Les structures du colonialisme d’occupation au Canada perpétuent encore aujourd’hui les dépossessions des Autochtones au bénéfice des occupant·es, ainsi que les tentatives de substitution des occupant·es aux peuples autochtones, suivant ce que Patrick Wolfe appelle une logique de l’élimination. Il ne suffit pas de déclarer notre reconnaissance du territoire autochtone. À titre de Zhaaganaash (occupante blanche sur un territoire Omàmìwinini/algonquin non cédé), il m’incomberait de « participer au processus de décolonisation », suivant l’appel à la justice 15.2 de l’ENFFADA (2019). Toutefois, la logique coloniale, incluant une épistémologie de l’ignorance, conditionne la population générale à naturaliser les hiérarchies désirées et à « ne pas voir » la violence coloniale — historique et contemporaine — au Canada. Alors que mon projet initial visait à cultiver des possibilités de subjectivité occultées par le patriarcat, à la lumière de la pensée de Luce Irigaray, mes études féministes m’ont fait voir l’urgence de la décolonisation. Je vois dans la pensée philosophique de Luce Irigaray une dimension déconstructrice (de la constitution du sujet, de son discours, et de ses « projet[s] téléologiquement constructeur[s] » d’un monde à son image et selon ses intérêts) et une dimension reconstructrice de possibilités alternatives (fondées sur ses concepts de la limite, l’intervalle, l’efflorescence, et l’éthique de la différence sexuelle, entre autres). Plus je lis son œuvre, et plus je lis de perspectives autochtones diverses, plus je vois comment les processus théoriques que décrit Luce Irigaray sont opérationnalisés contre les peuples autochtones sous le colonialisme d’occupation au Canada, et comment certaines nouvelles possibilités imaginées par Luce Irigaray — notamment pour les femmes — exist(ai)ent déjà, concrètement, chez certains peuples autochtones au Canada. Je soutiens que certaines théories irigaréennes sont ouvertes à des prolongements anticoloniaux et décolonisateurs utiles pour ouvrir la réceptivité d’occupant·es, au-delà des fragilités blanches et occupantes, à diverses perspectives autochtones essentielles au désapprentissage de nos aveuglements coloniaux et à la culture de subjectivités relationnelles qui sont spécifiquement décolonisatrices selon la définition de Tuck et Yang (2012). Le colonialisme d’occupation étant trop complexe pour s’expliquer à partir d’une seule théorie (Wolfe, 2006), mon projet consiste à développer un cadre d’analyse multidisciplinaire (incluant, mais non limité à la philosophie irigaréenne), dont la loupe de sélection se constitue de diverses perspectives autochtones. J’explore ce que voudrait dire la décolonisation en termes concrets dans mon quotidien de Zhaaganash.

This thesis offers an exploration of the writing of an irreducible feminine difference in four novels by women. Drawing from the work of the Continental feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, I read her conceptual undertaking of sexual difference as precipitating an alternative narrative for feminist thought. The crux of this project involves an inscription of the indeterminable, and thus far elided, category of the feminine, back into the uncontested frameworks of patriarchal knowledge. In so doing, the feminine illuminates what Irigaray calls the “otherwise, elsewhere” that troubles the universality of all masculine discourse. Sexual difference can then be extrapolated from these terms, to anticipate a compelling horizon of possibilities for feminism that lies beyond the deterministic confines of the singular present. Its advent marks the creation of radical feminist lines of inquiry that have yet to be imagined. My study builds on Irigaray’s approach to sexual difference to suggest that the transformative space of literature provides a promising blueprint for its otherwise inchoate articulation. The texts I analyse invoke an anticipatory impulse to think the impossible, and offer an imaginative frame of reference for envisioning these processes of sexual difference. By considering four novels by Marilynne Robinson, Jeanette Winterson, Elena Ferrante, and Rachel Cusk, I illustrate that their engagement with sexual difference is a strategic and combative negotiation of our dominant modes of understanding. More crucially, I examine the dialogue that is inspired by these texts when the intimations of sexual difference are brought together with the evocative possibilities of literature, which might accordingly be extended to affirm a new and reflective cartography for the futures of the feminist imaginary. A further narrative can be located in the sequence of the chapters in my thesis, insofar as each of its novels was published around successive decades apart from 1980- 2014. By alluding to the respective contextual backdrops of these texts, I consider the more overarching trajectory of feminist theory and criticism, in which sexual difference has materialised in its contingent narratives as an enduring, and indeed unsettling, question. It circulates as a speculative theoretical paradigm in the multiple intersections of feminist theory, philosophy, and literary studies. My thesis will argue not only for the altogether difficult and necessary unknowability of feminist thought as it looks ahead to the future, but also for the critical relevance of literary perspectives in explicating these processes of feminist world-making.

