Alice Kessler-Harris: You are all being recorded so watch out. Let me begin by apologizing. I have a rather bad cold and so I'm going to use my cold as an excuse not to talk too much, especially since this is a workshop. And you'll forgive me if I break up into coughing fits every once in awhile. Then you can all take over. The subject of this workshop is "The Dialectical Treatment of Difference". It's a title which Elizabeth [Minnick] invented. So I'm going to hold Elizabeth [Minnick] half responsible for what happens in this workshop. And it's a subject which is dear to the hearts of Renata [Breidenthal] who's sitting over there. [laughter] Who I brought along as part of an ongoing support network. That's good, thank you. It's not possible to open windows, is it? [indistinguishable voice] Okay, let's suffer a bit. What I've done is to hand you all outlines which I'm going to talk about a little bit right now. That outline is a basis for what I want to talk about. I thought if you had it in your hands it would make it easier for me to sort of, talk quickly. I hope 5 or 10 minutes about some ideas that I have about the subject and then when I'd like to do is just open the room to talk about the subject. Let me begin by saying that I was struck this morning with a couple of exceptions by most of the panelists and speakers who were operating in what seemed very un-dialectical way. That is, they were operating outside of the dialectical tradition which has become so, I should say strange, or perhaps a little strange within the context of the American feminist movement which is informed least if not influenced by conceptions of [Marxian and Hegelian] philosophy. That it was strange to sit and listen to speakers who did not have the same kind of construct and that might be one thing that people would want to pick up on in the conversation that we going to have today. Let's look at the outline then and let me talk a little bit about what I take to be a dialectical treatment of difference. There are a number ways it seems to me of doing such an outline and of approaching such a subject. And what I've done here is simply to take one which seems useful to me as a way of understanding difference as a dynamic process to see if it won't get us moving into a discussion of what the meaning of difference is as a source of change. Would you all like to come in and sit down? Yeah, there are a couple more chairs over there. Want to take a couple of outlines? Okay, I began with the [Hegelian] notion of the unity of opposites, a construct which implies that within a whole or within any single totality there are varieties of competing forms. And that those competing forms all somehow fit and merge within the totality both to form it and to change the totality. From there I moved on to the notion that within that construct of the unity of opposites, and as I say in the outline, there's no definition of women without men. One cannot understand any of the oppositional forces without looking at its opposite. And one could say that in the number different ways. Hegel uses the master-slave relationship; you can understand the master without understanding the slave, you can't understand a maid without understanding a mistress, and so on. But within a world in which man in fact exists, it seems to me and perhaps people might wanted to debate this, that there can be no definition of women without men as that can be no definition of men without women; that the two exist in opposition to each other. But it's precisely the existence of the two in opposition to each other that contains tensions or implies certain kinds of tensions which have to be understood as part of a process. Sometimes tensions are called contradictions when they become especially strong. Tension I think is an easy word to use. A brief illustration of this might be the role of the wife in relationship to the husband for example. They are not themselves, they're not necessarily opposites, yet they do contain tensions within them. That is, the role of the wife implies certain kinds of both behavioral, psychic, cultural attributes on the part of a husband. Which in turn create, or recreate, or influence the role of the wife. So the two exist in tension with each other, both forming and playing off each other. Again, to move a step further into the dialectic, these tensions are the sources of a new totality. That is they are not constant and unchanging but are constantly changing. The wife has certain kinds of behavior patterns which in relationship to the husband, act together to create a new totality which is the marriage relationship. Which is different and changing within the construct of each specific relationship with each, within the concept of each marriage if you like. But also within the whole notion of all the marriages that we know about. You think about husband- wife relationships in the 19th century as opposed to the 20th century that becomes clear. And then I sort of elaborated a little bit and said they were also the sources of new concept, new ideas about what husbands and wives should be like. And then new categories of thought as for example, the relationship of marriage to living together which has become a new category of husband-wife relationship in the new definition of husband wife. In that connection the recent trial of [being Marvin's wife] [Michelle Triola Marvin] is a good example of how those categories are beginning to change. And the article in New York Times this morning which indicated that a Virginia lawyer is a Barbara Cord somebody Cord, the Virginia Supreme Court had just decided that she was fit to practice law in New York. That she was not disbarred merely because she was living with another man as a lower court had declared. Thereby validating or institutionalizing if you like, the "living with" relationship or creating a new category which now has to be restructured to be considered within the new definition of what the totality looks like. When you look at these together, if you look at that sort of process as a dynamic process. And there the outline goes on to say, in other words, the differences between men and women and/or among women and/or among men produce a dynamic tension. One can conceive of it as a flow and not as a static unit. The difference is therefore understood as an ongoing process that contains its own motive force. And that's, I think the key to what happens next. That is the understanding of difference as something which changes constantly as a process. Whose dynamic one has to understand not as simply a static set of relationships which one deplores or decries or proclaims an evil. And what I did here was just cite a couple of examples. The first I thought would make the process self-evident because I thought people would be instantly familiar with it. That is that 19th century domesticity, you know the notion of females as pie as pure, submissive and so on, yielded a notion of women's moral power. Which is in some sense the opposite of piety, purity, and submissiveness. But which in turn led to an enlarged role for women in the larger society as in the abolition movement, the struggle for suffrage, and the reform movements of the pre-civil war period. In other words, what you have here is a set of ideas out of which comes certain kinds of behavior patterns which are in contradiction to the original set of ideas. And which in turn produce a new set of roles which are in opposition to the old prescription or the old set of rules. And then I move on from there to something which I think we'll be less taken for granted; contemporary notions of feminism a debatable proposition but let me stick with it for the moment. Which attributes certain nurturing and cooperative qualities to women should yield changes in male/female dynamics that produce a series of possibilities for social change. Well obviously this is what we're now all going through. And what it requires is a definition of feminine and feminism. In the language panel which preceded us I thought was interesting in that respect, cause it really set us up for discussion of what that definition might be. But the word itself implies certain kinds of desirable goals and the question of what those desirable goals are then becomes an issue in terms of how we structure our politics or how we operate within the notion that dialectical process. Well have having said all that, the issues that are raised when one conceives of differences of dialectical process instead of as a static construct are I think not simple. And what I've done here is to just indicate some of them that came to my mind as I was thinking through this workshop which people may want to pick up on, they want to begin with. First one which I think is essential is that it assumes that what's important about difference is not the biological base but the social base. That is, that since gender differences, gene-related differences are something we can do very little about culturally and socially. The issue in terms of a notion of difference as a changing process, must have to do with the way society and culture influence the way people behave and the way that we can all influence that. Secondly, it assumes the necessity of difference as part of the social dynamic. So it does in some ways the opposite of what some of the people on the panels we're doing this morning. That is instead of decrying difference and proclaiming it's something we have to eliminate, disregard, in order to create a new construct with women in which women are central. What a dialectical notion does is to assume that the dynamic process of change necessitates a notion of difference which creates the tensions and