168 ‘THE POLITICS OF DISPLACEMENT {slong as they do not interfere with the economy. Indeed, the implication is that such « pola! form may be necessary in order fora truly “liberal” economy to poliesl power which can hold the economic intrest in hel, and inthe coniet oad Seam, b. 332.) eG The Origin of Spee (New York: Coliet, 196%). p37 ‘Hercatter eed invent 8 OS; all succeeding eeferences sre iicaed parenthese cally inthe text DISPLACEMENT AND THE DISCOURSE OF WOMAN Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ‘Hien IN The Philophy of Right Hegel writes of the distinction berween thought and object his example is Adam and Eve: Since ie ein hough that Iam fret at home (bei mir), 1 do-n0t penetrate (éarcbboren) an. cbjece unt 1 understand it it then ceases to sand over sgsinst me and [have taken ffom it is ownness (dar Eigen) that it bad for self guint me, Just as Adem systo Eve: "Tho art es of my flesh snd bane of my bone," 0 mind says: “This is mind of my mind,” end the sliennes (Fremaeras oppesed vo das Eigen: alerty as opposed ro owrness) dseppeare.” Ie would be possible wo assemble here 2 collection of “great passages” from Ierature and philosophy 10 show how, unobtrusively bue crucially, & certain mecaphor of woman has produced (rather than merely illustrated) a discourse thar we are obliged “historically” to eall the discourse of man ? Given the accepted charge of the notions of production and constitution, ‘one might reformulate this: the discourse of man is in the metaphor of Jeeques Derride’s critique of phallocentrism can be summarized as fol. lows: the patronymic, in spite ofall empirical details of the generacion gap, keeps the transcendental ego of the dynasty identical inthe eye of the law. By virue of the father’s name the son refers to the father. The irreducible importance of the name and the law in this situation makes it quite clear that the question is not merely one of psycho-socio-sexual ‘behavior but of the production and consolidation of reference and mean ing. The desire to make one's progeny represeat his presence is akin to the desire to make one’s words represent the fall meaning of one’s intention, Hermeneutic, legal, of patrilinear, itis the prerogative of the phallus t0 declare itself sovereign source.’ Its eauses are also its effects: a social 69ae ‘THE POLITICS OF DISPLACEMENT strvcture—centered on due process and the law dogocentrism}; a structure fof argument centered on the sovereignty of the engendering self and the determinacy of meaning (phallogocentrism), a structure of the text cen- tered on the phallus as the determining moment (phslloceatrism) oF signifier. Can Derride's critique provide us a network of concept ‘metaphors that does not appropriate or displace the figure of woraan? In order to sketch an answer, I will refer nor only to Derrida, but to two of Derrida’s acknowledged “creditors” in the business of deconstruction, Nietzsehe and Freod.* I will not refer co La Carte patale, my diseussion of which is forthcoming’ ‘The deconstructive structure of how woman “is” is contained in & well known Nietaschean sentence: “Finally-—ifane laved them ... what eames of ic inevitably? that chey ‘give themselves,” even when they—give them= selves, The female is so artstc."* Orz women impersonate themselves as having an orgasm even atthe time of orgasm. Within the historical under= standing of wamen as incspable of orgasm, Nievzsche is arguing that impersonation is woman's only sewual pleasure. At the time ofthe greatest sell-possession-cum-eestasy, the woman is sel: possessed enough to organ= ize a self (re)presentation without an actual presence (of sexual pleasure) to represent, This is an originary displacement. The virulence of Nietzsche's misogyny oceludes an unacknowledged envy: a man cannot fake an orgasm. Fis pen must write or prove impotent.” For che deconstructive philosopher, who suspects that all (phallogocen- twic) longing for a transcendent truth as the origin or end of semiotic gestures might be “symptomatic,” woman's style becomes exemplary, for Bis style remains obliged to depend upon the stylus or stiletto of the phallus. Or, to quote Derrida reading Nietzsche: She writes there) for (s) writen Ele (ri, Style amounts for reams to (een 2) hee. Rather: i