>>1716066Whence the mystery that woman represents in a culture
claiming to count everything, to number everything by units, to inventory everything as individualities. She is neither one nor two. Rigorously speaking, she cannot be identified either as one person, or as two. She resists all adequate definition. Further, she has no "proper" name. And her sexual organ, which is not one organ, is counted as none. The negative, the underside, the reverse of the only visible and morphologically designatable organ (even if the passage from erection to detumescence does pose some problems): the penis.
But "thickness" of that "form," the layering of its vol ume, its expansions and contractions and even the spacing of the moments in which it produces itself as form-all this the feminine keeps secret. Without knowing it. And if woman is asked to sustain, to revive, man's the request neglects to spell out what it implies as to the value of her own desire. A desire of which she is not aware, moreover, at least not ex plicitly. But one whose force and continuity are capable of nurturing repeatedly and at length all the masquerades of "femininity
that are expected of her.
