E 341 Lecture Notes - Gender Trouble, Post-Structuralism, Performativity
Document Summary
1980"s: growing prominence of french feminism (luce irigaray, h l ne cixous, and julia. Instead of focusing on how women had been marginalized in patriarchy or how they had been misrepresented, french feminism focuses on exploring female essence . I. e. , bringing into light a specific mode of being, thinking, speaking, writing that is essentially female. Women"s physical processes offer a different experience of being. The persistent materiality of female bodily processes is very different from male abstraction, of the prioritization of abstract reason, thought etc. over the physical, of raising soul/mind over body. This difference is partly due to the socialization processes of patriarchy that force rejection of the maternal. Female essence can also be manifested in writing/literature. Cixous" term is closely linked with derrida"s analysis of writing as differance. From her essay, the laugh of the medusa , cixous suggest that ecriture feminine is associated with the feminine and facilitates the free play of meanings .
