Re: feminism

It makes a lot of sense to me and is very interesting. My own language
(below) is much to presumtuous, though I stand by the statement, even if
it in fact is not hip to the real and specific, situated/contextual
meaning employed by D/G. I'm ambivalent as to whether "machinism" is cool,
even at the best levels of reading, though at those levels my reading is
poor. On the other hand, it isn't clear whether the reading is poor due
simply to laziness or something, or becuase my own thinking is *so*
divergent form D/G in so many ways that their thinking often simply can't
take flight at all in me. I'm not sure. Anyhow, I really liked reading
your post simply because it had a lot of good thinking in it, had a
refreshing honesty, rigor and attitude, and suggests someone who is
admirably on their own path.

I think the "reusing" stuff is fraught with difficulties; as if there were
no constant resonances that are not of significance. Also, I find the very
notion of a "subject" a bit troubling. What is this "subject"? Why
"subject"? Why is that term used? And can it be reused so easily, if one
has problems with it? Then I have a problem with "becoming". Nothing at
all wrong with it, but what is so right about it? Lastly, and as always,
and as usual, I really don't like the hiding of nonviolence in the
language of anti-fascisms, -despotism, -tyranny. I mean, I don't like
despots either, but the language that says "despot!" *without* opening up
non-violence as such strikes me as profoundly naive in certain ways. Just
as the language that says "schizoanalysis" in some shift out of
"psychoanalysis" without grasping the basic framework of *analysis as
such* as a problem strikes me as naive. Yet perhaps the vicinity of such a
polemical orientation is one in which nonviolence can come to its senses; 
taken seriously, that could amount to a kind of deep reading and
engagement with what D and G engage. 

Why, one might ask, if I feel I have such divergent thinking, do I write
on this list and talk in their vicinity? Because I like a lot of the
attitudes here, like your post's, even when I deeply disagree or an
incommensurable with this or that.  I like a lot of the "general themes" 
and issues. Plus the NV stuff. So I dunno. But enough about me. 

Keep on writing, you make lots of sense and are very interesting to me.

TMB (Talkie to you soon, ok GI Joe?)


On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, chris wrote:

> TMB wrote:
> > 
> > Maybe it's been touched on, but part of what is not attractive to women is
> > the language/thinking of the "machine" as such. *Very* attractive to some
> > boys, of course. Not so much to girls or others, perhaps.
> > 
> > TMB
> 
> 
> O.k. - perhaps I'm not 'normal', but I'm a girl/woman (anatomically) and
> in my reading of AO I thought it was very clear that the
> language/thinking of the 'machine' was re-oriented in such a way as to
> make it a very attractive 'tool' (as process rather than mechanical
> divice) for feminism/women to analyse their position.  I also think the
> becoming-woman issue is critiqued from a problematic position, in that,
> like the critique of the "machine" there seems to be an ignorance
> (ignoring of) to the actual re-use of the words "woman" and "machine' 
> -- in both cases the despotic signification of majoritarian thinking
> seems to continually overcode the 'actual' way in which D&G set up the
> term within the context of their own theorizing.  
> 
> I did think the proposition that women (anatomical) should/could be
> better positioned to 'go first' in the becoming-woman 'project/process'
> (?) seemed a little strange, but then on the other hand I've heard it
> suggested that masculinity studies come about as a way of actively and
> positively taking account of the criticisms and analysis of feminisms --
> and I was thinking about how, in terms of traditional dichotomies
> (placements of man and 'his' woman) that when woman begins refusing her
> 'place' in this ascendency towards the become-man, that this might be
> considered the first becoming-woman (beginning of).   I guess perhaps
> I'm thinking that it seems to fit in terms of historical institions,
> where in D&G's sense we are all become-man (historical man), but it is
> the minoritarian states (within such majoritarian states), such a as
> women, which in refusing their 'role' begin the becoming-woman that
> produces a flow of becoming 'embodied' (which is, I think the crux of
> their use of 'woman' as a becoming) throughout the bod(ies) that are no
> longer despotically signified (no longer biologically determined in the
> dualistic states of man and woman).    
> 
> The most difficult problem I have, in trying to come to terms which what
> they are saying, is the need to distinguish when they are using the
> terms woman and man to refer to anatomical bodies and when they use the
> terms to speak of transcendental and disembodied man (in history The
> Subject)  as opposed to immanent and embodied woman (in life as
> subjectless process).  That is, distinquishing the difference between
> the reference to a 'sex' and a reference to the concept of that sex
> (gender??) For my own peace of mind, and the need for more simplicity, I
> have used some Donna Harraway to re-name becoming-woman as
> becoming-situated so that the process is about situating the becoming
> within the body that is not pre-gendered in any fashion.  another reason
> I would think that 'woman' is perhaps not the best term, is that with
> the wide-spread commercialisaiton/capitalisation of feminism, I think
> she has become a despotic Subject (an historical man) and I can't help
> thinking that much of the so called feminist critiques of D&G eminate
> from (or get trapped within/under) this very 'power' base -- determined
> to retain their newly formed despotic subject into exlusive and
> excluding accounts of woman and women (the sort of feminism that just
> reworks the hierachies of patriarchy under the name of woman and hence
> falls right back into the old schema of man and his woman!)
> 
> I would be very interested if this makes sense to anybody else.
> 
> 
> rgds
> Chris.
> 
> 

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