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FROM REAL ESSENCES TO THE FEMININE IMAGINARY:
Critiques of Essentialism in Feminist Theory
in North America in the 1980's
Kathryn Snider
Departmeno. of Religion and Philosophy in Education • McGiII University, Montreal
Il thesis submitted to the Faculty ofGraduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment ofthe degree of Master of Arts
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ISBN 0-315-99935-7
Canada • Table of COJ:\tents Page
Abstract . i Resumé . ii Acknowledgements . iii :Introduction . l Chapter One: The :Issue of the 80's: Essentialism and its Discontents 6
Chapter TWo: The Specificity of the Body . 27
Chapter Three: The ":Imaginings of Luce l.rigaray" 40 Selected Aspects of Jacques Lacan's Work 42 Irigaray and the Female Body . 45 The Feminine Imaginary . 54 What the Critics Say . 67
Chapter Four: When Education and Essentialism Meet 76
Conclusion . 87
Notes . 93 • Bibliography . 103
• • Abstract
The polemical debate, within feminist theory in
North America, in the 1980s, around essentialism is the
central focus of this thesis.
In particular, this work attempts to critically
examine the notion of essentialism, the resistance to
accepting a feminine "essence," and the loosely defined
and employed terminology surrounding this field of
inquiry. In accomplishing these objectives l draw upon,
and critique, the more recent work elaborated around
theorizing with/through the "body." • Aspects of feminist theory which are examined as contributive towards the above aim are an analysis of the
explicit, and implicit, dangers of accepting or
discarding essentialism, and an analysis of the inherent
ontological and philosophical tenets that function within
this present discourse.
It is maintained that by addressing the issue of
essentialism, the relationship between subjectivitiy,
identity, and gender, within feminist theory, will be
liberated from further constraining propositions .
• i Resumé
• '~bjectif Cette thèse se propose comme de rendre compte du débat polémique qui s'installe dans les années quatre-vingt, autour de l'essentialisme dans le cadre de la théorie féministe. Ce travail tente, tout particulièrement, d'examiner de manière critique la notion même d'essentialisme, les résistances à accepter une "essence" féminine, et le manque de rigueur de la terminologie employée et définie dans ce champ de recherche. Pour cela, je Ille réfère aux travaux et discute les ouvrages les plus récents qui traitent de la théorisation avec/par le "corps." • Par ailleurs dans la mesure où ils contribuent à réaliser les objectifs précités, deux aspects de la théories féministe sont analysés: les dangers explicites et implicites à accepter ou à rejeter l'essentialisme et les principes philosophiques et ontologiques inherents aux discours en question. En abordant le problème de l'essentialisme, je soutiens que la relation entre subjectivité, identité, et genre, au sein de la théorie féministe, sera libéré de nouvelles propositions contraignantes .
• ii • Acknowledgements Many people, both wittingly and unwittingly, have been instrum.mtal in aiding me to complete the task of
writing this thes~s. l would like to acknowledge the support of my
departmental supervisor Stanley Nemiroff. l 0we a greal
deal to Stanley for his guidance, and unrele~ting encouragement which inspired me to ask more questions.
l would also like to thank Michael Chervin, who initially inspired me to address the issues in this
thesis. Michael proved to be, not only a trusting friend
but, an unparalleled confidante and advisor throughout
this entire Master's process . • l thank Claire Nollet for her translation of the abstract into French, and Eric Francouer for the
subsequent proofreading of the translation and the use of
his printer.
My last note of gratitude, and on a certain level the most important, is reserved for Inge Karam, who
contributed enormously to my well-being and peace of
mind, and was encouraging, supportive and loving .
• iii • Introduction
Bringing forth essentialism as an explicit topic for
analysis is an important undertaking. This thesis, as
the title mentions, explores the theoretical terrain
around essentialism that was passionately debated within
feminist theory during the decade of the 80's.
"Essentialist," although often ill-defined, became a
destructive charge that was issued against any theory or
theorist that entertained a feminine specificity derived,
or connected to, a female body. The emotion behind the
charge, coupled with a desire not to deconstruct • essentialism, has been, as Elizabeth Grosz states, a reaction to the pervasively misogynistic treatment of women' s bodies, and to various patriarchal attempts to reduce women to their bodies when these bodies have been conceived in the most narrowly functionalist and reductionist terms.'
Consequently, "essence" has not been an enriching
notion for many women. Many feminists, justifiably so,
are not yet willing to encounter, or deconstruct this
concept. But, through discussions of sexual difference,
and the connection between theory and political force,
there is an appeal to loosen the ban on "essence," and to
temporarily ponder the reasons that repel feminist theory
away from this area. Therefore, during the decade under • 1 study the notion of "essence," and therefore • "essentialism," was in the process of being retheori::ed, with the hope that this analysis might
provide explanations for women' s social subordination, and perhaps incre importantly, its ability to help reconceptualize women' s capacities for resistance to their social subordination and to prûvide positive terms in which to explain the process of social and psychical construction.'
It is not entirely unfeasible that the issue of
essentialism may liberate feminist theory from a
reactionary position against the dominant order.
By the end of this era theorists were beginning to
engage the debate directly3 and the possibility of
"taking the risk of essentialism'" was introduced.
This thesis will purview the decade in feminist • theory in North America, in order to render explicit the assumptions and intricacies inherent in the terminology
used within this debate, aIl the while trying to decipher
the relationship between the "body" and "essentialism."
This relationship will be further exposed and
interrogated through the analysis and presentation of
Luce Irigaray's feminine imaginary. And finally, l chose
to analyze the manner in which essentialism functions in
the classroom.
Chapter One begins by exposing the assumptions, and
overarching philosophical tenets, present in the commonly
accepted definition(s) of essentialism. This opening • 2 chapter will present tl:e main points of contention, on • each side of the essentialist/anti-essentialist binary, examj.ning where they diverge, intersect, and how the
debate is restricted by this particular binary logic.
Within Chapter One, the dialectical relationship
between theo :~. and the body begins to emerge. The
"essentialist" debate begins to shift from limiting
concepts of fixed properties, which define sorne sort of
essence, and consequently a "realness," to an engaging
analysis that starts to expose, through the discourse of
the body, the often mentioned, but little analyzed,
relationship between the body and subjectivity, identity,
and knowledge construction.
Chapter Two, titled "The Specificity of the Body," • directly investigates these new theoretical possibilities. How is the "body" theorized, and in what
ways have these theories "marked" the "body?" And, using
the propositions put forth by social constructivists, how
is "gender" related to, derived from, and influenced by,
the "body?"
Once the relationship between the body and
essentialism has been established, l felt it was
imperative to analyze a theorist who stretches the
boundaries of the debate, while purporting to offer a
potentially liberating practice. This theorist is Luce
Irigaray. Irigaray is accorded numerous, often • 3 contradictory, interpretations. However, the charge of • essentialism is consistently issued against her work, and this unwittingly exposes the tensions, and points of
confrontation, inherent in the debate. Yet, since
Irigaray is tolerated by sorne anti-essentialists, the
question that is begged is, how can Irigaray speak the
body, propose a feminine imaginary, and still be
tolerated? What is in her work that has made her so
controversial and contradictory? And finally, beyond the
limitations of a debate structured around an opposing
binary, what does Irigaray have to offer those who are
trying not to be restricted by the confines of this
logic?
The final chapter, titled "When Essentialism and • Education Meet," engages specifically with Mary Midgley' s representation of the effects of social construction,"
and Diana Fuss' s chapter titled "Essentialism in the
Classroom. ,,6 The debate around essentialism, as Diana
Fuss notes, is a particularly volatile issue in the
classroom. The practice of education, which is not
solely, or by any means exclusively, a feminist practice
is represented in order to grapple with sorne of the
embedded notions, wit'iin modern educational theory, that
rely on a preconceived belief in "essence." These
notions inevitably affect the students and teachers, and
should be explicitly challenged in order to counteract • 4 any negative outcomes that may arise, caused by their • implementation. Essentialism is a notion that is somewhat
misunderstood, often discarded, and easily abused. Where it shows up the most, that is, in feminist theory, the terminology surrounding it is often loosely defined, and
at the best of times contentious. Where notions of essentialism apparently do not emerge, for instance in education, they are in fact operating through the
practices and assumptions that are made about others, their subjectivity, identity construction, and experiences. •
• 5 1
The issue of the 80's: • Essentialism and its Discontents
Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. Virginia Woolf
This chapter outlines the volatile issue of
essentialism in feminist theory during the 1980' s. It
will investigate the relationship between social/cultural • constructivists and those they accuse of essentialism. To represent the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate in
North America l have chosen, out of a very large and
diverse field, feminists that specifically engage the
debate, questioning the complexities of either essentialism or anti-essentialism. It must be remembered
however, that although many feminists do not query this
discussion directly, their arguments are infused with
assumptions on either side of the debate. This cilapter
will, then, analyze the work theorized around the "body,"
and its relationship to the charge of essentialism. Finally, with regard to the future, l will introduce the • 6 most chal1enging and likely directions in which the
debate is heading. • The complexity of r.he essentialist/anti-essentialist
debate and its continuaI resurgence in feminist theory,
most notably in the 1980'5, attests not only to the
difficulty of disentangling the nuances of this
discussion, but more importantly to the inherent
political dangers for embodied women on both "sides" of
the issue. As the layers are shed, and as theorists
appear forever at an impasse, those that have faced the
charge of essentialism are becoming more intrigued by the
political and psychological investments of those who lay
these charges. The debilitating charge of "essentialism"
has been used by anti-essentialists to ensure that • knowledge claims could not be made on the basis of sorne pre-determined or possessed attribute. With the growing
acceptance and theoretic~l adherence to the premises put
forth by such critical schools as post-structuralism,
postmodernism and deconstruction it became impossible to
claim that there was a knowledge borne out of a body.
Consequently, there could be no knowledge that could not
be rendered visible by another who chose to interrogate
it with their critical tools. But what exactly does the
charge of essentialism mean? And what are the
assumptions behind the essentialist/anti-essentialist
discursive framework within feminist theory? • 7 Essence in Aristotelian terms meant that which was • the "most irreducible and ui1changing about a thing" 1 Centuries later, Locke taxonomically expanded this sparse
definition into two distinct categories -- real essences
and nominal essences. According to Locke, real essences
exist, ipso facto. However, knowledge of real essences
may not be obtainable to human beings. At this present
historical juncture it has become extremely difficult to
be committed to qualities of existence that are pre
determined, for example by biology or religion, as if
such knowledges were not constructed, and at the same
time accept that we can never know these illusive
properties. Bounded by these limitations the appeal to
any real essence quickly lost its lustre . • Real essences have been claimed for woman as those genetically determined characteristics, such as a woman' s
biological role in reproduction (gestation, lactation... )
whereby women are then interpreted through this dominant
representation, which claims that woman' s biological
nature ensures that they, in turn, are nurturing, caring
and protective.
Nominal essences, as outlined by Locke, are
categories and classifications determined by the
knowledge one acquires through experience. The debate
within feminist discourse is structured around the
position that women are made not born, and that gender is • 8 not an innate feature but a socio-cultural construction . • However, de Lauretis exposes a confusion within feminist theory between Locke's real and nominal essences. She
states that,
the essence of woman that is described in the writings of many so-called essentialists is not the real essence in Locke' s terms, but more likely the nominal one. It is a totality of qualities, properties, and attributes that such feminists define, envisage, or enact for themselves . 2
Locke's description of nominal essences leaves space for
a variability of experiences and consequent
interpretations, therefore not rendering nominal essences
to the paradigm of transcendental universality. Yet, it
is within this discursive framework that feminists appeal
to a universality of their experience . • Locke proposes that real essences are the work of God. However, to many this appeal to a dis-empowering
"master" does not suffice. Given that real essences are
described as the source of all a particular
object's/subject's properties, not just those singled out
by an observer, and can and have been used against others
to maintain oppression, the appeal to real essences
leaves an individual with an always and forever
unattainable knowledge.
In early psychoanalytic theory, Freud like Locke
concluded that "what constitutes masculinity and
femininity is an unknown element which is beyond the • 9 power of anatomy to grasp." 3 His appeal to a real • essence, an unknown power, which at the time was constructed as an unmapped territory, has been utilized
by anti-essentialist feminists who, in turn, proclaim that this unknown element is socially constructed. Consequently, and partially as a result of the complexity of social construction, given its innumerable outcomes, masculinity and femininity are gender roles and
identities that one acquires. But this is also a somewhat unknown process, not easily or even possibly knowable. However, what is implicit in Freud's statement
is, that if it is beyond the power of anatomy to grasp the constitution of masculinity and femininity, then
psychology, the science of the mind which "does" the • science of anatomy, will be sufficiently privileged to grasp this unknown constitution. Within the feminist movement in the 1980'5, as
different groups or types of feminisms (liberal, Marxist, radical... ) were defined, and the critical tools
avai1ab1e to theorists (deconstruction, postmodernism... )
expanded, the need arose not only to be very precise
about language, but to investigate the assumptions and
philosophies that each individual word carried. No
longer cou1d the signifier "woman" be used with the
expectation that potentia1 readers would know what was
meant . • 10 Lorraine Code, in "Is the Sex of the Knower
Epistemologically Significant?, " postulates that "the • fact of being male or being female seems to be fundamental to one's way of being a person in such a way
that it could have a strong influence upon one's way of
knowing. ,,' Yet, it is unclear what Code means by
"being" . She implies that "being" is in sorne way
different or more elemental than "doing" or "acting."
"Bèing" beckons back to an original state which,
potentially, has a causal relationship to the way one
acquires and uses knowledge. Code's analysis eliminates
the room for the postmodern assumption that knowledge is
partial. She re-ifies the belief that whatever
constitutes this "being" acts in such a way as to give • individuals certain identifiable and uniform characteristics with regard to their acquisition and use
of knowledge. This "being" is also characteristic of
social constructivism, in that one learns how to "be"
either male or female. And, if we are "made, not born" ,
the fact is that we are, now, women and men and this may
have a significant effect on our "ways of knowing."
