File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1997/french-feminism.9708, message 23


Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:50:36 -0700
From: Sally Cloake <xtnybw-AT-echidna.stu.cowan.edu.au>
Subject: Re: middle-passive


Meaghan wrote:
> 
> as i think i understand this middle-passive, sally, irigaray says that
> it's not exactly like the 'middle voice.'  the closest thig we have to
> the middle voice (a greek verb tense, or mood, i think) is something
> like 'it's raining' wherein the subject is the verb.  heidegger tries to
> approximate the middle voice when he says things like 'the worlding of
> the world' in Poetry,Language,Thought (although this is a stragey he
> uses elsewhere as well).  There's no object of the action, but something
> is _taking place_.  irigaray is very interested in 'woman' taking place
> in An Ethics, but she's also interested in teh couple and the man taking
> taking place and in how two subjects can take place together without the
> sorts of icky power struggles this usually entails (as it does in the
> existentialism of both Sartre and de Beauvoir, two of her predecessors).
> i think she trying to figure an ethos of living and becoming that
> functions other than in the existential agon.  the middle passive seems
> to me to be a both a mode of thinking/writing and of being/becoming. the
> process of becoming in this way would, i think, entail becoming which
> does not appropriate either the being or the becoming of one's other,
> but which happens from the self, for the self and the other, and in the
> realtionship.  it's akin to a being being in and for itself, but a
> little skewed.  -- ok, i'm sound too much like heidegger, but he's a big
> influence on irigaray, so maybe that's not so bad?
> 
> i understand it this way becuase of her concept of the interval, a
> mediating and elastic between of two beings through and in which thier
> relations take place. of course, it is vital in her thinking that this
> relation be one of generous and not of selfish desire. so i think the
> middle passive is a sort of condition to be acheived, or a way of being
> to be inhabited by selves/subjects.
> 
> let me know if this helps, or if i need to clarify what i've just said.
> i wrote this without rereading the passages in An Ethics where this
> comes up, so take this as off the cuff.  it's a great question, and one
> that i know i'm deep in thought about for my dissertaion, so the more
> discussion about this, the happier i'll be.
> 
> be well,
> meaghan
> 
> Sally Cloake wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> > I'd be interested to hear anyone's conception of
> > Irigaray's 'middle-passive' in _An Ethics of Sexual Difference_?
> > Sally
> > xtnybw-AT-echidna.stu.cowan.edu.au
> >
> >      --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 
>      --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---Thanks Meaghan.
I have read barely any Irigaray, and I find her quite hard (harder than 
other feminists I have been looking at such as Butler, Bordo, Braidotti, 
Grosz, Haraway, etc).  I think it must be partly because she doesn't 
write that linear, academic style that I'm used to.  I also think it 
is because Australian education seems to offer no philosophy (unless you 
do a philosophy degree) in undergraduate degrees.  I have never read 
Heidegger, or Sartre, or anyone.  The closest I got was a bit of Derrida 
in my  honours year. I guess I'll just have to discover it all now.
  I will have to check this, but what you said about the middle-passive 
seems to parallel what Haraway calls actor/actant network theory in _The 
Promises of Monsters_ Have you read it?  If there is a correlation, it 
could prove a useful way in to a particular problem I'm currently 
addressing.
  What is your dissertation about?  I have just started my Phd this year 
- Feminism and Cyberspace (Groovy title not yet decided).  I am focusing 
on issues of subjectivity and dis/embodiment.
  I would love to 'talk' to you and the others on the list, but you might 
have to wait until I have read and digested more Irigaray, and can then 
discuss it properly! 
Thanks again for your reply,
Sally.


     --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

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