Annette Kolodny
Encyclopedia
Annette Kolodny is a feminist
literary critic
and activist, and currently holds the position of College of Humanities Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona
in Tucson. Her writings represent and discuss some aspects of feminism after the 1960s; the revision of dominant themes in American studies
; and the problems faced by women and minorities in the American academy.
to Esther Rifkind Kolodny and David Kolodny. (Jay 211) She did her undergraduate work at Brooklyn College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa magna cum laude in 1962. After graduation, she took a position on the editorial staff at Newsweek
. Kolodny left to return to graduate studies in 1964, citing a desire “to teach people to think critically and because she wanted to be able to publish her own ideas, not merely report the ideas of others." (211) Her M.A.
and Ph.D.
work were completed at the University of California, Berkeley
, and she earned the latter degree in 1969. (Leitch 2143) Her first teaching position at Yale University
was cut short as she left after a year to move to Canada
with her husband, whose draft
board appeal for conscientious objector
status for the duration of the Vietnam War
was rejected. (2143) Finding a position at the University of British Columbia
, she helped work on western Canada’s first accredited women’s studies program before returning to United States in 1974 to teach at the University of New Hampshire
. (Jay 212)
In New Hampshire
, she wrote her first major work of literary feminist criticism, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975). While the book got positive reviews, Kolodny was denied promotion and tenure
. (Richter 1387) Active in the student movements while in Berkeley, she continued to advocate for the right to establish a program in women’s studies. She later sued
the university “on the basis of sexism and the violation of academic freedom
.” (Leitch 2144) She settled with the "largest financial award in history in a case of this kind" (Jay 212). She used this money to establish the Legal Fund of the Task Force on Discrimination for the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) (212), an organization she had helped found, and served as director of the task force from 1980-85 (Leitch 2144).
Kolodny changed schools several more times, teaching at the University of Maryland
and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
and eventually moving to Tucson and the University of Arizona
to become dean of the Faculty of Humanities in 1988 until 1993. Currently, she is Professor Emerita of Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
.
concerns and the historic destruction of the land (Jay 217). Her most recent book, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (1998), “details the extent to which women and non-white students are still outsiders on American campuses.” (Leitch 2144)
Kolodny is also well-known for two essays published in 1980: “Dancing Through the Minefield” (Feminist Studies, spring 1980) and “A Map of Reading: Gender and the Interpretation of Texts” (New Literary History, spring 1980). Of these, “Dancing Through the Minefield” is the most well-known, and is sometimes said to be “the most reprinted essay of American feminist literary criticism.” (2143)
In her first book, Lay of the Land, Kolodny explores the colonialization
of America, both in reality and in the realm of metaphor
. She examines "the continued repetition of the land-as-woman symbolization in American life and letters" (Kolodny ix). The reasons for the feminization of the land was essential to its colonization, she argued; in her introduction, she asks, "was there perhaps a need to experience the land as a nurturing, giving maternal breast because of the threatening, alien, and potentially emasculating terror of the unknown?" (9) By construing the land as female, she argued, it was possible for the colonists to remove some of the terror and mystery from an unknown land. Instead, it became either a nurturing maternal figure, existing to provide sustenance, or as a passive virginal figure, existing only to be dominated, sexually or otherwise. With these metaphors firmly in sight, the colonists had a framework through which to view the vast stretches of North America
as less alien and terrifying. Through an examination of several male writers, such as Philip Freneau, James Fenimore Cooper
, and John James Audubon
, Kolodny pursues the implications of this metaphorically female land.
Different chapters of the book correspond to different chronological eras after the discovery and colonization of the Americas and to different metaphorical mindsets as manifested in the writings of the authors considered. In chapter 2, “Surveying the Virgin Land: The Documents of Exploration and Colonialization, 1500-1740”, the likening of the land to an untouched, virginal paradise begins the exploration. Chapter 3, “Laying Waste Her Fields of Plenty: The Eighteenth Century”, discusses the romanticized agrarian
and pastoral
ideals that coloured the view of America, especially in its comparisons to ideal lands like Elysium
and Arcadia
, and the consequences that arose from such ideals, such as the exploitation and alteration of the land. Chapter 4, “Singing Her Past and Singing Her Praises: The Nineteenth Century”, examines the dual images of Mother and Mistress in the land, as well as the frustration of the pastoral impulse with the closing of the American frontier and the victory of the industrialized North in the American Civil War
. Finally, chapter 5, “Making It with Paradise: The Twentieth Century”, deals with the increase of industrialization and the yearning both “to return to and to master the beautiful and bountiful femininity of the new continent.” (139)
There are Freudian and psychoanalytic
influences in this text, especially in the “psychosexual dynamic of a virginal paradise” (Kolodny, Land Before Her, 3). It also has tones of ecofeminism
, which will be discussed below.
