Abstract
Before reading
The title of the book might prompt discomfort in anyone immersed in the never-straightforward world of feminisms’ literature—even when engaging with earlier works, with their fertile opportunities for dialogue. This lingering feeling is far from reassuring, especially for scholars seeking certainty as part of their problematizing (and perhaps attempt to overcome) all binaries.
Cyberspace, September 10, 2024
Just published. . . seems to criticize Butler . . . [with an e-commerce link]—Click.
“Yeah”. . .I heard that they deliberately address Butler with “she” instead of “they”. . .—Click.
“Ooooh . . .”—Click
Well, we’ve had the privilege of reading Cavarero before. Here she’s back as co-author alongside Guaraldo, Director of the Arendt Center for Political Studies at the University of Verona. But firstly, we’ll read the blurb. . .
Did you say we’ll read the blurb?
Yes. We’ll read, right?
Actually, I read. If you read, that’s your business. If I read, that’s my business. I’m a woman, and I have the right to speak for myself.
. . .
[Later:
Anyway—here’s what it says on the back.
“Inclusive language champions fluidity and stigmatizes anyone who acknowledges that there are two sexes, male and female. A new language is spreading, in which genders multiply, while the fact of sex difference is considered dangerous and discriminatory. In progressive cultural environments—universities, festivals, and publishing houses—the term ‘woman’ is increasingly replaced by ‘person with a uterus,’ thus erasing the central subject of feminism, which enabled the conquest of rights and freedoms.” 2
[Ah. . . freedom. . .] Speaking of freedom, I wonder what William Dorsey Swann and Angela Davis (1981) would think about it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—nothing worse than reviewing a book without having read it properly.
San Gennaro, September 19, 2024
The book has arrived. Unicuique suum. “May all get their due.” A principle of justice and equity cherished by the Platonic state. Five chapters: sexual difference, emancipation and equality, the symbolic order of femininity, sex and gender, and the issue of surrogacy.
Is this going to be “scientific outreach,” a commercial thing, or more of the same great research we’ve read in the past?
Doing research, outreach, or selling are completely different. It’s a matter of Relating Narrative (Cavarero, 2000 [1997]).
A timeless issue?
I think this book deals with an intensely current and simultaneously eternal issue—or, sometimes, a trend. The eternal hue of the issue at hand weaves through history, from Heraclitus (oops—Aristotle?) to modern-day protagonists. But then we were saying. . . don’t you find it a bit “d’antant”—of “bygone days,” shall we say? Come on . . .we live in a country led by a female Prime Minister who communicates with a female President of the European Commission, who converses with a female presidential candidate for the United States! 3
What’s that got to do with it? Haven’t you seen what’s going on in the U.S. with abortion rights? And it wasn’t that long ago that women couldn’t even vote. Reading Cavarero and Guaraldo’s book makes me realize that feminist gains are really recent and fragile, and need protecting. I mean, just think about my grandmother. . .
“We, the authors of this book, are exemplary products of emancipation, and we are quite happy about it” (p. 80).
Well said. Me too!
Sorry, Daniela, but there are a lot of proud grandmas out there, right? All of them out in the streets, while grandpas are nowhere to be seen. The woman, explored in all her possible contradictions and subjectivity, evolves (or would evolve) (Pullen and Rhodes, 2015), through history and culture. Seemingly indisputable—except for the fact that history and culture are themselves natural experiences (In spite of “Plato and the primitive humanoids,” from p. 21). As such, history and culture could serve as a sympathetic vehicle—a resonating chamber for theoretical aspiration and an impulse towards an ideal, deeply rooted in d’antant feminism.
Ah, I see what you’re getting at. After page 40, it seems like all this emphasis on nature vs. culture becomes a bit rigid, right? It starts to feel a bit confining. And isn’t it exactly this binary opposition that patriarchy tends to reinforce? Czarniawska (2014) would respond: “are people unnatural?” (p. 2).
exactly, the brilliant Barbara . . .
Two women
216 pages written by two women who narrate themselves.
the female experience is rooted in a structural exposure to alterity that exemplifies all vulnerabilities—whether self-determined or not, and is no longer defined through assimilation with or subtraction from the other.
We believe that interdependence and vulnerability are existential conditions for everyone, and so is care. Each of us is embodied, exposed, and fragile. Recognizing this could foster alliances, thus transiting toward the stance of the “other,” as transfeminism has recently come to express. . . alas, for that “trans!.”
Yes, but when it comes to—for example—care work, it’s always women that do it. On the other hand, there are (very well paid!) jobs that are considered the prerogative of men, particularly in business.
“Female leadership has left its mark over time by offering more cooperative and relational power management models [. . .]. It is now widely recognized in economic studies that having women in managerial roles leads to improved teamwork” (p. 80).
Oh no. . . corporate performance. Every time they bring it up in business schools, I say: what if performance actually got worse with more women on boards? What would we do then, send them back home? But most of all, it seems to me that the logic of the argument doesn’t work. . . feminism and femininity are not the same thing (Segal, 2023), as if just because I have a vagina (oops sorry—because I’m a woman) I should automatically be empathetic and cooperative. At least as much as the Italian Prime Minister. . .
