Kill the mother. When Luce Irigaray meets Angélica Liddell

Abstract

During the seventies, psychoanalysts such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray went against Freud’s vision of both maternity and the figure of the mother by creating a new way of understanding these concepts to allow a different construction of feminine identity. Forty years of feminism later, the playwright and performer Angélica Liddell shouts her hatred of women and the figure of the mother on every European stage. This article aims to bring these two schools of thought, which at first glance appear diametrically opposed, together by comparing Irigaray’s «Le corps-à-corps avec la mère» and the struggle shown by Liddell in Tout le ciel au-dessus de la terre. This paper intends to highlight how Liddell, possibly against her will, works with the original matricide illustrated by Irigaray and creates a violently new version of the female’s freedom of desire.

Keywords

• mother’s figure and feminine figure
• identity
• angélica liddell
• luce irigaray
• feminism