In the preface to this book, Kolodny states that “[t]he purpose of this study is to chart women’s private responses to the successive American frontiers and to trace a tradition of women’s public statements about the west.” (Kolodny, Land Before Her, xi) Thus, she approaches the same topic as that of Lay of the Land (“landscape as a symbolic…realm” [xii]), but from a different direction. In the writings she examined, she noticed a different theme from that of the male writers:
There is little sense of the conquering-of-the-frontier
mentality that Kolodny discovered in the male writers she discussed in Lay of the Land. There were no triumphant hero
es of the order of Daniel Boone
or Davey Crockett; rather, the narratives of these women focused on the triumph of domesticity and order in a wild land.
The book is organized chronologically, in much the same way as Lay of the Land. The first section is titled “Book One: From Captivity to Accommodation, 1630-1833”, and traces the writings of and about women as they moved from captivity both literal (Mary Rowlandson
’s account of being captured by Native American
s) and figurative (the sense of being forcibly confined in a new and strange land) to adaptation in the form of survival skills, such as those reputedly possessed by Rebecca Boone
, the wife of Daniel Boone. Book two, “From Promotion to Literature, 1833-1850,” follows attempts to encourage women to move westward by male writers to western narratives by the women themselves. The third and final section, “Book Three: Repossessing Eden, 1850-1860,” documents the attempts by women to create a familiar order in a still unfamiliar country.
Both of these books relate to a subgenre of feminism called ecological feminism or ecofeminism, a social and political doctrine that posits a relationship between the subjugation of women and the destruction of nature. Ecofeminists theorize that a culture based on the dominance of women is directly connected to social ideals that promote the environmental abuse of the earth.
These two books have a connection to ecofeminism, particularly Lay of the Land. The feminization of the land and the images of the earth as a passive, giving female figure show the social ideas that ecofeminism protests against. Likewise, The Land Before Her exemplifies the same ideas from a different point of view in the ideal of the domestic garden, or the altering of nature.
Kolodny emphasizes Social constructionism in this essay, although she herself never uses the term. Briefly, social constructionism is a school of thought that involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, by people. (See full article on Social constructionism) Using this theory, social entities are seen as always being in a state of change as society itself changes, and the relationships of the entities change. “[T]hings in the world … are the products of ongoing social processes of interaction, and thus do not have fixed or inherent meanings.” (Leitch 2144)
In “Dancing Through the Minefield,” Kolodny applies this theory to the literary canon, those works of literature
that are considered appropriate for study. But such a canon is formed by critics whose values of aestheticism
are not neutral. The critical interpretation is formed by the interaction between two objects: the text and the reader. According to Kolodny, the reader’s ability to read any given text is shaped by the social conventions and assumptions of their time and place; Reading becomes a social product. But neither is the text pure; it is also moulded by social relations and customs. So any critical interpretation is necessarily a product of two forms of social construction. “Readers and texts are both made — and they are continually being remade.” (2144) The dynamic nature of both texts and readers must be taken into consideration when examining any text, or the established criticism of that text.
Kolodny’s essay has a clear theoretical outline. In light of the social constructionist view that aesthetic values, as assigned to the literary canon, are in actuality the products of social conventions and values, Kolodny claims that feminist criticism should “discover how aesthetic value is assigned in the first place” (Kolodny 2147) and then assess the socially-constructed reading patterns that lead to those value judgements. “Having become embroiled in value disagreements, feminism should consider the processes underlying value judgements.” (Leitch 2144) “Dancing Through the Minefield” outlines a three-part nucleus assumed by most contemporary feminist literary critics to be essential. First, any construction of a literary canon is a social construction; second, readers unconsciously engage texts from a certain point-of-view; and third, this unconscious bias present in all readers must be consciously and critically re-examined.
