French feminist philosophyDe Beauvoir, Kristeva, Irigaray, Le Doeuff, CixousAlison AinleyINTRODUCTIONAlthough women have been active philosophers for many centuries,1 the development ofa specifically feminist viewpoint in the context of philosophy has gained credence onlycomparatively recently; partly as a result of more widespread debates about sexualpolitics in recent years, and partly as a result of social changes in the status of women.While recognizing that feminism did not spring fully formed and fully armed from thelast twenty years like Athena from the brow of Zeus,2 for reasons of brevity I will discussin this chapter only a few of the better-known contemporary contributors to feministphilosophy, and focus particularly on those feminists whose work overlaps with or drawsupon continental philosophy.At the outset, it should be stressed that the strands of feminist thinking in relation tophilosophy have been and continue to be diverse and do not necessarily present a unifiedpoint of view. Feminist thinking in relation to philosophy can take place at a number oflevels and from different perspectives, and indeed this has been one of the strengths of itsposition(s). In general terms, it can take the form of a critique of philosophers’ images ofwomen (for example, criticisms of Schopenhauer’s description of women as ‘defective,trivial, silly and shortsighted’,3 or Kant’s account of women as more sentimental andmore ‘delicate in judgment’ than men).4 It can be historical research into past womenphilosophers whose work may have been unjustly disregarded.5 It can be a politicalcritique of the organization of the discipline of philosophy, or a critique of the whole ofphilosophy as ‘male’ or ‘masculine’.6 Or it can be positive contributions to philosophyfrom a feminist perspective.7 Feminist philosophy may take all or some of theseapproaches to be important.However, as a general guide, feminist philosophy willassume the question of sexual difference to be a philosophical issue at some level and,depending on the point of departure, produce very different ways of theorizing thisquestion. Having said this, not all women philosophers are necessarily feministphilosophers (although there may be feminist implications in their work); for exampleHannah Arendt and Simone Weil are twentieth-century thinkers whose work I will notdiscuss here;8 and not all feminists accept the relevance of philosophy to their work.Despite these qualifications, a notable amount of feminist thinking has been greatlyinfluenced and aided by developments in recent continental philosophy, borrowing fromthinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Lacan,and earlier figures such as Hegel, Freud and Heidegger.9 Such borrowings have furnishedmany different aspects of feminist approaches to questions of sexual difference,subjectivity and selfhood, ethics and epistemology. Because the above thinkers have beenconcerned to raise questions about the discipline of philosophy itself—for example, whatthey see as philosophy’s tendency to organize its enquiries in particular ways aroundnotions of truth or knowledge, the use of binary oppositions or dualisms of mind/body,spirit/matter, order/chaos and hierarchical structures, and the issues of power andpolitics—they have been helpful in the search for ways of theorizing sexual difference forfeminists.However, feminist theorists have also been highly critical of the above thinkers,sometimes finding their work reduplicating some of the problems they had alreadyidentified with the discipline of philosophy in general, i.e. the exclusion of women asphilosophers, the use of such symbolic values as ‘the feminine’ to indicate chaos andplurality without considering how such values relate to women, or the tendency to speak‘on behalf of’ women.10 In other words, feminists have been concerned about theapparent loss or lack of political agency which seems to accompany critiques of identityin recent postmodernist theory. Postmodernists such as Jean Baudrillard respond that‘there is a strange, fierce complicity between the feminist movement and the order oftruth’11 and women would do better to recognize that ‘woman is but appearance. And it isthe feminine as appearance that thwarts masculine depth. Instead of rising up against suchinsulting counsel, women would do well to let themselves be seduced by its truth, forhere lies the secret of their strength.’12The critiques of identity which thinkers such as Derrida, Baudrillard and GillesDeleuze advance mean that women, characteristically stereotyped as lacking agency inthe past, are ironically now ‘already’ in an enviable position.13 But feminists have beenalarmed or suspicious of the passivity implied in such characterizations of the feminine.Such disagreements have often been placed in the context of themodernism/postmodernism debate, where feminist theorists are seen to be holding on tonotions of emancipatory Enlightenment projects and ‘essentialist’ notions of identity inthe face of, and in opposition to, unassimilatable heterogeneity and the feminine as‘mere’ surface. However, the feminist thinkers I discuss below have, I believe, a subtleand complex approach to political questions and are not easily placed into this either/ordebate. In addition to raising questions of sexual difference in the context of philosophy,they also raise questions about the connection (or lack of it) between theory andpractice/lived experience—women
are the ones (amongst others) over whose heads thisdiscussion often seems to take place, and deserve to be able to make their owncontribution.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIRSimone de Beauvoir is perhaps the best-known feminist philosopher of the twentiethcentury. Her lifelong association with Jean-Paul Sartre seems to have been on the wholeone of mutual intellectual inspiration and companionship.14 De Beauvoir’s work on themoral implications and the social context of existentialism, for example in her 1947 work
Pour une morale de l’ambiguité (translated as
The Ethics of Ambiguity)15 was influentialupon Sartre, an influence discernible in his shift of focus from the individualconsciousness in
Being and Nothingness16 to the more collective or situated concerns ofhis later work. The publication in 1949 of de Beauvoir’s best-known work,
The SecondSex,17 continued her interest in these themes, a work which provoked reviewers toexpress outrage at a book which was seen to herald the breakdown of social relations.However, given that de Gaulle had granted French women the vote only five yearsearlier, the radical impact of this book should not be underestimated.T
he Second Sex is a rich and complex work which draws upon literature, myth andreligion, theories of biology, accounts of social and economic development (Marxism andpsychoanalysis), but also existentialist philosophy. De Beauvoir’s aim is to address thequestion ‘What is a woman?’18 It is because her painstaking analysis uncovers andaddresses the nature of the oppression and exclusion of women that it has been significantin the history of feminist thought. But de Beauvoir is also responsible for the promotionof questions of sexual difference on to the philosophical agenda, and for probingquestions about the social context of the existentially free individual. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and other existentialist thinkers agreed that sexuality was an issue that had beenlargely disregarded in philosophy, but de Beauvoir’s work most insistently asks questionsof the relevance of sexual difference to philosophical notions of identity, an insistenceMichèle Le Doeuff has called ‘a characteristic genius for the inappropriate’.19 DeBeauvoir points out that sexuality is not just ‘added on’ to human beings but plays afundamental role in the meaning of an individual’s existence: that we are ‘embodied’.However, she rejects the accounts of sexual difference which subscribe to an‘essential’ notion of identity, whether this is found in the biological differentiation of thesexes (male/female) or in the ‘eternal feminine’, an ideal ‘essence’ of femininequalities.20 She rejects these accounts first because she sees individuals as dynamic,engaged in struggles towards freedom, and second because she fears that to suggest an‘essential’ nature of woman will allow women to be imprisoned back in the problematicidentity of the oppressed. This identity is unacceptable for ideals of existential freedom,and for feminist claims that women should have equal opportunities to engage freely inprojects in the world. Her overwhelming historical evidence points to the fact that, ingeneral, men possess such freedom and women do not.De Beauvoir takes up the concerns of existentialist thinking with the freedom of theindividual, the capacity of the individual to make choices and the conflicts which arisebetween individuals in the context of social relations. She claims that
The Second Sex is‘an existentialist ethics’,21 and hence agrees with Sartre about the need for individuals ‘toengage in freely chosen projects’.22 The Sartrean individual, striving to maximizefreedom, becomes aware that he or she exists as an object in the consciousness of others,a compromising objectification for an individual striving towards freedom. Individualsmay become locked into opposing the determinations that others, with their own projectsand their capacity to objectify an individual, present. This means that social relations areinherently conflictual, basically relations of dominance and submission. For de Beauvoir,it is important that freedom be maintained as an open horizon, since this is what givesmeaning to an individual’s existence. However, she immediately questions the apparentneutrality of the individual and the equal starting point of human freedom and autonomythat existentialist individuals are supposed to possess. She points out that, rather thanbeginning from a neutral and autonomous point, women are already in the position of thedetermined and objectified, as the Other. ‘She is defined and differentiated with referenceto man and he not with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposedto the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.’23The freedom of the existential individual is immediately compro-mised by the sociallyconstructed roles for men and women; rather than various neutral possibilities presentedto equal individuals, women are unable to exercise their freedom, because they inherit apre-given set of assumptions shaping the range of possibilities available to them.This seems to suggest that women are doomed to be inauthentic because of their sex, ifinauthenticity is the failure to maximize one’s freedom. Women are in the position ofbeing the second sex. Their existence is constantly conflated with their gender in a waythat men’s is not, and they seem to be more confined to being bodies or objects.De Beauvoir accepts that biology plays an important part in one’s identity (we live ourbodies), but argues that it cannot be used to determine one’s destiny. Women’s role inreproduction has caused her to be exclusively identified with this role, but with adequatesocial changes such as childcare and medical advances, there is no reason whyreproduction should limit a