A REINTERVIEW with Rosa Eberly, 2.

The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View

with Rosa Eberly  about her  article published in P/T

during February, March, and April of 1995.


==========================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Feb 1995 19:36:49 -0600 
From:         Victor Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv: begin re/inter/view with re

To:  REINVWers From: vjv, moderator Re: Begin REINVW with Rosa Eberly

*****

----Let's begin the next REINVW.  But first, I would like to thank
Geoff Sirc for spending so much time and energy talking with us.  The
re/inter/view definitely had its moments.  I would also like to thank
Rosa Eberly for agreeing to do a re/inter/view on such short notice. I
think that her article, recently published in *PRE/TEXT*, is timely,
e.g., in its possible parallels with the discussion that we have been
having on PTISSUES about Jake Baker.  But, to be sure, the issues
raised by Rosa's article need not at all be limited to that previous
discussion and should not be.

The format that we will use for this re/inter/view will again be a
forum/roundtable; therefore, feel free to address questions and
responses not only to Rosa but also to anyone else who has posted.

*****

Let me begin with one question that becomes several:

Rosa, one of the reasons that I like your article is that it allows us
to rethink *ethos.* My question:

_____How can anyone (male or female) raise objections to Dworkin's
*Mercy* without the possibility of such objections (or questions)
being labeled "ad personam" or "ad feminem"?

You make it clear in your article that the objections raised are by
women ("liberal feminists") themselves. Talking about Andrea the
author of and "Andrea" the character in *Mercy* is fraught with all
kinds of difficulties ... which may very well be the un/intended value
of the D/Work-in itself.

Other questions:

_____How can we speak of, think about, Dworkin's ethos here ... in
neo/Aristotelian or especially non-Aristotelian terms?

It's clear that Dworkin would not fare well by way of Aristotle's
*Nic. Ethics*, say, in his terms of D's not avoiding excess or defect
in writing her novel (see 1106b). She would not do well in terms of
any updated version of such a view of ethos/ethics (e.g., MacIntyre,
*After Virtue*). And besides, vvhy should she?, when these are
typically male-centered views! However, if we go to other accounts of
virtue, say, liberal feminist accounts, D would probably still  find
herself in trouble, as you point out is the case!

_____What about non-liberal feminist accounts?  What about AD's own
account of ethics/"virtue," etc.?

(As R. Lanham suggests, virtue is virtuosity.)

_____Has D demonstrated, however, a lack of such virtuosity in writing
this novel and, therefore, she demonstrates that she has not produced
much of a novel for people to respond to?

_____And yet, what would virtuosity be in AD's *own terms*?  How
should "we" read her in her own terms? How does she want women 
to read her?  Men (if at all)? (Rosa, when I read your manuscript, I 
checked out a copy  of the novel from our library and read it.)

_____ Is it necessary (as I think that you imply) to think in terms of
Habermas's public sphere? In order to think about this problem of
reading AD (in her own terms)? (This question probably has more to do
with my problems with Haber*m*a*s*h!)

_____Is there a problem in my even asking the question about 
*AD's own terms*?

I ask ... because I can hear some readers possibly asking Why should
we completely rethink the public sphere so as to understand AD?  Who
is she anyway but some irresponsible person who advocates killing all
men!

_____What does AD mean by "killing"?

Does she mean the same thing that, say, Cixous and others (female and
male) mean, namely, the killing of the subject (agent) in a
post-structuralist sense? (Cixous's primary example of this is in her
reading of Lipsector.  Also, I have in mind her first section, "the
school of the dead," to *Three Steps...*.) Or does AD (the author or
the character or a personification of *rage*) _literally_ mean to kill
men? Has the 'real' person AD ever killed a man? If not, What does
this tell us? Is she, however, inciting other women to kill men? If
so, ...?

And on and on.  Sorry, for the length of the one question and its
variations? There are certainly others that can come out of it, and
yet there are all together different questions that can be asked. So
everyone please ask away!

---VJV
========================================= 
Date:         Tue, 21 Feb 1995 18:25:24 -0400
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Organization: Miami University (Ohio USA)
Subject:      re->vjv: ethos/ethics

so: for a while we will reconsider ethos: ok.
i'd imagine such a reconsideration will be especially productive because so
many of us come to ethos and hence to this reconsideration from different
historical and theoretical perspectives.

