The Rhetoric of Theory: Responses to Toril Moi

Abstract

In Women, Subjectivity, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Humanism in Feminist Film Theory, I investigate some of the ways in which feminist (film) theory relates itself to, and distinguishes itself from, theory in general. If one imagines that feminist theory is something that is distinct from theory due to a specifically political causal history, then feminist theory will be inclined to relate itself to theory confrontationally. If on the other hand feminist theory is understood as something which follows from, or responds to, work done in a prior or dominant theoretical domain, then it might be condemned in perpetuity to being asymmetrically dependent upon that prior domain. Both these possibili ties^?that feminist theory confronts another theoretical discourse, or that feminist theory is inevitably subordinated to a prior theoretical dis course^?risk leaving feminist theory in just the sort of disadvantaged, marginalized position vis-?-vis that prior domain that women occupy within patriarchy. One of my objectives in this paper is to dissolve the exclusionary, dichotomized opposition between theory and feminist theory by indicating just the degree to which, by engaging in feminist theory, we also engage in, and modify, theory. More specifically, I offer a symptomatic account of a critical strategy which one encounters generally, both in theory and in feminist theory. This strategy involves organizing a debate around two antithetical positions. Moreover, the privileged position?the anti-humanist posi tion, in the particular case I consider?creates its antagonist through the use of oversimplifying and reductive caricaturizations of that position. Anti-humanism, under one description or another, is the positively valued term of a binary pair, and humanism, as the antagonist of anti humanism, becomes the negatively valued term. Now, anti-humanism is a framework which organizes and directs much recent and contempo rary theoretical work, including work by feminists. There are various anti-humanisms on the market these days, just as there are various modernisms, various postmodernisms, and so forth. Nevertheless, part of what distinguishes the construction of the debate around an appar ently self-evident opposition between anti-humanists and humanists is a governing set of directive ideas about what marks the difference; that there are identifiable directive ideas shared by various anti-humanists