MAJEURE : Féminismes, queer, multitudes
MULTITUDES QUEER: NOTES POUR UNE POLITIQUE DES «ANORMAUX »
By BEATRIZ PRECIADO.
This article deals with the formation of both queer movements and theories, with the relations that they entertain with feminisms and the political uses to which they put Foucault and Deleuze. It also explores the theoretical and political advantages provided by the concept of « multitudes » over that of « sexual difference »for queer theory and movements. In contrast to the American scene, queer movements in Europe are inspired by anarchist culture and the emergence of transgendered cultures to counter the « sexual Empire », notably by proposing a de-ontologisation of identity politics. No more natural base (« woman », « gay » etc.) which can legitimise political action. The emphasis is no longer on « sexual difference » or « the difference of homosexuals », but on queer multitudes. A multitude of bodies, transgendered bodies, men without penises, dykes, cyborgs, butch girls… The « sexual multitude » appears henceforth as the possible subject of a queer politics.
LES SUJETS NOMADES FÉMINISTES COMME FIGURE DES MULTITUDES
By ROSI BRAIDOTITI.
This article rests on the theoretical assumptions of feminist post-structuralist thought and aims at exploring some of their implications. It discusses the notion of nomadic feminist subjectivity and it addresses some of the tensions implicit in this notion. The emphasis falls on two central ideas: on the one hand on bodily materialism and hence also sexuality and sexual difference. On the other hand the necessity is also stressed to nomadize all differences, in order to avoid the recomposition of molar formations the feminist subject. The article concludes by arguing for the need to understand the becoming-woman of the subject as a project that is both political and ethical, and hence requires an open and concrete approach.
DIVERGENCES SOLIDQIRES
By MARIA PUIG
The feminist politisation of experience (the personal is political) has reached that knowledge we call scientific. The theorization of those politics in terms of the construction of « situated knowledges » challenges modern epistemological tradition. Affirming a political style that otherwise divergent solidarities these theories continue the livelines of the political history of feminism.
INTERROGER LE FÉMINISME : ACTION, VIOLENCE, GOUVERNEMENTALITÉ
By CRISTIANA VEGA
An examination of contemporary feminism is an exploration of trajectories. Trajectories across the changing scenarios of women in globalization. In this contextm the question of violence against women as a source of both the legitimsation and the management of the social and the perfecting of workm of affects and of daily life in the era of flexible reproduction become key spheres of the transformation of the technologies of the government of gender. The conflict that incites the various and urgent administrative inventions and the equivalence that feminist action itself maintains with regard to it must itself be submitted to an examination which place at its centre the desiring capacities and the creation of the value of feminism.
QUEL EST CET ANIMAL POLITIQUE DU CHAPEAU DE LA ‘‘GENDER THEORY”
By NOORTJE MARRES
Second-wave of feminism has stressed the particularity of phenomena that modern political theory had conceptualized as general in nature and scope: the citizen, the political community, the topics of politics. Since then, feminist and queer theories and practices have not only shown that the subjects, arrangements and issues of politics are always historically specific. They have also demonstrated that their particularity may be constitutive of politics. The specificity of political actors, of particular procedures and themes may inform political processes. This insight of feminism, this short piece argues, is of special relevance for grasping politics today. Under circumstances of globalization, the particularity of political processes, and their ingredients, becomes increasingly obvious. In this context, unorthodox actors, such as NGO’s, serve as agents of politics, and the boundaries of political communities become unsettled. Also, here issues emerge that resist treatment in classic democratic institutions, such as those founded in the nation-state. As the particularity of the actors, arrangements and issues is increasingly clear, feminist and queer theory become especially crucial to the understanding of politics. It tells us not to resist this particularization of politics, but to embrace it. It reminds us that the main political question is that of the staking-out of particular sites, the construction of specific forms of politics, and the articulation of particular issues.