woman’s capacity for freedom. The problem with a biologicalaccount of sexual difference, she argues, is that it may attribute essences to men andwomen, splitting human beings into two types or essential identities.24 There may beperceptible differences (in physical strength for example), but there is no intrinsic reasonwhy strength should be given a superior value. Such values depend on social context, andare therefore open to revision.De Beauvoir may wish to dissociate herself from the ‘biology is destiny’ position, butshe often seems to come close to rejecting biology altogether. If women are restrictivelydefined as ‘mere’ bodies or as mothers then such restrictions must be overcome, to ensurethat women are able to realize their choices consciously. But de Beauvoir does notalways consider the extent to which she may be echoing a misogynistic distaste for thefemale body in trying to overturn such determinations. ‘It has been well said that womenhave “infirmity in the abdomen”, and it is true that they have within them a hostileelement—it is the species gnawing at their vitals.’25These aspects of her argument are an attempt to escape from essentialism or biologismand to affirm the demand for self-determination. But de Beauvoir has also argued thatwomen’s own experience is important and should be validated, even if such experience isof a less independent nature than men’s. After sex, she suggests, men are free to take uptheir individuality once again, whereas women feel themselves to be more ‘connected’ tobiology and more embodied, with responsibility for reproduction within themselves—anexperience of their own ‘immanence’.26 De Beauvoir’s commitment to projects oftranscendence and freedom on the one hand, and her argument that women are moreimmanently ‘in’ their bodies on the other, seems to suggest that women are placed in theimpossible position of having to transcend their own bodies. It suggests that if women donot seektranscendence they are ‘inauthentic’ or guilty of bad faith, but if they do seektranscendence it will be a project of self-defeat, an attempt to escape from the immanentrealm which is ‘feminine’.27 This contradiction has led some feminists to interpret deBeauvoir either as essentialist or as suggesting that sexual identity is culturallyconstructed. In fact she seems to be in both positions, and the tension here can beinterpreted as part of the contradictions in her existentialist framework.In keeping with her initial socialist perspective on oppression, de Beauvoir does seemto locate inequalities between the sexes in a social or cultural context. Such declarationsas ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one’28 or ‘the body is not a thing, it is asituation’29 would tend to support this interpretation. Her concern is to ensure thatinequalities can be diagnosed, and so combated, at this level. She refuses to accept thatany biological or essentialist reason could be given to prevent women overcoming their‘secondary’ position. Sheer effort of will, the widespread recognition of women’sfreedom and choices (which must also be recognized by men) and the fuller availabilityof choices will bring about greater equality of the sexes. This uncompromising stanceoften leads her to be stern about the efforts women must make to transcend determinationfor themselves, in effect to ‘stop colluding’ in becoming the other for men. Her objectiveis to galvanize women into asserting their autonomy and formulating projects which willallow them to develop their own identity. She has been criticized for apparentlysuggesting that it is only if women become more like men that equality will be attained,partly because the kinds of projects she values as important are derived from a frameworkwhich itself could still be described as masculine—emphasizing fewer domestic ties, theneed for recognized (and paid) labour, perhaps specifically the work of individualcreative artists. However, she does suggest that even complete equality in this spherewould not cancel out all differences between the sexes, and women would still maintain aspecific understanding of their own sexuality.30
AFTER DE BEAUVOIRThe increasingly complex account of otherness that feminist theory in France hasdeveloped owes a clear debt to de Beauvoir’s analysis of Woman as Other. Feministshave sought to combine the forceful political critique provided by drawing attention tosexual difference, with an analysis of identity drawn from developments inpoststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory. Such an analysis draws attention to the self’svulnerability to the displacing effects of desire, as well as to the socially and culturallyconstructed nature of identity, implicating systems of language and meaning in such acritique.31Rather than situating projects for change and emancipation within existing political andcultural practices, many feminists have subjected such practices to a sustained critique,asking questions about the very constitution of meaning and the concepts of power andpolitics as such. Whereas de Beauvoir stressed the strong will and self-control required instruggling for equality and autonomy, subsequent theories have raised questions about thevery nature of equality and the extent to which such self-control can be practised. In thisrespect, feminist critiques of identity as rational or masculine coincide withpsychoanalytic theory regarding the displacement of consciousness by forces which callinto question the epistemological privilege of the subject. Such forces are seen as allpervasiveand unsettling, manifest in systems of representation and language and areunderstood as corresponding linguistically to the processes of desire. This theory, shapedin part by Lacan’s work in structuralism and psychoanalysis, looks at difference as arelation operating not only intersubjectively between self and other, but also as sets ofrelations of differences within the very systems of signification which order and createmeaning. This expanded version of difference means that apparently unified or singularterms are seen to operate by processes of exclusion or suppression, occluding theirrelation to, or reliance upon, other terms. Discrete or autonomous identities are shown tobe disrupted or undermined by ‘otherness’ and concepts such as ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’are put into question.Hence the maintenance of identity as rational and autonomous and the notion of truthas objective and independent are viewed as a defence of territory by the exclusion of thatwhich is other. Anything which lies outside the ‘normal’ circuits of knowledge or identitygets classified as madness, chaos, darkness or ignorance, and the borders between the tworealms are characterized as the site of constant power struggles. Many thinkers also drawattention to a symbolic equation between the excluded otherness and the feminine.Whether this connection is made explicitly or implicitly, the feminine as otherness is seenas multiple, dissembling and excluded, yet capable of disrupting limits and disturbing thestatus quo.Thus a connection is established between sexual difference (male/ female ormasculine/feminine) and polarized oppositions such as self/ other, knowledge/ignorance,spirit/body. De Beauvoir makes it possible to draw these parallels from a feministviewpoint, and to politicize the hierarchical arrangement of such oppositions. Apparentneutrality is thus opened up for analysis as an imbalance of power. But de Beauvoirretains her existentialist/humanist framework when discussing a possible feministpractice, whereas other feminist thinkers take up thecritique of the humanist subject asbesieged and intersected by unruly forces of desire and structures of power. Thinkerssuch as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous or Luce Irigaray are influenced by understandingsof otherness inherited from Hegel, Sartre and Heidegger, as well as by Derrida’s accountof western thinking as phallo-logo-centric, unduly centred on a particular account of truthwhich is infused with masculine values, and Foucault’s analyses of the connectionsbetween power and knowledge. They are also influenced by Lacanian theory concerningsexuality, language and identity.32Psychoanalytic theory has proved useful to feminist theory, in that it can show theextent to which identity and sexuality are constructed by conflicting and quasideterministicforces, as well as indicating the penetration of such forces to psychicstructures.33 At the same time there is an acknowledgement of the implicitly sexualnature of structures and economies which are ostensibly neutral. Hence on one level itprovides a generalizable account of identity construction, cross-culturally and transhistorically.Despite the danger of universalizing identity which such an analysis courts, itdoes give a certain force to the analysis of sexual difference: the dominant structureswhich divide sexuality into two essential types may need to be challenged and addressedat precisely this level. However, the determinism implied by such internalizedconstructions is offset somewhat by the notion of the unconscious. The unconscious canact as a constant reminder of the overall failure of the internalization process: ‘aresistance to identity at the very heart of psychic life’,34 as Jacqueline Rose puts it. Thesplits, forcings and divisions of psychic life place pressure against the notion of coherentidentity, a widespread replay of an incomplete adjustment to the norm. This moment offailure, negativity, fluidity or formlessness is symbolically bound up with the feminine.As Rose suggests, feminists may recognize certain similarities with their own projects—a‘symbolic failure to adjust to normality’35 and the resistance this implies.Lacan suggests that the whole social and cultural context of meaning, the SymbolicOrder, is premised on a suppression or repression of the symbolically feminine/maternal.Symbolically otherness stands as excessive, ex-centric and ecstatic, beyond or outside thedominant order of meanings, which allows Lacan to state ‘the woman does not exist’.36Whether this is the pre-Oedipal mother or the quintessentially feminine, the Ideal womanor the dark absence of negativity, it is the process by which such a realm is designated asOther or otherness which allows the dominant meanings to retain their hold on truth,singularity and power, although paradoxically such otherness is the hidden ground orunacknowledged axis of such an economy.In its very construction the Lacanian framework is emphatically unfeminist.Nevertheless, Lacan accords women, or the feminine, a kind of power, the possibility ofdisrupting signifying systems, albeit without the agency to do anything other thanconstantly disrupt, efface, move on. ‘I believe in the jouissance of the woman in so far asit is something more, on condition that you screen off that
something more until I haveproperly explained it.’37 The force of feminist theory influenced by Lacan may beunderstood as a kind of ‘return of the repressed’.38 The unnameable and unrepresentablefeminine jouissance Lacan has proscribed is taken up as the power of disruption anddestabilization, and works to unsettle fixation, particularly in the realm of sexualstereotypes.
