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CHAPTER 2 Problematizing "Hysteria" and the Origin of Psychoanalysis Section 3 Feminism and the Hysteric Foucault’s concept of hysterization theorizes a pathologizing of all women’s bodies, employed to justify all policing, but it does not account for the use of the diagnosis as a means of appropriation or reappropriation of the disorderly bodies labeled as hysterics. The difference between the normal female body and the hysterical one, in a pseudo-Foucauldian sense, might be construed as the difference between the always potentially disruptive body (in need of policing) and the actually disruptive body (in need of a type of incarceration, a diagnosis as incarceration). It would be "pseudo" because Foucault did not theorize anything beyond the body as a discursive formation: nothing to repress, and nothing otherwise to the power that might create a dissension within discursvity. Furthermore, Foucault’s hysterization does not account for the difference between the normal and hysterical positions of "woman" within patriarchies that used the diagnosis of hysteria, and it does not account for the deployment of "hysteria" as a reappropriative measure. As with Lacan’s hysteric, Foucauldian "hysterized body" is synonymous with "female body." Whatever created the dissension within the strictures of proper womanhood, or within the hysterized body, would have been radically other to the identitarian logics of these discursive formations, and therefore would have been threatening to the stability of these logics and the powers of the patriarchies in question. To call this source of dissension "hysteria," however, would reduce what is radically otherwise to that logic, to make it recognizable and therefore masterable within that logic and its possible bodily positions. "Hysteria" marks what is otherwise to a particular phallic order, while providing one of many feminine positions within that order, and a mode of defense against what is radically other to that order. In all cases "hysteria" is a reappropriative tool of these orders. The hysteric as proto-feminist would be oxymoronic if hysteria is understood only as a patriarchal tool of appropriation, and if feminism is understood as being about problematizing, if not disrupting or destroying, traditional positions which would be in the service of patriarchy. Dianne Hunter’s assertion that "feminism is transformed hysteria, or more precisely, that hysteria is feminism lacking a social network in the outer world" (Hun83 68) would thus seem to be contrary to my position, as Hunter’s position seems to associate hysteria with what is otherwise to the patriarchy, rather than with patriarchy’s appropriation or totalization processes, its identitarian or (op)positional logics of the Same. Some feminisms might aspire for feminism to be the transformation of the disruption of whatever it is that creates Derrida’s "dissension," and by definition this (non)source or Derrida might argue that both "hysteria" and feminism are both part of a phallogocentric social network. We might ask, how much is the phallogocentrism of "hysteria" linked to the phallogocentrism of feminism? The larger question becomes how much is feminism invested in the "social network of the outer world," its logic of the Same, its essentialism, and its use of "hysteria." Limiting the scope of my inquiry, I want to focus on the problematic relation of certain feminisms to essentialist conceptions of hysteria. These conceptions might be seen as the lure of phallogocentrism for these feminisms. As I stated above, Derrida reduces feminism to a phallogocentric discourse, and feminisms’ inability to give up essentialist conceptions of hysteria seem to be evidence supporting Derrida’s reduction. Yet Derrida’s reduction of feminism to phallogocentrism is just that, a reduction. It assumes that, like logocentrism, phallocentrism is inescapable, thus all logocetrism would be phallogocentrism. In Spurs, Derrida writes probably his most infamous lines for feminists: And in truth, they too are men, those women feminists so derided by Nietzsche. Feminism is nothing but the operation of a woman who aspires to be like a man. And in order to resemble the masculine dogmatic philosopher this woman lays claim–just as much claim as he–to truth, science and objectivity in all their castrated delusions of virility. Feminism too seeks to castrate. It wants a castrated woman. Gone the style. (Der79 62-65)Derrida assumes that all feminists assume only two positions available to bodies: male or female. Most feminists do just this, particularly psychoanalytic feminists, who seem to be the most invested in this fundamental aspect of phallogocentrism. In Feminism and Deconstruction: Ms. en Abyme, however, Diane Elam writes, If feminism is merely a form of phallogocentrism, then Derrida, however much he gestures at historical necessity, would be equating all of feminism with a teleological search for the essence of woman. Thus, he would be reducing all feminisms to one and the same feminism. Lost the style, for Derrida as well. (16-17)Derrida also reduces all male/female binaries to its phallogocentric form: presence/absence of the penis-phallus by assuming that all searches for truth or logocentrism are necessarily phallogocentrism. Since Derrida wrote Spurs in 1978, many feminists have attempted to theorize bodies, genders, and sexualities beyond the limitations of phallogocentrism and its male/female. For me the question remains open whether logocentrism, which seems to be inescapable for theory, is necessarily phallocentric. Logocentrism seems inescapable for any theory of bodily or sexual positioning. But why would phallocentrism be inescapable? What seems to be at stake here is the relationship between the traditional binary of sexual difference, male/female, and the traditional binaries of presence/absence. Which is primary? Is logocentrism, the metaphysics of presence, always phallogocentrism? Can we have logocentrism without phallocentrism? I return to this question in the concluding chapter. next —> |
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Copyright 2000 by Eric W. Anders |