Title: Postmodern
Procreation: Subjectivities and Sexual Difference Beyond Phallocentrism
Committee: Donald Callen, Philosophy,
Bowling Green State University (Chair)
Kathleen
M. Dixon, Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
Sara
Worley, Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
Ellen
Berry, English, Bowling Green State University
According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, a properly
functioning subject is one which has a relationship, i.e., is in dialogue with,
that aspect of human experience which Lacan calls the real. In our
phallocentric signifying economy, women have been identified with and, hence,
collapsed into the real rendering women not merely objects in the symbolic but
that which is unspeakable and unintelligible within our signifying economy.
Because subjectivity requires recognition and acknowledgment by another
subject, as a result of this exclusion of women, men are not able to be
properly functioning subjects either. In this dissertation, I have attempted to
extricate our selves from the phallocentric master/slave model of
inter/intra-subjectivity where the quest for recognition becomes a fight to the
death and everyone loses. Drawing on criticisms of phallocentrism from a
variety of theoretical perspectives, including Marxism, poststructuralism, and
feminism, I have explicated and supported a model of inter/intra-subjectivity
put forth by Kelly Oliver which not only leaves the real intact, allowing for
the existence of authentic desiring
subjects, but which also includes women among those subjects. I have argued for
this model of subjectivity as an improvement over Judith Butler’s
poststructuralist model of subjectivity which subsumes the imaginary and real
dimensions of human experience under the symbolic and in doing so ends up
eliminating desire, and women, altogether. Finally, I have applied the
theoretical findings of this project to the practical issues of genetics and
alternative reproductive technologies.