File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-06-15.140, message 238


Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 16:31:04 +1200
From: gdv-AT-deepsouth.co.nz (danny butt/dessford vogel)
Subject: Re:  contexts for French feminism


Laurel and Stokely wrote:

>We are worried about your
>terminology of 'getting in the back door' and 'fetishising origins'.  To
>put it bluntly, who decides where the front door is anyway?  Who are you
>to guard the 'pure', 'virginal' quality of a discourse?  While we think
>that some attention needs to be paid to context, we don't have a sense of
>responsibility to necessarily respect these contexts. Isn't that just a
>paternal condescension?  And also, none of the women we've referred to
>define themselves as French feminists anyway--they would object to such
>categorisations.

Ryan Schram wrote:
>Neither of you have talked
>about your positions as readers in relation to the theory you discuss.
-snip-
>Your discourse seems to suggest that the question is "to
>borrow theory or not to borrow theory." As L+S pointed out, this paints a
>picture of theory as having a "pure" and "virginal" state wherein "context" is
>the only arbiter of meaning (whether or not the theory is sullied by the
>experience.) I would like to point out that _any_ reading displaces one
>"context" with another, thus every reading is different. For me the question is
>not how much should one be aware of what the author intends, but what can be
>gained by consciously resisting an author's intentions.

yipes. just been thinking with gentle amusement about these replies while
surfing at a deserted beach here at the bottom of new zealand (do you have
interesting insights into Hawaiian surf culture through 'french feminism'
Ryan? would love to hear) -  a  long way from france or indeed america or
the u.k., in fact before i went to france i calculated that it was
diametrically opposed to dunedin, new zealand on the globe. i was later
told that this was incorrect, but i still like the story - anyway,
amusement that as a male who reads Irigaray and Kristeva in translation
near-exclusively i stand accused of guarding the 'purity' of 'french
feminist' discourses...

i thought i had made some effort to reiterate that i wasn't guarding
anything (again, 'i don't want to be policing boundaries or fetishising
origins'), and "pure" and "virginal" are not terms i would ever use to
describe theory, and i never suggested that context is the only arbiter of
meaning. everything is always already muddy and i have spent many hours
attempting to write the mud. to me the sense of 'purity' seems to reveal
itself in the responses above, in the idea of uncomplicated *transmission*
across cultures. while i appreciate your point that every reading is
different Ryan, it does not follow that all readings are equally different.
each reading is a function of (among other things) the political/cultural
location of the reader (and writer) and their relationship to writing. this
has very little to do with 'authorial intent' whatever that is. it's about:
as much as we read/write ourselves through language, we are also
read/written by it.

thinking along these lines, how can the 'reading subject' know 'what can be
gained by consciously resisting an author's intentions?' for in the
discourses of self/other it seems that a resistance also entails some kind
of embrace. we are never completely outside the text, looking cleanly for
intentions to resist, for of course what we see as the intentions are again
dependent upon our political/cultural desires as readers.

Laurel and Stokely and Ryan, you may feel confident about identifying
positive new uses for 'french feminist' theories irregardless of their
context. for myself i feel less confident. an interesting thing for me
about spending a few months in france and picking up some of the language
and talking to people (thinking context) was how 'naive'  (not the right
word sorry) my previous thoughts about Irigaray and Kristeva (the only two
authors i have more than hearsay familiarity with) seemed. i don't mean
that these previous readings were 'wrong', that they were more 'misread'
than the readings i make now, or that they were not useful (au contraire
they have been very important to me!). i mean i was struck by how much of
my own cultural location i was reading into the texts, and reinscribing in
my thoughts/writings with them. which i still do (how can i not), but
perhaps it is now slightly more conscious, or at least more subtle, which i
mostly think is a good thing, or at least i hope it is. well there is a lot
to be said here

but in there is what i think i have been getting at with context, IT CAN
HELP MAKE VISIBLE (sensible?) THE POLITICAL LOCATION (context) OF ONE'S OWN
READING. sorry to shout but that bit seems quite important if we are to
propogate other discourses such as those suggested by various 'french
feminist' theories while minimising reproduction of the dominant discourses
which are also part of us/them. <this is what i meant by 'in the back
door', i 'decide where the front door is' in terms of the political effect
i wish to facilitate with my discourse, the stuff coming in through my/the
back door is the unconscious reproduction of culture - i want more through
the front door where i can see it. well perhaps it was an ill-starred
metaphor from the beginning>

so these thoughts on contexts are not about 'respecting' them which would
indeed be a paternal condescension, but (precisely!) about our 'positions
as readers in relation to the theory'. i am horrified that i may have
impled that 'the question is "to borrow theory or not to borrow theory',
especially here in a 'bicultural state' where nothing is ever nearly so
easy. i don't want to sound too defensive but it's hard not to when someone
asks 'Who are you to...'. i suppose i should have been more explicit in the
first place...

well i have gone on far too long and it is not my intention to intimidate
replies or to dominate the discussion and it is too nice an autumn day to
sit at a computer anyway. i appreciate the conversation on this list and
wish you all well.

bye
x.danny

p.s. Laurel and Stokely: you will note that i take great care to put
'french feminism/ist' in quotes all the time and am fully aware that most
and possibly all of the writers discussed in this list do not like the term
but nevertheless this is the 'french-feminism' list and i thought that we
were all aware of the ironies of using the term, especially when all the
french guys each get a list of their own... :-)




   

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