Natalie Cote
Theory Map Description & Analysis
GSW 5200 / Heiniger / 4/21/14
Theorizing through visual rather than written means was an entirely novel endeavor for me, but
one that proved to be both illustrative and rewarding. As academia typically requires written or verbal
analysis, I haven't had much experience visually representing my ideas for quite some time. In fact, the
last time I can remember being asked to present my ideas by means of some sort of tangible medium
was high school, when poster presentations and other visual aids were typical of every class from
English to chemistry. Being far removed from high school and the related assignments, I first felt a bit
confounded by the task. Now, despite my initial apprehension, I respect the visual medium as a
communicative means. The visual can (and does) surpass the written and the spoken in some ways that
are indeed useful to rigid academic analyses. Whereas essays are generally confined to the page, maps
and pictures are easily transmittable to wider audiences. While words merely state, visual
representations illustrate and explicate in a manner that both demands and facilitates deeper
understanding. In this way, the visual can be preferable both to the creator and to the audience for its
tendency to communicate subtle notions and complex issues simply. For these reasons, applying a
visual-reductionist approach to the task of explaining the feminist theory canon was a useful tool both
for my own understanding and, ideally, for that of others.
I attempted to be creative by locating my theorists on a solar system rather than a map, which
was the apparently obvious choice given the title of the assignment. After seeing the first few students
apply their disciplines to their theory map presentations, I decided that I would try to use the same
approach in a visually engaging way. I came up with the concept of a solar system and then applied the
most relevant sub-disciplines in my field (philosophy) to various aspects of the system. Arguably the
most important aspect of my solar system is the sun wherefrom all theories emerge. Located within the
sun are various contentious terms that are associated with power and oppression, like heteronormativity,
racism, classism, and sexism. Because all feminist theories seem to arise in response to contingent
social facts, I thought the concept of the sun to be fitting to illustrate the perpetuation and subsequent
necessity of theory and counter-action, which is then represented by the circling planets. I kept the
names of my planets rather simple: ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology. Each planet has
either a moon, ring, or cloud surrounding or shooting off of it to represent another sub-discipline within
the divergent fields: the planet of ethics has a political philosophy moon, aesthetics has a value moon,
metaphysics has an ontology cloud, and epistemology has a logic ring. Though each theorist could
arguably fit in all of the planets and their respective additions, I will support my locational decisions in
this paper by referencing the most salient aspects of each theorist's claims.
Starting from the bottom right, the ethics planet (which, as an aspiring ethicist, is my
indubitable favorite) contains the theorists most interested in virtue, value, and social change. I decided
that Heidi Hartmann's article “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More
Progressive Union” and Minnie Bruce Pratt's Identity: Skin, Blood, and Heart” were the most fitting
representations of these themes. Hartmann's article concerns the effect of male-dominated theory on
more female-centric theories and concludes that both must be taken into account to combat the
powerful, destructive force of capitalism. Hartmann's approach is reminiscent of ethical theories in that
it calls for a comprehensive theoretical approach to solve a deeply moral issue (i.e. the oppression of
specific persons, women) that is embedded within another moral issue (i.e. the oppression of persons
simpliciter). Placing Pratt within the sub-field of ethics was a simpler decision as Pratt outright
discusses both subconscious and accessible beliefs and the importance of overturning them to reach
valuable ends in society.
Off of the planet of ethics I placed a “PoliPhi” or political philosophy moon. Again, most of our
theorists could be placed on this moon but I tried to narrow the scope and choose those that were most
concerned with political ideas. So, on the PoliPhi moon I placed Leslie Feinberg's article “Transgender
Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come”, Amrita Basu's article “Globalization of the
Local/Localization of the Global: Mapping Transnational Women's Movements”, and T.V. Reed's “The
Poetical is the Political.” Feinberg's article focuses on the importance of asserting group rights and
value to reclaim power, which is an approach that is apparently pragmatic in nature and therefore
political. Similarly, Basu argues that both local and global issues need mutual influence to secure the
ends of both, which again seems to be inherently political. Finally, Reed's article argues that the most
effective means to change is reaching wide audiences through palatable and memorable expressions,
which is related to both Basu and Feinberg in that it asserts the value of gaining power through public
expression and coalition. From the PoliPhi moon to the epistemology planet I placed a rocket ship to
express the concept that political moves and fronts can affect knowledge, which is an ideal view that all
of the theorists in the ethics planet and PoliPhi moon seem to espouse. I will touch on this more later
when I discuss the epistemology planet.
