Strategically speaking

the problem of essentializing terms in feminist theory and feminist organizational talk

Leslie J. Miller

Jana Metcalfe

pp. 235-257

in: Human Studies 21 (3), 1998.

Abstract

This paper examines the discursive construction of collective identity in several feminist organizations, as a way of shedding new light on the debate over "essentializing" or "totalizing" terms in contemporary feminist/postmodernist theory. We argue that while this debate is about language, it has remained largely untouched by the insights of a discursive approach. The latter as we take it up here treats language as irremediably "strategic" or "interested." In contrast, the feminist argument over essentializing terms appears to hold to a correspondence version of language, a position which limits the debate in fatal ways. Part 1 reviews the argument that terms such as "women", "feminist" and "feminist identity" are essentializing discourses which dominate by silencing difference. Part 2 then considers the way one such concept – feminist identity – is actually constructed and used in the routine talk of members of feminist organizations. In Part 3 we draw out the implications of a discursive approach to such terms for the feminist/postmodernist debate.