"Space, Time, and Perversion": An Exercise of Moderation

          Upon picking up Elizabeth Grosz’s Space, Time, and Perversion, I immediately noticed the blurbs on the back cover, the first of which is an endorsement of the work by Judith Butler.  Seeing as I read the book with Butler on the brain, I was not at all surprised Butler’s discussion of women as a collective group within Gender Trouble made its way into our class discussion of Grosz’s work.  Within the first chapter of Space, Time, and Perversion, Grosz sets out to both reveal “the more conventional positions regarding the categorization and assessment of feminist (and patriarchal) texts are problematic in feminist terms” and propose “new conceptions of textual production and reception that may help to explain the ways in which political judgments about the textual and sexual positioning of theories and texts may be possible”(11).  All of the issues with the common theoretical frameworks used to designate texts as feminist Grosz expresses can be related to a general suspicion of identity politics which pervades Butler’s works.  However, her effort to generate new and improved theory in the designation of texts as feminist reveals an acceptance, if a somewhat grudging acceptance, of the importance of identity politics, a sentiment which Butler similarly concedes through her call for fragmented coalitions or groups which “acknowledge it contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact”(20)

                Grosz positions the sex of the author, the content of the text, the sex of the reader, and the style of the text as the four highly problematic characteristics of writing individuals often examine in determining whether or not a work is feminist in nature.  Examining the sex of the author leads one into the web of intentional fallacy and suggests there is a certain manner in which women write which allows individuals to immediately recognize the gender of the author on the basis of the text’s content or style.  Grosz dismisses the legitimacy of both the sex of the author and the content of the work as an indicator of the text’s feminist nature with the simple assertion that “women’s experiences are as varied as men” and not wholly dictated by patriarchal oppression, the universality of which Butler critiques through her claim “the urgency of feminism to establish a universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminism’s own claims to be representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorical or fictive universality of the structure of dominance”(5).  The consideration of the sex of the reader as an indicator of a text’s status as feminist, patriarchal, or some compromise of these appellations also relies on this problematic notion of the universal experience of patriarchal oppression, as such framework ignores the affective fallacy, and in doing so, creates an “ideal reader” which comes to signify the collective mindset of women. The final category, the style of the text, which is justified as an indicator of a text’s feminist nature through the assertion that women writers always craft their work in manners which somehow undermine the logical constructions of texts as dictated by our masculine signifying economy, is undermined through its paradoxical imagination of patriarchal repression as both an experience universal for women and exclusive to women.  Grosz uses the example of avante garde art, which is a field dominated by male artists, as evidence that one does not necessarily have to be a woman to experience the repressive nature of patriarchy and desire to express these trials within art. 

                Though dismissing these common frameworks is fairly easy to reconcile within the spirit of suspicion of the merit of identity politics, suggesting that a text can be inherently feminist requires acknowledgement of the utility of labels. Grosz’s reluctance to enter this realm is clearly revealed by her tentative assertion the construction of parameters as to what constitutes a text only “may” be possible, expression of “a Foucauldian anxiety about what power is invested in providing definitive categories” and acknowledgment of the potential “that there isn’t really a clear-cut distinction between feminist and mainstream texts and that, moreover, one and the same text can, in some contexts, be regarded as feminist and in other contexts as non- or anti- feminist (18). Nevertheless, she presents framework for deeming a text feminist, a label which has had great historical worth in allowing individuals to improve their qualities of life and abilities to be heard, which are flexible and resist assumptions of the gender collectivity such terms as the feminine imagination imply. In doing so, she asserts that in order to be considered feminist, a text must challenge phallocentrism in some way, “problematize the standard masculine ways in which the author occupies the position of enunciation,” and not only challenge patriarchy, but “help, in whatever way, to facilitate the production of new and perhaps unknown, unthought of discursive spaces”(Grosz 23).  None of these requirements are gender specific, opening up the possibility of the consideration of a diverse body of texts as feminist in nature and the collection of the infinitely varied writers and readers of these works into feminist coalitions of individuals with an array of biological traits and life experiences, a possibility which Butler champions in her revisionary assessment of identity politics. Moreover, the requirement that texts must generate new ideas and open up revolutionary possibilities within the world of representation in order to be considered feminist works retains the consideration of feminism as a highly productive movement and manner of changing the world which spans eras, effectively doing the spirit of the movement which has inspired the legacy of texts under consideration justice.  In examining the role of identity politics in the modern era, Grosz, in my opinion, manages to successfully negotiate a compromise between the modern sentiments of the problematic nature of labels and the great benefit labels have reaped throughout history, creating a valuable link between feminism and queer thinking without completely abandoning the conception of woman.

- Tracy

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge Classics. 2006. Print.

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