The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminin is a psychoanalitical aproach on gender binaries. Irrigaray argument in this book is that there is a gendered bias in language. Her philosophy originates in Freud’s Phallocentric system that supposes many binary oppositions. In this system she sees the superiority of male centered discourse and she argues that the philosophic discourse is a male-dominated thinking where women can only copy masculine language. In other words she can not express or function in a male centered framework and as long as she borrows ideas from a masculine logocentric discourse she will remain a derivation and consequently she does not see any common ground between the theoretical male system and the feminine style of writing. A first phase in the feminine constructed profile is that of mimesis. But mimesis means here a way to appropriate a different discourse where the woman would transgress from the realm of subordination to the one of affirmation. Her discourse wants to break masculine language by opposing material and physical allusions to masculine abstract speculation. This way of writing creates the allusion to an incomprehensible rest that’s to be understood as the invisible of her own readers (mostly female). In the freudian phallogocentric model the privileged sexuality is based on the visible where the woman is seen as the result of a castration and the woman desire to act and think according to a masculine paradigm is a form of castration denial and this makes her neurotic. Irrigaray argues the freudian approach and talks about female pleasure as the place of a new construction the “ek-stasy in the transcendental”. If there is difference between female desire and female pleasure, this is something that should not be looked for in the visible, where female desire is the image of a lack nor within the discourse where she is seen as a deficient masculine or a negative image of the subject, but rather in a newly constructed language where style would be able to form a disjunction. In this style what maters is a new opposition visible/tactile.
Month: October 2013
I would have to agree with Simone de Beauvoir that in the past women have been placed or seen as secondary in relation to men. We have been put in a separate box (not just check Male or Female) but a separate box in life. Throughout history we have been seen as less; look how long it took us to get suffrage.
Being from the states, I can say that although we have yet to elect a woman as president, having had them in the running was at least a big step. Even in Houston, which is located in Texas (primarily a Republican state), we managed to elect a mayor that was not only a woman but also a lesbian. But even still, after such advances, I still feel that women are held back. I am not sure how to explain it but it’s still taking place.
I know this may be a silly thing to say but I think the fact that women are the bearers of children pays a role in it. Although Beauvoir didn’t go into it in the introduction I think it’s a big component. I mean lets think about it…back in the day (cave man days), women bore children and men protected the family. Then it went from women bore children to men protecting the home, bringing home the bacon, voting, etc. Now both can do it all except women still bear the children. So although we have now “proven” ourselves to be capable of everything men can do and more, the weight of childbirth is still upon us. Of course, I know there isn’t a natural way for a man to bear a child nor do I think it will make things better at this point. I think the fact that women are capable of conceiving a child and still manage to work and do the same as men is a phenomenal feat. It is nothing to be looked down upon and it something I look forward to doing in the future (farrrr future…still have time). But, it is something that takes over us and changes us whether it is mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. It is something that can make us stronger or weaker in the eyes of others….excuse me in the eyes of the Subject as Beauvoir might say.
I suppose my question is, are there any other big differences in men and women besides child birth that come to any ones else’s mind that have played a large role? Besides our sex, I believe it to be one of the biggest distinguishing factor.
I would have to agree with Simone de Beauvoir that in the past women have been placed or seen as secondary in relation to men. We have been put in a separate box (not just check Male or Female) but a separate box in life. Throughout history we have been seen as less; look how long it took us to get suffrage.
Being from the states, I can say that although we have yet to elect a woman as president, having had them in the running was at least a big step. Even in Houston, which is located in Texas (primarily a Republican state), we managed to elect a mayor that was not only a woman but also a lesbian. But even still, after such advances, I still feel that women are held back. I am not sure how to explain it but it’s still taking place.
I know this may be a silly thing to say but I think the fact that women are the bearers of children pays a role in it. Although Beauvoir didn’t go into it in the introduction I think it’s a big component. I mean lets think about it…back in the day (cave man days), women bore children and men protected the family. Then it went from women bore children to men protecting the home, bringing home the bacon, voting, etc. Now both can do it all except women still bear the children. So although we have now “proven” ourselves to be capable of everything men can do and more, the weight of childbirth is still upon us. Of course, I know there isn’t a natural way for a man to bear a child nor do I think it will make things better at this point. I think the fact that women are capable of conceiving a child and still manage to work and do the same as men is a phenomenal feat. It is nothing to be looked down upon and it something I look forward to doing in the future (farrrr future…still have time). But, it is something that takes over us and changes us whether it is mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. It is something that can make us stronger or weaker in the eyes of others….excuse me in the eyes of the Subject as Beauvoir might say.
I suppose my question is, are there any other big differences in men and women besides child birth that come to any ones else’s mind that have played a large role? Besides our sex, I believe it to be one of the biggest distinguishing factor.
Take the test: http://areyouafeminist.com/
(you will know in only a few seconds…)
I really like how things are slowly starting to connect, and make sense..In reading Cixous’ excerpt of The Newly Born Woman, I was making links between her philosophy and our passed weeks reflection around language and social speeches, psychoanalysis, social and political domination and of course, the topic of this week, Feminism(s).
To start that post, I picked a quotation from that text that I think illustrate the intication of a language and a social construction dominated by male:
“Philosophy is constructed on the premise of woman’s abasement. Subordination of the feminine to the masculine order, which gives the appearance of being the condition for the machinery’s functioning. […]
[I]t suddenly came out that the logocentric plan had always, inadmissibly, been to create a foundation for (to found and fund) phallocentrism , to guarantee the masculine order a rationale equal to history itself”
I would just question the idea of a plan of History…can we really think that the domination of men over wociety and language was rationnlly conceived? Maybe it is just an effect of the translation or the result of a shortcoming to explain the evolution of Western History, but I think this idea of a “male” theology is to be questioned.
I would in particular pursuit the exploration of that topic in asking how men are themselves trapped in that male dominated language and those representations that give them a role to endorse. Maybe feminism is as much about a liberation of “women” than a miberation of men
That leads me to me second point around that intricationf of a language and a social system of domination: if the aim of feminism is to give a new language to women, how can this happen: is that liberation a invention of a new language (i.e. in French, the adding of an -e to words that did not have one because they initially were used for positions reserved to men such as “professor” (professeur/e), “doctor” (docteur/e)…) Or is liberation about playing with one’s chains, therefore coming from inside the language, as a new use of those words, concepts etc…that have been used forever in male-dominated society? I guess my main question is : are the fights of feminists over a word or a saying worth being? or is language just an epiphenomenon of deeper structures that we shoudl focuse on?
I am very convinced with Cixous’ work but I wonder if there is not tension between the desire to get out from traditional binary oppositions (patterned by the opposition of the masculine and the feminine) and the necessity to reuse them to build her philosophy. For example, if psychoanalysis is seen as a way to define an intrenseque difference of identity between men’s and women’s, the first one as being a separation and a difference from the mother, and the other a similarity and therefore, an acceptance of what could be different, how can binarity be overcome?
Feminine writing understood as the creative concept of femininity, also defined as the “other bisexuality” seems to be an attempt to get out of the impasse of binarity. Indeed, it is seen as the acceptance of the other in oneself, “the location within oneself of the presence of both sexes” or else “the non exclusion of difference of a sex” but at the same time, it is defined as a opposed to the “masculine” order, organisation, the domination of reason. Is feminine writing related to a “masculine” order as a difference or is it exceeding it in enclosing it? What about feminine writing as a thematic writing (i.e. women topics such as motherhood) ? does it fall under the criticism of a dominant “male-thinking”?
Last question that I would like to ask is the one of our contemporaneity. The text was written in 1975…how much have things changed since? do we slowly start to shift our representations? Are we reaching the “possibility of a radical transformation?” and is teh “other bisexuality” starting to shape our society? For example, when I surf on the web, I dont know i fthe author of the blog is a woman or a man. Is that part of a new language and way of communicating that is not gendered based and commonly accepted?
I know….too many questions are bad for one’s health! Pump it up guys AND girls…or “guyrls” ????
Categories
Fem…Femme…Femini-what?
This week’s readings made me think of the definition of feminism, or, I should say, the way I perceive feminism. Right now, I like to say that feminism is a trendy word. I hear it everywhere, in the newspaper, in magazines, in class, in the middle of a discussion… But what do I really […]
http://cafaitgenre.org/ A very interesting blog on that topic, written by an old classmate of mine (and PhD student who will certainly make her voice heard around the questions of feminism and gender studies). I remember that time when I read one of her posts about the use of the male overtone prevaling in the grammatical […]
I find very interesting the text The Traffic in Women, by Gayle Rubin. In first place, because she makes a review of some the theories of some authors that we have read or we at least we have references. In her review, she tries to find some convergences and divergences (I think there are more of this, in fact) with the ideas of this authors and feminism. I think this is a very good exercise of make theories alive, that is, make them talk among each other, discuss their possible strengths or shortcomings according to one’s perspective.
