Abstract

Following Žižek's hermeneutics of Hegelo-Lacanian theory, this paper provides a Žižekian reading of the early American novel: The Female American. Viewed through the dialectical lenses of Hegel's concrete universality, and, homologous to the latter, Lacan's formulae of sexuation, the overall aim of this paper is to refute the predominating critiques of The Female American currently in circulation; that the text is not a proto-feminist subversion of the standard, masculine-oriented castaway novel. Rather, the novel itself operates precisely as a "re-marking" of the masculist ideology of its time. By providing a detailed explication of the complex nature of Žižek's rendition of Hegel's concrete universality à la Lacan's formulae of sexuation, this paper presents the following argument: The Female American functions as a point de capiton, creating a new space into which the old elements of the universal ideology of its time get reinscribed; therefore weakening today's leading commentary on the matter that The Female American is a feminist text