Doing "the shimmy again": Private Dancers and Public Property. Some thoughts on theory and practice in feminist literary criticism(s)

Lesley Procter
Department of English
University of Otago
New Zealand

lesley.procter@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

Deep South v.1 n.3 (Spring, 1995)

What do critics mean by the term praxis and is this synonymous with practice? Why do we/they find it necessary to discuss the binary opposition of theory and practice? Is there a third option, a way of deconstruction the binary without necessarily privileging one term over the other? In company, I suspect, with many other critical readers, the necessity for me to ask these questions, and others like them arises from the process of negotiating a way through the multiplicity of theories available to me as a critical reader. This process mirrors that of the wider critical community, for these are the questions not only of the individual reader/critic, but of literary criticism as a discipline. They are also the questions, more specifically, of feminist literary criticism and, indeed, of feminist theoretical discourses in general.

This paper represents in part the results of a process of positioning myself rhetorically, theoretically and critically within the discipline of feminist literary criticism and feminist studies. It is also an exploration of some of the tensions inherent in the theory-practice binary, and the way in which a deconstructive third option creates a space within which can be experienced the play of seduction and desire into which we enter as critical readers. Do we choose a particular theory for its "utilitarian" applications; for its potential to create change in ourselves and/or the readers of the critical text we create; for its ability to make sense of a textual/actual experience; or do we choose a theory because it seduces us with the play of signification, the joy of performance -- because it is "fun"?

Finally, this paper represents an attempt to push open the closet door and "come out" as a pluralist/relationalist critic, as an advocate of a plurality of theory and of theory and practice. In my personal critical practice I am consistently unable to place myself within one or the other of the potential theoretical "schools" within feminist literary criticism or feminist studies. For example, in researching aspects of the mother-daughter relationship as it is portrayed in women's writing, I find aspects of classical Freudian criticism, or Object Relations theory, useful for some texts, but not others. Some of the theories of Foucault, Irigaray or Cixous offer tantalising readings of certain texts, but fall disappointingly flat in other texts, or in other parts of the same text. In any case it is no longer (if it ever was!) either advisable or possible to search for one version of theoretical "truth" which will explain a text to the exclusion of all other possible explanations. The potential for critical plurality offered by the recent applications to literature of, for example, Chaos theory and relational theory are well worth exploring in this respect, for they provide useful paradigms with which to explore that space of seduction and desire to which I have already referred.

I have chosen a central metaphoric framework around which to develop the ideas presented here -- the metaphor of the dance. It is through dance that we express the seductive and pleasurable qualities of what it is to be human. It is through the actions of the dance -- spinning, shaking, stepping etc -- that we mirror the basic units of life and of the universe . . . the dance places us on a continuum that includes both the atom and the galaxies. In the dance we move in spatial terms from one point to an other, in temporal terms from one beat to the next. In theoretical terms a plural dance of theory has the potential to mirror all of these activities. It is a dance that can take place everywhere and nowhere. In practical terms however, it most often takes place within the generative space created from the disruption of the theory and practice binary by the intrusion of the elements of plurality and relation which provide a third option. The specific dance I have chosen to represent these potentials is the "shimmy", a dance in ragtime rhythm, a dance of displacement.

In this paper I discuss the elements of the theory/practice binary, I then outline what I mean by the term "critical plurality" and the potential I believe it has to create an exciting new dance. I offer you an invitation to the dance . . .

The first and second dancers are joined by a third participant . . .

I suggest that feminist theories and feminist literary criticisms can also, like the music, be located between the shimmying first dancer and the Foucaultian second dancer of the above narratives and encouraged to dance to a similar ragtime rhythm. A gap, an indeterminacy exists between the two on the page above, from which emerges the genesis of a map for the variable and changing terrain traversed by the music which joins the two. It is this "musical" lacunae that I wish to explore It is necessary, however, to preface this exploration with further description of the dancers involved. The first dancer, epitomized by the "Private Dancer" of Tina Turner's portrayal, represents the theorist who does the "shimmy" on demand. I see this situation as analogous to the privileging of theory at the expense of practice.