But, which I like most in his text are some ideas that are in the last paragraph of the part entitled “Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents”. There she says: “It [the feminist utopia that is, according to the author the exegesis of the works of Freud and Lévi-Strauss] suggests that we should not aim for the elimination of men, but for the elimination of the social system which creates sexism and gender” (787). I strongly agree with this idea, because, at the end, it is not only men oppressing women (this is the surface that we could see); it is a social system that creates his own systems of repression (here I remember Foucault). In it, the creation of the labels –because, at the end, they are not more than labels, like a lot of others regarding of race, for instance– of “sex” and “gender” have the aim to control, to order, to keep the status quo, to repress. And, as Rubin says, the social system not only repress women, but also men (I remember, for instance, that very common phrase in some male chauvinist –machistas- societies that literally says: “Men must not cry”. It’s a simple phrase, but hides a lot). It would be interesting to begin questioning why, if we know it (as the ideology), we still use and practice this labels.
The author also says: “It [the feminist movement] must dream of the elimination of obligatory sexualities and sex roles. The dream I find most compelling is one of an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (787). This is a very revolutionary idea. On the one hand, because it goes against the labels that I was talking about in the previous paragraph and gives complete liberty to the individual (maybe in this situation we can talk, finally, of an individual rather than a subject). On the other hand, this idea could have political implications. Nowadays, in many countries (Perú one of them) the debate of civil marriage between persons of the same sex is a strong debate. If societies fall apart from the ideas of obligatory sexualities, these debates would immediately dissolve. But, for any reason (maybe our education system or others institutions that preserve hegemony) we still believe in sexual role and genders. It would be a good idea to think, when human beings will stop to believe in labels. On one hundred years, two hundred… never? Even if we have the weight of hegemony upper us, I think there is always the possibility to revert oppressions.
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The discourse of feminisms (in plural) is definitely an aspect that is many times overlooked when observing the way women have come to terms with their identity and establish their place in a political, private, public and intimate contexts. Questioning structures of power and inequality not always results in the simple elimination of the external force that install such structures, as Rubin says in her introduction (770), because our own perspective is also destabilized, renewed and redefined in the process. The emancipation and awareness is also painful for women who have lived with the belief of achieving happiness as long as the foundation of social relations, unequal or equal, remains intact.
Far from a unified, homogeneous movement, Western feminism reproduced the same structure of negligence to different determinations that affect women inside the movement. Lorde (856) looked into her own case when explaining all the layers that interact in her identity and its implications: African American (or Black to be more precise), lesbian, women and how not even African American literature is included in women’s literature or any literature course in general in her critique to the movement from the inside. Heng reveals in a similar way the dynamics and determinations that the State, society and the market play in the development of particular feminisms in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, usually judged by Western feminists for not following a confrontational, opposed-to-the-state activism or for having ground in the tradition or folklore as archaic ideas, ignoring the need for legitimation in the local context.
The complexity toward adopting and defending feminist ideals in the 3rd world also includes the “theoretical dependence” taboo that undermines any serious attempt to question ancient frames of thought and representation. When I lived in Colombia in the 1990s and volunteered in an shelter for abused women, the executive board was always afraid of adopting a feminist approach as the organization would be seen as copying a foreign discourse that has no sustainable ground in Colombian society, and the same women in need might refuse to ask for help. Another fear was to be perceived as “too leftist”. Since the organization received funding from the government, they wanted to avoid being identified as a guerrilla-supporter- organization. In that case, we can observe how male oppression is not the only determinant in the emergence, development and survival of a movement that need to recognize all the variables (social stigma, economic and political conditions) at play in specific contexts.
Something interesting that I also observed while was there was the different attitudes and contradictions toward self-proclaimed “feminist”. The first reaction women and men had toward the feminist was that she was miserable, bitter, lesbian and that was raped once at least. Surprisingly, women in Colombia are encouraged to study and work although there is still inequality in a lot of areas (i.e. salary), but it is still expected that they carry out all domestic tasks if there are not female maids around. Usually, when this structure is questioned by a girl, is another woman (the mother) who corrects the deviant behavior. I always thought our emancipation in the public sphere (vote, representation) served to increase our burden as it was not accompanied by education and acceptance in the private/intimate sphere. Of course, this does mean we have to go back in order to be the “angel of the house” and have an “easier” life, but to be aware about internal mindsets in both women and men about feminism.