Introduction

In this chapter, my focus is on Irigaray's claim that all Western theoretical models function through an unacknowledged silencing of women, thus perpetuating what she considers to be the foundation of Western culture: the murder of the mother. Specifically, my interest here is with Irigaray's critique of psychoanalysis as a discourse of origins. According to Irigaray, this fascination with beginnings in the West, be they cultural or individual beginnings, has been monopolized by masculine thought and experience, at the expense of women. In particular, psychoanalytic theory perpetuates this silence through its own masculine configurations of individual and cultural genesis.