Can the Imperialist read? Race and feminist literary theory

Since the mid 1980's it has been unthinkable for white feminist literary critics to neglect \nrace in their theoretical work. Strong challenges from black feminists have been effective in \nplacing race high on the critical agenda. No longer is the kind of exclusivity that marked \nearly (white) feminist literary theory possible. However, despite the evident commitment to \naddressing the race question in their work, the black feminist challenge has been greeted \nwith a considerable degree of anxiety by white feminist critics. I suggest that the main \nsource of anxiety is a failure to square the pressing need to 'include' race on the feminist \nagenda with doubts about straying into what is perceived to be black feminist territory. In \nother words, white feminist critics have yet to resolve their relation to the black feminist \nproject. This anxiety has meant that a concern over the notion of exclusion has given way to \nthat of appropriation. This has tended to place the white feminist reader in the paralysing \nposition where there seems little available ground between the twin poles of exclusion and \nappropriation. Typical questions that have arisen out of this dichotomy are: should white \nfeminists teach black women's writing? Should white feminist critics produce critical \nreadings of texts authored by black women? Can white women readers read black women's \nwritings without imposing onto them their own critical agendas? Is a non-appropriative \nreading relation possible? How should white feminists deal with the fact of their own race \nprivilege and what bearing does this privilege have upon the readings they, potentially, \nmight produce? \nThis project examines some of the ways in which white feminists have attempted to \naddress their relation to the race question in feminist literary criticism. Over the space of six \nchapters I focus on a number of specific reading strategies offered as positive critical \ninterventions. My main contention is the impossibility of a guaranteed anti-imperialist \ntheory or reading position. I also argue for the necessity of asking the question: whether the \nimperialist can read, as a complement to that of whether 'the subaltern can speak'. Chapter 1 \nquestions the white feminist ambition of arriving at the truth of the black text as a means of \ndecolonising the text. Through an examination of the Rodney King events some of the perils \nof appeals to pure seeing are highlighted. Chapter 2 explores the implications of white \nfeminist abstention from the race debates. Chapter 3 looks at the issue of identification as a \nbasis for reading. Chapter 4 questions the identifications that inhere in applying theory to a \ntext. Chapter 5 challenges the use of contextualisation as a source of textual limits. Chapter \n6 examines the limits of self-reflexivity as an anti-imperialist method.