nlTLEH ------. Only Paradoxes to Offer; French Feminists and tlte nights of Man. Cambridge Harvard UP. 1996. Sedgwick. Eve Kasofsky. Fpistemology itfihe Cimet. Berkeley: U oľ California ľ, 1991. ------. Tendencies. Berkeley: U of California P. 199$. Snilo«; Ann. Christine Slansell, and Sharon Thompson, eils. Power* of Desire: The Palilirs of Sexuality- New York: Monthly Review, 1985. Spivak, Cayalri Chokravorty. "Subaltern Sludles: Deconstructing Historiography."/» Oilier H orlds: Essays in Cultural Politics- New Vork: Melhuen. 1987. Í97-Í21. Vance, Carole S.. cd. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring female Sexuality, l/mtfon: Rom-ledge, 1984. Walkowilz, Judith. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives If Sexual Danger in lMte-1 íe torian London. Chicago: V oľ Chicago P. 1992- Williams. Linda. Hard Core. Berkeley: U of California P. 1989. K O 8 I H R A I D 0 T T1 n nu Ji »nu Bi'Ti,e t, Feminism by Any Other Name. Interview Ros isi BraidotU is Professor and Choir of Women's Studied at the iniversity of Utrecht in the Netherlands. She received her doctorate in Philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris, and has worked extensively in the intersections of feminist theory and philosophy. Her books include Nomadic Subjecis: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (Columbia University Press, 1994): Patterns oľ Dissonance: An Essay on Women in Contemporary French Philosophy (Polily and Routledge, 1991); and Women, the Environment, and Sustainable Development (Zed Rooks, 1994), co-authored with Ewa Charkiewicz, Sabine Häusler, and Saskia Wieringa. She has published widely in Dutch, French, Italian, and English, and she works with feminist scholars in a range of countries. Shč is one of the central coordinators for the Network of Interdisciplinary Women's Studies in Europe (n0i2se) and for ERASMUS, the interdisciplinary exchange program set up among European NOiSsE affiliates supported by the European Community. The interview here pertains centrally to the theoretical and political intplications of formulating feminist theory in Europe, and to debates emerging from the paradigms of sexual difference and gender. At the lime of this transcription Hosi BraidotU and I have never met in person, but we appear to be part of a post-topicalfeminist community. She has described our interview as takingplace in "cyberspace": we sent queries and responses back and forth across the Atlantic at odd hours with the aid ofvariausfax machines. Thefollowing is a result of our efforts: JB; How would you describe the difference, both institutionally and meoretically, between gender and women's studies in Europe right now? hb: Don't forget that you are talking to a nonuidic subject. I was born nos i HOAiyniii «nu Judith iiuti.hr on thai northeastern corner of Italy thai changed hands several limes before fot'i'iimin» I in Hu n after Wu ti d War f. My family emigrated tu Melbourne, \uslra Ha, alongside millions of our country(wo)men. I grew up in lhe polycultural metropolises of down-under, just as lhe "white Australia" policy was coming lo an end, to he replaced by the antipodean version of multiculluralism. The great common denominator for all European migrants was a negative identity; i.e. our not being British. This is lhe context in which I discovered thai I was, after all, European—which was far from a single, let alone a sleady, identity. Insofar as •'European" could he taken as "continental" —as opposed lo British—it was an acl of resistance lo the dominant colonial mode. Calling myself European was a way of claiming an identity they taught me lo despise. Bui I knew enough about Europe not to believe that it was one. The sheer evidence of the innumerable migrant ghettos would testify lo its diverse and divisive nature. Thus, discovering my "European-ness" was an external and oppositional move, which far from giving me the assurance of a sovereign identity, cured me once and for all of any belief in sovereignly. Reading and recognizing Foucaulťs critique of sovereignty became later on the mere icing on a cake whose ingredients had already been carefully selected, mixed, and pre-baked. The Europe I feel attached lo is that site of possible forms of resislance that I've jusl described. My support for the highly risky business of European integration into a "common house" (the European Community, also referred to as "The European Union" in whal follows) rests on the hope, formulated by Delors and Mitterand—lhal Ibis "new" Europe can be constructed as a collective project. The Europe of the European Union is virtual reality: it's a projed thai requires hard work and commitment. I am perfectly aware of the fact that, so far, the results are not splendid, if you consider lhe debacle in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the increasing waves of xenophobia and racism that are sweeping aemss Uns region. Nonetheless I believe thai without lhe project of the European Union, this wave is here to slay. The resurgence of xenophobia and racism is the negative side of the process of globalization that we are going through at the moment. 1 share the hope thai we shall grow out of il and confront the new, wider European space without paranoia or hatred for the other. I am deeply and sincerely convinced lhal European integration is the only wa> for this continent to avoid the hopeless repetition of the darker sides of our dark past. The auti- sm by Any Oilier Name, interview opeans in Europe today are: lhe conservative and the extreme right, as well the extreme fringe of lhe nostalgic left, including lhe many "green parties" and other well-meaning but often ineffectual intellectuals. Shall we ever get over the Weimar syndrome? Willi these qualifications in mind, I'd like to point oul Iwo initiatives in which I am involved, which in my opinion have the potential to influence the international debate. Firstly, the making of the European Journal of Women's Studies. Secondly, the growing number of ERASMUS (inlra-European) networks for women's studies, of which the Utrecht-run one, significantly called noiSse, is the best example. A great many of my observations aboul gender and its institutional perspectives come from my experience in noiSse.1 Having said this, would you really be surprised if I lold you that it is impossible to speak of "European" women's studies in any systematic or coherent manner? Each region has ils own political and cultural traditions of feminism, which need lo be compared carefully. As a matter of fact, there is already quite a rich bibliography of comparative studies on the question of how to institutionalize women's studies in Europe today.2 Based on the experience of the initiatives listed above, I would raise the following points: 1. Only northern European universities enjoy some degree of visibility for positions thai can be identified as women's studies and feminist studies. The term "women's studies" is preferred as it stresses the link wiih the social and political women's movements. Only research institutions or centers lhat are not tied lo leaching programs at lhe undergraduate level can afford lhe denominator "feminist." Generally, however, "feminist" is perceived as too threatening by lhe established disciplines, especially by sympathetic, non-feminist women within them —so it tends to be avoided. 2. Many women's studies courses are integrated. An alarming proportion of them are "integrated" into departments of American Literature or American Studies, especially in southern and eastern European countries. The reason for this is obvious: as feminism is strong in the U.S.A., its presence in an American Studies curriculum requires no additional legitimation. The paradox here is that these courses never reflect local feminist work, initiatives, or practices. 34 HOŠI B K .11 »Mill HITU JIUITII BI II.KU 3. We have very little teaching material in women's studies that is conceptualized and produced in Europe. The U.K. is active, but they still tend to look at their privileged Norili Atlantic connections more favorably than they do their European partners. On the continent, there's not even one publisher that has the capacity to attract anil monitor the feminist intellectual production in a truly trans-European manner. The quasi-monopol y exercised on the feminist market by the Routledge giant is in this respecl very problematic for us continental feminists because il concentrates the agenda-setting in the hands of that one company. All of this makes us dependent upon the commercial, financial, and discursive power of American feminists. This dependency is a problem when it comes to setting the feminist agenda. It also means that there's no effective feedback between local feminist political cultures and local university programs in women's studies. A sorl of schizophrenia is written into this, as in all colonial situations. 