Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 13:57:47 +1000 (EST)
From: Catherine Driscoll <s_cad1-AT-eduserv.its.unimelb.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: This Sex


On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Judith L. Poxon wrote:

> Thanks for the suggestion; I'll take a look at it. Off the top of my 
> head, I think the tension between Jagose's position, as you describe it, 
> and yours, is a tension that is present in Irigaray's work itself: that 
> is, if you read her as she seems to "intend" to be read--and I suspect 
> that this is the reading that's most productive for further theorization 
> of the problems she's concerned with--you end up with the reading you're 
> suggesting, whereas if you attend to what is present in the text in spite 
> of her "intentions," you end up with a reading like the one you attribute 
> to Jagose. I can't help but be a little suspicious that anyone who comes 
> from such a psychoanalytic background as Irigaray does, even taking her 
> critique of psychanalysis into account, is probably going to have some 
> theoretical problems with homosexuality.
> 

I understand the suspicion and I'm not arguing that such a reading isn't 
possible and even to a certain extent necessary.  I think all caution 
wiht regard to psychoanalysis is advisable.  However, its also 
interesting to me that this is emphatically not the grounds on which 
Jagose takes issue with what she sees as Irigaray's co-option of the 
lesbian.  

I've written an article on Irigaray, Jagose and the lesbian as 
utopia for a new Australian journal called _Critical InQueeries_ which is 
being released this month.  I don't know if that would be difficult for 
you to get, but I'd be interested in your feedback if you would like to 
discuss it.  My argument is substantially that Irigaray's critique of 
psychoanalysis includes a critique of the developmental model by which 
relations between women are confined to a preSubjective state.  Thus I do 
not think that she set up the lesbian as 'outside' patriarchy or as a 
developmental stage to be passed through for (feminist?/new?) women.  

But doesn't she still retain some kind of developmental model?  Isn't 
the 'blind spot of the old dream of symmetry' about different development 
and the development of difference?  Is there a way to talk about coming 
to be women that is no way developmental (all developmental models being 
teleological)?  

I do have a problem with Irigaray's reference to the lesbian which is 
related to these questions.  All psychoanalytic accounts and all accounts 
beginning with the psychoanalytic staple of an originary bond to the mother, 
collapse the lesbian into  a relation to the mother -- before any 
development, either a failure or a refusal to grow up.  


Catherine





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