NOTES
ON: Braidotti, R.(2003)
‘Becoming Woman: or Sexual Difference
Revisited’, in Theory, Culture and Society,
20 (3): 43-64.
This is a
reading based on Irigaray and Deleuze,
especially his work on the nomad.Irigaray
has always been interested in post structuralist
accounts of the subject, but her later work
focuses more on heterosexuality specifically.The
earlier work is of interest here.
Sexual
difference theory is not only critical but
affirmative, expressing ‘women’s ontological
desire’ to develop into ‘corporeal and
consequently sexed beings’ (43 – 4).This
must begin with emphasising bodily aspects to
oppose any apparently neutral discussion of
subjectivity and embodiment.Desire
becomes important in the construction of the
subject, both libidinal and ontological.
The
feminine subject’s particular concern is with
inequalities, and asserts diversity and
difference as a positive alternative.The
feminine subject is rhizomatic ‘embodied and
therefore perfectly artificial’ (44), machinic
and capable of many interconnections.One of
its main fields of operation is sexual
difference.For Irigaray, ‘the feminine’ is virtual,
a project arising from transcending the usual
conceptions of woman as the other of the same:
it is the other of that other.This
is an embodied transcendence, however.
The body
is a key term—it is neither biological nor
sociological but ‘a point of overlap between the
physical, the symbolic and the material social
conditions’ (44, with an acknowledgement of
Grosz).The
body for Irigaray is ‘a mobile set of
differences’, a field, a surface on which
multiple codes are inscribed, a cultural
construction but one which ‘capitalizes on the
energies of a heterogeneous, discontinuous and
unconscious nature’.Among
other implications, this leads to a critique of
humanism and Eurocentrism, and the Logos.Sexual
difference provides the matrix of power, but
Irigaray has added dimensions to include race,
ethnicity and religion.Difference
is the main category, and it has had good and
bad effects, the latter including fascism, which
has driven a particular attempt by liberal
intellectuals to reclaim the concept: a new
creativity is required.
Feminist
conceptions have focused on the relation between
self and other, intending to restore the idea of
the subject as a fully creative singularity.This
necessarily means that the subject of feminism
is not conventional Woman
[I’m not sure why the first letter is
capitalised and italicised], but a complex and
multi layered subject standing outside the
institutions of feminism.She is
no longer merely the specular other of the male.She
need not even be female, but more ‘a subject in
process, a mutant’, post woman even though still
taking conventional shape (45).
One
project involves working through all the
conventional representations of women created by
the masculine subject, in arts, science and all
knowledge, collectively repossessing Woman
through what Irigaray called mimesis.This
involves collecting the ‘fragments and figments
of the phallocratic imaginary’.These
have to be reworked in order to permit the
emergence of the feminine in a way which is not
colonised: they may also be too fragmented to
permit a coherent representation.Using
conventional representation simply repeats this
imbalance.
We need
the ‘virtual feminine’ to break with dialectical
thinking between selves and others.Dualistic
categories are rejected, including Hegel’s.Complexity
rather than humanism or ‘naive social
constructionism’ characterizes the subject (46).Irigaray
urges us away from this framework, and this
involves a stage of radical heterosexuality,
[seeing gendering as deeply affecting all
categories?]. She
also hopes to construct a location for positive
and harmonious coexistence between sexed
subjects.Reconciling
other
positions, especially ethnic and religious ones,
become equally important, especially in the
second phase of her work.
This
heterosexuality is not heterosexist.It
does also allow for homosexuality, although
there is some ambivalence.For
Grosz, for example, it might be possible to
think of relationships based on the model of
preoedipal bonds between mothers and daughters,
as a tactical move to make explicit forms of
women’s desire in opposition to oedipal
formulations.For Irigaray, these new thoughts are
important to prevent lesbianism from imitating
the phallic structures of conventional sexism.Men
are also invited to conceptualize a non phallic
sexuality with reconfigured desires.In
this way, the politically potent form of sexual
difference is between experimental and
conventional sexuality, aimed at an escape from
phallic sameness.