Firstly, she writes, “literary history…is a fiction.” (Kolodny 2153) This refers to the traditional formation of the literary canon and literary history as a social construction. Literary histories define the major, minor, and ignored texts according to their own social values and conventions, not out of any inherent aesthetic value on the text itself. For example, the western literary canon has been largely created by well-educated white men, and the focus of the canon is therefore on works by well-educated white men. It embodied, as well as upheld, the dominant ideology of the time, and had implications beyond aesthetic values. To give preference to texts by this group was to ignore texts created by other social groups. In recent years, the monolithic nature of the canon has been challenged, and works by previously ignored sections of the literary world (women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities) have gained some footholds in the canon.
Secondly, readers of texts “engage…not texts but paradigm
s.” (2155) Just as texts and canons are socially constructed, so are the vantage points from which readers engage with any given text. This was also mentioned by Stanley Fish
, who called these vantage points interpretive communities
. Kolodny states that “we appropriate meaning from a text…according the critical assumptions or predispositions (conscious or not) that we bring to it.” (2155)
Finally, Kolodny “strives to undo the unconsciousness of reader identified” (Leitch 2145) in the second part of her theory:
These three general theoretical principles are then supported by the concept of pluralism. Pluralism in this context refers to a conscious effort not to limit oneself to a single critical approach when reading a text. Rather, the object of pluralism is to make use of multiple critical approaches and to get a fuller appreciation of the variety of meanings which can be present in a single text. Kolodny specifically refers to a feminist pluralism, which validates “multiple interpretations of various texts” (Leitch 2145) according to the usefulness of a pluralistic view of a text. This method of reading would give equality to different approaches as well as allow critical examinations of those same approaches, which in turn helps create the “broad critical awareness” (2145) advocated by Kolodny’s third principle as outlined above.
The essay emphasizes the real situation of contemporary women. Kolodny believes that feminism and women’s studies should not be confined to books or classrooms. “[I]deas are important because they determine the ways we live, or want to live, in the world” (Kolodny 2164); ideas are therefore not meant to exist in a vacuum. Rather, they must be taken into the world through activism
.
Several authors have criticized “Dancing Through the Minefield”. The most well-known of these criticisms appeared in a collaborative article Kolodny wrote with Judith Gardiner, Elly Bulkin, and Rena Patterson entitled “An Interchange on Feminist Criticism: On ‘Dancing Through the Minefield’”, which was published in the journal Feminist Studies in 1983.
Both Bulkin and Patterson believe that Kolodny, while speaking to women in her essay, is only speaking to a certain group of women — those who are white, middle class
, and heterosexual. Patterson states that “despite its language and intent, [the essay]…represents classist
, white, and heterosexist
attitudes which are common in feminist literary criticism and which contradict the best of feminist thought and the aims of the women's movement” (Patterson, 654). This is a common criticism of second-wave feminism
: that it tended to ignore the problems of non-white and non-heterosexual women in favour of a homogenized white heterosexual feminist culture. However, Kolodny’s advocacy of the concept of pluralism may offset this claim. While she does not specify that alternative critical approaches should come from different ethnicities or sexualities
, there is no reason why they could not and such inclusion would only increase the scope of the “broad critical awareness” (Leitch 2145) mentioned above.
Gardiner, on the other hand, disagrees with Kolodny about the use of pluralism. While there can be no single ideology to which all feminist theories belong, Gardiner writes, there are some strong ideological concepts that define areas of feminism. Examples of this would include liberal feminism
, socialist feminism
, and ecofeminism
. In Gardiner’s view, the strong ideological beliefs shared by these groups would “limit their susceptibility to pluralism.” (Gardiner 634)
and promotions processes, which Kolodny believes still reflect an attitude antagonistic to women or ethnic minorities; a movement of anti-feminist and anti-intellectual
harassment; the lack of support available for students with children; the extent to which women and non-whites are still considered outsiders on university campuses; and the effect of an outdated teaching system in the face of greater demographic diversity and changing student learning needs. She outlines a number of changes which can be made to improve conditions and, realizing that any substantial change will require equally substantial money, encourages government reinvestment in higher education.
