Hypatia, Inc.

"Essentially Speaking": Luce Irigaray's Language of Essence Author(s): Diana J. Fuss Source: Hypatia, Vol. 3, No. 3, French Feminist Philosophy (Winter, 1989), pp. 62-80 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3809788 . Accessed: 25/11/2013 00:43
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Hypatia, Inc. and Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hypatia.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

"Essentially Speaking": Luce Irigaray's Languageof Essence

DIANA J. FUSS

LuceIrigaray's towards the bodyhas earned fearlessness speaking for herwork thedismissive label"essentialist." But Irigaray's femmeand Speculumde I'autre Ce Sexe qui n'en est pas un suggest thatessencemay not be theunitary,monothatanti-essentialists so oftenpresume it to be. lithic,in short,essentialist category essentialism at least two reasons: to Irigaray strategically deploys for first, reverse and to displace Lacan's to and second, Jacques phallomorphism; exposethecontraat theheartof Aristotelian diction which denies women accessto "Esmetaphysics sence"whileat thesametimepositing theessence "Woman" as non-esof precisely sential(as matter).

Perhapsmore than any other notion in the vocabularyof recent feminist has come to representboth our greatest theory, "essentialism" postructuralist The idea that men and women, for examfear and our greatesttemptation. eternal, immutable ple, are identifiedas such on the basisof transhistorical, "essences" has been unequivocally rejected by many anti-essentialist feministsconcernedwith resistingany attemptsto naturalize poststructuralist "humannature."And yet, one can hear echoing from the cornersof the debateson essentialismrenewedinterestin its possibilitiesand potential usages, or to "dare" soundswhich articulatethemselves in the formof calls to "risk" essentialism.1Essentialismhas been given new life by these invitations to considera possiblestrategicdeploymentof essence; we could even say that, in feminist theory, essentialismis the issue which simplyrefusesto die. Certainly essentialism is the charge most frequentlyheard in critiquesof Luce The presentessayparticipatesin the general Irigaray's "psychophilosophy."2 of essentialismin orderto pose the questionof how calls for a reconsideration feminist theory and essentialismmight operatein theservice of Luce Irigaray's in work? What might be is invoked her when essentialism and politics. Why In short, are at stake in the deploymentof essentialismfor strategicpurposes? there waysto think and to talk aboutessence that might not, necessarily,"always already,"ipso facto, be reactionary? In what follows it will become clear that I do believe that there are such waysto elaborateand to workwith a notion of essence that is not, in essence,
Hypatiavol. 3, no. 3 (Winter 1989) ? by Diana J. Fuss

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

63

ahistorical,apolitical, empiricist,or simplyreductive.But beforeturningto a considerationof Irigaray's strategicuse of essentialism, it bearsemphasizing that most of the criticismslevelled againstIrigaray's work since the publication of Speculum de l'autre in are 1974 femme inevitablybasedupon or in some to this fear of A linked essentialism. way summary sampleof the most important and oft-cited of these criticisms is enough to demonstratehow impassioned and genuine the resistanceto essentialismis for many feminists, and how problematic the reassessmentof essentialism'stheoretical or political usefulnessis likely to be.
IRIGARAY AND HERCRITICS

In 1981, two critical essayson Luce Irigaray's work were publishedin the U.S., each in a well-known feminist academic journal:Christine Faure's "The Twilight of the Goddesses, or the Intellectual Crisis of French Feminism"appearedin Signs,and CarolynBurke's "Irigaray Throughthe Looking Glass"appearedin FeministStudies.Faure'scritique, a translationfrom the the more severe. She objects to a generaltrend in French, is unquestionably French feminist theory, epitomizedby Irigaray's search for a female imagiwhich marks "a retreat into aesthetics where the thrust of feminist nary, is masked the old naturalistic ideal in of supstruggle by draped the trappings 'feminine' Burke also wonders 81).3 posedly lyricism" (1981, Carolyn whetherIrigaray's workescapesthe very idealismwhich her deconctruction of selected philosophicaland psychoanalytictexts so rigorously and persistently seeks to displace: Does her writingmanageto avoid constructionof anotheridealism to replacethe 'phallogocentric' systemsthat she dismantles? Do her representations of a parler femme,in analogywith female sexuality, avoid the centralizingidealism with which she taxes Western conceptual systems?(1981, 302) Metaphysicalidealismis probablythe most damagingof the many criticisms it finds its most recent and perhapsmost powerful chargedagainst Irigaray; rearticulationin Toril Moi's SexualTextualPolitics: Any attempt to formulatea general theory of femininity will be metaphysical.This is preciselyIrigaray's dilemma:having shown that so far femininityhas been producedexclusivelyin relation to the logic of the Same, she falls for the temptation to produceher own positive theory of femininity. But ... to define 'woman'is necessarilyto essentializeher. (1985, 139) Is it true that any definition of 'woman'must be predicatedon essence?And does Irigaray,in fact, define 'woman'?Though I will later arguethat the

