Who Makes Them This Way? | Clarissa's Blog
Of course Bataille's concept of "non-knowledge" was precisely a critique of instrumental rationality. But what most people don't see is that they can't simply adopt a non-rational perspective out of the blue. Instrumental rationality is already in them; it's already a part of who they are. It's also what divides the world up into supposedly rational men and non-rational women. It's part of the symbolic structure of late industrial cultures. It makes no sense, then, to proclaim that one intends not to be rational, in order to escape male control.
That assumes that one has a choice in the matter, whereas in reality one has been relegated, if female, to the non-rational side of the equation prior to any awareness one might have. If one wants to escape male control, therefore, one has to effectively not know about it; one has to become ignorant of it in some way, so that one does not categorize oneself in any way. One way to escape the categorization that has already taken place within one's subjectivity is to take on what has been denied to you. Women should embrace logic. After that, they should forget that they had ever been denied entrance in the realm of logic. It doesn't help to embrace exactly what you have been made to be by forces outside of your control.
Of course Bataille's concept of "non-knowledge" was precisely a critique of instrumental rationality. But what most people don't see is that they can't simply adopt a non-rational perspective out of the blue. Instrumental rationality is already in them; it's already a part of who they are. It's also what divides the world up into supposedly rational men and non-rational women. It's part of the symbolic structure of late industrial cultures. It makes no sense, then, to proclaim that one intends not to be rational, in order to escape male control.
That assumes that one has a choice in the matter, whereas in reality one has been relegated, if female, to the non-rational side of the equation prior to any awareness one might have. If one wants to escape male control, therefore, one has to effectively not know about it; one has to become ignorant of it in some way, so that one does not categorize oneself in any way. One way to escape the categorization that has already taken place within one's subjectivity is to take on what has been denied to you. Women should embrace logic. After that, they should forget that they had ever been denied entrance in the realm of logic. It doesn't help to embrace exactly what you have been made to be by forces outside of your control.
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