Χα!

Το 85% των Κυπρίων είναι ρατσιστές λένε οι στατιστικές.

Λες και χρειαζόμαστε τον κο Γκάλοπ για να μας πει τα χάλια μας.

Σκατά

Despair: the inability to find meaning in what takes place around you

Unfuckinbelievable

...με την καλή έννοια βέβαια.

Τα μαθες μπλογκίδιε;

Υπάρχουν άτομα που μπλογκάρουν στην κυπριακή διάλεκτο!

Πω ρε φίλε, συγκλονίστηκα.

Συγχαρητήρια στα παιδιά που χρησιμοποιούν γραπτώς ένα ιδίωμα που χρησιμοποιείται ολοένα και λιγότερο στον προφορικό λόγο.

Tες ευτζιές μου να'σιετε. (ή κάτι τέτοιο...)

Lacan and Postfeminism*

Σε μισώ, σε μισώ σε μισώ! Θα πληρώσεις γι'αυτό που με αναγκάζεις να κάνω. Ηλίθιο! Βλαμμένο!

I have always been wondering about what “postfeminism” really is; what it means outside the academy and what its political agenda is. As a term, it made me wary and forced me to regard it as suspicious and potentially complicit to the workings of patriarchy; for, it might presuppose the closure of a cycle of feminist struggle towards equality, that we no longer need feminism, that we need to defer it both spatially and temporally. Elizabeth Wright’s intriguing exegesis of the encounter between Lacanian psychoanalysis and postfeminism showed my grasp of postfeminist politics and the Lacanian revisiting of Freud leniently deficient and naïve at best. Wright’s undertaking can be considered hazardous (in the least) for she attempts to reclaim the potentials of a political and social framework-postfeminism- and a psychoanalytic theorist that have been massively disputed and are, on this account, controversial.

Apart from her methodical line of reasoning and sophisticated theoretical analysis, the discursive register she uses, fails to reduce this book-length essay to a feminist academic manual but rather it can be easily read by non experts as well. Of course, this does not entail that a person completely unacquainted with feminist theory, cultural workings and Lacanian psychoanalysis would be able to fully understand the intricacies of Wright’s argument.

Wright, then, begins with a discussion of postfeminism; what she calls a “positive” and “negative” reading of postfeminism. She emphasizes the self- transforming process in which postfeminism finds itself and the critical positioning towards feminism it has to take precisely because of this process. Nevertheless, she also tries to map out the temporal deferral of feminism that postfeminism appears to be emblematic of. She talks about postfeminism as a sabotaging attempt against feminism’s inability for collective action and consideration of difference. What is at stake, Wright seems to imply, is identity; for, postfeminism endorses the kind of postmodern discourse of the dispersion of subjectivity, of the inability to talk about stable and fixed identities. According to her, this is exactly where psychoanalysis comes in and illuminates the debate on the crisis of feminism, not only because psychoanalysis is the only discourse that offers a theory of the unconscious but also (and most importantly so) because this theory works to destabilize and transform any kind of supposedly lived and whole-some experience while it provides the possibility to escape rigorous and clearly delineated definitions of sexual difference, which any discourse- be that feminism or postfeminism- engaged in a polemic against male dominance is in need of.

All the aforementioned, however, are not new. As a matter of fact, these are issues debated upon since the advent and proliferation of psychoanalytic theories of sexual difference and the emergence and struggles of second wave feminism. Wright’s contribution to this field of past contestation and cultural practices is that she seems to insist that one should revisit (or rather refrain from misreading) Lacan’s process of sexuation and thus conceptualize what his analysis of sexual difference might bring to postfeminism. Sexuation is for Lacan one of the major assets of psychoanalysis, that is, the process through which a subject “chooses” between different sexual modes of being. Wright argues that the way in which Lacan understands sexuation can make valuable contributions to a possible postfeminist political agenda since –as she tries to chart it-, Lacan’s symbolic logic of the sexuation process entails that the speaking subject -be that biologically male or female- has the potential to inscride (or ally) itself to traditionally considered as transgressive gender roles. The formulaic representation (which is difficult to transfer here) of the instability and flux characterizing the subject also shows that the phallic function –the function of castration according to Lacan- which enables the subject's entrance into the symbolic applies to both sexes yet in different ways. This aspect of Wright’s argument is of extreme importance both because it casts the voices that reject Lacan’s theory as phallogocentric suspicious but most importantly it aligns Lacan to the postfeminist tendency to regard subjectivity (and by extension femininity) as a process of everlasting transformations and thus infinite potentials for self-realization and political positioning.

Although small in size, Lacan and Postfeminism is a tour de force that incites readers to problematize positive (as opposed to negative, hyphenated or fluctuating) identity from a different and altogether new perspective.

*Μπλογκίδιε, αυτό μην το διαβάσεις αγόρι μου. Για το καλό σου το λέω.

Θα σας πνίξω βλαμμένα.

Είναι ανυπόφορο το αθώο σας βλέμμα.
Απεχθάνομαι την εμπιστοσύνη και την αγάπη που βλέπω στα μάτια σας.
Δεν απεχθάνομαι την εμπιστοσύνη και την αγάπη, απεχθάνομαι τη δική σας εμπιστοσύνη και τη δική σας αγάπη γιατί είναι ανκοντίσιοναλ. Δεν ζητάτε τίποτα, απλά δίνετε.

Δε σας μισώ. Σας ζηλεύω.
Ζηλεύω την αδιάφορη αθωότητά σας, την ικανότητά σας να αγαπήσετε και να εμπιστευτείτε. Έτσι απλά...

Πιο πολύ σας φοβάμαι όμως.
Φοβάμαι τη μέρα που θα σβήσει η αθωότητα από τα μάτια σας.
Φοβάμαι τη μέρα που θα σταματήσετε να αγαπάτε και να εμπιστεύεστε έτσι απλά.
Φοβάμαι γιατί εκείνη τη μέρα θα μας ξεσκίσετε και θα έχετε και δίκιο.

Να ξέρεις

Είμαι και εγώ θυμωμένη

με τον εαυτό μου

που το τράβηξα τόσο πολύ

Today

I'm on GREEN MODE.

Όχι γιατί πρασίνισα από τη ζήλια μου (αν και έχω άπειρους λόγους να το κάνω)

Ούτε γιατί είμαι φυτό (αν και κάποιοι πιστεύουν το αντίθετο)

Ούτε γιατί είμαι οικολόγΑ.

Όχι, όχι.

Έγινα πράσινη τιμής ένεκεν του 1ου ομονοιάτη γριβικού που γνώρισα.

Ναι, βέβαια. Στην περίπτωση του, η πατρική πειθώς* ήταν ισχυρότερη από την προπαγάνδα της ΕΔΟΝ.

Πάει χάλασε ο κόσμος...

*Τον κλείδωσε στο μπάνιο χωρίς φαί μέχρι να αλλαξοπιστήσει. Απορώ πού κατουρούσαν ιν δε μιντάιμ.