Sunday, March 16, 2014
Monday, March 03, 2014
Exploring the Minds in 'Mahabharata' - A Study of the Experiences during Childhood and Previous Births
The whole purpose of the clues in a mystery are to push us to think beyond what is right in front of us, to make us think of the impossible. We might not know the exact truth behind each and every clue there is, but we might know how those clues glue the pieces of the story. At times, the clues are constructed in a way to add to the ‘fantastic’ aspect of the piece and when these clues or instances transcend the fantastic, we have an epic. It reaches a plane where these events act as the reasons for the actions that follow. They come close to being a truth and though it can be contested, it isn’t. Apart from the events that took place in the epic narrative, Mahabharata, the characters that lived through the events can be studied. As Freud analysed many a patients to locate the origins of their fears, thoughts, personality traits and tendencies, I will attempt to analyse the influence of childhood experiences on the later life of the princes of the ‘Kuru House’. An interesting observation that I came across is that the experiences extend beyond childhood into the previous births as well. Though it might be simple to explain adulthood tendencies based on childhood experiences, the added layer of the influence of previous birth experiences makes this reading somewhat complex.
Freud, in the course of his life and work, proposed and established a number of theories that fall under the psychoanalytic umbrella. One of these suggests that the personality of an adult is formed on the basis of the childhood experiences and instinctual impulses that are ingrained in the mind of that individual. Though there are many thoughts and impulses that might get stored in the unconscious, never to be accessed, the rest remain set in the mind, to varying degrees. Freud majorly addressed the sexual drives and impulses, but he never dismissed the other instinctual instincts that can arise in a person’s mind. Hence, I would like to apply this theory to the character traits that the princes possess in the later course of the story. For the purpose of this paper, I shall only be exploring a number of selected chapters from the first section of Mahabharata, named ‘Adi Parva’, literally meaning ‘the beginning’. This section establishes most of the character that feature in the entire epic and also, how these people came to be.
The first reference to a consequence of the previous birth presents itself in the first chapter ‘On the Banks of the Ganga’. The scene is that of the queen, Ganga, proceeding to kill her eighth child, just as the King, Santanu stops her. She explains to her husband that she was cursed and that was the reason behind her actions. I’d like to bring the focus to how she explains the King’s desire for her – the reason lying in his previous birth. His desire for Ganga has its roots in his desire for her in their previous birth. There are modern studies that use hypnosis to delve deeper into past-life experiences, but that came later. In my view, with reference to the story I am analysis, the dissection of the mind happens on a more spiritual level in Mahabharata. The theory given by Freud works on a physical and psychological level, but when you introduce a new plane of the spiritual to parallel the rest, it brings forth a lot of questions about whether it is truly applicable. It might be and this paper explores just that. So, coming back to the question of his love for Ganga existing in his present birth, we are now posed with the question of possibility. Can the desires be attached to a particular spirit and then transferred to the body? Then again, someone might ask if the spirit exists in the first place.
The second chapter is a better example for the influence of childhood experiences. It is titled ‘Sixteen Years Later’ with reference to the eighth son, then named Devavrata and later, Bheeshma. The chapter gives evidence of all that Bheeshma learns during his childhood and adolescence. His attitude of striving for more than his potential gives testimony to the decisions he takes later in life, when he turns father to his dead brothers’ sons and then grandfather to their sons. His experience of staying away from his father for those many years might have driven him to be the best father figure that the princes could possibly have. This is reflected first when he first chooses the wives for his brother, Vichitraveerya and then through the ways in which he brings up the princes. He provides them an education far superior to his own when he was as old as them.
The next reference to previous birth comes about in the sixth chapter when one of the princesses chosen for Vichitraveerya, Amba claims that she had already chosen her husband. According to custom, she is no longer eligible to marry Vichitraveerya and hence leaves the palace to return to her chosen one. When he rejects her, she is in a fit of rage and does a penance to be able to take revenge on Bheeshma for reducing her to such a state. In time her perseverance gives way to her being granted a boon that she would be reborn as a man who shall destroy Bheeshma. She is also granted the benefit of remembering the rage that she felt in the present birth when she was to be born again. The whole process of being born in this instance is driven by her rage against Bheeshma. Transcending above a childhood to adolescent trait, she is born all over again to fulfil that impulse. The focus here is then on how the act of transference of an instinct is transformed into the fantastic as an element of an epic.
