On the quotes sheet that we received in class, one quote in particular raised a question for me. Butler claims that "Within a language pervasively masculinist, a phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable. In other words women represent the sex that cannot be thought." (Butler 13).
What I want to know is, if we have within our masculine-focused language a tendency to leave out women entirely, to imply their portrayal as an unsaid one, then how do we explain the tendency of our language to assign gender roles to inanimate or abstract things? I know Butler is driving more at female voice in language, but darn it I've been watching a lot of naval/pirate movies lately and I can't get it out of my head how most of the characters refer to their ships or country as "her" or "she". You never hear the phrase "father-ship", and though I've heard "father-land" instead of "mother-land" a few times, the idea that women constitute the unrepresentable in contrast with the referral to things like ships and countries is confusing for me.
Perhaps I would amend Butler's statement by saying that while women themselves constitute the unrepresentable, our masculinist language tries to clumsily make up for that deficiency by projecting female identity onto things that, while they may represent big and important things, are still thing that can be dominated. Like how countries can be invaded and land can be "conquered" (flitting back to "Ecoporn" briefly here), and ships, while there are often referred to with female pronouns still need to be handled, guided, or controlled by the male crew. Women, I don't think, are the unrepresentable in our phallogocentric language. I think women are the physically ignored and misrepresented, whilst the supposed submissive female identity is projected onto (in male-centric opinion) larger and grander things. Heteronormativity prompts men to have allegiance for something bigger than themselves (a vessel or country), and so to show that love and allegiance they project a female identity onto it.
I just don't think women are complete unrepresented in this language, but the representation is misplaced and odd. If women weren't being represented at all, it would be a different case than if we were misrepresented or portrayed incorrectly, and I think the main issues with the masculinist language of our country deals more with the latter.
Just something that caught my attention. Please add your thoughts if you wish, I just wanted to get it out. Going to go watch movies now. Yay!
3 comments:
Thinking about this, "motherland" is a maternal image akin to "Mother Earth" or somesuch, and a ship is an object. While the term "motherland" is somewhat more flattering because it identifies a mother as a progenitor, at the same time a motherland is the place where one lives. Its space is something to be used, no matter how respectfully one treats it. I'm thinking here of "The Giving Tree" and how she gives everything she has to the boy who loves her.
As far as ships go, a ship is a possession, controlled by a captain, and also a space which is used for whatever purpose. If we consider the naming of spaces and objects as a representation of women, I am fearful of what they are being represented as.
This post reminds me of the female gender as material discussion in our background reading of Ryan and Rivikin's "Feminist Paradigm." It reads, "the direct link to material nature in women’s bodies and the flight from such contact that is the driving force of male abstraction, its pretense to be above matter and outside nature (in civilization)...matter is what makes women women" (767). The male gender can only successfully dominate by claiming itself as an essence above the physical world, and since the mother is the supposed source of the physical body, phallogocentric language objectifies her in order to prove the male gender's supposed transcendence above the physical world. Perhaps, this is actually what it means for language to by phallogocentric. Instead of being a collection of symbols representing physical essences, according to Derrida, language is actually a constantly shifting network of differances. The fragile binaries which present themselves prominently during certain time periods are particular to that episteme. This process is reflexive of the male gender writing itself as abstract against the material female gender. It must use material instances or make material would-be abstractions such as gender in order to claim itself as abstract. This would be an essentialist point of view, I believe.
When Butler says woman can not be representable, I believe she is working through constructivist principles. The idea of female and male gender are constructs of phallogocentric language, not identities which exist beyond language. If the female identity is a construct of said language, then the "she" and "her" pronouns are more similar to a language setting its own limitations rather than the limitations of an actual person?
"Perhaps I would amend Butler's statement by saying that while women themselves constitute the unrepresentable, our masculinist language tries to clumsily make up for that deficiency by projecting female identity onto things that, while they may represent big and important things, are still thing that can be dominated." I can honestly say that I have never thought of the use of feminine language in this way, but it is very intriguing. It was this point that lead you to discuss the difference between misrepresentation and a complete lack of representation. In class I discussed the ways in which language can form barriers for representation of various classes in that it does not have the proper words to accurately describe them. This thought is what left me with a question that you (at least from your understanding), answered: "I just don't think women are complete unrepresented in this language, but the representation is misplaced and odd. " I really enjoy this idea and believe it is well articulated here; you brought some awesome things to the table and helped me to clear up some things that were beginning to get foggy in my head :) thanks for sharing.
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