Michèle Le Doeuff's "Primal Scene": Prohibition and Confidence in the Education of a Woman

• Authors: Pamela Anderson
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

My essay begins with Michèle Le Doeuff's singular account of the "primal scene" in her own education as a woman, illustrating a universally significant point about the way(s) in which education can differ for men and women: gender difference both shapes and is shaped by the imaginary of a culture as manifest in how texts matter for Le Doeuff. Her primal scene is the first moment she remembers when, while aspiring to think for herself, a prohibition is placed in her reading of literature. Her philosophyteacher-at a boys' school-told the young Michèle that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was "too difficult" for her to read. In recalling this scene, the older (and wiser) Michèle-now, a woman philosopher-directs her readers to this text by Kant, in order to demonstrate how knowledge has been constrained by the narrative and imagery in the text of a philosopher; similarly, in the texts of others. She finds the central imagery of Kant's text for setting the limits to human knowledge in his account of "the island of understanding," or "land of truth," surrounded by "a stormy sea" of uncertainty; the latter image also retains a seductive appeal, threatening to destroy the confidence of any knower who ventures out beyond the well-marked out island. Moreover, women have (too) often been associated with the dangers at sea beyond the safety of the island, where falsehood and worse reign. I propose that "text matters" here not only for gender issues, but for the postcolonial theory which Le Doeuff's reading of island imagery enhances in western literature and culture. The suggestion is that women in the history of ideas have been more susceptible than men to prohibitions (to reading texts): women's negative education is against going beyond certain boundaries which have been fixed by a generally colonialist culture on the grounds of gender-hierarchies. I stress the significance of confidence in the production of knowledge. A lack or an inhibition of confidence in one's own ability to think critically risks the damaging exclusions of, for example, colonialism and sexism. My aim is to unearth the political biases evident in textual imagery, while also pointing to new epistemic locations, with island-and-sea imagery that transgresses patriarchal prohibition, liberating subjects for confident reading and writing of texts today.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 1
• Pages: 11-26

Dates

published

2011-01-01

online

2011-11-23

Contributors

author

Pamela Anderson

• University of Oxford

References

• Altman, Meryl. "Waiting for Lady Reason." Women's Review of Books 22.2 (Nov. 2004): 14-15.
• Anderson, Pamela Sue. "The Lived Body, Gender and Confidence." New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate. Ed. Pamela Sue Anderson. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. 163-80.[WoS]
• Bacon, Francis. New Atlantis. Ed., intro. and notes Susan Bruce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 149-86.
• Birch, Dinah, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Blumenberg, Hans. Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence. Trans. Steven Rendall. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997.
• Conrad, Peter. Islands: A Trip Through Time and Space. London: Thames and Hudson, 2007.
• Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe. Ed. and intro. Thomas Keymer. Notes Thomas Keymer and James Kelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. London: Continuum, 2004.
• During, Lisabeth. "Islands and Theatres." Operative Philosophy and Imaginary Practice: Michèle Le Doeuff. Ed. Max Deutscher. Amherst: Humanity, 2000. 223-48.
• Kant, Immanuel. "Conjectural Beginning of Human History." On History. Trans. Emil L. Fackenheim. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
• Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1952.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. "Engaging with Simone de Beauvoir." The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays. Ed. Margaret A. Simons. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. Hipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc. Trans. Trista Selous. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. "A Little Learning: Women and (Intellectual) Work." French Feminist Philosophy. Ed. Kelly Oliver and Lisa Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 74-89.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. The Philosophical Imaginary. Trans. Colin Gordon. London: Continuum, 2002.[WoS]
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. The Sex of Knowing. Trans. Kathryn Hamer and Lorraine Code. New York: Routledge, 2003.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. "Le sexe de la philosophie." Pensées pour le Nouveau Siècle: Entretiens. Ed. Aliocha Wald Lasowski. Paris: Fayard, 2008. 449-75.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. "Women in Dialogue and in Solitude." Journal of Romance Studies 5.2 (Summer 2005): 1-15.
• Le Doeuff, Michèle. Vénus et Adonis, suivi de genèse d'une catastrophe. Évian-les-bains: Alidades, 1986.
• Mackay, Robin. "Philosophers' Islands." Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development 6 (2010): 431-57.
• Moi, Toril. Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Moore, A. W. "Bounds of Sense." Philosophical Topics. 34.1-2 (Spring-Fall 2006): 327-44.
• Nye, Andrea. Feminism and Modern Philosophy: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Rockwood, Camilla, ed. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 18th ed. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2009.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Émile, or On Education. Ed. Christopher Kelly. Trans. Allan Bloom. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2009.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10231-011-0002-y