contradictions which will continue to produce change. In other words that without difference a stasis would result and that difference is therefore a healthy not an unhealthy sign. A source of struggle, an aid in struggle and not a way of keeping women down if you like. The second part of that question is the issue of what social dynamics then, keep the differences going. And wether in fact those social dynamics move us towards what one might consider a more acceptable feminist society in light of that question I raised earlier about what is feminine. That is what is the acceptable goal of the society. In other words, what are the dynamics, what are the dynamic tensions we want to encourage and which are the dynamic tensions that we want to suppress. In here of course one thinks instantly of economic job related material kinds of things and political goals. So the questions about which political goals to pursue and how to pursue them become instrumental in questions of how one begins to resolve certain kinds of tensions, and how those tensions produce additional differences. So the strategies you use to determine the next stage of struggle. Third issue I raised was a contemporary question. It seemed to me that the significant questions in the present context center on political directions or policy implications that some of the issues that we should be dealing with are issues of immediate tactics and strategy. That is, what are the goals that we want and therefore what are the differences that we should begin to enhance? How should we struggle with them? And finally, a question which I've been avoiding so far but which I think is crucial to an understanding of the dynamics of difference; what is the relation of difference to the society as a whole? That is, how does the male- female tension produce creative results? Or to put it in the way a friend of mine, male, always puts it: "What's in it for me, what's in it for men?" That is to maintain the dynamic tension one has to substitute for subordination. For subordinate dominant relationships, a relationship in which a genuine struggle occurs out of which is produced a new whole or new change. I won't spell those out any further cuz I'm sure that you know questions about them will emerge as we start talking about. Fifth, we're all the questions that everybody else would have cause obviously I haven't thought of all of them or any small number of them. And I'm going to stop there and sort of open the floor for discussion. Yeah? Speaker 1: Idealized notion of thought versus feeling as a dialectic. Is this an example of a dialectic or is this the dialectic? Alice Kessler-Harris: No, no. I would not include Audrey Nord's notion of thought versus feeling. Indeed I find that notion very difficult to think about. That is, I'm not willing to accept the fact that feeling is female and thought his male. Speaker 1: I didn't mean to imply that that was the equivalent of male versus female. But simply within a given individual, thought versus feeling or in society. The tendency toward thought as opposed toward feeling. Of the relative importance assigned to present this.... Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. How would you see those as in dialectical relationship? Speaker 1: Well.... Alice Kessler-Harris: In other words, the question is, how does one produce the other? How do they interact? Speaker 1: In terms of what you've defined here, I experience those as being in any situations, opposite or in conflict. And the two, the opposition of the two generated a tension which does tend to produce energy implied in directed toward resolving that conflict. Toward merging them. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 1: I'm just trying to see if I've understood what you put forth. Alice Kessler-Harris: Uh, yeah. Maybe someone else wants to comment on that before I. Speaker 2: I think the humanistic tradition tends to make feeling and thought as opposites. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 2: And, you know, attribute thought, rationality to the male. And hysteria, passion, hope [and all that] to female. I mean, in the 19th century that was sort of, you know, the woman took care of the heart, the home, the children, the family, all that. And the man went out into the business world and conquered the environment, the money, you know the power. And in our tradition, in the humanist tradition those have been set up as opposites. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, did you want to add something to that? Speaker 3: It seems to be one who has put that with the lessons is to think about separation of thought and feeling as one of the results of the contradictions in society that we live in between males and females. And it seems to me that what I took from what she was talking about was that women are trying to articulate female feeling into the realm of language which makes it possible to think. It makes it possible to act on it. Almost as a way of starting the dialectic process. In other words, as a mode of force. The thing that I don't understand is that I think it's hard to talk about dialectics without talking about hierarchy. That one can talk about a difference that leads to a change reality when it's brought into sharp focus and conflict and contrast. But, I think that we need to talk about what the mode of force is that starts that off. Because they're plenty of differences like the ones that we know of between men and women that lead to stasis. I mean, that is the way that functions in an oppressive way. And the possibility for changing it lies within the difference but there has to be a mode of force. And I think that that's what she's dealing with. Speaker 4: Well, but it seems to me that what she's attributing to our ability as women to get in touch and to so call integrate what one would have to say, the feeling as expressed by ourselves, is what one would also have to consider an alienated situation for men. And that when you describe what she says is the "white fathers imposition of a thought process",s a social manifestation of an alienated society. In which men are as alienated as women. And the idea that in a different situation, men would be as in touch with their feelings would also [unclear] a situation in which they would not be as removed from their life situation. Whether you choose to call it their control over their means of production, their control over their integration into society is a whole. There as alienated by the fact that they have to go to Vietnam, or they have to go anywhere as women are in a different sense. And I seems to me that it's a false presentation of a description to talk about it as a dialectical opposition. I don't see it. Speaker 5: Somewhat related to it but not entirely within this discussion is my question to you, Alice. Would you accept in under your [unclear] concepts of categories also language as exchanges, perhaps as a result of this? I was just wondering as you were going through those three things. You see language as a subcategory of category [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, and I don't want to slough off this question I guess my own... Speaker 5: I feel that it's very much related... Alice Kessler-Harris: Right, it is a related question so let me start with this and then move on to that. I guess, and it's a personal feeling, but my own sense is that thought and feeling are not in dialectical opposition. That is, one can operate on both levels simultaneously and they are not in contradiction to each other. That is, or they do not need to be in contradiction to each other. And I would argue that language is simply a manifestation of the relative values that we may place on one or the other so that... Speaker 5: Absolutely, so then that changes everyone's perceptions. Alice Kessler-Harris: Right, exactly. Exactly. Speaker 5: This was really what I was going to say. That yes, I do think that we need new language but are you the [unclear] of this new language as the result of perhaps two processes with [unclear] obviously. Plus we gave much more of the feeling, whereas [academics] I think must begin with concepts. Ideally what you experience is worth your time to express in thoughts obviously. Use both words and give different connotations [unclear] and thus in a sense also [unclear]. So the [vision] of this new language can come from two sources. At least that is the way I see it. Brought from the [unclear] who puts feeling first before [unclear] or from the scholar who leads with concept. And to express new ideas. They may still have to use the old words but with a different .... Alice Kessler-Harris: Right, well the old words come to mean different things, yeah. Speaker 6: What you just said about thought and feeling as not being dialectical oppositions to you, sounded to me like exactly what the woman who spoke over there said.... ... Alice Kessler-Harris: Maybe Speaker 6: Was to her why when men talk about [unclear] and it seems, I was just thinking it might be useful if both of you....I mean it struck me that she was disagreeing with you. And then you were to say for example, how come women and men aren't [unclear] dialectical opposition, whereas thought [unclear]... Alice Kessler-Harris: Hmmm. Uh, do we want to have a discussion around that? Cause I don't really want this to turn into a question answer session although I could. Do you want to say something about that? Speaker 7: Yeah. As far as I can see right, you're not talking about men and women being in dialectical opposition.... Alice Kessler-Harris: Being...right. Speaker 7: ...but it's, perhaps it's male roles or female roles that are in dialectical opposition. But these are the things which are the stop of the dialectics. And that it's not men versus women and somehow the actual men came natural [leadership]. And it seems that the beauty of using dialectics to talk about differences is that it's a dynamic theory. And that the theory that I was finding incapable of digesting this morning was a very static theory which was fundamentally concerned with looking back into things which are essentially very static. And various psychoanalytic problems and even the nature of the way language was being used except in a poetic sense. So that's why I think dialectics is very [unclear].... Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah.. Speaker 8: That doesn't answer the question about one thing that's to me a [product] of seeing instead of opposition. And another thing [unclear] for purposes of what is and what is not about [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: Hmm. Do you want to say something about that? Speaker 9: Do I? No... Alice Kessler-Harris: No, no. I'm talking to the lady next to you… Speaker 10: I [unclear] but I'd really like it if those who [unclear] said that either didn't agree or didn't understand the second issue here [unclear]. [unclear] approach to assume the necessity of difference and so on. But, does this assume the necessity of difference according to sex? I mean, supposing uh, you know, in a more ideal society there would be a physical differences and I don't think we should [unclear] exclude the possibility of other kinds of difference which would call on sex [lives], On the other hand I don't think we should assume it. I mean, certainly I think there [unclear] assuming there wouldn't be very many other that purely physical sex related differences. Sorry, wasn't sure about that. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. I was struck, and maybe this gets at both issues. I just finished reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland" which just came out and here's a society which is essentially female. She posits a society in which women regenerate themselves. And in which the three males who enter the society are clearly outside and enter, and are not part of the dynamic of the society. And I was looking for the dynamic which made that society go, and in the absence of men it's the mothering/ non mothering relationship. What she posits is the essential difference, cause there are no physical differences between the people there, is the ability to mother and to be a good mother. You know, then you can have an extra child, otherwise you can only have one child. And then the relationship with the children becomes the source of the dynamic tension and the children produce the tension with the parent's that enable the society to grow. But my own sense of that process is that it isn't male- female. I think they're male-female differences and that those differences which are materially translated into different roles in the society and different functions in the society, are what produce the tensions. And if you will, move the dialectical process along. And how that happens is different in different societies, in different times and places. I think the distinction between men, women, and male roles and female roles is a good distinction. And maybe a sharper distinction still is the distinction between the perceptions of what female or feminine roles should be and what those roles actually are, as opposed to the tension between what male role should be in what they actually are. That is the tension between an idea and a reality in terms of the roles, might be sharper than the distinction between the roles themselves. Does that make.... Elizabeth? Speaker 11 (Elizabeth): When you started you were saying something, you mentioned a contradiction and then backed off and then said you preferred difference. There are two things that I want to say. Alice Kessler-Harris: A tension...right Speaker 11: There's tension, excuse me. Right. It seems to me that if we start by talking about difference we've got the problem of saying "Well these two things are different and these two things and...everything is different from everything else. So how we get from that to a dialectical treatment of difference is very problematic. It seems to me, wouldn't you have to go to two things? One is to the notion of a contradiction. It's when differences have developed historically in a specific time, specific historical times, specific society. This is descriptive not prescriptive if we're following the Marxist basically Macheovelian too. Only when certain differences have reached the stage of contradiction literally of opposition to the point of mutual destruction, are they clearly in the dialectical relationship. Alice Kessler-Harris: Relationship with each other... Speaker 11: Out of which can come..isn't that right? Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, well when they've reached the point of tension I would say. But yeah. Speaker 11: But if we're still talking at the level of tension then we're saying wherever there's difference of some tension... Alice Kessler-Harris: Right. Speaker 11: What I don't know how to do is to get from that to something that helps me get some sense of dialectics as a description of a process that actually happens in time through history rather than some definition of concept that we're going to play with. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Um, Renata do you want to say something? Speaker 12 (Renata): I do. The word "tension" interests me because it can...contradiction interests me because it came up in something I write. So it came up as a problem. And I would agree. I think that I would argue that tension is a subjective experience perhaps of a contradiction, but that it's important to hold the clarity of contradiction because a dialectical process also involves a conflict. If you really only think of it as opposites. So, I think it would help us here in our exploration if we keep in mind the notion of opposites and that those occur over process. And I also think that it was very valuable to remind us that we're talking here about a historical situation and not a universal one. I mean, I was also a little disturbed this morning by the ahistorical, transhistorical, universalistic thing which really doesn't help us explore our own situation today. And also, I think it might help us here in this exploration to remember that dialectics originally was a form of thinking. That is to say logic which simply acknowledges that the human mind appears to construct things in opposites. These are not necessarily always in conflict. I mean, take ying-yang opposites are not seen to be in conflict, they're seen to be complimentary. And throughout our even in Western civilization, there are these two notions; one is that women's roles complementary to that of male and the other is the obvious war between the sexes that you find on the literature. So that it's also experienced and opposite and contradictory somehow. And I don't know that I could add anything more this minute, but I just wanted to add that because I think this is the right road to take, you know. That at some point those complementarity became experienced as opposite. My own feeling is that, that property relations are somewhere at the heart of it. That that does bring in the question of hierarchy and shaping oneself in the conflicts around hierarchy. And I don't mean only between classes, but also the one that [angles] posited between men and women. And that the evolutions of property relations is probably brought us to the point where today we can think of feminism as an articulated philosophy that has something to do with the contradiction of male-female roles. Alice Kessler-Harris: Hmm. Speaker 13: [One way]. When you first spoke it sounded...when you talked about the roles of husbands and wives it sounded a little bit like there's no sociology. A sense of rights and whose Alice Kessler-Harris: I hope not. Speaker 13: No, I know. But I think where we can begin to find where the contradiction of experience is such as [unclear] to look where [they move out]. Speaker 14: My biggest gripe when sort of looking at something like this [unclear], is that when two [unclear] meet head on and they neutralize. They... Alice Kessler-Harris: Why do you assume that they neutralize? Why don't they produce another..... Speaker 14: Because they get back to a unity. I mean... Alice Kessler-Harris: Well, maybe they produce a different kind of unity. Maybe. Speaker 14: I don't know. I disagree with that concept of thinking in those terms. That a dialectic, that if you have two opposite opposing forces clashing and then you see another unity, I think I have a problem with the whole concept of unity. What's wrong with difference, you know? Why is that a bad thing? Uh, language in the sense is the neutralizer of emotion. That has been the basic humanistic ontotheological, you know whatever cliche you want are tradition. You know, it's assuming things from [the beginning]. You assumed that this is the way it's going to be. Alice Kessler-Harris: Renata? Speaker 12 (Renata): I think there's a misunderstanding there. Uh, at least as I understand the [unclear]. Which is not to neutralize or end opposition, but to see it exists. Cause I, if I heard you right, you appear to doing value judgements in that. And there is a distinct valuing of conflict on the grounds that it provides exactly this mode of course for change. That assumes of course that we all think change is a good thing. Now if we think change is a good thing and we value whatever it tells us. But it's exactly those clashes that impel change. It's not and attempt to do