In any discussion of naming and subjectivity I think it's
vital to distinguish between the name and the signature. The
signature is always the function of an interaction, not an
identity. That's what Derrida means when he says that the
addressee signs the text. Something that has been emerging
very clearly on this list is that Marie and Erik and Mer are
not singularities. We are Marie and Erik and Mer in our
relation to the Deleuze list, elements of its assemblage, if
you like.
In another list Marie is somebody else, it's that freedom
which makes the net so satisfying. That's what I meant by
saying I liked to see the names swirl and run at the edges and
acquire new half tones as a discussion proceeds. Derrida also
says that the dead can sign the text, and indeed I think that
some of the texts on the list have been signed by Felix.
These are phenomena that I tried to discuss in -The Name of
the Mother-, but what I'm enjoying so much now is the
actualisation on the net of things I only postulated in that
text because I only got my modem after the book was finished.
One of the ways in which I question a certain received
feminism is that I see the fluidity of the name, a fluidity so
much more accessible to women than to men, as a very positive
thing. In my case studies, for example, I look at one
wonderful woman who, while signed as it were by her stage
name, used no less than seven different names for different
purposes in the course of her life. Many women don't in fact
want to keep their father's name all their lives and rather
enjoy the chance to change it.
Similarly, lots of men seek the freedom of the pseudonym, one
version of which is the choice of the matronym. The discussion
of the name, even on the list, is very oriented by the fact
that men do think of their names as a preconception,
something, as Seamus said, which must be assumed to satisfy
their families. Women, on the other hand, do have the
possibility of considering a reconception. It's easier for
them to be a 'myriad of fictions', and in my book that's no
bad thing.
By the way, the reaction of a mother to the fantasy of 'the
fully fulfilling mother' is 'Shit!' Are we always going to
have this crap put on us? When you study Freud's letters
carefully you discover that his mother and father fantasies
were in fact the result of his having very little to do with
either. I had a lot of fun when I found out that the really
primal relation seems to have been with his old nurse, a
thoroughly unsavoury character. One reason to cheer when D&G
get stuck into the Oedipal is that it helps to dislodge the
imposition of that particular master narrative.
Would you like a few extracts from my work? Michael tells me
it's not yet in the bookshops though it should be, but the
first chapter appeared as 'Signing the Matronym: the
Performance of Illegitimacy' in -New Literary History-,25, 1,
Winter 1994:95-107. Marie Maclean
------------------
vital to distinguish between the name and the signature. The
signature is always the function of an interaction, not an
identity. That's what Derrida means when he says that the
addressee signs the text. Something that has been emerging
very clearly on this list is that Marie and Erik and Mer are
not singularities. We are Marie and Erik and Mer in our
relation to the Deleuze list, elements of its assemblage, if
you like.
In another list Marie is somebody else, it's that freedom
which makes the net so satisfying. That's what I meant by
saying I liked to see the names swirl and run at the edges and
acquire new half tones as a discussion proceeds. Derrida also
says that the dead can sign the text, and indeed I think that
some of the texts on the list have been signed by Felix.
These are phenomena that I tried to discuss in -The Name of
the Mother-, but what I'm enjoying so much now is the
actualisation on the net of things I only postulated in that
text because I only got my modem after the book was finished.
One of the ways in which I question a certain received
feminism is that I see the fluidity of the name, a fluidity so
much more accessible to women than to men, as a very positive
thing. In my case studies, for example, I look at one
wonderful woman who, while signed as it were by her stage
name, used no less than seven different names for different
purposes in the course of her life. Many women don't in fact
want to keep their father's name all their lives and rather
enjoy the chance to change it.
Similarly, lots of men seek the freedom of the pseudonym, one
version of which is the choice of the matronym. The discussion
of the name, even on the list, is very oriented by the fact
that men do think of their names as a preconception,
something, as Seamus said, which must be assumed to satisfy
their families. Women, on the other hand, do have the
possibility of considering a reconception. It's easier for
them to be a 'myriad of fictions', and in my book that's no
bad thing.
By the way, the reaction of a mother to the fantasy of 'the
fully fulfilling mother' is 'Shit!' Are we always going to
have this crap put on us? When you study Freud's letters
carefully you discover that his mother and father fantasies
were in fact the result of his having very little to do with
either. I had a lot of fun when I found out that the really
primal relation seems to have been with his old nurse, a
thoroughly unsavoury character. One reason to cheer when D&G
get stuck into the Oedipal is that it helps to dislodge the
imposition of that particular master narrative.
Would you like a few extracts from my work? Michael tells me
it's not yet in the bookshops though it should be, but the
first chapter appeared as 'Signing the Matronym: the
Performance of Illegitimacy' in -New Literary History-,25, 1,
Winter 1994:95-107. Marie Maclean
------------------