Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 19:33:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: MOWERY-AT-UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: Re: Text Discussion



Weeeeell, I've been thinking about the suggestion (from an 
anonymous FF-er) that to "found" and to "ground" are not at 
all the same things.  And I'm open to that difference of 
interpretation--please say s'mo' about that.  Keep talking; 
I'm listening. I base my original assumption on more of 
Braidotti's work but also on other interpretations of 
language. Not the least of which is that, for instance, my 
unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language 
defines "found" as: "to set up or establish a firm basis or 
for enduring existence." Found, after all, is the root of 
found/ation...and found/ation is one of those sub/stance 
words that Burke talks about. Sub/stance words...words that 
attempt to call up the image of getting UNDER an idea to its 
BAS(e)IS (another sub/stance word), its a priori, its 
GROUNDing/FOUND/ing, in order to UNDER/stand (yet another 
one) it. 
 
Braidotti: "Feminism is about ac[/]count[/]ability; it is 
about grounding a new epistemology and a situated ethics; it 
is about foundations."
 
Braidotti: "I aim at the empowerment of women."
 
Braidotti: "One cannot deconstruct a subjectivity one has 
never been fully granted control over;...In order to 
announce the death of the subject, one must first have 
gained the right to speak as one." 
 
(Hartsock: "Why is it that just at the moment when so many 
of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to 
name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of 
history, that just then the concept of subjecthood becomes 
problematic?")
 
I see red flags all over the place in the above quotes. So 
many that it's difficult to know where to start...Must one 
have been granted the right to BE a Nazi b/f s/he can 
productively de/construct such a position?
 
But is Braidotti suggesting that women have not always 
already been subjects?...that women have been OBJECTS all 
along? And that men, on the other hand, have been empowered, 
HAVE been "fully granted control" over their subjectivity? 
Irigaray, to my knowledge, would never buy that.  In fact, 
Irigaray argues that the phallus does indeed *get around* to 
women...that women have been "transformed by phallocratism." 
It is not that WOMEN (the other side of the binary from MEN) 
are not linguistically re/presented but that *the feminine*, 
as the EXCESSes that overflow our categorical boundaries, 
are not represented. "Real women" can act as subjects 
inasmuch as they play woman-as-man's-other. But that seems 
hardly a revolutionary thought...there's nothing new here. 
No busting of boundaries, no breaking with (phal)logocentric 
ordering systems...no "jamming of the theoretical 
machinery."  
 
Maybe more importantly, Braidotti appears to be after a 
particular type of female subject position...an emPOWERed 
one...one that can make off with the power of the Other. And 
THAT is disturbing to me. Why do we tend to desire the very 
thing that oppresses us?  
 
P.s. I'm operating off of two accounts, if you're wondering 
why my address just changed...the one at home is my old 
account at UTA. Can't access the LAN account at ODU from 
home. 
 
Diane (mowery) Davis
ddd100f-AT-hamlet.bal.odu.edu 

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