Diffraction as a Methodology for Feminist Onto-Epistemology

On Encountering Chantal Chawaf and Posthuman Interpellation

Bibliographic Data

ID7429707
AuthorsIris Van Der Tuin (0000-0003-1890-940X, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume20
Issue3
Pages231-244
Publication date2014-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueParallax (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1353-4645 • E-ISSN: 1460-700X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13534645.2014.927631
OpenAlexW2142557700
LanguageEN
Citations received39

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsI wish to thank the editors of this special issue – Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele – for their thoughtful editing and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article. I would like to extend my thanks to Alex Hebing and Gregg Lambert for their generous engagement with my work.Notes1 The discussion can be retrieved from: [06/06/2013].2 Quentin Meillassoux in Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012), p.80.3 Stacy Alaimo, 'Thinking as the Stuff of the World', O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, vol. no.1 (2014), p.15.4 Think of the inclusion of Isabelle Stengers in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman (eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne: re.press, 2011) and Meillassoux's appearance in Dolphijn and Van der Tuin, New Materialism.5 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism [1966], trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1991), pp.56–57.6 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition [1968], trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp.70–71.7 Stacy Alaimo, 'Thinking', p.16, p.19.8 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), p.185.9 I do not speak for 'OOO's cartography' in this article; here, OOO features as one actualization of the striving for non-dualist thought, an unsuccessful one, in fact. Nathan Brown has clearly laid out why the philosophical impetus of OOO does not comply with the gesture of virtual-actual coupling that this article tries to make. Brown argues that '[i]n order to stake its claim to originality and supremacy, "OOO" has to fulminate against what it sees as a threatening field [of] materialists, purveyors of "scientism", process philosophers, Deleuzians, and system theorists. It has to establish itself as "the only non-reductionist, non-atomic ontology on the market"'. See Nathan Brown, 'The Nadir of OOO: From Graham Harman's Tool-Being to Timothy Morton's Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality', Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy, 17 (2013), p.68. Brown explains that strategy of divide and concur (which is not a cartographical strategy) is attempted to be accomplished by 'obscurantism'.10 Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p.14.11 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p.56. Haraway on Deleuze: Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2008), pp.27–35.12 In Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness, p.273.13 Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness, p.273.14 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p.71.15 Karen Barad, 'Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol.28, no.3 (2003), p.811.16 Karen Barad, 'Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come', Derrida Today, 3:2 (2010), p.244.17 Bernard Pullmann in Suzanne Guerlac, Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), p.40; cf. Barad, 'Quantum Entanglements', p.252.18 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p.72.19 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, p.72.20 Karen Barad, 'Posthumanist Performativity', p.808.21 Donna Haraway, 'The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others' [1992], in The Haraway Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p.64.22 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge [1969] (London/New York: Routledge, 1972), pp.65–66.23 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.70.24 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', pp.69–70.25 Donna Haraway, 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective', Feminist Studies, 14:3 (1988), p.594.26 Minh-ha refers to Chawaf's nourricriture (nurturing writing). See Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.33.27 Valerie Hannagan, 'Reading as a Daughter: Chantal Chawaf revisited', in Contemporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives, eds Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1980), p.177.28 Valerie Hannagan, 'Reading', p.185.29 For a list of the students, see Rosi Braidotti, 'Thinking with an Accent: Françoise Collin, Les Cahiers du Grif and French Feminism', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39:3 (2014), pp.576–626. For their original responses, see Hecate, 6:2 (1980).30 Domna C. Stanton, 'Language and Revolution: The Franco-American Dis-Connection', in The Future of Difference, eds Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980), pp.75–87.31 Rosi Braidotti and Jane Weinstock, 'Herstory as Recourse', Hecate, 6:2 (1980), p.25.32 Jane Gallop, 'French Feminism', in Around 1981: Academic Feminist Literary Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p.46.33 Jane Gallop, 'French Feminism', p.46.34 Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women and Contemporary Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).35 Morton – after May 24, 2013 – has engaged with Chawaf's text too. The engagement can be found on his blog: [05/12/2013]. In this talk, presented on October 5, 2013 during PostNatural (the SLSA 2013 conference) at Notre Dame University, Chawaf's text is recapped as a text on 'the ecology of the sign', a position about which Morton claims to have thought, as a grad student at Oxford University, 'That's me!' This unambiguous statement confirms Alaimo's and Brown's worries about the Subject of OOO. Morton mutes (essentializes!) Chawaf's position on signification which is one of an active, transformative articulation, and the possibility of transference or transposition between Chawaf's text and Morton is foreclosed because Morton assumes an 'I' for himself. As part of the same argument, new materialisms are discredited as 'correlationist', which, to me, proves the point of OOO's non-cartographical manner of doing theory. In sum, Morton follows a logic of recognition and reflection.36 Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir [1992], trans. Anne Lavelle (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996).37 Vicki Kirby, Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.67–69.38 Chantal Chawaf, No title [1976], New French Feminisms: An Anthology, eds. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), p.178.39 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.40 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.41 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.42 Adrienne Rich, 'Notes Towards a Politics of Location', in Blood, Bread and Poetry (London: Virago, 1987), pp.213–214.43 Chantal Chawaf, p.178.44 Patricia MacCormack, 'Mucosal Monsters', in Carnal Aesthetics: Transgressive Imaginary and Feminist Politics, eds. Bettina Papenburg and Marta Zarzycka (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), pp.226–237; Hélène Cixous, 'The Laugh of the Medusa' [1975], trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1:4 (1976), pp.875–893; Murat Aydemir, Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection [1980], trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).45 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.46 Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time [1988], trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).47 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.48 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.49 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.50 Chantal Chawaf, p.178.51 Claire Colebrook, 'Postmodernism is a Humanism: Deleuze and Equivocity', Women: A Cultural Review, 15:3 (2004), p.286.52 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.53 Chantal Chawaf, p.178.54 Chantal Chawaf, p.177.55 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.70.56 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.117 n.18.57 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.112.58 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.89.59 Karen Barad, 'Nature's Queer Performativity', Kvinder, Køn og Forskning, 1–2 (2012), p.35.60 Vicki Kirby, Judith Butler: Live Theory (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), p.78.61 Vicki Kirby, Judith Butler, p.162, n.1.62 Cf. Sara Ahmed, Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.113–118.63 Louis Althusser, 'Correspondence about "Philosophy and Marxism"' [1993/1994], in Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978–1987 (London and New York: Verso, 2006), p.241.64 Louis Althusser, 'Correspondence', p.241.65 Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness, p.50.66 Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness [1889], trans. F.L. Pogson (London: George Allen, 1913), p.168.67 Donna Haraway, 'Promises of Monsters', p.117 n.18.Additional informationNotes on contributorsIris van der TuinIris van der Tuin is associate professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy of Science at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She edited Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture (Routledge, 2009) with Rosemarie Buikema and authored New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies with Rick Dolphijn (Open Humanities Press, 2012). Her work on feminist new materialism has appeared in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Australian Feminist Studies, Women: A Cultural Review, European Journal of Women's Studies and Women's Studies International Forum. She is currently finishing the NWO-VENI project 'The Material Turn in the Humanities' (2011–2014). Email: [email protected]

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