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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