Author: Wang Yao
Women and Power: A Manifesto is an adaptation of two lectures by Mary Beard. At more than a hundred pages, it looks like a booklet, and precisely because it is concise and easy to carry, it is likely to become a "small object" that changes the daily life of readers. Although the book's subtitle suggests that it is a manifesto, Mary Beard does not shout some overzealous slogans, but declares that the subjects she cares about are extremely complex, and that what she wants to do is not to stir up shouts but to inspire thought.
The main topic discussed in the book is female aphasia in the public sphere. This aphasia is clearly not a free choice for women, but because in a patriarchal society, women as "absolute others" cannot obtain the same legal subject identity as men. Beard uses this as a starting point to analyze how and why culture silences women. Beard, a classically educated man, searched for answers to his questions by going back to the roots of Western culture. At a time when the discourse of modernity and postmodernity is rife, it may seem questionable whether appeal to the classical is a good approach, but it has to be said that looking back at the classical examples found by Beard in the current cultural situation, they are eloquent and persuasive, and form a certain intertextual effect with current cultural events.
Beard begins by recalling a famous case from three thousand years ago, from a scene in Homer's Odyssey, in which his son Tramacus taught his mother Penelope that public speaking is a man's business, and that it is the duty of a woman to go back upstairs, to her room, to the loom. In epic narratives, the shaping of feminine traits depends on the education and reprimand of men (or even a boy), while the growth of a man and the cultivation of his masculine traits come from speaking openly and dominating in gender relations and using power, i.e. self-talk and preventing women from speaking. Once this scanning perspective is opened, it will be found that there are countless similar narratives from classical to contemporary. Clearly, scanning these narratives is not Beard's main job, she is more concerned about the relationship between these narratives and women's aphasia in the public field in contemporary social culture, emphasizing that her intention is to make a diachronic examination of women's voices and the public sphere of speech, debate and commentary, and to trace it back to the distant past.
From the classical to the present, Beard collected centuries-old evidence, citing examples of women's aphasia and ridicule, ultimately pointing to a sharp diagnosis: it is not what you say that provokes the attack, but the fact that you are speaking. The importance of this diagnosis is to make introspective women realize that even if they speak, no one will hear them. Women's voices, whether in themselves or in what they say, are not accepted and loved in the public arena. Beard proves to us that these attitudes and prejudices, which have been deeply rooted in antiquity and are widespread in history, culture, and language, scattered throughout the literary narrative. Thus, Beard argues that women's public speech is repulsive and reprimanded because public speech has become an important attribute in defining men in classical times. Therefore, any woman who dares to invade the male realm and probe masculine traits can invite relentless repression. Beard provides us with a perspective worth referencing, in which we can see that in many current literary, film and television narratives, women's cries often occupy a large amount of space, as opposed to men's sanity, small words and even angry rage.
Having made a "diagnosis" that women say is not accepted, where is the "prescription" in reality? Beard analyzes the "hermaphrodite" scheme. In the public arena, women who try to make their voices heard always adopt "like a man" approach, which in Beard's view does not touch the essence of the problem. In traditional cultural structures, we are not used to seeing women as authority figures or having any expertise outside the family. Beard's core proposition is that if women are perceived as inappropriate for current power structures, then those structures should be redefined, rather than requiring women to submit to them. So, she says, "we need to raise a sense of reflection on what an 'authoritative voice' is and how authority in the voice is constructed." ”
As a classicist, and like many feminist scholars (woolf, Beauvoir, Militt, Shawalt, Toly Moy, etc.), Beard discovered the power of literature. Literature as a medium that drives change in consciousness seems to have a powerful persuasive power and influence. It can be said that woolf's discussion of the issue of "women's writing" officially opened up the study of feminism in the field of literature, and inspired feminist literary theory and literary criticism in the mid-to-late 20th century and even the present. At the beginning of "A Room of My Own," Woolf describes a woman being barred from entering in front of a college library. It is a highly tense metaphor that points to the long-standing reality of women and their image in literature. At the same time, through this scene, Woolf introduces the issue of "women and fiction". In her view, the literary expression of the novel presents a rupture between history and literature, and the way to connect this rupture is to reposition women on the fringes of history and literature. On this level, Beard continues Woolf's thinking path in Women and Power, from examining the image of women in literature to how women speak (write) in reality and the meaning of speech (writing).
Beard and Woolf are similar in that, despite their speeches (or even manifestos), they frankly fail to give good words or fixed conclusions, but instead lead the problem to a broader and deeper dimension in their arguments, that is, to try to dissect how the mechanisms of silence rooted in Western social culture are constructed and operated, and how women are excluded from the public sphere.
In addition, both Woolf and Beard are trying to explore and respond to a question that has been haunting feminist literary criticism for years, namely, whether there are women speaking (women writing), and if so, how should women speak (writing)? As Shawalt puts it, in Woolf, advocating for hermaphroditism is a "strategic retreat" that helps her escape from the feminine nature that makes her miserable, without colliding head-on with it. Through various examples, Beard presents that women's right to speak in the public sphere is closely linked to political power, and women in high positions of power often have to behave like men if they want to make speech more effective. It may be a practical strategy, but Beard argues that it's not worth affirming, and she draws the problem to a critique of power itself: "You can't easily put women in an architecture that's already masculine coded, you have to change the architecture itself." Changing the architecture itself means thinking about power in a completely different way. Beard offers the inspiration that, rather than arguing about the nature of women's discourse (femininity, female experience), try to reflect and change the architecture itself.
From Woolf to Beard, we can see that the resistance to women's speech has never been the female identity itself, and the controversial femininity that seems to be uncertain, or the questionable female experience that seems to be unable to determine reliability, but the rigid and biased cultural coding architecture. Women and Power reminds us that when women enter the realm of power, they learn from their male predecessors and learn to become a traditional enforcer of power, as do men. Obviously, it's not just "women" who need to be liberated from prejudice, but it's worth noting that at the heart of Beard's Manifesto is the more urgent need for women to be liberated from this structural bias.
(The author is Wang Yao, a lecturer at the College of Literature of Lanzhou University, and the department of literature is a phased achievement of the "Special Funding Project for Basic Scientific Research Business Expenses of Central Universities (18LZUJBWZY086)". ）
Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel