Representation: The Feminist Crisis

When first reading Butler’s article, I began to think that feminism is failing us. It’s very nature of representation undermines itself. In seeking to fully represent all individuals, namely women, it restricts women by simply classifying them as women. Our human desire to classify seems to be hindering our progress. So is feminism really failing us, or are we failing feminism? Butler seems to be arguing for the latter. But, perhaps, Miller’s theories of genre typification and fluidity can bandage this wound.

The fundamental goal of feminism is equality for all sexes. However, it is often advocated by and for women, the more socially subordinate sex throughout time. But, according to Butler, this is where the primary problem that faces feminism arises. Feminism is targeted primarily toward women and it seeks equal representation for women. But what constitutes women?  The entire social movement seeks to more accurately represent women, but in doing so, fails to represent women accurately. How can a movement that contradicts itself possibly succeed? It seems that feminism is stepping on its own foot.

Feminism makes use of fluid terms given concrete definitions. So feminism seeks to represent all women with all of their unique and equally important intricacies? Then, why have feminists created such a restricted genre of womanhood. In distinguishing woman as the primary focus and subject of feminism, the ideology becomes restricted. By recognizing women as merely women, feminists are reducing these individuals to a sex or to a gender, ignoring all other facets of each individual personality. What makes these individuals common subjects of feminism is their sex and their consequent subordinated position on society. But, “if one ‘is’ a woman, that is surely not all one is” (Butler 4). The label fails because of its failure to recognize all of the terms and concepts that intersect gender and identity. Assuming that the term woman denoted s a “common identity” is troublesome (Butler 4).

As a feminist myself, it is somewhat difficult to common to this realization. The “exclusionary practices that ground feminist theory in a notion of woman as subject paradoxically undercut feminist goals to extend” the reach of representation (Butler 5). Feminism is grounded in the social struggle for more complete representation. Yet, in attempting to achieve this, feminism seeks to achieve a common identity to which those it is trying to represent belong. This identify is woman. But, by classifying so many individuals by their womanhood alone, feminism undermines itself. It immediately fails at the fair representation it is trying to achieve. The “presumed universality and unity of the subject of feminism is effectively undermined by the constraints of the representational discourse in which it functions” (Butler 6). The way that we are currently doing feminism seems to fail from the start.

So, does this mean that all representational politics fails form the start? Does every quest for equal representation undermine itself in the way that feminism does, using a closed system of classification to represent the subject that it is arguing as fluid? How are we ever to achieve full and fair representation of all when we undermine the goal every time we try?

Perhaps the answer, or at least a step towards the answer, lies in Miller’s discussion of genre. While Miller discusses texts, his ideas can easily be applied to people. He warns us against classification. By our very nature, we often seek to classify things, categorizing them into categories. Just as we struggle to classify texts into genres, we classify individuals into genres. In Butler’s case, the genres are male and female. Miller argues that, by doing this, we limit all that something is capable of. By restricting it to fit in one category, to be one thing, we take away and undermine all else that it is. In this way, classification is a closed system of identification.

Feminism seems to be treating individuals, namely women, in this way. In identifying women as the subject of feminism, we identify all women solely by their womanhood. We classify them in order to invoke a sense of unity. By doing so, however, we disregard all other facets of the individual that we seemingly seek to represent. This is problematic.

Miller provides a solution to this closed-mindedness. We need to start understanding genre (of texts and of people) in terms of typification rather than classification. Typification, he argues, allows us to categorize and label in a much more fluid and all-encompassing way. In accordance with typification, individuals can be of many different types, which often overlap. We typify according to what we see and experience most often. Types are the products of recurrent situations. Miller also allows room for new types. When something doesn’t seem to belong to any existing, type, we should just create new ones.

So, no let us apply this feminism. The contradictory crisis of feminism that Butler identifies could be solved by simply reconstructing our understandings of genre. We need not classify in order to foster a sense of feminist unity. The problem of feminism lies in restrictive classification and the subsequent failure to accomplish complete and fair representation. But, perhaps instead of classifying we should just typify, identifying characteristics and types without truly classifying. By doing so, we could represent women and the feminist cause in a much more fluid, adaptable, and all-encompassing way. By allowing room for new types and new genres, we allow room for infinite representation. this is what feminism has been striving for all along. 

--Morgan