After Hegel, Who Are We Going to Spit on? – Antithesis

The creation of the dominant identity is mainly based on the contrast between the self and the other.

The existence of another, compared to the conventional standard, is a crucial element as it is precisely through the creation and destruction of what is different that power affirms itself and is legitimised. In this manner, the patriarchal dynamic is very similar to that of colonisation, in both practice and ideology.

Colonialism identified the other in the colonised peoples, through language, religion and coercion they then assimilated the other, teaching a new language, professing a new religion and depriving them of their own spaces and territories.

The processes to construct the other, in colonial and racist terms, are: dehumanisation, exoticization (the myth of the “good savage” or “bad savage”), subhumanization, inferiorization and hierarchization and assimilation.

The creation of the dominant identity is mainly based on the contrast between the self and the other.

The existence of another, compared to the conventional standard, is a crucial element as it is precisely through the creation and destruction of what is different that power affirms itself and is legitimised. In this manner, the patriarchal dynamic is very similar to that of colonisation, in both practice and ideology.

Colonialism identified the other in the colonised peoples, through language, religion and coercion they then assimilated the other, teaching a new language, professing a new religion and depriving them of their own spaces and territories.

The processes to construct the other, in colonial and racist terms, are: dehumanisation, exoticization (the myth of the “good savage” or “bad savage”), subhumanization, inferiorization and hierarchization and assimilation.

Just like racism, patriarchy is based on the constitution of another subject, identified no longer on the basis of the concept of race, but on that of gender. Men represent the reference standard and women their variant.

Researcher Sara Pierallini focuses on a dynamic typical of hetero-patriarchal society: oppositional and hierarchical dualisms such as male/female, culture/nature, reason/nature, mind/body, etc

First another is created, different from the self and whose differences are amplified, then a hierarchy is created.

Subsequently, what the aforementioned scholar defines as incorporation occurs, whereby the master is the standard and the other is defined based on possessing these requirements or not.

Lastly, the other is constructed as if void of purpose or meaning, other than to serve as a resource for the master.

Thus the woman who at home has the role of serving man, is a parallel to the slavery and exploitation of colonised peoples.

Once the characteristics to which we must adapt have been created, power keeps the new subject «aligned with male culture, models and values» as stated by Emanuela Gioia of the IAPh Italy editorial team.

Carla Lonzi's unexpected subject is also unexpected because, quoting Federica Giardini, professor of Political Philosophy at the Roma Tre University, she invades but without taking over power.

It is in this way that she becomes different from what has dominated her previously. In the contribution Conflict and creation. Su un altro piano (on another level), the teacher states that «Feminism is the signifier of those who remember having been conquered and do not repeat the history of the winners», thus the new unexpected subjects maintain the memory of those who have been conquered and constantly work to undo this history, its effects on the present, and to create a different time.

Overcoming the creation of the self and the other should therefore not consist in establishing a new dominant subject that cancels and de-legitimises the different, but in its promotion and the removal of hierarchies.