"Feminism and Apocalyptic Thought: Strange Bedfellows"

Marin Lorenson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

In the classroom, in popular culture and in suburbia, to call someone or something 'extreme' is enough to completely eliminate his, her or its credibility. 'Extreme' has become a derogatory comment. Today, I will be dealing with two extreme depictions of feminism; one from John Irving's novel The World According to Garp and the other Catherine MacKinnon's essay "Sexuality." It is important to keep in mind that some have argued that the extreme views of any movement for social change are important because they push boundaries and make other voices of the movement sound more reasonable (thus gaining more support).

In my dealings both these works, I want to avoid falling into the defensive trap. While feminists are negatively portrayed in the Irving's novel as extreme, anti-male, and apocalyptic, I want to get past a knee-jerk dismissal of the novel and get at Irving's commentary on the feminist movement because I believe that it can provide valuable insights into feminism. Similarly, I will not automatically run away from MacKinnon's essay because her feminism is so radical. The rhetoric in which MacKinnon phrases her arguments is apocalyptic, and she serves here as my "real" example.

What I find most important is that 'extreme' is not automatically a dismissal. I do not want to lose track of this position because it can work as a counter-text to some of my arguments within this paper. Both of these depictions are compelling, they seduce their reader, if only momentarily, into believing their portrait of feminism. I can only speak for myself in reporting reactions to these texts. I found "Sexuality" persuasive because MacKinnon does not hesitate to point her finger at those responsible for the sexual violence that terrorizes women in all walks of life. Similarly, Irving is successful in presenting a feminist movement that I would hesitate to involve myself in.

My aim is to examine the ways in which apocalyptic discourse is generated around issues of reproductive freedom in both The World According to Garp and Catherine MacKinnon's essay "Sexuality." Specifically, I will be examining MacKinnon's characterization of men and Irving's characterization of feminism to examine what apocalypticism promotes within these representations when gender is at issue. This becomes especially useful today as women's reproductive rights are so fraught with debate and inflamed rhetoric over issues like abortion and genetic engineering. My goal is to examine how apocalypticism in both these representations of feminism can be potentially dangerous.

It is also important to stress that both MacKinnon and Irving=s versions of feminism are depictions. Much of feminist thought today does not encourage self-mutilation or anti-male sentiments. Feminism today is a very diverse discipline with a plentitude of different, sometimes cacophonous, voices.

First, to briefly summarize The World According to Garp (some of you may remember the film starring Robin Williams and Glenn Close): The novel begins with Garp's mother, Jenny, a progressive-minded nurse in a Boston hospital during World War II. Jenny decides that she wants a child without the constraints that accompany the traditional method of obtaining offspring: aka, forget the father, wedding vows and the white picket fence. Jenny has one patient in her Intensive Care ward with some peculiar habits. Garp's father is an airman who was wounded in action, his vegetative state brings him to reside in Jenny's ward. As a result of his wound, his mental capacities have become reduced to those of a baby. What he still has are constant and unabashed erections. Put one and one together and there's Garp, Jenny's no-strings attached son.

After giving birth, Jenny takes a position at a private school as school nurse and raises Garp. When Garp comes of age, the pair travels to Europe to pursue writing careers. There Jenny writes her only book, Sexual Suspects, which becomes an international best seller, inspiring the feminist revolution. Garp, on the other hand, begins a prolific writing career that provides him with a modest following. He marries his childhood sweetheart, Helen, and begins a family as his mother's achieves fame. Jenny's followers are mainly a group of feminist called the Ellen Jamesians, who are named for a young girl who was brutally raped. Her rapists cut out her tongue in order to escape identification. In symbolic protest, these feminists cut out their own tongues and live in seclusion. Jenny Fields is assassinated by (what I will call) a masculinist terrorist, a man desperate to stop her feminist message. Garp is forced to sneak into his mother's funeral in drag because men are not allowed to attend. In one of his most famous works, Garp opposes this act of self-mutilation and begins a feud with the Ellen Jamesians. The feud escalates over the course of the book, and the Ellen Jamesians begin to make attempts on Garp's life. The novel ends with a successful attempt, a feminists literally ending the World according to Garp.

