One of the interesting features of the first difference that Evans identifies is that she has decided to foreground difference rather than equality as the central concept for exploration of cultural feminism. This reinforces our understanding of the inter-relationship of meaning that is drawn from the dualistic pairing of difference-equality. Thus, although we first encountered these in Chapter 2 under the concept of equality, Evans refers to the variety of schools that are termed ‘woman-centred’, ‘cultural’, ‘gynocentrism’ and ‘gynandry’ as a form of difference. These schools of thought, as Barrett notes, draw on women’s experiences of being different from men. This difference from men is not in terms of liberal feminism that argues that there are no important differences between the sexes that should stand in the way of equality. On the contrary, the difference that this school of thought argues for is that there are differences between women and men and the political task is to valorize these.
What is useful is that Evans extends our understanding of the equal but different school introduced in Chapter 2 by distinguishing between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ versions of cultural feminism. Evans refers to ‘weak’ cultural feminism as ‘woman’s kindness’. ‘Weak’ cultural feminism would be arguing for woman’s values to be incorporated into the public spheres of life. The ‘good’ traits of womanhood are not exclusive to women. They could, and importantly here should, also be developed by men. Evans explores the ‘strong’ school of cultural feminism through the work of Mary Daly, Andree Collard and Adrienne Rich. What they each have in common is that their work aims to revalue women’s activities and traits that have been devalued by patriarchy. In comparison to ‘weak’ cultural feminists their strategy is more separatist as they do not see how woman can reclaim, retain and recreate her unique differences in patriarchal cultures.
Differences between Groups of Women: Identity Politics
In outlining her second category, that of identity politics, Evans focuses on Black feminist experiences and critiques of racism in the White women’s movement. For example, Black women have illustrated how feminism has assumed Whiteness as a normative category (Carby, 1982). Evans comments that this critique of White feminism and later of the heterosexist nature of predominant feminist assumptions led to a broader ‘move towards “identity politics’’, that is, basing an activism, a political viewpoint, and a sense of selfhood on, say, religious practice, ethnic identity, or sexual preference’ (1995: 22). This new pluralism, Phillips notes:
homes in on identity rather than interest groups; not those gathered together around some temporary unifying concern — to defend their neighbourhood against a major road development, to lobby their representatives against some proposed new law — but those linked by a common culture, a common experience, a common language. These links are often intensely felt, and, more important still, are often felt as opposition and exclusion. Identity groups frequently secure their identity precisely around their opposition to some ‘other’, focusing on a past experience of being excluded, and sometimes formulating a present determination to exclude. (1993: 146-7)
Evans’ exploration of identity politics focuses on the relatively neglected issue of class through the work of Iris Young (1990). Evans regards Young as an exemplar of changes in socialist feminism where a faith in ‘sameness’ equality has been lost and has been replaced by an understanding of identity divisions and disadvantages based on issues of gender, ‘race’, class, sexuality and disability. To reinforce the point made in the introduction to this chapter, what is also significant is that Young’s theoretical framework of difference is derived from the poststructural/modern theorizing of Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and Kristeva. This is combined with Marxist critical theory and Black philosophy. Given that Evans’ third category of difference is the postmodern/poststructural, this illustrates how the labelling and categorizing of a field of knowledge must function as an umbrella term within which there will be a variety of theoretical, philosophical and political positions.
One of the main critiques of identity politics is that the presentation of a unified identity can mask the differences within a particular group. As many feminists have noted (see, for example, Spelman, 1988), there will be many other axes of difference within groups designated by virtue of ‘race’, ethnicity, class, disability, sexuality, and so forth. For example, Brah (1990) summarizes critiques of the term ‘Black’ when it is used to define the experiences of South Asian and African-Caribbean groups in Britain. These include the charge of essentialism that the term ‘Black’ conveys a pre-given nature or identity and in addition that it is not a term with which all groups can identify. Indeed, it is this attention to the complexities of group analysis that is the primary reason why Evans categorizes Young’s work as ‘identity politics’.
Young’s text is critical of individualist and sameness principles in the achievement of equality. Instead, Young argues for a politics of difference that accords with affirmative and positive action approaches to group rights that were introduced in Chapter 2. In this respect she argues that ‘social policy should sometimes accord special treatment to groups’ (1990: 158). However, Young does not see groups as homogenous entities that would parallel humanistic notions of the individual. Rather, she argues for a contextualized and relational understanding of difference where:
Group differences will be more or less salient depending on the groups compared, the purposes of the comparison, and the point of view of the comparers. Such contextualized understandings of difference undermine essentialist assumptions. For example, in the context of athletics, health care, social service support, and so on, wheelchair-bound people are different from others, but they are not different in many other respects. Traditional treatment of the disabled entailed exclusion and segregation because the differences between the disabled and the able-bodied were conceptualized as extending to all or most capacities. In general, then, a relational understanding of group difference rejects exclusion. Difference no longer implies that groups lie outside one another. To say that there are differences among groups does not imply that there are not overlapping experiences, or that two groups have nothing in common. The assumption that real differences in affinity, culture, or privilege imply oppositional categorization must be challenged. Different groups are always similar in some respects, and always potentially share some attributes, experiences, and goals. (ibid.: 171)
As Young notes, one clearly needs to be attentive to the potential divisiveness of identity politics if one is seeking to work within a political framework that emphasizes difference rather than sameness. Thus, while Young seeks to validate difference, she argues that this has to be accomplished ‘within a public arena that can encourage interaction and change’ (Phillips, 1993: 151). In other words, what is required is a wider shift in the meanings of difference. This point is also taken up by some feminists who are discussed within postmodern and poststructural framings of difference.