>_____How can anyone (male or female) raise objections to Dworkin's
>*Mercy* without the possibility of such objections (or questions)
>being labeled "ad personam" or "ad feminem"?

back to perelman and olbrechts-tyteca for a moment (and i hope we reflect
as a group on the merits and demerits of their lexicon for this kind of
rhetorical analysis): ad personam argumentation aims at disqualifying the
person herself from debate. camille paglia's comments in *playboy* on
dworkin's and mackinnon's bodies are so clearly ad personam that they
aren't terribly interesting (in that light). all arguments are ad hominem
but not all are ad personam in that sense: not all arguments attempt
(intentionally or structurally, as you like it, take your pick, choose your
weapon, dig your methodological grave) to disqualify the other from debate.
one would not be engaging in ad personam to the extent that one would not
attempt to disqualify the other from the conversation or debate.

(a recent example of ad personam argumentation, though not identified that
way, was analyzed in blair, brown, and baxter, "Disciplining the Feminine,"
*Quarterly Journal of Speech* Nov 1994.)

my article on *mercy* attempts to come to terms with how dworkin's rhetoric
and the rhetorics of those who have responded to her (all of which have
been influenced and formed by other discourses, etc etc) before and after
*mercy* have structurally changed--i don't want to use the language of
degeneration here bc all empirical public spheres are somehow
"degenerate"--the discursive and rhetorical public spaces where they
interact.  more generally, the article attempts to take a very fine-grained
rhetorical look at what might be said to happen when issues many have long
considered private--rape, sexual abuse--are made/become public.

>Talking about Andrea the author of and "Andrea" the character in *Mercy* is
>>fraught with all kinds of difficulties ... which may very well be the
>>un/intended value of the D/Work-in itself.

another aspect of ad personam is that it often substitutes (or makes
coexistent) the person for (with) the act, and this addresses the "who is
which andrea?" question.  there is of course a long history of such
argumentation in public literary criticism: joyce's and miller's and
ellis's psychological health also became, to greater or lesser extents,
public issues in certain publications and locations around the country.

yet reflect on the contrast between bret easton ellis's ethos as a male who
wrote about raping and murdering (among other acts) women and men and
dworkin's ethos as a woman who wrote about being raped and beaten by men:
ellis was considered (by some) a literary genius and dworkin was considered
(by some) a whiner.  and, again, i'd say that studying how the rhetorics
about issues long considered private change as they become public can help
us revise our rhetorical theories and practices to allow a place for
"private" voices in public.

>_____How can we speak of, think about, Dworkin's ethos here ... in
>neo/Aristotelian or especially non-Aristotelian terms?

i'd like to think about public ethos in general here: and this does require
a distinction between private and public subjectivities that i have found
vvvvvv productive and resonant in my work and in my life: richard sennett's
distinction between presentational and representational subjectivities is
how i understand public ethos. and it fits much better with aristotle's
conception of ethos--as one among many means of persuasion--than it would
with quintilian's or even, i think, cicero's more essentialist theories of
ethos.  (if anyone wants to hear more about richard sennett or about my
father on this, just say the word.)

>_____ Is it necessary (as I think that you imply) to think in terms of
>Habermas's public sphere? In order to think about this problem of
>reading AD (in her own terms)? (This question probably has more to do
>with my problems with Haber*m*a*s*h!)

nope. it's not necessary, philosophically or otherwise. it's just what i do.

i'm interested in looking at texts ususally considered literary--at
novels--as public discourses because i think that method--pardon the
expression--offers an alternative way of studying how "literature" changes
"social practices." that's my ultimate concern. so this is part of looking
at rhetoric and rhetorical theory as counterparts/correctives to cultural
studies.

also: i think nancy fraser and seyla benhabib and other feminist
commentators on habermas have increased tremendously how rhetoricians and
lit crits can use habermas's vvvv rich conception of structural
transformation. as i wrote in the article, i use the empirical habermas of
*structural transformation* and don't go anywhere near the later habermas.
my project would make no sense to habermas, because for him "literature" is
solely "symbolic action" (but not in kb's sense) with its end being
"expression," and "rhetoric" is solely "strategic action" with its end
being "manipulation."  poppycock.