The twelfth chapter that narrates ‘The Birth of the Pandavas and Duryodhana’ represents the source of their personality traits. It is not based on their childhood experiences; it is based on the God that they are born of, hence raising the question of genetically retaining traits and impulses. That then contradicts that belief that every individual is unique. This is said to have occurred in a time obviously much before Freud gave his theories to the world. So, suggesting that the Pandavas possess certain skills and traits because they were born of a certain person, or entity, in this case, questions the theory itself? Can this epic be dissected then, on the basis of psychoanalysis, when the first step of the process is itself questionable? If the brothers had honed their skills based on a certain drive and if they had chosen a certain role based on a particular instinct they couldn’t explain, this theory would have worked quite well.
The fifteenth chapter marks the conflict and is titled ‘Jealousy: Its First Sprouts’. This is the best example of a childhood experience being the root of Duryodhana’s drive in life. His feeling towards his cousins, the Pandavas, had only been the result of a childish rage of jealousy. If he had let it pass, the story would have taken another course altogether. The fact that his uncle, Sakuni influences him at an early age with the most negative of thoughts leaves this experience embedded in his mind. What was then a childish behaviour results in a violent action on his part when he attempts to kill Bheema. The entire course of Duryodhana’s life is then steered by this one desire that could have dissolved had it not been solidified with his uncle’s words.
The last episode of such a Freudian occurrence is in the nineteenth chapter titled ‘Radheya’ which takes us back to the tenth chapter when he is first born of Kunti and the Sun God. He is given away by Kunti, who was then a young girl and found and brought up by a childless couple. At the age of sixteen, Radheya is troubled by his unusual desire to learn archery which was what he was born to be worthy of. These repressed instincts come back to him in the form on dreams and desires that puzzle him. When he addresses his mother, she tells him the truth about how he was found and that he was, in fact, the son of someone divine. The search for his true identity then leads him away from his adopted parents towards his real home.
Despite the few episodes that actually refer to childhood desires transforming into adult personalities, the question here still remains the same. Where are our desires rooted? In the world we live in, it is all apparently in our mind, but based on my reading of Mahabharata, there are worlds still unexplored and that might not even be capable of being explored out there that leave us thinking. I believe that spirits exist, in the sense that the energy that we leave behind. Maybe that connects us to the next life, if there hopefully exists one and that is another way that our desires and instincts are carried forward. I don’t know if Freud ever read this epic, and if he did, I wonder if he would have had a convincing answer to the same.
Bibliography
Mitchell, Stephen A., and Margaret J. Black. Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1995. eBook.
Psychoanalytic Criticism - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/04/
Subramaniam, Kamala. Mahabharata. 16th. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2011. 3- 142. Print.
Nandika A.K.
1324140
Exploring the Minds in 'Mahabharata' - A Study of the Experiences during Childhood and Previous Births
The whole purpose of the clues in a mystery are to push us to think beyond what is right in front of us, to make us think of the impossible. We might not know the exact truth behind each and every clue there is, but we might know how those clues glue the pieces of the story. At times, the clues are constructed in a way to add to the ‘fantastic’ aspect of the piece and when these clues or instances transcend the fantastic, we have an epic. It reaches a plane where these events act as the reasons for the actions that follow. They come close to being a truth and though it can be contested, it isn’t. Apart from the events that took place in the epic narrative, Mahabharata, the characters that lived through the events can be studied. As Freud analysed many a patients to locate the origins of their fears, thoughts, personality traits and tendencies, I will attempt to analyse the influence of childhood experiences on the later life of the princes of the ‘Kuru House’. An interesting observation that I came across is that the experiences extend beyond childhood into the previous births as well. Though it might be simple to explain adulthood tendencies based on childhood experiences, the added layer of the influence of previous birth experiences makes this reading somewhat complex.
Freud, in the course of his life and work, proposed and established a number of theories that fall under the psychoanalytic umbrella. One of these suggests that the personality of an adult is formed on the basis of the childhood experiences and instinctual impulses that are ingrained in the mind of that individual. Though there are many thoughts and impulses that might get stored in the unconscious, never to be accessed, the rest remain set in the mind, to varying degrees. Freud majorly addressed the sexual drives and impulses, but he never dismissed the other instinctual instincts that can arise in a person’s mind. Hence, I would like to apply this theory to the character traits that the princes possess in the later course of the story. For the purpose of this paper, I shall only be exploring a number of selected chapters from the first section of Mahabharata, named ‘Adi Parva’, literally meaning ‘the beginning’. This section establishes most of the character that feature in the entire epic and also, how these people came to be.
