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Wednesday, February 10, 2021

WMST427A.1001--Essay: Of Phlogiston and Feminism--UNIV NEVADA, RENO, SPRING 2021

 

ENG.WMST427A.1001

James L’Angelle

University of Nevada, Reno

Dr. J. Nelson, Professor

11 February 2021


Assignment: J. Butler, Gender Trouble


     “Every science has passed through a phase in which it considered its basic subject matter to be some sort of substance or structure. Fire was identified with phlogiston; heat with caloric; and life with vital fluid. Every science has passed beyond that phase, recognizing its subject matter as being some sort of process:” (Brickhard, MH) 


Can the concept be extended to the study of feminism? In Butler’s opening paragraph, the author notes “representation is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women.” (Butler, 3) To what degree the concept of gender is linked to the classical terms of feminine, woman, opposite sex and similar is grounded in language itself. 



Butler makes an argument in relation to the French in section v. where gender and sex appear to have a connection embedded in linguistics. In fact, there is a distinct relationship between the two related to the endings of the words and how the subject affects other components of the sentence. Nouns ending in -e normally are considered feminine by gender, with the possible exception of l’homme (man) and similar words. Butler then alludes to the opening paragraph of Monique Wittig’s The Mark of Gender, but omits on page 28 an important observation, replaced by three dots, an ellipsis;

     “It is thus that English when compared to French has the reputation of being almost genderless while French passes for a very gendered language. It is true that, strictly speaking, English does not apply the mark of gender to inanimate objects, to things or nonhuman beings.” (Wittig, 76)


  Going back to the trial by fire analogy that phlogiston was the inherent component that caused the element to burn, it then becomes necessary to reinvent language itself from the basics of phonemes and morphemes instead of the rather immediate convenience of redefinition and recategorization by syntax and semantics. Wittig adds yet another interesting sentence that further describes the very nature of gender, “takes place in a category of language that is totally unlike any other and which is called the personal pronoun.” (78) Wittig distinguishes between the first and third person with the latter being the enabler of gender, as “I” alone leaves a “suspension of the grammatical form.” Wittig’s solution was to substitute the neuter pronoun “one.” In fact, neuter by definition, is;


     “of, relating to, or constituting the gender that ordinarily includes most words or grammatical forms referring to things classed as neither masculine nor feminine.” (Merriam-Webster)


Of course in a few short paragraphs the effort to unravel the complexity that involves gender and sex is quixotic, especially when that effort spans different languages with dissimilar syntaxes. Butler may have intentionally cited French as where not to go to find an answer but found Wittig’s arguments useful, even in abbreviated form. At least they both can agree it isn’t phlogiston that makes fire burn.

Namebase: (by page)

(4) Foucault,

(6) Denise Riley, Am I That Name?

(8) Marx,

(11) Lévi-Strauss,

(12) Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

(14) Luce Irigary,

(17) Plato, Cartesian, Husserl, Sartre, 

(24) Wittig,

(27) Nietzsche, Haar

(29) Aretha Franklin,

(31) Herculine Barbin,

(32) Robert Stoller,

(36) Lacan, Freud,

(37) Jacqueline Rose, Jane Gallop,

By Section:

i. “Women” as the Subject of Feminism  (3)

ii. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire (9)

iii. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate (11)

iv. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond (18)

v. Identity, Sex, and the Metaphysics of Substance (22)

vi. Language, Power, and the Strategies of Displacement (33)



Definitions:

(4) juridical (adj)-of or relating to the administration of justice or the office of a judge

(5) ontological (adj)- relating to or based upon being or existence

(6) hegemonic (adj)-the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group

(11) structuralism (n)-a method of analysis (as of a literary text or a political system) that is related to cultural anthropology and that focuses on recurring patterns of thought and behavior.

(11) prediscursive (not in dictionary)-discursive (adj)-moving from topic to topic without order, proceeding coherently from topic to topic, method of resolving complex expressions into simpler or more basic ones : marked by analytical reasoning,

(14) phallogocentric-not in dictionary-

(16) existential (adj)-having being in time and space

(26) conflation(n)-a composite reading or text

(33) “gender is not a noun”--subclass within a grammatical class (such as noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics (such as shape, social rank, manner of existence, or sex) and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms

Cited;

Brickhard, M.H., Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation | SpringerLink

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble : Tenth Anniversary Edition, Routledge, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/knowledgecenter/detail.action?docID=180211.

Wittig, M., wittig_-_the_mark_of_gender.pdf (unito.it)

neuter, Neuter | Definition of Neuter by Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com)



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Monday, January 11, 2021

INSURRECTION--Chain-of-Command Breakdown-- DAY OF INFAMY, 2021

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"… Now, all the authorities, they just stand around and boast How they blackmailed the sergeant at arms into leaving his post..."  (Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited)

 

Incline Village, Nev. (EoC Syndicated)--As timelines go, the focus has been on breaching of the Capitol building by the mob of the president's supporters, many of whom had arrived already prepared for a fight. But another significant timeline has emerged and republished from the Washington Post in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning surrounding the actual role of the security chain-of-command that failed to respond adequately. According to the report, Steven Sund, the Capitol police chief, requested assistance prior to the electoral college certification;     
     "House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he was not comfortable with the 'optics' of formally declaring an emergency before the demonstration, Sund said. Meanwhile, Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund informally seek his Guard contacts, asking them to 'lean forward' and be on alert in case Capitol Police needed their help." (Inquirer)
The Post-Inquirer report then gives the long drawn-out interaction between various entities tasked with assistance that ultimately rested on the Pentagon. More than anything, the report suggests the lack of authority to commit the National Guard and the process that requires the approval of getting those boots on the ground on federal property. Curiously, had the request come from a state, it might have been approved without the half-stepping and marching in place that occurred on the Day of Infamy, 2021. 
     What's also a mystery is why a detailed brief was posted by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) just two days prior to the siege that outlined in no uncertain terms who has/had the authority to commit forces into the battle in case of an insurrection; 
     "As noted in CRS Reports R42659 and RL31133, Congress has provided approximately 50 statutory authorizations to use the military forces for foreign or domestic purposes—not including formal declarations of war." (CRS)
Those include the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the War Powers Act of 1973. The second specifically states that the President is authorized to call out the Guard in a "national emergency created by an attack on the United States." The US Constitution has a more nebulous definition as to who retains the authority to act in case of an insurrection, as stated in Section 8 under the powers of Congress; 



     "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"
Thus, it seems that everyone, and no one, had the authority to execute the command that would have spared the capitol the attack, and it was without a doubt an attack on the United States, another Day of Infamy as paraphrased by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) , and spared the lives of a half-dozen citizens and police officers in the process. But as in many other cases of American history where who was involved, who incited, who pulled the trigger, how many conspirators escaped to Venezuela, from the Lincoln assassination to the Kennedy assassination, from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra, the same question arises. Did the mob of 20,000 plus on the capitol grounds act alone or was it incited by the president, by his cohorts and family insiders? Was Congress complicit for failure to anticipate the attack and be ready to execute its constitutional authority to call in reinforcements? Why did the Pentagon choose to march in place? Where in the timeline report published by the Post-Inquirer article are the answers to that one serious and simple question?

Cited:
Defense Primer: Legal Authorities for the Use of Military Forces, Defense Primer: Legal Authorities for the Use of Military Forces (congress.gov)
Pontiac Rebellion image, fort.jpg (814×491) (theballreport.com)
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 album cover, 
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