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

64

Hypatia

problemof an idealismbasedon the body, on an essentialfemininity, is funsuffice it to say here that Moi's assumpdamentallya misreadingof Irigaray, tion that "to define 'woman'is necessarilyto essentializeher"is by no means self-evident. While Irigaray has been criticizedby both psychoanalysts and materialists the most have come from the materialike, impassionedcritiques primarily alists. Monique Plaza's " 'Phallomorphic Power' and the Psychology of 'Woman,' " first published in the French radicalfeminist publicationQuestionsfeministes and later reprintedin the BritishmarxistjournalIdeology and offersthe most sustainedand unremittingly criticalindictment Consciousness, of Irigaray's apparentessentialism. According to Plaza, Luce Irigaray's great mistake(second only to her generalfailureto interrogateadequatelypsychoanalyticdiscourse)is a tendency to confusesocial and anatomicalcategories; for the feminine 'intheorizationof female pleasureand her "search Irigaray's terior'" lead her to abjurethe categoryof the social and to practicea dangerous form of "pan-sexualismwhich is only a coarse, disguisednaturalism" (1978, 8-9). Plaza,along with MoniqueWittig and ChristineDelphy, argues is alwaysa productof social refromthe materialiststandpointthat "nature" lations and that sex is alwaysa constructionof oppressionand never its cause. It is the move to desocialize"women,"Plazainsists, which leadsIrigaray into the fallacy of essentialism: The absence of a theory of oppression,the belief in the unavoidable and irreduciblesexual Difference, the psychologistic reduction, the inflation of the notion of "women"which one finds in Luce Irigaray's investigation, can only result in this essentialistquest. In the gap left by the statementof woman's will set up a "new"conception of non-existence, Luce Irigaray woman. (28) of positivism, empiricism, and negativism Plaza goes on to accuse Irigaray (31). Toril Moi, another materialistcritic, adds two more weighty epithets: ahistorcismand apoliticism (1985, 147-48). If this were a critical barbecue, would surelybe skewered. Irigaray Luce Irigaray,however, is not without her defenders. Jane Gallop, in "Quand nos levres s'ecrivent: Irigaray's Body Politic," interpretsIrigaray's of ratherthan a reflection persistentfocus on the female labiaas a construction essentialismis thus read within a largeranti-essentialist the body; Irigaray's the body (1983, 77-83). Margaret project of re-creating, re-metaphorizing Whitford takes a similarlysympathetic(which is not to say uncritical) apwork. In "Luce Irigaray proach to the question of essentialismin Irigaray's and the FemaleImaginary: Speakingas a Woman,"Whitfordconcludesthat does sometimes blur the distinctions between the social and while Irigaray historithe biological, "this is obviouslya stategyadoptedwithin a particular

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

65

cal and culturalsituation"(1986, 7).4 This particularresponseto the probstrikesme as the most promisingline of argulem of essentialismin Irigaray ment to follow, for ratherthan foreclosingthe discussionon essentialismbefore it has truly begun, this approach asks the more difficult question: if Irigaray appealsto a mode of feminine specificity,and if she attemptsto speak of essentithe femalebody, what might such strategicforaysinto the territory alism allow her to accomplish?What might Irigaray's work amount to if she refusedsuch admittedlyriskyventures into "this sex which is not one"?
"BYOURLIPSWEAREWOMEN"

Let me begin to answer these questions by re-examining the place and function of the "two lips" in Irigaray's theorizationof female pleasure.This concept is perhapsmost responsiblefor generatingthe chargesof essentialism. Three words neatly summarize for Irigaray the significanceof the two lips: "Both at once." Both at once signifies that a woman is simultaneously two-but not divisible into one(s)," or, singularand double; she is "already another she is "neither one nor two"(1985c, 24, 26). It is the two lips put way, which situate women's autoeroticism,their pleasure,in a differenteconomy from the phallic, in an economy of ceaselessexchange and constant flux: Woman's autoeroticismis very differentfrom man's. In order to touch himself, man needs an instrument: his hand, a woman'sbody, language. . . . And this self-caressing requires at least a minimum of activity. As for woman, she touches herself in and of herself without any need for mediation, and before there is any way to distinguishactivity from passivity. Woman "touchesherself"all the time, and moreoverno one can forbidher to do so, for her genitals are formedof two lips in continuous contact. Thus, within herself, she is already two-but not divisible into one(s)-that caress each other. (1985c, 24) It would be hard to deny, on the basisof this particular passage,that Irigaray proposesto give us an account of female pleasurebasedon the body'sgenitalia; and it would be hard to deny that her account of the phallus is any less morphological.5 Why the essentialistlanguagehere?Why the relentlessemphasis on the two lips? Let me turn first to the Irigariancritique of the phallus to demonstrate what appearsto be a strategic misreadingof male genitalia. According to Irigaray,Western culture privilegesa mechanics of solids over a mechanics of fluids because man's sexual imaginaryis isomorphic;as such, the male imaginary emphasizes the following features: "production, property (propriete),order,form, unity, visibility, erection"(1985a, 77). The features

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

66

Hypatia

associatedwith a female imaginary,as we might expect, moreclosely approximate the properties of liquids:"continuous,compressible, dilatable,viscous, diffusable" conductible, (1985c, 111). The problemhere is simplythat many of the propertiesIrigaray associateswith the two lips might also describethe K.K. Ruthven As penis. points out: A good deal dependshere on the accuracyof Irigaray's characterizationof the penis as "one" in comparisonwith the "not one" of the vulva. Certainly, her theory seems to requirethe penis to be alwaysinflexiblyerect and quite without metamorphic variation,and also to be circumcised,as the presenceof a foreskinendows it with most of the properties she attributesto the labia. (1984, 100-101) Irigaray's reading of phallomorphismas a kind of isomophism,however, is as an exposure of one of the dominantmetaphorsin not so much a misreading who erects the phallusas a psychoanalysis.It is not Irigaray poststructuralist productionof an apparsingle transcendentalsignifierbut Lacan:Irigaray's ently essentializingnotion of female sexualityfunctions strategicallyas a reversal and a displacementof Lacan'sphallomorphism. critique of Lacan centers primarilyon his refusal to listen to Irigaray's women speakof their own pleasure;she finds most untenableLacan'sinsistence that, on the subject of pleasure, women have nothing to say. In his SeminarXX on women, Lacanlistens not to women but to art, not to Saint Theresa but to Berini's statue of Saint Theresa:"you only have to go and look at Bemini's statue in Rome to understandimmediatelythat she's comof The Woman," in ing, there is no doubtabout it" ("Godand the Jouissance Mitchell and Rose 1982, 147). Irigaray's interrogatory responsein "CostFan "In Rome? So far at here: Tutti" deftly unmasks the phallocentrism play To look?At a statue?Of a saint?Sculptedby a man?What pleasureare away? we talking about?Whose pleasure?" (1985c, 90-91) Her logic is irrefutable: of why woulda womanneed to go all the way to Rome to discoverthe "truth" her pleasure? Why, afterall, is "the rightto experiencepleasure... awarded to a statue" (1985c, 90)? "When Our Lips Speak Together"providesan explanatorygloss Irigaray's on Lacan'seffortsto arriveat the truthof woman'spleasurethroughan appeal to a statue:"Truthis necessaryfor those who are so distancedfromtheir body that they have forgottenit. But their truth immobilizes us, turnsus into statues .. ." (1985c, 214). If women are turnedinto statuesthroughthe process of specularization-through the agency of the look-how can this specular economy be undone?How, in other words, can women begin to speak their own pleasure?Throughoutboth Speculum of the OtherWomanand This Sex of the gaze with the logic of the WhichIs Not One, Irigaray logic supplants touch: it is the "contact of at least two (lips) which keeps woman in touch

