Recently in Irigaray Category

Finally today, everything kind of clicked during the presentation today, so I decided to post on how I came to my revelation (note this is not intended for the sane).  I am not sure why or when or if it really had anything to do with what was being said, but things suddenly clicked in my mind during the speech.  Maybe it has been the cross-pollination of ideas from the sociology course I am taking in concert with this one.  This cross-breading of ideas has increased at the end due to the final sociology course material of race and gender issues.  In the class,we have discussed how these issues are not biological or innate, but created by people and society.  These thoughts lead to great change in my ideas of gender issues.  

Before this semester and before this class, my thoughts of feminism were naive.  I was never against the movement, but from the name I thought it was all about raising women to a position of power along side men.  However, after this course I feel that the movement has been misnamed at least how it applies to Irigiray.  I believe it should be named something closer to the "Topsy-turvy" movement, because it requires a complete re-tooling of the way we think.  It requires a break down in our logic, that not only involves gender relations, but racial relations as well.  Though you may not be a racist, there seems (to me at least) to be an innate feeling that has been implanted in us through our socialization as children that people who look different than us are different in some fundamental way.  This is especially true for those of use that were raised in racially non-diverse areas.  This racial classifying is not exactly dichotomous, because it uses more than just two races, but is the sort of simple labeling that Irigiray is arguing against.  It is not possible to have this sort of group division and move toward the non-phallocentric structure that Irigiray is looking for.  In fact, it is this blind classification that possibly lead  Freud to his "well excepted" ideas.  Basically, to him, we are all defined by our sex and therefore all of our actions are based on sex (both the classification and the activity).  This would logically lead to his ideas presented in his controversial paper which we read this semester on femininity.  

This means that, for a non-phallocentrically structured world, we must eliminate pigeon-hole classifications such as race and gender.  This is not to say that we will all be equal or the same.  A female will still have ovaries and a male still have testes.  Our skin colors will remain varied, as well as other differences.  However, things such as affirmative action and those "optional" surveys on job applications need to go.  These attempt to control or study humanity based solely on practically random birth happenstances that give us membership into our respected classifications.  This also has shown to me the need to reform our current structure, because the phallocentric structure is innately based on these narrow minded classifications.  So we must completely "reformat" the current phallocentric structure in order to be a truly individualized society,  where our worth is based on our personal achievements and not our birth, where we can truly live the "American Dream".      

This past weekend author Malcolm Gladwell appeared as a guest on Fareed Zakaria's GPS in order to promote a new book. During the course of the interview, he caught my attention while discussing the inherently hierarchical (read: phallocentric?) nature of language. He cited an example from his book: research connecting higher rates of plane crashes with poor communication in the cockpit, a relationship that he argues is a causal one. According to the argument, the high power distance (the perceived "distance" between subordinates and their superiors) nature intrinsic to certain cultures results in hesitation, which, compounded with other factors, can translate into crashes. He speaks specifically about Korean airlines in this excerpt from a Fortune Magazine interview:

"Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.

But Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the U.S., where hierarchies aren't as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it's very difficult.

I use the case study of a very famous plane crash in Guam of Korean Air. They're flying along, and they run into a little bit of trouble, the weather's bad. The pilot makes an error, and the co-pilot doesn't correct him. But once Korean Air figured out that their problem was cultural, they fixed it."

How did they fix it? By teaching the pilots English. The resulting decline in crashes appears to support this theory to some extent, suggesting that the language (and, by extension, the culture) fosters an egalitarian dialogue not found in some of its linguistic peers. Thinking about this in an Irigarayan context (who, I can only assume, would disagree with the claim), I then wandered over to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots web site where I found some rather dismal statistics; according to the FAQs, of approximately 80,000 airline pilots worldwide, only around 4,000 are female (although the site reassures us that the majority are from the Unites States, perhaps further argument for the democratic nature of the English language?) with a mere ("speculative") 450 Captains.

