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

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122 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS Ex-tase (standing outside) is an other strategy to escape the body. Perhaps the Dionysian tearing apart of animals and the delirium of the maenads reaches towards such an out of body state: the ecstatic nihilism of religious existentialism 7 This Gnostic hymn, then, seems to praise deconstruction’s hermetic negative theology 8 and knowledge of the unknowable: O thou beyond all things what else can it be meet to call theeHow can speech praise thee for thou art not expressible by any speech.How can reason gather thee for thou art not comprehensible by any mind.Thou that art alone ineffable while thou engenderest all that is open to speech.Thou that alone art unknowable while thou engenderest all that is open to thought…End of all things art thou and one and all and none,Not being one nor all, claiming all names how shall I call thee 9 What this means is that postmodernism is neither original nor unusual. Gnostic Jean- François Lyotard also aspires to join electric immateriality and be freed from matter by technoscience, the new Messenger of Light: “And since one day we must really emigrate from earth…” (Lyotard and Théofilakis: 1985, p. 14). Francis Bacon authored The Masculine Birth of Time; Lyotard’s exhibition of Les Immatériaux was The Masculine Birth of Space. But the body is heavy, it resists its dispossession, dematerialization and deconstruction, or so Lyotard laments: …the body is the region of resistance to certain severe postmodern tendencies: it resists at the level of aesthetic perception but also from its habitat, etc. Will there be a cleavage between what is of the body and which is not very modifiable, and the rest. I don’t know (Lyotard and Théofilakis: 1985, p. 14). Lyotard’s 1985 Paris exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou took place six years after the publication of La condition postmoderne. Ihab Hassan describes the “eerie, ingenious” (1987, p. 228) exhibition as a scene of slippage where senses dissolve: Walking through this (almost) dematerialized electronic environment—a space of invisible codes, artistic concepts, inaudible whispers—the visitor 7. See Jonas (1967, pp. 284–289) for a description of “Ecstatic Illumination” and gnosis as “knowledge of the unknowable”: “It involves an extinction of the natural faculties, filling the vacuum with a surpassingly positive and at the same time in its ineffability negative content. Annihilation and deification of the person are fused in the spiritual ecstasies which purports to experience the immediate presence of the cosmic essence” (1967, p. 284). 8. For an application of ayin (nothingness) and alef (the ineffable), see Daniel C.Matt (1990), “The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism.” In Robert K.C.Forman (Ed.), The Problem of Pure Consciousness, Mysticism and Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. 9. Opening lines of a hymn by Gregorius the Theologian, cited in Jonas (1967, p. 289).
OUT OF OBLIVION 123 Figure 1: Egyptian bas-relief—goddess offering the sign of life to King Nectanebo II, last independent Pharaoh of Egypt—presented in a dark area. Sound of breathing, and a long corridor with a mirror at the entrance area. “Bas-relief, Fragment of Temple wall of Karnak-North.” Museum of Grenoble, Egyptian Collection. Photo: Peter Willi. Printed by CCI (Centre de Création Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris). senses himself/herself also disappearing into disembodied sensations, states of mind. The semiotic model replaces the model of matter and/or spirit. We are left only with forms of energy and their flux of energy and their flux of transactions, with les immatériaux (1987, p. 228). What is in mind is a disruption and displacement of what is perceived to be destiny. The somber entrance hall, filled with the sound of breathing, contains an Egyptian bas-relief, a fragment of temple wall from Karnak which depicts: “Goddess offering the sign of life to Nectanebo II”. The exit area, which is silent, no longer breathing, presents the same temple fragment, but in a speeded, wavy image such that “the
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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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68 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS has no father,
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70 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS (1983, p. 958)
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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
Page 201 and 202: REFERENCES 169 Raulet, Gerard. (198
Page 203 and 204: 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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