away with it [unclear]. It's an acknowledgement. But I think important. I think there's just two ways of looking at that movement. Either you can look at it as sort of a step back toward equilibrium in society. Or you can look at it as a push in time, a process instead of a procession. Alice Kessler-Harris: I think what's true about what you're saying is that there's no knowing what that contradiction or explosion will produce. That is, it may produce something forward moving or that we would value as forward moving. It also may be a step backwards and I think the best example of that is what's happening in the contemporary women's movement. When I think about the women's movement and the way it emerged in a dialectical sense, and I think about the kinds of contradictions that it itself is producing you know, it goes both ways. That is on the one hand, the women's movement produces conferences like this in which we can talk intelligently about modes of living in the future which we are not living in now. On the other hand it produces the Christopher Lasch's of the world who, you know write articles about, and books about the flight from feeling. And who is so afraid of what is happening in the real world that he wants to push the real world back into his old comfortable framework. And there are dozens of such examples of you know, motion back and forth that one can think of. Speaker 15: And if you look at the sort of mythic, the [Dionysus] and the [unclear] yeah, [laughter]. You know, sort of, these two forces get into conflict and then it's tamed. That type of dialectic is in our condition and that's the... Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, I don't see the taming of contradictions. I see that containing of contradictions, that is it is possible to contain them or to control them in certain kinds of ways. As for example women's demands to move into better jobs up into the hierarchy and so on, are contained by giving some jobs to a few people to whom one can point and say, "look we are doing this." And that silences everyone else and forces them to believe that it's their own fault that they're not moving up. So I think that kind of process occurs but the taming of a demand assumes that the demand does not have a real base which is not a proposition I would agree with. That is you know, it seems to me that I suppose one should add the notion of materialism or dialectical materialism to ones dialectical notion. If one argues that the process in here is in some construct of reality which is not simply ideological, then in order to contain it or if you prefer to use the word "tame", you have to deal with what that reality is. In other words, you have to do something about the dynamic process which is producing the tension. So you have to move to another level. Speaker 16: I begin to raise the question that you raised earlier about why you see the [unclear] as a dialectical one and not thought and feeling.. Alice Kessler-Harris: And not thought and feeling. I'm having a hard time understanding why those are you know, sort of played off against each other. But let me talk a little bit about.... Speaker 17: I think it's completely unnecessary to do that.... Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 17: if you simply justify why it is you see women and men as a dialectical [unclear] Alice Kessler-Harris: I don't see women and men as.... I do Speaker 17: ...you did say women and men. I assumed you meant girls cause you said social [unclear]. That's fine [unclear]. Justify as dialectical [unclear] Alice Kessler-Harris: I do see, uh. Let me see if I can elaborate on that construct a little more and perhaps it will clarify it. I do see that the differences. Well let me do an Engels thing, right. Engels argues that the ultimate antagonism is the antagonism of men and women which occurs within the family. That the family creates or, which can be conceived of as a certain kind of unity of opposites, holds within itself of the male and the female who have both different and similar. Renata said both complementary and oppositional functions within the unit. And depending on the historical time and place, one can define those things in different ways. If one looks at the contemporary family, for example instead of going back into the past. A contemporary family is an amalgam of complementary needs which have to do with the needs for emotion, support, economic as well as emotional support systems. But it'll it also contains within itself a conflict between the two which [in key] is in the fact that both people value their individual lives, their individual careers, their individual relationships, and yet the family itself is a unit designed to preserve a, or to reproduce a labor force if you like. Which is in contradiction to the individual modes and individual needs required by both people. Are you you still ...? Speaker 17: Are you talking to me? Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah I am cause I see you sort of looking down and... Speaker 17: No, I'm just thinking about what you're saying and that I do agree with what you just said to [unclear] [laughter]. What I'm saying is you began by saying "Okay let's do Engle. I don't agree with Engle's account. Therefore.. Alice Kessler-Harris: Ah, okay. Well you seem to be questioning the use of a dialectical mode. Speaker 17: But all I'm saying is that uh, to begin essentially with assuming that a dialectical treatment of the sex differences as they occur in the society is what we are to talk about.... Alice Kessler-Harris: Ah. Speaker 17: And then go on to show that it has uses [unclear] do that is one way to do it. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 17: To look at it and say "This requires a justification" is another way to look at it. And I would oppose to, for example, looking at it the way we did. I would say, I would ask a question. For example, what about male dominance? Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 17: Okay, if one is going to speak about a dialectical relationship between sex differences and say "That is the way we should analyze the situation between the sexes socially." It has been [unclear], we've been doing that. A different thing is to say "Maybe these aren't in dialectical opposition at all, maybe this is a question of dominance, of subordination, and so on." Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 17: For example, Engels is not [unclear]. And I just wonder why do you think about it in that way? Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Good. I'm glad you said that because it really clarifies the.. Speaker 18: Yeah, it's just at that point when you start saying "Okay what about male dominance?", that the powerfulness of a dialectical method becomes really very useful. Because then you say "Dominance isn't a black and white question". You have to look at the qualitative nature of that dominance to find the things in it that can be changed, that will interact in some kind of dynamic process. So that you see that there can be change over time and therefore it's important to have a discussion. If you say that dominance has been going on throughout history from A to the present, to Z, then what's the point of having a discussion of the phenomenon at all? Speaker 19: Yeah, I have no problem with dialectics as a method. What I'm questioning is the making of women and men into, that is to say, social categories of males and females as the opposition's the ones looking at that might [that method].. Speaker 20: It's all at once about positions... Speaker 19: ..I'm just asking if someone could justify the doing of that. [multiple voices] Speaker 21: I don't understand how you can not do that. [laughter] [Put it in points]. I really don't see how you can not do that when what we experience is male domination. So that, it seems to me that that is what puts them in that relationship. It's in tune with that maleness and femaleness as creatures or categories, and one requires the other by definition. But I don't really think that's what we're talking about. I don't think we're talking about definitions. I think that we're talking about a condition of male dominance that puts men in....alright. Maybe, if you could say it as a statement. That's why...I don't... Speaker 19: I was just hoping that we would have a discussion with would clarify for me. And the reason why I originally posed it was [unclear] somebody. Uh, was not a dialectical opposition socially, right. But women and men were being posed as one. I was just hoping someone would say, seperate from the usefulness of applying the dialectical method to anything which one might do, what it was about women and men without an analysis of dominance which is not being done here. Or being posed as a dialectical opposition, that is the question I have. Having to do what this is about. [Multiple voices] Alice Kessler-Harris: You know, in a way it's sort of like talking about chickens and eggs separately. The dialectical method is a method of understanding change, right. We are exploring how change occurs. We're not using static concepts and you seem to be asking about dominance as a static concept. Speaker 22: No. Speaker 19: I'm not asking about dominance as a static. Speaker 23: It's again taking it which is unfortunate. Taking it a-historically; the fact is that when you describe these kinds of concepts within historical situation you aren't necessarily taking men as opposed to women. Or at least you must describe the relationships of men and women within their historical evolution to be able to say "Well they have arrived at such-and-such a posture in society why did they come to this posture?" What will be the next steps so that they move on or they don't move on, or they clash and they disappear. I don't think anyone is describing this in terms of homogenization for, example. And I think that there is always the idea that the new will contain differences, which is the concern perhaps. But I think that again, it's this avoidance of putting these things within a context and the same complaint that you've had for the people of in the morning is exactly what's happening here; dialectical analysis is a historical situation that arose in certain point in time as a result of certain historical phenomena. And you can't just put it on like a pair of shoes. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yes. Right. Speaker 23: You have to talk about it which is, for example, how can we talk about the feminist movement and say "Well we're having all these problems with the feminist movement". Of course we are, when, if we talk about it in terms of "Well let's just talk about it in terms of the way it's functioning in society today." Sure there's this opposition. Why is there this opposition? Because we're trying to fit in a whole new situation in a construct that really has no room for us, nor will it. And of course then, the men and the women will be fighting as we know, for the piece of the pie that we as so called academics are now grabbing a little bit of. Well. here we are. So we're going to be talking about that but not out of context. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah? Speaker 24: I think part of the problem kind of relates to what Elizabeth was saying before, it says here the the differences contained tensions. 47:11 [recording is garbled and then cuts off] Speaker 24: ...the difference that's yielding attention. Alice Kessler-Harris: Sure. Speaker 24: I mean women's domesticity and males non-domesticity. Alice Kessler-Harris: Well, the co-construct of ... Speaker 24: But it's... Alice Kessler-Harris: Go ahead. Alice Kessler-Harris: The whole construct of domesticity is a construct evolved out of the specific historical condition. That is the transition from a pre-industrial to an industrial society, which required a justification for certain kinds of roles which women were now being asked to perform which differed from their old roles. That transition in roles which brought with it the new justification which we sort of shorthand as domesticity, produces in women a response. That is, on the one hand women do in fact fit into those roles and do those things. That is they do in fact stay at home, take care of the children, they don't go out to work in large numbers, and so on. On the other hand, they use that very notion of domesticity, their superior qualities in terms of religion, morality, and so on, to say that they should translate that home role into a greater sphere in the outside world. Which is precisely what the notion of domesticity was [designed] to prevent them from doing. Speaker 24: Can I make one more point? Alice Kessler-Harris: Yes. Speaker 24: When you said before, "Difference is an aid in struggle.", and I think that's what you just said. Alice Kessler-Harris: Uh huh. Speaker 24: Um, not a way to keep women down. I think that it should be that differences in aid and struggle as well as a way to keep women down. As I understand the dialectic, there's unity and disunity... Alice Kessler-Harris: Uh huh. Speaker 24: ...and I think we're focusing too much on the differences. I mean, I think that's the hard part of the dialectic. Alice Kessler-Harris: Well. Go ahead Rentata. Renata: I'm going to come out a little bit more with Marxist feminists here because I think it'll help. I was just thinking about this. I don't think it's a coincidence that feminism is a conscious movement and ideology as distinctly sporadic eruptions of the past emerges around the time of industrialization. I don't think that's an accident. And I think one of the things that it reflects is the split that created between two important functions that women had of production and reproduction. And that slip then created an opposition inside of women themselves which is also experienced as an opposition with capital which created that. In other words, it's not all men because some men were also dispossessed by the process. And I think that those are the kinds of contraries that we're experiencing out today. And that it has something to do with those splits rather than all men and all women. I think it's important to bring capitalism in here, to bring back the historical perspective in which all these, all this kind of dynamic was really understood. And I would add, as long as I'm on [laughs], that one of the ways I've been thinking of feminism most recently was again borrowing the Hegelian notion of people shaping themselves out of struggle. And that women, that this consciousness [would rope in] toward now, is an attempt to shape ourselves in the struggle with the system that created those splits and those opposites and those problems. And that the reason we're unclear about what that new being would be and that consciousness would be is that we're still shaping it. That this is the middle of a struggle and there's no way of knowing what it will look like. You know I really am off myself a little bit futurizing and just into exploring the present which is the [unclear] the best [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. You could be schematic about that and carry the step further. That is again, sort of using the Marxian notion of material reality you could argue that the contemporary women's movement emerges out of precisely the same kind of shift as the pre-industrial industrial movement creates. That is it emerges out of a kind of shift in a material base which while previously it had found the function for women within the home that justified their staying at home. Whether or not it was a happy relationship or not, at least it provided justification. Ideological justification. has dramatically decreased over the last generation or so. That is the material reasons for women to stay in the home have been all but eliminated in contemporary capitalist American society. I don't want to make this a universal for all but a very small proportion of women which therefore creates other kinds of you know, tensions both internal and external. Which increase the [mode of] force towards equality which is the simplest definition of feminism and that's a.... Speaker 25: I want to try taking a totally different tack, okay? Alice Kessler-Harris: Promise not to confuse us all? Speaker 25: Well it may. This may not get us anywhere but um, I'm feeling restless so that I'm trying to figure out my own relationship to the topic. And starting with that as a beginning place and then seeing where that gets me, rather than starting with the outline that you've asked us to do. Which I realize it's partly not fair but it's my own reactions in part to the outline that is suggesting me to do this. When I started out as a feminist and I was heterosexual, the issue of the dialectic between men and women seemed much more clear-cut than it now does to me as a lesbian. Now it is not that I have any different evaluation of men, in a sense I might in part, but it isn't that I politically see them in a different position now. I don't. But my own sense of struggling with meaningful similarities, meaningful differences, of clashes that something good or bad may come out of, have changed. Which suggests to me that something has happened to me historically which has also happened to a number of other women. And I'm trying to go from that to saying "what happens in a social or political sense when those conflicts which we have seen as the most crucial, while they're still the most crucial, we changed our position somewhat in where we stand looking at it. And how does that then affect the way the dialectic continues or how we start to finding the new ones coming to birth." You know, I don't know how to say with a question out of this. But I'm just trying to see if this feeds anyone else's thoughts about it, you know, how to get into this. Speaker 26: Yeah. Well, I guess it was apparent before. I agree. I mean, I guess I resist the notion of the dialectic being women and men because that isn't the way I feel. I don't want- a part of this morning which I found liberating was that I don't have to define the direction in which I move or in which we move, by where men are at the moment. Or by how men define us, or by how men define themselves. That we can take off and in a totally other direction and if, as I suspect I do not, if I understand this notion of dialectic, define another dialectic -- I mean, it really feels as oppressive as the situation that I came out of to be forced to accept a dialectic which is principally that between women and men. It's not my experience. Alice Kessler-Harris: Uhh. Well, go ahead and then.... Speaker 27: Yeah, alright. [unclear] I don't think anybody would say that the dialect, or I certainly wouldn't say that the principal dialectic is that between men and women. I think there are many other and maybe dialectic is the wrong word to use. I think there are many other contradictions in this society that are absolutely vital to be confronted in order for there to be change. And I think the people's perspective on what are the primary contradictions in their laws are very different individually and depending on where people's lives are. But I think one of the things that disturbed me about this morning's presentation was that I began to get a sense that what people were talking about was going inside and finding out what was real about one's experience and then somehow creating a world out of that perception or that language. And I guess the thing that I liked about Audrey's presentation, though I don't know that she needs it to be taken there at all and I suspect that she doesn't, is that it seemed to me that she was talking about language as something that could be worked with that could provide a mode of power. Because no matter how much you work to act on how you perceive your reality, there is still a material reality that surrounds you. And I think that that the reason that feminism today is very different from in the beginnings of industrialization, is that we now have the material conditions, that is that now women really do represent almost half of the workforce. And the material conditions exist for the contradictions between male domination and female submission to be confronted and exploded and to get to be real revolutionary change. And that didn't happen before. When you look at the example, for example of 19th century domesticity which was the time that women were really put back into the home. in some ways you can see what happened. And I guess I see it a little differently, that it's true that women, the only power that they had was this sort of vague moral force. You know, that they didn't have access to anything that could significantly change their reality. So yes, it was another kind of stasis again; here the women are separated off again and so then they create some sort of moral force that brings them back into the society in a certain way. But it's without very much leverage and that I think is what's different. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, but the point of what you're saying though, and it connects up very nicely, is that to argue that women have always struggled against domination, I think that's a truism and we would all accept it. There are lots of examples of that. The question is how they do it, and how they do it relates to how you understand the dynamics of social change to be occuring. Speaker 28: The question for me is whether the dialectic is a tool that can be tined variously for various purposes, in various disciplines... Alice Kessler-Harris: Right, yeah. Speaker 28: ...which I hear one group saying here. And the other group is saying the dialectic is a very specific thing which comes out of a specific academic and historical viewpoint. Which can be implied for specific purposes. Now if that is the case, then I think I'll have my cigarette and go. [laughter] Because it's not my number and it's not what i care. It's perfectly fine, but I was interested as to whether it was a general way of looking at things which would for certain purposes help to clarify possibly. You know, as opposed to say, other notions which might be cyclical for instance, as opposed .... Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah. Speaker 28: ....to oppositional. Alice Kessler-Harris: I would certainly argue that you can understand all of history via the dialectical method. But that how you understand it, right, and how the tensions and contradictions emerge is specific to historical time and place. So that in a given society in a given place depending on what you want to understand, you have to sort of work out or look at the dialectical process as it emerges at that time and place. So I hope you won't take your cigarette. [laughter] Speaker 29: Just sticking with the question of whether the male-female is...relationship..I don't know what terms to use at the moment. Is one on which the familiar historically based. I find that very important. That if I lose that than I lose the use of this tool. If you use the dialectical analysis on the male female relation in specific historical times however you approach it, whether it's purely Marxist or not, that's another area where I think you could move the tool. I think so. Whether or not male-female is fundamental to it which is what we seem to be circling around from the beginning. It seems to me that if you take the historically based approach, that's not something we can answer. There are two responses. One's not something we can answer. Either it is or it isn't. If it turns out that the the raw conflict between male and female of the sort that is blowing the family apart, of the sort that ....I'm now [unclear] I'm sure this is a quote [unclear]...of the sort that is producing. Let me go back. Blowing the family apart because those, the ideologies, the myths, the nice notions of duty of complementarity, of male and female, of self fulfillment of the female and becoming alive. All of the things that kept this relationship from being raw and contradictory and opposite, those are all being destroyed one way or another probably by the marketplace, by the dynamics of the society. What's emerging.. I'm not going to use the tool obviously. What's emerging is a sense of raw opposition "I've gotta get out of this to save myself when it isn't doing anything for me." "Why should I be submissive and proper as a wife?" I'm not getting any goodies out of it anymore. It's nothing but an exploitative relationship. If that dynamic continues I think there's a certain powerful evidence that we've reached at least some point that makes it look like it's a gender contradiction because the forums that have adjusted us to each other as male and female historically for eons, seem to be at a great tension if nothing else. They're not working the way they used to work. it looks to me like we're on the verge of the emergence of a real contradiction, not one we decide whether is or isn't. If it turns out to be the case that there are ways to avoid this as a contradiction, there are alternative lifestyles, alternative choices, that it's not something based in the historical. It's not fundamental to the form of our society, then it will turn out that way. You see what I mean? It's not a question for us to simply decide is it or isn't it. if I think at this point it looks like it is, simply because it somewhat shakes when these two emerge as in opposition. As at present. I have evidence for that being an intensity of the backlash, the intensity of the anger when women start acting like they shouldn't. I don't think we know quite yet. I think we may be close to knowing but that's getting into prediction which is not something we get to decide. All that is to say if I stick to the dialectical model I'm uncomfortable deciding for myself whether or not this is or is not one of the fundamental oppositions that will move, out of clash will move [to a] new stage. We are in time, we're in society, were in certain structures, we'll see whether it does or doesn't. [unclear] Speaker 30: I just want to question whether, in the presentation is what I understand is this question. The implication for example, of a of a lesbian posture is that somehow the removal of male -female struggle implies that women as a group of lesbians are somehow out of the struggle. And because the question about whether or not now that the important struggle for the way you conceive it, is that it's no longer for you men and women, seem to imply - and I may certainly be reading it wrong- that you no longer felt yourself involved in struggles of women. See because I don't see the dialectic in the terms of men- women's struggle. And therefore I'm just wondering in terms of clarification, whether you have moved to a place where you don't see yourself involved in the struggle. And it seems to me lesbians are constantly involved in the struggle in society and therefore are another piece of the contradiction or another piece of the struggle. And so that's why I wonder about, while I understand in terms of perhaps clarifying man- woman, I think it's important to place the struggle in a place where we are definitely all involved. And that it doesn't necessarily mean that these are the inherent contradictions. We have certain contradictions relative to our, as you call which I call it too, the material realities. We are involved in struggle. Speaker 31: Well, this to me comes back full circle because as a lesbian one of the struggles that I'm involved in as a woman and that I percieve women being involved in, is thought versus feeling. Now, if we define that as male-female then, you know. As I said we said we don't. I mean there are many things that I experience as struggling as a woman, as a person, that don't feel to me at this time to be intimately bound up with men. Alice Kessler-Harris: Isn't it possible to conceive of lesbianism itself, and perhaps this just sharpens something you were trying to say, isn't it, and this is by no means a put down but just the way of understanding. Is it not possible to conceive of lesbianism itself as a manifestation of an emerging contradiction. That is to live in a society in which it is not only you know, practiced as it has always been but is becoming avowed and open and available as a form of struggle, right. Is in itself a manifestation of the fact that we are now at the point where women can come together and say we are struggling with all the dimensions of our being, right. Not simply our economic being or our family beings, but our very sexual beings. Speaker 32: But how does that involve men? Alice Kessler-Harris: Well obviously one of the struggles is, you know from, even though you're not struggling within the family against man, the struggle on the larger sphere is to take power from those who have it who are men. And surely that's one of the aims of the whole women's movement. And lesbianism is the vanguard of a women's movement - is in the vanguard of that movement. Yeah. Speaker 33: Uh, I'm not a lesbian but I don't live with a man and I'm not in a family so I don't have that kind of thing. But I feel it every day. You feel it on your job, you feel it...people passing you on the street. I mean, it's just there everyday you see it. Hustler magazine covers in the subway, I mean it's just there all the time even though it's not within the kind of family male...you know that kind of thing.They're not dependant on [unclear]. It's still there. It's all around me everyday, I feel it constantly. I mean, are you talking...are you [unclear] Speaker 34: I think there are other struggles. I mean, I don't.. Speaker 33: Oh sure... Speaker 34: My sense of struggling no longer intimately involved that sense of struggling with or against men. Or male concepts. Except in so far I choose to define everything which I'm struggling... Multiple voices: [unclear] Speaker 34: Which is subjective. You know, you can or cannot do that. You can say thought is male and female and define the struggle [unclear].. Alice Kessler-Harris: Can we hear from someone we haven't heard from? My sense of struggling no longer intimately involves that sense of struggling with or against men. Or male concepts. Except in so far I choose to define everything which I'm struggling... Multiple voices: [unclear] Which is subjective. You know, you can or cannot do that. You can say thought is male and female and define the struggle [unclear].. Alice Kessler-Harris: Can we hear from someone we haven't heard from? Speaker 35: This is, it's a fascinating discussion and I'm thrilled it has started out with the question [unclear] because it's bringing up some things that might not have happened here. If we really are in the process of kind of trying to each name our world and understand it then is there something oppressive that starts happening when you start telling each other how to go about that kind of naming. You asking for it and keeps becoming a more and more interesting question. But the question of can we [unclear] in a way that makes sense to you in terms of [unclear] struggling to make sense to you or do we all as a group have to agree that this is it, this is all how we are going to name it together. How much do we mean that and how much oppression is there in that? How much space is being allowed for people to do that individually. And if we do give a lot of individual space, what is there about this common history? Because I think we really do live in something of a shared common historical world. And maybe that's the biggest tension here, right in this room I think. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, I'd make a distinction between trying to understand our world and our experience, and trying to understand the historical dynamic. Not that they're separable, but that for analytic purposes then they have to be. And that, I think that is the source of some of the tension. Speaker 35: That is a dialectical [unclear] that's what's going on.. [multiple voices speaking] Speaker 36: We're back to the scholar versus the feminist. Alice Kessler-Harris: Well, maybe. Right. Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 37: Well, I just think that one source of confusion here has been a misunderstanding that dialectics is a description of reality versus the concept of dialectics as a method of analyzing [unclear]. And it's not that we all have to agree that that is a description. If we just proposed [unclear] the idea of it as a method or analyzing any of the phases of life. It's not [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 38: Thinking about that I was going back [unclear] [laughter]. Just that example, even it seems to me that there's a relationship between a method and its [unclear]. There is a reason why, say in a Marxist method one has class. I mean, I can take Marxist method and apply it to all kinds of things, right. But it isn't merely the concrete historical reality of Marxist time or whatever. It seems to me that produces class as a central category out of Marxist method, right. It seems to me also that theres something around feminist method [unclear] the term that has something specifically to say about or produces the category of women. It isn't merely that we as biological females think in a certain way or whatever. I mane, that's a very complex issue but I think there's a relationship between method and the categories. I'm still wanting to know what it is about what you were calling dialectical method, that produces and makes meaningful, and justifies and negated the categories as how everything [unclear] as women and men. And when you say there's a difference between descriptive means...okay, that's one way of looking at method. But if you're going to describe the world in terms of categories that grow meaningfully out of and [reveal] within a method, we're looking at the world as you said, in a certain way. I just wanted to see that connection. Speaker 39: Yeah, I feel, well I was going to say this before, cause I felt like yeah I didn't see the distinction between men and women and their roles was just [unclear]. But the way that this went down here, the way that I saw it. Right of course, unity of opposites in women and men. I don't believe that there are opposites. And so I feel like then, well how can I, I mean just look at it that way as a method. And what I see happening is that even when you start to talk about "Well it's the roles, it's the male role or the female role, but then all of a sudden those roles become the beings and they're totally inseparable. And then we just start using the words "women" and "men". I mena, not just in this group, it's happened a few times in this room and also many times before. And there's always [unclear] is indistinguishable from the first one. Speaker 40: Can I also ask whether or not, I mean [unclear] is one, but you see [unclear] as dialectical contradictions. And if not, then how is that different from say, women and men? Or are you presupposing the concrete categories and then applying the method to it in some way? Alice Kessler-Harris: A dialectical method is a as a historian uses it, is a search for the dynamics of change. I [story] using dialectical techniques normally looks for the tensions evident in a particular society as they appear in the contradictions manifested by that society. So one looks for points of explosion or points of contradiction and then says "How did these come to be: how were they caused, who created them?" You know, when you start tossing out dialectical method in terms of thought and feeling and gay and straight, those words don't make any sense in terms of the method or the tool. That is, that they don't seem to be applicable. It's...... Speaker 41: But women and men do, right? Alice Kessler-Harris: Well, right exactly. They do at the present moment. Now let me let me go a step further. The Marxian method is...Marx himself, not the dialectical method per se but Marx himself is I think historically specific. The the use of, let me see if I can say this as simply as I can. The use of the dialectical method to understand major contradictions in society in the 19th century made it apparent that the major contradiction in that society in that time and place was a class contradiction. That what Marx saw when he looked at that society was, you know master, servant, worker. You know, boss, capitalist, whatever. Those categories it seems to me have changed. Now the subject that we were supposed to be discussing around this room was the future of difference, right. So my assumption was, perhaps it was incorrect and perhaps I should have stated at the beginning, that beginning with the present, right, we were looking at the future of difference. The future of difference between men and women. It is my interpretation of the contemporary scene, that if one looks at contemporary contradictions as they have emerged in the present period, that perhaps the major contradiction, perhaps the major dynamic of change is that which is occurring between men and women. That is, that women are now feeling in such fundamental contradiction with the ideological justifications which have so far determined their roles that they're breaking out of their roles. And that that's creating conflict in sex roles and role structure. So that at the present moment that's a fundamental contradiction which may yield change in this society, right. Is that..? Go ahead. You’ve been having your hand up for a while. Speaker 42: Yeah, that's clear. Except that as I understand your definition of the dialectic method, any study of change is dialectical. Alice Kessler-Harris: No. I didn't say that. I said it was a method of studying change. Not that any study of change is dialectical. Speaker 42: How does it differ from a very traditional sociological analysis of roles [unclear]. I'm sure there are ... Alice Kessler-Harris: How does it differ? Um, well I'm not a sociologist so that's, you know. But it certainly does not fall within certain frameworks of analysis that I understand sociologists to use. That is... Speaker 43: I think one of the differences is that there's an assumption with dialectics of a clash not an adjustment. Where as what sociologists are talking about is usually predicated on a notion of adjustment. That the role strain will somehow all even out somewhere. Speaker 44: But then don't we need to know [unclear] choosing methods that are [unclear] specify the point of which it becomes available [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, it is emerges from out of their own reality. That is, you know that old notion it is not consciousness which produces reality, but social reality that produces consciousness. Is the key notion that is out of the social reality that we face as individuals and in groups emerges a need to, well first a questioning of the consciousness that has been brought down on us. And the things that happened on the platform today are perfect examples of that new consciousness emerging, right. That new consciousness then results in different forms of action in terms of the jobs one takes, the political actions one takes, and so on. Yeah? Speaker 45: Basic hegemony of our culture is male. I mean, there's that group and it disseminates what we should know and what we should not know what language we use, what language we should not use, how we express ourselves, how we should not express ourselves. And I think basically the conflict is a conflict against that structure. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, but the... Speaker 45: Now, whether it's... I mean I think this happens to males in our society, females in our society, Blacks in our society, excetera. It is us clash against that structure. Now, what Audrey [Lloyd] was talking about today, what all these women were talking about were saying "This is a language we have. This in our Western tradition is the language we have to express ourselves." That is a hard and fast thing. Now what you have to do [unclear] in a way a conflict there is the overthrowing of that structure. So that you can end up by just being subjected to being individuals, being different. Alice Kessler-Harris: Well what I would conclude from what you have just said is that the very perception of the society as male, right. The perception of the language as male which is not a perception most of us had 10, 15, 20 years ago. It certainly was not a generalized perception. Is a manifestation of the awareness of that new consciousness, right. Which is, or i'll be the producer of change.. Speaker 45: But I don't think just women are feeling it, I think men are feeling it. Alice Kessler-Harris: Oh no. Oh no, I would never. I would never argue that exclusively. I would say that this is, I'd say the major contradiction right now is certainly not the only contradiction. And you could probably get me to say a major contradiction if you pushed me far enough. Speaker 46: Yeah, I just want to say a couple things. One is, I think came up from the last point is that a dialectical does see in the notion of the [individual] between opposites that a system, a unity, contains the seeds of its own destruction. Which moves it to another system. So I think it's not surprising you'd find all these things emerging out. But what I wanted to say to come back to the question of lesbian feminism. And I would distinguish between lesbians and lesbian feminists because I think that's where the consciousness really is. Is that I think what's interesting and new about it and why it becomes so in the vanguard, and I believe is was in many ways a vanguard, is that because complementarity has been burst asunder by capitalism, okay which has the seeds of its own destruction. First it created the compliment by saying reproduction here, production there, splitting functions that had been unified. First it creates that split, then by moving more and more women into the labor market it contradicts that split, right. So that we're walking around with a split consciousness ourselves all the time. So it creates the situation and burst apart again the complementarity that it had established, so that when we come now into the picture we're aware that we are not complementary. We're individuals. And what's happening, I think, is that I see feminism as it's an individuating out of women where it's really not acceptable to us. It's not acceptable to me anymore just to be called woman, you know what is that? That's a perception of a self of an other, you know? When I look around i see a lot of different women and I think what lesbianism shows is that in fact there is no need anymore intensively for complementarity. That you have to see male- female and the only possible couple, but that you can see varieties of individuals coming together of whatever gender may be and whatever life they choose to make. And that since it's the ultimate individuating out. And in that sense I see is totally fitting into a dialectical vision which includes the notion of consciousness. In other words, material conditions changing dialectically and consciousness changing dialectically also, in a connection with that material [face]. Alice Kessler-Harris: It's an interesting illustration of that which expands on what you're saying is the notion that, you know, given the fact that split between reproduction and production has been sort of obscured by pushing women into production. Women are now moving in two directions, that is some lesbian feminists are rejecting and not simply lesbian feminists, but other women are rejecting reproduction altogether since they've assumed the other roll. And other women are saying men should be involved in reproduction. So in a way the response to that movement now is to either move out of reproduction altogether or to pull men into reproduction too, which is an interesting dynamic. Yeah? Speaker 47: Well in a way what's important to ask is whose controlling the dialectic. I mean... [laughter] Speaker 48: That's a great point. Great point. Speaker 47:...I mean in a way, in a way in one sense you're either going to say that the dialectic movement going to be a process through time. Is it going to follow whatever clashes, you know, just follow its own way. Right. Or are you going to say is it going to be controlled controlled by some sort of hegemony, some sort of whatever power structure. And in a sense, a lot, a lot in our history has been controlled that sort of clashes. I mean okay if you feel this way write a sonnet, right? laughter] I mean, that's sort of. Or if you're in love, get married. [laughter]. I mean, that is a controlling of tension. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, well go ahead. Speaker 49: By definition dialectic [unclear] is not controlling. Alice Kessler-Harris: Right. Speaker 50: I don't know what you're thinking of but it's not this. Alice Kessler-Harris: No. Speaker 50: You're thinking perhaps times in history where one group has exercised control. But dialectics by definition is a struggle in which there is human agency. The most misunderstood thing about dialectical process is the notion that there is no human agency. Of all possible systems of thought, it is the one that leaves the most space for human agency except as Marx did say, not under conditions necessarily of our choosing. We're born here with these conditions that's different from being born say, I don't know, in the middle of Asia in pre-industrial conditions. You can't just make yourself up completely. But under certain conditions that you find yourself in, there's room for a lot of agency. And I see the feminist movement as the strongest emergence of female agency in their own history and very much a product of advanced capitalism to which it is a tribute for me to it, right. [laughs] And we're gonna break it up, too. That's how it goes. Alice Kessler-Harris: Another way of saying that is while, you know, controlling a dialectic has no meaning if you understand the struggle that is emerging. You can then participate in that struggle or exacerbate a contradiction, or work to contain a contradiction, right. In other words, if you understand what the process is that's happening, you can then act to participate in it. Speaker 51: I think all too often, I mean maybe mistakenly, the dialectic is looked at as that there will be an end. That will have preconceived notions, that will already be decided before it gets there. Speaker 52: And that's by people who don't understand. Speaker 51: Well, I agree [laughter] with that in a lot of ways has been our tradition. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 53: Yeah, I feel that also that that's a lot the way that it comes out whether that's true or not. And then there's one struggle that's put up as being you know, the struggle. And then it's seen as that kind of thing we can't move beyond. Alice Kessler-Harris: Yes. Speaker 53: And when I [unclear] someone said lesbianism being the ultimate thing, well that's just the ultimate on one side. Because they'll say "Well then that assumes that you need to be a couple." And [laughs] [unclear] another contradiction. If you totally individuate it out you don't have to assume any social form except I think most people in social groups [unclear]. If I said that [unclear]. I don't think everybody has to be coupled. [unclear]. Alice Kessler-Harris: People who are in tune with or feel that they are in tune with a dialectical process often believe that they have the answers to where things are going to end up. [laughter] And I think out of that you get that notion. But the other piece of that is the thing you hear so often from left men nowadays, which is that they wish they could participate in the women's struggle with women because they see that as where the action is, right. [laughter] And they're furious as well. [multiple voices] They could support us but they're furious that we have the power and the direction. That's the...you see. I mean, we are in control, I don't know. We have some directions...movement. Does somebody want to summarize where we've come or gone? Can anybody summarize? Speaker 54: Dialectics is open. [laughter] Alice Kessler-Harris: Dialectics is open. Right. I should've begun by saying dialectics was a theory of struggle. This is my theory of how struggle of how this struggle is going to use the differences between men and women. Unfortunately we didn't do that. But I think we have in a kind of circuitous way come back or around to that point. [muffled voices] [recording ends]