“I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Genealogies, Re-Visions of the Body, and Feminist Figurations

Retracing women’s genealogies is not only “an act of survival”, but also a radical deconstruction of the western symbolic order where women have represented the “other” of man. This act starts from the reappropriation of language, re-visions of the female body, and the recognition of women’s multifaceted and heterogeneous traditions. Theorizing continuities and discontinuities in gender constructions implies envisaging new figurations capable of elaborating and prospecting new forms of identity and subjectivity. Luce Irigaray’s divine women, Hélène Cixous’s laughing Medusa, the posthuman images of the nomadic feminist subjects (Rosi Braidotti), and the feminist cyborg (Donna Haraway) are connected to the analyses of the queer, the drag, and the abject by Judith Butler in order to highlight the heterogeneity of feminist thought, but also a transversal continuity in women’s critical traditions.