In response to the last post, entitled, "Passion, like a flame... or a semiotics of sexuality, or an anatomy of desire..." A little something on semiotic theory...
Hi everyone- I'm not saying that we as individuals want or don't want to have children, or even think about them if we're past child-bearing age, not at all, only that that biological reality is there in heterosexual unions in ways that aren't in homosexual unions.So it can be looked at semiotically in Sassure's sense, where the "referent" is an object in the world, or a relation to the material world, rather than a concept of it. Sassure's work as a linquist revolved around signs. The sign is created by a signifier (material or physical form of the sign) and the signified (the concept it represents, its content). He applied these concepts to linguistic terms, to words.
The word "sex" is the signifier, and what it means to each of us is the signified.
That's pretty easy. Sex is a sign. Albiet a potent one.
In heterosexual sex there is a referent to the world in a way that is absent from same sex sex. It's a biological referent. It operates as a referent in potentia or as actuality or what is forgone or even as memory. Because it's there, I am suggesting that the anatomy of desire itself, its semiotic configuration, is different for a heterosexual person than a homosexual one.
And then I'm interested in what ways this plays out in culture. But it gets very complicated. I come to this through my work on why the maternal body is problematic not just in our culture but in feminist theory. Where the triad is not really accepted, nor is sexual difference. I'm a sexual difference feminist, in the European sense; rather than a North American feminist in the equality sense (meaning I don't want to adhere to a 'one-sex' model of equality that doesn't recognize my maternal body, its monthly cycles, the children I'm raising, the hormonal fury of menopause). And I need to do this in a non-essentialist way too.I can see from Suzanne's comment here, and the comments I received at my other site, that I have a long way to go on clarifying what I am trying to say! There is a discussion going on in my post at Xanga, which you can look at here if you wish.
You are all helping me so much on this path, an area I've been exploring in painting, poetry and theory for almost 2 decades now....
Brenda____
ReplyDelete(I hope this doesn't come off
as flippant or arrogant . . .)
while I prefer the continental philosophers
to the analytic or logical positivistic ones
(and goddess knows reading philosophers
excepting the extremely fine writerly ones
and there aren't all that many of those)
I am let coolish to cold
by semiotics
signifiers and the signified
De Sassure Derrida et al
seems so simplistic to me
even all dressed up
in word fancy and technical
philosophical verbage
I am not a joiner
so I am not what you'd call a North American Feminist
insofar as that's a group
I believe in social parity
but I certainly never would say
that men and women are the same
and I am joyous as all get out
to be a woman
even though there have been negative consequences to it
out in the work-a-day and academic world
and I stand by my initial stance
that because men and women have reproductive equipment
that does not mean every sexual encounter between them
carries reproductive elements
PS:
I didn't have any hormonal fury pre-menopausal or post___
definitely still have
circulating estrogen
only lacking reproductive capability
which I wasn't using anymore
anyway
brenda I wanted to post something in reply
ReplyDeleteto your coments an Xanga
but noy necessarily sign up
so here it is
because one has had thoughts
or made decisions
or fate has made decisions
about reproductive matters
because that happens some of the time
that does not make it always
and forever
part of lovemaking
I saw a owoman in therapy
who, became a parent
with her Lesbian mate
They got a gay friend to donate the sperm
and they used a turkey baster
for purposes of insemination
how does this fit into your thinking
(they had twins!)
Suzanne, you raise important points. In one of my earlier versions, I did mention the consideration and difficulty that go into a decision by a gay couple to have a child. I, too, have known gay couples who underwent artifial insemination, or, a homedone one, and hey it worked, a turkey baster filled with the sperm of a gay male friend. It's a different configuration of desire, for sure.
ReplyDeleteAt least, I see it that way.
I think that first and second wave feminists have a deep aversion to the maternal body, to maternity, to theorizing maternity, except negatively and problematically, to the woman's body as a maternal body, because they had to, to break out of the home, to undo the damage the dominant masculine culture had done to women by restraining them in the home, pregnant and raising children.
I was creamed by a Women's Studies department whose admissions committee was run by first/second wave feminists, and who saw ANY work on the maternal body as suspect, as a throw back to pre-Beauvoir and pre-feminist eras. I did get into another programme in another department, thankfully. But the experience made me acutely aware of how motherhood is not just difficult in the culture itself philosophically and politically, but a divisive issue between women as well. We see that divisiveness in the current "Mommy Wars" that the media is playing up between mother who work outside the home and mothers who stay home to raise children.
These questions and issues will be with us a long time until we develop a philosophy that can encompass the maternal body/motherhood, or so I believe.
And for that we need to accept the spectral third, the possible child.
I mean, I can understand why a woman would want to throw away all memory of, and reference to, her fertile years because of the ways in which she has been prejudiced against for that very biological ability.
It's just where I stand, being rebellious, emphatically proud of my womanhood, of my bleeding, birthing, breastfeeding, menopausal body.
I want that maternal body represented strongly in the culture. Not as the buried or repressed foundational body.
And I want it in in a non-essentialist way.
(And menopause does have accompanying hormonal fluctuations, which I have, for dramatic effect, called 'fury,' and it must be something not to have experienced any of that.)
