Some of you people's conceptions of feminism are funny. Firstly there is no one feminism, there exists considerable disagreement within the feminist community of what exactly feminism is and/or should entail. I myself am attracted to Joanna Zylinska's model of feminism which questions whether or not there are actually just male/female, straight/gay, etc. binaries. However, this should not preclude what most feminism is based on and that is positive social change for women preferable under the auspices of women.
Some of you people's conceptions of feminism are funny. Firstly there is no one feminism, there exists considerable disagreement within the feminist community of what exactly feminism is and/or should entail. I myself am attracted to Joanna Zylinska's model of feminism which questions whether or not there are actually just male/female, straight/gay, etc. binaries. However, this should not preclude what most feminism is based on and that is positive social change for women preferable under the auspices of women.
I'm sure you're familar with Julia Kristeva, too. I'd give her credit for formulating the first, major post-structuralist approach to language and gender.
However, this should not preclude what most feminism is based on and that is positive social change for women preferable under the auspices of women.
What I like about this is that it out right acknlowedges that most feminism is not based on any idea of equality. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
“One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
I'm sure you're familar with Julia Kristeva, too. I'd give her credit for formulating the first, major post-structuralist approach to language and gender.
Familiar with, but not having read I cannot be a proponent for or against her. You would place her before Foucault and Derrida though? Or are you talking about straight up in your face discussions of gender?
One of the many faces of bi phobia. Along with heterophobia and homophobia, bi's also suffer from outright bi-phobia. One of its guises is in the fact that according to a minority of monosexuals (straights and gays) you can't help being straight (if the bigot is gay) or gay (if the bigot is straight). But bi people have a choice and choose to be attracted to the "wrong" sex (this is bollocks since you don't choose your sexuality). Many gay feminists (or bi feminists who convince themselves they're gay) see straight and bi women as traitors, but especially bi women as they're more traitors since they have the "choice".
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
if you wanna be a friend of mine
cross the river to the eastside
Familiar with, but not having read I cannot be a proponent for or against her. You would place her before Foucault and Derrida though? Or are you talking about straight up in your face discussions of gender?
She was very influenced by Derrida, and Lacan. She was at the vanguard of the post-structuralism, and formulated a psychoanalytic approach to linguistic signification. She argued that in the pre-linguistic stages of language acquisition, a child communicates with their mother through sound and through physicality. She argued also, that the first intervention of the father in the child's psychological development, what Freud called the oedipal stage, arrives at the same time as the beginning of learning language as words or symbols/tokens for thoughts. Spoken or written language, Kristeva proposed, is male, and phallocentric. A child loses their pre-genderedness in learning language, and is assimilated into the "symbolic order" (where words are phallic symbols of male power). Kristeva argued that, by exploring emotive vowel sounds, fluid syntax, wordplay and any stream of consciousness that breaks down traditional male, linguistic constructions of reality, a writer could subvert language from within and disrupt the symbolic order, re-discovering their pregendered voice.
Anglo-American, materialist feminists often argue that that's just a load of pretentious guff, that pleases the post-structuralists in male-dominated academies. But Kristeva's ways of looking at semiotic interventions in language provide interesting ideas for reading, say, Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, or The Waves, as novels or even prose poems, that work against previous conventions of realism.
She was very influenced by Derrida, and Lacan. She was at the vanguard of the post-structuralism, and formulated a psychoanalytic approach to linguistic signification. She argued that in the pre-linguistic stages of language acquisition, a child communicates with their mother through sound and through physicality. She argued also, that the first intervention of the father in the child's psychological development, what Freud called the oedipal stage, arrives at the same time as the beginning of learning language as words or symbols/tokens for thoughts. Spoken or written language, Kristeva proposed, is male, and phallocentric. A child loses their pre-genderedness in learning language, and is assimilated into the "symbolic order" (where words are phallic symbols of male power). Kristeva argued that, by exploring emotive vowel sounds, fluid syntax, wordplay and any stream of consciousness that breaks down traditional male, linguistic constructions of reality, a writer could subvert language from within and disrupt the symbolic order, re-discovering their pregendered voice.
