This is the resulting debate between Nussbaum and several of her critics
that occured subsequently in the editorial pages of the New Republic.
The New Republic APRIL 19, 1999
Copyright 1999 The New Republic, Inc.
The New Republic
APRIL 19, 1999
SECTION: Pg. 46
LENGTH: 2847 words
HEADLINE: Martha C. Nussbaum and Her Critics: An Exchange
BODY:
To the editors:
In a recent issue ("The Professor of Parody," February 22), as an example of
gullibility in the face of obscure prose, Martha C. Nussbaum trots out a
secondhand quotation where I reputedly opine that Judith Butler is "probably
one of the ten smartest people on the planet."
Had Nussbaum verified the quotation instead of citing a citation, she would
have found a literary theory website introducing "The Grand PoohBahs: Often
Named Jacques, but also Helene, Luce, Michel, and occasionally Fred" (which
also features Michel Foucault's head pasted atop a Pez dispenser). The
original quote: "Judith Butler's ideas are sophisticated enough that people
usually simplify them in cartoonish ways. Engaging her in a profound way
necessitates an understanding of an intimidating list of difficult
thinkers... . Probably one of the ten smartest people on the planet, and
damn her--he said admiringly--she's only 34." It's called irony. Discerning
readers are welcome to join me.
Without doubt, theory-minded academics often dismiss objections with
unwarranted impatience. But when self-appointed defenders of clarity are
unwilling to do the basic research we would require of any first-year
composition student, perhaps that impatience is warranted. For the original,
campy discussion of Butler (and now, Nussbaum) visit: www.sou.
edu/English/IDTC/Swirl/ swirl.htm.
Warren Hedges
Assistant Professor of English
Southern Oregon University
Ashland, Oregon
To the editors:
In her recent review of Judith Butler's work, Martha C. Nussbaum complains
that feminists like Butler "find comfort in the idea that the subversive use
of words is still available to feminist intellectuals." Her own essay is a
better example of this confidence than anything written by Judith Butler.
Nussbaum believes that socialconstruction theories are the same as the
analysis of gender as performative. And she will not allow Butler the
freedom of expanding the Austinian performative into a more than verbal
category. Since she so berates Butler for being impractical, she should have
reckoned that social construction of gender theories being around since
Plato is not quite the same thing as an intellectual pointing out that we
all make gender come into being by doing it. Butler's performative theory is
not the same as Austin's and not the same as social construction theories.
She is addressing conventions in use, social contract-effects, collective
"institutions" of elusive materiality, the ground of the political. No legal
or political reform stands a chance of survival without tangling with
conventions.
As an Indian feminist theorist and activist resident in the United States
and honored by the friendship of such subcontinental feminist activists as
Flavia Agnes, Farida Akhter, Mahasweta Devi, Madhu Kishwar, Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan, Romila Thapar, Susie Tharu, and many others, I refuse the implicit
matronizing reference to "rape law in India today, which has most of the
flaws that the first generation of American feminists targeted" with which
Nussbaum opens her subplot of Indian feminists as an example of what Butler
is not. (How are we to treat Anupama Rao's serious consideration of Butler
in "Understanding Sirsgaon: Notes Toward Conceptualising the Role of Law,
Caste and Gender in a Case of 'Atrocity,'" for example? Instances of the use
of Butler by Indian feminist theorists can be multiplied.)
This flag-waving championship of needy women leads Nussbaum finally to
assert that "women who are hungry, illiterate, disenfranchised, beaten,
raped ... prefer food, schools, votes, and the integrity of their bodies."
Sounds good, from a powerful tenured academic in a liberal university. But
how does she know? This may be her idea of what they should want. In that
conviction she may want to train them to want this. That is called a
"civilizing mission. " But if she ever engages in unmediated grassroots
activism in the global South, rather than championing activist theorists,
she will find that the gender practice of the rural poor is quite often in
the performative mode, carving out power within a more general scene of
pleasure in subjection. If she wants to deny this generality of gender
culture and make the women over in her own image, she will have to enter
their protocol, and learn much greater patience and understanding than is
shown by this vicious review.
