Since this is my blog and I have creative control, I’ve decided that we should talk about feminist philosophy a bit….
It was an overcast and somewhat cold day and the sky was gray gray gray. The feminist philosophy student sat in her bedroom among the typical clutter of a college student and she allowed herself to contemplate. She contemplated taking a nap, but then decided that it was against her better judgment because she had more important things to do. She contemplated taking a nap again and then realized that she was far too much a procrastinator for her own good, so she forged ahead in trying to complete those more important tasks. On making this decision, she stopped. What exactly is important? Why shouldn’t she take a nap and just put everything off? Well, I guess she knew that in the long run contemplating and dissecting Cuomo’s, “The Philosopher Queen” and showing how Lugones’ “Enticements and Dangers of Community and Home For Radical Politics” fit in with what Cuomo was saying was a much better idea than a nap because while a nap would support her lazy desires, a paper on Cuomo and Lugones would support her expensive college education grades.
She forged ahead in her journey to discover feminist theory. What exactly was feminist theory? She opened up her notebook and began to scribble down ideas:
Feminist Theory. An extension of feminism into the philosophical realm…or theoretical realm if you will. This realm of thought is extensive and includes but is not limited to feminist politics, women and gender studies, feminist literary criticism and the roles and lives of women.
She contemplated a nap again, but then it hit her…. The web cam from the top of her monitor. It hit her straight on the noggin’ and she then regretted the decision to not take a nap, but it also became apparent to her that this feminist theory is exactly what Cuomo was talking about. “The list says: mold, immobilize, reduce, internalize, constitutes groups, benefits those with power, systemic and systematic network of forces…….. THEORY” (Cuomo, 8-9). The PQ was talking about theory the entire time; the PQ is a theorist.
The philosophy student was sitting in front of her computer. She was in the beginning of the years in the end of the beginning of her life. She was studying English writing and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater. She was sitting in front of her computer trying to figure out if she hated her life. The PQ sure stimulates a lot of thinking, or perhaps that was the purpose of the PQ. Perhaps she wanted us all to be theorists and to think about the mundane on a larger spectrum. The PS and the PQ look like they have a few things in common, they are both swimming in the sea of thought searching for reasons beyond their grasp. Does this make them both theorists? Can anyone be a theorist?
The philosophy student recalls Lugones’ struggle with oppression.
“I write for those of us in resistance to intermeshed oppressions and in the company of those with whom I struggle against oppression, from inside various complex collectivities: ‘women’ in communities struggling against the intermeshed violences of racism and battering; jotas y jotos standing our ground against erasure and being cast out; Chicanas and Chicanos in communities with a strong sense of place for whom the struggles against colonization take the form of land and water struggles” (Lugones, 194).
While Lugones really is speaking of oppression she is also defaulting to the role of a theorist. In expressing her beliefs on oppression, Lugones becomes a theorist, at least this is what the philosophy student has surmised using the PQ’s guidelines that aren’t really guidelines on being a theorist. Does this make Cuomo, Lugones and the PS all theorists?
The PS looked longingly at her disheveled bed and really wished for a nap, but again forged ahead in her quest for knowledge. She thought she should feel guilty for her incessant longing to have a nap because it was inhibiting her from getting any real work done. Soon after that she actually did feel guilty for her nap longings, so she returned to contemplating the premise of being a theorist.
Like the PQ, the PS had a fondness for philosophy and like the PQ the PS changed her views and opinions each time she read something new and seemingly convincing, but each time her new philosophy was cut to pieces by a professional on the subject pointing out the holes in the theories. Now look at them both. The PQ: “now look: here she was, a professional philosopher, a professional provider of counterarguments, a seeker of hidden assumption, and wasn’t that a thrilling life to be living at the beginning of a new century” (Cuomo 4) and the PS a student in the realm of philosophy who has grown enough to have her own views and opinions on pressing issues, morals, ethics and aesthetics, a student who contemplates the things she reads and tries to tie them to her own life and apply them accordingly. The PS has realized that this is exactly what the PQ was doing with her writing, the PQ was examining her own philosophy that she had gathered based upon experience and knowledge and forming her own philosophy or theory while doing so… this is in essence what the PS is doing with the work of the PQ. They must really both be theorists!
