The Metaphors of Spatial Merging: The Female Body as House in the Work of Mary Caponegro, Louise Bourgeois, and Francesca Woodman

Authors : Ceylan ERTUNG

Pages : 17-30

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Publication Date : 2007-04-01

Article Type : Conference Paper

Abstract :Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar once asked, if a pen is a metaphorical penis entitling men to have authority over the creative process, whence should women derive their creative powers; or in other words, with what organ can women generate texts? By saying “women have sexual organs more or less everywhere” 252 Luce Irigaray gave the answer by suggesting that woman’s creative organ is their body. Ecriture Feminine which translates roughly as feminine writing or writing in the feminine mode, implies writing from or by the female body. According to Helene Cixous, feminine writing would constitute a counter language which has a subversive potential to explode the oppressive structures of conventional thought and language; giving woman the ownership and the authorship of their own bodies that have been denied to them. She says, “By writing herself, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display—the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions” Cixous 116 .
Keywords : Metaphors, Spatial, Merging