LA FIN DE LA DOMINATION (MASCULINE) : POUVOIR DES GENRES, FÉMINISMES ET POST-FÉMINISME QUEER
By MARIE-HÉLÈNE BOURCIER.
The object of this article is to return to the critique formulated by queer post feminism of the use of the paradigm of « male domination » — a use made by both Bourdieu and some renaturalising currents within feminism. Equally, we look at different queer strategies to escape from this paradigm, and see how it is possible to resist the dominant sex / gender system. A reductive vision of the power of gender often goes hand in hand with a renaturalisation of « masculine » and «feminine » genders and serves as a block on the sexual politics that make up feminisms. We emphasise the limits believed to have been imposed by Bourdieu in diffusing a blocked description of « male domination ». We critique equally the limits of certain feminist currents, which, by developing a monogendered vision of gender oppositions, have made of the entrance of gender, a unique entrance point – hegemonic one might say – and have, therefore, led sexual politics to make numerous simplifications and exclusions. The strategies proposed by queer post feminism, to counter the effects of the renaturalising seizure of « male domination », as well as those of totalisation and the universalising unification of those feminists which are neither revolutionary, nor
abolitionist, nor dialectical, are drawn from a modest but multiple micropolitics, and prescribe a salutary deontologisation of the « subject Woman of feminism ».
VENIR À LA CONNAISSANCE, VENIR À LA POLITIQUE : UNE RÉFLEXION SUR DES PRATIQUES FÉMINISTES DU RÉSEAU NEXTGENDERATION
By RUTVICA ANDRIJASEVIC & SARAH BRACKE.
Starting from the dispute centered around « positivity of politics » and « negativity of theory », as it took place on the mailing list of the NextGENDERation — a European network of students and researchers in women’s studies – we investigate the ways in which the split between « thinking » and « doing » is among the key mechanisms that demarcate the knowledge production along the lines of race and gender. As generations of feminists have pointed out, the dismissal of the knowledges of « Others » – women and ethnic peoples as theory, and the relegation of these knowledges to the category of « description », maintain a sexual and racial division of labour in favour of white (male) intellectuals, and ultimately preserves the existing social relations of domination. We argue that the affirmation of feminist practices, and perhaps its re-politicization cannot afford to pass through the negation of theory. Instead, we urge, in the light of NextGENDERation’s feminist intervention at the European Social Forum in Florence, for a recuperation of feminist, antiracist and queer genealogies which would allow for new forms of feminist subjectivities on the one hand, and the furthering of feminisms as oppositional projects on the other.
LES ANGLES MORTS
By VALÉRIE MARANGE.
The question of violence is the horizon of the degradation of the political on the police, which touches today on the most intimate questions, it is to thwart a symbolic peril which concerns language itself. But if this language of culture runs a risk, today, it is that of vacuity, which seems to be attested to by the order word of « zero tolerance » or the success c f the crime of « outrage ». Where the violence of the protestor becomes intolerable, the violence of influence is multiplying. More banally, this vacuity reflects a defection of the real, constructed froth the incommensurable and meaningless but also from such words as difference or alterity. A becoming-woman of language reunited with the real, that of struggle but perhaps more accurately, that of daily resistance, of the slightest gestures which ensure that, in spite of everything, life remains.
MINEURE : Devenir femme du travail et de la politique
DEVENIR-FEMME DE LA POLITIQUE
By JUDITH REVEL.
In order to think the becoming-political of women is it also necessary to think the becoming-woman of politics? It is clear that an analysis of changes in the paradigm of work and its feminisation, is above all else to understand if gender oppositions or the construction of sexual identities permit the emergence of new modalities of political aggregation or if, on the contrary, it is once again a question of thwarting disciplinary mechanisms. The deconstruction of the processes by which identity becomes fixed is without doubt the price of a veritable politics of the multitude, and it is precisely here that women’s voices are precious: perhaps because they tell us that differentiation to the infinite and becoming-other have dragged generation down to its biological reduction and made possible a political ontology of creation.
