interview with rosi braidotti.pdf

8/20/2015 New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/11515701.0001.001/1:4.1/--new-materialism-interviews-cartographies?rgn=div2;view=fulltext 1/23

I. INTERVIEWS > 1. “THE NOTION OF THE UNIVOCITY OF BEING OR SINGLE MATTER POSITIONSDIFFERENCE AS A VERB OR PROCESS OF BECOMING AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER”

1. “The notion of the univocity of Being orsingle matter positions difference as a verbor process of becoming at the heart of thematter”

Interview with Rosi BraidottiQ1: In your contribution to Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook’sDeleuze and Feminist Theory you coined the term “neomaterialism”and provided a genealogy of it. Focusing on theories of the subject,one of the red threads running through your work, your genealogy“Descartes’ nightmare, Spinoza’s hope, Nietzsche’s complaint, Freud’sobsession, Lacan’s favorite fantasy” (Braidotti 2000, 159) is followedby a definition of the subject, the “I think” as the body of which it is anidea, which we see as the emblem of the new materialism:

A piece of meat activated by electric waves of desire, atext written by the unfolding of genetic encoding.Neither a sacralised inner sanctum, nor a pure sociallyshaped entity, the enfleshed Deleuzian subject is ratheran ‘inbetween’: it is a foldingin of external influencesand a simultaneous unfolding outwards of affects. Amobile entity, an enfleshed sort of memory that repeatsand is capable of lasting through sets of discontinuousvariations, while remaining faithful to itself. TheDeleuzian body is ultimately an embodied memory(ibid.).



In this text you stay close to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze whendeveloping the new materialism. The term, however, can already befound in Patterns of Dissonance, where you state that “a generaldirection of thought is emerging in feminist theory that situates theembodied nature of the subject, and consequently the question ofalternatively sexual difference or gender, at the heart of matter. […]This leads to a radical rereading of materialism, away from itsstrictly Marxist definition. […] The neomaterialism of Foucault, thenew materiality proposed by Deleuze are […] a point of no return forfeminist theory” (Braidotti 1991, 263–6), and in Nomadic Subjectswhere it is stated that “What emerges in poststructuralist feministreaffirmations of difference is […] a new materialist theory of the textand of textual practice” (Braidotti 1994, 154). How is “genealogy”important for you, and how is it that the fullfledgedconceptualization of the new materialism came about in a text thatfocused on the philosophy of Deleuze?

Rosi Braidotti: You’re right in pointing out the progressivedevelopment of and identification with the label “neo-materialism”within the corpus of my nomadic thought. Patterns of Dissonanceannounces my general project outline in theoretical terms, which areexpressed in the mainstream language that is typical of book versionsof former PhD dissertations. Then there follows a trilogy, composed byNomadic Subjects, Metamorphoses and Transpositions. NomadicSubjects—which incidentally has just been re-issued by ColumbiaUniversity Press in a totally revised second edition seventeen yearsafter its original publication (Braidotti 2011b)—already has a morecontroversial message and a more upbeat style. Metamorphoses andTranspositions pursue the experiment in a conceptual structure thathas grown more complex and rhizomatic and a style that attempts todo justice to this complexity, while not losing touch with the readersaltogether.



More theoretically, I would argue that, throughout the 1980’s, a textsuch as Althusser’s “Pour un materialisme aléatoire” had established aconsensus across the whole spectrum of his students—Foucault,Deleuze, Balibar. It was clear that contemporary materialism had to beredefined in the light of recent scientific insights, notablypsychoanalysis, but also in terms of the critical enquiry into themutations of advanced capitalism. It was understood that the post-‘68thinkers had to be simultaneously loyal to the Marxist legacy, but alsocritical and creative in adapting it to the fast-changing conditions oftheir historicity. That theoretico-political consensus made the term“materialist” both a necessity and a banality for somepoststructuralists. Leading figures in the linguistic turn, such asBarthes and Lacan, wrote extensively and frequently about “themateriality of the sign.” In a way there was no real need to add theprefix “neo-” to the new materialist consensus at that point in time.That, however, will change.

What is clear is that by the mid-1990’s the differences among thevarious strands and branches of the post-structuralist project werebecoming more explicit. The hegemonic position acquired by thelinguistic branch—developed via psychoanalysis and semiotics into afully-fledged deconstructive project that simply conqueredintellectually the United States—intensified the need for clearer termsof demarcation and of theoretical definition. Thus “neo-materialism”emerges as a method, a conceptual frame and a political stand, whichrefuses the linguistic paradigm, stressing instead the concrete yetcomplex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power.