However, an alternative interpretation could be read
through Code' s work. By linking knowledge and "one' s way
of knowing" to the biological body of a man or a woman,
as opposed to another factor such as class, or race, Code
may be open to the charge of biological determinism, a • 11 category often used by theorists in a synonymous fashion • ~ith essentialism. However, the difference between biological determinism and essentialism as l see it, is that according to the former, in a predetermined manner with literally no chance of social interference, one's biology will have a distinct and determinable effect on a person's characteristics. Essentialism, as developed since Locke and more specifically within feminist theory, is an appeal to the possibility of differences experienced through the body, albeit in a non-uniform fashion, and these differences, that may be more similar within the biological group known as women as opposed to
the group known ~s men, may interact with the forces of social construction but not in a deterministic way . • In response to Code's paper Alan Soble is convinced that Code arrives at the following con,~lusion. If the cognitive abilities of men and women differ in virtue of their biological differences, then the sex of the knower would be epistemologically significant, but if cognitive sexual differences are the result of differential socialization then in principle the sex of the knower is irrelevant.' This conclusion seems fair enough, but leaves researchers with the formidable question regarding the ability or the methodology to determine if the cognitive abilities of men and women are different by virtue of their biology. Soble believes that Code argues that cognitive sexual differences are largely socialized rather than natural, • 12 and he notes, that underlying her argument is the • assumption that the social is somehow more malleable and changeable than the natural. This, he concludes,
overestimates the depth of the natural and underestimates
the power of the social, and oversimplifies their mutual
causal influence.
Given that Code acknowledges the importance of both
social constructivism and the "natural, " it is important
to investigate what, specifically, is meant by the
latter. Code's claim that the biological differences between males and females are significant in that they
make it "logically impossible" for men to know something
that wom,m know, and for women to know something men
know: what ~~ is to be a female or a male, respectively. • In "Experience, Knowledge and Responsibility" Code claims that,
experiences which depend upon natural biological differences, in areas of sexuality, parenthood, and sorne aspects of physical and emotional being, must be different for women and for men to the extent that it would be impossible for them to know them in anything like 'the same' way.6
An analysis of Code' s statement would have been more
fruitful if she had been more specifie regarding the
aspects of emotional being that were determined by
natural biological differences. Code' s inclusion of
"emotional being" makes it impossible to determine her
distinction between socially constructed qualities and • 13 those she claims are biological. Her warning that "any • celebration of specifically 'feminine' modes which would aim to revalue them, yet leave them intact, would be in
danger of obscuring the constraints cornrnonly attendant
upon their manifestation"? is difficult to understand.
What does Code mean by re-value? And who is doing the
re-valuing sorne women, society at large, al). women?
What keeps a "mode" intact revolves around society' s
notion of its relative value, and therefore, if the value
changes, then the constraints cornrnonly attendant upon its
manifestation would also change. However, it is possible
that Code is referring to the danger women run by pre
critically valorizing their modes without modifying them,
which might possibly result in further limitations . • Within Code's framework there is a body, a biological entity that enables women to have the
experiences as other women, thereby privileging them to
a source of knowledge that cannot be known by men. The
assumption underlying her theory is that aIl women
experience their biology in the same manner. It is the
unitary representation of experience that both
acknowledges the real essence of the being and the
nominal essence. The two distinct Lockean essences have
been collapsed within a circular matrix which insists
that the body, that which we cannot know, will ensure a
uniformity of interpretation of experience, becoming that • 14 which we can know . • Given Code's emphasis on the biology of each sex, her conclusion that once the male and female gender roles
becorne less rigidly specified, by society, the
differences between male and female knowledge, language,
and experience will no longer be equivalent to
differences between "forms of life," seems forced. When
did experiencing our bodies, and the innate knowledge
that cornes from a person's relationship with their body,
become equivalent ta sod.etally determined roles? will
the body be forever denùunced when the theory must
conclude?
This debate pivots around a rising hierarchy of
positions that is exposed through language. Sable • protests that the phrase "the perspective of women"· is totalizing and hierarchical. Given the multitude of
standpoints and "positionalities" that anyone may lay
claim ta (Jew, lesbian, black, lower class ... ) sorne
theorists insist that there is a common ground, certain
points of intersection that may contribute ta a sparsely
uniform definition of a "women's perspective." Elaine
Showalter, in "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness" , 9
uses the language of mathematics and logic, ta
graphically represent and locate this "common ground."
• 15 The area of the circles that are non-overlapping is • designated as the "home of essentialism." This schematic representation may be helpful, but it does nothing to
alleviate the contentious issues, and initial
determinations, of what is actually on the overlapping
side and what, if anything, is left out. Another
significant problem with framing the discussion in this
manner is that one must be willing to accept the premise
that there are groups of people who represent "women" and
groups that represent "men. Il A discourse. or
determination, undergirding this representation had to be
accepted on the basis of what "real woman" are and what
"real man" are. Without this implicit acknowledgement
the use of set theory makes little sense. 'rhe sets • "women" and "men" must be pre-determined and the question becomes determined on what? Their bodies? And what
specifically about their bodies? Showalter, like Code,
failed to deal with the linguistic signifier "woman" as
representing specifie embodied groups of people.
Although the debate may have originally begun under
the rubric of nature vs. nurture, the exposition of the
signifying categories, "women" and "men," led the
investigation more specifically into the exposure of
embedded assumptions within concepts that were still
being used freely. As Ruth Levitas expounded,
what is inherited is not discrete genes, but systems of genes linked together which can • 16 interact with each other and with th, environment in many different ~dYS.... These gene systems allow developmental flexibility, whereby the same genotype can gi"e rise to • different phenotypes (or observable characteristics), while also permitting canalization, where diffe~ent genotypes will tend to result in similar phenotypes. This makes it logically impossible to separate genetic and environmental effects, and absurd to argue for genetic or environmental causation per se.'a
Evidently Levitas is relying on empirical claims that are
known thus far. This, however, does not mean that in the
future these claims will be appropriate. They are made
in the present with the limits of our knowledge.
Therefore, her argument, that it is "logically
impossible" to separate genetic and environmental effects, is fallacious. Furthermore, when Levitas refers
to the environment, it is unclear whether she means the • socially constructed orders, that are in our world and function as environment(s), or the natural environment,
or both. Does it make a difference?
Merle Thornton is more precise about what is meant
by nature. Nature in this dimension is "the capacity or
potential to perform. "U With extreme caution Thornton
notes that, "we know that many of the detailed
elaborations of gender differences are due to social
training; we do not know how much underlying structure of
d.i.fference may be entrenched in biology." '2 It is this
lack of knowledge, or the lack of a discourse constructed
to negotiate the underlying structure of difference that • 17 is entrenched in biology, that has resulted in this
morass. • P.t times the word nature seems as undefined and
loosely employed as the word essence. Grimshaw, in
Philosophy and Feminist Thinking, declares that the idea
of nature
involves a claim that it is possible in sorne way to identify sorne sort of basic or fundamental human motives, drives, desires, which are 11niversal in the sense that they can be thought of as the same in ail historical circumstances. Human culture has to negotiate them, and their behavioural expression may vary; but they nevertheless underlie ail cultures."
Many feminists, from vastly different philosophical
pathways (liberal and radical), might argue that there is
a basic male drive or desire, that underlies ail • cultures, and that it is misogyny. It may appear in various forms in different cultures, but, nonetheless, it
is consistently present. The identification of
fundamental human drives and motives has, historically,
always run the danger of the converse definition, that if
a characteristic is not natural then it is unnatural.
And from here the definition of "unnatural" motives and
drives has been used to justify forms of social
oppression, racism, and sexism. Consequently, who is
"doing" the defining, of natural and unnatural, matters.
with this in mind Grimshaw contends that,
in one way or another ... the biological differences between men and women, especially • 18 those related to reproduction, are seen as determining, not necessarily how all women will actually behave, but what their deepest feelings and motivations wi~l be and what • forms of relationships between men and women will ultimately be viable. 'Biology' is often seen as the rock on which feminism will inevitably founder. 14 Grimshaw may be elucidating the motivation, politically
and otherwise, behind the feminist attachment and
commitment to a discourse around, through, and with the
body that does not continually re-inscribe the body' s
historical role, relegated to an inferior status.
Jacques Derrida, the master of deconstruction, deals
with the question of feminine experience by turning it
into a question of essence, which he can then subject to
the deconstructive formula, demonstrating, along with
Jacques Lacan, that "woman does not exist." In Spurs, • Derrida claims to be showing that, woman has no essence of her very own, ... and that that's the phallocentric gesture.... It's the gesture of considering that there is "la femme" and that she has her very own essence."
The difficulty with this is around the displacement of
the signifiers, woman/man. Displacing/deconstructing
signs and signifiers does not necessarily de-essentialize
either side of the binary, but only elucidates the gaps
and holes within language to grasp either side of the
binary in its entirety. Of course, it is accepted,
within deconstructive theory, that language is the most
privi1eged of systems, and within language there is the • 19 ability to understand all systems, even those initially • perceived as non-linguistic. Everything can be read as a text, which, it follows, can then be subjected to the
tools of the deconstructing investigator. The flaw here
may simply lie in the sign or signifier's inability to
comprehensively represent that which may possibly have an
essence.
Mary Midgley' s article "On Not Being Afraid of
Natural Sex Differences" appeals to the rationale of
bringing "the two sides (same/different) somehow
together, since all of us at one time or another need
help from both of them. ,,16 Midgley contends that "it is
inconvenient to regard the existing distinctive qualities
of women whatever these may be as simply • deformations produced by oppression, which could be expected to evaporate when that artificial pressure is
removed. ,,17 She continues,
we cannot hope to do this rethinking while still clinging to the currently orthodox view that there are no natural, genetically deter:nined sex differences. This orthodox view does not really rest on factual evidence ... It is heId because people believe the acceptance of natural sex differences to be dangerous. This danger has been a real one, but it has flowed from acceptance of difference as such. Different does not mean worse or better, it means different .'8
It seems unfair to the feminists who are charting new
ground to assume that they are acting solely out of fear
of danger . Midgley ignores the distinction between • 20 natural sex differences. that is. women have a uterus • capable of supporting an ernbryo and men do not. and the argument underneath this which revolves around the
acceptance that men do not have a uterus and the
determination of whether these characteristics. or
natural sex differences. constitute an essence. If these
natural sex differences do constitute an essence. are
they unique to each woman and each man or clustered
together under the appellations women and men? The
problem is that individuals may claim a difference but
that does not mean that the individuals who claim a
difference are therefore similar. They may still be
different from each other.
As Midgley seemingly opens the door to an analysis • of natural sex differences, Grimshaw dismisses the notion of any natural sex differences at aIl.
There is no 'original' wholeness or unity in the self , nor a 'real self ' which can be thought of as in sorne way underlying the self of everyday life. The self is always a more or less precarious and conflictual construction out of, and compromise between conflicting and not always conscious desires and experiences. which are born out of the ambivalences and contradictions in human Experience and relationships with others. " Grimshaw equates essentialism to cultural construction.
with her acceptance of cultural construction as the
determination over natural sex differences, the actual,
real body has no constitutional effect of its own.
Unfortunately. the polemical debate around • 21 essentialism segregates participants into opposing camps . • Spelman, in Inessential Woman, caricatures the opposing claims in the following manner:
selves are not made up of separable units of identity strung together to constitute a whole person. It is not as if there is a goddess somewhere who made lots of little identical "woman" units and then, in order to spruce up the world a bit for herself, decided to put sorne of those units in black bodies, sorne in white bodies. 20
Spelman does not comprehensively engage with the
essentialist debate but reduces it to a simplistic level.
She contends that positing an essential "womanness" has
the effect of
making women inessential in a variety of ways. .. if there is an essential womanness that aIl women have and have always had, then we needn' t know anything about any woman in particular... And so she also becomes inessential in the sense that she is not • needed in order to produce the "story of woman." If aIl women have the same story "as womenu, we don' t need a chorus of voices to tell the story. 21
Spelman misses one poignant point -- her definition of
essentialism has no ability of combining with experience
to produce uLi~~c women; her defi~ition implies a
hierarchized thought process whereby essence is
untouchable, devastatingly immutable. Rer parodie tone
of a woman and her story, negates the idea that there are
many stories, each with the same theme (calI it essence
if you like) , yet each one is capable of being different,
important, and unique. Even though stories manage the • 22 same theme, they are not necessarily similar .
Although anti-essentialists position themselves in • response to essentialists it is difficult to determine what "essentialists" support, given that they are wary of
offering specific declarations toward the constitution of
the "essence" of woman. However, throughout this debate
situated around "woman, " essentialists seem concerned
with not losing actual embodied women. As Hawkesworth,
in "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims
of Truth, " notes,
the notion that instrumental reason is ess~ntially male also sustains the appealing suggestion that the deployment of a uniquely female knowledge a knowledge that is intuitive, emotional, engaged, and caring could save humanity from the dangers of unconstrained masculinism. To develop an account of this alternative knowledge, sorne feminists have turned to the body, to sexed • embodiedness, to thinking in analogy with women' s sexuali ty, to eros, and to women' s psychosexual development. 22
Positing instrumental reason as the essence of "man"
counter-constructs a female knowledge, not an essence,
that is intuitive, tlll\otional and engaged. However, what
purpose is served by essentializing men? And how is a
return to sexed embodiedness related to female knowledge?
What are the boundaries between the use of
biological determinism and the use of the body through
discourse? According to Donna Haraway,
to lose authoritative biological accounts of • 23 sex, which set up productive tensions with gender, seems to be to lose too much; it seems to be to lose not ju~t analytic power within a particular Western tradition but also the body • itself as anything but a blank page for social inscriptions, including those of biological discourse. 23
The progression from all encompassing, rather imprecise
terms, such as woman and man, and a desire to re-theorize
and re-visualize the body, specifically the female body,
has resulted in the body's emergence out of a category
separate from the mind. The body now insists that the
relations between sex and gender be re-worked. And those
theorists who were previously chargèd with essentialism
have, in earnest, responded and are attempting to
theorize the body, hopefully elucidating its specifies.
Gayatri Spivak warns that the body is
essentialism's greatest text: to read in its • form the essence of Woman is certainly one of phallocentrism' s strategies; to insist that the body too is materially woven into social (con}texts is anti-essentialism's reply....Feminisms return to the problem of essentialism --despite their shared distaste for the mystification of Woman ~- because it remains difficult to engage in feminist analysis and politics if not "as a woman.,,24
Spivak simultaneously opens both sides of the
essentialist/anti-essentialist binary. Her now famous
ph:r.ase, "taking the risk of essentialism," offers
feminist theorists a method of non-rigid analysis whereby
the body can be theorized, and the political importance
of this theorization maintained.
