Identity as Ambiguous

As mentioned in my first blog about feminist research, there has been a shift in some feminist methodology from standpoint epistemologies to discourse theory. Epistemology is simply the study of how we know what we know, what is truth, what is real. Standpoint epistemologies believe that each person from their various standpoints has different access to the truth and will probably experience a different truth. Often scholars will privilege one particular standpoint as more true than others, particularly arguing that those who are oppressed or on the margins of society understand reality better than the privileged. Discourse theory believes that all of us have identities that are shaped by a myriad of criss-crossing discourses or streams of influence. These include aspects of our race, class, and gender but also include the big ideas in our societies that shape our understandings of ourselves.

Discourse theory is particularly highlighted in Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s work Changing the Subject. While I love this book, I would not recommend it to anyone who is not interested in a very abstract discussion about knowledge and identity. It is long and dense. Fulkerson critiques feminism for failing to develop theories that adequately attend to issues of power. She seeks to radicalize and deepen our understanding of the construction of gender in order to embrace difference. Fulkerson shifts from a privileging of women’s experience to women’s experience as more ambiguous and constructed. She begins from the location of women and their experiences. In order to uncover the discourses at work in the construction of women’s identity, she focuses on the material reality of their lives. She looks for those practices that are sites of utterance, locations in which communication takes place. In her study of women in the PCUSA, she considers bible reading. Among Pentecostal women she focuses on oral histories. In the world of feminist academia she focuses on books and literature. She sees each of these places as the dominant forms of communication within those cultures.
Within such practices, she looks for the various discourses that cross one another, the differential referents of meaning. In particular, she looks for those places where women’s construction of identity and meaning seem to differ from those of the dominant discourse. These are the places where women are graf(ph)ting new meanings and creating new identities. They are the sites of resistance and liberation. They are not, though, unambiguously liberating. Fulkerson seeks to analyze the unspoken rules operative within the community that shape how they negotiate the differences in discourses. She analyzes the power dynamics inherent in the process including the choices women make, the pleasure they gain, the pain they avoid, the ways they are complicit in their own oppression, and the ways they seek liberation.

This focus on the ambiguous nature of women’s experience is central to understanding women and pastoral identity. Too often the choices women make, the compromises in order to survive and thrive in a patriarchal culture are seen as a justification for women not being capable of or desiring to become pastors. It is important to highlight how the pain inherent in becoming a pastor, as well as the pleasure, is different for men and women because of the different ways discourses regarding gender and pastoral office intersect. Women's choices regarding the raising of children, their career choices, whether they will pursue further education, how they will lead, and how they present themselves are just that... choices. The choices often involve compromises and/or sacrifices based on the conflicting expectations of the culture around them.