History of Social Work Education - Gamre Chima R Marak

Introduction

 An assessment of social work education must begin with a look that there have been sweeping changes that has taken place in the national as well as the international level. 

Several individuals have shared their valuable thoughts into the emergence of Social Work as a discipline for education:

Dr Thomas identified some of the emerging fields that social work educators have to concentrate. The identified areas are: gerontology, environment, peace studies, counseling, tribal exploitation, etc. He is of the opinion that is social workers should concentrate on such areas of concern so as not to become irrelevant. In order to develop the social work education, the importance of communication skills is felt and the quality of the atmosphere of the training institutions, which according to Dr Thomas determines the quality of the final product.

Dr D. Paul Chowdhry calls for a curriculum building in social work education, as it is a very difficult task. He adds that the curriculum constructed should be dynamic in nature, and should be a continuous and joint exercise of the academicians, administrators and practitioners and other experts in the field.

Prof. S. B Saxena touches upon important aspects of social work education, and stresses on how each can be strengthened by having a built-in system of feedback. There is a need to sharpen research tools so as to identify the emerging needs and new concerns. Traditionally, the honored method of instruction was ‘blackboard and chalk’. With the exceptional expansion of communication technology, it will be more effective to use the modern technology in social work education. Until 1994, there were ten institutions in India which was providing undergraduate education in Social Work.

Dr. H. Y. Siddique talks on the important models of Social Work, such as “Systems Approach”, “Social Change Approach” and “Neighborhood development” and so on, which enables us to get a clear message as to the extent of the contribution that Social Work provides for the enrichment of the society.

Dr. I. A. Shariff is of the view that great leap has been made by Psychiatric Social Work in India, with the help of NIMHANS, Bangalore. NIMHANS has been providing M.Phil, training programs and research work in Psychiatric Social Work.

History of Social Work

It is being said that ‘Social Work’ is an extension of the earlier types of activities in the last centuries. Even though, Social Work did not seem to exist before the 1860s, certain periods in the history played a role in developing Social Work. The historical development can be divided into the following stages:

        i.            The Colonial Period (1620-1776)

      ii.            Civil War and Industrial Revolution (1776-1860)

    iii.            Industrialism-The Human Side (1860-1900)

    iv.            Social Work seeking professional characteristics (1900-1930)

      v.            Highly Professionalized Discipline (1930 onwards)

In the USA, the existence of Social Welfare Services was present since the establishment of the original thirteen colonies on the eastern sea board in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Elizabethan Poor Law existed as the basic pattern for extending financial assistance for the people in need.

Beginning of Social Work Education

The first professional Social Worker in United States of America was Mary E. Richmond. She was also the treasurer of Baltimore Charity Organisation Society and later became a practitioner, teacher and a theoretician. In the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1897 in Toronto, she advocated towards the establishment of a training school for professional social workers. The Charity Organisation Society of New York started the training course for perspective Social Workers in 1898. A little later, New York School of Philanthropy was created, which is known today as Columbia University School of Social Work.

The Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy was established in 1901, which late on became affiliated to the University of Chicago. It was then realized that education for Social Work should be part of the general University education. Simmons College in Boston was the third School of Social Work to be established. This school in Boston was the pioneer school to develop medical social work.

In 1919, the American Association of Schools of Social Work was founded. Its purpose was to facilitate the communication among the other schools of social work.

In 1867, Edward Edison thought that the distribution of alms or relief did not serve as a solution of the problem. University settlement had three objectives:

        i.            Education and Cultural Development of the poor.

      ii.            Provide information to the students and other inmates of the settle house regarding the poor for the improvement of their conditions for the social reform.

    iii.            To develop consciousness towards social and health problems and the need for enacting legislation.

In 1928, the International Association of Schools of Social Work was founded at the International Conference of Social Work in Paris. The initial number of schools of social work was 51. The association comprised of member schools from different parts of the world.

