This week’s prompt is: Drucilla Cornell’s and Linda
Zerlli’s works are very compatible and complementary. Identify and
discuss at least two ways in which the themes and discussions of the two
readings intersect, e.g. Zerilli on freedom and Cornell on autonomy. Also, are
there any significant differences in their approaches?
Both Zerilli and Cornell draw the unavoidable duality
of “theory” and “lived experiences” that exists in feminist discourse. For Cornell,
this means a distinction between the unconscious and conscious, highlighting
that it “we cannot make the separation…because of the structural moment of the
imaginary” (Cornell 146). Essentially Cornell points out that we can only know
ourselves through the “already imagined,” meaning that we cannot fully
recapture an identity outside of pre-existing contexts and via a cultural,
ethnic, and societal vacuum. This translates to our idea of agency, and
according to Cornell, we make decisions only inasmuch as our environment shapes
and defines what would be appropriate in certain situations.
In spite of all this, much like Zerilli, Cornell
claims that autonomy is not lost because it cannot exist free of the conditions
of the “other,” but rather it remains as still needing to be claimed via the “elaboration
of this discourse” (Cornell 147). Zerilli similarly makes claims about feminism
by paralleling it to democracy, stating “there is a constitutive and
ineradicable tension between openness and closure in feminism…this tension is
related to the free act that calls into existence “women” as a political
collectivity, just as the free act of political founding described by Arendt
calls into existence “the people”” (Zerilli 168). According to her, feminism is
confounded in that it must hold its autonomous and independent identity of
belonging to “the women” while also accepting non-infallibility and openness to
opposing and potentially constructive claims. This flux exists in democratic
discourse as well and is related to Cornell’s duality of the unconscious and
autonomous mind.
Hello Ren. I think that your response is very informative. I also found Cornell's idea that we see ourselves through "the imaginary" as very significant. It made me contemplate the true level of autonomy that I have in making decisions in my everyday life. In class, I hope we can discuss further the implications of operating in "the imaginary" to the individual and to other women.
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