Multitudes
Of a bastard line.
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- Nov 27, 2005
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As the titile suggest I would like to start an discussion on femininity and what is woman... I will outline certain ideas and suggest things that you moght not be able to relate to, but that shouldn't keep you from responding your ideas on this subject and realte it to anything you want...
In western dominant cultures/societies the woman has been defined through her body, her ability to reproduce, the household, nature or said in another way 'the eternal feminine', while the male has been defined by truth, intellect, power, culture, language, representation and sexuality or to use freuds useable term 'Phallos'..
So to call dominant western cultures "pallagocentric" is not fare away, because the rules and definitions has been set by the male...
What I want to propose here is a way to formulate an alternative account of feminity, one which aims at disturbing a phallogocentric model constructed around a framework of dualism, because what wouldn't be better to formulate a feminity which is not constructed and defined through dominant male terms and rules and escaping those residence of surveillance...
Ofcourse this discussion is not a new one, so I'm gonna bring two philosophers/thinkers into play which I hold dear and also reference a couple of voices from other who can't keep there mouth shut...
Irigaray(you might know if you are familiar with feminist theory) and Derrida both turns to the concept of dance as a means by which to indicate non-phallogocentric being. But unlike Irigaray, derrida is keen to avoid any notion of the 'eternal Feminine". Instead, he uses the metaphor of dance as a means by which to get a certain unfixing of a 'truth' of femininity, and claims that dancing 'is the deplacement of women'. he therefore relates dancing to the destabilisation of sexual categories, including the category of 'woman' as an unproblematic basis for a revolutionary feminist politics.
What he reads into the dance, are the possibilities for disrupting established 'spaces' and escaping the male surveillance. Dancing therefor becomes a metaphor through which to imagine a certain disorganisation of subjectivity. I will post some pictures oif two female choreographers work, Pina Bausch and Anne Teresa De keersmaeker, which i think takes on the dominat male paradigms...
Baudrillard is another one who's keen to join in on thoughts on femininity is Baudrillard, who for most occupies him self with female seduction, because for him seduction is female, in proportion to the dominant male sexuality. Where the male as sex is based on the distinction and the contrast, while the female as sex is not seen as the opposite of this, but that, which is beyond this contradiction. This is not, claims Baudrillard, realised by the feminist. They see them selfs through male paradigms and focuses especially on the female pleasure and the specific female bodily experience. but then they forget, that a womans most powerful weapon towards the man lies in the control of surface and the skin, which captures the male desire, and not in taken over of the male deep lying meaning, on the behind the scene bodily truth. When the woman moves from her status as (sexual)object to the priviledge male staus as subject, lord and master, then she loses exacttly that power of seduction, which alone can bring the male universe of production, truth and sexuality to fall apart.
This hole idea of this thread came when Model_Mom asked me this Question "So you like the ladies that say yes sir and no sir and 'Do you need your slippers dear?" and I answrede her "No I don't like obedience... I like a woman who knows there edge... Which is the thing that makes them women... I can't define it, and that is exactly what is the beauty of it, It's something that is shimmering on the surface, that draws you in and at the same time escapes you, a fluidity in movement and quality, that destabilizes any sexual categories, not bound to any truth, sexuality or other definable mechanisms that men has constructed to hold things into place, a possibility for disrupting established spaces and escaping 'those residence under surveillance'.. a history not based upon continuities, dualism and consensus, but a 'dream of the innumerable'... a movement based upon dissymetri and multiplicity... hence my name... Multitudes.."
The.."Elusive Butterfly" which I have to say thank you to Model_Mom for that beautiful image
I have now outlined some ideas and suggestion on what is woman and feminity... and maybe some ways to escape defing the female under dominat male paradigms... and maybe all this doesn't make sense at all... but I dare you to play this game... come on... react!!!!
In western dominant cultures/societies the woman has been defined through her body, her ability to reproduce, the household, nature or said in another way 'the eternal feminine', while the male has been defined by truth, intellect, power, culture, language, representation and sexuality or to use freuds useable term 'Phallos'..