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

67

with herself but without any possibility of distinguishingwhat is touching fromwhat is touched"(1985c, 26). This shift of focus fromsight to touch affordsIrigaray another opportunityto challenge Lacan, this time on the subject of his obsessionwith veiling: "Veilingand unveiling:isn't that what intereststhem? What keeps them busy?Always repeatingthe same operation, every time. On every woman"(1985c, 210). A woman'sexchange of herself with herself, without the agencyof the literalpenis or the Symbolicphallus, is exactly what puts into question the prevailingphallocraticand specular economy. It is tempting to compare Monique Wittig's concept of "lesbian"and notion of the "two lips," since both work to rethink the place and Irigaray's statusof the phallus in Western culture. For Wittig, "lesbian"operatesas a new transcendental signifierto replacethe phallus;it is outsidethe systemof "two lips,"while also outside exchange and keeps the systemopen. Irigaray's of a phallic economy, do not function in the same way, since the lips articulate a female imaginaryand not a culturalsymbolic.6Still, it is not always easy to distinguish the imaginaryfrom the symbolic in Irigaray,especially since the female imaginary is repeatedlytheorizedin relation to the symbolic agencies of languageand speech. MargaretWhitford comes closest to pinaccount of female pointing Irigaray's departurefrom Lacan;in the Irigarian "what is needed is for the female imaginaryto accede to its own sexuality, specific symbolisation"(1986, 4). This symbolisationof the female imaginary is preciselywhat Irigaray seeks to elaboratethroughher conceptualization of the two lips. The sustainedfocus in her workon this particular tropeoperatesin at least two ways. First,it has the desiredeffect of historicallyforegrounding "the more or less exclusive-and highly anxious-attention paid to erection in Western sexuality" and it demonstrates"to what extent the imaginary that governsit is foreign to the feminine" (1985c, 24). Second, it poses a possibleway out of one of the most troublingbinds createdfor feminist psychoanalysts: the problemof how to acknowledge the formative role of the Symbolic, the arm of to the notion of feminine specificity. To phallocracy,while still subscribing turn once again to that lyrical lover letter, "When Our Lips Speak Together,"Irigaray's testing of the essentialistwatersbecomestotal submersion: "no event makesus women,"she explains, rather"byour lips we arewomen" (1985c, 211, 209-10). Unlike Wittig, who seversthe classification"woman" from any anatomical determinants, there can be little doubt that, for Irigaray,a woman is classifiedas such on the basis of anatomy: Your/mybody doesn't acquire its sex through an operation. Throughthe action of some power, function, or organ. Without any intervention or special manipulation, you are a woman already. (1985c, 211) The point, for Irigaray, of definingwomen from an essentialiststandpointis not to imprisonwomen within their bodies but to rescuethem fromencultu-

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

68

Hypatia

ratingdefinitionsby men. An essentialistdefinitionof "woman" impliesthat there will always remain some part of "woman"which resists masculine imprintingand socialization: How can I say it? That we are women fromthe start. That we don't have to be turned into women by them, labeled by them, made holy and profaneby them. That has alwaysalready happened, without their efforts. . . . It's not that we have a territory of our own; but their fatherland, family, home, discourse,imprisonus in enclosedspaceswherewe cannot keep on moving, living, as ourselves.Their propertiesare our exile. (1985c, 212) To claim that "we are women from the start"has this advantage-a political advantage perhaps pre-eminently-that a woman will never be a woman solely in masculineterms, never be wholly and permanentlyannihilatedin a masculineorder.
UP IN METAPHORS" "ROLLED

critics is the way in which the figure Perhapswhat most disturbsIrigaray's of the two lips becomes the basis for theorizinga speaking (as) woman, a parler femme. Many American feministsare disturbedby the Frenchfeminist tendency to link languageand the body in any way, literallyor metaphorically. It bothersElaineShowalter,for example, that "whilefeministcriticism rejectsthe attributionof literal biological inferiority,some theoristsseem to have accepted the metaphoricalimplicationsof female biological difference in writing."Showalterbelieves that "simplyto invoke anatomyrisksa return to the crude essentialism, the phallic and ovarian theories of art, that oppressedwomen in the past" (1982, 17). MaryJacobusconcurs, arguingthat "if anatomy is not destiny, still less can it be language"(1982, 37), and Nancy K. Miller similarlyinsists in her criticismof the Frenchfeministsthat must be sought in "the body of her writingand not the writa "woman-text" ing of her body" (1980, 271). It is interestingto note, as Jane Gallop does, and SexualDifference that all the critics includedin Writing (a volume which includes Showalter's "FeministCriticism in the Wilderness"and Jacobus's "The Question of Language:Men of Maxims and The Mill on the Floss") have difficultyaccepting the metaphoricityof the body; they demand that metaphorsof the body be readliterally,and they then reject these metaphors as essentialistic (1982, 802).7 essentialisminevitablycomes down to this quesThe debateover Irigaray's tion of whetherthe bodystandsin a literalor a figurativerelationto language and discourse:are the two lips a metaphoror not? What I proposeto argue here is that, for Irigaray,the relation between languageand the body is nei-

