why do i drink so much pomegranate juice?

So I was in the 'Library' today trying to find some sort of scholarly article to follow up my close reading/strange rant about Fanny Fern the other day, when I stumbled across a dissertation abstract (thank you UConn libraries for never giving you what you need). Well, the search wasn't helped by the fact that I was shoved into a dingy corner up to my elbows in books and freshman, trying to think over Paul's assignment editor shouting at him about the mouths of babes. ANYWAYS Mariasa Mettifogo of the University of California, why does your dissertation cost $41.00 (well, it is the norm, but it still bothers me).

In her dissertation Mettifogo is describing the: "discontinuities between feminist theory and practice in Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand and Neera". Now there is one particular point that Mettifogo makes that I would like to expand upon. She discusses Sand's desire for a "new, woman-centered order of representation capable of legitimizing female creativity and subjectivity". This point reminded me of an Elizabeth Grosz article "Contemporary Theories of Power and Subjectivity". In the article Grosz discusses several early male theorists and their impact on feminist thought. She discuses Althusser in particular and how he, "shift[ed] the status of experience so that is is no longer guaranteed a face value but acts as a symptom of a deeper underlying or latent structure. His claim is not that of Descartes, that our experiences deceive us, but rather, that we must learn how to "read" them". Because of this, Althusser legitimatized women's experiences and enabled them to be taken seriously. It is this that Sand was trying to work against, she wanted to separate the female experience from any male "support".

In modern times, feminism has so many fine schisms, much like the early communism/humanism splits, just now the differences are much more acute. Why don't we as women unite under that universal banner of equality? Like Katie mentioned, I've met so many people who say, "I believe in human rights but I'm not a feminist." I think that a lot of women I know don't even acknowledge that there still is a gap between women and men in society. I mean, most people will acknowledge that in a lot of societies women are inferior whether it's wearing a burqa in Saudi Arabia or being abandoned by her husband in sub Saharan Africa after contracting AIDs (most likely from him) but certainly not in OUR society.

hmmm loosing focus/falling asleep. More later?