Born from the Head: Reading Woolf via Kristeva

Abstract

In an attempt to overcome the embarrassment of feminist misconstruals of Virginia Woolf, Toril Moi suggested in Sexual/Textual Politics certain directions for a Kristevan interpretation, focusing on Woolf s treatment of gender identity [Moi 11-16]. The adequacy of such an approach, whether directly related to Kristeva or not, was almost simultaneously demonstrated by Mary Jacobus's insistence on the inseparability of the problematics of gender and writing in Woolf's works [Reading 21-22]. More recently, Jacobus's understanding of Woolf has been supported by Pamela Caughie's close reading of Orlando, which discusses the novel's playful and evasive subversion of gender identity as part of Woolf's strategy for uncovering the duplicity of discourse. And yet, fruitful as Moi's suggestion has been, it is bound to stumble, if studiously followed, over Kristeva's own assertion that,

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