WMST 100

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WMST 100

• Unit 6 Violence Against Women Controlling Chaos
  
• Systemic Violence
• Readings Kramer and Sprenger, 295-304 women as
  chaos
• Kerber and Sherron, 305ff - Systemic Violence

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WMST 100 Unit 6

• 1. Introduction
• Comment re Systemic Violence
• Systemic - refers to systems
• social aspects of violence that function within
  all institutions such as the law, government,
  military, family and so forth

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1. Introduction

• violence as a systemic or structural problem
• focus on social and historical context
• individuals social beings
• Carter patriarchyÿsexualityÿviolence
• Marquis de Sade is Donatien Alphonse Franççois,
  comte de Sade (1740-1814)

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1. Introduction

• Works
• The Complete Justine
• Philosophy in the Bedroom
• The Hundred and Twenty Days at Sodom
• Juliette

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1. Introduction

• Context of De Sade and Epistemic ground for West
• Enlightenment rationality (see pgs. 37-38 of your
  guide)
• man
• Woman Question

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1. Introduction

• nature------------------------culture
• woman-----------------------man
• physical----------------------metal
• mothering-------------------thinking
• feeling and------------------abstract knowledge
  and thought
• superstition
• darkness--------------------light

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1. Introduction

• Sexuality in Enlightenment Principles
• Science (categories) and medicine (physiological
  realities)
• Human sexuality biologized
• Link of female sexuality with nature
• Conflation of morality and physiology

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1. Introduction

• Polarity between masculinity and femininity
• Masculine reason, rationality, strength
  cognitive, ethical, physical strength
• A Subject with agency Guides women
• Femininity passion, emotions, weakness
• Lacking cognitive, ethical, physical strength
• An Object with no agency Guided by men

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2. Angela Carter

• critically engage pornography
• and the pornographer
• problematize late 20th century cultural
  representations of women
• pornography abstracted sex from late 19th century
  onward

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2. Angela Carter

• raises the spectre of moral pornographer
• overturn basic notions of sexual relations
• free of social relations - located in nature
• every relation infused with social dimensions

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2. Angela Carter

• pornography in the service of women?
• De Sade?
• politicizes sex
• demythologizes sex
• sexual relations in context of unfree society are
  power relations

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2. Angela Carter

• whip hand - political power
• victim - powerlessness
• gender ideology on level of biology
• male tyrant (sadist)
• female martyr (masochist)

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3. Undercutting Essentialized Gender

• Pornography if rejects mythic speech
• of essentialized sex
• the fringed hole and the probe
• evince a critique of current social relations
• demystification of the flesh
• penetrate to the heart of contempt for women

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3. Undercutting Essentialized Gender

• de Sade fails
• two levels of gender ideology left in tact
• biological/metaphysical
• binaries
• male/female
• masculine/feminine remain mystified

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3. Undercutting Essentialized Gender

• Justine/Juliette
• holy virgin/whore
• mother figure - de-eroticised
• de Sade
• reinstates god/king/the law - i.e., patriarchy

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4. Justine as Symbolic Victim

• female heroines
• Justine and Juliette
• Justines virtue and virginity
• good girl according to patriarchal precepts
• passive ethical position
• adheres to undisclosed virtue

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4. Justine as Symbolic Victim

• perfect victim completely passive
• submits to rules in order to be seen as good
• female virtue virginity
• she rejects her own sexual autonomy
• i.e., does not define it herself
• patriarchal myth (truth) of female subjectivity

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4. 1 Juliette the resister

• Juliette (the whore and libertine)
• claims her sexual autonomy
• patriarchal world of unequal relations
• strong over the weak
• phallic female - masculinized woman
• rejects myth (truth) of natural domination of
  women
• challenge to mystification of human social
  relations

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4.2 The female/feminine as Symbolic victim

• Justine - perfect victim
• the innocent lamb of sacrifice
• Justine is the sacrifice
• beauty
• virtue
• objectivity
• willingness to be a good girl

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4.2 The female/feminine as Symbolic victim

• in patriarchal capitalist society
• vulnerability victim
• female victim is
• one-dimensional patriarchal character
• empty of a self
• suffering gratuitous
• leads to more suffering

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4.2 The female/feminine as Symbolic victim

• feminization of the category of victim
• embodiment in female reproductive capabilities
• practised by good girls
• three elements that maintain narrative of the
  victim