File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 34


From: Russell Pearson <R.Pearson-AT-art.derby.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 10:40:29 +0000
Subject: M-TH: Putting her teeth on the line?


Hugh spurts:

>If Gogol can write about a nose on the lam, and Philip Roth go on about a
>breast,
>why not have a misogynist's rant about savage sabre-toothed pussies roaming
>the forests of the night? That way he could translate the emotional force
>our intimate organs have for him into whining poetry and give us new
>insight into where fetishism is at among certain "Marxist" circles in the
>US today.

Been done before ol' bean:

Barbara Creed's Kristevean study of contemporary horror and women  _The
Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis_. London, Routledge,
1993.

Here's some snips, if you'll pardon the expression:

"All human societies have a conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what
it is about woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject." (:1)

vagina dentata: "...the myth generally states that women are terrifying
because they have teeth in their vaginas and that the women must be tamed
or the teeth somehow removed or softened- usually by a hero figure- before
intercourse can safely take place." (:2)

Creed's argument:

Part 1: "...when woman is represented as monstrous it is always in relation
to her mothering and reproductive functions." (:7)
As: "...monstrous womb; the witch; the vampire; and the possessed woman."
(:7)

Part 2: "...linked to question of sexual desire rather than to the area of
reproduction. The image of woman as castrator takes at least three forms:
woman as the deadly femme castratrice, the castrating mother and the vagina
dentata." (:7)
And for Creed, in what form does the savage sabre-toothed pussy aka vagina
dentata, take today:  why it's that nasty creature, 'The Bitch', in the
Alien saga!

But remember, 'In cyberspace nobody can hear you cream'.


Russ






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