Switching over now to theory, I'd like to quickly summarize "Sexuality.": In her essay "Sexuality," Catherine MacKinnon essentially argues that sex is the main source of women's oppression. She asserts that male dominance is sexual. The male sexual role centers on aggressive intrusion on those with less power, and men experience these acts of dominance as sexually arousing. Sexuality is a construct of male power, defined by men, forced on women and constitutive of the meaning of gender. She is interested in correcting, refocusing the theory of gender inequality to include this understanding of sexuality, therefore making it more accurrate.

Before I begin my main argument, I would like to lay some groundwork.

In order to make my comparison between MacKinnon's essay and Irving's novel viable, I ask that my audience consider MacKinnon and Irving in a sort of parrallel universe; MacKinnon's theory becomes a type of fiction, and Irving's fiction becomes a type of theory. Both these presentations are extreme in some ways, but extremely pallateable in other ways, and this is one of my interests in this paper. Part of my investigation will examine whether the seduction that these two texts are capable of performing on their reader is in part due to their apocalypticism.

To begin, I would like to address the question of how and why feminism, as a resistant mode of thought, could contain versions of apocalyptic discourses within it. The psychological appeal of an apocalyptic mode of thought to an oppressed group has been noted by numerous apocalyptic scholars. The oppressed and abused women in the feminist movement depicted in The World According to Garp and Catherine MacKinnon's radical feminism are no exception. (quote) "The rhetoric of the Apocalypse intends both a 'real' crisis in the 'real' world and its solution in the fictive world"(endquote), the creation of a world of chaos that is brought to order by the apocalyptic discourse. Feminism becomes, in this apocalyptic imagination, the saving grace for the world, and feminists are the chosen group to whom this message has been given. Without a feminist consciousness, the world, for women particularly, will come to an end if the patriarchal oppression of women is not stopped. Redeem yourself, give up your misogynist ways and you shall be saved. Masculinist apocalyptic discourses in this novel understand feminism as a dangerous threat to "rational mankind." So that the end-time is not precipitated, and indicated by plague and natural disasters; but for the masculinist apocalyptic imagination in The World According to Garp it is instead the overturning of the 'natural' gender roles of men and women that becomes the important 7th sign.

The apocalyptic feminism presented in both MacKinnon's theory and Irving's novel provides support to Pippin insight that apocalypticism is about revolution, (quote)"the political agenda of the Apocalypse is revolution."(endquote) The feminist revolution is about overturning the gender inequality, and oppressing men for the feminists depicted in The World According to Garp, moving the oppressed group to the top of the social pyramid. The apocalyptic feminism presented in both MacKinnon's theory and Irving's novel provides support to Tina Pippin's insight (from her book, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John) that apocalypticism is about revolution, "the political agenda of the Apocalypse is revolution." Make no mistake then, all versions of apocalypticism must then be approached from a political standpoint.

I am indebted to the essay "Genealogical Feminism" for a very useful list of three characteristics of apocalyptic feminism that illuminate the construction of apocalyptic thought. These characteristics play out within both versions of feminism presented here. First, each feminist version presents a universal truth about men and women, and understands anatomy as innate characteristics. Second, Apocalyptic feminism sees a single origin of patriarchal oppression which both Jenny Fields and Catherine MacKinnon understand as sexuality/ 'lust.' And lastly, feminist apocalyptic thought contains a utopian vision of the past and future which they strive to re-create. In accord with the principle behind the Ellen Jamesians self-mutilation, this vision of utopia strives on behalf of women's self-determination. In The World According to Garp the Fielding Home fills this role, with Jenny Fields as the supreme mother/goddess protecting and nurturing wayward and physically and/or emotionally disfigured women.

The major theme that accompanies, and is integral to, the masculinist apocalyptic discursive in The World According to Garp is an emphasis on female sexual purity and the silencing and marginalization of the female; "It is also the revealing of women in that it constructs their sexual natures in good or evil terms." For many apocalyptic groups, sex and physical gratification is the source of evil; as the fundamentalists rage against homosexual relations and premarital sex, so Catherine MacKinnon understands sex as the major source of women's oppression. This parrallel, made possible though the examination in the apocalyptic discourses in the Irving novel and MacKinnon's essay, enables feminists to correct their understandings of sex. I think that it is very enlightening to see such a striking similarity between two such seemingly opppositional political stances. Pippin argues that in the Apocalypse of John, the seductive power of the female results in punishment for her impurity, death. The object of desire, the Whore of Babylon, is made into the object of death. The whore/goddess/queen/Babylon is murdered, and this murder is a sexual murder; after which she is eaten and burned. Combining Pippin and MacKinnon, the original apocalyptic text, the Book of Revelations, becomes a pornographic text. This demonization of sex echoes throughout other apocalyptic discourses; for example, the Heaven's Gate group also saw sex as a dilemma and began to actively eradicate all evidence of it from the physical bodies of its followers, castrating the male members and erasing physical signs of individuality or difference in each member's appearance.

