Towards a Theory of Displacement

Following an interview with the women from the group Psychanalyse et Politique,' the journal Tel Quel,2 borrowing the expression from the talks held by Julia Kristeva, entitled the article La Femme ce n'est jamais cela, thereby stressing from the outset that any attempt to define woman is, if not bound to fail, at least condemned to a perpetual sliding along the hypothetical axis of a feminine nature. To delimit woman, encircle her, enclose her in order better to define her, such has been the objective for several years of much sociological and psychoanalytic research in pursuit of a feminine essence.3 Conceived of as a rare animal, a strange object that past science and philosophy dismissed for lack of ability to understand her, explain her, explain her to themselves, she has suddenly become the center of all inquiries, of all interrogations. She is asked questions and is expected to give answers that might inform us not only of herself and her desires, her body and her pleasure, her relations to maternity and her inscription in reproduction, but also about the order of the world and its structures, power and its foundations, and finally about the law and its implications for the individual and society. Caged in, placed under glass, pinned to the wall of masculine knowledge believing itself to be the only one capable of understanding her, irremediably trapped, the object of man's incessant curiosity which probes her underneath [ses dessous] with amazement and sends her back without discussion into the cave from which she has been

Curiosity · Object (grammar) · Order (exchange) · Pleasure · Power (physics) · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · French Urban and Social Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Essentially Speaking”

  Open Access•Diana Fuss, Diana J Fuss•Hypatia•1988

  Add to list

• The political letter

  Open Access•Marianne De Jong•Journal of Literary Studies•1987

  Add to list