Revolutionary Time

Fanny Soderback

Description

This book is the first to examine the relationship between time and sexual difference in the work of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. Because of their association with reproduction, embodiment, and the survival of the species, women have been confined to the cyclical time of nature—a temporal model that is said to merely repeat itself. Men, on the other hand, have been seen as bearers of linear time and as capable of change and progress. Fanny Söderbäck argues that both these temporal models make change impossible because they either repeat or repress the past. The model of time developed here—revolutionary time—aims at returning to and revitalizing the past so as to make possible a dynamic-embodied present and a future pregnant with change. Söderbäck stages an unprecedented conversation between Kristeva and Irigaray on issues of both time and difference, and engages thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt, and Plato along the way.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Part I. Why Time?

Introduction: Time for Change
French Feminism and the Problem of Time
On Time and Change
Decolonial and Queer Critiques of Time
A Note on Language

Part II. Revolutionary Time

1. Linear Time, Cyclical Time, Revolutionary Time
From Beauvoir’s Sexual Division of Temporal Labor to Revolutionary Time
Three Temporal Models, Three Feminist Waves
Kristeva and Irigaray on Time and Difference
Conclusion

2. Alterity and Alteration
Time, Change, and Sexuate Difference
Remaking Immanence and Transcendence
Mimesis, Imitation, and Strategic Displacement
Conclusion

3. Revolutionizing Time
Returning to the Body . . . and the Soul
Intimate Revolt: The Time of Psychoanalysis
Re-Membering the Past: Memorial Art
Conclusion

Part III. The Present

4. The Problem of the Present
Metaphysical Presence
Metaphysical Absence
To Be Finite Is to Have Been Born
Conclusion

5. Temporalizing the Present
Breathing Life into Presence: The Praxis of Yoga and Pranayama
(Re)presenting Becoming: Poetry as a Practice of Presencing
Time for Love: Presence as Co-presence
Conclusion

6. An Ethics of Temporal Difference
On the Propriety of Self and Other
Becoming Two: Encountering the Stranger Within
(Un)Timely Revolutions: The Timelessness of the Unconscious
Conclusion

Part IV. The Past

7. Returning to the Maternal Body
Feminism and Motherhood
Mothers Lost: Matricide
Other Mothers: A Colonial Maternal Continent
Conclusion

8. Motherhood According to Kristeva
Plato’s Cho¯ra Revisited: Receptacle or Revolutionary?
Flesh Flash: On Time and Motherhood
Temporalizing Mat(t)er: On the Interdependence Between Semiotic and Symbolic
Conclusion

9. Motherhood According to Irigaray
Plato’s Cave Revisited: An Impossible Metaphor
The Substitution of Origins for Beginnings
Mother Lost, Time Lost
Conclusion

Part V. The Future

A Non-Conclusive Conclusion: New Beginnings
Suspended Time, Foreclosed Futures
Arendt and the Unpredictability of the Future
New Beginnings
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438477015
• Langue: English

