Hope and Feminist Theory by Rebecca Coleman Debra Ferreday

Author:Rebecca Coleman, Debra Ferreday [Rebecca Coleman, Debra Ferreday]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415618526
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 9757227
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Gendered Time

In a series of lectures from 1965 (in the middle of his training with Lacan), Guattari (2000, p. 49) identified the type of question that I have circled above (How to conceptualise the ontology of subjectivity?) as “Operation Althusser”. In this account, subjectivity is constituted by “as many temporalities as you like, but it is up to you to work out a synchronisation. And you never will” (Guattari 1984, p. 176). This is the process of a subject that Guattari works on continually; not a question of “What is a subject?”, but a consideration of the activities that come to comprise the subject. Guattari is quite clear here in his difference from Lacan, noting “what I call history is what Lacan calls development” (Guattari 1984, p. 176); and he critiques Lacan’s position as being atemporal in its post-fact construction of a historic lineage. Guattari’s own view is clearly stated even this early in his career: “To me, history — the history made, articulated and remembered by human beings — is a subject” (Guattari 1984, p. 176). This subject as history becomes a useful way of thinking about how the manifesto operates. Rather than engaging the manifesto form as a cultural contextual piece (which makes it an already dead history as soon as it is uttered), if we perceive the manifesto as a subject that has an affective praxis and whose activities are not limited to forms of activism, then actions that have ruptured the "historicisation" of subjectivity can be engaged. Given this, the question arises: How to make the content of the feminist manifesto visible, practical and useful? And: What is the value of the manifesto?

To take a specific example of a manifesto whose value has been contentious for feminist theory, Guattari’s concept of becoming-woman provides a declaration of the principles of action. The concept of becoming-woman was first published in an August 1975 interview (in La Quinzaine littéraire) and as it is first stated by Guattari, presents a problematic text for feminists: it is a text of its time of production. However, as a concept, it is representative of certain forms of feminist manifesto, as much of its premise has been critiqued as well as taken up and used by feminist theorists in various ways.5 Becoming-woman articulates a movement in ontology, and this philosophical position incites feminist theory. However, it is important to stress that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-woman is not a metaphor, not an evolution of identity, is not about “the future”, and in no way is it a psychoanalytic-type fantasy (which has a masculine historical centre). Rather, the concept of becoming engages an experimental “program” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, pp. 150–151), an “asymmetrical” “block of alliance” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, p. 291), a process that, as they detail in A Thousand Plateaus, is an activity for all potential shifts in ontology. Becoming is not limited to women, is applicable to all bodies and things, and provides (one of many) manifesto values around which feminist theory can orient its own platforms.

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