Theories of the body are particularly important for feminists
because historically (in the humanities) the body has been associated with
the feminine, the female, or woman, and denigrated as weak, immoral, unclean,
or decaying.
Feminism and post-structuralism operate in binaries: good/evil, truth/lie, love/hate, man/not man(woman)
Kristeva emphasizes the maternal function and its importance in the development
of subjectivity and access to culture and language. While Freud and Lacan
maintain that the child enters the social by virtue of the paternal function,
specifically paternal threats of castration, Kristeva asks why, if our
only motivation for entering the social is fear, more of us aren't psychotic?
Kristeva argues that there
are three phases of feminism. She rejects the first phase because it seeks
universal equality and overlooks sexual differences. She implicitly criticizes
Simone de Beauvoir and the rejection of motherhood; rather than reject
motherhood Kristeva insists that we need a new discourse of maternity.