University of McGill (Montreal) in the fall o f 1992. The readings and procedures (e.g. several indigenous narratives relating to the same event laid side by side) presented as a corrective to the univocal representation o f conventional anthropology left me quite unsatisfied in as much as they were merely addressing the surface of a very profound problem.
will try to position myself within feminism in my consideration of the deconstructionists' critique of 'a fantom feminist essentialism' (de Lauretis
1994:33).
ENGENDERING KNOWLEDGE
The crisis of an epistemology predicated on a notion of universal, neutral, objective knowledge has given way to many reformulations. In Trinh T. Minh- ha's words, 'an inescapable awareness of the sterility o f the unitary subject and its monolithic constructs' (1991:6) has been central in reshaping the relationship between subject and object in the anthropological endeavour. Deconstruction has also challenged the assumption of a 'universal truth', since that truth is also a construct which depends on the interests at stake. Truth is not neutral. A self- reflective stance on the part o f the anthropologist is advocated. This is framed as an encounter, a dialogue between different historical subjectivities. As Crapanzano (1979) stated, the ethnographic text is the result of a particular ethnographic encounter. Not only should multiple voices be heard but the anthropologist's presence should be visible and not neutralized. However, acknowledging the multiplicity of interests, of positions, of voices, has been taken so far as to stress that no view should be privileged (cf. Rabinow 1987). This could leave intact forms of power, and, worse, could justify them under the rubric of 'multivocality'. To stress the partiality of one's own position does not mean that no position is privileged. It rather exposes the moral and political bases of that commitment. As Abu-Loghod stresses, partial truths are always 'positioned truths' (1991:142).
Challenging 'universal truth' from a feminist position is different. Clifford's project speaks o f a plurality o f voices, but only if we start by acknowledging two voices (e.g. female and male) can we (women and men) break with the traditional universal subject and allow for a plurality o f voices to be heard. A central concern of new ethnography is the inscription o f otherness in such ways as to accord them subjectivity. Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 in The Second Sex wrote about the experience of woman's otherness and the inscription o f women as 'other' in language and discourse. The debate of the female as 'other' was in fact 'the starting point of contemporary feminist theory' (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe and Ballerino Cohen 1989:11). And de Lauretis states: 'I would insist that the notion of experience in relation both to social-material practices and to the formation
and processes of subjectivity is a feminist concept, not a poststructuralist one' (1994:7). The Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus, 1986) project is not only far from recognizing that the universal subject is primarily a male subject, but also blind in acknowledging what feminist theories have produced. That whole project is in fact devoid of feminist insights (see Mascia-Lees, Sharpe and Ballerino Cohen's critique, 1989).
Although social reality and power relations are constructed, they are not so easily deconstructed: they are embodied in the practice of individuals. I will introduce my perspective as a white Italian feminist, a position which informs my being-in-the-world and which shaped my relations in the field. My starting point is the theory of sexual difference [il pensiero della differenza sessuale], a theory of social-symbolic practice elaborated by one stream of Italian feminism.3 Drawing mostly on French and Italian women’s thought4,1 need to specify what I mean by 'sex', 'gender' and 'embodiment of the subject', concepts which I use in conforming to established usage within this stream of the Italian feminist movement. In attempting to outline the meaning of these terms in the Italian context, problems of different cultural and historical contexts as well as questions pertaining to linguistic translation between Italian and English come to the fore. For example sessuata/o [literally 'sexed'] used in expressions such as 'pensiero sessuato' are generally rendered in English with the adjective 'gendered', as in
'gendered thinking' (see de Lauretis 1990b:21).5 Confronting three recent texts published in English dealing with Italian pensiero della differenza, one finds a crucial phrase from Cavarero (1987:180) rendered in three different ways. Cavarero speaks of 'Vessere sessuate nella differenza' (1987:180), which de Lauretis translates as 'being engendered in difference' (1990b: 18); Bono and
3 This applies to all the points I present, even when I use the expression 'Italian feminism'. 4 Diotima 1987, 1990, 1992; Libreria delle Donne di Milano [Milan Women’s Bookstore
Collective] 1990 [1987], English translation with a very good introduction by de Lauretis
(1990b: 1-21); Irigaray 1982, 1984, 1990, 1992; Bono and Kemp 1991; Muraro 1991b; Cavarero
1992; Violi 1992. 'Sottosopra' [Upsidedown] 1983 was a publication o f the Milan Women's
Bookstore Collective. It is widely acknowledged, by women holding different positions on the issues, as the text which addresses the difference/equality question in the terms that have since shaped the Italian feminist debate. The English translation of the text appears in Bono and Kemp (1991:110).
5 de Lauretis writes that in English 'sexed subject' is used as well but with a different meaning from 'gendered subject’ (1990b:21). Gatens seems to my non-Anglophone ear, however, to use it
Kemp as 'being engendered in a different sex' (1991:16) and Violi as 'being engendered differently' (1992:164).6
In the Italian context, sexual difference is considered an original difference, which becomes in Cavarero's terms 'not negotiable' (1987:180)7; a difference predicated neither on a biological sex nor on a social gender but on an engendered body and its inscription in the world (see the latest 'Sottosopra', 1996).8 As aptly underlined by de Lauretis, the notion of an original difference is a basic assumption in this theory of sexual difference, a theory which is 'historically constituted’ (1994:32, emphasis is mine). The 1996 'Sottosopra' clearly states that '[l]a differenza sessuale veicola la necessitä della mediazione, ma non da le risposte. Queste, le dä la storia, non si pud dedurle.' [Sexual difference poses the necessity of mediation but it does not give answers. These are given by history, they cannot be deduced.] (1996:5).
Gender is the social construction of womanhood and manhood. Although a cultural and historical construct, it should not be viewed in opposition to biological sex. The articulation between the two is such that, as Gatens has suggested, speaking of 'feminine' and 'masculine' experience is quite different from speaking of 'female' and 'male' experience. 'Feminine' experience lived through a male body is 'qualitatively different from female experience of the feminine' (1991a [1983]:146). Thus, the world is inhabited by subjects who, in Gatens' terms, are sexed subjects. This viewpoint is not predicated on some form of biological essentialism, but rather 'holds that subjectivity cannot but be engendered' (Violi 1992:166). To speak of the partiality of the subject means that the world, both the symbolic and the socio-political world, must accommodate
6 The same kind o f problems loom in translation from English into Italian. For a telling recent