It is this reversion to traditional sexual 'morality' (otherwise known as the 'double standard') that is found in MacKinnon, where women find no pleasure in sex. My concern is that her argument allows no space for resistance or alternatives to the still misogynist world they live in. She argues that women's sexual reluctance, dislike, 'frigidity' is a silent rebellion against sex as force of the penis. I disagree. In understanding women's reluctance to engage in sex as rebellion against male aggression, MacKinnon continues to place women in the same submissive category that MacKinnon is also arguing against. Women cannot engage in sex without engaging in their own oppression. Where, then, does the passionate feminist fit? Where is the room for choice?

Jenny Fields, leader of the feminist movement in The World According to Garp, posits lust as the primary source of oppression, she states: (quote)

Jenny Fields and Catherine MacKinnon are similar in that both posit lust or sexuality as the source of patriarchal oppression. I find this view excessively limited and too general to be accurate.

In her book Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in John, Tina Pippin presents the Apocalypse (the version in the John/Book of Revelations) as an enactment of death inherently connected to the sexual. Pippin notes the dilemma surrounding gender and sexuality in the Book of Revelations: (quote)"women who act on their own are defying the male-defined sex roles for women. Thus Jezebel and the Whore are destroyed, but the real point is that these autonomous females are 'scapegoats' for the evil in society. Evil is again associated with the female and with her body."(73 Death and Desire) Garp's encounter with Mrs. Ralph very clearly plays this out, as he is convinced that his son will come to serious harm when he sleeps over at her house. She is an autonomous woman, defying the male-defined sex roles in inviting a young man back to her house, and this fosters in Garp the combined emotions of disgust (so much so that he almost assaults her) and desire.

I find MacKinnon's assertion that sexuality is the source of women's oppression to be flawed. It loses track of the power structures (theorized by Michel Foucault) that, while perhaps operating in the interest of regulated sexuality, go far beyond it. As an alternative to this, Luce Irigiray and Helene Cixious demonstrate a resistant feminist discourse that re-appropriates sex as a positive, egalitarian act. This re-appropriation is essential in creating strong women with healthy perceptions of their bodies and desires. The demonization of sex has typically produced constraints on, and taboos against, the female body. These constraints and taboos usually operate in such a way as to simultaneously eroticize that which they seek to regulate and control. (Think bound feet. Not a positive advance for womankind.)

I recognize two competing apocalyptic discourses provided by the feminist movement of the novel that is in opposition to a masculinist apocalytic discourse represented in the men out to assasinate Jenny Fields, making her the Whore of Babylon as well as sometimes coming from Garp himself. What Irving demonstrates with these two competing discourses is the isolation of the two groups from each other and the rest of the world that quickly escalates into a battle between the two. There is a very notable opposition of Self versus Other in the Ellen Jamesian feminism, all men are the enemy, and so strong is this opposition that it leads to violence or threats of violence when the lines between the genders are crossed. The creation of an Order versus a Disorder reinforces the need for isolation and ideology against the opposite group is reinforced. In this particular situation both Garp and Jenny Fields are assasinated by the warring factions. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians at Waco also came to a violent end as a result of the isoaltion and apocalyptic mindset. What I am saying is not that if these groups did not isolate themselves from the world that violence would be avoided. Rather what I am saying is that an apocalyptic mindset, one that believes that they are in the ultimate battle of good versus evil, a battle upon which the fate of the world depends, and who has become completely isolated off from the differing opinions, will not hesiatate to use whatever means necessary to beat the 'bad guys.' How does this come to bear on feminisms you may ask? Well, I think that a certain feeling of desperation remains necessary to those seeking social change. But the important lesson is that a movement or group that becomes overly focused on one goal, and isolated, loses track of the wider audience. The support of that wider audience is crucial to the cause, feminism is a democratic pursuit.

