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A Feminist Departure from Kant and Hegel

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A Feminist Departure from Kant and Hegel Performing the Speculative: A Feminist Departure from Kant and Hegel Isabell DAHMS September 2019 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London for the award of Doctor of Philosophy. Abstract This thesis defines the philosophical concept of speculation and assesses its emergence in Kantian and post-Kantian German philosophy, in the attempted construction of a post-Enlightenment “scientific” philosophy and alongside early work in anthropology and gynaecology. It argues that in the historical elaboration of the problem of speculation “race” and “sex” emerge as concerns for this newly defined scientific philosophy. Moreover, a concept of performativity is introduced in the attempt to think the ontological implications or “effects” of speculative thought. This thesis proposes that Hegel is the originator of such a concept of performativity, introduced as the conclusion to the Science of Logic. Here, performativity is defined as activity of form or determinate being in contrast to the empty notion of being pure being with which the Logic begins. Speculation, the Logic proposes, is not only a methodological necessity giving rise to an essentially epistemological problem, as Kant had defined it, but is also to be thought as ontological Thätigkeit (activity) proper. Rewriting speculation as an ontological concept of form, Hegel uses, among others, social and political examples to illustrate the nature of speculative thought. The surprising appearance of the state and the sexual relation in the Logic, alongside the concepts of violence, resistance, power and freedom, demonstrates that speculative (theoretical and non-empirical) reason necessarily encounters political categories and suggests that these might be exemplary of its nature. While it remains unclear, in Hegel, precisely how the unfolding of conceptual form leads to political categories, both Irigaray and Butler offer answers to this question. In doing so, they separately outline ways of thinking the ontological dimension of speculative thought: Irigaray by modifying speculation as specula(riza)tion – an attempt to visualise speculation and to render its social dimensions visible; and Butler by formulating the concept of gender performativity. This thesis offers its own answer, too, by situating the emergence of speculation and performativity as philosophical concepts in the context of the history of modern gynaecology and the speculum. It reads these concepts alongside those of sexual difference, Geschlecht and gender, arguing that only in this way can speculation and performativity be thought. i ii Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. – Sappho iii iv Acknowledgements There are no thoughts without friends. Many thanks, in no particular order, to Marie Louise Krogh, Alva Gotby, Franziska Aigner, Iain Campbell, Louis Hartnoll, Ben Hjorth, Daniel Nemenyi, Peter Ely, Jordan Skinner, Miri Davidson, Kylie Gilchrist, Betty Schulz, Michael Washington, Iwan Oostrom, Aaron Berman, Emma Fajgenbaum, Steve Howard, Astrid Heideman Simonsen, Marion Bilodeau, Idil Onen, Sophie Bahl, Charlie Morgan, Charlotte Grace, Erin Liu, and Maria Alexandrescu. To those of you whom I live / have lived with, for being my family. To my family in Germany, in particular my parents, Brunhilde Anna Loges-Dahms and Jörg Dahms, for their love and support despite all difficulties. To M., for being there in the end (when the monads slide into the ocean). To my two supervisors, Catherine Malabou and Stella Sandford, for their continuous support and encouragement, and for often knowing before me what I was looking for. Thanks also to Rebecca Comay for supervising me abroad. It was an honour to work with you all. To the staff and students at Kingston University London’s Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, for the many inspiring conversations, classes, and friendships. Many thanks also to the British Library staff – inside and outside of the reading rooms. To Sisters Uncut – I have learned a lot, and I keep learning. My thanks to TECHNE and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my two grandmothers, Maria Loges and Christel Agnes Dahms, who taught me the essentials; and to all those who are looking for bodies in the abstract. v vi Contents v Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Performing the speculative 2 Speculation 4 Performativity 5 Aim, method, structure 11 Chapter one: An a priori necessity of reason: The role of speculation in Kant’s critical philosophy 12 Introduction: Speculation as philosophical problem 13 Definition of speculative reason 15 