1 think Europe is a bit of a colony in the realm of women's studies-Special mention must be made, in this respect, of the work of the feminist historians who are among the few groups that have managed to bridge the gap between university programs and local feminist practices and traditions. See, for example, the multi-lingual and polyvocal collection of volumes on Women's History, edited by Michelle Perrot and Georges Duby and translated into even- major European language. In both Italy and the Netherlands the historians have gotten themselves organized in strong national associations that produce enlightening publications. I also have the impression thai the historians have more systematic professional exchanges with their American colleagues than any of the other disciplines—judging by the fact that Gianna Pomata and Luisa Passerini. for instance, «ere well received in the United States. JB: As you no doubt know, there has emerged an important and thoroughgoing critique of Euroeenlľism within feminism and within cultural studies more generally right now. But 1 wonder whether this has culminated in an intellectual impasse such that a critical understanding of Europe, of the nism by Any Oilier Name. Interview iS il i tv of the very category, and of the notions of nation and citizenship in sis there, have heroine difficult to address. In that context, (a) How has the postCOlonial critique of Eurocen- sm—and the reapproprialion of the "European" within that critique —registered with feminist domains? (b) Has your network of feminist institutions in Europe addressed the question of the current parameters of Europe as a feminist question? Do you know some of the feminist philosophers in Belgrade or the lesbian group, Arkadia? They seem to be drawing some important critical linkages between nation-building, helerosexual reproduction, the violent subordination of women, and homophobia. HB: I think that the impact of the critiques of Eurocenlrism upon women's studies has been fundamental. I am thinking not only of work done in cultural studies such as that of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhahha. Paul Gilro\. bell hooks. Gayatri Chakravorly Spivak and many others, but also of critiques that take place within more traditional disciplines, such as those of Julia Kristeva (psychoanalyst), Edgar Morin (historian of the philosophy of science). Bernard Henry-I,evy (philosopher), Massimo Cacciari (philosopher), and others. All of these share a deep distrust of any essentialist definition of Europe, although for quite different reasons. I would not describe this situation as an impasse, but rather as a clear-cut political divide between, on the one hand, those on the right who uphold a nostalgic, romanticized ideal of a quintessential Europe as the bastion of civilizalion and human rights and. on the other hand, the progressive left for whom Europe is a project yet to he constructed by overcoming the hegemonic nationalist and exclusionary tendencies that have marked our history. In between these two greal camps are the individualist libertarians who fear and °PPose the power of the Brussels bureaucracy in the name of "freedom": a Ěfeat many in the ecological or "green" parties are in this position. The right as wel| as this last group oppose the Maastricht Treaty which includes provisions 'or9 social charter of workers' rights, a common currency, and an enhanced federalism; the left see federalism as a necessary, however painful, process. These divisions are also present within the women's movements in Ope. The clearest evidence of this is the huge numbers of women who Eur Participated in the anti-Maastrichl referenda recently held in the community. 36 II OS I flRAlDOTTI WITH IťUlTH BUTLBH Take Ihe case of Denmark: in the first referendum, it was definitely the women who defeated the Treaty; their arguments were based in a critique of Eurocentrism, but in the libertarian mode 1 mentioned above. They feared both the centralization of decision-making in Brussels and the loss of social welfare privileges that the Maastricht Treaty would entail for them. Because the Treaty is an attempt to find a compromise among all the member states, some of the social provisions in the Treaty which may appear progressive from a Grerk or Italian perspective tend to look rather disappointing from a Scandinavian one. For instance, the Danish women stressed that the European Union takes Uie family as the basic social unit. They thought, quite rightly, that European legislation would have negative consequences for single women and lesbians. Other examples of feminist criliques of Eurocentrism can be found in the work done by black and migrant women commissioned by Brussels. These women include prominent academics such as Helma Lutz, Philomena E$sed, and Nira Yural-Davis, who wrote books and official reports denouncing the "Fortress Europe," sponsored by Brussels. I think there is a consensus that racism and xenophobia are Ihe largest problems in ihe European Community at the moment. What 1 want to emphasize is that these problems can be solved only at an intra-European level and cannot be left to single nation-states, which are generally far more conservative and nationalistic than Ihe European commission in Brussels. .IB: 1 take it that for you the European Union constitutes a hyper-federalism thai thwarts ihe nationalist tendencies at work in various European nation-states? Kti: Yes, but I want lo add lhal this is a hope and a political choice. 1 take il that by "hyper- federal ism" you do not mean something abstract: the European project is powerfully real in its economic and material realities. Let me give you concrete examples: no sooner had the first issue of ihe European Journal of Women's Studies come out lasl week than the United Kingdom Women's Studies Association accused it of being Eurocentric. They obviously had not read the editorial, which states quite clearly our political determination to undo the hegemonic and imperialist view of Europe by stressing the discrepancies and differences internal lo women's studies. How-often and how • k-.irh must we say that we need lo deconstruct the essentia list im b\ Any Other Name. Interview 17 and dominant view of Europe by starting a social and intellectual process of federalism, i.e. anti-nationalism? JB: 1 lake it that federalism can be an instrument of nationalism, though, and that it may not be enough for a women's studies journal to declare, however clearly, its anli-Eurocentrism if the substance of its ariicles tend to underscore an opposing intellectual disposition. I haven't seen the journal in question, so I can't make a judgement. But 1 would suggest lhal an anti-Eurocentric stance probably has to do more than mark differences, thai is, those markings have lo become a point of departure for a critique of nationalism in both its federalist and anti-federalist forms. But as I understand it, your point is lhal right now to center a progressive politics on Europe is not Ihe same as Eurocentrism, and thai Eurocentrism is not the same as nationalism. I take it thai part of what will make good this last claim is to be sure the boundaries of what is accepted as "Europe" contest ralher than reinscribe the map of colonial territorialities. RB: Yes, bul thai can only be achieved through political action. Let me give you a different example of what I mean. This year the Europride week took place in Amsterdam and gay people and various associations gathered lo talk and celebrate. Some complained lhal a Europride week was too Eurocentric They either did not know or chose to ignore the points of view expressed by Italian, Spanish, Greek and other European gay rights activists who clearly slated that European legislation on gay rights is far more advanced than legislation existing at national levels. As a consequence, we need to appeal to Europe in order to oppose national governments; Ihe Irish feminists worked "us tactic in the case of abortion legislation. Many lesbian organizations have also pointed out thai, with the exception ofHolland and Denmark, there are no lesbian rights at all in Ihe nations comprising Ihe European Community today. Take the case of the Italian lesbian couple who recently gave birth to a child through donor insemination. The Vatican excommunicated them. Whereas at some level 1 find it quite hilarious lo be officially condemned to eternal nation, it is also important to remember how enormous is Ihe social ostracism of these women. In such a context, opposing European federalism in the name of anli-Eurocemrism ends up confirming the hegemonic and fascistic view of Europe 38 m»-i ľ. u i unii r i with n ii i t ii iiiri.tn which we arc all fighting against. It is quite analogous lo opposing special actions for women in the name of antiessenlialism. I think we need lo approach these questions strategically. .IB: So how is it that the kind of feminist scholarship and activism in which you are involved calls into question the given parameters of "Europe"? nil: The ERASMUS noi9se nelwork has placed the critical evaluation of European multiculluralism at the center of our interests. The joint curriculum thai we have been developing focuses entirely on cultural diversity. European multiculluralism, and anti-racism. Significantly, we (Chrisline Rammrath and all Ihe participating partners) spent about three years in preliminary research for this new curriculum. The bibliographic search confirmed the points I made before aboul the domination of American sources on the theme of multi-culturalism. It seems quite obvious lhat we Europeans have been slower lo face these issues, partly because inlra-European cultural and ethnic divisions are so huge lhat they seem threatening. The first time we opened a discussion on the theme of racism in Europe, many of the southern European participants in our network fell very' strongly t hat they have been the oppressed in the Community today, thai they have suffered from racism in the course of the mass migrations (to northern and western Europe) from countries such as Greece, Spain, and Italy. They also acknowledged how difficult it is for countries or peoples who are accustomed lo economic and social marginalily. such as southern European emigrants, to realize thai, at this point in history in Ihe European Community they are actually discriminating against peoples from even further south or from Eastern Europe: Ihe Turks, the Moroccans, the peoples from the former Yugoslavia, the African migrants who enter the Community legally or not. I think that the process by which this realization is made is both painful and necessary. If you look at how these concerns are reflected in the university curricula in women's studies, you will be struck by omissions and silences. In her background preliminary study on this theme, Marischka V'erbeek argues lhat whereas U.S.