Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Theory

Author(s): Charlotte Witt

Source: Philosophical Topics , FALL 1995, Vol. 23, No. 2, Feminist Perspectives on
Language, Knowledge, and Reality (FALL 1995), pp. 321-344
Published by: University of Arkansas Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154216

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PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS
VOL. 23 NO. 2, FALL 1995

Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Theory

Charlotte Witt
University of New Hampshire

The question of anti-essentialism and essentialism is not a philo-

sophical question; that's why there isn't any rebuttal from the
house of philosophy.
- Gay atri Chakravorty Spivak1

Essentialism is widely rejected by feminist theorists today. Indeed, showing

that a position is "essentialist" can function in and of itself as a good reason
for rejecting it.2 Before I offer an explanation of the puzzling unanimity of
feminist anti-essentialism, it will be helpful to clarify what is being rejected.
What is essentialism?
As I use the term, it refers to the thesis that certain of an object's prop-
erties are necessary to it. Traditionally, essential properties have been given
one or more of the following functions:3

(1) Causal or explanatory power: An entity's essence is meant

to either explain or cause its characteristic behavior.4

(2) The basis of classification into kinds: Essential properties

are thought to provide the criteria for classifying entities
into kinds.

(3) The basis for the identity of things: The identity of an object
and its persistence through time is secured by its essential
properties.

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Given this description of essentialism, the thesis of gender essentialism holds
that there is some property (or properties) necessary to my being a woman,
like being nurturing, or being oppressed, or having a uterus.5 And this essen-
tial property or properties might be thought to fulfill any of functions (l)-(3).
Now, this thesis is sometimes stated as I just did in terms of a necessary prop-
erty of mine, but it is also sometimes stated in terms of the essence of the
generic Woman.6 Generic gender essentialism holds that there is a com-
monality of experience or a characteristic that unites all women, a core of
properties that constitutes the generic Woman and that must be satisfied if
something is to count as a woman. Although individual and generic gender
essentialism differ from one another in important ways - for example, in the
location of necessity - feminist anti-essentialists tend not to distinguish them.
This tendency is understandable because of the second traditional function
of essence listed above, which connects an object's necessary or essential
properties with its membership in a kind.7 1 use gender essentialism to refer
to both individual and generic essentialism, and I only differentiate the two
where it is useful to do so.
Anti-essentialist feminists reject the thesis of gender essentialism in both
its forms. They deny that there are any properties that I have necessarily inso-
far as I am a woman. Or, to use the variant, they reject the existence of a
generic Woman; there is no single, shared property or properties that must
be satisfied in order to count as a woman. As a woman, I am not necessar-
ily anything at all, and supposing that I am necessarily one way or the other
is taken to be a symptom of theoretical incorrectness, a sign of lingering
maleness. Anti-essentialism has become (almost) an essential feature of fem-
inist theorizing. Given the diversity of views within feminist philosophy on
all other topics this is a surprising fact and one which requires explanation.
In section I, I provide an explanation by discussing what I call the core
argument. A belief in the premises of the core argument is common to every
feminist anti-essentialist and hence helps to explain the appearance of a uni-
form anti-essentialist position. However, I argue that since anti-essentialism
does not follow from the premises of the core argument, we must look else-
where for the feminist case against essentialism. Thus, the argument which
provides the appearance of unity among anti-essentialists turns out not to be
an argument against essences at all.
In sections II-IV, I distinguish three independent arguments against
essentialism.8 The first anti-essentialist position I discuss is Elizabeth
Spelman's claim that essentialism in feminist thought excludes certain groups
of women (the exclusion argument against essentialism).9 The second posi-
tion I consider is that of Drucilla Cornell, who argues in principle against the
stability of all linguistic categories including the category of gender (the
instability argument against essentialism).10 Third, I consider the work of

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Judith Butler, who has adapted to feminist ends the insights into power and
theory developed by Nietzsche and Foucault (the power argument against
essentialism).11
The exclusion argument against essentialism points out that essen-
tialism within feminist theory itself has served to exclude certain women -
especially women of color. Thinking of women as a group characterized by
certain essential features - economic, sexual, reproductive, political - has
reflected the social positions of the theorizers, in this case middle-class white
women. The exclusion argument points out that essentialist feminisms have
made certain women invisible, just as women as a group disappear in male-
centered traditional philosophical theories.12
The instability argument claims that all categorical groupings are arbi-
trary and instable because of the nature of language. And the category of
women is no exception. Language is not a transparent mirror of reality but
instead is inherently normative and productive. It is a fun house mirror that dis-
torts as it reflects in a way that images the norms of the culture. Essentialism
is a mistaken theory because it relies upon a mistaken view of language,
roughly of a language that can be purified of its normative, productive, and
metaphorical content. Since language cannot be purified, there is no possible
essentialist language and, hence, no essentialism.
Rather than query the view of language required by essentialism, the
power argument seeks to expose the conditions under which a system of
categories emerges in society. The process of drawing categorical distinc-
tions, like all other social processes, is inherently an exercise of power. For
the proponents of the power argument, the appropriate approach to all essen-
tialist claims is genealogical, namely, to ask about the conditions that allow
this particular manifestation of power to emerge. At the deepest level, the
power argument identifies the metaphysics of substance, of self-identical
subjects, as the basic ingredient in the development of fixed, categorical dis-
tinctions like gender, and it critically examines the notion of substance.
It might be thought that these three criticisms of essentialist thinking
together constitute a flat-out rejection of essentialism for feminists. After all,
if essentialism can be shown to be a paradigmatically exclusionary form of
thinking (the exclusion argument) that distorts the inherently fluid character
of the language of gender (the instability argument), a language which
expresses temporary congregations of power rather than enduring substantial
realities (the power argument), then it might seem that anti-essentialism is
the only viable position for feminist theory.
In fact, I think that the first-principle status of anti-essentialism in fem-
inist theory is a result of the illicit and tacit combination, and sometimes con-
flation, of these arguments. But, I argue that these arguments cannot be joined
together into a unified, coherent critique of essentialism because they cannot

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be made together consistently. So, feminists considering the issue of essen-
tialism must evaluate each of these arguments separately, on its own merits.
The conclusions of my paper are modest. Anti-essentialism in feminist
theory consists of three independent arguments that must be evaluated sep-
arately. Further, since I argue that the exclusion argument is compatible with
both essentialism and anti-essentialism, it does not stand as an independent
anti-essentialist argument. Moreover, the exclusion argument cannot be com-
bined and used to strengthen the instability or power arguments, because it
is incompatible with them. Thus, what remains of the case against essences
in feminist theory is the instability and power arguments. I suggest some
general lines of criticism of them, although I leave the question of their final
persuasiveness open. I end with a discussion of my own reservations about
gender essentialism, reservations which focus on the relevance of gender
essentialism (rather than gender essentialism) for normative issues. Unlike
the arguments I discuss in the body of this paper, my concern is neither with
the truth of essentialism in general nor with the dangers of gender essential-
ism for feminist theory, but rather it is with the relevance of gender essen-
tialism for the kinds of normative questions that feminist theory addresses.
One reason that there has been a tendency to think that all feminist anti-
essentialist arguments could be united into a definitive rejection of the essen-
tialist position is that anti-essentialists accept certain theses that are
sometimes used by them to make what I call the core argument. Since I
show that the core argument does not entail anti-essentialism, it follows that
we need to look elsewhere for distinctively anti-essentialist arguments.
However, it is useful to begin with the core argument both because it serves
to camouflage real and important philosophical differences among feminist
anti-essentialists, and because it is useful for mapping the conceptual terrain
of essentialism in feminist theory.