At that point, it became clear to me that the genealogical line thatconnected me to Canguilhem, Foucault and Deleuze also marked adistinctive tradition of thought on issues of embodiment and politicalsubjectivity. The terminological differences between this branch andthe deconstructive one also became sharper, as did the political



priorities. Accordingly, “nomadic subjects” is neither aboutrepresentation nor about recognition but rather about expression andactualization of practical alternatives. Gilles Deleuze—from his(smoky) seminar room at Vincennes—provided lucid and illuminatingguidance to those involved in the project of redefining what exactly isthe “matter” that neo-materialism is made of. Things get moreconceptually rigorous from that moment on.

Feminism, of course, did more than its share. Feminist philosophybuilds on the embodied and embedded brand of materialism that waspioneered in the last century by Simone de Beauvoir. It combines, in acomplex and groundbreaking manner, phenomenological theory ofembodiment with Marxist—and later on poststructuralist—re-elaborations of the complex intersection between bodies and power.This rich legacy has two long-lasting theoretical consequences. Thefirst is that feminist philosophy goes even further than mainstreamcontinental philosophy in rejecting dualistic partitions of minds frombodies or nature from culture. Whereas the chasm between the binaryoppositions is bridged by Anglo-American gender theorists throughdynamic schemes of social constructivism (Butler and Scott eds. 1992),continental feminist perspectives move towards either theories ofsexual difference or a monistic political ontology that makes thesex/gender distinction redundant.

The second consequence of this specific brand of materialism is thatoppositional consciousness combines critique with creativity, in a“double-edged vision” (Kelly 1979) that does not stop at criticaldeconstruction but moves on to the active production of alternatives.Thus, feminist philosophers have introduced a new brand ofmaterialism, of the embodied and embedded kind. The cornerstone ofthis theoretical innovation is a specific brand of situated epistemology(Haraway 1988), which evolves from the practice of “the politics oflocation” (Rich 1985) and infuses standpoint feminist theory and the



debates with postmodernist feminism (Harding 1991) throughout the1990s.

As a meta-methodological innovation, the embodied and embeddedbrand of feminist materialist philosophy of the subject introduces abreak from both universalism and dualism. As for the former,universalist claims to a subject position that allegedly transcendsspatio-temporal and geo-political specificities are criticised for beingdis-embodied and dis-embedded, i.e., abstract. Universalism, bestexemplified in the notion of “abstract masculinity” (Hartsock 1987)and triumphant whiteness (Ware 1992), is objectionable not only onepistemological, but also on ethical grounds. Situated perspectives laythe pre-conditions for ethical accountability for one’s own implicationswith the very structures one is analyzing and opposing politically. Thekey concept in feminist materialism is the sexualized nature and theradical immanence of power relations and their effects upon the world.In this Foucauldian perspective, power is not only negative orconfining (potestas), but also affirmative (potentia) or productive ofalternative subject positions and social relations.

Feminist anti-humanism, also known as postmodern feminism,expanded on the basic critique of one-sided universalism, whilepointing out the dangers implicit in a flat application of equalopportunities policies. Contrary to “standpoint theory” (Harding1986), post-humanist feminist philosophers do not unquestionablyrely on the notion of “difference,” as the dialectical motor of socialchange. They rather add more complexity to this debate by analyzingthe ways in which “otherness” and “sameness” interact in anasymmetrical set of power relations. This is analogous to Deleuze’stheories of Otherness; his emphasis on processes, dynamic interactionand fluid boundaries is a materialist, high-tech brand of vitalism,which makes Deleuze’s thought highly relevant to the analysis of thelate industrialist patriarchal culture we inhabit. Furthermore,



Deleuze’s work is of high relevance for feminism: not only does hedisplay a great empathy with issues of difference, sexuality andtransformation, but he also invests the site of the feminine withpositive force. Conveyed by figurations such as the non-Oedipal Alice:the little girl about to be dispossessed of her body by the Oedipal Law,or by the more affirmative figure of the philosopher’s fiancée Ariadne,the feminine face of philosophy is one of the sources of thetransmutation of values from negative into affirmative. Thismetamorphosis allows Deleuze to overcome the boundaries thatseparate mere critique from active empowerment. Last but not least,Deleuze’s emphasis on the “becoming woman” of philosophy marks anew kind of masculine style of philosophy: it is a philosophicalsensibility which has learned to undo the straitjacket of phallocentrismand to take a few risks. In Deleuze’s thought, the “other” is not theemblematic and invariably vampirized mark of alterity, as in classicalphilosophy. Nor is it a fetishized and necessarily othered “other,” as indeconstruction. It is a moving horizon of exchanges and becoming,towards which the non-unitary subjects of postmodernity move, are bywhich they are moved in return.

