From: n2412@cray.com (Joe Green)
Subject: Re: john wesley hardin
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 16 Apr 92 10:41:18 CDT

In article <7710410@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>In rec.arts.poems, n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
>
>Thanks for the summary of the reading list Joe.  I am interested
>enough in these ideas that I will probably read some of these
>with my valuable reading time.
>
>Having made it clear that I do not have the proper reading background
>to address this, I still want to make some comments and add some
>thoughts and questions to this debate.
>
>>Are you, John Wesley, denying that the speechlessness I have
>>described is real?  Does the fact that for centuries women
>>have had next to nothing to say about their situation as chattel
>>suggest that speechlessness is a fantasy?  Or is there some
>>esoteric way in which they have been heard and heeded?
>
>One problem that I have with the discourse is the assertion
>that marginalized groups do not have a language to address their
>oppression.  It seems to me that what they do not 
>have is an audience.  Taking the
>case of women, specifically, it has probably always been possible
>to put together the words to say, "I may be a woman, you bastard,
>but that does not mean you can treat me like a goddamned cow."
>In other words, it seems that the language, as a syntax and
>a collection of words has always been there.

Well, there are several answers to this.  The most interesting --
because it still is so new -- is Nietzsche's.  See especially
Genealogy of Morals.  A simplification of what he says when
writing about Master and Slave morality is that everything the
slave does and think is a reaction to the master.  Because it
is reactive it is not free and, in fact, is characterized
by certain structures which give the appearance of freedom but
actually implicate the slave in the sort of abasement which is
in fact desired by the master. Barthes on Sade also describes
something like this.  The words you have your woman say, for example,
may be just what her master wants to hear and tho she thinks
she is defying him she may actually be satisfying him.  It makes
certain things possible for him, justifies certain persecutions, etc.
She may think she has an effect but because he does not listen
except to derive his own satisfactions the effect she actually
has is to please her master.  Read _The Duchess of Malfi_ for
an example of this economy in action. 


>
>So what is it that has not been there, because I would say that
>you are absolutely right that women have been oppressed BY 
>language.  Of course the assertion that this is the fault of
>capitalism, or even western society is obviously incorrect since
>it has happened in MOST cultures. iIn FACT, it is only the modern
>success of capitalism and democracy that has begun to empower 
>women to FIX this problem.

No -- I said that it was worsened by capitalism.  To see exactly
what I mean read Foucault's _Discipline and Punishment_.
He claims (and this is a simplification and he doesn't always
write exclusively about the effect of capitalism) that many
other cultures and Western culture before capitalism actually
provided more space for resistance to the disciplines imposed
by culture than capitalism and "democracy."  More or less
he says that power was imposed from the outside in these
cultures and some space was left to resist this power
(even if the King, for example, regarded this resistance
as meaningless -- a mere "safety valve.")  but that capitalism
is imposed from the inside and colonizes the mind more completely --
attempts to take away all autonomy because it was finally seen
that any autonomy was dangerous. 


>


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