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

69

ther literal nor metaphoricbut metonymic. what Though Irigaray disparages of she calls the " 'masculine' and she is (1985b, 140), games tropes tropisms" not without her own favoritetropes, chief among them the figureof metondeconstructsthe preymy. But before examining the way in which Irigaray dominance of metaphoricityin Western culture and creates a space for metonymy, a brief considerationof what Irigaray actually says about speaking in woman is order. (as) Irigaray's project is to explore the "distinctionof the sexes in termsof the (1985c, 100); her workrepreway they inhabitor are inhabitedby language" sents "an attemptto define the characteristics of what a differentlysexualized languagewould be" (1985a, 84). This line of inquiryleads her to ask how women can "already speak (as) women." Her answer? "By going back men's 'mastery.'By speakthroughthe dominantdiscourse.By interrogating ing to women. And among women" (1985c, 119). The chapter entitled in ThisSex Which Is Not One providesus with a seriesof clarifica"Questions" tions on what a speaking (as) woman might be and how it can be put into practice: Speaking(as) woman . . impliesa differentmode of articulation between masculine and feminine desire and language. (1985c, 136) Speaking (as) woman is not speakingof woman. It is not a matterof producinga discourseof which womanwouldbe the object, or the subject. (1985c, 135) There may be a speaking-among-women that is still a speaking (as) man but that may also be the place where a speaking(as) woman may dare to expressitself. (1985c, 135) Speaking (as) woman would, among other things, permit women to speak to men. (1985c, 136) It is certain that with women-among-themselves . . . someof a woman is heard. This accounts for the thing speaking(as) desireor the necessityof sexual nonintegration:the dominant languageis so powerfulthat women do not dare to speak (as) woman outside the context of nonintegration. (1985c, 135) Parler femmeappearsto be defined not so much by what one says, or even by how one says it, but fromwhence and to whom one speaks.Locusand audience distinguisha speaking(as) woman froma speaking(as) man: "byspeaking (as) woman,one may attempt to provide a place for the 'other' as feminine" (1985c, 135). Is it only from this "place"what women can speak to can achieve a women, or is it preciselyby speakingto women that the speaker parler femme?Irigaray's responsewould be "both at once" since for a woman

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

70

Hypatia

to speakshe must establisha locus fromwhich to be heard, and to articulate such a space, she must speak. Closely connected to the notion of parler femmeis Irigaray's conception of two syntaxes (one masculine, one feminine) which cannot accuratelybe describedby the number"two"since "they are not susceptibleto comparison" in their strangeness and eccen(1985b, 139). These syntaxesare "irreducible one to the other. out of different times, places, logics, 'repretricity Coming sentations,'and economies"(1985b, 139). The two syntaxescannot be comparedsince the relationbetween them is not basedon similaritybut contiguity, in other words, not on metaphorbut on metonymy.Like the "two lips," they "touch upon"but never wholly absorbeach other. Contiguity, it turns out, operates as the dominant featureof a parler femme, the distinguishing characteristicof a feminine syntax: what a feminine syntax might be is not simple nor easy to there wouldno longerbe either state, becausein that "syntax" or "oneness" would no longer be privileged, subject object, there would no longer be proper meanings, proper names, attributes. . . Instead, that "syntax"would involve "proper" nearness,proximity,but in such an extremeformthat it would preclude any distinction of identities, any establishment of ownership, thus any form of appropriation.(1985c, 134) Impactedwithin this list of what a feminine syntax is not-subject, object, and so on-a positive descriptionemerges:nearness oneness, appropriation, and proximity. We returnto the figureof the two lips as a model for a new kind of exchange: aredoubtlessquite foreignto the femOwnershipand property inine. At least sexually. But not nearness.Nearness so pronounced that it makesall discriminationof identity, and thus all forms of property, impossible. Woman derives pleasure She fromwhat is so nearthatshecannothaveit, norhaveherself. herself enters into a ceaseless exchange of herself with the other without any possibilityof identifyingeither. This puts into question all prevailingeconomies. . . . (1985c, 31) To speak (as) woman is ceaselesslyto embracewordsand persistentlyto cast them off. To touch upon but never to solidify, to put into play but never to arrive at a final telos or meaning, isn't this another way to speak about "diff6rance"?Carolyn Burke seems to think so when she proposes that fable of significationto supplement,but not reoffersus a "vaginal" Irigaray place, Derrida's"hymeneal" fable (1987, 293 and 303). I don't believe, would ever use such a term or endorsesuch a concept however, that Irigaray as "vaginalfable"since it limits female pleasureto a single erogeneouszone

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

71

the vaginaand denyingthat a woman'ssexualityis plural: by over-privileging in fact, "a woman'serogeneouszones are not the clitoris or the vagina, but the clitorisand the vagina, and the lips, and the vulva, and the mouth of the uterus,and the uterusitself, and the breasts.. ." (1985c, 63-4). The sites of wonderswhether the qualifier woman'spleasureare so diffuse that Irigaray "genital"is still even required(1985c, 64). If the tropeof nearnessdoes not function in the way Burkesuggests,as yet "8 it does appearto facilitate a another non-synonymicterm for "differance, deconstruction of the metaphor/metonymybinarismoperative in Western philosophicaldiscourse. Roman Jakobsondefines these two polar figuresof speech in "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturin which he demonstrates that all variebances,"a studyof speech disorders ties of aphasiacan be identifiedas an impairment either of the facultyfor "selection and substitution"(metaphor)or of the facultyfor "combinationand contexture" (metonymy). Metaphor operates along the axis of similarity whereasmetonymyoperatesalong the axis of contiguity (Jakobson and Halle 1956, 76).9 In theories of language,metaphorhas long dominatedover metonymy.'0 We see this dominance played out in Lacanian psychoanalysis where the phallus stands in a privilegedmetaphoricrelation to the body (it "standsfor"sexual difference), and where the "paternalmetaphor"emerges as the privilegedsignifier. Why is metaphorvalidatedover metonymy?Exactly what role does the paternal metaphorplay in Lacan'stheorizationof sexual differenceand its construction? JacquelineRose identifies three symbolic functions: First, as a referenceto the act of substitution(substitutionis the very law of metaphoricoperation), wherebythe prohibition of the father takes up the place originallyfiguredby the absence of the mother. Secondly, as a referenceto the status of paternity itself which can only ever logically be inferred. And thirdly,as partof an insistencethat the fatherstandsfor a place and function which is not reducibleto the presence or absence of the real father as such. (Mitchell and Rose 1982, 38-39) Rose goes on to defend Lacan againstthe chargeof phallocentrism,arguing that we must recognizethat for Lacan "the status of the phallus is a fraud" (becausecastrationis a fraud)and so we mustnot literalizethe phallusand reduce it to the level of the penis (40 and 45). While this line of argumentis compellingenough, and certainlyfaithfulto Lacan'sown conception of the phallus, still the contiguitybetween the penis and the phallus, the proximityand nearnessof these two terms, gives one pause. MaryAnn Doane puts the problemthis way: [D]oesthe phallusreallyhave nothing to do with the penis, no commercewith it at all? The ease of the descriptionby means