-slyle black feminism is well represented in most European courses, issues closer lo local realities are more often omitied. I think lhat there is a tendency lo defer confrontation with the more Immediate "Other." by Any Oilier .Name. Interview yt jb: What I found recently in Germany was a revival of interest in Jewish culture, and a strong show against anti-semitism in public discourse, but that form of anti-racism did not appear lo translate into a more systematic and wide-ranging public examination of racism against the Turks and other domestic minorities. It was as if the work of culturally rehabilitating Jewish culture within Germany —an imporlant and necessary project in its own right-works in part lo displace public attention away from of the most vehement forms of contemporary racism. BB: I think that the concern about anti-semitism is perfectly justified, but anti-racism needs to cover a broader spectrum. In the context I am referring to above, this deferral lakes a spatial and temporal dimension. You will find women's studies courses in history throughout Europe that deal with issues of colonialism and imperialism in the last century, including American slavery as weil as anti-semilism and the holocaust in Nazi Europe. It is much more difficult, however, to find material relaled to recent events, such as the growing persecution of immigrant workers. Ihe killing of gypsies and other nomads, the resurgence of Nazi-skinheads, anti-semitism, and the growth of the "Fortress Europe" mentality. This difficulty is the result of the inherent conservatism of European universities which are still monopolized by rigid disciplinary boundaries and of the delayed relation of theory to practice. As you know, thinking the present is always the most difficult task. In our European network, we have taken Ihis task as our focus. We plan to start producing research and a book series in the next few years. JB: Can you say more aboul feminist critiques of nationalism in the contemporary context? BB: I think that Ihe former Yugoslavia is the nightmare case thai illustrates everything the European Union is trying to fight against. Paradoxically, it has also demonstrated ihe inefficiency and powerlessness of the European Community which simply has no military way of enforcing its Policies and has shown pathetic diplomatic skills. You asked before about the work of the Yugoslav philosophers. I think J'ou mean Dasa Duhacek and Zarana Papic whose work is well-known and very veil received at the moment. I think that the analyses Papic proposes of BOM niltlllOrri MITH Jl-IIITII Hľľl.fc« nationalism, patriarchy, and war are important, courageous, and necessary. I am especially impressed by her reading of the current war as a "tribalist patriarchal ism" which seeks to erase sexual difference through the rule of war-oriented nationalist masculinism. One cannot be a woman in the former Yugoslavia: one must be a Serbian, a Croatian, or a Bosnian woman. Sexual difference is killed by nationalism. In this respect, Paptc's work is not unique. There are several interesting analyses of the intersection between nationalism, war. and masculinity in Europe. There is the work of Maria Antoinelta Macciocchi, former Communis! and now Euro-parliamentarian. Already in her study of Italian fascism, La Donna Nera published in the seventies, she broke the taboo against linking nationalist masculinity with the subordination of women. Her later work, published in French, Lesjemmes et kurs mattres, is also of great interest. I think also of Gisela Bock's research on women in Nazi Germany and the literature by migrant and postcolonial women who are either citizens or residents in the European Community, from Buchi Emecheta to the Algerian-Jewish Heléne Cixous. Interesting also is the work of Italian women who were caught in the armed rebellion of the 70s against the nation-state (the so-called "terrorists"). JB: What are the intellectual reasons for preferring the term Feminist Studies over Gender or Women's Studies? mi: This question has been at the center of a hot debate in The Dutch Journal of Women's Studies and 1 think it will continue in the pages of the new European Journal of Women's Studies. Let me start with this formulation: I think that the notion of "gender" is at a crisis-point in feminist theory and practice, that it is undergoing intense criticism from all sides both for its theoretical inadequacy and for its politically amorphous and unfocused nature. Italian feminist Liana Borghi calls gender "a cookie cutter," which can lake just about any shape you want.1 The areas from which the most pertinent criticism of "gender" has emerged are: the European sexual difference theorists, the postcolonial and black feminist theorists (my colleague Gloria Wekker explains that in our practice here in Europe we use the term "black feminist theory" as a political category, and we refer to black and migrant women. In the U.S., on the other band, you seem to use the term "black" as synonymous with "African-American" and you refer to "women of Inisrn by Any Oilier Name. Interview 41 color" to cover other ethnic denominators), the feminist epistemologists working '» the natural sciences, postmodernist cyborg feminism, and the lesbian thinkers. I think your work has been very influential in arousing healthy suspicion about the notion of gender, too. A second remark: the crisis of gender as a useful category in feminist analysis is simultaneous with a reshuffling of theoretical positions which had become fixed and stalemated in feminist theory, most notably the opposition between, on the one hand, "gender theorists" in the Anglo-American tradition and on the other, "sexual difference theorists" in the French and continental tradition.* The debate between Anglo-American "gender" theory and Continental sexual difference theorists became stuck in the 80s in a fairly sterile polemic between opposing cultural and theoretical frameworks which rest on different assumptions about political practice.1 This polarized climate was reshuffled partly because of the increasing awareness of the culturally specific forms assumed by feminist theory and this has resulted in a new and more productive approach to differences in feminist positions. A third related phenomenon in this respect is the recent emergence of the international debate of Italian, Australian, and Dutch feminist thought, as well as others; these alternatives have helped to displace the too comfortable binarj' opposition between French Continental and Anglo-American positions." These publications have helped not only to put another, however "minor," European feminist culture on the map, but also to stress the extent to which the notion of "gender" is a vicissitude of the English language, one which bears little or no relevance to theoretical traditions in the Romance languages.7 This is why gender has found no successful echo in the French, Spanish or Italian feminist movements. When you consider that in French "le genre" can be used to refer to humanity as a whole ("le genre humain") you can gel a sense of the culturally specific nature of the term and, consequently, oľits untranslatabilily as well. JB: But what do you make of the German Movement? How is it that the term which has no theoretical tradition in that language nevertheless can take hold there, precisely as a disruption of that tradition? RB: My impression from working with groups in Berlin, Kassel, elefeld and Frankfurt is that the process of institutionalizing feminism has 42 HUSI HHAIliOTTI WITH IUUITII BITI.K been slow and not very successful. Even Habermas has not appointed a single feminist philosopher in his department! The feminist wave of the 70s did not survive the long march through the institutions. "Gender" is coming in as a later, compromise solution in the place of the more radical options that have emerged from local traditions and practices. The imported nature of the notion of gender also means that the sex/ gender distinction, which is one oľ the pillars on which English-speaking feminist theory is built, makes neither epistemological nor political sense in many non-English, western European contexts, where the notions of "sexuality" and "sexual difference" are currently used instead. Although much ink has been spilled over the question of whether lo praise or attack theories of sexual difference, little effort has been made to try and situate these debates in their cultural contexts. I think that one of the reasons for the huge impact of your Gender Trouble in the German context is that it brings in with a vengeance a long overdue discussion. What is special about the German context, and potentially very explosive, is that their debate on feminist gender theory is simultaneous with a radical deconslruclion ofthat notion. Many rather conventional German feminists are very worried about it. More generally, though, the focus on gender rather than sexual difference presumes that men and women are constituted in symmetrical ways. Bui this misses the feminist point about masculine dominance. In such a system, the masculine and the feminine are in a structurally dissymmetrical position: men, as the empirical referent of the masculine, cannot be said to have a gender; rather, they are expected to carry the Phallus—which is something different. They arc expected to exemplify abstract virility, which is hardly an easy task." Simone de Beauvoir observed fifty years ago that the price men pay for representing the universal is a loss of embodiment; the price women pay, on the other hand, is at once a loss of subjectivity and a confinement to the body. Men become disembodied and, through this process, gain entitlement to transcendence and subjectivity; women become over-embodied and thereby consigned to immanence. This results in two dissymmetrical positions and to opposing kinds of problems. JB: Your point that gender studies presumes and institutionalizes a false "symmetry" between men and women is very provocative. It seems to me, though, that the turn to "gender" has also marked an effort