Gender Theory 5
Monique Wittig part II
Last time, we reached Wittig's proposal of her project to revolt the social reality of oppression based upon the heterosexual relation by introducing into her writing the lesbian subject with an ungendered universal ontology. Then, who is this, the lesbian subject, and what does it mean, in the feminist context of writings?
One Is Not Born a Woman
Simone de Beauvoir suggests, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". (Q1) For Beauvoir, gender, or woman, is a variable cultural construct, but, sex is biological, i.e., culturally fixed. But, Wittig claims, sex, or woman, is neither natural nor invariant. (Q2) Sex is just reification. In other words, it is a political construct intended for reproduction of sexuality, pretending to be natural, and thereby, concealing its own artificiality and justifying the social reality of oppression. (Q3) The social necessity of the production of offspring politically cultivates our intuition. Then, we objectify ourselves as 'women' as it imposes upon us. Therefore, for Wittig, sex is no more than gender; one is not born a woman, but one becomes female. She criticizes Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous supporting feminine difference and the equality of difference, and thereby, only reproducing "natural women" created by men. Wittig points out that feminism is the movement for those who share common (social) features of oppression but not common (natural) features.
Wittig extends materiality to the level of idea. For oppression is practiced at both levels of idea and materiality. As opposed to the idea of nature, we are able to abandon socially imposed female productive, or, so-called, biological, function by our idea, i.e., our historical consciousness. (Q4) The idea recognizing the social reality of oppression, Wittig calls, the science of oppression created by the oppressed. Though accepting class struggle to eventually destroy the class relation, i.e., heterosexual relation, Wittig differentiates herself from Marx. She points out Marxism failed to enable the masses to fight voluntarily because people themselves did not change. Thus, generating individual subjectivity as well as class consciousness is the first condition of the revolt. The two levels are connected by language; the necessity to abandon 'woman' as a class member requires individual subjectivity. It follows that the lesbian subject must be a new ideological, ontological product of society-but not a product of nature-transcending the heterosexual relation with historical consciousness, and connecting individual and material realities as a language user. (Q5) It starts with the current lesbianism, now the only social form in which we can speak by ourselves and expose the contingent cultural constitution of heterosexual relation.
The Trojan Horse
In what strategy, should Wittig, as a writer, pulverize the old forms of the straight mind? In her essay, 'The Point of View: Universal or Particular?', Wittig points out the limitation of committed writings, for example, ecriture feminine committed to feminine difference. (Q6) "They throw dust in the eyes of people", confined within a particular point of view ("Trojan," p46). So, they are condemned for their particularity. It is equally applied for gay and lesbian committed writings which are easily being a manifesto. Neither do they operate as literature by losing polysemy, nor can politically speak as the universal subject, only to be appropriated by the straight mind. They are not transformative of the textual reality of our time. It is not good at all strategically. (Q7) To make the oppressed truely visible, one must make one's point of view universal. Wittig, then, distinguishes letter and meaning. Since minority writers are easily committed to particular interested meaning, for them, meaning tends to hide letter from sight.
Witting's essay, "The Trojan Horse", suggests that to make words visible, the writer must engage in defamiliarization, i.e., force the reader to see words differently:
"At first it looks strange to the Trojans, the wooden horse, off color...barbaric...Then little by little, they discover the familiar forms which coincide with those of a horse. Already for them, the Trojans, there have been many forms, various ones...that were put together and worked into creating a horse, for they have an old culture. The horse built by the Greeks is doubtlessly also one for the Trojans, while they still consider it with uneasiness. It is barbaric...for its form, too raw for them, the effeminate ones...But later on they become fond of the apparent simplicity, within which they see sophistication. They see, by now, all the elaboration that was hidden at first under a brutal coarseness. They come to see as strong, powerful, the work they had considered formless. They want to make it theirs, to adopt it as a monument and shelter it within their walls, a gratuitous object whose only purpose is to be found in itself. But what if it were a war machine?"
Language is raw material she can use to form a literary work, prior to form and content. For words (the Trojan Horse) to be read in their materiality, a writer must first reduce words to be meaningless (off color, simple, coarse), or neutral, by removing the old meanings from them. Words are recognized by the readers (Trojans), taken into their cognitive world (sheltered within their walls, into their city). But, at the moment, the readers (Trojans) are unaware that words (the Trojan Horse) are actually a "war machine" whose ontology (its design and goal) is to pulverize the old forms and formal conventions. What changes must take place in the mind of the reader, when out of the phallic Horse comes not the male warrior but the lesbian subject? (Q8)
Questions
Q1. Beauvoir makes a beautiful statement:
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine."
How much do you accept Beauvoir's claim? Who is this "one" to become a woman? Judith Butler is being to dismiss Wittig as a humanitarian idealist after connecting the lesbian subject and Beauvoir's "one" as prediscursive. Butler asks. Is there any human who is not always already gendered? Consider the moment of gendering a human body when the question, "is it a boy or girl?", is answered. First of all, sexual minorities fall outside the human. Second, we dehumanize a human body this way, and then, humanize it again, by answering, "it's a boy." This mechanism of gender construction seems to be done by the normative function of language. When you practice those questions and answers in your everyday life, do you simply imply your child has a penis? Or, do you anticipate, or even command, that he become a man?