So does English promote a more lateral mode of communication? Or is this true only as long as the actors speaking are male? Using Gladwell's argument, I think it would be interesting to see the statistics of incidents for all-male (insert phallocentric dominance of language and/or airlines joke here:) cockpits, all-female cockpits, and mixed pilot/co-pilot teams, perhaps illuminating (or disproving entirely) Irigaray's critiques of language with some quantifiable measurements.

    The story of Antigone, as interpreted by Irigaray, I find to be very flawed. Not only did I find her arguments lacking textual proof but also counter productive.

    In The Eternal Irony of the Community, Irigaray criticizes Hegel's dichotomous claims on femininity vs. masculinity, especially with regards to divine vs. human responsibilities. Summing-up his theory she claims, "Just as man must strive to make this negativeness into an ethical action by sacrificing his life for the city - in war for example - so woman must be that external and effective mediation that reconciles the dead man with himself by taking upon himself the operation of destruction that the becoming of mind cannot manage without (Irigaray, 215)." And then later elaborates that a main difference between men an women lies in the concept that, "... the brother has already been invested with a value for the sister that she cannot offer in return, except by devoting herself to his cult after death (Irigaray, 217)." She discredits the idea that woman and men must play these specific roles, or at least it seemed that way until she leaped into the story of Antigone.

    It is with Antigone that she went astray. In her attempt to disrupt the male paradigm, she jumped over who Antigone really is and simply created a reading that is befitting with a female paradigm. Her ultimate claim is that Antigone acted the way she did because of mother issues. Really? Mother issues? Antigone as a character is the epitome of a woman breaking all the rules of a phallocentric model of what is femininity. And yet, Irigaray brings it all back to the mother, essentially making Antigone even more feminine. Irigaray in her critique of Freud was effective in showing what sexual development might look like if viewed through the lens of a female-centric world, an alternative to the male-centric one provided by Freud. In the case of Antigone, however, I find this style to be ineffective. Firstly, there is little textual proof to back her claims and secondly, it is counter productive. Why is it better that Antigone acts as a result of her mother, rather than her father? The end result is still a rigid dichotomy of sexes. Antigone is the one person who can't be classified into just one category and she certainly can't be explained as re-acting to the choices and actions of others, especially not her mother or father. Below are some of the more ridiculous claims that Irigaray makes concerning Antigone:

"However guiltless, she feels she bears the burden of her mother's fatal marriage, feels guilty for being born of such terrible embraces (Irigaray, 218)." Firstly, this is a quantum leap she is making and one in which she provides not a single shred of evidence. To claim that she feels guilty for her mother's actions is completely unwarranted. This also implies that Antigone feels she is responsible to and should act in accordance with other people, that she is submissive. Her defiance of Kreon should prove otherwise. And while technically she feels a responsibility towards her brother, it is a familial responsibility one that would extend to any member of her family. Her actions regarding her brother are not out of submission to her brother but rather a realization of her own values and the fact that she had to act true to herself.

"Whatever her current arguments with the laws of the city may have been, another law is still drawing her along her path: identification with her mother (Irigaray, 219)." Again, Irigaray moves the central focus away from Polyneices, a man, to Antigone's mother, a woman. It is demeaning to Antigone to claim that her actions meant to honor a fallen family member and her refusal to subject herself to Kreon's unjust laws are all a result of her desire to be like her mother and to connect with her.

"Thus the sister will strangle herself in order to save at least the mother's son (Irigaray, 219)." Again, all that Irigaray has done is rewrite the story so that it is centered on Jocasta. She also claims that Antigone is mimicking her mother in her suicide. Rather, it is more likely and textually proven that she was avoiding a fate she wished not - a marriage to Haimon. It is a shame that Antigone should be read as acting in submission to anyone or that her actions are intended to mimic.


    This is Irigaray's fatal flaw in her reading of Antigone. In trying to discredit the phallocentric representational economy, she over zealously created the female version of one. In that respect, she is just the other extreme of Freud and therefore no better.

