From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:17:58 -0000 (GMT) Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:_more_on_subjectification?= Lydia A necessarily brief note as I'm under severe time pressure today. Yes - I agree, actually with both you and Badiou. However my issue is as I hope is getting clearer that in some sense we - that is people on the left of spectrum - need to be able to construct a radical 'political subject' in the same sense that has always existed for the right. In this sense I agree with Hardt, and misquote(the frailty of memory), when he said at a meeting that I attended '...the left has lacked Utopian dreams and part of our intent was to produce one...' Such a statement requires a universal element. Which incidentally feminism has always contained. But opf necessity - at least in the European field - the feminist construct of 'woman' is in no sense, necessarily a left category, feminists as fascists have been in easy supply. 'Woman' as such is an entirely seperate issue. So of course I agree with Badiou - (would not have written it in that way if I did not) but recognise that they are seperate and equally necessary struggles. Unlike say the ill-fated PIE excahnge which plainly was a fascist always to be oppressive direction. Bensaid quotes Marguerite Duras (one of my favorite novelists who when asked what should be done said '...resurrect the class struggle...' But equally I agree with the below. regards steve > Steve, > > For "women", it seems, there is no home. On one side there are > poststructuralist men eager to dissolve binary differences, including > the sexual one, into a joyous explosion of multiplicities that escape > permanent signification. On the other, there are theorists like > Badiou who dismiss gender as a poor stand-in for the universal (though > proletariat fares somewhat better, I'd assume?); and like Zizek, who > argues that to identify with the idea Woman means to identify with the > ultimate male chauvinist fantasy. > > Rosi Braidotti is correct, "women have always been postmodern." > Solitary stutterers, instead of creators of traditions; fear of > authorship instead of anxiety of influence. Not-just-yet-it, > almost-consistent, deterritorialized pseudo-subjectivity. Women are > bad citizens of philosophy today, as they have been bad citizens of > states from times immemorial. > > As Drucilla Cornell shows, thinkers whose primary political/ > philosophical concern is to get rid of oppressive femaleness that > confined individual women for too long, may end up perpetuating > misogyny. It is from within the sexual difference that we must start > the very deconstruction of sexual difference. It is in this > double-bind that women negotiate every hour of the day. > > But that is not of interest to Badiou. > > In an essay on Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own' and Homer's Penelope, > Peggy Kamuf writes about the role of interruption in women's > coming-into-subjects. 'A Room' is "a book that, like a woman's > thought, a woman's body, is frequently broken in upon. And broken > off." She cites Woolf: "the book has somehow to be adapted to the > body, and at a venture one would say that women's books should be > shorter, more concentrated than those of men, and framed so that they > do not need long hours of steady uninterrupted work. For interruptions > there will always be." > > And misrecognitions. And injurious names. And simple neglect -- the > madwoman at the attic will often have to be unattended to and left to > her own ghostly devices. > > So let us try to understand that for her, it will always be about > identity. It always has. > > L. > > _________________________________________________________________ > Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online > http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
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