File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-07-07.000, message 131


Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 18:17:58 -0600 (CST)
From: dralfonso-AT-msuvx2.memphis.edu
Subject: Re: de(con)struction



Hey Diane!  First:  What is a gulag?  I have hear this word about lately, 
but I cannot find it in a dictionary...

What follows is brief commentary on your reply, which did give me a good 
sense of your perspective. (And forgive my breaking into your text...)

On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, D. Diane Davis wrote:

> When Heidegger strives for the "clearing," he's not striving for an 
> archemedian point--no such thing. He takes this idea of "clearing away" 
> from Nietzsche ('shedding')...it's about collapsing our linguistic 
> guardrails, one by one...a collective PURGING.  Cixous calls for much 
> the same thing--a disgorging, a metaphorical throwing up of "the basic 
> structures of property relations" ("Castration" 54). 

Can you give me a fuller cite on the "Castration" article?
And O.K., I follow your logic on the Heidegger-Derrida-Cixous trajectory.  

> .... I understand your reservations about deconstruction and feminism. 
> B/c you're obviously right--even feminist politics (in its multiplicity 
> of forms) will not be safe with it.  Deconstruction is no respecter of 
> poly-tics. Everything is vulnerable to it. But, then, french feminists 
> like Cixous and an early Irigaray were ok with that. And in the states, 
> Haraway, Ronell, and, as you say, Butler. They just plop what is called 
> "feminism" right up there on the chopping block with everytyhing else. 
> And here's why I like that: feminisim has itself grown out of the stuff 
> deconstruction is busily hacking up. Feminism is inscribed within 
> phallocracy in the sense that it's an reaction against it and so depends 
> upon it. If we would like feminism to become more than an answering 
> machine for an already reactionary phallogocentric mindset, that is, if 
> we want it to become more than a reaction to a reaction, I think we'll 
> have to let it take deconstruction's hits and morph itself, shed it's 
> old bark, accordingly.

I like this, and I largely agree.  But my question!  What are we (feminists) 
'seeking to do,' positively, with deconstruction?  I don't feel you have 
replied to this. Just give me an example of a positive/productive moment 
*you've* witnessed. Or again,  what, in your estimation, has been opened 
up?  And please hurry -- we are running out of trees!  rita.



   

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