Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray

416 Pages·2019·1.662 MB·English

by  Fanny Söderbäck

REVOLUTIONARY TIME

REVOLUTIONARY TIME
On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray
Fanny Söderbäck
Cover art: Anne Thulin, Swerve, pigment, acrylic, and wax on paper, 2018
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Söderbäck, Fanny, 1978– author.
Title: Revolutionary time : on time and difference in Kristeva and Irigaray /
Fanny Söderbäck.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059958 | ISBN 9781438476995 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438477015 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Time. | Sex differences. | Feminist theory. | Kristeva,
Julia, 1941– | Irigaray, Luce.
Classification: LCC B638 .S63 2019 | DDC 115—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059958
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For James, who taught me how to ride the swerves.

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xv
PART I. WHY TIME?
Introduction: Time for Change 3
French Feminism and the Problem of Time 5
On Time and Change 10
Decolonial and Queer Critiques of Time 15
A Note on Language 20
PART II. REVOLUTIONARY TIME
1 Linear Time, Cyclical Time, Revolutionary Time 29
From Beauvoir’s Sexual Division of Temporal Labor
to Revolutionary Time 33
Three Temporal Models, Three Feminist Waves 38
Kristeva and Irigaray on Time and Difference 45
Conclusion 50
2 Alterity and Alteration 53
Time, Change, and Sexuate Difference 55
Remaking Immanence and Transcendence 59
Mimesis, Imitation, and Strategic Displacement 73
Conclusion 82
viii Contents
3 Revolutionizing Time 85
Returning to the Body . . . and the Soul 88
Intimate Revolt: The Time of Psychoanalysis 94
Re-Membering the Past: Memorial Art 101
Conclusion 109
PART III. THE PRESENT
4 The Problem of the Present 113
Metaphysical Presence 116
Metaphysical Absence 119
To Be Finite Is to Have Been Born 123
Conclusion 131
5 Temporalizing the Present 135
Breathing Life into Presence: The Praxis of Yoga
and Pranayama 136
(Re)presenting Becoming: Poetry as a Practice of
Presencing 141
Time for Love: Presence as Co-presence 147
Conclusion 156
6 An Ethics of Temporal Difference 159
On the Propriety of Self and Other 160
Becoming Two: Encountering the Stranger Within 163
(Un)Timely Revolutions: The Timelessness of the
Unconscious 170
Conclusion 179
PART IV. THE PAST
7 Returning to the Maternal Body 185
Feminism and Motherhood 186
Mothers Lost: Matricide 192
Other Mothers: A Colonial Maternal Continent 196
Conclusion 199
8 Motherhood According to Kristeva 201
Plato’s Cho¯ra Revisited: Receptacle or Revolutionary? 202
Flesh Flash: On Time and Motherhood 214
Contents ix
Temporalizing Mat(t)er: On the Interdependence
Between Semiotic and Symbolic 218
Conclusion 230
9 Motherhood According to Irigaray 233
Plato’s Cave Revisited: An Impossible Metaphor 236
The Substitution of Origins for Beginnings 246
Mother Lost, Time Lost 254
Conclusion 260
PART V. THE FUTURE
A Non-Conclusive Conclusion: New Beginnings 265
Suspended Time, Foreclosed Futures 266
Arendt and the Unpredictability of the Future 269
New Beginnings 273
Notes 277
Bibliography 362
Index 381