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

72

Hypatia

of which the boy situateshimself in the mode of "having"one would seem to indicate that this is not the case. . . . There is a sense in which all attemptsto deny the relationbetween the phallus and the penis are feints, veils, illusions. The phallus, as signifier,may no longerbe the penis, but any effortto conceptualize its function is inseparablefrom an imagingof the body. (1981, 27-28)11 The problem,put anotherway, is simplythat the relationbetween the penis and the phallus is as much one of associationor metonymyas similarityor treatmentof the "two lips," metaphor.The same might be said of Irigaray's the only differencebeing that Irigaray allocates the metonymic function to the two lips and relegatesmetaphorto the realmof Lacan'sphallomorphism. has this to say about a woman'shistorical relation to metaphoriIrigaray city: a woman is "stifled beneath all those eulogistic or denigratorymetaphors"(1985b, 142-43); she is "hemmedin, cathected by tropes"(1985b, 143) and "rolledup in metaphors"(1985b, 144). One wondersto what extent it is truly possible to think of the "two lips" as somethingother than a metaphor.I would arguethat, despite Irigaray's protestationsto the contrary, the figureof the "two lips" never stops functioning metaphorically.Her insistence that the two lips escape metaphoricity providesus with a particularly clear example of what Paul de Man identifies as the inevitability of a systemof tropesat the very momentwe claim to escapefromit" "reentering (1984, 72). But, what is importantabout Irigaray's conception of this particularfigureis that the "two lips"operateas a metaphor for metonymy;through toward the deconstructionof the this collapseof boundaries,Irigaray gestures binarism.In fact, her workpersistentlyattempts classic metaphor/metonymy dominanceover metonymy; to effect a historicaldisplacementof metaphor's she "impugnsthe privilege grantedto metaphor(a quasi solid) over metonymy (which is much moreclosely allied to fluids)"(1985c, 110). If Freudwas insiststhat no analnot able to resist the seduction of an analogy,12 Irigaray her: no metaphoricoperation, completes ogy, Are we alike?If you like. It's a little abstract.I don't quite understand'alike.' Do you? Alike in whose eyes? in what terms? with referencesto what third?I'mtouching by what standards? that's you, quite enough to let me know that you are my body. (1985c, 208) Lacanwritesthat the play of both displacementand condensation(metaphor and metonymy) mark a subject'srelation to the signifier;they operate, in fact, as the laws which govern the unconscious. A question oft-repeatedin is "whetherthe feminine has an unconsciousor whether it is the unIrigaray conscious"(1985c, 73). Is it possiblethat the feminineneither has an uncon-

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

73

man'sunconsciousbut ratherarticulatesitself sciousof its own nor represents as a specific operationwithin the unconscious:the play of metonymy?
A POLITICS OFESSENCE

favoritetopics-the two lips, parler Irigaray's femme,a feminine syntax, an economy of fluids-all seem to suggestthat she is more interestedin questions of subjectivity,desire, and the unconsciousthan in questionsof power, history, and politics. In one sense, this is true; as a "psychophilosopher," Irigarayplaces greater emphasis on the "physical"than on the "social." However, her work is not entirelywithout what one might call a certainpolitical perspicacity. Monique Plaza, Beverly Brown, Parveen Adams, and Ann RosalindJones all question whether a psychoanalyticinvestigationof the feminine can adequatelyaccount for women'ssocial oppression.As Jones puts it, feministsmay still doubt the efficacyof privilegingchanges in subjectivityover changes in economic and political systems;is this not dangling a semiotic carrot in front of a mare still harnessed into phallocentric social practices? (Jones 1985, 107)13 Plazagoes furtherand indicts Irigaray for providingnot a theoryof oppression but an oppressivetheory (1978, 24-25). While I think it is true that Irigaray does not provideus with a blueprintfor social action, I also find her workpolitically awareand even practicallyuseful. Any discussionof Irigaray's "politics of essence"must begin with her own understanding of politics and, specifically, with her comments on what a feminist politics might be. on political practice, the women'smovement in Irigaray's explicit remarks France(the MLF), and women'ssocial oppressionare largelyconcentratedin the selection from her interviews, seminarremarks,and conversationspublished underthe title "Questions" in ThisSex Which is Not One. It seemsthat readersand studentsof Irigaray most want her to talk about the political significanceof her work, its impacton social practice,and its relationto current political activism in France, perhapsbecause Speculum appears,on the surto so the of the face, jettison completely category political in favor of the and seems philosophical psychoanalytic.Irigaray eagerto respondto her critics. If Plaza and others see her work as reactionarybecause it is apolitical, is likely to respondthat they are workingwith too limited or rigid a Irigaray notion of politics, that they areperhapsthinkingonly in termsof a masculine politics: Strictly speaking,political practice, at least currently,is masculine throughand through. In orderfor women to be able to