Today, I experienced a very odd coincident in two of my courses. This was between this course, Philosophy 298H, and my Sociology course, Soc 001. The material covered in the Sociology course today was concerning social stratification, which is basically the study of different class-type systems in society. The connection really struck home, when the professor was about to show clips from a documentary entitled Lakshmi and me. Before playing the clips, he wrote on the board three things to look for in these clips which signaled to me the need for this post due the intimate connection with our recent discussions on Irigaray:

Separation

Division of Labor

Hierarchy

Then came the documentary, Lakshmi and me, and I knew that this was definitely related to our discussion in class. The documentary shines light on the persistent caste system in India. For those of you who did not have the privilege of taking a sociology-type of course, the caste system is similar to the class system, which we are used to, in that certain jobs and salaries are associated with different castes. However, the big difference is in the was people get into their different castes. In a class system, we enter into a new class by achieving a job and salary associated with that class. If we want to be in a high class, then theoretically, all we have to do is work for it. However, in a caste system, you are born into or assigned to your caste, which is a grouping similar to class. This means you are stuck with the caste and corresponding set of jobs/salaries, which you are born into or assigned to and there is nothing you can do to change it, especially in an upward fashion.

In the documentary, this system is further exposed as operating in modern times. We see the problems encountered by Lakshmi, who is of a lower caste, and her relationship with the film maker Jain, a professional of the caste similar to our middle class. You will also see in the trailer, a little about the feminist movement in that country and how women of privileged castes can now hold professional jobs, such as filmmaker. This is in contrast to the increasing need for jobs occupied by those in the lower castes such as Lakshmi, mainly as maids. It is also interesting how a feminist, Jain, who refuses to clean on grounds of gender inequality, has, at first, no problem with giving the job to another woman of a lower caste for a monthly pay equivalent to the cost of a fancy dinner. I thought these clips and insights were very interesting in light of what we have been discussing in class. I hope you all get a chance to watch them.

The clips I have talked about can be found at the following websites:

The Lakshmi and me trailer

More clips and corresponding article from PBS

During our Class on Wednsday, I made a very interesting observation: we want to be ruled. This stems from the fact that in Wednesday's class, the discussion seemed to always lead back to Professor Long with some people even raising there hands to be called upon.  This was after Professor Long tried to relinquish his authority.  This, I believe, leads to a conclusion that holds even outside of the classrooms.  It shows that in society we seek an authority, which eventually leads to a structured government.  In our society, we learn this from our parents and our education.  At home, we are taught to obey our parents and respect their authority.  This authority is transferred into our teachers and eventually to the government and other community leaders.  With this structure in place, it becomes very difficult if not impossible to completely uproot this structure.  

Also, I would like to propose that this goes beyond a humanly made invention.  A structured hierarchy exists in other non-human societies as well.  For example, most studies of wolf packs have concluded that they too have an alpha dog and certain structure in how the pack interacts with one another.  This seems to suggest that this domination mentality is something natural.  Upon thinking about this I am left with more questions than answers.  I ask myself is this natural, or is this just our humanly trained mind imposing the structure of our society on the natural world? Can we find an alternative to a phallocentrically structured society?  Can we do this without reverting to a chaotic anarchy?  Is there a way we can create an overreaching equality without a powerful government?  Is there a way to propose this with out falling victim to the dichotomy that supports what it should have replace?  Am I just another victim of the frustrating ideas of "Speculum"?  

Despite my meditation over these questions I seem to be unable to find an answer to these questions except: probably, maybe, possibly, probably not, don't think so, and definitely yes.   Maybe someone else can do better.
    

 

 

Here stands a movement wielding patriarchal dominance and its byproduct as weapons (especially menacing when one considers the metaphoric origins of the name).  Male reproduction and (re)production (if the former can be considered propagating life and the latter propagating lies (or deceit)) provide the foundation of the group's existence. While the Quiverfull Movement remains a fringe group, espousing extreme interpretations of seemingly benign source material, these sentiments betray a larger trend in line with many of our classroom discussions.

And how isolated are such beliefs when a one-time front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination has signed onto their principle doctrines? Incidentally, the interview draws a very strong correlation between Christianity and this patriarchy. I find it worthwhile to ask - to what degree does religion perpetuate and legitimize this phallocentric economy of representation, motivating even women to willingly submit to its laws?

