Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Arts Faculty of the University of Utrecht, May 16, 1990.

In this thesis, I use poetic texts by two German women Expressionist authors, Claire Gull and Paula Ludwig, to examine questions of selfhood, aesthetics and sexual difference within a Kantian philosophical frame. The thesis is structured in two parts. In Part One, I situate the project via a critical examination of Lyotard's reworking of the Kanlian sublime. I argue that Lyotard closes down the gaps within Kant's system that feminist philosophy could usefully exploit and explore. I then position German Expressionism (...) as an alternative mode of post-Kantianism. I argue that although the male Expressionist poets break down the Kantian subject-object distinction, they continue to position woman as the "other". There follows a brief bridging section, in which I outline work by some of the key women Expressionists, and argue that the theoretical frameworks used in Expressionist scholarship are inherently gendered. In Part Two of the thesis, I explore texts by both Go!! and Ludwig in detail. I argue that whilst the male Expressionists are concerned with dissolving male subjecthood, these writers can be read as subverting Kantian space-time to produce alternative modes of female selfhood and of the sublime. In chapter 4,! examine Goll's disruptive exploration of a mode of embodied selfhood generated through productive play and movements of relationality. Chapters 5 and 6 extend the theme of relationally generated selfhood by tracing the subversive use of neoplatonic and Orphic elements in a short story by Goll. In chapter 7, I show how Ludwig radically reconfigures the limits of both body and self to produce identities no longer constructed via oppositional boundaries in the manner of the Kantian subject. I conclude by arguing that the work of these authors provides feminist philosophy with productive models for rethinking immanent transcendence and relationally generated selfhood which can incorporate both difference and change. (shrink)