DOCSLIB.ORG

The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, and Interrelatedness

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, and Interrelatedness University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2016 The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, and Interrelatedness Robyn Henderson-Espinoza University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Henderson-Espinoza, Robyn, "The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, and Interrelatedness" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1168. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1168 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, & Interrelatedness _________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver ________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _________ by Robyn Henderson-Espinoza June 2016 Advisor: Theodore M. Vial, Jr. ©Copyright by Robyn Henderson-Espinoza 2016 All Rights Reserved Author: Robyn Henderson-Espinoza Title: The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, & Interrelatedness Advisor: Theodore M. Vial, Jr. Degree Date: June 2016 ABSTRACT This project weaves together the theoretically rich and diverse work of ancient materialist philosophers, modern philosophy which advanced a theory of monism, and contemporary philosophies that further extends monism into new terrain, including ‘new materialism.’ While monism is a strand of this project, the core features of this project are materiality and bodies; these two concepts create the particular entanglement and central thrust of this project, which is becoming. While this project is conceptually organized around matter and bodies, and a particular notion of becoming traced from ancient through contemporary thought, this project, also, introduces the importance of Gloria Anzaldúa as a philosophical thinker whose writing is theoretically rich with concepts of matter and becoming. Using the body, broadly construed, as the framework for which both matter and becoming are mobilized, this project further complexifies the material entanglement of becoming by suggesting a never-receding horizon of becoming through the language of interconnectedness, which is the precise metaphysics that is advanced by Gloria Anzaldúa. Framed by the entanglement of ontology, epistemology, and ethics, this project privileges a queer strategy in dismantling the hegemonic interpretation of matter and bodies by suggesting an Anzaldúan turn through the replacement of interrelatedness. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I acknowledge the philosophically poetic mind of Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa that has encouraged this dissertation. Her theories continue to enliven my mind to transgress the boundaries that Western Thought have concretized, and she helps to unleash my imagination in ways that are critical to the development of what I have come to to engage at the intersection of continental philosophy and theology. My committee has been very encouraging of my work, always pushing me to use language with substance. I owe a bottle of Scotch to both Ted Vial and Edward Antonio for their time and energy in conversation. Their interest in my project continues to encourage my own deeply seated intuitions concerning the body and materiality. Likewise, AnaLouise Keating’s enthusiasm and investment in my ideas and project has been a profound gift. We took time to visit in person at conferences and engaged in regular correspondence. Her commitment to my ideas has given me the support I have needed to explore unusual intellectual trajectories that I found in Gloria Anzaldúa and Gilles Deleuze. She has become my comadre. Lastly, and most importantly, I am reminded of the folks with whom I do life: Thelathia Nikotris Young, Jared Vazquez, and Wendy Arce. These three have helped me birth the following dissertation. Still, I am mindful that I tend to engage very meta work, so I have in my mind Chris Davies who has, from the very beginning of our engagement, supported and encouraged my ongoing efforts of translating theory to praxis. I have an abundance of gratitude for those who call forth my deepest and most profound becoming as a scholar. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Del Otro Lado: A Brief Bio .................................................................................... 1 Scope of This Project .............................................................................................. 6 If We Read Anzaldúa This Way, Then… ............................................................. 15 A Note on Methodology ....................................................................................... 18 Why Anzaldúa? ..................................................................................................... 19 Anzaldúan Materiality: The Theoretical Arc of the Dissertation ......................... 22 So What? ............................................................................................................... 27 Chapter Two: Bridging and Rewriting Anzaldúa as a ‘Generative’ Materialist: A New Light in the Darkness of Matter ........................................................................................ 29 Anzaldúa’s Materialism as a Generative Materiality ............................................ 34 The Intersection of Continental Theories and Gloria Anzaldúa: Method and Tracing Anzaldúan Features in “Materialist” Philosophies .................................. 42 Bodies of a Generative Materiality ....................................................................... 51 Chapter Three: Lucretius, An Ancient Matter .................................................................. 52 Lucretius and On the Nature of Things ................................................................. 55 Autopoiesis & Decomposition .............................................................................. 67 Autopoiesis ............................................................................................... 67 Decomposition .......................................................................................... 69 Movement or Force Inherent in Lucretius ............................................................ 70 Anzaldúa and “Tihueque” ..................................................................................... 73 Connecting the “Vital Force” of Ancient Materialism (Lucretius) with the Idea of “Vital Becoming” in Modern and Contemporary Materialism ........................ 77 Why This Material Cartography Is Important? ..................................................... 82 Chapter Four: Modern Matter and ‘Vital Becoming’ in Spinoza and Nietzsche ............. 84 Baruch de Spinoza as a Modern “Materialist” ...................................................... 86 Substance Monism ................................................................................................ 88 Spinoza’s Modern “Vital Materialism” in the Doctrine of Conatus ..................... 98 Friedrich Nietzsche & The Will to Power ........................................................... 104 The Philosophy of the ‘Will’ as a Force Becoming ............................................ 105 Conclusion: The Making of ‘Modern Matter’ .................................................... 109 Gloria Anzaldúa’s Tihueque and Modern Matter ............................................... 110 Chapter Five: Contemporary Matter ............................................................................... 112 Henri Bergson (élan vital) .................................................................................. 114 Gilles Deleuze (pli) ............................................................................................. 119 “New Materialists” .............................................................................................. 127 Rosi Braidotti .......................................................................................... 130 Jane Bennett ............................................................................................ 135 Vicki Kirby ............................................................................................. 137 iv Karen Barad ............................................................................................ 138 Mel Chen ................................................................................................. 142 Anzaldúa as a Materialist .................................................................................... 143 Chapter Six: The Logic of the Body: A Genealogy of A Material Socio-Sensory Reality ............................................................................................................................. 150 René Descartes .................................................................................................... 153 Benedict de Spinoza ...........................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Unity of Heidegger's Project
    REFERENCE ONLY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THESIS Degree fV\o Year Too£ Name of Author A-A COPYRIGHT This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished typescript and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting the thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. COPYRIGHT DECLARATION I recognise that the copyright of the above-described thesis rests with the author and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. LOANS Theses may not be lent to individuals, but the Senate House Library may lend a copy to approved libraries within the United Kingdom, for consultation solely on the premises of those libraries. Application should be made to: Inter-Library Loans, Senate House Library, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. REPRODUCTION University of London theses may not be reproduced without explicit written permission from the Senate House Library. Enquiries should be addressed to the Theses Section of the Library. Regulations concerning reproduction vary according to the date of acceptance of the thesis and are listed below as guidelines. A. Before 1962. Permission granted only upon the prior written consent of the author. (The Senate House Library will provide addresses where possible). B. 1962- 1974. In many cases the author has agreed to permit copying upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. C. 1975 - 1988. Most theses may be copied upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. D. 1989 onwards. Most theses may be copied. This thesis comes within category D.
    [Show full text]
  • CRITICAL THEORY INSTITUTE University of California, Irvine CTI
    CRITICAL THEORY INSTITUTE University of California, Irvine CTI 2011 Wellek Library Lecture Series Donna Haraway Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz Playing Cat’s Cradle with Companion Species Monday, May 2nd, 5-7pm Tuesday, May 3rd, 5-7pm Thursday, May 5th, 5-7pm Humanities Gateway, 1030 Contact Information: Critical Theory Institute University of California, Irvine 433 Krieger Hall Irvine, CA 92697-5525 Phone (949) 824-5583 Fax (949) 824-2767 Director: Kavita Philip Admin. Coordinator: Lisa Clark [email protected] www.humanities.uci.edu/critical For information concerning accommodations for disabilities, please contact Lisa Clark at 949-824-5583 Donna Haraway: A Bibliography for the Occasion of the 31st Wellek Library Lectures Compiled by John Novak, UCI Research Librarian An electronic version of this and previous Wellek Library Lecture bibliographies with working electronic links will be maintained at this Web site: http://www.lib.uci.edu/about/publications/wellek/wellek-series.html Direct links to electronic materials may be accessed on-campus. Off-campus access is for the UCI community via the VPN. For more information, visit the following Web site: http://www.lib.uci.edu/how/connect-from-off-campus.html Table of Contents for Bibliography Works by Haraway ..................................................... 1 Haraway Interviews and Biographies ....................... 16 Selected Works About or Utilizing Haraway ............. 18 Works by Haraway 1975 "The Transformation of the Left in Science: Radical Associations in Britain in the 30s and the U.S.A. in the 60s." Soundings 58 4 (1975): 441-62. Print. Call Number: Langson Bound Periodicals BV 1460 C6 1976 Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology.
