By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. Althaus-Reid, Liberation Theology and Sexuality, Women have always been alienated from the symbolic structure of the traditional Christian image of God. The symbolic is the realm of society and subjectivity has been governed by the Law of the Father.
To discern the subjectivity of women, both Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray stress the necessity of changing the representational system of Christian symbols in phallocentric culture. Both have carefully discerned the representation of the image of women in relation to religious languages.
Christian patriarchal symbolic order is challenged by the Irigaraian imaginary and the Kristevan semiotic. Observing and comparing the works of Kristeva and Irigaray, this paper will find out how they reconceptualize and reconstruct the divine and women especially on their God-talk. French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has consistently challenged viewers to consider the ways women negotiate sexual freedom in light of numerous forces of repression. This essay considers how Breillat's depiction of women's sexuality in Romance and Anatomy of Hell simultaneously evokes abjection and empowerment.
Specifically, we consider Breillat's contrast between her female protagonists and male protagonists, her treatment of women and their bodies as infused with desire yet struggling towards sexual subjectivity, and the avenues available to women to define themselves outside of hegemonic masculinity.
We argue that Breillat's provocative portrayals provoke consideration of the problems inherent in hegemonic female sexuality while also offering hopeful alternatives to sexual expression, sexual freedom, and changing definitions of power and pleasure. The past 25 years have seen an upsurge of interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene, whose image has been transformed through feminist scholarship from penitent prostitute to prominent disciple of Jesus.