The first reference to a consequence of the previous birth presents itself in the first chapter ‘On the Banks of the Ganga’. The scene is that of the queen, Ganga, proceeding to kill her eighth child, just as the King, Santanu stops her. She explains to her husband that she was cursed and that was the reason behind her actions. I’d like to bring the focus to how she explains the King’s desire for her – the reason lying in his previous birth. His desire for Ganga has its roots in his desire for her in their previous birth. There are modern studies that use hypnosis to delve deeper into past-life experiences, but that came later. In my view, with reference to the story I am analysis, the dissection of the mind happens on a more spiritual level in Mahabharata. The theory given by Freud works on a physical and psychological level, but when you introduce a new plane of the spiritual to parallel the rest, it brings forth a lot of questions about whether it is truly applicable. It might be and this paper explores just that. So, coming back to the question of his love for Ganga existing in his present birth, we are now posed with the question of possibility. Can the desires be attached to a particular spirit and then transferred to the body? Then again, someone might ask if the spirit exists in the first place.
The second chapter is a better example for the influence of childhood experiences. It is titled ‘Sixteen Years Later’ with reference to the eighth son, then named Devavrata and later, Bheeshma. The chapter gives evidence of all that Bheeshma learns during his childhood and adolescence. His attitude of striving for more than his potential gives testimony to the decisions he takes later in life, when he turns father to his dead brothers’ sons and then grandfather to their sons. His experience of staying away from his father for those many years might have driven him to be the best father figure that the princes could possibly have. This is reflected first when he first chooses the wives for his brother, Vichitraveerya and then through the ways in which he brings up the princes. He provides them an education far superior to his own when he was as old as them.
The next reference to previous birth comes about in the sixth chapter when one of the princesses chosen for Vichitraveerya, Amba claims that she had already chosen her husband. According to custom, she is no longer eligible to marry Vichitraveerya and hence leaves the palace to return to her chosen one. When he rejects her, she is in a fit of rage and does a penance to be able to take revenge on Bheeshma for reducing her to such a state. In time her perseverance gives way to her being granted a boon that she would be reborn as a man who shall destroy Bheeshma. She is also granted the benefit of remembering the rage that she felt in the present birth when she was to be born again. The whole process of being born in this instance is driven by her rage against Bheeshma. Transcending above a childhood to adolescent trait, she is born all over again to fulfil that impulse. The focus here is then on how the act of transference of an instinct is transformed into the fantastic as an element of an epic.
The twelfth chapter that narrates ‘The Birth of the Pandavas and Duryodhana’ represents the source of their personality traits. It is not based on their childhood experiences; it is based on the God that they are born of, hence raising the question of genetically retaining traits and impulses. That then contradicts that belief that every individual is unique. This is said to have occurred in a time obviously much before Freud gave his theories to the world. So, suggesting that the Pandavas possess certain skills and traits because they were born of a certain person, or entity, in this case, questions the theory itself? Can this epic be dissected then, on the basis of psychoanalysis, when the first step of the process is itself questionable? If the brothers had honed their skills based on a certain drive and if they had chosen a certain role based on a particular instinct they couldn’t explain, this theory would have worked quite well.
The fifteenth chapter marks the conflict and is titled ‘Jealousy: Its First Sprouts’. This is the best example of a childhood experience being the root of Duryodhana’s drive in life. His feeling towards his cousins, the Pandavas, had only been the result of a childish rage of jealousy. If he had let it pass, the story would have taken another course altogether. The fact that his uncle, Sakuni influences him at an early age with the most negative of thoughts leaves this experience embedded in his mind. What was then a childish behaviour results in a violent action on his part when he attempts to kill Bheema. The entire course of Duryodhana’s life is then steered by this one desire that could have dissolved had it not been solidified with his uncle’s words.
The last episode of such a Freudian occurrence is in the nineteenth chapter titled ‘Radheya’ which takes us back to the tenth chapter when he is first born of Kunti and the Sun God. He is given away by Kunti, who was then a young girl and found and brought up by a childless couple. At the age of sixteen, Radheya is troubled by his unusual desire to learn archery which was what he was born to be worthy of. These repressed instincts come back to him in the form on dreams and desires that puzzle him. When he addresses his mother, she tells him the truth about how he was found and that he was, in fact, the son of someone divine. The search for his true identity then leads him away from his adopted parents towards his real home.
Despite the few episodes that actually refer to childhood desires transforming into adult personalities, the question here still remains the same. Where are our desires rooted? In the world we live in, it is all apparently in our mind, but based on my reading of Mahabharata, there are worlds still unexplored and that might not even be capable of being explored out there that leave us thinking. I believe that spirits exist, in the sense that the energy that we leave behind. Maybe that connects us to the next life, if there hopefully exists one and that is another way that our desires and instincts are carried forward. I don’t know if Freud ever read this epic, and if he did, I wonder if he would have had a convincing answer to the same.