This double genealogy makes my own relationship to materialism intoa lifelong engagement with complexities and inner contradictions.

Q2: In the same chapter in Deleuze and Feminist Theory the newmaterialism is also called “antimaternalist” (Braidotti 2000, 172).Maternal feminism surely is, along with feminist standpoint theory, afeminist materialism. So, on the menu we find “the naturalisticparadigm” and its “definitive loss” (ibid., 158), feminist materialisms,“social constructivism” (ibid.), and, finally, “a more radical sense ofmaterialism” (ibid., 161), that is, an “antiessentialism” (ibid., 158), “aform of neomaterialism and a blend of vitalism that is attuned to thetechnological era” (ibid., 160). In Metamorphoses you propose acartographical method for contemporary philosophical dialogue



according to which “we think of powerrelations simultaneously asthe most ‘external’, collective, social phenomenon and also as the mostintimate or ‘internal’ one” (Braidotti 2002a, 6). Looking back at yourchapter in Deleuze and Feminist Theory, how would you employ thismethod to draw a contemporary map of the new feminist materialistdialogue? Or, from a slightly different angle, your chapter fromPatterns of Dissonance on the radical philosophies of sexual difference(a branch of feminist theory that does not necessarily overlap withthe trademarked “French feminism” and which is very much amaterialism) closes with the provocative question: “have they beenheard?” (Braidotti 1991, 273). How would you answer your 1991question nowadays, amidst the theorizations of new feministmaterialisms?

RB: The issue of the relationship between the material and thematernal was crucial for my generation. Part of it was contextual: wewere the first ones in fact to enjoy the privilege of having strong,feminist teachers and supervisors in our academic work. In my case, Ihad as teachers and role models women of the caliber of GenevieveLloyd and Luce Irigaray, Michelle Perrot and Joan Scott—to mentionjust the major ones. Talk about the anxiety of influence! This sort oflineage made the issue of the oedipalization of the pedagogicalrelationship into a crucial and complicated matter. Another reason forit was of course theoretical: if you look back at the scholarship of the1980s, you will find a plethora of texts and treatises on pedagogics andmother-daughter relationships. Psychoanalysis alone blew this issueout of all proportions, and with the privilege of hindsight you may saythat the entire post-1968 generation has a big negative relation to theirmothers and fathers. I guess all members of a revolutionary generationare marked by the violence of a break, an inevitable rupture from theprevious generation.

Personally, I fast grew allergic to the whole oedipal theme, also



because I witnessed the many violent and sharp conflicts it engenderedin the feminist community—the clash between Cixous and de Beauvoirbeing a legendary one. In some ways I was scared of the negativepassions that the “maternal” mobilized in a highly politicized context. Iconsequently took shelter in the first volume of Capitalism andSchizophrenia, aptly called AntiOedipus, and made sure to apply it tothe question of how to develop an independent yet loyal system ofthought in relation to the development of feminist philosophy. Thischoice coincided with my decision to bring feminism into theinstitutions, which I took as a process of democratic accountability.Central to it, of course, is the project of inter-generational justice.

All of my cartographies are as inclusive as I’m capable of making themand I’ve carefully avoided sectarianism, while taking a firm theoreticaland political stand (Braidotti 2010). This standpoint was also for me away of staying sane through the multiple “theory wars” and “culturewars” we witnessed through the 1990’s, as the right wing took over theagenda in the USA and the post-1989 global consensus tends todismiss the key traditions of thought I consider as fundamental for mywork: Marxist and post-structuralist theories of materialism.

Right now there is a need for a systematic meta-discursive approach tothe interdisciplinary methods of feminist philosophy. This is amongthe top priorities for philosophy today (Alcoff 2000) as well aswomen’s, gender and feminist studies as an established discipline(Wiegman 2002). If it is the case that what was once subversive is nowmainstream, it follows that the challenge for feminist philosopherstoday is how to hold their position, while striving to achieve moreconceptual creativity (Deleuze and Guattari [1991] 1994).

