶ white body to the black child, who receives that
violence by shrinking, shrinking¶ away from its sound. But the mother cannot bear to speak of racism and¶ creates an impression
that the violence is random. Racism is a pain that is hard to bear. Consciousness of racism becomes retrospective, and the question
of¶ its timing does matter. You learn not to see racism as a way of bearing the pain.¶ To see racism, you have to un-see the world as
you learned to see it, the world¶ that covers unhappiness, by covering over its cause. You have to be willing to¶ venture into secret
places of pain.
Some forms of “taking cover” from pain — from not naming the causes of¶ pain in the hope that it will go avvay — are to protect
those we love from being¶ hurt, or even to protect ourselves from hurt, or are at least meant as a form of¶ protection. If happiness
does provide a way of “taking cover,” it is not always¶ offered to protect us from hurt. It can also work to conceal the causes of hurt¶
or to make others the cause of their own hurt. In The Cancel' Journals, Audre¶ Lorde offers a powerful critique of the politics of
happiness. She writes as a¶ black lesbian feminist who is experiencing breast cancer: Lorde never refuses¶ the power of “writing as"
nor assumes it can abbreviate an experience. Faced¶ with medical discourse that attributes cancer to unhappiness and survival or¶
coping to being happy or optimistic.
AT Cap
The idea of happiness is inherently tied to capital—only our rewriting of
unhappiness is able to resist these capitalist notions.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Happiness becomes, then, a way of maximizing your potential of getting¶ what you want, as well as
being what you want to get. Unsurprisingly, positive¶ psychology often uses economic language to describe
happiness as a¶ good. Heady and Wearing, for example, describe the “relatively stable personal¶
characteristics” which account for some people being generally happier than¶ others, which they
call “stocks,” including social background, personality, and¶ social networks {1991: 49). Happiness
gets you more in the bank; happiness¶ depends on other forms of capital (background, personality,
networks) as well¶ as acquiring or accumulating capital for the individual subject.¶ One of the most
recent proponents of positive psychology is Alan Carr,¶ whose work also crosses the border between popular and academic
readerships.¶ Carr also describes
the project of positive psychology in terms of the¶ twin objectives of
understanding and facilitating happiness and subjective¶ well-being (2004: 1). Positive emotions
“like pleasure or contentment tell us¶ something good is happening” (12). He argues that happy and
unhappy people¶ “have distinctive personality profiles” (16). A happiness profile would be the¶ profile of the kind of person who is
most likely to be happy, as we can also see¶ in the following classic description:¶ happy
persons are more likely to be
found in the economically prosperous¶ countries, whose freedom and democracy are held in
respect and the political¶ scene is stable. The happy are more likely to be found in majority groups
than¶ among minorities and more often at the top of the ladder than at the bottom.¶ They are
typically married and get on well with families and friends. In respect¶ of their personal characteristics, the happy appear relatively
healthy.¶ both physically and mentally. They are active and openminded. They
feel they¶ are in control of their lives.
Their aspirations concern social and moral matters¶ rather than money making. In matters of politics,
the happy tend to the¶ conservative side of middle. (Veenhoven 1991: 16)¶ The face of happiness, at least in this
description, looks rather like the face of¶ privilege. Rather than assuming happiness is simply found in “happy persons
"¶ we can consider how claims to happiness make certain forms of personhood¶ valuable.
Attributions of happiness might be how social norms and ideals become¶ affective, as if relative
proximity to those norms and ideals creates happiness.¶ Lauren Berlant has called such a fantasy of happiness a
“stupid” form¶ of optimism: “the faith that adjustment to certain forms or practices of living¶ and thinking will secure one’s
happiness” (2002: 75).¶ For Carr happiness profiles are also profiles of social forms as well as individual¶ persons: he suggests that
certain types of families “promote the experience¶ of flow” by optimal levels of clarity, centering, choice, and challenge (62).¶ If
certain ways of living promote happiness, then to promote happiness would¶ be to promote those ways of living. Thus happiness
promotion becomes very¶ quickly the promotion of certain types of families. The idea of “flow ” to
describe¶ the relationship between happy persons and happy worlds is powerful.¶ Deriving primarily from the work of M ihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, flow describes¶ the experience of an individual engaged with the world, or involved with the¶ world, where the
world is not encountered as alien, as an obstacle or resistance.¶ “The best moments in our lives” Csikszentmihalyi suggests, “are
not¶ the passive, receptive, relaxing times —although such experiences can also be¶ enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain
them. The best moments usually¶ occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary¶ effort to accomplish
something difficult and worthwhile” (1992: 3). He argues¶ that “in
the long run optimal experiences add up to a
sense of mastery— or¶ perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life
— that¶ comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can¶
conceivably imagine,” (4)¶ When the subjects are not “ in flow” they encounter the world as
resistant, as¶ blocking rather than enabling an action. Unhappy subjects hence feel alienated¶
from the world as they experience the world as ahen. I suspect that Csikszentmihalyi¶ can teach us a great deal
about the phenomenology of happiness as an intimacy of body and world. What if to flow into the world is not simply under^¶ stood
as a psychological attribute? What if the world “houses” some bodies¶ more than others, such that some bodies do not experience
that world as resistant?¶ We
might need to rewrite happiness by considering how it feels to be¶
stressed by the very forms of life that enable some bodies to flow into space.¶ Perhaps the experiences
of not following, of being stressed, of not being extended¶ by the spaces in which we reside, can teach us more about happiness
AT Just Be Happy
The AFF’s attempt to raise our consciousness through telling us to just be
happy is antithetical to the figure of the feminist killjoy because it refuses
denies our shift of orientation. (Also don’t tell us what to do!)
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
Consciousness and Unhappiness¶ To
be against forms of power and violence that are concealed under
signs¶ of happiness does not necessarily mean becoming unhappy, even if it does¶ mean refusing to go
along with things by showing signs of getting along. It¶ is striking that Shulamith Firestone’s “dream action” for the women’s
liberation¶ movement is “a smile boycott, at which declaration, all women would¶ instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles,
henceforth only smiling when something¶ pleased them " (1970: 90). To refuse
the promise of happiness is to
refuse¶ the demand that you show signs of happiness. For Firestone, this means a shift¶ of
orientation; it means changing one’s bodily habits: “In my own case, I had to¶ train myself out of the phony smile, which is like a
nervous tic on every teenage¶ girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real¶ smiling, I had less to
smile about” (go). To
refuse to keep smiling for Firestone¶ is not a refusal of joy or any of those good
feelings that are not distributed along¶ accepted paths of happiness. If anything, the false smile
sustains the very psychic¶ and political condition of unhappiness. The feminist who does not
smile¶ when she is not happy wants a more exciting life. Indeed, as Firestone argues:¶ “Eroticism is exciting. Noone wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and¶ routine affair without at least that spark. That’s just the point. Why has all joy¶
and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow difficult-to-find alley of¶ human experience, and all the rest laid waste?”
(155; second emphasis added).¶ Feminism
involves challenging the very “pressure” of happiness, the way
it¶ restricts the possibilities for finding excitement, of being excited.¶ This is not to say that feminism makes
women happy. It is simply that feminism¶ by refusing to go along with public displays of happiness can
participate¶ in the widening of horizons in which it is possible to find things. Feminism does not
guarantee what we will find through this expansion of bodily horizons. It simply opens up the places where we can
look. The fact that any such¶ opening is read as a sign of hostility, or of killing other people’s joy,
tells us¶ something. The public investment in happiness is an investment in a very particular and
narrow model of the good; being happy requires a commitment to¶ find what Firestone brilliantly describes as a “narrow
difficult-to-find alley” of¶ human experience.
I have explored how feminism is represented as causing unhappiness and as¶ caused by unhappiness.
Rather than disregarding the possibility of a link between¶ feminism and unhappiness, I want to consider another way of thinking¶
about it. We
could describe consciousness raising as raising consciousness of¶ unhappiness. As Gayle
Greene argues, “For though education raised women’s¶ expectations, it also made many of them
unhappy, creating ambitions that were¶ frustrated by the rigid domestic ideology that urged
them back into the home”¶ (ig gi: 9; emphasis added). Indeed, you have to experience limitations as limitations;¶ the act
of noticing limitations can actually make life seem more rather¶ than less limited. If the world
does not allow you to embrace the possibilities¶ that are opened up by education, then you
become even more aware of the¶ injustice of such limitations. Opening up the world, or
expanding one’s horizons,¶ can thus mean becoming more conscious of just how much there is
to be¶ unhappy about. Unhappiness might also provide an affective way of sustaining¶ our
attention on the cause of unhappiness. You would be unhappy UJiffi the¶ causes of unhappiness. Consciousnessraising does not turn unhappy housewives¶ into happy feminists, even though sometimes we might wish that
this¶ were the case!
Feminism involves political consciousness of what women are asked to give¶ up for happiness.
Indeed, in even becoming conscious of happiness as loss,¶ feminists have already refused to give up
desire, imagination, and curiosity¶ for happiness. There can be sadness simply in the realization
of what one has¶ given up. Feminist archives are thus full of housewives becoming conscious of¶ unhappiness as a mood
that seems to surround them: think of Virginia Woolf’s¶ Mrs. The feeling is certainly around, almost as a thickness in the air.¶ We
sense the unhappiness seeping through the tasks of the everyday. There she¶ is, about to get flowers, enjoying her walk in London.
During that walk, she¶ disappears: “But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch¶ picture), this body, with all its
capacities, seemed nothing — nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being¶ no
more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing¶ and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond
street, this being¶ Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”¶ ([1925] 1953: 14).
**AFF**
State Key/Perm
We have to extend politics beyond the realm of our immediate experience and
the confines of the debate space---structural analysis key
Rob 14 Carleton College, Robtheidealist, My Skinfolk Ain't All Kinfolk,
www.orchestratedpulse.com/2014/03/problem-identity-politics/
identity politics merely
means political activity that caters to the interests of a particular social group. In a certain sense,
all politics are identity politics. However, it’s one thing to intentionally form a group around
articulated interests; it’s another matter entirely when group membership is socially imposed.
Personal identities are socially defined through a combination of systemic rewards/marginalization plus actual
and/or potential violence. We can’t build politics from that foundation because these socially
imposed identities don’t necessarily tell us anything about someone’s political interests.
Successful identity politics requires shared interests, not shared personal identities. I’m not here
to tell you that personal identity doesn’t matter; we rightfully point out that systemic power
shapes people’s lives. Simply put, my message is that personal identity is not the only thing that matters. We spend so much energy
labeling people—privileged/marginalized, oppressor/oppressed—that we often neglect to build
spaces that antagonize the systems that cause our collective trauma. All You Blacks Want All the Same Things We
Some people look at these flaws and call for an end to “identity politics”, but I think that’s a mistake. At its most basic level,
assume that if a person is systemically marginalized, then they must have a vested interest in dismantling that system. Yet, that’s not always the case. Take Orville Lloyd Douglas,
who last summer wrote an article in the Guardian in which he admitted that he hates being Black. I can honestly say I hate being a black male… I just don’t fit into a neat
category of the stereotypical views people have of black men. I hate rap music, I hate most sports, and I like listening to rock music… I have nothing in common with the
archetypes about the black male… I resent being compared to young black males (or young people of any race) who are lazy, not disciplined, or delinquent. Orville Lloyd Douglas,
membership in a marginalized group is no guarantee
that a person can understand and effectively combat systemic oppression. Yet, we seem to treat
all marginalized voices as equal, as if they are all insightful, as if there is no diversity of thought,
as if—in the case of race– “All you Blacks want all the same things”. Shared identity does not
equal shared interests. John Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer of 12 Years a Slave, is a good example. He’s written screenplays based on Jimi
Why I Hate Being a Black Man As we can see from Douglas’ cry for help,
Hendrix, the L.A. riots, and other poignant moments and icons within Black history. He wants to see more Black people in Hollywood and he has a long history of successfully
incorporating Black and Brown characters into comic book stories and franchises. However, in 2006, Ridley made waves with an essay in which he castigated Black people who
did not live up to his standards; saying, “It’s time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good luck.” So I say this: It’s time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good luck. Just as
whites may be concerned with the good of all citizens but don’t travel their days worrying specifically about the well-being of hillbillies from Appalachia, we need to send niggers
on their way. We need to start extolling the most virtuous of ourselves. It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans—those who have sealed the Deal, who aren’t beholden
to liberal indulgence any more than they are to the disdain of the hard Right. It is time to praise blacks who are merely undeniable in their individuality and exemplary in their
levels of achievement. The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger While Ridley and I share cultural affinity, and we both want to see Black people doing well,
shared cultural affinity and common identity are not enough– which recent history makes abundantly clear. Barack Obama continues to deport record numbers of Brown
Don Lemon, speaking in support of Bill O’Reilly, said
that racism would be lessened if Black people pulled up their pants and stopped littering. Last
fall, 40% of Black U.S. Americans supported airstrikes against Syria. My skinfolk ain’t all kinfolk, and the Left needs to
immigrants here at home, while mercilessly bombing Brown folks abroad.
catch up. NO MORE ALLIES John Ridley, Barack Obama, myself, and Don Lemon are all Black males. We also have conflicting political positions and interests, but how can we
Instead of learning to recognize how the overarching
systems maintain their power and then attacking those tools, we spend our energy finding an
“other” to embody the systemic marginalization and legitimize our spaces and ideals. In some
interracial spaces I feel like nothing more than an interchangeable token whose only purpose is
to legitimize the politics of my White peers. If not me, then some other Black person would fill the slot. We use these
“others” as authorities on various issues, and we use concepts like “privilege” to ensure that
people stay in their lanes. People of color are the authorities on race, while LGBTQ people are the authorities on gender and sexuality, and so forth and so
on. Yet, experience is not the same as expertise, and privilege doesn’t automatically make you
clueless. As I’ve discussed, these groups are not oriented around a singular set of political ideals and
practices. Furthermore, as we see in Andrea Smith’s work, there are often competing interests within these groups.
decide which paths are valid if we only pay attention to personal identity?
