File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-07-07.000, message 175


Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 22:37:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: Nancy Ann Nield <nanield-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: re(con)struct...


On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Alpha Anderson wrote:

> Laura Wedner wrote: 
> 
> "Lyotard in Libidinal Economy in particular scorns the dialectical
> remaneuvering of the construction of binaries and the satisfying insertion
> or extraction of a third term."
> 
> Forgive my ignorance, but can you tell me why Lyotard scorns the "insertion
> or extraction of a third term"?
> 
> And what about the idea that Trinh Min Ha and Rey Chow, among others, speak
> about, of writing from a "hyphenated" space between two binaries?
> 
> Thanks in advance...
> 
> Alpha Anderson

My educated guess is that Trinh's and Chow's reference to a "hyphenated 
space" between terms locked together in a hierarchical binary opposition 
borrows and builds heavily on Jacques Derrida's notion of the hymen, 
which can be found in the essay "The Double Session" in _Dissemination_.  
Ironically, despite Derrida's appropriation of this very culturally and 
linguistically loaded term for an "unpenetrated" female body, his 
discourse proves oddly devoid of any direct reference to any actual, 
corporeal 
female body and thus succeeds in distancing itself, I think quite 
deliberately, from any feminist agenda.

Nancy Nield
University of Chicago 



   

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