"Butler's hip quietism ... collaborates with evil," Nussbaum concludes. Any
involvement with counter-globalization would show how her unexamined, and
equally hip, U.S. benevolence toward "other women" collaborates with
exploitation. The solution, if there is any, is not to engage in abusive
reviews in the pages of national journals.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Avalon Foundation Professor
in the Humanities
Columbia University
New York, New York
To the editors:
We were disturbed by Martha C. Nussbaum's attack on Judith Butler in the
February 22 issue of The New Republic.
One element we found particularly objectionable was Nussbaum's repeated
attempts to dismiss Butler as a philosopher. At one point Nussbaum claims
that Butler is seen as a major thinker "more by people in literature than by
philosophers." She asks whether Butler's manner of writing "belongs to the
philosophical tradition at all." As one who has contributed much to bringing
literature and philosophy closer together, Nussbaum's questioning of
Butler's attempts are disingenuous. Furthermore, Nussbaum's move is
reminiscent of those who have tried to keep feminist concerns out of
philosophy on grounds " that this is just not philosophy."
While Nussbaum raises some worthwhile questions, the element of
vituperativeness in the essay is disturbing. Butler's contributions are not
only described as "unconscionably bad" but the quietism Nussbaum claims to
follow from them is said "to collaborate with evil." This rhetoric of
overkill stands in striking contrast to the unquestioning adulation Nussbaum
gives to Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. Given the authoritarian
strains in the politics of MacKinnon and Dworkin, Butler's strong
antiauthoritarianism is a useful antidote.
Seyla Benhabib
Professor of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nancy Fraser
Professor of Political Science and
Philosophy
The New School for Social Research
New York, New York
Linda Nicholson
The State University of New York,
Albany
Albany, New York
To the editors:
Martha C. Nussbaum's review of Judith Butler takes as its premise the belief
that the test of a theory's goodness is its positive political outcome. Yet
we are offered no empirical evidence for this claim. Instead, we are
presented with a manichean scheme which defines "good" theory as that which
" is closely tethered to practical commitments," to "real" issues, to "the
real situation of real women," to "real politics" and "real justice." It is
irrelevant to Nussbaum's polemic that Judith Butler is on record in word and
deed as a politically concerned person with "practical commitments" to "real
politics," and that her writings have influenced what even Nussbaum would
take to be "good" politics among Queer activists, feminist psychoanalysts,
and lawyers working on women's rights. According to the logic of the
argument, since Butler does not share Nussbaum's "normative theory of social
justice and human dignity," Butler can only "collaborate with evil." In the
guise of a serious book review, Nussbaum has constructed a self-serving
morality tale in which she (along with Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin) represents historically authentic and politically efficacious
feminism, while Judith Butler (and the young, Francophile, sado-masochist
minions who are said to follow her) indulge in "amoral anarchist politics"
or "hip quietism" and so betray feminist goals.
Nussbaum conveniently omits all discussion of instances of "real" politics
in her article, perhaps because the evidence is so damning to her argument.
To deduce politics from theory, as Nussbaum does, is to misunderstand the
operations of both. The job of theory is to open new avenues of
understanding, to trouble conventional wisdom with difficult questions. The
job of politics (in democratic societies, at least) is to secure some end in
a contested, conflictual field. Politics and theory may inform one another
at certain moments with successful or unsuccessful results--the outcomes are
not predictable. Historically, though, one thing is sure: when the gap
between theory and politics is closed in the name of virtue, when
Robespierre or the Ayatollahs or Ken Starr seek to impose their vision of
the "good" on the rest of society, reigns of terror follow and democratic
politics are undermined. These are situations in which, to reverse Martha
Nussbaum's reasoning, too much "good" ends up as "evil," and feminism, along
with all other emancipatory movements, loses its public voice.
Sadly, Nussbaum's good versus evil scheme substitutes moralist
fundamentalism for genuine philosophical and political debate among
feminists- -and there is much to be debated these days: Are all "women" the
same? Who can speak for the needs and interests of "women"? How can
political action address deeply rooted conventions about gender? Judith
Butler has engaged these questions with great honesty and skill. Those of us
looking for ways of reflecting on the situation of feminism today
understandably prefer the provocative, open theories of Judith Butler to the
closed moralizing of Martha Nussbaum.