We mistake essentialism for intersectionality as we look for the ideal subjects to embody the
various forms of oppression; true intersectionality is a description of systemic power, not a call for diversity. If we don’t develop any
substantive analysis of systemic power, then it’s impossible to know what our interests are, and
aligning with one another according to shared interests is out of the question. In this climate all
that remains is the ally, which requires no real knowledge or political effort, only the willingness
to appear supportive of an “other”. We can’t build power that way. After having gathered to
oppose organized White supremacy at the University of North Carolina, a group of organizers in
Durham, North Carolina found that the Left’s emphasis on personal identity and allyship was a major
reason why their efforts collapsed. They proposed that we adopt the practice of forming
alliances rather than identifying allies. (h/t NinjaBikeSlut) Much of the discourse around being an ally seems to presume a relationship of onesided support, with one person or group following another’s leadership. While there are certainly times where this makes sense, it is misleading to use the term ally to describe
In an alliance, the two parties support each other while maintaining their own selfdetermination and autonomy, and are bound together not by the relationship of leader and
follower but by a shared goal. In other words, one cannot actually be the ally of a group or
individual with whom one has no political affinity – and this means that one cannot be an ally to
an entire demographic group, like people of color, who do not share a singular cohesive political
or personal desire. The Divorce of Thought From Deed While it’s vital for me to learn the politics and history of
marginalized experiences that differ from my own, listen to their voices, and respect their spaces and contributions — it’s also
important for me to understand the ways in which these same systems have shaped my own
identity/history as well. Since we know that oppression is systemic and multidimensional, then I’m going to have to
step outside of personal experience and begin to develop political ideals and practices that
actually antagonize those systems. I have to understand and articulate my interests, which will
allow me to operate from a position of strength and form political alliances that advance those
interests– interests which speak to issues beyond just my own immediate experience.
this relationship.
The permutation solves best – the feminist movement has historically used a
dualistic method of both discursive social movements and reform of political
and economic institutions.
Schlosberg and Dryzek ‘2—David Schlosberg Poli Sci @ Northern Arizona, and John Dryzek
Social and Political Theory @ Australian Nat’l [Political Strategies of American Environmentalism:
Inclusion and Beyond” Society and Natural Resources 15 p. 796-798]
Dual Strategies: Inclusion and Opposition Environmental activism in an oppositional public
sphere, which has grown in large measure as a result of disillusion with the results of inclusion,
demonstrates that the life of environmentalism can go on beyond the state. Among political
theorists who have contemplated the question of inclusion versus opposition, most conclude
that social movements should operate both inside and outside the state. Referring to the
exemplary case of the women’s movement, Cohen and Arato believed that “The dual logic of
feminist politics . . . involves a communicative, discursive politics of identity and influence that
targets civil and political society and an organized, strategically rational politics of inclusion and
reform that is aimed at political and economic institutions” (Cohen and Arato 1992, 550). For
Cohen and Arato, the justification of the dual strategy is largely the well-being of civil society:
Groups or their supporters influential within the state would help build a constitutional, legal,
and policy context for the movement outside. Hilary Wainwright (1994) reached the same
conclusion from a more instrumental perspective. Action within the state is needed to supply
collective decisions with “binding national and international authority” (p. 195), but without the
movement outside, such policy action is unlikely (p. 197). Iris Young, arguing against those who
pin their hopes on civil society rather than the state, concluded that “social movements seeking
greater justice and well-being should work on both these fronts, and aim to multiply the links
between civil society and states” (Young 2000, 156). A number of movement activists also
advocate a dual strategy. David Brower, the leading American environmentalist of the 20th
century, was fond of saying that he was glad someone like Dave Foreman (founder of Earth
First!) came along, because it made Brower’s position seem more reasonable. Brower’s own
then-radical presence was once praised in identical terms by moderate environmentalist Russell
Train. Mark Dowie (telephone conversation with the author, 26 August 1999) argued that such a
recognition is becoming more widespread in the U.S. movement: “I think wise people at both
levels, grass roots and national, value the work of the other side and see ways of partnering and
working together on some of these issues. . . . I think there is a certain maturity coming now in
the movement that has accepted the work of the different styles and different tactics of
different people with the same objective.” It is easy enough to conclude in the abstract that a
dual strategy emphasizing both state and public sphere is desirable for any social movement.
As Dryzek (1996a, 119), argued, the “happiest conceivable outcome may be a clear separation
between two environmental movements: one within the state to take advantage of every bit of
flexibility in the liberal democratic system, another outside, more democratic and vital.”
Alternative alone can’t solve – focus on tactics and strategy key
Rachel Saloom 6, JD Univ of Georgia School of Law and M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from U of Chicago, Fall 2006, A Feminist
Inquiry into International Law and International Relations, 12 Roger Williams U. L. Rev. 159, Lexis
Because patriarchy is embedded within society, it is no surprise that the theory and practice of both international law and
international relations is also patriarchal. 98 Total
critique, however, presents no method by which to challenge
current hegemonic practices. Feminist scholars have yet to provide a coherent way in which
total critique can be applied to change the nature of international law and international
relations. Some [*178] feminist scholars are optimistic for the possibility of changing the way the current system is structured.
For example, Whitworth believes that "sites of resistance are always available to those who oppose the status quo." 99 Enloe
suggests that since the world of international politics has been made it can also be remade. 100 She posits that every time a woman
speaks out about how the government controls her, new theories are being made. 101 All of
these theorists highlight
the manner in which gender criticisms can destabilize traditional theories. They provide no
mechanism, however, for the actual implementation of their theories into practice. While in the abstract,
resistance to hegemonic paradigms seems like a promising concept, gender theorists have made no attempt to make their
resistance culminate in meaningful change. The
notion of rethinking traditional approaches to international law
relations does not go far enough in prescribing an alternative theoretical basis
for understanding the international arena. Enloe's plea for women to speak out about
international politics does not go nearly far enough in explaining how those acts could have the
potential to actually change the practice of international relations. Either women are already
speaking out now, and their voices alone are not an effective mechanism to challenge the
system, or women are not even speaking out about world politics currently. Obviously it is absurd to assume that women remain
and international
silent about world politics. If that is the case, then one must question women's ability to speak up, challenge, and change the
system.
Feminist critiques of the state get co-opted to justify neoliberal deregulation –
engagement in the state is key
Rahila Gupta 12, freelance journalist and writer, Has neoliberalism knocked feminism
sideways?, https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rahila-gupta/has-neoliberalism-knockedfeminism-sideways
Feminism needs to recapture the state from the neoliberal project to which it is in hock in order to make it
deliver for women. It must guard against atomisation and recover its transformative aspirations to shape the new social order that is hovering on the horizon,
says Rahila Gupta¶ How should feminists read our current times? A major economic crisis rocks the developed world. While austerity measures don’t appear to be working
across Europe, the mildly Keynesian efforts of Obama to kick-start the US economy have had only a marginal effect. The Occupy movement has gone global and the public
disorder in the summer, with more disorder being predicted by the police, is an indication of deep discontent with the system. Yet we have seen an enthusiastic and vibrant
third wave of youthful feminism emerge in the past decade. At the rate at which these waves arise, it will be some time before the rock of patriarchy will be worn smooth.¶
The current phase of capitalism – neo-liberalism – which began with Thatcher and Reagan in the 1970s, promotes
privatisation and deregulation in order to safeguard the freedom of the individual to compete
and consume without interference from a bloated state. According to David Harvey, a Marxist academic, the world stumbled
towards neo-liberalism in response to the last major recession in the 70s when ‘the uneasy compact between capital and labour brokered by an interventionist state’ broke
down. The UK government, for example, was obliged by the International Monetary Fund to cut expenditure on the welfare state in order to balance the books. The post-war
settlement had given labour more than its due, and it was time for the upper classes to claw these gains back. ¶ The fact that second wave feminism and neoliberalism
feminism ‘served to legitimate a structural
transformation of capitalist society’. I am with Nancy Fraser in so far as she says that there is a convergence, a
coinciding of second wave feminism and neo-liberalism, even that feminism thrived in these
conditions. It is well known that in an attempt to renew and survive, capitalism co-opts the opposition to
its own ends. If part of the project of neoliberalism is to shrink the size of the state, it serves its purpose to co-opt the
feminist critique that the state is both paternalistic and patriarchal. Critiques of the nanny state from the right may chime
with feminist concerns. However, the right has little to say about patriarchy. What is left out of the co-option process is equally
significant. The critique of the state mounted by feminists such as Elizabeth Wilson when state
capitalism was at the height of its powers suited neoliberal capitalists seeking deregulation and
a reduced role for the state.¶ Fraser’s analysis does not explain the current resurgence of feminism at a time when the shine of neoliberalism has faded.
It is not so much that feminism legitimised neoliberalism, but that neoliberal values created a
space for a bright, brassy and ultimately fake feminism - the ‘I really, really want’ girl-power
ushered in by the Spice Girls. This transitional period between second wave and the current
wave of feminism (which some commentators characterised as post-feminist) represented the
archetypal appropriation of the feminist agenda, shorn of its political context, by neoliberalism.
flourished from the 1970s onwards has led some to argue, notably Nancy Fraser, that
Incidentally, many of us rejected the label post-feminist because it felt like an attempt to chuck feminism into the dustbin of history and to deny the continuing need for it. In
hindsight, there was something different going on in that lull between the two waves in the 70s and 80s and today; the voice of feminism was being drowned out by its loud,
If the culture of neoliberalism had something to offer women, it was the idea of agency,
of choice freely exercised, free even of patriarchal restraints. It emphasised self-sufficiency of
the individual while at the same time undermining those collective struggles or institutions
which make self-sufficiency possible. The world was your oyster – all you needed to do was
compete successfully in the marketplace. The flexible worker, in order to make herself
acceptable to the world of work, may even go so far as to remodel herself through cosmetic
surgery, all the while under the illusion that she was in control of her life. In her essay on ‘Feminism’ in a
forthcoming book, Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, Clare Chambers argues that liberal capitalism is committed to what she calls
the ‘fetishism of choice’. If women choose things that disadvantage them and entrench
differences, it legitimates inequality because the inequality arises from the choices they make.
The few women who do well out of the sex industry do not believe that their work entrenches
inequality because it is freely chosen, because prostitution is seen as a liberation from the
drudgery of cleaning jobs. Choice is their weapon against feminist objections. In their so-called
brassy sisters.¶
free expression of their sexuality, they are challenging nothing in the neoliberal schema because
the work reduces women to the status of meat and commodity.