JULIA KRISTEVAThe interdisciplinary nature of Julia Kristeva’s work, drawing from linguistic theory,Marxism, philosophy and psychoanalysis, makes her a versatile and wide-rangingthinker. She sees herself as a cultural critic and analyst rather than particularly as afeminist thinker, although many feminists see potentials in her work for developingcritiques of western thinking and for understanding problems of identity, and shecertainly deals with questions about ‘the feminine’, cultural representations of figuressuch as ‘the mother’, or topics such as Chinese women. Coming to Paris from Bulgaria inthe mid-1960s, she brought with her a mixture of left-wing politics and an approach toliterary criticism influenced by Russian formalism: in brief, a materialist approach tosignification and social structures, tempered by her commitment to aesthetic and culturalpractices and her desire to change oppressive conditions.39 The common themes runningthrough her work are an interest in language, politics and sexual identity, themes initiallybroached in her doctoral thesis
Revolution in Poetic Language (1974),40 where sheattempts to develop a theory of identity formation in the context of Lacanianpsychoanalysis and structuralism. Her main concern in this book is to understand thestructuring effects of language without relinquishing the creative, poetic and marginalaspects. She then links her theory to a political account of marginalized but revolutionaryforces, exemplified in the figure of the avant-garde poet.Through a complex intersection of theoretical perspectives, Kristeva develops heraccount of the material/linguistic forces which constantly disrupt identity, but are stilllocated within the corporeal body. She suggests that identity is forged in a precarious anddynamic relation between various positionalities which can be taken up according to thesocial and cultural meanings in the Symbolic, and a force of negativity which ispersistently engaged in undermining such positions. Her analysis has proved intriguingfor many feminist theorists for a number ofreasons. First, she emphasizes the critique ofidentity as a fixed or essential notion. Second, she identifies the constructed nature ofmeaning and sexuality, and the determining or restrictive effect which existingdefinitions, stereotypes and cultural roles can have in shaping identity. Third, sheidentifies a transgressive force which, if activated, can have a disruptive orrevolutionizing effect on the social/cultural context in question. Her account of ‘thesubject-in-process’41 analyses the cost involved in subject formation, but it also hints atways of subverting the dominant forms of understanding sexual difference. For feministtheorists, she seems to negotiate essentialism on the one hand by suggesting that subject‘positions’ are being created and destroyed in the ongoing dialectic of signification, andyet she refuses to diffuse subjectivity into merely an effect of language.For Kristeva, Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ (his reworking of Freud)42 is important in thatit shifts the focus from biology to a linguistic shaping of sexuality and identity. This shift,she thinks, will allow for a different way of understanding identity. If sexual difference isimplicated in the conceptual framework itself, Kristeva’s characterization of language asa shifting process of the production and decay of meaning allows her a potential formobility on the question of identity formation. The Freudian focus on a visible/biologicalstructure seems very limiting in the light of the fluid freeing of sexual difference into theSymbolic arena (many potential positionalities or social roles to be fulfilled). But in someways all that has happened is a shifting of the terms of formation. Lacan’s point that aframework of cultural reference is the only place from which any account of sexualdifference can be produced, is meant to negate any simplistic biological starting point.Now that difference is seen as being produced by systems of meaning, there is no directaccess to a pure biological understanding of physical bodies, since it would be impossibleto recognize such bodies outside of the system of meaning. This is the basis of thedevelopment of the imaginary, the realm which severs full cognisance of the body andrenders its relation metaphorical or ‘morphological’. If identity is seen as
structurationrather than as psycho-physical development through time, the issue shifts from questionsof anatomical difference (at what point in development do differences appear?) toquestions as to what such differences
mean within the symbolic, and the extent to whichthey are open to subversion. But because Lacan denies any access to an ‘other’ realm, forhim there can only be the conceptions of sexual difference which already exist, but whichare inherently ‘masculine’ (because created in the Symbolic).43For Lacan, the primary relation with the mother’s body, which he had characterized asfluid and plural, the realm of unmediated jouissance, was what had to be overcome sothat identity could be established. Successfully relinquishing this realm of non-separationallows for successful entry into the Symbolic and identification with the masculine orpatriarchal values of social/cultural meaning. The price to be paid for attaining linguisticcompetence and a place in the Symbolic is the loss of the blissful, unselfconsciouspleasure before the entry into language. However, Kristeva argues that the overcoming ofthis ‘other’ realm can never be wholly successful, and it will continue to break through orirrupt into the Symbolic Order, where its effects will be felt bodily as pleasurabledisturbances. Symbolically, such disruptions will connote the pre-Oedipal and thefeminine.The focus of Kristeva’s work on femininity is governed by this understanding. If thestructuration of identity is at the level of language, but this process is constantly invadedby the ‘language’ of the other realm, then its stability is called into question. Perhaps byinsisting upon the disruptive rather than the constitutive elements of language, asufficiently transgressive notion of the subject can be produced to allow it to reformulateitself, ‘more or less’ masculine or feminine?Kristeva is critical of theorists who focus on language as a homogeneous, logicalsystem with internal coherence. It would seem she has in mind the prioritizing ofcommunication, consensus and competence she finds in the work of Saussure andChomsky and in Lacan’s symbolic. In contrast, Kristeva focuses on the ‘edges’ oflanguage, the points at which language appears to break down: the ‘pathologies’ ofmadness and schizophrenia, the hermetic and difficult poetries of the avant-garde, and the‘hysteria’ of women. She theorizes these aspects in a different way from other linguists,who had seen these forms of language as continuous with conventional signification, butless successful. If the formal practice of language uses is emphasized, these deviantpractices are judged according to their conformity or deliberate flouting of the rules.Structuralist linguists minimized reference to ‘subjective’ elements. Kristeva seeks toidentify a connection, but, as she makes clear, it is a productive and dynamic relation sheis interested in, not a relation of stasis or a revival of a humanist subject.Focusing on rhythm, repetition, elision and displacement reinforces a notion of thesubject-in-process, rather than an ideal enunciator, since it concerns the apparent failuresrather than the successes of the struggle to maintain a coherent identity. It is alsoindicating the points at which the ‘other’ realm is discernible through its effects.Kristeva’s notions of ‘the semiotic’ and the
‘chora’ present an attempt to theorize thisuntheorizable, pre-discursive realm which is described in terms of ‘space’ or a locus toavoid pinning it to a stage of development. She writes of the semiotic as a kind ofprimordial writing or signifying of the body, although this is not strictly an accuratedescription, since it is concerned with ‘the body of a subject who is not yet constituted assuch’.44 Still, this pre-signifying signification is a textuality of the body which is moreexperiential than meaningful. ‘We understand the term semiotic in its Greek sense;=distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof engraved or writtensign, imprint, trace, figuration.’45 It is an ordering of energies which initiates theinscription and conditions for representation. Hypothesized as both the material rhythmsand forces underlying the possibility of textuality, and the imprinting of psychicalenergies to connect sensation to movement, it acts as a preparation for entry intolanguage. This space is as yet undifferentiated but it cannot be described ashomogeneous, shot through with ‘psychical marks’ and in a state of motility. Kristevanames it as ‘the
chora…an essentially mobile and extremely provisional articulationconstituted by movements and their ephemeral stases’.46That this notion is positioned ‘prior’ to signification should not be taken to indicate anecessary chronology in time, since this realm is symbolically ‘other’ to temporal orderas well as topographical space. Therefore although it is given an apparently archaic andoriginary status, it does not constitute a reified origin divided from the subject in thesymbolic. This would replicate a duality which Kristeva is concerned to resist; the termsare not equal and the notion of origin is reconstructed only in retrospect from positionsalready in language. In fact, Kristeva is explicitly critical of Lacan for making therepression of the mother the condition of subjectivity. As she draws attention to thesymbolic connection of the
chora with feminine or maternal notions, she is taking up prefiguredconnections which identify the notion of an origin with a primordial mother:‘This place which has no thesis and no position, the process by which significance isconstituted. Plato himself leads us to such a process when he call this receptacle or choranourishing or maternal.’47 However, the semiotic is in one important sense opposed tothe Symbolic: it is a site of resistance and disruption against which the organization of theSymbolic is to be compared. Kristeva takes up the equation of otherness with thefeminine or maternal, in order to demonstrate the sacrificial process involved in identityconstruction, and to suggest how the inherent violence might be made less painful orchannelled in more creative ways.Despite the alignment of otherness and the feminine, for Kristeva it does not constitutean alternative identity for women, nor does it allow a specifically female or femininelanguage. However, there are ways of maximizing its disruptive effects in order tocombat the restrictive impact of the Symbolic. The figures of the avant-garde poet andthe political dissident are focal points in Kristeva’s earlier work, while later on sheconsiders women as potential disruptive figures.What the father doesn’t say about the unconscious, what sign and time repressin their impulses, appears as their
