The Decentering of the Phallus in Poems of Insomnia (after Wine)

by Carmen Cecilia Suárez

Authors

Keywords:

sexual difference, poetics of the caress, other bisexuality, decentering of the phallus, partiality

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on the processes of decentering of the phallus as a totalizing code of desire and corporeity in Poems of Insomnia (After Wine) by Carmen Cecilia Suárez (2004). Resorting to some ideas of “The Lesbian Phallus and The Morphological Imaginary” of Bodies That Matter by Judith Butler (2002), I expose how the signifier possesses the ability to symbolize various parts of the bodies and, in consequence, I show the decoding processes of the partial, decentered, and substitutable character of the phallus that deterritorializes its naturalized link with the masculine morphology; to this tenor, I emphasize the poet’s preference on partiality to represent the connection between the feminine and masculine bodies. From the perspective of the representability of sexual difference, my analysis endorses the caress’s poetics of Luce Irigaray (1993) that she exposes in The Fecundity of the Caress of An Ethics of Sexual Difference, and the notion of the couple as a metaphor of the sexual difference that she develops in “The Universal as Mediation” of Sexes and Genealogies. Likewise, it endorses the concepts of feminine writing and the other bisexuality that Hélène Cixous (1976, 1981, and 1986) presents in “The Laugh or Medusa”, “Castration or Decapitation?”, and “Sorties” of The Newly Born Woman. As a result, I show the poetic writing capacity to signify in ways that exceed the appropriate structural place in the
symbolic and reconfigure the woman’s status as the subject of desire and speech.

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Author Biography

Luz Maria Betancourt Aduen, City University of New York, New York, U.S.A

Colombian-American. D. in Philosophy, Department of Spanish-Brazilian Language and Literature from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Independent researcher in the areas of gender studies and Colombian women's and lesbian literatures. Lines of research: gender studies, feminist theory in its intersections with the notion of sexual difference in writing, cultural constructions of sexuality within the sex/gender system, theories of performativity, black feminisms and women of color, lesbian and queer feminisms, and figurations of postfeminist subjectivity.

Email: luz.bet2@yahoo.com

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Sitios Web:

Suniga, N. C. (2015). El falo en disputa. Judith Butler, lectura crítica de Jacques Lacan. En: Diferencia(s), Revista de Teoría Social Contemporánea [en línea], 1, pp. 64-86. Consultado el 15 de septiembre de 2019. Disponible en www.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/70330?show=full.

Published

2021-10-14

How to Cite

Betancourt Aduen, L. M. (2021). The Decentering of the Phallus in Poems of Insomnia (after Wine): by Carmen Cecilia Suárez. Géneroos, 28(29), 321–356. Retrieved from https://revistasacademicas.ucol.mx/index.php/generos/article/view/49

Issue

Section

Dissemination articles