Andrea Joseph, "Sigmund Freud." http://andreajoseph24.blogspot.com/

Written in 1992, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is perhaps the most well-known and probably the best-selling self-help guide geared towards artists. Cameron, herself a recovering alcoholic, imagined her book as a kind of twelve-step program for struggling artists, complete with daily affirmations of one’s own artistic power and a belief that true creativity comes from God, the Divine, or whatever one might wish to call a higher spiritual power. While not geared specifically to writers, her techniques for recovering one’s creativity include “morning pages,” a daily exercise in which, immediately upon waking, the struggling artist writes down three pages of whatever comes into his or her mind, with no attempts at editing and no concern for the quality or content of the writing. This technique, often known as “free-writing,” is at the core of most self-help writers’ programs. Although the frequency and duration of free-writing exercises varied from book to book, all of the books I read during my research touted the benefits of free-writing. In fact, this kind of writing advice dates back at least as far as an 1823 essay by Ludwig Borne entitled “The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days,” which argued that a single three-day period of intense free-writing was the key to successfully accessing the hidden life of the mind. In a wonderfully circular piece of history, the article is said to have inspired Sigmund Freud’s ideas about free-association and the unconscious mind, while Freud’s ideas have in turn gone on to inspire the modern self-help movement.

Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, believes that timed free-writing exercises allow aspiring writers to access the “tremendous energy” of first thoughts without the usually toxic influence of ego. Goldberg’s zen-like free-writing exercises, while not producing much good writing at first, are intended to provide the compost of ideas and creativity from which good writing will eventually bloom. This sentiment is echoed by Bonnie Goldberg (no relation to Natalie) in Room to Write, a book of two-hundred short writing exercises designed to foster creativity and break down a writer’s inhibitions. Her book has four fundamental rules: “1. The most important action you can take is to show up on the page; 2. The more you can give up control over what you write, the more genuine your writing will be; 3. Making room in your life to write generates even more room for your writing; 4. The only true obstacle to writing creatively is a lack of faith that appears as fear and self-judgment” (xi-xii). These and other similar guides promote a daily, free-associative writing routine as the way around the kinds of self-criticism and doubt that, according to the authors, are the real causes of bad writing and writer’s block. These books promote the idea of mundane writing practices as the gateways to some transcendent, spiritual connection with one’s inner self.

Of course, these same books say very little about what actually constitutes good writing. For them, good writing seems, simply enough, to be the inevitable result of getting past one’s fears. While there are many well-regarded nuts and bolts guides to writing such as Strunk and White’s Elements of Style that deal with this subject outside the self-help paradigm, one book that straddles the line between the two is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Lamott is somewhat pessimistic about the chances that all of her students or readers will become happy and successful writers, but she believes that the simple act of writing truthfully is a difficult and worthwhile goal in and of itself. She, too, emphasizes that sitting down and writing at the same time every day is “how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively” (6). But rather than providing themed writing exercises or ways of managing free-association, Lamott tailors her advice to writers already working on their own projects. Lamott goes over her opinions on what constitutes good character development, how to decide on a plot, and how to know when you are finished writing, but most of the advice is similar to that found in other books: break your ideas down into short writing assignments; don’t be afraid to write what she calls “shitty first drafts;” avoid perfectionism, and so forth. What she does add, however, is at least a little discussion of the revision process in which she urges her readers to find others who will read their drafts and give honest critiques.

In any case, all of the guides that I read peppered their advice with personal anecdotes and a vaguely New Age spirituality. They all agreed on the importance of writing as practice, but framed this practice not simply as a means of inducing small, incremental improvements in one’s writing over time, but as a way to commune with a higher power, achieve greater self-awareness, or overcome fear and self-doubt. My own fear is that aspiring writers who read these guides and undertake their programs will either come away feeling disappointed at the lack of transcendent experience that results, despite the amount of time and effort they’ve put in, or will be goaded into a false sense of the quality and power of their own writing. After all, one could argue that the real heavy lifting in the writing process is not the initial writing itself, which these guides all focus on, but the process of editing and revision that is not only the titular inspiration of this magazine, but also the most consistently overlooked subject in these guides. It is difficult enough to write, but writing well requires one to develop a sense of one’s own voice, learn the stylistic conventions of particular genres of writing, and understand how to convey ideas not just truthfully, but effectively and efficiently as well. This often requires a healthy dose of the self-criticism and doubt that is universally bemoaned by self-improvement guides. What’s more, these skills come just as much from reading the writing of others, and tirelessly revising one’s own writing, as they do from sitting down at a desk each day and free-associating. In placing so much emphasis on the routine, mundane practice of writing, the authors of self-help writing guides seem to betray a lack of trust in their own notions of creativity. Natalie Goldberg argues that “writing is not a McDonald’s hamburger” (37); it is a long slow process. Yet, in urging aspiring writers to fill a notebook per month with free-writing and assuring them that this is the key to writing creatively, she is adopting an approach that puts quantity over quality, removes mystery for the sake of predictability, and routinizes what was formerly seen as a capricious aspect of artistic life. Sociology students should recognize this as an example of what George Ritzer calls the “McDonaldization of society.”