Anglo-American, materialist feminists often argue that that's just a load of pretentious guff, that pleases the post-structuralists in male-dominated academies. But Kristeva's ways of looking at semiotic interventions in language provide interesting ideas for reading, say, Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, or The Waves, as novels or even prose poems, that work against previous conventions of realism.
Well I must say that I am all for tearing apart any pretense at realism or objectivity, so I'll bet that I'd find her at least somewhat useful. Isn't semiotics a somewhat dated philosiphical theory in that we all use forms of semiotics everyday? This isn't to say that it's not useful, but just reading the text doesn't necessarily get at the production (values) in and around the text(s).
Well I must say that I am all for tearing apart any pretense at realism or objectivity, so I'll bet that I'd find her at least somewhat useful. Isn't semiotics a somewhat dated philosiphical theory in that we all use forms of semiotics everyday? This isn't to say that it's not useful, but just reading the text doesn't necessarily get at the production (values) in and around the text(s).
Kristevan semiotics is a very different concept, from conventional semiotics (the study of signs, that goes back to Saussure and is common in structuralism). "Semiotic", in Kristevan terminology, means pre-oedipal, pre-linguistic signification.
well I'll actually have to do some reading on this, but does this pre-xxx form of semiotics get into the modes of pre-xxx production? In other words does she consider the relative levels of (under)privilege that the baby experiences in the womb?
d. There is a common misconception of feminism, that it is a mass of raging females with short hair wearing flannel trying to strike a mass takeover. Feminism and the feminist movement has always been about equality. Even today men with the same qualifications as women make more, women have to work twice as hard and twice as long to make as much of an impact. It's all about equal rights, and with every movement there are always going to be individuals that will set you back a few steps along the road.
well I'll actually have to do some reading on this, but does this pre-xxx form of semiotics get into the modes of pre-xxx production?
You mean, in critical practice, as a way of showing students its relevance, in studying feminism in literature? Kristeva is really a philosopher and psychoanalytical, cultural theorist, rather than a literary critic. But any good reader in feminist literary theory, and critical practice, should show you how her ideas, as well as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, have informed what's come to be known as French psychoanalytical feminism. (Although Kristeva is Bulgarian, she came to prominence in France, as an academic.)
Fair enough, what I need to do then is actually get my hands on these authors. In some feminist sport studies stuff I've seen the latter two names being cited, but haven't taken the time to get into it...I kinda had to teach myself feminist sport studies this summer so getting to the originating texts in the next step. Thanks for the direction.
That would be nice. If we could all be sisters. But then all we're doing anyway is fighting over men, so how can we be sisters?
Kidding aside, women are their own worst enemy.
I think of my grandmother, made to marry at 16. She never had any say over anything and saw life as babies and drudgery. I have all these choices. Lucky me.
have you read "The Red Tent" (forgot the author, a Jewish woman)? It's about Jacob's (the Biblical figure who had 2 wives plus 2 concubines) women. Hoiw they're all sisters and how they managed to love Jacob without fighting over him.
You mean, in critical practice, as a way of showing students its relevance, in studying feminism in literature? Kristeva is really a philosopher and psychoanalytical, cultural theorist, rather than a literary critic. But any good reader in feminist literary theory, and critical practice, should show you how her ideas, as well as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, have informed what's come to be known as French psychoanalytical feminism. (Although Kristeva is Bulgarian, she came to prominence in France, as an academic.)
hard to be a feminist literary critic when the text she deals with uses symbols made by men... but it's also hard to be feminist cultural theorist when history is writtten by men.
hard to be a feminist literary critic when the text she deals with uses symbols made by men...
but it's also hard to be feminist cultural theorist when history is writtten by men.
On the first point, according to Kristeva: she argues that you successfully subvert language from within the lexical and syntactical conventions of symbolic order, and not outside of it, for to try to signify outside of language would lead to madness.
On the second: Kristeva uses linguistic play to defer the phallologocentric logic of conventional discourses of history. Such interruption would deliberately sabotage its point being made, ironically to prove its point, of an alternative experience.
On the first point, according to Kristeva: she argues that you successfully subvert language from within the lexical and syntactical conventions of symbolic order, and not outside of it, for to try to signify outside of language would lead to madness.
oh, internal sabotage? infiltrate the system, right?