    [Show full text]
  • Tesis Oct Draft 20.Pdf
    A Manolo y Maruchi 2 Index Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………... 9 Introduction 1. Research topic, objectives and research questions…………………… 11 2. Research motivations…………………………………………………….. 14 3. Methodological strategies ………………………………………………. 15 4. Structure of the thesis…………………………………………………… 17 Chapter 1. Drawing cartographies, building epistemologies 1.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………. 22 1.2. Feminist (in)visible alliances: the importance of methodological bridges between the Humanities and the Social Sciences…………………………………. 24 1.2.1. Writing a scholarly piece in between the Social Sciences and the Humanities………………………………………………………… 25 1.2.2. Conceptual and political benefits of such a methodological bridge… 27 1.3. From post-modernist paradoxes for literary studies to post-humanist and post- colonial contributions: mapping literary theory………………………………….. 28 1.4. Literature and feminism: an overview………………………………………… 33 1.5. Entangling literature, technology and feminism ………..…………………… 37 1.5.1. Cyberfeminism: going political through the social net……………. 39 3 1.5.2. Feminist Science and Technology Studies: How might we theorize bodies as lived and/or as socially situated? ……………………………………….. 41 1.5.3. Third wave feminism: reinforcing dichotomies? …………………….. 43 1.6. New materialism: third wave feminist epistemology…………………………… 45 1.6.1. New materialist conversations: engaging with the critiques. ………. 46 1.6.2. Putting new materialism to work: implications for the relation between Toni Morrison and Facebook. ……………………………………………… 49 1.7. Conclusions………………………………………………………………… 51 Chapter 2. Diffractive methodology: relating gendered fluxes 2.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………. 53 2.2. Diffractive methodology……………………………………………………….. 54 2.3. Objective and research questions……………………………………………….. 56 2.4. Selecting the participants ……………………………………………………….. 57 2.4.1. Toni Morrison: performing feminist politics in the information society 58 2.4.2. Social Networking Sites: the case of Facebook………………………… 59 2.4.3.
    [Show full text]
  • Amitav Ghosh – Thursday 11.30 – 13.00 Auditori
    ABSTRACTS IN ORDER OF INTERVENTION Panel 1: Amitav Ghosh – Thursday 11.30 – 13.00 Auditori Routes Beyond Roots: Alternative Ecological Histories in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies Maria-Sabina Draga, University of Bucharest This paper will attempt to read Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies as an account of “world histories from below” (to use Antoinette Burton's term, 2012) and take the debate further through positioning the idea of writing alternative histories of the colonial times within an ecocritical context. While the need for such rewritings has always been a central preoccupation of postcolonial literature, the recent tendency (shared by Ghosh) has been to look at history from increasingly local, individualised perspectives. I will examine Ghosh's tracing of routes and connectivities across the Indian Ocean at the time immediately preceding the opium wars, focusing on the consequent reconsideration of human relationships and hierarchies in a post-human perspective. This perspective cuts across boundaries established by caste, social class, biology and geography, as well as by the colonial system, which Ghosh has long been interested in reimagining. While on board the Ibis identities become deterritorialised and fluid, they are disconnected from their various roots and paths established by rigid culturally conditioned frameworks. Connections are established between the human and other forms of life, forming a continuum across the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, which becomes a fluid space of rebuilding identities. I will position my discussion within a theoretical framework informed by Bruno Latour's concept of a politics of nature, Donna Haraway's nature-culture negotiations and Sangeeta Ray's studies of ecological intimacies.