In a globally connected and technologically mediated world that ismarked by rapid changes, structural inequalities and increasedmilitarization, feminist scholarship has intensified theoretical and



methodological efforts to come to grips with the complexities of thepresent, while resisting the moral and cognitive panic that marks somuch of contemporary social theories of globalization (Fukuyama2002, Habermas 2003). With the demise of postmodernism, which hasgone down in history as a form of radical scepticism and moral andcognitive relativism, feminist philosophers tend to move beyond thelinguistic mediation paradigm of deconstructive theory and to workinstead towards the production of robust alternatives. Issues ofembodiment and accountability, positionality and location havebecome both more relevant and more diverse. My main argument isthat feminist philosophy is currently finding a new course betweenpost-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentric theories onthe other. The convergence between these two approaches, multipliedacross the many inter-disciplinary lines that structure feminist theory,ends up radicalizing the very premises of feminist philosophy. Itresults especially in a reconsideration of the priority of sexuality andthe relevance of the sex/gender distinction.

It is more difficult to answer the question of whether the radicalphilosophies of sexual difference, as a form of neo-materialism thatdoesn’t necessarily overlap with French feminism (a misnomer onmany accounts) had actually been heard. The paradigmatic status ofthe sex/gender distinction in American feminist theory and the globalreach of this paradigm, for instance across the former Eastern Europeafter 1989, has made it difficult for situated European perspectives tokeep alive, let alone move forth.

Most notably, this sex/gender distinction has become the core of theso-called “Trans-Atlantic dis-connection.” If I were to attempt totranslate this into the language of feminist theory, I would say that“the body” in U.S. feminism cannot be positively associated withsexuality in either the critical or the public discourse. Sexuality, whichis the fundamental paradigm in the critical discourses of



psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, simply has no place to be inAmerican political discourse: it got strangled. What chance, then, did“French feminism” have? The sex/gender dichotomy swung towardsthe pole of gender with a vengeance, disembodying it under the jointcover of liberal individual “rights” and social constructivist “change.” Itwas left to the gay and lesbian and queer campaigners to try to reversethis trend, rewriting sexuality into the feminist agenda. For instance,Teresa de Lauretis (1994) returns to issues of psychoanalytic desire inorder to provide a foundational theory of lesbian identity. JudithButler reverses the order of priorities in the sex/gender dichotomy infavor of the former and manages to combine Foucault with Wittig. Bynow, observers begin to speak of American post-structuralism as amovement of its own, with its own specific features and conceptualaims. The fact that most leading French poststructuralists take upregular teaching positions in the USA favors this second life of post-structuralism, which in the meantime dies away in Europe anddisappears especially from the French intellectual scene. By the start ofthe third millennium, “French” theory belongs to the world in adiasporic, not a universalist mode. The Frenchness of post-structuralism is lost in translation indeed, just as it undergoes aconceptual mutation in the Trans-Atlantic transition.

One practical action I took in order to make sure that other, moreEuropean approaches were heard is to set up EU-wide networks ofwomen’s gender and feminist studies, of which ATHENA (theAdvanced Thematic Network of Women’s Studies in Europe) is thebest example. Theoretically, my function as ATHENA foundingdirector resulted in friendly but firm criticism of American hegemonyin feminist theory and an attempt to develop other perspectives, drawnfrom historical and situated European traditions. I think we’ve beenheard, insofar as counter-memories and alternative genealogies canever be heard. The sheer tone and structure of this interview with you—a younger generation of critical thinkers—gives me great reason to



rejoice and feel a renewed hope.

Q3: Your philosophy has always been a philosophy of difference. Inthe chapter “Sexual Difference as a Nomadic Political Project” fromNomadic Subjects (1994) you explain why, and follow Luce Irigaraydoing so. First, you claim to attempt to shift differenceasadialectics, which underpins Western, Eurocentric thought. Here, “inthis history,” you claim, “difference” has been predicated on relationsof domination and exclusion, to be “differentfrom” came to mean tobe “less than,” to be worth less than” (Braidotti 1994, 147; originalemphasis). Second, you try to break through the canon of Westernfeminism, which has dismissed sexual difference “in the name of apolemical form of “antiessentialism,” or of a utopian longing for aposition “beyond gender,” (ibid., 149). Developing your ownapproach, you have consistently focused on “sexual difference as aproject,” as a “nomadic political project” (ibid.). Doing so, you haverelied on socalled “French feminism” and “French theory.”

Having discussed “French feminism” and its place in contemporaryacademia in question 2, what is your take on French theory at largein contemporary academia? Apart from its canonical version, whichhas been created in an AngloU.S. context just like “French feminism,”do you see minor traditions in academia that are equally “French”?And if so, how do they look and how are they related to the newmaterialism?

