Death and/as Woman: Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Philosophical Imaginary

As the sex/subject who gives birth, woman personifies an inevitable ambivalence. Life turns to death, good to evil, purity to impurity. Death’s ambivalence generates man’s fear, violence, even matricide - if not, suicide. Man’s domination of woman is one means for him to avoid confrontation with death and embodiment. Avoidance of thinking death and woman results in the ambiguity of ‘woman.’ The unthought elements which constitute ‘the philosophical imaginary’ include the non-rational asides and unnoticed images in cultural texts. The duplicity of imagery becomes tied to the duplicity of woman. In this way, nature and culture are shaped by the mbivalence of human embodiment and the ambiguity of patriarchal concepts.