Feminists must reform law for pragmatic reasons –key to strong feminist
jurisprudence
Samuels 14 [Harriet Samuels, A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of
the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Feminist engagement
with law in the new millennium, February 2014]
It appears to have a very clear message and poured a bucket of very cold water over second wave feminists’ enthusiasm for trying to
use law for women.70 This has led to a disjuncture between feminist theorising and practice, which is regretted by many
feminists.71 It is my disquiet about this call to turn away from law, and the belief that legal
feminists, both scholars and
activists, have a responsibility to engage with law that underpins the thesis. Critique of law is
insufficient. There is a need to use law’s tools in traditional and imaginative ways not only to
expose its gendered character but to find new ways of doing law. This aligns the thesis alongside feminists
who seek to reconstruct liberal values rather than reject them outright.72 Feminists have interrogated
liberalism and found it wanting. They have critiqued the individualistic and autonomous nature of the liberal subject, the dualism
that liberalism presents in its divisions between the rational versus the emotional, its formal view of equality, the vision of the
neutral state and its separation of the public and the private realm. 73 Jaggar concludes that feminism has often relied on liberal
ideas and has many reasons to be grateful to liberalism, but that it is incapable of bringing about the changes desired.74 Nussbaum,
on the contrary, accepts much of the critique of liberalism, but she has famously mounted a spirited defence of its principles of
‘personhood, autonomy, rights dignity [and] self respect’.75 She has pointed out the diversity of liberal thinking, and notes that it
has attempted to respond to feminist criticisms. She tries to persuade the reader that, ‘[t]he deepest and most central ideas of the
liberal tradition are ideas of radical force and great theoretical and practical value’.76 Nussbaum’s own project, based on human
capabilities, articulates a set of needs necessary for autonomy and human flourishing.77 My concern that Smart’s exhortations
to desist from legal engagement, are overly dismissive of law’s possibilities, are shared by other legal
feminists and critical theorists. Sandland criticizes Smart for creating a dichotomy between politics/philosophy and between
deconstruction/reform thus closing
down all political and legal options. 78 Being outside the system as a
form of resistance is, according to Sandland, a strategy of ‘no resistance’. He sees Smart as being
overly pessimistic, by dismissing the significance of cases such as R v R, where the judges
removed the marital rape exemption, there is a danger of feminism ‘understating its own
political and jurisprudential purchase as a subversive force interrupting the “unmodified” liberal
paradigm’.79 Feminism needs to use the tension between recognition and denial of law to evaluate the merits of legal
intervention on a case-by-case basis. Sandland sees there being value in finding the gaps in law that provide a space to
struggle over law’s meaning.80Lacey appears sympathetic to Smart’s theoretical project, and to Smart’s insight that law’s belief that
it is objective, true and impartial inflates its status so that it appear superior to other forms of knowledge. This makes it harmful to
women.81 But she also has reservations about Smart’s political strategy and argues that it
would be unfortunate to give
up attempts at legal reform. She notes that it is unclear that other institutions such as the family, religion or politics are
more susceptible to reconstruction than law.82 Writing just under ten years later Munro argues that feminism should not
relinquish its attempts to reconstruct law. She is not uncritical of liberal values, but given law’s resistance to
competing discourses she thinks there are pragmatic reasons for using law rather than remaining
silenced by an oppositional stance.83
The state is not inherently gendered – reform is effective and only way to solve
Connell 90 (R. W., “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal”, Theory and
Society, Vol. 19, No. 5, (Oct., 1990), pp. 507-544)
Appraisals Is the state patriarchal? Yes, beyond any argument, on the evidence dis- cussed
above. It is not "essentially patriarchal" or "male"; even if one could speak of the "essence" of
a social institution, this would exaggerate the internal coherence of the state. Rather the
state is historically patriarchal, patriarchal as a matter of concrete social practices. State
structures in recent history institutionalize the European equation be- tween authority and a
dominating masculinity; they are effectively con- trolled by men; and they operate with a
massive bias towards hetero- sexual men's interests. At the same time the pattern of state
patriarchy changes. In terms of the depth of oppression and the historical possibilities of
resistance and transformation, a fascist regime is crucially different from a liberal one, and a
liberal one from a revolutionary one. The most favorable histori- cal circumstance for
progressive sexual politics seems to be the early days of social-revolutionary regimes; but the
later bureaucratization of these regimes is devastating. Next best is a liberal state with a
reformist government; though reforms introduced under its aegis are vulnerable in periods of
reaction. Though the state is patriarchal, progressive gender politics cannot avoid it. The
character of the state as the central institutionalization of power, and its historical trajectory
in the regulation and constitution of gender relations, make it unavoidably a major arena for
challenges to patriarchy. Here liberal feminism is on strong ground. Becoming engaged in
practical struggles for a share of state power requires tactical judgments about what
developments within the state provide opportunities. In the 1980s certain strategies of
reform have had a higher relative pay-off than they did before. In Australia, for instance, the
creation of a network of "women's services" was a feature of the 1970s, and the momentum of
this kind of action has died away. Reforms that have few budgetary implications but fit in with
other state strategies, such as modernizing the bureaucracy, become more promi- nent. Equal
employment opportunity and anti-discrimination legisla- tion have been highlighted;
decriminalizing homosexuality is consistent with this.
State influence inevitable---only mobilizing focus on reforms can effectively
challenge patriarchy
R. W. Connell 90, “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal”, Theory and
Society, Vol. 19, No. 5, (Oct., 1990), pp. 507-544, http://www.jstor.org/stable/657562
the state is a major stake in gender politics; and the exercise of
that power is a con- stant incitement to claim the stake. Thus the state becomes the focus of
interest-group formation and mobilization in sexual politics. It is worth recalling just how wide the liberal
state's activity in relation to gender is. This activity includes family policy, population policy, labor force and labor market management, housing
Because of its power to regulate and its power to create,
policy, regulation of sexual behavior and expression, provision of child care, mass educa- tion, taxation and income redistribution, the creation and use of mili- tary forces - and
that is not the whole of it. This is not a sideline; it is a major realm of state policy.
Control of the machinery that conducts these
activities is a massive asset in gender politics. In many situations it will be tactically decisive.
The state is therefore a focus for the mobilization of interests that is central to gender politics
on the large scale. Feminism's historical con- cern with the state, and attempts to capture a
share of state power, appear in this light as a necessary response to a historical reality. They are not an
error brought on by an overdose of liberalism or a capitula- tion to patriarchy. As Franzway puts it, the
state is unavoidable for feminism. The question is not whether feminism will deal with the
state, but how: on what terms, with what tactics, toward what goals.5" The same is true of the
politics of homosexuality among men. The ear- liest attempts to agitate for toleration produced a half-illegal, half-aca- demic mode of organizing that
reached its peak in Weimar Germany, and was smashed by the Nazis. (The Institute of Sexual Science was vandalized and its library burnt in 1933; later, gay men were sent to
concentration camps or shot.) A long period of lobbying for legal reform followed, punctuated by bouts of state repression. (Homosexual men were, for instance, targeted in the
The gay liberation movement changed the methods and expanded the
goals to include social revolution, but still dealt with the state over policing, de-criminalization,
and anti-discrimination. Since the early 1970s gay politics has evolved a complex mixture of confrontation, cooperation, and representation. In some cities, including San Francisco and Sydney, gay men as such have successfully run for public
office. Around the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, in countries such as the United States and Australia, gay community based
organizations and state health services have entered a close - if often tense - long-term
relationship.' In a longer historical perspective, all these forms of politics are fairly new. Fantasies like Aristophanes's Lysistrata aside,
the open mobiliza- tion of groups around demands or programs in sexual politics dates only
from the mid-nineteenth century. The politics that characterized other patriarchal gender orders in history were constructed along other lines, for
instance as a politics of kinship, or faction formation in agri- cultural villages. It can plausibly be argued that modern patterns re- sulted from a
reconfiguration of gender politics around the growth of the liberal state. In particular its
structure of legitimation through plebiscite or electoral democracy invited the response of popular
mobilization
McCarthyite period in the United States.)
State influence is inevitable but depth of oppression matters---reform is
effective and only way to solve---they exaggerate state’s internal coherence
R. W. Connell 90, “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal”, Theory and
Society, Vol. 19, No. 5, (Oct., 1990), pp. 507-544, http://www.jstor.org/stable/657562
Is the state patriarchal? Yes, beyond any argument, on the evidence dis- cussed above. It is not "essentially
patriarchal" or "male"; even if one could speak of the "essence" of a social institution, this would
exaggerate the internal coherence of the state. Rather the state is historically patriarchal, patriarchal
as a matter of concrete social practices. State structures in recent history institutionalize the European equation be- tween authority and a
dominating masculinity; they are effectively con- trolled by men; and they operate with a massive bias towards hetero- sexual men's interests. At the same time
the pattern of state patriarchy changes. In terms of the depth of oppression and the historical
possibilities of resistance and transformation, a fascist regime is crucially different from a liberal
one, and a liberal one from a revolutionary one. The most favorable histori- cal circumstance for
progressive sexual politics seems to be the early days of social-revolutionary regimes; but the later
bureaucratization of these regimes is devastating. Next best is a liberal state with a reformist government; though
reforms introduced under its aegis are vulnerable in periods of reaction. Though the state is patriarchal,
progressive gender politics cannot avoid it. The character of the state as the central
institutionalization of power, and its historical trajectory in the regulation and constitution of
gender relations, make it unavoidably a major arena for challenges to patriarchy. Here liberal
feminism is on strong ground. Becoming engaged in practical struggles for a share of state power
requires tactical judgments about what developments within the state provide opportunities. In the
1980s certain strategies of reform have had a higher relative pay-off than they did before. In Australia, for
Appraisals
instance, the creation of a network of "women's services" was a feature of the 1970s, and the momentum of this kind of action has died away. Reforms that have few budgetary
Equal employment opportunity
and anti-discrimination legisla- tion have been highlighted; decriminalizing homosexuality is
consistent with this
implications but fit in with other state strategies, such as modernizing the bureaucracy, become more promi- nent.
They presume the purity of their experience in place of facts---we must
examine multiple perspectives
Conway 97—philosophy, Penn State (Daniel, Nietzsche and the political, 135-6)
This preference is clearly political in nature
any
epistemic privilege necessarily implies a political (i.e., situated) preference
All perspectives are partial, all standpoints
situated—
It is absolutely crucial
that we acknowledge claims
about situated knowledge as themselves situated within the political agenda
feminist s must
accept
the self-referential implications of their own epistemic
claims ¶ The political agenda of
assigns to some) subjugated standpoints a political
preference or priority.
, and Haraway makes no pretense of aspiring to epistemic purity or foundational innocence. For Haraway,
. Her postmodern orientation elides the
boundaries traditionally drawn between politics and epistemology, and thus renders otiose the ideal of epistemic purity.
including those of feminist theorists.
to Haraway's postmodern feminist project
her
she sets for postmodern feminism;
theorist
therefore
and accommodate
.
postmodern feminism thus
(
Haraway, for example, believes that some subjugated standpoints may be more immediately revealing, especially since they have been discounted and excluded for so long. They may prove
especially useful in coming to understand the political and psychological mechanisms whereby the patriarchy discounts the radically situated knowledges of others while claiming for its own (situated) knowledge an illicit epistemic privilege: ¶ The
standpoints of the subjugated ... are savvy to modes of denial through repression, forgetting, and disappearing acts— ways of being nowhere while claiming to sec comprehensively. The subjugated have a decent chance to be on to the god-trick and all its
But these subjugated standpoints do not afford
an epistemically
privileged view of the world,
Haraway
warns against the ¶ danger of
appropriating the vision of the less powerful while
claiming to see from their positions. To see from below is neither easily learned nor
unproblematic, even if "we" "naturally" inhabit the great underground terrain of subjugated
knowledges The positionings of the subjugated are not exempt from critical re-examination
The standpoints of the subjugated are not
"innocent" positions ¶ A subjugated standpoint may shed new light on the ways of an
oppressor, but it in no way renders superfluous
the standpoint of the oppressor.
Because neither standpoint fully comprises the other the aggregation of the two would
move both parties
closer to a more objective understanding of the world If some
have political reasons for disavowing this project of aggregation, or for adopting it
selectively, then they must pursue their political agenda at the expense of the greater
objectivity that they might otherwise have gained
dazzling—and, therefore, blinding—illuminations.34 ¶
feminist theorists
independent of the political agendas they have established. Reprising elements of Nietzsche's psychological profile of the "slave" type,
serious
romanticizing and/or
.
,
decoding, deconstruction, and interpretation; that is, from both semiological and hermeneutic modes of critical enquiry.
.35
or redundant
,
(or a third party)
.
feminists
.
The more they win that the state is bad, the more it proves the value of
framework – just ignoring the law [or pointing out it’s sexism] allows
unfettered regulation and denigration of women’s bodies – bringing women’s
experience into the law is the only successful strategy
Finley 89 – Professor of law @ SUNY
(Lucinda, “Breaking Women's Silence in Law: The Dilemma of the Gendered Nature of Legal
Reasoning, Notre Dame Law Review, 64)
III. Dealing With the Dilemma of Legal Language
So, what's a woman do? Give up on law, on legal language entirely? Disengage from the legal
arena of the struggle? Neither of these strategies is really an available option. We cannot get
away from law, even if that is what we would like to do. As Sandra Harding has said, "[w]e do
not imagine giving up speaking or writing just because our language is deeply androcentric; nor
do we propose an end to theorizing about social life once we realize that thoroughly
androcentric perspectives inform even our feminist revisions of the social theories we
inherit."97 Because law is such a powerful, authoritative language, one that insists that to be
heard you try to speak its language, we cannot pursue the strategy suggested by theorists from
other disciplines such as the French feminists, of devising a new woman's language that rejects
"phallologocentric" discourse.98¶ Nor can we abandon caring whether law hears us. Whether
or not activists for women look to law as one means for pursuing change, the law will still
operate on and affect women's situations. Law will be present through direct regulation,
through nonintervention when interven¬tion is needed, and through helping to keep something
invisible when visibility and validation are needed." Law will continue to reflect and shape
prevailing social and individual understandings of problems, and thus will continue to play a
role in silencing and discrediting women.¶ Since law inevitably will be one of the important
discourses affecting the status of women, we must engage it. We must pursue trying to bring
more of women's experiences, perspectives, and voices into law in order to empower women
and help legitimate these experiences. But this is not as easy as it sounds, because there is no
"one truth" of women's experiences, and women's own understandings of their experiences are
themselves affected by legal categorizations.¶ To the extent that the law's authoritative
definitions are based on male perspectives, much of women's own understandings of things
whose meaning is greatly influenced by legal definitions—such as rape or equality—will be
constructed with reference to the male meanings. So the feminist project of incorporating
"women's experience" into legal definitions is not as simple as "one, figure out who or what is
'women'; two, consult women's experience; and three, add it to law and stir." Women's
experiences are diverse and often contradictory; and there is no true women's experience
unaffected by social construction, which includes legal construction, which includes male
defined understandings. How many women have thought of themselves as not having been
"raped," when they know that what happened to them did not match the legal definition of
rape which informs the social understanding of rape?100 How many women have thought of
themselves as not victims of discrimination when the law says they are different because they
are pregnant or capable of becoming pregnant, or subject to greater health risks, or too short,
or not strong enough, or working in jobs and at rates of pay they have freely chosen to accept,
or not reacting to workplace "horseplay" (manplay)101 the way a reasonable "person" would?'¶
The answer to both questions is many, some, but not all, and not the many or some totally.