RB: It is clear by now that we need to deterritorialize French theory inorder to rescue it from the debacle it suffered in North America. This isa double challenge, considering how right-wing the Europeanintellectual context has become in the last decade. A further factor thatdelays the development of situated European perspectives is theperennial hostility between French and German philosophicaltraditions. There are however three main points worth stressing: first,



a tendency to move beyond the analytic versus Continental divide inphilosophy, as indicated by John Mullarkey (2006) in his work on“post-continental” philosophy. German philosopher Dieter Thomämakes a similar case in the volume I edited for the History ofContinental Philosophy (Braidotti ed. 2010). These are encouragingdevelopments that allow us to activate new theoretical andmethodological resources within the previously antagonistic traditions.

Second, the productive contribution of radical epistemologies to thereception of French philosophy also needs to be stressed. Nowadays,there can be no reading of Canguilhem without taking into accountHaraway’s work; no Derrida without Butler or Spivak; no Foucaultwithout Stuart Hall and no Deleuze without materialist feminists. Thisis a point of no return.

Third, to address more directly your question I think Frenchphilosophy is rich in minor traditions, which we would do well torevisit. They range from the less globally recognized, but nonethelessquintessentially French tradition of philosophy of science andepistemology to the emphasis on sexuality of the libertine tradition.My personal favorite is the enchanted materialism of Diderot and anestablished tradition that links rationalism directly to the imagination.They are a multiplicity of mountain streams that converge uponmainstream materialism.

Q4: Do you agree that difference is quintessential to the newmaterialism? And if so, how would you define its take on difference?

RB: Absolutely—especially if one follows Deleuze on this point andposits monism as the fundamental ontology. The notion of theunivocity of Being or single matter positions difference as a verb orprocess of becoming at the heart of that matter. There are onlyvariations or modulations of space and time within a common block so



it’s all about patterns of repetition and difference. Within such asystem of thought, moreover, sexual difference plays a crucial role.

Sexual difference in particular poses the question of the conditions ofpossibility for thought as a self-originating system of representation ofitself as the ultimate presence. Thus, sexual difference producessubjectivity in general. The conceptual tool by which Irigaray hadalready shown this peculiar logic is the notion of “the sensibletranscendental.” By showing that what is erased in the process oferection of the transcendental subject are the maternal grounds oforigin, Irigaray simultaneously demystifies the vertical transcendenceof the subject and calls for an alternative metaphysics. Irigaray’stranscendental is sensible and grounded in the very particular fact thatall human life is, for the time being, still “of woman born” (Rich 1976).There are resonances between the early Irigaray and Deleuze’s work.

As I have often argued, Deleuze’s emphasis on the productive andpositive force of difference is troublesome for feminist theory in so faras it challenges the foundational value of sexual difference. ForIrigaray, on the other hand, the metaphysical question of sexualdifference is the horizon of feminist theory; for Grosz ([1993] 1994) itis even its precondition. For Butler (1993) difference is a problem toovercome, as a limit of the discourse of embodiment; for me howeversexual difference is the situated corporeal location that one starts from—it is a negotiable, transversal, affective space. The advantage of aDeleuzian as well as Irigarayan approach is that the emphasis shiftsfrom the metaphysics to the ethics of sexual difference. Deleuze’sbrand of philosophical pragmatism questions whether sexualdifference demands metaphysics at all. The distinctive traits ofnomadic sexual difference theory is that difference is not taken as aproblem to solve, or an obstacle to overcome, but rather as a fact and afactor of our situated, corporeal location. And it is not a prerogativeonly of humans, either. This has important methodological



consequences.

Following Deleuze’s empiricism, Colebrook for instance wants to shiftthe grounds of the debate away from metaphysical foundations to aphilosophy of immanence that stresses the need to create newconcepts. This creative gesture is a way of responding to the given, toexperience, and is thus linked to the notion of the event. The creationof concepts is itself experience or experimentation. There is a doubleimplication here: firstly that philosophy need not be seen as the masterdiscourse or the unavoidable horizon of thought: artistic and scientificpractices have their role to play as well. Secondly, given that ethicalquestions do not require metaphysics, the feminist engagement withconcepts need not be critical but can be inventive and creative. Inother words, experimenting with thinking is what we all need to learn.That implies the de-territorialization of the very sexual difference westarted off from.

Q5: In your recent work you focus on “posthumanism” and “postsecularism.” In two articles in Theory, Culture and Society youelaborate on both terms. In fact, you immediately complexify theposthuman by weaving a postanthropocentrism through it, which isan intervention ascribed to feminist theory: “The feminist postanthropocentric approach […] also challenges the androcentrism ofthe poststructuralists’ corporeal materialism” (Braidotti 2006, 198).In addition, you claim that for instance Donna Haraway’s postanthropocentric posthumanism is not an antifoundationalism; it isa “process ontology” instead (ibid., 199). Apart from the fact that youcapitalize on Haraway’s Whiteheadian moment here (“Beings do notpreexist their relatings” (Haraway 2003, 6)), you also ascribe aspecific theory of time to feminist posthumanism, a theory thatseems Bergsonian:

To be in process or transition does not place the thinking



subject outside history or time […]. A location is anembedded and embodied memory: it is a set of countermemories, which are activated by the resisting thinkeragainst the grain of the dominant representations ofsubjectivity. A location is a materialist temporal andspatial site of coproduction of the subject, and thusanything but an instance of relativism (Braidotti 2006,199).