>_____Is there a problem in my even asking the question about *AD's own
>terms*?

sure. that part of the article makes me want to vomit.  there's no way we
can see anything in its own terms. (i think i'll wait a while before i
write the "yet, yet, yet..." part of this answer.)

>I ask ... because I can hear some readers possibly asking Why should
>we completely rethink the public sphere so as to understand AD?  Who
>is she anyway but some irresponsible person who advocates killing all
>men!
>
now that's another question, and in it you sound a lot like, well ... no ad
personam here!  no: we do not need to rethink all theories of publics and
public spheres in light of andrea dworkin. but andrea dworkin and her novel
*mercy* provided this rhetorician a difficult but ultimately
too-compelling-to-run-away-from-in-fear example of what could be said to
happen when discourses of private pain enter public spheres.  THAT is the
problematic, and it is similiar to issues involved in identity politics.

>_____What does AD mean by "killing"?
>Does she mean the same thing that, say, Cixous and others (female and
>male) mean, namely, the killing of the subject (agent) in a
>post-structuralist sense? (Cixous's primary example of this is in her
>reading of Lipsector.  Also, I have in mind her first section, "the
>school of the dead," to *Three Steps...*.) Or does AD (the author or
>the character or a personification of *rage*) _literally_ mean to kill
>men? Has the 'real' person AD ever killed a man? If not, What does
>this tell us? Is she, however, inciting other women to kill men? If
>so, ...?

has andrea dworkin ever killed a man?  i don't know. i'll see if she'll
tell us.
she has said recently (92nd st. Y, NYC, 2/9/95) that "fiction is not to
confess but to confront" (my friend anne conners relayed information about
and quotes from dworkin's 92nd st. Y talk to me). so: i don't think dworkin
intended women to go out and kill men. but what i think--or what she
intended--hardly solves anything.

rosa eberly
_______________________________________________
victor: end my post with this, or don't, as you like:
"'The big man has his teeth between my legs ... he's biting, not a little,
deep bites, he's using his teeth and biting into the lips of my labia and
I'm thinking this is not happening and it is not possible....'  'I'm biting
hard, gnawing at Tiffany's cunt, and she starts tensing up. "Relax,' I say
soothingly. She starts sqealing, trying to pull away, and finally she
screams as my teeth rip her flesh.'

"There are some people right now who are claiming they can't tell what
distinguishes these quotations from one another, in intention or effect.
The first is from Andrea Dworkin's critically reviled novel *Mercy*. The
other is from Bret Easton Ellis's fake-controversial *American Psycho.*

"The critical negotiations surrounding these two books ... have almost
nothing to do with their respective literary merits. They have much to do
with real-life power. This debate is actually a struggle over the proper
gender of literary authority. The issue raised by these books' critical
reception is this: who gets to tell the story of sexual violence against
women, the hunter or the prey? Who gets, textually, to bash women, with
what pleasure, and to what end?"

Naomi Wolf, *New Statesman and Society,* April 1991 

=============================================

 
Date:         Sat, 25 Feb 1995 20:16:27 -0600 
From:         Victor Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv->re: ethos&silence, 1/3

Re: REINVW with Rosa Eberly

Re: follow-up post to ethos(ethics)

RE:Ethos and Silence part 1 of 3

from: VJV

=======

Rosa,

While others are still reading the article or thinking of how they
might want to enter the discussion, let's stay with ethos-(ethics) but
add a dimension to it in the name of *silence.*

Previously, the questions centered around ...

_____How does someone (F or M) respond to A. Dworkin without having to
face a counter-response of an ad feminem or ad hominem or, as you have
stressed, ad personam?

Mercy, mercy, mercy, your subtitle, Rosa, is ... Pain, Ad Personam,
and **Silence** in the 'War Zone.'

Hence, as I suggest, let's make some connections here between earlier
questions of ethos and now, as always,

S  I  L  E  N  C  E.