From the fact of being to the constancy of the law: In search for organizing principles 18 Logical unity, synthesis, and systematic order 19 The ideas of reason as focus imaginarius 21 Applicability of logical systems to the classification of nature 24 From the ideas of reason to the concept of purposiveness 26 ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’ 30 Rethinking the problematic: ‘The Critique of Teleological Judgement’ 34 Organisms and organicism 37 Conclusion 41 Chapter two: The logical is political: Or, how thought thinking thought itself ends up speculating about the sexual relation 42 Opening 43 Introducing Antigone into the Science of Logic 48 The role of exemplarity: Or, “it is just an example …” 50 Changing the stakes of speculation: From Kant to Hegel and beyond 52 From ‘Objectivity’ to ‘The idea’: The concluding chapters of the Science of Logic 54 New logical categories? 57 Mechanism as a discourse of violence, power, resistance and freedom 62 Antigone takes the stage – but is it relevant? And who cares? 64 Chemism as a category of social relation: The logical foundation of the sexual relation 71 Affinity is the pre-condition of these characters/objects 73 Conclusion vii 77 Chapter three: Geschlecht in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy: One-sex model or two? 78 Introduction 79 Conceptual and historical motivation of Hegel’s political examples 80 Naturphilosophie and the temporalisation of “nature” 87 A first biopolitical vocabulary? The constitution of a species-oriented perspective 89 What kind of conceptual transformation? 94 The one-sex body on trial 98 Gynaecology: Between philosophy and modern medicine – Hegel, Carus and the first German textbook on gynaecology 105 Chapter four: A performative concept? Speculation in Hegel’s Science of Logic 106 Opening 107 The marriage ceremony – pronouncing Sittlichkeit in the Philosophy of Right 114 Teleology: Thinking form as activity 118 Life-form as new speculative law 121 Thinking the concept as method: performativity as conceptual form 127 Hegelian performance(s) and dramatic speech acts: From law to speculation 129 Gillian Rose on the law and (abstract) ends in Hegel’s Logic 133 Concepts that name the relation between the actual and the real 134 Conclusion: Now we have got a concept of performativity – where to go from here? 137 Chapter five: From speculum to specula(riza)tion: Thought thinking thought itself, but through the history of gynaecology and female mysticism 138 Introduction 141 Two histories of gynaecology: From philosophy of nature to biomedicine 143 Visualizing Kantian and Hegelian speculation: Speculation as specula(riza)tion 149 Subject of speculation / Subject to speculation 153 An empirical idea of reason? 156 Gynaecology and the “science of woman” 164 Health care struggles: The re-appropriation of the speculum by the Women’s Liberation Movement 168 La Mystérique 171 All you need is love? The language and genre of female mysticism 173 Le Mirouer des simples ames (Speculum simpliciarum animarum) 175 From the Beguine movement to the witch hunts viii 178 What can language do? 182 Conclusion 183 Chapter six: A Hegelian speculative ontology? Butler’s concept of gender performativity 184 Introduction 185 The end of sexual difference? 190 The biopolitical origins of “gender” 193 Gender is trans-gender 195 Naturphilosophie meets cybernetics 197 From gender to gender performativity: A question of history 201 The “Reimer case” 204 “Gender”: Implementing the promise of Naturphilosophie 208 Troubling gender / “Gender trouble” 211 Towards a performative ontology 213 Gender as a doing 221 Is gender a bad habit? 225 Conclusion 227 Concluding remarks – Staying in trouble 227 Speculating on performances: Exemplarity 229 Performing the speculative 229 Material reliance and effects 231 Sexual difference and/or gender? 233 Towards a performative ontology 234 Concluding reflection on method 237 Bibliography 253 Appendices 255 Appendix I: Helen King: Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology 257 Appendix II: History of gender and modern medicine 261 Appendix III: Carl Gustav Carus gynaecological timeline and tools ix x Introduction: Performing the speculative 1 How do the two concepts of speculation and performativity relate to each other? And what is their philosophical relevance, both historically and into the contemporary period? This thesis sets out to answer these two questions. While speculation has in recent years made a return in theory, circulating in academic, artistic and activist discourses under various banners of speculative realisms and materialisms, this thesis addresses itself to an alternative ‘speculative turn’, one firmly anchored in feminist,
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