How to Suppress Women's Writing, and: The Subject of Semiotics, and: The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (review)

reviews 203 tion, creativity, language, and communication that do not necessarUy increase alienation and domination. In fad, there are problems with Balbus' own mode of symbolization. Thoughout his book he sets forth his arguments in terms of binary oppositions: Marx vs. Hegd, objectification vs. recognition, Instrumental Mode of Symbolization vs. post-objectifying nonInstrumental Mode of Symbolization, mother-monopolized mode of child rearing vs. shared parenting, rtc. In each case, one term of the opposition is said to be the source of domination, and the other term is affirmed as the key to liberation. But this mode of categorization is simpUstic and undialectical, and ends up in a one-sided absolutist position which affirms one pole and denies the other. In fact, not only does he reduce Marxism to an instrumentalist theory of the mode of production, but he argues that sodai theories should contain a single unifying prindple," or "common logic" (345). In our opinion, however, it is a mistake to try to reduce radical social theory to a single explanatory, unifying prindple. Balbus, on the other hand, argues against the supposed 'eclectidsm" of Neo-Marxist efforts to combine Marxism with other Uberation theories or movements. But this move ignores the fact that Marx's own categories are historical and dialectical, and are open to development in the light of new sodai conditions and poUtical movements. Moreover, we bdieve that rather than discovering a single key to liberation as Balbus proposes, we are forced to muddle along in a complex world using whatever critical theories, including Marxism, that will help us with spedfic tasks and struggles. Although Balbus makes some important points, his efforts to repudiate Marxism completdy leads him to misrepresent Marxian theory and to unduly restrict the range of issues that his theory of liberation can adequatdy deal with. Thus although we agree that shared child rearing should be part of any future theory and practice of Uberation, a more adequate understanding of domination must address many issues that Bulbus ignores. The theory and practice of Uberation in the present age remains a task on the theoretical and historical agenda that no one theory alone is Ukely to solve. JUDITH BURTON AND DOUGLAS KELLNER NOTES 'Barbara Ehrenrrich, The Hearts ofMen (Garden City: Doubleday, 1982). Joanna Russ. How to Suppress Women's Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. 159 pp. $14.95 (cloth); $7.95 (paper). Kaja Silverman. The Subject ofSemiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 304 pp. $35.00 (cloth). Jane Gallop. TheDaughter's Seduction: Feminism andPsychoanalysis. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982. 163 pp. $14.95 (cloth); $9.95 (paper). Each of these three books offers a contribution to the task of understanding women's place in culture. WhUe the books have points of similarity— Russ's and Gallop's refusal of traditional academic discourse, Silverman's and Gallop's commitment to lacanian psychoanalysis—it is difficult to imagine three works which differ more widely in their styles, their sources, their conceptions of what feminist criticism should do. And although all three are successful on thdr own terms, and all three constantly quote and discuss the work of other authors (perhaps thdr strongest similarity is the degree to which they are syntheses of or commentaries on critidsm, rather than literature), none offers much help in understanding feminist criticism as a field which includes all three of these perspectives. Joanna Russ has written an energetic and persuasive account of the ways in which women's writing is discouraged, ignored, misunderstood, belittled and otherwise suppressed . Her interest is particularly in "[information control without direct censorship" (p. 4): in how it comes about that women apparently have had the freedom to write, and yet—ap- 204 the minnesota review parently—have written rarely and badly. How to Suppress Women's Writing is irreverent, amusing, and often devastatingly accurate . In "Prohibitions" Russ discusses how difficult it can be for women to write; in "Denial of Agency" she shows that women's work has often UteraUy been attributed to men, or at least to the author's "mascuUne" side; in "PoUution of Agency" she examines the attitude that "women make themselves ridiculous by creating art, or that writing or...