One of the problems with both MacKinnon's radical feminism and the feminists represented in Irving's novel is that it is a feminism based on essentialist assumptions about both genders, that cling to the inaccurate split of male/agressive, female/submissive hierarchy. My concern is that this hierarchy is characteristic of traditional masculinist apocalyptic discourses and feminist apocalyptic discourses. In traditional masculinist apocalypticism, women are the sources of sin and evil, while at the same time posited as the weaker sex. For both MacKinnon and the feminists in Irving's novel, women are defined as victims. This is consonant with the representations of women in the Book of Revelations, contrary to what you might expect from a resistant discourse such as feminism. As Pippin notes,(quote) "all females in the Apocalypse are victims; they are objects of desire and violence because they are all stereotyped, archetypal images of the female rather than the embodiment of power and control over their own lives in the real or fantastic worlds." (end quote)

Both Irving's novel and MacKinnon's essay present the typical gender stereotypes as universal truths about men and women. For the feminists in The World According to Garp, all men are rapists and violators, and all women are their victims. The Ellen Jamesians exclusion of Garp from his mother's funeral demonstrates this. They are so extreme in their judgement on men that they do not allow Garp to attend his mother's memorial service, he must dress in drag to go. Women are victims, and nurturers. Jenny Fields is the perfect example, opening her house and taking care of lost, abused women. And I also want to stress that in The World According to Garp both the masculinist and feminist camps create, through their own actions, those circumstances they fear from the other. In murdering Jenny Fields, the masculinist group creates, to a degree, the violent and dangerous anti-male feminist. Or as our parents remind us: violence begets violence.

Catherine MacKinnon echoes these universal truths about men and women. In "Sexuality" MacKinnon states:(quote) "Men in particular, if not men alone, sexualize hierarchy"(end quote), MacKinnon puts the weight of gender inequality and masculinist oppression on sexuality, and blames men. All sex is dominance, all men dominators. Women occupy the role of submissive victim, unable to counter male aggression with any of their own,(quote) "submission erotocized defines femininity."(endquote) MacKinnon's world is one of absolute truths, and essentialist assumptions about gender. MacKinnon remains entrenched in the system of definitions and understanding based on binary oppositions like male=aggressive, always wants sex; versus female=victim, always avoiding, not enjoying sex.

MacKinnon's argument is not only apocalyptic in its essentialist and universalizing tenets, but she also fails to understand the ways that gender inequality can work in a very different way for African-American women, Asian-American women, all 'minority' women because of varying historical and socio-economic backgrounds. She is creating an order which is based on a single experience.

Tina Pippin also counters MacKinnon's understanding sexuality, Pippin rejects universals and argues that the (quote) "inscribed negation of women is not something that can be worked out or generalized; oppression is always specific and specific females in the text are targeted, and this violence has impact on the specific lives of women readers by promoting an extreme hatred of women."(end quote) Pippin's argument that the lives of women readers are impacted goes further than the promotion of misogynist acts. It also means that women are forced into a difficult position as readers of such a text because they are encouraged to engage in acts of self-hatred, torn between their identification with female characters as women readers, and their identification with the protoganist as Judith Fetterley asserts in her essay "On the Politics of Literature": "In such fictions the female reader is co-opted into participation in an experience from which she is explicitly excluded; she is asked to identify with a selfhood that defines itself in opposition to her; she is required to identify against herself." Such is the position of the feminist reader in The World According to Garp.

Because of the pervasiveness of apocalyptic thought, and its emergence in different historical contexts, it is difficult at times to make an accurate statement about characteristics of apocalypticism. Just because these two particular brands of apocalyptic thought represented in both MacKinnon and Irving are essentialist and lack diversity, it does not necessarily follow that a feminist theory based in pluralism is not apocalyptic. This mode of thinking has 'shape-shifting' tendancies, that as we see here, have allowed it to exist in feminism. They perpetuate, instead of questionning and deconstructing the gender stereotypes; for example, all men for MacKinnon, are potential rapists, while women, in Irving's representation of feminism, are caretakers and nurturers, even as they enter the work place.