Joan W. Scott
Professor of Social Science
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
To the editors:
Are feminist theorists now divisible into two distinct groups, the activists
and the "hip defeatists"? While Martha C. Nussbaum raises some serious
issues about the relation between feminist theory and the day-to-day
struggles of women around the world to achieve recognition of their dignity,
her dichotomy between those feminists who are "materialists" and those of a
" new symbolic type" who "believe that the way to do feminist politics is to
use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity
and disdainful abstraction" is not only simplistic but obscures the crucial
focus of second-wave feminism on the role of representations in shaping our
reality.
We don't think that any feminist, Judith Butler included, believes that
feminist political goals can be achieved in the ways attributed by Nussbaum
to this "new symbolic type." But feminists of all stripes-- as well as many
other groups in the second half of this century--have long seen that
questions of how we represent ourselves and are represented by others are
central to the quest for justice. In her article, Nussbaum contrasts
Catharine MacKinnon as the exemplar "good" activist feminist to Judith
Butler, her epitome of the "bad" language-oriented feminist. Yet for both
MacKinnon and Butler, feminist work is grounded in an insistence upon the
material force of representations, linguistic as well as visual. Catharine
MacKinnon and other antiporn feminists have taught us that pornographic
images and words brutalize us as women and that resisting repression means
finding ways out of these representations.
Judith Butler's work, including her rightfully famous insight into the
performative aspect of identity, likewise focuses on the ways in which
representations have constitutive force, the way in which who we are is
deeply connected with how we are represented. But whereas MacKinnon's focus
on the materiality of representation has turned toward legal reform,
including the creation of an innovative civil rights ordinance written with
Andrea Dworkin, Butler has argued that the struggle over representations
should be fought out in politics.
This is a real difference between them and needs to be addressed. Feminist
theorists, including one of the authors, have sought for years now to
address this question of the parameters of legal reform and the
possibilities of change through politics. Part of this involves a problem
that has historically plagued analytic jurisprudence: How do we reconcile
freedom and equality in a concept of right?
Given the stakes and seriousness of the work of these two theorists as well
as the complexity that their work--and that of many, many others--seeks to
address, Nussbaum's facile division of theorists into two camps is not only
inaccurate, it is less than productive. Reading her essay, actually not much
more than an ad feminam attack on Butler, one is indeed reminded--if
ironically, if paradoxically--of David Hume, whom Nussbaum accurately
characterizes as "a fine ... a gracious spirit: how kindly he respects the
reader's intelligence, even at the cost of exposing his own uncertainty."
Would that Martha Nussbaum had honored Hume's philosophical spirit in her
own review of Judith Butler's work.
Drucilla Cornell
Professor of Law, Political Science,
and Women's Studies
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Sara Murphy
Lecturer
Gallatin School, New York
University
New York, New York
Martha C. Nussbaum replies:
Hedges's letter shows that I quoted him correctly. The larger context of his
remark suggests that it may be hyperbolic; there is no sign that it is
ironic. Perhaps Hedges confuses these two concepts.
Spivak is wrong to say that I equate social-construction theories with the
thesis that gender is performative. I said that the latter, though built on
the former, was Butler's one interesting new contribution. Butler can of
course expand on Austin as she likes, but my claim was that Austin's views,
which in any case she misrepresents, do not help her much with the project
that she is pursuing.
I admire Spivak's work with tribal women: indeed I was thinking of it when I
wrote that feminists in India, whatever their intellectual orientation,
remain close to practical problems. But she should inquire about what I do
before she makes assumptions. I have spent a lot of time during the past few
years with activists and women's development projects in India. I have
visited projects of many different types in different regions. I have never
yet met a poor woman who told me she took pleasure in subjection, though
there may be some who do. I have met countless women who struggle for access
to credit, education, employment opportunities, political representation,
and shelter from domestic violence.
My claims about rape law in India are correct: a victim's sexual history,
for example, is still relevant evidence. I believe that there is nothing "
matronizing" about making American readers aware of the fine work being done
in this area by activists such as Indira Jaising, for whose advice and
illumination I am grateful. In my forthcoming book, Women and Human
Development, my claims about women in India are amply documented, as was not
possible in a brief review.
Benhabib, Fraser, and Nicholson say that my claim that Butler is more
sophist than philosopher is "disingenuous" because I have written that
philosophy can derive insight from literature. This odd non sequitur might
be valid if one supplied the tacit premise that sophistry is literature, or
that Butler is a figure comparable to Proust and Henry James. But I see no
reason to accept either of those assumptions. What I called "unconscionably
bad" was not Butler's work in general, but her use of First Amendment legal
materials in Excitable Speech. In that context, the phrase is appropriate.
Finally, anyone who reads what I have written about MacKinnon and Dworkin
will know that my attitude to them is not one of "unquestioning adulation,"
but rather of deeply respectful criticism.
Scott misses an important distinction. I was talking not about practical
activities pursued by theorists, but about theorizing in a way that gives
direction to practical political efforts. Butler may well have admirable
practical commitments, but this does not change the fact that what she
writes as a theorist offers no helpful direction for practice. I discussed
many examples of theorizing that does provide such a direction, including
writings about the reform of rape law, sexual harassment law, and the
concept of sex equality more generally. Nor do I see how the scare-names of
the Ayatollah and Robespierre undermine the value of the work of feminists
who have helped make progress in legal reform.
Cornell and Murphy write an interesting letter that goes to the substance of
what I actually argued. They are correct in noting that MacKinnon's thought
has a significant symbolic dimension. The differences between MacKinnon and
Foucault deserve a subtle investigation. I hope they will write such a
study. Far from dividing thinkers into two camps, I made it clear that I
respect some work in the Foucauldian-Symbolic tradition, including the work
of Foucault himself. Butler doesn't seem to me a thinker of the same
caliber.
(Copyright 1999, The New Republic)
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: April 8, 1999
that occured subsequently in the editorial pages of the New Republic.
The New Republic APRIL 19, 1999
Copyright 1999 The New Republic, Inc.
The New Republic
APRIL 19, 1999
SECTION: Pg. 46
LENGTH: 2847 words
HEADLINE: Martha C. Nussbaum and Her Critics: An Exchange
BODY:
To the editors:
In a recent issue ("The Professor of Parody," February 22), as an example of
gullibility in the face of obscure prose, Martha C. Nussbaum trots out a
secondhand quotation where I reputedly opine that Judith Butler is "probably
one of the ten smartest people on the planet."
Had Nussbaum verified the quotation instead of citing a citation, she would
have found a literary theory website introducing "The Grand PoohBahs: Often
Named Jacques, but also Helene, Luce, Michel, and occasionally Fred" (which
also features Michel Foucault's head pasted atop a Pez dispenser). The
original quote: "Judith Butler's ideas are sophisticated enough that people
usually simplify them in cartoonish ways. Engaging her in a profound way
necessitates an understanding of an intimidating list of difficult
thinkers... . Probably one of the ten smartest people on the planet, and
damn her--he said admiringly--she's only 34." It's called irony. Discerning
readers are welcome to join me.
Without doubt, theory-minded academics often dismiss objections with
unwarranted impatience. But when self-appointed defenders of clarity are
unwilling to do the basic research we would require of any first-year
composition student, perhaps that impatience is warranted. For the original,
campy discussion of Butler (and now, Nussbaum) visit: www.sou.
edu/English/IDTC/Swirl/ swirl.htm.
Warren Hedges
Assistant Professor of English
Southern Oregon University
Ashland, Oregon
To the editors:
In her recent review of Judith Butler's work, Martha C. Nussbaum complains
that feminists like Butler "find comfort in the idea that the subversive use
of words is still available to feminist intellectuals." Her own essay is a
better example of this confidence than anything written by Judith Butler.
