Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Jstor Beta Search + Zotero = Digital History tools for Intellectual History


Essentialism 1976-1988

On of the texts I loved best in graduate school was Raymond Williams’  keywords. Now that I’ve dabbled in corpus linguistics I have a whole other understanding of the idea of keyness, as a word that is unusually frequent in one set of texts as compared to another set of text. I keep coming back to this idea of keywords in the women’s culture wars based on the key words. 

 I wanted to know when how and who introduced “essentialism.”  I tweeted as I read, mostly about the way French Feminism appeared in Anglophone journals as an sophisticated "other" to its more pragmatic American cousin.  (more here)  Yesterday as I played around with Jstor’s new beta search, I performed a  Williams-inspired analysis of “essentialism” certainly one of the words most key to debates about women’s culture. 

As I tweeted, this visualization helped some.  The “peak” of the graph is 1997, which corresponds with what I recall from living through these years.  I decided that I'd get familiar with two tools at once, since I'd determined I also needed to start using Zotero for my references.  It auto-imports references beautifully from Jstor, so once i downloaded the free-standing version and the word for mac plug in, I was set.  



Sorting through the docs by date, I realized that essentialism, of course, comes out of philosophy, not deconstruction philosophy, a Platonic essence kind of philosophy.  In 1978 via writings by feminists in Europe it entered Anglophone women’s studies journals in film and literary criticism.  British film maker and theorist Laura Mulvey refers to "feminine specificity" solidifying into "essential feminine."[1] (ahistorical essentialism) The next instance of “essentialism” in a women’s studies journal seems to be in UK journal Feminist Review, 1980 article authored by Socialist feminist activist Beatrix Campbell described an “essentialism based on culture of women are wonderful.”[2] (celebratory essentialism)   In a 1981 special issue of Yale French Studies, “Feminist Readings: French Texts/American Contexts” British scholar Mary Jacobus distinguished between Cixous’ essentialism and that of Walter Ong.[3] (strategic essentialism)

Around 1980, Anglophone feminists became quite interested in what French feminists were doing, in part due to a very vocal schism between MLF and Psych et Po.  A series of articles ‘explaining” French Feminism to US and UK audiences appeared that often mentioned essentialism as a defining difference of the French Factions.  In a 1979 piece about De Beauvoir (1978-1979 much focus on du Beauvoir due to 30th anniversary of the second sex’s publication in France) Michèle Le Doeuff sees de Beauvoir escaping  essentialism.”[4] In 1981 Helene Wetzel opposes Monique Wittig to ecriture feminine’s “essentialism or biological determinism.” [5]  (biological essentialism). 
This strain continues in a 1983 article for Signs, in which Dorothy Kaufmann-McCall describes the feminists (MLF) in France as refuting essentialism and Psych et Po embracing difference (read essentialism) as potentially liberating.[6]

By the early 1980s in the UK essentialism referred specifically to biological determinism that socialist feminists often ascribed to radical feminisms. the UK based Feminist Review, Cynthia Cockburn, an activist and academic, discussing a “materialism feminism” associated with French feminist Christine Delphy, rejects “the essentialism inherent in …[Kate Millet and Shulamith Firestone’s] view, and especially the biological determinism of Firestone.”[7] This assessment of Firestone appears in work of French feminist Michèle Barrett as well [review in science & society 1983]).[8]  British literary critic  Rachel Bowlby rejected “an essentialism in which biological difference is made the basis of  subjectivity.[9]  While the strength of socialist feminism in the UK meant that biological essentialism proved a central target, UK feminist did also also discussed the consequences of essentialism.  In a 1984 Feminist Studies article on lesbian identity by British feminist activist and academic, Elizabeth Wilson she describes a sort of apolitical essentialism [that] acts as a central ideological support to modern capitalist societies.”[10] In Feminist Review Marie France, writing about the “sex wars” in the US, argues both “sides” are engaging in “essentialism” because they conceive of “sexuality and sexual behavior as embodying some kind of truth … Arguing in essentialist terms … [is] either backing away from the challenge or ignoring it.” [11]

By 1981 at least one American scholar, Mary Anne Doane, a film theorist, argued that “it is crucial for feminism to move beyond opposition of essentialism and anti-essentialism,” although clearly that did not happen.[12]   However, at that point, feminist sociologists picked up essentialism, (perhaps via Foucault as interpreted by Welsh historical sociologist Jeffrey Weeks), although literary critics continued to be extremely influential.[13]

