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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
After the success of the hardback, students and academics will welcome the publication of this book in paperback.
The aim of the book is to explore the connection between two perspectives that have had a profound effect upon contemporary thought: post-modernism and feminism. Through bringing together and systematically analysing the relations between these, Hekman is able to make a major intervention into current debates in social theory and philosophy.
The critique of Enlightenment knowledge, she argues, is at the core of both post-modernism and feminism. Each also offers a basis for critical reflections about the other. In particular, post-modern philosophy provides a means of criticizing aspects of contemporary feminism and thus contributing to the development of a more sophisticated approach to current feminist issues.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Gender and Knowledge
Elements of a Postmodern Feminism
SUSAN J. HEKMAN
Polity Press
Copyright © Susan J. Hekman 1990
First published 1990 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd
First published in paperback 1992
Reprinted 1995, 2005
Polity Press
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For My Mother
Florence Stuart Hekman
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Modernism, Postmodernism, and Feminism
2 Rational/Irrational
I Postmodernism and Rationality
Gadamer
Foucault
Derrida
Nietzsche: Truth is a Woman
II The Feminist Critique of Rationality
Language and Reality
The “Man of Reason”: The Diagnosis
The “Man of Reason”: The Alternatives
III Liberalism and Feminism
3 Subject/Object
I Postmodern Philosophy and the “Death of Man”
Introduction
The Postmodern Critique of the Subject: Gadamer, Derrida, and Foucault
II The Feminist Critique of Subjects and Objects
III Subjects, Objects, and the Social Sciences
4 Nature/Culture
I Postmodernism and Science
II Nature and Culture
III A Feminist Science?
IV Woman’s “Nature”
5 The Possibilities of a Postmodern Feminism
I The Feminist Case Against Postmodernism
II Other Critiques
III Derrida: Supplementary Logic
IV Foucault and Political Action: A Feminist Perspective
V Conclusion
References
Index
Acknowledgments
Writing a book on an aspect of feminism is quite different from writing a book on any other topic. In the course of researching and writing this book I was on numerous occasions amazed and gratified by the extent of the support that I received from the feminist community, even by those who disagreed with me. In particular, the feminist community at the University of Texas at Arlington, the Arlington Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society, encouraged me at every stage of the project, offering both scholarly and emotional support. As I was finishing the project, the feminist community at the University of Washington provided a congenial atmosphere in which to do feminist scholarship.
A number of people read all or portions of earlier drafts of the manuscript and offered valuable advice. Linda Nicholson read the entire manuscript at an early stage and supplied insightful comments that aided in my task of rewriting. Christine Di Stefano helped me iron out the thorny problems of the feminine subject over endless cups of espresso. Jan Swearingen offered both moral and scholarly support during the difficult times in which the manuscript was written. And Evan Anders uncomplainingly suffered through tortured discussions of Derridean epistemology that would have tried a lesser individual. I offer my heartfelt thanks to all of them. I only hope that I can repay the favor someday.
1
Modernism, Postmodernism, and Feminism
Contemporary intellectuals in a wide range of different disciplines frequently proclaim the current “crisis” of western thought. This crisis is defined in many different ways, but in recent years it is usually cast in terms of the opposition between modernism and postmodernism. Although many critics argue that the debate is unresolvable because the participants cannot agree on precise definitions of either “modern” or “postmodern,” the broad themes of the dispute are nevertheless clear. Most of the participants agree that the dispute assumed its current form with the work of Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s questioning of the Enlightenment-humanist legacy that is the hallmark of modernity set the stage for the contemporary dispute.1 Following Nietzsche postmoderns question the foundationalism and absolutism of modernism and propose instead a non-dualistic, non-unitary approach to knowledge. “Postmodern” is not the only label that describes this critique. “Antifoundational” and “poststructural” are also used to characterize the attack on modernism. But however it is defined it is not an exaggeration to say that the entire spectrum of intellectual thought has been profoundly affected by this fundamental dispute.2
One of the most influential and radical movements of the second half of the twentieth century, contemporary feminism, occupies an anomalous position with regard to the modernism/postmodernism debate. On one hand feminism seems to have much in common with postmodernism. Like postmodernism, feminism is a radical movement that challenges the fundamental assumptions of the modernist legacy. Both feminism and postmodernism challenge the epistemological foundations of western thought and argue that the epistemology that is definitive of Enlightenment humanism, if not all of western philosophy, is fundamentally misconceived. Both assert, consequently, that this epistemology must be displaced, that a different way of describing human knowledge and its acquisition must be found. Feminism, like postmodernism, poses a challenge to modern thought in every discipline from philosophy to physics, but the cutting edge of both critiques is to be found in those disciplines that study “man.” Both feminism and postmodernism are especially concerned to challenge one of the defining characteristics of modernism: the anthropocentric definition of knowledge. Since the Enlightenment, knowledge has been defined in terms of “man,” the subject, and espouses an epistemology that is radically homocentric. Feminist and postmodern critiques have converged in their attack on this homocentrism and, consequently, have devoted particular attention to the sciences of “man.”
Despite the similarities between the two movements, however, there is at best an uneasy relationship between postmodernists and feminists. Few feminists are willing to label themselves postmodernists and, similarly, many postmodernists are profoundly skeptical of the feminist movement. This is partly due to the fact that there is not one “feminist” position but, rather, many “feminisms.” But there is a more fundamental reason for the uneasiness between postmodernism and feminism: the profound ambiguity in the feminist heritage. On one hand, feminism, because it challenges the modernist, Enlightenment epistemology, is an intellectual ally of postmodernism. On the other hand, however, contemporary feminism is both historically and theoretically a modernist movement. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century roots of the feminist movement lie in liberal-humanism, a movement that is one of the primary objects of the postmodernist challenge. Although Marxist/socialist feminism is an independent movement that rejects liberal feminism, it, too, has modernist roots. From both of these directions feminism inherits a legacy that is thoroughly modernist, a legacy rooted in the emancipatory impulse of liberal-humanism and Marxism. This legacy, furthermore, is not just an irrelevant historical fact. Modernist values are very much a part of contemporary feminist positions. The contradiction between these values and the postmodern themes of much of contemporary feminism thwarts attempts neatly to categorize feminism as modernist or postmodernist.