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
literary critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
and activist, and currently holds the position of College of Humanities Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
in Tucson. Her writings represent and discuss some aspects of feminism after the 1960s; the revision of dominant themes in American studies
American studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the study of the United States. It traditionally incorporates the study of history, literature, and critical theory, but also includes fields as diverse as law, art, the media, film, religious studies, urban...
; and the problems faced by women and minorities in the American academy.
Biography
Kolodny was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Esther Rifkind Kolodny and David Kolodny. (Jay 211) She did her undergraduate work at Brooklyn College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa magna cum laude in 1962. After graduation, she took a position on the editorial staff at Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
. Kolodny left to return to graduate studies in 1964, citing a desire “to teach people to think critically and because she wanted to be able to publish her own ideas, not merely report the ideas of others." (211) Her M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
and Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
work were completed at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, and she earned the latter degree in 1969. (Leitch 2143) Her first teaching position at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
was cut short as she left after a year to move to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
with her husband, whose draft
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
board appeal for conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
status for the duration of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
was rejected. (2143) Finding a position at the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
, she helped work on western Canada’s first accredited women’s studies program before returning to United States in 1974 to teach at the University of New Hampshire
University of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
. (Jay 212)
In New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, she wrote her first major work of literary feminist criticism, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975). While the book got positive reviews, Kolodny was denied promotion and tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
. (Richter 1387) Active in the student movements while in Berkeley, she continued to advocate for the right to establish a program in women’s studies. She later sued
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
the university “on the basis of sexism and the violation of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
.” (Leitch 2144) She settled with the "largest financial award in history in a case of this kind" (Jay 212). She used this money to establish the Legal Fund of the Task Force on Discrimination for the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) (212), an organization she had helped found, and served as director of the task force from 1980-85 (Leitch 2144).
Kolodny changed schools several more times, teaching at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
and eventually moving to Tucson and the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
to become dean of the Faculty of Humanities in 1988 until 1993. Currently, she is Professor Emerita of Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway.-History:The University of Oslo was established in 1811. The idea of a learned society in Christiania surfaced for the first time in 1841. The city of Throndhjem had no university, but had a learned...
.
Works
Kolodny’s first two books were The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975) and The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860 (1984); both of these texts deal with environmentalEnvironmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
concerns and the historic destruction of the land (Jay 217). Her most recent book, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (1998), “details the extent to which women and non-white students are still outsiders on American campuses.” (Leitch 2144)
Kolodny is also well-known for two essays published in 1980: “Dancing Through the Minefield” (Feminist Studies, spring 1980) and “A Map of Reading: Gender and the Interpretation of Texts” (New Literary History, spring 1980). Of these, “Dancing Through the Minefield” is the most well-known, and is sometimes said to be “the most reprinted essay of American feminist literary criticism.” (2143)
The Lay of the Land: Metaphor As Experience and History in American Life and Letters.
In her first book, Lay of the Land, Kolodny explores the colonialization
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
of America, both in reality and in the realm of metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
. She examines "the continued repetition of the land-as-woman symbolization in American life and letters" (Kolodny ix). The reasons for the feminization of the land was essential to its colonization, she argued; in her introduction, she asks, "was there perhaps a need to experience the land as a nurturing, giving maternal breast because of the threatening, alien, and potentially emasculating terror of the unknown?" (9) By construing the land as female, she argued, it was possible for the colonists to remove some of the terror and mystery from an unknown land. Instead, it became either a nurturing maternal figure, existing to provide sustenance, or as a passive virginal figure, existing only to be dominated, sexually or otherwise. With these metaphors firmly in sight, the colonists had a framework through which to view the vast stretches of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
as less alien and terrifying. Through an examination of several male writers, such as Philip Freneau, James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, and John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
, Kolodny pursues the implications of this metaphorically female land.
