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Ecriture feminine...2nd WAVE of feminism...
Gopa B. Caesar:
“No Jacob’s ladder for a return to the mother. Jacob’s ladder always climbs up to heaven, to the Father and his kingdom.†p. 40
men need to feed their libido (sexual urge or drive) p. 39 and distanced/removed from their bodies/corporeal in (sexual) production p. 49 —need wife-mother/ a woman-wife (p. 43) = need women’s guardianship of their corporeal unity (p. 49)
Gopa B. Caesar:
Fantasy of Mother as a devouring monster and her womb as the devouring mouth:
able to give birth and life (power of procreation and creation/generative power)
steal the creating power or life essence from men?
womb/the silent and threatening belly = capture net of maternal power, the phallic mother → phallic threat, anxiety, phobia of castration fear (p. 41) [from man-father’s perspective]
Q: Fantasy based on Oedipus’s hatred: (still uninterrupted)
makes a hole in the bellies of women/identity = a stake driven into the earth (p. 41)
“Torn between the sons and the fathers, the stake or sacrifice in disputes between men (disputes for the ownership of the mother’s body), she is fragmented into bits and pieces, and therefore ‘unable to articulate her difference’†(p. 27)
“The (male) subject prefers to see her as the maternal-feminine rather than as a woman (castration and death, the unimaginable heterogamous other)†(p. 27) → “A hole in the texture of language corresponds to the forgetting of the scar of the navel†(p. 41).
Q: 1. phallic erection = the only sexual value? (in the patriarchal tradition)
2. castration anxiety = the unconscious memory of such sacrifice?
The murder of the father = “a desire for one who artificially cut the link with the mother in order to take over the creative power of all worlds, especially the female world†(Wrong) →
“signifies a desire to take his [the father’s] place, a rival and competitive desire†(p. 42)
Gopa B. Caesar:
Have fathers ever been asked to renounce being men? We do not have to renounce being women in order to be womenâ€
“We are always mothers once we are women†(p. 43): bring children; love, desire, language, art, the social, the political, the religious…
We should give our mothers a new life instead of killing her/sacrificing her to the law of the father. We must invent a new language that does not replace the bodily encounter (paternal language), but which speaks corporeal while we seek a new relationship with the body of our mother.
Women should speak up rather than remain silent!! = outlet of their emotion
We should assert the genealogy/history of women = identity, subjectivity +
do not try to deny our mother (and her body) as our love object
assert love for other women [women-sisters]
The two modes of women’s jouissance (enjoyment):
programmed in a male libidinal economy
with their own sexual identity (against the norms of phallocratic economy)
Gopa B. Caesar:
Women-Mothers: the Silent Substratum of the Social Order (published as an interview.
“The substratum is the woman who reproduces the social order, who is made this order’s infrastructure: the whole of our western culture is based upon the murder of the mother. The man-god-father killed the mother in order to take power†(p.47).
the hysteric—revolt and refusal, “a desire for/of the living mother who would be more than a reproductive body in the pay of the polis, a living, loving woman†(p. 47-8)
Gopa B. Caesar:
“the only path that remains open to us is madness†(p. 48)
We need language to define madness.
Women suffer in their bodies (inaudible)
Patriarchy discourse = discourse of men about women (objects/silence)
“Being guardians of their corporeal unity, we cannot be beings of desire… desire is movement.â€
the so-called ‘sexual liberation’ lay trap
(Greek) relationship to mother = relationship to women
Mother= function = no personal language and identity
mother/daughter, daughter/mother relationship
→ say goodbye to maternal omnipotence and establish a woman-to-woman relationship of reciprocity * mothers = daughters
“Liberate ourselves along with our mothers†(p. 50)
“We [women] lack speechâ€
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