truth (if there is no absolute, what is truth, ifnot the unspoken of the spoken?) and this truth can be imagined only as awoman. A curious truth: outside time, with neither past nor future, neither truenor false; buried underground, it neither postulates nor judges. It refuses,displaces, breaks the symbolic order before it can re-establish itself.48Kristeva suggests three ways in which this curious truth may be understood: ‘Jouissance,pregnancy, and marginal speech: the means by which this “truth”, cloaked and hidden bythe symbolic order and its companion, time, functions through women’.49 Here Kristevais linking ‘a vigilance, call it ethical’,50 with the figuration of the feminine and thematernal as ‘other’. It is a critical and disruptive kind of ethicality, linked to a capacity toresist the fixation of subjectivity and to remain critical, but also seeking a means toexpress such ‘otherness’.To refuse all roles, in order, on the contrary, to summon this timeless ‘truth’—formless, neither true nor false, echo of our jouissance, of our madness, of ourpregnancies—into the order of speech and social symbolism. But how? Bylistening; by recognising the unspoken in speech; by calling attention at alltimes to whatever remains unsatisfied, repressed, new, eccentric,incomprehensible, disturbing the status quo.51Here she seems to be suggesting that the location of ethicality is no longer adequatelysituated in the reformulation and attempted perfection of codes of behaviour, rules andlaws. Unless the disruptive traces of the subject, constantly being rewritten in itsprocesses, can also be accounted for, these projects are destined to keep retreading thesame ground. The constant transgression and renewal of positioning in relation to theprocess of signification leads to the possibility of new practices, forged at the veryboundaries of thinking.Kristeva finds in maternity the metaphoric expression of the above boundary locationof ethicality, which is given the force of subversion but still embodied. Maternityconnotes a possible irruption and interruption of the Symbolic, centrally placed, yetdisruptive, a disturbance between stasis and dynamism, cyclical/monumental time anddiscursive/grammatical time. In her essay ‘Stabat Mater’,52 the poetic, left-hand(sinister?) ‘other’ side of the text irrupts into the historical and chronological mapping ofmotherhood. Textually this corresponds to a writing of the metaphoric mother, positionedas a body in signification and yet already split, separated, pleasuring; ‘the heterogeneitynot subsumed under any law’. A space is opened for different subjective possibilities, yetretaining the specificity of women. This ‘heretical ethics’ (her-ethics) is based not uponavoiding the law, but upon enriching it. ‘Now, if a contemporary ethics is no longer seenas being the same as morality; if ethics amounts to not avoiding the embarrassing andinevitable problematics of the law but giving it flesh, language, jouissance—in that caseits reformulation demands the contribution of women.’53 A similar position is taken inKristeva’s analysis of the role of the Virgin Mary. In ‘Stabat Mater’ she draws heavilyupon Marina Warner’s book
Alone of All Her Sex; the Myth and Cult of the VirginMary54 to indicate how the Virgin Mary becomes a symbolic axis of the conjunctionbetween hebraic and hellenic; and as a conjunction between virginity and maternity. As amoment of undecidability, the figure presents a potential site of ambivalence, for the twotraditions as well as for understandings of women. There is a potential disruption of theGreek logos and Jewish monotheism in the presence of a divine feminine figure, centralto religion but neither one thing nor another. But this dangerous ambivalence isconscripted for control and synthesis, in that the virginal aspect becomes a pure and holyasceticism, and maternity becomes the continuity of the community via reproduction. Thefreezing of undecidability sets up an ideal, fusing with the existing ideal of virginity incourtly love and the ideal of devoted maternal love. The impossible totality of the virginmother is not only disseminated within patriarchal cultures but becomes the prototype forwestern love relations. In Kristeva’s terms, the dangerous moment of rupture is containedby erasing jouissance, in virginity, and channelling it, in maternal reproduction, to sustainthe deathless ideal of the masculine, whether this is the law, the community or thesubject.This maternal figure, the epitome of romantic sentimentality and utterly serene icon,ideal and untroubled, functions as a sublimating vessel for various cultures. And yetKristeva indicates that its ‘cleverly balanced architecture today appears to be crumbling’,the ‘psychotic sore of modernity’ is ‘the incapacity of contemporary codes to tame thematernal’.55 Thus it reveals that which it cannot contain even in trying to cover over thisslippage.Despite Kristeva’s characterization of the subject as ‘an open system’, I don’t think sheis committed to the denial of sexual difference or the ‘erasure’ of the subject. However,she does argue that the positionality which may lead to a metaphysical hypostatization ofidentity is to be found in feminist discourse too. This is perhaps what leads her to beunnecessarily harsh on the variety of feminist positions which do not coincide with herown; a fear of the reintroduction of the essentialist subject which has led women to‘sacrifice or violence’. If this is a challenge to feminist theory, is it the kind of critiquewhich feminist theory needs? Many feminist writers on Kristeva find her attacks onfeminism uncomfortable, especially when they seem to emanate from an apparentlypowerful position as the ‘queen of theory’. But on occasion her work is compatible withfeminist approaches to the body, offering a potential rethinking of corporeality in keepingwith a radical perspective on difference. As Rosi Braidotti puts it:the body thus defined cannot be reduced to the biological, nor can it be confinedto social conditioning. In a new form of ‘corporeal materialism’, the body isseen as an inter-face, a threshold, a field of intersection of material andsymbolic forces; it is a surface where multiple codes of power and knowledgeare inscribed; it is a construction that transforms and capitalises on energies of aheteronomous and discontinuous nature. The body is not an essence, andtherefore not an anatomical destiny.56
LUCE IRIGARAYLike Kristeva, Irigaray has a background in linguistics, psychoanalysis, philosophy andfeminist theory, and is currently practising therapy or analysis. However, she takes a setof premises very different from Kristeva’s from these areas, and produces markedlydifferent conclusions.Born in 1930 in Belgium, Luce Irigaray began her work with research intopsycholinguistics, specifically the language of patients diagnosed schizophrenic orsuffering from senile dementia (see some of the essays in
Speaking/Language is NeverNeutral/Neuter first published in 1986).57 Her conclusions concerning the loss or lack ofidentity of such patients who seem ‘overwhelmed’ by language led her to drawcomparisons with the position of women in relation to language. In the process of theanalytic session, understood as a dialogue between two speakers, Irigaray noted a numberof factors which continue to be important throughout her work. First, the emergence ofidentity formulated as possible positions in such locutionary exchanges. Second, thedifferences (specifically sexual difference) dramatized or enacted in speech. Third, thepoints at which grammatical formulations of language begin to break down, and theexperience of speakers caught in this position. Her focus is the vulnerability ofsubjectivity and the attempts to secure a place for it against the destructivetechnologization of communication in the present age. However, her concern is not theresurrection of a humanist subject but a critique of the language and thinking whichpresents itself as neutral or neuter.Irigaray combines this research with her understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis andstructuralism concerning the construction of identity, to throw light on what she sees as asacrificial culture and the position of women in such a culture. One of her concerns,which has been extensively misinterpreted, is her attempt to develop an alternativestrategy to allow ‘feminine identity’ to take (a) place. Although she has often beenunderstood to be positing a language of the female body, the level of her intervention ismarkedly that of cultural and social formations. She does suggest that the dominant formof discourse has been ‘isomorphic’ with masculine sexuality, and it is this relation whichhas been difficult to understand or translate. It is not simply a representational model buta relation itself to be understood as metaphoric or metonymic. If this relation hasdominated in the past, perhaps there could be a form of discourse which hasmorphological suggestions of images of the female body? It is this ‘hypothetical’ styleshe deploys in the essay
This Sex Which is Not One’ (first published in 1977),58 andwhich has led to the assumption that she is ‘writing the body’. Rather, it appears that thisstylistic deployment is a strategic intervention in what she feels has been a monologic or‘phallo-logo-centric’ approach to questions of sexuality and language. In her later work itappears that she is concerned more with existing social formations and linguisticpractices than with developing a completely alternative female language, and her recentempirical studies into language use and sexual difference would seem, with hindsight, tosupport this analysis of her early writings. However, this does not lessen her attempts torestore, or rather to create, a less damaged and damaging understanding of sexualdifference.At the beginning of her book
The Ethics of Sexual Difference, (first published in1984),59 she states her belief that sexual difference is the burning issue of our age, theissue of difference which potentially could be ‘our salvation on an intellectual level…theproduction of a new age of thought, art, poetry and language; the creation of a new
poetics’. However, she suggests that the development of this event is hampered andconstrained by the systematic repetition of sameness being compulsively reiterated in thespheres of philosophy, politics, religion and science. This repetition, or reworking of thesame ground, is evident in many contexts, which Irigaray lists as ‘the consumer society,the circular nature of discourse, the more or less cancerous diseases of our age, theunreliable nature of words, the end of philosophy, religious despair or the regressivereturn to religion, scientistic imperialism or a technique that does not take the humansubject into account, and so on’.60 According to Irigaray, this repetition works to concealor efface a possible way of articulating otherness. This articulation, she thinks, can besttake place in the context of questions of sexual difference. Apart from the explicitfeminist perspective, her reasons for privileging sexual difference lie in her specificappropriation of psychoanalytic discourse, particularly the work of Lacan. Despite heruse of a psychoanalytic framework, her work is also a strategic departure from it, or anattempt to subvert it from within. She suggests that psychoanalysis has enabled atheoretical treatment of sexuality and identity to take place via the (generalizable)analysis of forms of patriarchal identity as constructions. Her focus on the
