Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument: Beyond the Trope of the Angry Feminist

289 Pages·2010·1.92 MB·English

by  Barbara Tomlinson

F A
EMINISM AND FFECT
S A
AT THE CENE OF RGUMENT

F A
EMINISM FFECT
AND
S A
CENE RGUMENT
AT THE OF
_
Beyond the Trope
of the Angry Feminist
Barbara Tomlinson
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Temple University Press
1601 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
www .temple .edu/ tempress
Copyright © 2010 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2010
COVER ART: “Enchanted Rider.” Artist: Bob Th ompson. Smithsonian American
Art Museum Accession Number: 1975.21. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson.
Martha Jackson Memorial Collection. Used with the kind permission of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Tomlinson, Barbara, 1941–
Feminism and aff ect at the scene of argument : beyond the trope of the angry
feminist / Barbara Tomlinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4399-0246-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0247-9
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Feminism. 2. Women—Psychology. 3. Sex role.
I. Title.
HQ1155.T66 2010
305.42—dc22
2009048504
Th e paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1992
Printed in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
Ac know ledg ments vii
1 Transforming the Terms of Reading: Ideologies of
Argument and the Trope of the Angry Feminist 1
2 Ideologies of Style: Discursive Policing and Feminist
Intersectional Argument 31
3 Anger: Grammars of Aff ect and Authority 56
4 Tough Babies, or Anger in the Superior Position 87
5 Faux Feminism and the Rhetoric of Betrayal 114
6 Intensifi cation and the Discourse of Decline 142
7 Ridicule: Phallic Fables and Spermatic Romance 167
8 Th e Labor of Argument and Feminist Futures 191
Notes 205
References 245
Index 273

Ac know ledg ments
T
hanks to my wonderful colleagues and students in the Department
of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
It has been exhilarating to be part of the critical project that we are
creating together. I am especially appreciative of all the work that department
chairs Leila Rupp and Eileen Boris have done to welcome me into the de-
partment and to build a program of which we can all be proud. My research,
writing, and teaching have all been enhanced by working with Laury Oaks,
Barbara Herr Harthorn, Jacqueline Bobo, Grace Chang, Ellie Hernandez,
Mireille Miller- Young, Christina Toy, and Lou Anne Lockwood. Claudine
Michel, Maria Herrera- Sobek and William Warner made me feel especially
welcome went I fi rst arrived on campus, and sharing ideas with them as well
as with Felice Blake, Paula Ioanide, Heidi Hoechst, Gaye Johnson, and Es-
ther Lezra has been a wonderful experience. Th anks as well to Dean Melvin
Oliver whose unique blend of research distinction, professional leadership,
and personal integrity sets a high standard for the rest of us to emulate. It has
also been wonderful to learn with— and from— a new generation of scholars,
especially Denise Gill, Katrina Kimport, Joan Budesa, Jason Pfeifl e, Angela
Baez, and Darlene Craviotto.
Scholars across the disciplines have been generous with comments, criti-
cisms, and questions that have helped me hone and refi ne my ideas. Among
them are Nancy Armstrong, Rise Axelrod, Steven Axelrod, Susan Castillo,
Kimberle Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Susan Gilman, Wlad Godzich, Luke Har-
ris, Bruno Latour, Elizabeth Long, Steven Mailloux, Emily Martin, Elaine
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
May, Susan McClary, Helene Moglen, Tricia Rose, Dick Terdiman, and Sha-
ron Traweek. I appreciate the comments from audiences at the British Associa-
tion for Cultural Studies in Nottingham, UK; the Institute for Cultural Re-
search at Lancaster University, UK; Brazilian National Seminary of Univ.
Professor. of En glish Language & Literature at Atibaia, Brazil; Second Ful-
bright American Studies Conference, University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ;
New Zealand- U.S. Educational Foundation Lectures at University of Victoria,
Massey University, and the University of Aukland, NZ; Pacifi c Coast Ancient
and Modern Language Association, Conference on College Composition and
Communication, the University of Illinois, and UC Santa Cruz.
Th anks for sharing years of feminism and aff ect to George Lipsitz, Kerry
Tomlinson, Matthew Tomlinson, Lisa Choy Tomlinson, Rebecca Leigh Tom-
linson, Emily Rae Tomlinson, and Kevin James Tomlinson.
Janet Francendese has been an ideal editor. I am deeply grateful to her
for her faith in this book, for her wonderful work in support of it, and for the
professionalism and wisdom that she has displayed in every single one of our
interactions. An especially helpful reader’s report from an anonymous re-
viewer has strengthened this book tremendously and I very much appreciate
the time and care that this reviewer devoted to my work.
Some of the material that follows has been taken from previous versions
and revised. Due to the sometimes lengthy pro cess of journal publication,
earlier versions may not yet be published.
“Intensifi cation and the Discourse of Decline: A Rhetoric of Medical Anthropology.”
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 13.1 (March 1999): 1–2 5. Th anks to the Ameri-
can Anthropological Association.
“Phallic Fables and Spermatic Romance: Disciplinary Crossing and Textual Ridicule.”
Confi gurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology 3.2 (May 1995):
105– 134. Th anks to Johns Hopkins University Press.
“Th e Politics of Textual Vehemence, or: Go to Your Room Until You Learn How to
Act.” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22.1 (Autumn 1996): 86–
114. © 1996 Th e University of Chicago.
Review of Lisa Jean Moore, Sperm Counts: Overcome by Man’s Most Precious Fluid.
(New York: New York University Press, 2007). Cultural Sociology 3.1 (March
2009): 198– 200. © 2009 SAGE Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.
“Tough Babies or Anger in the Superior Position.” Cultural Critique 39 (Spring 1998):
151– 188. © 1998 Oxford University Press.
“Transforming the Terms of Reading: Ideologies of Argument and the Trope of the
Angry Feminist in Contemporary U.S. Pol itic al and Academic Discourse.” Jour-
nal of American Studies. Th anks to Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER ONE
Transforming the Terms of Reading
_
Ideologies of Argument and the
Trope of the Angry Feminist
C
ontemporary U.S. po liti cal and academic discourse abounds with a
recurring set of formulaic claims that feminist scholars (and feminists
in general) are angry, unreasoning, shrill, humorless, ugly, man-
hating, perverse, and peculiar. Th is “trope of the angry feminist” is designed
to delegitimize feminist argument even before the argument begins, to un-
dermine feminist politics by making its costs personal, and to foreclose femi-
nist futures by making feminism seem repulsive to young women.1 Th e trope
is a convention, a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type.2
Its incessant repetition constitutes part of a cultural training program that
makes antifeminism and misogyny a routine element in everyday speech and
written argument. Instigated by expressly po liti cal opposition to feminism,
deploying aff ectively charged strategies that fl oat free of evidence, clichés
like the angry feminist put animosity—n ot argument—a t the center of po-
litic al discussions, interpellating readers as always already antifeminist. Th e
repetition and circulation of such tropes produces a cumulative overdeter-
mined quality that makes them seem already true before the moment of ar-
gument. One never encounters the feminist’s argument for the fi rst time
because it comes already discredited. Because the trope of the angry feminist
encourages unacknowledged ways of interpreting feminist aff ect, its inveter-
ate irruption is consequential in journalism, entertainment, pol itic al, and
quasi- intellectual arenas, as I describe in this introductory chapter. It is per-
haps even more consequential in its infl uence on academic discourses, the
subject of the remainder of the book: aff ect in academic discourses on social