Re: AUT: critiquing biological determinism/ideology of difference

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <bartelbyvqf@xxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 22. juli 2002 03.24
Subject: Re: AUT: critiquing biological determinism/ideology of difference


> Well right,
> the article takes a very idealist approach. But rather than the idealism
of the late enlightenment, which the writer characterizes as a product of
the experience of the world from a male perspective, it posits a female
telos. The writer Carla Lonzi clarifies that she is not speaking in
biological determinist terms but in terms of how (at least) her worldview
begins from a different orientation than that of, as she says in the title,
Hegel. The article places itself in the context of the second wave of
feminism in Italy but really fails to explain how feminism got to that point
and extrapolate from that where it must go.
> mcapri

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mcapri, is the enlightment such an onedimentional experience that
it is possible to either wholly support or wholly reject? And is not the
enlightment also a critical part of the historical foundation of a
women's liberation movement? Her worldview begins from a different
orientation than that of Hegel. But does really question of fe/male
perspective rely on what one might think of the intellectual contribution
of Hegel? Is it not better to say that a specific male or female "telos"
-- if you first accept that the more than doubtful claim that something
like that is at all possible -- is something that should be rejected. The
life of men and women on this earth is far too interwined, and composed
of too many specific histories, to single out a particular female worldview.
I know for certain for instance that anything that might be described as
a "female worldview" is quite different  in the southcoast towns of
Norway than it is in North of Norway, for instance. Might not Carla Lonzi
be confusing her own worldview with that of some imagined
transhistorical womankind as a whole?
        This said, it still only women that can get pregnant, and despite
some modern artificial methods of bringing children into this earth --
that is a transhistorical reality. But I am far from sure that it from this
follows a particular judgement of Hegel, or that any critique of Hegel
relies on this. And can the thoughts of Raya Dunayevskaya, whatever
one might think of it, simple be reduced to a male worldview?

What is certain though is that the life-experience of women was
silenced on political/public arena throughout much of human
history, as has in fact been the life-experience of the majority of men.
That this has impoverished the "worldview" of us all, there can be little
doubt, even if is never was so that these voices were wholly silenced
in all spheres of life, nor that the situation was precisly the same
everywhere. I also suspect that influence of Hegel has been rather
minimal on the worldview of men and women in the North of Norway,
unlike the the influence of the mighty forces of the Ocean and all  the
lifes lost there while trying to harvest it riches.

Harald



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