Going clockwise, we next reach the aesthetics planet. The sub-discipline of aesthetics is similar
to ethics in that it is concerned with value and to some extent virtue, but it is less concerned with moral
value than it is with physical value (though it does often, for example, relate the effect of physical
value on perceived moral value). Aesthetics, then, is principally concerned with the nature and
appreciation of beauty. Due to their primary subjects, I decided to put Shulamith Firestone's “The
Culture of Romance” and Leila Ahmed's “The Veil Debate Again” on the aesthetics planet. Both
discuss the importance of cultural values to conceptions of physical beauty and vice versa (in that order,
respectively). Firestone points out that due to the relegated role of women, they feel compelled to
please men by means of reaching impossible standards of beauty that are asserted by both men and
women to be valuable. In this way, aesthetic value becomes moral value, because what is beautiful is
conceived to be what is good. Women are reduced to visual objects, and those who cannot engage in
the heteronormative objectification preferred by society are not seen as desirable. From the planet of
aesthetics I placed a moon simply named “Value” to indicate the one theorist who dealt with aesthetics
by means of an entirely theoretical approach: Alison Jaggar's “Love and Knowledge”. Jaggar argues
that emotional approaches and forms of knowledge are devalued by Western philosopher primarily
because of the force of the patriarchy and contempt for all things perceived to be feminine. This
assertion places Jaggar in the realm of aesthetic value, as rationality is preferred to emotionality
primarily due to its prima facie appearance (coupled by its derivative theoretical weight). To signify a
divergence between the theoretical approaches of those located in the ethics realm and the aesthetics
planet, I placed a few asteroids that are meant to circle around the two areas. They are to communicate
that the sub-disciplines sometimes meet and create new sorts of theories, e.g. Humean
passions/aversions.
Above the planet of aesthetics lies the planet of metaphysics. Despite its overly technical
appearance, the sub-discipline of metaphysics has more to do with feminism than meets the eye.
Metaphysics is the study of what there is and what it is like. It concerns questions regarding the nature
of the universe and the things that inhabit it, e.g. “is there a God?” and “what constitutes human nature?”
Because so many of our theorists focused on gender essentialism and constructionism, it was natural to
find a place for them within the metaphysics planet. I decided to place Luce Irigaray’s “The Sex Which
Is Not One” and Charlotte Bunch’s “Lesbians in Revolt” within the category of metaphysics. Irigaray
discusses the nature and qualities of sex, and Bunch argues that to avoid subservient categorization
women must challenge heterosexual relationships and instead choose lesbian relationships. Bunch
might have also been placed on the PoliPhi moon, so I included a rocket ship to illustrate that her ideas
are related to political ends. Ultimately, I chose to include Bunch in the metpahysics sub-discipline
because the main thrust of her argument was that all lesbians should be feminists and all feminists
should be lesbians; though she lays out her premises in this way to reach a conclusion (namely, that the
status quo can be changed), her use of categories aligns her with metaphysics as she discusses both the
way things are and the way things ought to be.
Surrounding the planet of metaphysics is an ontology cloud. Ontology is a sub-discipline within
metaphysics. It is the study of what sorts of things they are and more particularly where they came
from. I decided to put Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” and Judith Butler’s “Gender
Performativity” within the ontology cloud as they both discuss the effects of society on our perception
of the nature of things, e.g. gender. While society indoctrinates us with the belief that men and women
are essentially different, de Beauvoir and Butler make compelling claims that illustrate that gender is
constructed and performed throughout our lives. Simone de Beauvoir’s and Judith Butler’s arguments
show us that gender is neither intrinsic nor natural but fabricated and imposed. Due to the relation
between perceived origination and knowledge formation, I drew a conceptual bridge from the
metaphysics planet to the epistemology planet. Gender, then, is a learned concept rather than an
inherent necessity, and thus the theorists located on the metaphysics planet are essentially connected to
those on the epistemology planet.
The last planet in the solar system is the epistemology planet. Epistemology is the study of
knowledge formation and concerns questions like “how can we know what we know?” I placed three
theorists in the epistemology planet proper: Monique Wittig’s “One is Not Born a Woman”, Donna
Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges”, and Suzanna Danuta Walter’s “From Here to Queer”. Wittig’s and
Haraway’s articles are directly related to knowledge formation; Wittig explains that the concept of
womanhood is learned through heterosexual experience and Haraway argues that subjective knowledge
is valuable for its instrumental role in facilitating great understanding of oppression and therefore
subversion. Walter’s article was a bit more difficult to place, but it seems to fit within the category of
epistemology because she argues that the theoretical import placed on “queerness” tends to eclipse
more traditional feminist ends and definitions in our minds, which is ultimately detrimental to feminist
goals. Finally, I placed Uma Narayan’s article “The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Feminist
Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist” and Lata Mani’s “Multiple Mediations” in the logic ring.
Logic as a philosophical field concerns proper argumentation and drawing justified conclusions. Both
Narayan and Mani put forward primarily logical arguments to illustrate that nonwestern feminisms
ought to be considered both in conjunction with western feminisms and perhaps more importantly in
their own right.
Illustrating my conception of the theorists we’ve analyzed this semester aided me in reaching a
broader conclusion about feminism. Because the forces of oppression are so powerful and multifarious,
it is essential to greater feminist ends that we embrace the concept of intersectionality (i.e. that classism,
racism, sexism, heteronormativity, capitalism, etc. are essentially connected). To defeat sexism, we
must not only address dynamics between sexes but also the forces of racism and classism that tend to
oppress women. Therefore, we ought to utilize all of the approaches we’ve encountered so that we can
analytically determine which theory is the best way to combat inequality. Only when we place theorists
in conversation with each other can we apply the rigor necessary to effecting real and lasting change,
and only when we work together (or apart at times, depending on the end in mind) will we be able to
eradicate the oppression we face and find the truth we seek.
*All articles were taken from Carole K. McCann’s and Seung-kyung Kim’s Feminist Theory
Reader: Third Edition, published by Routledge in 2013.