Fístula arteriovenosa

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter, I evoked Madhu Dubey’s notion of ‘repetition with variation’, as a way of thinking about generational relations and tradition-building which does not accede to the linear order of succession, but equally, does not set up a dualistic juxtaposition between ‘continuity’ on the one hand, and ‘discontinuity’ on the other. The idea of ‘repetition with variation’, I proposed, captures the delicate and precarious interplay between continuity and discontinuity within the temporal dynamics of generational time and the process of tradition- building, and can accommodate and articulate contradictions, fragmentations, and ambiguities, as well as resonances and links between feminisms of the past and feminisms of the present. This chapter will further elaborate upon ‘repetition’ as a historiographical concept, drawing together various ideas and themes that have been discussed in previous chapters. The aim is to show how ‘repetition’ enhances the multidirectional, multilinear model of historical time I have been developing through the thesis, at both a conceptual and a practical level.

When we think of historical progress in terms of a unilinear, continuous progression, ‘history repeating itself’ can only be thought in negative terms, as a sign that transformative efforts have failed and progress has stalled. This negative concept of repetition—as a step backwards or a waste of time—has a demoralising impact within feminism, leading to a sense of frustration or defeat (Browne 2012). The intention here, however, is to demonstrate how this negative concept can be overturned when we think in terms of ‘repetition with variation’ or ‘repetition with difference’, which recasts repetition in history as a potentially creative and productive phenomenon. Indeed, this alternative understanding of repetition overturns the

unilinear, progressivist models of historical time and change that classify repetition as a negative phenomenon in the first place.137 To demonstrate this alternative conception, section 1 draws on the work of feminist philosopher Christine Battersby, who establishes a unique model of historical time that operates through repetition and ‘echo’ (1989; 1998; 2007). I focus particularly on Battersby’s appropriation of the Kierkegaardian concept of ‘recollecting forwards’ and the Nietzschean concept of ‘untimeliness’, which she uses to depict repetitive temporality in terms of a relational dynamism between past, present and future. This gives rise to an insightful account of ‘vertical’ or diachronic relations, and to a process-oriented conception of historical truth and reality, which can build on my own discussions of indirect realism, narrativity, and generational time in earlier chapters.

Section 2 then considers how this alternative conception of repetition can translate into historiographical practice. The first half of the section extends the discussion of Battersby’s work, as I show how the thought of repetition can translate into a transformative historiographical practice, which works through ‘repeating’ or re-activating forgotten ideas and methods that can unblock feminist thought in the present, and bring positive change. The second half of the section takes a more critical perspective, as whilst it is important to rethink the temporality of the historiographical process and the productive aspects of ‘repetition’, it is equally important to acknowledge that repetition is not always a positive phenomenon. There are ideas and presumptions that we would rather weren’t repeated, but which nevertheless persist and resurface within feminist discourse in the present, often unconsciously. My proposal here is that the concept of repetition can inspire a reflexive and critical mode of historiographical practice, alongside the more affirmative mode, precisely because it makes us realise that the ‘bad bits’ of past feminisms cannot be simply left behind, but rather, often

137

The idea of ‘repetition with variation’ or ‘repetition with difference’ has become a reasonably common theme within feminist theory and can be drawn from various sources: for example, from Derrida’s notion of différance (see e.g. Schor, Weed and Rooney (2003)), or from Deleuze’s work on

virtual self-differentiating temporality (see e.g. Colebrook and Buchanan (2000)). This chapter, however, in keeping with the theoretical framework of the rest of the thesis, develops a conception of repetition grounded in the interpretative, experiential, and relational depths of historical time as a lived time, and the politics and patterns of social remembering. As such, it draws on theorists whose work is also grounded in these thematics.

repeat themselves in our own presumptions and discourses. To elaborate, I turn to Dominick La Capra’s psychoanalytically-inspired concept of ‘historiographical transference’ (1984; 1854; 1994; 2004), as a way of understanding the process of repetition and displacement that occurs as a structural determinant of historical practice. I conclude by advocating the notion of a ‘dialogue’ between past and present, as a way of positively and responsibly engaging with repetitions of the past in the present, of both the desirable and the undesirable kind.

1

RECOLLECTING FORWARDS AND THE UNTIMELY EVENT

In his essay on ‘Repetition’, Kierkegaard writes that ‘genuine repetition’ does not signify a simple remembrance of a past event, or a recurrence of the same. It refers, rather, to the process whereby the possibilities generated by the past are taken up and actualised in the present, which Kierkegaard describes as a process of ‘recollecting forwards’:

‘Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions, for what is recollected is repeated backwards, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward’ (Kierkegaard 2001c:115-116).

In The Phenomenal Woman (1998), Battersby uses this idea of repetition as ‘recollecting forwards’ to provoke a complete reconceptualisation of the relation between past, present and future. The account she gives of lived time as a repetitive temporality helps to elaborate the multidirectional, multilinear, internally complex conception of historical time that this thesis is seeking to develop. In the first instance, the idea of ‘recollecting forwards’ requires us to move away from a conception of the past as a fixed, determinate foundation—which exists as ‘objectively true’—towards a more fluid and fragmentary model in which the past is ambiguous and indeterminate, and can be ‘repeated’ in the present in various ways. As I argued in chapter 2, there is no direct access to a past that is ‘given’ as ‘true’ to all parties,

and as such, there can be no simple ‘re-take’ of the past (Battersby 1998:209). To illustrate this point, Battersby turns to Kierkegaard’s rendering of the story of Antigone in Either/Or (Kierkegaard 2001a). Here, Kierkegaard presents an Antigone racked with uncertainty about the extent to which her father Oedipus knew about his guilt and his fate, particularly following his death, as she loses all opportunity to ask him. Her uncertainty and anxiety regarding her family’s past are thus taken up into her life as a ‘secret’: an ambiguous relation to a past that she cannot change, but which necessarily escapes her. Indeed, Battersby writes, ‘it is ‘anxiety’—a temporal relationship that binds future to present and that endlessly reworks the past—that becomes the mark of Antigone’s own singularity’ (ibid: 154). In one way, Antigone’s ‘sad fate is like the echo of her father’s’; however, in Kierkegaard’s hands, that echo is ‘a form of repetition that transforms the present; it does not simply repeat a past or a destiny that is fixed (fated) in the manner of the Greek tragedies’ (ibid: 169).

This conception of the past as an enigmatic or ‘elusive precursor’—which repeats and echoes in the present yet cannot be definitely grasped and known—has significant implications for how the present itself is conceptualised (ibid: 182). On this model, the present is not an omniscient moment of complete insight; but nor is it simply a passive conduit or link in the chain from past to future. Instead, Battersby describes the present as a ‘generative caesura’, a ‘nook’ where the many different paths from the ambiguous past intersect in a ‘deepened present’, to produce multiple interpretations and possibilities that stretch into the future. This image makes it impossible to think of the ‘moment’ in terms of a ‘single, linear series of ‘nows’ that are linked together through one uniting history’. On the contrary:

‘The present is birthed within a multiple play of possibilities. The ‘now’ emerges in a ‘nook’ of intersecting paths, all of which contribute to the present and to the individualised egos and objects that emerge in this meeting’ (ibid: 150-1).