Semiotic theory, also, like any theory, is vast and complex, and certainly not for everybody. I find it interesting, and Sassure has informed my thinking since I first read him 30 years ago.
What else... have you read Judith Butler? The mirror post to this one at Xanga has a bunch of stuff on her in the comments, with some links.
The reason I also post away from Xanga is that problem of not allowing people to post who aren't members of Xanga. I don't agree with that at all...
Sorry you couldn't post there, but it's Xanga's fault. They've lost alot of potential subscribers because of it.
No battle cry here. Not today. I guess I believe in exploring mainstream experience, and that that's where some helpful insights might lie, along with exploring the extremes, a la Butler, and Wittig, and other wonderful and brilliant lesbain feminists.
my body as a woman is my womanly body
ReplyDeleteI cannot separate out maternal aspects as something separate!
Sex is so much more for me
than "maternal body"
I am not never have been
uncomfortable
with having a cunt, ovaries,
uterus breasts, a clitoris
or talking or writing about them:
they are part of me
I wasn't particularly found of pregnancy
but I LOVED giving birth
and I loved raising my sons
I loved breast feeding
and I was happy to menstruate
and happy to stop
all celebratory processes to me
as is my thick corpus callosum
to which I attribute
my ability
to consider separateness and Connectedness simultaneously
and to pay little mind
to dichotomizing the world
in any of its attributes
(my other objection to the continental philosophers
especially the women
is their affinity with
psychoanalytic and, particularly, Freudian notions
which are wrong headed
wrong hearted
and just drought stricken
in what ought to be fertile mental territory
If, "I am not never have been
ReplyDeleteuncomfortable
with having a cunt, ovaries,
uterus breasts, a clitoris
or talking or writing about them:
they are part of me,"
then why are you having difficulty with the idea that there might be a difference in the configuration of desire in a predominantly heterosexual orientation, which includes a specifically female body, and a homosexual one, which I'm not sure does, since the maternal capacity is removed?
Anyway, I take everything from Luce Irigaray, the French feminist philosopher who was emphatically gay. My books are still in storage, so I can't quote the passage from "Speculum of the Other Women." Essentially she goes back to the roots of our culture in Greek thought and realizes that everything is built on a philosophy and politic of men who are gay, created out of a man-to-man homo-homo model.
And that we need to undo that. Her strategies and mine are quite different, however. I want to put the third back in, and affirm sexual differnce, not erase it.
When a man's sperm enters me, my womb becomes the universe of creation itself, and it's very beautiful, that flooding light in the darkness, and even though I will not have any more babies it's the memory that I carry/my body carries of conception, and I would never want to remove it from my sexual experience. It's an experience that he can never have. Just like breastfeeding is something he can never know. I'm not going to downplay these ways of knowing my body and experiencing pleasure because he can't know them. Because ultimately I think that's who we're trying to please by downplaying these miraculous abilities, this miraculous body of life: men, the dominant culture, acceptance into it.
And Freud? What's that about?? I am absolutely and in no way a Freudian by any stretch of the imagination.
The only think I like about Freud is that he filled his beaudoir, his therapeutic office, with goddess figurines...
Oh, I just re-read, that was a criticism against Continental feminists, and a fairly common one by NA feminists. It's just that in the intellectual milleau of Europe, Freud and post-Freudians like Lacan figure prominently, and so these feminists have had to take on Freud and deal with him in ways that NA feminists haven't. I can't fault them for that. They are situated in world whose philosophic underpinnings are a little different to ours. Anyway, my current favourite is Rosa Braidotti. Like her, I am very much into embodiment theory.
ReplyDeletewhy are you having difficulty with the idea that there might be a difference in the configuration of desire in a predominantly heterosexual orientation, which includes a specifically female body, and a homosexual one, which I'm not sure does, since the maternal capacity is removed?
ReplyDeletemy disagreement has nothing to do
with that aspect of my
my sexual Being
that has been maternal
I just don't subscribe
to the notion
that sexuality for me
(and I only speak for myself
because that is truly the only person I can speak for)
When I am making love/fucking
my uterus and ovaries
are not involved
on only three occasions
were they
and believe me
I took quite a bit of heat
that they were Present
in my thoughts
when I was purposefully
getting pregnant
among the gays and lesbians
I know and talk to
(including my dear near daughter
there is no difference in the desire she for example
feels, for intimacy
with another woman
and that I feel in my desire for intimacy with a man
I don't deny my maternal instincts and Being and Actions
but they are not the all of me
and they are not omnipresent
that's all I'm saying
in fact how much I loved mothering
my sons
was one of the biggest and best
surprises of my life
and right along woith that
as both a surprise
and enormous pleasure
is how much I am enjoying the sexual non-reproductive
part of my being
NOW
Dear Suzanne, I think we are talking about two different things. I don't feel you've understood what I've been trying to say. That's okay- it sounds like it's helped you to define your position on your sexuality at present. In a way, really, I hope I never forget the richness of fertility, even in my older years. But maybe that happens anyway. And please keep enjoying an unfettered sexuality that is free of, as you call it, "ovaries and uterus." (Although that wasn't what I was talking about at all; in fact, your response fits quite well into my thesis, but that's neither here nor there and won't satisfy you.) Can we please let this go now?
ReplyDelete