Patterns of Disonnace

Thoughts

Many mentions to other philosophers and currents inside philosophy. Many mentions to
Foucault.

Chapter 1 Imagines of the Void

Modernity is characterized by an Anti-Cartesianism, challenging dualism and dichotomy body-

and- soul. So, the classical philosophy is undergoing to a crisis that its questioning its very own
function. The author is going to focus especially on the French philosophy whose discourse is
focus on the questioning of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘rationality’.

The object of the study is the intersection of philosophical modernity. Based on two different
things: on the one hand the analysis of modern philosophy characterized by the crisis of the
rational subject. On the other hand, the part that women take on philosophy, which are
growing more and more by numbers in philosophy.

Diagnosing the crisis

There is a breaking point in philosophy, which has always been marked by classical rationalism
that is being question in the modern age.

Philosophy is not the queen of knowledge. In the social ranking of sciences philosophy has lost
its first places and its raking low. Postmodern society. “God is dead, Marx is dad, and I’m not
feeling too well myself”. French philosophy focus on the crisis of the rationality, the Decline
of reason as the ideal and a correct definition of human subjectivity.

Other trends:

Neo-liberalism/humanists: it’s not safe for humans to question subjectivity. The author
believes that this philosophical trend tends to trivialize the theoretical complexity and the
subversive potential of post-structuralism philosophy, bringing a nostalgia for humanistic
ideals.

Post-structuralism: the subject of modernity does not coincide with self-reflecting

consciousness, so it can’t be the main discourse. It is a critique to the classical philosophy and a
new form of thoughts. Questions all premises to what we recognize as thinking. We are a
historical product.

French philosophy is not a system builder because philosophy nowadays has to be plural and
has to carry a useful meaning link the problems we face in our age. This ‘crisis’ should be seen
as a new opportunity to create new philosophy trends.

The author wants to approach the focus of the French philosophers’ emphasis on the crisis of
the death of the subject questioning the conception we have on what we call thinking. This
imagery of the void its not as negative as it might sound at first. Philosophy is not dead.
Women have never been historical an important part of philosophy, so this fundamental
questioning that is undergoing has brought the question to the table of women and
philosophy.
The feminine at stake

The relations between femininity women, feminism and philosophical modernity is not very
clear, due that the lack of attention that professional philosophers have paid to this relation.

There’s an intersection of to phenomena:

- in the last 30 years there’s been a resurrection of women’s struggles in social, political,
private and theoretical domains. Which analysis the role, experiences and modes of
existence of women. In this specific time period of the death of rationality is also the
time period of a mass theorical of feminist theory or practice. (not a unified voice)
- The crisis of classical reason which has profound links with socio-economic conditions
of structures of the late capitalism that has brought to question the rational subject.

So thanks to this precise historical context philosophy has now to share room, for the first time
in history, with the oppressed. This marginalized position has brought awareness to philosophy
to has been called the Other.

So this link is not casual that these to phenomena happen to occur at the same time period, it
is because a coincidence of extraordinary effects: the new feminism and the crisis of
philosophical knowledge. The conjunction and marks the points where they converge but also
when they differ.

Focus of the reading: in what way feminism has questioned the corporeal nature and the
sexuation of the subject. To think through the body. Mentions Lucy Irigaray.

Main issue for women in the contemporary philosophy is the need to speak about the bodily
roots of the thinking process. Body and mind are not antagonist and they need each other in
order to perform their tasks. (non-carteisanism)

Focus of the reading: the problematization of woman, women and the feminine in
contemporary French philosophy id a major factor in the critique and deconstruction of the
rational subject.

Feminism is the discourse of modernity.

Its not strange that the legitimization of the Other (women usually) has taken place at a crisis
point of philosophy at the death of the man. Man discovers his gender-specificity as a loss of
the former universal value that was attribute to the masculine gender. There’s a feminization
of the postmodern flied of knowledge. BUT we need to be careful to not just do an exercise of
substitution.

The crisis of the rational subject is not exclusive of French philosophy. Its been going on in
Europe for the last 100 years. Just a culture begins to its relation his alterity when its deeply
stuck in a crisis. Only at times of crisis a culture asks about the sexed nature of the human
subject.

The female feminist

Feminism has plenty of different theoretical approaches. For the author feminism is the critical
living experience of discovering new woman-based modalities of existence, creation and
communication of knowledge. Feminism is not a counter-philosophical system. She hopes to
woks towards are formulations of the question of women and philosophy as a singular
multiplicity of related issues. Feminist movement is heterogenous.
The line (showed as the conjunction AND) that puts togethers and sets aside women and
philosophy is fragile and full of differences. (Luce Irigaray). Uses the imagery of an acrobat in
the tightrope without a safety net, feminism can’t fall into the void. The author calls this
dissonance (feminist movement can’t emulate or they acrobat will become dizzier.

Dissonance two objects of study:

- The discourse of the crisis in philosophical modernity

- The elaboration of feminist theories of subjectivity the total lack of symmetry.

Nomadic project that relates to the tightrope metaphor.

There is not any ultimate truth anymore.

Metaphor with Ariadne, she has fled the maze old and they thread that will help us to get out
of it (women and men) is a tightrope stretched above the void.

Chapter 6

Feminist genealogies

It is still too soon to write the history of feminist thought, feminism is not neither a concept,
nor a theory, nor chosen by certain women to situate themselves in reality so as to redesign
their “feminine” condition.

The author thinks it would be dangerous to propose a purely theoretical representation of this
multiple, heterogeneous complex of women’s struggles. She is trying to draw a map rather
than an attempt t o classify.

Our culture is deeply rooted in the antinomy between thought and the feminine and has
created difficulties in women’s entitlement to theoretical subjectivity. Women have always
been identified with Nature, inferior, and men with rationality, superior. (patriarchal thought).
Devaluation of women’s abilities in the intellectual word, art and has led to an exclusion of the
social sphere and repression of their civil and political rights. There’s not a feminine genealogy
due to this exclusion.

The constantly re-enacted incompatibility of women and Reason is one of the main obstacles
in the elaboration of theoretical and, especially, philosophical reading of feminism.

The author thinks that, even though it is a heterogeneous movement, to establish some
general rules. Her goal is posing differently the question of women and philosophy by means
of a revolution of women’s theoretical intelligence. Secondly, she wants to emphasize the
feminist theory reveals an intellectual voice and mode of thinking that may be specific to
women.

Assessing the second wave.

Similarities between the recognition of the heterogenous type of the feminist movement ant
the post-structuralism for its recognition of the limitations of the established traditions.

Different authors to approach stages in feminism:

Kate Stimpson:

- First came the critique of sexism as a permanent bias in the social as well as the
discursive fields.
 - Deconstructions of the systems of knowledge along different variables first and
foremost that of gender and of women-identifies discourse.
- The redefinition of universal epistemological and ethical values on the basis of gender
specific knowledge.

Hester Eisentein: three periods

- First being that of the founding texts of the great visionaries and utopian thinkers of
the late 1960s.
- The evolution of the women-centered perspective which corresponds to a shift of
emphasis from the notion of equality and the ethics of sisterhood as a political
rejection of oppression to that of “difference”
- Third state results from the relative failure of the second: the notion of difference led
either to a new form of feminist “essentialism” that is to say a substantive redefinition
of woman or the idea of women’s moral superiority.

Jaggar in four classifications:

- Liberal feminism
- Traditional Marxism
- Radical Feminism
- Socialists feminism

All these texts, from the liberal kind to the radical kind are full of a very intense tone asking for
justice.

The second wave of feminism is a special moment in the long history of women’s struggles,
and its one of the most revolutionary social movements of the century. The second wave of
feminism is most Western countries grew out of the general movement of political worker and
student revolt in the sixties, in a socio- cultural context shot through with Marxist- Freudian
ideology (Juliet Mitchell).

