Félix Guattari's "Becoming-Woman"

In this episode, I present Félix Guattari's "Becoming-Woman."
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[@zuz-ve4ro]

finally my ultimate transition guide

[@numbersix8919]

I think "Hatred of Capitalism" is a great title for any book!

[@aaka6763]

here here

[@adaptercrash]

We watching a movie on the brain through the spacetime backwards

[@numbersix8919]

@adaptercrash Indeed, you have said it truly.

[@mygriddyaunt]

Buying a book called hatred of capitalism

[@numbersix8919]

@@mygriddyaunt Excellent choice.

[@Joe-kn3wt]

I am new to Guattari (and Deleuze as well) and found your bite-size take on "Becoming Woman" quite an insightful trip into the world of those two writers. Glad I came across your podcast.

[@cjanderson4628]

David these videos have taught me more than any philosophy/cultural studies class ive ever taken so thank you so much

[@kvass679]

I want to suggest a reading of Guattari's "Molecular Revolution in Brazil" his first essay about "Is Culture a Reactionary Concept?"

[@danic2514]

Love your pfp

[@jamielee2314]

Critical theory is never boring! Lol 🫂♥️ appreciate your labor and care for the material.

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

Just finished the “Hatred of Capitalism” collection after watching this video a while back and deciding I should check it out and I was very pleased with it! Very gut wrenching, radical, exciting, and novel. Just wanted to thank you for putting me on this and thus expanding my theoretical knowledge a lot with all these disparate figures. This essay was definitely one of the best ones in that collection!

[@JS-dt1tn]

Couldn't agree more on the critique. They themselves are absolutely mirroring those late-stage capitalist ideologies. What did Hegel say? The owl of Minerva? Subjugation become identity, what a timely, capital-centric logic.

[@billpeel4408]

I found this collection at a tiny secondhand shop in my hometown. I haven't read the Guattari essay yet, but the two essays Deleuze & Guattari have are very good

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

I loved the collection very much!

[@agenieshuvalova2299]

David, could you please tell about the artwork on the wall behind you? And the cage outside the window ? So intriguing

[@enbiyademirsen850]

thank you, it was a really useful explanation. i think the real superiority of these and similar concepts of d&g don't lies in directly challenging capitalism, but their ability to destabilize the objects that capitalism gains power by reining in some bodies. but, as you mentioned, vectors such as the discovery and distribution of interconnections between these "bodies that can be something else" may not be against capitalism per se. however, i think that these concepts are still vital because of their superiority in destabilizing the objects of capitalism, which i mentioned at the beginning.

[@comu157]

Actually not. Deleuze and Guattari never truly opposed capitalism. In fact Guattari seems to be advocating in favor of the female body as a commodity.

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

@@comu157Or as a site of possible flight. Poking a whole in all identity in favor of more rich flight paths that simply obey a boundless becoming.

[@demit189]

Do you think you’ll ever make a video on What Is Philosophy ? I know you’ve spoken about how difficult it is to understand and that you want to give it the justice it deserves, but currently theres very few resources online of understanding it, and im sure you could do a good job. Great video btw.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Only if you defend me in the comments from all the Deleuzians who are mad at me

[@prostoname5338]

Thanks a lot

[@amorfati4096]

“Out of the Shadows: The Psychology of gay men’s Lives” by Walt Odelts, is the best book on gay men ever written, and it’s quite depressing and heartbreaking.

[@MarcosBarroso-si4jn]

Hi, would you make available subtitles on your videos? For acessibility. Thank you!! love your content

[@christofthedead]

'Licks Guitary could have made an awesome musician

[@livinglux9107]

Sex workers need help and liberation, not to be a forced part of “sex is a human right” How could that be when it requires fabricated consent and sacrifice of sexual autonomy ? That’s one of my problems with them.

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

How is it fabricated consent? Like because the sex workers “have” to give their bodies into their work because of poor economic circumstances? Not exactly sure what’s wrong with sexual liberation of sec workers.

[@livinglux9107]

@@gavinyoung-philosophy coming from someone trying to leave the industry, the “consent” is predicated entirely on financial compensation. Once you have agreed your body no longer is yours because you are engaging in acts it does not want to engage in. There are mental consequences for this as well. We see women in prostitution have somewhat higher rates of PTSD than veterans. Women are particularly vulnerable to being sexually exploited for money due to the way we are conditioned to view ourselves in addition to living in a society with men. I was approached countless times as a teen and young adult by men offering me money for sexual acts. I was financially vulnerable as well, just like most young people are nowadays. Something I find strange is how modern leftist men seem to show no interest as to how women are left uniquely vulnerable to exploitation in a capitalist society when Marx and Engels wrote on the issue.

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

@@livinglux9107 Thank you for the clarification and I’m so sorry that happened to you. You’re very right :)

[@battragon]

Women are very powerful beings.