According to the decision of the Association of Schools of Social Work, it was firmly established that the American tradition of organizing social work education on the graduate level would begin. With the emergence of graduate education in Social work in the United States of America as the only level of professional social work, the existence of the undergraduate programs did not disappear. It continued to meet the demands of the state departments of public welfare. In 1942, the institution organized their courses under the name National Associations of Schools of Social Administration. The Association was able to promote the undergraduate level of social work courses in various parts of United States.

The event then followed several years of discussion between the associations so as to find a basis for agreement with regard to the development and accreditation of the undergraduate education in social work. Thus, leading to the formation of National Council of Social Work Education in 1946. It came to their realization that there was a need for University Education in Social Work, since it represented the progression of social work education from the undergraduate to the graduate years. Study of Social Work in the undergraduate level represented the first stage of preparation for social work; the first year of graduate year represented the second stage; whereas the second year of the graduate year represented the third stage which was necessary for the professional practice. The Post-graduate studies aimed at preparing for the professional leadership in administration, research and teaching, this represented the fourth stage. These stages came to be considered fundamental to any curriculum of social work education.

History of Social Work Education in India

The development of Social Work in India can be presented according to the historical analysis:

        i.            Era of Community Living

      ii.            Era of Charity

    iii.            Era of Secular Reforms

    iv.            Era of Religious Reforms

      v.            Era of Professional Training and Organisation

The organization of formal training for Social Workers started since the nineteen twenties by Social Service League, Bombay.

In the history of Social Work in India, 1936 marks a turning point as the first school of Social Work was started in Bombay under the advice of Dr. Clifford Manshardt of the American Marathi Mission. The school’s name was Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work, now known as Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The pattern of the school was based on the pattern of Schools of Social Work in the United States of America. It was the only institution of its kind for eleven years.

This was the only institution providing professional Social Work till 1947. After Independence, several schools came up – In 1947, Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi, and College of Social Service, Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad was established. Delhi School of Social Work in was established in 1948 and Department of Social Work, Lucknow University in 1949. The Gujarat Vidyapith was founded by Mahatma Gandhi.

The most prominent feature of the Social Work education in India has been the two year training program at the graduate level. In accordance with the international survey on training facilities in social work of 1950, it was noted that most of the countries in the world had only the undergraduate level of social work and not the graduate level, the graduate level education was confined to highly industrialized and economically well developed countries.

From the year 1955, there was a rapid expansion of welfare services and its requirement for trained social work personnel. Many more centers opened for Social Work education. The number of centers was 13 in 1960, grew to 34 in 1978 and to 50 in 1988. All the institutions that were set up before 1967 offered two year professional training in Social Work only on the graduate level. The undergraduate level was started only during the later part of 1960s.

Table: No. of students awarded Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD Degree in Social Work from 1950 to 1975 in India.

Degree	Boys	Girls	Total
Bachelor’s Degree	1252	577	1829
Master’s Degree	6437	2121	8558
PhD Degree	65	33	98
Total	7754	2731	10485

Different patterns of bachelor’s courses in social work developed in India. Origin of the first pattern was in 1955, when the departments of Sociology and Social Work in Lucknow University introduced social work as an optional subject in Bachelor’s program. Initially, it was not aimed at providing a professional course but to attract students for its Master’s Program in Social Work, which in turn helped in raising the quality and standard of its graduate teaching.

After having sufficient experience in conducting graduate program in social work, Nirmala Niketan had also started the under-graduate program in social work. It was in a better position to provide the link between the two levels of program, which also resulted in the revision and improvement of its Master’s curriculum.

The country saw that the expansion of the doctoral programs in social work was much faster than the bachelor’s program. There were only 5 doctoral programs in social work in 1965, which went up to 11 in 1980.

