Author : Kari Weil
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0813914051
Androgyny and the Denial of Difference by Kari Weil Pdf
This book traces the long and complex history of the androgyne throughout Western aesthetics, philosophy, mythology and literature, from Plato to contemporary feminist theory, with particular attention given to the Romantic period. It notes that from the classical vision of the androgyne as a symbol of primordial totality and oneness created out of a union of opposed forces to Freud's theory of the libido, the figure has functioned as a conservative, even a misogynistic, ideal. Kari Weil shows that, rather than being a synthesis of male and female, the androgyne has been a construction of patriarchal ideology that has served to establish sexual, aesthetic and racial hierarchies.