That's the idea, but many would argue that Kristeva didn't practice what she preached.
why? she is a cultural theorist and a philosopher, how could she not have practiced what she preached? she most probably have used info researched, tested and written by men? haven't she "infiltrated" the male-dominated system of philosophy?
Feminism and feminist are very fuzzy terms. Just because you have someone on record stating something and calling him/herself a feminist, doesn't mean that all people that call themselves feminists think that way.
At the heart of feminism is equality between the sexes. Equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. This is the bedrock. From there, there are probably as many variations as there are feminists. You do have the man-haters on one side, although their numbers are teeny tiny compared to more "regular" feminists. Now that we're talking about it, what constitutes a feminist is in no way standardized. If you can agree to the first line of this paragraph, that means that you can call yourself a feminist if you so choose. And maybe you sortof are one, without knowing it.
But it is a very fuzzy term, about on par with "liberal", which changes content from country to country politically. If you as a right-wing american "hate liberals", then you hate your counterparts in Australia for instance. Both liberalism and feminism have their basis in a small core. For liberalism it is about freedom for the individual (but how that is best achieved is debatable and spread across the political spectrum), and for feminism it is about equality and an end to oppression of women physically, economically and otherwise. To restore females as individuals in their own right.
So, the alternatives listed are nonsense, except d which is vague enough to fit anything. a is very marginal, although I guess they exist. b and c is science fiction.
I call myself a feminist. To me that means to be sensitive towards discrimination and indifferences regarding women, and promote equality between the sexes. Equal pay for equal work. Equal opportunities and equal choice. Feminism does not equate man-hating.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
why? she is a cultural theorist and a philosopher, how could she not have practiced what she preached? she most probably have used info researched, tested and written by men? haven't she "infiltrated" the male-dominated system of philosophy?
Remember that her roots as a thinker were Marxist. Then, she loudly embraced Reagan era, mass popular culture, in the US (calling it a wonderful example of a "semiotic"). In continuing the post-structuralist theoretical path she had chosen (something very fashionable in US universities), she was thought to be playing this Derridean game of destabilising terms such as "woman", "feminism" and "history", when it was the aim of politically committed, often Marxist-influenced, materialist feminists, not to deny these concepts but rewrite history, to include past representations of feminist women's lives. (However, it should be said that, although there have been Marxist-feminist critical collectives in literary study, materialist feminists have often been wary of the androcentric bias of Marxism.)
Kristeva's kind of feminist thinking is often called Gynocriticism, whereas her detractors often adhere to what's called Gynesis (a concerted effort to re-read representations of women in literature, to the extent of researching women's writings over the centuries that have been ignored by those people - usually men, until recently - who construct a literary canon of classic literature, for schools, colleges and the marketplace).
Well then I guess I completely don't understand what you're saying.
I think that women are their own worst enemy in that their is no common definition of feminism, there's no common goal to work towards. Women devalued the value of being a stay at home mom.
In the workplace how a woman will treat another woman can be comical at times. The attacks get very personal, very quick. All in the name of getting a leg up on the competition. Woman, generally, try to get the leg up on men in other ways.
“One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
I think that women are their own worst enemy in that their is no common definition of feminism, there's no common goal to work towards. Women devalued the value of being a stay at home mom.
In the workplace how a woman will treat another woman can be comical at times. The attacks get very personal, very quick. All in the name of getting a leg up on the competition. Woman, generally, try to get the leg up on men in other ways.
I don't think there can be one single comprehensive unified vision for feminism across the country or world. There are way too many people, and not everyone is the same. There is the common basis of social, political, and economic equality, but it is only natural to have many splinter groups from that. Everyone will never want/need the same exact thing. Find what group you agree with and work towards that common goal, if you're interested in a common goal. There are so many goals to choose from.
I'm sorry you have that experience in your workplace, because I've never had that. All women I've worked with at various places have been extremely supportive and they range in age. But I hate to see that in a gendered way, because how can someone say men aren't competitive? The fact that they're not called out on that here is indicitave. Aren't many people in business competitive regardless of gender?