Hysteri tillhör en av de mest omdebatterade diagnoserna i psykologins historia. Under några decennier kring förra sekelskiftet sysselsatte sjukdomen dåtidens främsta läkare. I Freuds välkända fallbeskrivningar framträder den hysteriska kvinnan som traumatiserad, både av sina minnen och av sina symtom. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att ifrågasätta en etablerad tolkning av hysteri som individuell patologi. Luce Irigarays konceptualisering av det imaginära och kvinnans symboliska hemlöshet används som utgångspunkt för en kritisk läsning av  Studier i Hysteri. Ansatsen är kvalitativ och teoridriven, metoden mimetisk, analysen är tematiskt strukturerad. Av resultaten framkommer att Irigarays tänkande kan bidra med en fördjupad förståelse av hysterin som någonting som överskrider individuell patologi, som någonting som blottlägger detta psykiska tillstånds relation till imaginära föreställningar om rationalitet och femininitet. De presenterade perspektiven belyser hur hysteri såväl som samtida kvinnosjuklighet formas av ett kulturellt omedvetet.

This thesis examines the role of woman within Nietzsche’s late-middle period, through The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as interrogating the more social or political elements of nihilism, in order to conceptualize a novel reading of Nietzsche’s figure of the Overman. The motivation for this project is to create an understanding of the Overman that stands in stark contrast to those interpretations of Nietzsche advanced and deployed by those on the far-right of the political spectrum, who historically have used Nietzsche’s ideas to justify acts of cruelty and violence through an appeal to preservation of the self and of the same. I begin with the idea that woman is representative of truth for Nietzsche through her embodiment of difference, both internal to herself and within her relationship to man. This view of woman within the thesis is led by the work of Luce Irigaray in her work Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, and a reading of her work alongside Nietzsche’s Gay Science comprise the first chapter. In the second chapter, I chart different typologies of nihilism as advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Alenka Zupančič in order to probe their status as “universal”. I also delve into the eternal return as the process through which nihilism is overcome and the Overman emerges, as perhaps an eternal return of the different rather than the same. In the final chapter, the lessons from the beginning of the thesis are applied to a reading of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in order to read difference into that text toward the overcoming of nihilism and the birth of the Overman.

In her philosophical work, Luce Irigaray questions the universal genderless subject and advocates that it should be recognized as being implicitly male. As a result of this she proclaims a need for a new type of language, with a different set of logic, that is able to include women as subjects – which she calls “womenspeak”. In this essay I will account for Irigaray’s understanding of “womenspeak” in order to see if what she is describing also could work as a new understanding of art. “Womenspeak” is a language that defies logic, and contains contradictions without losing factuality – which also could be considered as a valid description of art. I will later argue that using Irigaray’s philosophy’s emphasis on practice, our conception of art could shift from being mainly oriented towards finished art works, to also include the artist’s practice, which would lead to a fuller understanding of art as a whole.

