Mikael Hart wrote:I think that innately there are parts of us that act as we are because of the gender we're born as. Hormones make us act certain ways, feel certain ways, that sort of thing. But I do agree that society plays a large role in how we behave and what we do.
When it think about it, the former is not so different from animals in how they behave with their own species. Don't male birds have certain dances and calls and colors because they are male (in order to attract females)? And yet some birds, when placed in a society where there is only one gender, will begin to pair off with each other due to the lack of the other gender?
Aha, Kristeva confuses you? Even though these classes sound interesting, I don't think I'd enjoy them as much. Too much controversy and differences of opinions going around, I think. And people always seem to take them personally.
To each their own, but I cannot reply (what is there to reply to when it comes to opinion anyhow) or agree with your opinion.
To some extent in order to even understand a theory, I have to agree with what these professors/theorists are saying (at least say "I see where you're coming from"); know where they started like Lacan and Foucault and whoever.
The theories are what they are. Kristeva's theory sounds very much like the typical, modern feminist theory. She mixes in linguistics and psychoanalysis, but she's focused on promoting "the feminine" and escaping the idealization of patriarchal society- which is basically all feminists these days.
Prior to this class I had read several books about Intersex conditions/Disorders of sex (whatever the PC is these days.) One professor (for some reason I always forget his name) used Intersex to de-construct social gender from a biological stand point (Between XX and XY.) I also read Allan Johnson, who wrote Gender Knot. Actually, when I think about it, these two books almost match up with the difference in Kristeva and Bulter's theories, but they (Kristeva and Butler) argue from language/linguistics, which is why I'm learning about them in a literary theory class.
I would've written about Postcolonialism and Culture Criticism, but we went over the theorists for those too briefly and I couldn't produce a decent vocabulary for them in the paper.
I suppose any contemporary theory is argumentative. Theory in the humanities wouldn't exists if not about something "avant garde." But then in my art theory class we're exploring the "what is art" question, which everyone and their dog has an opinion about, but what theorists debate over in that field couldn't matter less to most people. So I suppose linguistics are more viral. It's funny- Kristeva calls out art as a means of symbolic and believes that literary writing is a direct threat to it. I'm not a professor or theorist, but I think she's kind of audacious. (Though maybe she's right. It just seems kind of bizarre.)
Well, thanks for discussing it with me, Hart. It's helped me get some of it out and I think I'll have an easier time writing my paper now.
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