The Irigaray Reader - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

The Irigaray Reader

Description:

women's/mothers' own desire suppressed/forbidden by the law of the father ... We should give our mothers a new life instead of killing her/sacrificing her to ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:242
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 31
Provided by: engFj
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: The Irigaray Reader


1
The Irigaray Reader
  • Lynn Tzeng

2
Introduction to Section I (by Margaret Whitford)
  • Patriarchy (defined by Irigaray)an exclusive
    respect for the genealogy of sons and fathers,
    and the competition between brothers (Sexes et
    parentes, p.202)
  • maternal genealogy absent in western thought and
    institutions
  • coexistence of two genealogies (patriarchy and
    matriarchy), not simply a reversal or a
    replacement (p. 23)

3
  • Whereas de Beauvoir emphasizes access to the
    world of men (equality), Irigaray is suggesting
    the creation of difference (p.24).
  • develops de Beauvoirs idea of Woman as Other (I
    the other of the same, the necessary negative
    of the male subject, all that he has repressed
    and disavowed.)
  • but a self-defined woman who would not be
    satisfied with sameness, but whose otherness and
    difference would be given social and symbolic
    representation. Each sex would then be other
    for the other sex (p. 24-25).

4
  • Equal or Different? (1986 1988 1990)
  •   The Bodily Encounter with the Mother
    (conference on Women and Madness, Montreal,
    1981)
  • western culture is founded not on parricide (as
    Freud hypothesized in Totem and Taboo, but on
    matricide (p.25).
  • Is reinterpretation of the mythology
    (Clytemnestra) the installation of patriarchy,
    built over the sacrifice of the mother and her
    daughters.
  • The major cultural taboo is on the relationship
    with the mother (p.25).
  • The stress on Oedipus, on castration, serves to
    conceal another severance, the cutting of the
    umbilical cord to the mother

5
  • hatred from men and archaic projection of male
    imaginary (woman as devouring monster threatening
    madness and death) has made women suffer
    culturally
  • This relationship with the mother needs to be
    brought out of silence and into representation
  • contraception and the legalization of abortion
    control womens reproduction womens identity
    as women not as mothers (role as reproducer of
    children, as nurse, as reproducer of
    labour-power)
  • warns the daughters against repeating the murder
    of the mother.
  •  To move out the role of guardians of the body
    for men
  • To put into words and symbolic representations
    the primitive relation with the mothers body.
  • Speaking about the relationships between women
    create a new identity within the symbolic order

6
  • reiterated in Women-Mothers the Silent
    Substratum of the Social Order (interview)
  • overlap the preoccupations of other
    English-speaking feminists
  • 1. Women and madness
  • 2. the inadequacy or failure of the sexual
    revolution from womens point of view
  • 3. the importance of consciousness raising as a
    practice
  • 4. the analysis of the family as a social device
    for appropriating womens labour
  • 5. the mother-daughter relationship
  • 6. the attack on psychoanalysis (a discourse
    which normalize patriarchy) the re-evaluation of
    hysteria (as the unheard voice of the woman who
    can only speak through somatic symptoms)
  • 7. Second-wave (post 1968) women (both as
    daughters and mothers) must liberate themselves
    with their mothers (p.26)

7
  • the end of 1970Anglo-American feminism began
    to theorize womens difference (as a source of
    cultural possibility rather than simply as a
    source of oppression).
  • I examining equality, mothers function (as the
    infrastructure of Western civilisation), and the
    obliteration of women as women.
  •  Speculum, 1974
  • Catholic countries (France and Italy) the
    importance of attending to motherhood as an
    institution, sanctioned by the divine
  • Volume with contours (extract from Speculum)
  • male imaginary, philosophical logos and system
    (of discourse and representation ) that
    confine/define women