Extrait

REVOLUTIONARY TIME
REVOLUTIONARY TIME
On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray
Fanny Söderbäck
Cover art: Anne Thulin, Swerve , pigment, acrylic, and wax on paper, 2018
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Söderbäck, Fanny, 1978– author.
Title: Revolutionary time : on time and difference in Kristeva and Irigaray / Fanny Söderbäck.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059958 | ISBN 9781438476995 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477015 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Time. | Sex differences. | Feminist theory. | Kristeva, Julia, 1941– | Irigaray, Luce.
Classification: LCC B638 .S63 2019 | DDC 115—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059958
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For James, who taught me how to ride the swerves.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
PART I. WHY TIME?
Introduction: Time for Change
French Feminism and the Problem of Time
On Time and Change
Decolonial and Queer Critiques of Time
A Note on Language
PART II. REVOLUTIONARY TIME
1 Linear Time, Cyclical Time, Revolutionary Time
From Beauvoir’s Sexual Division of Temporal Labor to Revolutionary Time
Three Temporal Models, Three Feminist Waves
Kristeva and Irigaray on Time and Difference
Conclusion
2 Alterity and Alteration
Time, Change, and Sexuate Difference
Remaking Immanence and Transcendence
Mimesis, Imitation, and Strategic Displacement
Conclusion
3 Revolutionizing Time
Returning to the Body … and the Soul
Intimate Revolt: The Time of Psychoanalysis
Re-Membering the Past: Memorial Art
Conclusion
PART III. THE PRESENT
4 The Problem of the Present
Metaphysical Presence
Metaphysical Absence
To Be Finite Is to Have Been Born
Conclusion
5 Temporalizing the Present
Breathing Life into Presence: The Praxis of Yoga and Pranayama
(Re)presenting Becoming: Poetry as a Practice of Presencing
Time for Love: Presence as Co-presence
Conclusion
6 An Ethics of Temporal Difference
On the Propriety of Self and Other
Becoming Two: Encountering the Stranger Within
(Un)Timely Revolutions: The Timelessness of the Unconscious
Conclusion
PART IV. THE PAST
7 Returning to the Maternal Body
Feminism and Motherhood
Mothers Lost: Matricide
Other Mothers: A Colonial Maternal Continent
Conclusion
8 Motherhood According to Kristeva
Plato’s Chōra Revisited: Receptacle or Revolutionary?
Flesh Flash: On Time and Motherhood
Temporalizing Mat(t)er: On the Interdependence Between Semiotic and Symbolic
Conclusion
9 Motherhood According to Irigaray
Plato’s Cave Revisited: An Impossible Metaphor
The Substitution of Origins for Beginnings
Mother Lost, Time Lost
Conclusion
PART V. THE FUTURE
A Non-Conclusive Conclusion: New Beginnings
Suspended Time, Foreclosed Futures
Arendt and the Unpredictability of the Future
New Beginnings
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This book has taken me a decade to write, and there is no way that my remarks here can do justice to the incredible community of people who have supported me along the way. It was conceived as a dissertation project at The New School for Social Research, underwent revisions during my years at Siena College, then final changes in my time at DePaul University. Ten years, three institutional contexts, countless revisions, and an amazing community of interlocutors.
From my time at The New School, I owe special thanks to Jay Bernstein, whose thesis supervision and mentoring were invaluable; Claudia Baracchi, in whose seminar on French Feminism the idea to examine the question of time in the work of Kristeva and Irigaray was born; and Tina Chanter, my external reader, whose work has been, and continues to be, a source of inspiration for my own thought. The folks in People in Support of Women in Philosophy , among others Grayson Hunt, Marianne LeNabat, Karen Ng, and Francey Russell, provided a vital and nourishing social context for what can otherwise be a lonely endeavor. Ella Brians, Kristin Gissberg, and Rocío Zambrana were there from the very start, and have offered helpful feedback along the way. Rocío was, and continues to be, the philosophical sister that carried me through, and for that I am forever grateful.
At Siena College I was blessed with supportive colleagues in and beyond my department. Special thanks to Karen Ng for postpartum soup, to Laurie Naranch for keeping the feminist conversations going, to Vera Eccarius-Kelly for being a force of nature, to Marcela Garcés for reminding me of what matters in life, and to Jennifer McErlean for making life-changing introductions.
I completed this book at DePaul University, where I am lucky to have first-rate colleagues and students. My wholehearted thanks go out to the students in my graduate seminar on Luce Irigaray, where I fine-tuned many of the ideas running through this book, and to the fantastic group of philosophers who make up my academic home and who inspire me in my daily work. I especially want to thank María del Rosario Acosta López, whose intellectual energy and loving friendship is one of a kind.
Importantly, I would like to thank Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. It is as daunting as it is exciting to write a book on two thinkers who are not only alive, but who still lead very active intellectual lives. My work owes a great deal to the conversations I had with Luce Irigaray at the doctoral seminar she taught at Liverpool Hope University in the summer of 2007, as well as the tightknit community of scholars who partook in that course. Similarly, the three seminars I took with Julia Kristeva at The New School for Social Research in 2004, 2006, and 2008 provided important insights into her work, and marked the beginning of a lasting intellectual friendship for which I am immensely grateful. My reading of both of these thinkers’ work has, in other words, been informed by their teaching in the present and by questions that they themselves have raised in response to my work. This has brought the texts with which I engage to life—a fact that seems especially apt given the importance that I ascribe to life and aliveness in my examination of time.
I want to extend thanks to the participants of the many conferences and workshops where I have presented bits and pieces of this book, and who have asked all the right questions along the way. I am particularly indebted to members of the Irigaray Circle and the Kristeva Circle. I want to also express my gratitude to the many individuals beyond my institutional affiliations, who, at different stages of the process, have read drafts, provided invaluable comments, and stubbornly challenged and engaged me in conversation about the matters treated here: Sara Beardsworth, Emanuela Bianchi, Matt Congdon, Ben Goldfarb, Lisa Guenther, Matt Hackett, Sarah Hansen, Sabrina Hom, Martin Hägglund, Rachel Jones, Thomas Khurana, Sina Kramer, Lisa Folkmarson Käll, Anne van Leeuwen, Mary Beth Mader, Lori Marso, Danae McLeod, Sara McNamara, Elaine Miller, Holly Moore, Johanna Oksala, Kelly Oliver, and Adam Rosen-Carole. Thanks to the mentorship of Cecilia Sjöholm, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, and Fredrika Spindler, who believed in me in my very earliest days of philosophizing, and who continue to inspire. I also want to thank the two anonymous readers who offered productive feedback, and who pushed me to make crucial improvements to the manuscript. The book is far better thanks to their careful reading. And Andrew Kenyon at SUNY Press, whose trust and support made it all possible.
I am grateful to Anne Thulin for making the beautiful art work for the cover—a red revolutionary swerve that only Anne could have made—and to Tana Ross for providing the abode in which much of this book was written. I am indebted to Eileen Nizer for her editorial work, and to Eliza Little for making the index. My Swedish community—Karin Andersson, Stina Bergman, Hanna Larsson, Marcus Lindeen, Annika Malmborg, and Julia Marko-Nord among others—have sustained me through summer research and much needed breaks. My lifelong friendship with Stina keeps me grounded. I also owe thanks to Shayna Silverstein for helping me navigate new beginnings. I am blessed by the presence in my life of Shiri Levinas, who provides orientation, and Nikki Byrd, with whom important foundations were laid. And, of course, my parents—Yvonne Rock and Björn Söderbäck—and my siblings—Jonna Rock and Joel Söderbäck—for their unfaltering support and encouragement on this decade-long journey.
It is hard not to notice that my intellectual support system is mostly female. It is women who have nourished me, kept me sane, let conversations spill into the night, and who have