Photographer: DG
I was particularly interested in the interview with Toril Moi, who comments on feminist theory "after theory" and discusses Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir.
Toril Moi published the first Kristeva Reader in 1986 in which she pointedly acknowledged her identification with Kristeva, as a woman "coming from one language and writing in another". Moi is Norwegian and has been writing in English, Kristeva is Bulgarian and has been writing in French. I share that identification, for I too come from one language and write in another, so I too write as an étrangère and take that position of outsider, of which Kristeva speaks.
I have been reading and thinking a lot about Julia Kristeva, recently. A literary critic and a psychoanalyst, Kristeva draws on her clinical practice in her writings about culture and
the human condition. Her critical texts
are examples of exquisitely evocative and thought provoking prose. Latterly
she has also embraced fiction writing, articulating her theoretical insights in
the speech and actions of her characters.
I find Kristeva's notion of the chora most intriguing. The chora is "the seat of the semiotic modality of significance, a non-expressive totality
formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is full of
movement as it is regulated …as rupture
and articulations (rhythm)…it precedes evidence, verisimilitude, spatiality and
temporality ". Joshua Hall, writing for Philosophy Today has linked the chora to dance. In a similar way, other writers have linked the chora to music.
But even more significant, for me, is Kristeva's emphasis on the speaking subject. Toril Moi points out that this is a key term, that brings with it a sense of embodiment "which you also get in Freud, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir" and which has led her to developing the personal in her writings.
Why am I posting about Toril Moi and her comments on Julia Kristeva? Because as I read on, I was really struck by what Toril says to Michael Payne towards the end of the interview. The 1980s sense of "theory", she says, continues to reign supreme in universities, especially in the US. But "theory today is the orthodoxy, the dogma that’s taught to every student…the point is to
stop repeating a hegemonic and terribly dogmatic discourse. It is important to find a voice of one’s own”.
I think this is crucial. A great many students today learn theory in sound bites and key words. There is a surfeit of critiques relying on "deconstructing" and "re-constituting", full of jargon and empty words.
"What I and many other people have been trying to do" says Toril "is to find different ways of thinking ...that allow me to say something that I can believe in, that I can mean"
True and sincere words, which really resonate with me.
(Photo modelled by Alex B)
These words resonate with me--they "move" me as a string is moved by sound in tune with it. As a believer in God, and the son of a scientist who also believed in God, I understand perhaps better than most how "Science" can be worshiped just like a religion, although it is only a method of learning. Yet there's a big difference between teaching the scientific method and teaching "scientific fact." Strictly speaking, there are no "scientific" facts; only observed facts and theories. And theories are only guesses backed up by observation and experiment. But that truth is perhaps lost on many students who sit under professors (who may well have begun as hungry for knowledge as any Einstein or Galileo) that teach, not true science, but dogma based on "scientific fact." This is truly sad. There is still so much to learn, so many observations and experiments to verify what we now only guess...especially about ourselves...
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking as a man, I find no threat in feminism, only a challenge to redefine myself as a man being with strong women. For me, there wasn't much redefining to do; I grew up in a household of strong women and have always respected women as much as myself. But, tragically, many men have refused to accept the challenge and instead declared war on womanhood.