In this chapter, Grosz addresses the relationship between images, metaphorical representations of the feminine and feminist discourse and practice in the terms of power and strategy. Using the concept of ethics in contemporary philosophy specifically its importance in post modern philosophy and the theorizing of the subjective, Grosz juxtaposes Foucault and Irigaray’s basic concepts of alterity and otherness. Alterity is a major theme of post modern philosophy because of the problematization of structures of subjectivity. Grosz sees the women’s movement as one of the primary sources for the dislocation of the rational subject. This echoes our class discussion and previous readings on the invisibility of woman, the void ascribed to the feminine and the purpose of feminist theorizing to speak woman, redefine subjectivity into non-patriarchal, plural terms that include woman.
The most important difference between Foucault and Irigaray is how they theorize sexual difference. Clearly Irigaray has theorized an ontology based on the concept of fundamental sexual difference that is constitutive of the human experience, it’s the starting point. Foucault, as a male philosopher speaking within the patriarchal masculine ontology discusses the constitution of the subject within the confines of sexual sameness. This fundamental disconnect between theories weights the feminist argument of sexual difference by highlighting Foucault’s perspective of society not including invisible women and leaning toward the dominance of masculinity.
Foucault’s work takes place in three phases. First, the analysis of the type of discourse that claims the status of science which leads him to the critique of the role that the “knowing subject” plays in the history of western philosophy. Secondly, the constitution of the subject through “dividing practices” like exclusion, separation and domination within oneself as well as towards others. Lastly, he takes on the question, what is sexuality and by what means do we all become sexual subjects? Overall his work brings out the highly sexed rules that govern philosophical discourse and how phallogocentric discourse is a specific political and libidinal economy that assigns the sexes to precise roles, poles and function to the detriment of the feminine.
We all know the quick on Irigaray. What I found most important about the difference of the presentation of Foucault and Irigaray was that Foucault is a theory and Irigaray is an action. Grosz presents Foucault as problematizing and deconstructing society but Irigaray is adding to the feminist project, in other words her work is useful, active, and consequential.
This was a breaking moment for me on sexual difference. Up until this point, I’ve been able to understand the idea of fundamental sexual difference as lived. While reading this chapter I connected the importance, the meaning behind sexual difference and its usefulness politically and ontologically.
Questions:
Why Foucault and Irigaray?
What do you think the most important difference/similarity is between these two prominent, might I say royal, theorist?
The most important difference between Foucault and Irigaray is how they theorize sexual difference. Clearly Irigaray has theorized an ontology based on the concept of fundamental sexual difference that is constitutive of the human experience, it’s the starting point. Foucault, as a male philosopher speaking within the patriarchal masculine ontology discusses the constitution of the subject within the confines of sexual sameness. This fundamental disconnect between theories weights the feminist argument of sexual difference by highlighting Foucault’s perspective of society not including invisible women and leaning toward the dominance of masculinity.
Foucault’s work takes place in three phases. First, the analysis of the type of discourse that claims the status of science which leads him to the critique of the role that the “knowing subject” plays in the history of western philosophy. Secondly, the constitution of the subject through “dividing practices” like exclusion, separation and domination within oneself as well as towards others. Lastly, he takes on the question, what is sexuality and by what means do we all become sexual subjects? Overall his work brings out the highly sexed rules that govern philosophical discourse and how phallogocentric discourse is a specific political and libidinal economy that assigns the sexes to precise roles, poles and function to the detriment of the feminine.
We all know the quick on Irigaray. What I found most important about the difference of the presentation of Foucault and Irigaray was that Foucault is a theory and Irigaray is an action. Grosz presents Foucault as problematizing and deconstructing society but Irigaray is adding to the feminist project, in other words her work is useful, active, and consequential.
This was a breaking moment for me on sexual difference. Up until this point, I’ve been able to understand the idea of fundamental sexual difference as lived. While reading this chapter I connected the importance, the meaning behind sexual difference and its usefulness politically and ontologically.
Questions:
Why Foucault and Irigaray?
What do you think the most important difference/similarity is between these two prominent, might I say royal, theorist?
3 comments:
I think the discussions of Irigoray and Foucault are both pretty good. but i think there is no necessity to view them as divergent. instead, i think they can be read as complementary in their divergence of focus. Foucault explores the specific ways in which historical assembledges have contributed to thinking and Irigoray explores the functional products of such thinking while miming it back.
I think both are simultaneously construtive and deconstructive. Foucault undermines the same universalistic stability which Irigoray attacks by demonstrating it as highly contingent. This is in itself productive of a methodology of engagement with systems of thought which is highly subversive in its recentering of any discussion upon the bodies of those who are the subjects of it.
My big problem though is in the claim that "the cases of Irigoray and Foucault tend to prove that on the conceptual level patterns of great dissonance are emerging between male and female philosophers" To discuss a pattern is to me to evoke explicitly an empirical trend which then cannot be contained to two examples of it. furthermore, to say that the specificity of experience of a sexed philosopher inevitably contributes to the positioning of that philosopher within its methodology seems congruent with the spirit of Braidotti. however, to state that these two writers exemplify, rather than embody, that localizable positioning seems unnecessary. a woman using a more foucauldian approach would speak it differently but it would not be a linear divergence.
I wonder if Braidotti chose these two because Foucault writes about what Irigaray is doing. In other words, Foucault claims that the subject is made, but on the other hand is also productive. So Irigaray's project takes on the second part of Foucault's idea about the subject: the subject can produce within power relations. For Irigaray, this means producing the ontology of sexual difference.
I think that Kira has responded aptly to the question of 'proof' in Braidotti's assessment of the case of Foucault and Irigaray. Even before the quite obvious problem of making a single 'experiment'(here the comparison of F and L) the proof of a general or universal rule (here of conceptual dissonance) there is the fact that I think it was a poorly conducted experiment. I would suggest that this reading of Foucault is highly selective, and that his career was thoroughly invested in the notion and the problem of difference. I would also resist the thought that Foucault illustrates the sexual regulation of discourse and Irigaray begins where he stopped, taking the process further. Such a comparison assimilates two very different thinkers, careers, methodologies to a common analytic register, Braidotti's. I think it would be more effective to make that explicit; indicate that Braidotti is not primarily invested in the breadth or depth of Foucault's work, but in how his work aids or detracts from her work and the work of feminism. I think it is possible to indicate the usefulness or lack thereof in regard to a thinker or theory without cloaking that indication in the pretense of expressing the meaning of that theory or thinker.
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