A Delicate Balance of Collectivism and Individualism

I've recently dug up some old transcendentalist literature that I read in high school and begun to immerse myself in it once again, in some sort of vague attempt to calm the nerves of graduating university and stepping out into the whirlpool of society.  Upon poring through the romantic lines of Thoreau's Walden, in which he recounts two of his introspective years spent in the perfect harmony of the Massachusetts wilderness, I began to realize a perhaps less-than-obvious similarity between the goals of feminism and the echoes of transcendentalism.

 (A link to a preview of the annotated version:  http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Annotated-Henry-D-Thoreau/dp/0300104669/ref=la_B000AQ4HEO_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422539830&sr=1-4)

Perhaps one might contend that the above statement is inherently paradoxical or lofty.  I offer that American transcendentalism stressed self-reliance, the pursuit of truth, and the strength of one's intuition...values that assuredly saturate feminist discourse.  A critical responsibility rests in the mind of the modern reader in evaluating feminism, for it is a movement which at its surface may appear collective, but whose goals should not be appropriated or molded to fit the neat corners of a group. Campbell echoes this sentiment, directly warning against the threats of "essentialism."  (Campbell)

I'd argue that feminism and women's rights activists indeed stress the goals of group equality, and of feminine authority, but that these goals are often colored by staunch individualism that must not be glossed over.  Rather, feminism is a powerful blend of collective identity and individual distinction, a combination that complements itself.  This is precisely the balancing act we must keep in mind when constructing a feminist paradigm.  

Sojourner Truth's speeches -- and even her name -- suggest an overlap of transcendentalist and feminist goals.  Feminism amassed its power through embracing the collective, but also by highlighting the individual capacity of woman.  Women, then, were not to be taken as some frustrated mass identity that lacked inventive thought, but as an equally powerful group as men, capable of great individual achievement.  Heilbrun reminds us that "power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter."  (Heilbrun 18)  Truth and other activists, such as Anna Julia Cooper or Harriet Tubman undoubtedly united women -- and more specifically, black women -- under banners of identity, and at the same time, perhaps unknowingly, became heroic icons of the movement through their outspoken achievement.  

Referencing back to Barthes, and his assertion that "the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone..."  (Barthes 875)  I believe that we, as modern readers, must be acutely aware of the social connotations and culture of our time, and the potential those factors may have in coloring our perception of both earlier and modern feminists.  Perhaps an analysis of Truth's speech would be strengthened by reading it alongside more social history of the time and a conscious approach to the biases of written discourse in a society that was fundamentally disparate from that of the modern day. 

Barton then describes a more contemporary version of an individual hero that champions the potential of an underrepresented group, in a way akin to the chronicling of Sojourner Truth, by introducing Roosevelt and examining him as a "quintessential American 'supercrip.'"  (Barton 185)  Barton expands, detailing FDR's "successful" public image, the polished example who "lives out the popular representation of disability as adversity to be overcome."  (Barton 185)  In both FDR and Sojourner Truth, I believe there is an interesting parallel in that they are advocates -- active, powerful faces of an "ignored" or "inferior" group who rise above the limitations of their social chains and live freely and strongly.  I believe this position is exactly what gives these icons a certain rhetorical worth, a sort of labored-for ethos.  This achievement seems to challenge our notions of the "Death of the Author" in previous readings -- especially, perhaps, in oratory -- and regarding Truth's 1851 speech or FDR's speeches, there is assured, extra merit in their words, for they speak from a place of deserved social veneration.  A vital question, then, might be: How does the ethos of speakers evolve over time?  How do our historical knowledge, modern perspective, and societal awareness affect our constructions and divisions across ideas?  Is it a step backwards to rhetorically classify feminism as a group movement and a step forward to champion its individualism at all costs?  Overall, I don't think the idea is so much divisive as it is harmonious.  

Referenced Readings:

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2.1 (2005): 1-19.

Heilbrun, Carolyn. “Introduction.” In Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: Norton, 1988. 11-24. 

Barton, Ellen L. “Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way.” Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Ed. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. 169-199