[@tcmackgeorges12]

It’s kinda wild how so many post-structural thinkers will just “coin” a term like “becoming-woman” or “the gaze” without having to properly ground their analysis of these without a fair discussion or analysis of the ideas similar that are coming from that same decade. This idea of becoming a woman isn’t new to Felix, he likely read it Beauvoir’s the Second Sex (and unlike him she avoids all the pitfalls he sets up for him self here) it’s the same thing with Lacan and the gaze. Like the dude can talk about power of the gaze on subjectivity and just completely ignore Sartre? It doesn’t make sense and I think it is My criticism of 20th century France post phenomenology is that everyone wants to unnecessarily distance themselves from existential phenomenology but clearly still draw on it for their own work. I’m not saying that Felix and Lacan are ripping of Beauvoir and Sartre, but what I am saying that they already laid the ground for the terms and ideas the develop and it’s just kinda weird how they can just skip over like they don’t matter. It’s like if I wanted to write about race, gender, and class in the 21st century and completely ignored all work of black feminist philosophers.

[@aesthetewithoutacause3981]

I agree! I observe this so often too and can't quite understand why it is.

[@tcmackgeorges12]

@@aesthetewithoutacause3981 it’s kinda frustrating because it’s like this is the whole point of scholarship

[@Specializex]

@@tcmackgeorges12 It's quite prominent in Foucault as well, he publicly stated numerous times that he uses authors' work without explicitly citing them. It leads to this weird phenomenon where neologisms are seen as "new" despite merely recycling old theory. Strange.

[@javedmarch4368]

@@Specializex I agree, it's super odd to see how explicitly Foucault will draw on a scholar, but never even acknowledge that he has utilised or even read their works. Erving Goffman comes to mind here, when we're talking about power relations between people and totalising institutions, and even though there's a fair academic consensus that Foucault absolutely read and used the work of Goffman, he never states this anywhere. And now Foucault is known far more than Goffman is.

[@javedmarch4368]

I agree with this. More contemporary postmodern philosophers like Butler are far more transparent about using these works, in fact I believe Butler very transparently synthesises works like Sartre and De Beauvoir alongside Foucault. But Foucault and *his* contemporaries very much stole ideas without reference

[@stellar_queer]

where can i find this text?

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

“Hatred of Capitalism” published by Semiotext(e) ed. Chris Kraus and Sylvére Lotringer

[@mattmontag3922]

One time I had a delusion I was a woman hah

[@ZitaHarkaran]

Did I understood it correctly, is he saying “becoming woman” is a deviancy? Deviancy from what?

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

A deviancy only insofar as this is a deviancy from binary identity categories. Becoming-woman understands femininity as a moment of flight whereby we liberate ourselves from identity as a universal category.

[@gregoryperlman9501]

The becoming woman is not a concrete occurrence, in any sense. Its an abstract movement into freedom, by suspending the shackles of oppression, those of participating in oppression by "being man". And in the case of those who are concretely privileged, and whose abstract movements are not prohibited by gratuitously limiting concrete conditions (are not oppressed) this suspends one between the shackles of oppression and oppressor, both restrictively implicated and constructed by the logic of anti-freedom (oppression). The possible space for liberatory thought would be a sight that is neither oppressor or oppressed, which is the same as the oppressed with the concreted conditions needed to become freely. The structural resources of the oppressor with the indeterminacy of the oppressed, who are denied the space for nuanced coherence (its constantly violently interrupted) offers a sight to which liberation of the subjugated can move. How do we engage in liberation without simply moving oppressed groups to the side of oppression? (the shifting category of whiteness for example) Possibly by opening a sight in which the answer to the violence against the peaceful coherence denied to the oppressed is not the determinacy and world destroying stability that has come to mark the privilege of the oppressors. To the extent that the movement is concretized, and actual identities are usurped from the subjugated as caricatured play things for their oppressors via the lexicon of liberation politics, I'm sympathetic to your critique.

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

This captures the radical sense of flight and liminal identity latent in Guatarri’s thought rather well. Thanks!

[@mirarstudios]

So lower class men are also becoming-woman 😅

[@balsarmy]

In my opinion, women oppression and gay oppression are different. As I see it with women, the case of prostitution as a norm is still undercover. Actually I see a big threat for gay men from 2nd category who close to fetishism. That's opposite to what feminism is for. And, sadly, after "sexual revolution" the process of defetishism and deobjection of women failed. Maybe I'm writing something stupid. Sorry

[@R_e_d_L_i_o_n]

Why is there a cage outside your window? It looks like you are in a nice jail cell

[@rangecow]

Expert salesmen say never, ever say anything negative about your product no matter how terrible or even boring it may be. So "soothing voice with occasional Canadianism" is possibly where you should stop when describing your sleep-inducing properties.

[@xenoblad]

This was very difficult for me to understand in its totality. I get individual parts, but the whole is lost to me. 🫤

[@gavinyoung-philosophy]

Read the essay and it makes more sense.