(Caveat, to subscribers of REINVW: what follows is a lengthy
discussion.  I could ask a few simple questions, but the problem that
Dworkin and Eberly are dealing with, I believe, cannot be dealt with
*simply*. Or perhaps, I myself do not see how a brief message might be
written without some very expensive assump- tions that need to be
discussed. Therefore, if you don't like to read long posts, then,
please delete, save for later, or whatever. Also please be aware that
there are subsequent lengthy posts, each of which is numbered in the
subject heading.)

***

What I am going to suggest is that Dworkin's ethos is a person-
ification of SILENCE.  And, as I implied earlier, I suspect that this
might be the case for several reasons. Our educations in and about
discourse ... yes ... tend to be very conservative.  They're
neo-Aristotelian. Which means that when it comes to ethos-(ethics,
virtue), we are probably coded to  look at BALANCE (anything as being
vanilla or not too spicey but as institutional thought for wide-spread
consumption) as the GOOD. In 1987, I called this "pabulum"!, which
upset some neo-Aristotelian types, and that's okay, because I am an
excessive un/kind of rhetor.

Opposite to BALANCE or the INTERMEDIATE is *defect* or *excess*, which
we are coded to respond to in rather negative terms. For example, if
someone expresses anger, his/her point will be most likely not heard;
if passion, his/her point will probably be taken for anger and will be
lost; if not taken as such but as passion, then, passion is still a
sign of a defect or excess. If what is called *ludic* is dis/engaged
in, then, someone's point/less via such a discourse practice will be
seen as so much aesthetic excess and ... well, without genuine care
for political issues, which have to be dealt with in serious, yet
moderate practical terms! People should not be passionate about
particular subjects. What is expected is a certain average
metabolism!! Calm!! Reserve!! Even if you, Andrea/"Andrea" have been
raped! For sure, if you have been raped, don't act like an *hysterical
woman*!

********************
 "...a master of any art avoids excess and defect,
but seeks the intermediate and chooses this--the intermediate not in
the object but relatively to us" (*Nic. Ethics* 1106.6-8)
********************

Now let's complicate matters: Bret Easton and others like him can say,
indeed, what they wish (or fantasize), because if they are writing
about excess or defect THAT IS OKAY, at least explictly in liberal
circles. After all, Easton et al are only reflecting what is going on
in our society, blah, blah, blah!

(Yes, there are other arguments, but it is not my purpose, today, in
understanding Eberly's article, to argue for the liberal position.)

Because Dworkin is Dworkin, however, ... what an ethos!! (the style is
the woman!!) ... as the charge is commonly leveled against her ... and
because her character *Andrea* ad- vocates killing all men ... well,
we already know... what a huge amount of SILENCE, except for the
sprinkling of speech which is still a SILENCING, censuring if not a
censoring of Dworkin. (For those who have not read "Andrea Dworkin's
*Mercy*," Rosa has documented all this SILENCE.)

In "Andrea" 's defense: To say in response ... well, don't forget she
was raped!! What do you expect?! ...  is not going to mean much in
terms of identification/consubstantiation to *we-men* or as you, Rosa,
point out *those-women* critics. So SILENCE reigns, except at the Y,
where Dworkin recently spoke and, I assume, was heard.

Rosa's concerns, as I read them, and I point to only ONE concern here,
for they are more complicated than this ONE, center on:

<<...defining the literary public spheres that form around [AD's] work
as 'war zones' has consequences for the quality and quantity of public
discussion of Dworkin's work: guerrilla rhetorical tactics--judging
critics in advance and seeing all men and anyone else who does not
agree with her as partly responsible for individual and systemic
sexual abuses of women--DO NOT FOSTER [vjv's emphasis] open debate or
a common space for productive discussion....>> (Eberly 300).

This is one vvay of looking at the situation!

_____Can we understand it better?

_____Or, say, DIFFERENTLY?

I definitely think so. (I continue in the next post: part 2 of 3.)

