Patterns of Dissonance

A Study of Women and Contemporary Philosophy

Rosi Braidotti

• Editore: Polity
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745665726
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Philosophy History & Theory

This book is a brilliant and timely analysis of the complex issues raised by the relation between women and philosophy. It offers a critical account of a wide range of contemporary philosophical and feminist texts and it develops this account into an original project of critical feminist thought.

Braidotti examines contemporary French philosophy as practised by men such as Foucault and Derrida, showing that they rely on a notion of 'the feminine' in order to undermine classical thought, which bears no direct relevance to the historical experience of women.

Braidotti then looks at the attempts of contemporary feminist thinkers in Europe and the United States to show the gendered nature of discursive power games. She discusses the contributions of Luce Irigaray and many other feminist theorists to the understanding of sexual difference and of its implications for philosophy and politics. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in women's studies, feminist theory, social theory, cultural studies, philosophy and literature, and anyone interested in contemporary feminism and the relation between feminist theory, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis.

1

Images of the Void

It is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man’s disappearance. For this void does not create a deficiency; it does not constitute a lacuna that must be filled. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than the unfolding of a space in which it is once more possible to think. Foucault¹

For over a century now, philosophical modernity has been aware of fundamental problems in the nature, function, and limits of human subjectivity. Special attention has been paid to the critique of the classical representations of the subject, as exemplified in seventeenth-century rationalism. This vision of subjectivity has become as much a contested object as the Enlightenment project of the historical progress of humanity through the adequate use of reason. Anti-Cartesianism has therefore been put on the agenda of modernity: it raises questions concerning the structure of subjectivity in such a way as to challenge dualism, of which the Cartesian body-and-soul dichotomy is the paradigm, and in so doing to change the very definition of the function of philosophy.

The contemporary theoretical climate, at least in ‘Continental’ and especially French philosophy is dominated by the discourse of the ‘crisis’, meaning the questioning of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘rationality’.

The object of this study is the intersection of philosophical modernity, defined as the discourse of the crisis of the rational subject, and the question of the feminine and of women in philosophy. Bordering this territory are, on the one hand, analyses of the state of contemporary philosophy by such philosophers as Michel Foucault or Gilles Deleuze; and on the other, the research into theory, politics, and subjectivity pursued by a growing number of women working in the field of philosophy.

DIAGNOSING THE CRISIS

According to Foucault, our age, as a whole, is trying to escape from the heritage of classical rationalism.²

We are all epistemological orphans, and the ontological insecurity we suffer is our unavoidable historical condition. Afflicted by the melancholy which henceforth³ marks the end of this millennium, haunted by a feeling of loss, philosophy is no longer the queen of knowledge, nor is it the master-discipline any more. At the most it can claim the status of a merry widow,⁴ sadly trying to find her place in the new cynicism of postmodern society. As a famous graffito on the Paris walls put it: ‘God is dead, Marx is dead, and I’m not feeling too well myself’.

The French school of philosophical modernity builds upon and works through the issue of the crisis of rationality and, contrary to the German critical tradition, focuses on the decline of reason as the ideal and the appropriate definition of human subjectivity. At times, this approach drifts into a critical, nihilistic mode,⁵ but it never ceases to bring the discourse of the crisis to bear upon the issue of changing notions of subjectivity.

The state of intellectual ‘crisis’ we are in is not necessarily the sign of the imminent death of theoretical practice, or of those whose living and pleasure depend on exercising it. The issues – the death of the subject, the end of man(kind) – which the post-structuralist generation put on the agenda, are in my view a set of figures of speech that express the will to go on theorizing, that is, to engage in philosophical discourse by all possible means. Far from being a metaphor for the void, this set of questions is the sign of an irrepressible theoretical vitality: the problematization of the ‘crisis’ of the subject, far from being related to any ‘death of man(kind)’, is rather the leitmotiv for a whole generation of French philosophers. As I see it, the so-called ‘death’ of the subject is less important than the funeral ceremony which marks it as a central theoretical event.

Another example of this crisis is a series of plaintive meta-narratives about the crisis of rationality and of the rationalist subject, which forms the essence of the theoretical legacy of the sixties. Precipitate, inaccurate and often aberrant readings of Foucault, Lacan or Derrida are part of the air one breathes in France today.⁶ The tendency is not simply to lower the intellectual level but also to trivialize texts and their authors, if not positively to despise them. The discourse of the crisis of philosophy has been hijacked to the profit of a loose form of neo-humanism which accuses the ‘post-structuralist’ generation of failing to respect the basic rights of ‘Man’.