In India, the Associations of Schools of Social Work was established in 1960, so as to perform as a non-official organization in the field of social work education. Some of the concerns of the Association are:

        i.            Laying down and maintaining proper standards in professional social work education and promoting the profession on scientific lines.

      ii.            Providing opportunity for faculty members to meet and exchange their ideas.

    iii.            Arranging seminar and refresher courses for faculty members.

    iv.            Encouraging and coordinating researches and promoting publication of literature on different subjects relating to social work.

      v.            Disseminating information with regard to social work education.

    vi.            Working as a national forum on all matters concerning social work education.

In India, in the early twentieth century, the phenomenon that appeared was formal training in social work which comprised of a course of lectures and supervised fieldwork. In the wake of nineteenth century, there was the growth of adhoc training courses. The first set of training in social work education was given by Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay.

The schools of Social Work which were established earlier had the expertise and the resources to develop social work education in the under-graduate level and integrate it with the graduate level, but no such initiative was adopted by them. But Rural Institutes of Vishva Bharati and Jamia Millia Islamia converted their Diploma in Rural Services to Bachelor’s degree in Social Work in 1967.

In 1963, the first Review Committee of the Association of the Schools of Social Work in India organized a National Seminar in Bangalore. The seminar was conducted so as to discuss the questions on organizing social work education in the under-graduate level.

In the second Review Committee, it was noted that as the graduate social work education started in India following the American pattern, the Bachelor’s of Social Work program also took inspiration from the American pattern. The American model aimed at:

        i.            Providing the students of liberal education knowledge of social work, which may be useful for the effective carrying out of non-social work jobs.

      ii.            Training students for jobs with social work functions at the intermediate or field levels.

    iii.            Preparing students for graduate education in social work.

Till 2009, the number of Social Work training institution was 41. Bachelor’s degree was still being provided by some, Certificate courses in Social Work, Post-graduate diploma and most of them were conducting courses which were leading to Master’s degree in Social Work. And about one third of them were providing PhD courses. And two of the institutions were providing the highest research degree of D. Litt in Social Work.

Conclusion

It is seen that social work existed since earlier times. Although, its recognition as a profession and as a discipline in education came to be recognized much later. After comparing and contrasting the evolution of undergraduate education in Social Work in U.S.A and India, it is pointed out that the undergraduate program in Social Work developed well in the U.S.A. In India, most institutions that had initially started with an undergraduate program, but eventually developed post-graduate programs too. But rarely, institutions that began with a post-graduate program started an under-graduate program.

It is looked upon at social work education to produce efficient social workers since education is not merely a preparation for career but preparation for life. Through higher education there is a need to improve the quality of social work as a profession and as a discipline in Universities, so as to meet the requisite capacity to face the global problems and the need to make a distinct contribution in the society.

References

Jacob, K. K. (1994). Social Work in India: Retrospect and Prospect. New Delhi: Himanshu Publications.

Jha, J. K. (2009). An Introduction to Social Work. New Delhi: Anmol Publications.

Singh, S., & Srivastava, S. P. (2003). Social Work Education in India: Challenges and Opportunities. Lucknow: New Royal Book Co. 

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.

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.

Supritha Balu

1324151

Contemporary Critical Theory- MEL 232

Dr. Pinto

15 February 2014

Reading Barthes with a Cup of kaapi

This is the time for a secret confession….I have never been able to understand Barthes.  His texts are way too lengthy and taxing on my fragile mind, and I simply could not for the life of me postulate as to why any scholar would want to dissect myths.  After all myths are not to be messed with, right?  They MAY be only half-truths, but they are there for a reason.  For instance, I would never dare question my grandparents over a retelling of the Ramayana; the epic is filled with myths and mythological characters in order to inculcate certain CULTURAL values (my personal opinion).  And here my friends, is the wardrobe to the magical land of Narnia….