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

74

Hypatia

make themselves heard, a 'radical'evolution in our way of conceptualizingand managingthe political realm is required. (1985c, 127) For Irigaray, from the project politics-a "feminine"politics-is inseparable of puttingthe feminine into history, into discourse,and into culture. Because of the contingent, future condition of this latter project, Irigaray acknowl. .. in that fact "we cannot of a feminine but only of edges speak politics, certain conditions under which it may be possible"(1985c, 128). The nascent condition of a feminine politics, however, does not preclude discussionof a feminist politics. "Liberation" (loosely understoodby Irigaray task: as the introductionof the feminine into practice)is not an "individual" A long history has put all women in the same sexual, social, and cultural condition. Whatever inequalities may exist among women, they all undergo,even without clearlyrealizing it, the same oppression, the same exploitation of their body, the same denial of their desire. That is why it is important for women to be able to join together, and to join together "amongthemselves".... The first issue facing liberaof tion movements is that of makingeach woman "conscious" the fact that what she has felt in her personalexperience is a to thatexperience condition sharedby all women, thus allowing be politicized. (1985c, 164) A differentnotion of politics does seem to emergehere-a politics basednot so much on group militancy or open confrontation as on shared "experience." But this notion of politics sounds suspiciouslylike the popularapprovedmethod of politicizationin the earlyyearsof the Women'sMovement And as such, it is subject in both Franceand America:consciousness-raising. to many of the same criticisms-especially the charge by numerous"marginal" feminists that what white, heterosexual, middle-class,and educated women feel in their personal experience does not necessarilyrepresent"a condition sharedby all women." Irigaray might rightlybe accusedhere of a certain tendency to universalizeand to homogenize, to subsumeall women underthe categoryof "Woman."Still, her work is not alwaysinsensitive to Consider: the axes of differencewhich divide "women-among-themselves." I think the most importantthing to do is to expose the exploithat are tation common to all women and to find the struggles appropriatefor each woman, right where she is, depending upon her nationality, her job, her social class, her sexualexperience, that is, upon the formof oppressionthat is for her the most immediatelyunbearable.(1985c, 166-67) double gesture:Irigaray Here we see the typical Irigarian proposesa feminist politics politics that will workon two frontsat once-on one side, a "global"

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

75

that seeks to addressthe problemof women's universaloppression,and on the specificityand complexthe other side, a "local"politics that will address In situation. order to accomplish "both at of each woman's ity particular believes that "it is essential for women among themselvesto once," Irigaray invent new modes of organization,new forms of struggle,new challenges" (1985c, 166). The phrase"women-among-themselves" suggestsa call for sepand indeed endorse aratism, does, cautiously, Irigaray separatismas a valid for feminists: political strategy For women to undertaketactical strikes, to keep themselves apartfrommen long enough to learnto defendtheir desire, especially throughspeech, to discoverthe love of other women which sheltered from men's imperiouschoices that put them in the position of rival commodities, to forgefor themselvesa social status that compels recognition, to earn their living in orderto escape from the condition of prostitute. . . these are certainly indispensable stages in their escape from their on the exchange market.But if their aim were proletarization to reduce the orderof things, even supposingthis to be simply would possible, history repeat itself in the long run, would revert to sameness:to phallocratism.(1985c, 33) believes that separatism can be a legitimatemeans to escape from a Irigaray phallic economy but not an adequategoal; she sees it as a tactical option ratherthan a final telos. Above all, she does not want to foreclosethe possibility that the politics of women-among-themselves might itself be a way to the feminine into put practice. Through her comments on what a feminist politics might be, Irigaray broadensthe notion of politics to include psychic resistance. She does not rule out direct political activism;she simplyinsiststhat resistancemustoperate on many levels: women mustof coursecontinue to struggle for equalwagesand social rightsagainstdiscriminationin employmentand education, and so forth. But that is not enough: women merely "equal"to men would be "like them," thereforenot women. (1985c, 165-66) seems to imply here that women both alreadyhave an identity on Irigaray which to base a politics and that they are striving to secure an identity throughthe practiceof politics. In either case, the concept of "identity"has long been a problemfor feminist poststructuralists seeking to base a politics on somethingother than "essence."Is it possibleto generatea theoryof feminine specificity that is not essentialist?How do we reconcile the poststructuralistprojectto displaceidentitywith the feministprojectto reclaimit? For

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

76

Hypatia

the solution is again double: women are engaged in the processof Irigaray both constructingand deconstructingtheir identities, their essences, simultaneously.14 The processof laying claim to "essence"at first appearsto be a politically essentialismin the reactionarymaneuver;but one needs to place Irigaray's in to context of Western order historical larger philosophy comprehendhow has a she might be using it strategically.In Aristotelianphilosophy,"woman" distinct from "man's" relation to essence. relation to essence, very specific Only man properlyhas an essence; subjecthoodis attained as he strives, in words, "to realizehis essence as perfectlyas he can, to give full exIrigaray's pression to his telos"(1985b, 164).15 Because only subjectshave access to remainsin unrealized essence, "woman" potentiality;she never achieves "the wholenessof her form"-or if she has a form, it is merely"privation" (1985b, 165). Woman is the groundof essence, its preconditionin man, without herself having any access to it; she is the groundof subjecthood,but not herselfa subject: Is she unnecessaryin and of herself, but essential as the nonsubjective sub-jectum?As that which can never achieve the statusof subject, at least for/byherself. Is she the indispensable condition wherebythe living entity retainsand maintainsand perfectshimself in his self-likeness?(1985b, 165) In a phallocraticorder, woman can never be more than "the passagethat the inessentialwhims of a still sensible and materialnaserves to transform ture into universalwill" (1985b, 225). reading of Aristotle's understandingof essence remindsme of Irigaray's Lacan'sdistinction between beingand havingthe phallus:a woman does not the phallus, she is the Phallus.16 Similarly,we can say that, in Aristopossess telian logic, a woman does not havean essence, she is Essence. Thereforeto and to offer give "woman"an essence is to undo Western phallomorphism in Western women entry into subjecthood.Moreover,because this ontology existence is predicated on essence, it has been possible for someone like that without Lacan to conclude, remaining metaphysics, fully withintraditional essence, "womandoes not exist." Does this not cast a ratherdifferentlight on theorizationof a woman'sessence?A woman who lays claim to an Irigaray's essence of her own undoes the conventional binarismsof essence/accident, form/matter,and actuality/potentiality.In this specifichistoricalcontext, to essentialize"woman"can be a politically strategicgestureof displacement. To say that "woman"does not have an essence but is Essence, and at the same time to say that she has no accessherselfto Essenceas Form,seemsblatantly contradictory.Moreover, has not Western philosophyalwaysposited an essence for woman-an essence basedon biologyand, as everyoneknows, definedby the propertiesof weakness,passivity,receptivity,and emotion, to

