penis phallos woman jew circumcision castration?!?

*

'the [re]de[con]struction of women'

*~*

one at least has to recognize
that positing woman as a figure of displacement risks, in its effects, continually displacing real
material women
*~*

~*~

What I wish
to suggest here,
very briefly,
is that post-structuralist deconstruction of the sign "woman"
once more reproduces and continues the "western" (Pauline) tradition
of attack on real identities,
on difference.


In other words,
once more here I would suggest that women and Jews
are analogous terms vis-a-vis
the dominant discourse.


The political claim
about post-structuralism
is not new;
what is new is only the suggestion that post-structuralism here continues
- as opposed to opposing -
the discourse that it seeks to
disrupt.


For some
post-structuralists,
it seems,
"Woman" has become a sign in almost strict analogy to the way that "jew"
as become a sign for Lyotard
and Nancy.


Thus
Diana Fuss
remarks of Lacan,


"Of real material women ... Lacan has nothing to say,
readily admits his knowing ignorance.
Vut of 'woman' as sign Lacan has everything to say
(especially since women, as we shall see,
cannot say 'it' themselves)."


"Woman" is,
for Lacan,
the being who (whether male or female in body)
has ecstatically transcended - gone beyond - the phallus
and attained the status of
"Woman."


It seems
that Lacan ultimately reinscribes here
the myth of the primal androgyne,
however - and this is not to be ignored -
inscribing the androgyne as a female
and not a male
one.


We still end up
with no male and female in Christ -
quite precisely in Christ;
Saint Theresa is, after all,
Lacan's ideal type of one who has gone beyond
the phallus.


~*~


Fuss has thus shown
how central is the distinction between penis and phallus
for Lacan's system.


I speculatively suggest
that the precise source of the scandal of circumcision in western culture lies in its threat to the idealization of the phallus, to its conversion from biological organ
to logos.


Because of circumcision, the flesh cannot become Word.


The insistence
on a physical cutting
interrupts the dematerialization of the penis and thus of its semiotic transformation into phallos
and logos.


And paradoxically
we find this brought out even at the very site of
the theoretical attack on this structure,
Derridean post-structuralism.

As Barbara Johnson has written:

The letter,
says Lacan,
cannot be divided:
"But if it is first of all on the materiality of the signifier
that we have insisted,
that materiality is ODD [singuliere]
in many ways,
the first of which is
not to admit
partition."
This indivisibility,
says Derrida,
is odd indeed,
but becomes comprehensible
if it is seen as an idealization
of the phallus,
whose integrity is necessaryfor the edification
of the entire psychoanalytical system.
With the phallus safely idealized
and located in the voice,
the socalled signifier
acquires the "unique, living, non-mutilable integrity" of the self-present spoken word,
unequivocally pinned down to and by
the signified.
"Had the phallus been
per(mal)-chance divisible or reduced to the status of a partial object,
the whole edification would have crumbled down,
and this is what has to be avoided
at all cost."


~*~


But the penis,
of course,
IS divisible.


In circumcision it is divided.


It is striking to me
that the penis has been so spiritualized
in European tradition
that even when its Lacanian idealization is being opposed by a hypothetical,
Derridean mutilable,
divisible phallus,
the very mutilation of the penis
which is at the center of the tradition of the Jewish Other
is not mentioned.


For Derrida,
standing in antithesis to Lacan,
even castration remains
allegorized.


"The phallus,
thanks to castration,
always remains in its place,
in the transcendental topology ...
In castration,
the phallus is indivisible,
and therefore
indestructible."


This rather invites speculation
on the legend [?] of Origen's castration and
on the reason why in some cultural contexts circumcision is identified
with castration and in others
as its very opposite.


Once
the signifier
no longer possesses a "non-mutilable integrity,"
then the "idealization is necessary not only for the edification of the psycho-analytic system but for any logocentric
(allegoretical) system.


But since it is
precisely this transformation
that allows for the putative de-essentialization of "Woman"
in Lacan's (and ultimately even Derrida's) thinking,
we see onece more the sources of this strange and persistent association of Jews and women in western
culture.


Women
in their bodies
and Jewish (males)
in their altered ones
keep reminding "US"
that the phallus
is after all (ONLY) a penis,
and the logos is after all (ONLY)
some body's utterance.


According to midrash,
even the Torah is given in the speech of
human beings.



*~*~*



"The Secret of The Jews"


NOW
let me pursue
an alternate reading
of Blanchot, and of Nancy's gloss.


ITS
implications
are both more modest and more conducive to my project of constructing a progressive and strong Jewish
subjecthood.


According
to this second reading of Blanchot,
the Jews' freedom from myth was primarily, if not exclusively,
significant as a myth that murderously irritated
Hitler.


Nancy
would then be saying
not that "we" have inherited the secret of the Jews
but rather that it is incumbent upon us
- the pronoun this time not excluding in any way
Jews living after the Nazi
genocide -
to assume the challenge
of the myth
of freedom from myth,
to let come
a community
that is free
from myth.


I will
suggest
later on that,
especially in the experience of Diaspora,
which has constrained Jews
to create forms of community
that do not rely
upon one of the most potent
and dangerous myths
- the myth of autochthony -
living Jews
may have a particular contribution to make
to that general
effert.


As I have already suggested,
the tendency of postmodern thought continues willy-nilly
the trajectories that PAUL set in motion
in Christian/European thought.


Reactions against this disembodying move, however,
prove equally as dangerous, if not more so.


Let Heidegger be an exemplum.


This conclusion raises, however,
frightening specters with regard to Jewish existence
in the world.
engel
25 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 21 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
Weet je zeker dat je dit verhaal wilt rapporteren? Ja | Nee
Profielfoto van Asih
Asih, man, 81 jaar
   
Log in om een reactie te plaatsen.   vorige volgende