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cise cyberspace as a place where our bodies meet, not by extending themselves in our dreams into wires, but by
typing, massaging our hands in-between, smiling in front of the screen, enjoying words and responses from each
other, that embody our pains and pleasures, deriving from new encounters, relations, sensations, friendships. These
intensities contribute to a creation of our female subjectivities, that are ours and corporeal. In this case this meet-
ing that we are in today gives us another, new kinds of sensations, possibilities of new pleasures and developments,
that are not a break from or extension of virtual reality we are working in, but another form of embodiment, that is
full of potentiality of pleasure. We are pleased in being here due to various reasons and despite of so many more
other reasons. We are pleased in being in cyberspace with women and as women, though it is not all unproblemat-
ic: Irigaray through her analysis of European philosophy and sexual order that it represents, shows that "women's re-
Jationships with their mothers and daughters and with each other" have been traditionally sacrificed to the patriar-
chal economy and that “all the norms of existing culture and society ...rest ... on the separation between women”
(Whitford, 1991: 182-183). It makes clear why a shared sociality and joined symbolic work between women - as it
is expressed in virtual space as one of new spaces - is highly political, since it creates pleasures of women and for
women, also making visible female lines and genealogies of creation. For us our differences are becoming another
source of mutual pleasure, that we are discovering, and not a matter to absorb.

RUSSIAN JOUISSANCE

| argue that “jouissance" is especially relevant and appropriate as a corrective to the Russian ‘culture of suffering’.
Orthodox Christianity and the following it "communist faith" as it has evolved in Russia traditionally stress the im-
portance and goodness of suffering, especially for women, that has been expressed in various ways in Russian
“high’ and ‘popular’ cultures. Thus, | see the idea of articulated and symbolised (collective) female jouissance as an
even more appropriate "strategic operation" of the subject for Russian women that challenges ideals of “what a
woman should be" in Russia. Do you think that our mothers, Mother-Russia and we, their daughters, have suffered
enough? Or still it needs a bit more? Who needs? For whom? For what? Women in Russia seem to have fulfiled their
lot of suffering. Last (?) time in Chechnya. We must be angels by now. And we are. We leave this world of suffering
to "become". We are cyberangels. We use cyberspace to speak to each other “from afar", to embrace "Others". We
carry out rites of passage between earth and sky, heaven and hell, and it is our pleasure.

There are other spaces where women are already finding possibilities for an embodied politics of pleasure: art
groups, friendship clubs, etc. A limited scope of this paper does not allow us to elaborate on them and their relation
to cyberspace. However, we can pose some questions for a future analysis: “What differentiates them from cyber-
space? To what extent have the potential of a feminist politics of pleasure within / through cyberspace been prefig-
ured by earlier spaces / practices / discourses of feminist pleasure? What are there continuities and contradictions
if at all?" My experience of a participation in one of women's organisations - Committee of Soldier's Mothers
(Moscow brunch) - suggests that there can be no easy answers to such questions, though it is obvious that women
in the Committee use strategically their embodied stereotyped positions as "women/actual/potential mothers” to
challenge the most (literally) phallocentric institution: an army, which Foucault considered as a heart of modern so-
cieties, together with prisons. Though it is not necessarily pleasure that is aimed at in these spaces that women cre-
ate among themselves, they do feel "to-gether", they share everyday tears and humour and it gives them energy. It
is that kind of “de-sexualized" pleasure that was discussed earlier. We are comfortable among ourselves, despite of
many problems and cultural stereotypes and we use it for highly effective and productive resistances. Russian
women share their lives with each other, and more often today - with other women on the earth. Their collective jois-
sance from shared actions gives birth to / labours a new political situation. Moreover, covered with dust and forgot-
ten joissance of our mothers, grandmothers and grand-grand... mothers enjoys its rebirth too, being newly articulat-
ed thus giving us an opportunity to discover and continue creations of our female geneology.

It is a political statement that celebrates power of pleasure. This positive energy of cyberfeminism in Russia in
joined action with other feminist practices creates new forms of subjectivities for Russian women, establishing