Mother, Father, Power and "Global
Project"
irina aktuganova
Father's discourse died in Russia
When I think about gender injustice and social disbalance, I ask myself:is injustice exist in reality or only in minds of feminists and does disbalance mean injustice. Also I would like to ask somebody: why do we speak about unlimited men's/father's power?And where did they take this power?It's very strange situation, because men have no ontological/immanent reasons to be powerful. The physical advantages could not be the basement for a social and political Power. All of us: men and women - are sons and daughters. We follow our mothers. Mother's influence is very strong in all aspects - from physical till spiritual one. Mother forms our mind and destiny. In archaic cults Mother was a god and God was a Mother. Women's Power was supported by her natural right to give birth and love. Males had to serve Mother's mission of reproduction.Male's life was not valuable and was sacrificed by community to the needs of reproduction, family, generation.We know about ancient hunters and soldiers, but could you imagine these guys, who have to die every time for the saveness of group of women and kids. It was the main idea of their destiny, their supertask. They even were not fathers, only something like males in animal's shoal with strong legs and hands.Of couse I don't know what's really happened , but a symmetry between Powerful Mother and males became dangerous for the people's population. Male had to become Father. ( Compare: Harmonically organized family relationships depends on equalvolubility of father's and mother's elements. And Mother always supportsFather's authority in spite of the personality of the concrete Father)
We usually link the patriarchy and Father's Power to Monotheism. Monotheism was born like the reaction to the unlimited and eternal power of Mother. But it was not men's reaction to their oppression, it was not arevolt, but the unconsciousness social reaction , when women delegated part of their power to men. It was not the father's conspiracy, but Father's/Mother's agreement. In terms of modernity, it was very ambitious, risk and complicated collaborative project to transmit some power to Father. It was necessary to form and extend the territory of male responsibility and to increase his separate volubility. Father could not replace Mother in her Power because he could not give birth. He could only to create his own alternative territory and to proveit's importance and equality to the Mother's one. So people had to runtheterrific ideological machine. The most complicated task was to createtheway of legitimization of Father's Power. The project needed in thesupremeMale Power, that could donate his authority to Father. The problem was that the Mother's supreme Power was based on her ontological natural background. The Father's Supreme Power had no clear, uncontrodictional ontological basement and always was kind of virtuality. The mutualmale/female efforts produced the huge narrative to support father's spaceof responsibility and authority. All the culture from theology tophilosophy, science, art and politics were organized like ideologicalindustry to support father's authority and to prove his rights to be valuable. And even these terrible efforts and permanent work could notsaveFather from critics.Today, listening women's talks, reading their stories I could see that inspite of cultural difference, women from everywhere underline the strong patriarchal power in social field and unlimited Mother's Terror in private one.. It means that project was succeeded.
During last two or may be more millenniums Father's narrative extended to much. The virtual father's world, that was produced, became tooreal,too large. It came in contradiction with something very important for harmonical functioning of our system. So, society like selfregulatedsystem, began to extend the Women's space, women's territory again,usingat least two possibilities:1. Discreditation and Occupation of father's virtual world2. Extending of Mother's discourse (creation of virtual reality of itsown) Again, Our common male/female efforts in different parts of the worldwere oriented in this direction since the end of 18th century. Andbefore18th were done a lot for the future feminithation. No doubts for me that visible cultural and social activity as well as many of historicalevents that we could not interpret in terms of feminism served atleastto the needs of feminizm. And at the same moment they are only visiblesings of any "supernatural" task ( or absolutely natural task that we could not yet observe from our local point of view, or we still have no key to penetrate there) that have to be realized by different ways in different traditions. We realize our task stupidly everywhere, even if we don't think aboutit. We do it in the same way like sportsmen in synchronous swimming,but wecannot understand one another.The most obvious difference and misunderstanding is between East andWestin the frames of Christian culture.Of couse the borderline between East and West coincides with division onortodoxal and Catholic-protestnt's tradition. This division reflects our psychological and cultural difference. Not more. But this difference define the ways of our activity in this world. The ways of constructing of reality.West:Method of theoretical and ideological narrativity-well developed theology-scientism in philosophy-strong developed uncontrodictional discourse is not only the instrument of knowledge but first of all the instrument of construction of uncontrodictional reality.- So, the virtual ideologically strong Catholic-Protestant's Father's world was established like ideology and supported by theology/theory, science,politics and art.east:ontological method. -Undeveloped theory- artistism in science in philosophy- East does not care about description of experience or phenomena. Reality could express itself through ontology and history.- so the project of impowerment of Father was realized like practical transmitting of Mother's rights and gifts to their sons and husbands. Russian women acted in social field through men because she took care about their authority and feelings.
Father's discourse died in Russia
The disembodiment of father's world and further feminization is developing by the traditional means.For the West - through the development of Father's discourse and science, in theoretical, political and sociological way, using all the ideological achievements of the western past. Every more or less influenced theory had became the platform for the feminist reflection and reaction: Marxism, Freudianism, and others...Western feminism uses the same"patriarchal" tools (words, ideas, scientific, social and politicaltechnologies) for it's aims. For the East - through ontology and history. Without any theory, and special feminist social and political activity. It looks like the chess game, where the first step was the separation of the church from the state by Piter the Great in 18century. After a few practical steps including , male/female Russian terrorism,Czar's renunciation from PowerMurder of Russian Czar.Soviet govemental feminism and atheism and ,at least, abolition of private property the Father's discourse died in Russia. Ontologically. You and we came to the very similar results.But our experiences are mutually useless. You could not abolish privateproperty and church, we could not produce your kind of ideological reality. But we could understand that nobody of us more cleaver or moreprogressive. We work together for the "global project" and aim of thisproject is hidden from us.