With the acceptance of theorizing the body it • 24 appears as though a significant amount of progress has
been made. However, Alice Echols sees the cultural • feminist project of investigating biological explanations of gender difference as ironie, given the energy radical
feminists devoted to refuting biological justifications
of gender hierarchy. 25 But this rather ahistorical
representation negates the fact that cultural feminists are not in any way attempting to justify gender
hierarchies, but are rather willing to actively engage
with the very sites on which gender hierarchies have been
established.
So, with this apparent deadlock, those willing to
take the risk of essentialism are beginning to look for
an explanation for those who apparently will not . de • Lauretis issues a reason for the intellectual avoidance of essentialism. Using the work of Catherine MacKinnon
de Lauretis states that,
socially, femaleness means femininity, which means attractiveness to men, which means sexual attractiveness, which means sexual availability on male terms. What defines woman as such is what turns men on. Gender socialization is the process through which women come to identify themselves as sexual 2 beings, as beings that exist for men. '
This social construction, that de Lauretis outlines, is
inscribed with the assumption that heterosexuality is
constructed and compulsory. And, it is the blind
adherence to constructed heterosexuality that enables
anti-essentialists to continually avoid an active • 25 engagement with essentialism. According to de Lauretis, • those who will not take the risk of essentialism may be hiding behind a greater fear, which is challenging directly the socio-symbolic institution of heterosexuality. This powerful statement moves the debate in an entirely new direction. The simultaneous deconstruction of the discourse
around the body, and the socic'-symbolic institution of heterosexuality could prove very fruitful. Yet,
deconstructing the institution of heterosexuality has, almost exclusively, been taken up by lesbian theorists
and not feminists in general. It may be as bleak as de Lauretis claims: feminists are "unwilling to confront and
corne ta terms with the stakes, indeed the investments, • that feminism may have in the heterosexual institution. ,,27
• 26 2 • The Specificity of the Body
As chapter 1 made mention of, there is a theoretical
need to re-conceptualize the body, to understand embodiedness, or, as has been coined in theory, to analyze the specificity of the body. The body has been
subordinated to more "transcendental concerns
consciousness, the unconscious, collective social organization and production -- thus relating the body to
an immanent status. ,,1 However, by the latter half of the
1980' s, the role of the body in the "production of • subjectivity, the operations of perception and consciousness, and the functioning of power relations'"
was being reconsidered. This chapter will explore the
difficultiës inherent in theorizing the "body," and
examine the postmodern implications of a genderless
(bodyless?) subject.
An analysis of the specificity of the body has
introduced such concepts and practices as women's writing/ecriture feminine, writing the body, and thinking
through the body. As Judith Butler questions,
is "the body" or "the sexed body" the firm foundation on which gender and systems of compulsory sexuality operate? Or is "the body" itself shaped by political forces with • 27 strategie interests in keeping that body • bounded and constituted by t.he markers of sex?' There may be another way to theorize this situation
besides employing the either/or dichotomy. The "body" may be the foundation on which compulsory sexuality
operates and it might also be the terrain shaped by
political forces. These two forces do not have to be mutually exclusive, but rather they might weave together
creating the constitution and construction of the
female/feminine.
The sex/gender distinction and the category of sex itself appear to presuppose a generalization of "the body" that preexists the acquisition of its sexed significance. This "body" often appears to be a passive medium that is signified by an inscription from a cultural source figured as "external" to that body. Any theory of the culturally constructed body, however, ought to question • "the body" as a construct of suspect generality when it is figured as passive and prior to discourse.'
Pre-figuring the body as passive continually re-instates
the body in a hierarchy that pre-supposes the body' s
inertness. Furthermore, not imagining that the body
exists prior to discourse determines that the "body" has
no pre-linguistic state, and therefore supports the same
hierarchy. Encoding the body, or doing an analysis
through the body may require an ë..::ceptance of a non-
passive, pre-linguistic "body" that acts as another
force, amongst many others, in the construction of the
subject . • 28 Jane Flax raises the following questions in
"Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory": • What is gender? How is it related to anatomical sexual differences? How are gender relations constituted and sustained (in one person 's lifetime and more generally as a social experience over time)? How do gender relations relate to other sorts of social relations such as class or race? Are there only two genders?5
Flax introduces the body in her quandary about gender but
only as a receptacle of difference. The body is not
theorized, in a privileged manner, as gender is, but only
in relation to gender. Theorizing the body, positioned
only in relation to gender, undermines the potential
constructive power of anatomical sex differences and
establishes gender systems as more influential. When
Flax asks "are there only two genders?" is she also • hinting at the spectrurn of possibilities related to the nurnber of "types" of bodies, beyond male and female? By
accepting the possibility of a spectrurn for both gender
and sex, the overly-privileged "gender" system and the
under-privileged "sex" system would be theorized as
potentially equal influences.
Flax continues,
to the extent that feminist discourse defines its problematic as "woman, " it, too, ironically privileges the man as unproblematic or exempted from determination by gender relations. From the perspective of social relations, men and women are both prisoners of gender, although in highly differentiated but interrelated ways. That men appear to be and (in many cases) are the wardens, or at least • 29 the trustees within a social whole, should not blind us to the extent to which they, too, are • governed by the rules of gender.' As Flax points out men do not escape the inscription of
gender. However, defining woman as problematic and
creating a discourse to manage and investigate "woman,"
does not necessarily mean, by extension, that "man" is
unproblematic. "Man" may be another problematic that
feminist discourse, for various historical reasons
centered around the privileged male, does not wish to
consider. The choice to neglect engaging with "man" as
unproblematic is both risky and beneficial risky in that it might assume that "man" is, as Flax states, the
"unproblematic;" and beneficial because it provides a
discourse on "woman" that has been absent . The binary • logic (woman/man, problematic/unproblematic) is sustained but i t also needs reckoning. The obvious power and
pervasiveness of binary logic has been theorized by
Derrida and within feminist theory. However, to assume
that the theorization of one side of the binary
continually re-inscribes the other leaves feminism in a
difficult state. Feminism has had to, for social,
political, and emotional reasons, focus on the
underdeveloped side of each binary, because that was
where a "woman's" identity had previously been allocated.
There is not a direct causal relationship between both
sides of the binary, and theorizing one side. say • 30 "woman/problematic," is not an explicit recognition and
acceptance of the other, "man/unproblematic." • Although Flax herself raised the question of "how gender relations are connected to anatomical sex
differences, " her theoretical inquiry does not necessarily entertain this question. She refers to "men"
and "women" as prisoners of gender, and presumably she means embodied "men" and embodied "women." Therefore, could one not raise the question as to whether these
groups are not also prisoners of their bodies? Flax however, does en:Jage with the "body" as if it
were a prisoning agent. What after aIl, is the "natural" in the context of the human world? There are many aspects of our embodiedness or biology that we might see as given limits to human action which Western medicine and science do not • hesitate to challenge....More and more the "natural" ceases to exist as the opposite of the "cultural" or social. Nature becomes the object and product of human action; it loses its independent existence. Ironically, the more such disenchantment proceeds, the more humans seem to need something that remains outside our powers of transformation.'
According to Flax, nature, or the "body," becomes an
obj-'!ct of discourse whereby its influence is not an
independent factor but one pre-determined by the
discourse that engages it. Yet, as Flax reflects on "human nature," and the apparent desire "humans" have to
experience something that remains outside their transformative powers, l am not convinced that the body • 31 is not this "something." We have illusions based on • "truths" that are produced through discourses on the "body," but assuming that the "body" also exists outside
discourse, how is an actual "body" transformed by discourse? And is this transformation always complete
without any bodily resistance? Donna Haraway in "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question... " expounds upon the body' s connection to
discourse and its consequent transformation. She states
that, the body, the object of biological discourse, becomes a most engaging bei::lg. Claims of biological determinism can never be the same again. When female "sex" has been so thoroughly retheorized and revisualized that it emerges as practically indistinguishable from "mind," something basic has happened to the categories of biology.8 • Within this description, the "body" is portrayed solely as an object that is transformed through biological
discourse. But where is, if there is at all, a "body" that is a subject not an object? Haraway continues,
the biological female peopling current biological behavioral accounts has almost no passive properties left. She is structuring and active in every respect; the "body" is an agent, not a resource. Difference is theorized biologically as situational, not intrinsic, at every level from gene to foraging pattern, thereby fundamentally changing the biological politics of the body. The relations between sex and gender need to be categorically reworked within these frames of knowledge.·
This reworking of sex and gender, from two extremes, • 32 first passive then active, will hopefully result in a • recognition that the body does not have to be either an agent or a resource, but both in a fluid formation whereby neither agency nor resourcefulness is utterly
denounced. When Leslie Rabine connects the body directly to
essentialism and its problems, she notes that "this celebration of an innate, unchanging essence, rooted in
the body, takes its meaning from an historical
context. ,,10 Elizabeth Grosz positions the "body" at this
present historical juncture in the following manner.
The body is no longer construed merely as natural, fixed, ahistorical or given, rather it is analyzed and given ontological status as effect or result rather than a cause or giveness. It is no longer simply seen as an external limitation on women's capacities for transcendence, but is regarded as the pliable, • variable condition of both women's identities and their differences--from men, from other women, and from the narrow patriarchal characterization spawned by our received histories of thought. ll
Grimshaw summarizes the crux of the argument and the
difficulty with biology, and more specifically the
"body.1I
The central argument against the idea of biology as a substratum is that it is not possible to identify an absolutely clear non social sense of 'biology'; the biological is not a realm or sphere which can be isolated as a cause of any feature of human life. But neither is it possible to identify a clear non-biological sense of the 'social'. The biological and social are not entirely distinct and separable things which can simply be seen as 'interacting', nor can one be seen • 33 as in &ny way more fundamental than the other." • As Grimshaw explains, the "biological" and the "social" are not entirely distinct. And if "biology" incorporates
the "body," then a re-theorization and re-valuation needs
to continue.
Within feminist theory the clearest distinction and
connection to the body is through the use of maternal
metaphors, the state of maternity, and the psychological
implications of maternity. According to Robert Scholes,
this biological image (of maternity) becomes a principal metaphor, in ... groups of feminist texts, for a practice that seeks to liberate the feminine body through a feminine writing, but with historical differences. lJ
It could be argued that the consistent use of maternal
metaphors, or all metaphors situated around the process • of maternity, are not completely sufficient devices for the representation of the "body" specifie to embodied
"women". Not only does this allegorization of the female
"body" pre-suppose a heterosexual coupling, whereby
"women ll are defined through reproduction, and
consequently "less" than female if they do not indulge in
this forro of the maternal, but it also limits and
prioritizes the experiences of the "body" to one
idealized state.
The acceptance and re-theorization of the body is
one aspect, but the consequent interpretation of
subjectivity, whereby the body plays a role, is yet • 34 another query. Kaja Silverman notes that, female subjectivity begins with the body which is quite literal:y written. These texts also • make explicit at more than one juncture the exclusion of the female subject from the discourses which produce her."
But this is a discourse created on the body which
leans so hard upon real bodies that it transfers to them its structure and significance, a structure and significance which are then internalized in the guise of a complementary consciousness and set of desires. '5
This transference then creates a subjectivity that
masquerades as a subjectivity created on a "real body" --
a "real body" who' s desires and significances were mapped
onto it, and a discourse that could lay the claim that it
represented the body. However, Silverman notes that,
. ..it is imperative to confront the ways in which female subjectivity is over-determined • ... there is an alarming consensus as to what woman wants and is, and that consensus has been produced through shared assumptions about the female body '6. Addressing Silverman's statements on female subjectivity
de Lauretis postulates that,
the structuration of the female subject begins not with her entry into language, or her subordination to a field of cultural desire, but with the organization of her body. 17
de Lauretis seems to accept that there is a body that
exists prior to linguistic acquisition. However, a
question regarding the organization of the "body" still
remains. Ooes de Lauretis assume that the "body" is
organized in a way separate from discourse? And if so, • 35 what is this organization based upon, if not a linguistic • model? de Lauretis continues, the body is charted, zoned and made to bear meaning, a meaning which proceeds entirely from external relationships, but which is always subsequently apprehended as an internal condition or essence. That internal condition, the essence of femininity, is then a product of discourse. First, the female body is constructed as object of the gaze and multiple site of male pleasure and so internalized, for this is the meaning it bears: female equals the body, sexuality equals the female body. Then, once her desire has been made congruent with the desire of the Other, the female, now woman, can gain access to speech and to that discourse. 18
According to this paradigm, access to speech and
discourse already has limited entry points and privileges
that are not determined or specified by any "feminine"
deliberation. So, given that we cannot fully escape our • constructed subjectivities, and that we are only provided with a socially determined route into discourse, how is
it possible to create an alternative discourse that is
not already borne and determined out of the existing one?