--VJV

===================================================
 
 
Date:         Sun, 26 Feb 1995 08:23:11 -0600 
From:         Victor Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv->re: ethos&silence, 2/3

Re: REINVW with Rosa Eberly

Re: followup post to ethos(ethics)

RE: Ethos and Silence part 2 of 3

from: VJV

=======

Let me get more specific with my question(s). It will take a while,
for I want to work from Cath MacKinnon's thinking about SILENCE (2 of
3) and then from my own thinking about SILENCE as I experienced it on
the net (3 of 3).

*****

Whereas Bret Easton Ellis (*American Psycho*) is covered by the press
and the media in general, and praised, Andrea Dworkin is ...!

... spoken about in silence? I wonder! Or silenced? I wonder!

And yet, there is a 'logic' to this statement, which takes many twists
and turns from

--the reviewers (you, Rosa, refer to and elaborate on, even reviews by
women themselves)

--through Cath MacKinnon's reversals of the logic (women speaking but
not being heard ... hence, silence)

--to "postings" [!] on the net.

This requires some elaboration, but since Rosa has covered the first,
I willl elaborate on only the latter two:

-----MacKinnon's logic of reversals is necessary because of the logic
of pornography, which would speak for women by creating the illusion
that women speak for themselves (and not for a male fantasy). From
what I can tell: Pornography and Rape (which are the Same) are the two
(again, really One) Master Metaphor(s) for the Violence against and
the Silencing (again, the Same) of women.  In other words, I am saying
that MacKinnon in her strategy parallels Susan Brownmiller's in
*Against Our Will:  Men, Women and Rape.* ((My apologies for the
numerous parenthetical comments above ... but excessive interruptions
in this defective sentence ARE necesary here!))

Let me quote a lengthy passage from Cath MacKinnon's *Feminism
Unmodified*...

"I take one of two penultimate points from Andrea Dworkin, who has
often said that pornography is not speech for women, it is the silence
of women [ref is to AD's speech, Toronto, Feb. '84]. Remember the
mouth taped, the woman gagged, 'Smile, I can get a lot of money for
that.' The smile is not her ex- pression, it is her SILENCE. It is not
her expression not because it didn't happen, but because it _did_
happen. The screams of the women in pornography are SILENCE, like the
screams of Kitty Genovese, whose plight was misinterpreted by some on-
lookers as a lovers' quarrel. The flat expressionless voice of the
woman in the New Bedfor gang rape, testifying, is SILENCE. She was
raped as men cheered and watched, as they do in and with the
pornography. When women resist and men say, 'Like this, you stupid
bitch, here is how to do it' and shove their faces into the porn-
ography, this 'truth of sex' is the silence of women. When they say,
'If you love me, you'll try,' the enjoyment we fake, the enjoyment we
learn is SILENCE. Women who submit because there is more dignity in it
than in losing the fight over and over live in SILENCE. Having to
sleep with your publisher or director to get access to what men call
speech is SILENCE. Being humiliated on the basis of your appearance,
whether by apporval or disapproval, because you have to look a certain
way for a certain job, whether you get the job or not, is SILENCE. The
absence of a woman's voice, everywhere that it can- not beheard, is
SILENCE. And anyone who thinks that what women say in pornography is
women's speech--the 'Fuck me, do it to me, harder,' all of that--has
never heard the sound of a woman's voice." (from *Feminism
Unmodified* 194-94; SILENCE capitalized, added)

This whole discussion at this point in *Feminism Unmodified* concerns
freedom of speech as the framers of the First Amendment might have
intended it.  Which was for them, and most likely not for women (see
195). And then MacKinnnon writes: "Women will never have that dignity,
security, compensation that is thepromise of equality so long as the
pornography exists as it does now" (195). Liberalism is for men.
Pornography is for men. Pornographic Liberalism is for men.

So, though women might speak, ask for more X, smile, scream out "Kill
All Men" ... women do not speak except in SILENCE. In simpler words
now, they are not heard in the light of their experience of
pornography and rape.

_____Is this a way, via Dworkin and MacKinnon, to sense WHY the public
(literary) spheres preontically rule out what women have to say about
their experience?

_____...why the 'War Zone' is the same or, if different, more of the
same?

Given the conditions for the possibility of speaking and hearing,
women's conditions are *silencing* and, hence, women's not being
heard.

_____Does not such a situation place, at least, some of the silenced
in a position of having to engage in *excessive* and *defective*
language?