Nussbaum believes that socialconstruction theories are the same as the
analysis of gender as performative. And she will not allow Butler the
freedom of expanding the Austinian performative into a more than verbal
category. Since she so berates Butler for being impractical, she should have
reckoned that social construction of gender theories being around since
Plato is not quite the same thing as an intellectual pointing out that we
all make gender come into being by doing it. Butler's performative theory is
not the same as Austin's and not the same as social construction theories.
She is addressing conventions in use, social contract-effects, collective
"institutions" of elusive materiality, the ground of the political. No legal
or political reform stands a chance of survival without tangling with
conventions.
As an Indian feminist theorist and activist resident in the United States
and honored by the friendship of such subcontinental feminist activists as
Flavia Agnes, Farida Akhter, Mahasweta Devi, Madhu Kishwar, Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan, Romila Thapar, Susie Tharu, and many others, I refuse the implicit
matronizing reference to "rape law in India today, which has most of the
flaws that the first generation of American feminists targeted" with which
Nussbaum opens her subplot of Indian feminists as an example of what Butler
is not. (How are we to treat Anupama Rao's serious consideration of Butler
in "Understanding Sirsgaon: Notes Toward Conceptualising the Role of Law,
Caste and Gender in a Case of 'Atrocity,'" for example? Instances of the use
of Butler by Indian feminist theorists can be multiplied.)
This flag-waving championship of needy women leads Nussbaum finally to
assert that "women who are hungry, illiterate, disenfranchised, beaten,
raped ... prefer food, schools, votes, and the integrity of their bodies."
Sounds good, from a powerful tenured academic in a liberal university. But
how does she know? This may be her idea of what they should want. In that
conviction she may want to train them to want this. That is called a
"civilizing mission. " But if she ever engages in unmediated grassroots
activism in the global South, rather than championing activist theorists,
she will find that the gender practice of the rural poor is quite often in
the performative mode, carving out power within a more general scene of
pleasure in subjection. If she wants to deny this generality of gender
culture and make the women over in her own image, she will have to enter
their protocol, and learn much greater patience and understanding than is
shown by this vicious review.
"Butler's hip quietism ... collaborates with evil," Nussbaum concludes. Any
involvement with counter-globalization would show how her unexamined, and
equally hip, U.S. benevolence toward "other women" collaborates with
exploitation. The solution, if there is any, is not to engage in abusive
reviews in the pages of national journals.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Avalon Foundation Professor
in the Humanities
Columbia University
New York, New York
To the editors:
We were disturbed by Martha C. Nussbaum's attack on Judith Butler in the
February 22 issue of The New Republic.
One element we found particularly objectionable was Nussbaum's repeated
attempts to dismiss Butler as a philosopher. At one point Nussbaum claims
that Butler is seen as a major thinker "more by people in literature than by
philosophers." She asks whether Butler's manner of writing "belongs to the
philosophical tradition at all." As one who has contributed much to bringing
literature and philosophy closer together, Nussbaum's questioning of
Butler's attempts are disingenuous. Furthermore, Nussbaum's move is
reminiscent of those who have tried to keep feminist concerns out of
philosophy on grounds " that this is just not philosophy."
While Nussbaum raises some worthwhile questions, the element of
vituperativeness in the essay is disturbing. Butler's contributions are not
only described as "unconscionably bad" but the quietism Nussbaum claims to
follow from them is said "to collaborate with evil." This rhetoric of
overkill stands in striking contrast to the unquestioning adulation Nussbaum
gives to Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. Given the authoritarian
strains in the politics of MacKinnon and Dworkin, Butler's strong
antiauthoritarianism is a useful antidote.
