THE SEMIOTIC REVIEW OF BOOKS VOLUME 13.2 2003 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb ISSN 0847-1622 Feminism and Semiotics By Barbara Godard he addition of feminism to semiotics feminists have challenged in the name of the what Luce Irigaray (1985a) terms “becoming creates the “ampersand problem.” As signifying network and the embodied subject to woman,” a potential position for women as Tsupplement, feminism deconstructs the advance models of dynamic processes of speaking subjects of theory. This entails a presuppositions of semiotics to expose a prior signification within theories of complexity. The project of working within the interstices of and unexamined binary opposition privileging insights of feminism into power, difference and semiotic theory to expose the masculine the masculine of which women are the the signifying process of identification have theorists’ elision of their own embodiment, unnamed constituent part. Feminist critique contributed to the emergence of studies of which they displace onto women as Other in has established the ideological dimensions of racialized difference, postcolonial studies, the constitution of a rational, self-sufficient semiosis and so contributed to the elaboration lesbian and gay studies, and queer theory. subject. Feminist rewriting has made important of a critical, materialist semiotics and the The characteristic feminist stance in contributions to semiotic theory in a number development of cultural studies. In the process, semiotics has been to assess the limitations of of areas including: subjectivity, intertextuality, the “sex/gender system” (Rubin 1975) has been and then creatively rewrite the master theories. the symptom, linguistic value, differential shown to be an important signifying practice Feminist interventions in semiotics have regimes of signification, theories of through which relations of power are enacted. critiqued its structuralist tendencies for the enunciation, representation, narrative, and Feminists’ relations to semiotic theory are positivism of their logico-mathematical non-linguistic signifying processes. ambivalent. The theory affords a sophisticated paradigms taken for the real and advocated a In the development of feminist approaches understanding of women’s subordinate critical semiotics that would recognize the to semiotics, there have been two main phases, condition as cultural not natural. However, it discursive aspects of its paradigms as one emerging in France in the late 1960s which must be transformed if it is to serve a feminist representations structuring the real. Feminist embraced the project of Tel Quel to combine emancipatory project of constituting women as engagements with semiotics have contributed the theories of De Saussure (1857-1913) with the subjects who know rather than the invisible to, even as they have benefited from, those of Marx (1818-1883) and Freud (1856- objects of knowledge. While feminists have poststructuralist theories of meaning as both 1939), and expansions on those theories and/ made important contributions to semiotic polysemic - deferred in an infinite web of or reworking of the theories of other key theory, these are frequently marginalized within textuality - and ideological - stories told from semiotic theoreticians which occurred in the mainstream semiotics as feminist theory not an interested perspective. As the only “science” English-speaking world in the 1980s. Julia semiotics “proper.” The gap is marked explicitly explicitly concerned with elaborating a theory Kristeva, the first major contributor to feminist in Umberto Eco’s (1976) refusal of Julia of representation, asserts Kristeva (1969), critical reworkings of semiotic theory, Kristeva’s (1973) “speaking subject.” Teresa de semiotics becomes self-reflexively critical as well introduced the category of the subject into Lauretis (1984) considers this a “cross-roads” as critical of the representational models of semiosis. She rewrote Bakhtin’s concept of in semiotic research, split between a theory of other “sciences.” To be a critical theory, “dialogism,” an untotalizable and context- meaning and a ghostly self-divided subject. De however, as Mieke Bal (1985) points out, bound theory of meaning, into the concept of Lauretis follows Eco’s path to consider the social semiotics needs a social theory and a theory of “intertextuality” or “ideologeme” (1967), then constraints rather than the pre-symbolic drives subjectivity with which to account for the into “transposition” of texts (1984) to establish in the signifying process, so denaturalizing it as dynamic interactions between the individual a dynamic model of signification that insists cultural materialist praxis. However, her and social processes that are mediated on its productivity to make