Phelan: AG's preliminary discussion questions

Two thoughts occurred to me as I read the first chapter of Phelan's Unmarked:

1) Why does Phelan reverse the standard definition of markedness/unmarkedness from Prague School linguistics? From a structural point of view, in the opposition male:female, it is "male" which is the unmarked member, because it is the default; that is why sexists and linguistic conservatives think that "he" can be a gender-neutral pronoun in the phrase "everyone likes to hear his own name" or why many people can use "you guys" to address a group of any gender composition, whereas "you gals" would never be applied to a group containing even one male. For an explanation of the basic linguistic case, see, e.g., sections 12ff. of the introduction to Greg Nagy's Pindar's Homer; Nagy studied with Jakobson, so this is orthodox. Nagy's example is the opposition long:short in English. If I ask "how long is it?" I do not presuppose anything about its length; whereas "how short is it?" does already imply that it's short. "Long" is the unmarked member, here given its zero interpretation of a general category of which both "long" (+interpretation) and "short" are specific instances. How would thinking about the politics of visibility change if we went back to this conception of the marginalized, non-normative minority as marked rather than unmarked?

2) I am fascinated by Phelan's description of her response to the Louise Bourgeois sculpture Nature Study, Velvet Eyes. Phelan speaks of being "oddly reassured" (21) after the initial shock of seeing eyes in the rock. I am not compelled by the Lacanian jargon of the object's return gaze--but I do recognize that feeling of satisfaction in the face of a display of self-referentiality by an avant-garde artwork. What is comforting about frame-breaking? What are the politics of that comfort?

More to follow--live tomorrow!