Process ontology, along with neovitalism, also provides the key toyour conceptualization of the postsecular, albeit that sticking to thepsychoanalytic frame remains of importance to you (Braidotti 2008,12–13). In your work, postsecularism is conceptualized as follows:

The post secular position on the affirmative force ofoppositional consciousness inevitably raises the questionof faith in possible futures, which is one of the aspects of[…] residual spirituality […]. Faith in progress itself is avote of confidence in the future. Ultimately, it is a beliefin the perfectibility of Wo/Man, albeit it in a much moregrounded, accountable mode that privileges partialperspectives, as Haraway (1988) put it. It is a postsecular position in that it is an immanent, nottranscendental theory, which posits generous bonds ofcosmopolitanism, solidarity and community acrosslocations and generations. It also expresses sizeabledoses of residual spirituality in its yearning for socialjustice and sustainability (ibid., 18).

In your view, the postsecular is thus intrinsic to contemporaryfeminist theories of difference, perceived as structured by a politics ofaffirmation rather than negation or dialectics (ibid., 13). And oncemore, theory’s nonlinear temporality, in its Whiteheadian as well as



Bergsonian mode, appears to be key.

In your theorization of the postsecular, however, the strong antiandrocentric approach of feminist theory seems to disappearsomewhat, albeit that process ontology and neovitalism areexplicited. How is postsecular feminism an antiandrocentrism?How, for instance, should we conceptualize this faith in “theperfectibility of Wo/Man”?

RB: My starting assumption is that the post-secular turn challengesEuropean political theory in general and feminism in particularbecause it makes manifest the notion that agency, or politicalsubjectivity, can actually be conveyed through and supported byreligious piety and may even involve significant amounts ofspirituality. This statement has an important corollary—namely, thatpolitical agency need not be critical in the negative sense ofoppositional and thus may not be aimed solely or primarily at theproduction of counter-subjectivities. Subjectivity is rather a processontology of auto-poiesis or self-styling, which involves complex andcontinuous negotiations with dominant norms and values and hencealso multiple forms of accountability. This position is defended withinfeminism by a variety of different thinkers ranging from Harding andNarayan (2000) to Mahmood (2005).

The corollary of this axiom is the belief that women’s emancipation isdirectly indexed upon sexual freedom, in keeping with the Europeanliberal tradition of individual rights and self-autonomy. As Joan Scott(2007) recently argued, this historically specific model cannot beuniversalized and it is the basic fault of contemporary Europeanpoliticians that they enforced this model and insist on its homogeneityin spite of rising evidence of its contingent and hence partialapplicability. This is a crucial point, which again stresses theimportance of sexuality as the major axis of subject-formation in



European culture and in its philosophies of subjectivity. It is preciselybecause of the historical importance of sexuality that sexual differenceis such a central axis in the formation of identity and of socialrelations.

Thus the post-secular predicament forces, if not a complete revision, atleast a relativization of the dominant European paradigm that equatesemancipation with sexual liberation. Moreover, the post-secularposition on the affirmative force of oppositional consciousnessinevitably raises the question of the desire for and faith in possiblefutures, which is one of the aspects of the residual spirituality Imentioned above. The system of feminist civic values rests on a socialconstructivist notion of faith as the hope for the construction ofalternative social horizons, new norms and values. Faith in progressitself is a vote of confidence in the future. Ultimately, it is a belief inthe perfectibility of Wo/Man, albeit it in a much more grounded,accountable mode that privileges partial perspectives, as Haraway(1988) put it.

Desire is never a given. Rather, like a long shadow projected from thepast, it is a forward-moving horizon that lies ahead and towards whichone moves. Between the “no longer” and the “not yet,” desire traces thepossible patterns of becoming. These intersect with and mobilizesexuality, but only to deterritorialize the parameters of a gendersystem that today more than ever combines redemptive emancipatorybenevolence with violent militarized coercion into the Western neo-imperial project. Against the platitudes of sex as conspicuousconsumption and the arrogance of nationalist projects of enforcedliberation of non-Westerners, critical thinkers today may want to re-think sexuality beyond genders, as the ontological drive to purebecoming. Desire sketches the conditions for intersubjectiveencounters between the no longer and the not yet, through theunavoidable accident of an insight, a flush of sudden acceleration that



marks a point of non-return. Accepting the challenge of de-territorialized nomadic sexuality may rescue contemporary sexualpolitics from the paradoxical mix of commercialized banalities andperennial counter-identity claims on the one hand, and belligerent andracist forms of neo-colonial civilizationism on the other.