Writing in 1983 American sociologist Judith Stacey  notes the " twin errors of functionalism [are] essentialism and universality."   That same year, Stacey published a longer analysis of what she termed “the new conservative feminism” in which she tied activist Betty Friedan and feminist theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain  to a “retreat to essentialism.” (apolitical essentialism). In a similar vein, Suzanna Danuta Walters in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology(1985) sees both “spiritual feminism” and “radical feminism” sharing “essentialism” citing the work of Susan Griffin and Mary Daly.  She is most concerned with the “ahistorical essentialism.”[14]

A number of “big books” appeared including British psychoanalyst Janet Sayers Biological Politics: Feminist and Anti-feminist Perspectives, American Jane Gallop, The Daughter’s Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1982), and Norwegian Toril Moi’s Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory.[15]

By the mid 1980s “essentialism” appeared across a range of journals that published gender/feminist content, with literary and film criticism still dominating.  1985 saw the introduction of the notion of “strategic essentialism” by Gayatri Spivak, primary translator, and interlocutor of Derrida/deconstruction for many Anglophones “we must rather strategically take shelter an essentialism … [that] continue(s) to honor the suspect binary opposition(s).”[16]  This notion that essentialism might not be the apolitical retreat or celebratory pitfall proved revelatory and controversial (Google scholar finds about 1,020 works citing this article). That same year Homi Bhaba tied “essentialism”  “to race, nation, or cultural tradition” giving us hybridity in place of (racist) essentialism.[17]  Although the two would on the surface seem to be at odds with one another, they are not.  Both are joined in a commitment to negotiating the “fixed” nature of essentialism via different methods.

By 1986 U.S. historians finally picked up the term, although in relation not to gender but to class, in discussion of Marxism. Michael Denning in American Quarterly argues that contemporary “Marxists are more aware of the dangers of ….essentialism than most other scholars.”[18]   Jackson Lears in Reviews in American History writes of “a kind of essentialism” in the search for an untainted “working-class culture.”[19]

Historians of women also picked up the term that year. UK journal History Workshop, found American Studies scholar Barbara Melosh invoking “the essentialism often associated with celebrations of domesticity” in a discussion of gender in 1930s anti-war plays.[20]  In the enormously influential "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" Joan Wallach Scott acknowledges her reliance on English feminist lit prof and poet Denise Riley as she argues historians need to pay attention what those theories lit folks have been on about.[21] Among many other benefits, they offer a way around an “essentialism” based on “biological reproduction.”  To say Scott set off a controversy within at least US academic circles would be a serious understatement.  While that following year in Signs, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese cautions against “temptations to essentialism or ahistoricism,” not all historians were so easily convinced.  [22] Scott defended her focus on “language” in the UK International Labor and Working-Class History against criticism from Canadian Bryan Palmer and American Christine Stansell.[23]  She specifically labels Stansell’s approach on “woman, the subject” as “always … end[ing] up in essentialism” because the category “woman” rests on the body [biological essentialism]” or a fixed identity (ahistorical essentialism), and elides “interconnected  processes” (racist essentialism).

These strands of essentialism, as biological determinism, ahistoricism, or racism came together in 1988 when philosopher Linda Alcoff tied them up in her deconstruction of “cultural feminism” which invoked “essentialism” fifteen times.[24]   By 1988 essentialism is central if the not the key signifier of feminist theory.  Literary historian Mary Poovey used it six times in what is an article about “how feminism can use deconstruction” and “how deconstruction calls feminism into question.”[25]  Poovey, who invokes “dispatches with biological determinism (Cixous and Irigaray) then explains how “the concrete , class and race-specific facts f historical women” can survive deconstruction (i.e without ahistoricism or racism).  Her conclusion? Deconstruction can “demystify” women (lead us out of false universalizing essentialism), but only if “campaigns that reproduce … essentialism” are avoided in favor of “project that call into question the very essentialism on which our history has been based.” 

And with that, essentialism has been erased from “French Feminism,” and the charge of essentialism can be used to criticize (racism, ahistoricism) from the postmodern position.  As Claire Moses has noted, this American-Made French Feminism served very specific needs for academic feminists, which I explore in my book-in-progress, The Politics of Women’s Culture. [26]


















