646
PAR.T ISAN
R.EVIEW
their acc ulturati o n. It has been poss ible fo r people raised in religious
communiti es to rej ect reli gio n , and fo r people raised in secular commu–
niti es to embrace it. If matters so fund amental as wh o is a human being
and whether there is a God are no t determin ed by cultural membership ,
w hat then is left o f relati vism? The relati vist will ru sh to po int out that
these experi ences themselves (and inferences from them) must be described
(a nd justifi ed) in th e language of some gro up , but so w hat? Th e question
is wheth er group membership prescribes ideas and beli efs, and hence cir–
cumscribes knowledge and choice, no t wh eth er it provides the linguistic
apparatu s fo r ideas, belief, knowl edge, and cho ice . Perhaps language is, as
Friedrich W aismann sa id , "open-textured ," its rules compatibl e with
open-ended va ri ati o ns; perhaps gro ups, including w ho le cultures, are
po rous, open to new ideas and experi ences .
Steps
3
tilro ll,~iI
6:
c rollps, Idmtity , IlIl eresls, alld POlller.
Th e trans for–
mationist argument pos its that th e self is soc iall y constru cted th ro ugh
membership in va ri o us gro ups, mos t no tabl y race, class, and gende r.
On e's identity, inte res ts, and powe r re fl ec t g ro up members hips.
Language, ideas, and va lu es, therefore, refl ec t the interests of groups and
provide effec tive mea ns by whi ch do min ant gro ups ca n control and
shape the se lf-understanding o f less powerful gro ups. Th ese connections
among personal identity, group membership , interests, power, language,
and so fo rth are sometimes presented a pri o ri , as th o ugh they were so
interl ockin g co nceptu all y that th ey needed no empiri cal confirmati on.
Often the connec ti o ns are simply ass umed in interpretati o ns of literary
texts , soc ial instituti ons, and histori ca l events, as if the fac t that interest–
ing interpretati o ns could be based o n th em we re suffi cient validati on - a
rather circul ar proceeding and , in any case, a standard met by every the–
ory with a clever practiti o ner.
In fac t, broken down into indi vidual claims and defin ed with suffi–
cient prec isio n , some o f the transformati o ni st hypo theses should be sub–
j ect to empiri cal in vesti ga ti on . Transfo rmati o ni sts have, however, given
little effo rt to providing empiri cal suppo rt fo r th e correlati ons they pos–
tulate, and th e studi es that have been made tend to be too weak in their
co rrelati o ns
to
suppo rt th e stron g th eses advanced by th e transforma–
ti o nist argume nt. Fo r exampl e, vari o us e ffo rts have been made
to
show
that women w rite, think , talk , valu e, o r behave in d istinctive ways. The
studies are interesting and suggesti ve, sometimes confirming what we
al–
ready th ought , sometimes surprising us, but they have never shown that
all women w rite, think , talk, valu e, o r behave differentl y from men. If
some do and some do no t, even if most do, such studi es provide scant
suppo rt fo r transfo rmati o nist ideas . Fo r example , it has no t been possible
fo r even the most di scerning readers to dedu ce th e gender of an author
