The discussion on CAD's poem has been
>engrossing, the one thing that worries me is that at times people have
>teetered on the verge of the simplisme that because CAD is a woman the poem
>must be ok, I know you wouldn't fall into such a statement, but I do feel
>that occasionally your rhetoric edges towards such dualism.
Dave, just a note, in all respect, I think your conclusion that "people have teetered on the verge of the simplisme that because CAD is a woman the poem must be ok," shows the degree to how you have not listened to what was actually said, concerning the poem. No one said anything like this. What has made the discussion engrossing has been its particular and often fierce focus on the reading of one poem on its own terms. There seems to be a movement here from eliding the poem's subject, female desire, to erasing the actual responses of those who discussed it. I don't know how a "statement" can be "a dualism" and a "simplisme" and "rhetoric," but it suggests a certain willful refusal to hear what is actually said.
Best,
Rebecca
www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
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>A Chide's Alphabet
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>Painting Without Numbers
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>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 10:16 PM
>Subject: Re: "form"
>
>
>At 11:22 AM +0000 1/7/03, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>>I couldn't agree more with you about those
>>simple binaries of opposition, but then your post concludes with exactly
>>such a simplicity, wherein Woman becomes a cartoon figure of the Oppressed.
>>
>
>Not really. I was simply stating the case. It was a bit of a
>problem for the Revolutionaries when women started picking up on
>these ideas about freedom and deciding that revolution could apply to
>their own specific circumstances. At the time, the subjugation of
>women was a matter of social guarantees, "each man in his place", but
>once the fabric of that was torn it got a bit dangerous. de
>Tocqueville responded by theorising that women were biologically only
>suited for reproduction and child raising - they were small and soft,
>their brains were smaller, etc. So biological determinism has always
>been part of the sexual politics of the Enlightenment. The
>Suffragettes were scorned by Leftist intellectuals as well as
>conservatives. It's well known that the radical politics of the
>1960s was not in the least interested in the specific grievances of
>women, which is one of the reasons why the Women's Liberation
>movement exploded in the 1970s (and might also explain why some
>factions of that movement were so extreme).
>
>The sexism in Marx is not merely _lurking_. His whole theory of
>economics collapses when the unpaid work of women is taken into
>account: it's the secret deficit. Society depends on that unpaid and
>unacknowledged work of raising the means, fodder and consumption of
>production, ie the population.
>
>This kind of endemic bias is not simply subsumable as "the volatility
>of human behaviour", which is one (traditional) way of marginalising
>these concerns. It is, like racism, like homophobia, deeply
>structured into the social and psychic fabric of our social
>structures: and it is specific.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>--
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>Home page
>http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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>Masthead Online
>http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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