Linda Alcoff examines the valorizing analysis of the
female body put forth by Adrienne Rich and Mary Daly, who
claim that it is our specifically female anatomy that is
the primary constituent of our identity, and source of
our female essence. l9 Rich prophesizes that,
the repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers .... In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children (if and as we choose) but the • 36 visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence." • Rich has explicitly linked the female body with a greater political, active sphere that goes beyond the Marxist
tenets of seizing power through the means of production
by workers. The female body, but not necessarily the discourse on the female body, will bring forth this new
world. She assumes that there is a specifie commonality
to all women, that exists across bodies, and that is
experienced and known. But as Alcoff notes, in referring
to Daly and Rich,
they have been obliged to resort to an oppositional notion of 'feminine' subject defined by silence, negativity, a natural sexuality, or a closeness to nature not compromised by patriarchal culture. 21
Presently, within feminist theory, these idealized • subjects, "women, " conform to either the postmodern view of a "genderless" subject or a cultural feminist
proclamation of an essentialized subject. To accept the
postmodern view of individuality raises the question:
Where is there room for the political manifestations of
feminism given that we could possibly theorize without a
Il body? Il
Mary Poovey notes that,
if the position "woman" is falsely unified and if one' s identity is not given (solely or necessarily) by anatomy, then woman -- or even women-- cannot remain a legitimate rallying point for political actions. Real historical women have been (and are) oppressed, and the ways and means of that oppression need to be • 37 analyzed and fought." • Through a discourse that maintains an ambiguous relationship to anatomy, the desire by theorists to accept a "genderless" subject offers no valuable political agenda to alleviate oppression. It is the acceptance of the existence of oppression based primarily on anatomy, that fuels the theorization of the "body" as
the primary site of political expediency in an effort to
end oppression. According to de Lauretis,
we still need to be more precise as to the ways in which the process works and how the experience of sexuality, in en-gendering one as female, does effe~~ or ~onstruct what we may call a female subject. 23
And determining the manner in which this process of en- • gendering occurs requires an examination of actual embodied women, and a flexibility to incorporate
Silverman's foresight, which is that within the political
sphere it should be remembered that,
if the body exists in a number of ways (medical, legal) then clearly there can be no one sexed body to bear the burden of individuality. 24
Grimshaw states that, the first problern is that under sorne interpretations it seerns to suggest that the nature of human beings is fundamentally malleable; that is to say, it can be shaped in very different ways according to the nature and norms of any particular society (subject perhaps to the general constraints governing human existence such as the need to produce, and so forthl. But if this is so, then it rnay • 38 appear to be difficult to conceptualise the idea that a society does not rneet hurnan needs. If hurnan needs and hurnan nature are shaped by • society, how can we give expression to the idea that there are needs that society does not rneet, or that there are human potentialities which are unrecognised in a way that amounts to a distortion or a stunting of hurnan personality?" Given the prernises of ferninisrns, it can be deduced that society is not satisfying the needs of "wornen." The difficulty with Grirnshaw's argument is her linkage between "humans" that have the power and influence over sorne part of the social order, and the belief that those with this power will sornehow represent the overall needs of a population, and not just the needs of an elite sub- population. If "hurnan needs" are shaped by society, and a group within society are denied the "constructed" needs • through an uneven access to discourse, then their "human" needs are not being met. In a sense society creates a discourse that defines needs based on what is valued but to which not all "humans" have access. The needs articulated through feminism have led to a revaluing and a re-examination of the female "body." And as Spivak renders, we read the body, to find "woman"; in "women, " to secure feminism; to capture in a word the essence of a thing: essentialism is a dream of the end of politics among women, of a formal resolution to the discontinuity between women and feminisms. 26
• 39 3 • The "Imaginings" of Luce Irigaray
The fact that you no longer assert yourself as an absolute subj ect changes nothing. The inspiration which breathes life into you, the law or duty which guide you -- are these not the very essence of your subjectivity? You feel you could abandon your '1'? But your '1' holds you fast, having flooded and covered the whole of everything it ever created. And it never stops breathing its own emanations into you. With each new inspiration do you not become more than ever that '1'? Reduplicated within yourself .
Luce Irigaray • Elemental Passions
The premises underlying chapter 2 are as follows:
there is a socially determined route into discourse, and
we cannot fully escape our own constructed identities.
Consequently, the ability to create an alternative
discourse that is not already a sub-set of the prevailing
discourse is questionable. These common premises are,
through the works of Luce Irigaray, tackled and altered.
This chapter will attempt to elucidate the complexity of
Irigaray's work in order to rescue her from the • 40 essentialist camp to which she has, and continues to be,
so often relegated. Irigaray is both • revered and reviled, categorized if not always dismissed, as essentialist, Utopian or both. The density of her writing, the complex use of metaphors, riddles, and ellipses, along with her advocacy of the overthrow of syntax may have resulted in a significant misunderstanding of her work. ' l will begin by examining specifie elements of
Jacques Lacan' s work in order to provide a clearer
understanding of sorne of the aspects of Irigaray's work.
Irigaray positions herself, and creates many counter-
discussions, in relation to Lacan's hypotheses. Consequently, an understanding of such concepts as the
Imaginary, the Symbolic, the mirror stage, and "Woman, "
as articulated by Lacan, are necessary in order to • appreciate and critique Irigaray's responses and theoretical developments.
This chapter will investigate, within the section
subtitled Irigaray and the Female Body, how Irigaray
specifically engages with the female "body" through the
creation of metaphors and images, how she uses the body
to reconfigure the feminine imaginary, and the
intricacies of sexual in/difference as presented through
the theory of hom(m)osexuality.
The challenging project of developing a feminine
imaginary will be examined in the third section of this
chapter, subtitled The Feminine Imaginary. l will • 41 interrogate the relationship of the feminine imaginary to • the masculine imaginary, its position in relation to phallocentrism, and the use of mimesis as a strategy to
Q\'ercome the phallocentric articulations of the masculine
imaginary.
Finally, with the larger frame of essentialism as
the topic for this thesis, this chapter will end with an
examination of the charge of essentialism against
Irigaray's work, subtitled Whac the Critics Say.
SELECTED ASPECTS OF JACQUES LACAN'S WORK
This section, will present a cursive re-capitulation • of Lacan' s work on the Imaginary, the Symbolic, the mirror stage and "woman, " solely for the purpose of
understanding Irigaray's difficulties with the manner in
which these have been defined and employed.
According to Lacan, the Imaginary is a pre
linguistic, pre-Oedipal state, characterized by the
mother-child dyad. This dyad is interrupted through the
agency of the paternal function -- "the "Name of the
Father", rather than the biological father per se. ,,2
Under the threat of castration, the child passes from the
Imaginary into the Symbolic, where he/she recognizes that
different sexed subject-positions exist and the child • 42 finally assumes one.) Therefore, a subject is a "sexed
subject first and last.'" • According to Lacan, the Symbolic, which is imposed as universal, innocent of any empirical or historical contingency, is a male imaginary transformed into an
order. This "male imaginary" is an imagine.:cy, as developed by the threat of castration and the break up of the mother-child dyad, that positions a child, with respect to language, in relation to a sexed-subject
position. And as Diana Fuss summarizes Lacan's work on the Symbolic, it represents the "order of language which
permits the child entry into subjectivity, into the realm
of speech, law and sociality. ,,5
This progression, for the child, from the Imaginary • into the Symbolic is facilitated by the passage through the mirror stage. "The illusion in the mirror stage is
the founding moment of the imaginary mode (whereby) there
is a belief in a projected image.'" The image that is
constructed for the child is a coherent, totalizing
illusory image, that does not adequately reflect the
fragmented self that is experienced. Gallop states that,
the Mirror Stage is one of Lacan's best-known formulations. The traditional view of a mirror is that i t reflects a self, that i t produces a secondary, more or less faithful likeness, an imitation, a translation of an already constituted original self. But Lacan posits that the mirror constructs the self, that the self as organized entity is actually • 43 an imitation of tbe cohesiveness of the mirror image. 7 • The mirror stage is the turning point from the Imaginary to the Symbolic. After it, "the subject's relation to
himself is always mediated through a totalizing image
that has c0me from the outside.'"
The last concept that needs to be addressed is
Lacan' s notion of "Woman." In contradiction, Lacan
attempts to de-essentialize woman by defining the essence
of woman. There is no such thing as The woman since of her essence -- having already risked the term, why think twice about it? -- of her essence she is not all. 9
According to Fuss "the myth of Woman, Transcendental
Woman are all false universals for Lacan." lO And • according to Lacan, "there is woman only as excluded by the nature of things which is the nature of words." Il
Women, in a sense, occupy a posit~on whereby given their
"nature" they sit outside, as "Other", through their
exclusion from the nature of words. This exclusion is
brought about in the following manner. The male child
equates his penis with the transcendental signifier, the
phallus. This recognition provides a vehicle for him to
enter into the linguistic world in a manner that is not
similar for the female child. The girl child, obviously
without a penis, positions herself in relation to the
phallus as "lacking." This "lack" results in a single • 44 sexed-subject position available for woman, which is that • of "other. Il
IRIGARAY AND THE FEMALE BODY
In an attempt to re-metaphorize the body, develop
a feminine language, and a feminine access to the
symbolic order, Irigaray focuses specifically on the
female body as an imaginary construction of
representation. She creates metaphors and disrupting images that attempt to expose the "place and status of
the phallus in Western culture."" Using the reconfiguring image of the "two lips, " in • "When Our Lips Speak Together," Irigaray explains that, 'when our lips speak together' does not imply a regressive retreat to the anatomical or to a concept of "nature", nor is it a calI to go back to genital norms -- women have two lips several times over! It is more a question of breaklng out of the autological and tautological circles of systems of representations and their discourse so as to allow women to speak their sex. The 'at least two' lips no longer corresponds to your morpho-Iogic; nor does it obey Lacan's model of the 'not aIl' to which the one is neceRsary.'3
This metaphor of the "two lips" is, therefore, not a
definition of women's identity in biological terms. The
statement that theyare "'continually interchanging' must
make it clear that Irigaray is not talking about literaI • 45 biology. "H But rather, Irigaray, as Montefiore notes, • has chosen a metaphor that stands in confrontation with Lacan's statement of woman as "not aIl". Lacan's statement of woman as "not aIl" is associated with his image of woman as "hole," a "hale" that serves the masculine purpose of filling. In
contrast, Irigaray expands her metaphor of the two lips touching, to represent contiguity. The image of contiguity beckons back to the Imaginary by recalling and
representing the contiguity of the mother and the
daughter. This image also elucidates the possibility that woman's desire can be represented for itself, and
not as it appears in male representations. In male representations the
clitoris is conceived as a little penis • pleasant to masturbate so long as castration anxiety does not exist (for the boy child) , and the vagina is valued for the "lodging" it offers the male organ when the forbidden hand has to find a replacement for pleasure giving. 1S The clitoris has functioned as a comparable structure to
the penis, enabling the definition of woman, as "lesser
man," to be postulated. It is relations such as these
that Irigaray opposes. When woman is defined by these
"male-centred" articulations, then her access to the
symbolic is limited. Therefore, Irigaray uses the female
body in order to reconfigure the representation of the
Imaginary, which in turn will glimpse at the symbolic • 46 order. For the "syrnbolic can be encountered only as a
tear in the fabric of the imaginary, a revealing
• interruption. The paths to the syrnbolic are in the
imcJ.g inary. Il 16
Gallop notes that,
Irigaray seems to be advocating a female sexuality that replaces the anxious either-or with a pleasurable both: vagina and clitoris. But Irigaray ultimately chooses not both but neither, and the spark of her genital poetics rather cornes to light on the lips.17
This is an important distinction in Irigaray' s reconfiguration -- she moves away from a single, physical
structure to multiple structures that are many places.
However, Irigaray does not claim that the plural and
multiple organization of the female libidinal economy
should be celebrated ipso facto separ~te from syrnbolic • forms. It is not a ~estion of biology determining speech, but of identity assumed in language within a
particular syrnbolic system (patriarchy, as described by
Lacan), in which the only possible subject-position is
masculine. The only feminine identity available to women
is that of the "defective" or "castrated man" (as
outlined by Freud). Througr trigaray' s active process of
reconfiguration, "women" may gain access to language as
speaking subjects in their own right.
In order to recapture the imaginary, Irigaray begins
by noting that women always stand in an archaic and
primaI relationship with what is known in patriarchy as • 47 homosex~ality. The first object of love and desire for
the child is a woman (the mother). '":Jwever, if the child
• relatio~ship is a boy the first love object constructs a
that is inherently heterosexual, and if the child is a
girl the first love object constructs a relationship that
is inherently homosexual. Yet, this difference is not
represented in psychoanalytic theory. As Toril Moi in
Sexual/Textual Politics, notes,
Irigaray concludes that in our society representation, and therefore also social and cultural structures, are products of what she sees as a fundamental hom(m)osexualite. The pun in French is on homo (same) and homme (man) : the male desire for the same. The pleasure of self-representation, of her desi~e for the same, is denied woman: she is eut off from any kind of pleasure that might be specifie to her."
And according to de Lauretis, "Irigaray cleverly called • [this conceptual structure] 'hom (m) osexuality' or 'sexual indifference, , where the object choice of the homosexual
woman [can only be understood as] determined by a
masculine desire and 'tropism'. ,,19 So, when female
hom(m)o-sexuality is presented as an arrest on the
Freudian path of symbolic castration, the functioning
operative is: that male fantasies lay down the law (the
law of the father).
The female homosexual is thought to act as a man in desiring a woman who is equivalent to the phallic mother and/or who has certain attributes that remind her of another man, for example her brother. Why should the desire for likeness, for a female likeness, be forbidden to, or impossible for thp. woman? • 48 Then again why are mother-daughter relations necessarily conceived in terms of "masculine" desire and homosexuality? What is the purpose of this misreading, of this condemnation, or • woman's relation to her own original desires, this non-elaboration of her relation to her own origins?'o
Within Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory
everything must happen for the girl exactly as it does
for the boy, even though their original desires are very
different. This hom(m)ogenizing process fails to
recognize that a desire for a body t.he same as, or
different from, one's own is not necessarily the same
process for males and females. So, Irigaray searches for
the place of woman's self-affection or a female
homosexual economy, which challenges the ,")ndition of
"sexual indifference". The love of self and the • recognition of the debt to the mother, will hopefully, according to Irigaray, free the mother to be a sexual and
desiring woman, and free the daughter from the control of
the mother. Gallop states that,
Irigaray seek(s) to formulate a female poetics that would allow mother and daughter, once locked in a symbiotic fusion and plentitude, to become women and subjects, in and through language. Symbiotic fusion and plentitude lock women in, pre-Oedipal fascination holds them motionless. The question of language must be inserted as the wedge to break the hold of the figure of the mother. 21
The presumption that libido or desire is masculine,
leaves no desire specifie to woman. Gallop continues,
(if) what Irigaray calls "this multiple' of feminine desire and language" is not based in • 49 anatomy but constructs it, l can then assert that the Irigarayan poetics of the body is not an expression of the body but a poiesis, a • creation of the body". Tllis creation of the body is a productive, formative, and
active process, rather than a poetics of the body which
expresses and imagines that which is already there,
previously constructed, and for which there is no hope of
alteration.
