File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-fem_1995/french-fem_Oct.95, message 74


Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 12:28:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Diane Celia Hodges <dchodges-AT-unixg.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: identity issues/



Trudy - sorry to take so long in my responding;
I am feeling so swamped these days!
but you - and so many others - have provoked
some useful turns in my thinking. gracias!


On Wed, 25 Oct 1995, Trudy Mercer wrote:
<snip>

> On Wed, 25 Oct 1995, Diane Celia Hodges wrote:
> (snip) 
> > I am currently writing about identity issues,
> > that is, the multiplicitous self in opposition (and here I
> > position "opposition" as a strategic site)
> > to ideological constructions of the "whole" or complete
> > /singular self.
> 
> Some of the theory I've read posits the idea of "fluid" subjectivities. 
> In other words, a multiplicity of competing subject positions existing
> simultaneously, and influencing other sites.(can't cite any specific
> articles at the moment.) Is this connecting to your concept of identities?

it is absolutely - the dilemma, of course, is how to
write about it and still be coherent. 
f'instance, there is much literature which
discusses the shifting "I" as an allusion to the discursive self,

but when "I" am actually writing - and this is perhaps the crux
of it for me - "I" unavoidably fix the subject I am writing
about, as well as fix myself within some sort
of relation to the subject (eg., 'woman'/ or'queer')...

I am not sure this is a gesture towards a 'totalizing',
that somehow I will succeed in writing 'the' quintessential
discursive text; rather, how to write
about these issues in a way which
is coherent.

fluid subjectivities describes it very nicely;
...

> 
> > 
> > I am borrowing Frigga Haug's (1986) use of memory-work
> > and Dorothy Smith's counter-sociology to construct a
> > frame which enables a reading of multiplicity - the body as a text which,
> > when read critically/politically, produces difference.
> 
> I am not familiar with the works mentioned above. Would you post more 
> complete citations? I am interested in looking at the body as text, 
> including the concepts of interpretations & revisions.

I posted Haug's books earlier.
the Smith article is:

Smith, Dorothy. (1988) Institutional ethnography. In Arlene McLaren (Ed). 
_Gender and society:Creating a Canadian women's sociology_. Clark Pitman Ltd.

Dorothy Smith also wrote _The Everyday World as Problematic_, which
is also quite useful.


>  
> > I am wondering how this plays out in a feminist field
> > of inquiry; that is,
> > 
> > by generating more discursive readings of women - aren't I also
> > continuing to position "women"?
> 
> I agree, in some respects, that continuing to discuss "women" as a kind of
> category continues to (re)position females into this category. But I also
> feel that by complicating what this category "means"  can also complicate (&
> frustrate?) this repositioning. 
> 
> A lot of theory has broken down the categories of "men" & "women" into 
> three separate ares, sexual anatomy, sexuality & gender. How we view each 
> of these areas also depends on their relationship to each other. My idea 
> is to break down the concept of gender from 2 binary categories into a 
> multiplicity of categories relational to anatomy and sexuality. In this 
> way gender would not automatically be associated with sexual 
> anatomy. If we understand that there are a multiplicity of genders and 
> sexualities, then the categories of "men" & "women" become much more 
> complicated concepts. 
> 
> This connects with the concept of identity as an unstable position, by 
> making "men" & "women" unstable categories. 

the conflict for me here is that in the material/social world,
"men" and "women" *are* reified/stabilized categories.
and no matter how I may want to write against this,
there is an undeniable and overpowering social-contract
which works against the gesture, embedded obviously in
language/practice and so on.


there are no resolutions to this of course. I expect I
can negotiate some sort of 

compromise; although when I ask about how this
plays out in a feminist field of practice, I am thinking
more materially,
pragmatically, perhaps...

diane

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