The female identity as a discursive construct

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine how anti-patriarchal theories such as feminism, postmodernism and poststructuralism see in psychoanalysis, which is a model of human development within patriarchal society, a useful explanation and hence an opportunity to threat the linearity of masculine law. The focus of the thesis is the account of preestablished familial and social structure in which the boy and the girl align themselves with those images and modes of behavior their culture designate as masculine and feminine that has prompted feminists, postmodernists and poststructuralists to reject it. Freuds and Lacans model of male and female development theories, then, is recapitulated, in this thesis, not to be recuperated but rather to be the target of severe objections raised by theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Linda Hutcheon and others. This thesis contributes significantly to locate a female self that is not bound by castration or lack. It illustrates how the creation of female writing, according to feminists, postmodernists and poststructuralists, breaks the closed circuit of the patriarchal symbolic order to alter rather than to reverse the power balance of patriarchy. If their aim were simply to reverse the order of things, supposing this to be possible, then history would simply repeat itself, would revert to sameness: to phallocentrism. My research also intends to produce a recognizable feminist impact through its specific use of available material, Toni Morrisons Sula and Alice Walkers The Color Purple, in which feminist, postmodernist and poststructuralist criticism and theories are employed.