1st Edition

Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis

Edited By Teresa Brennan Copyright 1989

    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.

    Introduction Part 1: The story so far 1 Moving backwards or forwards 2 Still crazy after all these years Part 2: The story framed by an institutional context 3 The politics of impenetrability 4 Notes for an analysis Part 3: Towards another symbolic (1): the essential thing 5 The politics of ontological difference 6 Rereading Irigaray 7 The gesture in psychoanalysis Part 4: Towards another symbolic (2): beyond the phallus 8 Thoroughly postmodern feminist criticism 9 ‘Their “symbolic” exists, it holds power—we, the sowers of disorder, know it only too well’ 10 Echo and Narcissus Part 5: Sexual difference (1): reason and revolution 11 Patriarchal thought and the drive for knowledge 12 Feminism and deconstruction, again: negotiating with unacknowledged masculinism Part 6: Sexual difference (2): the psychical in the social 13 Cutting up 14 Of female bondage

    Biography

    TERESA BRENNAN studied psychoanalysis at the Tavistock Clinic. She has published articles on feminism, history, and political economy, as well as psychoanalysis.

    `... [a] stimulating insight into recent American criticism ...' - Times Literary Supplement