Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 00:10:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doris Rita Alfonso <pap-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Fill in



Troy writes:

>... I don't understand understand what you mean about "filling in ... the 
>essential/universal feminine." Are you saying that we should simplifiy 
>the catagory of woman to a really simple and loose essence (say: all 
>women  have vaginas) so that the catagory of "women" is large enough to 
>include all sorts of actual differences and potential future differences?

Where was it I read about the universal 'woman' being a vacant 
lot in which women can play? Anyhow, this was the image I had in my head 
when I was writting. And I was thinking that it is an useful category as 
long as we continue to define it internally, (thus my unfortunate 'fill 
in,') paying care to our differences even as we hold our likenesses to 
each other. This is necessary so that the universability of femininity 
does not usurp the place of our real bodies and experiences. 

But what does *this* mean, rita? It is an 'as if' game: let us go along 
pretending as if there is an essential or universal feminine and see what 
we discover.  Let us say we all have vaginas. Let us explore this 
further... but look, yours is not like mine, not at all. We may even 
experience them differently. Does this mean that they are not both 
vaginas? That we are not both, all of us, women? All I may assume from 
your being a woman is that you are a woman -- beyond this, it is up to 
you-me to establish. We have this in common, but this is not the end of  
our story. Our story begins with the you-me, and we must continue to 
question our experiences as women qua womanhood. Claiming  
universality is not to renege the possibility for our specificity. 
It is not that we are either universably the same or else not 
universably the same, either a totality or infinitely different. Perhaps we 
are so much alike that we are different. (So I guess the answer to your 
question is yes, but I do not know about the 'should." I think that the 
category exists already and must be played into.) 

Take 'man' who is the universal par excellance. Is he deprived of his 
specificity? No, not, never, ever. Not even in death. In fact, he aquires 
his specificity because he is the universal who can be anything at all. 
How come this category is not questioned? Ceratinly it is not because he 
never engages in politics. 

>Would this be a political strategy to circumvent a comment like "there is 
>no "group of women"" in order to have a macro politics? 

Yes, this would be an attempt to address concerns about essentialism, if 
this is what you mean. I could not express it as well as it has been 
expressed by Whitford?, whom Chanter elaborates upon, but the summary form 
of the argument is that an accusation of essentialism depends itself upon 
an essentialism of essentialism. Gulp! I will post the cites for this if 
anyone would like, but I imagine this will come up for discussion in the 
first chapter of the Chanter. (I simply do not have the cites at hand.)

rita

"I never could say anything in twenty words or less." Concrete Blonde
   

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