Girls gone bad: An essay on “Existence” in Chytilová's Daisies

Abstract

This essay re-examines the subversive potential of Vera Chytilová's film Daisies and elaborates on its possibilities for exploring (feminine) existence as difference in relation to work, (re)production, and consumption. Drawing on the work of Luce Irigaray and critical fem(me)ninity studies, it theorizes fem(me)nine existence as multiple and ambiguous, and explores its possible materialization through a poetic “re-representation” of the film. Through the ambiguous becoming of the film's protagonists, the Maries, the tension between the “undoing” patriarchal of orders of exchange and their tenacity is discussed in relation to the emergence of non-patriarchal forms of organizing. The essay contributes to organizational research on difference by introducing a critical fem(me)nine lens and by directing attention towards the struggle between existing only for and through an Other – and not existing at all. This allows for an examination of the disruptive potential of difference while further accounting for possible tensions with regards to its materialization. It is argued that fem(me) theorizations of film can be useful for exploring such matters differently as they open up ways to playfully and creative accentuate ambiguity and multiplicity rather than reducing “it” to sameness.