So much of feminist theory, and indeed of theory in general is premised upon the separation of one paradigm from another, of one use of theory from another. Theories are frequently portrayed as "competing" rather than as co-existing.[2] This separation mirrors the Enlightenment privileging of the autonomous, separated and individuated individual. Much writing by women on the other hand, whether it be poetry, fiction or theoretical writing, seems to privilege connection -- to a shared past, to each other as women, and/or to a pre-oedipal symbiosis with the maternal (both external and internal). Why then do we continue to discuss work that is about connection using paradigms that are fundamentally about separation and individuation? Why has so much of the debate about theory and practice been, as Ruth Perry points out, "about whether or not there is any value in theorising about merely discursive phenomena without reconnecting these phenomena usefully to the lived experience of real women" (Perry, 1995:14)? If, as Annette Kolodny was saying in 1980 , "what was at stake was not so much literature or criticism as such, but the historical, social, and ethical consequences of women's participation in, or exclusion from, either enterprise" (Kolodny, 1980:145), then why did the personal ever get separated from the politics of theory? The answer to this last question has been variously couched around the 'requirements-of-theory-to-explain-before-politics-can-change' paradigm. It seems to me however that much of feminist theory has been neither explaining nor changing. Instead it has been theorising about theorising about theorising . . .

In my theoretical reading I found that many theorists seemed to have succumbed to the seduction of theory for its own sake and had lost sight of what I have always believed to be the purpose of theorising -- to make sense of experience, be it textual or actual. They had, in effect allowed the dance itself (theory) to assert hegemonic control of the dancer (theorist) and her reasons for dancing in the first place. In many cases, dancer and dance could no longer be distinguished. Controlled to this extent, these dancers were no longer equal partners in the dance and it becomes increasingly impossible to answer the Yeats's question: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?".[3]

Flieger gives voice to a dominant critique within feminist theory when she asserts that the theory-praxis split is polarised around the choice between theoretical work and activism (Flieger, 1993: 254) which would seem to offer a definition of praxis as activism, or at least activity. At this point it is useful, then, to offer my preferred definitions of the terms to be used in this exploration. Rob Pope suggests a definition of "praxis" as the "theories of practice and performance" (Pope, 1995:183), thus negating a more common equation of praxis with practice[4] -- While I do not either down play or ignore Flieger's identification, I lean more in the direction of Pope's opening out of the binary into the three terms theory, practice and praxis. For this reason, I have used the term "practice" to refer to what is more commonly referred to as "praxis". Where I use "praxis" I will be referring to the more open connotation. I would also suggest that it is possible to orient the issue differently i.e. between theory and critical/political practice rather than theory and political practice. In many ways critical and political practice are one and the same. In a culture which is increasingly text-saturated, it is impossible to separate political practice from textual analysis of one sort or another. Flieger points to the increasingly "cerebral nature" of feminist theory as opposed to the "hands-on activism needed to effect changes in women's lives". Yet, she says, "two decades of feminist practice have taught us that theory alone will not suffice to bring about change: if economic and social rights have been won, it is because of hard political work. Yet surely theory is not inimical to action and to ethics, but can help provide a base for choices we make" (262). Flieger gives the example of Derrida's statement "there is nothing outside the text" as one which has "too often been read as an invitation to intellectual solipsism" but one which in her opinion "may also be read as a statement of implication, with 'text' understood as a social fabric . . . ". This reading allows for a more fertile 'marriage' between theory and practice, for if we read Derrida's statement as (in addition to the more accepted meaning) suggesting that all is text (social fabric) it is possible to considerably widen the applicability of critical practice to mean, in effect, political practice. In this formulation, theory and practice are not so much poles of a binary, but points on a continuum.