[1] Jacquelyn Suter, Sandy Flitterman, and Laura Mulvey, “Textual Riddles: Woman as Enigma or Site of Social Meanings ? An Interview with Laura Mulvey,” Discourse 1 (October 1, 1979): 86–127, doi:10.2307/41389047.
[2] Beatrix Campbell, “A Feminist Sexual Politics: Now You See It, Now You Don’t,” Feminist Review no. 5 (January 1, 1980): 1–18, doi:10.2307/1394695.
[3] “Introduction,” Yale French Studies no. 62 (January 1, 1981): 2–18, doi:10.2307/2929891.
[4] Michèle Le Doeuff, “Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism,” Feminist Studies 6, no. 2 (July 1, 1980): 277–289, doi:10.2307/3177742.
[5] Hélène Vivienne Wenzel, “The Text as Body/Politics: An Appreciation of Monique Wittig’s Writings in Context,” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (July 1, 1981): 264–287, doi:10.2307/3177524.
[6] Dorothy Kaufmann-McCall, “Politics of Difference: The Women’s Movement in France from May 1968 to Mitterrand,” Signs 9, no. 2 (December 1, 1983): 282–293, doi:10.2307/3173782.
[7] Cynthia Cockburn, “The Material of Male Power,” Feminist Review no. 9 (October 1, 1981): 41–58, doi:10.2307/1394914.
[8] Review in “JSTOR: Science & Society, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter, 1983/1984), Pp. 495-498,” accessed June 12, 2013, s-
[9] Rachel Bowlby, “The Feminine Female,” Social Text no. 7 (April 1, 1983): 54–68, doi:10.2307/466454.
[10] Elizabeth Wilson, “Forbidden Love,” Feminist Studies 10, no. 2 (July 1, 1984): 213–226, doi:10.2307/3177862.
[11] Marie France, “Sadomasochism and Feminism,” Feminist Review no. 16 (July 1, 1984): 35–42, doi:10.2307/1394956.
[12] Mary Ann Doane, “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body,” October 17 (July 1, 1981): 23–36, doi:10.2307/778247.
[13] Mary Jacobus, “The Question of Language: Men of Maxims and ‘The Mill on the Floss’,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (December 1, 1981): 207–222, doi:10.2307/1343160; Elaine Showalter, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (December 1, 1981): 179–205, doi:10.2307/1343159.
[14] Suzanna Danuta Walters, “Caught in the Web: A Critique of Spiritual Feminism,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 30 (January 1, 1985): 15–40, doi:10.2307/41035342.  Her conclusions are quite relevant to my book While not dismissing women’s culture completely, she sees “certain elements” possessing “radical and oppositional ponteitl” there is a “dangerously conservative strain to spiritual feminism within women’s culture that could impede  the development of a truly oppositional and radical feminist movement”
[15] Jane Gallop, The Daughter’s Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Cornell University Press, 1984); Toril Moi, Sexual/textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London; New York: Routledge, 2002); Janet Sayers, Biological Politics: Feminist and Anti-feminist Perspectives (Tavistock Publications, 1982).
[16] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (October 1, 1985): 243–261, doi:10.2307/1343469.
[17] Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (October 1, 1985): 144–165, doi:10.2307/1343466.
[18] Michael Denning, “‘The Special American Conditions’: Marxism and American Studies,” American Quarterly 38, no. 3 (January 1, 1986): 356–380, doi:10.2307/2712672.
[19] Jackson Lears, “Radical History in Retrospect,” Reviews in American History 14, no. 1 (March 1, 1986): 17–24, doi:10.2307/2702110.
[20] Barbara Melosh, “‘Peace in Demand’: Anti-War Drama in the 1930s,” History Workshop no. 22 (October 1, 1986): 70–88, doi:10.2307/4288719.
[21] Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1, 1986): 1053–1075, doi:10.2307/1864376.
[22] She links a historical, in this case “burgeoning women’s culture” of the 17th century to “essentialist” “currents” that should not “be equated with feminism,” preferring instead historical subjects who “connect ideas of women as a sex to ideas of women as a gender”  Her title’s reference to “culture and consciousness” terms that come from contemporary feminism rather than historical women, and her reading here of essentialism and feminism, sex v gender, , sex v
do not require much stretching to fit the terms of thedebates circulating within feminism in the late 1980s.
[23] Joan W. Scott, “A Reply to Criticism,” International Labor and Working-Class History no. 32 (October 1, 1987): 39–45, doi:10.2307/27671706.
[24] Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Signs 13, no. 3 (April 1, 1988): 405–436, doi:10.2307/3174166.
[25] Mary Poovey, “Feminism and Deconstruction,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (April 1, 1988): 51–65, doi:10.2307/3177998.  For the purposes of my book, her remarks about the writing of women’s history are quite salient.There could be “a historical practice[that] deconstruct(s) the specific articulations and … categories, their interdependence,and the uneven processes of deployment and alteration, enabling feminists to write a history of the various contradictions within institutional definition of women that show how these contradictions have opened the possibility for change” 
[26] Claire Goldberg Moses, “Made in America: ‘French Feminism’ in Academia,” Feminist Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 241, doi:10.2307/3178697.

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