Deleuze
can be borrowed to specifically inform
Braidotti’s ‘virtual feminine’.Deleuze
argues for a multiplicity of sexed positions and
rhizomatic connections.On the
other hand, there is a tension in Deleuze and
Guattari between becoming woman and becoming
minoritarian: the first is seen as essential to
all becoming, but the second is the more general
threatening to replace the first. Sexual
difference is a major form of difference, but
Deleuze also operates with ‘a multiple and
undifferentiated becoming’ (47) .Deleuze might
see conventional sexual identities as anchoring
points, but he has not particularly discussed
the relations between them.
Nevertheless,
both Irigaray and Deleuze can be seen as
converging in an interest in escape from
phallogocentrism.For Irigaray the point is to develop a
more symmetrical relation between all the sexual
categories; for Deleuze the point is to escape
all conventional forms of representation and
release the potential of the subject.Both
offer the basis for a ‘bodily materialism’ (48).
Other
thinkers have explored Deleuzian implications.For
example Griggers on the feminine as the abstract
machine of late capitalism, generating all sorts
of commodified distinctions.For
Deleuze, new images arise from various
figurations such as rhizomes and bodies without
organs, and these are new forms of being which
challenge conventional representations.The
central argument is taken by becoming
minoritarian and the emergence of the nomad
[seen as particularly youthful here for some
reason].Becoming
is a matter of exchanging particles in the space
of proximity or ‘dynamic marginality’ (49).
Deleuze
agrees that man is the centre of the signifying
system, the bearer of the law, so that becoming,
particularly becoming woman, is a necessary step
in critique.Becoming woman is the key process in
deterritorialization.However,
these are not empirical women but ‘socio
symbolic constructions...affective states’, but
these should be seen affirmatively.He
needs to catch up with feminist epistemology
here, that has long recognized that ‘women’ are
defined as the others of phallogocentrism, and
this lapse leads him to some pessimistic
conclusions about feminist politics.Becoming
woman is just a sub category of becoming
minoritarian, and ‘all becomings are equal’.
Deconstructing
phallogocentric categories is an essential
critical step, and feminists have done this by
reconstructing the history of the emergence of
male dominance.Sexuality is the dominant discourse of
power, as Foucault has argued, but it requires a
particular critical stance.Deleuze
intends to move beyond sexual categorisation
altogether into some form of polysexuality, and
he sees in feminist theory the tendency to
reproduce the conventional categories instead,
perpetuating majoritarian thinking.It
sees these as linked in a dialectic
relationship, a ‘flat repetition’ (50).Women
have to develop a more general project rather
than just pursue mimesis, however ironic.The
category ‘woman’ has to be dissolved back into
constitutive forces.However,
Braidotti says this already presupposes some
symmetry between the sexes, unlike the
asymmetric power differences in Irigaray which
have structured the very consciousness of women.
Deleuze
fails to see that there is asymmetry in the
ability to speak.It is not just a ‘devalorised difference’
(51).History
and time itself ‘is the master discourse of the
white, masculine, hegemonic, property owning
subject who posits his consciousness as
synonymous with a universal knowing subject, and
markets a series of “others” as his ontological
props’.Women
have never been offered a subjectivity to be
deconstructed: ‘In order to announce the death
of the subject, one must first have been granted
the right to speak as one’.Deleuze
has seen the need to dissolve all sexual
identities, especially in his analysis of the
oedipal structure, but this is too abstract.
Deleuze
has also been contradictory, revealing ‘a
structural and systematic indecision’ (52).His
naivety [conventionalism really] is revealed
when he imagines the upheaval should a woman
become a philosopher [What is Philosophy,
apparently].Braidotti argues there has been a corpus
of sophisticated feminist work since the 1970s.Becoming
is not just an internal volitional process, but
de-essentialized forms of embodiment for Deleuze
and re- essentialized forms for Irigaray: ‘
becomings or transformations are external and
interrelational’ (52).
Minorities
could include all sorts of groups, from
political guerrillas to street gangs.However
minorities have to actively pursue the creative
possibilities and flows that dissolve all
identities. [This
issue of becoming a group for itself is a
crucial part of the problem with Hardt and Negri
as well] .Becoming woman involves such a
transgressive group, aiming at taking on the
whole system of signs, social practices and
embodiments.Deleuze wants to abandon this project
based on identity in favour of a more general
project, but Braidotti thinks that few other
becomings can challenge the system [she cites
the use of Prozac, or the spread of anorexia and
bulimia].Griggers
says lesbianism is easily recuperated, part of
the differentiation of postmodern markets, and
already part of popular culture.Lesbians
find it difficult to form up a genuinely
transgressive identity when they are already
located in a dominant one.
Minorities
have to actively resist recuperation and change
conceptual schema altogether, heading towards
nomadicity, avoiding envy ‘(negative desire)’
(53) and a tendency to reintroduce domination.Inevitably,
this will involve different starting points.For
real life minorities, this may involve going
through a stage of developing an identity first,
developing a subject position first, so it can
be given up later.So there is a differentiation in becoming
minoritarian, depending on political resources.This
will introduce heterogeneity into otherness to
break its relation with the same.
A
figuration has a real existence in political
locations, and is not just a conceptual map.We
need a ‘cartography of power relations’ (54) to
locate sites of struggle and resistance.This
is where the project of finding adequate
representations becomes an important political
first step.Post structuralist-notions such as a non
unitary vision of the subject become real
political issues, not a retreat into relativism.People
starting from a location in the majority have
only the option to work through a minority, as
in becoming woman, to deterritorialize maleness
‘(also known as the feminization of Man)’ (54).People
starting from a location as an empirical
minority can head back into the majority, as in
recuperation, or escape into minoritarianism.In the
case of women, both these options are possible,
so becoming woman leads in different directions
[and one direction produces Margaret Thatcher,
not a feminine stereotype any more than
feminists are].Deleuze is interested in those paths that
do not involve simple reversibility.
For him,
this is an affirmative process, designed not
only to criticize but to construct alternatives
to phallogocentric power.One
option is the idea of the virtual feminine,
while another sees alliances between minorities.Both
majorities and conventional minorities are
transformed.However, given different [‘asymmetric’]
starting points, concrete projects can be mostly
critical.Others
might be ready to begin affirming new subject
positions, but this is a matter of ‘major power
dissymmetries and hence of structural
differences’ (55), not just an abstract
relativism.
Postmodernity
has already destabilized the social props of
identity.We
need to think about grounding new subjectivities
against this background of flow and movement.This
is where connecting Irigaray and Deleuze becomes
important, with both asked to address ‘feminist
politics of location’.
There are
different types of mobility rootlessness and
nomadism, and these have to be charted.Nomadism
is not a universal metaphor, but a way of
indexing ‘qualitatively different degrees of
access and entitlement to socially empowering
(or not) subject positions in an historical era’
(55).Power
is the key dimension, underpinning degrees of
embeddedness and embodiedness of subject
positions.
Irigaray
aims at a new kind of symmetrical
heterosexuality, but Deleuze and Guattari offer
a ‘multi sexual orientation’ (56).Irigaray’s
Lacanian allegiances might explain her position,
while Deleuze and Guattari break with Lacan on
the issue of the role of ‘lack’ in desire.Lacan
reflects ‘the centuries – old tradition of
Christian guilt’, and a residual Hegelianism.
In
Spinozist terms of ‘affectivity, intensity and
speed’ even Lacanian psychoanalysis is negative
in its adherence to a controlling regime.Its
claustrophobic atmosphere is found in French
novels like Flaubert, who’s Madame Bovary is
‘onanistic…[With a]…Sexuality that is simultaneously
titillating and denied’.So is
the agony and ecstasy of martyred female saints.It
extends to the attractive but decayed female
body of the Dame aux Camelias, a
common figure of 19th century
eroticism, apparently.
Nomadism
offers quite a different erotic imaginary, ‘less
sacrificial and more upbeat’ (57), involving
more technological and experimental forms of
desire.It
‘hints at transcendence, but always through and
not away from the flesh’ [what on earth does she
have in mind?].Desire is a material ‘socially enacted’
arrangement that permits becoming.It is
active, multiple and empowering.It
breaks with ‘phallocentric self referentiality’.There
is a dissociation from the conventional
conscious self.This inevitably involves relations with a
social field as multiple encounters are explored
and layers of the non unitary subject built up.