    [Show full text]
  • New Yorkers Had Been Anticipating His Visit for Months. at Columbia
    INTRODUCTION ew Yorkers had been anticipating his visit for months. At Columbia University, where French intellectual Henri Bergson (1859–1941) Nwas to give twelve lectures in February 1913, expectations were es- pecially high. When first approached by officials at Columbia, he had asked for a small seminar room where he could directly interact with students and faculty—something that fit both his personality and his speaking style. But Columbia sensed a potential spectacle. They instead put him in the three- hundred-plus-seat lecture theater in Havemeyer Hall. That much attention, Bergson insisted, would make him too nervous to speak in English without notes. Columbia persisted. So, because rhetorical presentation was as impor- tant to him as the words themselves, Bergson delivered his first American lec- ture entirely in French.1 Among the standing-room-only throng of professors and editors were New York journalists and “well-dressed” and “overdressed” women, all fumbling to make sense of Bergson’s “Spiritualité et Liberté” that slushy evening. Between their otherwise dry lines of copy, the reporters’ in- credulity was nearly audible as they recorded how hundreds of New Yorkers strained to hear this “frail, thin, small sized man with sunken cheeks” practi- cally whisper an entire lecture on metaphysics in French.2 That was only a prelude. Bergson’s “Free Will versus Determinism” lec- ture on Tuesday, February 4th—once again delivered in his barely audible French—caused the academic equivalent of a riot. Two thousand people attempted to cram themselves into Havemeyer. Hundreds of hopeful New Yorkers were denied access; long queues of the disappointed snaked around the building and lingered in the slush.
    [Show full text]
  • INTUITION .THE PHILOSOPHY of HENRI BERGSON By
    THE RHYTHM OF PHILOSOPHY: INTUITION ·ANI? PHILOSO~IDC METHOD IN .THE PHILOSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON By CAROLE TABOR FlSHER Bachelor Of Arts Taylor University Upland, Indiana .. 1983 Submitted ~o the Faculty of the Graduate College of the · Oklahoma State University in partial fulfi11ment of the requirements for . the Degree of . Master of Arts May, 1990 Oklahoma State. Univ. Library THE RHY1HM OF PlllLOSOPHY: INTUITION ' AND PfnLoSOPlllC METHOD IN .THE PHILOSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON Thesis Approved: vt4;;. e ·~lu .. ·~ests AdVIsor /l4.t--OZ. ·~ ,£__ '', 13~6350' ii · ,. PREFACE The writing of this thesis has bee~ a tiring, enjoyable, :Qustrating and challenging experience. M.,Bergson has introduced me to ·a whole new way of doing . philosophy which has put vitality into the process. I have caught a Bergson bug. His vision of a collaboration of philosophers using his intuitional m~thod to correct, each others' work and patiently compile a body of philosophic know: ledge is inspiring. I hope I have done him justice in my description of that vision. If I have succeeded and that vision catches your imagination I hope you Will make the effort to apply it. Please let me know of your effort, your successes and your failures. With the current challenges to rationalist epistemology, I believe the time has come to give Bergson's method a try. My discovery of Bergson is. the culmination of a development of my thought, one that started long before I began my work at Oklahoma State. However, there are some people there who deserv~. special thanks for awakening me from my ' "''' analytic slumber.
    [Show full text]
  • Women and Gender Studies / Queer Theory
    1 Women and Gender Studies / Queer Theory Please choose at least 60 to 67 texts from across the fields presented. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with major works throughout this field, balancing their particular interests with the need to prepare themselves broadly in the topic. First Wave Feminism 1. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) 2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” (1848) 3. Harriet Taylor, “Enfranchisement of Women” (1851) 4. Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851) 5. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869) 6. Susan B. Anthony, Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting (1872) 7. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South (1892) 8. Charlotte Perkins, Women and Economics (1898) 9. Emma Goldman, The Traffic in Women and Other Essays on Feminism (1917) 10. Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987) 11. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929) 12. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1953) Second Wave Feminism 13. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963) 14. Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (1969) 15. Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness (1970) 16. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970) 17. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970) 18. Brownmiller, Susan, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975) 19. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) 20. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) 21. 22. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-75 (1989) Third Wave Feminism 23. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, eds., Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (1997) 24.
