Editor's Note
This post was written by Lillian Called Barger Lilian Calles Barger is an intellectual, cultural and gender historian. Her book entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology is forthcoming in the summer 2018 from Oxford University Press. She is currently researching the history of feminist thought and the gender revolution.
Mary Beard’s Women & Power: A Manifesto (LiveRight Publishing, 2018) has stepped into a stream of feminist history that is overflowing its liberal banks. By looking at that history, one can see her Manifesto within a tradition. As the feminist “third wave” of the 1990s crashed into the aughts, it appeared that feminism was in the doldrums. Nobody needed feminism, and young women didn’t identify with it. That changed during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton made it to the top of the Democratic ticket, reviving feminist hopes and giving many something to cheer about. Finally, the U.S. presidency, the golden dream of liberal feminism, was within reach. All those years of banging on the glass ceiling, getting out the vote, and supporting women candidates were finally going to pay off.
Clinton not only was a major political player but showed her fashion gravitas by bringing back the pantsuit with what she dubbed “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits,” in a reference to Ann Brashare’ popular novel and film by the same name. This reference to pantsuits is not lost on Beard, who sees it as part of a simple tactic of emulating men by making women “appear more male, to fit the part of power” (54). Pantsuits were first seen in the 1920s after women won the vote; they showed up again in the 1960s as women were entering male professional arenas such as law and business. The pantsuit was a sign of feminist advancement, and Clinton was its leading champion.
But her election was not to be. Donald Trump’s win and his “grab them by the pussy” persona might ultimately register as a fortuitous gift for feminism. His election raised a languishing movement to its feet with the 2017 Women’s March one day after his inauguration. Women were no longer going to pussyfoot around; pussy was going to grab back. But what were women fighting for: equal pay, reproductive rights, education, family leave, healthcare, safety from sexual violence? A movement needs an overarching purpose to signal resolve and hold it together.
The current sexual harassment scandals associated with high-profile men (which even touched the Miss America organization, considered by millions of Americans to be as wholesome as apple pie) has given women a unifying cause in the #MeToo campaign. Women of all classes, races, and political camps identify with the issue. Kate Manne’s popular Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (OUP, 2017), a book I reviewed on this blog, provides a serendipitous analysis of the underlying misogyny. Now we are considering Beard’s relatively short Women & Power: A Manifesto. Both books serve to remind us what feminism is about: the unfinished fight against misogyny and sexism and battle for the recognition of women’s muffled voice and suppressed power. Once again, another generation is discovering women’s history, trekking over the same terrain.
Manne and Beard are on opposite ends of the generational divide. Manne is a millennial moral philosopher with of-the-moment analysis. Beard is of the boomer generation, a senior scholar in the classics (nonetheless with an active social media presence and a woman who has faced Internet trolls’ attempts to silence her). Her book does not offer a new theory or history, nor does it claim to do so. Drawing from Greek and Roman literature, she demonstrates how “deeply embedded in Western culture” is the silencing of women and their identification with illegitimate power (xi). Using her public persona and her knowledge of antiquity, she offers the sum total of women’s position in a historically recognizable form—the manifesto.
The manifesto is typical of feminist public rhetoric. Most often manifestos are short, taking the form of a letter, speech, or pamphlet. They are highly evocative, attempting to persuade an audience of the justice of a cause, illuminate a wrong, or move readers to action. We can go back as far as Mary Astell’s Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1700), Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), or Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech “The Solitude of the Self” (1892) for examples of the genre. In the twentieth century, Emma Goldman gave us a polemic against the sexual double standard and compulsory marriage in “The Traffic in Women” (1910). The high point for manifestos was the 1960s; examples include the satirically titled SCUM (Society for Cutting up Men) Manifesto (1967), the Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and the Black Women’s Manifesto (1970) by the Third World Women’s Alliance. Feminists ended the twentieth century with the zine, launching “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” (1991) and Sisters Testify’s proclamation “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves” (1991), a response to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. We can place Beard’s moderate voice within this feminist tradition.
What am I to make of this new manifesto, whose content is taken from original lectures, as a statement against the lack of recognition of women’s public speech and the casting of power in decidedly male terms? Every page reminded me of the unfinished cultural business of the radical wing of the women’s movement. While liberal feminism, focused on women’s appeal to the state, made unprecedented historical strides in civil rights, reproductive rights, and access to education and jobs, there is one realm of women’s lives that has seen much less change: the culture we all live and breathe in. Beard takes on the need for cultural change as political in the widest sense, aware that “these attitudes, assumptions and prejudices [against women] are hard-wired into us: not into our brains … but into our culture, our language and millennia of our history” (33).