Yes, we read about optimization and corporate efficiency, companies-as-holy-temples—a litmus test of the (supposed) value of this proposed theoretical stance. In short, a “demonstration”—a typical response from scientific thinking that reduces complexity into a laboratory simulation (where the “experimental method” is applied). This creates a short circuit between science, philosophy, and social research, making interdisciplinary inquiry a thorny issue.
We fail to understand how the existence of intersex people—the “existence in nature” of biological variations regarding sex—necessarily leads to the dismantling of the binary division of sexes, which is prevalent in nature (p. 128).
Hmmm, perhaps I haven’t got this. So, they’re using statistics (that insistence on what’s “prevalent”) to support the idea that sex is binary? Again, two recurrent keywords: data and nature, seem to raise questions about the world’s reality. I’m not sure that this (supposed) reality is so important in shaping one ideal view of the world or another, are you?
They keep referring to data (certainty or prevalence)—factual data, along with the “limits of reality” in support of either that worldview or theirs, reducing this complex issue to its factual dimension, as if reality should serve as the decisive criterion.
Yes, that same reality—presumed as objective and neutral by definition—that feminism taught us to question! Adriana and Olivia remind us of this, only to forget it when they anchor sexual difference to the (precisely!) biological fact.
“Now, the biological fact related to sexuation and the reproduction of life is no longer simply confined to its traditional, despised status as mere animal nature, but is instead denaturalized and transformed into a product of discursive regimes” (p. 150).
The dialogue with the “hard” sciences is certainly important. . . otherwise, one risks reducing (as we said) a complex issue to the confines of a single discipline. . . and yet. . . it should remain a dialogue (oops, Plato again). In short, cohabitation, a dance between structurally polar epistemic fields.
Gender (troubles) or (f)acts of sex
It seems that the matter worth debating is not scientific falsification (can we find the black trans Swan(n)?), but rather the ethics of relationships (Tyler, 2019). We believe that the ethics of relationships is based on the recognition of the irreducible otherness of the other, avoiding narcissistic identification (Derrida, 1995; Levinas, 1969). In short, recognizing each other as persons. . .
“Person is really yet another mask that the male subject wears to appear neutral and universal” (p. 80).
Pirandello (2001 [1921]), too, as an expression of the bourgeois revolution of those years, presents us with his concept of the mask:
It’s words—that’s where all the trouble lies. [. . .]. How then can we understand each other when the words that I use to speak are full of my meaning of the world and the person who is listening to me, inevitably, has their own world inside of them, attaches their own meaning to my words. We think we understand each other—we don’t really. (Indicates Mother). (p. 15)
So, what should we do, mask behind quotes? It doesn’t get more bourgeois than that. We’re practically on the verge of salon talk.
And who doesn’t do that?
Well, popularizers, refined researchers, poets and musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers—we’re all, in one way or another, authors, actors, characters, and interpreters, behind a mask of sorts. Once again, we are all like that. . .
Women are like that! 4
Gee whizz. That logic of opposition again.
It is difficult to avoid the trap of “proof” within an argument centered on the logic of opposition . . . voilà . . . Hegel!
Proof is binary (true/false); just as the I/you opposition is. In this oscillation between biological facts, statistical data, and anthropological evidence, freedom and slavery, sexual binarism seems to be a minor issue.
Other binarisms prop up the text: sex that generates/sex that does not generate. . .And what if one, like me, hasn’t “generated”?
It doesn’t matter! If you want, you can. In any case, “if it cannot give life, the sex that does not generate can at least bring death” (p. 40).
How complimentary. What if the origin of male chauvinism is just a matter of muscle? In short, you women have control over the continuity of the species, you live longer (now I’m bringing out the statistics), and you know how to endure pain better. Could it be that us, scared little men, have resorted to bullying? Being domineering, “prepotent”—the power that surrounds fear. That’s what everyone does when they’re afraid. The dog growls, right?
You with your “you women” and “continuity of the species” talk. Haven’t you read Halberstam (2012)? “Where reproduction becomes artificial, male and female distinctions and mother and father roles wither away, leaving in their place only parents; and if we create machines to do our labor for us too, then we rid ourselves of gendered and economic division of labor, and we lose the rationale for the biological family completely” (p. 75). It takes a little imagination, as our Braidotti (2022) says; reproduction is now posthuman!
I don’t know. It makes me think of Tekton, the putative father of Jesus, author, actor, and interpreter of a great revolution which speaks volumes about the structurally superfluous nature of males. . . we’re useless. And as far as reproduction is concerned there are many dear. . . friends around. And more recently, excellent clinics.
Superfluous? Yes! Children are of those who give them birth, not of those who claim an alleged right to parenthood. “When it comes to bringing children into the world [. . .] it takes a woman” (p. 163).
Sapperlot! 5 Good luck figuring out who my grandfather is! Who knows?
