Suchergebnisse

Discusses the personal experience of coming to the realization of one's marginal status while occupying the roles of mother, wife, teacher, & woman. Little of the emerging feminist theorizing penetrated the life of one who graduated from Oxford U (England) in the late 1960s & quickly entered into the role of young motherhood. However, experience as a part-time instructor catalyzed a movement toward feminist & class concerns & allowed the development of female friendships that spurred a process of self-discovery. Helping revise an introductory class on feminist history offered an opportunity to reflect on the dilemmas & possibilities of embracing this marginalized status. This reflection has revealed a deep desire for belonging & corresponding fear of being an outsider, which are linked to a more generalized fantasy of stability. It is concluded that true intellectual freedom means facing such desires & fantasies & forging beyond them into the liminal state of marginality. 12 References. D. M. Ryfe

In seiner Einleitung erinnert der Verfasser an Textuntersuchungen von Literatur des 1. Weltkrieges und den daran nachweisbaren Inhalten von regressiven Mutterleibsphantasien und den Lobpreisungen von Männerbünden. Bei der anschließenden Überprüfung von Texten aus Bundestagsdebatten auf ihren latenten Sinngehalt hin wird mit einer modifizierten Form der Fantasy-Analysis des Amerikaners De Mause gearbeitet. Unbewußte Gruppenphantasien zeigen die "Angst vor Verlust der patriarchalischen Gruppenidentität", die durch "ritualisierte Inszenierung von Brüderlichkeit bewältigt werden" soll. Während sich in Umweltdebatten "emotional ein heftiges, konventionelles Schlachtengetümmel" entfaltete, wurde in Sicherheitsdebatten mehr die männliche Solidargemeinschaft beschworen (Männerbund). Die existienzielle Angst hat zu einer Identitätskrise des patriarchalischen Bewußtseins geführt und läßt auf archaische Abwehrmechanismen gegen regressiv-destruktive Mutter-Imagines zurückgreifen. (KO2)

Investigates gendered aspects of the virtual environment suit as a particular mode of disembodied subjectivity, drawing on the work of Zoe Sofia (1992), Elizabeth Grosz (1992), & Luce Irigaray (1985). It is suggested that scientific commentary on virtual environments commonly refers to them in terms of the creation & control of occupiable spaces. As a key aspect of this control, the virtual environment suit weds technology & body into a cyborg-like fantasy of eradicated corporeal limits & disembodied mastery. In the guise of the virtual environment suit, cyberspace becomes a kind of ideal love object that is endless, reiterative, & excessively recombinant. However, despite the effort to erase the gendered female Other, the body of disembodied consciousness is intrinsically tied to the bodies it excludes. It is this paradox that opens opportunities for redeploying cyberspace in terms of differences between the spatiality of bodies rather than in terms of a unitary, masterful subjectivity. 27 References. D. Ryfe

Draws on 25 years as an activist for welfare issues to examine the dual role of "welfare" in furnishing a historic source of fear & fantasy for right-wing views of the world, & in providing a common enemy & shared vision for the current coalition of dissimilar conservative forces. It is maintained that advocates of an American welfare state purposely mislead their opponents about their structural intentions in order to sell programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children as temporary. This lack of clarity, compounded by the Left's failure to promote welfare as a social achievement for all, allowed right-wing proposals to gain widespread acceptance in the political arena. Conservative opposition to welfare has served as a unifying factor for a Right wing plagued with divisions over other issues. The Right correctly views welfare as representative of everything they oppose; therefore, it is proposed that welfare rights advocates combat Right-wing fears/fantasies by aggressively defending, redefining, & broadening democratic visions of welfare rights as economic & social justice for all. J. Lindroth

Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault on governmental rationalities, particularly those related to the government of the state, the governance of modern societies is explored. A slightly different view of the relationship between liberalism & society as "a complex & independent reality that has its own laws & mechanisms of disturbance" is advanced, suggesting that analysis of the government of the state be extended to a broader examination of the "government of populations," ie, government between rather than within states, better befitting the modern geopolitical situation. The view of modern society as consisting of one or more societies is explored & related to the liberal rationality of government, then employed in a fresh analysis of Foucault's liberal critique of the police. Immanuel Kant's vision of what constitutes a "constitutional republic" is examined as an elaboration of a "contractarian political fantasy" regarding the society of modern states; its limitations are also illuminated, arguing that its view of the order imposed by government within the state & the disorder resulting from lack of government is too simplistic. The dependence of government within a state on the conduct of forces external to the state is described & implications for citizenship & democracy are considered, along with extensions to concerns about the international protection of human rights & noninterference. 43 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