I. THE CORE ARGUMENT

Anti-essentialists share two basic premises which are sometimes put together
into an argument against essentialism. The first premise is an equation of
essentialism and biologism. The second is that gender is socially constructed
rather than given by biology or nature.13 On the assumption that essences
are biologically determined or natural and that gender is socially constructed
and noř biologically determined, an anti-essentialist position concerning con-
cepts of gender follows. I call this argument the core argument.14
Proponents of the core argument provide (or might provide) the fol-
lowing support for the equation of essentialism and biologism. First, although
it is strictly speaking false to equate essentialism and biologism, biological

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descriptions are one way of specifying the essence of women, a way that has
predominated in patriarchal thought both in the past and today.15 The most
plausible reading of the anti-essentialist equation of biologism and essen-
tialism is to read it as a rejection of patriarchal conceptions of gender, which
have tended to be naturalistic. Feminists have very correctly been suspicious
of appeals to women's nature or biology because they have been, and are,
used to justify social and political injustice. For this reason, feminist theo-
rists like Simone de Beauvoir have urged that women are made and not born.
Thus the social constructivist view of gender is opposed to the naturalist
position, which is equated with essentialism. Second, the rejection of biol-
ogism (and with it essentialism) can charitably be read as endorsing another
view of concepts of gender, the social constructionist view. This is the idea
that concepts of gender are not given in biology or nature but are produced
by languages, cultures, ideologies, regimes of power, etc. Social construc-
tionist views of gender are uniformly anti-essentialist, although they vary
with regard to the question of whether or not there is anything at all given
prior to, or underlying, the process of social construction. 16 It is thus assumed
that the thesis that gender is socially constructed, in itself, entails a rejection
of essences.

Thus the issue at the heart of the core argument boils down to the ques-
tion of whether the social construction of gender categories is incompatible
with gender essentialism. We need to recall that gender essentialism consists
of two, related positions, which I called individual and generic essentialism.
The social construction of gender would be incompatible with gender essen-
tialism if the fact that gender is social (and not natural) and the fact that it is
constructed (rather than given) ruled out individual or generic essentialism.
But neither of these facts is incompatible with either form of gender essen-
tialism, and we can see this by example.
It is important to see that my argument by example is not intended to
establish either the truth of essentialism or the falsity of anti-essentialism.
Rather, I use the example of an artifact to show that the origin of an object
or category makes no difference to the question of whether or not it has an
essence. But, if this is so, then the fact that gender is socially constructed
rather than natural makes no difference to the question of whether or not it
has an essence. Or, in other words, the core argument fails, and the case
against essences must be made on other grounds.
Let us begin with generic essentialism. Human inventions like machines
are constructed; they are social objects and not biological givens. If there are
necessary features that an object must have in order to satisfy a machine kind
(the generic Machine), then social construction is compatible with generic
essentialism. Consider the Coke machine. It does not follow from the fact that
a Coke machine falls under a socially constructed category, rather than a nat-
ural one, that it lacks an essence. In order to fall under the genus Coke

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Machine, a machine must have the function of providing a Coke in exchange
for money. In order to count as a Coke machine, an object must have that
function.17 And, to consider individual essentialism, if an object is a Coke
machine, it necessarily has the Coke-machine function of providing a Coke
in exchange for money. So, it does not follow from the fact that the functional
essence of a Coke machine is not a natural or biological property that it is
not an essential property. Essentialism is compatible with social construction.
Similarly, it does not follow simply from the fact that gender is deter-
mined within and by a social context that gender essentialism is false.
Our Coke machine example shows that it does not follow from the fact
that women's essence is not biological (but rather - take your pick
- psychological, legal, pornographic, symbolic) that we do not have an
essence at all. Now, this result is modest. All I have established is that anti-
essentialists are wrong when they argue that, or assume that, the social con-
struction of gender is incompatible with gender essentialism. This leaves
wide open many questions about gender essentialism, including whether
there are other compelling arguments against it; whether there are any con-
siderations in favor of it; and a whole host of epistemological issues con-
cerning how gender essences might be specified, given the sorry spectacle
of patriarchal accounts of the essential feminine. In the remainder of this
paper I consider only the first of these three issues.
Even if the anti-essentialist grants that it is a mistake to think that the
social construction of gender is simply incompatible with essentialism, she
might argue that once we accept that gender is socially constructed and not
natural, made by us and not given by God or whomever, we can only for-
mulate what might be called (following Locke) a theory of nominal
essences;18 that is, a theory in which essences simply record the conventional
meanings of words with no claims about the connections between the ver-
bal meanings and real properties of things. Nominal essences are verbal
meanings which have neither causal nor explanatory power. They do not
explain or cause the behavior of the entity in question. Nominal essences do
not play an important classificatory role either, in that they do not purport to
"carve nature at the joints." Rather, they record a lexicon of "folk essences"
which are the meanings that people conventionally associate with words.
Nominal essences are located in language rather than in the world. And these
verbal essences are nothing more than a record of our variable human vocab-
ulary (or vocabularies). Indeed, some anti-essentialist feminists have urged
the utility of adopting a theory of nominal essences, which allows meaning-
ful talk of women (the subject matter of feminism) without being commit-
ted to real essences, i.e., any property or properties shared by women that
play an explanatory or classificatory role.19
The Coke machine example has indicated that the social construction of

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gender is compatible with essences. But what kind of essences? Does the
thesis of the social construction of gender provide a sufficient reason to
decide against real essences and in favor of nominal essences? If we consider
the Coke machine example again, we can see that the fact of social con-
struction does not entail that the essence of Coke machines is merely a mat-
ter of conventional linguistic meaning. Rather, there is a real functional
property that Coke machines must have - a Coke machine dispenses a Coke
in exchange for money - even though being a Coke machine is a thoroughly
social category. The functional property that is essential for being a Coke
machine satisfies all three characteristics that I suggested are associated with
real essences. We explain what a Coke machine can do by referring to its
essential functional property; we classify whether or not a machine is a Coke
machine by virtue of whether it has or lacks that property; and we identify
an individual Coke machine as one just if it has that property. Hence, there
is every reason to assign a real essence rather than a nominal essence to a
Coke machine even though a Coke machine is not a natural entity with a bio-
logical essence. Therefore, anti-essentialists need an additional argument to
move from the idea that gender concepts are socially constructed to a theory
of merely nominal essences. One way to read the anti-essentialist arguments
that I consider below is as an attempt to provide the missing link.
Let me sum up my discussion of the core argument. If the core argument
literally equates essentialism with biologism in its first premise, then it is
unsound because this premise is false. I have suggested, however, that the
premise really functions as a shorthand rejection of patriarchal theories of
women, in which case the weight of the argument falls on the other premise.
And I argued that anti-essentialism simply does not follow from the claim
that gender is socially constructed. The argument is invalid. Hence, we need
to consider what other reasons there are for adopting an anti-essentialist posi-
tion. And it is by looking at the other reasons and arguments that the differ-
ences among anti-essentialist feminists emerge.