The anomalous position of feminism vis-à-vis the modernist-postmodernist debate is of enormous importance for the future of the feminist enterprise. The issues at stake are far from trivial. Postmodernism is challenging, among other things, the fundamental dichotomies of Enlightenment thought, dichotomies such as rational/irrational and subject/object. It is questioning the homocentricity of Enlightenment knowledge and even the status of “man” himself. These are not issues on which feminism can be ambiguous. If all the “feminisms” have anything in common it is a challenge to the masculine/feminine dichotomy as it is defined in western thought. It is this dichotomy that informs all the dichotomies the postmoderns are attacking, even though they do not always make this explicit. Similarly, challenging the priority of “man” in the modern episteme must be fundamental to any feminist program. On these key issues, as well as on many others, feminism has much to gain from an alliance with postmodernism. An alliance with modernism, on the other hand, can only result in a perpetuation of the Enlightenment/modernist epistemology that inevitably places women in an inferior position.
Advancing an argument for a postmodern approach to feminism is by no means simple. The modernist legacy of feminism is not a superficial aspect of contemporary feminism. Questions such as whether a postmodern feminism offers an adequate political program and whether the emancipatory impulse of both liberalism and Marxism must be abandoned are of central importance. Discussions of postmodernism and feminism are already seeking to resolve these questions. It is my intention to contribute to that resolution by constructing an argument for a postmodern approach to feminism. This argument has several aspects. First, it involves chronicling similarities between postmodernism and feminism. Second, it involves arguing that a postmodern position can resolve some of the key issues debated in contemporary feminism, issues such as the existence of woman’s “nature.” Third, it involves the argument that feminism can contribute to the postmodern position by adding the dimension of gender, a dimension lacking in many postmodern accounts.
In order to illustrate the importance of a postmodern approach to the issues of contemporary feminism, it is useful to examine the methodological dispute that has dominated the social sciences since at least the turn of the century. Examining this dispute is instructive for a number of reasons. First, many of the issues that have been discussed in the dispute over the methodology of the social sciences are strikingly similar to issues that are being debated in contemporary feminist theory. The specific disputes within the social sciences that set the stage for the advent of postmodernist thought parallel the disputes that feminists are engaged in today. Thus a comparison between these two disputes throws light on the nature of the relationship between the two movements. Second, issues in feminist theory frequently overlap those of the social sciences since both are concerned with the study of human beings, or, as the social sciences have characterized it for so long, with “man.”
The contemporary debate over the methodology of the social sciences traces its roots to the Methodenstreit of Max Weber and his contemporaries. Since then the issue of the proper methodology for the social sciences and their relationship to the natural sciences has continued to be a controversial topic. Two principal positions that emerged from this debate set the stage for the discussion in the twentieth century: the argument that, epistemologically, the social sciences are no different from the natural sciences and that they should, as a consequence, mimic the methods of the natural sciences; and the argument that, although there are similarities between the social and natural sciences, they require different epistemologies and, hence, methodologies, because the goal of the social sciences – understanding – is distinct from that of the natural sciences-explanation.
Until quite recently these two positions dominated the methodological debate in the social sciences, with the positivists or empiricists (the latter-day heirs of the Enlightenment tradition) espousing the former position and humanists or interpretive social scientists espousing the latter. But in recent years postmodern thinkers have formulated a position that challenges both sides in this debate. This position is radical in the literal sense of the word because it challenges what lies at the root of both positions: Enlightenment epistemology. The position espoused by such challenges defies brief summary, but one aspect of it stands out: the rejection of the attempt to find an absolute grounding for knowledge, or what Richard Rorty calls “metanarratives” (1983: 585). One of the best summaries of this principal thesis of postmodernism is that found in Jonathan Culler’s commentary:
If “sawing off the branch on which one is sitting” seems foolhardy to men of common sense, it is not so for Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; for they suspect that if they fall there is no “ground” to hit and that the most clear-sighted act may be a certain reckless sawing, a calculated dismemberment or deconstruction of the great cathedral-like trees in which Man has taken shelter for millenia. (1982: 149)
The postmodern rejection of metanarratives has taken many different forms, but two of these forms have had a significant impact on discussions in the social sciences: the rejection of the dualisms of Enlightenment thought and the argument that the model of knowledge embodied in the scientific method of the natural sciences is not the only paradigm of knowledge. Calling into question the Enlightenment model of knowledge has enabled the postmoderns to reformulate the relationship between the natural and the social sciences and the dualisms on which it rests. Both sides in the debate between positivism and humanism defined the natural sciences as embodying the paradigm of true knowledge. Although humanists argued for a “separate but equal” status for the social sciences, their position was always constituted as a defense of social scientific knowledge vis-à-vis that of the natural sciences. Thus the priority of the natural scientific paradigm was not seriously questioned; both sides in the debate accepted the epistemological priority of the natural sciences. They differed only in that the humanists argued that the natural science model is not appropriate to the social sciences. The postmoderns challenge this hierarchial view of knowledge. They assert that, far from possessing the one model of true knowledge, the natural sciences embody a model of knowledge that is a “special case.” Their argument focuses on the interpretive character of all human knowledge and removes the privileging of the scientific model that characterizes Enlightenment thought. A parallel revolution in the natural sciences, furthermore, has reinforced the postmoderns’ case in this regard. Many contemporary philosophers of science are questioning the appropriateness of the rationalist epistemology of the Enlightenment for the natural sciences as well. Some have even come to the conclusion that knowledge in the natural sciences, despite the fact that it represents a “special case” of knowledge, does not transcend the universal, hermeneutical character of all knowledge. They conclude that the natural sciences, like the social sciences, are fundamentally hermeneutical disciplines.
The contemporary feminist critique reiterates many of the themes found in the postmodern argument about the relationship of the social and natural sciences. Feminists, like the postmoderns, attack Enlightenment epistemology, specifically its rationalism and dualism. But, unlike the postmoderns, feminists reject Enlightenment thought because of its gendered basis. They argue that the rationalism that is the source of Enlightenment epistemology has been defined as a specifically masculine mode of thought. Thus, for example, they interpret the positivists’ claim that only rational, abstract, universalistic thought can lead to truth as a claim about the masculine definition of truth. Similarly feminists assert that the dualisms at the root of Enlightenment thought are a product of the fundamental dualism between male and female. In each of the dualisms on which Enlightenment thought rests, rational/irrational, subject/object, and culture/nature, the male is associated with the first element, the female with the second. And in each case the male element is privileged over the female.