Myth does not necessarily need to refer to made-up stories; for Barthes, myth is a semiological construction by members of a certain culture who signify and grant meaning to the world around them (Myth Today).  What is more, the originators of these myths necessarily believe them to be true (Encyclopedia Mythica).  In simpler terminology, Barthes considers all discourses to be myths.  Perplexed?  If we were to look at the very etymology of the word ‘myth’, it stems from the Greek mythos which initially meant speech or discourse, but later came to be associated with fable and legend (Encyclopedia Mythica).  If I were to reach into my inner-foodie and to all my culinary-inspired friends out there; even in terms of what is today known as food communication, the symbols (i.e. the combination of signifier and signified) are none other than pure simple myths.  In order to prove my (rather Barthes’ point), let’s take an easy example:

 h+o+t+d+o+g= signifier

a cooked sausage, grilled or steamed and served in a sliced bun as a sandwich= signified (Wikipedia)

According to Saussure, the link between the signifier and the signified is associative; we label and attribute meanings to objects, concepts, ideas, events, and experiences.  Hence, we come a full-circle back to Barthes by concluding that all things are myths.  Having established this, let us not go into a sense of ennui; instead, we shall apply Barthes’ theorem to a universally well-loved and admired entity: COFFEE!  

For as long as I remember, coffee for us Tamil Iyers were never cappuccinos or frappes, but degree filter coffee.  The beverage became such an iconic symbol of Tam-Brahms, that it became customary to step into one’s home and smell the aroma of the decoction wafting from the kitchen.  Guests are usually required to compliment the sight, smell and taste of the kaapi served in the dabara and tumbler.  If the celebrated drink does not live upto its mark though, it is spread throughout the Iyer gossip-tree that a particular household cannot provide its visitors with well-made filter coffees.  How did this cultural narrative of the Tam-Brahm and the Kumbakonnam degree filter coffee come about?  Well, perhaps Barthes can help us in analyzing this hundred years-old tradition…..or as we now call it, myth.

Moving away from the signifier and the signified, the filter kaapi has become a second order signifier, standing for cultural product.  The essence of Tam-Brahm values that the beverage symbolises is virtuously associative.  Much like in the visual narrative of the African child soldier saluting the French flag, we are required to read between the lines to arrive at the required associative meaning.  Denotatively, the filter kaapi is a milky beverage made from roasted coffee beans and extracted in a metallic container under the force of gravitation (Anzzcafe).  Connotatively though, the mixture of coffee beans, chicory, milk and jaggery; not only stands for the Godly act of hospitality, but is also a carrier of the South-Indian pride of being able to produce gold from straw.  I shall explain the latter statement; India was known to the British as the land of tea.  Coffee came to the South (especially Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) in the seventeenth century, through an Indian Muslim Saint Baba Budan.  He smuggled seven coffee beans from Yemen while on a pilgrimage to Mecca (ironical; Wall Street Journal Blog).  Coffee plantations thrived in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu; the local royals found it easy to placate the British sensibilities by serving them a rich hot brew of filter coffee.  Thus several hill-stations in the South became holiday spots for the British; they could enjoy the stiff air coming from the hills while keeping watch over the coffee and tea plantations.  The British officers were so enamored by this dark drink that they set up several coffee stalls near prominent railway lines.  The filter kaapi by the late nineteenth century, had crept into Tamil homes where coffee lovers (mostly Tamil women, who were interestingly asked to stay away from this ‘dark poison’) roasted peaberry beans and devised their own gadget (the filter/percolator) for roasting, grinding, brewing and serving.  Thus the degree kaapi turned into a community art-form (Crucible Chronicle).  Dissecting the coffee linguistically, chicory beans were and are still used to make the filtered brew.  The South Indian pronunciation of chicory was chigory which became digory and finally, degree (Kumbakonam Degree Coffee, The Hindu Online).  Hence, the myth of the filter coffee is a science of forms (Myth Today).  We are required to weave everything that comprises an icon/object together, in order to arrive at the desired meaning and establish the myth.  

