This thesis brings together two important aspects of Feminist Theory, the problem of reconceptualising community in terms of difference, and the role of temporality and futurity within feminist visions of the political. I argue that rethinking community directly entails a rethinking of temporality. This is initially suggested in my examination of the work of anthropologists Carol Greenhouse and Johannes Fabian, who argue that conceptions of time play an important role in social methods of ??managing?? difference. I then turn to an analysis of a number of different feminist accounts of community in order to show that, in each case, the attempt to rethink community in terms of an openness to diversity is invariably accompanied by a contestation of dominant linear temporal concepts. I suggest that these accounts represent a shift to an understanding of time as fractured, dislocated or out of joint. While this shift is explicit in some of the work I examine, specifically in Linnell Secomb and Rosalyn Diprose??s work, for the most part, the problem of temporality is not explicitly thematised. I therefore seek to uncover an emerging critique of linear temporality within feminist accounts of community, while also arguing for a greater recognition of the way time systems shape the way we understand and relate to difference. In order to extend the contestation of linear temporality developed in the first section, I turn to the work of Jacques Derrida. I extend the gesture towards a dislocated time by examining Derrida??s deconstruction of Aristotle??s account of time and his quasi-concept, diff??rance. Both of these accounts challenge the self-presence of the now. What proves to be particularly important for the problem of community is the way this fundamental dislocation suggests a reworking of social understandings of the heritage, transformation and political action. This suggestion is developed through an analysis of two of Derrida??s later essays ??The Other Heading?? and ??Psyche: Inventions of the other??, where I draw out his claim that an openness to the coming of the other involves both the active disruption of convention and tradition as well as a passive relation to an open and incalculable future. I conclude this thesis by arguing that Derrida??s account of time, as a disruptive exposure to alterity, is a provocative candidate for a model of temporality congenial to feminist projects of reconceptualising community. Accordingly, this thesis makes a unique contribution to feminist theory by connecting two significant but often separate concerns, in the process providing new avenues for feminist theorisations of community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/258063 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Bastian, Michelle Harmonie, History & Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW |
| Publisher | Publisher:University of New South Wales. History & Philosophy |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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