8
  • Dominant fantasy of the mother/Male
    Representation of Women a closed volume a
    receptacle for the (re)production of sameness
    and the the support of (re)production
  • mens desire immobilize women (control and
    possession), appropriate by masculinity
  • mens fear of the open container, the
    incontournable volume, the fluid, the mobile,
    not a solid ground/earth, or not mirror for
    subject
  • contemporary theory in the feminine a fresh
    attempt at terrorialization of the
    maternal-feminine
  • I an other woman (exterior to all these
    masculine metaphorizations) shake the
    foundation of patriarchy

9
  • I oppose an other woman, a woman without
    common measure (who cannot be reduced to the
    qualifying measurements by which she is
    domesticated in male systems, who exceeds
    attempts to pin her down and confine her within a
    theoretical system, whose volume is
    incontournable against Lacanian image of
    woman as a hole, oppose the image of contiguity
    of two lips (mother-daughter, mother-father,
    maternal-paternal genealogies) womans desire
    could be represented for-itself (not in male
    representation) (p.28)

10
Simone de Beauvoirs modern feminism Luce Irigaray
Attitude towards psychoanalysis Attitude towards psychoanalysis
Resist psychoanalysis Not always negative not totally consistent One of our contradictions was that we denied the unconscious (p. 24). de Beauvoirs response to Irigaray in an interview (1984) anyone who wants to work on women has to break completely with Freud (p. 24). For de Beauvoir, Irigaray always began from Freuds postulates, adopted too readily the Freudian account of the inferiority of women. 1. as an analyst (psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist)important for thinking sexual identity (p.31) (Freudian theory), challenging 2. uses and challenges philosophical traditions (psychoanalysis for understanding the self-realization of consciousness)
concept of equal rights/sexual difference/Womens Liberation concept of equal rights/sexual difference/Womens Liberation
equal equal to men the imposition of a male norm genocide of woman. (Irigaray to de Beauvoirs response, p. 23) Demanding equality erroneous (presupposes a term of comparison) Q Equal to what? What do women want to be equal to? Men? A wage? A public position? Equal to what? Why not to themselves? (p. 32) Women need an identity as women womankind (p.24)
favoured social justice and supported feminists 1949, The Second Sex (her own life story with scientific data)subordinated feminism to socialism, helped women to be sexually freer by offering them a socio-cultural model Find value in being women, not simply mothers rethinking, transforming centuries of socio-cultural values.
 
11
Equal or Different? (1986 1988 1990)
  • most claims to equality superficial critique of
    culture, and utopian as a means to womens
    liberation.
  • The exploitation of women is based upon sexual
    difference, and can only be resolved through
    sexual difference (p. 32).
  • neutralization of sex (contemporary feminists)
    end of human race (divided into two genresensure
    its production and reproduction)
  • Trying to suppress sexual difference is to
    invite a genocide (destruction of women and all
    values) more radical than any destruction that
    has ever existed in History (p. 32).
  • define the value of a sex-specific genre genre
    as sexuate (p. 33) and form a culture that
    respects both genres

12
  • We are still in the childhood of culture People
    constantly split into secondary but murderous
    rivalries without realizing that their primary
    and irreducible division is one between two
    genres (p. 33).
  • We must give, or restore cultural values to
    female subjectivity (not simply procreative) e.g.
    The Second Sex

13
 The Bodily Encounter with the Mother
(conference on Women and Madness, Montreal,
1981)
  • Men-practitioners absence a sign of their
    psychiatric practice (self-sufficient) madness
    of women their words are not heard (p 35).
  • Scientific discourses, serious scientific
    practices, therapeutic decisions and diagnoses
    still the privilege of men (who define womens
    function, social role, and the sexual identity)
  • Each sex relates to madness in its own way (p
    35)
  • All desire is connected to madness (in the
    relationship with the mothera mad desire (the
    dark continent par excellence)) shadows of
    our culture, it is its night and its hell
  •  