Q6: As a final experiment, let us try to move feminism beyond ideasabout the social and cultural embeddedness of embodied femininityby discussing the way in which you work with the notion of thenomad. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze ([1968] 1994, 36)already contrasted the nomad to nomos, and it seems that throughoutyour work you delve into this particular opposition more and more.In other words, it seems to be interested increasingly not so much in afeminism that is about a rethinking of the relation between the femaleand the male, or the relation between the female and the world, whatis at stake in your feminism is thinking about “woman” in all of itsmorphogenetic and topological virtualities. From the “othermaterialism” which you already propose in the final chapter of yourfirst book (Patterns of Dissonance) in 1991 to claims like “Language isa virus” (in Nomadic Subjects), you have already pushed feminismway beyond the idea that the female should be thought as “the Other”and even beyond Deleuze and Guattari’s “becomingwoman” which insome way comes close to a nomadology but still implies the social andcultural relationality which the nomad does not need. Could weconclude (with Arnold Toynbee) that the nomad is she who “does notmove” but is merely interested in the experimenting and experiencingfemininity in all its material realizations? Or better, has the conceptof the nomad allowed you to set in motion a return to a radicalSpinozism that studies not so much the social and cultural aspects offeminism, but simply poses the question what a woman can do?

RB: What a great question! I wish we could run a six-week seminar onit! The starting point for most feminist redefinitions of subjectivity is a



new form of materialism that develops the notion of corporealmateriality by emphasizing the embodied and therefore sexuallydifferentiated structure of the speaking subject. Consequently,rethinking the bodily roots of subjectivity is the starting point for theepistemological project of nomadism. The body or the embodiment ofthe subject is to be understood as neither a biological nor a sociologicalcategory, but rather as a point of overlap between the physical, thesymbolic, and the sociological. I stress the issue of embodiment so asto make a plea for different ways of thinking about the body. The bodyrefers to the materialist but also vitalist groundings of humansubjectivity and to the specifically human capacity to be both groundedand to flow and thus to transcend the very variables—class, race, sex,gender, age, disability—which structure us. It rests on a post-identitarian view of what constitutes a subject.

A nomadic vision of the body defines it as multi-functional andcomplex, as a transformer of flows and energies, affects, desires andimaginings. From psychoanalysis I have learned to appreciate theadvantages of the non-unitary structure of the subject and the joyfulimplication of the unconscious foundations of the subject. Complexityis the key term for understanding the multiple affective layers, thecomplex temporal variables and the internally contradictory time- andmemory-lines that frame our embodied existence. In contrast with theoppositions created by dualistic modes of social constructivism, anomadic body is a threshold of transformations. It is the complexinterplay of the highly constructed social and symbolic forces. Thebody is a surface of intensities and an affective field in interaction withothers. In other words, feminist emphasis on embodiment goes hand-in-hand with a radical rejection of essentialism. In feminist theory onespeaks as a woman, although the subject “woman” is not a monolithicessence defined once and for all, but rather the site of multiple,complex, and potentially contradictory sets of experiences, defined byoverlapping variables, such as class, race, age, life-style, sexual



preference and others. One speaks as a woman in order to empowerwomen, to activate socio-symbolic changes in their condition; this is aradically anti-essentialist position.

The nomad expresses my own figuration of a situated, postmodern,culturally differentiated understanding of the subject in general and ofthe feminist subject in particular. This subject can also be described aspostmodern/postindustrial/postcolonial, depending on one’s location.In so far as axes of differentiation like class, race, ethnicity, gender,age and others intersect and interact with each other in theconstitution of subjectivity, the notion of nomad refers to thesimultaneous occurrence of many of these at once. Speaking as afeminist entails that priority is granted to issues of gender (or rather,of sexual difference) in connection with the recognition of differencesamong women. This figuration translates therefore my desire toexplore and legitimate political agency, while taking as historicalevidence the decline of metaphysically fixed, steady identities. One ofthe issues at stake here is how to reconcile partiality and discontinuitywith the construction of new forms of inter-relatedness and collectivepolitical projects.