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

77

it is prename just a few? The problem, I would argue, is not with Irigaray; essentialism of which clarifies for us the contracisely Irigaray's deployment diction at the heart of Aristotelian metaphysics.In his philosophy, we see has become the site of this contradiction:on the that the figureof "woman" asserted to have an essence which definesher as woman one hand, woman is and yet, on the other hand, woman is relegatedto the status of matterand can have no access to essence (the most she can do is to facilitateman'sactualizingof his inner potential). I would go so far as to say that the dominant line of patriarchalthought since Aristotle is built on this central contradiction: woman has an essence and it is matter;or, put slightly differently,it is the essence of woman to have no essence. To the extent that Irigaray reopens the questionof essence and woman'saccessto it, essentialismrepresents not a trapshe falls into but rathera key strategyshe puts into play, not a dangerous oversightbut rathera lever of displacement. never actuallytells us; What, then, constitutes woman'sessence?Irigaray at most she only approximates-"touchesupon"-possible descriptions,such as the metonymicfigureof the two lips. In fact, she insiststhat "woman" can never be incorporatedin any theory, defined by any metaphysics."What I want," Irigaray writes, "is not to create a theory of woman, but to secure a for the within sexual difference"(1985c, 159). She explains feminine place that "for the elaborationof a theory of woman, men, I think, suffice. In a woman('s)language,the concept as such wouldhave no place"(1985c, 123). workstowardssecuringa woman'saccess to an essence of her own, Irigaray without actuallyprescribing what that essence might be, or without precludthe that a ing possibility subject might possessmultiple essences which may even contradictor compete with one another.Thus Irigaray sees the question "Are you a woman?"to be preciselythe wrong question. Let me conclude with her playfulchallenge to all those who would pressher to define the es" 'I' am not 'I,' I am not, I am not one. As for woman,try sence of "woman":
and find out . ." (1985c, 120).

NOTES
1. Heath (1978), Jardine(1987), Schor (1987), and Spivak (1987) have all endorseda renewed considerationof essentialism. 2. The phrase is Carolyn Burke's(1981, 289). 3. Two earlierintroductory pieces to Frenchfeminist theory also appearin Signs:see Marks (1978) and Burke (1978). 4. Foranothersympatheticreadingof Irigaray, and an applicationof her deconstructivefeminism, see Feral (1981). 5. Irigaray makesa distinction between "morphological" and "anatomical" in "Women'sExile" (1977, 64), but I agreewith Monique Plaza(1978, 31) and Toril Moi (1985, 143) that the distinction is too impreciseto be helpful. 6. The Imaginary and the Symbolicare here used in the Lacaniansense. The Imaginary refers to the primary narcissism(the illusionaryoneness with the maternalbody) which characterizes

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

78

Hypatia

the child's psychicaldevelopment in the pre-oedipalstage. The symmetryof the mother-child dyadis brokenby the introductionof the Lawof the Fatherduringthe Oedipalstage, facilitating the child's accession to subjectivity through the order of language, speech, and sociality. In Lacan, the Symbolic is alwaysvalued over the Imaginary(see Lacan 1977). to reduce"the subtletyof 7. Carolyn Burkemakes a similarargumentin defense of Irigaray: Irigaray's thought to a simpleargument'fromthe body,' in orderto then point out that such arguments are, indeed, essentialist"amounts to a circularargumentbasedon a ratherquestionable initial reading(1981, 302). 8. Vincent Leitch writes that, by the early 1980's, Derridahad formulatedmore than three dozen such substitutions(see Leitch 1983, 43). 9. For a recent rereadingand applicationof akobson'sterms, see Johnson (1984, 205-19). 10. Studiesof metaphorhave also dominatedover studiesof metonymyin the comparatively in meaningconrecent historyof linguisticand semiotic research.Jakobson explains:"Similarity to. similarityconwith the symbolsof the languagereferred nects the symbolsof a metalanguage nects a metaphoricalterm with the term for which it is substituted.Consequently, when conto interprettropes, the researcher possessesmore homogeneousmeans structinga metalanguage to handle metaphor,whereasmetonymy, basedon a differentprinciple, easily defies interpretation. Thereforenothing comparableto the rich literatureon metaphorcan be cited for the theory of metonymy"(1956, 81). the penis/phallusdistinction, focussing Lacan(1985) also addresses 11. Jane Gallop'sReading specificallyon the linguistic sourcesof the confusion. See especially chapter 6, "Readingthe Same Difference"in Men by Women, Phallus,"pp. 133-156. See also Gallop's "Phallus/Penis: Womenand Literature (1981). in Analysis"(1937): "I have not been able to "Constructions 12. The referenceis to Freud's resistthe seductionof an analogy."Jane Gallop has cleverlysuggestedthat Irigaray's generalresistance to analogicalreasoningis based on a priorrepudiationof Freud's anal-logicalmodel of refusalof analogycan thus be readwithin the widerframeof a deep sexual difference. Irigaray's scepticismconcerning the anal fixation of Freud'sown theories (see Gallop 1982a, 68-69). 13. See also Plaza (1978) and Adams and Brown (1979). 14. Naomi Schor has made a similar point which I find compelling: "in both Cixous and the anti-essentialistaspect of their work is that which is most derivative, that is most Irigaray cease to mime the master'svoice and speak in their own Derridean.When Cixous and Irigaray voices, they speak a dialect of essentialese, the languageof what they construeas the feminine, and wishing it weren'tso won't make it go away. Ratherthan simplywanting to excise this unsightly excrescence, I think it would be ultimatelymore interestingand surelymore difficultto deconstructand constructfemjust how and why a Cixous and an Irigaray attemptto understand ininity at the same time" (see Schor 1986, 98-99). on Aristotle can be found in the chapterentitled "Howto Conremarks 15. Most of Irigaray's ceive (of) a Girl"in 1985b, 160-67. ForAristotle'sown commentson essence, see especiallyCatand On the Generation of Animals,all of which can be found in egories,Physics,Metaphysics, McKeon 1941. 16. For Lacan'sdistinction between being and having the phallus, see "The Meaningof the Phallus"in Mitchel and Rose 1982, esp. 82-84. Both girl and boy are the phallus in the preoedipal stage; that is, both are the phallusfor the mother. But duringthe crucial accension to sexual differencethrough the recognition and representationof lack (the castrationcomplex) the possessionof a penis allows the boy to havethe phalluswhile the girl continues to be it. For Lacan, it is this distinction between being and having the phalluswhich facilitatesthe takingon of a sexed subject position, the productionof masculineor feminine subjects.

