Accessing Women through Masculine Discourse: Luce Irigaray’s Embodied Syntax

Date
2012
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
Type
Thesis
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Open Access
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
Men and women’s relationship to their bodies is mediated by the linguistic structures surrounding them. The human body plays an important role in understand the border between language and the body. Contemporary Feminists, Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler, understand this relationship as intrinsically linked. This thesis articulates a possible development of the body that sees the female body as becoming a linguistically necessary reference for the male dominated discourse. By existing in a society that values the phallus as the master signifier women become displaced from their own bodies. This displacement is represented in how women relate to language. Without a connection to their own bodies women lose their position as a subject. Additionally, the rejection of her own body leaves the woman in a state of sexual and psychological repression. According to Irigaray their lost female identity can only be reclaimed through a new understanding of language. This new language would incorporate the materiality of the body in an attempt to reclaim a space for the female subject in discourse. These claims are based on a reinterpretation by Luce Irigaray, of Sigmund Freud’s theoretical and psychoanalytic work on sexual development.
Description
Citation
Collections