Psyche of Feminism: Sand, Colette, Sarraute

Notes

Notes Preface 1. Cf. Felman, Literature and Psychoanalysis] 05. 2. Rochefort] 83. She continues with an anecdote: I got some free analysis after my first book [Le repos du guerrier] was published. One journalist wrote that I probably was ugly and frustrated-till, meeting him at a cocktail party, I patted him on the shoulder saying: "Ho, sir, I'm the ugly, frustrated one." He ran away while the others laughed. He himself was a piece of fat. Had her writing provided this reader with more or less unconscious insights into his own, sexed, position as a male reader and critic? And does Rochefort's sneering reaction tell us anything more about herfrustrated ?-observation that her books are considered "a woman's" books? 3. Also cited in Holmes 27, 44. For the reader's convenience, I have provided page references to published English translations where possible . However, in most cases the translations themselves are my own, as I have preferred to give as literal a rendering as possible of the French. When I have used someone else's translation, I make note of this in the reference. Introduction Psychoanalytic Feminism: Sexual Difference and Another Love 1. Throughout this book, ellipses in citations will be placed in brackets unless they appear in the cited text. I have adopted this convention for the purpose of clarity, since many of the writers I will cite make extensive use of ellipses. 2. We can note, by way of example, that Irigaray has a stake in beginning Speculum, de I'autre femme with and from psychoanalysis: in this way, with the curved, sexed mirror of her "Speculum" (the book's middle section), she reads the history of philosophy as a history now inflected! reflected (and hence, transformed) by a specifically feminist psychoanalytic interrogation of sex(uality). 3. For a recent re-reading of Simone de Beauvoir's work, see Toril Moi's Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. And for a reading of de Beauvoir as anticipating a feminist psychoanalysis, see chapter] 3 ("The Female Body and the Male Mind: Reconsidering Simone de Beauvoir") of Elaine Hoffman Baruch's Women, PoweI; and Love. Baruch claims that, although de Beauvoir rejected the centrality of the unconscious and herself spoke out against psychoanalysis, some 197 Notes to Pages 3-11 aspects of her thinking nevertheless find echoes in later feminist engagements with psychoanalysis (notably, the phallus/penis distinction, the importance of the pre-Oedipal, and the understanding of female sexual organs as their own referent, not as versions of masculine organs). 4. See Elizabeth Wright's introduction to her Feminism and Psychoanalysis : A Critical Dictionary, especially pp. xiv-xix. 5. For other examples of feminist refusals of psychoanalysis, see de Beauvoir's Le deuxieme sexe, Millett's Sexual Politics, Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, and Nina Baym's "The .Madwoman and Her Languages : Why I Don't Do Feminist Theory." 6. To name the most important examples where femininity was at issue, there is the series of works published by Freud and others ("the great debate") from the early 1920s into the 1930s. These include, by Freud, three papers that deal specifically with female sexuality: his 1925 "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes," his 1931 "Female Sexuality," and the 1933 "Femininity"; and by others: Karl Abraham's 1922 "Manifestations of the Female Castration Complex"; Karen Horney's 1926 "The Flight from Womanhood"; Ernest Jones's 1927 "The Early Development ofFemale Sexuality"; Jean Lampl-de Groot's 1928 "The Evolution of the Oedipus Complex in Women"; I\1elanie Klein's 1928 "Early Stages of the Oedipus Complex"; Helene Deutsch's 1930 "The Significance of Masochism in the Mental Life of Women"; and I\1arie Bonaparte's 1935 "Passivity, Masochism, and Femininity." 7. See Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (SE 23: 226n2). 8. Brennan sums up the "real riddle of femininity" for Freud thus: Why does femininity appear to afflict more women than men, yet why does it affect men at all? For that matter, why does it affect some women more than others, and why does its impact on both sexes vary and fluctuate? (216) Such an understanding of the riddle hinges on Brennan's assertion that there is indeed a psychical condition (not necessarily equivalent to female development or neurosis) called femininity. "It does [exist], and inhibits both sexes" (216). 9. Thus for Irigaray, the question of sexual difference is an ontological question and an ethical one (see EDS). While...