Transcript Transgression Guest Lecture 2016 without images

Binary Oppositions, Abjection,
Transgression
Rebecca Hill
Guest Lecture for Media Seminar
5/8/16
10am 94.4.26
Ideology
• Popular use of ‘ideology’ often associated with
propaganda
• In this sense ideologies are understood as ‘false’
ideologies
• But humanities scholars point out ideologies are at
their most effective when they appear as true
• Privileged norms in Oz of hard work, heterosexual
marriage are ideologies many accept as true, as
natural
Everything is Ideological
• Ideologies at their most effective mask their partial
and historically specific character. They seek to
present themselves as “True”.
• Ideology refers to ANY set of values or body of
knowledge. This includes codes of conduct and
actions.
(See Schirato and Yell pp. 72-6)
For Chris Barker, ideologies are “maps of meaning
which, while they purport to be universal truths, are
historically specific understandings of which obscure
and maintain power” (50, 1st ed/ 71 2nd ed).
The Structure of a Binary Opposition
(Dualism)
• Formalised by Aristotle through the Law of NonContradiction which is expressed as
A/Not-A
or
Not (A/Not-A)
• A and not-A are mutually exclusive (Law of Excluded
Middle)
• There is no position outside a binary structure. It is
totalising (universal).
Man/Not-Man
• Only ‘Man’ (A) has a positive identity
• ‘Not-Man’ (Not-A) is defined negatively as
the absence of ‘Man’
• ‘Not-Man’ has no independent identity
Infinitation of the Negative
• Because Not-Man (Not-A) is defined
negatively, it has no particularity and no
definition except as the lack of Man (A).
• This means it includes everything that is ‘NotMan’: women, children, animals, things,
monsters, the ocean, aliens, etc…
A Depends on Not-A
• Derrida argues that A depends on Not-A to
have meaning and to maintain its position of
privilege
A is ‘A’ because it is not ‘Not-A’
• Derrida is influenced by Ferdinand Saussure’s
theory of negative difference, i.e. that a sign’s
value emerges from its difference from all of
the other signs in the system
The Politics of Binary Logic
The fact that ‘Man’ has been privileged as
‘A’ in many texts is not required by logic. It is
an effect of ideology.
In other words, what binary oppositions
privilege and what they subordinate is
ideological.
A/Not-A
Ancient Oppositions
Soul/Body
Man / Not-Man
Light / Dark
Good/Evil
Some Contemporary Oppositions
Clean / Unclean
Civilised / Uncivilised
Same / Other
Heterosexuality / Not-Heterosexuality
White/Not White
Mind /Body
Culture / Nature
Natural/Unnatural
Subverting Binary Oppositions
• To identify a binary opposition is to
problematize its operation
• It must be reversed – this is a necessary
political gesture
• Reversing a binary still maintains the
hierarchical A/Not-A structure
• How can we get out of binary structure?
Beyond Binary Logic?
• Some feminists have argued that the man/
woman relationship can be re-thought as
A and B
•
A similar strategy to combat the racism of
binary logic is to symbolise ethnic difference
as A, B, C, D, E, F …
PART TWO
The Ambiguous Status of Bodies in the
Western Tradition
• On the one hand, bodies appear to be
celebrated – popular culture is full of images
of beautiful bodies, healthy bodies and
athletic bodies
• On the other hand, Western thought
(philosophy and other disciplines in the
humanities) are characterised by a profound
fear of bodies or somatophobia (Grosz: 5)
Theorising Bodies
• There is no single “body”; there are only bodies
which are sexually, culturally, and ethnically specific
• Studying bodies allows media theorists to foreground
the specific differences between bodies while
focusing only on the mind and ideas can allow these
particularities to be neglected
• What kinds of bodies are privileged in media texts?
What kinds of bodies are mocked? What kind of
bodies get ignored?
Bodies and Discourses
• To say that bodies are socially and culturally
specific, that some bodies are privileged and
others are denigrated is to say that bodies make
meaning – bodies are texts
• Bodies are inscribed with discourses of sexuality,
ethnicity, class
• To theorise bodies in terms of discursive
inscription is to move beyond the dislocation of
the mind/body split. It enables us to see how
knowledge and thought is materialised or
embodied in particular kinds of bodies.
‘Clean’ and ‘Dirty’
• What is dirt?
• For Mary Douglas, dirt is “matter out of
place” – dirt is socially and culturally
produced as dirt
• Eg: mud on a kitchen floor, a food stain on
clothing
(Douglas: 44-5)
Julia Kristeva and Abjection
• Kristeva develops Douglas’ argument in
relation to subjectivity (personhood)
• The abject is, “what of the body falls away
from it while remaining irreducible to the
subject/object and inside/outside
oppositions” (Grosz: 192).
• Eg: blood, snot, shit, vomit, sweat, pus, gases,
sexual secretions, the corpse, orifices
The Abject as a Threat to the Subject
(Person)
• “The abject signifies above all else ambiguity”
(Creed quoting Kristeva: 8)
• Reveals the irreducible messiness of bodies
• In the West there is a tendency to seek to
control and get rid of the abject – washing,
using perfumes, breath freshener
• Hair and gender roles: What kind of body hair
is valued? What kind is abject?
Abjection and Desire
• The ambiguity of the abject is also desired especially in sexual contexts – “dirty”
• Eg: Halle Berry in L’Oreal ad, men as
“animals” in bed (Viagra commercials)
• There is a longing for the collapse of proper
subjective borders: inside/outside; self/other
• (See Creed, 11-12)
References:
ON ABJECTION
• Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous Feminine. Chapter one.
• Chris Barker, Cultural Studies, “Foucault: Discourse, Practice and Power”
(101-5 2nd edition)
• Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger [on dirt]
• Grosz, Elizabeth Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. See
chapter one & pp. 192-5
ON BINARY OPPOSITIONS (OR DICHOTOMIES)
• Nancy Jay, “Gender and Dichotomy” Feminist Studies 6, 1, 38-56.
• Jacques Derrida, Positions. Alan Bass (trans). Chicago: Chicago UP, 1981.
• Handout
ON IDEOLOGY:
• Tony Schirato and Susan Yell, Communication and Cultural Literacy, Allen &
Unwin, Sydney, 2000, Second Edition, pp. 72-7.
• Chris Barker, Cultural Studies, Sage, London, 2000, pp. 48-65, (esp. pp. 5465)