2nd Edition
Deconstructing the Feminine Subjectivities in Transition
Deconstructing the Feminine looks beyond impasses of binary thought and essentialist conceptions of women and the feminine from a contemporary perspective.
With a multi-centred and complex approach and an ongoing dialogue with Freud, Leticia Glocer Fiorini addresses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty, and the passing of time by reconsidering the gender binary and underlying power relations. Glocer Fiorini’s work highlights current debates concerning women, the feminine, and sexual difference, as well as discussing topics which have caused controversy throughout the history of the psychoanalytic movement. The updated and expanded edition distinguishes between the concept of sexual difference and the category of ‘difference’ as it applies at various heterogenous levels, and includes new approaches reflecting on the ‘feminine enigma’, hysteria, feminine masochism, and masculinity.
Deconstructing the Feminine will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in clinical practice and in training, as well as to scholars of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies.
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Abel Mario Fainstein
Prologue to the Second Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1 Why the feminine?
Chapter 2 The feminine position: a heterogeneous construction
Chapter 3 The feminine, the pre-discourse and the symbolic
Chapter 4 At the limits of the feminine: the Other
Chapter 5 The feminine in the middle stages of life: the efficacy of an imaginary
Chapter 6 Love and power: the conditions of love in the Freudian discourse
Chapter 7 Itineraries of love life
Chapter 8 Maternity and female sexuality in light of new reproductive techniques
Chapter 9 Femininity and desire
Chapter 10 Towards a deconstruction of femininity as a universal category
Chapter 11 Between sex and gender: the paradigm of complexity
Chapter 12 Otherness, diversity, and sexual difference
Chapter 13 Difference(s): new constructions
Bibliography and references
Index
Biography
Leticia Glocer Fiorini is a full member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is also Chair of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee, former President of the APA and former Chair of the Publications Committee of the IPA and the APA.
“I strongly recommend Deconstructing the Feminine to all readers interested in psychoanalytic studies, gender studies, interdisciplinary perspectives, human cycle development and to therapists who deal, in their practice, with both women and men, their multiple itineraries of desire, gender questions and their interactions.” - Cláudio Laks Eizirik, Former President of the IPA
“This expanded and updated second edition of Leticia Glocer Fiorini's book is very timely. It revisits the notion of the feminine and rethinks her proposals from the first edition, in the context of the changes that occurr in current subjectivities. It focuses on the questioning of binarisms and on gender migrations, gender violence, changes in family configurations, and the impact of technology. This important contribution sheds light on the feminine from a psychoanalytic perspective on singular and collective practices. It makes its reading not only recommendable but also essential in our times.” - Virginia Ungar, Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association, IPA Past President.
