(No part of this reinterview may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and
lynda haas.) --Full Copyright notice at end of each file, starting with haas1 file.
The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Lynda Haas, beginning July, 1997. The subject of the reinvw is/was her article
"The Daughter's Seduction; or, Writing with the Rhetors,"
forthcoming in PRE/TEXT 15: 3-4.
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 13:31:58 -0500 (CDT) Pholks, let's get started with the Lynda Haas Reinvw. I have been having some terrible problems with e-mail and have hesitated to start until things got better. I have arranged it so that, if things remain bad, I can post from another e-mail account on another system. We will be discussing "The Daughter's Seduction; or, Writing with the Rhetors" forthcoming in PRE/TEXT 15.3-4. If any of you have not yet read Lynda's article and would like to do so, you will find it at http://jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU:80/~spoons/pretext/Haas1.html ===== vv>lh: metaleptically, now? Lynda, _____When you wrote this essay you were an academik. Now that you are collecting your money from another kind of corporation, What are your thoughts about your former, academik thoughts as stated or implied in your article? Are there now differences in your mind? Similarities? Non sequiturs? IOW, where are you now in relation to your essay? fathers? mothers? v
...if writing, especially writing histories of rhetorics, is "sexed," how many sexes are there in the writing(s)? V
Hello Pre/Text! And hello to all my old colleagues and friends, ex-students, and new colleagues and friends who have joined for the discussion. Let's start the party! When I was in my last year of grad school, I used to play the game "where will we be next year at this time" with some of my friends. Our greatest desire was to be at a college somewhere, happily teaching rhetoric and composition--the long trek to finish degree and dissertation finally over. A year later, with appointment to the writing department at Ithaca College intact, I forgot about that game. It's probably a good thing, because I would have never guessed that the answer for me would become "you'll be working for a corporation and starting all over again." I'll take the time out to talk about myself a bit as we start this re/inter/view--since VV asked the question--and since the nature of my article lends itself to the personal. My perspectives have been altered in many ways, but what remains is the conviction (matrilineal inheritance, perhaps, from Irigaray) that everything we think, say, write, do is very personally grounded--by our cultural context, and by our sex. So then, a bit about where I am now, to put this in context. I left Ithaca College after a year, not by plan, but by some karmic flood that washed me back to Tampa, Florida (where I had done my grad work). I did odd jobs for awhile and then somehow happily stumbled into a wonderful position at a corporation called Intermedia Communications. It's a telecommunications company, a phone company, but not the average AT&T / Bell kind of company. Intermedia does high tech data communications, computer telephony, ISP kindof stuff. I started as a tech writer and trainer in the Information Systems department and then tech writer and trainer in the Information Systems department and then a year later was promoted to my present position, which is manager of Strategic Planning. Basically what my department does is decide what the company will pursue five years from now (so I'm back to playing the "where will we be game"); basically my job in Strategic Planning is to be the mouthpiece of the department to the executive staff. So I've learned to build web sites and multimedia presentations, I'm still trying to learn ways to make communication interesting (enough that a VP will read it), and I write a gozillion white papers about things like "Local MultiPoint Digital Spectum Auctions" and the like. I adore it, but man am I a LONG way from the classroom. Or maybe not so far, depending on my perspective that day. I still like contradicting myself. What all this has to do with how I feel today about a three-year-old article that's enjoying a rebirth--hrm. I remember writing it, every painstaking word (it is an edited chapter of my dissertation). I was most evangelical about wanting to make a simple point very painstakingly clear: R/C writing is sexed. I haven't changed my mind about that at all. In fact, in corporate-land, without the mantle of philosophical and feminist and R/C and literary language to cover it--communications are quite baldly sexed (for anyone bothering to notice). I'm sure to bore you with several anecdotes along that line. There is still so much to write... hoping you all will help, Lynda
Lynda, ya just got going and then stopped short. i want some more. if interested, tell us how you differ now, if you differ, with what you say in your article. what would you say differently to bill, sue, and casper, If say anything? if you wish, put your saying in terms of 'strategic plainning' for our discussion. are bill's, sue's and casper's saying as real for you now, as they might have been earlier, that is real enough for you to have to respond to in writing the article? or, are they merely ghostly? do they, their sayings, still haunt? do your sayings haunt? the approach of annecdotes sounds perfect. please go for and with them. knowing that life is elsewhere, if not more so, V
Alrighty then. I'll start with an anecdote from today. A few colleagues in my department decided they would join in the discussion to see what it'd be like. For context, these guys do regulatory issues-they're somehow able to read the language of the FCC and then tell us how it's strategically important for our company. They went out to the website, printed the article, read the first questions... and then a few minutes later, when I was walking by Mike's cube....