II. THE EXCLUSION ARGUMENT

In her enormously influential book Inessential Woman , Elizabeth Spelm

argued that feminist theory has reproduced the exclusionary practices of
thinking in the western philosophical tradition:

I try to show that the notion of a generic "woman" functions in

feminist thought much the way the notion of generic "man" has
functioned in Western philosophy: it obscures the heterogeneity
of women and cuts off examination of the significance of such
heterogeneity for feminist theory and political activity.20

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Spelman shows, through an examination of the roots of exclusionary, cate-
gorical thinking in Plato and Aristotle, that certain classes of women and
men are erased. For example, in the distinctions Aristotle draws between
men and women and citizens and slaves, the class of women slaves is invis-
ible. The act of categorization, of deciding what distinctions matter, is itself
a political act because it reflects the interests and position of the categorizer.
And this point holds when applied to feminist theory itself. Spelman argues
in great detail, and persuasively, that when feminist theorists have made gen-
der relations their central topic of inquiry, and have not considered other
social classifications to be significant, they have tacitly been exploring the
gender relations of their own race (white) and class (middle). "[T]he real
problem has been how feminist theory has confused the condition of one
group of women with the condition of all."21 By making one pair of social
categories (gender) central to feminist theory, other significant categories are
marginalized. But the process of marginalization of race and class in femi-
nist theory, in fact, marginalizes certain women. And the purportedly gen-
eral theory of gender relations is, in fact, a theory of a particular class, race,
and even nationality of women. The allegedly universal theory of women is
really a theory of some women just as the allegedly universal theory of
human nature is really a theory of some humans (men).
Moreover, the error of taking one group of women to be women as such
is not simply an empirical one that can be easily corrected. Which women
are the subject of gender theory is not arbitrary at all, but reflects the privi-
leged position of the theorizer.
For essentialism invites me to take what I understand to be true
of me "as a woman" for some golden nugget of womanness all
women have as women; and it makes the participation of other
women inessential to the production of the story. How lovely:
the many turn out to be one, and the one that they are is me.22

According to Spelman, feminist essentialism not only excludes many groups

of women from explicit consideration in its theorizing, it creates a kind of
double-privilege in that it excludes many women from both the object of
inquiry and the role of inquirer, while at the same time placing other women
at center stage.
Spelman is committed to the core argument. Concepts of gender are
socially constructed. "But do we have gender identity in common? In one
sense, of course, yes: all women are women. But in another sense, no: not if
gender is a social construction and females become not simply women but
particular kinds of women."23 Spelman believes that essentialism is particu-
larly ill-suited to inquiry into concepts of gender because these concepts are
socially constructed rather than natural. But, as I argued in section I, the fact
that gender is socially constructed does not count against essentialism.

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Spelman needs another argument to move from the social construction of
gender to its merely nominal essence.
According to Spelman, not only is gender a social construction (rather
than a natural or biological category), but it is also a culturally relative con-
cept. In holding that gender is socially constructed Spelman follows a stan-
dard practice in feminist theory of differentiating between sex (being female),
which can be biologically defined, and gender (being a woman), which is cul-
turally defined. If gender is culturally defined, Spelman argues, then it must
make a difference to the concept of gender what culture the women in ques-
tion inhabit. Once we see that gender is culturally defined then we also see
that the race, the class, or the nationality of the woman will make a great dif-
ference to what being a woman means for her. The idea is that African-
American women and white women live in different cultures and that these
different cultures specify the meaning of gender differently. So, it is partic-
ularly ironic that feminist inquiries into gender marginalize factors like race
and class that are acknowledged to be social factors germane to concepts of
gender. But what kind of a difference does difference in culture make to the
concept of gender?
In order for Spelman's relativism to entail anti-essentialism it has to be
maintained in a strong sense. She must hold that there are no, or no signifi-
cant or interesting, features common to women across cultures. The cultural
relativity has to pertain to the core of gender concepts and not to their periph-
ery. For example, pointing to the difference between foot-binding in China
and cosmetic surgery in the United States does not establish significant cul-
tural relativity in notions of gender, because the differences are not as sig-
nificant as the similarity in the way that women mutilate themselves in pursuit
of a culturally defined notion of physical beauty. To put the point another
way, if the differences between foot-binding and cosmetic surgery are what
is meant by cultural relativity, then the essentialist feminist can accept that
concepts of gender are culturally relative.
The examples of cosmetic surgery and foot-binding, while certainly very
different procedures in very different cultures, nonetheless can both be
classed together as practices in which women mutilate themselves in order
to satisfy a culturally defined concept of beauty. I have suggested that they
are fundamentally alike although vastly different in detail. Their similarity
only emerges at a certain level of abstraction and generality; feet are not nor-
mally the object of cosmetic surgery in the west. Since Spelman is suspi-
cious of the philosopher's desire to classify by similarities and ignore
differences, she might object to this way of approaching the question of cul-
tural relativity. As a response it is important to consider how this level of
generality allows feminist theory to gain in explanatory power. When femi-
nists classify foot-binding and face-lifts together, as essentially the same,

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they obviously make no claim to "carve nature at the joints"; these are unde-
niably social customs. But they do enrich the explanatory power of their posi-
tion. We understand something important about women when we see both
practices in terms of their similarity. What kinds of abstraction and what
level of generality are appropriate in a given case is, of course, an on-going
question for both essentialist and anti-essentialist feminists.24
Does Spelman think of the social construction of gender concepts and
their cultural relativity in a strong sense that is incompatible with gender
essentialism, or does she hold a position that is compatible with it? Towards
the end of Inessential Woman Spelman states that "generalizations about
women may be possible"25 and she does not suggest that feminism abandon
gender studies. Her book is a cautionary tale about the political and intel-
lectual abuses of a facile essentialism rather than an argument against the
possibility of significant common characteristics among women. It invites
feminist theorists to listen to women who inhabit different cultures and to rec-
ognize the political and normative dimensions of the phrase "different cul-
tures." It argues eloquently for attention to be paid to the political, both with
regard to the objects of feminist inquiry and to the subjects who are inquir-
ers. Finally, however, the question of whether or not there are significant sim-
ilarities among women is left open as Spelman details the false assumptions,
projections, and power relations that accompany the investigation of gender
concepts.
The exclusion argument, on its own, does not provide the missing
argument that allows one to move from the social construction of gender
to its merely nominal essence. Even supplemented by a weak thesis of cul-
tural relativity, it does not provide the missing link. Hence, we can conclude
that the exclusion argument is compatible with either essentialism or anti-
essentialism. And Spelman herself leaves both possibilities open in that she
leaves open the question of whether or not there are significant cross-cultural
similarities among women. We must look elsewhere for the missing anti-
essentialist argument.

