KONSTERNUJĄCA REALNOŚĆ. Problem z pojęciem kobiecości w kontekście odwołania do doświadczenia
A Confusing Reality: The Problem with the Notion of Femininity in the Context of the Appeal to the Experience

Summary/Abstract: The objective of my paper is to consider the notion of experience and the ways in which this term is used within the philosophical discourse of the contemporary concepts of femininity. There is a strong critique of ‘experience’ in contemporary philosophy, in particular in postmodern theories, but I consider ‘experience’ to be a term still strongly entangled with the categories of subjectivity. Reflecting on how the category of experience interacts with other categories important in the philosophy of the subject, such as otherness and difference, I refer to the discussion on feminine subjectivity which takes place in the field of phenomenology, and to phenomenological feminist criticism. I address selected ideas developed by Emmanuel Lévinas, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, and Rosi Braidotti. The concept of a nomadic subject proposed by Braidotti seems particularly interesting in this context despite the fact that its nature is not obviously phenomenological. In her work Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Rosi Braidotti constructs the notion of feminine subjectivity based on a threefold model of sexual difference and accomplished on both the historical and the individual levels. In my analysis, a special consideration is given to the reflection on how Braidotti identifi es femininity at each level of the model of the feminine nomadic subject she has constructed. The discursive approach used by Braidotti is that of entanglement and repetition, so it is by no means easy to find a clear explanation of the process she scrutinizes. However, there is an element re-emerging in her descriptions of feminine identifi cation, namely that of ‘experience.’

• Details
• Contents