The PQ theorizes:
“No, no it’s not that I believed in the Philosopher King, I like democracy of course, I mean I benefit from it don’t I? But one can see the social need for an attentive, intelligent and benevolent leader, A queen who gives voice to the oppressed. Who knows her role is to seek and promote truth (not necessarily to ever really find truth)” (Cuomo, 4).
The PS finds another connection between the works of the PQ, Lugones and herself…. They are all this figurative “Queen” that the PQ speaks of. The PQ is this “Queen” because she is the one putting fourth the premise in the first place and without her premise or theory if you will, we could not have identified the “Queen”; Lugones is the “Queen” because she abides by all of the aforementioned rules of a “Queen”;
“As I form my words in this multitude, I hear my voices, and hear you hearing me. I/you extend myself/your concreteness. A I live and thing our relations, given the history and contemporary situation, I ponder and negotiate details and larger strokes, stoles kisses and endearing embraces, entrapments and tortures and inevitably, the identity markers and community relations, many fragmented and plural communities. As I feel my ground, it is in the midst of concrete, complex, non-reducible, cantankerous, fleshy, interrelated, positioned subjects, noncontainable within any easy, abstract, hard-edged, simple classification. It is from within this multitude that I want to consider the question of community” (Lugones, 196).
Lugones obviously gives voice to the oppressed. The PS is also a “Queen” because she is dissecting and theorizing the theories of others to further the understanding of said theories to anyone willing to listen. They are all “Queens”.
Though they all, of course realize that these said theories can only say so much about reality. Reality is in the eye of the beholder. This quest that they are all on for knowledge can only be so fruitless, they will never be able to “fully capture life” (Cuomo 5). Regardless of what we hear or say or do or write for that matter, we all say what we know.
The PQ demonstrated this idea by writing what she knew about dualisms, Lugones demonstrated by writing what she knew about oppression and the PS is demonstrating by writing what she knows of both of these other philosophers.
Her eyes got all droopy and she grimaced as she forged on in her work because she was far past the point of napping now to stop her thought process. Eureka!! Questioning!!!
All three of our philosophers were questioners as well! The PQ, Lugones and the PS all question philosophers and philosophies before forging ahead and/or giving in to them. This must be another quality of the theorist. Or is it?? There she goes again with the questioning.
Is it that they have too much free time on their hands so as a result thoughts get jumbled up in their brains forcing them to think things through and question reality? This can’t be the case because the PS doesn’t have any free time. She’s a full time student that is holed up in her bedroom during her waking hours churning out papers on random subjects and then sleeping and repeating the process the next day and the other two have to be busy to some degree of severity being scholars and all. So, it must just be the thirst for knowledge that fuels their fires or perhaps a crushing experience like the one the PQ suffered through in realizing that her life had been a lie…. Or perhaps that she had just been lied to her entire life. This realization occurred to her when she learned that Mark from the Gospel was a man and not God…. We’ve all been crushed in such ways… perhaps this is what adds to us being theorists…. But then again does this take away from theory? Does this make theory less concrete? Wait, theory isn’t suppose to be concrete, it is only the ones that believe fully in theories that make them out to be concrete.
In the eyes of the PS this is a flaw because build-ups lead to break downs and breakdowns lead to instability. Theories should be maintained as theories and nothing more, less we suffer a crisis of faith as the PQ did.
Theory;. “mold. Immobilize, reduce, internalize, constitutes groups, benefits those with power, systemic and systematic network of forces” (Cuomo, 8-9). Theory and oppression do look an awful lot alike if you think about it. What an excellent realization, ironic really, seeing as theorists are fighting oppression with oppressive theories. How silly.
A last commonality… the PQ, Lugones and the PS all see their problems as “such a big deal….. so important…..self-obsessed” (Cuomo, 9-10). Perhaps these are the qualities that make them into good theorists as opposed to bad ones… or maybe these are the qualities that push them over the line into the world of the philosopher. Who knows? I do know that since confusion is a constant and solving confusion is just as constant in that temporary sort of way that there is no use in my further dissecting the premise of the theorist. I do however think that it is time for that nap.
Bibliography
Cuomo, Chris. “The Philosopher Queen.” The Philosopher Queen: Feminist Essays on
war. Love and Knowledge. Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003.
Lugones, Maria. “Enticements and Dangers of Community and Home For A Radical
Politics.” Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theoirizing Coalition Against Multiple
Oppressions. Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003.
