The Feminist Difference Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender Barbara Johnson Harvard University Press + Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England + 1998Is Female to Male as Ground Is to Figure? No women, then, if have read correctly, With the notable exception ofthe smother, ofcourse. Bue chs makes up pare ofthe system, forthe mother isthe faceless, unfigurable figure of fgurant. She crates place forall the igutes by losing herself in the background, _beques Dod, “Al Ear Nitec’ Oroigaphy” ‘We must be cured of bya cue ofthe ground [New senses inthe engenderings of sense Wace Stevens, “The Rad” Asa way of discussing the relations between feminism and psycho- analysis, [ would like ¢o bring together three well-known texts, each of which tells the story ofa led cure: Nathaniel Hawthome’s “The Birthmark,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wall- paper,” and Sigmund Freud’s “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteia."' While the three cass filin very different ways, they are alike in presenting a female patient subject to the therapeutic ambi- tions of a male doctor. In all three eases, in fact, the initiative to- ward therapy comes not from the patient herselfbut fiom a man she has in some sense discommoded—which is not to say the woman does not suffer. ‘The question asked by my ttle isa rephrasing of Sherry Orner’s famous tile, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?”? The terms figure and ground, which refer to a certain distribution of out- line and attention, are of course drawn from the visual ats.’ ThatLiterary Differences jon ofthe woman in the origin is not irelevant here, since the quest ie Twill discuss is as much aesthetic as it is medical—indeed, the texts reveal a profound complicity between aesthetics and medi- = -ground relationship, I ‘or a preliminary description ofthe figure-gro\ mero punto fom Doug Haars GSH, Est, Bah, tum to a quotation a ‘which Finflect in terms of psychoanalysis and sexual differ “When a figure or “positive space” [cll ths “the male child” or simply “the child” or “Oedipts"] is drawn inside a a to this frame “psychoanalytic theory], an unavoidal ae quence is that its complementary shape—alo calle “ground,” or “background, stat” or the “other"} has aso been drawn. In most dew we this igure-ground relationship plays little roe. ground than in the fig- or “negative space” [call this the ings, however, eed in the ‘The artist is much less interest ‘ure, But sometimes an artist will take an interest in the ground aswell. Let us now offic : : tures: cursively drawable ones, and recursive ones ... A a found is merely an accidental drawable figure is one whose gr by-product ofthe drawing act. (Later, Hofitadtr refers to this asa recognize form whe negative space isnot 89 16698" sizable form."] A reaunive figure is one whose ground can be The “te” in “recursive! dings even 0 Kn ere A cursively seen as a figure in its own right. ° represents the fact that both foreground and background . cunsively drawable—the figure is “twice-cursive.” Each figu Js Female to Male as Ground Is to Figure? ground boundary in a recursive figure is a double-edged sword.! The dream of psychoanalysis is of course to represent sexual differ- ‘ence asa recursive figure, a figure in which both figure and ground, ‘male and female, are recognizable, complementary forms. This dream articulates itself through the geometry of castration in Freud, jn which the penis isthe figure, or positive space, and the vagina the ground, or negative space. But there are limits to how recursive Freud wishes this figure to be: he wants to stop short of something analogous to M. C. Escher’s drawing hands, with male and female cach drawing the other. Indeed, the expression “double-edged sword” occurs in the form of a “knife that cuts both ways,” which Freud, in a foomote to his essay “Female Sexuality,” uses to dismiss the undecidability of his own psychoanalytic authority when the