WMST-399-01 Journal Review Professor Dietzel

Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies

I read the issues of Differences for 1996, Volume 8. Upon a shallow viewing of the journal, I was most impressed with its inclusion of male authors as contributors. The journal is broken down into five or six academic, theoretical articles per an issue. Differences is edited by Naomi Schor, Elizabeth Weed, and Ellen Rooney. On their web site, the staff states that "Differences focuses on how concepts and categories of difference…operate within our culture."

The issue published in the spring of 1996 covered many interesting topics. These included feminist theory, narrative and address, American Naturalism, Puerto Rican masculinity, and an article regarding Mary Prince, a West American slave woman. The article I consider most engaging was "Merging with the Masses: The Queer Identity Politics of Leftist Modernism" by Michael Trask. Trask defines the queer concept as one that rejects exclusionary identity politics and individualism. It is a transitive movement because queer individuals are empowered to destroy the boundaries of society to create relationships. Trask also critiques Sedgwick and Butler for their separation of sexuality into categories of identity and action. He questions the meaning of desire in this movement and asks how it shapes the queer subject. Another complaint by Trask is the fact that desire has been so undertheorized in the movement. As he focuses on desire, he analyzes prostitution and traces how economics produce a hierarchy that keeps prostitution in place. He suggests a Marxist viewpoint that finds prostitution's root in capitalism.

As a criticism of leftist modernism, he denies the essentialist assumptions that feminism is spontaneous, inherent, or unchangeable. He calls for queer people to own their desires and not contribute them to changes in society. This seems contradictory because of the denial of an innate, fixed identity, coupled with the assertion of a specific queer desire.

The summer 1996 issue was a special edition entitled "On Violence." Some topics were legacies of second wave feminism on violence, female paranoia and popular culture, a neoslave narrative, white masculinity and victimization (focusing on supremacist white male organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Right), and finally a history of Christianity and the invention of murder. The article I concentrated on was "The Uninterrogated Question of Stupidity" by Avital Ronell. This paper looked at how stupidity has been constructed throughout history and how this coincides with the construction of "other." Ronell discusses the course of reasoning that leads from slavery and that slave being objectified as nonhuman, therefore, not educable and more specifically not intelligent. She also explains how that for those termed "other," faining stupidity became a strategy for survival. Some illuminating points were made concerning stereotypes of animals, children, and immigrants as stupid, particularly in America, which I interpreted to be those who fail to assimilate into our society. Ronell deconstructs "stupidity" by investigating the ideas of Greek philosophers, Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers, as well as Nietzsche. Ronell also makes excellent points about the dependence of moral purity and "American values" on ignorance. This is demonstrated by the example of Forrest Gump. Finally, she comments on a Marxist viewpoint that correlates alienated labor with a "dumbing" effect. This, combined with capitalism, is used in actuality and with the construction of other to form a working class.

The last episode of this volume, Fall 1996, includes topics on the natural laws of gender and their origins in the oppression of women, connectionist theories of cognition, technoasceticism, aesthetic theory and identity which critiques Kristeva's connections of art and the repressed maternal, and a review of Issac Julien's film "Frantz Fannon: 'Black Skin, White Masks." I concentrated on Katherine Rudolph's piece, "'This Body of My Dreams:' Decartes on the Body of Language." Rudolph uses the theories of Decartes as well as a postmodernist standpoint to indicate how language is constructed. She emphasizes Irigaray's association of the materiality of Descartes with the abandonment of the maternal body. Rudolph uses the metaphor of blindness found in Decartes' work to demonstrate the disconnection of our perceived images and the actual, "true" things they represent. Decartes asserts that we cannot base our identity on external misrepresented objects but rather pure, individual thought. This is an illustration of the "I think; therefore, I am" ideal of the Enlightenment. Rudolph goes a step further and correlates Decartes' theories with a fear of assimilation with the mother, because of influence of the mother, or "birthmark," refuses the child his/her identity.

Overall, I enjoyed Differences. I felt that this was mainly because of the experience and background I have gained this semester. The majority of the articles were grounded deeply in theory, and not practice. Many times I felt the theorists needed to take their ideas a step father and apply them to our society and culture, and I found myself doing this on my own.