Majewska, Ewa, Postdoc

By Gunnel Karlsson on 11 Mar | 0 comments

PHOTO: Joanna Erbel

Ewa Majewska, PhD in Philosophy, Gender Studies, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, Poland.

GEXcel Project:
Love in translation: A proposal for feminist critical theory of neoliberalism

“Criticism” is transformed into a transcendental being. These Berliners do not
regard themselves as men who criticize, but as critics who, incidentally,
have the misfortune of being men. (…) This criticism therefore
lapses into a sad and supercilious intellectualism. Consciousness or self-consciousness is
regarded as the only human quality. Love, for example, is rejected,
because the loved one is only an “object”.  Down with the object.
(…)It is therefore regarded as the greatest crime if the critic
displays feeling or passion, he must be an ironical ice-cold sage”.
Marx, from a letter to Ludwig Feuerbach, 11 Aug. 1844.

In contemporary, neoliberal societies primarily focused on effectiveness and productivity, love, as we remember it, especially in its romanticized versions, does not seem to be the first and most important social factor. Some even claim, that in the late capitalism the requirements of precarious condition and effectiveness, fast change and unmaking of long term bonds meets the liberatory expectations of feminism (See the work of Anthony Giddens for that). Paradoxical as it might sound – the needs of women are sometimes assumed to be accomplished within the least compassionate version of capitalist economy.

My working hypothesis would be that the feminist theorizing of love should also critically confront the paradigm of neoliberal productivity and the reductions of the richness of social life only to these elements, which might seem immediately profitable. In my research I would like to stay close to the context of the Polish transformation after 1989, which happened to be one of the applications of the Chicago neoliberal models. I will try to apply here some notions from various critiques of colonialism and since the famous phrase of Alfred Jarry from the Ubu le Roi (“In Poland, meaning nowhere”) still seems to be true, I will have to include some explanations of where/ what Poland and/or the second world actually is.

After so many years of feminist and postcolonial critique it would seem impossible for me to claim, that my own narrative is a transparent, objective knowledge transcendental to the described practices. I am convinced that various feminist and postcolonial critiques of the transcendental subject are substantial, so – although I think we should thank Kant for his discovery, that every knowledge is conditioned and for his notion of critique, we should also deconstruct his detachment from the material and the emotional.

I would like to start my research with a reconstruction of the place and role of love within translation. For both – Gayatri Spivak and Walter Benjamin, love is an indispensible condition of any act of translation, just like in Kant imagination seems to be at the foundation of any cognition, Kant actually calls imagination “a blind but indispensable function of the soul”, we do not hear much more about it in the “First Critique” just as we do not hear more about love in the above mentioned texts on translation.

The practice of translation, if seen as a modus vivendi rather, than a yet another type of job, confronts us with many things that are excluded within the success oriented, quick and short-term goals focused model of neoliberal productivity. There is a resistance in it, a resistance to understanding, to translating and to communicating. While the neoliberal governance claims, that there is no impossibility, markets are as flexible as yoga masters, and human psyche has the same adaptation skills as the stock market, well – the theories of translation teach us, that not only not everything is translatable, but that even in the translation in process the first thing we encounter is the foreignness – of the language, of the other and of the self.

As key element of translation, love can be seen as its core – as the site for the practice of translation but also as the site of resistance. That is how it has been understood by some Latina and Chicana feminist authors, including Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Norma Alarcon and Maria Lugones, just to name a few – as a site of resistance and as a “methodology of the oppressed”. Here, in the third part of my research, I will try to explain, how love as resistance might be interesting for a critical feminist theory, and how I understand the “critical” here.

In my work I will refer to the concept of “love power” of Anna Jonasdottir, especially to the connection she proposes between the caring and the sexual/ecstatic love, which I find particularly important. My discussion with her concept sometimes becomes an element of a much wider discussion between the paradigms of historical materialism, critiques of ideology and poststructuralism. I am particularly keen on feminist reworking of these debates, and I really think that instead of combining all paradigms we can learn from each other and work on a multiplicity of paradigms. Just as much as I think a connection between critical theory and poststructuralism is important, I do not think theorizing a contradiction without solving it always leads nowhere. And even if it does – “nowhere”, as we have seen in Jarry – can for some be home.

Selected bibliography
Adorno T. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1963, 1969), trans. H. W. Pickford, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998
Agamben G. Homo Sacer. Homo sacer. Power and Bare Life, Stanford 1998.
Althusser L., Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d'Etat Positions, Editions sociales, Paryż 1976
Anzaldua, G., Borderlands/La Frontera, San Francisco 1999
Bauman, Z. Liquid Love. On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Polity Press, 2003.
Beck, U. i Beck-Gernsheim, E., Individualization. Institutionalised Inividualism and its Social and Political Consequences, Londyn 2002.
Benhabib, S., Cornell D., (red) Feminism as Critique, Minneapolis 1988.
Benjamin, W., Illuminations, Trans. Harry Zohn. Edited and with Introduction by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968
Butler J., Bodies that Matter, Nowy Jork 1992.
Giddens A., Przemiany intymności. Seksualność, miłość i erotyzm we współczesnych społeczeństwach, przeł. Szulżycka A., Warszawa 2006.
Gilligan C., In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development, Harvard 1982.
D. Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in: Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988)
hooks, b. Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center, South End Press, 2000.
Jaggar A., Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Rowman & Allanheld Publishers, Inc, 1983.
Jaggar A., Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology [w:] Garry, A., Pearsall, M. (red.),     Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, Routledge 1989.
Jonasdottir, A., Love Power and Political Interests, Ørebro studies 7: Høgskolan i Ørebro, 1991.