Fusing the Individual and the Collective: Gadamer Finds Universal Understanding in Third Wave Feminist Discourse

FUSING THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE: GADAMER FINDS UNIVERSAL

UNDERSTANDING IN THIRD WAVE FEMINIST DISCOURSE

Emily Scherberth

California State University, Northridge

FUSING THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE 2

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic studies on understanding,

subjectivity and community were largely grounded in the realm of

philosophy. As Gadamer himself professes, "My real concern was

and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but

what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing" (1982b,

p. xxviiii). Yet following the publication of Gadamer’s Truth and

Method and Philosophical Hermeneutics, many scholars have

reinterpreted his concepts and extended his works into the social

and political arenas. This study attempts to do the same, by

exploring Gadamer’s concepts of fusing horizons, subjectivity and

community in the context of modern day feminism and the specific

political discourse of the Third Wave women’s movement. I will

build on other scholarly research that connects Gadamer’s

theories to feminism and show how the tension between the

individual and the collective which characterizes the discourse


of the Third Wave, can be explicated through a Gadamerian

framework.

Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics

In his seminal work, Truth and Method, Gadamer (1982b)

explores the basis for understanding between people and content.

He expresses that “understanding means, primarily, to understand

the content of what is said, and only secondarily to isolate and

understand another’s meaning as such” (Gadamer, 1982b, p. 262).

He goes on to explain that “to reach an understanding with one’s

partner in a dialogue is not merely a matter of total self-

expression and successful assertion of one’s own point of view,

but a transformation into a communion, in which we do not remain

what we were” (Gadamer, 1982b, p. 341). Therefore, in Gadamer’s

view, understanding takes into account individual subjectivity,

but as a means to an end which is to arrive at a transformational

communion of ideas, where one person’s perspective does not

dominate the other.

Linge (1976) also provides a helpful explanation of

Gadamer’s conception of understanding, which is that


“understanding is not reconstruction but mediation” (p. xvi). In

other words, understanding is not about trying to recreate

something, it’s about synthesizing the text with the

interpreter’s own positionality in a dialectical process. Or put

another way, understanding is the process of fusing the different

horizons of text and interpreter together “into a common view of

the subject matter – the meaning – with which both are concerned”

(Linge, 1976, p. xix). And as Chen (1987) summarizes, “Gadamer’s

model of the dialogue is not concerned with the subjective

meaning of the text, as intended by the author, rather it is

concerned with the truth claimed by the text” (p. 190). It is

through this authentic “participation in the dialogue, in the

form of constant questioning and answering, giving and taking,

truth(s) will gradually emerge” (Chen, 1987, p. 189).

Gadamer (1976) also clarifies that since the human

experience is temporal, so are any interpretations made by

humans, which makes historical mediation important as well.

In other words, our subjectivity limits the impact that our

awareness can have on understanding, which is why he advocates


for the fusion of horizons, or the synthesis of different

historical and individual perspectives to get the best

interpretation of a given text or discourse (Gadamer, 1976).

Extending Gadamer into the Political

It is through Gadamer’s notions of understanding,

subjectivity and fusing horizons in a specific historical context

that we can begin to form connections and relevance to a

political discourse. Other scholars have recognized this

connection and have argued that “the moral/practical/political

implications [of Gadamer’s work], have not been given sufficient

attention within the discipline of communication studies” (Chen,

1987, p. 184). For example, Kuan-Hsing Chen (1987) set out to

find the points of intersection between the hermeneutic tradition

and other critical work such as Marxism and feminism, in order to

find new possibilities for the study of communication. Based on

Gadamer’s (1982a) assertion that “no higher principle is

thinkable than that of freedom of all” (p. 9), Chen’s (1987)

reading of Gadamer casts philosophical hermeneutics as a

“humanistic, moral and practical enterprise with a political


intent to struggle for freedom” (p. 191). She goes on to argue

that “the struggle for freedom makes hermeneutics a political

project which seems to go hand in hand with other contemporary

intellectual discourses such as Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis

and post-structuralism” (Chen, 1987, p. 191).

Gadamer’s views on prejudice and subjectivity are also

similar to feminist standpoint theory which holds that where we

are situated in life - in terms of race, gender, sexuality,

socio-economic status, etc. – determines how we view the world.

