22 12 2000
Irina Aristarkhova: re: spasibo


Dear Jana, Andrea, Valentina, Irina, Larissa, and Alla,

first of all, I would like to thank Jana and Andrea for their invitation to take part in our discussion in cyberspace. It is a lot of work for you, and we all know the problems with encodings, trying to read the contributions on different computers, not even talking about that we haven't really been writing to each other and always kept not answering to each other. Therefore, in this last letter I would like to think about one point from Valentina's letter - her women-colleagues excluding her from her project at the point when she needed the support most of all.

Sometimes in our letters it seemed that responsibility and love to our closest ones stands in some kind of contradiction to other kinds of responsibility. As if a woman is respecting other women and is responsible for her friends and colleagues, means that she couldn't be a "good wive and mother", as if that would be some trick 22. And what about the relationships between women? Between us, to each other? The notion of ethics, responsibility and decency do not yet exist, or any more?

Dealing with the developments of new technologies, especially in genetics, medicine, biology, robototechnics, observing the development of cyberfeminism, I agree again and again with Levinas that nothing will change in great ways, neither in cyberfeminism, as long as we continue to give away our preferences to questions of ontology, existence and self, leaving ethics off board. Notice that we haven't discussed (cyber)ethics, although we have discussed a lot and discussed Russian women, ourselves. Ethics and responsibility in cyberspace will not emerge by themselves, if there is no respect, support and hospitability between us in other spaces. The betrayal or absence of answer and support, Valentina has written about, is always happening between us (notice that this is happening also among men, nobody doubts this, but this is just another story).

Cyberfeminism often repells its connection to feminism, and this is of course not only funny, as there has been invented nothing more traditional than "patri-matri-cide". But it is also showing its weak reflection of discussions which have been led in feminism a long time ago, and this is visible very brightly in cyberfeminist practice - what is found in the internet often refuses the neccessity of ethics. Questions of differences between women often are left off board, complex problems seem to be overcome in the thrive to be liberated of anything. It comes to my mind that there have already been calls for the overcoming of cyberfeminism, for a new cyberfeminism, for a post-cyberfeminism...

But cyberfeminism is falling out of fashion already, and those who ran after it as after the buy of a bright dress, to be noticed, will also run very quickly chasing after something else. And the question about the ethics of relationships between women, between men, between women and men, is the question about the other (m) and the other (f), the question about you and her, will remain. Until now we are not thinking about it a lot, we prefer ontology to ethics, although ontology without ethics will have the well-known consequences, philosophical as well as political as well as of everyday concern. In this year the Venice Biennale of architecture was called "less esthetics, more ethics". This is question No.1 for today, and as the Biennale has shown, it's easier to ask it than to find some new practices. How not to attack each other because of our differences? Attacking each other is always easier- that's what is taught; to coexist without levelling the differences and without selfdestruction needs a wholly new thinking about time and space, a thinking about the relations between us.

Take this as a self-critique, not as self-whipping. It is a way we walk on, and I would like us to meet more often on this way. Why? And why are we doing this at all, why do we write to each other? If cyberspace is not the try to flee reality, why do we want to dissociate ourselves from such a huge heritage, about which we know so little? How can we become woman, hating so many women and ourselves within them? That already is a psychosis. The wish to be the one (which one?), not be Self, to become cyborg or something else, but not o be woman - is this not the flight from complicated ethical solutions? We will not find another ontology, a new ontology, stepping beyond ethics. This will be the old ontology, the ontology of being-me, worn out and dead, anti-birthgiving.

Dear Valentina, there is nothing sadder and shabbier than the fight for a place under the sun among women, than such a strike on the back. I am absolutely admiring Your optimism, and am agreeing with You that our feminism can fully survive betrayal of friends - as if there was something new about this! Can cyberfeminism survive the absence of feminism? No, it can't, - today there is more feminism in cyberfeminism than not too long ago. Many are giving it up because of this, but the process is inevitable, and it is not merely about access or a site in the internet, but about critical thinking about genetics, cloning, medical experiments, - thinking from a point of view of gender and other differences, which themselves need our critical concern.

Again thanks to Jana and Andrea for organizing of our talks, and, hopefully, to new meetings and lots of love to everybody in the next year and in all years!

Irina Aristarkhova.


no next message
previous message

back to discussion list
home