FREUD AND THE MISOGYNY

possible readings from a feminist epistemology

Abstract

Sexism, expression of misogyny, uses several enhancement strategies that aim to ensure the maintenance of an entire order of social privileges historically tied to a specific identity (white-European-heterosexual man), a set of cultural dispositions known as the patriarchal system. What we want to discuss here is whether Freud’s work is unrelated to these mechanisms or whether psychoanalytic theory is limited by the devices of patriarchy. As a strategy, we will adopt a specific path that will allow us, initially, to understand how the concept of misogyny was structured in Western thought and its intertwining with history and culture; our hypothesis, a priori, is that this thought is closely associated with the devices produced by patriarchy. Finally, we will discuss with the founder of psychoanalysis, from his theory of the Oedipus complex, trying to understand if Freudian thought about sexuality is affected or not by the fallacious techniques of a thought originating from misogyny. We will seek to adopt, as a method of analysis of these psychoanalytic theoretical constructions, the category we suggest to call feminist epistemology.