Maureen McNeil also believes that while empirical work has continued, "more theoretical research . . . now has a prominent profile within feminism" (McNeil, 1993: 152). She suggests that this has resulted in the knowledge project within feminism becoming increasingly transformed into a series of self-regularising, normalised theoretical paradigms which have increasingly removed the subject -- in the case of literary criticism, the text and the reader -- from the social, in this case the multiple interactions between text, context reader and theory(ies). I agree that these comments hold true even in the application of continental theories which should, if anything, pay attention to the multiple contextual voices involved in these interactions. In numerous instances in my theoretical reading, I found that it was the theory as much as, if not more than, the text which excited the passion of the critic -- and this passion becomes more and more abstract.

The anxiety is also about identity. If we can say, for example, that we are a Foucaultian feminist, we have a ready-made and "safe" label with off-the-rack acceptability within the academy. If we already know our "size", we do not have to try anything on for fit. For me, this is akin to what Bernice Johnson Reagon calls "the exercise of violence in creating a legitimate inside and an illegitimate outside in the name of identity that is significant". If, on the other hand we cannot identify with one or two theoretical positions with any sort of conviction, our theoretical cloth must be tailor-made -- and it may turn out to be a veritable coat of many colours.

Associated with the anxiety of identity is the desire to retain control of the process of criticism. We fear to allow it to take on a life of its own, spiralling, spinning, losing awareness of self in the steps of the dance it creates as it dances. I return to the line from Yeats, "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" and suggest that in effect, we do not need to. Yet the fear remains that if we do not, we will lose that identity which is so dear to the Cartesian autonomous, rational self, that separated individual dancer. While this identity is of dubious value from the vantage point of late twentieth century ideas about the self, it has been an enormously seductive stance and the insecurity involved in occupying alternative stances is considerable. Rather than risk losing ourselves in the creative vortex of the text/reader/critic, it has been safer by far to remain a "dancer for money", accepting a ready-made role, conforming to the criteria of the audience -- even if that role is towards our own ends. Do we dance with Foucault or Freud, with Derrida or Deleuze? Either way, we shape our dance to fit with the fantasies of our theoretical dance partners. We do not necessarily consider how well they might "dance" in a particular situation. And because our "dance" is about reading a text, however widely we define that term, we risk falling into the trap of allowing our reading habits (dancing) to "become fixed, so that each successive reading experience functions, in effect, normatively". (Kolodny, 1980: 153)

The second dancer to be introduced is the theorist who privileges popular appeal, or grass roots "applicability" of theory to the aims and objectives of the women's movement however these might be defined. Implicit in this stance is an exploration of the tensions between the two stances and a questioning of the separation of theory and practice in the first place.

I join Jerry Flieger in questioning why the "divide between feminist theory and practice, or at least between proponents of theory and proponents of practice, (Flieger 1993:253-4) is increasingly evident. I find support from a number of areas within feminist theory in general and feminist literary theory in particular. Annette Kolodny, in the two essays from which I draw my metaphor of the dance,[5] and which have become classics of feminist literary criticism(s) questions the degree to which a "link between feminist literary inquiry and feminism as a political agenda" has been maintained, suggesting that theory has become an end in itself and thus divorced from practice (Kolodny 1988: 457). This question may also be asked of feminist theories in more general terms. Some feminists would say that, in the seven years since Kolodny wrote her second piece, feminism has indeed become theory-driven and that neither academic feminist literary criticism, nor academic feminist theories any longer have any connection to the "real world", however that may be defined. As Adrienne Rich points out

abstractions severed from the doings of living people [were] fed back to people as slogans. Theory -- the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees -- theory can be a dew that rises from the earth and collects in the rain cloud and returns to earth over and over. But if it doesn't smell of the earth, it isn't good for the earth(Rich, 1984: 213-4).

The reasons for these statements are grounded in the belief that feminist theories no longer have any accessibility to the 'audience' of grass-roots feminism. Others would assert, quite correctly, that in any case there is no longer a single unifying political agenda for the women's movement any more than there is -- in 1995 -- a single unifying category of feminist theory.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of interpretation; of the point currently occupied on the theory/practice continuum; or of the temporal placement of a particular theorist within the overall body of her or his work. McNeil, for example offers two possible readings of Foucault's ideas on theory and practice which could differ because of any of these three possibilities. One reading offered by McNeil is that he seems to call for forms of thought that reflect a distancing of theory from politics, and a second is one in which he can be understood to call for the involvement of theory in the constitution of a new politics of truth. Foucault's "notion of theory as 'a tool kit' involves a stress on local, specific and reflective knowledge" (159) which seems to preclude a knowledge (theory) which is divorced from its location and specificity in practice. Yet, as McNeil goes on to point out, "feminist knowledge has become somewhat detached from the goal of women's liberation" [emphasis added] (164). She asserts that it "can be argued that" what constitutes feminist knowledge " . . . must be grounded in women's lived experience [original emphasis] and that such knowledge continues to be devalued" (172). In terms of critical practice, these sentiments beg the question of what exactly is meant by 'lived experience'. I would suggest that it can most easily be understood in terms of the reader's 'lived experience' of the text -- however we define the term 'text'! This opens the way towards bridging that other division within feminist theory -- that between feminist literary criticism and feminist theory(ies) about society in general. "Text" here does not have to match the more common connotation of "literary text". Thus critical practice, most commonly focused on literary texts, can be widened to allow for critical attention to a whole group of "texts" which includes aspects of popular culture, social institutions, bodily specificities and individual experience(s). The door is therefore opened for a re-connection between feminist theory(ies) and feminist literary criticism(s).

Somewhere between the two poles of the theory/practice binary, and very definitely part of the continuum between them, lies a third option which could destroy the binary of the either/or choice. Plurality of both experience and theoretical position has achieved a measure of acceptance within the academy. The term "plurality" needs further definition here because, as Toril Moi points out in Sexual/Textual Politics a too liberal application of plurality in feminist theory risks"throwing the baby out with the bath water" i.e., in the search for diversity, feminism(s) risks rejecting the degree of commonality necessary for a recognisable feminism(s) to exist in th first place.(Moi, 1985:74) Even allowing for this note of caution however, dialogues between and among the multi-vocality of feminist literary criticisms and feminist theories account for the major part of the feminist canon in the mid-1990s. These dialogues provide fertile ground for any number of dances to take place, Foucaultian discourses with Deleuzian, Kristevan with Neo-Freudian.

Yet I would suggest that the acceptance achieved by such multi-vocality of theory is premised on the variously diverse participants representing discrete categories to which adherents "belong" -- the plurality in this paradigm is a plurality of separate individuals talking to -- or even at -- each other. Carol Gilligan discusses the potential effect of this with recourse to the metaphor of the tuning fork, when she says that it

is said that a tuning fork, tuned to a particular pitch, will stop the vibrations in eight or nine others that are tuned to a different frequency. Listening to human voices . . . [it is found that] one voice, speaking in a particular emotional register can stop the emotional vibrations in a group of people so that the environment in the room becomes deadened or flat. When this happens . . . it looks like silence but in fact the feelings and thoughts -- the psychological energy -- often move into the only place they can still live, and vibrate in silence, in the inner sense, until it becomes possible to bring them back into the world (Gilligan, 1995:121).

This deadening of the 'emotional vibrations' can be said to be happening within feminist theory and is, I believe a direct result of the 'particular pitch' of a theory-privileging theory/practice binary. The practice side of the dichotomy, or the unfashionable theory are driven into silence as they are forced to follow the 'lead' of the currently dominant dance partner.

Such an understanding of the situation seems of course to continue to privilege the either/or choice of the classic binary opposition. Yet we commonly speak of both theory and practice. With the introduction of the conjunctions "both" and "and", I am addressing what I believe to be a fundamentally problematic issue in the theory/practice debate.

Even where there is a more egalitarian sharing between the two partners, most of the dances take place between single couples -- the theorist and the text -- dancing to the tune of the chosen theory: the private dancer and those who "pay" for her services. It is far less common for there to be groups of three or four dancers -- the theorist, the "text" in question, and one or two theories -- dancing to music created from within the dance itself. Much rarer again is the larger group participating in a dance involving a theorist/reader, a text or texts, and several theories -- all of which may have applicability to each other and to the music they are jointly responsible for creating.

