Miranda Fricker argues that powerless social groups may be subject to a unique form of injustice: hermeneutical injustice. On her account, deficiencies in the shared tools of interpretation may render the experiences of powerless social groups (for instance, women prior to the era of second wave feminism) both incomprehensible and incommunicable. In this thesis, I argue that Fricker has mischaracterized hermeneutical injustice and the silence of marginalized social groups: rather than lacking understanding, powerless groups are often denied rational authority with respect to their own social experiences or choose to self-silence. For this reason, I argue that many of the cases of hermeneutical injustice offered by Fricker collapse into cases of testimonial injustice. This mischaracterization has led Fricker to propose solutions to hermeneutical injustice that are inadequate; in response, I offer a solution that prescribes self-reflexive awareness of the ways that power and privilege shape our interpretive frameworks.

The thesis argues that psychoanalysis is a necessary component of cultural analysis. It is argued that existing syntheses of psychoanalysis and political theories tend to limit the recognition of the relative autonomy of psychic reality by offering accounts of the social determination of subjectivity. The contemporary reappropriation of psychoanalysis by feminist theorists has formulated new explanations of the social position of women as the 'second sex'. The challenge of feminism to traditional theories of culture and society includes questions of how sexual difference informs the transformation of thought into language, how language determines theory, and how theory conceptualises the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. The contradictions within existing syntheses of structuralism, Marxism and feminism are described, and the differences between psychoanalysis and sociology are traced through the the critical reception of Freud's Totem and Taboo by anthropologists. The validity of Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex is explored, and it is suggested that despite the limited acceptance by anthropologists, Totem and Taboo contains a valid theory of the relation of the subject to society. Freud's work is relocated within the paradigm of evolutionary biology to provide a materialist analysis of psychic structure that is not based on linguistics. A study of the origins of language reveals the complexity of the historical factors determining the co-evolution of representation, the maternal function, and the structuration of psychic reality. New discoveries about the pre-Oedipal dyad that underlies the Oedipus complex have shown the effects of infantile dependence and maternal care on adult subjectivity, and it is argued that factors such as the unconscious fear of dependency and of women are of particular significance for feminist thought. It is argued that the theory of pre-Oedipal and prelinguistic subjectivity can make intelligible aspects of ideologies of racism and sexism that are not fully explained by sociological or political theory. The mechanism of projection or projective identification, it is argued, provides a specifically psychoanalytic contribution to existing theories of culture.

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This thesis seeks to account for virginity as the source of Mary's power to attract. The point of departure is the syncretistic culture of the classical world. Here, patristic use of Old Testament typology recognises the distinctive work of grace in Mary's virginity, thus allowing it to become the determining quality by which her experience is subsequently perceived and universalised. The thesis divides its exploration into the three categories by which Mary is portrayed in the gospels - woman, spouse, mother - concluding its investigation with the end of the nineteenth century and its new understanding of human identity in gender and sexuality. In each category the thesis attempts to identify ways in which the attraction of virginity has functioned through ambiguity (Mary as virgin and mother, mother and spouse of her son) as a positive quality of potency and freedom, rather than as a strictly biological human condition with negative association in contemporary culture. In order to assess the extent of Mary's attraction in periods that lacked the modern forms of articulating self-awareness, the thesis has considered the fabric of devotional practice in religious texts, art, drama and ritual, seeking to allow the perceptions of earlier periods of history (a medium in itself) to challenge our own. As expressions of attraction to Mary, these media have yielded an insight into the power of virginity as a statement of paradisal, heavenly life accessed by grace through male and female human experience. They have also shown virginity to be a source of power that can be exploited for political ends. Finally, the thesis suggests that the power of Mary's virginity has been subversive and liberating in Church and society, thus indicating its neglected significance as a statement about the ambiguity of our nature as human, gendered, and sexual beings.

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