Bibliography
Mitchell, Stephen A., and Margaret J. Black. Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1995. eBook.
Psychoanalytic Criticism - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/04/
Subramaniam, Kamala. Mahabharata. 16th. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2011. 3- 142. Print.
Sunday, March 02, 2014
Class Notes on The Sex Which is Not One - 1324147
The essay, “The Sex Which is Not One” explores female sexuality in a light, different from the contemporary views of the author, Luce Irigaray’s time. The summary given by a fellow classmate brought about a discussion of some key concepts: western sexual imaginary – penis envy – autoeroticism.
The essay published in 1977 and later translated to English is believed to be a refutation to Freud and Lacan’s conclusion of women’s sex as the lack of the male organ, phallus. Irigaray defies the Freudian and Lacanian reading when she analyzes the construction of the woman: a deficient derivative of man. She disagrees with the idea of women’s sexuality as that which is dependent on the phallus or in relation to the phallus. Throughout the history, penis invariably became the presence which defined the standard for masculinity. Women, on the other hand lack a clear and visual form of a sex organ. As they have always been constructed through the “male language”, this led them to be considered as the substandard and inferior.
The genitalia we never see, the “down-there” we never talk about, the masturbation we discourage, the sexual pleasure we never explore. As a society we have made the female sex invisible, and in its place propped up a cardboard cut out of a sexuality that is only for the comfortable enjoyment of man and his dominant phallic economy (Feminist Frenzy).
Also, male sexuality is seen as “the "strongest" being the one who has the best "hard-on," the longest, the biggest, the stiffest penis,” with reference to the western sexual imaginary. And when, man penetrates a woman with an intention to understand the secret of his origin, women in this imaginary, only become a prop in man’s fantasies.
According to Irigaray, women’s sexuality can be understood only through her body and this body cannot be reduced to one sex organ. The society has symbolically reduced male pleasure to the phallus, but women have multiple/diversified organs through which they can derive pleasure. Here, female genitals are prominently discussed.
Autoeroticism: She speaks of autoeroticism as internal to women. The “labial” lips of the vagina, that are always in contact with each other give her incessant pleasure while a man needs external tools to arouse himself. Further, she says women’s pleasure centres are plural. The foundation for the essay lies in this assumption.
Irigaray tries to prove that women have neither one nor two, but many pleasure centres which makes a woman’s sex not one. Therefore, sex which is not one is created through negation of sexual pleasure from singular or plural pleasure centres to none.
Friday, February 28, 2014
"This sex which is not one"
In her article, "This sex which is not one", Luce Irigaray defies Freud's and Lacan's analyses of sexual relations and proposes a female sexuality which is self-referential and disconnected from "masculine parameters" of sexual conceptualization.
Irigaray's definition of female sexuality and sexual pleasure is centered exclusively on the female body, which is conceived not as one sexual organ, but as a plurality of them. The female body, she argues, cannot be reduces to one sexual organ, because this would only reaffirm the male logic of the "primacy of the phallus". Important in this regard is Irigaray's concept of the 'other', meant as the capacity to create an alternative definition of the feminine, which defies the one created by patriarchy. It is in the realm of this 'otherness', situated sexually in the female body, that the alternative has to be found. In Irigaray's conceptions, the appropriation of a real female space requires the exclusion of man. Thus, heterosexuality as well as motherhood are rejected as a "masochistic prostitute:” but she does not seem to exclude completely the male cultural tradition, since she refers to a Marxist analysis in her interpretation of women oppression.
Given the very differences in male sexuality and female sexuality, then, leads Irigaray to importantly conclude that, “Women’s desire would not be expected to speak the same language as man’s”. Irigaray’s conclusion here seems to align nicely with that of Helen Cixous, whose “Laugh of the Medusa”, in which she posits “Ecriture feminine” as a women’s way of writing. For her, because the Female Imaginary cannot be pinned down- as Woman’s sexuality is not one, is not even two, but it is plural- so Woman’s language can be similarly be pinned down.
Throughout Irigaray seeks to dispute and displace male-centered structures of language and thought through a challenging writing practice that takes a first step toward a woman's discourse, a discourse that would put an end to Western culture's enduring phallocentrism. She further talks about ‘penis envy’. She says that the very absence of the penis in a woman leads to the ‘penis envy’. A woman realizes that she is different from man because of the lack of a penis. And for this reason, to get over it, she tends to become closer to the male members in the family especially the father or husband to cover up for the lack by serving them. After a course of time, she gets over the electra complex stage and starts for looking outside family relations.
