Unveiling the Other: The Politics of the Muslim Veil in France
In April 2011, the French National Assembly prohibited the wearing of face-covering garments in public spaces with legislation that generated significant controversy. Based on the idea that “Le port de tenues destinées à dissimuler le visage, en particulier le voile intégral, remet en cause les règles qui forment le pacte républicain” [The wearing of outfits intended to conceal the face, in particular the full veil, calls into question the rules that form the republican pact] (Conseil des ministres, 2010), the Loi interdisant la dissimulation du visage dans l’espace public transforms the burqa or niqab from a benign symbol of cultural difference into a sign of attack against French society and democratic ideals. Throughout a selection of contemporary journalistic reports on the French legislation, issues of women’s oppression and liberation emerge as central themes in the disputes over Muslim veiling and its perceived incompatibility with North American and European values. Through a theoretical lens informed by the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, this essay will examine the (veiled) Muslim woman’s position as a historical and contemporary “other” in the context of Western cultural norms. [Read More]
Fear and desire: Primitivism in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) is one of the most significant artworks of the twentieth century. As the catalyst of a rupture within the Western artistic tradition, the painting remains a subject of cultural fascination and scholarly debate by critics who read in the work “a recognition and disavowal not only of primitive difference but of the fact that the West—its patriarchal subjectivity and socius—is threatened by loss, by lack, by others” (Foster, 1985:46). Taking into consideration the analyses of art historians William Stanley Rubin, Robert Rosenblum, and Leo Steinberg, I will examine the ways in which the painting’s formal and pictorial representations of primitive difference support Foster’s reading of the work as an evocative representation of fear and desire of the other. [Read More]
The Spectacle of Anorexia Nervosa: Corporeal Semiotics and Gender Performativity
In this essay, I examine feminist cultural critiques of anorexia nervosa through a framework incorporating Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance, Michel Foucault’s concept of power relations, and Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of semiotics. Feminist interpretations of the anorexic body differ drastically, but share a tendency to consider the pursuit of thinness as a response to cultural ideals of femininity. I discuss these divergent perspectives, concluding that whether anorexia is perceived as a sign of submission to oppressive cultural values or as a rejection of traditional femininity, it gains significance only through the evaluation of an external spectator. [Read More]
Self-Consciousness in the Poetic Theory of Paul Valéry
The poetic theory of Paul Valéry centers on a theme of self-consciousness in action. This dissertation seeks to explore alterity in the poetic theory of Paul Valéry, through Bernard Stiegler’s critique of contemporary society, Sartre’s theory of literary enagement, and the concept of inner speech in Blanchot and Derrida. Chapter 1 defines poetry according to Valéry’s notion of aesthetic experience, then questions poetry’s survival in a society conditioned by technology. Chapter 2 relates poetry to a gift exchange involving a dialectic of recognition and discusses the role of memory and desire in the production of meaning in poetry. In Chapter 3, I explore the role of the poetic voice in the action of reading and writing, through the work of Blanchot and Derrida. This chapter closes with an analysis of Valéry’s poem, Narcisse Parle, in which I discuss Valéry’s use of the myth of Narcissus as an allegory for the creative process and the recognition of the multiplicity of the subject in the act of writing. Based on Valéry’s distinction between the Moi and the Je as, respectively, the universal and particular aspects of the self, I suggest that the utterance of the poetic voice reveals that the interior monologue is, in fact, a form of dialogue, and that this recognition provokes an experience of self-consciousness that links Derrida’s concept of différance to Valéry’s divided self.