Animals, Women, and Writing Impurity: From Joy to Compassion
Issue: Vol 26 No. 3 (2013) Rethinking Religion and the Non/Human
Journal: Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
Abstract:
This paper examines the subjectivity of the woman and the animal through the critical lens of écriture feminine, the poststructuralist, feminist theory of Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray, and queries how these theorists have used religious notions either to bolster or challenge their constructions of identity. In the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament we nd ordinations in regard to the pure and the impure. Cixous’s and Kristeva’s interventions into this text draw on literature to illustrate the shared associations between women and animals as categories of the impure and subjects of abomination. Yet, their feminist brand of anthropocentrism belies general disregard for the morality of eating meat, which is a pivotal concern in Leviticus. Irigaray’s autobiographical writing, which forgoes the confessional trappings of conventional memoirs, provides us with an alternative literary engagement with this theme, one that counters carno-phallogocentric logic with an embrace of vegetarianism. In her essay ‘Animal Compassion’ she writes about impurity in a way that describes the possibility of companionship between those exiled by this category, and therefore problematises the notion of human privilege.
Author: Eva Birch
References :
Augustine of Hippo
2006 Confessions, translated by E.M. Blaiklock. Hodder and Stoughton, London.
Blyth, Ian, and Susan Sellers
2004 Hélène Cixous: Live Theory. Continuum, New York.
Cadava, Eduardo, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds)
1991 Who Comes After the Subject? Routledge, New York.
Calarco, Matthew, and Peter Atterton
2004 Editor’s Introduction: The Animal Question in Continental Philosophy. In Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, edited by Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, xv–xxv. Continuum, London/New York.
Carroll, Robert, and Stephen Prickett (eds)
2008 The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cixous, Hélène
1993 Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, translated by Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers. Columbia University Press, New York.
2004 Birds, Women, and Writing. In Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, edited by Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, 167-173. Continuum, London/New York.
Chrulew, Matthew
2005 On Animals: Reviewing Agamben, Atterton & Calarco. The Bible and Critical Theory, 1(2): 71-78.
Derrida, Jacques
2002 The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow), translated by David Wills. Critical Inquiry, 28(2): 369-418.
Douglas, Mary
1966 Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge, New York.
1999 Leviticus as Literature. Oxford University Press, New York.
Grosz, Elizabeth
1994 Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Allen & Unwin: Sydney.
Irigaray, Luce
2004 Animal Compassion. In Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, edited by Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, 195-201. Continuum, London/New York.
Jones, Emma R.
2007 In the Presence of the Living Cockroach: The Moment of Aliveness and the Gendered Body in Agamben and Lispector. PhaenEx, 2(2): 24-41.
Kristeva, Julia
1982 Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by L.S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press, New York.
Lispector, Clarice
2012 The Passion According to G.H., translated by I. Novey and B. Moser. New Directions, New York.
Shildrick, Margrit
1997 Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)Ethics. Routledge, New York.
Wolfe, Cary
2003 Introduction. In Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, edited by Cary Wolfe, ix-xxiii. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.