Feminist considerations have induced a rethinking of many aspects of our contemporary world, such as the concept of gender and power relations. This has led to a re-examination of the entire previous tradition of thought, finding in phallogocentrism the paradigm of reference. This term indicates, starting with Derrida's considerations, the Western tendency to have centred not only the logos, but also the phallus, weaving an intricate relationship between masculinity and language. It's precisely this bond that makes man the archetype (...) on which society is founded, placing his supremacy in the natural order, defining power relations and nailing pre-established categories. A being-nailed in the Lévinasian sense, thus an adherence between the agreement of voices and being, which produces 'category-beings' in which pre-delineated social identity is concealed in a condition of 'nature', such as the 'being-male'. It's precisely this naturalness, discursively produced, that has made man universal. Consequently, man has convinced himself that he can speak for all humanity, becoming the logos through which he declines the rest. Declinations that have produced rigid and hierarchical categories that precede and define each person, prescribing 'consonant' ways, rhetorically assumed as 'human nature'. The "nature" of being man or woman does not, in fact, concern monolithic essentialisms, but rather movements of intertwined meanings in a process that Derrida defines as différance. A process, therefore, in becoming, which has over time produced unequal power relations, justifying them as "natural", and which daily reiterates a hegemonic and sexist social model. The aim of this analysis, hence, will be to bring phallogocentric masculinity and consequent hegemonic structures into the field of philosophical reflection, with the purpose of redirecting praxis towards performative processes of characterisation the person, rather than a pre-delineated categorisation. Thus, to release being from socio-cultural categories, which historical-performative praxis nails to each body. (shrink)

This Derridean reading of Freud asks the question of how we should read Freud with respect to sexual difference and what Derrida considers a radicalized concept of trace, a "scene of writing" of differance ---that is, how we should read Freud with respect to phallogocentrism. Throughout I consider the possible relationships between the "mainstyles" of various psychoanalyses, deconstructions, and feminisms. By analyzing what is most original for Freud---the cause of hysteria, the navel of the dream, the perceptual identity, the (...) primal phantasies, for example---I find that Freud consistently seeks a single origin, a "caput Nili," on which to base a grand narrative. At first this narrative is an etiology of hysteria, but it evolves into a masterplot of sexual development and later into one of humanity. The establishment of an oedipal origin and telos, and the masterplot based on them, moves psychoanalysis toward a totalizing theory, and therefore its openness to chance and something beyond what that theory can master is greatly reduced. ;I approach these topics in terms of a question of the ethics of psychoanalysis. This appropriative or reductive process of Freud's masterplotting is based on what Derrida calls "castration-truth" in his reading of Lacan, "Le facteur de la verite." In contrast to some theorists who appeal to the radical spirit of Freudian theory as a basis for their radicalization of psychoanalysis---specifically Barnaby B. Barratt's Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse---I argue that Lacan's phallogocentric "return to Freud" is actually a more faithful one since I find both "mainstyles" of these psychoanalyses based on a logic of lack or "castration-truth." I argue throughout that the radical spirit of Freud is at times overemphasized or exaggerated by Derridean theorists---and even Derrida himself, though rarely---and that the dominant specter of Freud is an "establishment" or appropriative one, rather than one which is radical or "other-wise." I connect this trend of Derridean thinkers claiming too much debt to psychoanalysis to these thinkers not taking seriously Freud's commitment and interest in an idealized phylogenetics: "phylo-'genetics.'" Since my establishment of this establishment specter of Freud as the "mainstyle" of Freudian theory itself risks reproducing exactly the kind of appropriative discourse I hope to problematize, I attempt to avoid such a reproduction by considering what remains of the radical spirit of Freudian theory in what might be called a deconstructive "technology of iterability;" a "cyborg-analysis;" or what I call "post-psychoanalysis.". (shrink)

Over the past decades, video games have emerged as one of the most influential media products in popular culture, conveying a multitude of messages and symbols that reflect as well as shape social reality. This paper aims to explore how video games contribute to the construction and perpetuation of gender stereotypes within a cultural context dominated by the phallogocentric paradigm. Through the analysis of Jacques Derrida’s theories on the logocentric paradigm and différance, together with Judith Butler’s reflections on gendered performativity, (...) it will be explored how language and video game representations act as performative acts co-producing reality. Acts, which not only consolidate social norms, producing hate speech and discrimination at times when images that are not “appropriate” are represented, but can also offer possibilities for rewriting and resisting such structures. The introduction of the concept of iterability, applied to the sphere of language in relation to both gender performativity and videogame dynamics, opens up a stimulating reflection on the subversive potential inherent in videogames themselves, which are not mere reflections of the dominant culture, but active tools in the definition and redefinition of gender “identities”. The analysis proposed here is therefore intended to analyse not only the stereotyped and phallogocentric gender representations within video games, focusing on instances of hate-spreading, but rather the occasions in which these media products pose as instruments of resistance, challenging traditional binarisms and offering new identity models. (shrink)