Gender Theory 6
Monique Wittig part III
In the previous three essays , Wittig has developed the lesbian subject as a strategic, ontological, individual construct, but with historical consciousness, to speak a universal language to expose the contingent cultural constitution of heterosexual relation. Then, how can language appropriated by the straight mind be, at the same time, used by the lesbian subject?
The Mark of Gender
Gender has been a self-evident concept going without saying of philosophy. (Q1) But, "gender is the linguistic index of the political opposition between the sexes and of the domination of women." Modern semiotics disconnects, or conceals, the referent, or the real, from sign, or language. But, for Wittig, language works in a material way to construct our minds and bodies, and thereby, the social reality of oppression, i.e. the referent. She concludes:
"Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it. For example, the bodies of social actors are fashioned by abstract language as well as by nonabstract language. For there is a plasticity of the real to language: language has a plastic action upon the real."
Gender as a material category of language that enslaves compels the social configuration of our minds and bodies. Gender, as in personal pronouns, is the linguistic enforcement of sex, "forcing every locutor, if she belongs to the oppressed sex, to proclaim it (sex) in her speech, that is, to appear in language under her body form." (Q2) Therefore, for Wittig, gender, or sex, is "woman", but not "man". For "woman" has been said to be particular. (Q3) The class of men have appropriated the universal for themselves at the level of discourse due to plasticity of language which, this time, resists the fixing of the subject position as masculine.
Language as a whole gives everybody the same opportunity of establishing subjectivity through its exercise. (Equality of Access to the Universal through Language) (Q4) But, gender, an element of language, blocks women's access to the plasticity of language, or opportunity to become the speaking subject. For gender is an ontological impossibility because it wants to split Being. (Q5) But Being prior to language, or gender, is not divided. The plasticity of language is applied only for Being prior to sexed being. Therefore, gender then must be destroyed for one to speak "I", i.e., for one to become a person, one must go beyond gender, or sex. To destroy the categories of sex in language is therefore part of Wittig's work in writing as a writer. (Q6)
On the Social Contract
The notion of "the social contract" as by J. J. Rousseau was criticized by Marx and Engels because it could only be applied to the serfs at the pre-capitalistic age, but not relevant in terms of class struggle. However, Wittig places women as structured as was the serfs rather than the proletariat. (See the footnote) She argues there is the heterosexual contract supporting beneath patriarchy. Like the social contract, it goes without saying, no juridical articulation, as though it goes on as such forever. It seems very natural since it has been persistent for a long time as shown in Aristotle's The Politics: "The first point is that those which are ineffective without each other must be united in a pair. For example, the union of male and female...the combination of ruler and ruled." (Q7) Since then, the heterosexual relationship has been the political parameter of all hierarchical relations. It is a social contract between men excluding women. (See the footnote) Again, she repeats, "Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it." A plasticity of the real to language reifies the political heterosexual contract as natural.
Wittig concludes that only by running away individually from their class can women enter a "new" social contract. Like the fugitive serfs, maroon slaves, runaway wives, et cetera. Only the individual's voluntary understandings of power identity and their ontological choices can break off the compulsory heterosexual contract, and thereby, reformulate it as a new one. (Q8)
Questions
Q1. Cartesian ontology starts with the recognition, "I think". "I" is the subject or self-determining cogito as the cause of "my" thought. But, this logic is destroyed by its genealogy. It may be rather the thought that comes to "me". Thus, Cartesian notion of the subject is only a grammatical illusion. So, we had better say, language, thought to be arbitrary without substance, determines philosophy. Concerned with persons, as in personal pronouns, gender, or sex, as a linguistic categorization, determines a conceptual episteme, and thereby, gender belongs to the very fundamental of philosophy. Can you find any example or counter-example of philosophy predicated upon gender? Descartes, Kant, Hegel, etc. Do their philosophies all assume gender?
Q2. Asymmetry of the Mark of Gender: Simone de Beauvoir points out, a woman must first of all say in any discourse, "I am a woman". A man never begins by making his sex public; it goes without saying that he is a man. The relation of the two sexes is not like that of two electrical poles. Without reciprocity, it is a woman only who is marked by gender. Thus, for Beauvoir, the term, gender, is equal to the term, woman. For a man is assumed to be universal. Even recently, some female authors, for instance, Joanne Rowling, used pen names such as "J. K. Rowling" to ensure that their works were accepted by the public. Did you ever experience of feeling that you were marked in your social group purely because you are a woman?
Q3. Beauvoir says:
"In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: "You think thus and so because you are a woman"...It would be out of the question to reply: "And you think the contrary because you are a man," for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity"
So, gender operates on discourse, which makes a female speaking subject particular, interested, rather than universal. Have you ever been told, without respect to the matter of gender, your argument was interested, and thus, biased? If then, what was your response to such a devaluation of your argument?
