Who the Heck Are We? Theoretical Turns against Gender

Abstract

Gender skepticism is much in vogue these days.' I am referring to a current and developing challenge to the place of gender as a category of analysis in feminist theory. This challenge comes from two major centers. The first, postmodern, camp charges that gender is a social construct rather than an essential element of identity and calls for its deconstruction. The second source of critical scrutiny is the work of women of color, who find that insufficient attention to issues of race and racism makes feminist theory complicitous with white privilege.3 Some white feminists have responded to this second source of scrutiny by turning the lens on gender theory to show that reigning theoretical concepts of masculinity and femininity obscure and therefore support contemporary dynamics of racism.4 All too often, the postmodern critique is allied or conflated with that of women of color who have no use for or interest in postmodern theory.s Part of the reason for this conflation may involve the rhetorical invocation of difference and the related suspicion of theoretical generalizations and founding categorical suppositions by writers in both camps. Indeed, much of what is at stake in these discussions and debates involves the question of theory as a contemporary enterprise: what theory is, what it does, what it ought to be and become. That the