22 12 2000
Andrea Hapke:
spasibo (translation from Russian)
Dear Larissa, Irina, Valentina, Ira, Alla, and Jana,
sorry, that I haven't answered for more than a week, but I had a cold
and didn't feel like writing letters.
Therefore, before I write my "final words", I would like to welcome Alla
in the last minute.
First of all, I would like to thank you all for the time, the aquaintance
and the experience of our discussion.
Thinking about it, I am sitting here with very ambivalent feelings.
It turned out that it is not easy at all to talk via email with such
different women, who know each other in different ways.
I've once again read our letters; and as Larissa wrote, there still is so
much left one can and has to "think about, get clear about, answer to,
make precise, object to".
This is good that there is left something unsaid.
But have we succeeded to overcome spatial and other distances?
I would like to leave this question open, it happened to be too
contrarys.
Sometimes it was very close, sometimes very emotional.
From the correspondence with Irina Aktuganova a bitter taste and feeling
remained, that we fell into oppositions which need not to be like this.
And I am a little sorry that I haven't answered a lot to Larissa's letters.
At the beginning I thought that we would have a rather short
and spontaneous communication, and hindered myself from that, as I often thought too long about the letters and my answers.
Often, I didn't have the feeling of a constant discussion but of many
muddled up talks and also of silence.
This of course is also about the medium.
And also because we had problems with the encoding, so that Larissa for a
long time didn't have all letters.
And because we often didn't know, why the other is not answering.
Our everyday life went on, and the others didn't know a lot about it...
Please, don't get me wrong: I don't want to draw a sad image, but it is
neccessary to think about the obstacles, since they bring us forward, make
us think, make us know our own "blind spots".
That is reality.
As I wrote earlier, I have learned a lot.
I thought a lot about Larissa's confrontation of ideal positions and
specific existence.
I thought about that we talked a lot about positions, and why our game
with them has not succeeded.
Of course, because we haven't known each other well.
But I also understood that I rely on positions and "political" relations
concerningn this topic, not to get lost in cyberspace or in the
temptations of the new technologies.
I will have to think about this and also about Donna Haraway's suggestion
to chose images or functional subjects to travel in this space, to
transfer its "too huge complexity".
In the course of our discussion I found out that I react to "cyberspace"
with great precaution.
As well as to different notions of feminism.
(But, I think, not in a dogmatic way.)
Therefore I sometimes forget about my humour, and even our discussion
sometimes seemed to be a quite alien space for me...
but we are all learning, and probably this will not be the last meeting in
this sphere...
Larissa also has written that "in cyberspace a quite democratic language
has strengthened".
Larissa, did you have in mind that what has happened between us, that we
e.g. were addressing each other in an informal way neglecting our age
differences, or that the language often is less formal?
But still even in the sphere of language new hierarchies are built, e.g.
by choosing the language.
I liked very much that we communicated in Russian an not in English,
disregarding all technical and language complications.
Of course, the English language offers the opportunity to reach more
people, that is why decided to translate everything into English.
It is important to balance here.
I also would like to add that there have been reactions to our dicussion -
on our website and in the cicles of our friends -, that they have been
foolowing the discussions with great interest.
It was good to know that we weren't in an empty space.
It would be interesting to know how this was in Russia or Singapure...?
Once again I want to refer to a difference which Larissa proposed -
concerning feminism, which after all seemed to be the most persistent
topic of our discussion - the difference between political and
sociocultural mechanisms.
I would like to propose that one could think and use them together; that
both ways - the "pre-political" as well as the "political" help to
change the images and mechanisms of (our) perceptions.
This, unfortunately, is too big a problem, although it could maybe help
finding the connection to cyberfeminism/cyberfeminisms.
To what I described above as positions and existences.
In this sense cyberfeminism is such a change of perception...
And we found out a lot about this.
Thanks a lot for this.
Somehow I hope that this won't be our last meeting...
I wish you energy and pleasure, and above all for you, Valentina, health.
With cordial greetings
Andrea
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