I know nothing about women’s or gender studies. Having completed a degree at U of T in history and religion it is surprising to me that I have managed to almost entirely pass over these two areas of study. Even in upper year seminar courses issues relating to women and gender were almost always jammed together in one lecture-- the theme of the class inevitably being “the body.” In post-colonial theory seminars we always returned to the idea of the woman’s body as the stage for the East/West, private/public, spiritual/material debate of the early 20th century Indian nationalist movement. Beyond that I have no knowledge. What is interesting to me about this lack of knowledge is that it highlights a problem mentioned by Judith Bennett in Clark’s article: women’s studies is ghettoized. From my experience, if you don’t take a course specifically dedicated to this area of study, your knowledge of these topics with regard to whatever else you are studying will be cursory at best. This is unfortunate because I think that some of the theoretical constructs proposed by feminist theorists etc. can be especially useful to those of us interested in textual-criticism.
I am currently working on a translation of the Kamasutra for one of my classes and I have found Judith Butler’s definition of “sex” and “gender” to be particularly helpful in understanding Vatsyayana’s concept of gender as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. ‘Sex’ is the biological difference between men and women while ‘gender’ is the culturally inscribed identity upon biological sex. Butler refines this idea, arguing that gender is not only “a cultural inscription of meaning upon a pregiven sex (a juridical conception)” but that “gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established.”[1] In essence what Butler means is that ‘sex’ as defined above is a culturally produced notion that is so pervasive that it appears natural. Sex, like the notion of property, masquerades as a natural fact when it is actually a cultural construct.
Understanding sex and gender to be culturally produced phenomena has helped me in analyzing Vatsyayana’s complex concept of gender. Vatsyayana, who views himself to be an objective observer of sexual phenomena, believes that he is simply providing a detailed account of all sexual practices when in truth he has actually constructed his own definition of gender and superimposed it on the various sexual practices that he describes in the text. In addition to heterosexual men and women, Vatsyayana introduces another category, the “third nature.” In the introduction to his chapter on oral sex he states that there are two types of persons of the “third nature,” one in the form of a woman and the other in the form of a man.[2] As the chapter unfolds we realize that this does not refer to the activities of both gays and lesbians. In fact, Vatsyayana has created a sliding scale of male homosexual behaviour, some acts apparently being more feminine than others. In his understanding, sex, gender, and sexual preference are conflated. These people, because of their sexual preferences, are neither man nor woman but exist in some other third category that has its own sub-categories, just as the categories of man and woman have their own sub-categories.
The grammar of this section also indicates this tension between the ‘third nature’ and femininity. He refers to people of the third nature as “she” so it is entirely possible to read this chapter as if it were actual women practicing these sexual acts. Perhaps this is simply linguistics, as the Sanskrit word for nature is feminine and so it makes sense to match it with a feminine pronoun, but perhaps his reasoning is deeper than that. Given the richness of Sanskrit vocabulary I refuse to believe that it was a coincidence that he chose a feminine word for nature. Any behaviour outside what he considers to be heterosexual male activity is pushed down the spectrum towards the feminine end. Unfortunately, he does not devote much attention to lesbian activity and so I am not able to compare his treatment of women who engage in sex with other women to see where they fall on his spectrum.
Through the use of Butler’s concept of sex and gender, I have been able to look at Vatsyayana’s text in a new light. Being attentive to how he conceives of gender, sex, and sexual preference adds a whole new dimension to the text itself. Seen in this light, I have developed a deeper appreciation for his work in that I can now see how some of his ideas were quite radical for the time.
[1] Judith Butler as qtd. in Boyarin, p. 117.
[2] Doniger and Sarkar, p. 65.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Text, Context, and the Reader
Clark opens her chapter on “Texts and Contexts” by quoting Hayden White, who formulates the problematic on text in context in recent theory:
“Where is this context which literary historian used to invoke as a matter of course to “explain” the distinctive features of the poetic text and to anchor it in an ambience more solid than words?...The text-context relationship, once an unexamined presupposition of historical investigation, has become a problem.”[1]
This problem of text and context has become a critical issue for me in the last few weeks. Like White signaling a new consciousness amongst historians of the problematic of text and context in 1982, I too am moving away from a precritical state. What is the relationship between text and context? What is text? What is context? What used to be such simple ideas ‘text’, a manuscript, and ‘context’, the time, location, date etc. in which the text was written, have now become extremely messy concepts for me. However, in the midst of all this confusion and despair regarding these questions with regard to my own project, Babak mentioned in class the idea that context can be viewed as fluid. This idea has got me thinking not only about the definitions of text and context but about the relationship that exists between the two.