to counter a perhaps too itnisi» ''X An>' 0lnťr ^amc Interview too rigid notion of gender asymmetry. How do you respond to the following kind of critique of "sexual difference": when sexual difference is understood as a linguistic and conceptual presupposition or. for that matter, an inevitable condition of all writing, it falsely universalizes a social asymmetry, thereby reifving social relations of gender asymmetry in a linguistic or symbolic realm, maintained problematically at a distance from soci o-historical practice? As a second question, is there a way to affirm the political concerns implicit in this critique and at the same time to insist on the continuing value of "sexual difference" framework? HB: I don't see sexual difference as a monolithic or ahislorical theory, to the contrary. In Nomadic Subjects 1 have tried to work out a three-level scheme for understanding sexual difference. On the first level, the focus is on the differences between men and women. Here the aim is descriptive and diagnostic. The approach to sexual difference involves both the description and denunciation of the false universalism of the male symbolic, in which one finds the notion of the subject as a self-regulating masculine agency and the notion of the "Other" as a site of devaluation. What comes into focus in the second level is thai the relation between Subject and Other is not one of reversibility. As Irigaray points out, women's "otherness" remains unrepresentable within this scene of representation. The two poles of opposition exist in an asymmetrical relationship. Under the heading of "the double syntax" Irigaray defends this irreducible and irreversible difference not only of Woman from man, bul also of real-life women from the reified image of Worn a n-as-Other. This is pro-osed as the foundation Tor a new phase of feminist politics. JB: But what does it mean lo establish thai asymmetry as irreducible and irreversible, and then to claim that it ought to serve as a foundation for feminist politics? Doesn't that simply reify a social asymmetry as an eternal necessity, thus installing the pathos of exclusion as the "ground" of feminism? RB: You must not confuse the diagnostic function of sexual difference ^th its strategic or programmatic aims. The emphasis, for me, is on the [»plications of the recognition of the asymmetrical position between the sexes, namely that reversibility is not an option, either conceptually or politically. The mt is to overcome the dialectics of domination, not to turn the previous slaves to new masters. Emancipationism tries to push women in thai direction. 12 44 BOM liriAIUIITTI WITH JUDITH HKTLKH thereby introducing homology into a male-dominated system. Just slotting women in, without changing the rules of the gome, would indeed be mere reification of existing social conditions of inequality. Sexual difference feminists ore opposed to that ond want to criticize the political bankruptcy of thai move. We should bank instead on the margin of ex-centrielty from Ihe phallic system that women "enjoy" as part of the patriarchal socio-symbolic deal, it's that margin of non-belonging that serves as foundation for feminist politics. Whereas Derrida-slyle feminists are happy to let this margin float in a disseminating vortex, sexual difference feminists uro determined to anchor ii :: women's lived experience. The ceninil issue ;i! sinke in this project is how to create, leiiitmuilc. and represent a multiplicity (if alternative forms of feminist subjectivity without falling into either a new- essentialism or a new relativism. The starting poin i for the project ofsexual difference is Ihe political will to assert Ihe specificity of the lived, female bodily experience. This involves Ihe refusal to disembody sexual difference through the valorization of a new allegedly "postmodern" and "antiessentialisl" subject; in other words, the project ofsexual difference engages a will to reconnect the whole debate on difference to the bodily existence and experience of women. I think it is a factor of our historical condition that feminists identify feminism as a political site of experimentation and that they are reconsidering the notion of Woman (the patriarchal representation of women, as cultural imago) at the exact period in history when this notion is deconstructed and challenged in social as well as discursive practice. Modernity makes available to feminists Ihe essence of femininity as an historical construct that needs to be worked upon. The real-life women who undertake the feminist subject -position as a pari of the social and symbolic reconstruction of what I call female subjectivity are a multiplicity in themselves: split, fractured, and constituted across intersecting levels of experience. This third level, which I call "Ihe differences within," is approached through an analytic of subjectivity. It highlights the complexity of the embodied structure of the subject: the body refers lo a layer of corporeal materiality, a substratum of living matter endowed with memory. The Deleuzian view of I Incorporeal subject that I work with implies that the body cannot be fully apprehended or represented: il exceeds representation. I stress this because far loo often in feminist theory the level of "identity" gels merrily confused m b; Any Olher Name, Inlervieit- 4S with issues of political subjectivity. Identity bears a privileged bond to unconscious processes—which are imbricated with the corporeal—whereas political subjectivity is a conscious and willful position. Unconscious desire and willful choice are of different registers. My emphasis falls on the positivity of desire, on its productive force. I would like lo understand feminism not only in terms of willful commitment to a set of values or political beliefs, but also in terms ofthe cal passions and ihe desire thai sustain it. What feminism liberates in women is their desire for freedom, lightness, justness and self-accomplishment. These values ore not only rational political beliefs, but also objects of intense desire. This merry spirit was quite manifest in the earlier days ofthe women's movement, when it was clear that joy and laughter were profound political emotions and statements. Not much of this joyful beat survives in these days of postmodernist gloom, and yet we would do well to remember the subversive force of Dionysian laughter. A healthy dose of hermeneutics of suspicion towards one's political beliefs is no form of cynicism, or nihilism, but rather a way of returning politics to the fullness, the embodiedness, and consequently the partiality of lived experience. I wish feminism would shed its saddening, dogmatic mode to rediscover the joy of a movement that aims to change the form of life. JB: I wonder whether Ihe notion ofthe bodily specificity of women is compatible with Ihe notion of difference thai you also want to applaud, for the claim to specificity may well be disrupted by difference. U seems important not to reduce the one term to the other. 1 think part of the suspicion toward the "sexual difference" framework is precisely thai it lends to make sexual difference more hallowed, more fundamental, as a constituting difference of social life more important than oilier kinds of differences. In your view, is the symbolic division of labor between the sexes more fundamental than racial or national divisions, and would you argue for the priority ofsexual difference over other kinds of differences? If so, doesn't this presume that feminism is somehow more fundamental and has greater explanatory power and political salience than other kinds of critical intellectual movements? RB: Your question tends to re-essentialize the issue of female subjectivity, whereas everything I am saying rests on a de-essentialized, complex, and ulti-layered understanding ofthe female subject. Woman is a complex entity 46 HOŠI HimillITTI «ITII JUDITH BLTI.K» which, as Krisleva puls it. pertains both to Ihe longer, linear lime of history and to a deeper, more discontinuous sense of time: this is the time of cyclical transformation, of counter-genealogies, ofbecoming and resistance. Although I am aware of how irritated a pustcolonial thinker such as Spivak is with Krisleva's "sacralization" of sexual difference, 1 prefer to approach Kristeva's analysis as a description —and, for me, a very adequate one—of how Western culture has historically organized a very effective dichotomy between, on the one hand, Ihe Ideological lime of historical agency—colonized by men —and. on Ihe olher, ihe time of cyclical becoming, of unconscious processes, of repetitions, and internal contradictions to winch women have not only access but also a privileged relationship. To understand the laller, I proposed that we interpret the notion of "situated" knowledge, or the "politics of location," not only in spatial terms (class, ethnicily, elc), but also as a temporal notion. It has to do with counter-memory, Ihe emergence ofalternative patterns of identification, of remembrance: memory and the sense of lime arc closely linked to sexual difference. My position is that we need to fight on all levels, but to assert lhal Ihe starting point is the recognition of a common symbolic position does nol imply that women are in any way ihe same. I won't deny Ihe real tensions lhal exist between the critique of the priority traditionally granted to the variable "sexuality" in Western discourses of subjectivity and my staled intention of redefining feminist subjecls as embodied genealogies and counter-memories. The question is how- to resituale subjectivity in a network of inter-related variables of which sexuality is only one, set alongside powerful axes of subjectificalion such as race, culture, nationality, class, life-choices, and sexual orientation. No wonder that this projecl has led some to reject Ihe entire idea of sexual difference and to dispose with ihe signifier "woman" altogether. These tensions form an