Notes on: Ahmed, S. (2008 ) Open
Forum Imaginary Prohibitions Some Preliminary
Remarks on the Founding Gestures of the 'New
Materialism'. European Journal of Women's
Studies, 15 (1): 23 – 39. DOI:
10.1177/1350506807084854.
Dave Harris
Ahmed begins with a series of quotes to represent
different sides of the debate — Sedgwick and Frank
in 1995 were talking about 'automatic
anti-biologism'; Kirby in 1997 was talking about
'the exclusion of biology' and why Irigaray had
ignored it, and says the question she asked at a
conference showed 'the speaker dismissed me with a
revealing theatrical gesture. As if to emphasise
the sheer absurdity of my question she pinched
herself and commented'; Wilson 1998 says that the
body is rarely pursued 'physiologically,
biochemically or microbiologically'; Wilson 2004
says that feminists still display 'fierce
anti-biologism that marked the emergence of second
wave feminism'; Squier refers to 'a "knee-jerk
constructivism" that means that there is no
incentive to engage with science; Grosz in 2004
talks about the forgotten dimension of research,
the body and what limits its actions, the 'world
of materiality' (23 – 24).
Ahmed wants to examine this assumption or gesture
and says it offers 'a false and reductive history
of feminist engagement with biology, science and
materialism' which has led to the field called new
materialism. That field now appears as a gift to
feminism, refusing to be prohibited, and becoming
'foundational of a field' (24). She acknowledges
that the work quoted is admirable, but suggest
their work has been gathered 'around a gesture'
which might lead to misunderstanding feminist
thought. She wants to open up the debate. She
knows that she risks 'overstating the case'. She
does not think that all the people quoted are
making the same gesture, but fears that that kind
of gesturing leads to a background, something
taken for granted, not really engaged with any
more.
She has 'an impression that has accumulated over
time' of the quite casual form of expression to
evoke rival positions — such as 'the expression,
"I don't think everything is just social"' (25).
Nobody is explicitly identified as making this
claim — it is somehow a 'somebody'who thinks that.
This is unproductive in failing to identify a
specific object. It is also a metonym — the word
social also implies language discourse and
culture. There seems to be 'familiar or even
habitual anxiety that feminism and post
structuralism have reduced "everything" to
language and culture'. She claims to have
identified lots of papers that make these casual
claims, 'repeated without illustration or
contextualisation'. It is this routinisation that
she wants to address. She realises that she might
herself be read symptomatically as anti-biologist.
Some accusations are addressed to feminism, others
more loosely to theory or theorists in a 'moving
referent' (26). If books are named, they become
symptomatic of a general trend — Sedgwick and
Frank take one book and obviously feel worried
about that. No other examples are referred to.
Terms need to be defined — theory for example. As
it is, it's almost defined as being something
which excludes biology, including science and
technology studies, but these have a 'long
genealogy'in feminism.
Grosz talks about returning to concepts of nature,
because we have forgotten them. Again, it is not
clear who she means by we: Grosz might be trying
to 'interpellate the reader into a community that
shares a common horizon' [very common of course],
especially feminists and all other theorists
.Grosz herself wants to return to Darwin, Bergson
and nature to produce feminist knowledge 'that can
enable political transformation' (27), yet does
not really engage with feminism, except as
'"standard knee-jerk feminist reading"', taken as
symptomatic. This reduces feminist responses [to
Darwin]. Calling them knee-jerk ironically evokes
some sort of biological source. It is still
important to point out sexism in philosophy. Other
feminists have worked this critique into Darwin.
There is also more recent work in feminist science
studies, including Haraway and Harding. It is this
work tactically that has to be forgotten if we are
to urge a return.
Wilson argues that feminism rejects the biological
altogether, even as a sphere of knowledge. The use
of the term 'fierce' [is itself symptomatic],
rejecting feminism that claims to be anti-killjoy
[personal for Ahmed who describes herself as a
killjoy feminist]. Wilson psychologises. Together
with Squier, the problem seems to lie inside
feminism, via a caricature of second wave
feminism.
