Final Blog

Haraway talks a lot about knowledge, and its relationship to power. Right away this made me think of Foucoult’s idea of power/knowledge. Haraway doesn’t say that they have to exist together, like Foucoult does though. She says that we have learned that with knowledge, we can achieve power. Her idea of knowledge connects to her ideas of language and subjectivity. She says that it is important to know that we are “…language-mediated actors in the knowledge game”. This also reminds me of what we discussed in class about subjects as the vehicles. Language is a part of the knowledge discourse. I think that her views of language build on Lacan’s theory of language. Language creates and determines our subjectivity and it is through language that our identities form.

What I get out of this is that Haraway believes that language and knowledge exist together. “Rational knowledge is a process of ongoing critical interpretation among fields of interpreters and decoders”.

Haraway says that “There is no single feminist standpoint because our maps require too much dimension for that metaphor to ground our visitors. The woman is made up of one single view, it is the joining several partial views. In regards to her ideas of feminist theories, I found her to be pretty similar to Irigaray’s idea that the female is a complex and dynamic in comparison to the simple and stable man

Blog 11

Recently I saw an article about my favorite cheesesteak place back home in Philadelphia; Geno’s. There have been a lot of complaints nationwide about a sign they had in the window that said, “THIS IS AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH”. I can partially understand why people may be bothered by this and think that this is racist, but I also can see why people stick up for him. Geno’s is in South Philly, an area made up of all different races and languages. The food is cheap, quick and famous worldwide. When ordering, you have to be fast and know how to abbreviate what you want. This is where I understand their need for English speaking customers.

I think this can relate to Spillers’ ‘Politics of Melanin’, the idea that Ethnicity only exists in visible markers, such as skin color. This theory claims that white people have no ethnicity. I think this idea relates to my experience because people are calling owner Joe Vento, racist or prejudice against ethnicities, when really he is doing the opposite (according to The Politics of Melanin). The sign is asking for something having to do with the language of cultures. I think it is actually anything but racist because they are leaving that out, and they don’t assume that a white person speaks English, or that a black person does not. In the end the Philadelphia Commission ruled that the sign violate any city laws.

Blog 10

In the Homosocial theory of masculinity the woman is seen as the exchange between two males. Although she is important, the focus goes to the men fighting over her. I think that in a way this relates to the movie Shreck. One who has never seen this before thinks that it is entirely about a love story between the Princess and Shreck. The only reason that Shreck went to go save the Princess was to get his land back. The Prince who had Shreck get the Princess had the power. He made a deal that if Shreck brings back the Princess, he will give him back his land. The plot behind this all is about the exchange of Princess Fiona for what each of the men want for them selves.

Blog #9 Queer Theory

The queer theory says that it is essential for us to stop using the terms men and women, which implies difference in the heterosexual system. As gendered and sexual subjects, we will remain in society’s traditional gender binary. In queer theory, the desire of a sexual object that is not ‘normal’, challenges the heterosexual society. Mansfield says that we can have queer politics without fixed gender. I am not sure exactly what I think about this, but I think I would lean toward no. We cannot have queer politics without fixed gender and sexuality. Since our definitions of sexuality are based on the heterosexual gender system, I don’t see how queer theory would come up otherwise. If there was not a dominant norm, we wouldn’t be able to label anyone as different or queer.

Additional Blog #2

The genealogy of subjectivity refers to examining the different theories of subjectivity. Mansfield uses this term to analyze many theories of the subject, focusing on the theory as the subject. Genealogy is most often paired with tracing history of families. In the same sense, this idea traces the history of ideas of subjectivity.

Freud was the creator of the psychoanalytic theory of subjectivity which was based on his notion of the unconscious. The unconscious mind drives the conscious, the irrational and rational. We try to repress these thoughts in the unconscious, but they sometimes come out through certain behaviors, habits and dreams. The subject is a construct of relationships. The subject is also produced through a child’s relationship with their parents during the Oedipal Complex. Many other theories of subjectivity use Freud’s idea of psychoanalysis.

Lacan used Freud’s model of psychoanalysis to form his theory of language and subjectivity. We are subjects in the world of language. The biggest difference between Lacan and Freud is that Freud focuses more on the biology of a person, while Lacan focuses on the language and symbolic concepts. In Frued’s model, the subject develops through the Oedipal Complex, but in Lacan’s it is during the mirror-stage. The subject is always trying to become stable even though it never achieves complete stability. These are our desires and demands to get back to the “real”.

Another theory that has developed from psychoanalysis is Kristeva’s model of abjection. Kristeva uses ideas from both Freud and Lacan. She also believes that there is an area between the unconscious and conscious that creates our subjectivity. What sets Kristeva apart from the Freud and Lacan is that she focuses on the unknown and unstable, where they focus on the stabilization of the subject. This incomplete area of horror between the self and the other is what Kristeva considers to be abjection.

Irigaray has a modern feminist theory of psychoanalytic subjectivity that opposes Freud and Lacan’s theories of the dominate male by adding the female imaginary. This idea is also based on the genitals, except this time it is the female. It represents the diverse and complex women, as opposed to the simple and stable male.

additional blog #1

Foucault- First there must be power in order for subjects to emerge. Subjects are produced through culture and power. Our subjectivity is based on the idea of knowledge/power. We are formed as individuals by the institutions that have power. “The subject is the vehicle of power”. It is a continuous circle of power reproduction. Institutions that have power need subjects to have power over. Foucault disagrees with the institutions that formed to find truths. He believes that there is no “truth”.

Freud’s two models of subjectivity are the unconscious and the oedipal complex. The unconscious us where we repress thoughts that we don’t want to enter into our conscious, but they often slip out. The development of the subject is based on the child’s relationships with the parents during the oedipal stage. At first the boy desires the mother and wants to replace his father, but then power of his father makes him see that there is a threat of castration, so he goes with his father. The subject is constructed through these experiences.

Lacan- In order for the subject to emerge, language must be there. The subject is constructed through a very complex process. The subject is constructed through the world of language, specifically through the mirror-stage. This stage is when the child first realizes that they are separate from the rest of the world. They then become lost in the symbolic world. Once subjects are created, they constantly desire to get back to the imaginary.

Blog 8: Essentialism

Luce Irigaray studied the female subject since it was something most theories of subjectivity neglected to address properly. She opposes psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan, which represented the female as the by-product of the male. Irigaray used the idea that males were stable, unified and fixed to uphold her theory that the female was diverse and complex. Butler believes that gender came first and then sex. If we are going to look at the idea of nature vs. biology, we cannot do that without influences, since we are already apart of our society. Everything in our culture is a result of gender.

I feel that Butler’s theory is more “essentialist” because she believes that “Gender is a regulated system of performances”. Our society is based on norms of what it means to be a gendered subject and we follow and repeat this system as best as we can. I think that Irigaray’s argument is more “anti-essentialist”. Irigaray believes that women are not uniform like men are. They are all different and are not fixed subjects.