Penis, passie, perceptie & poeha/boeha/tohoe/wohoe


~*~


WOMEN AS DIFFERENCE


The Greek desire for univocity
motivates the canonical account of the origin of gender,
the eighth~century B.C. poems of Hesiod.

The particularities too
of Hesiod's extreme negativity towards woman,
while open to compromise and mitigation in other texts
and other spheres of interest,
still remain the touchstone of an underlying attitude
concerning this intrusive and ambivalent 'other'
who is brought into another man's household
and forever remains under suspicion as introducing
a dangerous mixture into the desired purity and univocity of male identity, whether in sexual relations or
in the production of children.

This desire
for univocity of male identity
marked in the archaic Greek text
becomes inscribed as a philosophical principle in Greek philosophy,
and male becomes univocity as female becomes difference.
As a long line of feminist thinkers beginning with de Beauvoir has shown,
western thought is dependent on the identification of the putative universal spirit with the male and the body of difference
with the female.

This dichotomy or opposition
inscribes the opposition man ~ woman
in a whole series of culturally charged binary oppositions,
already in Pythagoras, although the actual list
has changed.

Thus man is to woman as

active: ~~~~~~passive
substance: ~~~accident
form: ~~~~~~~matter
soul: ~~~~~~~body
univocity: ~~~~division & difference
meaning: ~~~~language
signified: ~~~~signifier

These analogical sets of oppositions
often seem to be so deeply grounded in western culture
that they elude accounts of origins as well as
attempts at transcendence.

They seem to just be there.

Even we seem to imagine
often enough that we can only 'deconstruct' these oppositions
from within them and never
truly escape
them.

My
hypothesis is
that the discourse of gender in much of European culture
has its sources in a particular metatextual combination of platonic philosophy and Hebrew myth,
produced in the biblical hermeneutics of the first century,
and that perhaps only this particular cultural combination could have produced the precise set of pernicious practices which mark
western gender
theory.

In other words,
the same desire for univocity that some have claimed for the Greek {Hesiodic} reign of the phallus is that which produces the reign of the logos as well.

A series of
very specific exegetical moves on the Genesis story
proved to be the genesis as well of a certain type of allegory
in western discourse,
and that same allegory, in turn,
thematized the supplementarity
of woman in the
culture.

PHILO, FEMALENESS, AND ALLEGORY

To establish
the background for the interpretation of Paul,
I would like first to briefly consider the writings of Philo.
I should make it clear that I am NOT claiming that Philo is the background for Paul, but only that he provides a background for my reading of Paul, that is, that certain themes which are explicit in Philo seem to me to be useful for understanding in
explicit moments in
Paul's texts.

The myth
of primal androgyny,
a pre~lapsarian state before difference,
was widespread in late antiquity, particularly among
platonists in the Jewish
{and then Christian}
traditions.

As is well known by now
~ largely thru the efforts of feminist biblical critics ~
the Bible tells the story of the creation of humanity twice.
In chapter 1 of Genesis, male and female are apparently created simultaneously,
while in the second chapter, man comes first and woman is a secondary creation out of his body.

In the interpretation of Philo,
the first Adam is an entirely spiritual being,
of whose non~corporeal existence it can be said that he is male and female,
while the second chapter introduces a carnal Adam,
who is male and from whom the female is then
constructed.

Bodily gender
~ structurally dependent, of course, on there being two ~
is thus twice displaced from the origins of "Man":


"IT is
not good that any man should be alone."
For there are two races of men, the one made after the {Divine} Image,
and the one molded out of the earth ....
With the second man a helper is associated.
To begin with,
the helper is a created one,
for it says "Let US make a helper for him":
and in the nexts place,
is subsequent to him who is to be helped,
for HE had formed the mind before and is about to form
its helper.

Philo here regards the two stories
as referring to two entirely different creative acts
on the part of G*D and accordingly to the production of two different races
of "Man."

Philo here interprets Adam as the mind
and Eve as the senses, the supplement, the 'helper
of the soul.'

The hermeneutic substance
of the interpretation thematizes its own method,
therefore, for the interpretation that distinguishes between primary substance and secondary form makes itself possible as an interpretation
of the relation between
Adam and Eve.

Put perhaps
in simpler language,
the interpretation of Adam as spirit and Eve as sense~experience is what makes possible the interpretation of the myDi~Story,
the language of the Adam~and~Eve narrative,
as matter to be interpreted by reference
to the spirit of its true
meaning.

OR once more,
to reverse the relation,
the idea of meaning as pure unity and language as difference
is what makes possible the interpretation of Adam as meaning
and Eve as language.

The nexus
of allegoresis
and contempt for the senses
is tight.

Anyway, in BOTH,
a secondary carnal entity,
respectively material signs, woman,
the senses is contrasted to a primary, spiritual entity:
allegorical meaning,
man, mind.

Significant
in this context is,
that in post~Platonic thought one can scarcly speak of imitation
without assuming that it implies a gradation of kinds of Being,
especially since Plato often characterizes the relation
of sensible object and idea
as mimesis.

Philo explicitly marks
the ontological implications of his interpretative practice:
"Now these are no mythical fictions, such as poets and sophists delight in,
but modes of making ideas visible, bidding us resort to allegorical interpretation".

The biblical story
is not mimesis of the visible
but representation of the invisible.
Given this privileging of the invisible,
it is not surprising that for Philo the story of Adam and Eve is one of the creation pf sense~perception and its effects on Adam,
who was formerly
pure mind:

For it was requisite
that the creation of mind
should be followed immediately by that of sense~perception,
to be a helper and ally to it.
Having then finished the creation of the mind
HE fashions the product of creative skill that comes next to it alike in order and in power,
namely active sense~perception ....
HOW IS IT, then produced?
As the prophet himself again says.
it is when the mind has fallen asleep.
As a matter of fact it is when the mind has gone to sleep
that perception begins,
for conversely when the mind wakes up
perception is quenced.

The creation
of sense~perception in the state of sleep,
while recognized by Philo as a necessity, is profoundly and axplicitly unwelcome to him:
"But as its is, the change is actually repugnant to me,
and many a time when wishing to entertain some fitting thought,
I am drenched by a flood of unfitting mattars pouring over me".

And then:

"He built it into a woman" [GEN 2:22],
proving by this that the most proper and exact name for sense~perception is 'woman.'
For just as the man shows himself in activity,
so the province of the mind is activity,
and that of the perceptive sense passivity,
as in woman.

And finally,
the verse which in the Bible is one of the clearest statements of the non~supplementarity of gender
becomes for Philo something else
entirely:

"For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife, and the twain shall be ONE flesh" [GEN 2:24]

For the sake of sense~perception the MIND,
when it has become her slave,
abandons both G*D the Father of the Universe,
and G*D's excellence and wisdom, the Mother of all Things,
and cleaves to and becomes one
with sense~perception
and is resolved into sense~perception
so that the two become ONE flesh
and ONE experience.

OBSERVE that it is not the woman that cleaves to the man,
but conversely the man to the woman,
Mind to Sense~perception.

For when that which is superior, namely Mind,
becomes one with that which is inferior, namely Sense~perception,
it resolves itself into the order of flesh which is inferior,
into sense~perception,
the moving cause of
the passions.


(Philo 1929b, 125/241/245~46/255~57)


~#~
engel
27 okt 2004 - bewerkt op 06 feb 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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