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

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118 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS self-critique, I do want to indicate that even this is a gloss on sexism, a sexist gloss. A woman raising Paul Smith’s question in this group would risk being labelled “plaintiff” and “domestic”, while Smith is likely to gain (feminist) credibility. Nor are women phallic signifiers just by holding membership: the contradictions are not the same, the sexes are not interchangeable, even in the practice of feminist psychoanalytic theory. Women may act in a phallocratic sexist manner, but they do not symbolize patriarchal power, they do not have the authority. The narcissistic relation to the Father is not identical for both sexes. How to write psychoanalytic critiques without authority: this is her dilemma in the empty space between feminism and (in) psychoanalysis, where the only role for the bearded woman is to criticize hysterics.
6 OUT OF OBLIVION Philosophy, both ideal and material, has not found women’s praxis in giving birth interesting; rather, it has sustained a nagging death fetish, a preoccupation with finitude. Death without birth is not only abstract and unrealistic, but signals an odd unwillingness to give meaning to species persistence as the material substructure of temporality. I want to suggest that such an elision is possible only where thought is masculine (O’Brien: 1989b, p. 84). In masculine philosophy, the question of being has always been related to the structure of language. The notion that symbols are more real than that which they symbolize is Platonic. In Genesis, essences are ideas which God possesses for all eternity, and existence is simply the actualization of these essences which only acquire being through the act of creation, which is an act of speaking: “Let there be light, dark, heaven, earth.” This is creation ex nihilo: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void”. 1 God—spirit, value, creativity, consciousness—is idealized, not materialized. As Rosemary Radford Ruether (1975, p. 14) points out, “Creation is seen as initiated by a fiat from above, from an immaterial principle beyond visible reality.” Ex nihilo is viable only if you can imagine a nothing that is. God has his theologians: Jacques the Divine, Reb Derrida. 2 The Word of God is an action which must be received in faith and in self-abnegation. This Word is manifest in the Holy Scriptures, in nature, and in the minds and hearts of the faithful. Being communicated and being received are key aspects of the mystery of Christ. The Son of God is the Light of the World, and his Coming was as the Word out of silence. In John 1, 1–14, Logos is the second person of the Trinity, incarnate as Jesus Christ. The prophets of the Old Testament believed God’s word, Logos, had a virtually independent existence as well as original creative power. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” 3 God creates ex nihilo. The Word creates everything out 1. Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, King James version of the Bible. 2. In Writing and Difference Derrida ends the chapter “Ellipsis” with “Reb Derissa” (1978d, p. 300) after a passage in which imaginary rabbis consider: “God succeeds God and the Book succeeds the Book” (1978d, p. 294). 3. The Gospel according to Saint John, New Testament, Chapter 1, verses 1, 2, 3, King James version of the Bible.
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Somer Brodribb teaches feminist the
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Spinifex Press Pty Ltd, 504 Queensb
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Acknowledgements Many friends and c
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Preface “Postmodernism has become
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contributions, and feminist respons
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Introduction THE LABYRINTH Dionysus
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xvii special introductory power; it
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xix Postmodernism exults female obl
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Feminists have begun to think throu
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xxiii implications, are punished. A
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xxv modernism/postmodernism debate,
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iological determinist. Hekman’s a
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xxix will be outside the defined an
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1 A SPACE ODYSSEY What women need t
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 3 simply descriptiv
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 5 Male-stream liter
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 7 with the conceptu
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 9 Deconstruction is
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 11 capitalism in th
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 13 will address it
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 15 self-perpetuatin
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 17 harbour only dre
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 19 death, that shou
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A SPACE ODYSSEY 21 suffering from t
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24 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS repudiate the
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26 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS Like Rubin, Si
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28 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS The totalising
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30 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS ‘we’ merel
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32 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS (Lévi-Strauss
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34 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS But there is a
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36 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS We can see in
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38 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS “waiting’
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40 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS intellectuals.
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42 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS It is humanism
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44 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS will disappear
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46 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS The editors of
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48 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS space. At the
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50 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS In his view, f
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52 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS The order of t
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54 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS significant (1
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56 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS but discontinu
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58 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS their faith we
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60 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS support femini
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62 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS misogynist. We
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64 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS Gay Science, M
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66 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS venerable as s
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Page 181 and 182: References Abelard, Pierre. (1964).
Page 183 and 184: REFERENCES 151 Brennan, Teresa. (Ed
Page 185 and 186: REFERENCES 153 Connor, Steven. (198
Page 187 and 188: REFERENCES 155 Descombes, Vincent.
Page 189 and 190: REFERENCES 157 Forman, Frieda Johle
Page 191 and 192: REFERENCES 159 Habermas, Jürgen. (
Page 193 and 194: REFERENCES 161 Irigaray, Luce. (198
Page 195 and 196: REFERENCES 163 (Eds.) Exceedingly N
Page 197 and 198: REFERENCES 165 Lorde, Audre. (1984)
Page 199 and 200: REFERENCES 167 Nietzsche, Friedrich
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REFERENCES 169 Raulet, Gerard. (198
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REFERENCES 171 Second Sex: New Dire
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Permissions Excerpt from The Story
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Index A Abelard, The Story of, 74,
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INDEX 177 L Labyrinth, ix, xiii-xxi
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Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism

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