Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:39:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: rebecca elizabeth zorach <rezorach-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: psychoanalysis



I'm leaving for the weekend and won't be back on until Wednesday, but I 
wanted to quickly inject this into the discussion, on post-gender (and I 
apologize for not really responding to Rita's message, but I wanted to 
provide some amplification and clarification).  What I was thinking 
about, in terms of post-gender, is whether there's a way to talk about 
bodies, language, love, desire, etc. in terms that are feminist but not 
gendered. I don't mean this as a substitute for current kinds of 
feminist work, but a "supplement"... I still think there will be a need 
for strategic essentialism (a category called "woman") as long as there 
is oppression on the basis of gender, which may be forever. But I wonder 
if it might not be useful, additionally, to start mapping an imagined 
post-gender world -- not one in which gender does not exist but one in 
which power is not aligned with certain formations of gender at the 
expense of others. I have a feeling this is what Grosz is up to with 
"Animal Sex." And which (in response to our recent male-bashing 
discussions) provide a way in for men to identify with feminism. At the 
same time, I mentioned making gender "tacit" because it seems as if this 
project -- while claiming to make itself blind to gender -- would have to 
rest upon gender. That is, its practitioners would have a feminist 
project in mind, but would not mention women. Which seems odd. I guess 
this is very much related to Haraway's cyborgs (remember the cyborg too 
rests upon gender: "I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess" -- why not 
just "I'd rather be a cyborg"?). I'm sure it does relate to Butler but 
I'm not sure where/when/how. Lately I'm constantly intrigued, puzzled, 
made skeptical and yet tempted by her notion of the "melancholia" of 
gender. Related to this, and to get back to french feminism, there's the 
whole notion of the pre-Oedipal -- maternal identification, 
undifferentiatedness -- which involves a "prior to gender" state, and 
which has been used productively by so many feminists. If we can imagine 
oedipality as not universal, then we can imagine family forms as 
subjectivizing in different ways, and we might want to discard the 
pre-Oedipal as "pre-Oedipal" and find another term for it, since it 
seems to reify the Oedipal. (Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger has this notion 
of the "matrix" and "metramorphosis" -- is anyone familiar with her work?)

okay, i have to run. til next week --

Rebecca

On Wed, 10 Jul 1996 dralfonso-AT-msuvx1.memphis.edu wrote:

> Hi Rebecca!  Time to get this list jump started again!  Don't mind if I 
> jump in, do ya?  I finished Grosz' new one a couple of months ago and had 
> forgotten about her critique of de Lauretis -- partially because I am 
> only slightly familiar with de Lauretis' work, so I skimmed this part.  
> But from what I gathered, now having skimmed it twice, Grosz seemed to be 
> giving her a fair and rigorous reading...
> 
> On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, rebecca elizabeth zorach wrote:
> > Grosz
> > sees psychoanalysis as a discourse that has been useful for feminism, but 
> > which is fundamentally blind to lesbianism. "My concerns are not about 
> > the quality of de Lauretis's work but about the capacity of the 
> > framework of psychoanalysis to explain precisely that which it must 
> > exclude in order to constitute itself as a system or a discourse." (167) 
> 
> Right on!  Yes, the lesbian of psychoanalysis is a rather wretched 
> creature, when she actually makes an appearance, which is seldom to 
> never.  
> 
> In the quote above she seems to be saying that psych. does not have the 
> self-reflective ability/framework to be a critical (self-critical) 
> discourse;  it seems to follow that it must be critiqued from 
> 'elsewhere.'  I wonder what is behind this sentiment, where 'elsewhere' 
> might be?  Philosophy comes to mind as the arche-discourse because of 
> this bit about self-reflexivity.... And Grosz is a philosopher, yes?   
> 
> Does this mean jettison the lot?  DOes it mean destroy?  DOes it mean revamp?
> Is there and echO in here?  SOunds familiar... This cry has been heard in 
> philosophy, and feminist philosophy since at least de Beauvoir.
> 
> I can see now where the questions from your original post came from.  
> 
> But your most thought provoking question comes here, parenthetically:
> 
> > bodies -- in ungendered ways. (Can feminism and gay/lesbian studies do 
> > without a notion of gender? Or make gender tacit? Or find a model of 
> > gender other than the psychoanalytic?)
> > -Rebecca
> 
> Where did gender come from? Modern Psych? Not! 
> What are we giving up with gender, 
> if we could? Imagine that!  
> (I doo love Butler, almost as much as Irigaray -- no, more.  Is she behind 
> your questions here?)
> Working backwards -- can we do without it?  Wouldn't even Judy say no? 
> What are we left with without gender -- if we could imagine such a 
> thing?  Sex, no?  Biology, determination, natural categories. Then we are 
> gay by force of nature.  
> 
> But wait, sex is a construct dependent on gender for its meaning; sex falls 
> with gender.  
> 
> Maybe we are left with cyborgs?  
> 
> Maybe it is true that "sex is fucking, and everything else is gender."  
> (take that as you may...)
> 
> Maybe we do not/cannot know?
> 
> rita
>