III. THE INSTABILITY ARGUMENT

In Transformations , Drucilla Cornell rehearses the exclusion argumen

against essentialism:

The political challenge to essentialism and naturalism is neces-

sary if we are to recognize that an appeal to the generic Woman
has erased the full significance of national and class differences
among women. . . . Thus, if we are to be just to the differences

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 in women's lives, we must conceive of the feminine in a non-
essentialist manner.26

In this passage the exclusion argument is paired with the premise of the core
argument that equates naturalism with essentialism. Later Cornell states the
other premise of the core argument. Cornell argues, in her criticisms of fem-
inist legal theorists Robin West and Catharine MacKinnon, that the identi-
fication of essence and nature is a mistake because gender concepts are
socially constructed and not natural.27 This part of Cornell's argument is
familiar from the exclusion argument and the core argument, and it helps to
explain why anti-essentialist positions tend to sound alike. Cornell's anti-
essentialism does not end here. And it is her further argument about the
nature of language that is characteristic of the instability argument, and it is
this argument that might serve to fill the gap between the core argument and
the exclusion argument (which are both compatible with essentialism) and
Cornell's anti-essentialism.

One important characteristic of Cornell's position is the way that she

conceives of essentialism - the target of her argument. Cornell assumes that
essentialism is a thesis about meanings or concepts rather than a theory about
objects and their properties. Her criticisms are largely directed, therefore,
against generic gender essentialism, as can be seen by her reference to "the
generic Woman." Since Cornell thinks that concepts (and not things) have
essences, and that essences reside in the meanings of words (if anywhere),
her arguments are directed against a view of language she thinks is mistaken.
It is also important to note at the outset that Cornell uses a perfectly general
argument about the nature of language in order to argue against gender essen-
tialism. Her argument, borrowed from Derrida, concerns language and there-
fore is not limited to a thesis about the social construction of certain concepts,
like gender. And it is not limited to pointing out that certain cultural con-
cepts, like gender, have been mistakenly thought to be fixed biological or
natural categories.28 Rather, Cornell ties essentialism to a false thesis about
language: "Essentialism, in the strong sense, demands a particular view of
language."29 Any essentialism, including gender essentialism, is flawed
because it requires a particular view of language, and that view of language
has been discredited.

The discredited view of language is that it is a transparent mirror of

meaning. The transparency of language amounts to the claim that language
can simply reflect and record, without distortion, the essences of things. This
requires the possibility of a purely descriptive, purely reflective language.
What is the correct view of language? Cornell characterizes it in a variety of
ways: Meaning is "open-ended"; language is "productive" and "prescriptive"
rather than bounded and descriptive.30 In a more theoretical moment, Cornell

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borrows an argument from Derrida to argue that the basic error is to think that
there is a rigid distinction and transparency between bedeutung (meaning) and
sinn (reference).31 Cornell situates this claim historically as borrowed from
Derrida's criticisms of Husserl's phenomenology, which she terms "the post-
modern deconstruction of the philosophical basis of phenomenology." What
is this critique and how does it apply to gender essentialism?
According to Derrida, Husserl's claim that the phenomenological
method could reveal the essences of things themselves relies on a view of lan-
guage as a mirror. It assumes that language can have a purely reflective func-
tion rather than a productive one. But, the fact that philosophy in its very
attempts to purify language uses metaphorical language, which is the
paradigm for Derrida of the productive power of language, dooms this enter-
prise. Language as a reflective medium and as a productive medium form a
seamless fabric that resists purification by theory:

We prescribe these properties as the essence of the thing because

that is how we know the thing, or more precisely how we think
the thing should be, because if we cannot simply give the thing
its proper name through pure expression, we are always pre-
scribing its properties.32

For Derrida, even essences supposedly composed of descriptive properties

always have a normative edge because of the inescapably prescriptive nature
of language. Not only is language prescriptive in that any language provides
rules for correct usage, but that correct usage itself is normative; it makes the
world conform to it. For example, suppose being maternal is part of what is
meant when we call someone a woman. That meaning is not simply descrip-
tive, because it contains a covert prescription for women: Be Maternal! It is
also productive in that the covert prescriptivity of language tends to produce
what it describes; it tends to produce maternal women as we aspire to be
what we ought to be. If essences are meant to be non-normative rather than
prescriptive, and descriptive of what is already there rather than creative,
then this view of language is ill-suited to essentialism.
Further, the fact that language is metaphorical allows for "slippage" of
meaning. There is no fixed, pseudo-objective (but really normative) essence
of women, because language is inherently open-ended and plastic. The pro-
ductivity of language through metaphor assures its continued fertility and
the instability of meaning, and these in turn assure us that "there can always
be reinterpretations of gender identity."33 But if essences are supposed to be
fixed, timeless, and universal meanings, the instability and productivity of
language make essentialism itself a mere metaphor.
The two theses about language that Cornell derives from Derrida are
that language is never merely an objective mirror but always has a norma-
tive dimension and that the meaning of words is open-ended and instable.

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Cornell draws out the anti-naturalistic consequences of this view of language;
in effect the Derridean theory of language requires that concepts like gender
are socially constructed rather than biologically based mirrors of nature.
"Derrida shows us how gender identity can not be reduced to a description
of its biological base."34 For if language is productive rather than descriptive,
then the meaning of gender is produced rather than described or recorded.
And, since Cornell tends to equate essentialism with naturalism, the
Derridean view of language is intrinsically anti-essentialist, as Cornell under-
stands the term. The idea that the social construction of meaning is some-
how inherently anti-essentialist is one which Cornell shares with Spelman,
and even when couched in a sophisticated theory of language, it runs into the
same objection I outlined above, namely, that even socially constructed enti-
ties can have essences; essences need not be biological.
However, Cornell's Derridean view of language provides another argu-
ment against essentialism. The idea that meanings are inherently (and inter-
nally) instable and open-ended does seem to allow little purchase for
essentialism. At any moment, in any particular social setting, the meaning of
gender terms is not fixed and determinate, but fluid and fertile. And this is
because all linguistic meaning is, not only socially constructed (and hence
normative), but also undetermined (and hence open to new interpretations). But
if the concept of women has literally no fixed meaning (even within a given
culture at a particular time), then essentialism (insofar as it is a theory about
the meaning of concepts) is not possible. Ultimately, then, it is the radical
instability of meaning in language that underlies Cornell's anti-essentialism.
I return to the radical-instability-of-meaning thesis in the conclusion.
Cornell's anti-essentialism is different from Spelman's in two ways.
First, it conceives of essentialism differently. For Cornell essences are always
linguistic and what could possibly have an essence is a linguistic item, a
meaning. But Spelman does not share this theoretical perspective. She is
interested in what can be learned by studying the empirical differences
among women. And when she queries whether or not there might be shared,
essential properties, she is thinking about the women studied as having those
properties. However, both Cornell's linguistic approach and Spelman's
empirical approach converge on the same essentialist villain: the generic
Woman. Ultimately, they are both concerned to criticize, on different
grounds, the generic essentialist conviction that there are certain properties
common to all women.

