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

124 NOTHING MAT(T)ERS
Figure 2: Fragment of the temple wall of Karnak-North. Same bas-relief as in the
entrance hall, but projected in a wavy image. The matter-effect is absent. Silence on the
tape.
Montage by M.Peltzer after a process developed by Jiri Kölar, Centre de Création
Industrielle.
matter-effect is absent” (Inventory). 10 The organizing concept, according to the
presentation dossier, is mât: “For memory, in Sanskrit mâtram: matter and measure
(from the root mât: to make with the hand, measure, construct” (Album, 17). Maat is
also the goddess of life, unnamed and unidentified throughout the exhibit. Barbara
Walker (1983, p. 618) defines mater: “Aryan root word for both ‘Mother’ and
‘Measurement,’ giving rise to such English derivatives as matrix, matter, metric,
material, maternal, matron, etc”. Isis, the Karnak temple representation, is one form
of Maat (1983, p. 562), the Egyptian name for Ma, the “basic mother-syllable of
Indo-European languages” (1983, p. 560) for the “material force that bound elements
together to create forms at the beginning of the world” (1983, p. 560). And the voice
of the mother is really the first sound. 11
One enters Les Immatériaux through Beckett’s Theatre of the Non-body, which
stages “absence in the world, absence of the world. The body exhausts itself”
(Inventory). Five paths are indicated, each one leads to the Labyrinth of Language.
“The model of language replaces that of matter”: this is the parti pris of Les
Immatériaux (Album, 17). The pathways are: matériau (materials); matrice (matrix);
matériel (material); matière (matter); maternité (maternity). Each path corresponds
to its sequence: not-body, not-speech, not-other, not-history, not-me.
These two photos appeared in Les Immatériaux, at the Georges Pompidou Centre,
1985, Paris, in the section called “Theatre du non-corps” [Theatre of the Non-Body]
with the captions indicated here.
10. The following citations will be from either the Inventory which contains photos of the exhibition
site, from the Album, which is a written documentation record, or the Épreuves d’écriture, which is
the third section of the catalogue produced on Les Immatériaux held from March 28 to July 15, 1985
at the Centre Georges Pompidou, presented by the Centre de Création Industrielle. Page numbers are
not always available for citations.
11. Kahn (1989, p. 29) introduces the notion of a “maialogical perspective” into the theory of the
language of birth. Consider also how Derrida reacts so strongly against speech and the presence of
the mother that it evokes: the origin(al) presence.