historical contradiction: lhal Ihe signifier "woman" be bolh the concepl around which feminists have gathered in a political movement where the politics of identity are central, and thai il be als« the very concepl lhal needs lo be analyzed critically. I think that ihe feminist emphasis on sexual difference challenges the ccntrality granted to phallo-ccntric sexuality in Western culture, even though by naming il as one of Ihe pillars of this system, it appears to be endorsing il. As I said earlier, the real-life women who undertake the process of social and symbolic reconstruction of [nisi» by Any Ollirr Name. Inlervitw female subjectivity are nol a new version of Cartesian consciousness, but rather a deconstructed, multiple entity in themselves: split, fractured, and constituted over intersecting levels of experience. This multiple identity is relational, in that it requires a bond lo the "Other": it is retrospective, in that it rests on a set of imaginary identifications, that 's lo say unconscious internalized images which escape rational control. This fundamental non-coincidence 0f identity with the conventional Cartesian idea of consciousness is the crucial starling point. Because of il, one's imaginary relations to one's real-life conditions, including one's history, social conditions, and gender relations, become available as material for political and other types of analysis. Now, we all know—with Foucault-lhal Western culture has given high priority lo sexuality as a matrix of subjectivity. By taking up issues with the institution of sexuality, sexual difference feminists point out that Ihe normative effects of the web of power that takes the sexed body as target are not equally distributed between the sexes, bul rather implement the lack of symmetry between them, which is Ihe trademark of palriarchy. Hence, feminists go beyond Foucault and in so doing challenge the whole institution of sexuality. For one thing, Irigaray and others challenge it by redefining the body in a form of corporeal materialism that goes beyond the sacralized conception upheld in the west; the mimetic repetition is a strategy to engender the new. as you well know. As a consequence, Ihe besi strategy for moving out of this contradiction is radical embodiment and strategic mimesis, thai is, Ihe working through of the contradictions: working backwards through, like Benjamin's angel of history, a strategy ofdeconstruclion that also allows for temporary redefinitions, combining the fluidity and dangers of a process of change with a minimum of stability or anchoring. This is why I relate strongly to your "Contingent Foundations" piece. The process is forward-looking, not nostalgic. It does not aim at recovering a lost origin, but rather at bringing about modes of representation that take into account the sort of women we have already become. In this respeel, I suppose you are right in staling that I grant lo feminism a greater explanatory power than olher critical theories. JB: It seems we are in an odd position, since for you Ihe turn lo "gender" depoliiicizes feminism, but for some, Ihe luni to gender is a way of insisting that feminism expand its political concerns beyond gender asymmetry. a 48 HOS I HHAIDOTTI WITH JUDITH BUTI.KB to underscore Ihe cultural specificity of its constitution as well as its interrelations with oilier politically invested categories, such as nation and race. Is Ihis political aim in the turn to gender legible to you? mt: The opposition to gender is based on the realization of its politically disastrous institutional consequences. For instance, in their contribution 10 the first issue of the European Journal of Women's Studies, Diane Richardson and Victoria Robinson review the ongoing controversy concerning the naming of feminist programs in the institutions. They signal especially the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases here in Uie Netherlands, too, of positions advertised as "gender studies" being given away lo the "bright boys." Some of the competitive takeover has lo do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of de-radical! zing the feminist agenda, remarketing masculinity and gay male identity instead. On the other hand, 1 remember conversations with people in eastern European countries who argued that gender allowed them to bring to visibility very basic problems linked to the status of women alter the paralysis of the Communist regime. Still, there are many feminists, especially in Asia, who refuse our own definition of gender equality because they see it as an imitation of masculine norms and forms of behavior. JB: Yes, I found in Prague that the Gender Studies group found it necessary to distance themselves from the term "feminism" since that latter term had been explicitly used by the Communist state to persuade women that their interests were best served by the state. bii: I can see their point and have absolutely no objection to it as a first step toward setting up a feminist project—as long as it does not stop Ihere. The other relevant use of gender occurs, of course, in development work and in the sort of work done by U.N. agencies. It is clear that in a context where physical survival, clean air and water, and basic necessities are at slake, you need to allow for a more global term than sexual difference. Also, as the (si» by An,v Other Name. Interview 49 emphasis on sexuality is so central to the Western mind set, it may not apply widely outside it. jB: But what do you think of this association of "gender" with equality in opposition lo difference? nit: All I can say is that 1 believe firmly that a feminist working in Europe today simply has to come lo terms wilh the knot of contradictions surrounding the queslion of difference. 1 remember the first time 1 attempted such a conversation with an American colleague was when Donna {faraway came to Utrecht. Donna asked how it is I believe that difference is the queslion. I replied that it has to do with European history and with my being situated as a European feminist. As I told you before, I think thai Ihe notion and the historical problems related to difference in general and "sexual difference" in particular are extremely relevant politically in the European Community today. The renewed emphasis on a common European identity, which accompanies the project of the unification of the old continent, is resulting in "difference" becoming more than ever a divisive and antagonistic notion. According to the paradox of simultaneous globalization and fragmentation, which marks Ihe socio-economic structure of these post-industrial times, what we are witnessing in Europe these days is a nationalistic and racist regression that goes hand in hand with the project of European federalism. It is actually quite an explosion of vested interests that claim their respective differences in the sense of regional isms, localisms, ethnic wars, and relativisms of all kinds. "Difference," in the age of the disintegration of Ihe eastern block, is a lethally relevant term, as several feminist Yugoslav philosophers put it. Kragmentalion and the reappraisal of difference in a post-structuralist mode can only be perceived at best ironically and at worst "■agically, by somebody living in Zagreb, not to speak of Dubrovník or Sarajevo. 1 think the notion of "difference" is a concept rooted in European seism, having been colonized and taken over by hierarchical and exelusion- ar>' ways of thinking. Fascism, however, does not come from nothing. In the 1 »ropeari history of philosophy, "difference" is central insofar as it has always unetioned by dualislic oppositions, which cr eale sub-categories ofolherness, 50 rosí BKAiixírri «itii ji ihtii n u t li: r or "diffcrencc-from." Because in this history, "difference" has been predicated on relations of domination and exclusion, to be "different-from" came to mean "less than," to be worth less than. Historically, difference has consequent!) acquired essenlialisticand lethal connotations, which in turn have made entire categories of beings disposable, that is to say: just as human, but slightly more mortal than those who are not marked off as "different." What I was trying to say earlier is that, as a critical thinker, an intellectual raised in the baby-boom era of the new Europe, as a Feminist committed to enacting empowering alternatives, I choose to make myself accountable for this aspect of my culture and my history. I consequently waul tos/structuralism to the extent thai Willig, more than any other inheritor of that theory, calls into question tin-heterosexual presumption. I also think that it would be a mistake to locate the discourse on lesbian desire within the available conception of female sexuality or femininity in the psychoanalytically established sense. It seems clear to me that there are important cross-identifications with masculine norms and figures within lesbian desire for which an emphasis on feminine specificity cannot suffice, I also think that those very terms, masculine and feminine, are destabilized in pail through their very reappropriation in lesbian sexuality. I take it that this is one reason why sexual difference theorists resist queer theory. Although it may be true that the turn to gender obfuscates or denies the asymmetrical relation of sexual difference, it seems equally true that the exclusive or primán focus on sexual difference obfuscates or deniea the asymmetry of the hetero/homo divide. And thai dynamic has. of course, the power to work in reverse, whereby the exclusive emphasis on the hetero/honu» divide works to obfuscate the asymmetry of sexual difference. These are, of course, not the only matrices of power in which these displacements occur. In fact, they are bound to occur, in my view, wherever one matrix becomes distilled from the others and asserted as primary. BD: 1 w ill agree on one thing: you do remain very much under \Vittig'> influence. Let me focus on a few points: your suggestion that sexual difference theorists "resist" queer theory. 