Irigaray's fearlessness towards speaking the body
revalues the complexity, layeredness, and changeability
of the female body. There is an "essence" in the
presence of the female body -- an essence which contains
various erogenous zones. Irigaray does not fetishize
presence (clitoris/vaginal or lack (penis) but appeals to
the knowledge we have of sexuality as predicated on the • basis of perceptions of another's sexuality. As Irigaray notes,
Freud admits, the beginnings of the sexual life of a girl child are so "obscure," so "faded with time, " that one would have to dig down very deep indeed to discover beneath the traces of this civilization, of this history, the vestiges of a more archaic civilization that might give sorne clue to woman' s sexuality. That p.xtremely ancient civilization would undoubtedly have a different alphabet, a different language...woman's desire would not be expected to speak the same language as man's; woman's desire has doubtless been submerged by the logic that has dominated the West since the time of l.he Greeks. 23
with an entirely new vocabulary emerging, developed
mostly within Gay and Lesbian Studies, the categories of • 50 sex, masculinity and femininity have become less
definitive, and certainly no longer solely support the
• economy of just two sexes. But what are the reasons why we need to know what the biological/anatomical sex of
someone is? Irigaray's acknowledgement of this biologism, inherent in categorizing according to sex,
keeps her work grounded in the specificity of the body.
Irigaray makes a simultaneous calI to return to the
imaginary female body, and to develop a language that
emerges from that body, and its consequent relationship
to the symbolic order. According to Elizabeth Grosz,
"Irigaray is not outlining the truth of female sexuality
or the makeup of the world. She is creating discourse to
contest or combat other, prevailing discourses. ,,24 It is • crucial to recognize that although Irigaray is creating discourse, this discourse is in no manner a final,
complete, or self-contained discourse on female
sexuality, but is one of many possibilities. Irigaray
states that,
to seek to discover-rediscover a possible imaginary for women through the movement of two lips re-touching...does not mean a regressive recourse to anatomy or to a concept of "nature," nor a recall to genital order - women have more that one pair of two lips! Rather it means to open up the autological and tautological circle of systems of representation and their discourse so that women may speak (of) their sex."5
A part of the process of changing the categories of
sexual difference involves women creating and developing • 51 a specifie feminine language which evades patriarchal • regulation. And since the body is the site of a truly feminine specificity it becomes the potential source of
an alternative symbolic order. The subversion of the
text of patriarchy requires a new kind of feminine style,
possibly developed through "ecriture de la femme."
"Ecriture de la femme" is a writing practice that will
initiate the analysis of phallogocentrism by utilising a
unique style -- fluid, flowing, never allowing itself to
be defined or restricted, never taking a fixed position;
fixed configurations of meaning must be broken up or
subverted. As Domna Stanton in "Language and Revolution" notes,
Irigaray examines the strategies of repression which have valorized a single term in the polarity masculine/feminine, reducing woman to • man's opposite, his other, the negative of the positive, and not as Otherness, as difference in her own right. In the latonic metaphors which have è10minated and determined Western discourse, Irigaray finds a latent scheme/schema to subject woman to the principle of Identity conceived wholly as masculine sameness and male presence. 26
Extracting the female body away from masculine sameness
requires a methodology that does not re-create the same
order with a new mask. Irigaray encourages women to
overthrow syntax by suspending its eternally teleological order, by snipping the wires, cutting the current, breaking the circuits, switching the connections, by modifying continuity, alternation, frequency, intensity. 27
She also encourages women to "go on questioning words as • 52 the wrappings wi th which the 'subject, ' modestly, clothes
the 1 female. 1 Il 2R It is through this process that • Irigaray encourages a form of anarchy although anarchy, too, is a construct and process that labels,
relationally, within the dominant discourse. According to Grosz, Irigaray specifies an account of the body' s morphology; the body is not considered an anatomical, biological or neuro-physiological body -- a body that is the object of the sciences of biology. Rather, her object of analysis is the body as it is lived, the body which is marked, inscribed, made meaningful both in social and familial and idiosyncratic terms, the body psychically, socially and discursively established: the body as socially and individually significant. This body is considered to be built on biological raw materials out of which are produced meanings, sensations, desires, pleasures, by its interaction with systems of social meaning and practices. To separate the feminine from a female morphology, while useful in sorne • contexts for strategie purposes, is misguided, both theoretically and politically. It is politically misguided in so far as it enables the reproduction of the phallocentric privileging of male representations of femininity, the male prerogative of speaking on behalf of women; it is theoretically misguided in so far as it presumes a self, or drives, or forros of identification to function independent of the particularity of the bodies in which they arise. Such an account cannot explain why femininity inscribed on a female body is necessarily different from femininity inscribed on a male body. 29
Grosz provides sound reasons for not separating the
feminine forro from a female morphology, and Irigaray
simultaneously constructs a feminine forro using female
morphology . The "self" is then dependent on the body, • 53 since the lived "body" and sexed embodiedness determine • the construction of the self. However, Grosz's last point, that femininity inscribed on a female body is necessarily different from feminini ty inscribed on a male body, raises many questions. How could one determine the
specifie aspects of femininity that migh~ be inscribed on
a male body? And can one assume that the inscription
process is the same or might the process of inscripting femininity onto a male body be different from the process of inscription of femininity onto a female body, thereby
achieving different outcomes? Grosz summarizes the intricate layers of Irigaray's
work as such: At the same time as ...attempting a deconstruction of phallocentrism, Irigaray explores a new theoretical space and forms of • language which enable women to see and represent themselves in positive, self defined, and self-judging terms. In disentangling the reliance patriarchal power relations maintain over women' s bodies, sexualities, and experiences through the development and use of systems of representation, systems of meaning to inscribe the female body as a negative, dependent, lacking object, Irigaray attempts to explore sorne of the possibilities of different, positive representations contesting the inscription of women's bodies with meaning in challenging patriarchal power. JO
THE P'BMIInNB DlAGINARY
Irigaray's most challenging project is the • 54 development of the feminine imaginary . What is a feminine imaginary? In what respects is this feminine • imaginary different from the male imaginary? And how is this imaginary related to the body?
According to Margaret Whitford, if "one remembers
that the relation to the body is always an imaginary or
symbolic one; it is the real body, like the real of the
world, which is always out of reach. ,,31 Irigaray
deplores the modern neglect of the body, yet she proposes
the contradictory notion that it is "man's" body that is
the threshold, the porch, of the construction of his
universe(s). This apparent contradiction is elaborated
by Irigaray as such.
The importance of the imaginary body is that it underlies Western metaphysics, in which the subject is always identified as male. Sexual • difference does not yet exist in the social imaginary of the West; che female body is symbolised as outside. 'But this fault, this deficiency, this "hole", inevitably affords woman too few figurations, images or representations by which to represent herself' .32
Therefore, the feminine imaginary is an imaginary
revealed through the creation of figurations, images and
representations that will enable women to identify as
subjects that are not "male", while simultaneously
deconstructing the sexual indifference of the existing
social imaginary. However, as Whitford notices,
since Lacan describes identity as imaginary, and if identity, according to Irigaray, is male, the problem arises: either the idea of a • 55 female imaginary is self-contradictory, or the female imaginary, in so far as it attributes identity to the female populace, would still • fall within the parameters of male thought, would be a male definition of the female.J]
So, how can a definition of "woman" escape the parameters
of male thought, in order to be partially outside the
control of a male definition? The assumption, that in
order to successfully progress from the imaginary to the
symbolic means that there must be a repression of certain
desires, and these repressions are then harboured in the
unconscious, must be accepted. According to Irigaray the
site that harbours these repressions is the home of the
feminine imaginary. Therefore, the feminine imaginary is
in the "repressed unconscious, " and what is needed is a
method of exposing, through the fissures, gaps, blanks in • discourse, the unconscious of Western (male) thought, which will, in turn, reveal these feminine repressions.
However, it is assumed that these "blank spaces"
represent the unconscious, and not sorne other unknown
element. The reconstitution of the feminine imaginary
presupposes that there is something in the unconscious,
of males as weIl as females, as it is currently
designated, that can somehow be accessed, and this
something represents the pre-linguistic, mother-child
dyad. But until this repressed imaginary has been more
adequately symbolised we will not be able to articulate
the relation between male and female identity in a • 56 different way . According to Irigaray, the singular neglect, within psychoanalytic theory, of the relation of • a woman to her mother, and the relation of women amongst themselves, raises questions about the interpretation of
the way the unconscious works.
Whitford notes that, Irigaray's imaginary, although a concept which derives from psychoanalysis, cannot be understood in purely psychoanalytic terms, but also has an irreducible social dimension which makes its anatomical reference a symbolic or cultural one. She is not referring to a direct and unmediated relation to the body, but to an imaginary and symbolic representation of the body, an 'ideal morphology' which, as she puts it, leaves residues that are unsymbolised (or in which the female body may be symbolised as residue) .34
The imaginary is, therefore, related to the body through • Irigaray' s belief that an examination of the body' s representation will unmask the unsymbolised residues.
Irigaray's theory of the symbolic, which language
represents, and as Andrea Nye outlines,
depends on a Saussurian view of language as a system of signs internally related, and modified in the Lacanian version, whereby we do not use words to communicate; instead we "enter into" language, which is a fixed system of meanings structured around the master signifier, the Phallus, and its corollary, the Name of the Father. 3S
As a method of unearthing this fixed system l recognize
at least two distinct fronts that could be addressed.
The first is to somehow alter, through the creation of an
alternative discourse, the "entry" into language; and • 57 second, to shake t-he foundations on which this fixed
system is built, namely the master signifier the • phallus, and its corollary the Name of the Father. Irigaray attempts to manipulate the fixed configurations
of meaning, in order to, as she claims, insure a degree
of "subversive freedom." A potential problem, that l
perceive, with the claim of "subversive freedom," is the
assumption that the Symbolic is unable to "handle" the
break up of its fixed configurations. The Symbolic may
somehow be able to reconfigure itself, incorporating
alternative configurations, only creating the illusion of
subversion, a process that readily appears in the
multiple cases of co-optation. Whitford notes that, in This Sex Which Is Not One, • Irigaray provides a vision of woman's language. This language, developed through "ecriture de la femme"
promotes the textual practice, "travail du langage,"
which is a practice of refuting male philosophers but not
in their own terms. Irigarayapproaches the philosophers
as texts, that is, internally generated, more or less
ordered systems of meaning whose logical order and
pretended truth must be deconstructed.
Turn everything upside down, inside out, back to front. Rack it with radical convulsions, carry back reimport, those crises that her "body" suffers in her impotence to say what disturbs her. Insist also on those blanks in discourse, which recall the places of her exclusion and which, by their silent plasticity, ensure the cohesion, the • 58 articulation, the coherent expansion of established forms.)f, • By examining major philosophical works, and submitting modern psychoanalytic theory to the deconstructive
process, Irigaray attempts to tease out what is most
insolent ir. these texts to alleviate the oppression of
women.
As Whitford notes, this language
turns out to do more with socially-determined linguistic practices, sexual differences in the generation of messages and self positioning in language vis-a-vis the other, aIl of which are possible sites for transformation, opening up the possibility of women's distinct cultural identity."
l am uncertain what Whitford is referring to when she
claims that Irigaray is "opening up the possibility of a
women' s distinct cultural identity." Irigaray seems more • concerned with challenging the unitary representation of the syrnbolic crder rather than creating a distinct
cultural identity for women. And what exactly does
Whitford mean by cultural ide~tity? It could be argued
that woman, through her unique position in the socio-
syrnbolic order, already has a distinct "culture" - - a
"culture" that may need alteration, a "culture" that
relegates "woman" to the outside, but nevertheless a
culture. It could be inferred that Whitford is exposing
an underlying separatist treaty/creed in Irigaray' s work.
However, this creed, l might argue, is not the endpoint
of Irigaray's theories. According to Irigaray it is • 59 important to disconcert the staging of representation according to exclusively "masculine" parameters, and ... it is not a matter of toppling that (phallocratie) order • so as to replace it -- that amounts to the same thing in the end -- but of disrupting and modifying it, starting from an "outside" that is exempt, in part, from phallocratie law.'"
A possible female imaginary "would correspond to the
morphology of the female body with its own space-time
modalities, in which woman would be nomads, mobile and
dancing, taking their own "house" with them. ,,'9 Many
questions are raised from this appeal to disconcert the
staging of representation. What is the distinction
between oisrupting and modifying the phallocratie order,
that differentiates it from toppling that order? Can an
order not be so intrinsically altered that it no longer
resembles the original, and therefore could be said to • have been replaced? The concept of "outside" also needs to be precisely reckoned. According to 1rigaray, woman
is both "inside" and "outside" the phallocratie order,
and we must accept that there is "something in" each
individual that is not completely abandoned or structured
by the phallocratie order, that is the repressed feminin~
imaginary. However, can we assume that the repress~d
(feminine) imaginary is similar for "woman" and for
llman ll ? 1s any subject not always both "inside" and
"outside" this order?
1rigaray continues,
this domination of the philosophie logos stems • 60 in large part from its power to reduce aIl others ta the economy of the Same. The teleologically constructive project it takes on is always also a project of diversion, • deflection, reduction of the other in the Same. And, in its greatest generality perhaps, from its power to eradicate the difference between the sexes in systems that are self-representative of ct 'masculine subj ect' .40 It is through the economy of the Same that the assumptions and foundations in the teleological project
can be exposed. The over-determination through the reduction of Sameness is that which must be challenged, for the benefit (politically/sociologically) of women and
other "groups" of people that do not feel represented in this economy. By dismantling the reduction of Sameness,
Irigaray confronts the questions of identity construction. Within Lacanian psychoanalytic theory • women are denied an identity, therefore their "cü.tside" is determined as such.
Irigaray states that,
to give women an identity (however problematic the concept) will change our notio~ of what identity means. The existence of two 'kinds' would have an effect on mankind. 41
And she continues,
if identitv is formed by identification with elements in the social/symbolic or~~=, (then) it means that social/symbolic formations will have to change for womankind to come intI.. existence at all. 42
Irigaray resists the temptation that the theoretical
formation of identity should follow a presupposed linear • 61 path"ay. And in order to enlighten women, to the
intentions of the socio-symbolic order, lrigaray proposes
• pat~·iarchy," the "overmiming of in order to eventually
undermine it. This overmiming will stretch patriarchy's
pronouncements and authority to such an extent that the
blank spaces will be exposed.
