Looking in Hard-to-See Places
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Description
The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love—indeed much of Carol Gilligan's work-grows out of her consideration of outsiders' voices and perspectives. It is most fundamentally a demonstration of what can be learned by considering the position of women in patriarchy, but it is also a demonstration of what can be learned by considering the position of the maverick, the political dissident, or the colonial subject. What follows is a reflection on how easily and how often the outsider becomes invisible, even to those who would honor her. The Birth of Pleasure is centered on the story of Psyche and Cupid from Apuleius's The Golden Ass (1998a) and also importantly focuses on the work of William Shakespeare. In the first part of this reflection, I struggle with my instinct to redirect Gilligan's gaze from these valorized male writers, whom I associate with the patriarchal traditions of Greek myth and Elizabethan drama, to the harder-to-see lives and literature of women and other traditionally neglected outsiders. The Birth of Pleasure also addresses writers who are more easily recognized as outsiders. Gilligan complements her analyses of classical literature with analyses of fiction that she describes as postcolonial, represented chiefly by Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997), Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992), Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (1985), and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970). In the second part of this reflection, I consider Gilligan's interpretations of writers who conspicuously hold the insider/outsider position of being postcolonial subjects, straddling and blending colonial and indigenous cultures ( or, in the cases of Morrison and Kinkaid, historically slaveholding and historically enslaved cultures). Exploring Gilligan's treatment of classic texts, I find models of resistance that had heretofore been hard for me to see. Exploring Gilligan's treatment of postcolonial texts, I worry that she leaves invisible some of patriarchy's victims and some of those victims' strategies of resistance. I then try to draw a lesson about the value—and the difficulty—of being attuned to the full variety of outsider voices. I begin with two confessions: First, I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with "the canon." I enjoy ancient Greek literature and Shakespeare, but I would never go to these texts in search of liberation from color or caste or gender hierarchies. I think of them as what Audre Lorde called "the Masters' Tools" (1984). My discomfort embarrasses me. I move in worlds in which the promise of canonical literature seems unlimited. Or limited only by ignorance or sloth. And Gilligan, whose work I greatly admire, insists that resistance to patriarchy should be inspired by voices of resistance in classical texts. But the discomfort remains. Second, as I read The Birth of Pleasure, I was annoyed by what I saw as Gilligan's celebration of higher-caste women's love across color lines as a blueprint for liberation from patriarchy. As a woman of color, I struggle against being annoyed by stories of love between men of color and women of the "fairer" caste. But despite my struggles I find it hard to embrace these transgressive unions as models of resistance. The resentment I feel in response to stories of love between "fair" women and dark men embarrasses me even more than my discomfort with classical literature. It feels like a betrayal of people I know and love who are in interracial life partnerships. It seems profoundly intolerant: What fault could possibly be found in love that upsets unjustifiable status hierarchies? My resentment feels petulant. It bespeaks a jealous insecurity rather than a healthy sense of self. I have decided to swallow my embarrassment and force myself to take my discomfort and resentment seriously. I need finally to explain—or to get over—a pesky, subterranean, self-pitying sense that these feelings are justified. I need to find out what these feelings can teach me about caste, racism, and patriarchy. And about the often uneasy relationships between white feminists and feminists of color.
Source Publication
Enacting Pleasure: Artists and Scholars Respond to Carol Gilligan's New Map of Love
Source Editors/Authors
Peggy Cooper Davis, Lizzy Cooper Davis
Publication Date
2011
Recommended Citation
Davis, Peggy C., "Looking in Hard-to-See Places" (2011). Faculty Chapters. 300.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/300
