[rosi braidotti lecture: b/w the longer and the not yet]

BETWEEN THE NO LONGER AND THE NOT YET: NOMADIC VARIATIONS ON THE BODY

"The embodied structure of the subject is a key-term in feminist struggle. It is to be understood as neither a biologically nor sociologically fixed category, but,rather as a point of overlapping between the physical, the symbolic and the material social conditions. The body is an inter-face, a threshold, a field of intersecting material and symbolic forces, it is a surface where multiple codes (race, sex, class, age, etc.) are inscribed; it's a cultural construction that capitalizes on energies of a heterogeneous, discontinuous and affective or unconscious nature. This vision of the body contains sexuality as a process and as a constitutive element. Embodiment provides a common but at best very complex ground on which to postulate the feminist project. On the luna-park that marks the website of this conference, the body would definitely be on the roller-coaster.

Being embodied means being in and of sexualized matter. This sexual fibre is intrinsically and multiply connected to social and political relations; it is anything but an individualistic entity. Sexuality is simultaneously the most intimate and the most external, socially-driven, power-drenched practice of the self. As a social and symbolic, material and semiotic institution, sexuality in singled out by feminism as the primary location of power, in a complex manner which encompasses both macro and micro relations. Sexual difference - the sexualized bi-polarity, is another word for power in both the negative or repressive (potestas) and the positive or empowering (potentia) meaning of the term.

[...]

The sort of `figurations' of alternative subjectivity, which feminism has invented, like the womanist/ the lesbian/ the cyborg/ the inappropriate(d) other/ the nomadic feminist etc. etc differ from classical `metaphors' in calling into play a sense of accountability for one's locations. They express materially embedded cartographies and as such are self-reflexive and not parasitic upon a process of metaphorization of `others'. They provide, on the critical level, materially embedded and embodied accounts of one's power-relations.



Feminist theory is about multiple and potentially contradictory locations and differences, among women but also within each woman. To account for them, locations are approached as geo-political, but also as time-zones, related to memory. Feminism is not about restoring another dominant memory, but rather about installing a counter-memory, or an embedded and embodied genealogy. Feminist thinking takes place between the no longer and the not yet, in the in-between zone between wilful , conscious political practice and the not-necessarily conscious yearning for transformation and change. I see feminist theory as the activity aimed at articulating the questions of individual gendered identity with issues related to political subjectivity, the production of knowledge, diversity, and epistemological legitimation."


Or listen to the lecture here.

AUDIO LECTURE

Braidotti gave this lecture at the 4th European Feminist Research Conference which took place September 28 and October 1, 2000 in Bologna.

An interesting question and response (in Italian) - Braidotti proposes that women in humanities and sciences develop an alliance through new technologies:


Il lavoro delle donne nei new media e nelle nuove tecnologie può portare a cambiamenti di metodo e di contenuti?

Rosi Braidotti propone un'alleanza tra donne umaniste
e donne scienzate.

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