MIKE R: Do I have to read this WHOLE THING? That pretty much sums up how things are different for me, but let me be strategically plain about it... when I wrote the article, it was my dissertation, so of course it was of great importance to me, it was in no way a joking matter. Now, re-reading it.. well, to tell you the truth, I'd never re-read it if I didn't have to for this re/inter/view. Logical Question: So why do this re/inter/view? Well, VV put it best and I agreed with it-because it might be fun. And it might. And so, here I am. But without all the evangelism. In the article, I argued for how everything has an agenda-didn't much like Covino's "untutored reading" because it seemed to preach agenda-lessness and sexlessness-which means, underneath the rhetoric, a god's eye view. So now I sound like I'm contradicting myself, but: I don't have an agenda for doing this-well, not the academic kind- How about "the agenda of enjoyment"?) But I do still have a sex! And that's still of great importance because it's my identity whether I am in academics or in telecommunications. So, VV, what would I say differently? I have a great luxury in this discussion, since no academic writes my paycheck. I'd say the same thing, but in a different language. Why? Because I can. Which one of you would write in dissertation-ese about R/C if you didn't HAVE to-for tenure, or for a dissertation, or for reputation? If there were no reason in the world for you to write that way anymore, would you? To Covino, the rebellious son: "Magic: The Gathering. All you need is your mind, a dick (oops, deck), and a friend." (from TV) No, really, I mean that in fun... I wouldn't mind seeing more of your magic, I think I'm closer in perspective to you than I once was. To Neel, the Regulator: (from Desperation, Stephen King, pg 154) "Edgar Rice Burroughs was a better writer than you, know why? He was a hack without pretentions." To Jarratt, the just-a-little-too-faithful daughter: You produce the floods, I'll produce some venture capitalists to underwrite an ark. I'm still interested in what you're saying because I still think it can happen. Shake the foundations of the social order, then everything will shift. "That is why they're so careful to keep us on a leash." (Irigaray's Women-Mothers, p 47). I know, I know that you want me to be more specific VV. Sorry. I hate long emails. And, in a nutshell, that's what I'd say to them now. I think I just did. As to the other post about sex-haven't you already written about that in other places? Ah me, there's nothing new under the sun! How many sexes or how many genders? Irigaray would say there are three genres-the Same; the Other of the Same (the feminine as defined by culture who has no personal language or identity of her own so she's really just the same); the Other of the Other (the feminine defined by the feminine that goes beyond the stereotypical gestures woman is told to make). VV I know you would argue for many more sexes in writing-and perhaps, in some writing(s), there are. But in writing(s) about histories of rhetorics how many sexes are there? I thought that the front was still pretty unified (more and more and more of the same) when I left the R/C battle. Or has someone started a flood? You tell me. :-)
Haas, Can a man write women's writing? If I were to read every feminist theorist and every literary work written by a female body, absorb the style, know every trope, every gesture, then write and publish works under a female pseudonym, all the while everyone believing I am a woman... would that be women's writing? What is women's writing? Could I have that potential, or am I eternally "cut off" from any such endeavor? What is the relationship between writing and the body? Is it absolute? Sorry for asking for closure, but hey, I am a man... : ) Well, Lynda, how do I know you are a woman? Maybe you are a big burley friend of VV who has agreed to conduct this simulacra. : ) (hence the name Haas...sorry for those of you not up on southern lingo!) Oddly enough, for Plato, could it be writing that separates language from bodies as he so desires? Lynda, "Are you a woman?" : ) Please don't let the play "negate" the sincerity of my inquiry. This is a particularly important question for me right now. How does "a writing theory that would recognize sexual difference" work when someone not only sits down to write but sits down to READ-- how is it recognizable in the writing? Could it ever be recognized? Lynda, "Are you a woman?" Can you be communicated? Can any BODY be communicated? If "thoughts beyond positivistic experience have no referential existence beyond the imaginative extrapolations of the thinker," how do we read bodies in discourse? "So, what is a woman? Someone who makes the stereotypical gestures she is told to make, who has no personal language and who has no identity?" If I make those stereotypical gestures, am I a woman? My question for you is... Can a man be multiple? Can a man write "women's" writing? Thanks, B. Hawk
Can a woman write men's writing? If I were to read every unmarked theorist and every literary work written by a male body, absorb the style, know every trope, every gesture, then write and publish works under a male pseudonym, all the while everyone believing I am a man... would that be men's writing? What is men's writing? Could I have that potential, or am I eternally "cut off" from any such endeavor? What is the relationship between writing and the body? Is it absolute? Sorry for asking for closure, but hey, I am a woman...