There may be instances of dissonance, of resistance, and of wondering if the legal definition is
really right. A woman may still feel violated and coerced even though she was not "raped," and
she may begin to wonder if maybe feeling violated and coerced is so much like being raped that
she was raped even though she knew the man and agreed to go to his room. A woman may still
feel that she was treated unfairly or was not really given any choice or was expected to accept
something that really disturbed her or hurt her, and that all this was because she had no power.
She may then begin to suspect that the lack of power, and thus the way she was treated has
something to do with the fact that she is a woman, and she may wonder whether maybe this is
what discrimination is really all about anyway. The dissonances, resistances, and wonderings are
also part of women's experiences. Once they are articulated and shared with other women,
understandings often be-¶ gin to change.102 Legal activists can explore these voices of
dissonance, these barely audible questions. They can embrace the fact that women have many
very different experiences and can start working into the law the questions raised by women's
challenges to the prevailing legal constructions of situations. For example, as women
themselves started to talk to each other about experiences of violently coerced sex on dates,
and these women talked to other women who had been raped in the con-ventional sense, the
similarities between the way their experience made them feel and the recognized rape became
apparent. And so they began to question whether maybe they, too, had been "raped." This
opening in women's understandings is now being used to change the legal understanding of
rape as something that only happens between strangers.103 In engaging the law over the
meaning of women's experiences, people representing women must remain constantly critically
aware of the dilemma of legal language, of its simultaneous power and limitations. While its
power can help women by validating and affecting societal consciousness about women's
situations, its power also has a negative as¬pect. Precisely because it is an authoritative
discourse, it demands that we try to speak within its confines—it threatens us with not being
heard or credited if we do not. The patriarchal bias in legal language, and its limited way of
framing and envisioning situations, can easily distort what women have to say. It can put women
on the defensive, because of their "difference" from men. It can force women to respond to
sameness/difference arguments, public/private arguments, or free speech arguments, not on
women's own terms, but on the terms of the traditional arguments. This creates a stark
dilemma: in light of the power of exosting meanings, can we change the meanings of terms
while still using those terms?¶ By talking about family/work conflicts, are we helping to reinforce
the view of these two worlds as separate spheres? Are we continuing to privilege the existing
definition of work, and are we shoring up the notion of family as two opposite sex parents, with
some number of children? By using the term "equality," are we helping to keep the focus on
women and their differences from men, thus reinforcing the male norm? Or is it possible to use
this term in a way that makes women's exper¬iences the reference point,104 and shifts
attention to structures and val¬ues of the workplace?105 Even if we modify "rape" with "date"
or "acquaintance," are we leaving unchallenged the baggage that comes¶ along with the "r"
word—that this is a crime of sex, in which women's consent is the main issue, rather than a
crime of violence in which the violator's conduct is the issue?100 If we capitulate to the
language of private choice in the abortion debate, are we losing sight of the reasons why,
beyond privacy and choice, control over one's reproductive destiny is so essential to women's
position in a society of male domination?107 Are we leaving ourselves wide-open to the moral
high ground of the term "pro-life" when all we can juxtapose against it is "choice," rather than
freedom and equality? The word "choice" can seem as trivial as the color of one's clothes or
one's preferred brand of car, when it is life that some say they are fighting for.¶ There have been
examples of promising word changes and consequent meaning changes in legal discourse.
Consider the now widespread use of the term "sexual harassment," for what used to be
considered a tort of invading individual dignity or sensibilities; the term "battering" for domestic
violence. But even these language changes get confined by the legal frameworks into which they
are placed. For example, the individualistic and comparative discrimination framework now
applied to sexual harassment leaves some judges wondering about bisexual supervisors as a
means to deny that discrimination is what is occurring.108 The contract model of damages in
discrimination law means that the dignity and personal identity values that tort law once
recognized often go un¬dercompensated.109 And the use of the term "sexual assault" in place
of "rape" in some rape reform statutes has not obviated the problems of "objective" maleperspectived judgments of female sexuality and consent.110¶ It is not my purpose to offer a
simple, neat, for all times solution to the dilemma of legal language. Indeed, to even think that is
possible would be contradictory to my message—it would be a capitulation to the legal ways of
thinking that I seek to destabilize in order to expand. But I am not without solutions to the
dilemma of the gendered nature of legal reasoning. The message of this Article presents one
solution: critical awareness of the dilemma is itself important. Awareness encourages thinking
critically about whose perspective has informed a term or doc¬trine, and about the norms or
assumptions upon which the term may rest. This leads to self-conscious strategic thinking about
the philosophi¬cal and political implications of the meanings and programs we do en-¶ dorse.111
For example, just what are the implications of arguing either sameness or difference? If both
have negative implications, then this should suggest the need to reframe the issue, to ask
previously unasked questions about the relevance or stability of differences,112 or about the
role of unexamined players such as employers and workplace structures and norms. Critical
thinking about norms and what they leave unexamined opens up conversations about altering
the norms and thus the vision of the problem. This leads to thinking about new ways of
reasoning and talking. It leads to offering new definitions of existing terms; defini¬tions justified
by explorations of context and the experiences of previously excluded voices. Or, it leads to
thinking about offering wholly new terms.¶ In addition to critical engagement with the nature of
legal language, another promising strategy is to sow the mutant seeds that do exist within legal
reasoning. My previous description of legal reasoning is ob¬viously overly general. It highlights
tendencies or widely held assumptions about the nature of law. But this description, too, can be
deconstructed. For example, while law is generally ahistorical and ab¬stract in its highest
pronouncements of doctrine, it is also a fact-driven system, one that works with and exploits
variations between situations.113 Because legal reasoning can be sensitive to context, we can
work to expand the context that it deems relevant. By pulling the contextual threads of legal
language, we can work towards making law more comfortable with diversity and complexity,
less wedded to the felt need for universalizing, reductive principles.
Realizing any feminist end requires interaction with the state – their anti-state
stance is catastrophically hyperbolic and actively undercuts substantive gains
for women in need
Mansbridge 3– Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values @ Harvard
(Jane, “Anti-statism and Difference Feminism in International Social Movements,” International
Feminist Journal of Politics)
Feminist strategies that neglect or consistently deplore state action cannot accomplish what
women need – because individuals need collectives such as states to solve collective action
problems and to move toward more just social arrangements. Strategies that rely heavily on
women’s differences from men also cannot accomplish what women need – because women
are like men in many ways relevant to individual and collective action. Despite these truths,
social movements also need some strategies of action that work separately from and sometimes
against the state. Moreover, strategies that accentuate the differences between oppressed and
oppressing bring needed energy to a movement. The best overall strategy is, therefore, to
realize that both states and difference theories are dangerous weapons, and proceed with
caution.¶ In this important paper, Jane Jaquette sounds the alarm. She exposes the dangers of
ignoring the state and the dangers of ‘difference feminism’. She also shows how these are
linked. Although I will underscore the merits of anti-state activity and difference feminism, I
agree that a feminist strategy that neglected or deplored state action would be weak indeed.
So would a strategy that relied on women’s differences from men.¶ First, the merits of Jaquette’s
argument.¶ One strand in feminist theory and practice greatly suspects the state. This
suspicion can escalate into outright rejection, with potentially grave consequences for
women.¶ The philosophical case for the state is relatively simple. Collective action¶ can
improve human lives. Efficient collective action requires coercion. Instru- ments of collective
action involving coercion can, paradoxically, increase human freedom. We are freer to do many
things if we can bind ourselves with legally enforceable contracts. Rather than enforcing these
contracts privately, it is more efficient and potentially more just to give a monopoly of
legitimate violence to one entity, so long as that entity can reasonably claim to be more just
than the alternatives. Humans have long struggled to devise relatively legitimate forms of
coercion. The history of democracy is part of that struggle, although that history has nowhere
produced national-level institutions that are highly legitimate. Despite their incapacity ever to
be fully legitimate, however, we still need both states and international institutions to help
solve collective action problems and to give scope to the human capacity for justice.¶
Regarding women, the practical case for the state, must be grounded in contemporary realities.
In some states, such as Sweden, women do better, compared to men, than in the most
egalitarian of known pre-state entities, such as the Kung!. Moreover, although the dangers of
state power for women are great, it is not practical to contemplate returning to pre-state
entities. Human beings seem to want the goods produced by more extensive forms of
cooperation, including those that require legitimate coercion. Given that states will not
disappear in the near future, what stance should we take toward them? My answer is: wary
usage. State power will be used against women, just as other forms of power are used against
women, unless we intervene. One response is to establish barriers, such as constitutional or
internationally enforceable rights, to certain kinds of invasions by state power. Another is to
make states more likely to act in the interests of women.¶ In the United States both theory and
institutional practice carry suspicion of the state farther than in most countries, with some
malign consequences. Ours has been a ‘liberalism of fear’ more than an Enlightenment
liberalism that envisions a common good. Americans are wary of state power, encouraged in
that wariness by powerful capitalist interests. Jaquette rightly warns against this. State power
can serve both as a brake on the negative externalities of capitalism and as a positive force for
material redistribution. Particularly when patriarchal power takes violent forms in the private
sphere, state power can help women struggle against that violence as well as other non-state
evils.¶ The question, then, is how far to carry wariness of state power and of theories of state
universalism and impartiality. I believe we must both use state power and place bounds on.
Because the state as a tool is dangerous and flawed, we need to use it with caution.¶ Jaquette
faults contemporary feminist anti-state theorists not for wanting to abolish the state but for
spending their energies on wariness rather than on how to use it for redistribution. How
important one thinks this problem is depends on how one judges the current balance within
feminist theory. Many feminist theorists – e.g. Susan Okin, Nancy Fraser, Iris Young – call for
redistributive reforms requiring state power. Perhaps in Latin America, from¶ 356 International
Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––¶ Downloaded by [Harvard
Library] at 12:19 04 August 2014¶ which Jaquette takes her lead, theorists of the North are
represented by anti- state theory. In that case, one must ask why these are the theorists Latin
American feminists choose to read. Anti-state discourse may have informed radical practice in
Latin America not because anti-state theory is dominant in the North but because activists in
Latin America find that anti-state discourse meets their organizing needs. Anti-state discourse
may reflect the reality of individuals working on the margins of states that either are relatively
corrupt or, even more obviously than most, enforce the interests of dominant classes.¶ Jaquette
also rightly warns of the dangers of valorizing action in civil society to the neglect of state action.
However, we need evidence that the more women participate in NGOs the less they participate
in the state. Without such evidence it seems equally plausible that the more women participate
in NGOs the more they will acquire the skills and contacts required for involve- ment in state
politics. Some individuals also will not be able to deal with the hierarchy, coercion and male
dominance embedded in all states. They will need to work in social movements. Political
activism usually sustains a division of labor, with the individuals who can best deal with
established institutions doing just that and those who are most repelled by those institutions
charting another course. The directions they take sometimes conflict with one another.¶ Women
and feminists trying to achieve places in the state, whether as femocrats or politicians, face
major barriers but also major attractions. I do not know how much we should worry that they
will not be attracted to these jobs because of radical anti-state discourse. In the United States
this does not seem to be a huge problem. In some countries, women who could be agents of
feminist change turn down jobs in the state because those jobs are boring and unsatisfying.
