“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

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“We have no womanly reason to pledge allegiance to the negative.”

^{HÉLÈNE CIXOUS, THE LAUGH OF THE MEDUSA (1975), 884}

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With­in every fem­i­nist awak­en­ing lies a pro­found rup­ture in the very fab­ric of woman’s world.

From its after­math, she emerges long­ing to redis­cov­er what was burned in fire. Mov­ing momen­tar­i­ly with­out home, woman learns of the tran­sient and insub­stan­tial nature that char­ac­teris­es world­ly con­structs through the imper­ma­nence of the col­lapsed world at her feet.

As the veil between worlds is abrupt­ly lift­ed, woman emerges from the con­fin­ing grip of phal­lo­cen­tric con­structs. Agi­tat­ed by such new­found clar­i­ty, she renounces her alle­giance to the pre­vail­ing world sys­tem that had dic­tat­ed her per­cep­tion of self. Now, from every­where it seems, women return to their bod­ies and them­selves. Amidst this return, they unveil a dor­mant world, which lays in dark­ness wait­ing to be repop­u­lat­ed. 

In return­ing, woman recog­nis­es that the world she once knew is for­eign, while anoth­er world beck­ons her pres­ence. In this awak­en­ing, she will give a voice to her expe­ri­ences, affirm­ing not only her­self but also oth­er women. This affir­ma­tion unfolds through a lin­gua which con­fi­dent­ly asserts its own exis­tence, carv­ing out a space which nur­tures an authen­tic life.

When a world is shat­tered, reveal­ing its true nature as but a dom­i­nant tem­plate of pos­si­bil­i­ties, it nev­er­the­less presents as an oppres­sive sys­tem. Oppres­sive world sys­tems arise from the near total era­sure of alter­na­tive tem­plates, which need to be kept at the system’s out­er edge to pro­vide the oppressor’s world with its world pil­lars: exploita­tion, coer­cion, con­quest. 
By engag­ing with the meta­physics of oppres­sive world struc­tures which have arbi­trar­i­ly assumed dom­i­nance, we uncov­er their ori­gins in chance and ide­ol­o­gy. How­ev­er, achiev­ing a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of an oppres­sive world tem­plate requires step­ping out­side or above it. Giv­en that the major­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als reside with­in some form of a phal­lo­crat­ic soci­ety, it presents an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal chal­lenge. But it is not entire­ly impos­si­ble to step out­side a world. See­ing from with­out can be achieved through the per­spec­tives of oth­er worlds, par­tic­u­lar­ly those locat­ed in the periph­ery. 
To bring periph­er­al worlds into focus, one effec­tive approach is to trav­el to them. The abun­dance of worlds is matched by the diver­si­ty of their strug­gles, vio­lence, and genealo­gies. And worlds inter­sect. This is why we speak of inter­sec­tion­al activism: those who live in a world in which they suf­fer; those who feel and affect this world that dri­ves them to its edges and feeds off them; those who are tru­ly angry, sol­i­darise with sim­i­lar worlds. But the alliance of the periph­ery does not imply a belong­ing that extends across all worlds nor does it sug­gest they are akin. It is a com­mit­ment to appre­ci­at­ing the beau­ty of each world, even if they are unfa­mil­iar. 

The over­rep­re­sent­ed tem­plate goes by many names. It oper­ates with­in polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al spheres as a white patri­archy. Some know it as the tem­plate of the colonis­er. Oth­ers recog­nise it as the tem­plate of the Church. Cul­ture refers to it as a man’s world. Luce Iri­garay titles it a “phal­lo­crat­ic econ­o­my.” Hélène Cixous decodes it as “anti-love” in The Laugh of the Medusa (1975). Argen­tin­ian fem­i­nist philoso­pher María Lugones judges it as the arro­gant gaze (while draw­ing on work of fem­i­nist the­o­rist Mar­i­lyn Frye). In the work of US-Amer­i­can fem­i­nist sci­ence fic­tion writer Joan­na Russ, it is titled Man­land. 

