Grappling with Essentialism

Within her reflection on the problem of essentialism within Space, Time, and Perversion, Elizabeth Grosz paints a portrait of the two principle modalities of feminism and the fundamental tensions which differentiate these theoretical approaches to efforts to redefine women.  Grosz asserts all feminists must negotiate “between seeking acceptance in male terms and retaining a commitment to women’s struggles”(46). In doing so, the concept of essentialism, which Grosz defines as the assumption that women have a “given” and “universal” essence- describing biologism, naturalism, and universalism as distinct variations or specifications or this concept- becomes paramount.  Grosz asserts all of these frameworks have rationalized “the prevailing sexual division of social roles by assuming these roles are the only, or the best, possibilities, given the confines of the nature, essence, or biology of the two sexes”(49). 

Egalitarian feminists, or first wave feminists, attempted to completely abandon essentialism, a natural political move as this concept was the academic justification for their oppression throughout history.  Nevertheless, in seeking escape from oppression, these feminists struggled for “a greater share of the patriarchal pie and equal access to social, economic, sexual, and intellectual opportunities” by asserting that women could accomplish the same feats as men if they were not confined to restrictive social roles, effectively alleging the sameness of all humanity (51).  Though this movement championed the concept that men could be feminine and women could be masculine, making an important contribution to the development of recognition of the fluidity of gender roles, Grosz outlines the multiple problematic aspects of this approach.  She asserts this movement:

1.       assumed masculine values and achievements as the norm;

2.       focused on the commonality of humanity to an extent which led to the abandonment of conceptions of femininity;

3.       enacted equal opportunity laws which were often used by males in manners which hurt women;

4.       ignored specificities, including the history, of society’s male and female dynamic ;

5.       lost power through its reduction to an attack on patriarchy which was not gender specific;

6.       addressed only the public domain by addressing equality, a concept which cannot be policed on a personal  level;

7.       and did not rewrite the social meanings of women’s actions, preventing the change of women’s place within social and symbolic order.

Recognition of the significant political drawbacks of the complete rejection of essentialism likely contributed to a new conception of feminism focused on difference which emerged in the 1980s. However, the embracement of the age old conception of women as fundamentally different from men was based on a notion of difference vastly different than the binaries of autonomy and lack utilized historically. The women of these movements considered their difference as pure difference, or difference which is not derived “from a pre-given norm” or based on systematic privileging of any identity.  In describing the progress this new concept allowed, Grosz points to the fact the feminism based in difference:

1.       allowed a major transformation of the social and symbolic order by refusing to privilege a single identity ;

2.       allowed differentiation of women from other oppressed groups;

3.       made the fight against patriarchy specific to women;

4.       and put pressure on “structures of representation, meaning, and knowledge to transform in order to avoid patriarchal alliances(54).

The merits Grosz associates with feminism of difference, most particularly in her reflections on its ability to make the feminist movement explicitly feminine in nature, once again reveals a recognition of the worth of identity politics.  Though some theorists assert that to define women as a group different than men is to essentialize them, and thus tragically revert to the type of classification which led to the need for the feminist movement, Grosz allies repudiating essentialism with a politically impractical effort to retain theoretical purity.  In recognizing the political worth of acknowledging and celebrating the difference of femininity, Grosz sets herself apart as a theorist who recognizes that reshaping discourse is a political action, and thus cannot be meaningfully separated from politics into a realm of respectable academics.  Nevertheless, in acknowledging the legitimacy of the concern of producing work that is respected by our masculine notions of credibility, she illustrates the tensions which lead to an infinite variety in what constitutes a feminist text, a distinction which she explores in the first chapter of Space Time and Perversion.  As one reads Grosz’ text, which is ordered according to masculine logic- even utilizing numbers to highlight important points and their complexity, the variety of textual constructions which can be considered feminist and the differing motivations of writing feminist texts are clearly put on display.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion. Routledge New York and London. 1995. Print.