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Inscribing femininity: French theories of the feminine
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Jones, Ann Rosalind |
| Copyright Year | 2020 |
| Description | Book Name: Making a Difference: |
| Abstract | French theories of femininity, using Derridian deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis, centre on language as a means through which men have shored up their claim to a unified identity and relegated women to the negative pole of binary oppositions that justify masculine supremacy: subject/object, culture/nature, law/chaos, man/woman. Phallocentrism – this structuring of man as the central reference point of thought, and of the phallus as the symbol of sociocultural authority – is the target of Franco-feminist criticism. Ann Rosalind Jones traces, through the leading ideas of four writers, the forms this critique has taken. Julia Kristeva posits the concept of the semiotic, a rhythmic free play she relates to mother-infant communication, and looks for in modernist writers. Luce Irigaray emphasizes différence, a totality of women’s characteristics defined positively against masculine norms, and imagines a specifically feminine language, a parler femme. Hélène Cixous celebrates women’s sexual capacities, including motherhood, and calls for an écriture féminine through which women will bring their bodily energies and previously unimagined unconscious into view. Finally, Monique Wittig rejects this emphasis on différence, arguing that women must be understood not in contrast to man but in historical terms as subjected to oppression. Evaluating the possibilities for criticism that these theories of féminité suggest, Jones cautions that ‘Every belief about “what women are” raises political as well as literary problems’, and questions whether the critique of phallocentrism is yet freed from the metaphysical framework it seeks to dismantle. 81A feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive. It is volcanic; as it is written it brings about an upheaval of the old property crust, carrier of masculine investments; there’s no other way. There’s no room for her if she’s not a he? If she’s a her/she, it’s in order to smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the ‘truth’ with laughter. (Hélène Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’) |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2012-0-03008-4&isbn=9781003071044&doi=10.1201/9781003071044-4&format=pdf |
| DOI | 10.1201/9781003071044-4 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2020-07-15 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Making a Difference: Cultural Studies Critique Language Man Masculine Feminine Phallocentrism Jones Brings Hélène Cixous |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
