...Women are the 'sex' which is not 'one'. Within a language pervasively masculinist, aphallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable. In...univocal signification, the female sex constitutes the unconstrainable and undesignatable. In this sense, women are the sex which is not 'one', but multiple....

...language pervasively masculinist, a phallogocentric language, women constitute the unrepresentable. 1n other words, women represent the sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity. . . . women are the sex which is not "one" [the title of an essay by 1rigaray. "Ce sexe qui n'en est...

...Blake's linguistic strategies and symbol formation, particularly his female metaphor, Butler writes: Within a language pervasively masculinist, a phallogocentric...univocal signification, the female sex constitutes the unconstrainable and undesignatable [Gender Trouble 9]. Correspondingly, Luce Irigaray has notably called...

...of reprieve" (36). My use of the term "opacity" here differs somewhat from the Irigarian theory that "women represent the sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity" (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 9). Rather than arguing for representational absence, I am instead...

...argues that women constitute a paradox, if not a contradiction, within the discourse of identity itself. Women are the "sex" which is not "one". Within a language...cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity ... (Butler, 1990, 9). In contrast to Beauvoir, Irigaray: ... argues that both the subject and the...