From this it would seem that the relationship between feminism and postmodernism is quite simple: the feminist critique extends the postmodern critique of rationalism by revealing its gendered character. But the relationship between the two movements is by no means so simple. The first problem lies in the fact that many feminists, although they identify Enlightenment dualisms and the privileging of the male that is the consequence of these dualisms, refuse to accept the postmodern argument that these dualisms must be dissolved. They argue, instead, that the dualism should be maintained but reversed, privileging the female over the male. Against this, postmoderns assert that the attempt to privilege the other side of the dualisms will only meet with failure because it will result in perpetuating these dualisms. It is significant that the attempt to redefine rather than dissolve Enlightenment dualisms was precisely the error of the humanist/interpretive critique or positivism. Weber’s position is an excellent example of this error. Without challenging the subjective/objective dichotomy of the positivists he argued that the social sciences are subjective, but that this subjectivity is their strength, not their weakness. He also tried to define a kind of subjectively rooted objectivity that characterized the social sciences. Despite his efforts, however, the objectivity of the natural sciences remained the standard by which other variants, that is, that of the social sciences, were judged. Weber’s work did not alter the inferiority of the social sciences because he did not challenge the dichotomies on which that position rests.
Many contemporary feminists are making a parallel move in feminist theory. Their rejection of rationalism entails the privileging of the irrational (hence female) over the rational (male). They claim that we need a feminist epistemology to replace the masculinist one that has dominated for so long. They exalt the virtues of “female nature,” nurturing, relatedness and community as opposed to the “male” values of domination, rationality, and abstraction. But, as the history of the methodological dispute in the social sciences reveals, this move is ultimately self-destructive because it reifies the Enlightenment epistemology that it seeks to overcome. Like the anti-positivists before them, the feminists will not succeed in privileging the female over the male because they have not attacked the dichotomy that constitutes the female as inferior. The rationality of male thought is still the standard by which the virtues of “female nature” are judged.
A second problem in attempting an alliance between postmodernism and feminism lies in the difficulty of applying the postmodern rejection of absolutism to the feminist movement. The charge that postmodernism, because it rejects absolute values, cannot provide a viable political program is one that feminism must take seriously. If, as the postmoderns insist, there is not one truth but many, this leaves a postmodern feminism in an awkward position because feminism, unlike postmodernism, is necessarily a political as well as a theoretical movement. The specter of relativism, even nihilism, that haunts postmodernism, poses a critical problem for feminism in both theory and practice. A related problem involves the fact that a postmodern stance in feminism entails rejecting the idea of an innate “female nature.” Many contemporary feminists, particularly radical feminists, want to talk about the “essentially feminine,” discussions that contradict the postmodern’s anti-essentialism. Both of these problems point to the fact that, although the rejection of male-defined absolutism would seem an obvious goal of feminism, it entails consequences that are not easily reconciled to the feminist program, either politically or theoretically.
This brief sketch of the issues reveals the difficulty of even trying to define the relationship between postmodernism and feminism, much less formulating a coherent postmodern feminism. The central problem revolves around the fact that, on one hand, feminism has much in common with postmodernism’s attack on Enlightenment epistemology because it is an epistemology that places women in an inferior position. On the other hand, however, feminism is also tied to that Enlightenment epistemology, both because of its modernist legacy and because even radical feminists adhere to dichotomies and absolutes. Feminists have devoted extensive discussions to these issues and have established three principal positions on the question of where feminism should stand with regard to the modernism/postmodernism dispute. The first position is that feminism should retain the “good” aspects of modernity while at the same time rejecting its problematic features. This position is analogous to that taken by Habermas on the question of modernism. Habermas argues that we should not give up modernity as a “lost cause” but, rather, “we should learn from the mistakes of those extravagant programs which have tried to negate modernity” (1981a: 11). An example of a feminist position that echoes this Habermasian view is that taken by Eisenstein (1981). She asserts that liberal feminism, despite its flaws, possesses a radical potential that feminists can build on in their effort to move beyond the liberal program. Although she acknowledges the problems of liberalism, and modernism in general, she argues that it should not be abandoned altogether. Similar feminist arguments have been made in defense of a Marxist feminism. The problem with this approach is its eclecticism. Critics of Habermas have noted that he cannot simply pick and choose among the elements of modernism, saving those he likes and discarding those he does not. The epistemology of modernism is a unitary whole, not a piecemeal collection. The same criticism applies even more forcefully to feminism. Feminists cannot simply choose the elements of modernism that they like, the emancipatory impulse of liberalism and Marxism, for example, and discard those they do not like, such as sexism. In her discussion of western philosophical theories Finn makes this point very clearly:
You cannot “doctor” these theories with respect to women and at the same time save the theory. The philosophical system does not survive the doctoring. The exclusion or denigration of women is integral to the system and to give equal recognition to women destroys the system. (1982: 151)
A second position in this dispute is the attempt by some feminists simply to avoid the issue of where to place feminism in the modernism/postmodernism debate. One way of doing this is to reject the “feminist” label altogether. Because of feminism’s identification with humanism and liberalism, socialist women in particular have difficulty accepting the feminist label (Balbus, 1982: 62). These women argue that if feminism is an offshoot of liberalism then socialist “feminists,” who reject every aspect of liberalism, should have no part of it. The same conclusion has been reached by some French feminists who also object to the humanist roots of the feminist legacy, but on other than socialist grounds. Theorists such as Helene Cixous refuse the label “feminist” because of its suspect theoretical roots. Another way of avoiding the issue is to claim that feminism must be “non-aligned” (Bunch, 1981: 46). Some feminists have claimed that we cannot allow feminism to be “tainted” by the doctrines of male theorists. Rather, they argue that feminism should go its own way, formulating its own position independently of current doctrines. Radical feminists who ignore the explicit issues of the modernist/postmodernist dispute claim to be non-aligned in this sense. But by perpetuating the Enlightenment dichotomies they are in actuality taking sides in the debate. This position of avoidance has serious drawbacks. The modernism/postmodernism debate is the principal intellectual issue of our time. It is an issue that is central to feminism and one on which feminists must take a stance. Rejecting the feminist label or claiming to be non-aligned will not advance the cause of feminism in the present intellectual climate.