Seyla Benhabib
Professor of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nancy Fraser
Professor of Political Science and
Philosophy
The New School for Social Research
New York, New York
Linda Nicholson
The State University of New York,
Albany
Albany, New York
To the editors:
Martha C. Nussbaum's review of Judith Butler takes as its premise the belief
that the test of a theory's goodness is its positive political outcome. Yet
we are offered no empirical evidence for this claim. Instead, we are
presented with a manichean scheme which defines "good" theory as that which
" is closely tethered to practical commitments," to "real" issues, to "the
real situation of real women," to "real politics" and "real justice." It is
irrelevant to Nussbaum's polemic that Judith Butler is on record in word and
deed as a politically concerned person with "practical commitments" to "real
politics," and that her writings have influenced what even Nussbaum would
take to be "good" politics among Queer activists, feminist psychoanalysts,
and lawyers working on women's rights. According to the logic of the
argument, since Butler does not share Nussbaum's "normative theory of social
justice and human dignity," Butler can only "collaborate with evil." In the
guise of a serious book review, Nussbaum has constructed a self-serving
morality tale in which she (along with Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin) represents historically authentic and politically efficacious
feminism, while Judith Butler (and the young, Francophile, sado-masochist
minions who are said to follow her) indulge in "amoral anarchist politics"
or "hip quietism" and so betray feminist goals.
Nussbaum conveniently omits all discussion of instances of "real" politics
in her article, perhaps because the evidence is so damning to her argument.
To deduce politics from theory, as Nussbaum does, is to misunderstand the
operations of both. The job of theory is to open new avenues of
understanding, to trouble conventional wisdom with difficult questions. The
job of politics (in democratic societies, at least) is to secure some end in
a contested, conflictual field. Politics and theory may inform one another
at certain moments with successful or unsuccessful results--the outcomes are
not predictable. Historically, though, one thing is sure: when the gap
between theory and politics is closed in the name of virtue, when
Robespierre or the Ayatollahs or Ken Starr seek to impose their vision of
the "good" on the rest of society, reigns of terror follow and democratic
politics are undermined. These are situations in which, to reverse Martha
Nussbaum's reasoning, too much "good" ends up as "evil," and feminism, along
with all other emancipatory movements, loses its public voice.
Sadly, Nussbaum's good versus evil scheme substitutes moralist
fundamentalism for genuine philosophical and political debate among
feminists- -and there is much to be debated these days: Are all "women" the
same? Who can speak for the needs and interests of "women"? How can
political action address deeply rooted conventions about gender? Judith
Butler has engaged these questions with great honesty and skill. Those of us
looking for ways of reflecting on the situation of feminism today
understandably prefer the provocative, open theories of Judith Butler to the
closed moralizing of Martha Nussbaum.
Joan W. Scott
Professor of Social Science
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
To the editors:
Are feminist theorists now divisible into two distinct groups, the activists
and the "hip defeatists"? While Martha C. Nussbaum raises some serious
issues about the relation between feminist theory and the day-to-day
struggles of women around the world to achieve recognition of their dignity,
her dichotomy between those feminists who are "materialists" and those of a
" new symbolic type" who "believe that the way to do feminist politics is to
use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity
and disdainful abstraction" is not only simplistic but obscures the crucial
focus of second-wave feminism on the role of representations in shaping our
reality.
We don't think that any feminist, Judith Butler included, believes that
feminist political goals can be achieved in the ways attributed by Nussbaum
to this "new symbolic type." But feminists of all stripes-- as well as many
other groups in the second half of this century--have long seen that
questions of how we represent ourselves and are represented by others are
central to the quest for justice. In her article, Nussbaum contrasts
Catharine MacKinnon as the exemplar "good" activist feminist to Judith
Butler, her epitome of the "bad" language-oriented feminist. Yet for both
MacKinnon and Butler, feminist work is grounded in an insistence upon the
material force of representations, linguistic as well as visual. Catharine
MacKinnon and other antiporn feminists have taught us that pornographic
images and words brutalize us as women and that resisting repression means
finding ways out of these representations.
Judith Butler's work, including her rightfully famous insight into the
performative aspect of identity, likewise focuses on the ways in which
representations have constitutive force, the way in which who we are is
deeply connected with how we are represented. But whereas MacKinnon's focus
on the materiality of representation has turned toward legal reform,
including the creation of an innovative civil rights ordinance written with
Andrea Dworkin, Butler has argued that the struggle over representations
should be fought out in politics.