Still, there is valuable advice to be found in writers’ self-help guides. In academic writing, we are not necessarily looking to find our inner selves or commune with the Divine, but we are usually in need of more practice than most of us allow ourselves. Making time in one’s schedule to consistently work on one’s craft is good advice for every kind of creative activity, and writing is no exception. But writing well also requires the ability to look critically at one’s own work and figure out how to make it better. It is a delicate balancing act between self-pride and self-criticism that no one ever completely masters, and there is no secret formula or twelve-step program that can really teach it to you. Luckily, it does get easier with practice.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to High Creativity, Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher: 2002.

Flaherty, Alice. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Goldberg, Bonnie. Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer’s Life. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1996.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

See, Carolyn. Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers. New York: Random House, 2002.

Saschaaa. http://www.flickr.com/photos/saschaaa

The idea haunts me, though. Descartes had the money to finance a sojourn in Bavaria, while I most certainly do not. Moreover, the distractions that Descartes strove to avoid in 1641—backgammon, books, and beer—seem both qualitatively and quantitatively different from the distractions I find on my desk in 2009. On my desk sit two computers. One shows an email account, my instant messaging client, and my Twitter feed; the other displays another email inbox, my calendar, some spreadsheets, and a collection of blog posts I mean to read before the day is over. My phone has been ringing all day. And when I get home, TiVo and Facebook beckon. On top of this, I enjoy the same sorts of games, reading, and socializing that Descartes did. If good writing requires a distraction-free environment, then Descartes and his contemporaries were, all other things being equal, much more likely to write well than I am. That's a depressing thought.

An obvious way out of the modern predicament is to tune out the distractions. However powerful their allure might be, electronic temptations all share the vulnerability of an off switch. Window blinds, a locked bedroom door, and a good set of ear plugs can replicate, in a noisy New York apartment, the isolation of Descartes's cabin. Every distraction we manage to block out gets us one step closer to the Cartesian ideal of perfect concentration.

A more radical approach is to question the assumption that distraction is unequivocally bad for writing. Where does the assumption come from? Here's a theory. Out of the Cartesian mythos grows the idea that within the mind of every great writer is a font from which wisdom emanates. Scholarship is an art of thought, and thought exists not in the ether between us but within the confines of an individual mind. Thus if we want to engage in scholarship, we need to pare away all those things which are outside of our own thought.

So goes the mythos. To what extent has this ever really been true, though? Descartes himself was a well-read scholar, and the work that he did can be seen as part of a larger conversation that took place within a network of like-minded scholars. We might visualize his network in the following way: Descartes is a node, a nexus, a point; the scholars with which he directly and indirectly corresponded through books and letters are also nodes; and the books and letters by which their communication took place are like the lines that connect the points of the network to each other. We can tell the nodes apart from the connections because the connections are static and slow-moving (books that take years to be written and disseminated through a community of thinkers) while the nodes are vibrant and fast-moving (the mind of the scholar is constantly in flux). Insofar as the thinking that happens throughout this community affected the content of, say, the Meditations, a convincing argument might be made that the work of Descartes is not the product of Descartes at all, but rather is an emergent feature of his network. Of course, the pen that put the thoughts to paper was held in a hand attached to the man we call Descartes, but when we ask about the authorship of his ideas, the source is not so clear-cut.

If Descartes's works arose out of a network to which he belonged, then clearly it was to his benefit to allow himself to be "distracted" by the other nodes in this network, at least in some ways. And if this was true for Descartes, it is far more true for us today. The features that distinguished the nodes of Descartes's network from the connections between those nodes were technological in nature - the technologies of the printing press, the delivery of mail, and so on. As new technologies develop, these distinguishing features tend to fade. The speed of communication used to depend on how quickly a book could be published; now it depends on how quickly you can type your Facebook updates. As the speed of information flow through our own networks approaches the speed of thought, the notion of an individual author who alone is responsible for a text becomes less well defined.

