Contents of spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/Lubbock.abstracts/bainbridge

Abstract (with apologies for the lack of formatting and accents) Towards a Feminine Cinematics: Using Irigaray for Film Theory Caroline Bainbridge C.Bainbridge1@sheffield.ac.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Much of Luce Irigaray's writing has been seized upon by literary theorists investigating _ecriture feminine_. This is perhaps due to the emphais she places upon questions of language and the feminine throughout her work. Interestingly, on the other hand, relatively little use has been made of her writings within film theory despite the fact that psychoanalysis and questions of representation figure very largely in her work. This paper shows how Irigaray's writings are potentially extremely valuable to the feminist film theorist seeking to examine the representation of Woman and the feminine within cinema. By drawing upon the many structuring notions within Irigaray's thought that relate directly to questions of representation and spectatorship, this paper shows how using Irigaray's critiques of psychoanalysis and philosophy enables feminist film theorists to rethink and reshape contemporary perspectives on women and/in film. Examples are drawn from Jane Campion's _The Piano_ and from Sally Potter's _Orlando_ to show how cinema offers a way of realising Irigaray's calls to deconstruct traditional paradigms of the feminine by strategies of mimesis and attempts to represent feminine histories, which gives Irigaray's work a distinctly poltical edge.

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