Description
Book SynopsisUses the work of Julia Kristeva as a touchstone to explore the nature of violence against women.
Table of Contents Part I
Chapter 1 Introduction
I. Framing the Problem of Violence
II. Kristeva's Psychoanalytic Theory: A Helpful Resource for Feminists?
III. An Outline of Life-Sentences
Chapter 2 Kristeva in Context: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Beyond
I. The Lacanian Context: Human Existence as a Practice of Absence
II. The Lacanian Context Subverted: Kristeva's Theory of the Unconscious
III. The Lacanian Context Enfleshed: Kristeva's Theory of Sacrifice
IV. A Critical Context: Kristeva and Feminist Theory
A. Kristeva and Social Constructionism
B. Kristeva and a Libidinal Economy
Chapter 3 The Subject of Psychoanalysis: Death-Work and Agency
I. Drive Theory and Human Agency
II. Drive Theory and the Maternal Body
III. Drive Theory and the Fort/Da Game
IV. Drive Theory, Laughter, and the Sign
Chapter 4 In Search of the Mother in Mimesis: From Death-Work to Sacrifice
I. From Heterogeneity to the Symbolic Order
II. An Orderly Death: Sacrifice and the Symbolic
III. RenÇ Girard: Mimesis and Murder
A. Mimetic Desire
B. Surrogate Victimization
C. Ritual and Myth
IV. Kristeva: Mimesis, Mother, and Murder
A. Mimetic Desire
B. Victimization and Sexual Difference
C. Coding Matricide: Abjection, Defilement, Ritual Sacrifice
V. Conclusion
Part II
Chapter 5 'This Is My Body:' Abjection, Anorexia, and Medieval Women Mystics
I. Drawing the Line Somewhere: The Construction of Social Order
A. Eating Order: Food and the Social Body
B. Out of Order: Women and the Social Body
II. Holy Women, Holy Food, and Holy Order
III. Crossing the Line: Abjection and the Abyss
Chapter 6 'The Devils Are Come Down Upon Us:' The Witch as Scapegoat
I. The Witch in Historical Perspective
II. The Witch as Scapegoat
III. The Witch in Mythic Perspective
IV. Witch Hunts and the Work of a Sacrificial Economy
A. The Truth of Torture
B. The Truth of Sacrifice
Chapter 7 Life-Sentences: The Mother in the Cultural Archives of the West
I. Time's Truth
II. Femme Enceinte: Pregnant Body-Politics
III. The Scapegoat Among Us and the Stranger Within
A. Analysis as a Practice of Strangeness
B. From Fascinated Rejection to Familiar Strangeness
C. A Cautionary Tale of Hoffmann
IV. In Quest of a Strange Politics: Religion, Feminism, Elsewhere?