The alliance between worker’s struggles and women’s struggles gave impetus to the feminist
thought (Kollontai, Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg). The relation between capitalism and patriarchy
did not succeed t the libertarian theories in the 60s. Since then the feminism movement was
defined by:

- being opposed to the bourgeois patriarchal ideology and the socio-economic order
which supports it
- against the political programs and the revolutionary schema proposed by Marxist
ideology which is male dominated gin its deep structures.

Critics to Marxism: the notion of home as a refuge from the world of work masks a sexual
division of labor. Women work at home too, and this domestic labor helps reproduce capitalist
and patriarchal society. The separation of work (production) and leisure (consumption) really
exists only for men.

The key stone of difference between the sexes: the maternal functions need to be gotten rid
of. (women’s reproductive capacity, feminism must begin by criticizing the hold exercised over
women ‘s bodies by the culturally dominant sexuality, that s monogamous heterosexuality.

Some feminist theories believe that oppression will cease once women have given up all
identification with the oppressor.
Knowledge is not the source of salvation. There is not an ultimate truth free of the cultural
system from which it emerged. Women from minorities have criticized the second wave
feminism for its ethnocentrism. The point of departure for the second wave is the conviction
that, despite all the differences (race, class, sexual preferences), women are half of the human
population, and at every historical moment and social structure are a minority.

Simone the Beauvoir is the first thinker who links individual women and the status of all
women. The feminine condition.

The personal is political. Sisterhood, sorority but this unity needs to take in account other
variables like class, race….

What was feminism achieved?

So a good feminists targets have been achieved, even though this is a good thing, this has also
created a sense of conformism that creates a dangerous of indistiction between women and
men. Women have gained legal equality so they might not be able to see that they are not
truly equal. And some of the reforms who have been crucial to women like the pill can turn
against them in making them conform to a model of constant sexual availability.

Every step that feminism takes the patriarchy takes one too. And shits its form to confused
feminists.

Arianne Rich believes that women’s reproductive capacities had made men feel threatened
due that they depend on women for the perpetuation of the species. Motherhood is an
institution with two sides:

- One symbolizing women’s power to create

- The classic feminist analysis goes, representing the reproductive institution in whose
name women have been oppressed.

Women are trying to escape the body-trap. All human sciences as a collection of half-truths
and gaps as regards women’s lived experience, knowledge and understanding. Need a new
feminist ethic.

The logic of appropriation and domination, metaphysical cannibalism, is supported by a

particular socio-political system which I would not hesitate to describe as masculine, military
and monetary (Atkinson).

Dualism that women has been stuck is bad.

Oedipal Struggles.

Questioning the legacy of the second wave. Competition among academic women. The
oedipalization of women’s relations as a counterpart to the institutionalization of feminism
offers another fruitful point of intersection between feminist theory and the post-
structuralism.

Beauvoir is the symbolic mother of the second wave of feminism. It is surprising that the
Second Sex written in the 40s hasn’t had an impact in his natal place till the 60s, when in
America had an impact almost immediately. So the American feminism and the French
feminism have always had a troubled relationship. There’s a widespread “myth” which marks a
sort of division of labor between French and American feminists: and the supposed theoretical
superiority of the French over the organizational superiority of the Anglo-Saxons.
Beauvoir for the American is an absent, distant mother. Her “presence” in America has being
more powerful that her living presence in the French feminist movement. It’s clearly
noticeable that Beauvoir impact in America was way powerful than in her home country. But
Beauvoir’s impact in France changed with the post-structuralist generation (change in the
intellectual world).

She was the first feminine totem. Some of her thoughts need to be reassessed because she
focuses only in the differences between men and women, but women are different between
each other.

To be a feminist is to be a woman aware of her oppression, acting on the basis of this

awareness, with other women: it is to think oneself with them.