Critique of Sexual Difference | Analysis

Critique of Sexual expiration AnalysisSexual Difference RepresentationExplain how and why the followup of intimate difference intersected with a (postmodern) critique of commission in the later 1970s and early 1980s. take c ar why picture taking had an important role and the signifi notifyce of externalize- text edition human relationship in this type of practice.As Craig Owens states in his paper The Discourse of other(a)s Feminists and Postmodernism (Owens, 1983), the 1970s and 80s saying a coming together of the (mainly) feminist and queer theory critiques of sexual difference and the erosion of perspectivalist and univocal theories of vision and representation. As this paper shall assert, two(prenominal) of these positions provoke be seen to be traceable back to a unity ontological and aesthetic rupture the breakdown in what Lyotard was to term the solemn or meta narrative (Lyotard, 1984 xxiv) and the subsequent rise in fancys much(prenominal) as polyvocity (Deleu ze and Guattari, 2004), heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 2000) ecriture feminine (Cixous, 1980) and differance (Derrida, 1997). This paper will also assert, through of the work of Roland Barthes especially, that bucky had a major significance in exemplifying the kind of aesthetico-ontological c at a timerns and strategies of postmodernity and poststructuralism in general through much(prenominal) notions as the punctum (Barthes, 2000) the ho-hum meaning implicit in(p) within still visual pics (Barthes, 1983) and the play of meaning between image and lingual sign. This paper represents then an attempt to not except understand crackys place within critical theory over the know two decades or so but how this provides a mirror to the wider relocations of philosophic design.The critique of sexual difference can be seen to emanate from a wide variety of authors (Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Wittig etc) however, within the mandates of this paper, I should like to look at two main theor ists that defend special relevance Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous, twain of whom name been seen to challenge the phallic hegemony and its role in normative representation. As Elizabeth Grosz (1994) points out, unitary of the chief critiques inherent within the second wave feminist movement of the 1970s and 80s was its contention that the philosophical and social subject had always been thought of gendered, as Grosz statesThe enigma that braggy female has posed for men is an enigma only because the male subject construed itself as the subject par excellence. The way (he fantasizes) that Woman differs from him makes her containable within his imagination (reduced to his size) but also produces her as a enigma for him to master and decipherThe construction of the male universal subject, asserted m each feminist thinkers, resulted not only in the normalisation of phallocentricism but a privileging of its many dependants (reason, univocity, vision and so on). By positing Woman as the type of man through such notions as (among others) the castration complex and the psycho-sexual other, a phallocentric regime suppressed many of the discourses and thought processes associated with the feminine. Thinkers such as Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous attempt to challenge this position by asserting the prominence of other discourses and narratives that avoided or any(prenominal)times even challenged, the dominance of the male point of view. In The trick of the Medusa (1980) for instance, Cixous suggests that womens writing and artistic creativity (disciplines such as photography for instance) should recognise the mensurate of multiple readings, intertextuality and indistinct poetic expression, for her the notion of sexual difference was inextricably tied to textual and visual representation and both were dominated by a single, male-centred, vision, as Cixous details to the highest degree the entire history of writing is confounded with the history of reason, of w hich it is at once the effect, the support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the phallocentric tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self gratulatory phallocentricism.This same theme is continued in the leaven This Sex Which is non One (1985) by Luce Irigaray where the example of the female genitals is cited as subsisting as an intensive binary, each part relying and drawing stimulation from the other, thusly challenging the oneness and singularity of the phallus. Irigaray also makes the point that, for female sexuality, progress to is more meaningful that vision, the first suggestion that in that location maybe some cross over between the critiques of sexual difference and representation.As Owens (1983) suggests, postmodernity and the critique of representation also aimed to challenge the accepted (male dominated) field of vision by, firstly, exposing the tie in that exist between representation and phallocentricism and then by asserting the value of multi-perspectives, multiple readings and other modes of viewing. The postmodern image, as Jameson (1991) states, is one that has lost its originary conjunctive to a real world and exists instead in a lot of self referencing images whereby The worldmomentarily loses its depth and threatens to become a jazzy skin, a stereoscopic illusion, a rush of filmic images without density. The postmodern image elides notions such as authenticity and distinct critical reading because it has lost what gum benjamin (2008) described as the aura of original authorial intent. Commensurate with notions such as the death of author (Barthes, 1988) the postmodern critical position asserts the grimness of multiple readings and the inherent intertextual nature of image and text, as Owens (1983) statesIt is precisely at the legislative frontier between what can be represented and what can cannot that the postmodernist operation is being staged not in cast to transcend repres entation, but in order to expose the system of major power that authorizes certain representations while blocking, prohibiting or invalidating others. Among those prohibited from Western representation, whose representations are denied legitimacy, are women.The critique of sexual difference, then, and the critique of representation are inextricably linked, being as they are both attempts at challenging tralatitious modernist and phallocentric modes of thinking. Each can be viewed as a strategy that seeks to get over not only specific areas (gender inequality, monolithic modes of representation etc) but the regime that provides their ground. Each attempts to do this through a series of critical re-framings and a priori positions that uncover the inherent inconsistencies and internal fissures in the dominant discourse.Roland Barthes work tv camera Lucida (2000) is an ideal example of how such ideas can be translated into literary and photographic theory. In his notion of the punct um, for instance, Barthes details how time, sentiment and personal interest can alter our reception of a photograph far beyond the intents of any the photographer or the photographic model. The punctum, or as Barthes details a partial object (Barthes, 2000 43) is that which exists outside of the normalised view of what is representable in a photograph, it elides direct visual recognition and changes with each viewer and viewing Barthes describes his assure of a photograph by William Klein from 1954 of poverty stricken children in young Yorks Little Italy for instance, despite the overtly socio-political message of the photograph (an adult hand holding a gun to a smiling boys head) what could be considered the traditional representational, rational meaning, Barthes can not serve up but stubbornly see one childs stinky teeth (Barthes, 2000 45). In his notion of the third meaning, also from his essay of the same name, Barthes points to the humourous and sometimes comical acciden tal elements of a photograph or a still image of a film, what he calls the obtuse meaning, speaking of a still from Romms Ordinary Fascism, he saysI can easily read (in this still) an obvious meaning, that of fascism (aesthetics and symbolics of power, the theatrical hunt), but I can also read an obtuse meaning the (again) disguised flaxen silliness of the young quiver-bearer, the flabbiness of his hands and mouthGoerings inscrutable nails, his trashy ringFor Barthes then, that which was not intended to be represented the inherent phallic instability of the Nazi party can be discerned in photography, not in the elements that form the centre of the picture (the studium) but those at the periphery that elide the rational and studied gaze. As Shawcross (1997) details, Barthes notions here smoothen the desire to challenge the kinds of discourses we have looked at above, it stresses the importance of multiple readings when transaction with photographic images and also attempts to ch allenge traditional (Western phallocentric) notions of single point perspective.In allowing such multiple readings, asserts Barthes, the photographs brings into question the relationship between image and text and, more rightly, exposing the play that exists between the two. In a process that Barthes calls anchorage (Barthes, 1977 38) text pins down the multi-faceted meaning of an image, suppressing the natural polyvocal nature of a photograph and re-establishing the rational search for a unique interpretation. In the series of photographs by Gillian Wearing, for example, where ordinary members of the public were photographed holding up textual messages such as Im Desperate and Help, it is the text that is assumed to be the underlying truth behind the photographic image, highlighting the extent that textual and linguistic signifiers have historically dominated visual ones.Feminist photographers have often played with the inherent slippage of meaning within the photographic image th e work of Cindy Sherman, for instance, exemplifies many of the issues we have been discussing here. Photographed in a series of ironic and iconic poses and disguises Shermans work is both postmodern, in that it is self referential and kitsch but it is also considered feminist in that it attempts to rediscover and reclaim patriarchally constructed images of cleaning woman (the housewife, the screen starlet, the victim etc). As Shawcross (1997) details, by using herself as a model, Sherman also deconstructs the notion of identity and surface appearances who or what are we reacting to in these images, Sherman the photographer, Sherman the icon, Sherman the disguised housewife or the housewife per se as an image in itself? As Barthes would suggest, the contribution of the photograph to the debate on the relationship between image and text (Sherman tellingly does not titled any of her photographs) is the very play of interpretation that such photographs expose.Ultimately, then, as we h ave seen, there could be considered a direct link between the failure of dreadful narratives such as sexual difference and perspectivalist representation and the rise in critical interest in photography. As an art form that is both indexical and open to manipulation, photography is ideally suited to exemplify debates on the nature of interpretation and semiotics, something that has had a marked influence on both critical theorists and photographers alike.ReferencesBakhtin, M (2000), The Dialogic Imagination, Austin University of Texas.Barthes, R (1977), Image Music Text, capital of the United Kingdom Hill and Wang.Barthes, R (1980), Barthes Selected Writings, capital of the United Kingdom Fontana.Barthes, R (2000), Camera Lucida, London Vintage.Benjamin, W (2008), The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, Cambridge Harvard University.Cixous, H (1980), The Laugh of the Medusa, published in New French Feminisms, London Harvester.Deleuze, G and Guattari, F (2004), A deoxyguanosine monophosphate Plateaus, London Continuum.Derrida, J (1997), Of Grammatology, Baltimore Johns Hopkins University.Durand, R and Criqui, J.P (2006), Cindy Sherman, London Flammarion.Grosz, E (1994), Volatile Bodies Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Indianapolis University of Indiana.Heidegger, M (2007), The Origin of the Workd of Art, published in Basic Writings, London Routledge.Irigaray, L (1985), This Sex Which is non One, New York Cornell University.Jameson, F (1991), Postmodernism, or The Logic of Late Capitalism, London Verso.Lloyd, G (1984), The Man of Reason, London Methuen.Lyotard, J.F (1984), The Postmodern Condition, Manchester University of Manchester.Owens, C (1983), The Discourse of Others available online at http//216.239.59.104/search?q= lay awayFb1ceOH6t0AJwww.mariabuszek.com/kcai/PoMoSeminar/Readings/OwensOthers.pdf+the+discourse+of+othershl=enct=clnkcd=1gl=ukPaley, M (1997), Gillian Wearing Signs that Say What you Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants, London Interim Art.Shawcross, N (1997), Roland Barthes On Photography, Gainsville University of Florida.