style were as far Freud che penis is “che normal prototype ofthe feish") the man, writing would be woman.” A lot is going on here. Through his critique of Nietzsche, Derrida is questioning both the phallus-privileging of a corain Freud a5 well as the traditional view, so blindly phallocentric that ic gives itself out as general, that “the style is the man.” Throughout his work, Derrida asks us to notice that al! human beings are ireducibly displaced although, in a dis- course that privileges the center, women alone have been diagnosed as such, correspondingly. he attempts to displace all cencrisms, binary oppo- sitions, or centers. It is my suggestion, however, that the woman who is the “model” for deconstructive diseourse remains a woman generalized and defined in terms of the faked orgasm and other varieties of denial. To {quote Derrida on Nietzsche again: Displacement and the Dscooveof Woman ra ‘She is vwiee model, in 4 contradictory fashion, at once lauded sad con- emned, (Firs) like writing... But, insofar as she doesnot believe, hnerslf in aruch-.. she is agun the mode, this time the good model, or rather the bad mode as good model: she plays dssimulation, orpament, Iying, are, the arieie philosophy... (pp. 60) At this point the shadow area berween Derrida'on Niecrsche and Der~ rida on Derrits begins 10 waver. “She is power of efirmation,” Derrida continues, We are reminded of the opening of his essay ‘The circumspect title fr this mectng would be Ie gutin of ye [But woman wil be my sbi. I eemsins to wonder if that comes tothe same (recon a ime)—or to the other ‘The “question of style." as you no doubt have recognized. is 2 quotation. 1 wanted to indicate tht [shall advance nothing here that doesnot belong t2 the space cleared i the last 0 years by readings that open new pace the process of Uecorstrutve, tbat i 10 afrmaricg, interpretation. (Ep, PP. 34 36: italics mine) Quotation in Derrida is « mark of non-selt.identy: the defining pred cation of « woman, shose very name is changeable “Give themsetves is thas isingushed fom “give themsebves"in Nietsche's description of ‘woaran, The reader will notice the eaeflly hedged arcalaton ofthe deconstratve philosopher's desire to usurp “che place of civplacement™ bbenseen che reminder of an appropriate tle and the invocation of the complicity ofthe save andthe ther (philosophies! themes of erest pres tige, comes the sentence: “Woman will be my subject.” We give the "Subject its philosophical value of the capital Ln the place ofthe writers wil be woman. Bur, collouialy, my subjet”mheans “my objet." Tins, even if le style” nan?) “revien 3 ele returns or ames he) is an afermation of ce qui ne ceviene pas au pre” (that which does nat enum or amount ro the father). the author of La quatin de syo—chat displaced reve that dacs nor exis, yer dacs, ofcourse, as Ep —having stepped int the place of displacement, has displaced the woman-medel doubly as sharing between the sethor’ subjee and object. hem, she “deconstuctve” i “afrmative”by way of Nietsche’s woman, who is “power of allirmation,” we are already within the circuit of what I cal dlble displacement in order to secure the gesture of aking the woman as tmodel, the gure of woman smust be doubly displaced. Fr a type ease af double displacement, tar to "Femininity," alte ext of Freud certainly swell known as the Nietschean sentence.”‘THE POLITICS OF DISPLACEMENT n Freud's displacement of the subject should not be confused with Freud's notion of displacement (Verschisbuyg) inthe dream-work, which is ‘ne of the techniques of the dream-work 1 tanseribe the latent content of the dream to its manifest content. The displacement of the subject that is the theme of deconstruction relates rather to the dream-work in general; for the dream ara whole displaces the text of th latent content into the text of the manifest content. Freud calls this Exzzeliang (literally “displace- ment”; more usually translated es “distortion”) Freud expanded the notion of the displacement of the dream-work in general into an account of the working of the psychic apparatus and thereby put the subject as such in question. One can produce a reading of the “metapsychological” rather than the therapeutic Frevd to show thet this originarily displaced scene