The third position is one that a number of feminists both in America and France are attempting to formulate: a postmodern approach to feminism. This position has several advantages over the other two. As the history of methodological disputes in the social sciences has illustrated, anything short of outright rejection of the dualism and rationalism of Enlightenment thought will not be a successful strategy. The social sciences could not eschew their inferior status until they rejected the epistemology that defined them as inferior. Similarly, feminists cannot overcome the privileging of the male and the devaluing of the female until they reject the epistemology that created these categories. The attempt to preserve the “good” aspects of modernity, or even to privilege the feminine over the masculine, cannot escape from the inherent sexism of Enlightenment epistemology.
Another advantage of this position is that postmodernism can reveal some of the errors of contemporary feminist positions. The postmodern position reveals the futility of the attempt to define an essential female nature or to replace the masculinist epistemology with a feminist epistemology. Further, post-modernism’s rejection of the subject/object dichotomy, and its definition of all knowledge as interpretive adds depth and substance to the feminist critique. But if postmodernism corrects feminism it is important to note that feminism also acts as a corrective to postmodernism. The postmodern critique of Enlightenment rationalism reveals the failure of what Foucault calls the modern episteme to describe the phenomenon of human understanding, particularly in the social sciences. It represents a radical critique of modern western thought that, as Richard Rorty (1979) argues, transforms the project of philosophy itself. The postmodern critique of Enlightenment dualism and the privileging it entails, however, is incomplete without the feminist contribution to that critique. The postmoderns see the error of Enlightenment dualism but the feminists complete this critique by defining those dualisms as gendered. The two movements, then, are complimentary and mutually corrective.3 Feminists see the gendered basis of Enlightenment thought but postmodern thought expands and concretizes that vision.
In order to present an argument for a coherent and viable postmodern feminism it is necessary to criticize the other feminist positions described above. This can be accomplished by defining specific postmodern thinkers and positions that are relevant to feminist issues. Although they are certainly not the only writers whose works have feminist implications, the works of Foucault, Derrida and, to a lesser extent, Gadamer, are particularly germane to feminist issues.4 There are significant differences between these writers, but it is nevertheless possible to define common themes among them that can be applied to the feminist critique. The first task in my attempt to define a postmodern feminism is to analyze the work of these influential postmodern thinkers and assess their relevance in feminist terms. The second task is to circumscribe this unwieldy topic and reduce it to manageable proportions. Although both feminism and postmodernism are complex movements, the focus of both positions, at least in epistemological terms, is challenging the hierarchical dualisms of Enlightenment thought. The attack on the dualisms of rational/irrational, subject/object and culture/nature is central to both the postmodern and the feminist critiques. Organizing the discussion around an examination of these dualisms reveals the relationship between postmodernism and feminism and can serve as the basis for the formulation of a postmodern feminism. The third task of this examination is to use these analyses to refute the principal criticisms of postmodernism by feminist critics. Unless these criticisms, particularly the political critique, are addressed, an argument for a postmodern feminism cannot be advanced.
An issue that is central to all these discussions is the definition of “epistemology.” The Enlightenment defined “epistemology” as the study of knowledge acquisition that was accomplished through the opposition of a knowing subject and a known object. This definition is problematic for both feminists and postmoderns. Feminists reject the opposition of subject and object because inherent in this opposition is the assumption that only men can be subjects, and, hence, knowers. Postmoderns reject the opposition because it misrepresents the ways in which discourse constitutes what we call knowledge. Strictly speaking, then, when feminists and postmoderns discuss the constitution of knowledge they are not engaged in “epistemology” as the Enlightenment defined it. They reject both the notion that knowledge is the product of the opposition of subjects and objects and that there is only one way in which knowledge can be constituted. In light of this difficulty, some theorists have argued that we ought to discard the term altogether. A postmodern approach to feminist issues entails the attempt to formulate not an “epistemology” in the sense of a replacement of the Enlightenment conception, but, rather, an explanation of the discursive processes by which human beings gain understanding of their common world. A related issue is the question of whether the attempt to formulate a postmodern feminism entails the definition of a “feminist epistemology.” This phrase is appealing because it seems to entail a rejection of masculinist epistemology. But it is misleading as well. If a “feminist epistemology” is an epistemology that privileges the feminine as opposed to one that privileges the masculine, then it cannot be the goal of a postmodern feminism. A postmodern feminism would reject the masculinist bias of rationalism but would not attempt to replace it with a feminist bias. Rather it would take the position that there is not one (masculine) truth but, rather, many truths, none of which is privileged along gendered lines.
The task of formulating a postmodern feminism is difficult, yet, given the contemporary intellectual climate, also compelling. Both feminism and postmodernism have had and will continue to have a profound impact on the course of intellectual inquiry. And, despite feminism’s ambiguous legacy, they complement each other in important ways. Richard Rorty claims that the task of philosophy is not to discover absolutes but to continue the “conversation of mankind.” Despite the gendered connotations of this phrase, it describes the spirit of this work. My intent is to foster this conversation by promoting a conversation between postmodernism and feminism, a conversation which can significantly benefit both participants.
Notes
1 In this introductory discussion the terms “Enlightenment” and “modernity” will be used interchangeably. Subsequent discussions will develop more specific formulations.
2 For a perceptive discussion of this crisis see Zygmunt Bauman’s Legislators and Interpreters (1987).
3 Flax makes a related point about psychoanalysis, feminism and critical theory (1986b: 323).
4 Although Lyotard’s position has been very influential in some circles, his thought is less relevant to the issues that will be discussed here. His position on the natural sciences, however, will be discussed in chapter 4.
2
Rational/Irrational
I Postmodernism and Rationality
Supposing that Truth is a woman – what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women – that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?
(Nietzsche 1964b: 1)
In this passage Nietzsche expresses what will later become one of the central themes of postmodernism: the rejection of the dogmatism of Enlightenment thought and the formulation of a new definition of truth. This passage also presages the connection between the postmodern critique of truth and rationality and contemporary feminism. The critique of the Enlightenment concept of rationality and its unitary definition of truth forms the basis of postmodern thought. It is also central to contemporary feminism. Feminists have defined what the postmoderns call “logocentrism” as an inherently masculine mode of thought. Thus, like the postmoderns, they challenge the Enlightenment’s concepts of truth and rationality. Although the other dichotomies that inform the postmodern position are important, the rational/irrational dualism is particularly fundamental to the postmodern attack on logocentrism and the connection between that attack and contemporary feminism.