The so-called ‘neo-liberals/humanists’ shift the grounds of the argument from the idea of ‘crisis’ to that of the ‘void’ and so too to the notion that any questioning of subjectivity tends to endanger the ‘human person’. These are conceptual slippages which I would rather resist, for there is a world of difference between the statement that a quite specific form of philosophical ratio is now outmoded and the most banal forms of nihilism. What I call nihilistic in this respect is the attempt to trivialize both the theoretical complexity and the subversive potential of poststructuralist philosophy, replacing them with a generalized nostalgia for humanistic ideals.

Contrary to this regressive tendency, the post-structuralist insight is that the subject of modernity does not coincide with self-reflecting consciousness; s/he therefore cannot fulfil the role of founder of discourse. The philosophy of the ‘crisis’ thus expressed is both critique and act of creation of new forms of thought. It calls into question the very foundations and premises of what we recognize as ‘thinking’.

This way of approaching modernity implies that strong emphasis is laid on the historicity of philosophy as discourse; according to Foucault, ‘We are destined historically to history’, that is, to the repetition of discourses on discourses.⁷ In this sense we are still involved with the last century, though only by negation.

Consistent with the premise that philosophy today can only be conjugated in the plural, contemporary French philosophers are not systems-builders. They rather prefer to define themselves as providers of services, of ‘toolboxes’, working with ideas which are programmes for action rather than dogmatic blocks. First and foremost is their concern for the relevance of their work in drawing up connections and linkages between philosophy and the fundamental problems and preoccupations of our age. Faithful to the insight that one never thinks in a void, the French post-structuralists present themselves as diagnosticians of their time and age. In their perspective, ‘thinking’ is akin to Lévi-Strauss’s idea of a constructive ‘bricolage’.

Deleuze defines this mode of thinking as ‘problematic’,⁸ that is, a line of questioning that is organized around the problematization of ideas in the ‘nomadic’ style. I shall return to this later. Theoretical work, especially philosophy, is rather like a building site: the selection of elements, the distribution of tasks, and the overall plan for the project are the key to what is called the ‘materiality’ of ideas. Thinking is a skill that requires a certain craftsmanship: homo sapiens turns out to be a slightly more elaborated version of homo faber.

To adopt the ‘problematic’ model of philosophy is therefore a political gesture, which connects the act of reflection to the context which engendered it. It consists in locating the ‘apologetic or polemical targets’⁹ which sustain the theoretical process, attaching it firmly to its material and theoretical conditions of production. Setting up a problematic in philosophy means setting the margins, tracing the frontiers of a line of questioning which – by being thus framed – can be formulated as discourse, that is to say: it becomes utterable just as it becomes visible.

The crisis in the speculative function of ratio, which has also led to the liquidation of the principle of the subject’s identity with consciousness, ultimately poses the question: what is the relation between thought and the subject? What do we call ‘thinking’? This question challenges the very legitimacy of philosophical discourse as a specific style and mode of thinking.

In the French context, the questioning of the rationalist vision of the subject merges with a broader debate concerning the role of the intellectual. This topic stems not only from the prestige which French culture has traditionally accorded to its intellectuals,¹⁰ but also from the fact that the philosopher represents the prototype of the French intellectual. The philosopher stands for the masterful self-control that is expected from the thinker but also from the average citizen. This contributes to the political dimension of this discipline, as if the debates of ideas were analogous to political combat.¹¹

As Descombes argues, the relationship between philosophy and public opinion has been mediated in France via the literary and political milieux.¹² Since the fifties, it has in fact been impossible in France to separate the institutional practice of philosophy from avant-garde thought, literature, and philosophy. The monumental figure of Sartre as intellectual-philosopher represents most effectively this vision of the social function of philosophy.

The political events of the May 68 students’ and workers’ riots are very significant in this respect and they deserve independent analysis.¹³As regards philosophy, one of the fundamental effects of May 68 was the questioning of the power of institutions of learning, such as the university, with its traditional faculty and disciplinary distinctions. The idea of the institution itself became the centre of a reflection on the link between power and knowledge; supported by the insights of psychoanalysis, linguistics, and semiology, French philosophy evolved towards a structured reflection on the power of discourse. The work of Michel Foucault, which I shall shortly analyse, clearly exemplifies this.

Another significant effect of the cultural prestige of philosophy outside the university in France has been the role played by philosophers in places such as critical journals, reviews, the media, journalism, and publishing.

A painfully clear example of the potential dangers of this vision of philosophy is the episode in the mid-seventies known as the ‘new philosophy’.¹⁴ Launched by a series of television shows, it proved the power of the mass media as a vehicle for intellectual ideas, transforming thought into a sales system subject to literary marketing. Deleuze has quite rightly emphasized that it represents a ‘new type of thought, interview-thought, talk-show-thought, instant-thought’.¹⁵

In a socio-economic climate dominated by increasing budgetary cuts for the humanities in general and philosophy in particular, it is, therefore, important to recognize the far from accidental coincidence between the ‘increasing scarcity of teaching posts and the increasing number of television sets’.¹⁶

The controversy over the intellectual power of the media and the difficulties inherent in the transmission of a post-68 theoretical legacy add a significant new light to the question of the crisis: isn’t it true, after all, that the function of self-questioning suits philosophy rather well? Has this discipline ever been anything other than a reaction and an attempt to respond to a crisis situation: what is to be done? What should we think? How do we get out of it? Are these not the sempiternal questions underlying the philosophical discursive order, endemic to this discipline and as such constitutive of its field of enunciation? If so, what is the specificity of the crisis we are going through?