1 think the verb "resist" suggests a more active and purposeful denial of this theory than is actually the case. What is true is thai queer theory has had little impact on European feminism so far, but that is mostly due to the fact that a great deal of uncertainty still surrounds the term-Most of us have read the issue ofdifferences on "Queer Theory" (5.2 (199l|). but the positions expressed there and elsewhere seem to be quite diverse. For instance, you seem to claim a "queer" identity as a practice of resign! fixation and resistance, rather than as a lesbian counter-identity. In this respect, there is an interesting dialogue to be had between you and Teresa de Lauretls, who is more concerned with issues of lesbian epistemology. desire, and subjectivity. nlsin by Any Other Name. Inierx'leu- 55 Moreover, in countries like Holland, where gay and lesbian studies are institutionalized and the social and legal position of gays and lesbians is comparatively quite advanced, the emphasis at the moment does nol seem to be so much on claiming an identity they taught us to despise, as on a sort of epistemological anarchy, a psychic and social guerilla warfare against the kingdom of identity perse. The term "queer" sounds strangely old-fashioned in Ihiscontext. 1 think that to really understand why sexual difference theorists do pot care for queer theory you need to address the very real conceptual differences between the two schools of thought. And here let me move on to another point you make, concerning Wittig's practice of lesbian authorship. If the issue is the analysis of the limitations of the social/sexual contract such as Lévi-Strauss proposes, let me say that Wittig was neither the first nor the only one to raise questions about it. In her early 70s essay called "Des marchandises enlrelles," Irigaray opens fire on the whole theory of exogamy and diagnoses the heterosexual contract as confining women to a reified position in the realm of desire, as well as in the socio-economic spheres. As I said earlier, however, she then goes on to propose another line of attack, quite different from Wittig's. but equally aware of the hold that heterosexual desire has on women. I guess part of my cross-questioning has to do with the fad that I do not recognize Wittig in the reading you are proposing of her. 1 think there's more of you in it than Wittig herself, though I am sure you would say the same of my readings of Irigaray—with which I would have to agree. I^et me focus on only one point, however: 1 do not see how the kind of lesbian subjectivity Wittig defends can be taken as a more universal conception of subjectivity. All 1 see is tne affirmation of a lesbian identity which rests on the dissolution of the signifier "woman" and the dismissal of all that which, historically and psychically—following the multi-layered scheme 1 suggested earlier—we have learned to recognize as "female desire." I object to that because I see it as a contradictory claim which aims to hold together simultaneously a notion of a specific, object-oriented practice of lesbian desire and a concept of sexually undifferentiated, "post-gender" subjectivity. I just do not see how that would work. You know from my first book how critical I am of any attempt to "dissolve" women »Ho "post-something" categories; 1 think it is one of the most pernicious aspects of both postmodern and other theories. I also have a conceptual objection: Wittig speaks as if we could dispose 1°' "woman," shedding her like an old skin, ascending onto a third subject 5i HUSI HHilDUT'ľl nim JUDITU iUTLBR position. This slrikes me as a vohmtaristic attempt to tear women away from Ihe crucial paradox of our Identity. Paradoxes need lo be handled with more care than that. As I said earlier, the paradox of female identity for feminists is that it needs to he both claimed and deconstructed. Such a paradox is therefore the site of a powerful set of historical contradictions, which must be worked through fully and collectively before they can be overcome. II is not by willful self-naming that we shall find the exit from Ihe prison-house ofphallogocentric language. Win ig may appear to have a more optimistic approach to language, believing in the plasticity and changeability of the linguistic chain. Without giving into some of the linguistic euphoria which marks the more exalted moments of éeriturefeminine, especially in Cixous, 1 do think nonetheless thai changes in the deep structures of identity require socio-symbolic interventions thai go beyond willful self-naming and that these call Tor concerted action by men and women. The famous statement that the unconscious processes are trans-historical and consequently require time to be changed was not supposed to mean that we can step outside or beside the unconscious by making a counter-move towards "historical or social reality." It rather means that lo make effective political choices we must come to terms with the specific temporality of the unconscious. Hence the points I made earlier about women and lime. It seems to me thai Wittig wants none of Ihis. Insofar as her theoretical work—as opposed to her fictional work —rests on the assumption <>I" a nature/culture, sex/gender divide which springs from Beauvoir's Cartesian legacy, she's vehemently opposed lo the practice ofthe unconscious, be it in the literary texts or through psychoanalysis. If the optimistic side of this is that she believes that we can change the world by renaming it. the negative one is that she neglects the issue ofthe split nature ofthe subject, the loss and pain that mark her/his entry into the signifying order. Wittig makes no allowance for this specific pain and prefers simply to declare that the phallicily of language is not at issue. Thus, I Ibid her deeply antithetical to the basic assumptions of post-structuralism, especially the idea of Ihe non-coincidence of identity with consciousness. Contrary to you, I think we need more than ever to work through the psychoanalytic scheme of desire, because it offers a sel of multiple points of entry into the complexity of subjectivity. Resides, historically, psychoanalysis has evolved into the most thorough account of the construction of desire in Ihe West, and you know how I feel about historical accountability! Inisni l>.v Any Olher Name. Interview JB: To me it is less interesting to establish Witlig's poslslructuralist credentials than to consider the way in which she rewrites the imaginary' and originär)' mama "^,ne splitling of the subject. The subject comes into "sex" from a unitary being, split on the occasion ofils sexing. You are quite right that she underestimates the usefulness of psychoanalysis for her project, bul she does give us a quite trenchant critique of the sexual contract as it is presupposed and reinstituled through structuralism. I also think lhal she understands the pain and agony involved in the process of remaking oneself: 77ie Lesbian Body is precisely a painful, collective, and erotic effort to substitute (meta-phorize) an older body with a newer one, and the struggle involved is quite graphically difficult and in no simple sense voluntaristic. I think as well that there is no way to read what Wittig has to say about Proust, about the "Trojan horse" of literature, without realizing that what she seeks is a medium of universality that does not dissimulate sexual difference. 1 think, at her best, she recasts writing as a complex action of materialism. rii: I do think there are discrepancies between her theoretical positions and her fictional work; I do prefer the latter by far. One last point —about the asymmetrical relation between helero/homo and Ihe issues related to the power of each position. If at the level of diagnosis sexual difference theory clearly identifies heterosexuality as the location of power and domination, at the programmatic level, it challenges the idea of heterosexuality as the center and lesbianism as the periphery. Resting on psychoanalysis and on political determination alike, a sexual difference approach posits the center in terms of women's own homosexual desire for each other, whereas heterosexualily is seen as a further horizon towards which one could move, if one fell so inclined. « happens thai Irigaray feels very' much that way inclined, and Cixous, not a tiny hit im t the frame of reference is similar. And this is the reason why sexual difference theorists do not believe in radical lesbian claims. Not believing in mem is quite another position than denying them. 1 am quite struck by your final remark about clashes which occur between opposing claims as to which matrix of power really matters: is it man/ woman, hetero/humo, while/black, etc.? I think this approach is inadequate because if feminism and poststrucluralism—each in its specific way —have toughi us anything it is Ihe need lo recognize complexity; i.e., the simultaneous yet discontinuous presence of potentially contradictory aspects of diverse axes of subjectivity. In other words, 1 take it as a fundamental point to resist belief in KUit OľllllOľTI ttlTM JIJUITII BI. TI. K H Lh e almighty potency of one power location; one is never fully contained by am one matrix oľ power, except in conditions of totalitarianism, which is the ultimate denial of complexity in that it reduces one to the most basic and most ruthlessly available matrix. For instance, as we said earlier, women in the former Yugoslavia are stuck with an ethnic identity which becomes the sole definer of who they are. The fact of being women, or lesbians, only exposes them to more brutal carnal violation than the same ethnic entities who happen not to be women. You can say the same for conditions of slavery—but these are extreme, and extremely revealing, cases. Everyday oppression tends to work through a network of constant checks and systems of surveillance, so thai one cannot make a