Month: May 2013

No mortal women on the earth at the time of Prometheus?

Who said that?

Who do you think saved Prometheus?

————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Oh, Prometheus, my brave, strong, powerful, rugged Man.. I come to liberate you…”

 

 

Mountain- Breast

Peak-  Nipple

Eagle-  Scissors

Fire-  Water

Male- Female

Cut-Eat

…and where the last drop fell is where Prometheus pissed,  free from any Strangulation.

 

 

INTRO 

PART O

ARE YOU A MAN OR A MOUSE?

-“I am a woman transformed to a cat
I am a man transformed to a mouse
I am a mouse trasformed to a cat
I am a cat transformed to a man
I am….”

-“Oh, my dear, you are not a mouse, you are not a man, you are not a woman, you are not cat”..hahahah..You are dreaming to be everything…bit is your dream? or Other’s dream?…hahahah..”

-“Oh, nooooooooooooooo…..”

PART OO

-“Okay…at least now in my dreams,  can I be who I like?”

-“Well, my dear…what would you like to be?”

-“A Mouseman….”

-Well, my dear..you cannot be a mouse and a man at the same time!”

-“Ah..”

-“Go to sing now, my dear!”

 

 

 

-Where can I find my feminized masculinity, my dear?

-Well, I suppose in the clothing mountain of your significant appearance.

 

 

 

HELENE CIXOUS

“And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written.(And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.). Because writing is at once too high, too grat for you, it ‘s reserved for the great- that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly” Besides, you ‘ve written a little, but in secret.” The laugh of the Medusa.

http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/e321/Cixous-Laugh.pdf

NOTES from the article> HELENE CIXOUS: an imaginary utopia. (Moi, T. (1985), Sexual, Textual, Politics, Methuen & Co., New York)

• 1970, France
• She writes about the realtioship betwwen feminity/ women/feminism/text
• She refuses the label of feminism- bourgeois> feminists are womanm who wants power, respect, social legitimation.
• She mades a strong critic against the patriarcal mode of thought.

PATRIARCHAL BINARY THOUGHT on OPPOSITIONS

Activity- Passivity

Day – Night

Sun- Moon

Father- Mother

Head- Emotion

Logos – Pathos

Intelligible- Sensitive

Culture- Nature

The fundamental couple of male/female in the end comes back.

Nature – History     Nature- Art
Nature- Mind
Passion- Action

DEATH  > Victory against the passivity.

It doesn’t matter which of thesse couple ones choose to highlight the hidden female/male opposition is traced anyway. But in these couple some one has to win and in order to achieve that has to destroy the other.Then there is a meaning. So in order for something to acquire meaning must destroy its opposite. Under the patriarchy the male is the Victor, the one that destroys. The woman “Either is passive otherwise she doesn’t exist” .

A.J Greimas> meaning is produced precisely through binary oppostions.
Derrida> meaning is achieved through the “free play of the signifier”>Open -ended play between the presence of the signifier and the absence of the other. In order to make a distinction between writing and speech we have to realise that wirting is very close to difference.

ECRITURE FEMININE

• For Cixous the concept of feminine writing is “the work in difference” .
• She believes in the inherentbisexual  nature of the human beings.
• classic conception of bisexuality- the Other bisexuality
• This Other bisexuality is  >Multiple, variable and ever – changing  and is consisting as it does of the “ exclucion either of the difference or of one sex”. It “doesn’t annul differences, but stirs them, pursues them, increases them”.

REALM of PROPER:

PROPER> PROPERTY> APPROPRIA

Masculinity and masculine system of values. “Masculine libidinal economy”

•  Emphasis on:

SELF- IDENTITY

SELF- AGGRANDIZEMENT

ARROGATIVE DOMINANCE

that leads to male obsession for classification, systematization, hierarchization

• Fears that are related: of expropriation, castration, separation, loss of the attribute.

• Property is proximity, nearness.

REALM OF GIFT

“Deconstructive space of pleasure and orgasmic interchange with the other”

• Gift perceived by a man

DANGER.  When you receive it you open to others, is established inequality (difference), there is imbalance of power.

SO man wishes to RETURN THE GIFT

“Return”: the economy is founded on a system of returns. If a man spends and is spent, it’s on condition that his power return  (Castration, 50)

•  Gift perceived by woman

GENEROSITY. Gives without the thought of return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Constructing Masculinity.

Berger M. & Wallis B. & Watson, (1995), Constructing Masculinity, New York.

QUOTES

“I would argue that masculinity, however defined, is, like capitalism, always in crisis”. S. Godeau

“The basic purpose of obscenity laws is and always has been to reinforce cultural taboos on sexuality and suppress feminism, homosexuality, and ther forms of sexual dissidence…In a male super-mascisist society the only obscenity law that will not e used against women is no law at all.” Ellen Willis.

“Some women find a penis distasteful, others can take penises or leave them, but many of us find penises rather vulnerable and endearing. It’s the rest of men that scare us.” female wag´s comment on Lorena Bobbitt case.”

I am a Wo-Man who is afraid. 

I am afraid of what I am

I am afraid of what I am not

I am afraid that I don’t know who I am

I am afraid that I do know that I don’t know who I am

I am what I am afraid to be

I know that I am afraid to be

I am afraid that the Others tell me of what I have to be afraid.

……………….

