Divine Daughters of Divine Mothers: Carolyn

70
Luce
Divine Daughters of Divine Mothers:
Irigaray’s Search for Women’s Own Divinity
Carolyn Sharp
ABSTRACT
Patriarchal culture, Luce Irigaray reminds us, is an exclusivist culture
among men. Its intolerance of difference isolates women and strips them of
their subjectivity. Women are thus reduced to their biological capacity to
1 The consequence of this
satisfy men’s erotic, social and procreative needs.
culture for the female child is also important. Unwelcome daughters are
excluded from paternal society as fathers seek the sameness of the sons
who carry on their names. The concept of women’s own divinity is
necessary if women are to constitute a sense of purposefulness of existence
and identity.
brief article which appeared in Resources for Feminist Research,
Irigaray offers several practical suggestions for the creation of space for
the feminine within culture.2 Among these suggestions is the proposal
that images of the mother-daughter couple be prominently displayed
throughout our most public and most intimate spaces. The constant
exposure to secular and religious pictures of mothers and their sons is,
Irigaray insists, unhealthy for girls. The neglect of the mother-daughter
relation constricts girls’ ability to constitute their own sexual identity.
Irigaray proposes displaying a variety of images which allow a
daughter to remember her origins: pictures of the daughter with her
mother, of the mother with her mother, even of the daughter with her
mother and father. Among these, she includes the suggestion that
Christian women display images of Mary with her mother Anne.3 This
suggestion is likely to provoke surprise and resistance. Strategies that
revive pietistic devotions offer a frail basis upon which to construct a
In
a
Luce Irigaray,’ La culture de la difference’, RFR/DRF, 16.4 (December 1987), p. 7.
Luce Irigaray, ’La culture de la difference’, pp. 7-8.
’A toutes les femmes des traditions chretienne, je propose, par exemple de
metree dans les salles communes de leur logement, les chambres des filles et d’ellememes une image figurant Marie et sa mere Anne. Il en existe des photos ou des
peintures faciles areproduire’ (Irigaray, ’La culture de la difference’, p. 7).
1.
2.
3.
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spirituality. However, because Irigaray’s suggestion contains
important displacements, it merits attention.
Irigarays suggestion reflects her concern with women’s genealogy.
Locating women in relation to those who preceded them, to those who
surround them and to those who will come after, a genealogy provides
feminist
some
the basis of what Winnie Tomm has called ’a centred space within the
individual [which] exists in relation to the social milieu and other
relational existence’.4 In denying women such a genealogy, patriarchal
culture and religion denies them their relation with the divine, a relation
which, according to Irigaray, is the absolute condition for the constitution of women’s own identity.5 Such a genealogy which serves as a
’mirroir pour devenir femme’6 is the only possible basis for women’s
relation to themselves and to others.
Locating the divine in the mother-daughter relation, Irigaray’s
proposal thus differs pointedly from those representations of the female
divinity which speak of the Goddess and her son. Similarly, displaying
images of Mary with Anne displaces traditional Mariology. It invites us
to reflect upon Mary not as the mother of God/Jesus, but as daughter.
Thus, I decided to pay a visit to the Basilica at Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre. My
intent was to see if the Basilica could mean more than its builders had
meant it to say.
The Basilica contains a multiplicity of images which witness to the
fluidity of mother-daughter relation. These images, which portray the
rhythms and complexities of the mother-daughter relation from birth to
death, suggest that the concrete relation between Anne and Mary was
one of empowerment and tenderness. Yet it is necessary to acknowledge
the ambiguity of this thoroughly anachronistic iconography and its
glorification of the hierarchical spirituality of pre-conciliar Catholicism.
In order to explore this ambiguity - the images of tenderness and
denial -I will focus on two aspects of the ceiling mosaic. These mosaics
were created in the late 1930s. A booklet, still available in the Basilica in
1988, states that the storyline was drawn from the legends found in the
Apocryphal Gospel of James and in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria.~
The first aspect of the mosaic I want to consider is the glorification of
Anne which is found directly above the main altar. In this double trinity,
the familiar threesome of father, son and holy spirit is crossed horizon4.
W. Tomm, see pp. 8-29 in this issue.
5.
Cf. Luce Irigaray, Sexes et parentes (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1987), pp. 74-75,
94-96.
6. Irigaray, Sexes et parentes
, p. 79.
7.
Proulx Laurent, La route centrale de la Basilique Sainte-Anne, Ste-Anne-de(Beaupre, 1974), pp. 12-17.
72
a less familiar one of mother, son and grandmother. In the
horizontal trinity, Mary is busy reading.8 Indeed her glance is directed
away from her son, who, as the connecting point of the two trinities
should be the centre of attention. Anne, meanwhile, distracts Jesus with
the offer of an apple. Indeed, she comes in between the mother and boy
allowing her to maintain her own identity, that is, not to lose herself in
maternity.9 Moreover, inasmuch as literacy represents power, Anne is an
empowering mother. She taught her girl Mary to read and encourages
her as a woman to retain this space. Anne thus frees her daughter to be a
tally by
woman.