The second difference makes a difference. Spelman's exclusion argu-

ment is actually incompatible with Cornell's radical-instability-of-language
thesis. Spelman's view of the cultural relativity of gender, and indeed, the
exclusion argument itself, assumes that concepts of gender have (or could
have) different meanings in different cultures. Being a woman in China in the

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nineteenth century is different from being a woman in the United States in
the twentieth century. The exclusion argument, unlike the instability argu-
ment, assumes the stability of meaning of gender concepts within a culture,
and it generates anti-essentialism by noting that these concepts of gender
might be different from one another. Spelman does not argue that language
cannot be purified to mirror reality but rather claims that there may be many
realities of gender to be reflected in language, and the exclusion argument crit-
icizes the obliteration of those many realities in favor of one. The radical
instability of meaning of gender concepts denies them the stability that is
required in order to generate multiplicity of determinate gender categories at
the cultural level. But that there are multiple determinate gender categories
at the cultural level is a requirement of Spelman's exclusion argument. Hence,
although Cornell makes the exclusion argument, she cannot do so consis-
tently insofar as she holds to her own Heraclitean view of language. The
exclusion argument and the instability argument cannot be made together.

IV. THE POWER ARGUMENT

In Gender Trouble , Judith Butler makes a third argument against essentia

ism. The argument draws upon the work of Nietzsche and Foucault and pr
sents a metaphysical argument against essences by rejecting the notion of
substance, which Butler understands as a self-identical subject. Echoing
Nietzsche, Butler calls for a genealogy of the category of women: "To tra
the political operations that produce and conceal what qualifies as the jurid
cal subject of feminism is precisely the task of a feminist genealogy of th
category of women."35
A feminist genealogy of gender will accomplish several tasks. For
example, it will make the core argument by showing that gender concept
are socially constructed rather than natural or biological "givens," thereb
allowing for critique. It will also show how the social construction of gen
der happens; that it is an expression of power. Indeed, the latter point should
prompt self-criticism on the part of feminists, since their concepts of ge
der are subject to the same exclusionary vice as are the concepts they cri-
tique. In short, the genealogical approach appears to reinforce the exclusio
argument and to provide an engine (power) by which categories are social
constructed. Since Butler, like Spelman and Cornell, tends to equate essen-
tialism with biologism,36 the idea that gender categories are socially con
structed through "regimes of power" rather than being mirrors of biological
givens reiterates the failures of the core argument.
However, Butler also offers a deeper, metaphysical argument against
essentialism through her argument against the notion of substance. Butle
makes a curious connection between the metaphysics of substance - of a

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self-identical subject - and the notion of gender. What does gender have to
do with substance? Substances are described by Butler as self-identical sub-
jects. I understand her to mean that substances are subjects that persist
through time and that are the bearers of attributes, at least some of which are
intrinsic and not relational. This description fits the traditional Aristotelian
notion of substance. But, in this traditional account, gender - being a man
or a woman - is an attribute had by some substances. Yet Butler sometimes
speaks as if gender itself were a substance and indicates that her argument
is directed against the substance, gender:

A political genealogy of gender ontologies, if it is successful,

will deconstruct the substantive appearance of gender into its
constitutive acts and locate and account for those acts within the
compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social
appearance of gender.37

Although Butler is not clear or explicit on this question, there are two con-
nections between her critique of substance and the notion of gender. In the
first place, if the metaphysics of substance is rejected, then so is the endur-
ing subject-attribute model itself; the model according to which gender is an
attribute. In this way, an attack on the metaphysics of substance is also an
attack on the framework in which gender appears as an attribute. Second,
Butler thinks that all stable systems of categorization echo the metaphysics
of substance (even if what is categorized is an attribute in that system)
because they appear to be substance-like, i.e., stable, fixed, enduring. So it
is not that gender is literally an Aristotelian substance but rather that the
metaphysics of substance permeates our way of thinking about gender.
Hence, an attack on the substance way of thinking will be also an attack on
gender, viewed as an enduring, determinate entity.
The idea of substance that Butler appeals to is the traditional one of an
entity that has a unified, single identity at a time and that persists with that
identity through time. Through her discussion of the work of Michel Haar,
Butler ties the metaphysics of substance to the Aristotelian distinction
between substance and attribute. In contrast to Aristotle, however, for Butler,
the distinction between substance and attribute does not "reveal or represent
some true order of things."38 Instead, the distinction reflects a faith in gram-
mar, that is, a faith that the grammatical distinction between subject and pred-
icate mirrors the ontological distinction between substance and attribute.39
If the distinction between substance and attribute is a mere myth, or a false
projection of grammar onto ontology, then there is no reason to accept the
ontology of substance. Further, this ontology supports one version of essen-
tialism, which identifies substances as the enduring subjects of attributes and
which distinguishes attributes into essential and accidental.40 Without the
"fiction" of substances, the Aristotelian version of essentialism cannot gain
purchase.

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 A genealogy does not merely undermine the "giveness" of categories at
the level of metaphysics, however; it also provides an explanation of the myth
in particular cases. After all, since the idea of substance is a myth, we need
some explanation of why gender is thought of in a substantial way. In the case
of gender, Butler thinks that the political reasons for the "substantializing"
of gender are to be found in the regimes of power that institute and maintain
heterosexism. "The internal coherence or unity of either gender, man or
woman, thereby requires both a stable and oppositional heterosexuality. That
institutional heterosexuality both requires and produces the univocity of each
of the gendered terms that constitutes the limit of gendered possibilities
within an oppositional, binary gender system."41 The mechanism by which
the fictional essentializing of gender occurs is the constellation of institu-
tions and the loci of power that constitute heterosexuality. The mechanism
of power is that complex web of legal, medical, and social forces that regu-
lates and maintains heterosexuality.
Butler's feminist genealogy of gender operates at two levels. She offers
an explanation and causal mechanism for the dispensations of power that
regulate and constitute gender as it appears today. This is the heterosexism
explanatory hypothesis. At a deeper level, however, Butler explains the philo-
sophical tendency to congeal and reify categories by reference to the meta-
physics of substance. The genealogy of gender categories provides an
analysis of a symptom of a more serious, general condition - the metaphys-
ical disease. Hence Butler's rejection of the metaphysics of substance. Both
theses are required for Butler's position because one could accept the het-
erosexism hypothesis and still retain the idea of real, substantive genders
beneath or "before" or "after" the operations of social construction. In crit-
icizing certain feminist theorists, who make this error by postulating an
authentic sexuality, Butler comments:
But the quarrel seems also to turn on the articulation of a tem-
poral trope of a subversive sexuality that flourishes prior to the
imposition of a law, after its overthrow, or during its reign as a
constant challenge to its authority. Here it seems wise to rein-
voke Foucault who, in claiming that sexuality and power are
coextensive, implicitly refutes the postulation of a subversive or
emancipatory sexuality which could be free of the law.42

