Referring to the “communication sciences,” which she claims are tools that “embody and enforce new social relations for women worldwide,” Haraway says: “the solution to the key questions rests on a theory of language and control; the key operation is determining the rates, directions and probabilities of flow of a quantity called information….The biggest threat to such a power is interruption of communication” (164). I immediately connected this quote to The Female Man (and perhaps I’m taking Haraway’s idea out of context, because in the article she’s referring to biotechnology), but this struck me as somewhat applicable to the overall narrative structure of Russ’ novel. The Female Man uses what I think we can all agree is a jarring narrative technique: Russ has essentially interrupted the flow of communication of information to the reader by presenting the story in a jumbled, incoherent way. This idea of language as a force of domination harks back to Lacan, whom Haraway matches in a dichotomy against Freud, the former psychoanalyst representing “the informatics of domination” column (161). (From the course reader I’m getting the impression that postmodernism is all about dichotomous columnar charts…j/k
). It seems that feminists have embraced Lacanian theory so enthusiastically because his view of psychoanalysis is heavily dependent on language; and if sexism and patriarchy are embodied in the language we speak, then we can do something about them. I don’t know if this “interruption” was Russ’ intention in organizing the novel the way she did, or if the effect of her narrative structure challenges our conceptions of women, feminism or gender relationships; but the novel’s presentation certainly challenged me, and this seems in step with the feminist movements–which, as I perceive them, aim to challenge traditional conceptions of women and their place in our culture, among other things.