Abstract

In this essay, I argue for an alliance between deconstruction and feminist theology. I forge this alliance by demonstrating deconstruction's usefulness for helping feminist theology deal more adequately with differences of race between women. I argue that 'deconstruction' can help feminist theology uncover the roots of its hegemony and learn to think 'race' and 'gender' differently. ;According to my reading of deconstruction, Derrida and Irigaray uncover a persistent patterning which structures our institutions, our thinking, our writing, our politics, etc. This is what Derrida means by 'the text of western metaphysics' and what Irigaray calls the west's 'cultural grammar.' Their analyses suggest that this text is not a tool which we can pick up or put down at will. Rather, it inscribes us as much as we inscribe it. ;Feminist theology exhibits inscription by this text. I argue that the central texts of feminist theology are governed by the discursive structure of an essential 'woman' which blinds feminist theology to the difference 'race' makes for 'gender.' Through a reading of Derrida, Irigaray, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on 'race' and 'gender,' I show that feminist theology's separation of an essential 'woman' from 'race' emerges out of a larger text which attempts to keep the differences of 'race' and 'gender' in check. ;Deconstruction also offers strategies for intervening in this text in order to disrupt its mastery of these differences. These interventions open the text up for those whom the text defines as its 'others' allowing us to inhabit the text differently. Following out the problematics of 'race' and 'gender' in deconstruction undercuts the trajectory of their separation in feminist theology . In helping feminist theology unearth the roots of its own hegemony and think race and gender differently, I argue that deconstruction also offers feminist theology resources for carrying its critique and construction to a deeper level. Thus, this essay serves as a prolegomenon to further feminist theological reflection through this alliance