Different chapters of the book correspond to different chronological eras after the discovery and colonization of the Americas and to different metaphorical mindsets as manifested in the writings of the authors considered. In chapter 2, “Surveying the Virgin Land: The Documents of Exploration and Colonialization, 1500-1740”, the likening of the land to an untouched, virginal paradise begins the exploration. Chapter 3, “Laying Waste Her Fields of Plenty: The Eighteenth Century”, discusses the romanticized agrarian
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
ideals that coloured the view of America, especially in its comparisons to ideal lands like Elysium
Elysium
Elysium is a conception of the afterlife that evolved over time and was maintained by certain Greek religious and philosophical sects, and cults. Initially separate from Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes...
and Arcadia
Arcadia (utopia)
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
, and the consequences that arose from such ideals, such as the exploitation and alteration of the land. Chapter 4, “Singing Her Past and Singing Her Praises: The Nineteenth Century”, examines the dual images of Mother and Mistress in the land, as well as the frustration of the pastoral impulse with the closing of the American frontier and the victory of the industrialized North in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Finally, chapter 5, “Making It with Paradise: The Twentieth Century”, deals with the increase of industrialization and the yearning both “to return to and to master the beautiful and bountiful femininity of the new continent.” (139)
There are Freudian and psychoanalytic
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
influences in this text, especially in the “psychosexual dynamic of a virginal paradise” (Kolodny, Land Before Her, 3). It also has tones of ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
, which will be discussed below.
The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860
In the preface to this book, Kolodny states that “[t]he purpose of this study is to chart women’s private responses to the successive American frontiers and to trace a tradition of women’s public statements about the west.” (Kolodny, Land Before Her, xi) Thus, she approaches the same topic as that of Lay of the Land (“landscape as a symbolic…realm” [xii]), but from a different direction. In the writings she examined, she noticed a different theme from that of the male writers:
Like their husbands and fathers, women too shared in economic motives behind emigrationEmigrationEmigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration. There are many reasons why people...
; and like the men, women also dreamed of transforming the wilderness. But the emphases were different…Avoiding for a time male assertions of a rediscovered EdenGarden of EdenThe Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
, women claimed the frontiers as a potential sanctuary for an idealized domesticity. Massive exploitation and alteration of the continent do not seem to have been a part of women’s fantasiesFantasy (psychology)Fantasy in a psychological sense is broadly used to cover two different senses, conscious and unconscious. In the unconscious sense, it is sometimes spelled "phantasy".-Conscious fantasy:...
. They dreamed, more modestly, of locating a home and a familial human community within a cultivated garden. (xii-xiii)
There is little sense of the conquering-of-the-frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
mentality that Kolodny discovered in the male writers she discussed in Lay of the Land. There were no triumphant hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
es of the order of Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
or Davey Crockett; rather, the narratives of these women focused on the triumph of domesticity and order in a wild land.
The book is organized chronologically, in much the same way as Lay of the Land. The first section is titled “Book One: From Captivity to Accommodation, 1630-1833”, and traces the writings of and about women as they moved from captivity both literal (Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. After her release, she wrote a book about her experience, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and...
’s account of being captured by Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
s) and figurative (the sense of being forcibly confined in a new and strange land) to adaptation in the form of survival skills, such as those reputedly possessed by Rebecca Boone
Rebecca Boone
Rebecca Ann Boone was an American pioneer and the wife of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone. No contemporary portrait of her exists, but people who knew her said that when she met her future husband she was nearly as tall as he and very attractive with black hair and dark eyes.She was born near...
, the wife of Daniel Boone. Book two, “From Promotion to Literature, 1833-1850,” follows attempts to encourage women to move westward by male writers to western narratives by the women themselves. The third and final section, “Book Three: Repossessing Eden, 1850-1860,” documents the attempts by women to create a familiar order in a still unfamiliar country.
Ecofeminism
Both of these books relate to a subgenre of feminism called ecological feminism or ecofeminism, a social and political doctrine that posits a relationship between the subjugation of women and the destruction of nature. Ecofeminists theorize that a culture based on the dominance of women is directly connected to social ideals that promote the environmental abuse of the earth.
These two books have a connection to ecofeminism, particularly Lay of the Land. The feminization of the land and the images of the earth as a passive, giving female figure show the social ideas that ecofeminism protests against. Likewise, The Land Before Her exemplifies the same ideas from a different point of view in the ideal of the domestic garden, or the altering of nature.
"Dancing Through the Minefield"
Perhaps her best known work, Kolodny’s 1980 essay "Dancing Through the Minefield” was the "first work to attempt both a survey of the first ten years of feminist literary inquiry and an analysis of the informing theoretical propositions" (Jay 210). It has been the subject of criticism in the years since its initial publication, but can still be seen as a guide to “feminist concerns and methodologies.” (Leitch 2144)Social constructionism
Kolodny emphasizes Social constructionism in this essay, although she herself never uses the term. Briefly, social constructionism is a school of thought that involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, by people. (See full article on Social constructionism) Using this theory, social entities are seen as always being in a state of change as society itself changes, and the relationships of the entities change. “[T]hings in the world … are the products of ongoing social processes of interaction, and thus do not have fixed or inherent meanings.” (Leitch 2144)
In “Dancing Through the Minefield,” Kolodny applies this theory to the literary canon, those works of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
that are considered appropriate for study. But such a canon is formed by critics whose values of aestheticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
are not neutral. The critical interpretation is formed by the interaction between two objects: the text and the reader. According to Kolodny, the reader’s ability to read any given text is shaped by the social conventions and assumptions of their time and place; Reading becomes a social product. But neither is the text pure; it is also moulded by social relations and customs. So any critical interpretation is necessarily a product of two forms of social construction. “Readers and texts are both made — and they are continually being remade.” (2144) The dynamic nature of both texts and readers must be taken into consideration when examining any text, or the established criticism of that text.
Theory
Kolodny’s essay has a clear theoretical outline. In light of the social constructionist view that aesthetic values, as assigned to the literary canon, are in actuality the products of social conventions and values, Kolodny claims that feminist criticism should “discover how aesthetic value is assigned in the first place” (Kolodny 2147) and then assess the socially-constructed reading patterns that lead to those value judgements. “Having become embroiled in value disagreements, feminism should consider the processes underlying value judgements.” (Leitch 2144) “Dancing Through the Minefield” outlines a three-part nucleus assumed by most contemporary feminist literary critics to be essential. First, any construction of a literary canon is a social construction; second, readers unconsciously engage texts from a certain point-of-view; and third, this unconscious bias present in all readers must be consciously and critically re-examined.
Firstly, she writes, “literary history…is a fiction.” (Kolodny 2153) This refers to the traditional formation of the literary canon and literary history as a social construction. Literary histories define the major, minor, and ignored texts according to their own social values and conventions, not out of any inherent aesthetic value on the text itself. For example, the western literary canon has been largely created by well-educated white men, and the focus of the canon is therefore on works by well-educated white men. It embodied, as well as upheld, the dominant ideology of the time, and had implications beyond aesthetic values. To give preference to texts by this group was to ignore texts created by other social groups. In recent years, the monolithic nature of the canon has been challenged, and works by previously ignored sections of the literary world (women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities) have gained some footholds in the canon.
Secondly, readers of texts “engage…not texts but paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
s.” (2155) Just as texts and canons are socially constructed, so are the vantage points from which readers engage with any given text. This was also mentioned by Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish
Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island...
, who called these vantage points interpretive communities
Interpretive communities
Interpretive communities are a theoretical concept stemming from reader-response criticism and invented by Stanley Fish. They appeared in an article by Fish in 1976 entitled "Interpreting the Variorum". Fish's theory states that a text does not have meaning outside of a set of cultural assumptions...
. Kolodny states that “we appropriate meaning from a text…according the critical assumptions or predispositions (conscious or not) that we bring to it.” (2155)
Finally, Kolodny “strives to undo the unconsciousness of reader identified” (Leitch 2145) in the second part of her theory:
Since the grounds upon which we assign aesthetic value to texts are never infallible, unchangeable, or universal, we must re-examine not only our aestheticsAestheticsAesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
but, as well, the inherent biases and assumptions informing the critical methods which (in part) shape our aesthetic responses. (Kolodny 2158)
These three general theoretical principles are then supported by the concept of pluralism. Pluralism in this context refers to a conscious effort not to limit oneself to a single critical approach when reading a text. Rather, the object of pluralism is to make use of multiple critical approaches and to get a fuller appreciation of the variety of meanings which can be present in a single text. Kolodny specifically refers to a feminist pluralism, which validates “multiple interpretations of various texts” (Leitch 2145) according to the usefulness of a pluralistic view of a text. This method of reading would give equality to different approaches as well as allow critical examinations of those same approaches, which in turn helps create the “broad critical awareness” (2145) advocated by Kolodny’s third principle as outlined above.