To take the point a step further, it might be argued that each subsequent generation stands to gain even more from the kinds of internet distractions that plague so many of us. Technology is, of course, constantly changing. But people are changing too - becoming more accustomed to the constant hum of distraction around them, unable to work without it, in much the way that a city person might not be able to get to sleep in the quiet countryside. An individual who grows up with Facebook, for example, might find it easier to appreciate how the network can serve as an extension of the five senses, a more or less natural way to collect and process information.

All this is not to say that there are no bad distractions. Certainly the Internet has multiplied many times over the number of alternative subjects for our attention. But there is a real argument to be made for a new kind of thinking about the distractions that the Internet provides, and how they differ from the distractions that Descartes faced. When you think with your fingers on the computer keys, you do not think alone, but in pulse with the multitudes who write Wikipedia, who comment on your blog entries, who sit waiting on Facebook or Twitter to workshop your arguments with you. Leveraging the network for the purposes of writing requires the writer to develop a set of skills different from those that Descartes possessed, of course, and this is easier said than done. In order to differentiate between those uses of the network that are productive and those that truly are distractions, one must be able to make some difficult but fundamental value judgments. What is the goal of writing? How do traditional methods of writing, like Cartesian solitude, contribute positively to that goal? Can the distinguishing features of new media – the speed of communication it allows, for example – replicate or improve upon the benefits of traditional methods? If not, are the benefits of the new media worth the sacrifice? It’s easy to skirt these hard questions altogether by simply shutting off the computer, thereby shutting off the distractions. But this strategy, if adopted without first addressing the kinds of questions just raised, threatens to deprive our writing of the richness that lies dormant in the network around us.

I always have the best intentions of getting work done. After all, I committed myself to a life of writing, so on some level I do want to produce. I make up schedules and lists and sign up for workshops, but when it comes to the moment of actual writing I find a way out. How could I possibly work, when there are so many other important things to get done: don’t I have to read every article in the New York Times to be a fit member of society? If I don’t watch that episode of Law and Order, who will? People, that can of Pringles isn’t going to devour itself! But to be a great procrastinator, one must understand that distraction need not come from external stimuli. You can disconnect from the Internet, throw out the TV, isolate yourself in a quiet office, but there is no escaping your own mind. I can’t number the hours I’ve spent in a library, nothing but a pad and paper in front of me, obsessing over questions like what will I have for dinner? Do I hate Coldplay, or do I love them? Why didn’t I listen to my mother and just go to law school? I’ve hung around enough writers to know that I’m supposed to get past my own thoughts by writing them down, writing anything down, heed the advice “just write.” But if that blank piece of paper is terrifying, it can’t compare to the terror of a completed work.

You will rarely hear an English professor admit this, but writing is a terrible burden. It’s lonely, thankless work that produces the worst kind of anxiety and self-doubt. There is always a point in the writing process when the writer understands this might fail. What failure means depends on the piece: maybe the work will earn a bad grade, or fail to get published, or simply not accomplish what the writer intended. For me, and I suspect for other great procrastinators, this threat of failure is intolerable. If I put everything into my writing and it fails, doesn’t that mean at my very core I, too, am a failure? When questions like this are spoken aloud, it’s easy to dismiss them as useless, self-indulgent, crazy. But for the writer sitting alone in front of the computer, without any contact with the outside world, these questions can loom large. Writers are notoriously self-obsessed, but I think few people realize how much of that self-obsession is based on self-loathing.

Back when I was a good writer, I forced others to take on some of the writer’s burden. Every time I wrote a paper in high school, I made my mother sit on my bed while I read it out loud to her. She would stare off into space, clearly bored to distraction, while I would essentially read aloud to myself. When I finished she would nod, say, “Great. Do you want me to check the punctuation?” At this point, I would usually throw a fit and scream, “Great? Don’t you see, the conclusion doesn’t accurately reflect my larger point! This is terrible! I hate myself!” My mother’s answer was always the same. “So fix it.” For some reason, I found this ritual incredibly soothing. On those nights my mother, in the great tradition of mothers, showed me that I didn’t have to sit alone with my doubts.

