Grosz begins by listing some of the means by which a text was judged to be feminist. These are the sexes of the author and the reader, the content of the text an the style in which the text is presented. To Grosz, these perimeters belie and illusory correlation between what she refers to as "women's texts," "feminine texts" and "feminist texts" (Grosz, 11). Grosz problem is that her use of these terms is "purposely being vague," whereas other theorists had previously not made such distinctions (ibid). Logically, there are blatant problems with this. For one, under the assumption that a feminist text MUST relate in someway to a critique of patriarchal hegemony or promote female equality, then it is easy for a text written by a women to engage these issues at all. Even if a female author doesn't promote patriarchy in her work, it can't be automatically designated as anti-patriarchal. In the same mode of thinking, a man my create a text from a female point of view or character which does not promote a critique of male hegemony.
Grosz explains that to assume that the experience of subjugation to a patriarchal society is the only privileged perspective that any female can have is reductive and furthermore fallacious. This creates the illusion of a connection under the term "woman" that Judith Butler elucidates upon. This idea is also limiting to texts, which Grosz denies stating that "every text exceeds its author" (Grosz, 19).
Grosz, through her analysis of Derrida's concept of the signature, then believes in a dialectical relation between, originally, the author and the text, and then between the reader and the text. This signature concept basically seems to imply that in the generation of authenticity that a signature provides, there is created a distinction between others. Thus, in the way I see it, the text is the mediation in a dialectic between the author and reader, whereby both can be the subject. That is to say, the author has a discourse with his authorial "I" as in the narrator or point of view. The reader engages the "I" and therefore creates a semiotic barrier of intentionality (both conscious and unconscious in my opinion) and meaning that encapsulates the text on both "sides."
On a different note, I had a personal experience recently that I thought fit very well with our themes of perversion and gender roles/identities but is also (I think) pretty hilarious. This past Saturday, I went out for Halloween dressed (there's a much longer story behind this choice) as the pop singer Ke$ha (Yes, she does put a dollar sign in her name. Don't ask me why).
This is Kesha:
So this was what my costume attempted. The funny part is that I did this basically to make fun of my roommates, all of whom are straight males like me. However, where I think these things are funny, they were all extremely uncomfortable. When each one of them showed up at the party I attempted (successfully every time) to make them think I was actually a girl. They weren't pleased. Again, I thought this was the funniest thing that had happened in months.
To highlight why I am bringing this up, I think it enforces a lot of the issues we've discussed as far as class themes. There is a deep fear (yes, fear) in most males of a man wearing women's clothes. I think the massively adverse reactions they all had (exclamation, expletives, more expletives, etc.) illustrated the strength of the cultural taboos against perversion.
I even had some gender issues going through my head afterward as well. I'm sure most of you noticed Monday that I had nail polish on. It was shocking to me as well, when I woke up Sunday morning. In my mind, every hand gesture, every way I held a cup or did anything looked (for lack of a better term) "girly." The only thought I had was, well I need to get this stuff off. I then decided that that was not me talking, but the fear someone would think that it was weird. Which I took as a challenge. So I kept it on for a few days. After deciding Sunday morning that I needed to do a lot of masculine things to account for cross dressing the previous night, I realized I didn't care at all. So I left the nail polish on, cleaned my house and cooked dinner for all my roommates. I didn't stop laughing all day at how arbitrary and artificial it all was. I can only hope that Butler or Foucault would be proud of my decisions. Or at least amused. That is, if Foucault even knows how to laugh.
Works Cited
Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion. 1995. Routledge. New York, NY.