If, as Irigaray contenC:s, the "feminine 'sex' is a
point of linguistic absence, the impossibility of a
gramrrLatically denoted substance, as an abiding and
foundational illusion of a masculinist discourse, ,,43 then
it is apparent that the female will elude the very
requirements of representation, and when she cannot be
represented as either "other" or "lack," because those
categories are predispoGed to a phallogocentric scheme, • she becomes the site of snbversive m'"ltiplicity. Lacan's work on the cOIlceptualization of the
imaginary body during the mirror scage presupposed this
body as a male body, further erecting and supporting the
primacy of the phallus. According to Irigaray, Lacan's
mirror (the mirror of theory or discourse) can only see
women's bodies as lacking because it (the mirror) does
not have access to the "inside" of women's bodies. Not
being on the "inside" is consistently reflected back,
within a specular economy, whereby women are "fixed" into
position through the agency of the look, and "fixed" as
a "lacking" image. Lacan's analysis of "lack" would be • 62 less disturbing if "lack" was a free-floating signifier • that could act to define sexual differences on both sides of the binary (feminine/masculine), without regulating
the economy of the "same" to sexual differences.
The reconfiguring of Lacanian imaginary, that pre-
Oedipal order which is prior to sexual difference and
language, through a recasting of the imaginary
constitution of subjecthood, allows, as Irigaray
demonstrates, for women a privi leged relationship to this
domain. This privilege would come from a symbolic
constitution that had as its root the disereet
c:1clvelopment of a feminine imaginary. In Irigaray' s
Speculum of the Other Woman she elaims that,
subjectivity is denied to woman: indisputably this provides the finaneial backing for every irreducible constitution as an object of • representation, of discourse, of desire." As Whitford recalls, Irigaray's particular argument
against Laean is that he exeludes in advance the
possibility of any real social change, because he does
not seek to investigate the relationship between real
women and Woman -- or awoman (l'afemme) as he prefers to
say -- sinee "the woman does not exist". The problem for
real women is that although they may be symbolised as the
"outside", they are not in fact ol'.tside the society they
live i:1, and its symbolic struetu·ces.
Irigaray's impetus arises from Freud's and Lacan's
portrayal of women . • 63 (woman) is not only other, but is specifically man's Other. Patriarchal discourse situates woman outside representation: she is absence, • negativity, the dark continent or at best a lesser man." Freud and Lacan speak of women, authoritatively, non-
contextually and ahistorically, aIl the while, according
to lrigaray, speaking for/about that which they can never
know. The process of exposure, of beginning to glimpse at
the repressed feminine, involves a strategy appropriated
from the vocabulary of philosophy :by lrigaray), called
mimesis. This strategy involves transforming woman' s masquerade, her so-called femininity, into a means of
re?ppropriating the feminine. According to lrigaray,
one must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a form of subordination into an affirmation, • and thus to begin to thwart it...To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it. lt means to resubmit he:;self ._- inasmuch as she is on the side of the "perceptible," of "matter" -- to "ideas, " in particular to ideas about herself, that are elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but so as to make "visible," by an effect of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain invisible: the cover-up of a possible operation of the feminine in language. lt also means to "unveil" the fact that, if women are such good mimics, it is because they are simply resorbed in the function. They also remain elsewhere. 46
Mimesis, as utilized by lrigaray, has heen interpreted by
Naomi Schor "as describing a parodie mode of discourse
designed to deconstruct the discourse of misogyny through • 64 effects of amplification and rearticulation that work ...
to enact a defamilir.trized version of femininity."" • This mimetic strategy has definite benefits since the problem is that one cannot alter symbolic meanings by fiat. One cannot simply reverse the symbolism; and it is not enough te claim that women are in fact rational, since that is not the point. (The point is the relation of women to the symbolic structures which exclude them.) 4B
The relationship between "woman" and mimicry is two-
directional, utilizing a strategy that will change
"woman's" relation to the symbolic order. As women use
this mimetic strategy they will be more aware of the
exterllally imposed construction to which they had
previously adhered. This knowledge will, dialectically,
provide woman with the opportunity to construct other • images of herself. Irigaray spends significant energy trying to justify
the need for an elaboration of a feminine imaginary,
rather than simply articulating the imaginary herself.
In reference to the male imaginary, she states that,
woman, in this sexual imaginary, is only a more or less obliging prJp for the enactment of man's fantasies. That she may find pleasure there in that role, by proxy, is possible, even certain. But such pleasure is above aIl a masochistic prostitution of her body to a desire that is not her own, and it leaves her in a familiar state of dependency upon man. Not knowing what she wants, ready for anything, even asking for more, so long as he will "take" her as his "object" when he seeks his own pleasure. Thus she will not say what she herself wants; moreover, she does not 4 know, or no longer knows, what she wants. ' • 65 Irigaray also recognizes that,
every operation on and in philosophical language, by virtue of the very nature of that • discourse -- which is essentially political - possesses implications that, no matter how mediate they may be, are nonetheless politically determined. The first question to ask is therefore the following: how can women analyze their own eÀ~loitation, inscribe their own demands, within an order prescribed by the masculine?'o
Irigaray's project to "cast phallocentrism,
phallocratism, loose from its moorings in order to return
the masculine to its own language, leaving open the
possibility of a different language. ,,51 will hopefully
lead to the development of a feminine imaginary -- based
on the female body, articulated with a feminine language
-- unless, of course, Irigaray' s critics manage to insist
on her dismissal because she walks the essentialist • tightrope .
• 66 WHAT THE CRITICS SAY
• Theorists, such as Grosz, Fuss, Whitford, Hol~lund, and Gill, who do not wish to dismiss Irigaray's work as
essentialist, have actively theorized the basis of this charge. How does Irigaray hold the obvious contradiction between the concept that there is "woman, " and the refusal to accept further restrictive definitions? It must be asked: is it possible to generate a theory of
feminine specificity that ~s not essentialist? Yet for many critics, such as Judith Butler, Linda Alcoff, and
Elspeth Probyn, Irigaray stands too close to the essentialist line; she actually floats between the two
oppositions, simultaneously appealing to an essentialism • and refuting it. She never lets her theories be constrained by this binary.
Given that Irigaray uses the female body as the source of her theories, and her belief in the possibility
of creating a feminine imaginary, it is easy to
understand why she has been so controversial. But Fuss investigates this terrain by asking:
How might essentialism operate in the service of Luce Irigaray' s feminist theory and politics? Why and when is essentialism invoked in her work? What might be at stake in the deployment of essentialism for strategie purposes? In short, are there ways to think and to talk about essence that might not necessarily, "always already," ipso facto, be reactionary?52 • 67 Irigaray strategically deploys essentialism for at • least two, interwoven, reasons: first, to expose the contradiction at the heart of Aristotelian metaphysics,
which denies woman access to "essence" while at the same
time positing the essence of "woman" precisely as non
essential (as matter); and second, to reverse and
displace Lacan's phallomorphism/centrism.
In order to discuss the "essence" of woman, Irigaray
begins by determining what, in philosophy, is the
accepted definition of this "essence." Beginning with
one of the major foundations of Western thought, namely
Aristotle, Irigaray uses the declaration, that as matter
woman has no access to her own essence, against itself in
order to claim that women have both access and essence . • If "woman" has an essence, and is denied access to it, it is the essence of woman to have no essence, hence essence
is displacement and can be used politically. Moreover,
since in "the dominant tradition of Western ontology
existence is predicated on essence, it has been possible
for someone like Lacan to conclude, remaining fully
within traditional metaphysics, that without essence,
'woman does not exist.' ,,53 Irigaray traces Lacan' s
development and concludes its predictability given the
pathway of Western metaphysics and Aristotle's division
of essence and matter. To give women an essence is to
undo Western phallomorphism and to offer women entry into • 68 subjecthood . The difficult task is not to run from constructing an essence, but to lay claim to an essence,
• thereby th", conventional binarisms of undoing essence/accident and form/matter. As lrigaray notes,
ontological status makes her incomplete and incompletable. She can never achieve the wholeness of her form."
According to lrigaray, Lacan fails to question the
metaphysical premises of his theories. However, Lacan denies that he is referring to the transcendental
signifier "woman ll and not real, material women. lnterestingly, the problem arises when the essence of "man" i5 at issue. "Man", who possesses a penis but is
not the possessor of the transcendental signifier, the
phallus, exists. ls it a coincidence that "woman, " who • is without a penis, does not exist philosophically and within psychoanalysis, while "man," with a penis, does?
And given that neither "woma.l" nor "man" is the possessor
of the phallus why must woman, without essence, be the
repository of masculinity?
lt is Lacan, not lrigaray, who erects the phallus as
the single transcendental signifier. Consequently,
according to lrigaray, he exposes the phallocentric logic
that upholds his theories. lrigaray notes that woman's
lot is that of "lack", "atrophy (of the sexual organ), and "penis envy" , the penis being the only sexual organ of recognized value...Thus she attempts by every means available to appropriate that organ for herself. 55 • 69 In reaction to Irigaray's exposure of Lacan's phallomorphism/centrism, Lacan' s advocates make the point • that, Irigaray reads Lac3.n ideologically and suDstantively....By equating the phallic signifier with patriarchy, she substantivizes the concept biologically such that phallus=penis=male....Irigaray fails to see that the phallic signifier is intrinsically neutral. 56 According to Lacan the phallus equally symbolizes a male
and a female sex organ -- the penis and the clitoris.
Irigaray, however, does not accept this. She hopes to expose the disguised metaphysics in Lacan's work, and her particular response to the phallus involves examining
Lacan's privileging of solids over fluids.
If every psychic economy is organized around the phallus (or Phallus), we ~ay ask what this primacy owes to a teleology of reabsorption of • fluid in a solidified form. 57 Irigaray interprets the neglect of fluids (read women), in favor of solids (the phallus), as a neglect of
feminine sexuality in psychoanalysis. Irigaray's
production of a notion of female sexuality, exemplified
in such work as "The Mechanics of Fluids, "SB functions
primarily as displacement. Irigaray's reading of phallomorphism as a kind of isomorphism, however, is not so much a misreading as an exposure of one of the dominant metaphors in poststructuralist psychoanalysis. Irigaray's production of an apparently essentializing notion of female sexuality functions strategically as a reversaI and a displacement of Lacan' s phallomorphism. 59 • 70 For Irigaray i t is important to disconcert the
staging of representation according to exclusively • "masculine" parameters. And as Judith Butler interprets Irigaray:
women are the Il sex Il which in not "one." Within a language pervasively masculinist, a phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable. In other words women represent the sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity.60
In Irigaray's theory, the substantive grammar of gender,
which assumes men and women as weIl as their attributes
of masculine and feminine, is an exall1ple of a binary that
effectively masks the univocal and hegemonic discourse of
phallogocentrism, thereby appropriating and silencing the
feminine. The possibility of another language or signifying economy is the only chance at escaping the • "mark" of gender which, for the feminine, is nothing but the phallogocentric erasure of the female sex.
Toril Moi in Sexual/Textual Poli tics describes
Irigaray's dilemma in the following manner.
Any attempt to formulate a general theory of femininity will be metaphysical. This is precisely Irigaray' 5 dilemma: having shown that 50 far femininity has been produced exclusively in relation to the logic of the Same, she falls for the temptation to produce her own positive theory of femininity. But ...to define 'woman' is necessarily to essentialize her. 61
l wouId contest Moi's statement that Irigaray produces a
positive theory of femininity. At this historical
juncture Irigaray seems more concerned with "practising" • 71 what she "preaches, " rather than producing a static
theory of femininity or masculinity. To remain within • the logic of the Same, and to use the discourse and syntax of the "masters," without alteration, will not
result in a significant change. There must be a
practice, that may, at another historical time, be deemed
worthless, that can begin to examine the constraints and
privileges afforded to a phallogocentric philosophy.
This practice may be of particular significance and
consequence to those who have been dismissed or erased by
phallogocentrism.
Shoshana J:"elman offers the following criticism.
If 'the woman' is precisely the ather of any conceivable Western theoretical locus of speech, how can the woman as such be speaking in this book? Who is speaking here, and who is asserting the otherness of the woman? If, • as Luce Irigaray suggests, the woman's silence or the repression of her capaeity to speak, are constitutive of philosophy and of theoretical discourse as such, from what theoretieal locus is Luce Irigaray herself speaking in order to develop her own theoretieal diseourse about women? Is she speaking as a woman, in the narne of the woman? Is it enough to be a woman in order to speak as a woman? Is 'speaking as a woman' a faet determined by sorne biologieal condition or by a strategie, theoretieal position, by anatomy or by culture? What if 'speaking as a woman' were not a simple 'natural' faet?62
Felman's questions exhibit a eonflation of the repression
of "woman' 5" eapaeity to speak with an inability to speak
at aIl. Through exarnple, Irigaray is trying to expose a
strategie method of overeoming this repression. However, • 72 she is not speaking from an~vhere outside the Western
theoretical locus, nor is she speaking in the name of • woman. l would presume that Irigaray is speaking from the locuz that has been accorded "woman" in Western
discourse, while recognizing "woman' s" contrived entry
and representation in the socio-symbolic world. It is a
fallacy to conclude that because "women" are "unable to
create their own words, and women remain and move in an
immediacy withou t any transitional, transactional objects"" that women must, forever, remain so.
As Irigaray states,
whence the necessity of "reopening" the figures of philosophical discourse -- idea, substance, subject, transcendental subjectivity, absolute knowledge -- in order to pry out of them what they have borrowed that is feminine, from the feminine, to make them "render up" and give back what they owe • the feminine. This may be done in various ways, along various "paths"; moreover, at 6 minimum several of these must be pursued. '
In The Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex
Which Is Not One, Irigaray suggests that essence may not
be the unitary, mono-lithic, essentialist category that
anti-essentialists so often presume it to be. Irigaray's
claim that,
your/my body doesn't acquire its sex through an operation. Through the action of sorne power, function or organ. Without any intervention or special manipulation, you are a woman, 65
must be dealt with. What possible benefits could be
derived from the strict classification of "woman" based • 73 on anatClmical determinants? Are the outcomes of this
strategic usage of essentialism enough to justify this • strategy? In present Western discourse Irigaray sees
feminine sexuality as the fancasy projection by men of
perceived feminine essences. The assumption that
underlies these fantasy projections is that how one
experiences a female body, and one experiences a male
body, are the same. Since the specificity of the body
cannot be changed, but an individual may chose to act out
another gender, a body, by its very specificity,
determines one' s entry into the socio-symbolic world.