Many second wave feminists did critique the use of
biology as a defence of social roles as in
determinism, the way in which social relations
appeared as products of nature. This is not a
rejection of the 'biological as such'(28) but
rather of closing off associations with biology,
seeing them as fixed [she says that we also find
in critical race theory critiques of dominant
culture, but this does not mean that theorists are
against culture]. Generally, 'what constitutes
"biology" has been a question rather than solution
for feminist thought', and there are different
feminist critiques. Calling this anti-biologism is
a reduction of complexity and heterogeneity. Many
feminist writers actually do evoke the biological,
or criticise particular uses of biological
arguments like genetic determinism [I quite like
this argument from Janson-Smith: 'there are no
learning processes that do not have some genetic
limits, but there are few, if any, behaviours that
are dictated entirely by the genes' (29)]. So the
problem is using biology as an explanation of
behaviour, not actually denying it a role. Other
examples show that it is biological determinism
that is being rejected, which can even imply of
course a relevance for biology, which has to be
rethought — if biologism supports sexism, it
follows that 'biology is not itself inherently
sexist'. Seeing feminism as anti-biology 'is
itself part of the appropriation of biology...
Inseparable from antifeminist uses of biology'.
Some second wave feminists even examined nonhuman
beings, or criticised exceptionalism. There was
often considerable discussion of 'the biological
processes of women's bodies, such as menstruation'
(30) [Janson Smith seems to describe affects in
general]. This emerged particularly in the women's
health movement which engage critically with
biological sciences.
There has been feminist work on biology, including
recent work on embodiment. It is important to
develop internal critique as 'an important part of
a feminist inheritance' but we have to avoid
caricatures. Many of the new materialists use
'generous forms of critique', but they still offer
qualitative judgements like 'insufficiently
engaged', 'read lovingly'. Very often male writers
engage with closely while feminist writers are
not.
'It is possible to recuperate anything for
feminism (well almost)', and we always have to
choose what to read. But there is a politics
involved. Careful reading of early feminists would
not see them as anti-biologist. Instead we get
'the gesture of pointing to feminist
anti-biologism' (31) to exclude or forget some
feminist work, or read it is symptomatically
flawed.
Ahmed is reminded of evoking political correctness
to prohibit certain kinds of speech. The liberal
intelligentsia think they are fighting against
prohibition, but 'perversely, this is how a racist
joke can be spoken in the name of freedom'.
Prohibition of certain words has also been
inflated by invoking a powerful '"whoever"' is
doing the prohibiting, the whole world 'which
demands consent' leaving only minority positions
like racist or sexist ones and these are not
allowed to speak. 'I call this an "inflationary
logic".' (31). [I found this a bit confusing --
who inflates exactly? Liberals or racists?]
Via a 'potentially awful analogy', we find
inflationary logic in the gesture of prohibition
about speaking about biology. We have an
'"imaginary prohibition", which is then taken as
foundational to a given speaking or intellectual
community [social constructionists] — imagined as
hegemonic, as a majority position, leaving
opponents as a minority position' we see this in
any calls to return to biology which 'constructs
the figure of the anti-biological feminist who
won't allow us to engage with biology, and
inflates her power'. This is enhanced by rumours
[Ahmed discusses one about the ESRC which a
speaker at a conference claim to be exclusively
social constructionist!]. She wishes that the ESRC
would be infiltrated by social constructionists,
but this is a 'fantastic' identification (32) as
well as inflationary [in this case attributing to
social constructionism hegemonic power]. It is the
same as right wingers saying that academia is been
taken over by liberals. The new materialists see
their own work as 'the minority position, the
injured other', and the gesture towards biology as
an imagined 'prohibited speech act'. More
'inflationary rhetoric' whereby defending biology,
already a highly funded discipline and much
valued, is 'a form of free speech'.
These gestures can become foundational. 'The
theorist is embarking on a heroic and lonely
struggle against the collective prohibitions of
past feminisms' (32), transferred to the new
project. New materialists do not want to engage
with historical materialism, however, but their
entry starts with the critique that 'matter, as
such' has been ignored (32). The critique has
extended from alleging a refusal to engage with
biology to a refusal to engage with dynamic matter
itself: 'feminism, it seems, has forgotten how
matter matters'. Feminism is too limited by
focusing on culture. Again no one is specified
particularly — 'the object of critique is
unstable'and includes feminists who do not engage
at all with materiality, and those who do engage
but in a way that reduces materiality to culture
[later Butler is accused of insufficient
materialism].