The body
is a focus of forces with different speeds and
intensities.Human bodies have the power to
interrelate, to affect and be affected.In
temporal terms, bodies are portions of ‘living
memory’ [duration?], developed after constant
interaction with other bodies and forces.Thus
‘desire and the yearning for interconnections
with others lie at the heart of Deleuze’s vision
of subjectivity’.Psychoanalysis has reduced desire to
heterosexual relations and genital contacts.Deleuze
and Guattari want to argue that it is
unconstrained affectivity and external
relations, encounters between different
subjects, the pursuit of ‘intensive, affective,
external resonances ...Multiple
other encounters ...Territorial-
and
border-crossings’.[Argued best in Guattari on
alterity?].
The notion
of desire as lack reflects the context of 19th
century capitalism, and new forms of capitalism
have made it redundant. The
dualistically split subject also belongs here. The
point is to disengage desire even from these new
forms, which now make flow and multiple
encounters much more possible.
Feminists
have found this work useful, including the
critique of psychoanalysis and the advocacy of
polysexuality.[All old hat really, first argued by
Marcuse with the notion of polymorphous
perversity].It seems to support lesbian and gay
sexuality and queer theory [not specified as
such, but described as multiple sexualities].Wittig
in particular [discussed on pages 58,59] has
rejected any idea of the feminine in favour of a
general becoming minoritarian, and has cited
writers who have developed implications for
sexual identities of all kinds, starting from a
lesbian position.However, she seems to have not followed
the radical deconstruction of the conscious self
implied in Deleuzian work [apparently, Butler
disagrees with Deleuze on this point].Wittig
seems to operate with a classic humanist notion
of the self, however, with classic wilful
intentions.This also leads to her ignoring social
locations and power, and leads to idealist
notions of sexed identities.Nevertheless,
the work has become important, apparently in the
rejection of sexual difference in favour of
queer theory, and away from the idea of a more
symmetric heterosexuality. Irigaray became too
dogmatic to respond effectively, so
heterosexuality was marginalised, even though it
remains the choice of most women.[Suddenly
this is a preference, and not the result of male
hegemony?].In all of this, sexual difference as the
major form of asymmetric power was also
marginalised.[I think there is an implication that it
will affect any kind of sexed subject and
relations between them].
Other
feminists have also pursued crossings between
Deleuze and Irigaray, like Grosz.She
retains the Deleuzian interest in subjectivity
as multiplicity, and sees lesbianism as a form
of becoming minoritarian.Heterosexuality
is seen as a molar constraint.This
helps explore the creative potentials for
becoming of any minoritarian sexuality,
including queer ones.This
is a way of retaining an emphasis on sexual
difference while adding to it notions of nomadic
flows: female sexuality is still the
unrepresentable, but queer sexuality offers
possibilities, which is not very different from
Irigaray’s argument in favour of multiple female
sexualities instead of ones defined by binaries.Queer
theory sees the possibility of rethinking
relations with a nonconventional ‘improper’
object (60).
It is
possible to see a convergence between Irigaray
and Deleuze on the unrepresentable ‘multi –
centred fleshed subject’ (60).Both
offer a transcendental analysis, the sensible
and empiricist version respectively.However,
both are located differently [in philosophy?In
politics?].Both need to examine the shifting ground
of power relations.Similarly,
Grosz’s notion of embodiment is too ‘textual’
and not sociological enough, which makes her a
utopian writer, located in the abstract world of
post structuralism.
The
strongest point of these approaches is their
connection between the inner self and the
social, the symbolic and the material.Both
Deleuze and Irigaray offer serious challenges to
the idea of the conventional subject and the
notion of desire as lack, with all the
psychoanalytic implications that go with it.The
very attempt to separate these categories,
especially to declare the symbolic autonomous,
operating with disembodied subjects and abstract
categories is the hallmark of the ‘patriarchal
cash-nexus of power’ (61).Majoritarianism
means
the ‘masculine colonization of social space’,
confining others to a binary system, and
colonizing all aspects of the cultural and the
most powerful structures.The
privatized self is a typical device to divide
and rule, and liberalism is wrong to celebrate
it.Psychoanalysis
fails to see its connection with political
economy, as an interiorization of despotism.Deleuze
sees affect as a material force, flowing
dynamically.Irigaray still operates with the Lacanian
project of overcoming lack by reuniting the
subject with its power to become.The
patriarchal symbolic has to be replaced with
alternative ‘radical re-enfleshments’ of both
men and women.Both agree that the production of new
subjects is required as a radical challenge to
the existing system, and this is ‘radical
materialism of the post structuralist era’.