 

Notes from the chapter> Male trouble by Abigal Solomon-Godeau p. 69-76

Main topics of this paper are the construction of masculinity, the subjectivity of the contemporary man, the visual re-presentation of the male body in

painting (“feminized” masculinity of the 19^th century: Pierre Narcisse-Guerin or Girodet Trioson)

Aurora and Cephalous(1810), Morpheus and Iris (1811) Sleep of Endymion (1793)

and in mass media ( ads of 90s: Joe camel, Marlboro Man

 

 

• The masculinity is seen under the same lenses that is seen the femininity in feminist theory.

“Masculinity is, like femininity, a concept that bears only an adventitious relation to biological sex and whose various manifestation collectively constitute the cultural , social, and psychosexual expression of gender” (Godeau A. S., 1995, p.71)

• Masculinity becomes something that has to be: ACQUIRED, ACHIEVED, INITIATED (through painful ritual/mutilation etc)

• “crisis in masculinity” within the different expressions of idealized masculinity. According to author the “crisis” of masculinity is a veritable and venerable topos that we can contest already in the French art of late 18^th and beginning of 19^th century: large swords- diminutive genitalia, passive, beautiful, young man, poses and facial expressions.

Paintings of Pierre Narcisse-Guerin> reversal roles morphological effeminacy of idealized male figure, male sensuality and voluptuousness, feminized imagery of heroic masculinity. The female figure is phallicized (Aurora).

Girodet’s painting: androgynous, feminized, passive male figure that embraces: castration/ alterity / specularity

 

• Silverman: Nonphallic masculinity (“perverse”, “deviant”) vs classical masculinity (phallic, virile, martial, intensively Oedipalized).
• BUT The expression of nonphallic masculinities does not constitutes a particular problem in the patriarchal system of law and order.

• Physical Organ – Symbolic Phallus

ALEX POTTS: FEMINIZED MASCULINITIES of POST-REVOLUTIONARY CULTURE:

-represents the ultimate flight from sexual differences,

-is an extention of the woman’s expulsion from public sphere

-is the refelction of the chainging status of artists in the emerging free market of cultural production

-repudiation of a previous oppressive model of masculinity not appropriate to the needs of a new collective imaginary and symbolic order.

• Eroticized androgenous representation of masculinity does not necessary transgress the patriarcal privilege of masculinity.
• Homosexual desire and narcissistic identification.
• 2 options: feminized masculinity pr masculinized masculinity

EPHEBE: as masculine representation of Beauty ideal

as feminized image of masculinity: fantasy of possession and mastery

as unstable image of ambiguous gender: a phantasmatic free play

 

The “masculinity” is interrogated, analysed, destabilized but “Patriarchy” doesn’t relinquishes of the privilege and the power that denotes. And on the other hand has nothing to do with the female emancipation, empowerment and liberation.

 

 

Notes form the chapter>Marjorie Heins. Masculinity, sexism and censorship law. pp 223-239

 

CASE FRASER (1986) At a school assembly of approximately 600 high school students, Matthew Fraser made a speech nominating a fellow student for elective office. In his speech, Fraser used what some observers believed was a graphic sexual metaphor to promote the candidacy of his friend. As part of its disciplinary code, Bethel High School enforced a rule prohibiting conduct which “substantially interferes with the educational process . . . including the use of obscene, profane language or gestures.” Fraser was suspended from school for two days. http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1985/1985_84_1667

 

CASE ROTH (1957) a case which redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. Samule Roth was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing the sending of “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” materials through the mail for advertising and selling a publication called American Aphrodite (“A Quarterly for the Fancy-Free”) containing literary erotica and nude photography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_v._United_States

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

LAW and Obsenity in America

 

• LAW: judges inject their moral values/attitude about sexuality.
• The student-goverment campaign speech of Matthew Frase : “glorifying male sexuality” and “insulting “ to females according to Justice Steven.
• Penis: symbol of sexual dominance and rape.

 

• power relatioship
• indecency
• sexist attitude
• order and morality
• control of lascivious thoughts
• censcorship and nudity
• “protection” of woman and children> those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.
• Women were assumed to be frail, asexula creatures who had to be kept in ignorance and protected from the threateninf effects of erotic awakening for their sake and for the good of society. (case Regina v. Hicklin)
• Obscenity law and First Amendment protection (F.P.A): the idea that art or entertainment about sex is not entitled to full First Amendment protectionj because it is “no essential part of exposition of ideas”.#
• One of the function of the F.A.P is the moral judgment about correct gender roles and healthy sexual desires.
• Political control of female sexuality- bscenity laws.
• “healthy” lust standards.
• “Normal”- “abnormal.
• No empirical base to believe that pornography induces sex crime or antisocial behaviour.
• Catharine MacKinnon does not distinguish between raoe and intercourse; she sees them as epxressing “ the same power relation”, sees sexualitz as “violating” and pornography as bas because it shoes that woman (or some of us at least) “desire to be fucked”. Nadien Strossen.

 

Homophobia and Censorship

 

• Robert Mapplethrope
• Hpmophobia has been driving library censcorship battles,the main target is usually gay-positive literature.
• Fear of emasculation or vulnerability may also account for the oddly disparate responses to art containinf male and female nudity. Penis: threat in this culture more that vagine.
• Nudity= vulnerability