When I got to college, I started to email my papers to my mother. To her credit, she would read some of them, but her comments were less than helpful. “I don’t understand a word of this. What is Phallocentrism, and why are you so obsessed with it?” I had to find others to help me out. Because I lived on campus, I was surrounded by friends going through the same academic trials. We could write papers side-by-side, in dorm rooms or computer labs, all night long. We could go get snacks at two in the morning, complain about how hard it was to write five pages on a book we hadn’t read. When I got to that inevitable point in the process where I begin to think, this essay is the worst piece of shit anybody has ever written, I had good friends on hand to advise me. “Just finish it,” they would say. “Get it done. I’m sure it’s fine.” Then I could throw my fit: “Don’t you see, the conclusion doesn’t accurately reflect my larger point! I hate myself!” My friends’ answer was always the same. “Who cares? Just hand it in, and then you can go home for Christmas break.”

This is not an advisory essay. I’m not here to tell you to find somebody to sit with you while you write, or to yell at your mother that you are a terrible writer (although you might want to try it; it’s oddly satisfying). I point to these experiences because they show how dependent a writer is on contact with the world outside of herself, outside her work, outside her fears. I believe that the procrastinator’s reaching out for distraction is a way to reconnect to that outside world and, in so doing, avoid confronting the potential for failure that is always part of writing. So-called low-stakes writing, like freewriting, is supposed to help us get past our hang-ups, but what happens when you have hang-ups about freewriting? All writing has some stakes. Which is why, no matter how many great tips you can get from great writers, there is no easy out for the procrastinator.

I am beginning to think that the only way out of my patterns of procrastination is to regress a little. When I was an earnest college student, I truly believed that completing my work was worth all the trouble, all the self-doubt, all the fear. Being a great writer requires some amount of faith that whatever you are writing, that the very act of writing itself, is worth failing over. Before I became a lonely graduate student, desperate for love and money, I had this faith, most likely because I had people with whom I could share the act of writing. When I wrote, I saw beyond the page people who believed in me and valued my ideas; now when I write I see only judgmental committees who will never publish my work or offer me a job. Perhaps I will only become a good writer when I can, again, look beyond the possibility of failure and remind myself that there are so many other writers out there who believe, as I must somewhere deep down, that writing in and of itself is a worthwhile endeavor, even if, in the end, it fails.

Writing habits, while seemingly superficial, may have profound effects on brain chemistry. Various studies have shown that ordinary habitual procedures, such as sleeping and eating, can profoundly influence brain chemistry. Consciously creating habits can instill a recurrence of actions that come naturally, leading to the manipulation of one’s brain chemistry, which can have significant implications on various aspects of one’s lifestyle. Multiple studies have shown that habits, as in the case of writing, are engraved in the brain in the form of paved biochemical milieu, allowing for faster response, given the proper cues.

Dr. Lee Rice, from the Life Wellness Institute, believes that one can rewire one's brain in as little as 14 days. (1) The rewiring process encompasses believing in yourself, getting rid of mistrust, writing down what you want, and announcing your changes to the world. These are reiterating tasks; thinking, analyzing, writing, announcing, while trusting, are all reassuring and positive reinforcements to the brain that can lead to biochemical changes over time.

Creating a habit can be difficult; however, numerous studies have shown the long-term benefits of doing so. Ann M. Graybiel et al. showed that the process of learning a habit can require much effort but once engraved, the habit displays a rapid response that is easily recovered after a period of absence. (2) Graybiel’s study demonstrated that acquisition and extinction of a learned response alters the firing patterns of projection neurons. When training rats to navigate through a T-maze, the spike activity of the rats was spread throughout the task time, a condition they termed neural exploration. With time, the rats became accustomed to the maze and the auditory cues that signaled them to navigate toward the left or right and their neuronal activity became focused, a condition they called neural exploitation. After a long period of desensitization, the rats more rapidly remembered and re-habitualized themselves to the cues originally learned. When tracing neuronal signals and synapses of rat brains in learning studies, a clear correlation between habit formation and brain electrochemistry is observed. Somewhat like Pavlov’s dog, the brain retains the information of habitual actions, in the form of chemistry, as demonstrated by Graybiel et al. This indicates that the brain is subject to molecular and biochemical modification through the changing of habits. The sequence goes like this: habit influences the brain, which ultimately influences overall performance.

Ann Graybiel, "Paving Habits" (2006): Graybiel's illustration of the cognitive architecture of habit formation in rats may have implications with regard to the development of effective habits for (human!) writers.

