File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1997/97-02-05.141, message 192


Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 17:47:33 -0600
From: flo-AT-mailserv.su.ualberta.ca (Florence Pastoor)
Subject: matricide and genealogy



Can anyone help me with some questions regarding Irigaray's concept (?) of
matricide and how that relates to the collapse of female genealogy?  I am
looking at her re-reading of Plato in _Speculum_ and the issue comes up but
I can't seem to really get my head around it...

i think my biggest set back is that i have no knowledge of classics and so
most of her subsequent analysis (i.e., her discussions of Antigone in
_Sexes and Genealogies_) eludes me.

My questions are:

1.   I remember reading somewhere that there is a point in Greek culture
where we (think we) can identify a transition away from a respect for
matrilineage to an exclusive respect for patrilineage.  Is this true?  Is
Euripides' writings apart of this transition?  Is Plato?

It is clear that Plato held the view that women's role in the procreative
process was simply to incubate the male sperm.  She is the garden for his
seed.  Was this a relatively new patriarchal perspective or what?  Is it
not true that at some point there was respect and revere for the fertility
of women insofar as it was seen as a divine connection to the cycles of
life?  Wby did that change?  Was Plato's concept of (paternal) Forms a part
of that change?

Did the disappearance of the Goddess coincide with the erasure of respect
for mother - daughter relations?  Did female lineage disappear with the
ascedance of the concept of a single male Deity?  How did this Deity come
to seize absolute authority?

2.   With respect to Irigaray's concept of matricide is it premised on her
contention that male and female lineage has been collapsed into that of the
male?  Does matricide = the appropriation of the ability to bring forth
life by a male God?  (ie: God alone created the universe - without the help
of a woman, except perhaps as the earth-matter in which his will is
inscribed...)

Perhaps it would help to refresh some memories of what Irigaray says about
the issue of matricide and female genealogies...  Here are some quotes:


"The whole of our western culture is based upon the murder of the
mother.  The man-god-father
killed the mother in order to take power."  (from "Women-Mothers, the
Silent Substratum of the Social Order", p. 49)

If we are not to be accomplices in the murder of the mother we also need to
assert that there is a genealogy of women.  (from "Body against Body: In
Relation to the Mother", p. 19)

Male and Female Genealogies are collapsed into a single genealogy: that of
the husband.   (From Irigaray's intro to _Sexes and Genealogy_, p. 2)


My overall question is:

What is the relationship between matricide and the collapse of female
genealogies?  Are they one and the same?  Is there a point in time
(history) when this murder of the mother and conflation of male and female
genealogies took place?  Are there any theories about why this happened?
Does Irigaray offer a theory - or merely point out that it has happened?

I know that these are big questions...   (sorry)

Any help in enabling me to get a better sense about what Irigaray is on
about with respect to this issue would, however, be very appreciated!

all the best in the new year!

Flo

MA student
Trinity College
Ireland












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