constructednature of such notions as identity, philosophical discourse and its concepts has a numberof implications. She is able to diagnose a bias running through the history of such notionsand to point to the permeation of such forces to psychic levels. She is also able to conducta sustained critique of the damaging nature of such constructions as exclusion orsuppression. She thus sees her work as ‘jamming the machinery’61 of western theory, aprocess of analysing and uncovering the fantasies, projections and repressions which aretaken to be normal or necessary. The nature of this work is extensive and radical.For the work of sexual difference to take place, a revolution in thought andethics is needed. We must re-interpret the whole relationship between thesubject and discourse, the subject and the world, the subject and the cosmic, themicrocosmic and the macrocosmic…. In order to think and live through thisdifference, we must reconsider the whole question of space and time.62If such apparently foundational notions are shown to be constructions, then there is apossibility that they may be modified or changed in the future. For Irigaray, theusefulness of psychoanalytic theory rests in some part on its capacity to analyse thesymbolism of masculine and feminine as a pair of terms which pervade wide and varioussets of relations, such that the symbolization becomes tangled up in the very process ofconceptualization. The common oppositions of the Pythagorean table of oppositesbecome aligned with a symbolic interpretation of anatomical difference, and,significantly, the unified, non-contradictory and homogenous terms come to dominate.Across a range of systems and at different levels, exclusion and censorship operate toprioritize the masculine term at the expense of the feminine, such that the very operationitself is obscured from view. The status quo is maintained at the price of a peculiarviolence—the exclusion of the feminine, or its characterization as object, matter, inferiorterm. As regards subjectivity, masculine/feminine forces or values may become alignedwith male and female sexes, but, she suggests, the very notion of subjectivity itself has‘already been appropriated to the masculine’, despite the way that such a notion ispresented as neutral. It is because such structures are built upon repression and denial thatinevitably the tension of maintaining such a territory begins to show and the cracks,failures and breakdowns indicate the spaces through which the potentiality of thefeminine may begin to be built. It is through her under-standing and seizure of a certain
lack of synchronization, therefore, that Irigaray situates her project.Irigaray’s engagement with philosophy has been extensive. If she sees philosophicaldiscourse as ‘the master discourse…the discourse on discourses’63—adding, ‘thephilosophical order is indeed the one that has to be questioned, and disturbed, inasmuchas it covers over sexual difference64—she has also identified philosophy’s resources ascrucial in reinterpreting questions of sexual difference. She sees her focus asphilosophical, but her work is a dramatic testimony to the ambivalence she feels as awoman in philosophy, and as such displays an equivocation between her critique ofphilosophy and her more positive reconstructions of female subjectivity.In the context of philosophy, she announces her desire to ‘have a fling with thephilosophers’,65 paradoxically to indicate the seriousness of her engagement withphilosophical questions. This means ‘going back through the male imaginary’, and givesrise to ‘the necessity of “reopening” the figures of philosophical discourse—idea,substance, subject, transcendental subjectivity, absolute knowledge—in order to pry outof them what they have borrowed that is feminine, from the feminine, to make them“render up” and give back what they owe the feminine.’66She means to be as intimate and familiar with philosophical history as possible, butalso to challenge it from the position of a woman; that is, one who is symbolicallypositioned outside or other to philosophy, one who can only ‘flirt’ with ideas, orconversely, deflate them by being too playful, refusing to take them seriously. Thispositioning allows Irigaray to follow through some of the main canonical texts of westernphilosophy; in
Speculum of the Other Woman (first published in 1974), she takes onPlato, Aristotle, Meister Eckhart, Descartes, Hegel, Spinoza, Plotinus, Kant, Marx, Freud,and in
The Ethics of Sexual Difference she adds Hegel, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas,while other texts deal with Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example,67 reconstructing theirlogic carefully in order to show how it interrupts itself. What she calls ‘the blind spot inan old dream of symmetry’,68 the hidden assumption so necessary to the symmetry andso necessarily hidden, will entail analysing philosophy’s unconscious.For Irigaray, what is repressed is ‘the feminine’, that which allows philosophy to getoff the ground, but must remain essentially unspoken, as the ground. The negativity ofsymbolically occupying this groundless ground constantly places women in animpossible position. As primal matter or ‘mother-matter’, the feminine or maternal actsan archaic past, the ‘nature’ placed in opposition to culture. ‘The mother-woman remainsthe place separated from its “own place”, a place deprived of a place of its own. She is, orceaselessly becomes, the place of the other who cannot separate himself from it.’69 Oneof Irigaray’s concerns is to explore the suppressed or superseded nature of this element or‘the elemental’ space, partly to remind philosophy of its debt to this unexplored ‘prerational’world-view and partly to try to develop a vocabulary which could articulate thisotherness. Irigaray writes: ‘I wanted to go back to this natural material which makes upour bodies, in which our lives and our environment are grounded; the flesh of ourpassions.’70 Her ‘elemental’ texts deal with air, earth, water and fire, her ‘re-invention’ ofthe material origins of philosophical thinking and its elision with maternal or femininesymbolism (for example in
Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (first published in 1980)she shows a certain aversion in Nietzsche’s writing to water, which is symbolicallyfeminine). In trying to imagine this ‘other region’ she employs a strategic syntacticalstyle, an interplay of weaving in the writing of the body as she had expressed it—multiplicity and plurality, with frequent changes of tense, and questions disurpting herwork and interrupting whichever position she was speaking from. Speaking (as) womanis a tactical means of restoring specificity to a non-specific discourse, and alsocorresponds to her aim to put the philosophical subject back into a material context—thebody and the materiality of its surroundings.Irigaray’s strategy in reading these canonical texts is to imitate their movements, amimicry which is, in its very exaggerated miming, in excess of the limits and definitionswhich had been set.There is in an initial phase, perhaps only one ‘path’, the one historicallyassigned to the feminine: that of mimicry. One must assume the feminine roledeliberately. Which means already to convert a form of subordination into anaffirmation and thus to begin to thwart it…. To play with mimesis is thus, for awoman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, withoutallowing herself to be simply reduced to it.71Her strategy of mimicry is directly related to the notion of ‘mirroring’ which runsthroughout her texts. This notion is part of a complex set of interwoven strands whichexplore the preoccupation of western thinking with accurate ‘reflection’, illumination,and clarity. Not only do metaphors of the ‘ocular’ and ‘specular’ seem to dominate, but,she suggests, they are essential for the establishing of the self-reflexive subject, and theapparent autonomy of the philosopher. The narcissism of the subject that results is, forIrigaray, part of the logic of ‘the same’. However, she also suggests that the speculationswhich privilege this version of the epistemological subject are based upon a (hidden)reliance upon women or the feminine to act as a mirror for such a subject, at the expenseof their own identity. Women are either frozeninto static representations dictated by thelogic of the same, or they are positioned wholly outside the system as a conceptual ‘blackhole’; the elsewhere and otherwise without a status of its own. In
Speculum Irigaraysuggests equivalencies with Freud’s dark continent or Plato’s cave, the exploration ofwhich is deemed essential and yet produces, according to Irigaray, theory still caughtwithin its own expectations, more of the same. In order to broach the question of sexualdifference, Irigaray produces a critique of the ‘flat mirror’ of ‘the processes of specula(riza)tion that subtend our social and cultural organisations’72 and suggests, through sucha critique, another mode of approach which will allow for feminine subjectivity: ‘
acurved mirror, but also one that is
folded back on itself, with its impossible appropriation“on the inside” of the mind, of thought, of subjectivity. Whence the
intervention of thespeculum and the concave mirror, which disturb the staging of representation.’73 Ifmimesis is no longer direct and accurate ‘reflection’, then the distorting mirror in whichwomen have been confined can throw back ‘disturbed’ and disturbing reflections, therebybeginning the process of allowing the feminine to take (a) place. This is a mimicry whichnot only twists and parodies, but effects a change in the process.Irigaray proposes a particular conception of psychic health to counteract the crisis andfragmentation of the present age, which would involve the adequate conceptualization ofboth masculine and feminine elements in a non-hierarchical exchange and process.However, we are far from this stage. The feminine is still inadequately conceptualized. Itis only by intervening on the destructive circuit that another age of difference might bebroached, an intervention which Irigaray describes as ethical. The revaluation of‘passion’ and ‘wonder’
(admiration)74 could lead to relations which, while retaining theradical otherness of the other, allow for an ethical encounter to take place.Irigaray’s more explicitly political proposals include interventions in the legal, civiland representional status of women75 and her own work with various women’s groups inItaly for example. But she has also explored more ‘mystical’ approaches; lyrical poeticexpressions of love between women, between mothers and daughters and lovers, and herwork on ‘the divine’, which is an attempt to explore the forms of sacred meaning whichhave also acted to exclude women, and to revalue divisions between sacred/profane,carnal/celestial, matter/spirit.76Irigaray’s equivocations may strike her critics as contradictory or difficult to place.How are we to understand what seem to be utopic projections of ‘amatory exchanges’and a new fertile dialogue of sexual difference in the light of her sustained critique ofsubjectivity and philosophy, the ‘sacrificial culture’? Is she writing for all women? Fromwhere? However, at present she is perceived to be a thinker who manages to negotiate theminefields and sustain the tensions with acuity, a position which itself invites furtherresponses and engagements with her writings.77
