Feminist Theory Across the Millennial Divide

Extract

Every so often I receive a request to anthologize my 1987 article, “The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers” (Daly 1987), in which I used the feminist theory of the male gaze to analyze a prototypical pas de deux. So far, I have declined each one, or proposed that the article be published in tandem with “Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze,” a 1992 essay that critiqued the very theory that had enabled the earlier work (Daly 1992). While I am grateful that “Hummingbirds” made a meaningful contribution to our understanding of how feminist theory could be a useful framework for dance scholarship, I also appreciate that both feminist theory and dance studies have come a long, long way since the groundbreaking paradigm of the male gaze.

When I wrote “Hummingbirds,” feminist theory was the most creative, rigorous, and productive discourse around. It articulated what had emerged as the fundamental issue of twentieth-century arts and humanities: representation. Feminist theory infused dance studies with a fresh, compelling set of questions that were quickly taken up, especially by younger scholars, critics, and artists. We were challenged to shift our angle of vision and expand the field of our vision. As a result, our critical acuity was honed, the dancing we chose to study became more inclusive, dialogue was opened with other disciplines, and dance literature as a whole grew more incisive, complex, and engaged.

But no question, framework, or theory ever remains fixed. I began to question the theory of the male gaze almost as soon as “Hummingbirds” was published. When I attempted to adapt the model to my historical research on Isadora Duncan, I bumped up against its limits, which led me to other theories and more questions. It also led me to critique the then flourishing “success-or-failure” brand of feminist criticism, whose brittle, reductive analyses were not only unconvincing scholarship but problematic politics as well. So I wrote “Dance History and Feminist Theory” as a companion piece to “Hummingbirds.”