And not that I want to make an argument out of it, but most men I've worked with are extremely gossipy and initiate personal attacks, unlike women I've worked with. I just think those are tired stereotypes.
if you wanna be a friend of mine
cross the river to the eastside
I don't think there can be one single comprehensive unified vision for feminism across the country or world. There are way too many people, and not everyone is the same. There is the common basis of social, political, and economic equality, but it is only natural to have many splinter groups from that. Everyone will never want/need the same exact thing. Find what group you agree with and work towards that common goal, if you're interested in a common goal. There are so many goals to choose from.
I'm sorry you have that experience in your workplace, because I've never had that. All women I've worked with at various places have been extremely supportive and they range in age. But I hate to see that in a gendered way, because how can someone say men aren't competitive? The fact that they're not called out on that here is indicitave. Aren't many people in business competitive regardless of gender?
And not that I want to make an argument out of it, but most men I've worked with are extremely gossipy and initiate personal attacks, unlike women I've worked with. I just think those are tired stereotypes.
Of course men are competitive in business. They just in general compete in different ways than women. No one has called out women for their behavior, it has only been noted from personal experience.
Why would you think that men's behavior should be part of a discussion of feminism as it pertains to how women compete in the workforce?
In the workplace I'm happier to have a woman boss in general, and happier to work with mostly men. Luckily in my field this is quite common.
“One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
Comments
I'm sure you're familar with Julia Kristeva, too. I'd give her credit for formulating the first, major post-structuralist approach to language and gender.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
cross the river to the eastside
She was very influenced by Derrida, and Lacan. She was at the vanguard of the post-structuralism, and formulated a psychoanalytic approach to linguistic signification. She argued that in the pre-linguistic stages of language acquisition, a child communicates with their mother through sound and through physicality. She argued also, that the first intervention of the father in the child's psychological development, what Freud called the oedipal stage, arrives at the same time as the beginning of learning language as words or symbols/tokens for thoughts. Spoken or written language, Kristeva proposed, is male, and phallocentric. A child loses their pre-genderedness in learning language, and is assimilated into the "symbolic order" (where words are phallic symbols of male power). Kristeva argued that, by exploring emotive vowel sounds, fluid syntax, wordplay and any stream of consciousness that breaks down traditional male, linguistic constructions of reality, a writer could subvert language from within and disrupt the symbolic order, re-discovering their pregendered voice.
Anglo-American, materialist feminists often argue that that's just a load of pretentious guff, that pleases the post-structuralists in male-dominated academies. But Kristeva's ways of looking at semiotic interventions in language provide interesting ideas for reading, say, Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, or The Waves, as novels or even prose poems, that work against previous conventions of realism.
Kristevan semiotics is a very different concept, from conventional semiotics (the study of signs, that goes back to Saussure and is common in structuralism). "Semiotic", in Kristevan terminology, means pre-oedipal, pre-linguistic signification.
I consider myself a feminist and i'm a male.
http://www.wishlistfoundation.org
Oh my, they dropped the leash.
Morgan Freeman/Clint Eastwood 08' for President!
"Make our day"
You mean, in critical practice, as a way of showing students its relevance, in studying feminism in literature? Kristeva is really a philosopher and psychoanalytical, cultural theorist, rather than a literary critic. But any good reader in feminist literary theory, and critical practice, should show you how her ideas, as well as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, have informed what's come to be known as French psychoanalytical feminism. (Although Kristeva is Bulgarian, she came to prominence in France, as an academic.)
oops, sorry... hee hee! anyway, i like parodies because it illuminates some things that we take for granted. imagine a female-dominated planet!
have you read "The Red Tent" (forgot the author, a Jewish woman)? It's about Jacob's (the Biblical figure who had 2 wives plus 2 concubines) women. Hoiw they're all sisters and how they managed to love Jacob without fighting over him.
hard to be a feminist literary critic when the text she deals with uses symbols made by men... but it's also hard to be feminist cultural theorist when history is writtten by men.
On the first point, according to Kristeva: she argues that you successfully subvert language from within the lexical and syntactical conventions of symbolic order, and not outside of it, for to try to signify outside of language would lead to madness.