The circadian system, also referred to as the biological clock, can be trained to allow the body to perform certain functions at certain times of the biological day. For anybody who has attempted to shift sleep schedules to match work schedules, it may have become clear that it takes nearly twice the amount of sleep during the day to match the rejuvenating rest achieved during sleep at night. This is due to the fact that the body is not conditioned for such functions during the daylight hours. The efficiency of writing is likely to follow a similar pattern. Lisa C. Lyons et al, demonstrated biochemically that circadian clocks are influenced by long-term sensitization. (3) Key brain-related proteins are repressed or activated for prolonged periods of time, after the cue has stimulated, allowing for the biochemical modification of the brain, which functions as memory. This indicates that depending on the time of day, our brain chemistry is such that certain actions will be performed with greater efficiency than others, as a result of modified brain activity. On this same note, reading and writing can continually influence the activity of certain brain regions and their chemistry, leading to altered functions over time.

The process of writing paves brain biochemistry, such that through each consecutive period of writing, the overall process becomes a routine. Those who are constantly writing have much less difficulty in beginning and completing writing projects, while most of us have this very specific weakness. Many of us can start, but have difficulty developing ideas; others can go as far as to develop ideas, but cannot manage to complete the work; and yet others are very creative when presented with preliminary ideas already in existence but cannot start their own. The way we have trained our brains will dictate consequent performances. As mentioned previously, habit sensitizes the brain to perform recurring tasks with little effort, similar to the immune system’s recognition of pathogens after repeated encounters. The brain must first be trained to respond by habitualization, and this habitualization results from iterating actions.

In this issue of Revisions, multiple articles deal with tricks and suggestions for how people deal with inspiration and procrastination. Most of these suggestions describe specific repetitions, which over time shape brain circuitry. These are actions which influence the biochemistry in our brains and allow for significantly faster response and more efficient writing habits. Once the circuitry of the brain has been established and a habit has been engraved, repetition comes naturally, and ceasing the action is all that more difficult. For writers, habit is important: Develop productive habits in writing in order to re-circuit your brain.

1 Rice, Lee. “Break Bad Habits: Rewire Your Brain in 14 Days.” Paper presented at The Academy for Chief Executives’ first global CEO Conference, “Inspire 2006” (October 30 - 31, Stanmore, England).

2 Graybiel, Ann M., Terra D. Barnes, Yasuo Kubota, Dan Hu, Dezhe Z. Jin. “Activity of Striatal Neurons Reflects Dynamic Encoding and Recoding of Procedural Memories. Nature 437.7062 (2005), 1158–61.

3 Lyons, Lisa C., Maria Sol Collado, Omar Khabour, Charity L. Green, and Arnold Eskin. “The Circadian Clock Modulates Core Steps in Long-Term Memory Formation" in Aplysia Journal of Neuroscience 26.34 (2006), 8662-8671.

Writing is like working a muscle. I exercise it regularly.

As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Success at any craft requires routine practice. This is true for artists, marathon runners and serial killers alike.

Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner, when asked about his writing habits, said, “I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.” Though Faulkner was notoriously untruthful, this message is valid: if you want to be a successful creative writer, get to work daily.

This discipline of labor has also transformed my own stories. When I was younger, I wrote when I felt like it. I produced plenty, but my content was unrefined. I rarely revised, so my work never reached a greater standard. Now that I have a schedule, I tend to orient myself toward craft as well as creation. And with all the distractions of adult life and the modern world, routine is more important than ever for consistent production.

I don't write at the same time every day. I vary it for fear of making my art too regimented. That's a personal superstition. But it doesn't stop me from writing—every day.

Productivity experts say the trick to cementing any new habit is going public with your intentions, and the most public announcement you can make is on a little thing called the Internet, with its six billion potential writing buddies ready to hold you to your word(s).

For about a year I’ve been posting to my blog (www.lifeonthehighwire.com), where I’ve shared my experiences as a new New Yorker and MFA student. It’s forced me to focus on craft and content – story, writ tiny – in a way that random deadlines and made-up assignments never have.

With a blog there’s no waiting for overworked editors to decide your fate; you just hit post and voila! You’re published. Plus, it’s obvious when your writing is working (or not), because readers let you know. Murky message or sagging language? Radio silence, my friend.