meaning. The text subsequent extension of Eco’s work to theorize transformatively in signification. As Terry carries out a redistributive function to bring a materialist subject of semiosis has similarly Threadgold (1997) sums this up, there is no about change and heterogeneity that been positioned on the opposite side of this semiosis without subjectivity and no subjectivity constitutes a decentered “speaking subject” disciplinary distinction which separates analysis without semiosis. In their “dialogic” relation to (1973). Meaning is located not in the isolated of semiotic structures from subjective semiotic theory, to use the term of Bakhtin sign with its relation of signifier and signified, determinants. The emphasis on textuality (1895-1975), feminist semioticians rework but is produced “intertextually” (a network of partakes of semiotic theory’s focus on the sign established concepts so as to transform their differentiations) through the interaction of and universals - “logocentrism” - which implicit misogyny and create the potential for verbal texts and the texts of society and history within the transformation of the “ideologeme” (value-laden utterance) as a “signifying The Semiotic Review of Books Rates Canada USA Others practice” (1969). Although Kristeva insists Individual $30 US $30 US $35 after Bakhtin that there is “no general theory Volume 13.2 (2003) Institution $40 US $40 US $45 of language” (1977) and that a theory of Table of Contents General Editor: Gary Genosko metalanguage is always a representation, an Associate Editors: Verena Andermatt Conley (Harvard) Samir “ideologeme” (1969), her emphasis on Editorial: Feminism and Semiotics Gandesha (Simon Fraser), Barbara Godard (York), Tom Kemple (UBC) textuality as dynamism rather than “dialogics” By Barbara Godard 1-5 Section Editors: Leslie Boldt-Irons (Brock),William Conklin transforms Bakhtin’s materialist theory of (Windsor), Akira Lippit (UCal-Irvine), Alice den Otter signification. A “combinatory,” textual Formal Insistence (Lakehead), Scott Simpkins (UN Texas), Bart Testa (Toronto), transformation involves the interaction of a Peter Van Wyck (Concordia), Anne Zeller (Waterloo) “geno” (the “production of signification”) with By Paul Hegarty 6-9 Layout: Gail Zanette, Lakehead University Graphics a “pheno” text (the surface “communicative Address: Department of Sociology, Lakehead University, function”) (1969). Subsequently, she turns to Liberating Semiotics 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1 Tel.: 807-343-8391; Fax: 807-346-7831 psychoanalysis and posits the subject as text. By William Pencak 10-11 E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Dynamism is reformulated as the interaction of the “semiotic” (the energy of the Founding Editor: Paul Bouissac, Professor Emeritus, Echo Chamber Victoria University, Victoria College 205, 73 Queen’s Prk Cr. E., unconscious drive functions) with the By William Walters 11-12 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1K7 “symbolic” (the rational structuring forces) E-mail:[email protected] (1984). The trace of the corporeal, of the rhythms and musicality of the drives and the Web Site http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb The SRB is published 3 times per year in the Fall, Winter and Spring/Summer. body, may be located only through the structured syntax of the phenotext, but persists SRB 13.1 (2002) - 1 as negativity disrupting any singular or connection with and separation from the child the trace of the subject’s inscription. Through transparent meaning. The “semiotic” is most she carries in her body constitute an alternative her insertion of questions and parentheses into easily discerned in poetic and avant-garde texts to castration as a model of subject formation textual commentary, Irigaray disrupts their logic and constitutes the “revolution” carried out “in (1981). Abandoning European culture, by emphasizing the textual rhetoric. This poetic language” (1984). The poetic as Kristeva (1986) finds in China a model for foregrounds the dilemma of deconstructing a transformative process of signification pulverizes feminine subjectivity as contradiction and metaphysics of identity, yet remaining caught in and remakes meaning. As text, the subject heterogeneity. She highlights the figure of the a masculinist ideology. She thus frames her remains divided between the “semiotic” (an mother’s “jouissance” (orgasmic mother) as an theory as an utterance within a specific speech unconscious archaic feminine principle) and the excess that confounds the hierarchical binary exchange, implicitly theorizing philosophy as the “symbolic” (rational name/law of the father). of the Oedipal scenario. Chinese double enunciation of a situated subject, a self-reflexive Subjectivity is thus constituted