Q4. Wittig accepts a French structural linguist, Emile Benveniste's understanding of language and subjectivity; one becomes the subject by speaking "I", in doing so, reappropriating language as a whole, and proceeding from oneself alone, with power to use all language. For Wittig, since language is basically instrumental, everybody has the same opportunity to use to establish subjectivity. But, situationally not. Gender is a situation. (Beauvoir) Do you find, by your personal experience, any other example than gender, of situations destroying equality of access to language in which others dismiss your opinion as partial and interested?
Q5. Beauvoir's brilliant insight was to see that gender effects a division in the speaking subject. In such a situation as in Q3, the only defense of Beauvoir's, "I think thus and so because it is true", is actually to deny that one is a woman, one's social and psychic existence. Thus, by gendered situation, the female subject is splitted into self and Other, i.e., woman as the socio-historical subject and "Woman" as the patriarchal myth. When you are in any discourse, do you feel a split in your mind between yourself (your psychic existence) and Other (some peculiarity as others in the discourse impose on your individual)? What strategy do you choose to overcome that situation? For instance, do you try to use others' language, or to become a "person" unifying self and Other?
Q6. While Beauvoir pursues her Absolute Subject on the terms of a masculine universalism to counter particularity, Wittig is seeking for a new transcendental lesbian subject on the ungendered terms she uses in many of her writings. To restore an undivided "I" and to universalize the point of view of a group condemned to being particular is effected through using the "neuter" in the writings. For instance, one instead of she or he (The Opoponax), the third person pronoun, elles (Les Guerilleres), and the first person pronoun, j/e replacing je (Lesbian Body). Are her efforts acceptable for you? Hopefully, do not argue they look "unnatural", for, according to Wittig, something seemingly natural might be actually unnatural. How will you criticize Wittig?
Q7. Equality of Differences: What do you think is difference between differentiation and discrimination? How do you distinguish between difference and hierarchy? See the picture as seen in the subway of the United States symbolizing the ethnic diversity. Personally, I find a dialectics supporting the propaganda that Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Chinese, and other ethnic groups contribute to the prosperity of the country in harmony due to their ethnic, and thus, inherent strength based upon difference. Consider, this time, a marital situation. Husband says to his wife who wants to get a job, "Man and woman have different strength, naturally given. We are different. We can contribute to this family with our difference. So, we are equal. No patriarchy. I have my role in the family as a man. You have your role as a woman. As a homemaker." What do you think about this kind of equality? Sociobiology, in these days, proliferates its propaganda that sex roles are naturally given, and the future is more favorable to female. This seems like what the current capitalism requires. Do you think the current capitalism improved women's social status? Then, how much? Is there anybody who thinks capitalism needed another consumer class, and it is why capitalism only strengthens femininity of women? For instance, NYC. Even though the city is called "women's city", renowned for fashion and style, it smells testosterone, and masculinity controls the market. Do you agree, or disagree?
Q8. Wittig's expression, "maroon slaves" or "runaway wives", does not seem to mean, "You run away from your family." It seems like a metaphor. We may consider a mermaid longing for the land, exiting her father under the sea, or Pocahontas yearning for some other world. Personally, my eldest sister (born in 1956) always hoped to go to the United States, exiting her conservative patriarchal South Korean family, and she did, and became faculty, and married a liberal American intellectual in the United States. A new image of woman occurs to me: a person longing for going across something. If you like my expression, a trans-X, for instance, a transgender. It implies, I think, anybody can become a woman. Do you have any new future image of woman?
Notes
See her essays, "The Straight Mind", "One Is Not Born a Woman", and "The Trojan Horse" in Feminist Issues
Monique Wittig, "The Mark of Gender", Feminist Issues/Fall 1985
Ibid., p4
Ibid., p4
Ibid., p5
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge 1990, p159
Monique Wittig, "On the Social Contract", Feminist Issues/Spring 1989
Wittig finds a comparable structure between patriarchy and serfdom in that they are both feudal. She then finds patriarchy is persistent independent of modes of production. That's why she compares "women" to the serfs rather than the working class.
Wittig compares the heterosexual contract to "parameter". Aristotle's syllogism uses logical parameters. When we say, "Socrates is mortal", 'men' is a parameter binding 'Socrates' and mortality. The parameter is hidden in the concluding sentence. Thus, "parameter" has a double meaning: binding but being concealed in our articulations. Wittig's metaphor is appropriate, since the heterosexual contract, she says, is concealed but binding men. To use Levi-Strauss' expression, society cannot function without 'the exchange of women' between patrilineal clans. Don't forget that, for Wittig, 'sex' is precisely 'woman'. Therefore, the heterosexual contract is a social, political contract between men.
Michel Haar, "Nietzsche and Metaphysical Language", The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, ed. David Allison, Delta 1977, pp17-18
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Vintage 1989, p. xxi
Linda Zerilli, "The Trojan Horse of Universalism: Language as a "War Machine" in the Writings of Monique Wittig, Social Text, No. 25/26 (1990), pp154-155
I hope to see you all at the meeting,
Kyu Don
© 2011, Kyu-don Choi