The political strategy doubles up as a methodology; transformativeprojects involve a radical repositioning on the part of the knowingsubject, which is neither self-evident nor free from pain. No process ofconsciousness-raising ever is. In post-structuralist feminism, the“alternative science project” (Harding 1986) has also beenimplemented methodologically through the practice of dis-identification from familiar and hence comforting values and identities(De Lauretis 1986, Braidotti 1994).

Dis-identification involves the loss of cherished habits of thought andrepresentation, a move that can also produce fear and a sense ofinsecurity and nostalgia. Change is certainly a painful process, but this



does not equate it with suffering, nor does it warrant the politicallyconservative position that chastises all change as dangerous. The pointin stressing the difficulties and pain involved in the quest fortransformative processes is rather to raise an awareness of both thecomplexities involved, the paradoxes that lie in store and to develop anomadic “ethics of compassion” (Connolly 1999).

Changes that affect one’s sense of identity are especially delicate.Given that identifications constitute an inner scaffolding that supportsone’s sense of identity, shifting our imaginary identifications is not assimple as casting away a used garment. Psychoanalysis taught us thatimaginary re-locations are complex, and as time-consuming asshedding an old skin. Moreover, changes of this qualitative kindhappen more easily at the molecular or subjective level, and theirtranslation into a public discourse and shared social experiences is acomplex and risk-ridden affair. In a more positive vein, Spinozistfeminist political thinkers like Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd(1999) argue that such socially embedded and historically groundedchanges are the result of “collective imaginings”—a shared desire forcertain transformations to be actualised as a collaborative effort. Theyare transversal assemblages aimed at the production of affirmativepolitics and ethical relations.

De-familiarization is a sobering process by which the knowing subjectevolves from the normative vision of the self he or she had becomeaccustomed to. The frame of reference becomes the open-ended,interrelational, multi-sexed, and trans-species flows of becoming byinteraction with multiple others. A subject thus constituted explodesthe boundaries of humanism at skin level.

However, as Irigaray teaches us, changing the boundaries of what awoman can do entails the shift of fundamental parameters.Ontologically, in terms of the spatio-temporal frame of becoming;



symbolically, through liturgies of actualization and the formalizationof adequate modes of expression; and socially, in practical forms ofcollaborative morality and transitional politics that may lead to a moreradical form of democracy. As I argued earlier, the conditions forrenewed political and ethical agency cannot be drawn from theimmediate context or the current state of the terrain. They have to begenerated affirmatively and creatively by efforts geared to creatingpossible futures, by mobilizing resources and visions that have beenleft untapped and by actualizing them in daily practices ofinterconnection with others.

This project requires more visionary power or prophetic energy,qualities which are neither especially in fashion in academic circles,nor highly valued scientifically in these times of commercialglobalization. Yet, the call for more vision is emerging from manyquarters in critical theory. Feminists have a long and rich genealogy interms of pleading for increased visionary insight. From the very earlydays, Joan Kelly (1979) typified feminist theory as a double-edgedvision, with a strong critical and an equally strong creative function.Faith in the creative powers of the imagination is an integral part offeminists’ appraisal of lived embodied experience and the bodily rootsof subjectivity, which would express the complex singularities thatfeminist women have become. Donna Haraway’s work (1997, 2003)provides the best example of this kind of respect for a dimensionwhere creativity is unimaginable without some visionary fuel.

Prophetic or visionary minds are thinkers of the future. The future asan active object of desire propels us forth and motivates us to be activein the here and now of a continuous present that calls for resistance.The yearning for sustainable futures can construct a liveable present.This is not a leap of faith, but an active transposition, a transformationat the in-depth level (Braidotti 2006). A prophetic or visionarydimension is necessary in order to secure an affirmative hold over the



present, as the launching pad for sustainable becoming or qualitativetransformations. The future is the virtual unfolding of the affirmativeaspect of the present, which honours our obligations to the generationsto come.

The pursuit of practices of hope, rooted in the ordinary micro-practices of everyday life, is a simple strategy to hold, sustain and mapout sustainable transformations. The motivation for the socialconstruction of hope is grounded in a profound sense of responsibilityand accountability. A fundamental gratuitousness and a profoundsense of hope is part of it. Hope is a way of dreaming up possiblefutures, an anticipatory virtue that permeates our lives and activatesthem. It is a powerful motivating force grounded not only in projectsthat aim at reconstructing the social imaginary, but also in the politicaleconomy of desires, affects and creativity. Contemporary nomadicpractices of subjectivity—both in pedagogy and other areas of thought—work towards a more affirmative approach to critical theory.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ohp.11515701.0001.001Published by: Open Humanities Press, 2012

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