Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:18:00.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Corporeal Habits: Addressing Essentialism Differently

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Vicki Kirby
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Feminism could be described as a discourse that negotiates corporeality, what a body is and what a body can do. Nevertheless, the specter of essentialism means that the biological or anatomical body, the body that is commonly understood to be the “real” body, is often excluded from this investigation. The increasingly sterile debate between essentialism and antiessentialism has inadvertently encouraged this somatophobia. I argue that these opposing positions are actually inseparable, sharing a complicitous relationship that produces material effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 6 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminism and the Body , Fall 1991 , pp. 4 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

de Beauvoir, Simone. 1953 [1949]. The second sex. Parshley, H. M., trans. London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 1989. The politics of ontological difference. In Between feminism and psychoanalysis. Brennan, Teresa, ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burke, Carolyn. 1981. Irigaray through the looking glass. Feminist Studies 7(2): 288–306.10.2307/3177525CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campioni, Mia and Gross [Grosz], Elizabeth. 1983. Love's labours lost: Marxism and feminism. In Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx. Allen, J. and Patton, P. eds. Sydney: Intervention.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1983 [1972]. Anti‐Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Hurley, Robert, Seem, Mark and Lane, Helen R., trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (1972).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1979a. Scribble (writing power). Plotkin, C., trans. Yale French Studies 58: (1)17–47.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1979b [1978]. Spurs: Nietzsche's styles. Harlow, Barbara, trans. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1982a [1972]. The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before linguistics. In Margins of philosophy. Bass, Alan, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1982b [1972]. Différance. In Margins of philosophy. Bass, Alan, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1984. Deconstruction and the other: An interview with Richard Kearney. In Dialogues with contemporary continental thinkers: The phenomenological heritage. Kearney, Richard, ed. Manchester and Dover, NH: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1985a [1967]. Freud and the scene of writing. In Writing and difference. Bass, Alan, trans. London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1985b [1072]. Semiology and grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva. In Positions. Bass, Alan, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feher, Michel with Naddaff, Ramona and Tazi, Nadia, eds. 1989. Fragments for a history of the human body: Parts one, two, and three. New York: Zone; Cambridge, MA: Distributed by MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ferrell, Robyn. N.d. Xenophobia: At the border of philosophy and literature. In On Literary theory and philosophy: A cross‐disciplinary encounter. Freadman, R. and Reinhardt, L. eds. London: Macmillan, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Language, counter‐memory, practice. Bouchard, D. F. and Simon, S. trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fuss, Diana J. 1989. “Essentially speaking”: Luce Irigaray's language of essence. Hypatia 3(3): 62–80.10.1111/j.1527-2001.1988.tb00189.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1983. Quand nos lèvres s'écrivent: Irigaray's body politic. Romanic Review 74(1): 77–83. Republished, 1988. Lip service. In Thinking through the body. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1982. Writing and sexual difference: The difference within. In Writing and sexual difference. Abel, Elizabeth, ed. Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press; Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gasché, Rodolphe. 1979. Deconstruction as criticism. Glyph 6: 177–215.Google Scholar
Gatens, Moira. 1983. A critique of the sex/gender distinction. In Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx. Allen, J. and Patton, P. eds. Sydney: Intervention. Reprinted in A reader in feminist knowledge. Sneja Gunew, ed. London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1989. Sexual subversions: Three French feminists. Sydney and Boston: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1990. A note on essentialism and difference. In Feminist knowledge as critique and construct. Gunew, Sneja, ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Head, Henry. 1920. Studies in neurology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heath, Stephen. 1978. Difference. Screen 19(3): 50–112.10.1093/screen/19.3.51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1977. Women's exile. Venn, C., trans. Ideology and Consciousness May 1: 62–76.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985a [1974]. Speculum of the other woman. Gill, Gillian C., trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985b [1977]. This sex which is not one. In This sex which is not one. Porter, C. with Burke, C., trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (1977).Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985c. Is the subject of science sexed? Oberle, E., trans. Cultural Critique Fall 1: 73–88.10.2307/1354281CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jardine, Alice. 1985. Gynesis: Configurations of woman and modernity. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1987. Men in feminism: Odor di Uomo Or Compagnons de Route? In Men in feminism. Jardine, Alice and Smith, Paul, eds. New York and London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. 1980. The critical difference: Essays in the contemporary rhetoric of reading. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. 1984. Metaphor, metonymy and voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God. In Black literature and literary theory. Louis Gates, Henry Jr., ed. New York and London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. 1985. Taking fidelity philosophically. In Difference in translation. Graham, J. F., ed. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kirby, Vicki. 1989a. Habeas Corpus. Afterimage 17(3): 8–9.Google Scholar
Kirby, Vicki. 1989b. Re‐writing: Postmodernism and ethnography. Mankind 19(1): 36–45.Google Scholar
Kirby, Vicki. 1989c. Corporeographies. Inscriptions: Journal for the critique of colonial discourse 5: 103–19.Google Scholar
Kuykendall, Eléanor H. 1984. Toward an ethic of nurturance: Luce Irigaray on mothering and power. In Mothering: Essays in feminist theory. Trebilcot, Joyce, ed. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld.Google Scholar
Jacques, Lacan. 1953 [1966]. Some reflections on the ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 34.Google Scholar
Jacques, Lacan. 1977a [1966]. The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis. Écrits. Sheridan, A., trans. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Jacques, Lacan. 1977b. The Mirror Phase. In Écrits. Sheridan, A., trans. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Moi, Toril. 1988. Sexual/textual politics: Feminist literary theory. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Plaza, Monique. 1978. “Phallomorphic power” and the psychology of “woman.” Ideology and Consciousness Autumn 4: 57–76.Google Scholar
Sacks, Oliver. 1985. The man who mistook his wife for a hat. London: Picador‐Pan Books; New York: Summit Books.Google Scholar
Sayers, Janet. 1986. Sexual contradictions: Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and feminism. London and New York: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Schilder, Paul. 1950. The image and appearance of the human body. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
Schor, Naomi. 1986. Introducing feminism. Paragraph 8: 94–101.10.3366/para.1986.0013CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schor, Naomi. 1987. Dreaming dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault, and sexual difference. In Men in feminism. Jardine, Alice and Smith, Paul, eds. New York and London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1983. Displacement and the discourse of woman. In Displacement: Derrida and after. Krupnick, Mark, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1984. Marx After Derrida. In Philosophical approaches to literature: New essays on nineteenth and twentieth century texts. Cain, W. E., ed. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1989. Feminism and deconstruction, again: Negotiating with unacknowledged masculinism. In Between feminism and psychoanalysis. Brennan, Teresa, ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Turner, Bryan S. 1984. The body and society: Explorations in social theory. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Valéry, Paul. 1989. Some simple reflections on the body. In Fragments for a history of the human body: Part two. Feher, Michel, with Naddaff, Ramona and Tazi, Nadia, eds. New York: Zone; Cambridge, MA: Distributed by MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vasseleu, Cathryn. 1991. Life itself. In Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the mapping of bodies and spaces. Diprose, Rosalyn and Ferrell, Robyn, eds. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Weber, Samuel. 1987. Institution and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Whitford, Margaret. 1986. Luce Irigaray and the female imaginary: Speaking as a woman. Radical Philosophy Summer 43: 3–8.Google Scholar
Whitford, Margaret. 1989. Rereading Irigaray. In Between feminism and psychoanalysis. Brennan, Teresa, ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar