>>1716251Must this multiplicity of female desire and female language be understood as shards, scattered remnants of a violated sexu ality? A sexuality denied? question has no simple answer. The rejection, the exclusion of a female imaginary certainly puts woman in the position of experiencing herself only frag mentarily, in the little-structured margins of a dominant Qlogy, as waste, or excess, what is left of a mirror invested by the (masculine) "subject" to reflect himself, to copy himself Moreover, the role of "femininity" is prescribed by this mas culine specula{riza)tion and corresponds scarcely at all to wom an's desire, which may be recovered only in secret, in hiding, with anxiety and guilt.
But if the female imaginary were to deploy itself, if it could
bring itself into play otherwise than as scraps, uncollected de bri.s, would it represent itself, even so, in the form of one uni verse? Would it even be volume instead of surface? No. Not unless it were understood, yet as a privileging of the maternal over the feminine. Of a phallic maternal, at that. Closed in upon the jealous possession of its valued product. Rivaling man in his esteem for productive excess. In such a race for power, woman loses the uniqueness of her pleasure. By
dosing herself off as volume, she renounces the pleasure that she gets from the nonsuture of her lips: she is undoubtedly a mother,
