In structuralism, the signifier/signified concept is core to what theorists like Ferdinand de Saussure believed in. I think it can be applied to how women are oppressed in society. Let’s take the idea of chastity for example. My church, the Roman Catholic church, puts an extremely strong emphasis on people to be chaste before marriage. For women, chastity is rewarded and belief of not being chaste is punished severely as honour killings highlight. The signifier, in this case, the patriarchal societies that enforce chastity like the Roman Catholic church, ensure that the signified, women must subscribe to chastity et al.
According to this site, ” The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them”. Patriarchal societies like African and Middle Eastern ones that emphasise the importance of tradition thus create the neurosis of the signified, which in this case is the woman. Societies that emphasise the importance of a woman being a virgin and women working in “domain”, the kitchen, put women as the signified in an ambivalent position — why can’t women be the in position of power as the signifier ?
Jacques Lacan, the eminent structuralist thinker came up with the idea of the Symbolic. In his eyes, the Symbolic was the arena where social structures were created and notably, where the signifier was produced. It is also the order where sexual desires are repressed, according to this book. Women cannot exist as equal creatures in this Lacanian Symbolic simply because if we assert that women are the signified, how can they understand what it feels like or moreover, how can they enjoy the privileges of being the signifier ? Repression of sexual desires too denotes an emphasis on the heterosexual male experience of sexuality since women are seen to be the vessels in which repressed hetero desire is channelled and released.
I think womanhood operates in binary positions like “signifier/signified” because that is how humankind has conditioned itself to believe that there are men and women and that men oppress women. Women must strive to find relevant theories and lifestyles that ensure that oppression is at least decreased. The question is, even if we think structuralism is irrelevant, how can we argue that any theory from the canon of philosophy really is relevant when they such as structuralism, modernism, post-modernism have all overwhelmingly been created from the standpoint of privilege (white, hetero, male).
-Next topic: Is queer theory an apt ideology for hetero (black/asian) women ?
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@Marco, I think the ‘signifer/signifed’ is a binary dualism as much as misogyny/misandry is one. At the end of the day for me, I believe that women will always suffer under the former binary more because male political systems have made sure that women cannot gain more ‘power’ by making us second class citizens.
@Gwen, I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I just think that these structuralisms and post-isms are problematic in that they never took into account the position of women and where women would fit into the binary oppositions. It is almost as if they were created for men and men only.
This is really, really interesting – I meant to comment earlier but I’ve had limited internet time recently.
I don’t think structuralism is irrelevant, though I think your critique is quite good. At it’s basic level structuralism essentially posits that that all societies are underpinned by power structures that exert a defining influence over everything in that society, including language. The emphasis on language is because Levi-Strauss was able to use (the then very new discipline of) psychology and linguistics to better understand how these societal structures worked and were able to exert an such a fundamental influence.
The basic problem for women in signifier/signified dichotomy points to the existence of sexism as a basic structure in society. It probably never occurred to a lot of these privileged men that women could be anything but signified.
That’s not to say that I agree %100 with either structuralism or post-structuralism – and I lean more towards the post-structuralism side of things, as I think positing “overwhelming structures vs. powerless people” is not an accurate reflection of how power works in society. But I do think the basic insight – that there are overarching power structures that influence everything we do – is extremely valuable. Especially as the other big competing philosophical view of the world when structuralism was developed was existentialism which basically argued that people could choose to be whomever they wanted – completely ignoring the psychological and material effects racism, sexism and capitalism have.
And yeah – most philosophical systems were invented by white, privileged, hetero men, and that definitely shows. But these theories may still have valuable insights – just as J.S. Mill’s On Liberty might inspire anti-colonialists even while Mill himself was an imperialist. I think women (and feminist men) should use these insights as tools in developing our own theory and activism.
Hello again, aulelia,
I find your posts refreshing. But here, I do not quite get what you are arguing. I just need for you to clarify a few things:
Are you against the “signifier/signified” concept as much as you are against the Eurocentric philosophy of binary dualisms?
Although I acknowledge the danger of this concept, as a conceptual tool, can’t anything be a signifier or signified (according to context)?
@byrd parker, I feel like modernism is one of those ‘pseudo’ theories that would never benefit black people. ever. we really need to re-look @ postcolonial theory, imo.
@G.D, sure, blogroll ahead 🙂 thanks 4 the add
i love this entry. mind if we blogroll you?
i agree with your last statement , this precursor nullifies all theories …. after all what really is modernism ? can we say that modernism /post modernism , is a inherent trait for all human civilization that is usually initiated by intangible stimuli ?
Just thinking . a lot of time we ( human race) make a lot of drama and unnecessary systems / structures which really mean nothing , and at the time are just implemented by those with the controlling privileged hand . i.e. the banking system , corporations the idea of owning what was never yours to begin with !!!