Kristeva and Irigaray

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Kristeva and Irigaray

• Q A, and Some Examples

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Q A

• What is feminine writing according to Irigaray?
  Examples?
• What is the semiotic for Kristeva? How about
  genotext? Examples?
• How do we relate Kristevas ideas of
  genetext/phenotext to Barthes notions of
  writable/ readable text, text/work or Bahktins
  idea of novel?
• What do you think about their connections of
  feminine writing with womens bodies? Is it
  essentialist? Is it a kind of utopianism?

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• Georgia O'Keeffe
• Black Iris

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Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles Number 11, 1952
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Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles Number 11, 1952
Context 1. existentialism ("existence precedes
essence") alone in the void (alienation) 2.
the Cold War post-Hiroshima the Soviet Union
gets the bomb in 1949 3. the 50's beat
generation (pushing to the edge of one's
consciousness.) 4. Jungian analysis (the
collective unconscious the archetype mythic
structures embedded in everyone's unconscious).
5. Inspired by jazz improvisation listened to
records by Charlie Parker while he painted. Also
influenced by Native American sand painting and
the idea that painting could be ritualistic, a
rites of passage. (source http//www.csulb.edu/
karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.htm
l )
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Mimicry Cindy Sherman (1) Untitled Film Stills
(1977)

• Lois Lane in the 1950's television program
  Superman 

• Cindy Sherman (Staniszewski 281)

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Mimicry 2 Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Stills
(1977)

• Marilyn Monroe

• Cindy Sherman Untitled  film still (Staniszewski
  282)

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Cindy Sherman (2) work in the 80s critique of
portraits

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Body and the semiotic

• Chora -- The space of the drives
• The semiotic -- the bodily drive as it is
  discharged in signification (signifiance). The
  semiotic is associated with the rhythms, tones,
  and movement of signifying practices. As the
  discharge of drives, it is also associated with
  the maternal body, the first source of rhythms,
  tones, and movements for every human being since
  we all have resided in that body.

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The semiotic disposition

• The emergence of the semiotic in the symbolic, or
  the genotext in the phenotext.
• E.g. rhythm, ambiguity and over-symbolicity, the
  switches and multiplicity of locutionary
  position.

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The Symbolic the Semiotic

• element of signification is associated with the
  grammar and structure of signification. The
  symbolic element is what makes reference
  possible.
• Without the symbolic, all signification would be
  babble or delirium. But, without the semiotic,
  all signification would be empty and have no
  importance for our lives. Ultimately,
  signification requires both the semiotic and
  symbolic there is no signification without some
  combination of both.

source
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feminine writing according to Irigaray

• Sexuality plural clitoral activity vaginal
  passivity multiple erogeneous zones
• p. 28-29 She is definitely other in herself.
  . . .she sets off in all directions leaving
  him unable to discern the coherence of any
  meaning. Hers are contradictory words, somewhat
  mad from the standpoint of reason, inaudible for
  whoever listens to them with ready-made grids. .
  . For in what she says, too, at least when she
  dares, woman is constantly touching herself.

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feminine writing according to Irigaray

• an other meaning always in the process of
  weaving itself, of embracing itself with words,
  but also of getting rid of words in order not to
  become fixed, congealed in them. . . . What she
  says is never identical with anything, moreover
  rather, it is contiguous. It touches (upon).
  And when it strays too far from that proximity,
  she breaks off and starts over at zero her
  body-sex.
• P. 79 of our chapter

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