Therefore, you can change genders (surgically) or act out
another specifie gender, but you cannot change and "be"
as opposed to "become" that which your specificity has • already determined. And, since it might be true that identity is formed by identification with elements in the
socio-symbolic order, then, this would mean that the
socio-symbolic formations would have to change for
womankind to come into existence. Irigaray claims that
an essentialist standpoint is not to further the
imprisonment of women within their bodies, but to rescue
them from enculturating definitions by men. Furthermore,
if being a woman has any political advantage it can said
that a woman will never be a woman solely in masculine
terms, and therefore will never be wholly and permanently
annihilated in a masculine order . • 74 Converseiy, Irigaray' s essentialism can be read
within the larger anti-essentialist project of re- • creating, and re-metaphorizing the body. Th8 specifie physical attributes of the female oo1y (labia, clitoris, vagina, etc.) are used, by Irigaray, as a construction rather than a reflection of the body. As Moi says,
rather than foreclosing the discussion on essentialism before it has truly begun, this approach asks the more difficult question: if Irigaray a9peals to a mode of feminine specificity, and if she attempts to s?eak the female body, what might such strategie forays into ~he territory of essentialism allow her to ac:complish? What might Irigaray' s work amoun~ to if she refused such admittedly risky ventures inta "this sex which is not one"?"
The political usage and the risk of essentialism may well transform existing pO.-ler structures, and for Irigaray the pathway is clear. • For unless we limit oursel'Jes naively -- or perhaps strategically to sorne kind of limited or marginal issue, it is indeed prêcisely philosophical discourse that we have to challenge, and disrupt, inasmuch as this discourse sets forth the law for all others, inasmuch as it constitutes the discourse on discourse. 6·/
• 75 4 • When Education and Essentialism Meet
with the theorizing that has been presented thus
far, an analysis of a practice, such as education, may
further elucidate the embedded assumptions and beliefs
that work in and around the notion of "essence." Within
education, as outlined by Mary Midgley and Diana Fuss 1
specifically, essence operates as a privileged signifier.
Although the debate around essentialism manifests itself
in different terms, depending on the subject and context
that is at hand, as Fuss notes, the pedagogical issue of • essentialism in the classroom is "the most urgent (and the most frustrating to resolve) since it speaks to the
very subject. of who can speak. ,,2
This final chapter will examine the relationship
between education and essentialism, how essentialism
manifests itself in the classroom, and the use of
"experience" as a form of essentialism.
To begin, Mary Midgley notes that,
ffiodern educational theory has strongly promoted the idea that individual differences are intrinsic and must not be ironed out. We have been told for several centuries now that every child is naturally different and it is therefore wrong to impose on one the mould which has been prepared for others unlike it. This important thought has been constantly at • 76 odds with the equally influential notion tnat we are all blank paper at birth, ready to be entirely formed by our society. This last wild exaggeration has also been popular with • educators at ~imes when they wanted to stress the importance of their task and the need to get it right.'
Midgley surrunarizes the historical positioning of the
dominant educational theories, with regard to the nature
of children; however, her biases must be acknowledged.
Although the relationship between innate capabilities and
socially constructed ones is not, and may never be,
determined, Midgley, through her representation of modern
educational theory, fails to note that the "blank paper"
analogy does not work for children entering school.
Children have had five years, or so, of learning
(possibly the most intense learning of their lives), and • are therefore already IIrnarked. Il Midgley's characterization of educators who support the notion that
identities are completely constructed as wildly exaggerated seems to undermine the power of social
construction. Given what little is known "about· the
distribution of capabilities, it seems premature that
Midgley would characterize those who support social
construction as purporting wildly exaggerated notions.
Possibly any whole-hearted belief in the exclusivity of
either side of this dichotomy could be characterized as
exaggerated. For those (social constructionists) who
want to "stress the importance of their task and the need "' 77 • • ta get it right, " there are others (essentialists) who
can, in turn, justify their own failings based on the • acceptance that the child '.'las "born that way." Neither one of these extremes is primarily focused on the
children to be educated but each is positioned in
relation to the potential outcome of the educator' s
success.
Midgley' s thesis, in "On Not Being Afraid of Natural
Sex Differences," positions her closer to innate given
individuality than to the possibility of social
construction, and she uses the "experiences" of educators
to justify her point of view.
But the quite opposed notion of innate individuality has also maintained its strength, no doubt because there is so much in the experience of anybody who actually works with children to support it. If the little • creatures were really blank paper at birth, nobody would ever have the slightest difficulty in writing on them whatever their particular culture required, and it would be impossible for them to surprise their elders by unexpected conduct. This is so far from the truth that on the whole, for those really attending to education, the notion of innate given individuality has remained the stronger. 4
One of the major difficulties, aside from the neglect of
the years a child has had prior to entering school, with
this presentation of modern educational theory, and the
criticisms against social construction, is the apparent
belief in the cohesiveness of the process of social
construction. First, education is not isolated from
other powerful cultural influences that may stand in • 78 direct confrontation Nith the mandate of education .
Therefore, wi':h more than one stimulus attempting to • write on this "blank paper, " the relative distinction and control between what gets "written" and what does not get
"written" is unknown. Second, within education there are
multiple standpoints, histories, and cultures; at any
given moment these forces within education may be
contradictory or at least compromised, thereby, insuring
that children will not have direct access to a singular
unified view. And finally, the assumption at work in Midgley's
representation of social construction is that the process
of inscripting characteristics or capabilities cnte
children is somehow understood. l do not believe that • social constructionists put forth a fool-proof methodology of identity construction, but rather try to
elucidate possible positive and negative outcomes of
certain social practices.
Diana Fuss, in Essentially Speaking, has also chosen
the class~oom as a site for the exhibition of
essentialism. However, in contrast to Midgley, Fuss
refers to higher educa' '.on, say high school and up,
instebd of the elementary school education Midgley
analyzed. Fuss begins by observing that
no where (sic) are the related issues of essence, identity, and experience so highly charged and so deeply politicized as they are in the classroom. Personal consciousness, • 79 individual oppressions. lived experience in short, identity politics operate in the classroom both to authorize and to de • authorize speech. "Experience" emerges as the essential truth of the individual subject. and personal "identity" metamorphoses into knowledge. What we are becomes what we know; ontology shades into epistemology.'
If, as Fuss suggests, the classroom is a particularly
important site of confrontation, where identities need to
be authoritatively asserted, and "experience" emerges as
the essential truth, what is it, in the classroom, that
creates this struggle for authority? Fuss questions the
epistemologyof "experience" and the relationship between
ontology and epistemology. However, what is it in the
classroom environment, and the relationships that are
manifested there, that creates this need for authority?
The need to appeal to an indisputable authority may • provide a security mechanism, for the students and the teachers, whereby each can capture sorne of the
circulating "power" in the classroom, precisely because
power and authority function in this milieu around
knowledge and "proof" of knowledge.
Fuss does not want to dismiss experience altogether;
she prefers to deconstruct its position and work through
its connection to knowledge const~uctions.
Experience may be underwritten by a metaphysics of presence, this does not mean experience is necessarily present to us -- in the forro of an unmediated real. The appeal to experience, as the ultimate test of all knowledge, merely subtends the subject in its fantasy of autonomy and control. Belief in • 80 the truth of Experience is as much an ideological production as belief in the experience of Truth.' • Presently, with the limited theoretical work done in the area of how experience is mediated, and the ideological production of experience. it is difficult to analyze the (rel presentation of experience as ideological production.
However, knowledge of ideological production and construction would enable experience to be integrated into the classroom in such a way that it did not
necessarily posit authority with those who present their
experience. Since experience is not a forro of an unmediated real. it could be further mediated and interpreted by the classroom participants, thereby
possibly resulting in the dissemination of knowledge • rather than authorization of it. 'rhe negative outcomes potentially caused by the
appeal to experience function. according to Fuss, in the
following way.
While it may not always be the case that identity politics is reactionary, arguments based on the authority of experience can often have surprisingly de-politicizing effects. The ideology and effects of the politics of experience are therefore particularly important to confront in the institutional classroom setting, where identities can often seem more rigidified, politics more personalized. and past histories more intensified.7
The de-politicizing effects that Fuss refers to function
on the basis of exclusivity. As she outlines, those with • 81 experience use their "knowledge" to permanently exclude • others, on the basis that others are without this "experience." Experience, presented as such, is not a
transferable knowledge nor someth:ng that can be (re)-
mediated but is, in a sense, "innately" experienced --
experienced because of certain characteristics, race,
gender, sexual orientation... , that another will never
have or know. So, instead of promoting and developing
knowledge and understanding both are truncated.
As Fuss states (quoting Edward Said) :
it is both dangerous and misleading to base an identity politics upon rigid theories of exclusions, "exclusions that stipulate, for instance, only women can understand feminine experience, only Jews can understand Jewish suffering, only formerly colonial subjects can understand colonial experience" . The artificial boundary between insider and outsider necessarily contains rather than • disseminates knowledge.' These exclusions, created on the grounds that there are
those "who are in the know" positioned against those "who
are not in the know" (and never will be, given this
paradigm), map out territories based on knowledge claims.
Fuss notes that,
this delimiting of boundaries or mapping out of critical terrains is not a problem in and of itself (especially if it allows us to devote serious attention to previously ignored or trivialized issues); however, it becomes a problem when the central category of difference under consideration blinds us to other modes of difference and implicitly delegitimates them.'
One of the benefits of this "mapping out of critical • 82 t8rrains· is that ignored or trivialized issues caD be
brought under inspection and accorded the same rigorous • analysis as other previously deemed important issues. What needs to be created is a method of handling
Experience that does not solidify into a dictum that
ranks sorne knowledge as more authorized than others.
Another problem with promoting "authority through
experience" in the classroom is the fractured identities
that must be supported in order to make a knowledge
claim. Fuss comments that there is a tendency
to see only one part of a subject's identity (usually the most visible part) and to make that part stand for the whole ...A hierarchy of identities is set up within each speaking subject (not just between subjects), and it is this ranking of identities which is often used either to authorize an individual to speak on the basis of the truth of lived Experience or to de-authorize an individual from speakh'g on • the basis of lack of Experience. Identities are treated as fixed, accessible, and determinative, conferring upon the subject's speech an aura of predictability. What we see in this ordering of identities is none other than the paradoxical and questionable assumption that sorne essences are more essential than others. 10
In an intricate fashion "making a part stand in for the
whole" parallels an older order where the mind was
favoured over matter, objectivity over subjectivity, and
rationality over emotivity. In both cases relative value
is placed on only specifie aspects of an identity,
possibly resulting in either a denial of the remainder,
or an ignorance of the role the de-valued characteristics • 83 play in the mediation of the valued characteristics. The pendulum has swung vigorously in the other direction. • What is the purpose of actively supporting fractured identities, when any individua!. part of an identity cannot represent the whole? One significant change, however, has occurred. Individuals in the classroom now have the power to determine what specifie part of their
identity will be valued as knowledge. Previously, what was recognized as valuable knowledge was pre-determined by an institutional order. Now, with the appeal to
certain aspects of identity as a tolerated practice, it is the possessor of those characteristics that determines
each part of an identity's value.
Although Fuss is critical of the unmediated • representation of experience, she, conversely, maintains that there may be a limited place in the classroom for
the presentation of experience. Fuss' s desire not to dismiss experience has been aided by the understanding
that an appeal to experience has enabled formerly
silenced groups to articulate their perspectives. She
postulates that, while experience can never be a reliable guide to the real, this is not to preclude any role at all for experience in the realm of knowledge production. If experience is itself a product of ideological practices, as Althusser insists, then perhaps it might function as a window cnte the complicated workings of ideology. Experience would itself then become "evidence" of a sort for the productions of ideology, but evidence which is • 84 obviously constructed and clearly knowledge dependent. What l mean by this is simply that Experience is not the raw material knowledge seeks to understand, Lùt rather knowledge is • the active process which produces its own objects of investigation, including empirical facts. ll There are a few questions that need to be addressed as
Experience is mediated as Evidence for the production of
ideology. Fuss states that Experience, as Evidence, is
an Evidence which is obviously constructed, but what
Evidence in the production of ideology is not
constructed? Are sorne Evidences natural or essential and
others constructed? And since Experience is not the raw
material knowledge seeks to understand is there any raw
material at all?
As a final course of action Fuss suggests that,
we need both to theorize essentialist spaces • from which to speak and, simultaneously, to deconstruct these spaces to keep them from solidifying. 3uch a double gesture involves once again the responsibility to historicize, to examine each deployment of essence, each appeal to Experience, each claim to identity in the complicated contextual frame in which it is made."
This is probably the most responsible aCknowledgment of
Experience, and prescription for its analysis.
Although the presentation of Experience, in the
classroom, may be used to authorize speech, may silence
others who are without a similar Experience, and may
highlight the dubious nature of sorne knowledge claims, l
believe it would be negligent to erase Experience just • 85 when those who are possibly speaking for the first timc
are doing so from an essentialist position. However, • more analysis of the dialectical relationship between the role "experience" plays in knowledge construction, and
the simultaneous role ideological production plays in
constructing experience, is needed. This analysis may
provide a forum in the classroom where presented
experience is not debilitating to others .
•
• 86 • Conclusion
This thesis, which raised more questions than it
could possibly answer, presented an historical overview,
context, and analysis of the developments, progressions,
and points of resistance, within a very fertile
theoretical field. But were do we go from here? For my
concluding remarks, l would like to investigate the doors
that have been opened, for this decade and possibly
others, within this massive theoretical space.
As was presented in chapters 1 and 2, the connection
between analomy, gender roles and knowledge construction • is being re-theorized. In turn, the relationship between the "body" (imaginary or otherwise), and societally
determined roles is, also, being re-evaluated. With
hindsight it was necessary, in order to break out of
dominant western ontology, and provide the OPk rtunity to
offer a less rigid analysis of these relationships, to
work through the concept of essentialism. It seems to
me, that essentialism was the obstacle that needed to be
explicitly rendered in order to partially "ree these
concepts from their historical contingency. Yet, the
manner in which anatomy and gender roles are determined,
and the mechanisms embedded in the "marking" of the • 87 "body," still need to be theorized. How is the "body"
inscribed by/with gender? Is this process dialectical, • and, if so, how? If the underlying structures of gender differences are entrenched in biology, and the political
and social risks of engaging with biology are lessened,
then the opportunity to analyze this biological
entrenchment lies befùre us.