On the second: Kristeva uses linguistic play to defer the phallologocentric logic of conventional discourses of history. Such interruption would deliberately sabotage its point being made, ironically to prove its point, of an alternative experience.
oh, internal sabotage? infiltrate the system, right?
That's the idea, but many would argue that Kristeva didn't practice what she preached.
I'm not vilifying anyone. I know those choices were hard fought. I was being ironic and attempting to interject some humor.
So when you said "kidding aside women are their own worst enemy," you were actually kidding? Ah, okay.
cross the river to the eastside
why? she is a cultural theorist and a philosopher, how could she not have practiced what she preached? she most probably have used info researched, tested and written by men? haven't she "infiltrated" the male-dominated system of philosophy?
At the heart of feminism is equality between the sexes. Equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. This is the bedrock. From there, there are probably as many variations as there are feminists. You do have the man-haters on one side, although their numbers are teeny tiny compared to more "regular" feminists. Now that we're talking about it, what constitutes a feminist is in no way standardized. If you can agree to the first line of this paragraph, that means that you can call yourself a feminist if you so choose. And maybe you sortof are one, without knowing it.
But it is a very fuzzy term, about on par with "liberal", which changes content from country to country politically. If you as a right-wing american "hate liberals", then you hate your counterparts in Australia for instance. Both liberalism and feminism have their basis in a small core. For liberalism it is about freedom for the individual (but how that is best achieved is debatable and spread across the political spectrum), and for feminism it is about equality and an end to oppression of women physically, economically and otherwise. To restore females as individuals in their own right.
So, the alternatives listed are nonsense, except d which is vague enough to fit anything. a is very marginal, although I guess they exist. b and c is science fiction.
I call myself a feminist. To me that means to be sensitive towards discrimination and indifferences regarding women, and promote equality between the sexes. Equal pay for equal work. Equal opportunities and equal choice. Feminism does not equate man-hating.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Remember that her roots as a thinker were Marxist. Then, she loudly embraced Reagan era, mass popular culture, in the US (calling it a wonderful example of a "semiotic"). In continuing the post-structuralist theoretical path she had chosen (something very fashionable in US universities), she was thought to be playing this Derridean game of destabilising terms such as "woman", "feminism" and "history", when it was the aim of politically committed, often Marxist-influenced, materialist feminists, not to deny these concepts but rewrite history, to include past representations of feminist women's lives. (However, it should be said that, although there have been Marxist-feminist critical collectives in literary study, materialist feminists have often been wary of the androcentric bias of Marxism.)
Kristeva's kind of feminist thinking is often called Gynocriticism, whereas her detractors often adhere to what's called Gynesis (a concerted effort to re-read representations of women in literature, to the extent of researching women's writings over the centuries that have been ignored by those people - usually men, until recently - who construct a literary canon of classic literature, for schools, colleges and the marketplace).
No, there I was actually being serious. We are.
Well then I guess I completely don't understand what you're saying.
cross the river to the eastside
In the workplace how a woman will treat another woman can be comical at times. The attacks get very personal, very quick. All in the name of getting a leg up on the competition. Woman, generally, try to get the leg up on men in other ways.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
I don't think there can be one single comprehensive unified vision for feminism across the country or world. There are way too many people, and not everyone is the same. There is the common basis of social, political, and economic equality, but it is only natural to have many splinter groups from that. Everyone will never want/need the same exact thing. Find what group you agree with and work towards that common goal, if you're interested in a common goal. There are so many goals to choose from.
I'm sorry you have that experience in your workplace, because I've never had that. All women I've worked with at various places have been extremely supportive and they range in age. But I hate to see that in a gendered way, because how can someone say men aren't competitive? The fact that they're not called out on that here is indicitave. Aren't many people in business competitive regardless of gender?
And not that I want to make an argument out of it, but most men I've worked with are extremely gossipy and initiate personal attacks, unlike women I've worked with. I just think those are tired stereotypes.
cross the river to the eastside
Why would you think that men's behavior should be part of a discussion of feminism as it pertains to how women compete in the workforce?
In the workplace I'm happier to have a woman boss in general, and happier to work with mostly men. Luckily in my field this is quite common.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley