Reading the Same Twice Over: The Place of the Feminine in the Time of Hegelian Spirit

Abstract

It is well known that within the Phenomenology of Spirit¹ Hegel explicitly refers to the notion of the feminine only in a single chapter—the one that deals with the ancient Greek ethical order. This fact apparently renders the feminine marginal to the historical constitution of the Hegelian subject/Spirit. However, in this chapter I shall claim that the notion of the feminine is entrenched in the entirety of this work, as it signifies the point of origin from which the Hegelian subject departs on his historical journey and to which, as Hegel famously claims, he aspires to return. More explicitly, I shall locate the place of the feminine both formally, in Hegel’s dialectical procedure, and thematically within the historical journey of the Hegelian self-consciousness. On the basis of this I shall claim that the feminine is allotted a much more fundamental place in Hegel’s PS than is commonly appreciated. In order to do this I shall put forward in sequence two different lines of interpretation that will thereafter be integrated into a concluding discussion: the first will briefly examine the explicit conception of the feminine as it appears in Hegel’s discussion of the ancient Greek Spirit while the second will include a concise interpretation of Hegel’s argument in the first four chapters of his work. In my concluding discussion I shall, first, analyze the nature and function of Hegel’s notion of the feminine within his system, mostly in epistemological and temporal terms and, second, contest the stability of sexual difference in this system. Before turning to do this, however, I will explain the methodological grounds and theoretical presuppositions that underpin this undertaking.