Casting a Net

Towards a film; a few written notes from many mental ones that are mainly in my memory.

The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry

Animal becomes and animal succumbs.
Narrative allows a human place in a system devoid of explanation.
It was not our fault.
The mischievous spirit, the witch, the seal.
Misfortune in the village.
A woman who talks.

The skin is a beholden for the man who finds it.
man covets, man keeps, man writes.
The word is that She caused the trouble.
But there is a child.
The womb is troublesome as it tells its own history,
the man’s history.
Hysteria awaits in the mind of the pen.
Animal becomes and animal succumbs.

The weaver winds the wire.

Speculum

Subjectivity and objectivity; thoughts, links and wikipedia reminders:

In thinking about the self in relation to the subject of study: “the poststructuralists reject the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text.”

The state of consciousness does not have a gender.

There was this woman called Julliet Mitchell who hypothesized that psychoanalysis (as practiced by Freud) was only relevant in a capitalist society.

Androgeny and wetsuits.

The retranslation of The Second Sex was due to be started in 2008 after the publisher withheld the permission for almost six decades. The initial translation had missing text and was slated by the author.

Seals do not walk on land.

Hystera (behind)

Speculum of the Other Woman has been on my bookshelf since 1999, sometimes dipped into, sometimes relevant, sometimes not.

Below from http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/irigaray.htm

In a 1993 interview with Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray specifically says that she does not like to be asked personal questions. She does not want opinions about her everyday life to interfere with interpretations of her ideas. Irigaray believes that entrance into intellectual discussions is a hard won battle for women and that reference to biographical material is one way in which women's credibility is challenged. It is no surprise that detailed biographical information about Irigaray is limited and that different accounts conflict.

Irigaray argues that, since ancient times, mothers have been associated with nature and unthinking matter. Further, Irigaray believes that all women have historically been associated with the role of "mother" such that, whether or not a woman is a mother, her identity is always defined according to that role. This is in contrast to men who are associated with culture and subjectivity. While excluded from culture and subjectivity, women serve as their unacknowledged support. In other words, while women are not considered full subjects, society itself could not function without their contributions. Irigaray ultimately states that Western culture itself is founded upon a primary sacrifice of the mother, and all women through her.

While Irigaray is influenced by both psychoanalytic theory and philosophy, she identifies them both as influential discourses that exclude women from a social existence as mature subjects. In many of her texts, Irigaray seeks to unveil how both psychoanalytic theory and philosophy exclude women from a genuine social existence as autonomous subjects, and relegate women to the realm of inert, lifeless, inessential matter. With this critique in place, Irigaray suggests how women can begin to reconfigure their identity such that one sex does not exist at the expense of the other. However, she is unwilling to definitively state what that new identity should be like. Irigaray refrains from prescribing a new identity because she wants women to determine for themselves how they want to be defined.

While both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory are her targets, Irigaray identifies philosophy as the master discourse. Irigaray's reasons for this designation are revealed in Speculum of the Other Woman where she demonstrates how philosophy-since Ancient times-has articulated fundamental epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical truths from a male perspective that excludes women.

As the companion discourse to philosophy, psychoanalysis plays a unique role. While Irigaray praises psychoanalysis for utilizing the method of analysis to reveal the plight of female subjectivity, she also thinks that it reinforces it. Freud attempts to explain female subjectivity and sexuality according to a male model. From this perspective, female subjectivity looks like a deformed or insufficiently developed form of male subjectivity. Irigaray argues that if Freud had turned the tools of analysis onto his own discourse, then he would have seen that female subjectivity cannot be understood through the lenses of a one-sex model. In other words, negative views of women exist because of theoretical bias-not because of nature.

Through her critiques of both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Irigaray argues that women need to attain a social existence separate from the role of mother. However, this alone will not change the current state of affairs. For Irigaray is not suggesting that the social role of women will change if they merely step over the line of nature into culture. Irigaray believes that true social change will occur only if society challenges its perception of nature as unthinking matter to be dominated and controlled. Thus, while women must attain subjectivity, men must become more embodied. Irigaray argues that both men and women have to reconfigure their subjectivity so that they both understand themselves as belonging equally to nature and culture. Irigaray's discussions of mimesis, novel language and utopian ideals, reconfiguring the mother/daughter relationship, altering language itself, ethics, and politics are all central to achieving this end.