Today at SIRC, I was in a Southern Renaissance panel in which - inevitably - Faulkner surfaced. As we were discussing Faulkner's treatment and opinion of women, one of the people in the audience noted that in Faulkner's literature, women are treated as a "text" to be read and interpreted according to the other characters in the novel. I thought this was an interesting idea, and one certainly not limited to Faulkner, nor literature. We do, in many ways, read each other as "texts," bringing in our own understandings, biases, and expectations when we are interacting with others. And this certainly relates to gender in real life as well as in The Sound and The Fury. Simone de Beauvoir asks "the myth of woman plays a considerable part in literature; but what is its importance in daily life," and this "myth" is the lens through which the "text" of woman is read through (1265).
And on that note, enter: Deconstruction. In continuing with the idea of women and gender as a text, looking through a deconstructive view, it's no wonder that we are still arguing about it. Paul de Man says "literature cannot merely be received as a definite unit of referential meaning that can be decoded without leaving a residue," and in the same way, neither can an understanding of the text of women (1366). I won’t even begin to delve into the “residue” left by trying to interpret gender, but I think we can agree that gender disputes always fail to encapsulate the whole of the issue and even the interpretations themselves often fail to reach any real understanding. How can we possibly discuss gender and feel we’ve even begun to capture the different facets of each individual member of that gender? We can’t. Just as de Man talks about the issues we face with readings becoming reductive, so do the "readings" of gender. There is no way in which to summarize the whole, and certainly no way to understand it.
So then really, what’s the point of trying to “read” gender? Seeing as the text of woman is no more stagnant than language, the readings will always be changing, turning, and contradicting themselves. The readings of different individuals will always be challenging each other. Is there ever a “correct” reading to be had? If we can’t read the text of women, if there is inevitably going to be a residue, why bother? Well, probably because we should at least try. The deconstructionists don’t say not to ever even attempt to interpret; they just say we have to recognize we’re never going to catch everything. There’s always going to be residue. There’s always going to be meanings that are brought in that no one intended. There’s always absence and presence interacting. We don’t have to avoid these things; we just have to recognize them. So perhaps that’s why the gender discussions can become so grating. People like to present their ideas as absolutes (take the video Morgan posted, for example) and don’t acknowledge that there is no possible way to capture the whole. So maybe we should be a little more deconstructionist when reading the “text” of gender. Maybe if we took out the absolutes and quit applying what we think are comprehensive theories we might actually get somewhere. Or maybe we won’t……never know.
"We don’t have to avoid these things; we just have to recognize them."
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good point. Though, from the deconstructionist standpoint, it's not clear why we need to recognize anything, seeing as any recognition is just a construction, anyway.
As for feminism, my main problem with deconstructive feminism is that it assumes that (biological) gender is just another construction. At some point, I think that this simply breaks down.
This is the problem I have often had with criticisms made by people like this woman: http://www.feministfrequency.com/2011/04/tropes-vs-women-2-women-in-refrigerators/
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, she's right. Women are far too often used as plot pushers. On the other hand SOMETHING has to push the plot, and if your lead is a heterosexual male in an action genre, a good way to push the plot is to kill off his lady-love. In fact, Alias does the same thing with Sydney Bristow's boyfriend in the pilot. I guess that's subverting a trope if you want to look at it that way. More importantly though, what the Feminist Frequency woman is saying isn't entirely fair, and my "defense" (if you want to call it that) of women in refrigerators is offensive because she is also very right. You can't really criticize categorization very well because we humans instinctively categorize, so the response will be a new category that will be just as criticizable. Stories will always need plot pushers. Characters will never be full complex humans if only because they do not have full lives. They only live in the text; they only live in what the author tells you; they only live in what you see. She's never going to get the woman she wants from writers. She's not wrong that these tropes are disturbing, but tropes will always be present.
Caitlin, I agree completely. I think that's why people like Cixous assert that women need to write for women. Or even that we all must write ourselves. If this is the case, then the problem is not in our writing, as much as it is in our listening. Somehow we need to make sure everyone has an equal voice (in an ideal world). Not everyone will have an equal voice in every text, but hopefully more and more texts from different voices become heard. And that's where Greenblatt comes in along with the later Cultural Studies.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love that comic. Not sure where I have seen it before.
ReplyDeleteAubrey,
ReplyDeleteYou're right. What is the point? In a sense, everyone/thing in a book or even in real life can be treated like a text or read like a text--in fact, that may be what we do, if cognitive functions are based in language. Hmmmm.