Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 20:39:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bruce N. Simon" <bnsimon-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu>
Subject: Kaplan/Grewal summary


Here's the summary of Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal, "Transnational
Feminist Cultural Studies:  Beyond the Marxism/Poststructuralism/Feminism
Divides," _Positions_ 2.2 (Fall 1994) 430-445, that I promised.  It's
long, so if you're not interested, delete now!  I'm following Shan He's
advice to post this to the list to save everyone some time: 

As the title suggests, Kaplan and Grewal are adding "feminism" to Spivak's
call for a "transnational culture studies" in the last chapter of _Outside
in the Teaching Machine_, and they do so to highlight the "tensions
between liberal and more progressive forms of feminism" which they argue
are not being confronted in the American academy's embrace of "happy
pluralism" (431, 430).  In fact, they suggest that the marginalization of
Spivak's various projects reveals not only the limits of Anglo-American
bourgeois/liberal feminism (which "celebrates 'multiculturalism' in order 
to manage diversity" [431]), but also of masculinist marxisms and 
patriarchal postcolonialisms.  Thus, they call for a "transnational 
feminist cultural studies" which, "rather than maintaining and 
reproducing the divides between marxism, poststructuralism, and 
feminism," would instead "bring these approaches and tensions to bear on 
each other" (431).  Maintaining old divides would only result in the 
"retrenchment of masculist theories that consolidate traditional class 
analyses under the category of 'marxism,' as well as in the recuperation 
of patriarchal representational practices within theorizations of 
transnational 'proletarian' or 'subaltern' movements" (431). 

First K and G argue that Spivak's contributions have been fundamental:  "In
focusing on the interconnections between theories, institutions, and
representations, Spivak's work mediates marxism and feminism via
poststructuralism" (431).  They then focus on the "ambivalent reception" 
of her work by focusing on (a) conflicts between marxism and
Anglo-American feminism, (b) Spivak's erasure in recent masculinist
marxist practices, and (c) the importance of a transnational feminist
cultural studies. 

(a) K and G suggest that marxist feminists tend to posit gender as a
class, view all women as sharing a unified class consciousness, theorize
the family as the primary site of oppression and ignore differences of
nation, class, and race among women (432-33)--all of which Spivak has
critiqued.  Anglo-American feminists in film and literary studies, on the
other hand, have bypassed her work in favor of Bhabha's more
psychoanalytic approach (436), and in general, U.S. feminists have devised
a humanist take on Spivak's antihumanist political project in "Can the
Subaltern Speak?" (437).  Finally, recent approaches to global capital
(including Jameson, Eagleton, Wallerstein, Balibar, P. Anderson, Moretti,
Aronowitz) ignore several decades of feminist research on and extensive
bibliographies of class, ideology and gendered divisions of labor; sex
tourism; critiques of Western development; and women and nationalism; in a
de facto rejection of gender as a crucial category of analysis (433-34).
Exceptions here are C. West and S. Hall. 

(b) In the recent marxism/poststructuralism debates within postcolonial
studies, K and G detect a "backlash that includes the complete erasure or
suppression of [Spivak's] work" (435), and focus on the ways that Aijaz
Ahmad's _In Theory_ (which does not even list Spivak in the index and
which makes only vague and cursory reference to feminist scholarship)
"enacts a particular kind of retrenchment in the face of poststructuralist
critiques of historical narrativization and subject construction" (435). 

(c)  By explaining and emphasizing what they see as Spivak's major 
contributions--capitalism as "crisis management" (437), "negotiating the 
structures of violence" (437), her sustained interrogation of value and 
_diffe'rance_ (437-38), her focus on imperialism with gender, culture 
with capitalism (438); in short, her bringing together of approaches 
toward gender, political economy, international division of labor, and 
acedemic institutional production (438) and her "attention to the 
linkages and travels of forms of representation as they intersect with 
movements of labor and capital in a multinational world" (439)--K and G 
make their bid for a transnational feminist cultural studies:

"What we need are critical practices that link our understanding of 
postmodernity, global economic structures, problematics of nationalism, 
issues of race and imperialism, critiques of global feminism, and 
emergent patriarchies.  In particular, we are interested in how 
patriarchies are recast in diasporic conditions of postmodernity--how we 
ourselves are complicit in these relations, as well as how we negotiate 
with them and develop strategies of resistance.  Theories of opposition 
that rely on unified subjects of differance and metaphysics of presence 
cannot create alliances across differences and conflicts within a context 
of imperialism and decolonization.  Transnational feminist cultural 
studies recognize that practices are always negotiated in both a 
connected and a specific field of conflict and contradiction and that 
feminist agendas must be viewed as a formulation and reformulation that 
is contingent on historically specific conditions." (439)

K and G then critique Spivak's notions of "internationalism" and
"strategic essentialism" (440-441), calling on feminists to hold on to
Spivak's methodologies which "enable us to question any emphasis on
similarities, universalisms, or essentialisms in favor of articulating
_links_ between the diverse, unequal, and uneven relations of historically
constituted subjects" (440).  They point out that Spivak's last chapter of
_Outside in the Teaching Machine_ calls for transnationalist feminist
cultural studies to "negotiate between the national, the global, and the
historical, as well as the contemporary diasporic" (441).  They point out
the dangers of trendiness, U.S.  parochialism, depoliticization, and
diversity management that cultural studies in the US can too easily fall
prey to, and suggest Spivak's approach as an antidote (441). 

Some works other than Spivak's which are cited with the authors' 
approval include:  _Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism_, ed. 
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: 
Indiana UP, 1991) (although even in this collection, only Rey Chow's piece 
deals with Spivak), Carby's piece in _The Empire Strikes Back_, 
ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 
Rey Chow, "Ethics after Idealism," _Diacritics_ 23.1 (Spring 1993) 3-22, 
Robert Young's chapter on Spivak in _White Mythologies:  Writing History 
and the West_ (NY: Routledge, 1990) 157-175, and of course the book 
edited by the authors, _Scattered Hegemonies:  Postmodernity and 
Transnational Feminist Practices_ (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994).

Similarly, names which are mentioned positively in this piece include, in
addition to Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Maria Mies, KumKum Sangari, Mary
Layoun, Uma Chakravorty, Norma Alarco'n, Gloria Anzaldua, Ella Shohat,
Cynthia Enloe, Donna Haraway, Nelly Richard, Aihwa Ong, Catherine Hall,
Vron Ware, Hazel Carby, Valerie Amos, Pratibha Parmar, Rey Chow, and Trinh T.
Minh-ha. 

Hope this was of help to everyone.  Have a good weekend!

--Bruce
bnsimon-AT-princeton.edu




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