As Butler's criticism of Wittig's claim for the authenticity of lesbian sexu-

ality shows, the basic error of this position is that it retains a faith in the meta-
physics of substance in the person of an authentic form of sexuality that lies
beneath the machinations of power. These positions are mistaken just inso-
far as they retain a humanistic attachment to essentialism about sexuality,
which is to say, an attachment to the metaphysics of substance.
Although Butler underlines the way in which concepts of gender have
served to exclude certain groups - and the heterosexism hypothesis is intended

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to explain how that happens - there is a crucial difference between her under-
standing of exclusion and Spelman's. Spelman makes the exclusion argument
in the hopes of creating a feminist theory that does not exclude. But Butler's
power argument is committed to the view that theory, including feminist the-
ory, as an expression of power, necessarily excludes. "Feminist critique ought
also to understand how the category of 'women', the subject of feminism is
produced and constrained by the very structures of power through which
emancipation is sought."43 For Spelman, the moral of the exclusion argument
is that feminist theorists ought not to repeat the sins of the fathers. For Butler,
there is no moral to be drawn, except perhaps the observation that feminist the-
orists must surely repeat the sins of their fathers, given the connection between
theory and power. Spelman's understanding of theory is not compatible with
Butler's, because she understands the connection between theory and power
as contingent (and hence as open to variation) while Butler understands it as
necessary (and hence as immune to remedy).44
Butler's position is also not compatible with Cornell's radical instabil-
ity thesis concerning language. The instability argument rejects essences by
arguing against a certain picture of language, as a mirror of reality. The power
argument argues against essentialism by rejecting the metaphysics of sub-
stance. In principle these two arguments could be seen as compatible and as
reinforcing each other. Cornell's argument does to linguistic forms of essen-
tialism precisely what Butler's does to realist versions of essentialism.
Indeed, it is possible that their proponents see them in this way. However,
there is an important divergence in the way that each sees the social con-
struction of gender. For the instability argument, the meaning of gender is,
at a given time, fluid and indeterminate. Cornell's Heraclitean view of lan-
guage, together with her view that essentialism is primarily a linguistic or
conceptual matter, makes essences impossible because the meaning of gen-
der terms is fluid. For the power argument, on the other hand, the socially
constructed meaning of gender is fully determinate at a given time; indeed,
its stability is enforced. Butler thinks that gender terms lack essences because
there are no intrinsic properties that constitute gender; no essential proper-
ties and no substances. The genders are produced by regimes of power. But
what is so produced has a determinate, fixed meaning at a given time.45

V. CONCLUSION

In this paper I have argued that the appearance of a unified anti-essential

position in feminist theory is an illusion. The illusion is fostered by the c
argument, whose premises are widely accepted by anti-essentialists. Howeve
because the core argument turns out not to entail anti-essentialism, it cann

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serve to unite anti-essentialist feminists. Further, the exclusion argument,
which is also frequently made by anti-essentialists, turns out not to decide the
issue between essentialism and anti-essentialism either. Moreover, since the
exclusion argument is actually incompatible with both the instability argu-
ment and the power argument, it cannot be used to bolster them.
Feminists interested in the question of essentialism are therefore left with
two arguments to consider: the instability argument and the power argument.
These arguments cannot be made together, however, because they argue from
incompatible premises to their anti-essentialist conclusions about gender. The
instability argument attacks a linguistic version of essentialism according to
which essences are meanings of words. And because of the theory of the rad-
ical instability of meaning, the meaning of gender is Heraclitean, always and
continuously instable even within a given culture at a given time. In contrast,
the power argument is directed against a metaphysical theory of essences as
part of the theory of substance. Essences are not linguistic items but the real
properties that secure the identity and persistence of substance. The target of
the power argument, therefore, is not meaning but substance. And, even
though the idea of substance, of a persistent subject, is undermined by Butler,
gender is nonetheless a stable category within a given culture. Even if it lacks
an internal, intrinsic stability, it endures because it is enforced by regimes of
power - medical, legal, and political. For Butler, gender is like a corrupt polit-
ical regime that has no internal strength but is kept in power by the police,
the army, and the law.
Let me close with a few critical observations concerning these two argu-
ments. My criticisms in both cases could also be read as requests for further
explanation and justification. For both arguments, in my view, make assump-
tions that are neither fully stated nor supported. Without amplification, then,
neither the instability argument nor the power argument succeeds in making
the case for anti-essentialism in feminist theory.
The instability argument assumes that essences are pure meanings of
some sort. It is only on the assumption that meanings have essences that
Derrida' s attempt to de-purify them could count as an argument against
essentialism. But this linguistic definition of essences imposes limits on the
range of Cornell's argument. Because Cornell assumes that essences reside
in meaning, her arguments, even if they are satisfactory, have limited reach;
they leave entirely unscathed essentialism as I defined it at the beginning of
this paper. But any argument that purports to defeat essentialism must address
Aristotelian essentialism.
Further, there is an important question concerning what moral about lin-
guistic essentialism should be drawn from the observation that language is
normative and productive rather than purely reflective. Cornell thinks the
moral is that essentialism is impossible because it requires a mirror language.
But this assumption is never justified. Why can't I grant that our language is

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riddled with metaphor and norms and also claim that "Coke machine" has
an essential, functional meaning? After all, Cornell is right. There is a nor-
mative element to the meaning of the words 'Coke machine' ; Coke machines
ought to perform their function. Being a Coke machine is a normative iden-
tity. And, Cornell is right that the words 'Coke machine' have a metaphori-
cal use as well; for example, one could use them as a metaphor for America.
Cornell seems to think that if language is normative and metaphorical, then
it also cannot be used to state essences. But this claim requires explanation
and justification; it is not self-evident.46 Why can't linguistic expressions
have multiple uses, as indeed they seem to have?
The problem with the power argument is that it really does not provide
us with any reason to reject the metaphysics of substance. The idea of self-
identical, persisting subjects, Butler suggests, is a linguistic fallacy. It results
from taking the subject-predicate structure of a sentence as revealing the ontol-
ogy of the world, an ontology of substances and attributes (with essential
attributes a subset of a substance's attributes). It is difficult to tell how seriously
Butler takes the "faith-in-grammar" explanation of the metaphysics of sub-
stance. From the point of view of someone like myself, who has worked exten-
sively on the Aristotelian texts on substance, the "faith-in-grammar" diagnosis
is itself a myth, a backward projection on the Greeks of the twentieth-
century's linguistic turn in philosophy.47 There is simply no evidence in
Aristotle of an inference from grammar to world, and there is abundant evi-
dence of other origins for his theory of substance. So, we might conclude that
there is no reason to accept Butler's genealogy of substance.
However, that conclusion is too quick. The "faith-in-grammar" geneal-
ogy of the metaphysics of substance is not meant to capture Aristotle's
account of its origin. Rather, it is proposed as a diagnosis of how it was that
the metaphysics of substance originated given that Aristotle's own account
is not authoritative. So, we cannot simply point to the textual evidence that
undermines the myth, since it was not derived from that evidence. But we
can ask that the "myth of grammar" be made a believable myth. And that
requires that Butler explain what function it serves or why it is useful; no
myth survives unless it does important work. And on this issue Butler is
silent. Her central argument against essentialism, therefore, rests upon a
hypothesis that she has given us no reason to believe.48
In an early paper, Butler presents much the same view of gender as hav-
ing an "illusory character of substantial and self-identical reality," and the
illusion is again tied to grammar; we mistakenly think of gender as a noun
rather than as a verb. Although she offers us no more reason to believe the
myth-of-grammar origin for substance, she does provide a normative reason
to question the substantial view of gender. She asks, "But what if this sub-
stantial sex does not exist, and our experience of gender, pleasure, and desire
is nothing other than the set of acts, broadly construed, that constitute an

