Unknown Speaker 00:00 Do you think it's too crowded, okay. Unknown Speaker 00:05 But you can basically on your path to so many people by by by being in the sizing in France, and I'm afraid that that kind of topic implies that we're here to report about something that is exotic and, you know, 3000 miles away. And I don't want to do that if you, you know, if you if there's something you want to know, you can ask questions, and there's probably people who are equally or better qualified to answer that, then myself or Carolyn. But I would like to say, and I think kind of two reasons why psychoanalysis and feminism and why that might be a topic here. It's quite obvious. I think, everyone who's been through the two sessions, that there's something some kind of French input going on some kind of difference. And so perhaps to start, it might be interesting to think about. Just about everyone who spoke today spoke about some kind of difference that might be different than a difference, a kind of singular difference, a dichotomy. Something that would be more plural, maybe differences, maybe specificities different people set it in different ways. And I think my one of my senses of what's been going on here is that besides some discussion of the theme of difference, there is different discourses going on it was it was really clear at the last session, I mean, besides the fact that was pointed out that there was a linguist and a poet and a literary critic, even in the questions, the questions, were all set in different ways in different different kinds of discourses that I don't want to type here. And I don't think I can. So that I think the even the question of language and of possibilities of discourse is going on here on a practical level, and not a theoretical one. Among those questions of difference, or differences, is the question of, is there a difference, a difference between French and American feminism, which is, I think, a question that is circulating around like, is there a kind of substantive difference that has a gulf of the Atlantic Ocean or something between it? Or are there differences? There were, there were three people speaking today with French accents, which is I suppose one of the ways one, tries to figure out where people are from this morning, there seem to be some confusion over whether Josette and Monique were saying the same thing or different things, something that was more symptomatic than a real understanding that they will say the same thing. There were a couple of questions that no one was quite sure who they were directed to. And twice I think Monique said she hadn't said that, that maybe she said it said that. And both Josie and Monique started by saying I am not a representative of French feminism. So first, maybe we should think or wonder about the question of have we just instituted a kind of mystique of another dichotomy, the dichotomy between French and American feminism, and how that's fitting into some notion of a difference. Then to sort of fall prey to what I'm I was saying, I would like to point to some of the things I think are different about French and American feminism, how that might relate to psychoanalysis. Taking into consideration, I suppose what I just said. I'll talk specifically just about the three talks we heard this morning, which one could perhaps gather around, not all of them were exactly about psychoanalysis, but they all mentioned psychoanalysis. And there's some kind of three different places that they were all from, at least probably about. Well. I noticed Joe said said that. She distinguished between the question not who someone is, but who is speaking, the difference between a being and speaking. And in relation to that distinction. I think that's one of the places to look at perhaps some of the differences between a kind of American feminism and a kind of French feminism, which is that Unknown Speaker 04:33 feminist linguistics is still a kind of region of American feminist theory. It's something it's an important region and it's it's a region where a whole lot is going on. But there is a lot of American feminist theory that pays no attention to language or treats languages as sort of one manifestation of patriarchal structures or something like that. I think language is much more central to French feminine discussions. And that seems to me to be similar to to a kind of difference. And again, I'm making a difference between American and French psychoanalysis, in which part of the influence of mainly Lacan reworking of Freud is a real emphasis on language, and on language as constitutive of the subject. And, finally, in, I think the final thing I want to say is that Nancy Turner of this morning, was giving what I suppose I'll call an American psychoanalytic feminist reading. And I was trying to I was noticing ways that, for example, different different from show set in terminology, one of the things was that she kept talking about a kind of core building a core of the self. And I contrast that with what shows that was talking about, which was a subversion of the subject. I mean, I can't think of two phrases that are further apart. In some ways, and first of all, the difference between building a core some kind of solidity, some kind of goal of if you are autonomous, you don't need differentiation, in the sense that she was talking about, if you have a solid core of the self, you don't have to differentiate yourself in the mother. The difference between that and some kind of subversion, but also the difference between whatever a self is, which sounds like a kind of essential self. So something some kind of, it sounds like a core. And what a subject is a subject is already a linguistic definition. It's the it's the subject in language, it's not something unified, but it's it's, it's already split into the sushi Linnell sushi little session, which everyone has trouble translating the, the declaring subject and the subject of the declaration. And so that I'd like to throw those out as some of the things I'd like to talk about. Unknown Speaker 07:01 version of the subject. Um, Unknown Speaker 07:06 well, the sense I have a bit is some No, I don't know if I can. Can you defend? Unknown Speaker 07:14 Yeah, I'd like to talk about that a little bit. Okay. Is anyone familiar with Julia Kristina visited us? To some extent, she, she good, maybe you can help us with this, then she's done a great deal of work on this notion of the subject, tying it into roughly what we would be more familiar with, if we called it the Eagles. And she has completed define, three approached it as a very shaky concept one, which is very unstable and exactly not that which you would want to build up as we suggest that we might want to do a new, more American version of therapy that's analytically oriented. Now, some of you are therapists and analysts and correct. Chris Davis notion, if I can understand it, is that this very idea of the self a subject or possibly the ego is roughly the same is untrustworthy. The way in which the subject has been posited in our languages in our conceptual structures is misleading, partly because of the way in which it leads to reification. Partly because of the assumptions, which we make about it that give it more solidity, more coherence, more reliability. To come back to that question, who is speaking, we can't posit a coherent bounded, complete object in that sense, is interesting, Unknown Speaker 08:56 because what struck me about this is it all talk French, and there's no one has mentioned the way it was 30 years ago, for her the self was a self chooses, it seems to me that the new feminists are going to talk about self consciousness anymore. If I if if I understand if, if, if this fragment itself. Unknown Speaker 09:22 It just doesn't seem to have the boundaries around it, but this earlier, so Unknown Speaker 09:30 the things that makes it really hard, I think, for us as Americans to feel included in what French women, especially French academic women are saying is that they're basing themselves on all philosophical tradition. And when when Christopher talks about the subject, what she's opposing herself to is a tradition of which the best example is Descartes, which always supposes when they talk about speech or say, the image in Descartes They always suppose a pre existing already unified, perfectly stuck together. They're dependable self. Right? And even the philosophers who talk about a dialectic themselves would still read. Well, it's I have to talk a bit of jargon here, Susan, they still reduce negativity to positivity, they don't leave any Unknown Speaker 10:20 disunity. It's also rationalized. Unknown Speaker 10:24 So if there there is an Aristotelian logic, always in every notion of the ego in the western philosophical tradition, there's always a supposition of systematic exclusion of any kind of opposition. And it's all very rational and logical. And what Christopher's is saying, and by the way, not in the context of anything feminist, but in the context of trying to talk about poetic language. She said, the revolution of poetic language, or the other one is called putting love pol y, LG up. They're both published by saying, yes, you Unknown Speaker 10:55 neither have been transferred, you need to remember that Unknown Speaker 10:58 there will be a selection from her work in the book called French feminism's that will come from UMass. I think the fall of the winter by by new marks, and is it the Unknown Speaker 11:13 Alice Georgie in this process of doing translation Unknown Speaker 11:18 of mainly poly loggia that which I don't know when it's coming out. Unknown Speaker 11:22 So anyway, when you subvert the lamp, the subject what you do is you undo that tradition and posit a dialectical process. And what Christina says is these mysterious things like the subject is always already in process in question. So you can't like pause positive beginning, like here's when that started. It's always already going on. And it's a continual dialectic of interjecting and projecting and, and what part of what you bring in, in that in that process of being of speaking you, or the material relations in the world, including power relations, like sexual power relationships, I'd Unknown Speaker 12:00 like to point out that that type of discourse is very committed to me as a person. Also, it's cool, it's I think it's harder for people thought up in traditional Unknown Speaker 12:19 churches, whose revolutionary but you know, 20 years ago, there's deltas between that kind of critique of this country. So Unknown Speaker 12:32 well, what does simplify the difference, one might think of the difference between a system that tends to reify to stress, a notion of the self as a noun, versus a system that stresses classes, Unknown Speaker 12:50 is doing a lot of work, as well as feminists talking about the difference between structure and process. profusion Unknown Speaker 13:02 I think another thing, this, I think it's in keeping seems like Vicki with what we're talking about, that I went in Monique's critique of Lacan this morning. And I think it's, I think it's important to situate even what she said that that kind of very strong reaction to the the, the oppressiveness that is a potential of psychoanalysis, especially as it becomes an institution, and it is very much an intellectual institution in France, it's important to situate that not in our sort of American context, where psychoanalysis does not have the kind of theoretical power that it does in France. And to realize that I mean, the importance even of luck on the fact that the importance of her working against LabCorp, which is not to try to save him from her at all, but what what has, what is very important, I think, is the is Lacan as an institution in France, which he is now the whole, the strength of that the way, the reification of his concepts, and I think that that's what she was talking about. That's how I understand it, and it may not be what she was talking about. To the extent that psychoanalysis starts producing myths that become universal to the extent that you say, Well, we know what's in everybody's unconscious, there's a there's an Oedipus complex, and there's a castration complex, and you will find this you will find that then to that extent, that is no longer psychoanalysis in any way that that is powerful. The extent that it becomes concepts that one can predictably find there. Um, yeah, what yeah, Unknown Speaker 14:39 what I want to know is Unknown Speaker 14:41 where I mean, it's very compelling Unknown Speaker 14:42 to excuse me, it's basic, but where do the French draw the line between what is useful and psychoanalysis and these myths, the complex and where, when someone like Julian Mitchell says, It's the method the same, the scientific method that I find insightful and not the literal Olympics Oedipus complex and then starts talking about the literal literal, complex. I sort of take off and and plug out of the American feminist use of psychoanalysis, and I'm not that familiar with French work. And when you say it's an even more powerful tradition in France, what parts of it? Are they using? And what parts of it? Are they? You know, what parts of it? Can they relate to the whole Unknown Speaker 15:28 feminist? Feminist using? Unknown Speaker 15:31 Yes? What parts are feminist using? And where do they draw the line? And say, Well, no, these are the myths that Freud said that everybody would find that are useful, Unknown Speaker 15:40 be unconscious for one well, Unknown Speaker 15:42 okay, that's a concept that also has its roots in other traditions, I understand. And so why did the French poet on to psychoanalysis and say, but it's here that the unconscious is most fruitful? One of the paradoxes Unknown Speaker 15:55 is that he's always talking about the science speaks of the poet. And it seems to be that speaking as a poet, that he sees everybody's imagination, rather than the so called scientific content. Unknown Speaker 16:09 Yeah, I think that's, that's really, that's really what you mean, Unknown Speaker 16:12 maybe that notion of a scientific content is part of the problem. Juliet Mitchell says, at one point, a great deal of trouble with this, that Freud discovered the Unknown Speaker 16:21 laws of the unconscious. Yeah. Well, that's, that's one of the things that LTCF talks about when he talks about like, Cohen talks about Freud. Is that that psychoanalysis is the discovery of times I disagree with you. That is that the unconscious is something not that just what isn't conscious, but as a particular mode of functioning? Unknown Speaker 16:42 That means that's a given, we can't question that. Unknown Speaker 16:45 Do we mean the unconscious or the repressed unconscious? I mean, I think the use of the, the idea of consciousness unconscious is not very exciting. But I think Unknown Speaker 16:55 no, but the notion of the notion of the unconscious as as that which is Unknown Speaker 16:59 repressed, and the study of the ways in which it comes into consciousness, is a different Unknown Speaker 17:06 interpretation of dreams in which he really experientially made the discovery of the unconscious you centuries. And so American psychoanalysis was just meant to come coordinate, there isn't any it seems to me to come very dry, very much into structure. Unknown Speaker 17:25 One thing that Freud did discover that I think was interesting, I think he's the first person that in the Western tradition really, really concretely pinpointed it was the notion of the bisexuality of the infant, and how we were socialized into one of several possibilities in terms of sex. But Unknown Speaker 17:50 I walked up to shows it afterwards. And I said, if we, as women have internalized, well, if we are living with a male mythology, which I think we are, and that is to be gotten rid of, and of our unconscious, then what is left for us. And I don't know very much about this. So I'm kind of putting them in a very knowledgeable place. A little bit about analysis. I mean, what is left in terms of our unconscious, because we will be ridding ourselves of the male interjects of the male myths. And we will be this, you know, clean slate to do without, which gives us great freedom to choose in our lives to become, as we wish as as people. I think that there are that the male myths have given us in some way. A lot of power, although they're not applicable to women. It was a question that I raised to Suzanne, in terms of, I mean, we interject all this garbage in us. And then we try and get out in the world and we have a few choices, either we are to be strong, like men and get elected and run corporations and get on boards and do that trip. I mean, our our trip has not yet been spoken. And how do we get to that? And what happens when we give up? The male mythos? Where are we as women? Unknown Speaker 19:31 One of the things this is not this is pressing a direct answer to it's a response to the first part of what you're saying, which is that I would not say that what are unconsciousness are are some kind of introjection of male mythic structures. What I would, the way I understand the unconsciousness is taken from Luciana gathright Um, who was a student of Lacan, who was rejected by him that was ousted by him for interest for reasons I don't quite understand, but are very interesting anyway was the Unknown Speaker 20:06 school of school analyst Yeah, from his own school, which was an official kind of title so that for a time she practiced with the stamp of approval of Unknown Speaker 20:14 his school. Yes. And then she lost her job Unknown Speaker 20:18 after she wrote her first book, which criticized the entire range of anyone. The first ones the first one speculum Unknown Speaker 20:28 that she lost her job after that, anyway, this which comes more from me from Section nine, which is her second book is the notion that what the unconscious is what it what a real part of the unconscious is not what is in it, because that is that is guesswork, what is in it is not what you are conscious of, is what gets excluded in the constitution of a self, in what Lacan talks about in the Mirror Stage, if you want to read about where that comes from, and that in the Constitution of, of a self or of a subject, there are things that cannot be articulated, they can't be articulated because of some kind of necessity supposedly, it looks like in Lacan, like a necessity, I've had questions that absolute necessity, but the necessity, however, you look at whether it's societal or something, or structural, of constituting a subject that is together, that is unified, that gives a nice mirror image like a mirror, it is it is framed, and appears to have the togetherness of a kind of bodily envelope. And so that all that which cannot be somehow articulated into a into a unified discourse, or a unified image of self constitutes what is primordially repressed, but it's just kind of origin of the unconscious. And so that it's not in a certain sense, it is precisely that which makes no sense either as the opposite or the exact same thing of the maleness, but that which is that which is plural to and heterogeneous to the maleness, that is the unconscious and that is in a certain way, always operating, always speaking, also always being oppressed. Why is this called cycle analysis? Unknown Speaker 22:23 The process of getting to this sideboard hours, or poetry? Unknown Speaker 22:28 Yeah, I mean, not not necessarily just but I suppose, because it was most clearly articulated and discovered, Unknown Speaker 22:35 in a way Audrey Lorde was talking about getting to the same place. Yeah, by different means. She was talking about those sources, too. She called it was interesting. She uses two metaphors that that Freud used, and she spoke about the dark place that she wanted to. One can say that psychoanalysis is one way that probably has its uses, and probably has added some things. Freud, I believe, said that he learned much of it from the poet's got there in the first place. But I think the emphasis on the mode of discovery is is rather new, and it probably has its uses for women in ways that we haven't fully explored because we may have had a reductive version of psychoanalysis presented to us in our culture, yeah, that we should take as at least a hypothesis certainly considers questioning the label. Unknown Speaker 23:33 I think I think that the danger for me as an American feminist is to see America, other American feminists having to learn this yet this other patriarchal language in order to understand what it is that French feminists are doing other words, that we have to go, we are in the process. And we have been all day today of rejecting a certain kind of patriarchal language, nevertheless, and in this discussion here, we're trying to understand a French patriarchal discourse, so that we can understand what feminists are doing in order to break away from that, for me is, it's problematic in and of itself, because we have to spend an awful lot of time and energy, understanding that the discourse in order to break away from Unknown Speaker 24:17 it, well, do you are you sure that the end result would be breaking away from it? Unknown Speaker 24:24 As I've understood, everybody who's spoken today, it's working in some kind of contradiction, or in some kind of difference from it. So therefore, in order to have any difference, you have to have a something to do. Unknown Speaker 24:40 But it's I think it's in some of the French interpretations. It's a difference. There's nevertheless, that has come from and then hasn't completely cut ties because certain elements are still useful, like the idea of the unconscious, and like the idea of the who, who is speaking, but those are some of the Whose formulations are still useful to us, even as we criticize other elements, Unknown Speaker 25:04 I wondered if you could be maybe very specific about the elements that you feel are useful for feminists in this in this discourse, not so much the discourse in itself, I find has close ties to, Unknown Speaker 25:19 with say the the importance given to language to, to the unconscious to the the convergences between. And for me, and this seems almost paradoxical to giving up the idea of searching for a strong ego, to accepting the fact that that may be an illusion in some senses. That's what I've found, I can keep even in my opposition to some of the rest. I think Unknown Speaker 25:52 another thing that that for me, for me is, I suppose the most important thing about psychoanalysis what is most useful for me is the notion and it's a notion of method. I mean, the way I understand psychoanalysis as it's at its best, is it is an attempt to listen to something very specific that that doesn't quite work that doesn't quite fit a unified discourse. I mean, it's it's the Freudian slip in the most reduced sense of the term. And it's that that was somehow Freud's discovery in the analytic situation, or in listening to dreams to the one detail that's slightly off and, and to someone someone said, the man's name is Steven Heath, I won't be I won't be be mysterious about it in writing about relationships between left column feminism, that, um, that what is interesting about psychoanalysis is not it as an authorized institution that's precisely psychoanalysis. Its word, worst, but it is, he called it the site of eliciting attention as a place of constant surprise and constant reinfestation. And to me, the best way to get out of a unified self centered discourse is not with some other unified discourse, because that is, to me always fell centers there any other right. But it's precisely if you're asking what what, what can you do? It's, it's, it's the fact that no discourse was ever totally unified. And it's to listen with some attention to specificity to that, which doesn't fit a totally coherent, systematic. And psychoanalysis is about one of the best ways I know of, of becoming aware of that as as some kind of technique for what I see as work at an alternative practice of discourse. Unknown Speaker 27:42 And what I like to answer your question at a very basic level, I think that you can't understand a specific movement in a specific country, if you don't understand which kind of intellectual climate within which governing society, it is no good, because feminist movements are fighting against something in something which is in their country. And I think the reason why feminists movements in plants are so much oriented on the problems of language is associated is linked to the fact that French intellectuals in France and specifically that are very much oriented on this problem. And they are concentrating on these problems a lot, you know, it's not, you know, feminism is not something which emerges from from nothing is unrooted in this specific society. And I think that the fact that Lancome was defining the unconscious as something which is structured like language, which is his definition of the unconscious, has something to do with the fact that French feminists are very much interested in provenance of language. Unknown Speaker 29:02 Well, could I just underscore what you said by saying that something that you said earlier to that the importance of language in this tradition can't be underestimated. Values you've given to it? The language as an instrument of power earlier, which was that wanted to translate, please, de la Tahoe. Speaking up the force, that phrase is something that we don't quite have even in speaking up. The acquisition of language is something that the color is all new tradition. And I think we know it too. We feel it. That's what we're trying to talk about in this conference today, but we were slightly different. We're a little out of step with each other. Unknown Speaker 29:55 I'd like to address myself to a question I felt around all day and that is This what we're seeing why this? Why why you psychoanalysis why this kind of discourse? Why this method? And I guess I'd like to say personally what happened with me I'm, I'm a radical feminist and also a lesbian, and probably could not have been angrier when I first started hearing what French women were saying and common feminism, and it was at an MLA session in 1975. And it shows that, among other people who I like and admire right now, was saying things about the creation of a subject and women by referring continually to the presence or the absence of a penis, and I could not have been more angry and walked out of that session, I said to myself, Why are women putting so much energy into men for feminism to get their feminism, and a couple of years went by, and I kept doing what I do, which is teaching and stuff. And I came to a kind of a dead end in trying to learn about what American novelists like do normal, and at least in one of her books, Rita Mae, brown, and jungle and others were trying to create an answer to the question who was speaking because that question exists here, though it hasn't been addressed in those terms. And I began to feel not like American would bankrupt in terms of theory, but that our third theory couldn't satisfactorily address that question. So that we'd be able to say something about that voice in the text, something that would make some sense to me. And that's why I went back and rolled up my sleeves to writing it makes me feel extremely stupid. I mean, it's really hard to read loose even get on, right. I mean, it's not, it's not really easy. Unknown Speaker 31:38 But I find it very rewarding. Unknown Speaker 31:40 And I've begun to feel like it is indeed a path that shouldn't be fall, that we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the back. And that luck coins is extremely useful. In that once we do understand how to talk about why and how we create a certain position for ourselves within language in order to produce some of it and be produced by it. I think that will be a lot clearer about what feminism is what we want them in and what we don't want them. Unknown Speaker 32:14 On board I can't get Unknown Speaker 32:16 it's a basket name is very odd. It isn't even in French. Unknown Speaker 32:22 I just wanted to say it's not in the concepts, the unconscious and language that I find those very fruitful. I'm just I'm wondering in both America and France, which part of Freud where the line is drawn, I guess, and maybe maybe next night? Maybe that's a false question. Maybe people can't say where the wind is trying Unknown Speaker 32:42 to get the castration complex. Or the literal Unknown Speaker 32:49 Oedipus complex. When Juliet Mitchell starts Unknown Speaker 32:52 saying, Well, you know, little boys and girls back then I started thinking, Oh, this Unknown Speaker 32:58 is absurd. Maybe the question has to be also rethinking one's relation to these, these authority texts. And I mean, it's also a question of, if you're, in acquiring knowledge, a certain practice of reading where you don't feel like where do I draw the line? What do I use? What don't I use, but simply, I mean, you have a certain competence and using what you want, what it gets. So yeah, Unknown Speaker 33:25 we've been taught as women to mistrust or our experience, we think of our past and we can't relate back to the Oedipal complex, though we know language is important. And we know the unconscious is important. And so Unknown Speaker 33:35 we'll get the a number of women are saying, okay, that we always knew all along that Oedipal complex doesn't exist. Well, it's not all of them, but some are saying concrete material. Yeah. And yet, it's useful to be able to talk about the preamble, which is something that came up today that we all want to know more about, especially in relation to female children and mothers. So there's something there that's useful. Unknown Speaker 34:05 Sure. Absolutely. Unknown Speaker 34:07 is probably a reference but that branch has such an Arab discovery items which have been Unknown Speaker 34:18 Why did you use a French phrase when you? Meeting and taking Unknown Speaker 34:34 what seems new I'm not sure if you're really anything to me. Unknown Speaker 34:41 It was no accident that I am. I mentioned Simone de Beauvoir, I consider myself an existential psychotherapist. And this feels like going back to something that I left and moved away from very consciously now I know that, like God was ones interested in Heidegger, so I still find them useful. I don't see that this paradigm is especially more useful. It's interesting to ask your associates, I've spent weeks reading this patriarchal stuff, assume it's interesting. And it's, it's interesting, I'm not sure that it's really important, my feminism, any, any more than phenomenology? Unknown Speaker 35:23 Well, I find, the reason I don't go back to find it interesting is something somebody else said, which is that Lacan might might, might be considered a scientist, but he does talk like a poet. And I guess the reason I find interesting is that I see a consistency, if you like, sort of every word, but some kind of relation between a style of writing a style of speaking, a style of reading, because it's also I mean, like constant reading of Freud, do you have a as your governor, I have, you want to pronounce it as a reading of Lacan, or reading of Freud or reading of whoever. And involved in that is something I think beyond a set system of constructs, it's related to the whole notion, the whole inquiry into some idea of, of feminine writing, in the sense that Christian was talking about it today. And so that it, it's that consistency, which, to me, seems like some kind of liberation from what I see as the existential notion of the self, which is, again, a unified self that is totally responsible, and therefore must be consistent, and seems to me to be based on what I see as values that line up with masculine values and a certain hierarchy. Unknown Speaker 36:41 That may be something that were character of the of the existential self. Absolutely. While it's true that that boba and sort of both come finally, from the Cartesian tradition, in one sense, you also have perhaps the most famous quote from the second section, which is what is not born, a woman excluded that one comes along. So I think Bo was self is very much rooted in situation in, which would be a kind of Unknown Speaker 37:08 political unconsciousness. Unknown Speaker 37:10 So I think there's certainly a notion in in boba as there is more recently, that we are not simply self making choices. This is given as a value. In fact, that is a notion that I get very confused. In relation to feminism, what is being given to us is what is and in other words, the subversion of itself? Is this a description? Or is this a value? Or does that that distinction no longer is that distinction? Unknown Speaker 37:46 That remains to be seen, which I said to Suzanne before, which is that Josie and her talk this morning, when she was characterizing the difference between French and American feminist discourse, she said, American feminist discourses ethical discourse, and I expected another adjective for French, which she never gave. And I think that's an important question. I think it's not a coincidence, that really you brought up the same it that I don't think subversion the subject is purely descriptive. I think that perhaps there is a different relation between ethical or prescriptive and descriptive discourse, and I'm not sure what it is. I mean, Unknown Speaker 38:22 I know that it can't be related to political but that Unknown Speaker 38:30 that's also a serious problem, considering where, where the descriptive and the prescriptive emergence that's the one of the chief poems Unknown Speaker 38:41 Can you elucidate? Unknown Speaker 38:46 Well, that's someone likely to get high is more critical of him because she reads him as making prescriptions where someone like Kristeva finds, I think greater uses his word because she tends to read it less prescriptive way more descriptively. That's if a guy was excommunicated, maybe she was on the road. It could be Unknown Speaker 39:17 very, very common that to the extent that women have been synonymous with silence was just very useful. already kind of an affirmation in their proposal prescriptive. Unknown Speaker 39:43 I think there's another something else that that is useful in that call as well, Freud violent repression. Women we've been talking about that it's probably not new to to say above us. There isn't there's a quest to have been in this for a long time, but can still be useful to feminists. And the notion of the, what we call the end, which infringe comes across a little differently. It's a question of, again, of not not reifying, our English version somehow seems to reify because it's laterally, like ego super ego, because Latin sounds abstract, it immediately becomes reified in our heads when we hear it. Because we associate Latin with obstructions. When we think back to the German, when we get back to Deus s. But Lusa, it seems much more animal like much more will fall. Again, it's the it has elements of those things that can't be described that can't be fit into a schema. There are things in that, that I think are helpful for us when we're trying to get at questions of obviously, sexuality, desire, expression, poetic expression, and rethinking those notions via the French or German terms, is already a little more suggestive than having to grapple with what we got in the English translation. I don't know if it's clear, but that's something that's that's spoken to me. That's another thing which is, which Unknown Speaker 41:29 then becomes fortuitous. Is that local seizes on the PSA, which is how he translates what we transmitted via no transmit. Yes. But instead of just sort of calling it Lissa, he just calls it sir. And he says, Sir Powell, which means it speaks that that thing speaks, I mean, so it's also not like it, it's more like, sort of that. But also, his saw happens to be one of most frequently used words and in kind of conversational French, and Lacan uses it all the time, which means that at any given moment, he's reminding you and the reason that sight comes up and you know, two out of five of the senses, I don't know why. Yeah, but anyway, and every time you read it, then you remind of a kind of ambiguity, which is, are we just listening to lakorns ego unconscious, giving us his theory, we're reminded that that SOT speaks and it speaks, of course, not through some other voice, but it speaks whenever one speaks, um, as a kind of interruption as a kind of transversal. And it's that I mean, Lacan was constantly playing with language in a way that is not, which I don't read is just kind of sterile, or even just just play in some sense that it has nothing to do with anything. It's just frosting. But that play of language is is is a way of making you react to languages. It's a way of affecting certain things. Um, Unknown Speaker 42:58 the puns too. Yeah. That's a useful element, although infuriating, frustrating. There's something about his use of puns that triggers language play, I mean reading readers and his analysand and those who become involved with him mentally that can trigger the imagination, even as it infuriates reading Lacan Unknown Speaker 43:21 sort of like being in training analysis, which is that I mean that in order to read it, you begin to have to listen, you begin to have to pay attention, because it does not make linear coherent sense. And the later Lacan gets the blessed linear coherent sense he does. I mean, nothing is written after 1960 can just be sort of read on a simple way that you have to work with it. You have to work with puns, you have to work with double meanings and sentences that that only makes sense in the context of kind of overdetermined associations. Which means that it's not a kind of reading that places it's sort of totally outside of and from an objective distance to psychoanalysis with joysticks. Right, he did, but but somehow people can dismiss Joyce as fiction. Unknown Speaker 44:04 Seuss was a choice. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 44:09 Um, so you said I can dismiss Joyce's fiction and yeah, you just said before that one of the things you like and icons you think is poetic, but it's the minute okay, what bothers me is the claim. I find that troubling in point as well. Is the claim to science in what are useful metaphorical constraints, if it presented itself as poetry Unknown Speaker 44:37 as as a query as creative in Unknown Speaker 44:39 that sense, I think would be much less oppressive and repressive. You wouldn't, you wouldn't need to excommunicate the DNS. Well, and that seems to me I mean, that's not Unknown Speaker 44:55 true either. But always excommunicate people that wouldn't save him his his decorate. himself as a poet will not save him from that at all. Because poetry can be an institution, anything can become a common institution. That's true. Yeah, especially. Unknown Speaker 45:10 When you say that your system is dismissed, you'll be mistaken because I think he's, he has subverted reality, you can. And it's very interesting to hear the scope side. Because she sees me in exactly that light. Unknown Speaker 45:28 Yes, in a way, what's happening is that our critical discourse is just catching up with the modernists what modernist writers were doing in the 10s, and 20s. Finally, via this kind of talk, we're beginning to know how that how joystick is a 15 year gap of some sort that's beginning to be reached. But the theory is to Unknown Speaker 45:55 also can go mean when you when you can do the kind of critical discourse people are doing now, you can go back and look at how women subverted language, whether they wanted to or not, I mean, that's what's important to me, Joyce set out on this project, which was literary and intellectual. But the thing about women's discourses as is that it has been subversive for a very long time. And it's very hard to find a way to talk about that if you don't have the kind of particular constructs that post Lacanian psychoanalysis offers. Can you give some examples? Well, a lot of people seem to be pointing it out. In Wolf, for instance, a very simple example of it is that in Wolf, there's a she continually seeds drastic limits. The meaning of a sentence sends you on to the next sentence, which sends you on to the next sentence. So that meaning isn't sentence contained. And it isn't even a paragraph campaign. There's a sort of eternal law differing. Unknown Speaker 46:51 Another examples of some early Gertrude Stein, as she can be very interestingly discussed and finally, made accessible in these terms. Unknown Speaker 47:03 What about French writing? was mentioned all that writing which is? Interesting, you find it? Do you find the need for that? In your experience? Unknown Speaker 47:25 I don't work with it don't know it very well, except to the extent that for example, someone like aliens seeks to coexist somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction if you like, um, what interests me and it's personal, I don't know what how you feel about it. It's because I don't write fiction myself. What interests me is, is, is that kind of writing, which I mean, fragmented, nonlinear, etc, which is theoretical discourse. Now, it's the radical feminist discourse in France. And I guess I'm interested in at the place of subverting the difference between poetry and theory, if you like. And somehow, therefore, I'm interested in, in this kind of practice of writing as it goes on, in, in what doesn't pass under the rubric of literature, isn't there? Two things, Unknown Speaker 48:16 one, over and over again, in this afternoon's discussion, there seem to be a economy in which male writers were put outside of the sensibility just in the definitions that made up Yes, of this new writing. But if we look at male writing, and if we look at someone like Paul's, in a way there is a poetic and the theoretical discourse, philosophical discourse of a different nature that's fused together in his work, and I think perhaps, there should be some kind of comparison, Unknown Speaker 48:54 even even all of the her description of that kind of feminine discourse, a lot of those words like, like, fragmented and exploded and all of that function, not just in French feminism, but French function on French philosophy, and in people who are working at some kind of articulation between philosophy and poetry. And so that that what I find interesting about it is not it's, I suppose, its peculiarity to feminism. I mean, I find that interesting for for my feminist reasons, but the fact that feminism in a way has a more centralized place right now in French intellectual movements, because it's more in keeping with a lot of the kind of philosophical subversions I mean, it would be weird to try to talk about it wouldn't be weird if it French of feminism as a place in all the American disciplines. I mean, there is there is a feminist, Philosophical Association and psychological and sociological and all of that, but it exists in each of those separate disciplines in a in a pretty much of a regional way. And whereas feminism in As much as it's coherent with a lot of other things, partakes of a lot of what is currently happening in social sciences and in philosophy and in France. Unknown Speaker 50:12 It's, it certainly is one of the most lively intellectual discussion discussions. If someone like Danny does information, I missed the morning session. So maybe it was during the term Neo feminism, contemplate, is that an application of theory, Unknown Speaker 50:35 or does it come out of deconstructing criticism? Unknown Speaker 50:39 I think that was the the user's own term. I've never heard it. It sounded pejorative to me and suggested that this is she meant this is the recent way Unknown Speaker 50:49 over the last 10 years, yeah, new to me always sounds pejorative, as opposed to something like contemporary. And then she used any authority and at the same in the same Unknown Speaker 50:58 term, I think it's usage and it conveyed a certain attitude revision notes. And she was saying similar sorts of things about that, that particular view of a content. Unknown Speaker 51:14 Just in answer to your question, one author who uses the Kenyan influence and has in a sense an application of this type, within language. And into us His words, we see the progression of having started as a basically traditional novelist, we can speak in these terms, in terms of semantics in terms of a linear, perfectly structured clear language, and little by little using the exact same themes over a number of words and took a long period of time, and destroying her own language, her own inner logic, her own rationale until foreign language becomes purely fragmented to language becomes always in the process. And there's constantly will be contracted unknown D, what is not said, which is as important as what is said, Unknown Speaker 52:04 communicative Unknown Speaker 52:07 communicators, because the silence in itself becomes a form of communication and applies the tension within the number of creating the tension intermediary zone, between what is said, and what is then responded. So that instead of having a constant level of communication, instead of always demanding question answer, which in a sense, is a patriarchal structure of cause and effect, she destroys that by establishing the non set. And by establishing that sense of the openness, even now, if we look at her work on visual aesthetic level, if you look at the later works, like he just saw, or not any poetry or if there are large blank spaces on the page, you'll have you'll have the use of the, of the flatland just the right, the use the use of of constant break. And this break is also then comes across, in in the way she presents the themes. And the other thing that she does also have been worked on still and the text is the sense of constant of process, that the awareness and consciousness of doing and I think this is very, very important in terms of French women and French feminism, that there's a much stronger emphasis on process, both in film and in literature, that we're constantly aware of what we are doing while we're doing it. And I think this sometimes creates a lot of problems when people are reading. French novelists now, particularly in India last for seeing films that are done by the French avant garde or especially by French women. Because constantly we go back, and perhaps it's also very fresh, go back to analyzing immediately what is being done while it is being done. And so we have the simultaneous tension that occurs both on the written page both in the media, and both in evidence, every aesthetic and in every little form. But I think at the same time this is this is a way feminist point of view of constantly coming back to the interrogation. And I think maybe in a way, this is one of the things we're dealing with this whole conference is we're not answering or we're asking. And we're constantly and frenchwomen Constantly do this. They they stopped right before the answer and they go back and ask another question. And then they go on and then you constantly have to steer the tape. You know, and maybe this is this is the thing there's there's a very strong dialectic tension. Unknown Speaker 54:36 I think. Back in fact, you feel that feminism, feminist inquiry, feminist scholarship is more integrated into different disciplines and then our caucuses of Political Science and Learning For Unknown Speaker 55:00 No, on the contrary, less well integrated in academic settings in disciplines? Yes, yes, there is less much less than, to my knowledge of formal use of feminist approaches, within disciplines is that all beginning now in the feminist movement has been until rather recently, much less clearly attached to or identified with structures like universities than it has here, there's been a greater gap, Unknown Speaker 55:33 intellectually Unknown Speaker 55:35 well known have been several attempts Unknown Speaker 55:36 at feminists parties. In New York organized a party of her uncle's was here after the important pro abortion movement that she formed. And they've been feminist groups working in support of various left wing candidates, but those have been within traditional left wing parties that you're going to see something for Unknown Speaker 56:05 me I was getting the point that you made before about about the intellectual ferment that is going on in feminism and how did you make the point that there there is more intellectual ferment? Or that somehow it's Unknown Speaker 56:17 incorporating more things? Or? Unknown Speaker 56:19 I think you I think it was, like I said, I don't know, I think I think that was something, I think you're you're falsely accusing parallel. Because you just made her sound like she was contradicting yourself. And I think when I I wasn't referring so much to the kind of very traditional academic disciplines as they exist there, but I suppose part of it is that I have, maybe this is a wrong perspective, because it's easier to have a sense of France as a whole than America as a whole, when you live in America, and maybe even in general. But there's a kind of intellectual movements, whatever, if you like going on, that is not it is not so totally restricted to academia over there as it is here. I mean, there's much more of a, there's much more of a public for what looks like intellectual journals, theoretical journals, theoretical books. And to that extent, I said that, that a lot of what is going on in feminist theory is much more in keeping with what is what I said was going on in philosophy and in anthropology, and in history and things like that. Unknown Speaker 57:23 And yet, probably the total number of readers of such things is, is quite limited. No, that's not true. It's I mean, I'm, Unknown Speaker 57:32 I'm struck by the difference between walking into a bookstore in Paris and walking into a bookstore in New York and the number of books on psychoanalysis, no books on philosophy, where they are displayed, and obviously, how many copies they're selling. It's just really, I mean, it's a market thing. Unknown Speaker 57:46 In part, you know, Sherry Turkle talks about that in her book, psychoanalytic politics, although I think she somewhat exaggerates the phenomenon, but nevertheless, you she gives a good description of how important it is. But I think, even so, if we counted heads, this is an impression, I think we end up with more people, there's more people in America, Unknown Speaker 58:05 I mean, it's a strange game. Unknown Speaker 58:09 In spite of the fact that there may be, there may be more intellectual ferment and more fireworks and more sort of story explosions there. There are fewer people responding to this, we have a larger kind of movement, it's more diffused, and then it's penetrated in all sorts of different areas. Of course, the numbers game is silly. There are more people there to begin with. But I think it's taken a different form. And until very recently, the French feminist movement, it doesn't like to use the term feminist, the MLF was very small, very limited. There were until very recently, there was nothing whatsoever that attempted to reach large numbers of women, there were no feminist magazines, as we would define them, this is a very, very recent thing. Last couple of years such such an efforts have been made. So that's, Unknown Speaker 59:05 I'd like to point out something which strikes me as well, is that we get a very specific image of what is, which seems to be very, very theoretical. And it's true, but if it's only one very small group, when we speak about the French feminists here, we get the impression that only receiving Yamaha the LMC tools, and some others are the feminist leaders. They are but there are other groups who are very well, less theoretical. Women like boudoir, women like women like Luffy just in a clearer picture understand what they say, and every woman can understand that there are feminists as well, but they are consider less intellectual. And they are considered as reformist, which is something that's a dirty word, fight, and they fight on specific issues like you hide here, you know, on abortion, there are groups of women, within political parties like the Socialist Party of the Communist Party, who are fighting, because they realize that men in those leftist parties, parties were very sexist. And we never hear about those women. You know, I think this is a very reduced image of the real situation. I'm Unknown Speaker 1:00:52 glad that you brought that up. I wanted to bring it up. I brought in a magazine. Unknown Speaker 1:00:59 You mentioned the names. Unknown Speaker 1:01:00 I brought in a magazine that that I've wanted to pass around because it's, it gives a very different image, it's put it was put out by very different groups, a number of different groups of women who are not expressing themselves. In the same way, as the people we've discussed, we're more concerned with the kinds of issues that we're familiar with, and who themselves are not swept off their feet by luck or by the work of those who find it interesting, and I thought that it would be useful to just look at it. So you see that there are other things going on. Now these are some of these women are of course, dunked on by people who consider the only intellectual discourse of the highest rigor is what women should be doing. And that's very unfortunate. Unknown Speaker 1:01:55 There, for example, there are women in France, I've taken for a moment where the exactly the appeal is that a woman who is within the traditional framework. In other words, a woman who is who is middle aged, who was married with children, who seem to have followed all the norms, suddenly has what we used to call the race consciousness, but suddenly comes to terms with this, and tries to deal with it. And therefore, she's able to have a far greater audience among a larger group of women who can respond to that in terms of their own experience. And yet who can see alternative solution or alternative points of view within the framework of feminism. So I think it's extremely important what Michelle was saying that we we have to see that we're dealing with a far broader days, just like here, we talk about radical groups we talk about, about people who come to this conference, we also talk about people who are willing to Action Alliance will link to now who are linked to things that are far more established, and our awareness and the awareness of the media. The other thing is that let's not forget that in terms of the media, just like here in France, also there's a greater awareness and a greater a broader base for all kinds of feminism on a on a far less radical level. I think this this has to Unknown Speaker 1:03:09 be I just tried to add to that CQ flow, is it just the reverse? French petition, but there are two magazines, right one magazine, which is a Frenchman is it's been a year ago, January Unknown Speaker 1:03:34 14, so it's better Unknown Speaker 1:03:42 last January, because Unknown Speaker 1:03:46 they stopped with rich. Unknown Speaker 1:03:49 Yes, they realized after the battles within the movement two years ago that they had to break out of that and they started publishing firms on McMullen, which was very attractive and had a wide circulation that they stopped. Unknown Speaker 1:04:04 And there will be another one was really curious about the reuse of CES? Unknown Speaker 1:04:29 There's an interesting article in this one that I brought in about psychoanalysis, which offers a rather different view. It's one that's really more skeptical, less committed and at the same time, curious, not willing to take it all on authority and not willing to take it from the group most closely identified with psycho analysis. The second is a political If there certainly are other points of view, it will be very misleading if we wish to convey the idea that only those few voices who've been mentioned are the spokes women. Unknown Speaker 1:05:14 I realized that but I'm when I went to the napalm in December. I was impressed by what looked like the diversity of all voices and by the different kinds of women, I think I saw on that TV. And the other thing that struck me is that I'm speaking to friends with whom I went to school, 10 years ago in France, none of them have heard of any of them. And they were all sort of ripe to be the head of consciousness away erased, Unknown Speaker 1:05:38 partially they had careers Unknown Speaker 1:05:40 and things but there seems to be a real communication gap between all of Latham in France and and any of these voices going on, with the exception perhaps on my alley me and some people have really been movement oriented and turned off, raised many others. Unknown Speaker 1:06:04 Did you find a much different an interest in psychoanalysis or knowledge of what it had come to be in recent views? This is terkel's thesis that everyone knows about black hole everyone is in a very visual way though, in differing degrees. Unknown Speaker 1:06:21 I found a lack both a lack of knowledge and a lack of interest. And last but not least for people who don't really don't think themselves because they don't know what feminism really is. I mean, they don't want to, but they're people with jobs with maybe doctorates, trying to make their way in lives and wondering, you know, what feminism is going to bring them and they can, they really can't, I think it's maybe a mistake to characterize French feminism and anyway, I Unknown Speaker 1:06:50 mean, it's much easier to characterize Unknown Speaker 1:06:53 the think that new Massachusetts anthology is going to be called French feminism's. Unknown Speaker 1:07:03 I'd like to make a point that they're having been active in the American feminist women's is that when the Iranian women rose up, all of a sudden, women feminists around the world. We organized here in New York. We will link to Simone de Beauvoir's press conference. In, in France, there was it was New York and London and France. And, and it was as though we were unified. And it's very interesting that that on one level, theoretically, we may be very sub ahead of each others and behind each other. But when the time comes for action, there is a resounding Nope. Within all our our souls and