This thesis investigates some motifs in the fiction of Québec writer Anne Hébert (1916-2000), largely by exploring interesting affinities with notions in the philosophy of Luce Irigaray (1930-). The main focus is on the young female characters and their way to adulthood in three of Hébert’s books: her first novel, Les chambres de bois (LCB, 1958) and two of her later works, Aurélien, Clara, Mademoiselle et le Lieutenant anglais (AC, 1995) and Est-ce que je te derange ? (ECD, 1998). The study also addresses the situation of the male characters and the difficulties which confront them within a phallocentric order. It is argued that a comparison with features of Irigaray’s thought can shed light both on the emancipatory and the conservative tendencies in the novels. In particular, it is Irigaray’s notion of mimesis that proves to be fruitful for a deeper understanding of the female protagonists in the analysed works, but her specific use of the Oidipus complex, and her vision of a culture of sexual difference, also give important clues for the interpretation of both male and female figures in Herbert’s texts. With regard to LCB, it is shown that it is only when the female protagonist consciously positions herself as a reflection of male desire, as a mimetic figure, that substantial change comes about. In AC the female character is an incarnation of “utopian mimesis” and represents a new order. In ECD the female protagonist functions as a manifestation of a “symptomatic mimesis” and thereby becomes a catalyst for the revelation of the repressed sensibility of the male subject. Irigaray’s reading of the Oidipus complex is used to evince the utopian tendencies in AC, but also to explore how the male characters of all three works are stuck in a denied repetition of their childhood, which leaves little room for change. Irigaray’s vision of a culture of sexual difference provides a comprehensive picture of a place towards which all three novels can be seen to aim.

I investigate the ghosts in Elizabeth Bowen’s short stories, “Green Holly” and “The Happy Autumn Fields.” By blending psychoanalytic feminism and social feminism, I argue that these female ghosts are the incommensurable feminine—a feminine that exceeds the bounds of phallocentric logic and cannot be defined by her social or symbolic manifestations. An analysis of Bowen’s ghosts as actual ghosts is uncharted territory. Previous Bowen critics postulate that Bowen’s ghosts are imaginary figments or metaphors. These critics make Bowen’s stories “truthful” representations of the world, but, as such, Bowen’s ghosts become representations of the world’s phallocentric order. In contrast, I argue that these stories adopt a mestiza consciousness. Gloria Anzaldùa postulates that through a subaltern perspective developed outside of western logic, the mestiza reclaims the supernatural that exists outside of the masculine, symbolic order. The female ghosts are the feminine that Luce Irigaray explains, “remain[s] elsewhere” (76) as they live incommensurably in an alternate supernatural realm, disrupting phallic logic.

Appendix C contains video files which were unable to be uploaded onto the institutional repository, but are available with the hard copy of the thesis. / Is female subjectivity possible within a patriarchal system? The following discussion investigates feminist thought though equality, difference and androgyny, mapping the achievements, setbacks, advantages and disadvantages of each through the theories of Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and others. Discussing Irigaray’s thoughts on disrupting the symbolic with mimesis and hysteria, how intersubjectivity might be possible through a syntax appropriate to women and the possibility of female genealogies through craft and the work of artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse. Derrida’s theory of Différance is used in relation to Irigaray’s ideas of difference and morphology. And allows for Kristeva’s thoughts on the essential meaning of language being in a constant state of flux and therefore fixed definitions of identity are pointless. Virginia Woolf’s use of androgyny and modernist style in her writing is considered in relation to Kristeva’s ideas of revolutionary writing, and how destructive fixed gendered identities can be. The deconstruction of masculine and feminine identities is advocated by Kristeva to allow for individuality and subjectivity.

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This thesis undertakes to explore silence as it functions in relation to intimacy in Clarice Lispector’s last narrative. It asks how silence, when perceived as a generative force, may cultivate intimacy between men and women, opening up a horizon of equality and exchange between the sexes. Using Lispector’s work as a symbolic location for asking larger questions about the role of Eros in contemporary literature, the first chapter is dedicated to introducing her work as it relates to the critical canon. After examining silence and intimacy as each have been conceptualized by thinkers from various philosophical traditions, I incorporate the recent work of Luce Irigaray, which has integrated Western discourse and Eastern mystical concepts of the intimate to articulate a new kind of male/female reciprocity. I apply Irigarayan theory to Lispector’s text as a way of enriching the academic scholarship regarding Lispector.