Byron's question reminds me of RuPaul, the man/woman . . . actually a man who dresses up like a woman on a regular basis (and as a celebrity). The idea of dressing up as a woman parallels Byron's question -- if he obtained all the necessary equipment to write from a woman's point of view, could he do it? I think the writing a man attempts as a woman would simply be dressed up -- the way RuPaul is dressed up -- but could not come from the actual heart of a woman . . . a person who is truly a woman inside, a person raised and conditioned as a woman. This is my first, initial, off-the-cuff thought . . . also my first contribution to this list. :)
I think your point is exactly mine...? B.
susan miller wrote:
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 23:04:25 -0500 Part of my point was about writing, the other part reading. If we didn't already know RP was a man, how would we read "him"? B.
BRAMATLIN@AOL.COM wrote:
I see your point. There are several possibilities for reading him if we didn't already know he was a man. We could assume he's a "real" woman and, thereby, obtain a false reading. We could suspect he's a woman and based on our suspicions, get a confused reading. . . . . . It would be difficult to truly read "him" . . .
Byron, Thanks A LOT! I came into work today to the sound of several colleagues greeting me "Hello Haas! Hey, are you REALLY a woman?" Yeah, well, last time I checked, I was. Why do academics always ask questions they already have answers for? Now, to the point... Can a man write women's writing? Can a woman write man's writing? I would guess so, if they had a reason to. George Sand seemed to pull it off, as well as Ru Paul-but I think they had reasons for doing so. What would be your reason, Byron, to spend most of your life (I expect that's what it would take) reading every text ever written by a woman so that you could mimic a woman? And, by the way, what IS women's writing? Are we talking about writing that is performed by a female? Or are we talking about a specific genre of writing that the French feminists have called ecriture feminine? And what did I mean by "a writing theory that would recognize sexual difference"? And how does the body play into this? Let's go back to a woman writing like a man and take it where Irigaray takes it, to the symbolic. Women can only write like men, why? Because language is masculine. Why? Because in the womb of western philosophy, the feminine (mother) was murdered in order that the masculine could be born, could identify itself. Where does that leave women? Without a symbolic, in the Lacanian sense. So if woman has no symbolic, and no language except for the language of the patriarchy, what can she do? We only have, today, the "Same" and the "Other of the Same," which is all the same.. the only symbolic we have is the one given to us by patriarchy. And that's what I mean by "a writing theory that recognizes sexual difference"-I'd so very much love it if R/C theorists realized upon what foundation they build. So then, there is no such thing as "women's writing" in the strictest sense of what Irigaray's talking about. What is a woman to do? Make some sort of gesture that might shake the edifice of patriarchy. What might that gesture be? Well for Irigaray and Cixous et al, since they are writers, that gesture is ecriture feminine-a way of writing that focuses on things important to women as an example of what the "Feminine Feminine" might be like in the event that the patriarchy ever falls. Does that answer your question of what I meant? Can you write like a woman? Depends upon what you mean and upon why you'd want to do it. If you masquerade as a woman, will you be as entertaining as the Monty Python guys were when they did so? That'd be a good reason. :-) Can you write "feminine feminine" writing? No. no one does that yet, not until the foundations are flooded. Can you make gestures to help start the rain? Sure. I never thought Irigaray was exclusionary toward men. Can a man be multiple? Sure. Derrida does a pretty good job at that, and at ecriture feminine-Irigaray and Derrida have talked amongst themselves about that at length (this is not to say they're in total agreement) Now to your further question-how does the body play into all this? Is the relationship between writing and the body absolute? I promise this is the last time I'll invoke Stephen King (can't help it, he interests me because he keeps writing about writers)-in Desperation, the protagonist is a writer. The bad thing is something called "the unformed"-a being that can take human flesh and inhabit it. At one point the unformed thingy ("can tak" is what he's called) which is inhabiting the body of a cop talks to the writer and asks him if he knows what "sarx" is. The writer says, yeah it's the body. Can Tak replies that pneuma is the spirit, soma is the body, and sarx is the flesh-and that humans will never understand anything until they understand about those things: "Why can't you realize that a chicken is not a chicken dinner?" I found it interesting, anyway, and informative toward all the talking we do about bodies and writing. Are we talking about chickens or chicken dinners? The map is not the territory. By the way, Byron, I read your paper. The one on the web. And I do have a few comments in that direction.... What