14
  • the infrastructure of western culture women as
    mothers, the unacknowledged foundation of the
    social order
  • The maternal function underpins the social order
    and the order of desire (satisfying the
    individual and collective need) e.g. in the
    religious dimension of need (women mothers)
  • womens/mothers own desire suppressed/forbidden
    by the law of the father
  • Womens looking for their sexual identity and the
    meaning of motherhood contraception, abortion
  • western culture is founded not on parricide (as
    Freud hypothesized in Totem and Taboo, but on
    matricide (p.25).
  • Freud forgot a more archaic murder of the
    founding of a certain order in the polis (of the
    primal horde)

15
  • Clytemnestra myth
  • forgot the tragedy of Iphigenia
  • Orestes (son) kills his mother for the
    establishment of a new order (commanded by the
    God-Father (Apollo))
  • The Furies the ghosts of his mother women in
    revolt, rising up like hysterics against the
    patriarchal power in the process of being
    established (p. 37).
  • the law of the primal horde and mythology
  • men bury women beneath the sanctuary
  • regulation Athenas (virgin-goddess, born of the
    father and obedient to his law in forsaking the
    mother) perfect models of femininity (always
    veiled and dressed from head to toe)

16
  • The murder of the mother ?
  • the non-punishment of the son (Orestes), but
    punishment on daughter (Electra)
  • the burial of the madness of women (e.g.
    Clytemnestra)
  • the burial of women in madness (e.g. Jocasta)
  • In the process of the forming of the new order
    (based on matricide), a symbolic murder of the
    father is necessary for the coming of the sons
    revenge (murder of ) on the mother

17
  • e.g. p. 38 1. Oedipus re-enacting of the
    madness of Orestes (primal crimeIt was a sons
    duty to kill his fathers murderers, a duty that
    came before all others. But a son who killed his
    mother was abhorrent to gods and to men. A most
    sacred obligation was bound up with a most
    atrocious crime (Hamilton 256))
  • Oedipusviolates the law of the father (Oedipus
    Complex) ambivalence (focused on the father,
    but which is retroactively projected on to the
    archaic relationship with the body of the
    mother) towards his father

18
  • The mothers body as an object for cathecting (to
    invest emotional energy in (a person, object or
    idea)) and later decathecting (i.e., separate,
    detach, give up, repress)
  • After the bodily encounter with the mother,
    Oedipus grows up (to establish a new social
    symbolic order)
  • mother already torn into pieces
  • by Oedipuss hatred
  • torn between the sons and the fathers, between
    sons (p.27, 38)

19
  • the mothers body (the life of the drives)
  • Partial drives the body (primal wombfirst
    home, first love) which brought us whole (bound
    together) into the world
  •  Q The genital drive is said to be the drive
    thanks to which the phallic penis takes back from
    the mother the power to give birth, to nourish,
    to dwell, to centre. The phallus erected where
    once there was the umbilical cord (the first bond
    with the mother)? (p.38)
  •  the father and his law sever the over-intimate
    bond with the primal womb (the danger of fusion,
    of death, of the sleep of death)
  • a proper name/forename an extra-corporeal
    identity card (language which privileges the
    masculine genre) replaces the most irreducible
    mark of birth the navel (the irreducible trace
    of identity the scar left when the cord was cut)

20
  • Psychoanalysis
  • take a dim view of the first moment (bond with
    the womb and the imaginary and the symbolic of
    intra-uterine life)a taboo is in the air
  • Psychoanalysis (the social order/our culture) ?
    the mother must remain forbidden, excluded. The
    father forbids the bodily encounter with the
    mother (p. 38)
  • placenta (the first house surround us- childs
    security blanket)
  • men tend to go back to the primal womb the
    devouring mouth (p.41) , seeking refuge in any
    open body (of other women as well) danger,
    threat of contagion, contamination, engulfment in
    illness, madness and death but are NOT allowed.