REFERENCES

and sexualdifference. Chicago: The UniAbel, Elizabeth,ed. 1982. Writing Press. of versity Chicago

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Diana J. Fuss

79

Adams, Parveenand Brown, Beverly. 1979. The feminine body and feminist politics. m/f 3: 35-50. Burke,Carolyn. 1978. ReportfromParis:Women'swritingand the women's movement. Signs3 (4): 843-55. . 1981. Irigaray Studies7 (2): 288through the looking glass. Feminist 306. New York:ColumbiaUniDe Man, Paul. 1984. The rhetoric of romanticism. Press. versity analysis of women'sopDelphy, Christine. 1984. Close to home:A materialist Trans. Diana Leonard.Amherst:The University of Massachupression. setts Press. Doane, MaryAnn. 1981. Woman'sstake:Filmingthe female body. October 17: 23-36. Faure,Christine. 1981. The twilight of the goddesses,or the intellectualcrisis of french feminism. Signs7 (1): 81-6. 32: 52-64. Feral,Josette. 1981. Towardsa theory of displacement.Substance Same difference.In Men by women.Vol. 2 Gallop, Jane. 1981. Phallus/penis: of Womenandliterature, ed. JanetTodd. New Yorkand London:Holmes & Meier, 243-51. . 1982a. The daughter's seduction: and psychoanalysis. Feminism Ithaca, New York:Comell University Press. . 1982b. Writing and sexualdifference: The differencewithin. Critical Inquiry(Summer). . 1983. Quandnos Levress'ecrivent:Irigaray's Rebodypolitic. Romanic view 74 (1): 77-83. . 1985. Reading Lacan. Ithaca and London:Cornell University Press. Difference. Screen19 (3): 50-112. 1978. Heath, Stephen. Luce. Women's exile. Ideology 1977. andConsciousness 1 (May):62Irigaray, 76. . 1985a. Is the subjectof science sexed?Cultural 1 (Fall): 73-88. Critique . 1985b. Speculum of the otherwoman.Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, New York:Corell UniversityPress.Trans.of Speculum de l'autre femme. Paris:Minuit, 1974. . 1985c. Thissex whichis not one. Trans. CatherinePorterwith Carolyn Burke.Ithaca, New York:Cornell UniversityPress.Trans.of Ce Sexequi n'en est pas un. Paris:Minuit, 1977. Jacobus,Mary. 1982. The questionof language:men of maximsand The mill on thefloss. In Writing andsexualdifference; ed. ElizabethAbel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 37-52. Jakobson, Roman and Halle, Morris. 1956. Fundamentals of language.'SGravenhage:Mouton. Jardine,Alice and Smith, Paul, eds. 1987. Men in feminism.New Yorkand London: Methuen.

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

80

Hypatia

Jardine, Alice. 1987. Men in feminism: Odor di uomo or compagnonsde route?In Men infeminism, eds. Alice Jardineand PaulSmith. New York: 54-61. Methuen, Johnson, Barbara.1984. Metaphor, metonymyand voice in Theireyes were andliterary ed. HenryLouisGates, watching god. In Blackliterature theory, New 205-219. York: Methuen, Jr. Jones, Ann Rosalind. 1985. Inscribingfemininity: French theories of the Feministliterarycriticism,eds. Gayle feminine. In Makinga difference: Greene and Coppelia Kahn. London and New York:Methuen, 80-112. Lacan,Jaques. 1977. Ecrits.Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York:W. W. Norton & Company. criticism:An advancedintroduction. Leitch, Vincent. 1983. Deconstructive New York:Columbia University Press. Marks,Elaine. 1978. Women and literaturein France. Signs3 (4):832-42. New York:Random McKeon, Richard,ed. 1941. The basicworksof Aristotle. House. in France:Fora dialecticsof Miller, Nancy K. 1980. Women'sautobiography and society, eds. Sally identification. Womenand languagein literature McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker,and Nelly Furman.New York:Praeger. Lacan Mitchell, Juliet and Rose, Jacqueline. 1982. Feminine Jacques sexuality: and the ecolefreudienne. New York:W. W. Norton and Company. Moi, Toril. 1985. Sexual/textual politics.New York:Methuen. 1978. Plaza, Monique. "Phallomorphic power" and the psychology of andConsciousness "woman."Ideology 4 (Autumn):57-76. Originallypub1 lished in Questions feministes (1978). studies:An introduction. Ruthven, K. K. 1984. Feministliterary Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. 8. OxfordUniversity Schor, Naomi. 1986. Introducingfeminism. Paragraph Press:94-101. - . 1987. Dreaming dissymmetry:Barthes, Foucault, and sexual difference. In Men in feminism.Jardineand Smith, 98-110. and Showalter, Elaine. 1982. Feministcriticismin the wilderness.In Writing Abel. Chicago:The Universityof Chicago ed. Elizabeth sexualdifference, Press, 9-36. politics. Essaysin cultural Spivak, GayatriChakravorty.1987. In otherworlds: New Yorkand London: Methuen. and the female imaginary: Speaking Whitford,Margaret.1986. Luce Irigaray 43 (Summer):3-8. as a woman. Radical Philosophy Issues(Summer):103Wittig, Monique. 1980. The straightmind. Feminist 111. Issues(Fall): 47-54. . 1981. One is not born a woman. Feminist

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.3 on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:43:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions