Italialainen uusfeminismi naisemansipaation ja institutionalisoituneen luokkataistelun kritiikkinä

Authors

• Tuija Parvikko

Abstract

»woman» are considered to be products of language. For Jacques Lacan the subject is constituted through language as a split subject, it is »born divided». Juliet Mitchell emphasizes that it is the event of division which must be explained. In Freud’s theory this event is paternal threat of phallic castration. The castration complex brings about the distinction between the sexes. Julia Kristeva aims at destroying all fixed identities by saying that a subject is continually put on trial in a semiotic process which threatens the symbolic order. She claims that motherhood is a specific way for women to express the semiotic. Luce Irigaray points out that Phallus is a signifier which arises to replace the original mark of both woman and man — the navel. The father’s function is to deny this original matrix and to build a new matrix, the one of the language. Accordingly, two kinds of relationships are denied: the one between mother and daughter, and the one between women. When denying this it becomes possible to see language as no longer something oppressive but as something neutral and non-sexed. It is precisely this apparent neutrality that women have to struggle against.