Let’s be honest, surrogacy and all the new technological innovations are yet another way for men to control women’s bodies. Let’s not forget we’re talking about “biotechnological interference” (p. 168)!
And here we are with technophobia. . . as if technology cannot be reclaimed in an emancipatory way, in sexuality as well as reproduction (Preciado, 2018).
Well, regarding sexuality, we’re with Lonzi, that “the bet [. . .] is precisely to place the specificity of female pleasure as the constitutive, almost foundational, element of women’s freedom” (p. 92).
Yes, of course. . . in the struggle between the clitoris and the vagina (another binary!), we know who wins. . .
May Preciado and the countersexualists help us.
Glenn Gould affirmed that there are two kinds of musicians: virtuoso players for whom the piano (or any other instrument) becomes an end in and of itself and those for whom theis merely the interface through which our embodied sensorial materiality accesses the sphere of music, inventing a sound, creating a melody that didn’t exist before playing. We could just as well say that there are two kinds of sexual agents: those for whom the object of sexual activity is the repetition of the score of their sexual identity (masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual) according to a certain definition of proper functions of organs and bodies (erection, ejaculation, reproduction, orgasm, etc.) and those for whom the organ (biological or synthetic, alive or technosemiotically incorporated) is merely the interface by which they access certain forms of pleasure or affects that can’t be represented by sexual difference, gender, or sexual identity. We shall call the former “realists” or “genitalists,” straight/homosexual “naturalists,” followers, consciously or not, of the mainstream entertainment- cum- industry. We will refer to the latter as “countersexualists.” (pp. 9–10)
And here’s another binary, once again—naturalists and the “antis” (“against” something, once again) . . .
You are against all binarisms! “The risk we see—and can sometimes already feel—is that, with the critique of the binary, women themselves might disappear” (p. 152).
Well, yes, we are against all binarisms. For us, critical thought should be tasked with multiplying categories in the name of inclusion—which Arendt invites us to reflect on (we might also say: reality is complex and multifaceted, right?).
Let’s spit on Hegel, wrote Lonzi. So, let’s do it!
To women (and to you, girl)
This is a book addressed to women—or rather, to girls. Explicitly. And repeatedly.
“What it means to be a woman is something you, girl, must decide for yourself first!” (p. 190).
Speaking to girls implies I am superfluous. Can I at least assume I’m worthy of co-writing this review?
Well. . . in name, you’re also “Maria.” I’m probably more superfluous than you. I feel quite young, but would I say, “girl”? Not really. . .
“You girls, however, [. . .] we do not want to indoctrinate you or, even less, push you to take sides in the current linguistic and ideological battle” (p. 177).
Adriana and Olivia, can you address us with the pronoun they (using the schwa in Italian) please?
No. . . that’s not the point. You are a man and I am a woman, and that’s fine, isn’t it? The point is, why not recognize that the existence of other gender identities is not a threat to this?
“The trans phenomenon has spread very rapidly—perhaps also thanks to social media—among adolescents [. . .] indeed, there is talk of ‘contagion,’ and quite a few psychologists hypothesize that the phenomenon can also be explained by the typical adolescent tendency to rebel against the system and its norms” (p. 142) [. . .] “However, we believe it would be strange if it were trans women, that is, males who have transitioned to a female identity, who decide what a woman is or to question the existence of women.” (p. 190)
The two allied intransigent women reject these difficult alliances (p. 132), framing the situation as a zero-sum game (we win, you lose), fearing the woman’s erasure.
Isn’t the narrator supposed to remain neutral and objective?
Yes, Dad.
Perhaps this issue of difficult alliances brings us back to the ethics of relationships and its aporetic nature (Derrida, 1995 [1992]). Phenomena as diverse as (trans)feminist separatism and femicides prompt reflection on how categories are both cages and reassuring “containers.” Categories are “that which we cannot not want” (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013: 72), and politics and activism use them strategically (Prasad, 2012). At the same time, it’s vital to deconstruct these categories. We like to think that imagination is as important as “the limits of reality” (p. 174). Without this ongoing deconstruction, categories risk trapping each individual’s irreducible “otherness.”
Bodies in alliance?
Cavarero and Guaraldo establish a milestone in reaffirming work on “sexual difference,” tracing back to early voices advocating women’s equal rights and (co?)existence beyond the confines of a rigid patriarchal framework. Each “term” mentioned serves as a prompt for further exploration of a text rich in references to the shaping of feminist movement(s) over the centuries—back from when St. Paul’s exhortation for women to remain silent in the Assembly represented an impenetrable wall.
. . . one that seems to be rising again, regrettably.
After reading, what could be better than being left with open-ended questions: are we born woman (or man, or. . .)? And, if such a notion were ever acceptable, how and why do we not become something or someone else?
After writing
Let’s send this to Organization and see if the folks will appreciate it.
Hmmm . . .
Bureaucracy! Bureaucracy!
Who cares?
You care! Do not lie to me! You care, as your desire has been assembled in this way!
Thanks, EK, for letting us experiment with academic writing nonetheless.
