Feminist Theory and the Classics: A Modified Review

Here is a modified (i.e., significantly shortened) work I wrote not long ago....

Weighing the Phallocentrism of the Classics

I. Feminist Motivation

Feminist Theory and the Classics is a book of essays from various authors written in 1993; relatively long after many cardinal works of feminism and feminist theory had been spoken. Feminist theory is the philosophical explication of the values and ideals of feminist civil rights activists of the mid-20^th century. Taking the route of most post-modern (“post-modern” referring to a period in the early to mid-1900s) philosophies, a major vessel for feminist theory was in linguistics with noticeable strains of post-structuralist thought.

Post-structuralism is a reaction to structuralism in the academic disciples, such as philosophy, philology, and history among others. Structuralism was first introduced as a hypothesis in psychology, but more formatively to structuralism, it was the work of Ferdinand de Saussure in linguistics that breathed life into structuralism. Structuralism, in a post-structuralist interpretation, represents a reinforcement of traditional, inhumane power structures. Post-structural thought attempts to identify power structures and deconstruct them by dissolving “binary oppositions” (for example, existence/nothing, light/dark, black/white.)

Feminist theory is post-structural in that sense; it represents a gender-oriented approach to deconstructing pre-existing power structures oppressive towards women. In feminist theory, where there exists a privileged or favored term within a binary opposition—such privileged terms are representative of a phallus. This is called phallocentrism—the favoring of the phallus over the vagina; or, the domination and privilege of the phallus in western thought. A function of feminist theory is to deconstruct phallocentrism in order to shift or destroy the misogynistic power structure that is western thought.

Helene Cixous, a prominent French feminist, provides important insight into the feminist psyche regarding this deconstructive aspect of feminist theory: “What would become of logocentrism, of the great philosophical systems, of world order in general if the rock upon which they founded their church were to crumble? If it were to come out in a new day that the logocentric project had been, undeniably, to found (fund) phallocentrism, to insure for masculine order a rationale equal to history itself? Then all the stories would have to be told differently, the future would be incalculable, the historical forces would, will, change hands, bodies, another thinking, as yet unthinkable, will transform the functioning of all society.” (Cixous 314). Here Cixous seems to say that the success of the feminists goals would necessitate a re-examination and a re-telling of the formerly phallocentric text of western history.

Feminist Theory and the Classics is at least part of that re-examination of early history. How did the fathers of western thought consider the issue of gender differences? Of women's rights? How did they implement phallocentrism? Where were the mothers of western thought? How were they marginalized by phallocentrism? “Using contemporary theory, we hope to press the classics community to question itself; reviewing ancient material from new perspectives, we hope to enter the ongoing dialogue in feminist theory.” (Rabinowitz 2)

II. Feminist Readings of Classicism and Classical works

Structural and post-structural philosophy generally treat all subjects and objects as a text. That is to say, the methods one uses to critically read a text may be used in the treatment of other subjects. For example, a deconstruction of history, a Marxist reading of one's personal experiences, a Freudian examination sociology, and the subject of Feminist Theory and the Classics: A feminist reading of the Classics.

The politics of feminist beckon an identification of pre-existing power structures: What power structures are at work in the discipline of Classicism? Author Shelley Haley defines an elitist sexism common to the students of the classics: “Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell were members of the Oberlin class of 1884 and they too received B.A.s. The curriculum for this degree was classical and usually taken by men only; for that reason it was called the 'gentlemen's course.' Women took the 'ladies'' course, a two-year literary curriculum, which led to a certificate.” (Haley 25) Later, as Haley discusses her experience at the University of Michigan as a graduate student she mentions the sexism of the faculty: “I noticed, though, that while male faculty in conversation with students would refer to their [male] colleagues as 'Mr. ____,' and their female colleague as 'Gerda.'” (Haley 26). The general attitude towards the discipline of classicism by the feminist theorists is that it has been dominated by wealthy white males—and ancient history, Greek culture, and Roman culture has been written by them—thus marginalizing women and racial minorities.

Identification of power structures is part-one to the feminist strategy—part-two is the re-writing of the discipline of Classicism. Shelley Haley starts the book's first attempts at re-writing:

“This same symbol-making process has led to a physical stereotype, which has been applied to ancient African women even by twentieth century scholars [italics mine]. A good example is Frank Snowden's translation of the physical description of Scybale, an African woman who appears in the Moretum (a short Augustan poem of unknown authorship):

Erat unica Custos Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura, torta comam labroque tumens et fusca colore, pectore lata iacens mammis compressior alvo, cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta (Moretum 31-35)

African in race, her whole figure proof of her country—her hair tightly curled, lips thick, color dark,chest borad, breasts pendulous, belly somewhat pinched, legs thin, and feet broad and ample (translated by Snowden 1970: 6).

Snowden's translation reminds me too much of the physical stereotype of black women in the nineteenth century. He does not treat this passage elsewhere in his work, nor does he seem aware that his translation is stereotypical. Can we read the Latin another way? It seems to me that here is a place where classicists can use a Black Feminist perspective and Black feminism can rehabilitate the reading of a text. What would a Black feminist translation of this passage look like? Still using a standard Latin lexicon, here's what I came up with:

She was his only companion, African in her race, her whole form a testimony to her country: her hair twisted into dreads, her lips full, her color dark, her chest broad, her breasts flat, her stomach flat and firm, her legs slender, her feet broad and ample.” (Haley 30.)

Haley identifies a classicist who had been in the midst of culturally-imposed racist and sexist themes. She then identifies the time period in which the classicist works (twentieth century)—which presumably happens to be a time where such themes are unexpected—and proceeds to re-write the Moretum excerpt in terms different from those of Snowden's choosing. The Moretum excerpt is certainly anatomic in nature, but Haley later submits that only with Snowden's bias could the excerpt be written as it was—and that it is evidence of such bias.

Marilyn Skinner, a notable feminist (often cited by other authors for previous works) who seemed to be a highlight in this volume, wrote an essay titled “Woman and Language in Archaic Greece, or, Why Is Sappho a Woman?” She begins with an explanation of linguistic theories by prominent feminist theorists, a Miss Irigaray in particular—then arrives at a word that forms her thesis: Gynocritics. “Gynocritics[sic], defined by Elaine Showalter as the investigation of the 'history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women' (1985a:128)” (Skinner 128) Skinner then proceeds to take a gynocritical approach to reading Sappho of Lesbos.

Skinner writes: “Applying gynocritic methods to these texts readily illustrates how books by women 'continue each other' (Woolf 1957: 84)” (Skinner 129) The best and earliest starting point for such study is naturally in the classics. And in Ancient Greece, the lyrist and poet Sappho fills the mother role to women authors in later times. Sappho was a Greek canonical figure with numerous female followers including “Erinna and Nossis expressly looked back to Sappho as their exemplar (Rauk 1989; Skinner 1989.)” (Skinner 129). Skinner reveals this fact to explain the large flow of feminist classicists towards the recovery of female Sapphic followers throughout Greek history. She also attempts to explain why Sappho had appeal in anceint Greece; to paraphrase Skinner, the emotional quality of Sappho's songs made female desires emotionally and conceptually accessible to men and women. And it is this, theoretically, which allowed Sappho in the patriarchal canon. Skinner concludes that female writers of any civilization contribute something similar—and it would therefore be a loss to men, as well as women, to suppress female literature.

The final section of Feminist Theory and the Classics, titled “Epistemology and Material Culture” skirts the previous sections in an unexpected way. Dealing with Marxist theory and gynocritical analysis, feminist archeology, and a female ethnographer's “dilemma.” I could find no way of integrating these essays into the rest of the volume without writing awkwardly—and thus I must mention this section independently of the book.

III. Possible Response

Feminist Theory and the Classics has been out of print for an indeterminant number of years. In my personal research of the book I have found the essays within cited only a small number of times by other works—and most were by feminist journals and speeches for philological groups. For that reason, I found it difficult to find any serious criticism or commentary on the volume—I can only imagine the possible reaction to Feminist Theory and the Classics. And so I will attempt to construct a possible reaction from various groups.

Theorists—whether Marxist, psychoanalytical, post-colonial, or feminist—tend to work exclusively and tightly in academic circles, and thus a feminist comment to the book would perhaps be an idle “interesting.” The original works offer a titillating springboard from which feminist writers can elaborate or construct new ideas upon the ones established by the writers of Feminist Theory and the Classics.

A classicist, as a philological thinker, would find Feminist Theory and the Classics a good insight into feminist theory—a solid bridge from which a philological thinker unacquainted with feminist theory might become introduced to the subject. There is no better way to learn of an ideology than to hear such an ideology speak evaluatively to one's intellectual pursuits.

But a general opinion, that which the classicist and perhaps even the feminist might provide of Feminist Theory and the Classics is that it like all theory, and is therefore work towards a purely academic, impractical, and idealistic end. It is the nature of theory itself to ultimately be discarded by general opinion (that is, ultimately everybody's opinion, including many theorists) as an intellectual pursuit that perhaps serves no greater purpose than to achieve tenure for a professor of English. After all, any book with one thousand forty seven citations over the course of less than two hundred and fifty pages of actual text, making an average of approximately four citations per page, of which less than a quarter cite anybody other than like-theorists (many of which include citations of co-writers within the same volume)—and use many these citations to form their theses—is probably not a book to say anything groundbreaking or original. And so we will probably put it back on the shelf for an indefinite time.

Works Cited

Cixous, Helene. La Jeune Nee. As cited by Gold.

Rabinowitz, Nancy, ed. et al. Feminist Theory and the Classics. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Haley, Shelley. "Black Feminist Thought and Classics: Re-membering, Re-claiming, Re-empowering." Feminist Theory and the Classics. Ed. Rabinowitz, Nancy. et al. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Skinner, Marilyn. "Woman and Language in Archaic Greece, or, Why Is Sappho a Woman?" Feminist Theory and the Classics. Ed. Rabinowitz, Nancy. et al. New York: Routledge, 1993.