So to call dominant western cultures "pallagocentric" is not fare away, because the rules and definitions has been set by the male...
What I want to propose here is a way to formulate an alternative account of feminity, one which aims at disturbing a phallogocentric model constructed around a framework of dualism, because what wouldn't be better to formulate a feminity which is not constructed and defined through dominant male terms and rules and escaping those residence of surveillance...
Ofcourse this discussion is not a new one, so I'm gonna bring two philosophers/thinkers into play which I hold dear and also reference a couple of voices from other who can't keep there mouth shut...
Irigaray(you might know if you are familiar with feminist theory) and Derrida both turns to the concept of dance as a means by which to indicate non-phallogocentric being. But unlike Irigaray, derrida is keen to avoid any notion of the 'eternal Feminine". Instead, he uses the metaphor of dance as a means by which to get a certain unfixing of a 'truth' of femininity, and claims that dancing 'is the deplacement of women'. he therefore relates dancing to the destabilisation of sexual categories, including the category of 'woman' as an unproblematic basis for a revolutionary feminist politics.
What he reads into the dance, are the possibilities for disrupting established 'spaces' and escaping the male surveillance. Dancing therefor becomes a metaphor through which to imagine a certain disorganisation of subjectivity. I will post some pictures oif two female choreographers work, Pina Bausch and Anne Teresa De keersmaeker, which i think takes on the dominat male paradigms...
Baudrillard is another one who's keen to join in on thoughts on femininity is Baudrillard, who for most occupies him self with female seduction, because for him seduction is female, in proportion to the dominant male sexuality. Where the male as sex is based on the distinction and the contrast, while the female as sex is not seen as the opposite of this, but that, which is beyond this contradiction. This is not, claims Baudrillard, realised by the feminist. They see them selfs through male paradigms and focuses especially on the female pleasure and the specific female bodily experience. but then they forget, that a womans most powerful weapon towards the man lies in the control of surface and the skin, which captures the male desire, and not in taken over of the male deep lying meaning, on the behind the scene bodily truth. When the woman moves from her status as (sexual)object to the priviledge male staus as subject, lord and master, then she loses exacttly that power of seduction, which alone can bring the male universe of production, truth and sexuality to fall apart.
This hole idea of this thread came when Model_Mom asked me this Question "So you like the ladies that say yes sir and no sir and 'Do you need your slippers dear?" and I answrede her "No I don't like obedience... I like a woman who knows there edge... Which is the thing that makes them women... I can't define it, and that is exactly what is the beauty of it, It's something that is shimmering on the surface, that draws you in and at the same time escapes you, a fluidity in movement and quality, that destabilizes any sexual categories, not bound to any truth, sexuality or other definable mechanisms that men has constructed to hold things into place, a possibility for disrupting established spaces and escaping 'those residence under surveillance'.. a history not based upon continuities, dualism and consensus, but a 'dream of the innumerable'... a movement based upon dissymetri and multiplicity... hence my name... Multitudes.."
The.."Elusive Butterfly" which I have to say thank you to Model_Mom for that beautiful image
I have now outlined some ideas and suggestion on what is woman and feminity... and maybe some ways to escape defing the female under dominat male paradigms... and maybe all this doesn't make sense at all... but I dare you to play this game... come on... react!!!!
). But here the fulani are described as inverting the masculine/feminine duality and not necessarily disrupting it. i think that dance CAN BE a site of destablization of gender roles but is not necessarily so. just as fashion provides a site of possible destablization (just look at the androgyny thread). but show me some more pix maybe i can be convinced. i'm sure such instances exist and i would love to find out where. i mainly find that attempts to destabilize notions of feminity actually end up reinscribing them. Does the movie Thelma and Louise, for example, somehow represent a different (feminist) image of women...or simply reinforce the dichotomy by having them behave in male ways (toting guns) and then dying at the end as punishment for stepping outside of gender norms...?
there's more thinking to be done on this...
...in the in-between space...in the liminal...the space between spaces...
...
and I think we all know that it isn't... this 'figurer out who I am' has that to do with subjectivity and defining your identity?
since when...?