But if the post is laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly honest, wildly informative, or simply beautiful, you get comments and kudos – instant gratification for a job well done – and whether you have six or six thousand readers, that kind of feedback is invaluable (and addictive). Blogging keeps you writing, and that’s the point.

For the first session, we reviewed basic syntax and style; I planned a few creative writing exercises for the second. I wanted to engage the students’ imaginations and interest in writing. My plan was to get them to write freely without fearing the grammar rules that hindered their inner creativity.

I went to my local library and headed straight to the art section. Looking at art has always been a good way to spur creative expression. I leafed through a few books of paintings by famous artists like Van Gogh and Picasso and checked them out immediately.

I told my students to look through the books. Afterwards, I asked them to pick a painting. One of my students selected Van Gogh’s "Cafe at Arles." I told him to write a story based on the picture and not to analyze or describe the picture. It was challenging for him at first, but soon I could hear the scratching of his pencil on the paper. Twenty minutes later, the student handed me a short story about two random strangers meeting in the cafe through an internet dating service. It was funny and thoughtful. He enjoyed the assignment very much and I was reminded of the inner joy of unleashed creativity that writing can bring. We reviewed what he had written with an eye to grammar and syntax. The immediacy of catching the errors in their own writing was highly effective in helping students improve their English.

It may seem elementary to grab an art book and form a story based on an image, but selecting the right book is key. It might be too challenging to write based upon a book of abstract expressionist paintings, though I have not yet tried this. In any case, I have used these techniques to encourage students to write freely, initiate creative thinking, and overcome writer’s block.

The beginning of the process always involves a long phase of procrastination. The prevailing thought is how large this rock is and how difficult it will be to make something out of it. I am fully capable of maintaining a blank ‘New Document’ for hours. Then, the brainstorming begins, typically at a late hour. Random hits on the big rock break off pieces that lay in no particular order on the ground. Ideas come to mind, often at casual moments as while waiting for the bus or taking a shower. Phrases and terms are jotted on any piece of paper. With additional processing enough stones have accumulated to form an outline. Enough notes are written down to serve as a push beyond an imaginary threshold and the words begin to flow more readily off the keyboard. The details are filled in and the text is constantly revised.

There are two strategies that have proven immensely useful. The first is letting go of the text and getting back to it after a few hours or a day. This is where I often find myself wondering. “What was I thinking?” The second, as embarrassing as it might be, is giving the work-in-progress to others. In this case, they wonder, “What were you thinking?” A fresh look from another reader can be insightful. After wiping that last drop of perspiration off your forehead you may just have created something that you and others will like.

Some philosophers contend that by substituting “she” for “he” in invoking an abstract moral agent, we’ve solved a basic problem of feminism in philosophical writing. Or, at the very least, we’ve followed the APA guidelines for political correctness. In either case, the idea is that “she” automatically ushers in all the ladies who are excluded through the writing of the G.O.W.P. (Great Old White Philosophers). Poor Kant, if only he had chosen “she” instead of “he,” he would have revealed the feminist potential of his universalistic ethics.

Language itself can and does exclude. But using feminine pronouns is a lame attempt at being politically correct, not a serious effort to engage social inequalities. I will never, when critiquing Aristotle, use “she” instead of “he” as if this divests a philosophical system of its “sexism.” Mere “inclusion” by way of pronouns does not change power networks. “She” remains the neutered universal “he” of old precisely because it “includes” indiscriminately, as if lived experience, corporeality, ethnicity and class do not matter. Inclusion itself is a political problem in writing that often reads out politically potent difference; I’d rather forge alternative political ontologies through the economies of written discourses. Examples of this approach are found in the fundamental subversions of language employed by writers like Monique Wittig and Luce Irigiray.

The upshot: as much as we all adore him, Spinoza did not like women, and women cannot “fit” into his philosophical system just by changing pronouns. Ironically, his political ontology has radical feminist potential, but that does not involve grafting the “she” anachronistically and mindlessly onto his writing. When Spinoza wrote the “essence of man” he meant – albeit unwittingly, perhaps – the “essence of man.”

Again, why would women want to “fit” into a man-made hole in language or philosophical thinking, anyway? As if all we strive for is to fit into the shoes of the Man–same exploitative position, different genders makes it equal and good? Just because the product says “she” doesn’t mean it’s “feminist.” Just because the product says “Yes, we can” doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society, whatever the ahistorical, neoconservative hell that is. When crafting feminist subversions, let’s venture beyond the superficiality of language and engage the deeper relationship between political realities and writing.