Irigaray further says that, by virtue of the biological constitution of her genitals, in other words, woman has a radically different pleasure/sexuality from man, one characterized by self-sufficient, immediate touching—of each other. Finally, Luce Irigaray's formulation for an alternative female society, while presenting a very insightful critique of the traditional sexual relations, it is by definition one of narrow scope, both rhetorically and politically. It ultimately appeals only to a specific segment of a specific gender. It does not speak to those women, and for that matter to those men as well, concerned with inequality and who happen to be heterosexual.
[Notes of the lecture delivered by Shyam Nair on 24 February, 2014 at Christ University, prepared by Prathibha Sebastian Vellanikaran - I M.A. (ENG) -1324144]
Refernces:
- Nair , Shyam. "The Sex Which is Not One ." 24 02 2014. Address.
- Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. Print.
Institutionalising women's body in a social context as seen in Deepa Mehta's Water
Steve R Mathew
1324111
1st MA English with Communication Studies
Contemporary critical theory
Mr Anil Pinto
28th February 2104
CIA 3
Institutionalising women’s body in a social context as seen in Deepa Mehta’s Water
This study discusses Mehta’s film Water as a complex social document that in a way confronts and uncovers a malaise that prevails in Hindu society. The film grapples with the evil custom of sending Hindu widows away to pilgrimage centres where, forgotten by the acquisitive world, they live abrogated lives in miserable penury. The body which is, as it is seen as a site of degradation and sin by the Hindu society comes forth in a visual form where Deepa Mehta explores the binaries of presence/absence, sin/sinner, male/female and right/wrong. The movie binds the elemental with the feminine and probes the way women are preyed upon and shackled by social institutions pulverized and bartered by patriarchy. The movie represents in its totality a powerful and significant cultural challenge to the dominating masculine values and practices of oppression, subjugation and exploitation of women. Since Mehta happens to be a woman director, her courage in the face of intimidation by the largely patriarchal forces must be acknowledged as the immensely relevant preface to her film Water. The film documents, perhaps a little melodramatically, the marginalized life of forgotten Hindu widows battling to survive the harsh realities of neglect and poverty.
The film is set in the year 1938, when India was still under British rule. Child marriage was common practice back then. Widows had a diminished position in society, and were expected to spend their lives in poverty and worship of God. Widow re-marriages were legalized by the colonial laws, but in practice, they were largely considered taboo. The movie deals with such notions and challenges the predefined concepts, very much believed in the Hindu society. In a society where a woman’s identity is governed by her male relative–whether father, husband, or son–and eventual patrilocality, it would appear that after the death of the husband, she “ceases” as a person and passes into a state of social death.” Since a woman is regarded primarily as a vessel of reproduction, her “social death” also signals her “sexual death.” As a widow she is pushed to the margins of the functioning social unit of the family and is alienated from reproduction sexuality. She begins to be regarded as a disrupter of the social order and the society is not at ease about other categories because a woman is not regarded as an independent being.
Like its predecessors “Fire” (1996), which explored gender and lesbianism in India and “Earth” (1998), which looked at the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, “Water” digs deep into issues that many in India are reluctant to discuss. Now that it has finally been released, it is easy to see why defenders of tradition would want to thwart it. Set in the late 1930s against a backdrop of social upheaval and the quest for national independence, the movie explores the lives and the changing expectations of India’s ultimate outcasts:widows.
The film is packed with emotional scenes, bordered by breaks of comical moments. Much of the levity comes from the spirited lead character, Chuyia (Sarala), a feisty eight-year-old child widow who is brought by her father to a widow’s ashram in the holy city of Varanasi shortly after her husband dies. Chuyia rejects her new life, in which she is forbidden to see her family again, to remarry, to eat hot food or grow long hair and is expected instead to embrace a life of chastity and begging on street corners, while being draped in white for the rest of her life. Living at the ashram, Chuyia meets the young and naive Kalyani (Lisa Ray). Kalyani is pimped in order to pay the ashram’s expenses by the bitter and vulgar-tongued Madhumati (Manorama), an elderly widow who rules the house with an iron hand.
John Abraham, star of action-packed Bollywood films, such as Karam, (2005) Paap, (2004) and Jism (2002) steps out of those song and dance numbers to play a more serious role as Narayan, a radicalized, upper caste law student and follower of Mahatma Ghandi, who pushes to change India’s feudal traditions and ultimately falls in love with Kalyani.
The humble and faithful Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) who is known for Bollywood films like Pinjar (2003) and Bandit Queen (1994) becomes a mother figure for the young Chuyia. Shakuntala is a devout follower of Hindu scriptures, who only gradually begins to question the cruel conditions that her faith requires widows to endure.