'In most of these feminist critiques of feminism,
Judith Butler is singled out as a primary example'
[refs here include Barad 2003]. Butler talks about
materialisation, however, initially in the context
of engaging with Foucault on how bodies
materialise, how bodily norms are sedimented. This
is of course not a general theory of the material
world, but her argument could be 'extended to
other forms of materialisation' even though Butler
does not do this — but does not exclude it. She is
usually read as if she were offering a theory of
the material world, however, not explaining how
sex becomes material. 'To ask it to do so would
seem unjust', and inevitably it would look
partial. This critique of Butler 'seems to be
motivated, as if the moment of "rejection" is
needed to authorise a new terrain' (33).
Seeing Butler as reducing matter to culture misses
the point. She is right to emphasise how gender
and sexuality are reproduced in language, culture,
the symbolic and ideology, to develop a theory of
social reproduction and normalisation. This does
not leads to a disbelief in the material world.
The point is to show the 'complexity of the
relationship between materiality and culture', not
offer reductionism [more or less as Kirby says she
is doing].
Feminist work in science studies is intrinsic to
feminist theory and explores these themes —
Haraway on the '"material – semiotic"' for
example. New materialism seems to reinstate the
old binaries — for example Barad in 2003, [and
in 2007, p.132]
where language is given too much power in several
'turns' in recent theory. 'No examples are
provided to illustrate the argument. We have no
idea of who she is actually referring to (other
than those who use "matter" as a pun)'
[Kirby makes clear that she means Butler]. Barad
thinks that we are only suspicious of matter but
not culture, scared by facts but not
signification, assuming that language is
trustworthy -- despite poststructuralist critique
and its 'suspicion with words as much as things'.
Ahmed says Barad offers a caricature of post
structuralism 'as matter phobic' and is urging a
return to the facts of the matter, just as with
critical realism. Barad does not even specifically
name feminism but talks about intellectual thought
in general 'as an inflationary logic'. So she
'creates her caricature by saying what she is not
saying' addressing 'something or somebody
throughout' this ties in with her attempt to argue
that discourse is material, not just linguistic,
'an argument that discourse 'is" this, or matter
"is" this by arguing that it is "not" that, where
the "that" is an argument that is not attributed
to somebody' (35) New materialism is shaped by
this 'mobility and detachability of this "not"'.
There might even be an assumption that it is
reifying matter, which appears to be an object
that is either absent or present. If not an object
it might be a theoretical category. It might
reintroduce 'binarism between materiality and
culture' that science studies in particular has
challenged. 'Matter becomes a fetish object: as if
it can be an "it" that we can be for or against'.
This reflects 'a desire for a pure theoretical
object', or 'objects that are given and which our
task is simply to uphold'.
Earlier feminist work did much better on the
'entanglements and traffic between
nature/biology/culture and between materiality and
signification'. Haraway is one example — in her Primate
Visions, she declares she is not prohibiting
origin stories or biological explanations or
policing the boundaries between nature and
culture. This involves her 'letting go of proper
objects, including disciplinary objects: biology,
culture, the social and so on'. This will be
creative. Is already a matter of debate in dispute
in all disciplines, which 'often proceed from the
collapse of their objects'. [more than a hint of
this in later Barad and Kirby]
So returning to matter means missing the way in
which 'matter matters in different ways, for
different feminism is, over time. The gesture is
affect getting as well as a caricature' (36). This
argument might reduce the complexity of some of
the work. Ahmed felt 'compelled to write this
piece — by frustration, I admit'. We need to
appreciate earlier feminist work, 'in all its
complexity'. We should not always return to it,
but if we do we should not represent it is
something simple. Instead we should make a return
that 'would be ethical'. We should not just
abolition new terrain by simply rejecting
everything that came before. We might want to feel
less hopeful about 'the category of "the new"'
Note 5,p. 38 distinguishes her position from staff
on autonomous affects [especially Massumi] because
it distinguishes between affects and emotion, and
reproduces this distinction as a foundational
gesture. Affect is biology and emotion is culture.
The emphasis on biology might be important, but
the distinction itself needs to be challenged —
how are both mutually implicated?
[BIt dated and ignores Barad on the quantum
specifically, although there is a lot on Böhr even
in the 2003 piece. It is an esoteric dispute
turning on gestures, readings and symptoms, as she
suggests. All of them say they want to examine
nature AND culture and the links. All seem to
agree on extending to non-humans and breaking
disciplines?]
Barad page
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