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Femisin Crictal Theory by Gayu
Femisin Crictal Theory by Gayu
Unit V
Dear Scholar,
In this blogspot, you get another detailed summary of the same essay. but as
many students requested a simplified version of the same, I am publishing this
summary. This summary will be more useful from the examination point of
view.
Introduction
Section 1
[The first section of the essay deals with a talk Spivak gave several years ago.]
Spivak says that she cannot speak of feminism in general. She can only speak
about what she does as a woman in literary criticism. Her own definition of a
woman is very simple. That rests on the word ‘man’. Some may say that this is
a reactionary (backward looking) position. But this is the lesson she has
learned from deconstruction. No rigorous definition of anything is possible. If
one wants, one can go on deconstructing the binary opposition— man/woman
— and prove that it is an opposition that displaces itself.
Yet she feels that definitions are necessary in order to keep us going to allow
us to take a stand. Her present definition of woman is not based on the
‘putative essence’ (accepted, acknowledged) of woman but in terms of words
currently in use. She fixes on the word ‘man’ though she believes that no
definition of anything is ever possible.
In many critical theories of the day [Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Bathes], the text
is seen as an area of the discourse of human sciences. In other kinds of
discourses [like physics, mathematics, for example] there is an attempt to find
out the final truth. However, Literature shows that the truth of a human
situation is that it is not possible to find it. In the general field of Humanities
there is a search for solutions. But in literary discourse the playing out the
problem is the solution.
The Problem of Human Discourse
The problem is in three shifting ‘concepts’—language, world, consciousness.
The world we know is organized as a language
The consciousness with which we operate is structured as a
language
We are operated even by those languages we do not possess.
The category we call the ‘world’ contains the categories of language and
consciousness. World itself is created by language and consciousness. When
we think about human control over the production of language, the word
‘writing’ is the most suitable figure.
In ‘writing’ there is the absence of producer and receiver.
Thus ‘text’ is a safe figure. It is a weave of knowing and not-knowing
which is what knowing is.
Marx is a theorist of the world (history and society). He is read as a text of the
forces of labour and production-circulation-distribution.
Freud is a theorist of the self. He is read as a text of consciousness and
unconscious.
Woman in the traditional social situation produces more than she needs for
her subsistence. Thus she is a continual source of production of surpluses
for the man who owns her. The contemporary woman, when she seeks
financial compensation for housework, seeks to convert use-value into
exchange-value. The situation of the domestic workplace is not one of ‘pure
exchange’. Here some questions arise:--
Spivak says that women must engage and correct the theory of production
and alienation upon which the Marxist text is based and with which it
functions. Much Marxist feminism works on analogy of use-value, exchange-
value, and surplus-value relationships. If there is a rewriting it would be
harder to sketch out the rules of economy and social ethics. In fact,
deconstruction would question the definitions. In Marx one would find a major
transgression where rules for humanity and ethics are based on inadequate
evidence. Spivak suggests that if the nature and history of alienation, labour,
and the production of property are re-examined in terms of women’s work and
childbirth, it can lead us to a reading of Marx beyond Marx.
a. Pain/pleasure binary
Freud considered pain as the deferment (postponement, suspension,
adjournment, delaying, putting off) of pleasure. [Beyond the Pleasure
Principle]. Spivak argues that in the womb, a place of production, there is the
possibility that pain exists within the concepts of normality and productivity.
[This is not to sentimentalize the pain of childbirth]. The opposition
pleasure/pain is questioned in the physiological ‘normality’ of woman.
If one were to look at the never-quite-defined concepts of normality and health
that run through and submerged in Freud’s texts, one would like to redefine
the nature of pain. Pain does not operate in the same way in men and in
women. Once again, Deconstruction will make it very hard to devise the rules.
In Freud, the genital stage is pre-eminently phallic, not clitoral or vaginal. This
particular gap in Freud is significant. Everywhere there is a non-confrontation
of the womb as a workshop.
Conclusion of Section I
Woman cannot ignore these ideas saying that criticism is neuter and practical.
Part of the feminist critical enterprise is to see that the great male texts of
Marx and Freud do not become adversaries or models from which women take
their ideas and revise or reassess.
These texts must be rewritten so that there is new material for the grasping of
the production and determination of literature. If women continue to work in
this way, the common currency of the understanding of society will change.
This can infiltrate the male academy and redo the terms of our understanding
of the context and substance of literature as part of the human enterprise.
Section II
The second section represents a reflection of the First Section.
Spivak says that the dimension of race is missing in her earlier remarks. She
would prefer her work to be sensitive to gender, race and class.
The main problem in American feminist criticism is the identification of racism
with the racism in America. Therefore any study of Third World remains
constituted by the hegemonic First World intellectual practices.