FEMMES, MULTITUDES, PROPRIÉTÉ
By ANNE QUERRIEN
The more that industrial work is directed at consumption, the more it becomes service and communication, the more it mechanically imitates feminine modes of knowledge. Capital becomes, with the aid of the State, the only legitimate predator. Man is bound up a becoming-woman. Women overwork to give this becoming life. They produce an ever more precise individualisation, a sophisticated multitude of immaterial properties.
DE LA REPRODUCTION PRODUCTIVE À LA PRODUCTION REPRODUCTIVE
By SARA ONGARO.
This text describes the changes affecting the field of reproduction in the era of « globalisation », ultimately to insert the famous « putting life to work » into the mechanism of the reproduction of capital. We show the consequences this has on the roles assigned to women, and equally how it opens a space for new hierarchies between women in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The author speaks of her own journey through politics as a practice of change, where the collaboration between women of diverse cultures reveals itself to be essential, the fields of consumption and lifestyle becoming more and more those where the conflict with capital is played out. It becomes a question of locating such concepts as limit, dependence, autonomy, and liberty, firmly in the cultural model whose destructive effects are becoming so evident today.
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ACT UP : LABORATOIRE DES DEVENIRS MINORITAIRES
By ACT UP
To be a minority within a monority movement a heterosexual, HIV positive or negative, or lesbian woman within an identity movement, namely that of HIV positive homosexuals, poses the question of a women’s voice. This inquiry, front within Act Up Paris, traverses the problematics of multiple identities, identitary deconstructions and the emergence of minorities, but within the context of a common struggle for life, for the affirmation of the power of life against any representation of women and those with Aids as victims.
HORS-CHAPS
DES BIOTECHNOLOGIES AU BIOPOUVOIR, DE LA BIOÉTHIQUE AUX BIOPOLITIQUES
By FRÉDÉRIC KECK
This article reflects upon the notion of biopower deriving from Paul Rabinow’s work French DNA. This book undertakes an analysis of the relations between biotechnologies analysis of the relation between biotechnologies and bioethics in France informed by Foucault’s concept of biopower. We can retain two theses from this account: biotechnologies pluralise biopower and take it to the limit towards beings situated at the limits of life; bioethics fails to constitute a biopolitics because it is a discourse of sacralisation and not one of resistance. Beyond these two theses, we must apply the concept of biopower to recent transformations in the sciences of life.
AUTO-ENQUÊTES EN ITALIE
ET TOI, QUEL EST TON GENRE?
By LES BETTY
The Bettys, freelance intellectuals who share a militant desire and are equally critical of historic feminist groups and the political practices within the « movements of movements », recount their creation of a space, the « Sexishock s, at the very heart of a social projects centre in Bologna.
NOTRE JEU ET NOS TRAVAUX
By SHESQUAT
The Shesquat of Milano are young women who are also involved in the social centres movement. They seek to illustrate, through their invention of a game, possible ways out of egotistical self-enclosures as well as the enclosure in the identity-logic of the group. In addition, they imagine new forms of solidarity in labor, through invisible cooperation.
JOURNAL DE BORD
By A/MATRIX.
The A/Matrix is a group of young women closely tied to the experiences of cyberfeminism. By means of a self-inquiry in the form of a log book, they recount their construction of « pages» of resistance, as a process of construction of forms of life, thereby making life into that which they seek to appropriate.
S’ÉMANCIPER DU TRAVAIL
By GROUPE SCONVEGNO
Employed with short-term contracts as social workers focusing on women, mainly in European institutions, the « Sconvegno » group uses self-inquiries as a way of imagining the way out of emancipation by work: emancipating oneself from work.
JOURNALISTES OU VENDEUSES DE JOURNAUX?
By COLLECTIF DES 116
A collective of women journalists in the leading Italian editorial group RCS, who have fought against the union, during the restructuring of the group, wonder about the transformation of the nature of intellectual labor, power relations, and what it means to « act politically as women ».