One of the principal chroniclers of the postmodern movement, and certainly the most influential in America, is Richard Rorty. In his important book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) Rorty attacks what he identifies as the tradition of “foundational” thought in the history of western philosophy. Rorty argues that until the present postmodern (antifoundational) movement, philosophers were unanimous in the assertion that knowledge must be grounded in absolute truth. Although knowledge was usually defined in rational terms, this definition was not exclusive; Husserl, for example, defines truth as subjectivity. The point is that unless knowledge has an absolute ground it cannot qualify as truth. In opposition to this tradition Rorty both describes and advocates the work of what he calls “edifying philosophers” who, far from seeking absolute foundations for knowledge, aim at “continuing conversation rather than discovering truth” (1979: 373). What Rorty seeks to do in this work and other related essays is to argue that no absolute grounding in rationality or any other universal is a necessary condition of truth. Rather he argues that we have all the grounding we require in our common history, tradition and culture, a grounding that we have created ourselves. He asserts that
there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not our appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions. (1982: xiii)
This central attack on foundational thought and the rationality that has defined it particularly since the Enlightenment takes different forms in the three theorists under discussion here. But at least two common themes derive from their shared antifoundational impulse. First, Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida all reject the abstraction that is definitive of rationalist thought. Rationalism rests on the notion that there is an Archimedean point from which knowledge is acquired. The existence of such an Archimedean point that abstracts the knower from the known is, for rationalism, definitive of truth. Postmoderns, in rejecting this Archimedean abstraction frequently describe the Enlightenment position as a form of “privileging.” The postmoderns claim that the Enlightenment privileged rational discourse by identifying it as the sole avenue to truth. Postmodernism rejects this privileging of rational discourse, arguing that the Enlightenment erred in seeking to define one privileged discourse and, furthermore, in defining that discourse in terms of its abstraction from the social context.1
The second commonality among the three theorists is a rejection of the necessity for absolute grounding for knowledge and, hence, the unitary definition of truth. As Rorty puts it, postmodernism rejects “metanarratives” – the absolute justifying mechanisms of foundational thought (1983: 585). Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida all argue that such metanarratives are both unnecessary and undesirable. They argue for a plural definition of truth to replace the Enlightenment’s unitary definition. But the different ways in which each of the three theorists reject Enlightenment metanarratives is significant, and those differences are potentially important for contemporary feminism. Gadamer, while rejecting the rationalist metanarratives, argues that our knowledge is informed by tradition and prejudice which, although not universal or abstract, provide the necessary basis for human understanding. Tradition does not figure in the accounts of Foucault and Derrida. Foucault explores the ways in which particular discourses create their own definitions of truth. Derrida engages in the task of deconstructing the definitions of truth that have structured the metanarratives of western thought. Despite these differences, however, the commonalities that unite the theorists are of more consequence than these divergences. Most interpreters of postmodern thought agree that, at root, postmodernism involves a crisis of cultural authority (Owens, 1983: 57). Gadamer, Foucault, and Derrida are all challenging the Enlightenment concepts of truth and rationality that have provided the legitimacy for knowledge in the modern era. In this sense their theories entail a radical reversal of intellectual discourse.
Gadamer
A philosopher whose roots lie in the hermeneutic tradition, an approach that emphasizes tradition, prejudice and the interpretation of classical texts, would seem an odd choice for an ally of postmodern feminism. But Gadamer’s work2 provides important support for the postmodern position, particularly its attack on the Enlightenment concept of reason. His Truth and Method (1975) consists of a fundamental challenge to Enlightenment rationality and, as such, is an important document for both postmodernism and feminism.
The key to understanding Gadamer’s task in Truth and Method lies in understanding what he is not doing as much as what he is. Gadamer is adamant in his assertion that the philosophical hermeneutics that he espouses in this work is not designed to provide a method for the human sciences (1975: xiii). Unlike Schleiermacher and Dilthey, Gadamer, following Heidegger, defines hermeneutics as the foundation of philosophy itself, not a methodological tool for the human sciences. The principal thesis of Truth and Method is that all understanding is linguistic and that hermeneutic understanding is the basis for all human communication. The linguisticality and universality of understanding provide the basis for the philosophical hermeneutics that Gadamer advocates.
Central to Gadamer’s attempt to explicate the nature of hermeneutic understanding is his argument that we encounter “experiences of truth” other than that provided by the method of the natural sciences. He turns to art to provide an example of such an experience, and a significant portion of Truth and Method is devoted to an explication of the experience of truth encountered in art. Ultimately, however, his aim in this is to clarify the status of the human sciences. He argues that the model provided by the natural sciences is not the only source of truth and, hence, that truth can be found in art or the human sciences as well. But his argument goes considerably beyond this. He asserts that hermeneutic understanding, an understanding which has always been defined as the basis of the human sciences, is fundamental to all understanding, and, thus, also forms the basis of natural scientific understanding. In a later article he states this point very succinctly:
If Verstehen is the basic moment of human In-der-Welt-sein then the human sciences are nearer to human self-understanding than the natural sciences. The objectivity of the latter is no longer an unequivocal and obligatory ideal of knowledge. (1979: 106)
Much of Truth and Method is devoted to an explication of precisely how hermeneutic understanding is achieved. Central to that understanding is Gadamer’s concept of prejudice and the closely related concept of tradition, terms which have been widely misunderstood by Gadamer’s critics. By prejudice Gadamer means the pre-understandings that make all human communication possible. For Gadamer prejudice is not arbitrary, unexamined bias but, rather, is consistent with Heidegger’s notion of the “fore-structure” that makes understanding itself possible (1975: 237). Tradition, likewise, is, for Gadamer, neither arbitrary nor, as the Enlightenment claimed, opposed to reason. For Gadamer the basic misunderstanding of the Enlightenment was its rejection of tradition and prejudices: “the fundamental prejudice of the enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself which deprives tradition of its power” (1975: 239–40).