The two dancers introduced so far in this exploration, may be joined at this point by a third entity, creating an inverted triangulation on the page. This third entity, is introduced in my original description as the music to which these dancers dance. In its introduction of a third term, this entity is analogous to many ideas from post-structuralist thought. One possibility is that the theory/practice binary itself is representative of a theoretical "mirror stage" in which dyadic relationships have not as yet been broken up by the intervention of a third party. Thus the Symbolic Order of feminist theory can only be reached through the offices of the intervention of this third party -- not the Father of Lacan's formulations, but a force to intervene in the dyadic relationship between the first two parties nevertheless. A second possibility is that just as Derridean differance constitutes meaning through the seemingly endless process of referring to other absent signifiers, the third entity in the dance opens out the possibilities of theory and of practice, both individually and in combination. Consider the physical presence on the page:

First Dancer

Second Dancer

The inverted triangle, the Yoni, palaeolithic symbol of the life force, representative of the vulva through which life emerges; the Kali yantra representing shakti the life force, cosmic energy experienced as female.[6] Conceptually such a representation offers new forces, new ideas, new life . . . the creative potential of the feminine.

S. P. Mohanty has criticised the implicit assumption in contemporary cultural theory that pluralism is an adequate substitute for political analyses of dependent relationships and larger historical configuration (Mohanty, C. T., 1992: 91). This formulation of plurality is as much a political ideal as it is a methodological slogan. Somewhere between the pluralism of Mohanty and the singularities of the theory/practice solo dancers lies the space occupied by the dance of potential I have just described -- possibly what Mohanty describes as "insistent, simultaneous, non-synchronous process characterized by multiple locations". (87)

Such a non-synchronous process is not a project upon which the goddesses of the feminist critical project generally look with favour, despite repeated calls for such an undertaking from early theorists such as Elizabeth Meese[7] and Annette Kolodny. This reluctance is, in part at least, the product of wariness about the reductive potential implicit in the elements of synthesis involved in such a process.

A more "comfortable" non-synchronous dance however, might be one which, provides, in Susan Hawthorne's words, "ways of entering other worlds" (Hawthorne, 1988: 560). The world of theory has been about self-conscious perception -- about objectifying the world and the self-in-the-world. We need to step back from this study of ourselves from outside and step into our experience of self-in-the-text-in-the-world. We need to allow ourselves to be caught up in the whirl/world of a dance which is, like the ritual dance of old, a gateway to something different (560). Such a dance can overcome the extremely self-aware stance of the mono-theoried reader-critic who views the text through a ready-made lens. It can create a different level of awareness that is about the connections between things rather than the individual theoretical entities involved in the "feminism-and-"couple dance. It can return the dancers to a subjective participation within one's own experience. Such a return incorporates a reversal of the objectification of the world and the self which is part and parcel of so much contemporary theory.

Possibly it is naive to suggest that such a project could ever be anything more than reductive, or that it could return us, no longer critically immature, to the heady days of connection and merging immortalised by writers such as Mary Daly. Yet the suspicion persists that it is in just such a project that hope lies for a resolution of the theory/practice dichotomy. When the early feminist literary critics suggested gynocriticism as both a method and a theory, this possibility was apparent. The emphasis on theory has obscured it and gynocriticism has been -- with reason enough -- labelled deterministic. There has been widespread criticism of theorists who attempt to employ the methods of synthesis which do not take account of difference. Theory has been the winner -- at the expense of our experience of the text -- in this drive to dance each set to the same music and with the same partner. Yet dancing, as Hawthorne suggests "is above all an experience [also]. It is the sheer power of this experience, alongside its impact on our perception of reality, that gives dance its revolutionary potential" (Hawthorne, 1988: 561).

