Ecriture feminine...2nd WAVE of feminism...

[Gopa B. Caesar]

I.        French Feminism
A.     Common agreement between French feminists
1.      Western thought has been based on a systematic repression of women's experience.
B.     Comparison
1.      Opposes on masculinist thinking
2.      Western culture as fundamentally oppressive, and phallogocentric
3.      Men objectifies the world through Symbolic discourse
4.      Resistance does take place in the form of jouissance
5.      Oppose women's bodily experience to the phallic-symbolic patterns embedded in Western thought

Source:
http://personal.wofford.edu/~hitchmoughsa/Writing.html

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Contrasts

1.      Kristeva:
2.      Irigaray + Cixous:
a.      Women have been prevented from expressing their sexuality in itself
b.      Women must begin with their sexuality, bodies
c.      Speak in the new languages it calls for, they will establish a point of view (a site of différence)

[Gopa B. Caesar]

A.     Julia Kristeva

1.      Finds in psychoanalysis the concept of the bodily drives that survive cultural pressure in semiotic discourse (the gestural, rhythmic, language)
2.      Women, speak and write as hysterics
3.      Semiotic style: repetitive, spasmodic, separations
4.      Women should persist in challenging the discourses that stand
5.      The word “woman" represents as an attitude, men also have access to the jouissance (the emergence of bodily drive) that opposes phallogocentrism

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Luce Irigaray


1.      Women is different from men
2.      A world structured by man-centered
a.      Women has no way of knowing or  representing themselves
b.      Women’s bodies and sexual pleasure    have been absent or misrepresented in male discourse.
3.      A diffuse sexuality arising: two lips of the vulva, multiplicity of libidinal energies.
4.      Female sexuality v.s logic and language
5.      Women must recognize and assert their jouissance

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Hé1ène Cixous

1.      Women’s unconscious is totally different from men's
2.      Level of sexual pleasure is different
3.       The Laugh of the Medusa

a.      Female sexuality is superior to phallic single mindedness
b.      Masculine is inscribed within boundaries
c.      Her libido is cosmic, just as her unconscious, is worldwide

4.      Link women's diffuse sexuality to women's language-   written language
5.      Insists on the primacy of multiple, specifically female    libidinal impulses in women's unconscious

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Critique

A.     Idealist and essentialist:  Can the body be a source of self-   knowledge?
B.     Sexuality is not an innate quality, sexuality is not a natural given, but    rather is the consequence of social interactions, among people and    among signs   
C.     Sexist ideologies
D.     What about variations in class, in race, and in culture among women?
E.      Materialist feminists’ critique
F.      Whether the assertion of a shared female nature made by féminité    can help us in feminist action toward a variety of goals
G.     Colette Guillaumin, arguing along similar lines in Questions    féministés , points out that the psychic characteristics praised by    advocates of féminité have in fact been determined by the familial    and economic roles imposed on women by men.
H.     The author’s critique
1.      It neglects differences among women
2.      Understand and respect the diversity
3.     A monolithic vision of shared female sexuality

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Proposed Solutions

A.     To move outside the binary opposite
B.     Analyze the power-relationship
C.     Can the body be the source of a new discourse ,  Is it    possible to move from that state of unconscious    excitation directly to a written female text 
D.     But psychoanalytic theory and social experience    both suggest that the leap from body to language is    especially difficult for women
1.      Working against the concrete difficulties and the prejudices surrounding women's writing
2.      Indebted to the "body" of earlier women writers
3. Recognize it as a conscious response to socialiterary realities

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Monique Wittig

A.     She is suspicious both of the oppositional thinking that defines woman in terms of man and of the mythical-idealist strain in certain formulations of féminité

Focus on women among themselves

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Recognition

A.     The critique of phallocentrism in all the material and ideological forms it has taken

B.     The call for new representations of women's consciousness

[Gopa B. Caesar]

From New Criticism to Feminism

1. autonomous self/text, universal human nature,               

Self/text—gender and sex--  determined by society and history, and more specifically, by patriarchal society.

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Feminisms: Starting Questions

Who is feminist?  Can a man be a feminist?
What are the differences between men and women?  (gender difference)
Biology--Is our body our destiny?
Personality--What is “being feminine” like?
Career Aptitude—Are there jobs unsuitable for women?
Writing--Do men and women write differently?

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Feminisms: Starting Questions(2)

Images of Women:
Are there any texts similar to “A Rose for Emily” or “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
What are the traditional/stereotypical images of women? What’s wrong with them?
How do women deal with those traditional images?  Rejecting them completely?
How do women look at women and women’s images?  From a man’s perspective, or a woman’s?

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Feminisms: Starting Questions(3)

Feminine Writing, Feminist writings and Women’s work:
What is feminine writing?  Does it have definite features?
Are all women writers feminist writers?
What are the feminist strategies used in feminist writings and cultural productions?

[Gopa B. Caesar]

Feminisms: Starting Questions(4)

Body, Desire, Sexuality and Sexual Orientation:
How do women express/liberate their desires?  Is sexual liberation the only good way?  How about body sculpture?
How do we determine our sexual orientation? 
What is “good sex” and what is “bad”?
Should pornography be banned? And prostitution be legalized?

[Gopa B. Caesar]

 1. women‘s positions in patriarchal society and discourses
2. history of feminist movement & writings
 3. Feminisms and Gender Studies: Radical Feminism, French Feminism, Post-Feminism, Lesbian Feminism, Taiwanese Feminisms