This is a real difference between them and needs to be addressed. Feminist
theorists, including one of the authors, have sought for years now to
address this question of the parameters of legal reform and the
possibilities of change through politics. Part of this involves a problem
that has historically plagued analytic jurisprudence: How do we reconcile
freedom and equality in a concept of right?
Given the stakes and seriousness of the work of these two theorists as well
as the complexity that their work--and that of many, many others--seeks to
address, Nussbaum's facile division of theorists into two camps is not only
inaccurate, it is less than productive. Reading her essay, actually not much
more than an ad feminam attack on Butler, one is indeed reminded--if
ironically, if paradoxically--of David Hume, whom Nussbaum accurately
characterizes as "a fine ... a gracious spirit: how kindly he respects the
reader's intelligence, even at the cost of exposing his own uncertainty."
Would that Martha Nussbaum had honored Hume's philosophical spirit in her
own review of Judith Butler's work.
Drucilla Cornell
Professor of Law, Political Science,
and Women's Studies
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Sara Murphy
Lecturer
Gallatin School, New York
University
New York, New York
Martha C. Nussbaum replies:
Hedges's letter shows that I quoted him correctly. The larger context of his
remark suggests that it may be hyperbolic; there is no sign that it is
ironic. Perhaps Hedges confuses these two concepts.
Spivak is wrong to say that I equate social-construction theories with the
thesis that gender is performative. I said that the latter, though built on
the former, was Butler's one interesting new contribution. Butler can of
course expand on Austin as she likes, but my claim was that Austin's views,
which in any case she misrepresents, do not help her much with the project
that she is pursuing.
I admire Spivak's work with tribal women: indeed I was thinking of it when I
wrote that feminists in India, whatever their intellectual orientation,
remain close to practical problems. But she should inquire about what I do
before she makes assumptions. I have spent a lot of time during the past few
years with activists and women's development projects in India. I have
visited projects of many different types in different regions. I have never
yet met a poor woman who told me she took pleasure in subjection, though
there may be some who do. I have met countless women who struggle for access
to credit, education, employment opportunities, political representation,
and shelter from domestic violence.
My claims about rape law in India are correct: a victim's sexual history,
for example, is still relevant evidence. I believe that there is nothing "
matronizing" about making American readers aware of the fine work being done
in this area by activists such as Indira Jaising, for whose advice and
illumination I am grateful. In my forthcoming book, Women and Human
Development, my claims about women in India are amply documented, as was not
possible in a brief review.
Benhabib, Fraser, and Nicholson say that my claim that Butler is more
sophist than philosopher is "disingenuous" because I have written that
philosophy can derive insight from literature. This odd non sequitur might
be valid if one supplied the tacit premise that sophistry is literature, or
that Butler is a figure comparable to Proust and Henry James. But I see no
reason to accept either of those assumptions. What I called "unconscionably
bad" was not Butler's work in general, but her use of First Amendment legal
materials in Excitable Speech. In that context, the phrase is appropriate.
Finally, anyone who reads what I have written about MacKinnon and Dworkin
will know that my attitude to them is not one of "unquestioning adulation,"
but rather of deeply respectful criticism.
Scott misses an important distinction. I was talking not about practical
activities pursued by theorists, but about theorizing in a way that gives
direction to practical political efforts. Butler may well have admirable
practical commitments, but this does not change the fact that what she
writes as a theorist offers no helpful direction for practice. I discussed
many examples of theorizing that does provide such a direction, including
writings about the reform of rape law, sexual harassment law, and the
concept of sex equality more generally. Nor do I see how the scare-names of
the Ayatollah and Robespierre undermine the value of the work of feminists
who have helped make progress in legal reform.
Cornell and Murphy write an interesting letter that goes to the substance of
what I actually argued. They are correct in noting that MacKinnon's thought
has a significant symbolic dimension. The differences between MacKinnon and
Foucault deserve a subtle investigation. I hope they will write such a
study. Far from dividing thinkers into two camps, I made it clear that I
respect some work in the Foucauldian-Symbolic tradition, including the work
of Foucault himself. Butler doesn't seem to me a thinker of the same
caliber.
(Copyright 1999, The New Republic)
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: April 8, 1999