Braidotti starts by describing the nomadic condition (of sexual difference) as a "new figuration of subjectivity in a multidifferentiatied non hierachichal way" (62). Before talking about the "new difference," she first focuses on the "old difference" in European history that was/is "predicated on relations of domination and exclusion," which led/leads to "entire categories of beings [being identifiable as] disposable" (63). This patriarchal mode is monolithic and not subject (excuse the puns) to subtle manipulations by marginal groups.
Briadotti explores three categories, or "phases," of nomaic subjectivity, which are not dialectical or hierachical nature. Acting as conceptual operators of difference between (men and women), among and within (women), these "phases...can coexist chronologically and each and every one continutes to be available as an option for political and theoretical practice" (73). Here Briadotti is insistant that this concept be thought of as spacial-temporal map of the becoming-subject that can be "entered at any level and at any moment" (73). This still sounds fractal to me...
Difference between men and women
Phallocentric symbolic order.
Men = rational self
Women = irrational other
yada yada
Difference among women
"...this recognition of a common condition of sister hood in oppresion cannot be the final aim; women may have common situations and experiences, but they are not, in any way, the same. In this respect, the idea of the politicas of location is very important" (77). Here Briadotti is calling for a "theory of recognition of the multiple differences that exist among women" (77). Using such a theory can allow for a multiplicity of female identities to situated differently, coexist and still communitcate within a common condition of sisterhood.
Difference within each woman
Each female subject is a "multiplicity within herself...in an imaginary relationship to variable like class, race, age, sexual choice" (79). The female subject is fractured within herself. Because of this internal splintering, she is always in flux (Heraclitus style), always in a state of becoming. This phase is linked to Kristeva's notion of the "inner, discontinuous time of genealogy" (81).
"The nomadic subject I am proposing is a figuration that emphasizes the need for action both at the level of identity, of subjectivity, and of differences among women. These different requirements correspond to different moments, that is to say, different locations in space, that is to say, different practices. This multiplicity is contained in a multilayed temporal sequence, whereby discontintuities and even contradictions can find a place" (84).
Nomadism calls for "multiple female feminst emodied voices," located in transient, shifting spaces and times to use complex forms of action that respect contradiction and complexity without drowning in them....
Q: How does the transient becoming multiple female feminist, become solid and visible enough to participate in collective action?...and for how long? Does that "crystalization" then negate the nomadic-ness of the identity in question?
4 comments:
I was really interested in the discussion of divergency between continental sexual difference thinkers and american gender theorists. i think that talking more about the way in which these lines of thought developed within a cultural context would a be a useful and interesting project.
and i think that the claim that women have cohabited both a symbolic socially constructed world in history as well as a lived experiential one does much to show where the two lines of thinking converge and split.
In response to Erica's question, I don't really think Braidotti focuses so much on collective action. Collectivity is only mentioned in the theoretically realm (the grouping of theorists on page 155 or the "feminist intellectual" on page 172).
I do like the idea of transformation she talks about, by "working through the multilayered strucutres of one's embodied self" (171). Perhaps this can be seen as a first step in the feminist female subject who then goes on to form a collectivity with others who have gone through the transformation?
I also liked her analysis of some of the distinctions between theory from the U.S. and from Europe.
I personally would have liked to hear more of Braidotti's reasoning for deploying the figure of the nomad. This is obviously a catchy designator, and one with philosophical precedents that are important and interesting. I do think that pursuing the reasoning for this claim, and doing so within the context of nomadology (A Thousand Plateaus) or its progenitor, nomadic distribution (Difference and Repetition), would have been affective and clarifying for Braidotti's project. I do not think that it is an easy discursive move to map these nomic concepts onto feminine subjectivity, but that does not mean that it is not possible or not worthwhile. I think that both feminism and philosophy in general would benefit from a careful consideration of the potential crossroads at which the anarchic energetic flow of nomadic distribution meets the organizational structure of a subjectivity, feminine or otherwise.
I am interested in Braidotti's claim that the concept of difference is rooted in European fascism. As she had it, fascism is the result of a dualistic same-different, which makes sense if we think about fascist politics, but the conceptual origin of fascism- at least the word- is the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks bound together with a blade attached (the many small sticks giving a great weight to the head of the blade), or what could be seen as not the homogenization of difference so much as the inscription of telos on the multiple. But then, I guess there is a kind of homogenization in any teleology because it involves the collapse of the specificity of the unit, as Grosz put it.
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