Myth and their meanings are historically produced and conditioned according to Barthes; they are never fixed, but are constantly growing or changing.  He goes on further to say that myths de-historicise and de-politicise meanings that are always historical and political.  In terms of the filter coffee, the myth of the kaapi stands alone.  It has been reproduced so many times that it has become Americanised or Starbucked as we now call it.  When I decide to purchase a degree filter coffee today, it may not be its history or cultural implications that navigate my decision-making process, but the fact that I want to have it and my economic status which allows me to consume the product.

Myth for Barthes does not conceal anything, but distorts reality.  Myth is an ideological tool which presents realities in a manner that complies with the ruling ideology.  Take the myth of coffee itself; most of us drink it today and are psychologically made to do so because of the crop of coffee-places within an area itself.  These cafes were first opened to serve coffees-on-the-go and to provide a relaxed atmosphere for enjoying beverages.  People in the nineties were busy and they required peace-of-mind.  Hence the start of such coffee chains was in accordance with the ruling ideology.  The myths of various food items keep changing from one generation to another, in order to earn its current standing in favour of the ruling party’s ideas.  Hence for Barthes, myths can also be understood only in one manner at a given point of time; it is not open to interpretations.  This for him is the power of the myth.  The non-arbitrary relation between the signifier and the signified makes the associative link factual.  In other words, a myth is not what it describes about itself, but the assumption on which it is founded.  The ingredients of the kaapi are not what make the myth; the cultural value under which the kaapi itself was founded and devised is what gives flesh to it.  Barthes terms myth as a ‘collective illusion’; a story that a certain society or culture tells itself, to justify its own world the way it is.  Hence, all our foods have a back-story.  They may not physically voice-out where they come from and there is no empirical way of determining their status in society (except for economics which is also a human tool), but we attribute their characteristics to their location, history and culture, and link them to our understanding of food items as they are today.  

Probing into this point, let’s take the case of a common misconstruction, that of the Indian food.  What exactly is Indian food?  Does it comprise of dishes from the North, South, East, West, or the North-East?  Do the sweet or the savoury ingredients define them?  The concept of Indian food itself is a human ideological construct, a myth.  It is a collective illusion that gives us Indians a sense of national unity and identity.  If I were to go abroad, I would not term my daily cuisine as South-Indian, but Indian food.  Several South-Asian culinary markets fall under this very myth.  Asian cuisine is not noodles and Manchurian; it can be the Korean Soondubu Jiggae, or the Vietnamese Banh canh.  Hence, the language of food is not as simple as it may seem….much like Barthes’ myth.

I hope I have been able to understand Barthes through my cultural product, the degree filter coffee.  Hopefully, I shall be able to make a lot more sense of him and Myth Today while sipping on a cuppa today.  

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland.  “Myth Today”.  Print.  14 February 2014.

“South Indian Filter Coffee- All Stages from Bean to Mug..!”.  Anzzcafe.  Web.  

15 February 2014.

“Roland Barthes- Myth Today”.  the cultural studies reader. Blogspot.com.  7 April 2012.  Web.   15 February 2014.

Eckhardt, Robyn.  “India’s Streetside Coffee Culture”.  SCENE ASIA Food & Drink.  

The Wall Street Journal Life & Style.  27 November 2013.  Web.  15 February 2014.

Gerald, Olympia.  “Kumbakonam Degree Coffee”.  THE HINDU.  The Hindu 2014.  

27 October 2012.  Web.  15 February 2014.

Datta, Aparna.  “From Mocha to Mysore: A Coffee Journey”.  Crucible Chronicle.  

Crucible 2007-2008.  2004.  Web.  15 February 2014.

Doyle, Bernard.  “Mythology”.  Encyclopedia Mythica. MMIX Encyclopedia Mythica.  