I think *here* and *now* so.

_____If so, then, ...

_____BUT where must they go ... in dis/order (excess/defect) ... to
become heard?

(I continue in the next post: 3 of 3, which I will post in a day or
so. If you have read this far, then, my thanks.)


--VJV
======================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Feb 1995 12:30:19 -0400 
From:         PreText@MIAVX1.BITNET
Organization: Miami University (Ohio USA)
Subject:      re->vjv: ethos/silence, 1/3&2/3

victor and re/inter/viewers: i hope i won't be regarded as uncivil if i
respond to vv's 1/3 and 2/3 before his 3/3 arrives.  (if, as vv said, 3/3
accounts for things that have happened to him, the way his 3/3 is reported,
accounted for, and responded to in this medium would have at least some
resonances with the question of how personal experiences become public and
what happens to them and their teller's ethos when they do.)

and i'm glad vv thought my suggestion of focusing on silence would be worth
our time: i discuss silence and the limits of empirical/rhetorical analysis
at greater length in the opening chapter of the project from which the
*mercy* article is taken: i argue that studying/analyzing debates in
literary public spheres by using topoi and stases--tools that are vvvvv
much overlooked, i think--needs to be supplemented with some kind of
discussion of what foucault would call rules of exclusion.  and i
generalize from that to the position that all discourses, of course,
include and exclude.  gayatri chakravorty spivak's discussion of the
impossibility of subaltern speech is also a central and deeply troubling
text in this light.  andrea dworkin can't speak.  but she does. and how she
does is my concern--or one of my concerns.

so, then, to your question:
>Rosa's concerns, as I read them, and I point to only ONE concern here,
>for they are more complicated than this ONE, center on:

><<...defining the literary public spheres that form around [AD's] work
>as 'war zones' has consequences for the quality and quantity of public
>discussion of Dworkin's work: guerrilla rhetorical tactics--judging
>critics in advance and seeing all men and anyone else who does not
>agree with her as partly responsible for individual and systemic
>sexual abuses of women--DO NOT FOSTER [vjv's emphasis] open debate or
>a common space for productive discussion....>> (Eberly 300).

>This is one vvay of looking at the situation!
>_____Can we understand it better?
>_____Or, say, DIFFERENTLY?

yes, of course we can understand it differently--and further.  we can
understand it more.  what i tried to argue in the article, a delicate and
perhaps impossible balance, is that while dworkin speaks from a position of
much less power than ellis or than most of the people, most of the women,
who review her, her discourses nonetheless have consequences for the kind
of responses she gets.  that is not to say that she is more guilty or more
responsible than her reviewers.  i make a clear point in the conclusion of
the article that her way of discoursing makes great sense because of the
things that have happened to her in public and in private, though she
mightwould balk at that distinction, having been raped so often in public:
without walls, as she says.  and i give so much presence in the early part
of the article to what she has said about the power of public discourse bc
so many people make assumptions about her that are counter to that.  so i'm
saying--and i'm not entirely fearless about how she'll respond to the
offprints of the article, i must say--because you want to help women,
andrea, and i know you do, let's look together at how we might or, leave me
out of this, how you might reconceive public discourse and the
representation of private pain in public to allay some of the consistently
and systematically counterproductive responses we'll get.  but the
subaltern cannot speak. and i am perhaps at this point being as unhelpful
as derrida or foucault or the hard and hairy history of rhetoric....

there are many many many many accounts of dworkin's rhetoric that could
explain exactly why what she does is just right. and in many ways it is
just right, in that she has responded brilliantly and creatively to what
has happened to her and to what happens to women every day and night. but i
don't do art appreciation: that's one of the reasons i gave up lit crit and
am on cloudy days wary of cultural studies.

another issue that we need to understand differently: similar to dworkin's
rhetoric and how it can help me/us rethink private and public discourse,
dworkin's work and the work of feminist social scientists suggests that the
causal link between pornography and sexual abuse of women needs more
understanding. i only mention these concerns at the end of the article bc
merely studying the discourses took soooo many pages.  when i grow up,
perhaps, i will be able to cut to the quick....

i have gone on much too long and probably have clarified very little.  but,
alas, one more word: reading dworkin through mackinnon is one way. but an
oct *new yorker* article--if you can believe that pub on this
issue--suggests dworkin and mackinnon continue to see things rather
differently, in the particulars. the logic of reversals, nonetheless, is a
helpful, pardon the expression, calculus. *mercy* was accused of _being_
pornography.

rosa eberly 
===================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Feb 1995 13:00:39 -0600 
From:         Victor Vitanza 
Subject:      vjv->re: followup

From: Victor (VJV)
Re: followup

Rhosa,

a few thoughts about your response to my 1/3 and 2/3.

You speak of Spivak's statements about the subalterns,
namely, that we cannot speak for them, which I do, in a
sense, agree with, but the added statement that Spivak
makes is that the subalterns cannot even speak for
themselves. [Spivak has many articles on the subalterns;
the one that I now have in mind is "Subaltern Studies:
Deconstructing Historiography" (*In Other Words*), in which
she is writing against the SubalternStudies group.]

If this is the case, then, namely, that the subaltern cannot
speak for itself...

_____Can Dworkin, if she is a subaltern, even speak for
herself?

_____Likewise, if we were for a moment to consider our-
selves, perhaps un/wisely, the Dworkin study group, Could
we hope to hear Dworkin and speak for her?

*****

One way of telling the story of this subaltern-cannot-speak-
for-itself topos is to trace it back in time to Foucault's *Madness
and Civilization* and to Derrida's response to it in "Cogito and
the History of Madness" (*Writing and Difference*). Derrida was
ticked at Foucault. He writes that Focault's attempt is as mad
as madness itself.  Interestingly, Derrida (as Foucault) begins
to write about SILENCE (our interest, rhosa).

He says:

        Is there a history of silence? Further, is not an
        archaeology, even of silence, a logic, this is
        an organized language, a project, anorder, a
        sentence, a syntax, a work? Would not the
        archaeology of silence be the most efficacious
        and subltle restoration, the _repetition_, in
        the most irreducibly ambiguous meaning of
        the word, of the act perpetrated against
        madness--and be so at the very moment when
        this act is denounced? (35)

But you know, even though Foucault does not directly
respond to this article by Derrida, he does begin to work
his way out in a series of articles, later edited and collected,
under the title *Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice,*
which, I hope, that most of us here have read and studied
by now.  In those articles, I think, he puts forth a very
careful response to Derrida in terms of LANGAUGE return-
ing *as* COUNTER-MEMORY (that which has been syste-
matically excluded, purged) and, when returning, changes
the conditions for the possibilities of new PRACTICES. Which
gives us, as Spivak eventually notes ... if primarily through
Derrida! ... ways of getting at what has been silenced. Foucault
speaks of "nonpositive affirmatives"; Derrida eventually of
"affirmative deconstructions" (which Spivak has followed and
does mention in her Subaltern Studies article that I mentioned
above).

[[A note: these affirmative movements are very difficult to
understand and Derrida and Spivak DO NOT mean the same
thing that Foucault means, nor does Spivak, the same that
Derrida means! But the point that is important is that affirmative
deconstructions--the passing out of the binary altogether--
avoid theproblem of mere reversal. Yes, the charge against
Dworkin, in a reversal by some critics, is that she has only
produced more pornography! In a nonpositive affirmative
move, however, the conditions will have changed so radically
that such a charge could not be made.]]

Now, I am more than aware of the STORM over this issue getting
at what is beyond a negative construction of consciousness by
way of an affirmative one, and I will not here rehearse it! Someone
else can if s/he wishes. Nor am I going to explain nonpositive
affirmations. Foucaut gives plenty of examples in the book mentioned
above.  But ...

So my question ...

_____What new practices might allow Dworkin to speak
her SILENCE? (Are these practices realized in *Mercy*?)

_____Or if Dworkin has, indeed, spoken her silence, What
new practices of hearing/listening/reading might allow
both women and men, like us, to hear what she is saying?

____________

I will post my 3/3 later on ethos/silence.

---Victor



copyright 1994 Victor J. Vitanza, James J. Sosnoski, and Rosa Eberly.
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