When these women speak of their frustrations, radical anti- state discourse appears to play a
small or non-existent role.¶ In short, Jaquette is right that an established anti-state discourse
within radical movements makes productive interaction with states less likely, but I am not
sure that such discourse is created by feminist theory.¶ Jaquette also points to distortions
produced by difference feminism. It is true that any stress on women’s differences reinforces
the tendency of dominant groups such as white or middle-class women to interpret ‘women’s’
experiences primarily in light of their own experiences. In recent years, women of color have
produced the greatest advances in feminist theory, forcing white feminists to look more closely
at their hegemonically defined concepts of commonality; this work has given all feminists the
tools to understand better differences within their groups and subgroups.¶ In addition, in most
areas of presumed personality difference between men and women, the differences are
extremely small. The currently definitive meta-analysis of studies on Carol Gilligan’s hypothesis
shows that – at least in the United States, in the highly educated populations where she argues
that differences should appear – only very small differences can be found.¶ –––––––––––––––––
– Jane Mansbridge/Anti-statism and difference feminism 357¶ Downloaded by [Harvard Library]
at 12:19 04 August 2014¶ Most studies do not show women taking a different approach to
justice or behaving more cooperatively than men. Studies designed to elicit behavioral gender
differences often generate practically none.¶ In-groups, we now know, exaggerate similarities
within their group and their differences from other groups. The human brain makes these
predictable cognitive and emotional mistakes in in-group/out-group differentiation. Recognizing
this tendency, we should constantly struggle to take into account the fact that our social and
first-order cognitive estimates of such differences are usually exaggerated. In the case of
gender, all societies also engage in ‘gratuitous gendering’ – giving gendered meanings to nouns
and patterns of action that do not functionally require that identification. These processes
increase even more our perceptions of gender difference.¶ Today we have little idea what
differences might or might not emerge between men and women in a non-oppressive society. It
seems mistaken, therefore, to insist on difference rather than focusing on the effects of
dominance.¶ Finally, as Jaquette warns, promising different political results based on the
premise that women are different from men is dangerous. We are almost certain not to deliver
on that promise, at least in the short run. The backlash after the US suffrage movement was
undoubtedly caused in part by disillusion at the lack of change when women won the vote.¶ And
yet, small differences that do appear between men and women can take on major symbolic
significance, precisely because of our human tendency to exaggerate group differences.
Although using that significance is danger- ous, not only because it exaggerates reality but also
because it underlines the very stereotypes that have been used to keep women in their place,
the existence of danger does not mean that we should forswear this tool – any more than for
swearing the tool of state action. Just remember: when using a dangerous tool, take active
precautions against its potential harms.¶ Difference arguments for electing women are not just
arguments from ‘utility’, as Jaquette reports Marian Sawer’s point. For example, the fact that
women are perceived as more honest than men can advance an attack on corruption by
associating its female leaders with honesty. Using positive stereotypes of women in this way
need not be degrading. Successful uses may even result in males adopting certain features of
female symbolism to signify their own adherence to better standards.¶ In another example,
among professional populations in the United States, women are somewhat more likely than
men to adopt participatory, egalitarian styles of leadership. The difference probably derives
from women’s relative powerlessness, which teaches skills of persuasion rather than command.
In the US women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, women used the gender differences
they perceived in listening, interpreting body language and participatory style to create
significant departures from the prevailing styles of left politics in organizations dominated by
men. The message, ‘We do things differently’ is exhilarating. It prompts greater effort in trying
to¶ 358 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––¶ Downloaded
by [Harvard Library] at 12:19 04 August 2014¶ forge a new model, because the effort is
associated not only with a different culture that can replace the old one but also with a different
self and associated selves.¶ Turning from practical politics to political theory, concepts are also
often gender-coded. Freedom and self-interest, for example, are often coded as male,
community and altruism as female. It is not surprising, then, that when feminist theorists
entered the field of theory, some explicitly supported certain values previously denigrated as
female. Although the arguments made for these values might not be female, their proponrnts
often were. Moreover, having been raised in a subculture that had been allocated cultural
respon- sibility for these values, women had often thought about them more thor- oughly than
men. Women had also usually experienced the denigration of these values first-hand.¶ In short,
Jaquette is right that stressing women’s differences from men is fraught with danger. But values
and practices that many cultures associate with women are often good in themselves,
denigrated because of their association with women. Asserting the value of these ideals and
practices from a stance as women often makes emotional, cognitive and political sense.¶
Importantly, Jaquette identifies a link between anti-state discourse and difference feminism. A
number of anti-state theorists who are also strongly anti-essentialist would deny this
identification. But in social movements themselves, the identification makes sense. The state is
male; hence difference feminists should be anti-state. The state is instrumental, self-interested
and hierarchical; women are communal, nurturing and participatory. To the degree that these
associations are simply accepted as unchangeable truths, they compound the most problematic
anti-state mistake.¶ I agree wholeheartedly with Jaquette’s fears in seeing no visible trend
toward a renewed interest in the politics of economic justice, at least in the United States. In
contrast to the creativity in the struggle against globalization, there has been an absence of
‘street-level’ activism against, for example, the revolutionary shift in tax burdens in the USA.
More positively, the anti- sweatshop movement has had some good effects in raising consumer
con- sciousness and bringing younger activists in touch with international labor movement
organizing. As for the causes of the shift away from the politics of economic justice, I agree with
Jaquette that it is related to the post-Cold War era and the temporary triumph of capitalism. I
am not so sure that it has much to do either with activists’ anti-state discourse or with
difference feminism.¶ This commentary has concentrated on the caveats to Jaquette’s thesis. I
conclude by stressing again my fundamental agreement with her argument. Feminists have a
‘stake in a capable state’. It would be catastrophic to be so carried away by the theoretical
virtues of civil society or by anti-state discourse as to deaden oneself to the practical need to
work with the state to improve the lives of women.¶ Because ideas have influence, it is worth
stressing Jaquette’s point that¶ –––––––––––––––––– Jane Mansbridge/Anti-statism and
difference feminism 359¶ Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 12:19 04 August 2014¶ ‘norms
adopted internationally depend on states to implement them’; and only states can change the
rules for women and other disadvantaged groups. The welfare state is a huge improvement
over the arbitrary power of men in private families. Women’s groups must therefore work
closely with govern- ments or remain on the fringe. Feminists will not only have to ‘learn to
live with the state’. They should learn to work with the state. For those who do not already
know this, Jaquette’s article is required reading.
Using technical discourse strategically is key to solve the K
Mary Caprioli 4, Dept. of Political Science @ the University of Tennessee, PhD from the
University of Connecticut, “Feminist IR Theory and Quantitative Methodology: A Critical
Analysis,” International Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jun., 2004), pp. 253-269
We should learn from the research of feminist scholars to engage in a dialogue that can be understood.
Carol Cohn (1987), for example, found that one could not be understood or taken seriously within the national
security arena without using a masculine-gendered language. In other words, a common language is necessary to understand and
be understood. This insight could be applied to feminist research within international relations. Why not, as Charlotte Hooper (2001:10) suggests, make
"strategic use of [expert jargon] to gain credibility for feminist arguments (or otherwise subvert it for feminist
Little justification exists for abandoning the liberal empiricists who reason that "the problem
of developing better knowledge lies not with the scientific method itself but with the biases in
the ways in which our theories have been focused and developed" (Tickner 2001:13).
ends)."
Alt Fails
You can use a lot of the state key/perm cards as reasons why the alt fails absent
an enagement of the state/structural analysis.
Pessimism Fails
Optimism and solidarity are our only hope---their pessimistic understanding of
rage accepts the foundational premises of patriarchy/racism as its starting
point for politics
bell hooks 96, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, Google Books, 269-272
black Americans are succumbing to and internalizing the racist
assumption that there can be no meaningful bonds of intimacy between blacks and whites. It is
269More than ever before in our history,
fascinating to explore why it is that black people trapped in the worst situation of racial oppres sion—enslavement—had the foresight to see that it would be disempowering for
them to lose sight of the capacity of white people to transform themselves and divest of white supremacy, even as many black folks today who in no way suffer such extreme
black folks, like their white
counterparts, have passively accepted the internalization of white supremacist assumptions.
Organized white supremacists have always taught that there can never be trust and intimacy
between the superior white race and the inferior black race. When black people internalize
these sentiments, no resistance to white supremacy is taking place; rather we become
complicit in spreading racist notions. It does not matter that so many black people feel white people will never repudiate racism because of
racist oppression and exploitation are convinced that white people will not repudiate racism. Con temporary
being daily assaulted by white denial and refusal of accountability. We must not allow the actions of white folks who blindly endorse racism to determine the direction of our
resistance. Like our white allies in struggle we must consistently keep the faith, by always sharing the truth that 270white people can be anti-racist, that racism is not
some immutable character flaw.
Of course many white people are comfortable with a rhetoric of race that suggests racism
cannot be changed, that all white people are “inherently racist” simply because they are born and raised in this society. Such
misguided thinking socializes white people both to remain ignorant of the way in which white supremacist attitudes
are learned and to assume a posture of learned helplessness as though they have no agency—no capacity to resist this thinking. Luckily we have many
autobiographies by white folks committed to anti-racist struggle that provide documentary testimony that many of these individuals repudiated racism
when they were children. Far from passively accepting It as inherent, they instinctively felt it was wrong. Many of them witnessed bizarre acts of white
racist aggression towards black folks in everyday life and responded to the injustice of the situation. Sadly, in our times so many white folks are easily
convinced by racist whites and bLack folks who have internalized racism that they can never be really free of racism.
These feelings aíso then obsc]re the reality of white privi lege. As long as white folks are taught to accept racism as ‘natura]” then they do not have to
see themselves as con sciously creating a racist society by their actions, by their political choices. This means as well that they do not have to face the
way in which acting in a racist manner ensures the maintenance of white privilege. Indeed, denying their agency allows them to believe white privilege
does not exist even as they daily exercise it. If the young white woman who had been raped had chosen to hold all black males account able for what
happened, she would have been exercising white privilege and reinforcing the structure of racist thought which teaches that all black people are alike.
Unfortunately,
271so many white people are eager to believe racism cannot be changed because internalizing that assumption downplays the issue of accountability.
No responsibility need be taken for not changing something ¡fit is perceived as immutable. To accept racism as a system of domination that can be
changed would demand that everyone who sees him- or herself as embracing a vision of radai social equality would be required to assert anti-racist
habits of being. We know from histories both present and past that white people (and everyone else) who commit themselves to living in anti-racist
ways need to make sacrifices, to courageously endure the uncomfortable to challenge and change.
Whites, people of color, and black folks are reluctant to commit themselves fully and deeply to an
anti-racist struggle that is ongoing because there is such a pervasive feeling of hopelessness—a
conviction that nothing will ever change. How any of us can continue to hold those feelings
when we study the history of racism in this society and see how much has changed makes no
logical sense. Clearly we have not gone far enough. In the late sixties, Martin Luther King posed the question “Where do
we go from here.” To live in anti-racist society we must collectively renew our commitment to a democratic
vision of racial justice and equality. Pursuing that vision we create a culture where beloved
community flourishes and is sustained. Those of us who know the joy of being with folks from all walks of life, all races, who are
fundamentalls’ anti-racist in their habits of being. need to give public testimony. Ve need to share not only what we have experienced but the
conditions of change that make such an experience possible. The interracial circle of love that I know can happen because each individual present in it
has made his or her own commitment to living an anti- racist life and to furthering the struggle to end white supremacy 272 will become a reality for
everyone only if those of us who have created these communities share how they emerge in our lives and the strategies we use to sustain them. Our
devout commitment to building diverse communities is cen tral. These commitments to anti-racist living are just one expression of who we are and
what we share with one an other but they form the foundation of that sharing. Like
all beloved communities we affirm our
differences. It is this generous spirit of affirmation that gives us the courage to challenge one another, to work through misunderstandings,
especially those that have to do with race and racism. In a beloved community solidarity and trust are grounded in
profound commitment to a shared vision. Those of us who are always anti-racist long for a world in which evezyone can form a
beloved community where borders can be crossed and cultural hybridity celebrated. Anyone can begin to make such a community by truly seeking to
live in an anti-racist world. If
that longing guides our vision and our actions, the new culture will be born
and anti-racist communities of resis tance will emerge everywhere. That is where we must go
from here.