Furthermore, Gadamer, following Heidegger, describes understanding in terms of the hermeneutic circle. For both philosophers the hermeneutic circle is not “vicious,” but, rather, the positive possibility of all understanding. It describes understanding as the interplay of the movement of tradition (1975: 261). Gadamer’s explication of the hermeneutic circle definitively lays to rest the possibility of an Archimedean point, an abstract, universal standpoint from which “objective knowledge” can be achieved. All understanding, in art, the human sciences, and the natural sciences, is understanding that is contextual and historical, rooted in tradition and prejudice. Understanding always involves, in Gadamer’s terms, a fusion of horizons: a meeting of the contextual understanding of the interpreter with that of the interpreted (1975: 273–4). In describing the hermeneutic circle Gadamer establishes what one commentator has described as the ‘triunity” of understanding, interpretation, and application (Llwelyn, 1985: 111).
Although Rorty classifies Gadamer as one of the “edifying philosophers” who eschews foundational thought, Gadamer is not often labelled a postmodern thinker. But even this brief overview of Gadamer’s position indicates its importance for the postmodern critique. Like the postmodern movement in general, Gadamer produces a compelling attack on the rationalism of Enlightenment thought. He argues that the model of knowledge that the Enlightenment claimed as the only possible path to truth is fundamentally misconceived. Its emphasis on abstraction and its rejection of tradition and prejudice deny what Gadamer defines as the basic insight of hermeneutics: that all understanding is contextual, rooted in prejudice, and historically grounded (1985: 179). One of the most important effects of his position is to displace the hierarchical relationship between the natural and the social sciences that is characteristic of Enlightenment thought. Instead of conceding that the human sciences are subjective (and hence irrational) he rejects the rational/irrational dichotomy itself and argues that the human sciences are actually closer to the basic hermeneutic understanding that is the foundation of all human meaning. His intention here is not to reverse the dichotomy between the natural and the social sciences, making the social sciences superior. Rather, he wants to alter the Enlightenment understanding of truth. He argues that there is not, as the Enlightenment claimed, one means of attaining truth but, rather, many experiences of truth all of which, including that of the natural sciences, are rooted in hermeneutic understanding. But although Gadamer rejects the absolutism of Enlightenment rationalism, it does not follow that he is asserting that any interpretation is as good as any other. Gadamer argues that tradition and prejudice provide the basis for interpretation that is necessary for the achievement of understanding but that this process allows for and even demands both criticism and critique. Gadamer explicitly appeals to the use of “critical reason” to distinguish between what he calls legitimate and illegitimate prejudices (1975: 246). Gadamer’s position avoids the nihilism of an “anything goes” approach to interpretation while at the same time rejecting the abstraction of rationalist thought.3
If Gadamer’s postmodern credentials are fairly easy to establish, however, the same is not true of his feminist credentials. Two principal problems arise in attempting to establish Gadamer’s relevance for contemporary feminism. First, how can a philosopher who relies on tradition and prejudice be relevant for a movement, feminism, which is profoundly anti-traditional and whose explicit goal is to overturn the dominant prejudice of western culture? Gadamer’s position allows for a number of answers to this question. Most important is the point that his arguments in favor of prejudice do not amount to an advocacy of bias. Rather, they involve the assertion that all understanding is rooted, contextual, and historical. What he is asserting is that we must and do understand through the “prejudices” of our culture, a fact that any feminist will readily acknowledge. Equally important is the fact that Gadamer’s understanding of prejudice involves critique and self-understanding. Prejudice is not arbitrary understanding but, rather, a knowledge of what our prejudices are, an understanding that involves and entails critique. To understand the hermeneutic basis of all meaning entails a critical understanding of what we are as a culture. Gadamer argues in Truth and Method that such an understanding is fundamental to the human sciences.
Stated in this way, Gadamer’s relevance to feminism is easier to articulate. Much of contemporary feminist writing is involved in the attempt to understand and explicate the “prejudices” of western culture, particularly those prejudices that relegate women to an inferior role. Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be a useful tool in exploring these prejudices. The self-understanding of our culture that has been a result of such feminist analyses is compatible with Gadamer’s conception of the role of hermeneutic understanding. Of course, feminists do not want merely to understand the prejudices that relegate them to inferior status. They want to go on to criticize those prejudices and argue for their elimination. Gadamer’s work is also compatible with this attempt. It follows from his argument that self-understanding entails critique and that the self-understanding fostered by feminist analysis is at the same time a critique of the sexist prejudices of our society. As one commentator puts it, for Gadamer prejudices are thresholds as well as limits (Warnke 1986: 4). By attacking the dichotomies of Enlightenment thought, Gadamer is attacking an epistemology that has defined the feminine as inferior. The dichotomous, hierarchical thought of the Enlightenment necessarily disprivileged the “feminine” side of each of its dichotomies. Gadamer’s radical attack on these dichotomies and the hierarchies they entail thus can and should be an important element of a postmodern feminism.
The second problem involved in arguing for the relevance of Gadamer to feminism centers around the issue of whether it is possible to distinguish a “feminist epistemology.” One of Gadamer’s principal arguments is that understanding is not a product of rationality and abstraction, but, rather, that of the contextuality and relatedness of prejudice. But this creates a problem for feminist theory in general and postmodern feminism in particular. Feminists have shown that Enlightenment thought has identified the values Gadamer is rejecting – rationality and abstraction – as masculine and those that he espouses-contextuality and relatedness – as feminine. Indeed, feminists have shown that this dichotomy between masculine abstraction and feminine contextuality has been the central means of excluding women from the sphere of rationality and maintaining their inferiority. Although this insight is undoubtedly accurate it raises a serious problem. It seems to follow that, in feminist terms, Gadamer’s position entails substituting a “feminist epistemology” for the “masculinist epistemology” of the Enlightenment. This is further complicated by the fact that Gadamer claims that what the Enlightenment has defined as this “feminine” way of knowing is universal. Thus he seems to be substituting a universal model of truth (a “feminist epistemology”) in place of the “masculinist” model that the Enlightenment proclaimed to be the unique source of truth.
