Powers Control

I would like to introduce another term to our feminist readings, one that I have seen very little if at all and one that I think has pragmatic applications to the paradoxes of the feminist ideology. I would like to explore the ramifications of utility as it pertains to the patriarch’s power over females. We’ve already explored in class the ways in which feminism (and any structure that relies on power relationships) resembles Marxism. This comparison is significant if in no other way than it describes a similar dependency. I am speaking, of course, of the dependency of participation.

In Marx we were challenged by the question of, “having identified the problem why isn’t there a revolt.” Also in feminism we are challenged by a similar question put in a more fine way by our professor, “how come there aren’t riots in the street”. At some point we were given this symptom of the would-be rioters, call them the proletariat, the public, or women. At some point in the formation of the system (already defined as defunct, corrupt, or ineffective) there was a device installed to ensure the willing participation of those subjugated. The discussion of solutions to this problem cannot exist without the discussions of the nature of this device and a proposal for its eradication.

In feminism as stated by Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, and Helene Cixous, I see utility or to an effect dependency as that societal lynch pin that could potentially reshape the definitions of our sex relationship.

While reading the assignments for Wednesday’s class I found myself gravitating to the sensitivity of the authors to the “distance” between men and women. Within this “distance” or “gap” I found the authors playing with the ideas of subjectivity. Irigary writes “Sometimes a sense of wonder is bestowed upon a work of art. But it is never found in the gap between man and woman. This space was filled instead with attraction, greed, possession, consummation, disgust, etc., and not with that wonder which sees something as though always for the first time, and never seizes the other as its object. Wonder cannot seize, possess or subdue such an object.” Although this quote comments very specifically on “art” and uses the word “object” in the material sense I see implications that reach farther. It points to a more pure perception, one that is not yet dominated by societies compulsion to ascribe a specific utility to everything yielded by it’s producers. I believe it is the separation of the dependency of the empowered ( in this case the patriarch) from whatever it is they perceive the subjugated (in this case the feminine) has to offer that gives us the greatest chance of a just redefining of the sexes.

Similarly Butler writes, “For surely it is as unacceptable to insist that relations of sexual subordination determine gender position as it is to separate radically forms of sexuality from the workings of gender norms.” Interested by the insistence of the link between sexuality and the definition of a “gender” I see another way in which the ascribed place of the feminine in the man’s world is a function of the utility those men see in it.

To what end? How do we fix it?

Helene Cixous writes, “Of woman, upon whom he no longer depends, he retains only this space, always virginal, matter subjected to the desire that he wishes to imprint.” Here I see the author pinpointing the exact moment at which the “devise” is installed. The imprinting of subjective desires as they relate to the perceived use of the feminine. But what if this social compulsion were stopped just shy of affecting it’s goal. If we remove the dependency of the patriarch on the feminine, we then remove the patriarch’s insistence on how the female utility must be defined. By removing the overbearing restrictions of the dominators definition we are then forced to consider the feminine as distilled and as pure as it can be. Any dominator that sees utility in anything outside itself must redefine it according to the application of its usefulness in order to assert control over it. And thus we lose the true and objective representation of it.