The essay emphasizes the real situation of contemporary women. Kolodny believes that feminism and women’s studies should not be confined to books or classrooms. “[I]deas are important because they determine the ways we live, or want to live, in the world” (Kolodny 2164); ideas are therefore not meant to exist in a vacuum. Rather, they must be taken into the world through activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
.
Criticism
Several authors have criticized “Dancing Through the Minefield”. The most well-known of these criticisms appeared in a collaborative article Kolodny wrote with Judith Gardiner, Elly Bulkin, and Rena Patterson entitled “An Interchange on Feminist Criticism: On ‘Dancing Through the Minefield’”, which was published in the journal Feminist Studies in 1983.
Both Bulkin and Patterson believe that Kolodny, while speaking to women in her essay, is only speaking to a certain group of women — those who are white, middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
, and heterosexual. Patterson states that “despite its language and intent, [the essay]…represents classist
Classism
Classism is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes and behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes...
, white, and heterosexist
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
attitudes which are common in feminist literary criticism and which contradict the best of feminist thought and the aims of the women's movement” (Patterson, 654). This is a common criticism of second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
: that it tended to ignore the problems of non-white and non-heterosexual women in favour of a homogenized white heterosexual feminist culture. However, Kolodny’s advocacy of the concept of pluralism may offset this claim. While she does not specify that alternative critical approaches should come from different ethnicities or sexualities
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
, there is no reason why they could not and such inclusion would only increase the scope of the “broad critical awareness” (Leitch 2145) mentioned above.
Gardiner, on the other hand, disagrees with Kolodny about the use of pluralism. While there can be no single ideology to which all feminist theories belong, Gardiner writes, there are some strong ideological concepts that define areas of feminism. Examples of this would include liberal feminism
Liberal feminism
Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of feminism and theory, which focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices...
, socialist feminism
Socialist feminism
Socialist feminism is a branch of feminism that focuses upon both the public and private spheres of a woman's life and argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression...
, and ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
. In Gardiner’s view, the strong ideological beliefs shared by these groups would “limit their susceptibility to pluralism.” (Gardiner 634)
Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century
Kolodny’s most recent book is not a work of literary criticism, but rather one of institutional criticism. After serving as dean of Humanities for five years at the University of Arizona, Kolodny wrote this book in order to outline some of the problems with academic institutions. These include the ability of administrators to make uninformed decisions about budget cuts without realizing the effect of such cuts; a myriad of problems about tenureTenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
and promotions processes, which Kolodny believes still reflect an attitude antagonistic to women or ethnic minorities; a movement of anti-feminist and anti-intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
harassment; the lack of support available for students with children; the extent to which women and non-whites are still considered outsiders on university campuses; and the effect of an outdated teaching system in the face of greater demographic diversity and changing student learning needs. She outlines a number of changes which can be made to improve conditions and, realizing that any substantial change will require equally substantial money, encourages government reinvestment in higher education.
Sources
- “Annette Kolodny.” Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001. p 2143-2146.
- Gardiner, Judith, Elly Bulkin, Rena Patterson, and Annette Kolodny. "An Interchange on Feminist Criticism: 'On Dancing Through the Minefield.'" Feminist Studies v.8 (3) 1983.
- Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth, eds. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
- Jay, Gregory, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988.
- Kolodny, Annette. “Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B. Leitch, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.
- Kolodny, Annette. Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
- Koldony, Annette. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
- Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.
- Richter, David, ed. Critical Tradition. New York: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 1998.
See also
- EcofeminismEcofeminismEcofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
- FeminismFeminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
- Higher EducationHigher educationHigher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
- Literary CriticismLiterary criticismLiterary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
- Second-wave feminismSecond-wave feminismThe Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
- Social constructionismSocial constructionismSocial constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...