priority as to which matrix matters at all times. The temporal scale is very important. What matters especially to me is that we feminists find a way of accounting for the different matrices which we inhabit at different points in time—that we compare notes about them, identify points of resistance to them. There's no denying that sexual difference theorists and radical lesbian theorists will identify different points of resistance and different strategies to activate them. But why would that be a problem? Do we have to have only one point of exit from the kingdom of the phallus? I think, on the contrary: the more. the merrier. Let us turn our differences into objects of discursive exchange among us. jb: I think a further problem with the notion of sexual difference has been its assumption of the separability of the symbolic organization of sexual difference—i.e. the Subject and (erased) Other—the Phallus and Lack, from any given social organization. It may be a Marxist hangover-1 don't know-but it seems to ine a yet unanswered question whether sexual difference, considered as symbolic, isn't a reificatton of a social formation, one which in making a claim to a status beyond the social offers the social one of its most insidious legitimating ruses. At worst, it reifies a given organization of compulsory heterosexuality as the symbolic, vacating (yet ratifying) the domain of the social and the political project of social transformation. RB: I disagree with this account of sexual difference and I find this to be one of the most fruitful points of divergence between us. Working with the multi-layered project of sexual difference, I distinguish between its descriptive and programmatic aspects. I would thus say that the separation of the symbolic fcminis"" by Any Oilier Name. Interview 59 front the material, as well as the separability—i.e. the thinkability —of the separation, are an effect of the patriarchal system of domination. By providing description of this symbolic as an historically sedintented system, sexual difference theory highlights the violence of the separation between the linguistic and the social. This description, however, must not to be taken as an endorsement of this symbolic. Following the strategy of mimetic repetition, the perspective of sexual difference simultaneously exposes and offers a critique of the phallo-gocentric reification of social inequalities into an allegedly distinct and discursively superior symbolic structure. For instance, Irigaray states lime and again that the phallogocentric regime cannot be separated from a material process of the male colonization of social space, starting from the woman's body and Uten spreading across the basic "symbolic" functions in the West (according to the scheme proposed by Dumézil): the educational, the religious, the military, and the political. The separability of the symbolic from the material presupposes a patriarchal power that enforces the conditions under which such a separation is produced. In this sense, the symbolic is a slab or frozen history. But if you read Irigaray closely, you will see that her aim is to recom-bine that which patriarchal power has separated. Irigaray calls for the meltdown of the male symbolic in order to provide for the radical re-enlleshing of both men and women. She has always been explicit on the point that the production of new subjects of desire requires a massive social reorganization and transformation of the material conditions oľ life. This is no Marxist hangover, just radical materialism in the poststructuralist mode. jb: To claim that the social and the symbolic must both be taken into account is still to assume their separability. How do you, then, distinguish between social and material, on the one hand, and semiotic and symbolic, on foe other? mi: Let us nol confuse the thinkability of an issue with its reaffirmation. To think is a way of exposing and offering a critique, not necessarily an endorsing of certain conditions. Thus, your question comes from a very uncomfortable place, which I w'ani lo challenge. I would like to historicize your question and not let it hang ™ a conceptual void. Let me turn it right around and ask you how you hope to 60 BOSI MRA IIIIITTI WITH JUDITH 111 Tl. K H keep up a dislineiioti between the socio-malerial and the linguistic or symbolic? I think we are living through a major transition: the sort of world that is being constructed for us is one where "bio-power" as thought by Foucault has been replaced by the informatics of domination and the hypnosis of technobabble. As Deleuze rightly puts it in Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and as mam black and postcolonial feminists have noted: in the new age of transnational capital Oow and world migration and. I would add. of the inlernet and computer pornography, of off-shore production plants and narco-dollars, the material and symbolic conditions are totally intertwined. I think we need new theories that encompass the simultaneity of semiotic and material effects, not those that perpetuate their disconnection. ,ib: I agree, though. You mention here the intertwining of the symbolic and the material, but I am not sure where terms like the social and the historical tit into this scheme. I meant only to point out that those who separate the symbolic from the social lend to include under the rubric of the "symbolic" a highly idealized version of the social, a "structure" stripped of its sociality and, hence, an idealization of a social organization of sex under the rubric of the symbolic. Your reference to "the patriarchal system of domination" impresses me in a way. I think that the phrase has become permanently disabled in the course of recent critiques of (a) the systematic or putative universalit) of patriarchy, (b) the use of patriarchy to describe the power relations relating to male dominance in their culturally variable forms, and (c) the use of domination as the central way in which feminists approach the question of power. I also think that to call for the simultaneity of the social and the symbolic or lo claim that they are interrelated is still to claim the separability of those domains. Just before this last remark, you called that "separation" a violent one. thus marking an insuperability lo the distinction. I understand that you take the symbolic lo be historically sedimentcd, bul you then go on to distinguish the symbolic from both the social and the material. These two terms remain unclear to me: are they the same? When does history become "the historically sedimented" and are all things historically sedimented the same as "the symbolic"? ir the symbolic is also dynamic, as you argue in relation to Deleuze, what does this do lo the definition? kb: 1 do not see sexual difference as postulating a symbolic beyond the Ism by Any Oilier [Vanw. Interview social—quile the contrary. You know. 1 am beginning to think that where we differ the most is on how we understand the theoretical speaking stance and the activity of thinking. I do not think that lo emphasize the simultaneity of the social and the symbolic is the same as endorsing the separability of these domains. The conditions of the thinkability of a notion need to be analyzed in a more complex manner. Let me put it this way: there is more to an utterance than its propositional content. One also needs to take into account the pre-conceplual component, i.e. affeelivily, forces, the flows of intensity that underlay each utterance. With respect to "the separability of the social from the symbolic," I would distinguish among different possible topologies: i. a cartographic urge: the description and the assessment of the effects of a patriarchal symbolic; 2. a Utopian drive: the feminist political project to overthrow the aforementioned system and set up an alternative one; 3. a polemical touch: the desire lo set everybody talking about it. Where I do agree with Deleuze is in approaching the theoretical process as a dynamic, forward-looking, nomadic activity. The process of making sense, therefore, rests on non-conceptual material and on more fluid transitions than you seem to allow for. The point remains, however: we need lo conslrucl new desiring subjects on the ruins of the phallogocentrically enforced gender dualism. New subjects also require new social and symbolic structures that allow for changes in identity and structures of desire to be enacted socially and registered collectively. To achieve this, we need a quiet, molecular, viral, and therefore unstoppable revolution within the self, multi-Plied over a multitude of different selves acting as historical agents of change. Of course, history is the process of multi-layered sedimentations of «vents, activities, discourses, on the model of the archive which both Foucault and Deleuze propose, though in different modes (the latter more radically than Hie former). The symbolic system is linked lo this historical sedimentation, tt°ugh not always positively: I mean, it would be really too naive to think that l* symbolic would automatically register the kind of social changes and in epth transformations brought about by movements such as feminism. I think 62 nosí i: f \ i mi n i with 11 in in m.ri.KH the process of symbolic change is more like a dual feedback mechanism, which requires Ihe sort of diversified and complex intervention that Kristeva talks about. I also think you need to make a distinction between I-acan's ideas on the symbolic and its link to historical processes and Irigaray's and Delcuze's ideas on the matter: they are quite different. 