Other feminist scholars have already connected Gadamer’s theories

to feminism. For example, Ryan and Natalle (2001) use Gadamer’s

“emphasis on position and historicity” (p. 69) to develop their

own connection to feminist standpoint theory in a study that

fuses standpoint hermeneutics and invitational rhetoric. Ryan

and Natalle’s (2001) research builds on earlier work done by Foss

and Griffin (1995) who argued that the concept of rhetoric purely

as persuasion is flawed, and introduced the alternative practice

of invitational rhetoric which drew from the Gadamerian concept

of dialogue.


But the connection between Gadamer, feminism and the

individual-versus-collective tension in current Third Wave

feminist discourse, on which this study is focused, would be

incomplete without an exploration of the relationship between his

concepts of individual subjectivity and community.

Gadamer and Community

In Truth and Method, Gadamer (1982b) emphasizes that

individuals should to keep themselves “open to what is other – to

other more universal points of view...[which results] in rising

above [oneself] to universality. To distance oneself from oneself

and from one’s private purposes” (p. 17). Here Gadamer is putting

forward the idea that for universal understanding to be achieved

within a community, an openness between individual “others” is

required, which ultimately leads to a transformation of everyone

involved.

John Arthos (2000) asserted that Gadamer’s idea of community

“is strangely tied to the subjectivism he rejects.” (p. 17).

Michelfelder (1997) offers that Gadamer aims for self-


understanding, and “how one’s own individual life is bound up

with others” (p. 499). Smith (1997) believes that Gadamer’s

hermeneutics is grounded in the social construction of identity,

where individuals learn “to rise above our initially individuated

and private existences and to participate in the communities of

language and culture” (p. 517). Chen (1987) takes this idea

further by asserting that Gadamer has a “moral and practical

commitment to human communal life” (p. 192). And Arthos (2000)

concurs that “insight is lodged in the individual by the nature

of consciousness but realized in the community by necessary

relation of moral deliberation to the persons affected” (p. 25).

So if Gadamer favored a moral commitment to communal life

that recognized individual experience, yet found it an

insufficient path to universal understanding, how do we arrive at

truth in this context? Arthos (2000) offers that Gadamer

“weights communal identity neither towards subjective

individualism nor any kind of relational system, but in the

creative and uncompleted intermedium of conversation. The

priority Gadamer gives to the event of dialogue as the engine of


unexpressed human identity is the pivot of his entire hermeneutic

enterprise. The ontological preeminence of the unfinished

‘conversation that we are’ has implications for the theory of

communication yet to be seized upon and worked out” (p. 15).

It is here that we find the most direct natural link between

Gadamer and feminist theory as it relates to the current

discourse of the Third Wave. In utilizing a Socratic dialogue

model and emphasizing the power of the conversation to illuminate

both individual identity and universal understanding, Gadamer is

aligned with one of the major tenets of feminist theory which

advocates for a more dialogical, dialectical approach to

knowledge and understanding. Next we will turn to a deeper

exploration of feminist theory and how feminists conceptualize

the relationship between the individual and her community.

The Personal is Political

In order to understand how Gadamer’s framework for

individual subjectivity and community is relevant in the context

of Third Wave feminism, we must also look at the origins of the

relationship between the individual and the collective in the


political discourse of modern day feminism. As Chen (1987)

reminds us, Gadamer’s focus on context “stresses the necessity of

historicizing communicative action in concrete social, cultural

and political contexts” (Chen, p. 197).

The slogan, “the personal is political” emerged in the

second-wave women’s movement in the 1970’s as a way to

acknowledge that the oppressive experiences that women had in

their private lives reflected a greater problem in society. In

other words, personal experiences weren’t just personal and

isolated to a few; they were widespread and representative of how

women suffered from sexism all over the country. One of the main

ways that women came to realize that they weren’t alone was

through organizing and participating in consciousness-raising

groups. It was in these groups that women shared their personal

stories with each other, started to form collectives and

concentrated their power in order to bring the fight to the

government and institutions that were oppressing them.

The “the personal is political,” also challenges the idea

that women cannot hold power in private spaces. It was, in fact,


in these private spaces that these consciousness-raising groups

were formed and leveraged their power as collectives to fight the

oppression of women. As Collins (2006) notes, the goals of these

groups were to, “1) heighten individual women’s awareness of

gender oppression in their lives; and 2) organize this group of

individuals into a collectivity that would jointly design and

implement action strategies that resisted women’s oppression” (p.