What can be seen from the parrallels between all three representations (two feminist and one masculinist) that position women as victims is an understanding that thinking about women in heterogeneous terms can battle this still prevalent and debilitating stereotype. If we can understand women's lives as complex and divurgent, and begin to see resistance in women's acts and everyday lives, there lies the potential to battle these misunderstandings.

I would like to offer a simple theory for the correlation between apocalyptic thought and the notions of female sexual purity and embrace of universal definitions of male and female that follow masculinist lines. As a patriarchal culture, the sexual autonomy of women threatens the very core structures of this culture in that the identity of the father of a child would not be certain. Without an assurance of patrilineal blood lines, the ownership of property is without patriarchal basis, it could end up in another man's hands. Patriarchal society >s controll over female sexuality is set up explicitly to prevent this. Therefore female sexual impurity, or the anonyminity of the father, is a threat to this very world, it would create a chaos that the patriarchal structures was intended to order. Thus the connection to apocalyptic imagination, as women's sexual freedom means the downfall of the world.

The message that feminists in particular can garner from The World According to Garp is that the extreme forms of feminism can actually contribute to that which they battle--Garp becomes a victim to the destructive and violent forces of this apocalyptic feminism. It could be argued that this apocalypticism has lead to the violent tendancies of the Ellen Jamesians. They are desparate to silence and eliminate non-believers in a similar fashion to the fundamentalist militia groups bombing abortion clinics or the Japanese millenialist group that bombed subways with deadly chemicals. This propensity for violence has been noted by apocalyptic scholars, Norman Cohn and Charles Strozier, to accompany versions of apocalyptic thought is also a major characteristic of the apocalypticism in The World According to Garp. Cohn, in his essay, "Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come" describes what he has termed the combat myth, he states that (quote)"in the combat myth, in its various formulations, the conflict between universal order and the forces that threatened and invaded and impaired it -- between cosmos and chaos -- was given symbollic expression." (end quote) Given this insight, the battle between apocalyptic feminist and apocalyptic masculinist discourses in The World According to Garp make even more sense in their urgency, desperation, and violent retaliation. This combat myth takes on a new twist as two apocalyptic groups battle each other; certain men battle to eliminate the forces of evil feminists by assasinating Jenny Fields, and then feminists respond with violence by murdering Garp. This violence works in such a way in The World According to Garp that it becomes a terrorizing element used to effectively (and permanently) silence critics. Once again, communication has been eliminated and the violent efforts of both these groups are ultimately counter-productive, and just plain murderous.

It is ironic that two discourses that may seem to be in opposition to each other, are in fact so similar in the reactions that they elicit. Feminists, in embracing extremist and elitist/separatist conceptions of the world, as we learn particularly from The World According to Garp, are debilitating rather than strengthening their movement. Alienating would-be supporters, like Garp, who would be a supporter if they were not so extreme. Similarly, the masculinist movement in the novel whose goal is the maintenance of the traditional gender hierarchy and the elimination of Jenny Fields have the same effect on the less extreme thinkers.

In conclusion, while I agree with Quinby's argument that apocalyptic thought has been helpful in feminism to create a sense of urgency, motivating women, ultimately I feel that it is important that feminists maintain an awareness of the limitations of apocalypticism. What is important to me as a feminist contemplating the usefulness of apocalyptic thought is an examination of the way that this mode of thought is built around notions of exclusion/inclusion and sustained by simplistic binary oppositional thought. Feminism is most importantly a source of empowerment for women. As the old sexist gender categories creep in, it stops being empowering and starts reinforcing that which it purports to fight. We cannot allow the message that women are weaker, or submissive by nature to reappear just because it comes in new packaging. Relying too heavily on the victim-agressor rhetoric does just that. Same message, new vocabulary. It is important that feminists, and cultural theorist, practice an active skepticism towards apocalyptic thought so as to avoid the dangers that I have discussed in here.

Self vs. Other divisions are also at odds with feminist, and queer activists, attempts to break down stereotypical understandings of difference. Homogenization is by no means the goal, either. In his essay "Psychological Heterosexism and Anti-gay Violence: The Social Psychology of Bigotry and Bashing," Gregory Herek cites studies that have shown the difficulty most people have in maintaining homophobic views when they know an out gay man or lesbian woman. I am not proposing that we become a hippy, 'love' nation, I am simply arguing that in battling ideologies that promote discrimination against difference, it becomes crucial to understand effective ways to battle those discriminatory and oppressive practices. I feel that these types of understandings can help deconstruct potentially dangerous apocalyptic agendas.

