| This dissertation examines the undercurrent of what has been repudiated and discarded in language, logic, and literature---what I am calling the 'feminine.' I posit that the 'feminine' is a structure that upholds basic paradigms in logic and thought. The feminine is unveiled as a property that has always existed but becomes visible when provoked. This work takes its springboard from various French feminist influences: Luce Irigaray's monumental Speculum de l'autre femme, which shows the history of this repudiation, Monique Wittig's work on lesbian desire, and Julia Kristeva's concept of abject, female waste. I use their work to examine the repudiated feminine in the correspondence between Choderlos de Laclos and Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, in the Marquis de Sade's novel Justine, and in Matthew G. Lewis's gothic work The Monk.; Because it has always been camouflaged, the feminine has slid by the masculine, easily eluding recognition and definition. What Helene Cixous recognized as l'ecriture feminine, Luce Irigaray l'espace entre (between-space), Monique Wittig the lesbian escapee, and Jacques Lacan the Real have all been recognition, in some way or another, of this third paradigm, this third point that glues together and structures the binary, on which the masculine, as understood by post-Lacanian feminists, irrevocably depends. I examine this third feminine space that mediates between masculine binaries.; Binaries are fundamental, dual relationships in everything. Yet, binary logic---culture/nature, man/woman, X/not-X, same/difference, hetero/homo---has proven unsatisfactory, because the binaries exclude everything that does not neatly fit into such a categorical (and male) logic. In essence, the pitfall of the binary is that either it is or is not, it exists or does not exist; this type of solid logic fails to recognize more fluid, multifarious dimensions between the solid book-ends. If the third domain is the unstable 'feminine,' and limitations derive from the masculine Symbolic, then it is logical to assess that the third domain will eventually erupt into the masculine, causing havoc and chaos to its defined order. In effect, the masculine will react by trying to repudiate the feminine once again. These eruptions occur individually, nationally, and civically, and they all equally encounter resistance as can be seen in the three aforementioned eighteenth-century texts. |