164). And as Carol Hanisch (1978), who wrote a famous essay

entitled, “The Personal is Political,” asserts, “these analytic

sessions are a form of political action. It is at this point a

political action to tell it like it is, to say what I really

believe about my life instead of what I’ve always been told to

say” (p. 204).

Tension in Third Wave Feminist Discourse

The Second Wave women’s movement was successful due to the

ability of feminists to organize and work within the system to

enact change. Women banded together within powerful collectives

that fought for equal opportunity, equal pay and reproductive

freedoms. The Third Wave women’s movement that began in the


1990s, however, is marked by lack of a consistent focus and a

collective effort toward any one goal. If there’s a common theme

to the Third Wave, it is one of inconsistency, multiplicity and

contradiction that prizes individual subjectivity over collective

consciousness-raising and political action. In fact, many young

females today refuse to even identify as feminists, and instead

adopt a rhetoric of choice to explain their experiences as

liberated women, completely disregarding the hard work that the

women of the previous generation did to make those choices

possible (Gill, 2007; Budgeon, 2011).

Many have argued that neoliberal values have fueled this

anti-feminist/postfeminist sentiment, and essentially hijacked

any larger collective purpose that feminism might serve, throwing

it backwards into a preoccupation with highly-individual

concerns. Angela McRobbie (2004) even goes so far as to argue

that feminism is essentially “dismantling itself” through

postfeminism and neoliberalism. Feminist scholar, Rosalind Gill

(2007) describes neoliberalism and postfeminism as being

preoccupied with “self-surveillance, monitoring and self-


discipline [and] a focused on individualism, choice and

empowerment” (p. 147). Her research also reveals the dark side

of neoliberalism “where the individual must bear full

responsibility for their life biography, no matter how severe the

constraints upon their action” (p. 163). Mendes (2012) also

concurs that neoliberal values represent a “problematic

construction for those seeking collective social change” (p.

554).

Other feminist scholars like Shelley Budgeon (2011) have

even attempted to reconstruct the subject of feminism for a new

generation, by demonstrating how the tenets of the Third Wave,

which recognizes the multiplicity and contradictory nature of

women’s lived experiences, can be constructive and provide “an

opportunity for a revitalized feminist project” (p. 281) through

maintaining a respect for individual experiences while

challenging women to also think critically about their lives in a

collective sense. She implores that “third-wave feminist

political strategies must provide opportunities to transcend the

ideological incitement to engage uncritically in a project of


self-definition found upon individualized female success and the

values of choice, freedom and self-sufficiency” (Budgeon, 2011,

p. 289). It is precisely at this point where a Gadamerian

framework finds a useful application. By challenging women to

transcend the neoliberal imperative toward isolation and

individualization, and encourage a more communal mindset in which

individual women “distance oneself from oneself and from one’s

private purposes” (Gadamer, 1982b, p. 17), the tension between

the individual and the collective can be minimized. Following is

a more in-depth exploration of this idea.

Fusing the Individual and Collective Horizons in the Third Wave

In Gadamer’s published conversations with Jacques Derrida,

he delves deeper into the way history affects the individual’s

experiences. Gadamer (1989) asserts that:

“History does not belong to us; yet we belong to it. Long

before we understand ourselves

through the process of self-examination, we understand

ourselves in a self-evident way in


the family, society and state in which we live. The focus of

subjectivity is a distorting

mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a

flickering in the closed circuits of

historical life. That is why the prejudices of the

individual, far more than his judgments,

constitute the historical reality of his being” (p. 276-7).

If we take Gadamer’s view on the historicity of individual

subjectivity and apply it to the individual subject of the Third

Wave, we can see how the historical construct of neoliberalism

affects the female experience. In other words, since women are

continuously bombarded with messages that implore them toward

“self-surveillance, monitoring, self-discipline…and

individualism” (Gill, 2007, p. 147) in our neoliberal society,

their subjectivity is a “distorting mirror” (Gadamer, 1989, p.

