Carissa Sharp

Chapter 6: 193-206

Postmodern feminists seek to get away from any absolute assertions of what a feminist should be, since they try to avoid "phallogocentric thought," or thought that centers around an absolute word. They write about both feminist theory and practice. Three of the main postmodern feminists, Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, base their thought on Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism, Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism, and Jacques Lacan's interpretation of psychoanalysis (193-194).

Simone de Beauvoir stressed women's "otherness," with the idea that women are second to men. Postmodern feminists take her idea that woman is other, but say that this is actually an advantage because of the possibilities that being outside of the male-dominated world has (195). Deconstructionists like Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida believed that the entire system of thought in the Western world was wrong, and that we should get away from essentialist thinking, such as concepts like self-identity and truth (195-196). Jacques Lacan's interpretation of the Oedipus complex is such that unlike boys, girls are left without being able to fully internalize the symbolic order of the world. This is because both girls and boys split from their mother in exchange for masculine language. Boys identify with their father, and thus internalize the symbolic order of language, while girls are unable to fully identify with the father because of their anatomy. Because they lack feminine words there is no place for women in Lacan's social order &endash; they have a repressed existence at the margins (196-198). Jacques Derrida criticized logocentrism, phallocentrism, and dualism as they appeared in the social order. He defined the gap between reality and language as difference, which is a term that postmodern feminists appropriated (198).

Helene Cixous, a novelist, contrasts feminine writing with masculine writing, saying that masculine writing is based on oppositions, such as dichotomous pairs of words and concepts. Cixous draws many connections between sexuality and writing, saying that men's writing is like their sexuality in its pointedness and boring nature, while female writing is more open and full of possibilities. She encourages women to write in their own way, and through desire to escape the traditional masculine-centered Western thought (199-201).

Luce Irigaray is a psychoanalyst who believes that currently the feminine is defined by the patriarchy. Irigaray searches for ways to find the "feminine feminine," or woman the way women see her. She encourages women to use more active voice, to create a female sexuality, and to undo the effects of men's views of women by exaggerating those images. While Irigaray is often self-contradictory, she relishes that fact because it means that she is not being tied down by phallogocentric thought (201-204).

Julie Kristeva's main point is to break down identity, especially sexual identity, to make it ambiguous, rather than specifically masculine and feminine. Her rejection of the Oedipus complex allows for a liberated person to switch between different stages of development as well as masculine, feminine, and many other concepts. Kristeva believed in sexual differences, but opposed the idea of binary sexes (204-206).