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Analogy as Destiny: Cartesian Man and the Woman Reader

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Carol H. Cantrell
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Abstract

Feminist studies in the history and philosophy of science have suggested that supposedly neutral and objective discourses are shaped by pairs of dualisms, which though value-laden are assumed to inhere in the order of nature. These hierarchical pairs devalue women, particularly their bodies and their labor, as they sanction the domination of nature. Readers of literature can draw on these studies to address texts and genres which do not thematize gender but rather purport to portray “the human condition.” Samuel Beckett's Molloy, with its clear structure of Cartesian divisions, provides a dramatic example of how an examination of dualisms reveals the presence of a language of gender informing a minimalist literary text.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 5 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Feminism and Aesthetics , Summer 1990 , pp. 7 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by Hypatia, Inc.

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