At the center of Beard’s analysis is the act of coming to terms with women’s power as legitimate and the acceptance of women’s public speech as the “voice of authority” rather than as one standing in for men (45). She is following 50 years of feminist theorizing. Feminists of differing persuasions have addressed the issue of power and voice with materialist, existential, and psychoanalytic approaches, to name a few. Feminist radicals of the 1960s did not believe that securing political rights was the sum total response to the problems women faced. Reading Simone De Beauvoir, along with such intellectuals as Ti-Grace Atkinson, Susan Brownmiller, Kate Millett, and Jill Johnston, shows their focus on culture, and the interpersonal and systemic nature of social power.
By focusing on intersubjectivity, the relational dynamics within marriages, families, and groups, and things considered personal, such as sex and gendered self-presentations, radicals uncovered patterns of domination and subordination. By naming what previously had remained unrecognized, they exposed marital rape and sexual harassment. Unimpressed with the promise of liberal freedom, they viewed gender relations as projected onto the larger stage of political and civil society. This analysis writ large would today ask: How does the election of a man with the masculinist attitudes of Donald Trump reflect the position of women in the home and the workplace? Most Americans would demur at the question, uncomfortable when “the personal is political,” as illustrated by the slow-brewing sentiment “#MeToo is ruining romance.” Beard, in her own way as a scholar of our Western classical roots, offers a reminder of the radical theorizing that has gone before.
Beard notes that what we don’t yet understand what counts as power and how it works. She asks her readers to imagine new, inclusive ways of defining power: not as a noun, something one possesses, but as a verb, “to power” (87). And she defines power as the ability to effect change that “[decouples] it from public prestige” (87) and moves toward collaboration as being in power with rather than having power over. Unable to unlock the intersectional power dynamic that is always changing, situational, and often hidden, she finds it remains defined by structures coded as male and women’s acquiescence. The radical tradition she draws from asks for a change beyond what politics alone can deliver. In this moment of heightened politics, Beard’s Manifesto revisits a largely forgotten feminist idea that only deep cultural change can address the still-evident inequality.
8 Thoughts on this Post
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I have several thoughts inspired by this valuable post, albeit in absolute ignorance of Beard’s book, which I’ve yet to read. The first concerns the 1960s New Left slogan, ”the personal is political,” a rich rhetorical phrase that enshrines or crystallizes a telling critique of conventional power politics, and one not exclusively feminist in content (in saying this, I don’t intend at all to disparage that content). It should also, I think, be read as “the political is personal,” which may have subtle differences in meaning, one example perhaps being its implications or possible suggestions for how we might want, with Beard, to re-conceptualize power in ways that differ from, although at points may overlap with, conventional formulations of political power (so Promethean-like ‘power over’ will still be a relevant connotation, but not necessarily the foremost one; similarly, resort to ‘coercive’ power may be necessary, but the overarching aim would be to progressively reduce the justifications and occasions for its use).*
We see movement in this direction in the moral and political thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who believed that moral values and spiritual perspectives or “truths” (the latter not the monopoly of any one religious tradition, and bearing in mind that when Gandhi spoke of ‘religion’ he used the word ‘in a sense quite different from its common sectarian implications’) “also create power and enhance the possibility of individual effectiveness and collective survival.” As part of this comparatively novel concept of power, one that dramatically widened its scope, Gandhi sought to “destroy[ ] the dichotomies between private and public morals, religious values and political norms, ethical principles and political expediency.” At the same time, this meant overthrowing or overcoming morally cramped and crippled if not evasive conceptions of realism and self-interest. For Gandhi, the notion that power resides in “the people,” was not merely some democratic fiction or metaphor, but literally true, leading to, in some respects, an anarchist-like political philosophy (‘he always looked at politics more from the standpoint of the rebel than of the ruler’). Gandhi thus distinguished what he termed “sattvic” politics (sattva: truth, goodness; purity) from conventional power politics. This distinction may itself create yet another and perhaps equally pernicious dichotomy, at least if we believe it is “possible for power to be so organized as to ensure that those who seek it for its own sake or from selfish motives nevertheless [are capable of using] it, to a considerable extent, for the public good” (a belief for which I think there is ample historical evidence and is one reason why an argument for ‘utilitarianism as a public philosophy’ is more than plausible).
