File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1997/97-03-25.044, message 70


Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 11:30:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: J Poxon <poxon-AT-saclink.csus.edu>
Subject: Re: Cyberfeminism with a difference



On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, Kenneth MacKendrick wrote:

> After reading Rosi Braidotti's paper "Cyberfeminism with a 
> difference" I have several questions, which are interrelated and 
> thematic in regards to a general malaise of anti-humanism which 
> sweeps through contemporary discourse.

I'm not going to attempt to respond to all of Kenneth's questions, but 
having read through about half of Braidotti's essay (which, honestly, 
might be all I can take, since it seems at mid-point to be dis-integrating 
[!] into self-indulgent rambling), I have a few thoughts apropos of the 
issues he's raised here.
 
> 1.  Do images of cyber-humans, technologically grafted and 
> maintained, avoid anti-humanist implications?  Why is the 
> surreal image of a cyberfeminist or cyborg more illuminating than the 
> reality of concrete human beings?

I think Braidotti's reply (and this is something I would affirm, too) 
would be that when the "human" body loses its self-evident "identity"--
when, that is, it becomes radically uncertain whether bodies are "naturally" 
given or technologically constructed, or (as is becoming increasingly 
likely) a combination of the two--it is no longer possible to maintain 
enlightenment humanist assumptions that discrete, autonomous bodies house 
discrete, autonomous subjects. Which is to say, I think, that thinking of 
bodies as techno-biological collages undermines the foundations of 
humanism--although, granted, it may take us a while to see this being 
worked out on the level of popular understandings of what humanism is about.

> 2. Does systematic irony, in contrast to encyclopediatic 
> irony, serve as a vehicle for political and economic emancipation - 
> since the distinctions between truth/fiction, philosophy/literature, 
> life/death, freedom/oppression become blurred in a systematic, 
> totalizing, approach.  Contra Derrida a hope or fulfillment defered 
> infinitely is NO hope at all.  Infinity is not a bus stop.

This kind of question troubles me, too.
 
> [...]

> 4.  Braidotti writes: "I don't mind not having a single shred of 
> discursive coherence to rest upon."  [...] How 
> does "not having a single shred" possibly offer any basis for 
> resistance?!?  No subject, no communication, no coherence, no life.

I would guess it would be Braidotti's hope (at least in the context of 
this essay) that resistance is no longer a helpful way of thinking about 
political action, that it is too trapped in a reactive, victim-oriented 
thinking that absolutely _is_ "captured in the dialectic of modern 
thought"--and that what is needed is a way _out of_ the binary, 
oppositional structure of dialectics.

> 5.  How does the recent cyber-genre (rightfully understood as a 
> commodity) buy into trans-national capitalism (telecommunications, 
> computers, CD-ROM, etc.) and thereby become a tool of oppression 
> which wears thin the dialectic of freedom and domination.  Last time I 
> checked Laurie Anderson tickets were selling at $50 to $90.... and a 
> home computer is unaffordable for many.... not to mention finding the 
> time to read science fiction....  Ani Difranco once lyrically notes that 
> "we barely have to react let alone rehearse."  How does a 
> prescriptive blueprint help those who cannot or do not want to 
> participate in such a blueprint.

Good questions!
 
> 6.  Braidotti writes: "I see postmodernity... as the threshold of new 
> and important re-locations for cultural practice."  What are the 
> imperialistic implications of privileging the imperatives post-human 
> culture (which by definition is also trans-human) over and against the 
> humanist ideals  of the enlightenment?  How helpful is it - on a 
> practical level?  What insights into communication, democracy, 
> anarchism, or whatever are gained?

This is a tough one. My own response would probably run along these 
lines: Imperialism needs humanism to sustain itself, in spite of the fact 
that its "ethics" seems to run counter to many of the moral values that 
humanism claims to embrace. So a post-humanist thought would undermine 
the foundations of imperialism (just as post-human, cyborg bodies 
undermine the foundations of humanism itself). [Although as I write this 
I hear one of my marxist friends whispering in my ear, saying that 
imperialists are delighted that the European and American intelligentsia 
are amusing themselves talking about cyborgs and other such sci-fi 
nonsense, rather than forming alliances with the workers from their own 
and "third-world" cultures in order to overthrow the system that exploits 
them all, if differently.] And it may be impossible at this point to say 
what insights post-humanism will offer to discussions of "democracy, 
communication, anarchism, etc." because the emergence of post-humanist 
thought may very well render those categories unintelligible, at least on 
the terms of our current humanist understandings of them.

I'm going to stop here, although Kenneth's next question is one I 
particularly want to respond to. I need a coffee break, and this post is 
getting way too long. More later, then....

Judith Poxon
poxon-AT-saclink.csus.edu



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