Explores the issue of the widow's pension & charity in interwar Australia, drawing on an analysis of the records of the Charity Organization Society in Victoria & the views of charity workers. That the survival of the family preoccupied the state rather than the plight of widows seems to be informed by the fantasy of finding the perfect mother with the pension designed to prevent further family fragmentation & keep the mother in the home. The expectation that children would provide for their families dated from the early 19th century & is also fueled by fantasies about motherhood, children, & the family that framed the attitudes of interwar charity workers who, along with the state, assumed an emotional bond between children & widows. The interwar period evidenced much resistance to this assumption on the part of children. The 1930s professionalization of social work ushered in a shift that led to more actual listening to women & attempted directing of their behavior rather than merely observing their economic situation. It is argued that professionalization did not transform the extant moralism, but lent a new language through which to frame poverty. Analysis of studies on the role of silence or denial in families as protection from stigma or legal condemnation underpins a discussion of the impact of gossip & rumor in deriving the assumptions about poor families; at issue is how silence, secrecy, & evasion were interpreted by charity workers who viewed such behavior as deceitful & deceptive. In this light, workers employed shame to obtain information from widows & exert their sociopolitical power. In terms of legislation & charity work, familial notions of the responsible mother & doting children were enforced. However, neither widows nor children conformed to these ideas, & actual family relations were rife with the kind of fragmentation the state sought to ameliorate via the widow's pension. J. Zendejas

Explores the issue of the widow's pension & charity in interwar Australia, drawing on an analysis of the records of the Charity Organization Society in Victoria & the views of charity workers. That the survival of the family preoccupied the state rather than the plight of widows seems to be informed by the fantasy of finding the perfect mother with the pension designed to prevent further family fragmentation & keep the mother in the home. The expectation that children would provide for their families dated from the early 19th century & is also fueled by fantasies about motherhood, children, & the family that framed the attitudes of interwar charity workers who, along with the state, assumed an emotional bond between children & widows. The interwar period evidenced much resistance to this assumption on the part of children. The 1930s professionalization of social work ushered in a shift that led to more actual listening to women & attempted directing of their behavior rather than merely observing their economic situation. It is argued that professionalization did not transform the extant moralism, but lent a new language through which to frame poverty. Analysis of studies on the role of silence or denial in families as protection from stigma or legal condemnation underpins a discussion of the impact of gossip & rumor in deriving the assumptions about poor families; at issue is how silence, secrecy, & evasion were interpreted by charity workers who viewed such behavior as deceitful & deceptive. In this light, workers employed shame to obtain information from widows & exert their sociopolitical power. In terms of legislation & charity work, familial notions of the responsible mother & doting children were enforced. However, neither widows nor children conformed to these ideas, & actual family relations were rife with the kind of fragmentation the state sought to ameliorate via the widow's pension. J. Zendejas

A discussion of Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri's Empire (2000) begins by acknowledging the value of Lacan's mirror stage, which is related to Dionysus' mirror, as a political myth & a model for migration dynamics. As migration is hardly attended to in classical political theory, it persists in the realm of myth. Augustine's & Slavoj Zizek's views on migration, or exodus, are looked at in this light & in relation to Hardt & Negri's multitude. For postmodernists, exodus -- typically seen to involve three phases -- has become a two-place relation. Hardt & Negri turn nomadism into the "Neoplatonic ascent of the soul" wherein their Augustinian rhetoric crosses with Deleuze & Guattari's nomadology; migrant & nomad refer to the same people whenever they wish to stress the liberatory potential of nomadism, made possible, they reason, because they believe that now this is a "smooth world" (ie, no longer striated) characterized by a withered civil society, the collapse of national boundaries, & the obsolescence of traditional forms of politics. According to Hardt & Negri, this smoothness is the condition of the multitude's utopian aggregation. Linkages between Durkheimian concepts, organic & mechanical solidarity & the Body without Organs, to Deleuzain/Guattarian ideas in Empire are noted before addressing migration as a model for a politics of unfettered political agency, a politics without sociology, ie, a politics of unimpeded movement. Yet this smooth politics winds up constrained anyway in the social forms it can take. It is then contended that while nomadism might effect political change, in late modernity, it is largely motivated by the desire for wealth. Remarks are then offered on the notion of desire, highlighting Plotinus, Lacan, & desire's centralty to Hardt & Negri. It is argued that Hardt & Negri are actually working with the illusion of a smooth world, ignoring the striations that still exist, however finely wrought. Thus, the multitude is able to see the fantasy of its own unity in this smooth mirror. It is asserted that reasserting Durkheim's organic solidarity against Deleuze & Guattari's conception of the Body without Organs exposes the striations beneath the illusion of smoothness. The example of the Wobblies is used to illustrate the fallacy in Hardt & Negri's rejection of hybridity, which is identity across striation, & suggest that the Wobblies make a productive model for a contemporary politics of migration. Ultimately, Hardt & Negri's secular utopianism retains the social dynamics of its mythological predecessors. J. Zendejas