Irre­spec­tive of its nomen­cla­ture, the mas­cu­line posi­tions itself as the bench­mark of human­i­ty with­in the andro­cen­tric tem­plate of anti-love. It sets itself apart from the fem­i­nine, which it defines sole­ly in terms of its devi­a­tion from the phal­lo­crat­ic ideal—through what it is lack­ing. Con­se­quent­ly, the mas­cu­line assumes self-def­i­n­i­tion and per­vades the very bedrock of this world, while the def­i­n­i­tion of the fem­i­nine remains sub­ject to the whims of phal­lo­crat­ic doc­trines. With­in its econ­o­my, an unfal­ter­ing dis­dain per­me­ates towards any­thing that chal­lenges the made-ide­al shape of the erect. Phal­lo­crat­ic affec­tions are selec­tive­ly reserved for expres­sions of dom­i­nance, sin­gu­lar­i­ty, and con­quest; and last­ly sub­mis­sion by what the erect secret­ly fears—one may want to point towards Freudi­an the­o­ries of cas­tra­tion anx­i­ety.

Pre­dictably, with­in a cul­tur­al frame­work pred­i­cat­ed upon sin­gu­lar­i­ty and inal­ter­abil­i­ty, the plu­ral­is­tic nature of fem­i­nin­i­ty finds no room for expres­sion. Fem­i­nist con­cep­tu­al­iza­tions often draw from an andro­cen­tric lex­i­con, for it is the sole lan­guage we are taught. Our own lin­guis­tic struc­ture has been sup­pressed, our voic­es mut­ed. The predica­ment lies in the fact that even when fem­i­nist imag­in­ings por­tray women as the reverse image of defi­cien­cy or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty nar­ra­tives, they inad­ver­tent­ly uphold and per­pet­u­ate phal­lo­crat­ic prin­ci­ples by main­tain­ing a rela­tion to them, in refer­ring to them. What we tru­ly require is an imag­i­na­tive ren­der­ing of fem­i­nin­i­ty con­ceived entire­ly with­in its own gram­mat­i­cal framework—dreamt up with­in infi­nite space, where uncon­fined rivers flow and expand amidst a per­pet­u­al­ly shift­ing world. 
It is imper­a­tive to under­stand that an imag­i­na­tion of the fem­i­nine need not inher­ent­ly reflect a mere rever­sal of the phal­lo­crat­ic doc­trine, but will be its own meta­physics entire­ly. What lies beyond anti-love? Which dor­mant tem­plates lie obscured? More­over, from an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal stand­point, how far must we tran­scend the con­fines of our own world to even appre­hend their exis­tence? The first step in this sub­ver­sive adven­ture trans­lates into the cen­tral aim of my the­sis.

As the jour­ney unfolds, I take on the respon­si­bil­i­ty of nav­i­gat­ing the imag­i­na­tive realms with­in this the­sis, both for myself and for my read­ers. How­ev­er, before we explore these imag­in­ings togeth­er, we must first set aside pre­con­ceived nar­ra­tives of being-as-woman that may lim­it our under­stand­ing. We rec­og­nize that the ideas expressed in these nar­ra­tives are con­veyed through a lan­guage ill-equipped to cap­ture the com­plex world tem­plates of those who do not iden­ti­fy as men.
Engag­ing with the select­ed works I have curat­ed for this project invites us to leave behind the con­fines of phal­lo­crat­ic ways of imag­in­ing. Phal­lo­crat­ic ways of imag­in­ing rely on the tan­gi­ble, on what may seem pos­si­ble or eas­i­ly mea­sur­able. They present clear and famil­iar dreams, which, despite their dream­like nature, appear lucid in the sky and do not elic­it fear or dis­com­fort from the unknown. These dreams typ­i­cal­ly do not require brav­ery, sub­ver­sion, or step­ping out­side our com­fort zones. They are dreams that tend to keep us com­fort­able.
Instead, on our jour­ney we embrace a more expan­sive and nuanced per­spec­tive. We ven­ture beyond the lim­i­ta­tions of these famil­iar dreams, embrac­ing the enig­mat­ic, the unex­plored, the elu­sive dark con­ti­nents. It is through this dif­fer­ent­ly struc­tured imag­i­na­tion that we remain open and lov­ing towards the world(s) we will encounter. These new dreams will feel dif­fer­ent, yet as we invite them to reside in our own world, we may find they trans­form us as well. 
My jour­ney, then, touch­es upon humankind’s ear­ly social begin­nings and its burn­ing mid­day fires. It fol­lows the French fem­i­nists into fem­i­nine scrip­tive space, and explores along­side them the meta­physics of a gram­mar which still echoes faint­ly in the dis­tance. I dwell in the blind spot which the periph­ery rep­re­sents, immers­ing myself in a con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of being-as-woman which blooms through its rich­ness, its mul­ti­tudes, its nur­ture into what seems an infi­nite capac­i­ty of liv­ing. Paus­ing momen­tar­i­ly, I will sus­pend my trav­els to study the pro­found soli­tude of islands as dis­cussed by Jacques Der­ri­da, the unwel­com­ing non-shores in utter despair for con­nec­tion, and the ulti­mate demise of a soci­etal frame­work that lacks gen­uine vital­i­ty, accom­mo­dat­ing only its self-affirmed pro­to­type of humanity—the white Man.

