Dissonant voices in Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One.(Critical essay)

I

With the publication of Days of Obligation and, more recently, Brown, Richard Rodriguez's scholarship has begun to recognize the theoretical import inherent in the Hispanic writer's autobiographical essays. Juan de Castro most clearly makes this point as he states that "[t]oday, like Gloria Anzaldua or Jose David Saldivar, Rodriguez can be classified as a theorist of the borderlands" (102). This positive assessment of Rodriguez concerns mainly his two latest works which are often read as representing a radical rupture with his first autobiographical essay, Hunger of Memory. (1) In what follows I take de Castro's assessment of Rodriguez as a "theorist" seriously by uncovering the theory of borderland identities, which I consider to be already implicit in his first and most controversial book. (2) More precisely, I compare Rodriguez's epistemology of in-between identities with the theory of subjectivity advocated by the French feminist poststructuralist philosopher and psychoanalyst, Luce Irigaray in This Sex Which Is Not One. If on the one hand, Hunger of Memory can be read as a literary text with theoretical implications, then on the other hand, Margaret Whitford--one of Irigaray's most informed American critics--affirms that "we should treat Irigaray's work as literature" (23). (3) By cross-reading these two literary/theoretical texts I begin to delineate the points of divergence and the points of convergence of two epistemic models of subjectivity. Put differently, Rodriguez and Irigaray's theoretical opposition and proximity, I will argue, can be found at the complex intersection between literature and theory. Thus, implicit in this double-reading strategy is an attempt at once to theorize and to interpret.

It should first be noted that Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory is based upon epistemic, cultural, and political premises that are inimical, if not antithetical, to those articulated by Luce Irigaray's in This Sex Which Is Not One. In fact, Rodriguez's stand against bilingual education is consistent with his argument in favor of the "necessity of assimilation" (26) of ethnic minorities to the totalizing unity which is implicit in American national identity. His theoretical premises are grounded upon what Irigaray--speaking from the perspective of sexual rather than racial identity--defines as the "domination of the philosophic logos" which "reduce[s] all others to the economy of the Same" (This Sex, 74). Irigaray's theoretical position counters the theory of identity implicit in Rodriguez's autobiography. In fact, speaking from the opposite side of the spectrum, Irigaray promotes a conception of the subject rooted in difference and multiplicity which resists assimilation to the hegemonic (patriarchal) order. Briefly put, if Rodriguez's promotion of assimilation betrays a "desire for 'sameness,'" Irigaray advocates a "desire for 'otherness'" (This Sex, 130).

What is at stake in the confrontation of the Chicano writer and the radical feminist is a clash of theoretical perspectives concerning the subaltern subject as well as its problematic relation to both "sameness" and "difference." And in what follows I begin to explore the generative tensions arising from this theoretical clash. More precisely, I consider Rodriguez and Irigaray's economies of "sameness" and "difference" that sustain their conceptions of identity, in order to initiate a dialogue between these two thinkers. This confrontation will first allow me to point out the limitations inherent in Rodriguez's epistemology of "sameness" and, subsequently, to tease out the radical conclusions that are glimpsed, rather than taken hold of, in his first autobiography; while, at the same time, indicating the limits of Irigaray's radicalism. In brief, I will begin to open up a space of inquiry concerning in-between subjectivity by articulating the epistemologies of "sameness" and "difference" that informs Hunger of Memory and This Sex Which Is Not One. Finally, this cross-reading will allow me to nuance the dichotomic tendency inherent in criticism which tends to consider Rodriguez's first book as either neoconservative or progressive and This Sex as either essentialist or anti-essentialist. (4) Thus, if Henry Staten has convincingly argued that Hunger is situated "at the complex intersection of a both-and and a neither-nor" (104), I will argue that the complexity of this intersection, which accounts for the multiplicity of voices at play in these texts, continues to unfold if we consider the relative points of convergence and divergence between these two theoretical/literary texts and, as it were, use the two texts to unlock each other.

