Doubles and Multiples – Peg Rawes
by Mebuki FURUTANI
1) The Author
Peg Rewes is Professor in Architecture and Philosophy, Programme Director of the MA Architectural History, and a PhD Supervisor for Architectural Design and Architectural History and Theory PhD Programmes.
Her research and teaching focus on material, political, technological and ecological histories and theories of contemporary architecture and art.
2) Doubles and Multiples
This article describes Irigaray’s gender theory and the subject of gender.
In the case of Irigaray, culture is always built from complex historical and social relationships, and an individual is always distinguished by his or her sexual subjectivity.
In particular, she argues that the fields of Western culture, in particular philosophy, psychoanalysis and architecture, organize material and social structures through universal and hierarchical systems.
Sexual difference
Irigaray’s theory of gender difference has evolved from philosophical and psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity. First, subjectivity is physical or biological gender. Second, it is the way individuals express their sexuality.
Accordingly, in her earlier publication, male gender is defined in relation to his biological genitalia. In addition, male sex is reflected in the actions, thinking and symbols that constitute masculine identity in Western ‘phallocentric’ culture.
Sexed subjects
Irigaray argues at least two subject positions always construct the experience of being a woman.
First, the sexed subject cannot be reduced to a single homogenous subject because of her physical differentiation into two interconnected elements.
Second, the combination of physical and psychological expression of individual gender differences means that it is essentially pluralistic.
Therefore, for Irigaray, ‘woman’ is not lacking in psychological or physical powers. Instead, her multiple modes of embodiment confirm her plural existence and, as a result, she cannot be defined as incomplete or inadequate because she is not reducible to a single finite being.
Gendered subjects are constructed not only from biological differences between male and female bodies, but also by disciplinary and institutional organizations of knowledge in western society.
Relations and relationships
Architectural use and occupancy reflect the way social, spatial, economic and sexual relationships organize architectural production. Thus, building materials and spaces are related to each other as a result of the dynamic material conditions that make up a gender-defined subject.
In contrast, she shows that systematic thinking limits subjects to autonomous agents, regardless of these real dynamic social relationships.
Irigaray argues that Marxist theory of economic and social relations does not recognize the right of independent self-determination, but defines women as the “property” of male households.
For Irigaray, the formation of individuals in the family and their psychosocial space are central to understanding the importance of women in society, and their ability to engage in productive political and social change.
Otherness’ and ethical difference
Irigaray has the conviction that “otherness” is an integral political strategy to respect the various subjectivity and relationships that traditional structuralist theory overlooks.
Therefore, there are at least two realities that can actively express women’s gender. First, through the non-hierarchical dialogue between men and women, and second, through more radical strategies that reshape sexual relationships into completely different realities of gender differences.
Her later work seeks to replace the Western belief with system such as Buddhism, but Irigaray does not discuss multiculturalism and racial issues in detail. However, Irigaray’s argument is reflected in the rich aspiration for political, social and material change that ‘other’ gendered subjects bring to architecture.
Irigaray’s ethics of otherness therefore reflects the continuing need to examine and produce real material change in societies so that different sexed subjectivities may be fully expressed in architectural buildings, practice, research and education.
Subjects and objects: subject to subject
Through binomial thinking, Irigaray shows that Western ideas of subjectivity are supported by positive and negative links of power.
She claims, for example, that the dual subject-object relationship reflects an unequal power distribution due to the positive male subject, versus the inappropriate powers of the object or its equivalents .
As a result, subjects with gender are limited to passive, static material forms and objects that depend on the power of others.
Instead of these objectivity systems, Irigaray is constantly interacting with different subjectivity as well as between subjectivity, resulting in positive and fluid negotiations between active actors.
Multiple realities
For Irigaray, “reality” is always experienced at multiple levels simultaneously. This conviction supports her desire that actual physical, material, political, and spiritual realities exist in sexual objects in different historical and spatial contexts of Western culture.
From her early very critical objections to limited reality of sexual objects by philosophy and psychoanalysis, she made a major shift into dialogues with philosophers who develop positive arguments about sexual subject and philosophy.
These later publications create a sexual reality from positive dialogue with other individual philosophers.
These are key ideas that allow architecture to express the complexity of a sexual society and to create a realistic, material and productive reality for all individuals.
3) Personal Experience
In my country as well, while humans have natural biological sexuality, there are “male image” and “female image” created by society and culture through common sense and custom. For example, in Japan before our parents’ generation, the mainstream was that a woman become a full-time housewife to carry out almost all of the household chores, and that men would go out to work. Also today, the understanding and knowledge of LGBT is still far behind that of other Asian countries, and the reality that they can be seen with bias in schools and work has not been resolved yet. It is said that there is also a workplace that refuses to join the company only because they are LGBT.
In the last 10 years, gay and transgender entertainers have increased the chance to appear on television, and although they have become a catalyst for knowing their existence, they are treated as being “creepy” and “unhappy being”. It seems that people’s attitude to respect them as a single person and to eliminate discrimination are lacking. There are many scenes in which LGBT talents give favor to other performers and the other performers show that they are uncomfortable. Such discriminatory laughter is something that can not be accepted and is regrettable.
On the other hand, recently, LGBT Youtube and authors of books have begun to increase, and it has become an opportunity to disseminate an unbiased understanding of them.
Well, what is the difference between these two expression tools? One of them is the relationship between performers and producers. In Japanese television programs, there is separately a director who produces the script for the program, and a talent who speaks words in front of the camera along with the script.
The division of those roles in television may make the expression distort the consciousness of the talents or makes it a prejudiced expression by placing too much emphasis on making the story funny. So I think the spread of expressions by individuals such as Youtube and various SNSs should be a trigger to review the curving and exaggerated facts on television due to ratings and topicalities.
It is true that one of the first steps is to make them known in order to make the world where all people with different genders are treated equally and can take pride in themselves. However, by disclosing prejudice and discrimination, those expressions exacerbate the situation. I hope that it will be a place where honest opinions can be exchanged while fully considering the influence on others and the next generation, not only in personal expressions, but also in social expression organizations such as newspapers and television.
References:
Authors Profile: http://veiv.cs.ucl.ac.uk/72-people/academic-supervisors/357-dr-peg-rawes