Post-poststructuralism: Gender, race, class, and literary theory

Feminist, ethnic, and Marxist critics, lured by the promise of the legitimation and mainstreaming of discussions of "difference," have been converted to poststructuralism, the new religion of the academy. Deconstruction has become the method of choice for those seeking to explore multiplicity of meanings and identities; ironically, however, poststructuralist theory--which rest upon a binary opposition of subject-object/self-other--renders just such multiple perspectives impossible.;Poststructuralism helps us to understand marginalization, but not to overcome it; it explains the absence of the "other's" voice from the cultural dialogue, but is unable to explain the powerful presence of literary voices like Toni Morrison's or Maxine Hong Kingston's or even to explain the eloquent ways in which writers like Woolf, Plath, Rich, and Atwood use language to describe their alienation from language. The "other," which is the object of poststructuralist discourse, is precluded from ever emerging as a subject.;This tripartite study of recent feminist, ethnic, and Marxist criticism reveals that even the most sophisticated and well intentioned poststructuralist critics have failed to integrate gender, race, and class. Until we acknowledge and seek to correct the limitations inherent in our critical language and paradigms, we will be unable to say anything meaningful about the "differences" upon which poststructuralism has focused so much attention.;Present literary critical theory is inadequate, but rejecting theory altogether--as some critics are now advocating--is not the solution. We must evolve a critical language which connects rather than divides, which allows us to make distinctions without essentializing. We must transcend the present situation in which we have two distinct and hierarchically related groups of literary critics: one which examines literature under the microscope of "close reading" and throws into relief the most minute details of texts while obscuring the larger contexts which would establish the meaning and significance of such work; and another group which views the universe of literature through the telescopic lens of critical theory but is often unable to perceive the specificity of individual texts or make distinctions among them. This work is intended to be a step in that direction.