Instead of falling into the nostalgic rhetoric of the void, could it not be said, in the post-structuralist context, that the history of philosophical thought is inevitably linked with its decline, that is to say, with the transition of this discipline from the prestigious role it had played as dominant discourse to a much humbler role? The post-modern condition which Lyotard analyses so lucidly is marked by the fact that philosophy loses to the hard, technological sciences the function of cultural codification which had been its historical prerogative.¹⁷ This in turn marks a shift towards an instrumental conception of thought which brings the classical rationalism of the seventeenth century to the brink of implosion: reason turning against itself.

While recognizing the significance of these shifts, I maintain that what is, historically and structurally, the strength of this discipline is also its fundamental belief in the power and aesthetic beauty of thinking. Philosophy thus defined is an act of faith, however illusory, in the exercise of thought. As such it can be seen as the living stock of cumulated knowledges about reason, rationality, and the structure of the thinking subject itself.

This is why it is important to resist all temptation to vulgarize or trivialize the current discourse on the crisis of rationality, by keeping in mind the historical and discursive conditions which produced it. The very notion of ‘crisis’ should be understood as an opening up of the field of philosophy to other, new, extra-philosophical preoccupations. Unless it is understood in this sense, there is a risk of defining the crisis in an unhistorical or, even worse, ideological way.

In this work I will approach the French philosophers’ emphasis on the crisis or on the death of the subject not in the sense of a low-key anti-humanism, but rather as the mode of enunciation best suited to their redefinition of what it means to think. For me the ‘void’ is not a substantial concept: it is not the mark of an absence, or of a hole in the heart of the subject; rather, it signifies the transcendance of absence. Neither nothing, nor something, the conceptual value of the crisis as void should not be understood by negative reference to theoretical plenitude, but rather, as the historical impossibility for philosophy today to postulate yet another global theory – as a rupture in its tradition of representation and legitimation of the subject.

It is on this level that I also take my distance from the ‘postmodern’ stance in Baudrillard’s sense of the term, which implies the reduction of theoretical thought to a process of signification that bears no link to its empirical referents, the material conditions of its production.¹⁸

I would therefore propose to displace the problematic of the void and suggest that both the vitality and the relevance of the redefinition of philosophy undertaken by post-structuralist thinkers can be assessed by taking into account the impact and the extent of the problem of femininity, women, and woman in contemporary French philosophy. To relate these two aspects of the same discursive universe seems to me a much more fruitful way of evaluating both the question of modernity and the specificity of post-structuralist thought in France than the vain rhetoric of the crisis.

For in the midst of all this, philosopy is far from being dead: to be dead – isn’t this what Sartrean philosophy taught us? – is to be in the hands of the living.

The kind of critical reading I propose stems less from a sociology of knowledge than from an ‘analytics’, that is, an analysis of the conditions of possibility of its enunciation. It is therefore an epistemological analysis quite as much as a political one.

If crisis there be, it marks the opening of the borders of this discipline, affirming the obligation to respond to the historical context. This fundamental questioning has enabled, amongst other things, the emergence of the question ‘women and philosophy’. As an offshoot of the crisis of the rationalist, ‘logocentric’ subject, it is coextensive with it.

THE FEMININE AT STAKE

The relations between femininity, women, feminism, and philosophical modernity do not yet form an established, well-defined problematic, perhaps because as a whole, questions concerning women in philosophy have not received enough attention from professional philosophers. So, the problematic which interests me here is still theoretically rather amorphous.

The sheer possibility of enunciation of this however, is significant as an epiphenomenon: as evidence, above all, of the remarkable historical coincidence described above as the intersection of two parallel phenomena: on the one hand, the resurgence in the last thirty years of women’s struggle in social, political, private and theoretical domains, which has raised a whole range of questions and analyses of the role, lived experience and modes of existence of women. I shall refer to this heterogeneous and polymorphous set of open questions as ‘feminist reflection’, or ‘feminist thought’. And on the other hand, the ‘crisis’ of classical reason, a rupture inside the Western order of discourse. This ‘crisis’, which has profound links with the socio-economic conditions of late capitalism, has radically called into question not only the epistemic structures of the rational subject, but also its role as guardian of the transmission of discourse. That is to say, it has unveiled the structural links between rationality and ...