Q2. Beauvoir seems to accept sex as biological, while Wittig refuses the naturality of sex. But, is biology natural? Anne Fausto-Sterling, a biologist at Brown University, lays out a thought experiment considering an alternative model of gender containing five sexes but not our two. In our usual terms, disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology are called "natural" science. They want to see the Nature. But, are they, or scientific discourses, natural?
Q3. Wittig says, "Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy". Some feminists criticize patriarchy by pointing out prehistoric matriarchy. Now, our current civilization seems to become again more and more favorable to feminine roles. Woman is said to have the capacity of compassion to network different people, and thus, unify the society. Woman is said to be able to see the landscape while man is goal-oriented, which is said by evolutionary biology to be a genetic continuation of prehistoric hunter-gatherer society. Suppose we justify our future as matriarchal that way. Then, this time, can we justify our past (from the ancient to the present) as patriarchal in the same way?
Q4. idea vs. idea, ontology vs. ontology: Wittig argues that, since the dominating discourses oppress us with their own ontology, i.e., the straight mind, we must struggle with them with our ontology. Does it sound feasible? In the current society, everything seems structural. Can we transform such a structural contradiction with our humanitarian determination?
Q5. Wittig counter-intuitively claims that 'woman' is not natural but simply a social construct for stabilizing the secret heterosexual contract, because she does not trust her own politically cultivated intuition. But, counter-intuitive claim, sometimes, easily becomes reactionary if it lacks historical consciousness. The lesbian subject may be misunderstood as presumed to exist prior to sex and gender. Kristeva presumes there exists the Semiotic, feminine language, as prior to the Symbolic. Many people misunderstand that Marx has a nostalgia of the pre-capitalistic age prior to primitive accumulation. Naturalists presumably glorify the nature prior to civilization. South Koreans miss military dictatorship prior to neoliberalism at present. We say, "when I was young, I was happy." What do you think about this sort of nostalgic attitudes towards the past?
Q6. For Witting, ecriture feminine is only a sort of biological secretion natural to "woman". Not solely does it strengthen "woman", but also it keeps so particular a point of view that it may easily be ignored. Feminine writings may be comparable to shopping at Prada in SoHo and eating cupcakes in Greenwich Village with ignorance of the formation of these districts as counter-cultural, simply signifying "I'm a woman". But, in the history of women's writing, a lot of works including Orlando by Virginia Woolf can not be evaluated as "feminine". They are revolutionary, exploring "the given", to use Wittig's expression, exhibiting materiality recognizing the social reality of oppression. Do you agree with Wittig? Or do you think a female writer should advance femininity to make her literary works differentiated from men's writings?
Q7. Wittig concludes regarding "gender":
"Gender is the linguistic index of the political opposition between the sexes. Gender is used here in the singular because indeed there are not two genders. There is only one: the feminine, the "masculine" not being a gender. For the masculine is not the masculine but the general. The result is that there are the general and the feminine, or rather, the general and the mark of the feminine."
Thus, feminine writing can't avoid being particular, interested and biased. The "mark of gender", a stigma only upon our bodies, can be suppressed by making it obsolete, and thereby, creating the universal point of view. It is Wittig's proposal as a writer. Some of you may disagree with Wittig. What should feminist writings be about? Should they be an impartial-minimizing "feminine"-universal language? Do you think a "male" writer contesting the basis of women's oppression, can become a feminist writer?
Q8. Therefore, "the Trojan Horse" is Wittig's metaphorical connection of the universal ontology of the lesbian subject and the subversive device with its own design and goal in the feminist writing. In this sense, while Butler dismisses the lesbian subject as a humanitarian idealist project, Linda Zerilli at the University of Chicago controverts Butler, pointing out that the lesbian subject is actually Wittig's strategic, political simulacrum of being and of the universal which not only revolts heterosexuality supporting the textual reality but also effects a radical decentering of the subject conceptualized by the straight mind. She argues, it is neither pre-social nor pre-discursive, but actually as post-structural as Butler's writings. To wrap up today's meeting, what is your feeling after our review of the two essays?
Works Cited
Monique Wittig, "One Is Not Born A Woman", Feminist Issues 1980
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley, Vintage 1989, p267
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge 1990, p153
Monique Wittig, "The Trojan Horse", Feminist Issues/Fall 1984, pp45-49
Linda Zerilli, "The Trojan Horse of Universalism: Language as a War Machine in the Writings of Monique Wittig, Social Text No. 25/26. (1990), p165
Butler, ibid., p151
Anne Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes", The Sciences March/April 1993, pp20-25
Monique Wittig, "The Point of View: Universal or Particular?", Feminist Issues Fall/1983, p63
Ibid., p64
Zerilli, ibid., pp162-166
I hope to see you all at the meeting,
Kyu Don
© 2011, Kyu-don Choi