• 영미문화
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.1-27
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• 2016

This paper aims to explore an other way to reflect on the self through woman, through the feminine, as a mode of being. In other words, in order to say about "how to re-think the self, in a different way," if I start from the issue of the feminine, how and why can this "a different way" be linked to woman? This question implies several more questions; what is woman? what is the feminine? what does it mean "a different way"? how can we say of "a different way"? Or, why can we take woman as the medium to "be" in a different way? If woman gives us a "way out," that is to say, if (S)he opens out a way for our out-being, ex-sistence, standing outside ourselves, that is, ek-stasis, does this enable us to overstep egotism? Then, how can we re-flect and say about this "out (as 'ex-/ek-')" in terms of woman, the feminine? This paper starts from these questions. Woman is an explosive overflowing force, movement, and process, which displace 'within' into 'outside,' as what Irigaray would call a "disruptive excess." Thus, I start from saying of the "place" in which woman itself takes place as overflowing. By referring to Derridian, Lacanian, and Heideggerian terms, I hope to foreground the ex-sistential space of woman.