These are notions and perceptions of the world at odds with my feminist vision because they seem to be based largely on exclusion and homogeneity. What is also troubling is the large incidence of traditional gender hierarchization reinforced by apocalyptic discourse that I have shown in both Irving's and MacKinnon's depictions of feminism. Women remain in the position of victim, and sex remains a problem. I do not find either of these characteristics of apocalyptic thought condusive to feminist purposes. It is about positing yourself in opposition to others, something that I have a problem with because of its exclusivity. It is not about plurality or difference in its traditional forms. Tony Kushner complicates this generalization in "Angels in America" as his alternate version of apocalyptic thought is about collectivity and difference (Perestroika, Epilogue). Kushner breaks down the Self v. Other opposition, eliminating the notion of the separate individual throughout the play when Louis, Joe, Prior and Harper co-exist in the realm of revelation, and in the final scene as Louis and Hannah talk about "the sprawl of life, the wierd interconnectedness" (144). Imagination is the key to counter- and anti-apocalyptic thought for Kushner, and I would also embrace it as an alternative, tempered with a feminist political consciousness. The limits of existance can be pushed and surpassed through a little effort from the brain and soul, and new possibilities created.

This ability for connection across massive political boundaries (like Joe's conservativism and Louis' pro-gay politics) counters the silent, untraverseable gulf that divides feminists and men in The World According to Garp. I embrace Kushner's vision of a collective imagination and a realm of revelation. There is clearly room for communication between very diverse groups. As communication breaks down, for example between MacKinnonesque feminists and members of the male sex, I think that feminism becomes in danger of alienating its potential supporters. Especially in this day and age, I think that feminism has taken us to a certain point of awareness and sensitivity to gendered issues, it has brought about fantastic changes for womens' benefit. And I am not arguing that it has become obsolete, but I do think that it is time for men to join this fight in larger numbers than previously seen.

I now find versions of feminist utopia less creditable because I no longer believe that utopia is a possibility. I find Frances Bartkowski particularly helpful in understanding this. In her essay "Epistemic Drift in Foucault," she states: "Liberation is not a vision of the end of power or sex; it is an attempt to renegotiate the terms of power-knowledge-pleasure, as in the discourse of contemporary feminism." Bartkowski has a message for MacKinnon in this, that the elimination of sex and power are not in the realm of possibilities, a renegotiation of them is. The closest that we can hope to come to a feminist utopia is a new, different regime of power/deployment that does not harm or oppress according to the masculinist regimes of power that we are fighting now.

End Notes:

Tina Pippin. Death and Desire:The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse in John. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminister/John Knox Press) 1992.

.28 Death and Desire.

.28 Death and Desire.

.47, Death and Desire.

. John Irving. The World According to Garp. (New York: E.P. Dutton: Henry Robbins Book) 1976, 11.

.206 The World According to Garp

.72, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in John.

.Patricia Hill Collins' essay "The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood" in the Free Spirits anthology problematizes MacKinnon's statement that women are abused as women. Collins argues that Black women are abused as Black women, race and class are integral in establishing the type and degree of abuse.

Hill Collins, Patricia. "The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood," in Free Spirits, ed. Kate Mehuron, Gary Percesepe, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall) 1995, 339-351.

. 53, Death and Desire.

.493, Feminisms.

. Norman Cohn, "Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith" (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1993, 227.

. Quinby, Lee. "Genealogical Feminism" in Anti-Apocalypse (London: University of Minneapolis Press) 1994, 33.

.Gregory M. Herek. APsychological Heterosexism and Anti-Gay Violence: The Social Psychology of Bigotry and Bashing@ in the Men=s Lives anthology (Third Edition). Ed. Michael S, Kimmel and Michael A. Messner. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon) 1995, 341-353.

.Frances Bartkowski.@Epistemic Drift in Foucault@ in the anthology Feminism & Foucault:Reflections on Resistance. Ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby.(Boston: Northeastern University Press) 1988, 43-58