II

Rodriguez's promotion of cultural assimilation is grounded upon a dichotomic logic which sets the "private" and "public" spheres in a relation of mutual exclusion. His political argument seems straightforward: in order to assimilate to the hegemonic culture, ethnic minorities in the U.S. need to disavow what the author uncritically defines as their "private individualit[ies]" (26) with all they entail (i.e., native tongue, familial intimacy, cultural origins, ethnic and class bonds). This dichotomic understanding of identity formation is articulated around an image that is key to the shaping of Rodriguez's sense of selfhood in the U.S.: "[O]utside the house was public society" he writes; "inside the house was private. Just opening or closing the screen door behind me was an important experience" (16-17). For the moment suffice it to say that Rodriguez's dichotomic logic is structured around the trope of the "screen door." This image introduces a rupture, or discontinuity, between what the author perceives as two incompatible spheres: the "private" world of familial intimacy conveyed through Spanish and the "public" world of education based on English. Thus, for Richard the protagonist, the process of opening and closing the door involves an articulation of identity upon two dichotomic and contradictory poles. (5) Speaking of the difficulty of coordinating two different languages Rodriguez states: "It is not healthy to hear such sounds so often" (17). According to Rodriguez's identity politics, in order to avoid a schizophrenic split, the in-between subject is forced to sacrifice the "difference" inherent in the "private" sphere for the "sameness" which characterizes what Jose David Saldivar has called the "homogeneity of U.S. nationalism" (Border, ix). That is to say, he/she needs to choose between "inside" and "outside," "Spanish" and "English," "private" and "public individuality." Thus, it seems, on the surface at least, that inherent in the trope of the screen door is a fundamental "closure" to the "private" sphere, since the subject cannot sustain the psychic transition from the private to the public sphere and vice versa. "[T]he screen door shut behind me as I left for school" (39), writes Rodriguez, and since his autobiography's subtitle is The Education of Richard Rodriguez, it could be inferred that the screen door's closure is definitive (6) and that a unique telos drives this narrative. Finally, it appears to follow that according to Rodriguez, no sense of (an American) identity--which he understands according to its etymological meaning, from Latin identitas, the same--can be grounded on two antithetical poles.

The image of the screen door is instrumental in articulating the fundamental "twoness" of the in-between subject in the U.S.--an aspect which both Rodriguez's political stand in favor of assimilation (i.e., Americanization) and the either/or logic that sustain his narrative fail to address. Our understanding of the logic which underlies this image might improve if we compare it to Irigaray's conceptualization of the "vagina" and the "twoness" inherent in it. Both theoretical models, in fact, share a concern with an articulation of what Irigaray calls the subject's "multitude of 'selves'" (17): that is, a subject which, as Irigaray's puts it, is "at least two" (26). And I consider this consideration of a subject that is "at least two" as a key point of anchorage that provisionally links these two authors across the theoretical abyss that divides them. However, before initiating a dialogic relationship between Rodriguez and Irigaray it is necessary to make a few preliminary remarks to clarify the specificity of each approach. First, Hunger of Memory is a literary text, and the theory of identity that informs it calls for a hermeneutic effort since it is not entirely explicit. This Sex Which Is Not One is a theoretical text--albeit a peculiar one since at times theory and fiction are conflated--which deals directly with a reconfiguration of female subjectivity. Second, Rodriguez deals with the articulation between the public and private spheres starting from the case of an ethnic minority in the U.S., whereas Irigaray focuses mainly (though not only) on the privacy of a solipsistic female subject. The former is mostly concerned with the category of race, class, and ethnicity; the latter focuses on sexuality and gender relations. Third, Rodriguez's autobiography is not explicitly representative (he says: "I write of one life only. My own."), whereas Irigaray's project is wider in scope and ambition since she attempts to (re)conceptualize the epistemic foundations of female subjectivity. Finally, if Rodriguez writes from within the hegemonic sphere, Irigaray situates herself at a distance from patriarchal conceptualizations of gender in order to take a critical stand towards the hegemonic culture.