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identity rather than reflect one."49 Here, Butler rejects a substantial view of
sex and gender primarily on moral grounds; on the grounds that thinking
about them as substances, anchored by essential cores, is thinking about them
as sources of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. While this considera-
tion does not make the myth of grammar more believable, it does provide an
independent, ethical reason to question gender essentialism and the way it
can function as a source of norms. This is a concern that I share, although I
think we need to focus, not on gender essentialism, but on the way that it can
function to generate norms.
The purpose of this paper was to evaluate critically anti-essentialist argu-
ments in feminist theory. I was particularly concerned to disentangle several
strands of anti-essentialist thinking so that we could more clearly see what
the issues are. Having expressed my reservations about the persuasiveness
of three important anti-essentialist arguments, however, it is time for me to
confess to doubts about feminist essentialist projects.
One set of reservations comes from the anti-essentialist literature. First,
as I mentioned above, Spelman's book is a very effective catalogue of the lim-
its and failures of essentialist thinking about women within feminist theory.
Along the same lines, I wonder what is gained in feminist thinking if we
have to ascend to a high level of abstraction and generality in order to find
our common attributes in a political climate that is only too happy to iden-
tify the essential feminine and use it against us. Maintaining gender essen-
tialism is clearly a risky business that has the potential to divide rather than
to unite women.
Finally, however, my deepest worries about gender essentialism are not
these. I think that feminists need to reconsider the adequacy of the basis on
which the genders are thought to differ essentially, where that difference is
connected with the normative issues that are important for us. In part this is
a straightforward empirical task. But in part it is a conceptual one. Feminist
philosophers need to switch the focus from the quite general question of the
truth of essentialism and its importance or danger for feminist thought to the
question of gender essentialism and its relevance to the normative theoreti-
cal tasks that are central to feminist theory. That is, even if it turns out that
there are "boy genes" and "girl genes" the question for feminists is whether
or to what extent that fact has any relevance whatsoever to the normative
questions that lie at the heart of our enterprise.
One striking fact about gender essentialism, historically, is the way in
which it has been used as a grounding for the inequality and oppression of
women. Rather than use this fact to inspire us against essentialism in general,
I think that it should direct our critical attention to another target, which is the
connection between what we essentially are (if anything) and what we should
be. The unstated premise that feminists should examine critically, and reject,
is that our norms and values can be "read off' of whatever characteristics or

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attributes we might share insofar as we are women. For it seems to me that
neither necessary biological attributes (if any) nor necessary psychological
traits (if any) settle issues like whether or not we ought to aspire to equality
with men, or what a just arrangement of power might look like, or what an eth-
ical life is. For feminists, I advocate a healthy skepticism towards the idea that
the important questions of our moral life will be determined to any significant
extent by the truth of either essentialism or anti-essentialism.50

NOTES

1 . "In a Word. Interview" in The Essential Difference , ed. Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 160. 1 was drawn to Spivak's pronouncement
because it is a paradox. Understood in one way, it is false. Who could think that "the
house of philosophy" has nothing to say about essentialism, given Kripke! However, if
the debate about essentialism is framed as it has been by feminists, the statement is true,
even given Kripke. I also find the notion of "the house of philosophy," and the question
of who lives there, deeply interesting.
2. Revealing a theory's hidden essentialism functions as a critical trope in Judith Butler's
Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990). For a discussion of the way in which
charges of essentialism have been used and misused in feminist argument, see Diana Fuss,
Essentially Speaking: Feminism , Nature, and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989),
ch. 1.
3. For a discussion of these three functions of essence in connection with Aristotelian essen-
tialism, see my Substance and Essence in Aristotle (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1989).
4. John Dupré has argued against real essences in biology on the grounds that they serve to
preclude adequate empirical inquiry into biological laws. He doubts the explanatory value
of essences. In particular, Dupré questions the explanatory value of gender essentialism,
and he argues that essentialist concepts of sex and gender both fail to meet the require-
ments of an adequate empiricism in biology. The point about explanatory value is that rel-
atively little is explained by gender alone when what is at issue is particular behaviors in
particular cultures (like foot-binding in China). Essentialist claims about gender tend to
undercut an adequate empiricism precisely because they falsely attribute to gender a sig-
nificant explanatory role (e.g., of the practice of foot-binding). Moreover essentialist
claims systematically foreclose the empirical question of variation, thereby violating the
empiricist spirit. Questions of explanatory value and the issue of appropriate levels of
abstraction and generality are undoubtedly important questions for feminist theorists.
However, I don't think that it is essentialism itself that is responsible for the shortcom-
ings Dupré discusses, but rather poor science. See John Dupré, "Sex, Gender, and
Essence," in Midwest Studies in Philosophy XI: Studies in Essentialism , ed. Peter A.
French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986). In any case, nothing could be further from the spirit of the anti-
essentialist arguments I discuss than Dupré's robust empiricism.
5. Another, related question is whether being a woman is an essential property of mine. I
do not find this a central focus of criticism or even of discussion among feminist anti-
essentialists. It does come into peripheral sight for those anti-essentialists who want to
deny the thesis of gender essentialism by pointing out that gender does not have any spe-
cial claim over race and class in forming a person's identity.
6. The two ways of stating gender essentialism are not, strictly speaking, equivalent. One is
committed to individual objects with necessary properties; the other is not. Even if there
are properties necessary for belonging to the kind Woman, they need not be necessary to