    [Show full text]
  • NYU Paris PHIL-UA 9026 C01, History of French Philosophy
    NYU Paris PHIL-UA 9026 C01, History of French philosophy Instructor Information ● Philippe Lusson ● office hours TBD ● [email protected] Course Information ● PHIL-UA 9026 C01 ● History of French Philosophy ● An overview of important developments in French philosophy from the 16th century to the 1960s. We will pay close attention this semester to the relationship between the self and others. We will look at the debates that followed the rediscovery of Ancient philosophy and the Copernican revolution with Descartes’ rationalist and individualistic philosophy, Condillac’s empiricist critique, whose role for language brings the self into a web of social relations, and the growing recognition of the problem of society with Rousseau. We will then look at Henri Bergson’s reaction to the rise of the empirical sciences in the 19th century and especially at his distinction between the deep self and the social self. We will deepen our appreciation of the issues Bergson highlights with readings from René Girard and Jean Baudrillard, and we will look for possible solutions in Alexandre Kojève’s reading of Hegel and in Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s distinctive development of existentialism. ● No prerequisites ● Lecture Tuesday 5 to 6:30pm, recitation sections Thursday 3-4:30pm and 5-6:30pm ● NYU Paris, room TBD Course Overview and Goals Upon Completion of this Course, students will be able to: ● get a sense of the historical evolution of philosophy since the 16th-century, ● see how French philosophers developed some of the key ideas and movements in that history ● identity and debate important issues philosophers still discuss today ● learn how to assess the strength and weaknesses of arguments, ● engage in constructive philosophical discussion, give reasons, and raise objections, Page 1 ● perfect their skills in argumentative writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Bergsoniana, 1
    Bergsoniana 1 | 2021 Reassessing Bergson The Duration of History in Bergson Caterina Zanfi Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/435 DOI: 10.4000/bergsoniana.435 ISSN: 2800-874X Publisher Société des amis de Bergson Electronic reference Caterina Zanfi, “The Duration of History in Bergson ”, Bergsoniana [Online], 1 | 2021, Online since 01 July 2021, connection on 14 September 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/435 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/bergsoniana.435 Les contenus de la revue sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. THE DURATION OF HISTORY IN BERGSON Caterina ZANFI I. Is There a Philosophy of History in Bergson? Bergson has often been criticised for not thinking history. Although he developed one of the most relevant philosophies of time of the last century, his rare statements on history are said to betray an impoverished sense of properly historical issues. Moreover, this criticism is made concerning both his consideration of history as the becoming of human reality and his consideration of historical knowledge and narrative — of both history and historiography. It was first articulated in the 1930s by Marxist intellectuals like Paul Nizan (who was to perish in the fight against Nazism in 1940). In 1932, Nizan published a polemic entitled The Watchdogs against the so called “Philosophers of the Established Order.” There he includes Bergson among the philosophers who are “against history” (Nizan 1965, 29),1 considering him incapable of understanding the time and space in which philosophical ideas arise and therefore lacking in sensitivity for the material and embodied aspects of the historical becoming of philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Nail – Theory of the Border
    i Theory of the Border ii iii Theory of the Border Thomas Nail 1 iv 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Nail, Thomas, author. Title: Theory of the border / Thomas Nail. Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2016016792 (print) | LCCN 2016003957 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190618667 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190618674 (Epub) | ISBN 9780190618643 (hard- cover :acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780190618650 (pbk. : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands—Social aspects. | Boundaries—Social aspects.
    [Show full text]
  • A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist
    Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181. AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women's movements have constructed 'women's experience', as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind.
    [Show full text]
  • Being Qua Being
    OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST-PROOF, 01/06/12, NEWGEN part iv BEING AND BEINGS 114_Shields_Ch14.indd4_Shields_Ch14.indd 334141 11/6/2012/6/2012 66:02:56:02:56 PPMM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST-PROOF, 01/06/12, NEWGEN 114_Shields_Ch14.indd4_Shields_Ch14.indd 334242 11/6/2012/6/2012 66:02:59:02:59 PPMM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST-PROOF, 01/06/12, NEWGEN Chapter 14 BEING QUA BEING Christopher Shields I. Three Problems about the Science of Being qua Being ‘There is a science (epistêmê),’ says Aristotle, ‘which studies being qua being (to on hê(i) on), and the attributes belonging to it in its own right’ (Met. 1003a21–22). This claim, which opens Metaphysics IV 1, is both surprising and unsettling—sur- prising because Aristotle seems elsewhere to deny the existence of any such science and unsettling because his denial seems very plausibly grounded. He claims that each science (epistêmê) studies a unified genus (APo 87a39-b1), but he denies that there is a single genus for all beings (APo 92b14; Top. 121a16, b7–9; cf. Met. 998b22). Evidently, his two claims conspire against the science he announces: if there is no genus of being and every science requires its own genus, then there is no science of being. This seems, moreover, to be precisely the conclusion drawn by Aristotle in his Eudemian Ethics, where he maintains that we should no more look for a gen- eral science of being than we should look for a general science of goodness: ‘Just as being is not something single for the things mentioned [viz.
    [Show full text]