File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-fem_1995/french-fem_Oct.95, message 7


Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 16:16:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Elizabeth Droppleman <bdroppl-AT-grove.ufl.EDU>
Subject: Re: This Sex


Doris,

Thanks for getting the conversation started!  Your comments about the use 
of "self-embracing" are important in Irigaray, and the theme of exchange 
which by-passes woman is taken up again later in Chapter 8 "Women on 
the Market." (But more on that when we get there!)

Some thoughts on the question of fault...
I have the impression that Irigaray is concerned less with blaming, than 
with exposing the underlying assumptions of certain western narratives--
in this case Freudian psychoanalysis--and showing how these theories have 
shaped ways of thinking by attacking them from the inside.  A very 
effective strategy for beginning to answer your question, "How did it 
ever come to be this way?"

In the next paragraph...
Irig effects one of those brilliant deconstructive double movements, 
using the psychoanal. strategy of theorizing sexuality from the body--not 
to confirm that woman is "lack"--but to consider female sexuality as a 
metaphor for non-oppositional thinking:

	"Woman `touches herself' all the time, and moreover no one
	can forbid her to do so, for her genitals are formed of two
	lips in continuous contact.  Thus, within herself, she is 
	already two-but not divisible into one(s)-that caress each 
	other."

Her use of "two" and "one(s)" seems to be an attack on dialectical 
thinking--a refusal of unity--but I'm note quite sure I understand.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this? And what about the idea that 
Irigaray is not necessarily an "essentialist"?  I feel I'm on shaky 
ground when it comes to using certain terms (woman, women, female, 
feminine, female sexuality, etc.).  I'm not sure which are appropriate 
for different situations...

yours truly,
confused in Gainesville

(aka beth droppleman)
bdroppl-AT-grove.ufl.edu




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