The word "revolutionary" is significant here because it can mean both to change and to spin. Both words have alternative connotations of their own which are linked to creation. Hawthorne suggests all of these connotations in her linking of the spinning aspects of the dance she describes and the potential for change such a dance creates. The "shimmy" with its displacement of strong by weak beats is also about shaking and rotation, about non-synchronous wobbling of syncopated rhythm with its suggestion of the marginal areas of existence -- one of which within the world of this discussion is a critical interpretative plurality of approach.

All of this shaking, shimmying, spinning and syncopating strongly suggests the spiralling, spinning force out of which universes and atoms -- and critical theories -- are created . . . a generative vortex of potential. To return to the metaphor of the dance, what I refer to is a situation where an individual reader/critic enters into a dance with one or more texts. The music which they both dance to, and help to create, is not played by a single instrument. Rather it is made up of a number of theories and experiences which the reader/critic brings to her experience of the text -- what Madelon Sprengnether, in another context, calls a "bricolage [of] . . . interpretive strategies" (Sprengnether, 1985: 45). Susan Hawthorne's ideas about the revolutionary potential of the dance add to my point here. She believes that

Just as when one dances in ritual, the barriers separating other realms dissolve . . . .Indeed, the separation between subject and object becomes blurred. Just as you, the reader, and I, the writer, are part of this text. The meaning of the words I write at this time, is one set of meaning(s). Your interpretation generates a further set of meaning(s). We both participate in the creation of meaning, although our meanings may be very different (Hawthorne, 1988: 562).

This is not a novel idea. Many forms of literary criticism suggest the impossibility of a virgin reader or a virgin text. We frequently come to the text with our reading habits, as Annette Kolodny suggests, "fixed, so that each successive reading experience functions, in effect, normatively" (Kolodny, 1980: 153) We come to the text already shaped by the theories with which we are familiar, and by the experiences we have lived through. Similarly, the text is a product of the theories and experiences the author represents. This normative function of reading a text -- of whatever type -- leaves us vulnerable to the pressure from theory-driven feminism to dance every set with the same partner, or couple of partners. In both our 'reading'[8] and in our theory, we are 'socialised' to certain stylistic expectations and those expectations are based around the paradigms of separation of knowledges into disparate 'fields' rather than on the connections and interactions between our 'reading', the 'text', and the 'author'.

It is not the theoretical makeup of the dance which is emphasised here. Rather it is the way the theory and the reader/critic interact with the text within a somewhat utilitarian paradigm that is of interest. In placing the emphasis in this way, I place myself as a reader/critic between at least two binary commonplaces within the literary critical canon -- that of the text-reader and of the theory-text. In so doing I hope not only to avoid the normative effect of adherence to one or two theoretical positions, but to add greater depth to my reading experience of a wide variety of "texts". As Carol Gilligan has suggested, being able to distinguish between a patriarchal voice of separation and a relational voice of connection "defines a paradigm shift: a change in the conception of the human world. Theorizing connection as primary and fundamental in human life [ and in critical theory] leads to a new psychology, which shifts the grounds for philosophy and political [ and critical] theory" (Gilligan, 1995:121).

The sentiments expressed in Kolodny's 1980 work "Dancing Through the Minefield . . . " are still pertinent. She states, as do many other critics, that

we appropriate meaning from a text according to what we need (or desire), or in other words, according to the critical assumptions or predispositions (conscious or not) that we bring to it. And we appropriate different meanings, or report different gleanings, at different times -- even from the same text -- according to our changed assumptions, circumstances, and requirements . . . (Kolodny, 1980, p. 153)