Essentialism
Their reliance on gender binaries to explain violence is essentialist and wrong
Harvis, professor of government and IR – University of Sydney, 2K
(Darryl, “Feminist revisions of international relations,” International Relations and the Challenge
of Postmodernism, p. 162-3)
Critical research agendas of this type, however, are not found easily in International Relations. Critics
of feminist
perspectives run the risk of denouncement as either a misogynist malcontent or an androcentric
keeper of the gate. At work in much of this discourse is an unstated political correctness, where the
historical marginalization of women bestows intellectual autonomy, excluding those outside the
identity group from legitimate participation in its discourse. Only feminist women can do real,
legitimate, feminist theory since, in the mantra of identity politics, discourse must emanate from a positional
(personal) ontology. Those sensitive or sympathetic to the identity politics of particular groups are, of course, welcome to lend
support and encouragement, but only on terms delineated by the groups themselves. In this way, they enjoy an
uncontested sovereign hegemony oyer their own self-identification, insuring the group
discourse is self constituted and that its parameters, operative methodology, ,uu\ standards of argument,
appraisal, and evidentiary provisions are self defined. Thus, for example, when Sylvester calls lor a "home.steading" does so
"by [a] repetitive feminist insistence that we be included on our terms" (my emphasis). Rather than an invitation to engage in
dialogue, this
is an ultimatum that a sovereign intellectual space be provided and insulated from
critics who question the merits of identity-based political discourse. Instead, Sylvester calls upon
International Relations to "share space, respect, and trust in a re-formed endeavor," but one otherwise proscribed as committed to
demonstrating not only "that the secure homes constructed by IR's many debaters are chimerical," but, as a consequence, to ending
International Relations and remaking it along lines grounded in feminist postmodernism.93 Such
stipulative provisions
might be likened to a form of negotiated sovereign territoriality where, as part of the settlement for the
historically aggrieved, border incursions are to be allowed but may not be met with resistance or reciprocity. Demands for entry to
the discipline are thus predicated on conditions that insure two sets of rules, cocooning postmodern feminist spaces from systematic
analyses while "respecting" this discourse as it hastens about the project of deconstructing International Relations as a "male
space." Sylvester's
impassioned plea for tolerance and "emphatic cooperation" is thus confined to like-minded
who do not challenge feminist epistemologies but accept them as a necessary
means of reinventing the discipline as a discourse between postmodern identities—the most
important of which is gender.94 Intolerance or misogyny thus become the ironic epithets
attached to those who question the wisdom of this reinvention or the merits of the return of
identity in international theory.'"' Most strategic of all, however, demands for entry to the discipline and calls for
individuals, those
intellectual spaces betray a self-imposed, politically motivated marginality. After all, where are such calls issued from other than the
discipline and the intellectual—and well established—spaces of feminist International Relations? Much like the strategies employed
by male dissidents, then, feminist postmodernists too deflect as
illegitimate any criticism that derives
from skeptics whose vantage points are labeled privileged. And privilege is variously interpreted
historically, especially along lines of race, color, and sex where the denotations white and male, to name but two, serve as
generational mediums to assess the injustices of past histories. White males, for example, become generic signifiers for historical
oppression, indicating an ontologicallv privileged group by which the historical experiences of the "other" can then be reclaimed in
the context of their related oppression, exploitation, AND exclusion. Legitimacy, in this context, can then be claimed in terms of
one's group identity and the extent to which the history of that particular group has been “silenced.” In this same way, selfidentification or “self-situation”
establishes one’s credentials, allowing admittance to the group and
legitimating the “authoritative” vantage point from which one speaks and writes. Thus, for example, Jan
Jindy Pettman includes among the introductory pages to her most recent book, Worlding Women, a section titled “A (personal)
politics of location,” in which her identity as a woman, a feminist, and an academic, makes apparent her particular (marginal)
identities and group loyalties.96 Similarly, Christine Sylvester, in the introduction to her book, insists, “It is important to provide a
context for one’s work in the often-denied politics of the personal.” Accordingly, self-declaration revelas to the reader that she is a
feminist, went to a Catholic girls school where she was schooled to “develop your brains and confess something called “sins” to
always male forever priests,” and that these provide some pieces to her dynamic objectivity.97 Like territorial markers, self-
identification permits entry to intellectual spaces whose sovereign authority is “policed” as
much by marginal subjectivies as hey allege of the oppressors who “police” the discourse of realism, or who
are said to walk the corridors of the discipline insuring the replication of patriarchy, hierarchical agendas,
and “malestream” theory. If Sylvester’s version of feminist postmodernism is projected as tolerant, perspectivist,
and encompassing of a multiplicity of approaches, in reality it is as selective, exclusionary, and dismissive of
alternative perspectives as mainstream approaches are accused of being. Skillful theoretical moves of
this nature underscore the adroitness of postmodern feminist theory at emasculating many of its logical inconsistencies. In arguing
for a feminist postmodernism, for example, Sylvester employs a double theoretical move that, on the one hand, invokes a kind of
epistemological deconstructive anarchy cum relativism in an attempt to decenter or make insecure fixed research gazes, identities,
and concepts (men, women, security, and nation-state), while on the other hand turning to the lived experiences of women as if
ontologically given and assuming their experiences to be authentic, real, substantive, and authoritative interpretations of the
realities of international relations. Women at the peace camps of Greenham Common or in the cooperatives of Harare, represent,
for Sylvester, the real coal face of international politics, their experiences and strategies the real politics of “relations international.”
But why should we take the experiences of these women to be ontologically superior or more insightful than the experiences of
other women or other men? As Sylvester admits elsewhere, “Experience … is at once always already an interpretation and in need of
interpretation.” Why, then are experience-based modes of knowledge more insightful than knowledges derived through other
modes of inquiry?98 Such espistemologies are surely crudely positivistic in their singular reliance on osmotic perception of the facts
as they impact upon the personal. If, as Sylvester writes, “sceptical inlining draws on substantive everydayness as a time and site of
knowledge, much as does everyday feminist theorizing,” and if, as she further notes, “it understands experience…as mobile,
indeterminate, hyphenated, [and] homeless,” why should this knowledge be valued as anything other than fleeting subjective
perceptions of multiple environmental stimuli whose meaning is beyond explanation other than as a personal narrative?99 Is this
what Sylvester means when she calls for a re-visioning and a repainting of the “canvases of IR,” that we dissipate knowledge into an
infinitesimal number of disparate sites, all equally valid, and let loose with a mélange of visceral perceptions; stories of how each of
us perceive we experience international politics? If this is the case, then Sylvester’s version of feminist postmodernity does not
advance our understanding of international politics, leaving untheorized and unexplained the causes of international relations.
Personal narratives do not constitute theoretical discourse, nor indeed an explanation of the systemic factors that procure
international events, process, or the actions of certain actors. We might also extend a contextualist lens to analyze Sylvester’s
formulations, much as she insists her epistemogical approach does. Sylvester, for example, is adamant that we can not really know
who “women” are, since to do so would be to invoke an essentialist concept, concealing the diversity inherent in this category.
“Women” don’t really exist in Sylvester’s estimation since there are black women, white women, Hispanic, disabled, lesbin, poor,
rich, middle class, and illiterate women, to name but a few. The point, for
Sylvester, is that to speak of “women” is to
do violence to the diversity encapsulated in this category and, in its own way, to silence those
women who remain unnamed. Well and good. Yet this same analytical respect for diversity seems
lost with men. Politics and international relations become the “places of men.” But which men?
All men? Or just white men, or rich, educated, elite, upper class, hetero-sexual men? To speak of political
places as the places of men ignores the fact that most men, in fact the overwhelming majority of men, are
not in these political places at all, are not decision makers, elite, affluent, or powerful. Much as with Sylvester’s
categories, there are poor, lower class, illiterate, gay, black, and white men, many of whom suffer the vestiges of hunger, poverty,
despair, and disenfranchisement just as much as women. So why
invoke the category “men” in such essentialist
and ubiquitous ways while cognizant only of the diversity of in the category “women.” These are double standards, not
erudite theoretical formulations, betraying, dare one say, sexism toward men by invoking male gender
generalizations and crude caricatures. Problems of this nature, however, are really manifestations of a deeper, underlying
ailment endemic to discourses derived from identity politics. At base, the most elemental question for identity discourse, as Zalewski
and Enloe note, is “Who am I?”100 The personal becomes the political, evolving a discourse where self-identification, but also one’s
identification by others, presupposes multiple identities that are fleeting, overlapping, and changing at any particular moment in
time or place. “We have multiple identities,” argues V. Spike Peterson, “e.g., Canadian, homemaker, Jewish, Hispanic, socialist.”101
And these identities are variously depicted as transient, polymorphic, interactive, discursive, and never fixed. As Richard Brown
notes, “Identity is given neither institutionally nor biologically. It evolves as one orders continuities on one’s
conception of oneself.”102 Yet, if we accept this, the analytical utility of identity politics seems problematic at
best. Which identity, for example, do we choose from the many that any one subject might display
affinity for? Are we to assume that all identities are of equal importance or that some are more important than others? How do
we know which of these identities might be transient and less consequential to one’s sense of self and, in turn, politically significant
to understanding international politics? Why, for example, should we place
gender identity ontologically prior to
class, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, ideological perspective, or national identity?103 As Zalewski
and Enloe ask, “Why do we consider states to be a major referent? Why not men? Or women?”104 But by the same token, why not
dogs, shipping magnates, movie stars, or trade regimes? Why
is gender more constitutive of global politics than,
say, class, or an identity as a cancer survivor, laborer, or social worker? Most of all, why is gender
essentialized in feminist discourse, reified into the most preeminent of all identities as the
primary lens through which international relations must be viewed? Perhaps, for example, people
understand difference in the context of identities outside of gender. As Jane Martin notes, “How do we
know that difference…does not turn on being fat or religious or in an abusive relationship?”105 The point, perhaps flippantly
made, is that identity is such a nebulous concept, its meaning so obtuse and so inherently subjective, that it is near
meaningless as a conduit for understanding global politics if only because it can mean anything
to anybody.
The 1NC’s gender politics equate peace with the feminine – that not only turns
the k’s revolutionary politics because they simply continue to essentialize
gender but they also prop up militarism by misdiagnosing it.
Lucinda Joy Peach 97, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American
University, 1997, “Behind the Front Lines: Feminist Battles over Women in Combat,” in Wives
and Warriors: Women and the Military in the United States and Canada, p. 111
Whereas Justice Feminists assume the essential sameness of men and women, Care feminists often assume
that men and women
are essentially different, and have distinctive approaches to war and peace. Care feminists tend to
assume men and women are essentially different, women being more peaceful than men. There
is no necessary correlation between women and peace, or even between feminists and peace,
however. Although gender socialization may have instilled in women traits that correspond more
closely to pacifism than to war-mongering, that socialization has not precluded some women
from the advocacy, or even use, of violence. Care feminists who ally women exclusively with non-violence
cannot adequately account for the reality that many women take a pro-war stance in times of
international conflict, and that many women do choose to join the military.77 In addition, many
women do not adopt non-violent approaches to conflict resolution in their personal lives, and so
cannot be assumed to do so in military contexts.78 As Carol Tavris points out, "by focusing on the men in
power who make war (and the men in armies who fight), we overlook the women who support and endorse
war, making it possible. By focusing on male violence, we overlook the men who promote
pacifism and negotiation."79 Consequently, several assumptions of Care feminists regarding women's roles
in combat represent a continuation of the gender ideology that has contributed to the combat
exclusion in the first place, rather than moving beyond or outside it. Even though they may
revalue the traditional associations by valorizing peace rather than war, and consequently
women rather than men, their gender ideology functions to perpetuate rather than to subvert
traditional stereotypes. Stripping ideological notions of gender from the Justice perspective reveals that women are not the same as men
in all relevant respects. Differences in physical strength, capacity for pregnancy, and responsibility for child care may warrant treating some military
women differently in relation to some combat roles. Similarly, removing the ideological
assumptions that undergird the care ethic
casts doubt on the view that women are inherently more peaceful than men, or more likely to
adopt non-violent responses to conflict than are men.
Violence Fails
Their conception of violence is reductive and can’t be solved
Boulding 77 (Twelve Friendly Quarrels with Johan Galtung Author(s): Kenneth E.
BouldingReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1977), pp. 7586Published Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an economist,
educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and
interdisciplinary philosopher.[1][2] He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of
numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. He graduated from
Oxford University, and was granted United States citizenship in 1948. During the years 1949 to
1967, he was a faculty member of the University of Michigan. In 1967, he joined the faculty of
the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he remained until his retirement. )
Finally, we come to the great Galtung metaphors of 'structural violence' 'and 'positive peace'.