Clark cites Gerard Genette’s notion of ‘transtextuality’. Genette argues that all texts exist in relation to other texts; they imitate and transform each other and new meanings are fashioned out of old ideas.[2] This idea is echoed in the works of Jacques Derrida, who argues that no text exists untouched by another text.[3] ‘Text’ in this understanding is like a knot of threads in a larger net(work) of texts/ideas/thoughts. A text cannot be viewed as a standalone document; rather, it is a weaving of various threads from a host of different sources. Given this definition of ‘text’, it is easy to see how authorial intention is thrown out the window. With so many different threads cropping up within one text it is impossible to discern what the author intended. The text, then, to those who subscribe to this view, takes on a power of its own separate from its author within this network of ideas. It becomes ‘productive’.[4]
This idea of the text being ‘productive’ is confusing to me. Is it what the reader brings to the text through a certain mode of reading that makes the text ‘productive’? Meaning, every reader will take away something new and different and so in this way the text can be seen as ‘producing’ some new thread in the larger web? Wouldn’t that really be ‘provoking’ the creation of a new thread in the mind of the scholar reading the text? Surely the text is not ‘producing’ anything of its own, or is it? Clark cites John Mowitt who argues that ‘text’ is a name for what “a certain model of reading produces when it approaches texts (in the precritical sense) as though the discourses which comprise them obstruct as much as facilitate expression.”[5] Does Mowitt mean to say that we are so influenced by our own intellectual baggage that we are handicapped in terms of understanding all that the text has to offer? In the end are we forced into the position of the strong textualist?
Mowitt’s comment also made me reconsider the relationship of text, context, and the reader. In the quote I cited above he argues that ‘text’ is the name for what a certain model or reading produces when it approaches texts in the precritical sense, which I understand to be documents. The reader, who necessarily has a context by the sheer fact of their physical existence in the world, creates a ‘text’ out of a document by approaching it through a certain methodology. A collision of reader, context, and document creates ‘text’. If this is the case then text and context are constantly reproduced for every reader and every reading. Text and context are inextricably linked to one another, the instrument of this link being the reader. There is a limit to the number of interpretations that might be produced, the limit being set by the limitations of the language of the document. Some interpretations must be better than others. The whole idea though is that there is room for multiple interpretations. This concept is interesting to me because it allows for the scholar to approach and re-approach a document each time gaining fresh insight. We are forced into the position of the strong textualist but we have the opportunity to overcome some of our limitations by being able to re-approach the text as our context changes to learn something new.
[1] Clark, p 130.
[2] p. 132.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Mowitt as qtd. in Clark, p. 132.
This problem of text and context has become a critical issue for me in the last few weeks. Like White signaling a new consciousness amongst historians of the problematic of text and context in 1982, I too am moving away from a precritical state. What is the relationship between text and context? What is text? What is context? What used to be such simple ideas ‘text’, a manuscript, and ‘context’, the time, location, date etc. in which the text was written, have now become extremely messy concepts for me. However, in the midst of all this confusion and despair regarding these questions with regard to my own project, Babak mentioned in class the idea that context can be viewed as fluid. This idea has got me thinking not only about the definitions of text and context but about the relationship that exists between the two.
Clark cites Gerard Genette’s notion of ‘transtextuality’. Genette argues that all texts exist in relation to other texts; they imitate and transform each other and new meanings are fashioned out of old ideas.[2] This idea is echoed in the works of Jacques Derrida, who argues that no text exists untouched by another text.[3] ‘Text’ in this understanding is like a knot of threads in a larger net(work) of texts/ideas/thoughts. A text cannot be viewed as a standalone document; rather, it is a weaving of various threads from a host of different sources. Given this definition of ‘text’, it is easy to see how authorial intention is thrown out the window. With so many different threads cropping up within one text it is impossible to discern what the author intended. The text, then, to those who subscribe to this view, takes on a power of its own separate from its author within this network of ideas. It becomes ‘productive’.[4]
This idea of the text being ‘productive’ is confusing to me. Is it what the reader brings to the text through a certain mode of reading that makes the text ‘productive’? Meaning, every reader will take away something new and different and so in this way the text can be seen as ‘producing’ some new thread in the larger web? Wouldn’t that really be ‘provoking’ the creation of a new thread in the mind of the scholar reading the text? Surely the text is not ‘producing’ anything of its own, or is it? Clark cites John Mowitt who argues that ‘text’ is a name for what “a certain model of reading produces when it approaches texts (in the precritical sense) as though the discourses which comprise them obstruct as much as facilitate expression.”[5] Does Mowitt mean to say that we are so influenced by our own intellectual baggage that we are handicapped in terms of understanding all that the text has to offer? In the end are we forced into the position of the strong textualist?
Mowitt’s comment also made me reconsider the relationship of text, context, and the reader. In the quote I cited above he argues that ‘text’ is the name for what a certain model or reading produces when it approaches texts in the precritical sense, which I understand to be documents. The reader, who necessarily has a context by the sheer fact of their physical existence in the world, creates a ‘text’ out of a document by approaching it through a certain methodology. A collision of reader, context, and document creates ‘text’. If this is the case then text and context are constantly reproduced for every reader and every reading. Text and context are inextricably linked to one another, the instrument of this link being the reader. There is a limit to the number of interpretations that might be produced, the limit being set by the limitations of the language of the document. Some interpretations must be better than others. The whole idea though is that there is room for multiple interpretations. This concept is interesting to me because it allows for the scholar to approach and re-approach a document each time gaining fresh insight. We are forced into the position of the strong textualist but we have the opportunity to overcome some of our limitations by being able to re-approach the text as our context changes to learn something new.
[1] Clark, p 130.
[2] p. 132.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Mowitt as qtd. in Clark, p. 132.
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