21
  • No Jacobs ladder for a return to the mother.
    Jacobs ladder always climbs up to heaven, to the
    Father and his kingdom. p. 40
  • men need to feed their libido (sexual urge or
    drive) p. 39 and distanced/removed from their
    bodies/corporeal in (sexual) production p. 49
    need wife-mother/ a woman-wife (p. 43) need
    womens guardianship of their corporeal unity (p.
    49)
  • Fantasy of Mother as a devouring monster and her
    womb as the devouring mouth

22
  • able to give birth and life (power of procreation
    and creation/generative power)
  • steal the creating power or life essence from
    men?
  • womb/the silent and threatening belly capture
    net of maternal power, the phallic mother ?
    phallic threat, anxiety, phobia of castration
    fear (p. 41) from man-fathers perspective
  • Q Fantasy based on Oedipuss hatred (still
    uninterrupted)

23
  • makes a hole in the bellies of women/identity
    a stake driven into the earth (p. 41)
  • Torn between the sons and the fathers, the stake
    or sacrifice in disputes between men (disputes
    for the ownership of the mothers body), she is
    fragmented into bits and pieces, and therefore
    unable to articulate her difference (p. 27)
  • The (male) subject prefers to see her as the
    maternal-feminine rather than as a woman
    (castration and death, the unimaginable
    heterogamous other) (p. 27) ? A hole in the
    texture of language corresponds to the forgetting
    of the scar of the navel (p. 41).

24
  • Q 1. phallic erection the only sexual value?
    (in the patriarchal tradition)
  • 2. castration anxiety the unconscious memory
    of such sacrifice?
  • The murder of the father a desire for one who
    artificially cut the link with the mother in
    order to take over the creative power of all
    worlds, especially the female world (Wrong) ?
  • signifies a desire to take his the
    fathers place, a rival and competitive desire
    (p. 42)

25
Mens Rebirth (phallic erection masculine version of the umbilical bond) Womens Rebirth
Should respect the life of the mother, reproduce the living bond with her by recreating the intra-uterine life (the cord? the breast? the penis) Free from mans archaic projection onto her, the establishment of her own sexual identity 1. No envy for mens penis (the distorted/biased male representation of an instrument of power to dominate maternal power) 2. our auto-erotism, narcissism, heterosexuality and homosexuality.
26
  • Have fathers ever been asked to renounce being
    men? We do not have to renounce being women in
    order to be women
  • We are always mothers once we are women (p.
    43) bring children love, desire, language, art,
    the social, the political, the religious
  • We should give our mothers a new life instead of
    killing her/sacrificing her to the law of the
    father. We must invent a new language that does
    not replace the bodily encounter (paternal
    language), but which speaks corporeal while we
    seek a new relationship with the body of our
    mother.

27
  • Women should speak up rather than remain silent!!
    outlet of their emotion
  • We should assert the genealogy/history of women
    identity, subjectivity
  • do not try to deny our mother (and her body) as
    our love object
  • assert love for other women women-sisters
  • 2 modes of womens jouissance (enjoyment)
  • programmed in a male libidinal economy
  • with their own sexual identity (against the norms
    of phallocratic economy)

28
Women-Mothers the Silent Substratum of the
Social Order (published as an interview. )
  • The substratum is the woman who reproduces the
    social order, who is made this orders
    infrastructure the whole of our western culture
    is based upon the murder of the mother. The
    man-god-father killed the mother in order to take
    power (p.47).
  • the hystericrevolt and refusal, a desire for/of
    the living mother who would be more than a
    reproductive body in the pay of the polis, a
    living, loving woman (p. 47-8)

29
  • the only path that remains open to us is
    madness (p. 48)
  • We need language to define madness.
  • Women suffer in their bodies (inaudible)
  • Patriarchy discourse discourse of men about
    women (objects/silence)
  • Being guardians of their corporeal unity, we
    cannot be beings of desire desire is movement.
  • the so-called sexual liberation lay trap
  • (Greek) relationship to mother relationship to
    women

30
  • Mother function no personal language and
    identity
  • mother/daughter, daughter/mother relationship
  • ? say goodbye to maternal omnipotence and
    establish a woman-to-woman relationship of
    reciprocity mothers daughters
  • Liberate ourselves along with our mothers (p.
    50)
  • We women lack speech
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com