Genevieve Fraisse
But our minds are polarized by artificial debates in which we are enjoined to take sides: for or against surrogate motherhood, for or against the scarf, for or against prostitution. The question is not to know if a woman’s consent is real or not when she prostitutes herself. To question the subject behind the prostitute or the woman who wears a scarf is a form of class contempt. The real question is whether consent is a political argument. And to that I say: no! I cannot think correctly in politics without having first carried out an epistemological investigation: with what tools, what arguments do we think?
Geneviève Fraisse, in interview. I like very much her “no!” here. She has written a book on the subject of consent, which addresses such questions as whether individual acts or dispositions of consent can be joined together so as to amount to collective consent or will, and what the value of “choice” can be when it is a choice between forms of domination, but I don’t know what her conclusions are.
They’re good questions though. I think that framing the question as one of the possibility of linking a subjective disposition to a political argument is a suggestive approach to take – but also, mightn’t the link run in the other direction, such that to be won over to an argument or a political position is then to move towards assenting to the consequences that follow from it?
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 am
This seems very interesting. I would like to read Fraisse’s book, but from the abbreviated entry I already wonder if it is really up for debate at all. (I am referring to “choices” between and within power structures.) I think that this question is really a mis-question, or at the very least, it isn’t a real choice. Of course, the designation of a choice’s “realness” depends on the stipulations one puts on the term. But I think that here, the value of a choice is meaningless if it isn’t grounded in some sort of real discussion or problem. For example, doesn’t a woman’s choice to go into prostitution amount to the same timeworn choice that all workers face?– “of course you can choose *where* you work, but you must always work. Well that’s not true because there you also have a choice– you may live or die. But you will not be buried nor your family cared for if you do not choose to work.” As far as I’m concerned, whether or not the subject is linked up to a political argument is rather inconsequential since that too is an oscillation of power, devoid of philosophical (or real) potential if it is left undefined.