Schneider, Monique

The Impasses of Filiation and the Question of the Feminine - 2001.


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A gap separates the spatial inscription of filiation in genealogical trees and the logic inherent in the thought processes concerning filiation. Through different channels, W. Granoff, C. Stein, and E. Benveniste have stressed the primacy, in Western thought and in Freudian elaboration, of a linear representation of filiation, proceeding from the father and reposing either on “sidelining” the feminine, as in the thinking of Granoff, on the construction of the “immortal and unengendered father,” as in the thinking of Stein, or on the absence, in the European lexis, as analyzed by E. Benveniste, of the adjective matrius. By studying the looking and naming prohibition concerning the matrilineal side in Totem and Taboo, Freud would take psychoanalytical thinking in two directions: taking cultural priority into account by insisting on paternal polarity, and encouraging a line of thinking that leads back to questioning the origin of the maternal  Heim.