Within the postmodern movement, whereby partiality
is accepted, and gender and the body have begun to be
deconstructed, the ability ta purport that there is such
a CO!lstruct as a "genderless" subject, needs to be
investigated. 15 ct "genderless" subject also "bodyless?"
How is the "body", in its pre-linguistic state,
determined and theorized? Can a pre-linguistic "body," • prior to gender affirmation/accommodation be theorized, and remain "unmutilated" by a linguistic theory imposed
upon it? Once the "body" is marked, or transformed
through discourse, where are che sites that have resisted
discursive transformation?
Another theoretical space that may now be
interrogated, in order to alleviate female subordination,
is the site and specificity of gender hierarchy. This
analysis, which is not intended to bind women (or men for
that matter) to their biology, will enable an analysis of
how sexed embodiedness is related to knowledge
construction, possibly even female knowledge • 88 construction . A return to the body, endillg the western • philosophical stronghold of mind over body, may, in turn, change the very notion of "essence." Yet, throughout
this spectrum of feminist struggle, it cannot be
forgotten that the legitimate rallying point for
political and social change, is based en gender. Will we
be able to continue to initiate change if we are
"genderless?" The theory proceeds, precariously
balancing the need for theoretical expansion while
simultaneously ensuring that it does not contribute to
the social subordination of women.
As was briefly mentioned in chapter l, de Lauretis' s
offering, that those who are not yet willing to take the
risk of essentialism are avoiding the risk of challenging
• h~terosexuality, the socio-symbolic institution of needs
to be investigated further. What is the relationship
between essentialism and the institution of
heterosexuality? And what is the relationship between
sexual orientation, heterosexuality/homosexuality, and
the institution of heterosexuality? Is it possible that
the underlying assumption, within dominant feminist
theory, is that it is the "essence" of woman to be
heterosexual? How is heterosexuality inscribed on the
body? And what investments do h·'?terosexual feminists
have in the perpetuation of this institution? These • 89 questions, relatively embryonic, op,n large spaces for
feminist reflection. A resistance to theorizing • heterosexuality may be remarkably similar to the resistance around theorizing masculinity, and if this is
so, how do the political, social and rultural forces
ensure that this remains unmapped territory? An analysis of the creation of an alternative
discourse that is not already borne out of, and
determined by an existing discourse, is the justification
for presenting Luce Irigaray's work. She does create an
alternative discourse but it is not the last, final,
definitive feminist discourse on/for/by/with women -
hers is one out of many possibilities. And her
discourse, liberatingly so, exposed many embedded • beliefs held about women in the dominant "masculinist" discourse. This, in turn, may teach us, or enable
feminists to resist patriarchal regulation. But avoiding
Irigaray, on the charge of essentialism does not, l
believe, provide the much needed analysis of how this
"new" discourse inscribes the body. What does it
inscribe on the "body?" And aside from being a different
discourse, does i t sti11 follow the saroe inscription
process? Is there only one inscription process?
The creation of an alternative discourse, with the
assumption that there is a repressed feminine imaginary,
may simultaneously glimpse at a repressed masculine • 90 imaginary in ways that have not been articulated in
traditional Freudian, or Lacanian, psychoanalytic theory.
• But will i t ever be possible ta present i'i theory of
feminine specificity that is not essentialist? What
keeps this "cause" (feminine specificity) , and "effect"
(essentialist) in place? If one accepts that the re
metaphorization of the body is a process of "bodily"
construction rather than "bodily" reflection, does this
enable a theory of feminine specificity tu emerge?
And finally, education as a practice opens up a
specifie realm whare identities, subjectivities, and
knowledge constructions overlap in unique ways. However,
within this debate, the most intriguing process to be
grappled with is the process of mediation. Given that • there is no such thing as an unmediated self, the process of mediation, at its ;·mltiple sites, may expose sorne of
the sites of gender hierarch:{, and the marmer in which
gender roles are accommodated. Foregoing the belief that
the presentation of experience must, but actually rarely
is, accepted through the mediator's interpretation,
provides a dialectical space for the re-mediation of this
experience by others. This re-mediation may enable a
dialectical analysis to emerge similar to the process,
outlined by Il~garay. of "overmiming patriarchy in order
to undermine it." Both offer a methodology that might
lead to a heightened self-awareness . • 91 The relationships mentioned here may represent the
new directions in which feminist theories are heading. • As long as we remember "to theorize essentialist spaces from which to speak and, simultaneously, deconstruct
these spaces to keep them from solidifying, " 1 we may
achieve the, as yet unrealized, goal of combatting
misogyny on its own terms .
•
• 92 • NOTES Introduction
'Elizabeth Grosz, Hypatia: Feminism and the Body, 1991, vol. 6, no. 3, introduction.
"Ibid., introduction.
JAs evidence of this change see the journal differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1989, vol. 1, no. 2. This issue is devoted entirely to essentialism. 'Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "In a Word, Interview with Ellen Rooney, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol. 1, no. 2.
'Mary Midgley, "On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex Differences," in F'eminist Perspectives in Philosophy. eds. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. B1oomington: Indiana University Press, 1988 .
'Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, • and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Chapter 1
lDiana Fuss, "Reading Like A Feminist, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cul tural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 70.
2Teresa de Lauretis, "The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain," in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 5.
3Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho Analysis, trans. W.J.H. Sprott. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 1933, p. 155-6 . • 93 "Lorraine Code, "Is The Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant?" in Metaphilosophy, July/October 1981, vol. 12, nos. 3 & 4, p. 267. • 'Alan Soble, "Feminist Epistemology and Women Scientists," in Metaphilosophy, 1983, vol 14, nos. 3 & 4, p. 294.
"Lorraine Code, "Experience, Knowledge, and Responsibility, " in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 198.
'Ibid., p.199.
"Alan Soble, "Feminist Epistemology and Women Scientists, " in Metaphilosophy, 1983, vol 14, nos. 3 & 4, p. 298.
'Elaine Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, " in Writing and Sexual Difference, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982, p. 30.
IORuth Levitas, "Feminism and Human Nature," in Politics and Ruman Nature. eds. Ian Forbes and Steve Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983, p. 120.
llMerle Thornton, "Sex Equality Is Not Enough for Feminism" in Feminist Challenges: Social and Poli tical Theory. eds. CarCile Pateman and Elizabeth Gross. Boston: • Northeastern University Press, 1986, p. 78. 12Ibid., p. 97.
lJJean Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 105.
14Ibid., ;;J. 113.
15Ja.::ques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche' s Styles. trans. Barbar Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 49-53.
l'Mary Midg1ey, "On Not Being Afraid of Natura1 Sex Differences," in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. eds. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 31.
"Ibid., p. 34 .
• 94 "Ibid., p. 37 .
"Jean Grimshaw, "Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking," in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. eds. • Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 103.
'OElié"Flbeth Spelman, Inessential fl'oman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, p. 158.
"Ibid., p. 158.
":1ary Hawkesworth, "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth," in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1989, vol 14, no. 3, p. 542.
"Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Feminist Studies, Fall 1988, vol. 14, no. 3, p. 591.
24Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "In a Word, Interview with Ellen Rooney, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 125 . "Alice Echols, "The New Feminism of yin and Yang," in Powers of Desire: The Poli tics of Sexuality, eds. Ann • Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983, p. 442.
26Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn' t: Feminism, Semiotic3, Cinema. F'loomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 166.
27Teresa de Lauretis, "The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain," in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 32 .
• 95 Chapter 2
'Elizabeth Grosz, Special Issue: "Feminism and the • Body," in Hypatia, FaU 1991, vol. 6, no, 3, p. 1. 'Ibid., p. 1.
'Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 129.
'Ibid., p. 129. SJane Flax, "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1987, vol. 12, no.4, p. 627.
'Ibid., p. 629.
7Ibid., p. 634.
"Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Feminist Studies, Fall 1988, vol. 14, no. 3, p. 594 .
'Ibid., p. 594. • lOLeslie Rabine, "Essentialism and its Contexts: Saint Simonian and Post-Structuralist Feminists, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 108.
"Elizabeth Grosz, Special Issue: "Feminism and the Body," in Hypatia, Fall 1991, vol. 6, no. 3, p. H.
12Jean Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 p. 130.
13Robert Scholes, "Eperon Strings," in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol. l, no. 2, p. 107.
14Kaja silverman, "Histoire d'O: The Construction of a Female Subject, " in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 324.
15Ibid., p. 345 . • 96 16 Ibid., p. 345 .
17Teresa de Lauretis, Alic_ Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University • Press, 1984. p. 149. '"Ibid., p. 149. 19Linda l.lcoff, "Cultural Feminism versus Post Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,· in Signs: A Journal of Women in Cul ture and Society, 1988, vol. 13, no. 3, p. 4. 'OAdrienne Rich quoted by Linda Alcoff in "Cultural Feminism versus Post-Struccuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory," in 8igns: A JOl'rnal cf Women in Culture and Society, 1988, vol. 13, no. 3, p. 4.
"Ibid., p. 4. "Mary Poovey, "Feminism and Deconstruction, " in Feminist Studies, Spring 1988, vol. 14, no. 1, p. 62.
23Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn' c: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 166-7 . "Kaja siIverman, "Histoire d'O: The Construction of a Female Subject, " in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring • Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance. Boston: Rout1edge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 324.
"Jean Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 110. "Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "In a Word, Interview with Ellen Rooney, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol l, no. 2, p. 125.
Chapter 3
'Christine Holmlund, "1 Love Luce: The Lesbian, Mimesis and Masquerade in Irigaray, Freud, and Mainstream Film," in New Formations, Wintcr 1989, no. 9, p. 105 .
• 97 "Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Na ture, and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989, p. 7. • 'Ibid., p. 29. 'Ibid., p. la.
'Ibid., p. 7.
'Jane Gal1op, Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985, p. 81.
'Ibid., p. 38.
"Ibid., p. 79.
'Jacques Lacan, (qtd. in Fuss) , Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference. New York: Rout1edge, 1989, p. 11.
'ODiana Fuss, p. 11.
"Jacques Lacan, (qtd. in Fuss) , p. 12. "Diana Fuss, p. 6 a. "Luce Irigaray, (qtd. in Whitford), "Irigaray's Body Symbolic," in Hypatia, Fall 1991, vo1.6, no. 3, p. • 95. "Jan Montefiore, (qtd. in Whitford), p. 93.
l5Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One. trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 23.
"Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan, p. 60.
"Jane Gallop, Th.inking Through The Body. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, p. 97.
'"Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Poli tics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, 1985, p. 133.
"Teresa de Lauretis, "The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain," in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol 1, no. 2, p. 31.
• 98 'OLuce Irigaray, This Sex [\lhich Is Not One. trans . Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 65.
• "Jane Gallop, "Reading the Mother Tongue: Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1987, vol 13. no. 2, p.329.
"Jane Gallop, 1'hinking Through The Body. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, p. 94.
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which ls Not One, p. 25. "Elizabeth Grosz, (qtd. in Whitford), "Irigaray's Body Symbolic, " p. 100. "Luce Irigaray, (qtd. in Whitford), p. 101. "Domna Stanton, "Language anj Revolution: The Franco-American Dis-Connection," in The Future of Difference. eds. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990, p. 74 .
•7Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman. trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 142 .
'·Ib·~ d ., p. 142 . • 29Elizabeth Gross, "Philosophy, Subjectivity and the Body: Kristeva and Irigaray, " in Feminist Cha.I1enges: Social and Political Theory. eds. Carole Pateman and Elizabeth Gross. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986, p. 136.
30l b'd~ ., p. 134. 3lMargaret Whitford, "Luce Irigaray' s Critique of Rationality, " in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. eds. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 122.
32Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman. trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Corne1l University Press, 1985, p. 71.
33Margaret Whitford, "Luce Irigaray' s Critique of Rationality, " p. 121.
"Ibid., p. 122 . • 99 "'Andrea Nye, in Nargaret Whitford' s, The Irigaray Reader. Cambridge MA: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1991, p. 83.
J'Luce Irigaray, Specul um of the Other Woman, p. • 142. )"IMargaret Whitford, The Irigaray Reader. Cambridge MA: Basil B1ackwel1 Ltd., 1991, p. 5.
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 68.
19Luce Irigaray, (qtd. in Whitford) The Irigaray Reader. Cambridge MA: Basil B1ackwell Ltd., 1991, p. 73.
'OIbid., p. 74.
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 68.
"Ibid., p. 68.
"Ibid., p. 70.
"Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 133.
"Sigmund Freud, (qtd. in Toril Moi), Sexual/Textual Poli tics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, 1985, p. 133. • 'GLuee Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 76. "Naomi Schor, "This Essentialism Which is Not One: Coming to Grips with Irigaray, " in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1988, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 47.
'"Margaret Whitford, "Luce Irigaray' s Critique of Rationality, " p. 123.
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not Cine, p. 25.
SOIbid., p. 81.
51 Ibid., P. 8a.
520iana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989, p. 55.
"Ibid., p. 71.
• 100 S'ILuce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other i~Qlllall, p. 6~i .
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. :è3. • "Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornel1 uP, 1985, p. 134.
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex rl/hich Is Not One, p. 110.
"This is a chapter in Luce Irigaray' s This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 106-118.
"Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Poli tics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Meth~en, 1985, p. 98.
6°Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 9.
"Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Poli tics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, 1985, p. 98.
"Shoshana Fe1man, (qtd. in Moi), Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, p. 138.
"Margaret Whitford, The Irigaray Reader. Cambridge MA: Basil B1ackwel1 Ltd., 1991, p. 106 .
"Luce Irigaray, This Sex which Is Not One, p. 74. • 651b1d.• p. 211. "Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Poli tics: Feminist Literary Theory, p. 97.
67Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 74.
Chapter 4
'Mary Midgley briefly mentions education in "On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex Differences," and Diana Fuss has a chapter titleé' "Essentialism in the Classroom" in Essentially Speaki~d.
• 101 "Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989, p. xiii.
'Mary Midg1ey, "On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex • Differences," in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. eds. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford. B1oornington: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 39.
'Ibid., p. 39.
'Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking, p. 113.
'Ibid. , p. 114.
7Ibid. , p. 114.
"Ibid. , p. 115.
'Ibid. , p. 116.
lOIbid. , p. 116.
"Ibid. , p. 118.
"Ibid. , p . 118.
• Conclusion
lDiana Fuss, Essentially Speaking, p. 118 .
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