Pour etablir ou entretenir des relations avec soi-meme et avec l’ autre, il est
indispensable de disposer d’espace... Il est important que (les femmes)
disposent d’un espace exterieur proper qui leur permette d’aller du dedans
0
au dehors d’elles-memes, de s’eprover comme sujets autonomes et hbre.1
This trinity thus creates a visual picture of that desired centred space in
which one can both be connected and left alone.l1
Before discussing some of the unpleasant ambiguities in which
patriarchal Christianity has encased this attractive image, let me turn to
the other aspect of the mosaic which I want to discuss: the genealogy
embedded in the story of Anne’s life which covers most of the Basilica’s
ceiling. This genealogy recounts the story of four generations, from that
of Anne’s parents to that of her grandson. It is moreover matrilinear. An
interesting aspect of this family history is the consistency with which
conceptions and births are the result of divine intervention. Indeed, the
virgin birth is merely the last of a line of miracles. However, given the
objective of my visit, the most striking detail of this story is the name of
Anne’s mother: Emerentienne. Est mere ancienne. (She) is the ancient
mother. Anne and Mary are filles d’Emerentienne -daughters of the
ancient mother. Having been pushed into going to Ste-Anne by
Irigaray’s outrageous suggestion that I find there some reflection of
women’s own divinity, the coincidence seemed inoui. I felt as if I had
stumbled on a genealogical find.
8.
For a discussion of writing, reading and power in religious iconography, see
Vivian Labrei, ’Trois regards incultes sur l’eglise Saint-coeur de Marie, suivis d’une
reflexion sure l’ecrit, le corps et le jaillissement expressif’, in Benoit Lacroix and Jean
Simard (eds.), Religion populaire, religion de clercs? (Quebec: Institute Quebecois de
recherche sur la culture, 1984), pp. 101-130.
9. For discussion of woman as woman versus woman as mother, see Irigaray,
Sexes et parentes
, pp. 81-85.
10. Luce Irigaray, ’La culture de la difference’, pp. 7-8.
11. Cf. Tomm, see pp. 8-29 in this issue.
73
However,
as
I have
said, the iconography is fraught with ambiguity.
ambiguity can shed light upon the connection
between the search for women’s origins and their thirst for the divine.
The genealogy, as I have said, consists of four and not three generations.
The problem with this is suggested in another of Irigaray’s articles.
Let
me
turn to how this
L’important, pour (les femmes) est de retrouver leur genealogie, condition
de leur identite. Et dire que Jesus est le fils de ’Sophie-Sagesse’ ne suffit
pas, a moins d’affirmer qu’il est la fin de la genealogie gyneocratique. le fils
de la genealogie mere-fille. S’il en est ainsi, il designe l’appropriation du
statut divin de la fille et de la relation mere-fille....Jesus representerait
alors une figure de mise en place des structures partiarcales au carrefour
des traditions Greco-semitiques, au moins.12 Ultimately, with regards to
the search for women’sown divinity, the story of Anne’s life reads as a
feminine-divme genealogy dead-ended in the perfect male child. The
women in this genealogy are instrumental rather than term. Jesus is the
boy-child/ god-man who makes three generations of women truly
mothers, i.e. women devoted to the incarnation of man.13
HERMITS (EMERENTIENNE=ANNE=MARIE) JESUS
The double trinity displays similar ambiguities. It is a quite unequal
double trinity whose vertical axis is topped by the Father-God, robed in
clerical (Episcopal, pontifical) garb. His signs of office (radiance, beard,
hat, cross, orbs, vestment, raised fingers) are prominently displayed.
Women are found in the vertical axis, which crosses the masculine
trinity not at the centre, as might be expected, but at the base. This
reminds us that ’le sexe feminine...se definit comme une fonction
subordonnee a 1’economie de la subjectivite masculine’.14 Anne and
Mary remain well within the Father’s orbit. 15
Father
I
holy spirit
I
Mary---son---Anne
Moreover, while the double trinity provides images of woman both as
mother as well as woman, it lacks any image of the girl child. This is of
course the image for which I was searching.
12. Luce Irigaray,’Egales a qui?’, Critique
, 480 (1987), p. 431
13. Irigaray, Sexes et parentes, p. 76. Cf. Irigaray, p. 28. For a discussion of the
reduction of women to instruments of male agency, see Tomm, pp 8-29.
14. Luce Irigaray, ’L’ordre sexuel du discours — Seminaire de l’isisss. Toronto June
1987’, RFR/DRF, 17.4 (December 1988), p. 27.
15. Cf. Luce Irigaray, Ethique de la difference sexuelle (Paris. Editions du Minmt,
1984), p. 23.
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11 est
indispensable que nous soyons filles-dieux dans la relation a notre
mere, at non que nous la haissons pour entre dans la soumission au premari. Nous ne opouvons aimer sans memoire d’un passif natif vis-a-vis de
notre mere, d’un attachement primitif a elle et d’elle a nois.16 Indeed, since
the boy is placed between and slightly above his mother and grandmother
in the horizontal axis which they share, this trinity is overshadowed by the
artistic tradition of employing mothers as thrones. We are thus once again
confronted by the omnipresence of the mother-son relation.
