Gender Theory 1
Freudian Psychoanalysis part I
Feminism, Gender, and Psychoanalysis
Feminism is a discourse involving various movements, theories, and philosophies concerned with gender difference, equality and campaign for women's rights and interests. (Q1) Feminists have divided the movement's history into three waves. The first wave refers to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second wave refers to the ideas and actions associated with legal and social equality for women, beginning in the 1960s. The third wave refers to a continuation, and a reaction to, the perceived failures of second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s.
Post-feminism, as third wave, criticises second wave for its monolithic universalization of the essentialistic feminine identity of upper middle-class white women. Post-colonial feminists argue that oppression relating to the colonial experience, particularly racial, class, and ethnic oppression, has marginalized women in post-colonial societies. They argue that cultures impacted by Western imperialism are often vastly different and should be treated as such. (Q2) Post-structural feminism calls into question the second wave's assumption of the naturality and stability of woman's identity. (Q3) It actually dates back to Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist philosopher's famous claim, "One is not born a woman, but becomes one". This view, though still ontological, proposes that the term gender should be used to refer to the social, cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. Gender Theory is a field of dealing with how gender and its involving social oppression form as artificial constructs.
Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Monique Wittig, and Judith Butler, supposed to be reviewed later in the future, mostly start their discussions with criticism of the male-dominated explanations of gender formation of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Thus, it is priliminary to review Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis before understanding Gender Theory. Once you review psychoanalysis, you will be able to accept gender theorist's tropes: "Femininity becomes a mask that resolves a masculine identification, for a masculine identification would, within the presumed heterosexual matrix of desire, produce a desire for a female object, the Phallus; hence, the donning of femininity as mask may reveal a refusal of a female homosexuality and, at the same time, the hyperbolic incorporation of that female Other who is refused". (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge 2006, p72) (Q4)
Pleasure vs Reality Principles, the Unconscious
For studying Freud, it is crucial to keep in mind one has to survive, or preserve the self, not only biologically but also psychologically. A human being is controlled by Pleasure Principle and Reality Principle. We must repress some of our tendencies to pleasure by the need to labor due to harsh necessity in order to survive. It is repression of Pleasure Principle by Reality Principle. But, excessive repression can make us sick as suffering from neurosis and psychosis. The unconscious is defined as the place to which we relegate the desires we are unable to fulfil. Our lives are dominated by the unconscious, but, by definition, we are not conscious of it.
Infantile Sexuality, Libidinal Drive
We are all born, entirely reliant for our survivals on the parents' care. But, the dependence is not merely biological. The baby will suck its mother's breast for milk, but will discover this biologically essential activity is also pleasurable. The baby's mouth becomes not only an organ of its physical survival but an 'erotogenic zone', which the child might reactivate a few years later by sucking its thumb. The relation to the mother has taken on a new, libidinal dimension: sexuality has been born, as a kind of drive which was at first inseparable from biological instinct but which has now separated itself out from it. Thus, sexuality, or libidinal drive (libido), for Freud is itself a perversion-a swerving away of a natural self-preservative instinct towards another goal, i.e, pleasure. (Q5)
As the infant grows, other erotogenic zones come into play. The oral, anal stages, etc, sometimes incorporating things or objects. The phallic stage begins to focus the child's libido on the genitals. But, the drives are still extremely flexible, in no way fixed like biological instinct. Emerging and disappearing kaleidoscopically, their objects are replaceable, and one sexual drive can substitute itself for another. (Q6) Thus, the child is not a unified subject confronting and desiring a fixed, stable object. Really digressive, but still centered on its own body, the child, under the sway of Pleasure Principle, does not have any respect for differences of gender. For gender is a category of social roles.
Next time, we go on to review the really important notions including Oedipus Complex, Three Part Psychic Apparatus (Superego, Ego, Id), Melancholia of Gender, and Dream, Language and their connections to Lacanian Psychoanalysis.
Questions
Q1. Welcome to Feminist Study Group. Our biweekly meeting is open to anybody interested in Feminist Study. (But, next meeting will be for January 7th) The meeting will cover any topics and issues related to Feminism. Membership of the meeting is not defined. You may join the meeting when you feel like it. No other obligations for the participants than you express your opinions in English. What I am asking with this first question is if you have any experience of studying, working, or practicing as a feminist. What sorts of interests do you have in Feminism ?
Q2. There has been circulation of a perception (in the Western world) that Muslim women are being forced to wear their hijabs and Niqabs, and that the scarf stands a symbol of (gender) oppression. Last April, the French legislation tried to create a law forbidding Muslim women to wear the niqab. Sarkozy, the President of France, stated that he cannot allow means of slavery to exist in his country. However, many of Muslim women in the Western World criticised the French legislation effort for its standing as a contradiction of "original intent to oppose oppression". They argued that other means could be used to aid women who are forced to wear the Niqab, but for the most part, the other women should be granted the right to wear whatever pleases them. Which do you agree with? Sarkozy or Muslim women? What can be, you think, a desirable means to aid women forced to wear the Niqab?
Q3. The term, "gender", is generally used as a system of social roles, distinguished from "sex" and "sexuality". Gender category is said to be composed of "femininity" and "masculinity", while sex category, alleged to be biologically determined, "female" and "male". Do you believe biological sex category determines an individual's gender? Many news articles, highly inspired by Sociobiology and Darwinism, proliferate a rhetoric like this that male must behave as (...) while female as (...). What do you think about this kind of rhetorics? Specifically regarding femininity, do you think there is a certain stable and fixed subject as a woman? Or do you agree with some gender theorists on their opinion that gender might be changeable?
Q4. Did you ever think "womaliness" could be, sometimes, a masquerade or performance to satisfy man's desire to fill a certain feeling of lack? If so, what do you think the lack came from? Did you ever see your boyfriend or husband (or yourself, if you think of yourself as a man) identify you (your girlfriend or wife) with his (your) mother? You were also born as a baby hugged by your mother. Did you ever feel this time you need somebody or something to identify with your mother?
Q5. What do you think is the difference between sexuality and biological sex ?
Q6. For Freud, cathexis is an investment of libido. An object or thing might be the object of sexual drive. Furthermore, the object of libido can be replaced by other object, which is called displacement. For it displaces the meaning (sexual desire or libidinal drive) of one object onto another. Since, in such a sense, the object is a signifier of libidinal drive, displacement can be comparable to the imagery in language like metaphor and metonymy. Do you think life goal, idealogy, academic interest, and other forms of signifiers can be the object of libidinal drive? Consider your lover (or husband, wife) as an object signifying your libidinal drive. What was, as you experienced, the difference between your lover as you expect in your mind (the other) and your lover as "it" is (the Other)?
I hope to see you all at the meeting,
Kyu Don
© 2011, Kyu-don Choi