MICHÈLE LE DOEUFFMichèle Le Doeuff was born in 1948, taught philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieureand is currently doing research at the CRNS. Her focus on the apparently innocuousillustrative devices used in philosophy (and she shows that ‘the feminine’ is a constantlyrecurring item) uncovers a tension at the heart of such texts which has repercussions forwomen’s relation to philosophy. Although metaphors and images may appear to beharmless, especially when they are explicitly given a secondary status, one of LeDoeuff’s concerns is to expose such an assumption. Her reading of the history ofphilosophy shows how philosophy draws upon a very specific set of such devices whichfunction in quite particular ways in the texts, even as ‘philosophical discourse…labelsitself as philosophical by means of a deviation from the mythic, the poetic and all that isimage making’.78 For Le Doeuff, these images point to tensions or stress lines in theorganization of the philosophical enterprise, the ‘sensitive nerve endings’ which say moreabout philosophical discourse than it would prefer to speak. For not only do they providecontinuity markers in the history of philosophy, but they also indicate the ‘obsessions,neuroses and dangers’, or the more uncontrollable elements intrinsically bound up in theprogress of reason. In her book
The Philosophical Imaginary (first published in 1986) sheanalyses such images and figures in Kant, Rousseau, Plato, Moore, Bacon and Descartes.She argues that philosophy sets up the feminine as an internal enemy: ‘a hostile principle,all the more hostile because there is no question of dispensing with it…the feminine, asupport and signifier of something that, having been engendered by philosophy whilstbeing rejected by it, operates within as an indispensable deadweight’.79Despite the psychoanalytic tones of this analysis, Le Doeuff rejects any notion of theunconscious at work. For her, the metaphors of ‘the feminine’ are expressed as part of thephilosophical imaginary (which at times seems to resemble a bestiary), but she uses thisterm more in the sense of ‘a collection of images’ than in the sense which Lacan, orIrigaray, employ it. She argues that greater awareness of this process will have certainimplications for changes in the practice of philosophy, but she rejects overarchingframeworks such as Marxism or psychoanalysis, partly because of her concern thatwomen in philosophy will exchange one set of orthodoxies for another, sitting at the feetof ‘new masters’ (Lacan and Derrick, amongst others), a process which sets up newforms of political correctness.This is why she is careful to examine the specific relation of student and teacher in hermore recent book
Hipparchia’s Choice (first published in
1989).80 She conducts ananalysis of the way an apprenticeship is served in philosophy, considering whattechniques of assessment, training and control are used. Seeing this relation in terms ofinfluence and power or lack of it, she locates it within a wider set of relations, the relationof the academic institution to the particular social setting and historical inheritance, withconnections between knowledge and power being made in a manner reminiscent ofFoucault. Her ‘case study’ for this analysis is the relationship between Sartre and Simonede Beauvoir, a complex site of tensions between male/female, teacher/ disciple (deBeauvoir’s own description), philosophy/feminism.Rather than concentrate upon the exclusion of women from philosophy, Le Doeuffemphasizes their incorporation into the very centre. Far from them appearing as victimsof rigid expulsion, she points out, women have been philosophers all along, learning,corresponding, discussing and writing. However, the terms of their admission intophilosophy have been, she suggests, quite strictly controlled, presenting a more complexand subtle picture of philosophy’s process of self-legitimation.Despite the cheerful optimism which Le Doeuff seems to display about the possibilityof ‘retraining’ philosophy to be more open and tolerant, she doesn’t underestimate thedifficulties which such a demand presents. Rather, I would see her strategy as ‘entrism’,borrowing scholarly techniques in order to gain a legitimate foothold in philosophy, andfrom there developing the feminist challenges and provoking the changes which shebelieves the discipline must address. She wishes to redeem, restore and rehabilitatephilosophy, arguing for a pluralistic ‘contest of faculties’, or ‘constrained disagreement’in academia, which could allow for uncertainty and resisting closure, and preventdomination of any one viewpoint at the expense of other, more hesitant viewpoints. Thisapproach, which Rosi Braidotti calls ‘a reasoned critique of reason’,81 comparing it withthe work of Lorraine Code or Genevieve Lloyd,82 means that her work does not indict thewhole of western philosophy for ‘masculinism’. Her work is not really compatible withthat of, for example, Irigaray’s, because Le Doeuff does not subscribe to the discourse ofradicality or revolution. Her ‘commonsense’ approach contrasts with the ‘poetic-hysteric’style of other French feminists, but some critics find her occasionally too cautious.HÉLÈNE CIXOUSHélène Cixous was born in Algeria in 1937, and has been professor of English literatureat the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes, located in Saint-Denis, since 1968. It is withCixous that the notion of
écriture féminine (feminine, or female, writing) is most readilyassociated. Through her explorations of the relationship between sexuality and writing,mostly in her texts of the 1970s (which deliberately defy classification as poetry ortheory), she tries to encourage the scripting of Lacan’s forbidden feminine jouissance.While she seems to pay even less heed to the theoretical demands of philosophical rigourand clarity than Kristeva and Irigaray, she elaborates on the construction and uncoveringof feminine sexual pleasure as it might be given shape in a subversive practice of writing,but the implicit background is Derrida’s analysis of
différance and the poststructuralistproblematizing of logos, power and knowledge. Cixous takes up the notion of thefeminine as symbolically other, plural and multivocal, positioned as such by the classicaloppositions which classify and divide values. Her texts may be said to work at the knotswhich tie such an economy in place, loosening the rigidity of dualisms to free theexpression of heterogeneity. Through the exploration of this more open and fluid form ofdifference, from the strategic standpoint of a woman ‘lost’ in her corporeal sexuality, herdreams of her marginalized, inessential nature, Cixous believes that the fixity of ourpresent conceptual schema will be shaken. Her work initiates and celebrates theexperiential dimensions of feminine desire. She raids classical literature to uncover ‘lostvoices’ through reinvesting in powerful figures—mothers, mythical heroines, goddessesand the ecstatic and excessive aspects of a sexual ‘dark continent’. It is also an attempt toenrich a particular vocabulary coextensive with ‘the feminine’; poetic and allusive,metaphorical and ‘incandescent’. Rather than merely replicating the static, fragmented orsilenced position she has diagnosed women as occupying, her texts attempt to transgressthese positions by ‘overloading’ them, and lyrically exploding them. The notions of‘spending’ and ‘the gift’ are significant in her piece ‘Sorties’:83 showing up an economyof exchange to be one of exploitation by miming its carefully monitored limits to thepoint of parody is for Cixous a political and transgressive activity.There are many problematic aspects of Cixous’ work—she may seem to lapse into theversions of women’s bodies she was critical of, or into a fascination with her ownfabulous textual labyrinths at the expense of more explicit political engagement. She doesextricate herself from any collective feminism which she believes to be a quest forrecognition and legitimation in an inadequately interrogated patriarchal economy and so a‘reactionary ideology’. It is also unclear whether Cixous is celebrating and uncoveringthe quintessential ‘feminine’ in her work, or if she is demonstrating a strategy which allwomen are invited to explore for themselves. The use of ‘we’ for women in her texts isan ambivalent point in this regard. However, the celebratory tone of her texts isinspirational and creative: ‘a laughter that breaks out, overflows, a humour no one wouldexpect to find in a woman… she who laughs last. And her first laugh is at herself.’84
CONCLUSIONThe philosophical paradox of scepticism bears, I think, many similarities to feminist workin philosophy. ‘Scepticism may be understood as an expression of an extreme form ofdissatisfaction with the logos in its philosophical form. Scepticism tries to evadephilosophy; but is there any logos-free space where it could settle to enjoy a humanlife?’85 If thinking is continually involved in movements of imprisonment, encompassingand repulsing, ‘Which experiences, adventures of the mind, or events of history do notpermit the gathering of logos to enclose them within its horizons?’86 How are we to finda strategy of critique which is not merely repetition of the same, but manages to avoid theinfinite regress of a scepticism forced to be sceptical of its own position? This is theproblematic which faces those thinkers who seek to reproach philosophy for what it hasrepressed or left out, and to reproach it in the name of a legitimate cause, and yet thisreproach contaminates the basis of an appeal to legitimation in reproaching philosophy.How to dodge philosophical containment while at the same time utilizing its resources toarticulate otherness? Engaging in this ‘impossible’ enterprise is to offer an ethicalreproach to philosophy, the conditions of this reproach being a determination to avoidquietism.The questioning of identity belongs to an immense volume of work which aims touncover the conflation of singularity, ontology and presence, and the connection to thepower structures which not only create such formations but maintain them as the mostsuccessful means of sustaining the status quo. The totalitarian thinking which occludesdifference in the name of a more coherent theorization of unity is not confined to thosepolitical regimes more immediately identifiable as repressive, but also to the liberalframework which argues for equality at the expense of celebrating difference. If feministtheory has been concerned to question identity in the context of postmodernist thinking, itis in order to analyse the alignment of presence and power. But the recent ‘return to thesubject’ in philosophical theory, which is heralded as the chance to reconsider questionsof ethics and political responsibility now that subjectivity has been unsettled from itscomplacent fixity, is not really new to feminist theory, in that feminism is in generalseeking an effective version of agency to be able to conduct a struggle, whether reformistor revolutionary.
