Anonymous@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (10/23/88)
A friend writes about Lacan: First of all, he is a freudian. Of the classic school that brought us Penis Envy -- the stupifying phallocentric theory that the discovery of her lack of a penis deals every little girl a massive shock that from which she never recovers without analysis. Also of the school that denies the reality of sexual abuse of children (particularly female children), preferring to think that stories of it are fantasies of little girls with oedipal problems. Freud's basic methodological insight was reasonable -- self-examination of dreams can reveal unconscious conflicts. It just never occurred to him to ask a woman to do the same instead of deciding a-priori what her conflicts were gonna be. According to Sherry Turkle's book on Lacan, he is / was a specialist in what I would call intellectial nihilism. He delights (in what may be a singularly French phenomenon) in demonstrating that nothing works. In particular, that the "self" or "ego" is a bourgoise myth. I haven't time to go dig out the book and extract some juicy morsels, but I suggest that the rest of you find it before devoting any braincells to his theory on language and gender. My personal opinion is that this theory is nothing more than very thinly disguised sexism. Only someone who has never kept a house could imagine that there isn't plenty of logical cognition in traditional women's work. Who do you think figured out how to can vegetables? Sew clothing? Further, the opposition of emotions/feelings and logic is also false. Situations involving emotions, connections, and relationships are as logical as everything else, but they are COMPLEX. The false distinction results from equating simple and simple-minded. "Whenever someone proves that women are `different,' I check to see that I still have my wallet.'
michael@wind.bellcore.com (Michael Muller) (10/24/88)
In article <5636@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Anonymous@ecsvax.uncecs.edu writes (or writes about a friend's views, I'm not sure which): [Anonymous writes TR] >My personal opinion is that this theory is nothing more than very >thinly disguised sexism. Only someone who has never kept a house could >imagine that there isn't plenty of logical cognition in traditional >women's work. Who do you think figured out how to can vegetables? Sew >clothing? > >Further, the opposition of emotions/feelings and logic is also false. >Situations involving emotions, connections, and relationships are as >logical as everything else, but they are COMPLEX. The false >distinction results from equating simple and simple-minded. I agree strongly that the division between two different modes or or styles of mental activity is peculiar -- and that it serves to maintain a power differential. Many people have written about the ways that women have been described (mostly by men) as "having" certain kinds of knowledge and attributes, and the ways that people (mostly men) have punished women for "having" those qualities. Susan Griffin (_Pornography_and_Silence_), for example, writes very persuasively on these topics. In the example that Trish raised, it seems to me that women are being described as "having" attributes which make them _inevitably_ and _unchangeably_ outsiders to the realm of male power. But is the description of women accurate? And is the proposed opposition of logic vs. emotion accurate? In my own language, I agree with what I think Anonymous was saying: There isn't much in the way of logic without a component of emotions and connections and relationships, and there isn't much in the way of emotions and connections and relationships without a component of logic. I hope that people will at least question the dichotomy in the linguistic hypothesis. It is to me an oversimplification -- but an oversimplification that serves a purpose, a potentially political purpose. That doesn't mean that there aren't preferred emphases in cognitive style, and it doesn't mean that we haven't been socially trained into what are supposed to be gender-appropriate (sic) preferences. But we all know many personal counterexamples to the biology-is-destiny linguistic hypotheses that Trish described. Yes, there's a statistical basis to the _observation_ of preferred cognitive styles. For some people, that observation leads to a sexually-dimorphic _theory_ of types or styles of intelligence. But the observation can also give rise to other, more environmentally-based theories of the kinds of things we (women and men) have been differentially trained to think about. Or to interactionist theories, or to many other alternatives . . . Maybe the question(s) should be: How can we support people in a free choice of their preferred cognitive style? How can we develop a theory of thought and feeling and action and connection (i.e., as a unified entity, not a set of disjoint attributes) that is less susceptible to turning one attribute (or one person) against another? Thanks, Trish, for raising a challenging question. Michael Muller Bellcore 444 Hoes Lane Piscataway, N.J. 08854 US ..!bellcore!ctt!michael (201) 699 4892 michael@bellcore.com I am not a spokesperson for my employer, but sometimes I wish I were.