Abstract

GAINSBORG RIVAS, Carol M. "Woman Does Not Exist". Rev. aportes de la comunicación [online]. 2016, n.20, pp.63-67. ISSN 2306-8671.

Abstract This essay has been developed under the framework of the colloquium denominated "The Woman Does Not Exist", facilitated by the Simon I. Patino Center in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. This paper aims to approach the Lacanian statement "the woman does not exist", understanding the concept of "the woman" as one that cannot be universalized, as a ghostlike projection of men's self-fulfillment fantasy when faced with the horror ofwhat is real: death. Asa resultof this horror, a linguistic resource surfaces through which a discourse is constructed regarding what is real and the integration or marginalization of the other in a space of self-fulfillment in the determination of floating signifiers and their respective chains of equivalence. This work also shows how this exercise of universalizing patriarchal and heteronormative concepts determines the social political, economic and cultural order that the discourse of truth institutes throughout history to the detriment of women, revealing an impact that is real, not only discursive, but also material embodied in the construction of gender. At the same time, the existence of power lapses are witnessed in the same socially constructed chains of equivalence applied to women, through which the possibility of female resistance to the current order exists.

Keywords : "The Woman Does Not Exist"; "floating signifiers"; "discursive performativity".

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