Both the literary text, and the literary-theory-as-text can be approached in this way. Such an approach is not about a pluralism that merely describes. It is not about claiming either an exhaustive or a definitive listing of all the possible applications of the variety of possible theoretical interpretations of a text, or texts. It argues against always reading in terms of "measuring against a standard and in favour of reading in a . . . creative fashion" (Still, 1990: 57) It is about opening up both reading and writing to the "other" and thus reiterates the "point that reading is writing and writing is reading" (57) It is , in Kolodny's words, about "the search for patterns of opposition and connection" (Kolodny 1980:161) between all the partners in the dance. It is about finding out what works in helping to read a text -- not in the sense of discovering the "real", "for-all-time-truth" hidden in the work, but in the sense of saying, Yes, now I understand that part of the novel better, or saying, Now I think I understand a little better why that particular image of women has such an effect, or why that particular metaphor, or used that particular 'cultural myth' is a useful vehicle for the conveyance of a particular set of significations. It is, most importantly, concerned with being able to say that when the "text" is "read", in maybe six months time, there may be new understandings and old understandings may no longer seem to work so well. Thus critical practice is understood as a dialectical and fundamentally unstable process and the search for "truth" is understood as a chimeric margin which fades forever and forever as we move toward it.

Fundamentally, such a "critical practice" is also about opening ourselves as theorists and readers to the possibilities of pluralism -- to coming out as pluralists. In a women's movement which is infinitely plural, a pluralism which does more than merely describe is possibly the most comfortable position to occupy. As Kolodny points out, segmented "and variously focused, the different women's organisations neither espouse any single system or analysis nor, as a result, express any wholly shared, consistently articulated ideology" (Kolodny, 1980: 162). It seems appropriate then that to theorise about such a movement, and to 'read' the texts created in and through that movement, requires a similarly diversified stance from the theorist but one which does not, as Kolodny has been accused of doing, throw out the baby with the bathwater..

We must not become compliant dancers, we must hold on to the reasons for doing the dance in the first place. We must look in the faces of the dancers who join us, we must ask them their names (because, fundamentally, what we are concerned with as feminist theorists, is about people, about the power systems we create, and the way these interact) and we must assess their performances. As feminist theorists we should not accept the label of "just a private dancer".[9] We should hold on to our dreams of making "a million dollars" and of living "out by the sea" but we must not, in focusing on our dreams, lose sight of the way we dance our dance or who we are dancing with.. We must keep up the attempt to create a multi-vocal, private dance which explores to the fullest the potential interactions between reader, theory and text -- a dance which brings into being the generative vortex, the truly "revolutionary" bricolage of the conjunction in "theory and practice". Only thus will we create a theory which "smells of the earth" and which, by linking the two dancers, creates a third option --

NOTES

1. "Private Dancer" music and lyrics by Mark Knopfler, performed by Tina Turner. [Back]
   
2. A number of commentators have portrayed feminist theories in this way. A recent example is Patricia Elliot's repeated use of the word "competing" in describing feminist theory eg. "competing feminist perspectives", "competing feminist approaches" (Elliot, 1995:42) [Back]
   
3. Yates, W. B. "Among Schoolchildren". This poem is about synthesis and the ways in which a whole is a compound of many parts. It is commonly read as a description of complexity, of the way in which a thing finds the essence of itself in no one aspect but in all parts of itself, which indivisibly exists. Another reading may be suggested by a different emphasis on the "How" of that final line. If, instead of the implication of impossibility, connotations of "in what way can we know" are present, then the question assumes an answer that is a blueprint for discovery and re-covery of the composite parts. [Back]
   
4. As, for example: "praxis . . . the practice and practical side of a profession or field of study, as opposed to the theory".(Collins English Dictionary.) [Back]
   
5. These are, "Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism" and "Dancing Between Left and Right: Feminism and the Academic Minefield in the 1980s". [Back]
   
6. These ideas are drawn from Wendy Gaddon's work The Once and Future Goddess. [Back]
   
7. Meese argues for this in her 1986 book Crossing the Double-Cross: The Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism. [Back]
   
8. I am using words in quote marks here to differentiate my connotative application of them from the more common one. Thus, 'reading' here represents not simply the understanding of the words on a page, but the fuller sense of exploration of signification of a variety of 'text'(ual) manifestations. 'Socialisation refers to the normative shaping of 'reading' practice, and 'author' less to the person or persons responsible for 'writing' a text, than to the complete process of writing, 'reading', signification and representation -- in effect the 'bricolage' to which Sprengnether refers. [Back]
   
9. From "Private Dancer", my emphasis. [Back]

WORKS CITED