Thursday, September 08, 2016

Feminism and Henry Miller

Without extolling my credentials, a simple identification for me is extremely Male Identified Male Enculterated converted to Radical Lesbian Separatist Feminism in 1972, long before it became fasionable for certain men to say.

The other day I was listening to Dan Bern’s song Marilyn Monroe. His thesis is that if she had been with Henry Miller instead of ARTHUR Miller, she would have been more fulfilled.

In a post-post (4th Wave?) Feminist era, where the trumpeting of victim-hood reigns supreme in a post-modern flattened philosophical framework, meaningless save for instant gratification, what is gender, desire and how do we go about relating with others?

If ‘The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You’, by Dorothy Bryant, is representative of 3rd Wave Feminist Utopian Science Fiction, what is 4th Wave?

Using tools from semiotics, assessing the biases of language, French post-structuralist feminism, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Bracha Ettinger, influenced by Lacan and Derrida, their explication of Male identification and objectification brings us to a place where it’s clear that the notion of Agency for women is the battleground. This objectification takes place in the Female body, so that a woman has two choices. To allow it and remain passive, a tool of the Male Identification, or to use the body as art, protesting the objectification.

Even today amidst the most significant Archetypal battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, representatives of a Woman of Agency and a Rapacious Sociopath, reaches an apotheosis in Republican Reince Priebus’ comment regarding the Commander in Chief interviews, that Clinton didn’t ‘smile enough’. The commentators failed to understand any part of that statement, turning it back on Democrats as a ‘distraction’ from the Mortal Sin of taking Colin Powell’s advice to use a private server, which, as it turns out, was smarter than using the official ones, which, were hacked.

So, what is Agency? Lacan’s imploring that ‘Woman Doesn’t Exist’ makes clear the lack of Agency for women. Women are defined by Men in terms of their utility, some say, women have two options, doormat or menu item.

And it isn’t Agency that portrays Women enjoying strippers, as if they would be just like Men if only they could be. This is simple projection, or the outplaying of the inner realm of fantasies that men have, due to their own emotional discontents.

Thus, Feminism and Henry Miller. We can imagine what Henry Miller would done with Marilyn Monroe, ultimate fantasy material. What we can’t imagine is what Monroe would have imagined for HERSELF. Or who she would have been, etc. By that measure SHE DOESN’T EXIST.

What we’re leading up to here is what I feel is the last word on Feminism, certainly the latest I have heard. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen by Anne C. Klein reveals the core dynamic of Male/Female at the very basis of Tibetan Buddhism. Using the concepts form and formlessness, the two forces of the Universe that blend seamlessly in Enlightenment as references for our dualistic notions of male and female, it goes like this. When the Male energy creates, sourcing itself from the Female, and at the same time, denying the existence (Agency) of the Female, we have a situation I call, ‘Pimping the Void’.

That’s where we are in the world right now.


PS Remember that 80s MTV group, Romeo Void?
PPS Thank you Erica Jong.

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