Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (ii) (1996)

Part II (Chapters 3 & 4)

In these chapters Sargisson works to bring her concept of utopianism into feminism and deconstruction to show how relevant the concept is in contemporary feminist debates. In Chapter 3, she focuses on the concept of difference in feminism to argue for the need to side-step, subvert, move beyond, the binary of equality-difference. She argues against positions that want to 'close' the debate through arguments of equality vs. difference and instead argues that it is possible to create a utopian space 'in which we can start to think creatively and differently about equality and difference' (73). It becomes clearer as the chapter progresses that what Sargisson considers utopic and the approach that she finds preferable in the debate over equality and difference is a poststructuralist approach that undermines the conceptual system through which this binary is created in the first place. In other words, she argues for an approach that destabilizes and deconstructs the binary opposition. She argues that this rejection 'is one way in which systems of (linguistic and hence cultural) domination can be destroyed' (77). Further, that this approach, in its beginnings with dissatisfaction in the present and its pushing toward something new, is, according to Sargisson 'profoundly utopian' (77). Sargisson argues that the pushing toward something new is 'an essential function of utopianism - and, of course, of political theory: without utopianism, feminism will grind to a halt' (92).

In Chapter 4, Sargisson moves on to a closer reading of Derridean poststructuralism and Cixous. She argues for strong parallels between Derrida and utopianism: 'Deconstruction works from inside the text... This function is also performed by utopianism, which is rooted in and acknowledges complicity with the present. By employing various tactics of estrangement, utopian thought provokes a certain distant from the present which permits the creation of new conceptual space' (101). A further similarity between deconstruction and utopianism that Sargisson argues for is their mutual rejection of closure or an endpoint. Sargisson argues that deconstruction should not be read as the endpoint of analysis: 'Were deconstruction and utopianism to stop, to reach an end, then logocentrism would be embodied, the truth attained, and process completed. These ends are neither desirable nor "possible"' (103). Sargisson uses Derrida's concept of 'difference' as a moment of utopia in his work. She argues that because difference 'creates new "meaning" and is itself new in that it does not "fit" into a hierarchical or dualistic conception of language; strictly speaking, it is unconceptualizable' (108).

The understanding that I take from these two chapters is that she is attempting to bring utopianism into feminist theory in part through arguing for its affinity to poststructuralism. If her argument is indeed successful, she comes away with a concept of utopianism as non-binary opposition that works within the structures of language to attempt to make space for something new.