On Thu, 17 Aug 1995 17:25:01 +0400 <h.miller@xxxxxxxxxx> said:
> At the risk of sounding stupid could someone explain to me what D&G mean
>when they discuss 'becoming woman' ?
To second Stephen's response, there's nothing stupid in this query. His
reference to Grosz's work is quite useful. At the risk of being self-serving/
referential, I'm providing an excerpt from my interview w/ Guattari on this
question. The text of the complete interview is archived (somewhere) on
the D&G-archive (try July 93), and also has been published by PRE/TEXT 14.3-4
(1993 [publication 1995]): 215-250, under the title "Pragmatic/Machinic:
Discussion with Fe'lix Guattari".
CJ Stivale
..LAYOUT 1
3. *A Thousand Plateaus*: "Becoming-woman"
CS: I'd like to return to one of the areas you touched on earlier,
i.e. feminism, in order to consider the term "becoming-woman,"
whether this conception still functions, if it was a conception
that had an historical specificity at a given moment or if it's
still valid today. It's a term to which certain feminists react
in a very negative way.
FG: In the United States? Because that's not everywhere, there are
some feminists who react to it quite well.
CS: In the United States and in France.
FG: About the "becoming-woman" question? I didn't know.
CS: Oh yes. One objection is that one finds "becoming-woman",
especially in _A Thousand Plateaus_, in a kind of progression --
becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-child, then
becoming-molecular, and finally becoming-imperceptible --, and
so the question: why "woman" at the beginning of this
progression? Why is there this sort of questioning of
femininity? Where is the woman, where is the woman's body in all
that? 1\
FG: There is no rigorous dialectic, there is no series of
connections like _The Phenomenology of Mind_. But simply, the
departure from binary power relations, from phallic relations,
is on the side of the "woman" alternative; the promotion of a
new kind of gentleness, a new kind of domestic relationship; the
departure from this, one might say, elementary dimension of
power that the conjugal unit represents, it's on the side of
woman and on the side of the child such that, in some ways, the
promotion of values, of a new semiotics of the body and
sexuality, passes necessarily through the woman, through
"becoming-woman". And this "becoming-woman" isn't reserved to
women, this could be a "becoming-homosexual" . . . To present
this simply, brutally: if you want to be a writer, if you want
to have a "becoming-letters", you are necessarily caught in a
"becoming-woman". That might be manifested to a great extent
through homosexuality, admitted or not, but this is a departure
from a "grasping," power's will to circumscribe that exists in
the world of masculine power values. Let's say that this is the
first sphere of explosion of phallic power, therefore of binary
power, of the surface-depth power (_pouvoir figure-fond_) of
affirmation. Obviously, it doesn't end there, for this
"becoming-woman" is nonetheless to a great extent in a
relationship, even indirect, of dependence vis--vis masculine
power so that it might rapidly be reconverted into the form of
masculinized power.
There are other becomings that are much more multivocal,
that are much more liberated from this bi-univocity, from these
binary relations of woman-man, yin-yang, etc. So these are the
other becomings that you've enumerated that . . . well, it's
obvious that animal-becomings, for example in Kafka, offer an
exploratory spectrum of intensities, of sensitivities, that is
much larger than a simple binary alternative, that also exists
in Kafka, but there are binary machinic alternatives in his
work: think of his magnificent short story, "Blumfeld", where
you have a little ping-pong ball bouncing like that. So, the
"becoming-woman" has no priority, it's no more of a matrix than
a "becoming-plant", than a "becoming-animal", than a
"becoming-abstract", than a "becoming-molecular"; it's a
direction. Toward what? Quite simply, toward another logic, or
rather a logic I've called "machinic", an existential machinic,
i.e. no longer a reading of a pure representation, but a
composition of the world, the production of a body without
organs in the sense that the organs there are no longer in a
relationship of surface-depth positionality, do not postulate a
totality itself referenced on other totalities, on other systems
of signification that are, in the end, forms of power. Rather,
these are forms of intensity, forms of existence-position that
construct time as they represent it, exactly like in art, forms
that construct coordinates of existence at the same time as
they live them.
1/ For discussions of the concept of "becoming-woman," see Alice
A. Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1985) 209-17; Brian Massumi, A User's Guide to
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992) 86-89;
Elizabeth Grosz, "A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics,"
in Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, ed. Constantin V.
Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York: Routledge, 1994) 187-210.
------------------
> At the risk of sounding stupid could someone explain to me what D&G mean
>when they discuss 'becoming woman' ?
To second Stephen's response, there's nothing stupid in this query. His
reference to Grosz's work is quite useful. At the risk of being self-serving/
referential, I'm providing an excerpt from my interview w/ Guattari on this
question. The text of the complete interview is archived (somewhere) on
the D&G-archive (try July 93), and also has been published by PRE/TEXT 14.3-4
(1993 [publication 1995]): 215-250, under the title "Pragmatic/Machinic:
Discussion with Fe'lix Guattari".
CJ Stivale
..LAYOUT 1
3. *A Thousand Plateaus*: "Becoming-woman"
CS: I'd like to return to one of the areas you touched on earlier,
i.e. feminism, in order to consider the term "becoming-woman,"
whether this conception still functions, if it was a conception
that had an historical specificity at a given moment or if it's
still valid today. It's a term to which certain feminists react
in a very negative way.
FG: In the United States? Because that's not everywhere, there are
some feminists who react to it quite well.
CS: In the United States and in France.
FG: About the "becoming-woman" question? I didn't know.
CS: Oh yes. One objection is that one finds "becoming-woman",
especially in _A Thousand Plateaus_, in a kind of progression --
becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-child, then
becoming-molecular, and finally becoming-imperceptible --, and
so the question: why "woman" at the beginning of this
progression? Why is there this sort of questioning of
femininity? Where is the woman, where is the woman's body in all
that? 1\
FG: There is no rigorous dialectic, there is no series of
connections like _The Phenomenology of Mind_. But simply, the
departure from binary power relations, from phallic relations,
is on the side of the "woman" alternative; the promotion of a
new kind of gentleness, a new kind of domestic relationship; the
departure from this, one might say, elementary dimension of
power that the conjugal unit represents, it's on the side of
woman and on the side of the child such that, in some ways, the
promotion of values, of a new semiotics of the body and
sexuality, passes necessarily through the woman, through
"becoming-woman". And this "becoming-woman" isn't reserved to
women, this could be a "becoming-homosexual" . . . To present
this simply, brutally: if you want to be a writer, if you want
to have a "becoming-letters", you are necessarily caught in a
"becoming-woman". That might be manifested to a great extent
through homosexuality, admitted or not, but this is a departure
from a "grasping," power's will to circumscribe that exists in
the world of masculine power values. Let's say that this is the
first sphere of explosion of phallic power, therefore of binary
power, of the surface-depth power (_pouvoir figure-fond_) of
affirmation. Obviously, it doesn't end there, for this
"becoming-woman" is nonetheless to a great extent in a
relationship, even indirect, of dependence vis--vis masculine
power so that it might rapidly be reconverted into the form of
masculinized power.
There are other becomings that are much more multivocal,
that are much more liberated from this bi-univocity, from these
binary relations of woman-man, yin-yang, etc. So these are the
other becomings that you've enumerated that . . . well, it's
obvious that animal-becomings, for example in Kafka, offer an
exploratory spectrum of intensities, of sensitivities, that is
much larger than a simple binary alternative, that also exists
in Kafka, but there are binary machinic alternatives in his
work: think of his magnificent short story, "Blumfeld", where
you have a little ping-pong ball bouncing like that. So, the
"becoming-woman" has no priority, it's no more of a matrix than
a "becoming-plant", than a "becoming-animal", than a
"becoming-abstract", than a "becoming-molecular"; it's a
direction. Toward what? Quite simply, toward another logic, or
rather a logic I've called "machinic", an existential machinic,
i.e. no longer a reading of a pure representation, but a
composition of the world, the production of a body without
organs in the sense that the organs there are no longer in a
relationship of surface-depth positionality, do not postulate a
totality itself referenced on other totalities, on other systems
of signification that are, in the end, forms of power. Rather,
these are forms of intensity, forms of existence-position that
construct time as they represent it, exactly like in art, forms
that construct coordinates of existence at the same time as
they live them.
1/ For discussions of the concept of "becoming-woman," see Alice
A. Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1985) 209-17; Brian Massumi, A User's Guide to
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992) 86-89;
Elizabeth Grosz, "A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics,"
in Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, ed. Constantin V.
Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York: Routledge, 1994) 187-210.
------------------