The idea that real or true power rests in the hands of “the people” meant, for Gandhi, that we can come to recognize the power in our hands that is capable of being (and should be) used to “secure the social good (sarvodaya).” This same power can be used in non-violent resistance or action (satyagraha, which is grounded in a relentless search for truth and what he called ‘soul-force’) against unjust laws or repressive measures of the State so as to “morally and materially undermine[ ]” the State’s coercive authority (which is structurally liable to misuse and abuse). For Gandhi, this involves a long and arduous process of “purifying” conventional power politics and accounts for the “enormous importance [yet often neglected or unnoticed] that Gandhi gave to what he called the ‘Constructive Programme’ launched by the voluntary servants of the people—dedicated missionaries and conscientious revolutionaries bound by vow, willing to introduce the monastic as well as the heroic ideal into political and social life” (here is where Gandhi’s anarchist and democratic sensibilities are in tension if not conflict with his more ‘elitist’ inclinations as captured by his understanding of the need for ‘transformational’ leadership). The “power of the people” is also evidenced in Gandhi’s belief that power, “like welfare, [is] wholly a by-product of social activity and the complex web of human relationships, as expressed through a variety of groupings, from the family upward.” To the extent a society accords importance or preeminence to that sort of political power ultimately grounded in coercion and hierarchy, to that extent it is spiritually impoverished and thus suggests we have individually and collectively failed to recognize and depend upon the power latent within us (a failure due in part to a conspicuous dearth of leadership among its most morally developed members). Finally, Gandhi’s alternative conception of power amounts to a denial of the political doctrine of double standards that contends “that there are two level or types or standards of morality, one for the individual in his private life and immediate surroundings, the other for political life and collective conduct.” This doctrine is arises from the common belief—“stated plausibly over and over again, from Aquinas to Maurras, Kautilya to Tilak, Jowett to Niebhur,” that “[p]olitics may be subordinated, but it must not become subservient, to morals.”
All quoted material is from Raghavan Iyer’s book, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (Oxford University Press, 1973; 2nd ed., Concord Grove Press, 1983).
* For a philosophically profound if not urgent account that takes seriously both of these rhetorical formulations, see the section, “Community as the Context of Character,” but especially the chapters on “Three Myths of Moral Theory,” “Virtues and Their Vicissitudes,” and “Imagination and Power,” in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty’s Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Beacon Press, 1988).
I close with some germane thoughts from (that other) Rorty:
“Often what holds Subjects in damaging power relations is that they are unable to realize the options that are in principle open to them, or are unable to conceive ways of changing the options that are open to the Boss. It is not power as such, then, that holds Subjects in bondage. [….] Subject render services willingly or unwillingly because they believe the gains of doing so are greater than the losses they would incur by not doing so. But gains and losses are so in the eyes of the believer. Characteristically, the options of both the Subject and the Boss are at least critically fixed by their beliefs about their needs, that what they must have and what they cannot lose. If this is right, then being empowered critically rests on being in a position to define needs, either one’s own or someone else’s to serve one’s own. [….]
Why are our imaginations of power structures so fixed? It is because we learn from experience; and our most formative experiences of power, and of power relations, are those we have during our prolonged and wholly dependent infancy. While this prolonged infancy makes empathy and psychological complexity possible, it exacts a cost. We are formed not only by what we have learned from experience, but by the ways we learn. As long as we are in complex and often highly benign compliance to those who nurtured and sustained us as infants, we associate security and well-being with dependence on power figures. It is to these beginnings that our imaginations return when we are discomforted, depleted, in need. Even though we eventually chafed at the restrictions of our nurturing figures, even though, if we were lucky, we developed sympathy and autonomy, we still have as part of our expectations our early experiences of childhood, where reality mean dependency, being Subject to a Boss. If that relation was a benign one, we are all the more subject to gravitate to reconstructing it when we are troubled; but if it was a malign relation, then we are all the more incapacitated. For then a malign power relation is what we expect of the world. It is what defined normality. And of course if it was malign, then we are crippled in our abilities to envisage alternative structures.
With luck, we might discover some clarity about these constraints and relations. Even when we see that there is no such thing as power that binds us, but only complex and usually dynamic relations of trade-offs, with closed options and hidden routes for redefining options, our clarity does not by itself help develop those capacities of the imagination that transform needs.”—Amélie Oksenberg Rorty
Patrick, You added more than I ever could of thought about at the moment. Thank you.
I agree that how we have come to conceptualize power in modernity not only as bifurcates between private and public morality and power, but is also gendered with women holding down a sequestered private sphere. This is a good description you offer: “Gandhi’s alternative conception of power amounts to a denial of the political doctrine of double standards that contends “that there are two level or types or standards of morality, one for the individual in his private life and immediate surroundings, the other for political life and collective conduct.” This doctrine is arises from the common belief—“stated plausibly over and over again, from Aquinas to Maurras, Kautilya to Tilak, Jowett to Niebhur,” that “[p]olitics may be subordinated, but it must not become subservient, to morals.” But then getting beyond this means (at least a tentative) agreement about morals, justice, and the nature of power. In a pluralistic modern society I doubt we can ever reach it keeping us in a state of permanent conflict.
Lots to think about.
