Date:         Tue, 03 Oct 95 20:47:38 CDT
From: snehal <SSHINGAV-AT-TRINITY.EDU>
Subject:      RE: shaunanne tangney


that is an interesting take, but how do we, then, attempt to de-scribe "woman"
(or whatever the appropriate non-phallogocentric term for what we consider
"woman" to inscribe) from a patriarchal context.  indeed, if the term "woman"
is already connected to ideas/language/grammar/signs that connote
reconstructions/reproductions of power along sexual/gendered lines, then
perhaps the linguistic phenomenon reflects the social phenomenon: that women
are and have been tied to those same streams of power whose fluidity exists
within language and cannot be escaped without a re-examination of those
linguistic signifiers.  perhaps what i am asking here is how do we examine a
psychoanalytical critique so grounded in binary oppositions like subject/object
 and simultaneously attempt to break free of such oppositions when they may be
appropriate to in-scribe social phenomenon but not linguistic/actual/sexual
phenomenon?  how do you take woman out of "woman" without defining "woman" in
the context of women ... diane elam argues that "the more you try to fill [her]
 up the emptier [she] becomes" in reference to woman.  what are the alternate
forms of de-scription for ideas like subject/object that take into
consideration linguistic realities and still lead to a term with which we can
all feel "safe" ???

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