1 prefer Deleu/.e's definition of the symbolic as a programmatic model because he sees it as the dynamic process of production of signifying practices in a manner which interlocks Ihe linguistic and social conditions of this production. The problem is, however, that Deleuze denies—or rather, hesitates about—the specificity of sexual difference. lrigara> is clearer about the latter, on the other hand, bul she still remains attached t<> the La can i an scheme of the symbolic/imaginary link-up, which opens up a whole set of other problems, not the least of which is the issue of the female death drive. This results in a less dynamic scheme of operation. jb: But here, Rosi, it seems that you pick and choose those definitions of the symbolic that appear to suit your purposes, and if Deleuze is more dynamic, then Deleuze wins the contest. I wonder whether the symbolic is meant to operate in that way, that is, as a set of regulating structures and dynamics which might be elected over others. My sense is that symbolic is taken to mean a set of structures and dynamics which set the limit to what can and cannot be elected. Who, for instance, is the author who decides these questions, and how is it that authorship itself is decided in advance by precisely this symbolic functioning? I think that the symbolic designates the ideality of regulatory power and that that power must finally be situated and criticized within an enhanced conception of the social. This Is clearly a difference between us. In what directions do you intend to go? nit: Surely, by the mid-90s, we can say that there are theories of the symbolic which feminists need to analyze and assess comparatively, and yes, I definitely believe that, at this point in lime, feminists must choose among them. You seem to have a more static idea of how the symbolic works than I do; thus. my preference for Deleuze is not merely instrumental. 1 just think thai bis definition of the symbolic is more useful for feminist politics because it breaks from Lacan's psychic essentialism. 1 am also surprised that you seem to attribute all the regulatory power lo the symbolic function alone. I see thai function only as n term in a relation—for Lacan, the symbolic/imaginary/real ni by Any Other Name. Interview 63 relation, for lrigaray, the symholic/imaginary/political relation, and for Fou-cault. the process of subjectificatioii through truth, knowledge, and discursive practice. 1 am much more interested in the process, the relation, than any of its terms—hence my emphasis on nomadic shifts. At the moment, ľm working on this tension between Deleuzť's explicit hesitation on sexual difference, as opposed to what 1 see as Irigaray's implicit inability to really move beyond it. 1 tell you, there are days when I am attracted to (faraway's "cyborg" theory, just because it postulates the demise of the vision of the subject as split and resting on the unconscious. Bui, of course, I cannot follow ihat road. So I pursue my nomadic journey in between different processes, terms of relation, and theories, hoping to be able to resist the two greatest temptations facing feminists: firstly, losing sight of the practical, political implications of both this journey and the theories that sustain it; secondly, believing that any one theory can ever bring salvation. In this respect, the theoretical overload that marks our exchange may have at least one positive effect on the readers. By reaction, it may make them want to practice a merrier brand of idiosyncratic and hybrid thinking, something that is neither conceptually pure nor politically correct: a joyful kind of feminist "dirty-minded" thinking. July 1994 Notes I NOiSm (Network Oľ Inlerdlseiplinary W □men's Sludtes In Europe) lakes place within the KIUSMU5 exchange scheme of (lie European Union. It's an inlra-nnivei'slly students and teachers exchange program fully sponsored by Hie commissions of tbc Europenn t.'nion. Wc have partners from len European countries and we have around 40 sludenls every academic year, The central iheme of our noiSsb network islhc development of European women '«studies from a multicultural perspective. Christine Rammralh and I have years of »or* behind us. 10 construct a joinl European curriculum In »omen's studies. And I can tell you that Ihe Curriculum looks amazing. It Is being tested in Bologna Ihls summer, Denmark next Summer and ihen it gets rolling in 1096. rusí ľ.Hiiuorri nim Judith «i ni« 2 a) CRm:k. European Women's Studies Databank. Power. Empowerment and Polities. Feminist Research. Women and Work, Inequalities and Opportunities. b) Steering group lor women's studies, coordinated by Jalua Haunter: Women's Studies and European Integration with Reference to Current and Future Action Programmes for Equal Opportunities belween Women and Men. c> Margo Brouns. "The Development of Women's Studies: A Report from ihe Nelherlands.- d) ivMvs, Establishing gender studies in Central and Eastern European countries. 3 In the seminars ofthe research group "Genderand Genre" held In Iľlrechl in 1992 and Mini. 4 See Duchen. 5 For an attempt lo bypass the polemics and highlight the theoretical differences, allow nulo refer you to my study Patterns of Dissonance. 6 See Sexual Difference: A Theory of Political Practice, by Ihe Milan Women's Bookshop. See also Ihe volumes edited by Bono and Kemp, and b> Hermsen and van Lemming. 7 This point is made strongly by de Laiiretis. See also "Savoiľ el differencc des sexes." a special issue otl.es cahicrs dugr{f{451 1980)) devoted lo women's studies, where a Similar point is raised in a French contest. 8 One of the classics here is Rubin. See also I larlsock. 9 See Irtgaray, Speculum, Ce sexe qui il'en est pas an. and Ethique de ta difference sexuelle. See also Cixous, "l,e rlre de la Meduse." La /ernte are, Entre ľé.criture. and Le Hire de Prométhea. 10 As Foucaull argued in his L'Ordre du discaurs. 11 See Coward and Ellis. 12 To appreciate tile difference, one lias only to compare the vision of female homosexualit« til Clxous's Le livre de Pmmothea wllh Wltllg's hi Le corps lesbien. 13 See Ihe debate witliin the psychoanalytic society which, from the very start, opposed Ihe male-centered theories of Freud on female sexuality to the woman-centered ones defended liy Ernst Jones and Melanie Klein. Irigaray gives a full overview of this debate in Ce. Sexe. feminism1» -*»>' n,l"'r N"""' ll"<""" « Works Ciled Beauvoir. Simone de. Le deuxienie sexe. Paris: Callimard. 1949. Trans, as Ttie Second Sex. Trans, and ed. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1974. Benjamin. Walter. Illuminations. Ed. and introd. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zolin. .New York: Schocken. I960. Bock. Gisela. Siaria. storia delle donne, storia di genere. Fircnze: Estro slrumenti. 19S8. Bono, Paola, and Sandra Kemp. eds. Italian Feminist Thought. Oxford: Black well, 1991. ——.The Lonely Mirror. New York: Routledge. 1995. BraldoUl, Rosi. Patterns of Dissonance. New York, Routledge, 1991. ■ . "Towards a New Nomadism: Feminist Deleii/ian Tracks, or Metaphysics and Metabolism.- Oilles Deleuze and The Theater of Philosophy. Ed. Constantiu Boundas and Dorothea Olkowskl. New- York: Routledge. 1994. Brouns. Margo. "The Development of Women's Sludies: A Report from Ihe Netherlands." The Hague: STF.O, 1989. Cisous, Heléne- Entre ľécriture. Paris: Des Femmes, 1986. ------. Le livre de Prométhea. Paris: Galllmard. 1987. Trans, as The Book of Prométhea. Trans. Betsy Wing. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 1991. ------. "Lcrire de la Meduse." L'ArcGt (1974): 39-54. Trans, as "The Laugh of the Medusa." Sign* 1(1976): 875-93. Cisous, Helene, and Catherine Clement. La/eune nee. Paris: Union Generale d'ßditions. 1975. Trans, as The Newly Horn If oman. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: il of Minnesota P, 1986. Coward, Rosalind, and John Ellis, eds. Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory ofthe Subject. Bosioil: Routledge, 1977. de Laurelis, Teresa. -The Essence of the Triangle, or Taking ihe Risk of Essentlallsm Seriously." differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 1.2 (1988): 3-57. Deleu^e, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. Milles plateaus1: Capitalisme et Schizophrenie. Parts: L» 66 »OSI IIHAIIIOTTI MITII JUDITU BUTLKII Minuli. 1980. Trans, as A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 1987. Duby, Georges, and Michelle Permi, eds. A Ifistoty of Women in llu West. 10 vols, to date, Cambridge: Belknap, 1992-. Duchen. Claire. Feminism in France. London: Roulledge. 1986. Duhacek. Dasa. "Proposal for Ihe Experimental Women's Studies in Belgrade." Unpublished essay. 1992. Dun ./H. r,, ,,i-i-v. u.v.'r-..,., -r Řpopie. Paris: QalllnHrd, 1MB. Duras. Marguerite. Interview. Shifting Scenes: interviews on Women, Writing, and Politic* m Post 1968 France. Ed. Alice Jordine and Anne Menke. New York: Columbia UP. 1991. 71-7*. Essed. Phllomcna. Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. \.%miU-iv Sage, 1981. "Establishing Gender Studies in Cenlral and Eastern European Countries.- Bulletin of EftWS. Mar. 1995. Fare, Ida. Mara e le alire: le donne c la lotto armata. Milanu: Fcllrinelli, 1978. Fniic-iull. Michel. /.'Ordredu discours. Paris: Callimard. 1971. Trans, us "The Discourse on Language." Trans. Rupert Swyer. The Archaeology 0.1'Knowledge and 77řť Discourse »a Language. New York: Pantheon, 1972. Hartsock. Nancy. "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing Ihe Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism." Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectiix* on Epistenml-ogy. Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill R. Hintikka. Boston: Reidel. 1985. Hermsen.Joke, and Alkeline van lemming, eds. Sharing the Difference: Feminist Debates in Holland. New York: Roulledge. 1991. Irigaray. Luce. Ce scse quin'en est pas un. Paris: Minuil. 1977. Trans, as This Sex Which is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porler. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 1985. ------. "Egalcs á qui?" Critique 480 (1987): 420-57. Trans, as "Eipial to Whom?"differences: A Journal o,f Feminist Cultural Studies 1.2(1988): 59-76. tnlnism by An> 0lll'-r Name. Inttnuw _____Eihique de la difference sexuelle. Paris: Mlnult, 1984. Trans, as An Ethics