Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism

114 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS
opposing discourses” (1989, p. 1). The American umpire; but what has become
known as French feminism is largely psychoanalytic, so the opposition is
already…“mediated”. 18 Discontent requiring appeasement: a pluralist equalization of
desires, contexts, is to be healed by a textual intervention—discourse. Textual play,
textual surgery and operations—but who is the patient Whose body is being cured,
what language must it learn The pretext of feminist psychoanalytic theory has
shifted from using Freud’s theory of sexuality to look at gender, to a practice of
positions until the right methodology for feminist psychoanalytic theory can be
announced, an experiment in relationship, mood, attitude, style, appearance, and
packaging. The feminist psychoanalytic profession: What form will it take How can
it succeed the Father Standing before the closet, not a Thing to wear. Self-situated
on the fence between a discourse of “dissatisfied” feminism and patriarchy defined
as melancholic discourse, it awaits discursive silence while practicing the
organization of consent, and the dispersion of dissent.
Discontented Discourses: where does the misery come from Who’s unhappy
with what Feminist psychoanalytic critics want to be happy with the path they have
chosen, content with the course of psychoanalytic theory’s history and future. Of
course, the original feminist content and method of sexual politics will have to
change for this to be realized. This is the education to deference which is part of the
professionalization of women (Brodribb: 1988a); woman being a career now open to
men. Edited by Marleen Barr and Richard Feldstein, Discontented Discourses is
organized as follows: “In each of the essays presented here, feminism and
psychoanalysis intercede to mediate between a patriarchal discourse (named by each
chapter’s title) and a feminist discourse (named by each chapter’s subtitle)” (Barr
and Feldstein: 1989, p. 1). Such a traditional police version of a “dysfunctional
family” or domestic dispute is wilfully ignorant of the history of feminist thought
(Spender, p. 1983) and the masculine practice of abuse. This domestic dispute is then
to be judged by the “synthesis” of this abuse, feminist psychoanalytic theory or the
Athena that claimed to be father born.
Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1989), co-edited by Richard Feldstein and Judith
Roof, poses feminism and psychoanalysis as symmetrical Mother/Father discourses.
If female psychoanalytic critics do not always question the role of men, is it because
they do not deeply question their own role in psychoanalytic theory To question the
role of men would be to question their own professionalization as women, and to
suspect their own phallocentric tendencies. The series of “feminism and
psychoanalysis” books, begun by Juliet Mitchell’s (1975) Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, consents to psychoanalysis for feminism and argues that with a little
manipulation it can satisfy. The appearance is created of psychoanalytic theory as
imperfect but modifiable, malleable —the best and only source of knowledge of self
18. In “Woman’s liberation: the tenth year,” Christine Delphy (Duchen: 1987) documents the antifeminist
theory and practice of the group Psychanalyse et politique which copyrighted the name of
the women’s liberation movement in France. Collette Guillamin (Duchen: 1987) takes issue with the
psychoanalytic writing by Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva in “The question of
difference.” What has been published and translated of French feminist texts is largely
psychoanalytic, unlike the work of Delphy and Guillamin.