is the web to us, and how does it affect the body and writing? At one point you argue that web will change the way we create identities-it won't be about money, it will be about identity. Let's look at the edifice upon which it's built and see how pure it is, this new sandbox-the web. That may answer some questions about the body in cyberspace. Don't you ever think, for a minute, that the web is a neutral sandbox. The internet was started by the military, maintained for awhile by universities (UUNet was the company formed by the universities), and now whatever happens with the web will happen because American business has recognized that they can make money from the web. UUNet was acquired by a telecommunications company just like mine and the only thing they care about now is the bottom line. Whatever identity you create for yourself on the internet-be it male or female-is always already tainted by the edifice of what the web is. It's not some wonderful new thing that will change human nature as we know it-be certain that for the millions of poor and homeless people in this country, the web doesn't mean a thing, not a thing. Can woman construct herself a feminine feminine with a tool like the web? Maybe she can get closer to a cyborg self-but the foundations of patriarchy are still there. I think you'll see more and more of the cyborg body in cyberspace. For instance, one of the technologies we're testing in our department is wireless videoconferencing. I could be walking with my laptop with its attached camera eye and be seeing (and be seen) and talking (and hear the voice of) my colleague who's in a couple miles away. No writing involved. Or, a totally new kind of writing.
Sorry it's so long,
> Writing is not only sexed, it is organized by every other ideological category of identity as well, and all at once, in one holistic matrix. Point of view is a useful concept to use in studying the interaction of form and ideology in cultural artifacts. In teaching film studies I notice that most beginning students are well aware that novels have a point of view, but they are much less aware that films have a point of view, or how that point of view is manifested in particular cases. It is even more difficult to appreciate that whole culture, whole civilizations, have a point of view (a default set of preferred norms; Gramsci's "hegemony"). Our analytical methods of interpretation are very good at working with one category at a time, and it makes sense to look at each catetory, such as sexuality, for purposes of intelligibility. The problem arises when folks turn the limitations of analysis (the difficulty it has working with wholes) into laws (the problem of totalization, the final instance, in Marxism for example). __________so how is the sexed discourse affected by the fact that the discourse is also raced, religioned, ethnicized, aged, classed, gendered...? complexifyingly Greg Ulmer
My point may be seem obvious, but what the heck. "Men's" writing or "women's" writing makes sense in a limited number of ways. When Lynda says "yep, I'm a woman," she presumably accepts a biological notion of sex-identification (though this may be consistent with other ways of categorizing her gender. I don't know Lynda so I don't know). Yet none of us would accept the notion that all men write in masculine way and all women in a feminine way. This would imply to me that Lacan's psychological essentialism--or any other sort of essentialism--is not satisfactory either as a way to unpack this issue. The alternative is that we, as a specialized group of language users, basically have to stipulate what we mean with the categories of masculine and feminine writing. No categories are ideal or will make everyone happy, but such is life. The key is to note the interests that such categories/definitions serve. If we can identify with those interests, cool. We should go for it. The different interests served in literary criticism and, say, demarcating bathrooms, implementing affirmative action, or determining eligibility for track meets, at the current time vary. We don't need the same criteria for all. I say this becuase sometimes I sense that we slide between modes of categorization (based on incommensurable theoretical perspectives) and the result is frustrating. For example, one cannot "refute" Jamieson with Lacan or vice versa. One can only openly and reflexively acknowledge one's pieties to one's particular terminological screens, and be open to the possibility that someone else has a vocabulary or set-of-definitions to which you may want to give serious thought. Obviously, such a nominalist view would allow room for biologically-defined (by current norms) males to write as ideologically/stylistically-defined women, and vice versa. Kathleen Jamieson noted that Reagan was good at a "feminine style" of public discourse (which would strike some as oxymoronic). That may cause us distress, but unless we stipulate our own sense of what feminine style of women's writing is FOR A GIVEN CONTEXT/PURPOSE, there is little to complain about in her analysis. As long as we use such terms and categories with a Rortyean sense of irony, then we can move on without too much angst until someone comes up with a better way to chat.
Edward Schiappa
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