NOTES1 See M.E.Waite (ed.) [12.87].2 In [12.85], 169, G.Spivak suggests that the professional woman philosopher may becomparable to Athena: ‘Women armed with deconstruction must be aware of becomingAthenas, uncontaminated by the womb, sprung in armour from the father’s forehead’.3 A.Schopenhauer, ‘On Women’, in [12.84], 102–13.4 I.Kant [12.69].5 See some of the contributors to [12.87].6 Many feminists have drawn attention to masculine traits in philosophy (see [12.73, 12–80]for examples) although this does not often extend so far as to see philosophy as all andirredeemably ‘male’.7 I have tried to include a representative sample of feminist philosophers in the Bibliography.8 See E.Young-Bruehl [12.93], and C.Herman, ‘Women in Space and Time’, in E.Marks andI.de Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms, an Anthology (Brighton: Harvester, 1980), pp.168–74, for just two examples of feminist readings of Arendt and Weil.9 See A.Jardine [12.68], R.Braidotti [12.50] or E.Grosz [12.65] for a mapping of the influenceof such thinkers on contemporary feminist theory.10 The works cited in note 9 also give examples of critiques of these thinkers. See also A.Nye[12.79].11 J.Baudrillard [12.46], 8.12 Ibid., p. 9.13 See J.Derrida [12.57], J.-F.Lyotard, ‘One of the Things at Stake in Women’s Struggles’, inA.Benjamin (ed.), The Lyotard Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 111–21, or G.Deleuze[12.57] for examples of the fragmentation and dispersal of identity being linked to thefeminine.14 Texts dealing with Sartre’s and de Beauvoir’s relationship are extensive: see for exampleM.Le Doeuff’s discussion in Hipparchia’s Choice [12.43]. Many of the themes discussedabove are given shape in de Beauvoir’s novels, for example in The Woman Destroyed, or inher short stories, When the Things of the Spirit Come First. Portraits of women strugglingwith social contradictions and moral dilemmas and attempting, succeeding or failing to asserttheir freedom, complement her more theoretical work on this topic. Such themes are alsogiven poignant expression in her autobiography, from ‘dutiful daughter’ to ‘old age’.15 S.de Beauvoir [12.27].16 J.-P.Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H.Barnes (London: Methuen, 1968).17 S.de Beauvoir The Second Sex [12.28].18 Ibid., p. 13.19 M.Le Doeuff, Hipparchia’s Choice [12.43], 58.20 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex [12.28], 15.21 Ibid., p. 28.22 Ibid., p. 29.23 Ibid., p. 16.24 Ibid., pp. 35–69.25 Ibid., p. 62.26 Ibid., p. 57.27 See G.Lloyd [12.73], 102, for a discussion of this paradox in relation to de Beauvoir.28 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex [12.28], 249.29 Ibid., p. 66. De Beauvoir also considers a Marxist analysis of sexual difference, whichattributes inequalities to economic conditions and the historical development andtransmission of such conditions. The division of labour which leads to the unequaldistribution of property and wealth still does not explain why women should be seen assecondary, confined to the home and themselves valued as part of property. Sexual differencecuts across all class distinctions, yet in each class women are seen as subordinate. Althoughshe agrees that at some indeterminate moment in history women became the other for men,and, once occupying a secondary role, continued to perpetuate such conditions through thecenturies, she rejects the idea that the abolition of the family will resolve women’ssubordination, since without a fuller account of interpersonal relations (how dominant andsubordinate roles between individuals come about), she argues, the inequalities may continueto exist.30 See J.Pilardi, ‘Female Eroticism in the Works of Simone de Beauvoir’, in J. Allen andI.M.Young (eds) [12.44], 18–34. Another aspect of sexuality which de Beauvoir explores isthe psycho-physical development of an individual in the context of the family. She agreeswith Freud that women’s positioning as subordinate is a consequence of her own emotionaland sexual development, as a woman she identifies with or reacts against certain models ofsexuality and incorporates such attitudes into her own self-understanding. But she alsoquestions the universality of the Freudian scheme, being suspicious of the apparentinevitability with which men and women achieve their sexual identity in Freud’s view,motivated by drives and prohibitions into particular socially determined roles, mainlybecause it represents an encroachment on her valorization of freedom.31 See C.Duchen [12.61] for a clear historical perspective on the shifts in thinking.32 See E.Grosz [12.66].33 See J.Mitchell and J.Rose (eds) [12.76], or J.Gallop [12.63], for discussions of this influence.Feminist theory influenced by ego-psychology and object relations psychoanalysis, such asthe work of Jessica Benjamin or Nancy Chodorow ([12.48], [12.54]) differs, in that it tends toanalyse patterns of identification and difference or relations of dominance and submissionbetween individuals, rather than the fragmented individual of Lacanian theory.34 J.Rose, cited in G.C.Spivak, ‘Feminism and Deconstruction, Again: NegotiatingUnacknowledged Maculinism’, in T.Brennan (ed.) [12.51], 206–24.35 Ibid.36 J.Mitchell and J.Rose (eds) [12.76], 166.37 Ibid., p. 147.38 Although this is Freud’s phrase, it is often used to describe feminist theory influenced bypsychoanalysis.39 See J.Lechte [12.72] for an account of Kristeva’s work and influences upon her.40 J.Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language [12.35], Only the first part is translated. The poetsshe discusses in the later section are Lautréamont and Mallarmé.41 Ibid., p. 22.42 See Lechte [12.72], 32, where he writes: ‘On 7 November 1955, Jacques Lacan—doctor ofmedicine, psychoanalyst, friend of surrealism—“officially” announced his famous “return toFreud” in a paper given at a neuro-psychiatric clinic in Vienna.’ See J.Lacan, The FreudianThing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis’ in [12.71], 114–45.43 Lacan writes: ‘It is the name-of-the-father that we must recognize as the support of thesymbolic function, which from the dawn of history has identified his person with the figureof the law’ [12.71], 67.44 Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language [12.35], 25.45 Ibid.46 Ibid.47 Ibid., p. 26.48 Kristeva, About Chinese Women [12.36], 35.49 Ibid., p. 36.50 Ibid., p. 16.51 Ibid., p. 35.52 Kristeva ‘Stabat Mater’ in Tales of Love [12.40], and in The Kristeva Reader [12.41].Quotations from The Kristeva Reader.53 Ibid., p. 185.54 M.Warner [12.88].55 Kristeva ‘Stabat Mater’, in [12.40], 162.56 R.Braidotti [12.50], 219. In contrast to the so-called ‘feminists of difference’ stand thosethinkers who see all identity as social construction, and as a consequence see the notion ofsexual difference as constructed. Such thinkers as Monique Plaza and Christine Delphyreturn to the ground of materialist/ humanist thinking because they see the adoption of sexualdifference and ‘the language of the female body’ as too hasty or naive, in the face of thematerial and social oppression which women face. While it may be timely to remindphilosophy of such concerns, overall the rejection of difference may lead once again to themarginalization or postponement of issues about sexual difference, or to very specific orlocalized areas of concern. Monique Wittig is perhaps an example of this approach. Sherejects all binarisms of male/female or masculine/ feminine, and opts for a ‘third’ category,the lesbian, which, in her terms, involves advancing a strategic utopia and utilizing guerrillatypetactics of subversion. Opting out or refusing any given terms may ultimately render thistactic less than effective.57 L.Irigaray, Parler n’est jamais neutre [12.12].58 L.Irigaray ‘This Sex Which is Not One’, in This Sex Which is Not One [12.34], 23–33.Reprinted from Marks and de Courtivron (eds) (note 8), pp. 99–106.59 L.Irigaray, Ethique de la différence sexuelle [12.11]. First part translated in T. Moi (ed)[12.78] as ‘Sexual difference’, pp. 118–32. Quotes from translation.60 Ibid., p. 118.61 Irigaray, This Sex [12.34], 78.62 Irigaray, ‘Sexual difference’ (note 59), p. 119.63 Irigaray, This Sex [12.34], 149.64 Ibid., p. 159.65 Ibid., p. 150.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYPrimary texts by de Beauvoir, Kristeva, Irigaray, Le Doeuff, Cixous12.1 Cixous, H. ‘Le Rire de la Méduse’,
L’Arc (Simone de Beauvoir), 61 (1975): 39–54.12.2 Cixous, H. ‘Le Sexe ou la tête?’
Cahiers du GRIF, 13 (1976):5–15.12.3 Cixous, H.
La Jeune Née (en collaboration avec C.Clément), Paris: Union Généraled’Editions, 10/18, 1975.12.4 de Beauvoir, S.
Pour une morale de l’ambiguité, Paris: Gallimard, 1948.12.5 de Beauvoir, S.
Le Deuxième sexe, Paris: Gallimard, 1949.12.6 Irigaray, L.
Speculum de l’autre femme, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1974.66 Ibid., p. 74.67 L.Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman [12.33]. See also Marine Lover of FriedrichNietzsche [12.31] and L’oubli de l’air chez Martin Heidegger [12.10].68 The title of the first section of Speculum of the Other Woman.69 Irigaray, ‘Sexual difference’ (note 59), p. 122.70 L.Irigaray, ‘Divine Women’, Sydney: Local Consumption Occasional Papers 8, trans.S.Muecke, from Sexes et parentés [12.13].71 Irigaray, This Sex [12.34], 76.72 Ibid., p. 154.73 Ibid., p. 155.74 Irigaray takes this notion from Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, article 53 in ThePhilosophical Writings of Descartes, vol I, trans. J.Cottingham et al., Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985, p. 350.75 See L.Irigaray, Sexes et parentés [12.13], Je, Tu, Nous, pour une culture de la différence[12.15] and Le Temps de la différence: pour une révolution pacifique [12.14] for examples ofIrigaray’s recent concerns. See The Irigaray Reader [12.32] for representative translations,particularly pp. 157–218.76 See Ethique de la difference sexuelle [12.11] or Elemental Passions [12.29] for examples.77 See M.Whitford’s excellent and comprehensive study [12.90] and her introduction to TheIrigaray Reader [12.32] where she writes: ‘Holding the tension here, walking this particulartightrope, is what makes her work so challenging and so insistent’ (p. 13). See alsoR.Braidotti [12.50], 262–3.78 M.Le Doeuff, ‘Women and Philosophy’ in T.Moi (ed.) [12.78], 195, revised from versionprinted in Radical Philosophy, 17 (summer 1977):2–11. Originally from The PhilosophicalImaginary [12.42].79 Ibid., p. 196.80 M.Le Doeuff, Hipparchia’s Choice [12.43].81 R.Braidotti [12.50], 197.82 See G.Lloyd [12.73] and L.Code, ‘Experience, Knowledge and Responsibility’, inM.Griffiths and M.Whitford (eds) [12.64], 187–204.83 H.Cixous, ‘Sorties’ in Marks and de Courtivron (eds) (note 8), pp. 90–8.84 H.Cixous, ‘Castration or Decapitation?’ [12.24], 55.85 A.Peperzak, ‘Presentation’, in R.Bernasconi and S.Critchley (eds) [12.49], 51–66 (p. 54).86 Ibid., p. 53.12.7 Irigaray, L.
Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas un, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1977.12.8 Irigaray, L.