of writing is the scene of woman, Let ws consider Frevd’s description of woman's originary displacement “Paycho-analysis does not wish a describe (wich haciveiden«cill) what the female (des Weib) is... but investigates (wnteruzh) how she comes into being, how the female develops our of the bisexually disposed child” (F 2omn, p. 116; GW, p. 135). The name of this primordial bisexuality is of course unisex. “We are now obliged to recognize,” Freud writes, “thatthe lite girl isa ltde man” (Fxxn, p. 238: GW xv, p. 126) Here is the moment when wornan is displaced out of this primordial masculinity. One of the crucial predications of the place of displace- rment-—"the second task with which a girl's development is burdened—is l-child must change the object of her love. For the boy it never ‘But in the Oedipus situation the gir’s father has become (st _srwerdes) hor love-object.” The unchanged object situation and the fear of castration allow the boy to “overcome (ersinden) the Oedipus complex” ‘The gin i driven onto her attachment toher mather through the influence of her envy for the penis and she enters the Osdipus situation ar though jno- haven (She dsmandos) [bus a) ace and, even 5, imperecty (encolomn F xx, p. 1395 GW, p. 38) ‘Through the subject-object topology of the I (ego) and the it id), Freud displaces the structure ofthe psyehe itself. The beginning of sexual differ- tence is also given in the language of subject and object. The boy child is iredueibly and permanently displaced from the mother, the object of his desire. But the gicl-child is doubly displaced. The boy is bora as a subject that desires to copulate with the object. He as the wherewithal to make “proper” sentence, where the copula is intention or desire. The sentence can be Dipplacement and the Discourse of Wersan 13 S (subject) SS" = 0 (object The gitl child is born an uncertain role-player— litte man playing a ile gist or vice versa, The object she desires is wrong’—must be changed. Thus it ie not only that her sentence must be revised. It is that she did not have the ingredients to pur together a proper sentence in the fist place She is originaily writen as esquerating subjeny See temporary) (wrong object) T have made this analysis simply to suggest that 2 deconstructive dis- course, even eit criticizes phallocentrism or the sovereignty of conscious ness fand thus seeks to displace or “feminize” itself according to a ersain logic), must displace the figure of the woman twice over. In Nietasche and in Freud the critique of phallocentrism is not immediately evident, and the double displacement of woman seems all the clearer: “There is no essence of wonin Because woman avert and averts herself fromm herself. For if woman ith, J knows these is no roth that ‘oath hase place and that no one hits the trath. She is woman iesolr 5, she doesnot believe, herself in th therefore in what she i, iz what one believes she is, which therefore she isnot Ep, pp- 50,52) Here Derrida interprets what I call double displacement into the sign of| an abyss. Buc perhaps the point is that the deconstructive discourse of rman (like the phullocentric one) can declare its own displacement (as the phallocentre its placing) by taking the woman as objector figure. When [Derrida suggests that Western discourse a eughe within the metaphysical or phallogocentric limit, his point is precisely that man can problematize but not fully disown his status as subject. I do, then, indeed find in deconstruction a “feminization” ofthe practice of philosophy, and Ido not regard it as just another example ofthe masculine use of woman as instra- _ment of self assertion. I learn from Derrida’sertique of phallocentrism— ‘bur I must then go somewhere else with it. A male philosopher can deconstruct the discourse of the power of the phallus as “his own mis- take." For him, the desire for the “name of woman” comes with che {questioning of the “metaphysical familiarity which so naturally relates che £22 of the philosopher to ‘ween,’ the ce in the hotizon of humanity."* ‘This is an unusual 29d courageous enterprise, not shared by Dervide's male followers." Yer, “weswomen” have never been the heroes of philosophy. When it takes the male philosopher hundreds of pages (not to be able) to answer the