Such an interpretation of Gadamer’s position is misleading. It is neither an accurate reading of Gadamer’s aim nor a positive goal of feminist theory. The question of a feminist epistemology, furthermore, is not one that is unique to a discussion of Gadamer’s position. It is question discussed by many contemporary feminists in a range of different contexts; the question of “women’s way of knowing” is a popular one. It is significant that a number of these feminists specifically advocate the adoption of a feminist epistemology, arguing that this contextual “feminine” understanding is superior to the abstract, rationalist “masculine” model. This position is anathema to a postmodern feminism for a number of reasons. Most significantly, it perpetuates the dichotomies of Enlightenment thought that establish female inferiority. The feminists who argue for a feminist epistemology are making the same move as the interpretive social scientists who accepted the “subjectivity” of the social sciences. In both cases an attempt is being made to revalorize the “disprivileged” side of the dichotomy and thus to reverse it. But this tactic is doomed to failure. In Truth and Method Gadamer reveals why this tactic failed for the human sciences. Those who accepted the “subjectivity” of the human sciences failed to remove the inferior status of those sciences. The same argument can be applied to the feminist case. The feminists who argue for the superiority of “feminine” values will fail to privilege these values because their argument leaves the dichotomy that defines that inferiority intact. The privileging of the masculine is integral to that dichotomy; it cannot be conveniently detached. Only a frontal assault on the dichotomy itself can remove the privileging implicit in it.
Another problem a “feminist epistemology” poses for a postmodern feminism is that it entails that feminists are attempting to substitute another absolute, a feminist epistemology, for the masculinist epistemology that they reject. This position is opposed to the postmodern emphasis on plurality and fluidity. Feminists have revealed that the contextuality and relatedness that Gadamer identifies with the universality of hermeneutic understanding have been labelled “feminine” traits by the dominant masculinist epistemology. Their analyses have also revealed that the rational, abstract model of knowledge that Gadamer attacks has been associated with the masculine. It would be false to assume, however, that a feminist reading of Gadamer entails that he is seeking to replace masculinist values with feminist values. On the contrary, the point of his work is to attack the dichotomies of Enlightenment thought. It follows that if these dichotomies are displaced their gendered connotations would also be displaced: if, as Gadamer advocates, we displace the distinction between the rational and the irrational then the gendered connotations of these terms would be obviated. The thesis of Truth and Method is that there are many experiences of truth, but that at the root of all human understanding is the contextuality and relatedness that constitute prejudice. The fact that contextuality and relatedness have been associated with the feminine through the misconceived dichotomies of Enlightenment thought is part of the problem that would be overcome should these dichotomies be displaced. To assume that Gadamer is attempting to substitute one orthodoxy for another is false to his whole enterprise. It is also false to the enterprise of a postmodern feminism.
Gadamer’s relevance for the formulation of a postmodern feminism is not exhausted by these arguments. But at the very least they indicate that Gadamer’s thought has much to contribute to the articulation of this position. Gadamerian hermeneutics entails a critique of prejudice and tradition as well as material for an attack on the gendered connotations of ways of knowing. Both of these positions must be fundamental to a postmodern feminism. And, most importantly, rather than attempting to privilege “feminine knowledge” over “masculine truth,” Gadamer offers a means of displacing the gendered division of knowledge that is one of the inherent qualities of Enlightenment thought.
Foucault
Although it is much easier to make the case that Foucault4 can be placed under the “postmodern” label, he explicitly denies that this label characterizes his work. This in itself is not unusual. From the very beginning of his career Foucault has resisted labels. Although his critics have repeatedly categorized him, he has declared vehemently that he is neither a structuralist, a Marxist, nor a Freudian (Foucault and Raulet 1983: 198). The postmodern label, however, seems particularly apt and many of his contemporaries consider his position to be the very essence of postmodernism. This flies in the face of his statement that “I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist.” He goes on to dismiss the label as Habermas’s way of describing contemporary French thought (Foucault and Raulet, 1983: 205). Despite this disclaimer, however, to deny that Foucault is a postmodern makes no sense in the present intellectual climate. His position represents most of the key elements of postmodernism as it is commonly understood.
Attempting to summarize Foucault’s complex and sometimes contradictory thought is particularly difficult because, unlike Gadamer, Foucault did not publish one definitive work that states his theoretical position clearly and succinctly. On the contrary, Foucault’s work is diffuse and wide-ranging and he has repudiated his only strictly methodological work, The Archeology of Knowledge (1972). If there is a central focus to his work, however, it is his attention to language and his articulation of a theory of discourse. It is in the context of working out his theory of discourse, furthermore, that Foucault presents a critique of Enlightenment rationality that is particularly relevant to both postmodernism and feminism.
Two elements of Foucault’s theory of discourse stand out as significant innovations. First, he argues that discourse creates subjects as well as objects. It was one of the principal theses of interpretive social science that the object of social scientific analysis differs from that of natural scientific analysis. This thesis made the social sciences aware of the relationship between discourse and objects. Foucault’s insight extends this thesis by arguing that discourse creates subjects as well. His second innovation is that knowledge and power are inextricably linked in discourse. His entire corpus is informed by this insight and it is explicitly developed in Power/Knowledge (1980). His basic claim is that power and knowledge are fused in the practices that comprise history and that discourses partake of power, not knowledge alone. His argument about the power/knowledge nexus sets his theory apart from other twentieth-century language-based theories. It also constitutes an element of his thought that has a great deal of relevance for feminism. Foucault’s theory of discourse, with its emphasis on subjects and power, unites the diverse analyses in Madness and Civilization (1973b), The Birth of the Clinic (1973a), Discipline and Punish (1977), and The History of Sexuality volumes 1 (1978a), 2 (1985), and 3 (1986). In each of these works he analyzes a specific discursive formation, the kind of subjects that it creates and the kind of power it deploys.
The work that is specifically relevant to Foucault’s attitude toward Enlightenment rationality, however, is The Order of Things (1971). In this work Foucault, like Gadamer, presents a critique of Enlightenment thought and an explanation of why the human sciences have failed in the twentieth century. His explicit goal in this work is to analyze the transition from classical to modern thought. He does so by revealing what he labels the “a priori of thought,” both classical and modern:
This a priori is what, in a given period, delimits in the totality of experience a field of knowledge, defines the mode of being of the objects that appear in that field, provides man’s everyday perception with theoretical powers, and defines the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be true. (1971: 158)
He argues that the transition from classical to modern thought came not through a “rational” process of scientific analysis but through a shift in “what it makes sense to say.”