276) that results in a distorted view of themselves. As Cindy

Griffin (2009) explains that neoliberal and postfeminist

“principles and practices echo an all-too-familiar ruggedly

individualist narrative, and this narrative relies on a


disquietingly familiar refrain: if you haven't ‘succeeded,’ it's

your own fault” (p. 7). Under these influences, women are not

only isolated told they don’t need to confront the external,

institutional forces that work to oppress them, they also

systematically reject the feminist community that so desperately

wants to work for their freedom. If we look back to historical

context of the 1970’s, the feminist collective was a powerful

force that the individual female subject identified with and

sought to be a part of. Women had to band together in the 1970’s

and fight oppressive forces in society to gain equal rights. As

Arthos (2000) offers, Gadamer believed that “the relation of self

to other, friend to enemy, is finally nothing but history itself”

(p. 32). Today, women are fighting other women, demonstrating

that the neoliberal self-directed subject in opposition to the

collective is a purely historical phenomenon. Therefore, it can

be argued that the individual subjectivity of today’s women is a

historical construct, and unfortunately, is distorted in such a

way that continues to undermine women’s power. Instead of

reinforcing the unproductive binary opposition between the


individual and the collective that is so present in the Third

Wave feminist discourse, I think Gadamer would encourage a way to

bridge the two through dialogue, through what Aimee Carrillo Rowe

(2008) describes as ‘coalitional subjectivity’ which decenters

the individual and instead emphasizes our belongings and

relationships to others.

While decentering the individual is consistent with

Gadamer’s prescription for arriving at a universal understanding

within Third Wave discourse, it is important to note that Gadamer

would not advocate for a complete erasure of individual

differences. As Arthos (2000) explains, “Gadamer’s difference is

always a productive relation…that advances understanding” (p. 32)

and allows for “the other’s claim to truth” (Gadamer, 1982b, p.

299). Second Wave feminist author Audre Lorde (2003) offers a

similar view, expressing that:

“Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund

of necessary polarities between which our creativity can

spark like a dialectic. As women, we have been taught either

to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for


separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change.

Without community there is no liberation…But community must

not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic

pretense that these differences do not exist” (p. 26).

It is precisely through the dialogue between the Second Wave

collective philosophy and the multiplicity and individuality of

Third Wave feminist thought that we see what Gadamer (1982b)

means when he says “to reach an understanding with one’s partner

in a dialogue is not merely a matter of total self-expression and

successful assertion of one’s own view, but a transformation into

a communion, in which we do not remain what we were” (p. 344).

As feminist scholar, Glora Anzaldúa (1983) passionately argued

self-awareness not only involves “going deep into the self and

expanding out into the world” it is also “a simultaneous

recreation of the self and a reconstruction of society” (p. 208).

Carrillo Rowe (2009) offers that “for Anzaldúa the subject exists

in ‘symbiotic relationship to all that exists’…agency for

Anzaldúa assumes a collective subject—that subjects are ‘co-creators

of ideologies’” (p. 16). In other words, the tension present in


the individual-versus-collective debate that characterizes Third

Wave feminism can be ultimately transcended by forming community

through a productive dialogue about individual differences.

Conclusion

The goal of this paper was to extend the work of previous

scholars in showing how Gadamerian hermeneutics could have

relevance in the political context of today’s feminism. By using

Gadamer’s concepts of individual subjectivity and community, and

applying his dialogic method for achieving universal

understanding, I have demonstrated how the tension in Third Wave

feminist discourse can be rectified through a Gadamerian

framework. This study found that by respecting individual

differences and forming a collective built from a productive

dialogue about these differences, the feminist project can find a

new purpose that frees it from a limiting binary opposition that

only reinforces the oppression of women. In other words, by

fusing the horizons of the Second Wave’s collective identity and

the Third Wave’s individual differences, we can transcend the

limitations that the current feminist project is facing.


The use of a Gadamerian framework in this study also has

implications for other political discourse that has been shaped

by neoliberalism, such as the socialized healthcare debate, the

Patriot Act, and the growing tension around the Second Amendment.

I would argue that Gadamer’s concepts of individual subjectivity,

historicity and community have relevance in any discussion that

poses individual liberties against the greater good of the

community. In the future, more research should be done in the

communication studies discipline that leverages Gadamer’s work to

examine these issues.


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Fusing the Individual and the Collective: Gadamer Finds Universal Understanding in Third Wave Feminist Discourse