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Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis
In this landmark collection of original essays, outstanding feminist critics in Britain, France, and the United States present new perspectives on feminism and psychoanalysis, opening out deadlocked debates. The discussion ranges widely, with contributions from feminists identified with different, often opposed views on psychoanalytic criticism. The contributors reassess the history of Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminism, and explore the significance of its institutional context. They write against the received views on 'French feminism' and essentialism. A remarkable restatement of current positions within psychoanalysis and feminism, the volume as a whole will change the terms of existing debates, and make its arguments and concerns more generally accessible.
- GenresFeminism
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 29, 1989
47 people want to read
About the author
Teresa Brennan
13 books9 followersIn hmolscience, Teresa Brennan (1952-2003) was an Australian-born American feminist philosopher and social-political theorist noted for her psychodynamic theories on how energetics applies to social issues, such as relations between men and women, theorizing on concepts such as the physics of social pressure.
(from http://www.eoht.info/page/Teresa+Brennan)
(from http://www.eoht.info/page/Teresa+Brennan)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 1, 2024
A LARGELY "LITERARY" EXAMINATION OF VARIOUS DEBATES
Editor Teresa Brennan has also written books such as 'The Transmission of Affect,' 'History After Lacan,' 'Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy,' etc.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1989 collection of essays, "[This book] is based on a series of fifteen seminars given at Cambridge University ... from January to July 1987. The series was organized in an attempt to explore the often intense debates that have arisen around psychoanalysis, especially of the Lacanian type, and feminism... Mainly, the debates concern essentialism, the kind of symbolic law culture requires, sexual difference, how far knowledge is inherently patriarchal, and the practical and political use of psychoanalysis for feminism... In so far as debates on psychoanalysis and feminism have a common point of departure, it is feminism's concern with social transformation... the contributors are mainly literary theorists..." (Pg. vii)
She adds, "This introduction and to some extent this book is preoccupied with four stagnant issues in feminist, psychoanalytic thinking, and how to move beyond them. The issues are: the status of the Lacanian 'symbolic,' sexual difference and knowledge, the bearing of essentialism on feminist politics, and the relation between psychical reality and the social. If this introduction has a thesis, it is that thinking about these issues is deadlocked, of late, because their specific political OR psychoanalytic contexts have been neglected." (Pg. 1)
One essayist says, "If repudiation is always the repudiation of femininity, then in its own terms psychoanalysis can hardly blame feminism for an attitude which it has identified as inevitable... Psychoanalytically, it is impossible to adopt psychoanalysis ... it cannot but be repudiated. To put it bluntly, the knife that cuts both ways is also the three ways that fork only one way. You can't refute it; to which we may now add: you can only repudiate it." (Pg. 52-53)
Another says, "What I am trying to get to here is a new and different scene, at a new intersection of psychoanalysis, feminism, and the institution, where a radical deconstruction of the academic subject is taking place; where a radically new kind of knowledge is being produced; and where women are becoming radical agents of that new knowledge and of political change IF and WHEN they actualize freely the mutations and paradoxes I have been referring to." (Pg. 78)
Still another says, "I will challenge the view that the essentialist feminist position is apolitical or even potentially reactionary. On the contrary, I am in profound agreement ... that essentialism may be a necessary strategy. I will also assert that a feminist woman who is interested in thinking about sexual difference and the feminine today cannot afford not to be essentialist." (Pg. 92-93)
One essay argues, "With help of feminism psychoanalysis has achieved prominence in the literary institution via a critique of the ideological usage within its own institution. Literary criticism is one field in which a psychoanalysis-for-feminism has flourished, for it has tackled orthodoxy in psychoanalysis, hard to combat in the psychoanalytic institution itself. It has taken on the fight against patriarchy and indeed against any oppressive system, considering in the process to what extent psychoanalysis might be 'refunctioned'... in order to become more political than it is claimed by some feminists to be already. Literary criticism has given women access to discourse as both writers and critics, something they have not been able to have directly in psychoanalysis or in politics." (Pg. 142)
While some readers might have wanted a less theoretical, more "nuts-and-bolts" approach dealing with practical matters affecting these two topics, the essays explore the areas that the editor wanted to cover.
Editor Teresa Brennan has also written books such as 'The Transmission of Affect,' 'History After Lacan,' 'Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy,' etc.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1989 collection of essays, "[This book] is based on a series of fifteen seminars given at Cambridge University ... from January to July 1987. The series was organized in an attempt to explore the often intense debates that have arisen around psychoanalysis, especially of the Lacanian type, and feminism... Mainly, the debates concern essentialism, the kind of symbolic law culture requires, sexual difference, how far knowledge is inherently patriarchal, and the practical and political use of psychoanalysis for feminism... In so far as debates on psychoanalysis and feminism have a common point of departure, it is feminism's concern with social transformation... the contributors are mainly literary theorists..." (Pg. vii)
She adds, "This introduction and to some extent this book is preoccupied with four stagnant issues in feminist, psychoanalytic thinking, and how to move beyond them. The issues are: the status of the Lacanian 'symbolic,' sexual difference and knowledge, the bearing of essentialism on feminist politics, and the relation between psychical reality and the social. If this introduction has a thesis, it is that thinking about these issues is deadlocked, of late, because their specific political OR psychoanalytic contexts have been neglected." (Pg. 1)
One essayist says, "If repudiation is always the repudiation of femininity, then in its own terms psychoanalysis can hardly blame feminism for an attitude which it has identified as inevitable... Psychoanalytically, it is impossible to adopt psychoanalysis ... it cannot but be repudiated. To put it bluntly, the knife that cuts both ways is also the three ways that fork only one way. You can't refute it; to which we may now add: you can only repudiate it." (Pg. 52-53)
Another says, "What I am trying to get to here is a new and different scene, at a new intersection of psychoanalysis, feminism, and the institution, where a radical deconstruction of the academic subject is taking place; where a radically new kind of knowledge is being produced; and where women are becoming radical agents of that new knowledge and of political change IF and WHEN they actualize freely the mutations and paradoxes I have been referring to." (Pg. 78)
Still another says, "I will challenge the view that the essentialist feminist position is apolitical or even potentially reactionary. On the contrary, I am in profound agreement ... that essentialism may be a necessary strategy. I will also assert that a feminist woman who is interested in thinking about sexual difference and the feminine today cannot afford not to be essentialist." (Pg. 92-93)
One essay argues, "With help of feminism psychoanalysis has achieved prominence in the literary institution via a critique of the ideological usage within its own institution. Literary criticism is one field in which a psychoanalysis-for-feminism has flourished, for it has tackled orthodoxy in psychoanalysis, hard to combat in the psychoanalytic institution itself. It has taken on the fight against patriarchy and indeed against any oppressive system, considering in the process to what extent psychoanalysis might be 'refunctioned'... in order to become more political than it is claimed by some feminists to be already. Literary criticism has given women access to discourse as both writers and critics, something they have not been able to have directly in psychoanalysis or in politics." (Pg. 142)
While some readers might have wanted a less theoretical, more "nuts-and-bolts" approach dealing with practical matters affecting these two topics, the essays explore the areas that the editor wanted to cover.
May 21, 2018
Explores the ground between feminism and psychoanalysis. Some great essays - Rachel Bowlby's is witty and insightful. Other highlights from Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray, Joan Copjec and Parveen Adams.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews