College Essay: Who is the Subject of Feminist Politics Comparing Mouffe to Wittig?

The easy answer to the question posed by this paper would be a short one: women. This essentialist concept is quickly discarded by both authors. Women as a natural group based on biology and history is directly linked to their subordination. Making a social construction into nature makes the consequences preordained and just, because if something is natural it is fair. Yet if women are not a group, but only an idea defined by a set of standards people are taught then view within others, knowing the subject becomes difficult. Both authors seek to eliminate this difficulty through new social constructions.

This could become just as problematic as essential constructions. Mouffe wants to build on top of are concept of not only women, but all master statuses with a new construction of citizen. Wittig would have us destroy the idea of woman all together and create a new definition of women as individuals and as a class. She would also fight to suppress men as a class through political struggle, if the class of men disappears then so would women. Mouffe would like to build on top of a bad foundation and Wittig would like to blow the thing up and start over. While rejecting essentialist notions the authors use the words "oppression" and "subordination" as if they are intrinsic and unrelenting. The concept of women's oppression is left vague and assumes a lot about the state of all women.

Mouffe's concept of women as political actors in a state of flux. People are not just one identity sometimes fixed at one point, but shift between subject positions which is constantly moving. Discarding the common essence's of a person they become viewed through "family resemblances" with unity through partial fixations of identities (Mouffe, 373). The binary duality which women are viewed through is cast out and replaced by an over lying citizenship sharing the same ethico-political principles without losing their individual identities such as man, woman, black, gay. These groups are just now related to everyone else through the creation of nodal points. Women are no longer part of a homogeneous group, but part of a much larger relationship network.

Now it is no longer about feminist politics, but social justice. Because with all these shared relationships if something affects one group of people then in will quickly become a problem for you as well. Social justice and active citizenship become a large concern for the general public, inequality would not be tolerated. This may even make it so that everyone is in some way in the social and political majority. Everyone would have some social currency because of nodal points.

Women would act not as an essential group, but would have multiple forms of unity and common action (Mouffe, 381). There would remain an idea of woman, but she would not be confined to that. Feminist should no longer look for the perfect feminism, but look for the causes of women's subordination (Mouffe, 382). Looking at the constructions of oppression through multiple social positions is more desirable, and productive than having an identity fixed to one position.

The focus of Mouffe's new construction of the citizen is power relations and how to not reduce them, but pull everyone up to the same level. Using nodal points everyone at some point in Mouffe's construction of the citizen is the subject of feminist politics because if this web of social interaction pulls in one direction everyone is going to feel the tug.

Wittig has a different construction of women as political actors who are defined by their relationship to men. The idea of the division of the sexes is constructed as natural and based in heterosexuality. Women need to abstract themselves from this myth and can do so through gaining control of the production of children. Women are fighting against the idea of women which naturalizes their oppression.

Working against this oppression helped to prolong it though by looking at biological factors instead of social constructions. Looking to explain difference only supported that there is one. Women should be fighting for destruction of women as a class and idea, the first step is to suppress men politically. If men as a class are removed then there would be nothing to support the class of women because the mythical women is defined by her relationship to men.

Lesbians are not women because they refuse to remain heterosexual and have no relation to men. In doing so it is also the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man (Wittig, 13). So while Wittig wants to dispel the myth of women so the reality of woman can be found this new construction of woman or the "real" construction of women seems to be just as essentialist as the last. This stripping of the old system is just fighting against oppression Wittig seems happy with essentialist notions just so long as they are not oppressive. She does not think that women are a natural group, but the author speaks about lesbians as one. Her statements about lesbians may not be false I still find them problematic, in that she is outlining the struggle against labeling and naturalizing things, she does it throughout the article.

"...because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely (Wittig, 20)." This begs the question: social form of what? The author is looking for an area outside of the binary construction of gender and she only finds lesbianism. It would seem that the freedom Wittig is talking about is from men, which I do not see as productive. Wittig sees men in the form of a slave master and goes so far as to compare escaping the class of women as escaping slavery.

Making Wittig's political actors not fighting for equality, but for freedom from men. Lesbians have escaped the awful fate of men by rejecting them all together. While Wittig sat out to destroy the myth of woman she also wants the idea of men to disappear, providing no idea as to what will become of them. I feel that in any social justice approach you would have to look after both of these former classes. Yet outlined as a battle for survival against slavers, pausing to see what will become of the oppressor does seem pointless.

Wittig's subject in regard to feminist politics seems to be the non-myth woman who is free from the oppression of men and is just as socially constructed as the old concept of woman. The subject of feminist politics in regards to Wittig simply seems to be the same subject most authors have which is themselves. Looking on at her own perspective she leaves out other concepts of woman and assumes there is simply one myth which is oppressed by all men. While having wonderful ideas she is limited by her own short sightedness in regards to the rest of the world.

Works Cited

Mouffe, Chantal. The Return of the Political. Verso, London, 2005.

Wittig, Monique: "One Is Not Born a Woman." In: The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1992.