Reading Grosz (Again)

She's critical of how, amongst feminists, "there is still a strong reluctance to conceptualize the female body as playing a major role in women's oppression" (31). I found this an extremely interesting proposition--something I've never seen explicitly articulated before. She goes on to talk about how feminists should be paying more attention to the role of the female body because of the binary structure, and how males, in subsuming knowledge as theirs, have come to be associated with the mind; and how in dissociating from the body, the body becomes associated with the female, etc.

She then claims that all knowledges are therefore masculine (38). That these 'masculine' knowledges are then culturally and socially inscribed onto all bodies (male and female) to take precedence as something neutral, something eternal, and something true. I find this extremely problematic. First, she has no evidence that men, in "appropriating the realm of mind for themselves", has in fact "disavowed" their bodies ("physicality", to quote Grosz). This claim proceeds on grounds that the binary structure is already in place BEFORE this 'appropriation' of the males. While I agree it is true that traditionally, in most societies, patriarchy reigned supreme and therefore by default, men's opinions/thoughts/works etc. were 'canonized' and made integral to the society's backbone, I find that this does not neccessarily point to Grosz's simple equation that patriarchy = men's 'knowledges' as The Way = men "disavowing" their bodies, or as Grosz puts it, men's "disembodiment" (39).

Another thing that bothers me in her article is when she talking about "isomorphism" (38).

"This correspondence is a function of the systems of representation that traverse and constitute both men's bodies as such and the criteria for the evaluation of knowledges. [...] Instead of seeing man as the active creator of discursive and epistemic values, the male body must be seen as an inscribed product of the intervention of meanings into the way men live their bodies." (Grosz, 38-39)

It is admirable that she is attempting to make a case for men here--"It is not really a question of blaming men...". But it seems to me that this plea is rather futile. This whole 'crisis of reason' is a result of "the correspondence" between the men's bodies and external inscriptions. Now, if the society she referred to is a patriarchal one, then the "systems of representations" and the "criteria for the evaluation of knowledges" AND the "intervention of meanings" ARE ALL SET BY MEN THEMSELVES. They have created their own vicious cycle and are now trapped in it, embroiling women in the process, and now finding that there is a 'crisis' to their knowledges.

Perhaps Grosz is simply rallying for us to be critical of all knowledges; now that we know most, if not all, knowledges are 'masculine'. She is perhaps asking us take the cue from Irigaray, to re-evaluate knowledges as merely perspectives bound by significant sexual (and therefore bodily) differences. As such, does this mean the guys in this class will read the texts in a similarly different way from the girls?

It is still very confusing. But I think two of the more useful ideas are Irigaray's point about "returning the male body to its products" (42), and her attempt to "reveal a politics of truth, logic, and reason" (42), which means to me that she is not trying to debunk/negate 'masculine' knowledges, but more to reveal the tensions that produced the knowledges. I think this might be useful to keep in mind when we consider the other texts for this module.