Lilian, I agree and disagree. First, as to coming to some sort of fundamental or basic agreement (at least de facto, working, what have you) with regard to morals, justice, and power (and thus not on particulars or even particular theories), I think many (would-be) democratic societies, including capitalist (be they social democratic, liberal, or corporatist) democracies, have in fact done this, which accounts for their survival and occasional flourishing. For an explanation of this, I would recommend Gerald Gaus’ The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (2011). (I don’t agree with all of the argument, in particular the later stuff that clashes with my democratic socialist values and commitments.) As to changing the terms of that agreement (say, and just by way of example, along Gandhian lines), yes, that will prompt conflict, but the history of societies around our globe suggests that it is possible, even if the struggle is arduous, even if it takes several or more generations (and in our case, it is especially difficult insofar as we turn the constitution into a sacred text and deify, so to speak, the ‘founding fathers’), and of course a democratic society by design is said to manage or minimize such conflict (at least reduce the resort to violence). The widespread recognition of human rights (including economic, social and cultural rights), as well as the enshrinement of conceptions of human dignity in more than a few constitutions and legal systems, suggests changes along this score are possible, even if, as in the case of human rights, complete realization or compliance is far from where it should be. Along these lines, I think John Rawls’ notion of an “overlapping consensus” still has much to recommend it (with a bit of tweaking here and there). Conflict will not disappear (if only because it’s part and parcel of the human condition), but that should not prevent us from endeavoring to make social progress not unlike the progress or development exemplified in the individual case with self-realization or self-actualization, or increased capacities for human fulfillment and eudaimonia. Indeed, to see that evolving conceptions of power, justice, and morality have been intrinsic to modern history around the planet, please see Christian Welzel’s Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation (Cambridge University Press, 2013). I should add that I’ve been duly chastened by the work of A.O. Rorty, so I’m not inclined to believe in inevitable progress, only possible (or perhaps even probable) progress, albeit with ceteris paribus clauses.
Patrick, I don’t have a problem with viewing human rights as an area of tentative agreement. I think we are always in a situation of negotiation, day by day. That is the nature of society or rather that is the nature of western societies. There is more to the world than the West that challenges some of the key tenets of liberal democracy. And no doubt religion and values that rise from it play a big role in that.
Not too get to far flung from my original post. Feminists political philosophers question the very foundations of social contract theory viewing it instead as an agreement among brothers who had overthrown the patriarch ( the king) for fraternal patriarchy based on male sex right (See The Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman). Women were not included in that contract because they were not part of “society” but rather part of nature like slaves and unable to enter into a contract of equals. This is the long legacy that still hangs around coloring politics and the culture in regard to gender. Thank you Patrick for your insightful comments, as always you bring a lot to the table.
Lilian, I’ve enjoyed our conversation … and thanks for the kind words.
I trust you did not infer from my comments or references that I support social contract theory: to be clear, I do not. And I am delighted to see mention of Carol Pateman, whose essay “Feminism and Democracy”* I still recall reading while in graduate school. It was written before The Sexual Contract (Stanford University Press, 1988), and was one of only a few pieces on democratic theory and praxis penned by a woman that I came across back then (two of the more brilliant democratic theorists of our time and place happen to be women, namely, Nadia Urbinati and Hélène Landemore).
Incidentally, not all feminist political philosophers are anti-contractarian, as Charles W. Mills reminds us in his book, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1987), a work “inspired” by Pateman’s book:
“For me … it is not the case that a Racial Contract had to underpin the social contract. Rather, this contract is a result of the particular conjunction of circumstances in global history which led to European imperialism. And as a corollary, I believe contract theory can be put to positive use once this hidden history is acknowledged …. For an example of feminist contractarianism that contrasts with Pateman’s negative assessment, see Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (Basic Books, 1989).”
Finally, and by way of wrapping up my comments on this thread (I promise!), it bears noting that the Pateman essay I referred to above has a nice discussion of John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869). This text deserves, I think, inclusion in your list of manifestos “typical of feminist public rhetoric.” I won’t attempt an explanation here as to why (I can hear readers sighing with relief!), so I ask those interested to see my post at the Ratio Juris blog (and cross-posted at Religious Left Law) on March 01, 2016: “J.S. Mill’s pamphlet, The Subjection of Women (1869).” There I highlight and share snippets from Nadia Urbinati’s brilliant analysis of this feminist text found in her book, Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002): 180-189.
* Found in Graeme Duncan, ed. Democratic Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 1983): 204-217.
Feminist, particularly radicals, have hardly agreed on anything in a monolithic way except the historical oppression of women. The devil is in the details. That is why this area of study is interesting to me.
Good piece! Who would I add to the list of feminist intellectuals of the long Sixties? Ellen Willis for sure.
Alice, Definitely. Thank you.