Although Foucault’s aim is to examine the full range of the modern episteme, his discussion of the human sciences is particularly relevant. He argues that the human sciences do not fit into the modern episteme because of the ambiguity surrounding the concept of “man”:
Western culture has constituted, under the name of man, a being who, by one and the same interplay of reasons, must be a positive domain of knowledge and cannot be an object of science. (1971: 366)
Foucault discusses the contradictions inherent in the concept of “man” in the context of what he refers to as man’s “doubles.” Much of his discussion revolves around the argument that these internal contradictions will lead to the demise of the concept itself. His larger point, however, is that Enlightenment thought (the modern episteme) provides no place for the human sciences. Its rationalism and scientism leave human beings in an untenable position: as both subject and object of knowledge. Thus, like Gadamer, he challenges the hegemony of reason that the Enlightenment claims and the ambiguous space it creates for the social sciences.
There is, however, also an important difference between the critiques of Gadamer and Foucault. Gadamer’s critique is at once more circumscribed and more ambitious. It is more limited in the sense that it is only concerned with the analysis of one mode of thought, that of the Enlightenment. But it is more comprehensive in that his analysis goes beyond Foucault’s to examine philosophically the nature of human understanding itself. Foucault, on the other hand, goes beyond Gadamer to argue that all discourses, not just that of the Enlightenment, create subjects, objects, and regimes of power and truth. He thus gives us a way to analyze any discursive formation for the kind of power/knowledge nexus that characterizes it. This analysis is particularly relevant to the concerns of contemporary feminism because of its specific connection between power and knowledge. But it raises a problem as well. Foucault’s approach, many critics have claimed, is relativistic, even nihilistic. He is not concerned, as is Gadamer, to examine the nature of human understanding itself. Rather, he is concerned exclusively with the plurality of discourses, not with the underlying phenomenon of understanding that makes discourses possible. The only commonalities he discusses are the creation of both power/knowledge and subjects/objects that characterizes all discourses. The alleged relativism this implies, however, is a stumbling block for many feminists.
Even though Foucault’s analysis centers around a critique of Enlightenment thought (the modern episteme), he nevertheless claims to be ambivalent about it. He asserts that he refuses to be “blackmailed” by the Enlightenment and resents the necessity today to be either for or against it. He argues:
I think the Enlightenment, as a set of political, economic, social, institutional, and cultural events on which we still depend in large part, constitutes a privileged domain for analysis. (1984: 42)
Instead of condemning the Enlightenment he wants to separate it from humanism which is a “thematic” that “can be opposed by the principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy – a principle found in the Enlightenment” (1984: 44).
In The Order of Things Foucault is concerned not only with the character of the different discourses he discusses but also with another issue that is relevant to the postmodern critique in general and feminism in particular: his discussion of the way in which discourses change. His analysis leads him to the conclusion that the concept that has been the focus of the social sciences in the modern episteme, the concept of “man,” is about to be eclipsed. He then questions how the demise of “man” is to take place, that is, how we are to awake from this “anthropological sleep” to an ‘imminent new form of thought” (1971: 342). His answer to this question is that at least three sciences today represent a move to another form of thought: psychoanalysis, ethnology, and linguistics. These “counter sciences,” he asserts, although not less “rational” or less “objective,” flow against the tide of the modern episteme, they “unmake man” (1971: 379–81). In other words these counter sciences challenge the dominant episteme and offer the possibility of displacing that episteme. It is interesting to note that both postmodern social science and feminism fit this description. Although Foucault does not make this point, feminism is particularly effective as a counter science because it challenges “man” as both a gendered and generic concept.
Foucault’s critique of Enlightenment rationalism in The Order of Things represents a compatible extension of Gadamer’s critique. Gadamer shows the rational/irrational dualism of Enlightenment thought to be misconceived and thus relieves the social sciences of the stigma of irrationality and subjectivity. His approach is also relevant to the task of relieving women of this stigma because the Enlightenment thought that he attacks excludes women from the sphere of rationality. Foucault extends this Gadamerian insight by showing in more concrete terms how discourses create subjects and objects. Feminists can use his work to explicate how the Enlightenment discourse on rationality has created woman as the irrational and emotional counterpart to rational man. His thesis regarding the link between knowledge and power, furthermore, is an idea that has the potential to make an important contribution to feminist theory. The discourse on rationality has not “only” excluded women from the sphere of rationality; this is not exclusively a semantic issue. Rather, Foucault’s analysis can be used to show that the designation of women as irrational is directly tied to the social institutions that define women’s inferior status. Knowledge and power are two sides of the same coin. By showing that the (masculinist) rationalism of the modern episteme is not an absolute, but merely one of a plurality of discourses, Foucault’s analysis also suggests the possibility of the creation of a discourse that does not constitute women as inferior. It opens up a new way of thinking about women, knowledge and power that is very productive for feminist theory.
Another way of arguing for the relevance of both Foucault and Gadamer for the feminist project is to contrast their approaches to that of Habermas. Habermas has objected to the positions of both Gadamer and Foucault on the grounds that their total rejection of Enlightenment rationalism is too extreme and leads to relativism and nihilism. Against the postmoderns Habermas argues for the rationality of western thought, or, as Giddens puts it, that “West is best” (1985: 133). But Habermas, while clinging to what he considers to be the good elements of the rationality of Enlightenment thought cannot neatly detach the sexism that is inherent to the episteme. Many of Habermas’s critics argue that, by not rejecting Enlightenment rationalism Habermas fails to complete the critique of Enlightenment thought that is a necessary response to the demands of contemporary thought. Huyssen puts this critique very succinctly:
The critical deconstruction of enlightenment rationalism and logocentrism by theoreticians of culture, the decentering of traditional notions of identity, the fight of women and gays for a legitimate social and sexual identity outside of the parameters of male, heterosexual vision, the search for alternatives in our relationship with nature, including the nature of our own bodies – all these phenomena, which are key to the culture of the 1970s, make Habermas’ proposition to complete the project of modernity questionable, if not undesirable. (1981: 38)
This passage makes it clear that, particularly for feminism, a half-way critique of rationalism is not an adequate alternative to the liabilities of the modern episteme.
Derrida
If it was difficult to categorize Foucault’s work or to describe his “Methodology,” the work of Derrida5
