Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:42:58 -0400
From: Jeannette Gaudet <gaudet-AT-stthomasu.ca>
Subject: Re: Irigaray on the couple


Could you send me the reference for the article by Pheng Cheah please?
Thanks.
jg

At 09:28 97-02-19 -0500, you wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, J Poxon wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, 13 Feb 1997, Phyllis Kaminski wrote:
>>
>> > I'm working on a on feminist theology paper on the body--using
>> > Irigaray--and I have just
>> > finished reading I love to you--My question concerns Irigaray's use of
>> > the saving love of the couple--is she falling back to a heterosexist norm
>> > for the couple--or is there still an opening for same sex love--
>
>In Pheng Cheah's article "Mattering" in Diacritics Spring '96, he
>describes both Butler and Grosz as ultimately remaining within an
>"anthropologistic horizion" in their work, which, he argues, limits their
>ability to talk about agency and difference that are not human construct,
>thereby relegating them to the culture side of a nature/culture dichotomy,
>the form side of a form/matter dichotomy.  I have not represented his
>argument well in that brief synopsis, but in my question regarding the
>agency of a woman's body that is instrumental for the will of a deity, I
>am hoping to use Cheng's critique whereby I will say that the metaphor of
>sexual difference as radical difference remains within the
>anthropologistic horizion.  What is most critical to me is that, in terms
>of post-colonial questions of identity, the difference between the Nehanda
>spirit medium and the men in her community is nowhere near the radical
>difference between her and the British colonial government.  That is, sex
>as difference is a category of radical otherness, I think, for those who
>have the privilege of being the same.  If the body is raced, sexual
>difference becomes second to "the color line."  When it comes to the
>radical otherness of a Zimbabwean ancestor speaking through the body of a
>post-menopausal woman, sexual difference is hugely constitutive of her
>identity, but pales in comparison to the radical difference of her role as
>the place in which the ancestor speaks.  
>> > pretty persuasively that Irigaray sees the heterosexual couple as a
>> figure for the kind of coming to terms with radical otherness that is
>> necessary in any love relationship. Still, that argument reminds me of
>> the Lacanian "the phallus is not the penis" argument, to which Jane
>> Gallop, I think (and others, of course!) replies "Yes, but it's not _not_
>> the penis, either!" Which is to say that the use of the heterosexual
>> couple as a dominant metaphor for redemption, for genuine encounter with
>> otherness, may very well be unable to escape the heterosexist baggage
>> that many of us seem think attends its use.
>>
>Hope the unexplained use of my data on the Zimbabwe medium is not too
>cryptic to be of use. 
>>
>>
>>      --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>
>Mary Keller, Ph.D. Candidate
>Syracuse University
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
Jeannette Gaudet
Département de langues romanes
gaudet-AT-StThomasU.ca



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