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 any individual. Anything that belongs to the kind Red Things must be red. But being red
need not be an essential property of those objects. For the purposes of my paper, how-
ever, this difference is not significant, since anti-essentialists treat the two as equivalent.
7. The question of whether essences are primarily individual or universal, whether we should
think about my individual essence or the species essence, is one which has sparked debate
from Aristotle onwards. For a discussion of this issue in Aristotle, see my Substance and
Essence in Aristotle , ch. 5. Clearly there is a close connection between at least some of
my essential properties and the kind of entity I am.
8. I have tried in this paper to be as comprehensive as possible in my consideration of anti-
essentialist arguments in feminist thought. Even if I have missed an argument, my con-
clusion still holds for the theories I do discuss, which I believe are important and
representative.
9. Elizabeth V. Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1988).
10. For Drucilla Cornell's position, see her Transformations (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Elizabeth Grosz argues along the same lines in "Ontology and Equivocation: Derrida's
Politics of Sexual Difference" (manuscript).
1 1 . Butler's argument is in Gender Trouble.
12. The locus classicus of this criticism is Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider (Freedom, Calif.:
Crossing Press, 1984).
13. In this paper I am using biology and nature interchangeably, even though there are dif-
ferences between the two. For a useful discussion of this distinction, as well as other
terms associated with the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate, see Elizabeth Grosz,
"Sexual Difference and the Problem of Essentialism," in The Essential Difference.
14. I present evidence that Spelman, Cornell, and Butler adhere to the core argument later in
this paper.
15. The list runs from Aristotle to Freud. Feminist historians of philosophy cite Aristotle's
attempt to provide a biological basis for the difference between men and women in his
theory of pneuma. See Nancy Tuana's "Aristotle and the Politics of Reproduction," in
Engendering Origins , ed. Bat- Ami Bar On (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994). Freud
seems to fall in the same camp with his emphasis on the central role of genitalia in estab-
lishing gender identity. Today scientists are busy trying to find differences in the brain to
explain certain differences between men and women, e.g., in math ability.
1 6. Both Butler and Wittig are anti-essentialist feminist theorists, but Wittig posits an authen-
tic form of sexuality underlying the distortions of social construction. See Butler's dis-
cussion of Wittig in Gender Trouble , 16-22.
17. A broken Coke machine has that function, even though it is incapable of performing it.
18. I have included this section on Lockean nominal essences because some feminists have
urged the adoption of a theory of nominal essences in part because of its compatibility
with the social construction of gender. What I want to establish here is that the social con-
struction of gender does not entail that the only viable theory of essences for feminists is
Lockean, whatever other merits it might have. For a discussion of Lockean essences and
feminism, see Naomi Schor's introduction to The Essential Difference.
19. See Diana Fuss, op. cit., 4-5.
20. Spelman, op. cit., lx.
21. Ibid., 4.
22. Ibid., 159.
23. Ibid., 113; see also 134, 136, 172.
24. Two examples of recent feminist writing on diverse subjects in which the question of gen-
erality is a central concern are Susan Bordo, "'Material Girl': The Effacements of
Postmodern Culture," in The Female Body , ed. Laurence Goldstein (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1991), and Marilyn Frye, "The Possibility of Feminist

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 Theory," in her Wiltful Virgin (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1992). I suspect that both
of these writers consider themselves to be of the anti-essentialist persuasion; nonetheless
they both think that some form of generalizations about women are fundamental to the
political project of feminism.
25. Spelman, op. cit., 183.
26. Cornell, op. cit., 6.
27. See ibid., 63, 67, 69, 88, 98.
28. Hence, I believe that Cornell is mistaken when she says, "Yet it is precisely essentialist
and naturalist accounts of the feminine that have been philosophically rejected as incon-
sistent with 'postmodern' philosophy" (ibid., 63). Biological and naturalist accounts of
women have been rejected by feminists working from a wide variety of philosophical
perspectives. So, while it is true that a postmodernist like Cornell rejects biological essen-
tialism, she does not reject it precisely. Cornell rejects with equal precision nonbiologi-
cal essentialist accounts of women like the account of Catharine MacKinnon's. The
falseness of essentialism does not follow from the rejection of biological or naturalist
accounts of women, and Cornell's anti-essentialism is perfectly general and not precisely
directed against them.
29. Ibid., 67.
30. See ibid., 15, 67, 69.
31. See ibid., 64-67.
32. Ibid., 69.
33. Ibid., 10.
34. Ibid., 11.
35. Butler, op. cit., 5.
36. Ibid., 30.
37. Ibid., 33.
38. Ibid., 20.
39. The genealogy that Butler inherits from Haar is that the substance-attribute distinction
really originated in language in the distinction made between subject and predicate in
some languages. The purpose of a genealogy is, in part at least, démystification. Once we
see that the metaphysics of substance rests upon grammar, it will loose its grip upon us.
In this, Butler is certainly correct. However, since Butler gives us no reason to think that
the metaphysics of substance did originate from a grammatical distinction, the geneal-
ogy fails to be persuasive. For an alternative account of the Aristotelian metaphysics of
substance, see my Substance and Essence in Aristotle.
40. Butler's criticism of the metaphysics of substance leaves untouched other forms of essen-
tialism like mereological essentialism.
41. Butler, op. cit., 22.
42. Ibid., 29.
43. Ibid., 2.
44. It is important to distinguish between Butler's position on the necessary connection
between philosophical discourse and power, which I have just been discussing, and her
more positive position concerning the possibility of escaping, through invention, rigid
gender identities. Butler's thought on the possibility of emancipation from socially con-
structed gender roles draws on Sartre and Beauvoir and the central role they give to choice
in constructing the self in an on-going project. It is not at all clear to me, however, that
the way in which Foucault sees sexuality as a socially constructed manifestation of power
is compatible with the existentialist idea of choice and the radical invention of the self.
For Butler's argument, see her "Gendering the Body: Beauvoir's Philosophical
Contribution," in Women, Knowledge, and Reality , ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall
(Boston: Unwin Human, 1989) and "Variations on Sex and Gender," in Feminism as
Critique , ed. Drucilla Cornell and Seyla Benhabib (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

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 Press, 1987). Whether or not Butler has a coherent emancipatory project that combines
Foucault and Beauvoir is a separate issue from her view of the intermingling of theory
and power. Her recent writing shows that they are necessarily connected.
45. My colleague Bill de Vries suggested that Butler's view of gender can be illustrated with
the example of money. At any given time, money has a determinate value that is fixed
extrinsically; over time that value can fluctuate.
46. Cornell thinks that it is precisely the normative and productive features of language that
allow feminism to skirt a deterministic picture of gender identity. These features of lan-
guage make possible her project of ethical feminism - an anti-essentialist, creative pro-
ject of making the feminine anew. The idea that we feminists can, using the normative
and productive features of language, extend and create novel gender identities, while
attractive, rests upon yet another Cartesian assumption about meaning. The assumption
is that meaning is a function of our conscious intentions rather than determined by forces
beyond our control or what we might be unaware of. To show the implausibility of this
assumption just consider whether the term 'man' refers generically to human beings if
the man using it says so.
47. In fact, some Aristotle scholars interpret his thought (approvingly) as a metaphysics that
reflects the structure of language. This is largely because of the way that they interpret
his dialectical method as analogous to the procedures of ordinary language philosophy.
I cannot discuss this approach to Aristotle here except to say that its purpose and effect
are entirely different from Butler's.
48. My point is not that there could be no function for the myth of substance but merely that
Butler must provide one in her argument.
49. Butler, "Gendering the Body," 259.
50. I am very grateful for Sally Haslanger's wonderful, detailed editorial comments on an ear-
lier draft of this paper. Mark Okrent helped with the paper and with Anna. Drew Christie,
who remains unconvinced, gave me the reaction of an anti-essentialist to ponder, and Bill
de Vries was "picky" in a useful way.

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