They are metaphors rather than models, and for that very reason are suspect. Metaphors
always imply models and metaphors have much more persuasive power than models do, for
models tend to be the preserve of the specialist. But when a metaphor implies a bad model it
can be very dangerous, for it is both persuasive and wrong. The metaphor of structural violence
I would argue falls right into this category. The metaphor is that poverty, deprivation, ill health,
low expectations of life, a condition in which more than half the human race lives, is 'like' a thug
beating up the victim and 'taking his money away from him in the street, or it is 'like' a
conqueror stealing the land of the people and reducing them to slavery. The implication is that
poverty and its associated ills are the fault of the thug or the conqueror and the solution is to do
away with thugs and conquerors. While there is some truth in the metaphor, in the modern
world at least there is not very much. Violence, whether of the streets and the home, or of the
guerilla, of the police, or of the armed forces, is a very different phenomenon from poverty. The
processes which create and sustain poverty are not at all like the processes which create and
sustain violence, although like everything else in 'the world, everything is somewhat related to
everything else. There is a very real problem of the structures which lead to violence, but
unfortunately Galitung's metaphor of structural violence as he has used it has diverted attention
from this problem. Violence in the behavioral sense, that is, somebody actually doing damage to
somebody else and trying to make them worse off, is a 'threshold' phenomenon, rather like the
boiling over of a pot. The temperature under a pot can rise for a long time without its boiling
over, but at some 'threshold boiling over will take place. The study of the structures which
underlie violence are a very important and much neglected part of peace research and indeed of
social science in general. Threshold phenomena like violence are difficult to study because they
represent 'breaks' in the systenm rather than uniformities. Violence, whether between persons
or organizations, occurs when the 'strain' on a system is too great for its 'strength'. The
metaphor here is that violence is like what happens when we break a piece of chalk. Strength
and strain, however, especially in social systems, are so interwoven historically that it is very
difficult to separate them. The diminution of violence involves two possible strategies, or a
mixture of the two; one is Ithe increase in the strength of the system, 'the other is the
diminution of the strain. The strength of systems involves habit, culture, taboos, and sanctions,
all these 'things which enable a system to stand lincreasing strain without breaking down into
violence. The strains on the system 'are largely dynamic in character, such as arms races,
mutually stimulated hostility, changes in relative economic position or political power, which are
often hard to identify. Conflicts of interest 'are only part 'of the strain on a system, and not
always the most important part. It is very hard for people ito know their interests, and
misperceptions of 'interest take place mainly through the dynamic processes, not through the
structural ones. It is only perceptions of interest which affect people's behavior, not the 'real'
interests, whatever these may be, and the gap between percepti'on and reality can be very large
and resistant to change. However, what Galitung calls structural violence (which has been
defined 'by one unkind commenltator as anything that Galitung doesn't like) was originally
defined as any unnecessarily low expectation of life, on that assumption that anybody who dies
before the allotted span has been killed, however unintentionally and unknowingly, by
somebody else. The concept has been expanded to include all 'the problems of poverty,
destitution, deprivation, and misery. These are enormously real and are a very high priority for
research and action, but they belong to systems which are only peripherally related to 'the
structures whi'ch produce violence. This is not rto say that the cultures of violence and the
cultures of poverty are not sometimes related, though not all poverty cultures are cultures of
violence, and certainly not all cultures of violence are poverty cultures. But the dynamics lof
poverty and the success or failure to rise out of it are of a complexity far beyond anything which
the metaphor of structural violence can offer. While the metaphor of structural violence
performed a service in calling attention to a problem, it may have d'one a disservice in
preventing us from finding the answer.
Root Cause
Root Cause – War
War creates more gendered violence, not the other way around.
Workman 96 (Thom, Poli Sci @ U of New Brunswick, YCISS Paper no. 31, January 1996, pg. 6,
http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf)
With the loosening of the positivist/Realist hold on international relations and the simultaneous rise of feminist analysis, intellectual
space has been created to address war in terms of the social relations of power between men and women. This development places
war within a broader patriarchal matrix, and has helped to develop an understanding of war as one (obviously important)
manifestation of patriarchal violence. This development also has promoted a more unassuming character with respect to the subject
matter itself. The
concerns lies less with warfare or it destructive potential (although this concern
remains) than it does with the relationship between warfare and the oppression of women. The
primary concern, that is, rests less with war than with the reproduction of patriarchy. This paper
addresses the gender critique of war directly. It argues that the gender critique of war has racked
enough to be able to identify a preliminary thesis regarding war and the reproduction of
patriarchy. The altered experiences and practices of war, combined with the sometimes dramatic modifications in gender
representations (through propaganda, literature etcetera), are considerable. War produces cultural crises of gender,
especially as it throws the historical contingency and cultural arbitrariness of gendered
constructs into relief. There is the suggestion that through war traditional gendered constructs can modulate and unwind.
An emerging sense of cultural crisis revolving around gender shifts typically accompanies both war and post-war periods. Indeed,
much of the initial research on gender and war, in view of the extensive shifts in representations and practices during war, directly
or indirectly explores the emancipatory effect of war upon women. To the extent that war is contingent upon such gendered
constructs, constructs that the practice itself appears to threaten and endanger, the relationship between war and gender might be
said to be paradoxical. The paradoxical dynamic between gender and war, however, is softened by the profundity of the links
between war and patriarchy. The
gendering of experiences during war, along with the restoration of
traditional gendered constructs after war, more than compensate for any war-induced
sundering of the patriarchal tapestry. While the practice of war suggests that it might encourage
a rupture in the gendered fabric of society, it overwhelmingly contributes to patriarchal
reproduction. Questions oriented around the emancipatory potential of war where women are
concerned, therefore, run the risk of losing a perspective on the overall role of modern warfare
in the reproduction of women's oppression.
War causes patriarchy
Goldstein 2k2 (Joshua S., Professor Emeritus of International Relations, American University (Washington, DC) Research
Scholar, University of Massachusetts and Nonresident Sadat Senior Fellow, CIDCM, University of Maryland, War and Gender , P. 412
2k2)
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace.
Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, “if you want peace, work for justice”.
Then if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically
(perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the
peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause
war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way.
War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single
cause, although all of these influences wars’ outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in part
fueled and sustained these and other injustices. So, “if you want peace, work for peace.”
Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just
upward through the levels of analysis from types of individuals, societies, and governments up
to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes toward war and the
military may be the most important way to “reverse women’s oppression.” The dilemma is that
peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies and moral
grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of
war seems to be empirically inadequate.
Patriarchy’s not the root cause
Bell, senior lecturer – Department of Politics and International Studies @ Cambridge University,
‘6
(Duncan, “Beware of false prophets: biology, human nature and the future of International
Relations theory,” International Affairs 82, 3 p. 493–510)
Writing in Foreign Aff airs in 1998, Francis Fukuyama, tireless promulgator of the ‘end of history’
and now a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, employed EP reasoning to argue for
the central role in world politics of ‘masculine values’, which are ‘rooted in biology’. His
argument starts with the claim that male and female chimps display asymmetric behaviour, with
the males far more prone to violence and domination. ‘Female chimps have relationships; male
chimps practice realpolitik.’ Moreover, the ‘line from chimp to modern man is continuous’ and
this has signifi cant consequences for international politics.46 He argues that the world can be
divided into two spheres, an increasingly peaceful and cooperative ‘feminized’ zone, centred on
the advanced democracies, and the brutal world outside this insulated space, where the stark
realities of power politics remain largely masculine. This bifurcation heralds dangers, as
‘masculine policies’ are essential in dealing with a masculine world: ‘In anything but a totally
feminized world, feminized policies could be a liability.’ Fukuyama concludes the essay with the
assertion that the form of politics best suited to human nature is—surprise, surprise—freemarket capitalist democracy, and that other political forms, especially those promoted by
feminists and socialists, do not correspond with our biological inheritance.47 Once again the
authority of science is invoked in order to naturalize a particular political objective. This is a pattern
that has been repeated across the history of modern biology and remains potent to this day.48 It
is worth noting in brief that Fukuyama’s argument is badly flawed even in its own terms. As
anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson states, Fukuyama’s claims about the animal world display ‘a
breathtaking leap over a mountain of contrary evidence’.49 Furthermore, Joshua Goldstein
concludes in the most detailed analysis of the data on war and gender that although biological
differences do play a minor role, focusing so heavily on them is profoundly misleading.50 The
simplistic claims, crude stereotyping and casual use of evidence that characterize Fukuyama’s
essay unfortunately recur throughout the growing literature on the biology of international
politics.
War turns structural violence
Bulloch 8 (Millennium - Journal of International Studies May 2008 vol. 36 no. 3 575-595
Douglas Bulloch, IR Department, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is
currently completing his PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics,
during which time he spent a year editing Millennium: Journal of International Studies)
But the idea that poverty and peace are directly related presupposes that wealth inequalities
are – in and of themselves – unjust, and that the solution to the problem of war is to alleviate
the injustice that inspires conflict, namely poverty. However, it also suggests that poverty is a
legitimate inspiration for violence, otherwise there would be no reason to alleviate it in the
interests of peace. It has become such a commonplace to suggest that poverty and conflict are
linked that it rarely suffers any examination. To suggest that war causes poverty is to utter an
obvious truth, but to suggest the opposite is – on reflection – quite hard to believe. War is an
expensive business in the twenty-first century, even asymmetrically. And just to examine
Bangladesh for a moment is enough at least to raise the question concerning the actual
connection between peace and poverty. The government of Bangladesh is a threat only to itself,
and despite 30 years of the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh remains in a state of incipient civil strife.
So although Muhammad Yunus should be applauded for his work in demonstrating the efficacy
of micro-credit strategies in a context of development, it is not at all clear that this has anything
to do with resolving the social and political crisis in Bangladesh, nor is it clear that this has
anything to do with resolving the problem of peace and war in our times. It does speak to the
Western liberal mindset – as Geir Lundestad acknowledges – but then perhaps this exposes the
extent to which the Peace Prize itself has simply become an award that reflects a degree of
Western liberal wish-fulfilment. It is perhaps comforting to believe that poverty causes
violence, as it serves to endorse a particular kind of concern for the developing world that in
turn regards all problems as fundamentally economic rather than deeply – and potentially
radically – political.
Framing
Prioritize war impacts
John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of
Technology, 2012, The End of War, Chapter 5, Kindle p. 1600-1659
Throughout this book, I’ve examined attempts by scholars to identify factors especially
conducive for peace. But there seem to be no conditions that, in and of themselves, inoculate a
society against militarism. Not small government nor big government. Not democracy, socialism,
capitalism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, nor secularism. Not giving equal rights to women or
minorities nor reducing poverty. The contagion of war can infect any kind of society. Some
scholars, like the political scientist Joshua Goldstein, find this conclusion dispiriting. Early in his
career Goldstein investigated economic theories of war, including those of Marx and Malthus.
He concluded that war causes economic inequality and scarcity of resources as much as it stems
from them. Goldstein, a self-described “pro-feminist,” then set out to test whether macho,
patriarchal attitudes caused armed violence. He felt so strongly about this thesis that he and his
wife limited their son’s exposure to violent media and contact sports. But by the time he
finished writing his 522-page book War and Gender in 2001, Goldstein had rejected the thesis.
He questioned many of his initial assumptions about the causes of war. He never gave credence
to explanations involving innate male aggression—war breaks out too sporadically for that—but
he saw no clear-cut evidence for non-biological factors either. “War is not a product of
capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of
these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes,” Goldstein writes. “Rather, war has in part
fueled and sustained these and other injustices.” He admits that all his research has left him
“somewhat more pessimistic about how quickly or easily war may end.” But here is the upside
of this insight: if there are no conditions that in and of themselves prevent war, there are none
that make peace impossible, either. This is the source of John Mueller’s optimism, and mine. If
we want peace badly enough, we can have it, no matter what kind of society we live in. The
choice is ours. And once we have escaped from the shadow of war, we will have more resources
to devote to other problems that plague us, like economic injustice, poor health, and
environmental destruction, which war often exacerbates. The Waorani, whose abandonment of
war led to increased trade and intermarriage, are a case in point. So is Costa Rica. In 2010, this
Central American country was ranked number one out of 148 nations in a “World Database of
Happiness” compiled by Dutch sociologists, who gathered information on the self-reported
happiness of people around the world. Costa Rica also received the highest score in another
“happiness” survey, carried out by an American think tank, that factored in the nation’s impact
on the environment. The United States was ranked twentieth and 114th, respectively, on the
surveys. Instead of spending on arms, over the past half century Costa Rica’s government
invested in education, as well as healthcare, environmental conservation, and tourism, all of
which helped make the country more prosperous, healthy, and happy. There is no single way to
peace, but peace is the way to solve many other problems. The research of Mueller, Goldstein,
Forsberg, and other scholars yields one essential lesson. Those of us who want to make the
world a better place—more democratic, equitable, healthier, cleaner—should make abolishing
the invention of war our priority, because peace can help bring about many of the other
changes we seek. This formula turns on its head the old social activists’ slogan: “If you want
peace, work for justice.” I say instead, “If you want justice, work for peace.” If you want less
pollution, more money for healthcare and education, an improved legal and political system—
work for peace.
Misc
Public Sphere =/= Gendered
Public sphere not inevitably gendered---debates about public policy can include
embodied experience
Lincoln Dahlberg 5, The University of Queensland, Center for Critical and Cultural Studies,
Visiting Fellow, The Habermasian public sphere: Taking difference seriously?, Theory and Society
(2005) 34:111-126
I believe this critique of power, transparency, and the subject is largely based upon a poor
characterization of Habermas’ position. There are three main misunderstandings that need to
be cleared up here, to do with power as negative, as able to be easily removed, and as able to
be clearly identified. First, Habermas does not define power as simply negative and as therefore
needing to be summarily removed from the public sphere. The public sphere norm calls for
“coercion-free communication” and not power-free communication. Habermas emphasizes the
positive power of communicative interaction within the public sphere through which
participants use words to do things and make things happen.60 Communicative rationality
draws on the “force of better argument” to produce more democratic citizens, culture, and
societies. Subjects are indeed molded through this constituting power, but their transformation
is towards freedom and autonomy rather than towards subjugation and normalization. As
Jeffrey Alexander points out, to act according to a norm is not the same as to be normalized.61
The public sphere norm provides a structure through which critical reflection on constraining or
dominating social relations and possibilities for freedom can take place. As Chambers argues,
rational discourse here is about “the endless questioning of codes,” the reasoned questioning of
normalization.62 This is the very type of questioning critics like Lyotard, Mouffe, and Villa are
engaged in despite claiming the normalizing and repressive power of communicative rationality.