To use Irigaray's words, women play an essential role in propagating this economy, although not quite with the fervor of the Quiverfull women: "Her "phallicized" body will support its currency, prop it up, defend its exchange rate, guarantee its stock-holdings, while the father, the man, is busy with other investments." (73)

Over the past few weeks we have been reading and talking a lot about the phallocentric economy of representation that Irigaray associates not only with Freud, but with the very structure of the patriarchal society and culture in which we live.

What we've been covering these past two weeks has been provoking, but almost aggravatingly so. To start off with--phallocentrism. I think Kwame mentioned this in his post, and it has been a question that has been surfacing (to me, at least) throughout the lectures: Where in the world does phallocentrism end? What is not phallocentric? I think we mentioned in class that there is a phallocentric-centrism, and I would have to agree. The way that we are stressing this concept makes it appear pervasive, inescapable. Even Irigaray's reference to "the other" is phallocentric, which complicates...everything, the whole argument, perhaps.

Is phallocentrism escapable or is it a useless term that we are making much too big a deal about? I think that this "phallocentrism" occurred with the onset of written language. In a book called The Alphabet and the Goddess by Leonard Shlain, there is a chapter dedicated to "Image/Word" in which Shalin theorizes that the introduction of written language led to "explosive changes", namely that it subconsciously encouraged/forced patriarchal characteristics into society. This seems like a ridiculous statement at first, but a closer look makes this explanation entirely feasible: before language, there used to be art (symbols, logos, hieroglyphics and the like), which had the feminine qualities and allowed the brain to use a more holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete approach when one utilizes that mode of communication.

However, with the onset of language, this encouraged the brain to use what we would now define as more "male" qualities: linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract thinking. Writing and the alphabet, says Shlain, has upset the energy of the female yin and male yang, which, when there was non-writing and/or art forms, the female had more power.

"A medium of communication is not merely a passive conduit for the transmission of information but rather an active force in creating new social patterns and new perceptual realities... The alphabet, independent of the spoken languages it transcribes or the information it makes available, has its own intrinsic impacts."

His theories are not at all new in the academic world but are difficult to summarize without making the arguments seem silly. The entire book is very interesting and worth looking into.

Anyways, to expand on Shlain's theory that this created "new social patterns", I want to turn to linguistics and ask if language itself is sexist and further perpetuates this male-orientedism. Linguistic relativism says that language does influence our perceptions of the world and so, I wonder whether phallocentrism, apparently manifested in all aspects of life, and undoubtedly throughout language ("the other"), subliminally affects anyone using it to be more prone to phallocentric tendencies, whether it be by addressing or complying to them. Would "mimicry" on Irigaray's part be problematic, then, aside from how she structures her essay? To de-root this deep-seeded tradition with use of language, wouldn't we have to revamp language entirely? This example of language displays (I think) that phallocentrism is basically built into our society and to somehow change this would cause total chaos--it would be infeasible.

Another thing that frustrates me is that although I agree that gender neutrality is somehow reinforcing the same structure of power, I do not think that we can play up the numerous differences in order to, not fix the problem, but open it up to other possibilities. I personally don't think this is possible because if there is a diversity of structures, there is also a need to have one set norm. Just look at English--there are so many "forms" and usages of English throughout the country, but there is that need to have a "Standard English" in certain, mostly formal, situations. I don't think society can function well without having an accepted mode of action/conduct.

The main thing, then, that troubles me about this piece is that I personally don't feel that there are any conclusions to be drawn yet. Irigaray's actions seem somewhat ideal to me (like someone mentioned in class, "She's asking for something impossible"), and even I, who call myself a feminist, am a bit uncertain of what to make of all the information I've received.

Another small, technical thing that bothers me is that Irigaray's piece was written at least 30 years after Freud's death. We keep using the term that she's "holding the mirror up to Freud", but it's not as if Freud has a chance to retaliate. This isn't an important point, although I certainly think it would be interesting to see what he would have had to say.

I apologize for my thoughts being all over the place!