In many ways, the
iconography at the Basilica is
deceiving.
deceptive promise is not a dead end. The
absence of free-standing images of the mother-daughter couple points to
the women’s own undesired status. At Ste-Anne it is the daughter who
promise
of the
However, this
is obliterated. While she is present, she is not desired for herself, but for
the son who usurps her relation to desire and to the divine. This is the
point to which the Basilica’s ambiguity incessantly returns. Women’s
relation to their origins is disrupted by their undesired status and their
reduction to an instrumentality which denies worth in and for
themselves. The inability to find our own genealogy betrays an inability
to find our own desiredness.
This disruption of women’s relation to her origins recalls a curse.
Les femmes n’ont de diaboliques que leur absence de Dieu et le fait que,
preies de Dieu, elle se trouvent pliees a des modeles qui ne leur
conviennent pas, les exilent, le doublent, le masquent, les coupent d’elles
en en elles, leur otant leurs progress dans Famour, Fart, la pensee,
I’accomplissement ideal det divine d’etl(8).~
According to Dolto, a curse attacks the persons worth, questions the
person’s existence, denies love for the person. A curse is very different
from a blessing. ’To bless someone in God’s name is to tell the person
blessed that God chooses and sees that person as a distinct individuay. 18
However, curse and blessing are also similar. Both are irremovable
because’co-existential with the human subject and this also means with
his or her creation and procreation’.19 Both also refer implicitly or
explicitly to God and to the person’s relation with the divine.
Can healing-talk -be it feminist or psychoanalytic or even explicitly
theological-undo a curse? Specifically, can it heal the wound of the
daughter’s undesired, unrepresented status which prevents women from
firmly securing their own identity? For Irigaray, the analytical setting is
not simply one where ’there is a couch on which one person lies down
, p. 84.
Irigaray, Sexes et parentes
17. Irigaray, Sexes et parentes
, p. 76.
18. Francoise Dolto, ’The Power of Blessing Over Psychic Identity’, p. 81.
19. Dolto, ’The Power of Blessing Over Psychic Identity’, p. 81.
16.
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speaks and an armchair where another sits and listens’, 20 but a
setting where either a woman or a man sits and listens.21 But what
happens when both the listener and the speaker as a woman? What
fantasy emerges as she who is listening hears the speaker’s desire to be
desired for and in herself? Given the ongoing importance of the
psychoanalytic paradigm for Irigaray’s theoretical perspective, it does
not seem out of place to suggest that the dynamics of healing-talk have
left an imprint upon her discussion of women’s own divine.
Dolto tells us that a curse marks the unconsciousness ineradicably. She
affirms that the narcissistic wound of the curse presents a major obstacle
to psychoanalytical healing-talk. Kristeva, however, has suggested that
the effectiveness of a word of love in the dynamics of healing-talk.
A word of love is often a more effective, profound and durable
treatment than electroshock therapy or psychotropic drugs; sometimes it
is the only treatment for a condition that is no doubt a consequence not
only of our biological nature but also, and at the same time, of an
inopportune or ill-intentioned word.22
Such a word of love I suggest looks very much like Dolto’s blessing.
Can we overcome a curse through a blessing? Is the search for a feminist
vision of the divine an effort to procure such a blessing, one which can
and
reach back and eradicate the curse?
I suggest that Irigaray’s search for women’s own divinity represents
such an effort. Irigaray’s search for women’s own divine often recalls the
language of blessing. Women’s own divinity is necessary as a blessing
which allows women to constitute their own identity and upon which is
to be found the purposefulness of their existence.
de nous, assez fondamental pour
de
affirmer,
decouvrir,
permettre
accomplir des buts... Le but nous a
toujours ete propose hors de nous: I’homme, 1’enfant, la city... 11 nous
manque de le metre en nous et hors de nous, de nous aimer et de nou vouloir.
Ce qui ne peut etre que projet divin. Dieu se pense et s’aime lui-meme.
Cette part de Dieu nous a toujours det enlevee. Cela a fait de nous des
infirmes des informes, insecurisees, agressives, vouees a Fautre a defaut
d’etre conscientes de nous, soumises a l’ autre a defaut de pouvoir nous
consituer un ordre... Seul le divin nous offer, nous impose la liberte. Seul
un Dieu constitue un lie de rassemblement de nous qui peur nous laisser
Les
religieux est seul, en nous et hors
nous
libres, rien d’autre.23
20. Kristeva, In the Beginning was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith (trans. A.
Goldhammer; New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 4.
21.
22.
23.
Irigaray, Sexes et parentes, pp. 105-108.
Kristeva, In the Beginning was Love, pp. 48-49.
Irigaray, Sexes et parentes, p. 80.
76
Women’s divinity is also necessary in order to create a future for this
existence. ’L’amour de Dieu n’a rien de moral en soi. 11 indique un
chemin. Dieu de nous oblige a rien, sinon devenir’.24
24.
Irigaray, Sexes et parentes, p
81