In the after­math of this par­a­dig­mat­ic col­lapse, my jour­ney leads me to the alliance in the periph­ery. From the periph­ery, the dom­i­nant world tem­plate becomes stark­ly vis­i­ble, and against a post­colo­nial back­drop, I become a pas­sen­ger in worlds I do not inhab­it. These trav­els through Latin and Black worlds final­ly cul­mi­nate in the sub­ver­sive prac­tice of lov­ing per­cep­tion, itself a nega­tion of anti-love and an affir­ma­tion of plu­ral­i­ty and capac­i­ty. Briefly, I am car­ried off into the mul­ti­verse of Joan­na Russ’ The Female Man, where I encounter Joan­na, the pro­tag­o­nist, grap­pling with a cri­sis after sev­er­ing ties with her exist­ing world struc­ture. Joan­na embod­ies the Female Man, rec­og­niz­ing that the exclu­sion of women from the def­i­n­i­tion of human­i­ty reflects their rela­tion­al­i­ty to the white Man. Fol­low­ing along in Joanna’s quest for self-affir­ma­tion, I jour­ney to a sep­a­ratist utopia, wit­ness a forty-year gen­der war, and observe a rev­o­lu­tion­ary soul awak­en­ing with­in her as she merges her past and future selves into a com­plete, expand­ing and pros­per­ing whole.

My jour­ney comes to an end pre­cise­ly where wom­en’s worlds artic­u­late a yearn­ing of the sov­er­eign human soul. This par­tic­u­lar expres­sion, coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, emerges in his work as the dias­poric plea to dis­man­tle racial con­structs. The yearn­ing for authen­tic expe­ri­ences with­in a respon­sive cos­mos finds inter­pre­ta­tion in works like Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisy­phus, among var­i­ous oth­ers, and is native to both the phal­loc­ra­cy and the periph­ery. How­ev­er, in the for­mer it is mut­ed while in the lat­ter it has become a world build­ing prin­ci­ple.

In con­trast to the stag­nant con­crete tow­ers of the phal­lo­crat­ic world tem­plate, the con­cept of the sea—extending infi­nite­ly every­where all the time—and of the islands—sovereign worlds which nonethe­less affect oth­er such islands—emerges as a world struc­ture which nur­tures bound­less poten­tial. The pris­mat­ic lat­i­tude in the sea’s unceas­ing touch becomes a sanc­tu­ary from sin­gu­lar­i­ty to all crea­tures it car­ries.

With­in the mar­itime expanse, the periph­ery is eman­ci­pat­ed into sov­er­eign­ty.

While a world struc­ture informed by the dom­i­nance of a male-cen­tred per­spec­tive sculpts mas­culin­i­ty into a force that sev­ers and dis­con­nects, in our con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of the pris­mat­ic sea islands unceas­ing­ly touch the water. In times of growth, they stretch their shores fur­ther, explor­ing in capa­cious waters with a lov­ing curios­i­ty that mir­rors their evolv­ing sense of self. And when the tides of chal­lenge come, they recede with­out ever sev­er­ing the bond that ties them to the deep cur­rents.

With­in the pris­mat­ic sea, slow­ly a les­son unfurls. The islands teach us that sov­er­eign­ty does not thrive in iso­la­tion, but rather in the rich soil of plu­ral­is­tic life.

The under­stand­ing that every action and reac­tion sends rip­ples through the shared waters of exis­tence and that our lives are sat­u­rat­ed with those of oth­ers becomes a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for these sov­er­eign lands.

Mer­cy Fer­rars is a philoso­pher and writer based in Berlin.
http://www.mercyferrars.de