Jen's thoughts on womb envy and emancipation
Sorry this is a bit late. I had a last minute interview that I had to attend. Hope I was still able to contribute to the conversation.
I have a bit that I would like to pick apart with Ocampo on the basis of liberation and emancipation. I found it interesting that she leans more towards liberation. I also find liberation more accurate, as I’m sure many others do. However liberation means the attempt to achieve equal rights or status, where as emancipation means to free someone from the control of another. Now in most cases liberation seems to be the more obvious word, yet Ocampo continues on to describe how men occupy women, that “woman is a colony for him to exploit”(229).
I’m also curious on what people think of Ocampo’s statement “we are not interested in taking their place (this is an error that our extreme reaction to their attitudes may have contributed to creating) but in taking our own completely-something that has not happened yet” (231).
I love the question that Castro-Klaren give on feminist practices. On if we are more reactionary then action? Have our practices of feminism become more reactionary? Is that in our system to do? I also love the questions from Farina’s poetry of “How will I be able to represent myself, to rewrite myself? How do we think ourselves? Where does our thinking belong, how is it received by a discourse…that leave us out?” (273). What a fabulous creation of questions. If we are to think in terms of D’Bevoir, then the definition of women changes. Who we are is predefined, thus how do we come to know of ourselves under a predefined world, of which we were not apart of the creation of such a definition? What does it mean for us to be?
I’m wondering what people though to Flax’s critique? I liked the piece taken from Lacan, so I’m wondering if others did as well? She (Castro-Klaren) seems to be very much going off the work of Iriaquay when she discusses the phallic realizations of the mother. On a side note I love the term womb envy!