Amante marine, de Friedrich Nietzsche, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980.12.9 Irigaray, L.
Passions élémentaires, Paris: Editions de minuit, 1982.12.10 Irigaray, L.
L’oubli de l’air chez Martin Heidegger, Paris: Editions de Minuit,1983.12.11 Irigaray, L.
Ethique de la différence sexuelle, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1984.12.12 Irigaray, L.
Parler n’est jamais neutre, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1986.12.13 Irigaray, L.
Sexes et parentés, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1987.12.14 Irigaray, L.
Le Temps de la différence: pour une révolution pacifique, Paris:Librairie Générale Française/Livre de Poche, 1989.12.15 Irigaray, L.
Je, Tu, Nous, pour une culture de la différence, Paris: Grasset, 1990.12.16 Kristeva, J.
La révolution du langage poétique; l’avant-garde à la fin du XIXesiècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1974.12.17 Kristeva, J.
Des chinoises, Paris: Editions des Femmes, 1974.12.18 Kristeva, J.
Polylogue, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977.12.19 Kristeva, J. ‘Le Temps des femmes’,
33/44, Cahiers de recherche des sciencestextes et documents, 5 (winter 1979):5–19.12.20 Kristeva, J.
Histoires d’amour, Paris: Denoel, 1983 and Gallimard, 1985.12.21 Le Doeuff, M.
L’Imaginaire philosophique, Paris: Payot, 1980.12.22 Le Doeuff, M.
L’Etude et le rouet, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989.
Translations12.23 Cixous, H. ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, trans. K. and P.Cohn, in E. Marks and I.deCourtivron (eds)
New French Feminisms, Brighton: Harvester, 1980, pp. 254–64.Reprinted from
Signs, 1 (summer 1976): 875–99.12.24 Cixous, H. ‘Castration or Decapitation?’, trans. A.Kuhn,
Signs, 7 (1981): 36–55.12.25 Cixous, H. (with C.Clément)
The Newly Born Woman, trans. B.Wing, Theory andHistory of Literature Series 24, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.12.26 Extract from ‘Sorties’ in E.Marks and I.de Courtivron (eds)
New FrenchFeminisms, Brighton: Harvester, 1980, pp. 90–8.12.27 de Beauvoir, S.
Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. B.Frechtman, Secancus: Citadel Press1980.12.28 de Beauvoir, S.
The Second Sex, trans. H.M.Parshley, Harmondsworth: Penguin,1978.12.29 Irigaray L.
Elemental Passions, trans. J.Collie and J.Still, London: Athlone Press,1992.12.30 Irigaray, L.
The Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. C.Burke, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, forthcoming.12.31 Irigaray, L.
Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. G.C.Gill, New York:Columbia University Press, 1991.12.32 Irigaray, L.
The Irigaray Reader, ed. M.Whitford, trans. D.Macey
et al., Oxford:Blackwell, 1992.12.33 Irigaray, L.
Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G.C.Gill, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1985.12.34 Irigaray, L.
This Sex Which is Not One, trans. C.Porter and C.Burke, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1985.12.35 Kristeva, J.
Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. M.Waller, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1984 (first part translated only).12.36 Kristeva, J.
About Chinese Women, trans. A.Barrows, New York and London:Marion Boyars, 1977.12.37 Kristeva, J.
Desire in Language: a Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans.S.Gora, A.Jardine, and L.Roudiez, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984 (8 essays of 20 translated).12.38 Kristeva, J. ‘Women’s Time’,
Signs 7: 1 (autumn 1981): 13–55. Reprinted inN.O.Keohane, M.Z.Rosaldo, and B.G.Gelpi (eds),
Feminist Theory: A Critique ofIdeology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 and in [12.41], pp. 187–214.12.39 Kristeva, J. ‘Julia Kristeva in Conversation with Rosalind Coward’, in
ICADocument: Desire, London: ICA, 1984, pp. 22–7.12.40 Kristeva, J.
Tales of Love, trans. L.S.Roudiez, New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1987.12.41 Kristeva, J.
The Kristeva Reader, ed. with an introduction by T.Moi, Oxford:Blackwell, 1986.12.42 Le Doeuff, M.
The Philosophical Imaginary, trans. C.Gordon, London: Athlone,1986.12.43 Le Doeuff, M.
Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophyetc., trans. T.Selous, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Other works and criticisms12.44 Allen, J. and Young, I.M. (eds)
The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern FrenchPhilosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.12.45 Atack, M. ‘The Other; Feminist’,
Paragraph, 8 (Oct. 1986):25–39.12.46 Baudrillard, J.
Seduction, trans. B.Singer, London: Macmillan, 1990 (
De laseduction, Paris: Galilée, 1979).12.47 Benhabib, S. and Cornell, D. (eds)
Feminism as Critique, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.12.48 Benjamin, J.
The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem ofDomination, London: Virago, 1990.12.49 Bernasconi, R. and Critchley, S. (eds)
Re-reading Levinas, Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1991.12.50 Braidotti, R.
Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in ContemporaryPhilosophy, London: Polity Press, 1991.12.51 Brennan, T. (ed.)
Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis, London: Routledge,1989.12.52 Burke, C. ‘Romancing the Philosophers: Luce Irigaray’, in D.Hunter (ed.)
Seduction and Theory; Feminist Readings on Representation and Rhetoric, Chicago:University of Illinois Press, 1981, pp. 226–40.12.53 Butler, J.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London:Routledge, 1990.12.54 Chodorow, N.
The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociologyof Gender, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.12.55 Conley, V.A.
Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine, Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1984.12.56 Deleuze, G.
Différence et répétition, Paris: PUF, 1969.12.57 Derrida, J.
Eperons/Spurs, the styles of Nietzsche, trans. B.Harlow, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1978.12.58 Derrida, J. ‘Women in the Beehive: An Interview with Jacques Derrida’,
Subjects/Objects, 2 (1984). Reprinted in A.Jardine and P.Smith (eds)
Men inFeminism, London: Methuen, 1987.12.59 Derrida, J. and Conley, V.A. ‘Voice ii’,
Boundary 2, 12:2 (1984):180–6.12.60 Derrida, J. and McDonald, C.V. ‘Choreographies’,
Diacritics, 12 (summer,1982):66–76.12.61 Duchen, C.
Feminism in France from May ’68 to Mitterand, London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1986.12.62 Eisenstein, H. and Jardine, A. (eds)
The Future of Difference Boston: G.K. Hall,1980.12.63 Gallop, J.
Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter’s Seduction, London:Macmillan, 1982.12.64 Griffiths, M., and Whitford, M. (eds)
Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy,London: Macmillan, 1988.12.65 Grosz, E.
Sexual Subversions, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989.12.66 Grosz, E.
Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, London: Routledge, 1990.12.67 Harding, S. and Hintikka, M.
Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives onEpistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983.12.68 Jardine, A.
Gynesis. Configurations of Women and Modernity, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1985.12.69 Kant, I. ‘Of the Distinction of the Beautiful and the Sublime in the Inter-relationsof the Sexes’, in
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans.J.T.Goldthwaite (1763) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960.12.70 Kofman, S.
The Enigma of Woman: Women in Freud’s Writing, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1985.12.71 Lacan, J.
Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A.Sheridan, London: Tavistock, 1977.12.72 Lechte, J.
Julia Kristeva, London: Routledge, 1991.12.73 Lloyd, G.
The Man of Reason. ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy,London: Macmillan, 1984.12.74 Miller, N.K. (ed.)
The Poetics of Gender, New York, Columbia University Press,1986.12.75 Mitchell, J.
Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1974.12.76 Mitchell, J. and Rose, J. (eds)
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the EcoleFreudienne, trans. J.Rose, London: Macmillan, 1985.12.77 Moi, T.
Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, London: Methuen,1985.12.78 Moi, T. (ed.)
French Feminist Thought: A Reader, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.12.79 Nye, A.
Feminist Theory and the Philosophies of Man, London: Routledge, 1988.12.80 Okin, S.M.
Women in Western Political Thought, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1979.12.81 Pateman, C.
The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.12.82 Pateman, C.
The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory,Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.12.83 Schiach, M.
Hélène Cixous: A Politics of Writing, London: Routledge, 1991.12.84 Schopenhauer, A.
The Essential Schopenhauer, London: Unwin Books, 1962.12.85 Spivak, G.C. ‘Displacement and the Discourse of Woman’, in M.Krupnick (ed.)
Displacement: Derrida and After, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983, pp.169–91.12.86 Vetterling-Braggin, M., Elliston, F., and English, J. (eds)
Feminism andPhilosophy, Totowa: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1977.12.87 Waite, M.E. (ed.)
A History of Women Philosophers, 4 volumes, The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.12.88 Warner, M.
Alone of All Her Sex, London: Picador, 1981.12.89 White, A. ‘L’Eclatement du sujet: The Theoretical Work of Julia Kristeva’,Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Stencilled Occasional Paper49, 1977.12.90 Whitford, M.
Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, London: Routledge,1991.12.91 Wilcox, H., McWatters, K., Thompson, A. and Williams, R. (eds)
The Body andthe Text: Hélène Cixous, Reading and Teaching, London: Harvester, 1990.12.92 Wittig, M.
The Lesbian Body, trans. Peter Owen, New York: Avon, 1986 [
LeCorps lesbien, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1973].12.93 Young-Bruehl, E.
Mind and the Body Politic, London: Routledge, 1988.