2 August 2004.  Web.  15 February 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

28^th 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

                                                                                          Thekkekara Livea Paul

                                                                             Reg. No. - 1324153

            According to Luce Irigaray, the woman has been constructed as the specular Other of man in all Western discourses. Combining psychoanalysis, philosophy and linguistics, Irigaray's works has been largely influential in poststructuralist feminist thought. her rejection of the male symbolic order in order to highlight difference has been regarded as the "radical feminist" phase of the feminist movement.

                 (1) Speculum as the curved mirror - 

                                                              is of feminine self-examination. this is opposed to the flat mirror which privileges the relation of man with other men but excludes the feminine. Psychoanalysis has always inscribed masculine ideology. Irigaray seeks to uncover a feminine order of meaning so that a sexual identity of the woman may be constructed.

                 (2) Arguement against the "logic of sameness"-

                                                              operates within all discourse. this logic means that two specificities of man and woman are consistently merged into one : "man is the measure of all things". Turning of Freud, Irigaray how his theory of sexuality is basically premised on one sex - the male. There is the male and there is the absence or lack - the female. The male is the paradigm of all sexuality - physical changes and sexual pleasure - and sexuality is a priori male for Freud. Irigaray notes : "female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of masculine parameters".

                 (3) Suggestion of a specifically feminine writing practice -

                                                               Proceeding from the assumption that a different order of meaning is necessary to construct a positive representation of the feminine, Irigaray searches out new linguistic modes of expressing the feminine self. The Lacanian idea that language is phallic, she argues, implies a dangerous situation. For the woman to speak, she must speak like a man, or else to break away from the social/symbolic. If women are to have their own identity they must subvert the phallic version of the symbolic. She sees writing as going through the looking glass into a world of woman's self-representation.

                  (4) Adoption of a slippery kind of writing herself - 

                                                               Puns, word plays, syntactic experiments and new arrangements, fragmentation becomes the modes of feminine writing that breaks the stranglehold of masculine rigidified and rule bound language. Reading and writing then must favour the images and metaphors of fluidity, dynamism, polysemy and plurality rather than those of unity, monologism, stability and fixity.

                 (5) Association of the metaphor of the specular mirror with the feminine representation -

                                                               The curved surface of the speculum produces a deform image which reverses the reflection of masculine discourse. She writes: then "the specular surface found not the void of nothingness but the dazzle of multifaceted speleology. A scintillating and incandescent concavity". This curved surface represents the inner specificity of the female body. Women need to first represent themselves to themselves in order to constitute themselves as social beings who can form positive relationships with one another.

               (6) Rejecting the primacy of sight in psychoanalysis -

                                                               She returns to the pre-Oedipal stage where the sense of touch rules the mother-child relation. In addition, she rejects the focus on genitals as the erogenous zone in classical psychoanalysis. Arguing that the woman's body is multiplicity itself, she suggests that female sexuality is also multiple in its erogenous zones. It is now necessary to see female sexuality as not a lack but as "two lips" which are evidently different from the unitariness of the male organ. The lips are "continually interchanging" and touching, they are "neither identifiable nor separable from one another... these two are always joined in an embrace". Fluidity, multiplicity and the primacy of touch inform her writing. 

              (7) Foregrounding the mother - daughter relationship -

                                                               Irigaray argues that the woman's inability to represent herself is due to the undermining of the mother - daughter bond in the Symbolic Order. Motherhood is allowed only a small space, denied economic or social status and separated from the very aspect of sexuality. Creativity is male domain, motherhood is restricted to the nurture and care of the child. The daughter in the patriarchal system must separate from the mother in order to gain her own identity. The daughter is thus "exiled" from her first identity and history. 

          ( the above notes is prepared after referring the lecture given by Shyam, extra reading on Speculum of the Other and analyzing the common grounds between the two.)

    * References -

      “Luce Irigaray” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 18 February 2014.

         Nair, Shyam. “This Sex Which is Not One by Luce Irigaray.” Christ University. Bangalore. 24 February 2014. Lecture.

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 19^th 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 20^th 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

 

 

 

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]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Piyali Sarkar 1324143 (Class notes)