psyche. They might be different that Unknown Speaker 1:07:55 came out you did not throw the French feminists out of Iran, they're still there, I think, well, once the winner tried to Unknown Speaker 1:08:04 might be a political judgment at the time of who came to the fore and was the most loudmouth. rowdy, rowdy, a Party spokesperson, right? Yeah. And they added a total consent anybody up in your mind? Unknown Speaker 1:08:19 This is American Ranch, and that's why they eat out maybe I mean, I wonder Unknown Speaker 1:08:29 greater respect for an African French investor. Unknown Speaker 1:08:53 Was wondering if we can bring it to the discussion if anyone wants to go back to language, I felt a peculiar sort of dissatisfaction after the panel on language, because I was very thirsty to know more. Then I found out and I wasn't quite sure why, but it seemed to be very doable to come clearly across the discussions of language and I'd rather hope to see a coming together of possibly a feminist psychoanalytic point of view and a linguistic point of view. Is anyone doing work? As you said, unfortunately, somehow linguistics seems to be all there and it has some feminists working in it, but it hasn't come together with an a larger overall theory. Unknown Speaker 1:09:55 Yes, I wanted to see a beginning dialogue with the French spective you mentioned earlier that the difference I think the thing with work but that is an approach that is only relevant. So I don't see any points of convergence. Is it any changes in dialogue? No, Unknown Speaker 1:10:41 what I see the closest thing or other Unknown Speaker 1:11:00 getting moved away Unknown Speaker 1:11:09 could you tell us about what we are doing missing your TV that might be very useful? Because that seems to be that would come back to the question of how this kind of thing is of use for us in a variety of Unknown Speaker 1:11:31 ways. Simplify it tremendously and is going to appear as something well, not for the moment I can maybe try to explain the theory of crispy, but it's mainly because it's much more complex than that Unknown Speaker 1:11:59 you have the words Unknown Speaker 1:12:02 or the implications of what she says well, basically her work is based on second analytical work done by Lancome and Bisola combined, right, there is an evolution and for her there she operates with two concepts. One is the symbiotic and the other, the symbolic and usually when we when we use language, we are all in the symbolic because well, so that we can in order to speak, we have to repress a certain part of ourselves. And that threat that part which is repressed would be the SR. Unknown Speaker 1:12:42 Is it roughly the realm of Lusaka? Yes, because the site Yeah, express itself in symbiotic ways? Unknown Speaker 1:12:51 Yes, yeah. Yes, well, this, this would be? Well, it's not a place, it's not a crime. It's not a moment, I mean, life, the woman is the only thing you can say that it is in negative terms. What you can say about it is that it's, it's all what the symbolic is not. And when you enter language, what happens is that you have, in order to say, to say, I mean to speak, but to say you should be able to speak, you have to discover yourself as a human. And to discover yourself as a unity, you have to repress the multiplicity that you have to present yourself. And that's what LabCorp has called very simply this. What happens at that stage? Is that you? Well, it happens like in a mirror, I mean, you discover yourself in the mirror, and the image you see is at the same time yourself and not. And in order to speak, you have to discover that image and to know that this image is my cue, it's exactly the same language, you have to discover that. If not, it represents you. It's not you. That means that you have to enter in the realm of representation. And that's why we say some French feminists say that the language is based on the notion of quick presentation and begins this notion of representation. There is a whole effort to bring back the presentation rather than representation that's Well, that's true. Well, listen. Yeah, I think is everything which is usually it's, it's wisdom by the well what happens when we speak is that we control certain parts of ourselves and usually we control various Well, the mind and luck is not the reason. But they are gaps in that language. I mean, they are voice, you know, when you stop speaking, suddenly you lose your voice, or when an actor walks on the stage and stumbles, or when something happens, you know, which is unexpected. What happens at that moment is that this in your team comes back what happens, in fact, in the life of every subject, and there's this notion of receiving knowledge, as well as looking at Crystaline, okay, then the subject is a work of these two realms, this one is the semiotic and the other is the symbolic and both of them interact. And what happens is, that is usually the symbolic, so strong, that you work in the symbolic, but very often, this semiotic comes back, because you cannot request such it's such a space, which is so strong, and, and so violence. So this cinionic, erupts in language, and it erupts in the way you talk, if your reps also in the way you act, and in fact, the semiotics very close to the body. So the basic Well, the theory of decline of some French philosophers is that, in fact, the subject is always on this seven margin between the semiotic and the symbolic, and what actors do, and I think that what feminists can do is try to, to walk this tightrope between not falling into this neurotic as today. Because if you are too close to this symbiotic and if you fall into it, then you go crazy. But if you are a conflict complete, and it's symbolic, then you go paranoid. So you have to be in between. And that's what why Kristeva, for instance, speaking, as well as says that the position of women is to bring always the symbolic back to the car, trying to make things to show well, to request in this environment, and show that structures don't have to be completely rigid, you have to shatter the whole building, so that questions arise. And that's why when she speaks about the subjects, she says that the subject is work of going back and forth from the symbolic to the senior. That's what she called negativity, negativity, or her ship, the subject is composed of a succession of moments of stars, Jane stands on stage. Unknown Speaker 1:17:54 And that's when she will share rejections and in. And, in fact, the subject because always shuffle. Yes. And it's just for every week questioning, well, then this structure, rigid, rigid, the spine, and you stop for a while. And in fact, you don't have to stop tonight. Otherwise, you will see that. Unknown Speaker 1:18:18 Yeah, I think one of the interesting things is that Christopher uses the word renovate, which is I don't know, it struck me as surprising to hear what seems to be a kind of progressive word. I'm not saying this to criticize at all. But it's some sense of what sometimes I get a sense when I'm reading all of this theory of of all one can do subvert all one can do as negative and what what are you producing? It's a very American sense, I suppose I have of wanting to produce something. I mean, what what can we do? But it's it's the sense that precisely the, the, the bring the symbolic constantly back into the semiotic of, of disrupting, of disrupting the stick stasis causes not a, a new and better symbolic because is continual renovation, which is similar to something I suppose Americans called progress. Unknown Speaker 1:19:16 Progress to me, well implies that you start from a point that you don't question. Unknown Speaker 1:19:21 Well, it depends depends how you It depends whether you're in an ideology of progress, or in some sort of something else. I mean, I'm not. Unknown Speaker 1:19:32 The interesting point of which this can come back to some of the things that Nancy tutor was talking about, for example, is that Kristeva links the semiotic to the maternal. For this she has been criticized, but she wants to assign the semiotic functions which would include things like rhythmic process babble sounds, body language, all of these seemingly pre verbal pre rational forms of expression to that the maternal phase in which Infant is closely associated with the mother's body. So we begin to wonder, is this something which all human infants know in in the earliest stages, and which females somehow keep in closer touch with or not? We don't have to start answering those questions. But it would be interesting if we could. Do you know what the criticisms have been of her What? What the objections have been to her linking the semiotic to the maternal turn to biologies return may reductive, thinking again, Unknown Speaker 1:20:39 return to biology, in fact, well, it's it's very understandable that this idiotic is made is linked to pre pre, the pre mirror case, to everything which is before before language, because it's true that when you enter language, then you enter in certain structures. And I don't think it's a criticism of biology. No, and it's very funny Well, in fact, that this, this relation to the mother is, is in fact, very present everywhere and in the process. of language of life is very present we were coming from, from another seminar, which is, which was, it was done by experimental, experimental theater, and it dealt with sisters, daughters, and mothers. And it was so disturbing for everybody, everybody was crying. Well, it was because well, it refers really to, to some very deep things which are there and which are repressed. So when we talk like this about it, it's, it's fine. We can control it. It's when you have everything together in one hour. It's in a performance where you can you can extend it. And in fact, you know, it's it's it's, it's I guess it's because the input, the reappearance of the car is so strong, that well, either you leave, or else like, Unknown Speaker 1:22:21 is this the privileged area of women to be in touch with this let it's coming back to an issue that's come up several times, is, Unknown Speaker 1:22:29 I think it's I don't mean, it's only a privilege, because there are so many artists who have done it who have worked in that field. And I mean, who well are, who left the senior public speaking that if I can say that it's strong, my way of proving it is wrong. But the woman by her own constitution, I think, is much closer to her body. And I'm convinced that it's through the body, it's in the fact that we are moving further away from language or from structures of language that we can, that we can let all this speak. And maybe that's where a when we can do something, no, that's where maybe the feminist movement can break something for the changes in society. I don't think it's all a privilege. But I think that we wouldn't have more chance of accomplishing. Unknown Speaker 1:23:26 You know, when you say we're further away Unknown Speaker 1:23:28 from the structures of language isn't the process we're going through here is yes, an extremely elaborate complex, symbolic language, Unknown Speaker 1:23:40 yes, but we are doing it from our side. We are not doing it from inside because I don't think we have ever been inside the language really. Well, one of the proofs that American for instance, are trying to insert you know, what words places for women in language in this course, the values of language, because language is based on unit, your identity, language is something which which you have to work on, no too disruptive, to bring some other possibilities. And I think the fact we can work now on members is not is not an accident. I mean, there there is a history behind it. And that history is, is already three previous disruptions. Unknown Speaker 1:24:29 I have I have increased criticism of Christmas association of the semiotic to the maternal, and that is that it's the old story of describing it or manifesting a certain reality as if it were nature. I think that indeed, is culture where, where nurturance is primarily provided by women, the primary caretaker of the babies is a woman. And so that's semiotic pre verbal. But quorum space? I don't know if the call becomes associated with mother. But without saying, I think what Christopher should say is, that's an unfortunate thing that happens in societies which wish to divide labor in such rigid wage? Unknown Speaker 1:25:18 Well, well, Susan, I don't reimburse you for one reason is that when she identifies this mother, she's mostly referring to a place where the child is in the women, and that you cannot change it. A woman is having a baby. And something happens to you. The baby has relation with the mother, for instance, there is a fantastic discovery which has been done lately, by which it has been discovered that some cells of the baby are within the blood of a mother. And that has been discovered, I don't know when, well, one month ago, it was made public. But that, you know, implies that they are tracking their relations. I mean, there is something which has, which is biological maybe, but not only there is something else, you don't know what the type is the height that she did not find such as really Unknown Speaker 1:26:12 all of the theory of separating off and interjecting and projecting this is described as a prolongation of that process, when there's this radical revolutionary break in the in the fetuses existence when it becomes a child and suddenly emerges is no longer in utero. At that point, you do have to ask the question, what from now on is cultural? Unknown Speaker 1:26:34 And she doesn't know. But that's question we can address also to nurse each other. This morning, she mentioned that gender is something which is which is learned. That is gender differences. Children is something which is discovered. But from my own experience. I have I have noticed that my baby when he was three months old, could identify between men and women. And I'm wondering, you know, his three months that means he cannot see you cannot see properly. And sometimes. I don't know how or what sometimes the man didn't talk didn't open his mouth, just so you would go to him for a whole period. We I had only voice babysitters because he prefers voice babies. Well, now it has changed his back when he speaks. It's just a question. No one should have been How did you know Unknown Speaker 1:27:35 he was? He was identifying? Unknown Speaker 1:27:39 With I don't know, but something was sure that whenever he was seeing a man he was going towards him. But he didn't because his father was what about you time? Yeah, I Unknown Speaker 1:27:48 mean, you mean? Yeah, maybe. Unknown Speaker 1:27:50 But you know, yet if even if his father was absent, right? How can he say, Well, this is a man and this is a woman? I mean, apparently, you know, this is we are stressed and stressed the same way. So I didn't How can you? How can you say this? Unknown Speaker 1:28:08 wasn't really a woman man wasn't a woman and other? Was it simply what I mean? You're stating that there were seven categories? Was it really a sense of categorization? Or was addressed woman's mother? And other? Unknown Speaker 1:28:22 No, no, because he didn't have this because Unknown Speaker 1:28:25 I can share with you in terms of experience. I'm four months old. I had that that sense that she was she relates to two women one voice smile plays something and she has a very distinct other reaction to men. But I don't know if it's to other than the female. Now, I don't know whether is the other necessarily male is it just other than that, that's where I'm, Unknown Speaker 1:28:48 in my experience, it was because of an opposition to the mother. I mean, it wasn't the mother and the other. It was the mother and men. And his relation, Unknown Speaker 1:28:59 its Unknown Speaker 1:29:01 relation to women was very, was very different. There were some women if you like, and some he screamed when he when he sewed them. So I you know, it's just a question. I don't think we can answer. But you know, we can address Unknown Speaker 1:29:19 there was a question, it's something else I wanted to ask you. Does Christina establish the same connection with the symbol Ico and the name of the product? What Yeah, this Unknown Speaker 1:29:33 is exactly Unknown Speaker 1:29:35 the symbol in fact you entering the symbolic when you enter in the name of the Unknown Speaker 1:29:40 the name of the father opens the access to the symbolic well. Unknown Speaker 1:29:46 In fact, the name of the Father is this what to generate? Unknown Speaker 1:29:53 Well, it's a it's a useful name for symbolic because it attaches symbolic to patriarchy. And to the naming process is a naming process to the whole notion of identity identity in patriarchy. And I mean, it's one of the going back to electron for a moment. It's one of the, I guess another the useful things about Lacan is that whereas we're used to finding in Freud, the Oedipus being something that seems to resemble the biological father, although it's really kind of a primal father, which leaves you in, in a kind of non social, non historical family relationship that seems to be kind of separated out and biological natural. Lacan sort of distortion of that transformation of that into the name of the Father immediately moves the family situation into into a symbolic order into an order patriarchy into an order of an organization of society. And I think that's one of the reasons Lacanian psychoanalysis has has given rise to probably more feminist theory than a psychoanalysis that gives the Oedipus and as a as a non social family relation. Unknown Speaker 1:31:01 Oh, I'd like to add to that something that Gail Rubin brings up in that long article whose it allows us to start thinking about the whole constellation of ideas that define names properties, that what is proper appropriation, that whole complex of social boundaries into which we are made to fit that so it's, it generates another kind of analysis. Oh, Gil Reubens article is the traffic and women it's in that collection on ruminant anthropology. And she she attempts bringing together levy Strauss Lacan, and several other things. Talking about kinship patterns, Unknown Speaker 1:31:48 within that whole idea of naming, I think there's a real problem there. Because what, what would happen if we would suddenly start to name the female child with a mother's name? In other words, a surname and the mother's name, in other words, so that they're no longer has to be that immediate emphasis on the patriarchal name the nun, then you wonder, where would this in a sense change a certain sense of identity in terms of belonging to a male, in the sense of one's identity defined as belonging to another and the other being a male being the continuation of the patriarchal name, Unknown Speaker 1:32:25 we send them to tutor or to study. Unknown Speaker 1:32:30 And then, of course, there's the whole stigma of that in terms of that it used to be that if a child cared his mother's name, it was automatically an illegitimate child, it automatically had a stigma in social terms. If we would get to a point where we could eliminate that, then we would have another alternative, we would no longer have to give the child the patriarchal name yet we would not stigmatize the child. And I think we're very far from that at this point. And just in terms of what the name carries. Maybe we should stop, Unknown Speaker 1:33:01 go and have a drink. Thank you.