Androgyny and the Denial of Difference

Download or read book Androgyny and the Denial of Difference written by Kari Weil and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the long and complex history of the androgyne throughout Western aesthetics, philosophy, mythology and literature, from Plato to contemporary feminist theory, with particular attention given to the Romantic period. It notes that from the classical vision of the androgyne as a symbol of primordial totality and oneness created out of a union of opposed forces to Freud's theory of the libido, the figure has functioned as a conservative, even a misogynistic, ideal. Kari Weil shows that, rather than being a synthesis of male and female, the androgyne has been a construction of patriarchal ideology that has served to establish sexual, aesthetic and racial hierarchies.