Section III
The third section is an intermediate moment.
There are other views as well. In her monologues Jane analyses the
reasons for the love. Drabble considers the problem of making women rivals
in terms of the man who possesses them. But some form of female bonding
takes place because of the baby. Jane cannot deny the pleasure she gets
when she sees James holding the baby in his arms: “The man I loved and the
child whom I had given birth”.
The loose ending of the novel makes it an extreme case. Is this love going
to last bringing happiness to Jane and James? At the melodramatic ending of
the novel, Lucy understands everything and everything is reduced to a
humdrum (dull, boring, unexciting) kind of double life.
Spivak says that the problem is that the entire questioning is going on in a
privileged atmosphere. Drabble considers the story of so privileged a woman
the most worth telling, a woman whose poems are read on the BBC. This
enclosure is important. It is from there that rules come. First World feminists
are always doing it. If they need a morality they will create one, a new virtue.
They will invent morality that condones them though by doing so they
condemn all that they have been.
Conclusion
Drabble fills the void of the female consciousness with meticulous and helpful
articulation. But she does not give any serious presentation of the problems of
race and class, and of the marginality of sex.
Section IV
The fourth is the present moment.
Spivak says that essentialism is a trap. The feminist academia that creates the
discipline of women’s studies and the students who follow feminism must
remember that essentialism is a trap. All the world’s women do not relate to
the privileging of essence in the same way.
Spivak cites an incident that took place in Seoul, South Korea in March 1982.
The labour movements in the First World and the mechanisms of the welfare
state made manufacturing itself be carried out on the soil of the Third World,
where labour can make fewer demands, and the governments are mortgaged.
In telecommunications industry where old machinery becomes obsolete at a
more rapid pace than it takes to absorb its value in the commodity, this is
particularly practical.
The workers in the Seoul factory were women. They are the true army of
surplus labour. No one, including their men, will agitate for an adequate wage.
In a two-job family, the man saves face if the woman makes less, even for a
comparable job.
Control Data’s radio commercials speak of how its computers open the door
to knowledge, at home or in the workplace, for men and women alike. PLATO
is the acronym of Control Data’s computer system. PLATO reminds us of the
Athenian civilization which thrived on the slave mode of production. The
intellectual heights of the civilization were built in the silent depths of the city
where the slaves worked unceasingly.
Spivak concludes—“I think less easily of ‘changing the world’ than in the past.
I teach a small number of the holders of the can(n)on, male or female, feminist
or masculist, how to read their own texts, as best as I can”.
Notes 1-Derrida’s book is originally written in French which Spivak translated into English.
The translation had the approval of Derrida.
Notes 2—deconstruction emphasizes the fact that binary differences are not ultimate. Binary
differences like ‘good / evil, God / devil, man / woman’ can be deconstructed. Take the
example ‘God/devil’. We know that God created Satan who was an archangel much liked by
God till his rebellion. Since God created Satan there is an element of God in Satan and vice
versa. Deconstruction uses the term ‘trace’ to explain this. Similarly, there is an element of
man in woman and vice versa. Thus binary differences are not ultimate.
Notes 3—simply look at the multiple meanings of any word in the dictionary. Which meaning
are you going to select. Your selection of one meaning does not rule out the possibility of
other meanings. The word ‘cat’ is given here as an example.
cat \'kat\ n, often attrib, [ME, fr. OE catt, prob. fr. LL cattus, catta cat] (bef. 12c)
1 a : a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated as a pet and for catching rats
and mice b : any of a family (Felidae) of carnivorous usu. solitary and nocturnal mammals
(as the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah)
2 : a malicious woman, 3 : a strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship, 4
a : catboat b : catamaran, 5 : cat-o'-nine-tails , 6 : catfish, 7 a player or devotee of jazz , 8.
cat vb, cat·ted cat·ting, to search for a sexual mate — often used with around
To bring (an anchor) up to the cathead, catalog, catalyst, cat·boat, cat–o'–nine–tails are
other related words/expressions.
Any word we take up from the dictionary will offer you supplementary meanings like the
above one.
Deconstruction exploits the capacity of the language to offer semantic supplementary.
Notes 4. The worker’s alienation from the product of his labour under capitalism is a
particular case of alienation. The industrial worker in a modern car factory does not have
any relationship with the consumer of his product. There is total alienation between him and
his product.
[ this is a simplified version of the same essay published earlier in this blogspot. Please
refer to the original for a detailed study].
Dr. S. Sreekumar
drsreekumarenglishliterature at 10:15
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8 comments:
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President
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This summary and all the explanations are brilliant. Your work is excellent... Thank you!!!
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