Deepa Mehta’s film Water contributes to this filmic discourse on widowhood and makes commendable attempts to embed the cinematic images in the dialectical force-field of social practice and the urgent need for change.
Analysis of Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which is Not One & Speculum of the Other Woman
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Class notes for 18/2/2014 by Catherine Maria Andrade
“The Female Tradition” by Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter is an American feminist critic who helped develop the concept of gynocriticism. It involves the historic study of women writers as a distinct literary tradition, and the term was first coined by Showalter in her essay “Toward a Feminist Poetics.”
In “The Female Tradition”, Showalter begins by saying that English women writers have never suffered from the lack of an audience, yet they have never been sure about what unites them as women. In his essay “The Subjection of Women”, J.S. Mill said that women would find it difficult to overcome the influence of male literary tradition, and to “create and original, primary, and independent art.” He felt that women would always be imitators and never innovators. Showalter says that Mill would have never raised this point if women had claimed an important literary place. To many of his contemporaries, the 19th century seemed to be the Age of the Female Novelist, with stellar examples such as Jane Austen, George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte.
There is a clear difference between books that are written by women and “female literature”. The latter was defined by Henry Lewes as that which “purposefully and collectively concerns itself with the articulation of women’s experience”, and which guides itself towards autonomous expression. Women writers have never considered the fact that their experiences can transcend the personal and assume a collective form in art, revealing a history. Thus, they have always been self-conscious, but only rarely self-defining.
In “The History of the English Novel”, Ernest Baker devotes a chapter to women novelists, and says that “the woman of letters has peculiarities that mark her off from the other sex as distinctly as peculiarities of race or of ancestral tradition.” Showalter says that most critics who have tried to elaborate on these “peculiarities” have found themselves expressing their own cultural biases. The woman novelist is a composite of many stereotypes: to critics of the 20th century, for example, she is childless, and by implication, neurotic.
There are many reasons why the discussion of women writers has been inaccurate and fragmented. Firstly, it has been subjected to what John Gross calls ‘residual Great Traditionalism’. In simple terms, this means that the vast range of English female novelists has been reduced to a tiny band of the ‘great’ – four or five writers such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontë sisters, and Virginia Woolf. Losing sight of the minor novelists, who have acted as links from one generation to the next, has resulted in an unclear understanding of the continuities in women’s writing.
Secondly, critics have found it difficult to look at women novelists and women’s literature theoretically because of their tendency to expand their own culture-bound stereotypes of femininity. Thus, because it is difficult to accurately describe female writers, academic criticism often compensates by de-sexing them.
However, since the 1960s, there has been a renewed enthusiasm for the idea that ‘a special female self-awareness emerges through literature in every period.’ This interest in establishing a more systematic and accurate literary history for women writers is part of a larger interdisciplinary effort by psychologists, sociologists, social historians and art historians to reconstruct a political, social and cultural experience of women. Scholarship generated through this movement has increased the sensitivity to the problems of sexual bias and projection in literary history, while providing the information needed to understand the evolution of a female literary tradition.
Talking about the phases of women’s writing, Showalter says that it goes through three of these stages which can be loosely defined: the first is a prolonged phase of imitation followed by internalization of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition. Second, there is a phase of protest against this and an advocacy of minority rights and values, as well as a demand for autonomy. Finally, there is a phase of self-discovery, where there is a search for identity. An appropriate terminology for these stages would be to call them Feminine, Feminist and Female. These phases overlap, and one can also find them in the career of a single novelist.
class note based on 24 February 2014
Sneha Susan John
1324150
Luce Irigaray is a well-known writer in contemporary French feminism and philosophy. Her writing usually deals between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. She critiques the rejection of women from both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory and projects women sexuality which is not one. She speaks of language and science that are built by a phallocentric society and thereby critiques their notions.
“The sex which is not one” is a text dealing with violation of the woman’s body but it can also be looked at as describing the woman’s body in a way in which most women have not understood. She has given a critical approach to the traditional ideas of sexuality. According to the patriarchal society’s perception, the women’s sexual organs are considered a lack of the penis and the vagaina in no way over power the male organs. Women’s sexuality according to norms has been that which receives a man’s desires.
Irigaray projects the idea of female sexuality that contradicts general patriarchal ideas. She discusses autoeroticism, where a woman derives satisfaction through natural means where she does not need external objects to do so.
“This autoeroticism is disrupted by a violent break-in: the brutal separation of the two lips by a violating penis, an intrusion that that distracts and deflects the woman …. “
Irigaray points out that when there is a sexual act through penetration of the male into female vagaina, there is a destruction of female sexuality. The idea here seems to provoke lesbianism as the separation of the vagaina by a penis is considered a violent break-in, something that exploits the sexuality of women.