These critics have yet to explain adequately how they escape this performative contradiction,
although they may not be too concerned to escape it.63 The form of power that is to be
excluded from discourse in the public sphere is that which limits and disables democratic
participation and leads to communicative inequalities. Coercion and domination are (ideally)
excluded from the public sphere, which includes forms of domination resulting from the
maldistribution of material and authoritative resources that lead to discursive inequalities. This
emphasis on the ideal exclusion of coercion introduces the second point of clari- fication, that
the domination free public sphere is an idealization for the purposes of critique. Habermas is
more than aware of the fact that, as Nancy Fraser, Mouffe, and Young remind us, coercive forms
of power, including those that result from social inequality, can never be completely separated
from the public sphere.64 Claims that such power has been removed from any really-existing
deliberative arena can only be made by ignoring or hiding the operation of power. However, this
does not mean that a reduction in coercion and domination cannot be achieved. Indeed, this is
precisely what a democratic politics must do. To aid this project, the public sphere conception
sets a critical standard for evaluation of everyday communication. Chambers puts this nicely:
Criticism requires a normative backdrop against which we criticize. Crit-icizing the ways power
and domination play themselves out in discourse presupposes a conception of discourse in
which there is no [coercive] power and domination. In other words, to defend the position that
there is a mean- ingful difference between talking and fighting, persuasion and coercion, and by
extension, reason and power involves beginning with idealizations. That is, it involves drawing a
picture of undominated discourse.65 However, this discussion of the idealizing status of the
norm does notanswer claims that it invokes a transparency theory of knowledge. Iwould argue
that such claims not only fall prey to another performa-tive contradiction – of presupposing that
the use of rational discourse can establish the impossibility of rational discourse revealing truth
and power – but are also based on a poor reading of Habermas’ theory of communicative
rationality. This is the third point of clarification. In contrast to the metaphysics of presence, the
differentiation of persusion from coercion in the public sphere does not posit a naive theory of
the transparency of power, and meaning more generally. The public sphere conception as based
upon communicative rationality does not assume a Cartesian (autonomous, disembodied,
decontextualized) subject who can clearly distinguish between persuasion and coercion, good
and bad reasons, true and untrue claims, and then wholly re-move themselves and their
communications from such influence. For Habermas, subjects are always situated within culture.
The public sphere is posited upon intersubjective rather than subject-centered rationality. It is
through the process of communicative rationality, and not via a Cartesian subject, that
manipulation, deception, poor reasoning, and so on, are identified and removed, and by which
meanings can be understood and communicated. In other words, it is through rational-critical
communication that discourse moves away from coercion or non-public reason towards greater
rational communication and a stronger public sphere. The circularity here is not a problem, as it
may seem, but is in fact the very essence of democratization: throughthe practice of democracy,
democratic practice is advanced. This democratizing process can be further illustrated in the
important and challenging case of social inequalities. Democratic theorists (bothdeliberative and
difference) generally agree that social inequalities al-ways lead to some degree of inequalities in
discourse. Thus, the ide-alized public sphere of full discursive inclusion and equality requires
that social inequalities be eliminated. Yet how is social inequality to
befullyidentified,letaloneeliminated? The idealization seems wholly in-adequate given
contemporary capitalist systems and associated social inequality. However, it is in the very
process of argumentation, even if flawed, that the identification and critique of social
inequality, and thus of communicative inequality, is able to develop. Indeed, public sphere
deliberation often comes into existence when and where people become passionate about
social injustice and publicly thematize problems of social inequality. Thus the “negative power”
of social inequality – as with other forms of coercion – is brought to light and critique by the
very discourse it is limiting. This is not to say that subjects are merely effects of discourse, that
there are no critical social agents acting in the process. It is not to say that 125 subjects within
discourse cannot themselves identify negative forms of power, cannot reflexively monitor their
own arguments, cannot rationally criticize other positions, and so on. They can, and in practice
do, despite the instability of meaning. The point is that this reasoning and understanding is
(provisionally) achieved through the subject’s situatedness in discourse rather than via a prediscursive abstract subject. As Kenneth Baynes argues, it is through discourse that subjects
achieve adegree of reflective distance (what we could call autonomy) from their situations,
“enabling them to revise their conceptions of what is valuable or worthy of pursuit,[and]to
assess various courses of action with respect to those ends.” 66 Democratic discourse
generates civic-oriented selves, inter-subjective meanings and understandings, and democratic
agreements that can be seen as the basis of public sovereignty. How-ever, the idea of
communicatively produced agreements, which in the public sphere are known as public
opinions, has also come under ex-tensive criticism in terms of excluding difference, criticism that
I wantto explore in the next section. The ends of discourse: Public opinion formation The
starting point of discourse is disagreement over problematic validity claims. However, a
certain amount of agreement, or at least mutual understanding, is presupposed when
interlocutors engage in argumentation. All communication presupposes mutual understanding
on the linguistic terms used – that interlocutors use the same terms in the same way.67
Furthermore, in undertaking rational-critical discourse, according to Habermas’ formal
pragmatic reconstruction, interlocutors also presuppose the same formal conditions of
argumentation. These shared presuppositions enable rational-critical discourse to be
undertaken. However, as seen above, meaning is never fixed and understanding is always
partial. Understanding and agreement on the use of linguistic terms and of what it means to be
reasonable, reflexive, sincere, inclusive, non-coercive, etc. takes place within discourse and is an
ongoing political process.
Theory
Condo Ethics
Statements on the conditionality of happiness ensure that happiness is
directive. This evokes a relationship of care and reciprocity that is
unavailable to women. The NEG’s use of multiple conditional worlds
places them into a double bind because they are playing into the same
logic that forces women into a position in which their “happiness” is
contingent on pleasing others.
Ahmed 10
Sara, 1/1/2010. Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Promise of Happiness. Duke
University Press. // KD
For her to¶ be happy, she must be good, as being good is what makes them happy, and she¶ can
only be happy if they are happy.¶ Statements on the conditionality of happiness — how one
persons happiness¶ is made conditional upon another’s — ensure that happiness is directive:
happiness¶ becomes what is given by being given as a shared orientation toward¶ what is good. It might seem that what I am calling
“conditional
happiness” involves¶ a relationship of care and reciprocity: as if to say, I will not have a share¶
in a happiness that cannot be shared. And yet, the terms of conditionality are¶ unequal."* If certain people come first —
we might say those who are already in¶ place (such as parents, hosts, or citizens) — then their happiness comes first.¶
For those who are positioned as coming after, happiness means/ollouJing somebody¶ elses goods.
The concept of conditional happiness allows me to develop my argument¶ about the sociality of happiness. I suggested in the
previous chapter that we¶ might have a social bond if the same objects make us happy. I am suggesting¶ here that happiness
itself can become the shared object. Or to be more precise,¶ if one person’s happiness is made
conditional on another person’s happiness,¶ such that the other person’s happiness comes first,
then the other persons happiness¶ becomes a shared object. Max Scheler’s differentiation between
communities¶ of feeling and fellow-feeling might help explain the significance of this¶ argument. In communities of feeling,
we share feelings because we share the¶ same object of feeling (so we might feel sorrow at the loss of
someone whom¶ we both love; our sorrow would be directed toward an object that is shared).
Fellow-feeling would be when I feel sorrow about your grief although I do not¶ share your object
of grief; “all fellow-feeling involves intenrionaJ reference of the feeling of joy or sorrow to the other person’s experience" (Scheler
[1913] 2008:¶ 13). In this case, your grief is what grieves me; your grief is the object of my¶ grief. I would speculate that in everyday
life these different forms of shared¶ feeling can be confused because the object of feeling is sometimes but not¶ always exterior to
the feeling that is shared.¶ Say I am happy about your happiness. Your happiness is with x. If I share x,¶ then your happiness and my
happiness is not only shared but can accumulate¶ through being returned. Or I can simply disregard x: if my happiness is¶ directed
“just” toward your happiness, and you are happy about x, the exteriority¶ of X can disappear or cease to matter (although it can
reappear). Alternatively,¶ because
I experience happiness in your happiness, I could wish that¶ our
feeling of fellowship in happiness amounts to being happy about the same¶ things (a community of
happiness), such that x becomes shared as a happiness¶ wish. Of course, if the object that makes you happy is my happiness wish,
then¶ this would be precarious basis for sharing something (as wishing to be happy¶ about X can also be an admission that one is not
simply happy about x ) . In¶ cases where I am also affected by s, and I do not share your happiness with x, I¶ might become uneasy
and ambivalent, as I am made happy by your happiness¶ but I am not made happy by what makes you happy. The exteriority of x
would¶ then announce itself as a point of crisis I want your happiness to be what¶ makes me happy, but I am reminded that even if
my happiness is conditional¶ on yours, your happiness is conditional on x and I am not happy with x. In such¶ occasions,
conditional happiness would require that I take up what makes you¶ happy as what makes me
happy, which may involve compromising my own¶ idea of happiness (so I w ill go along with x in order to
make you happy even¶ if X does not “really” make me happy).^ In order to preserve the happiness of¶ all, we might even conceal
from ourselves our unhappiness with x, or try to¶ persuade ourselves that x matters less than the happiness of the other who is¶
made happy by x,^
We have a hint of the rather uneasy dynamics of conditional happiness in¶ Emile. For Sophy, wanting to make her parents happy
commits her in a certain¶ direction, regardless of what she might or might not want. If she can only be¶ happy if they are happy, then
she must do what makes them happy. In one¶ episode, the father speaks to the daughter about becoming a woman: “You are¶ a big
girl now, Sophy, you will soon be a woman. We want you to be happy, for¶ our sakes as well as yours, for our happiness depends on
yours. A good girl finds her own happiness in the happiness of a good man” (434). Sophy’s father¶ offers a happiness
commandment: it
is for the sake of her own happiness and¶ the happiness of her parents that she
must find happiness in the right place,¶ which is in the happiness of a good man. So it is not simply that
groups cohere¶ by taking up the same objects as the causes of happiness; some subjects are¶ required to take up the happiness
causes of others. In this case, for the daughter¶ not to go along with the parents’ desire for her marriage would not only¶ cause her
parents unhappiness but would threaten the very reproduction of¶ social form. The daughter has a duty to reproduce the form of
the family, which¶ means tafein^up the cause of parental happiness as her own.¶ In this case, Sophy “happily” does what her parents
want her to do. We might¶ imagine that she wishes to be made happy by the same things and receives¶ some comfort by the
realization of a happiness wish. O f course, we do not¶ “really” know if Sophy gets what she wants. The book can give us a happy
ending¶ by not giving us an account of Sophie’s desires beyond the articulation of a¶ wish to make her parents happy. The narrator
declares triumphantly: “At last I¶ see the happy day approaching, the happiest day of Emile’s life and my own; I¶ see the crown of my
labours, I begin to appreciate their results. The noble pair¶ are united till death do part; heart and lips confirm no empty vows; they
are¶ man and w ife” (526-27). The happy ending involves not simply the alignment¶ of desire but the willingness of the daughter to
align her desire with the parental¶ desire for happiness.
Happiness is how the given becomes given. In Emile happiness is linked to¶ nature; as being what follows naturally
from how things are, or how things are¶ if they are allowed to flourish. As Rousseau explains: “ I kept to the path of nature,¶ until
she should show me the path of happiness. And lo! their paths were¶ the same, and without knowing it this was the path I trod"
(487). Happiness¶ becomes
what follows nature’s paths. Deviations from nature become
deviations¶ from the common good. For women to be educated to be anything other¶ than wives
for men would hence take them away from nature, and from what¶ can promise happiness.
It should be no surprise that Rousseau’s treatment of Sophy was a crucial¶ object of feminist critique. Mary Wollstonecraft in her
Vindication of the Rights¶ of Women spoke out against Rousseau’s vision of what makes women happy.^¶ She comments wryly
about his treatment of Sophy: “ I have probably had an¶ opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than J. J. Rousseau"
([1792.] 1975: 43). The political plea of Vindication is against the right of men to decide¶ what happiness means for women. As
Wollstonecraft argues; “Consider, I
address¶ you as a legislator, whether, when men contend for their
freedom, and¶ to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not¶
inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe¶ that you are acting
in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness?Ӧ (5). The struggle over happiness
forms the political horizon in which feminist¶ claims are made, my argument is simple: we
inherit this horizon.