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

xxsexual, emotional, political desires: too demanding, he will not satisfy her. Denyingwomen’s desire, politically or sexually, is a male power play. Andrea Nye’s (1988)rewriting of the Freud creation story tells of male fears of the Father’s revenge anddisinheritance from patriarchal powers: getting close to women means losingeconomic and political power.Once there was a family headed by a brutal authoritarian father who in secrethad a tendency to abuse his wife, his daughters and any women who cameunder his power. Sometimes he even abused his sons. His sons were uneasyabout their father and about other men but they were men themselves.Therefore, they knew they were supposed to respect their father and learn tobe like him. One son, however, listened to his mother, his nurse, and the talkof other women. He became very uneasy. The women told him of crimes thathis father and other fathers had committed against women and about theirsuffering. But this son was also a man. He knew that he too had to become afather. Then he made his discovery. There was only one solution. The womenwere lying, they were in love with the father and wanted to be seduced. Theyhad only fantasized the father’s mistreatment. Now the son knew that he hadbeen guilty also; he had suspected his father out of jealousy. And he repented.Now all the sons could come together, celebrating the father’s memory andrejoicing that the father had committed no faults. Now they could follow in thefather’s footsteps and if accusations were made by the women or by anyyounger sons who happened to listen to women, the men would know what tosay (1988, p. 159).In this way, Freud felt he penetrated the mystery of female anguish: mysteriousbecause women were unreal to him. Lacanian psychoanalysis also says we mean yeswhen we say no: “the tension of desire hidden in the most professed horror of incest”(1953, p. 12). In fact, the Freudian Oedipal myth warns men of the risks of lovingthe mother: death as a Father, death of the King.Suzanne Blaise has argued that the current oppression of women would not havebeen possible without the death, the murder, of the mother. In Le rapt des origineson le meurtre de la mère, De la communication entre femmes, Blaise (1988) showshow the male murder of the mother and the massacre of the value of the female andthe maternal is continually reenacted among women. Drawing from forty years ofexperience in the women’s movement in France, she shows how the original murderof the mother by the sons has had serious repercussions for communication betweenwomen politically and personally. She reconsiders the current divisions, impasses,betrayals and violent denunciations among women in this light. Clearly, ourrelationship to other women, to our sex, symbolically and politically, is full ofconsequences for our sexuality. Blaise asks what it would mean for the personal andcollective body of women to recognize that sexual politics is also the politics ofmatricide (1988, p. 11): “To possess the mother, man destroyed the woman; topossess the daughter, he destroyed the mother” (1988, p. 10).