The essay contradicts the idea that female sexuality is one that complements the male desires. She critiques the thought of Freud and Lacan who discusses womanhood as the significance of the difference between male and female sex organs and also the experience of erotic desire in men and women. She also discusses the linguistic character of sexual difference like Lacan and intensely disagrees with his depiction of the Symbolic order as historical and static.
A part of the title, not one brings out the plurality of sexuality in a woman. She deals with Freud’s understanding of the female sexuality which is considered a lack or none. She brings out the plurality of sexuality saying that the women have sex organs almost everywhere and breaks down the general notion of the lack. Irigaray makes it a point to bring out the feminine sexuality by presenting the body and eliminating the phallocentric perceptions of sexuality.
CLASS NOTES
Pearl Pallavi Sahu
1324142
Literary Criticism and Contemporary Theory
MEL 232
I MA English
24 February, 2014
Monday
Class Notes
The Sex which is Not One
The essay, ‘The Sex which is Not One’, was written by Luce Irigaray where she tries eliminating the notion of female sexuality always being conceptualized on the basis of masculine parameters.
A person’s sexuality has always been an important aspect and the gender or sexuality has been dependent on the phallus of a person. It has always been considered that the penis is definite because it is visual and has a form while the vagina has no specific form and is indefinite. This causes the concept ‘lack’ for the women. This ‘lack’ causes the ‘penis envy’.
The very absence of the penis in a woman leads to the ‘penis envy’ which shows that the absence of the penis makes the woman realize that she is different from man and that is the reason she tends to long for it. She tends to get closer to the male members in the family especially the father or husband to cover up for the lack by serving them. She lives with the desire of the male organ in some way or the other. It is after some time that she gets out of the so called Electra complex stage and starts looking outside family relations.
The concept of autoeroticism is the stage when the woman herself ‘touches herself’. The man to derive sexual pleasure from his own body needs external help such as hands or the woman’s body or anything else, while for a woman it just happens consciously but soon becomes an unconscious effort from the woman’s side. According to Irigaray, a woman can derive the pleasure from her own body because of what she calls the lips that are formed by her genitals. Their constant contact gives her a sexual pleasure which she cannot avoid. This is what autoeroticism is. She says that this autoeroticism is disrupted only by the violent break in of the penis into the vagina parting the lips from each other.
She says that in this world, a woman, more than being self-obliging, obliges man. In fact proving the ‘lack’, she accepts to the man giving herself totally in his hands for him to act upon her as he likes. With his presence she gets what is not hers. There is a sense of dependency on him to give him what he desire. But she will never tell him what she wants or in easier terms, she does not know what she wants. The woman longs for the missing organ. Hence, she is considered to be the imperfect man. Man identifies the pleasure with a woman to maternal relations. He associates it with the womb to establish his lost maternal connections and get the secrets of his origin.
The writer says that because she does not have a sexual form, even her language is different from that of man. Her language also is not definite and what she says cannot be made out clearly. Unlike that of man who speaks out straight like his definite sexuality. The sexual imaginary in a woman is more a less the obliging props of a man’s fantasies. Since she does not have a specific sexual organ, she is considered to have none. This puts her as not one nor two but as the other. She is also categorized as the plural because she really does not have to derive pleasure from just her vagina but every part of a woman’s body could let her derive sexual pleasure.
Hence, through the essay, the writer tries to show the other aspects of woman sexuality showing that she is not dependent on masculine norms.
References:
· Nair, Shyam. "The Sex Which is Not One." 24 02 2014. Lecture.
· http://media.wix.com/ugd/b7563b_0971a09fbd16425f81d72e4853ced8a9.pdf
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Piyali Sarkar 1324143 (class notes)
Piyali Sarkar
1324143
MEL 232
Contemporary Critical Theory
Anil Pinto
24/02/2014
The Sex Which is Not One
Associated with feminism and psychoanalysis, Luce Irigaray is a remarkable cultural theorist best known for her work published in France through the 1970s. Psychoanalyst, linguist, and philosopher, Irigaray is concerned, particularly in Speculum of the Other Woman (1974, trans., 1985) and This Sex Which Is Not One (1977,trans., 1987), with exposing how Western discourse has effaced woman as the specular image of man. By contrast,
Irigaray carefully avoids enfolding her own ideas as "theory" to avoid an essentialism that will support patriarchalism. Irigaray was convinced that identity, if not fully then at least partly, was enacted in "self positioning in language".
Thus, she began to look for differences between the regular speech of men and hat of women: "it is not a question of biology determining speech, but of identity assumed in language within a particular symbolic system known as patriarchy, and as described by Jacques Lacan, in which the only possible subject position is masculine. Within this system, the only feminine identity available to a woman is that of a "defective" or "castrated" men; women are not symbolically
self-defined." Irigaray's thesis, put together in This Sex Which Is Not One, is that there might be a possibility of a different and non-masculine discourse. The following are the arguments presented by her:
1. Men are more likely to take up a subject position in language, to designate themselves as subjects of the discourse or action; women are more likely to efface themselves, to give precedence to men or to the world.
2. The use of the first person pronoun, I, by women, does not necessarily indicate a feminine identity.
3. Women are accustomed to being the vehicles of men's self-representation; their own self-representation in language is more or less absent.
4. Women are more likely to engage in dialogue; while men privilege the relation with the world and the object, women privilege interpersonal relations.
5. Women are not, as is sometimes thought, more emotional and subjective than men when they speak; their speech is likely to efface the expression of their subjectivity.
6. Women are less abstract than men, and are more likely to take account of context, they are also more likely to collaborate with the researcher and take research seriously.
Irigaray argues that the complexity of female sexuality and eroticism does not fit into male notions of sexuality. Irigray discovered women’s autoeroticism. In her autoeroticism, a woman is not “pleasure-giving” to men but “self-embracing” (This Sex Which is Not One 24). The autoeroticism could be a clue to overcome the logic of sameness in phallogocentric understanding of sexuality and its male God. The language she uses to describe this God comes from her account of morphology of women’s continual self-touching in the carelessness of two lips. God’s identity in trinity honors both self-love and relational wonder. Irigaray’s description of women’s autoeroticism helps to expand the conceptual horizons of Trinitarian thought. This God does not need an external other in order for there to be self-knowledge, for such knowledge is eternally generated through the relations of the Trinity. Such a God can relate to that which is truly ‘other’ than God, without reducing the other to a function of divine, narcissistic desire, as is the case in phallocetric conceptions of the Divine-human relation like the caress of two lips – always touching yet half open.
References:
· Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which is Not One. Cornell University Press, 1985. Print.
· Nair , Shyam. "The Sex Which is Not One ." 24 02 2014. Address.
[Notes of the lecture delivered on 24 February, 2014 at Christ University, prepared by Piyali Sarkar - I M.A. (ENG) -1324143]
This Sex Which Is Not One
This Sex Which Is Not One
In her essay ‘This Sex Which Is Not One’, Luce Irigaray critiques the masculine notion of a woman’s sexuality and proposes a female sexuality which is self-referential and disconnected from "masculine parameters".
From the early ages, a person’s sexuality has been defined by the presence of the phallus. The penis is a visual object and the vagina is not. Hence it is considered as a ‘lack’, which gives birth to the concept of an imperfect man. The lack of penis in a woman creates an envy known as the ‘penis envy’. A woman’s affection towards her mother declines because she blames her for the lack of a penis. To full fill her ‘lack’, she searches outside herself. This envy is the result of her affection towards her husband and father. Her desire for the penis is later achieved by giving birth to a boy child.
Talking about autoeroticism, Irigaray says that for a man to pleasure himself, he “needs an instrument: his hand, a woman’s body, language.” But for woman, “she touches herself in and of herself without any need for mediation.” “Woman ‘touches herself’ all the time,” Irigaray writes, “and moreover no one can forbid her to do so, for her genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact”. By virtue of the biological constitution of her genitals, in other words, woman has a radically different pleasure/sexuality from man. Her autoeroticism according to Irigaray, “is disrupted by a violent break-in: the brutal separation of the two lips by a violating penis”. This, Irigaray continues, “distracts and deflects the woman from self-caressing from her “own pleasure,” which disappears in this intrusion, “the encounter with the totally other.”
Next she talks about Western sexuality that has been laid down by man. It is based on the erection of the penis, the “thickness” of that “form,” the layering of its volume, its expansion and contraction and even the spacing of the moments in which it produces itself as form. She condemns man’s sexual imagery of woman as just a sexual object. A man’s desire of penetration into a woman’s vagina has two main reasons: to relive thoughts of his past about the mystery of the womb from where he entered this world; and also to establish his lost maternal connection. The penetration makes a woman submissive towards man. Also, she finds pleasure in being used as an object for sex.
Unlike Laura Mulvey, Luce Irigaray does not believe that "we can begin to make a break for examining patriarchy with the tools it provides," but she does not seem to exclude completely the male cultural tradition.
Notes created by Reginald Valsalan (1324108)
Notes taken on 24-2-1014
Submitted 25-2-2014