Women's Agency in the Perspective of Taoism and Psychoanalysis: An Interconnective Study of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Zi and This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray
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Abstract
Women's agency is a global issue that has long been debated in studies across cultures, histories, religions and philosophical systems. Studies of feminism in Eastern and Western philosophy have tended to compare the two without addressing how psychoanalytic perspectives, the main basis of the Western feminist movement, interact with Eastern feminist ideas. This research fills the gap by exploring the interconnectedness of women's agency in Eastern Taoism through Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching and Western feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One. This research aims to understand how the two texts relate to each other in representing women's agency. Using descriptive qualitative methods and content analysis, this study found that in the Tao Te Ching, women are depicted as “mysterious female” (玄牝), who symbolizes the Yin principle, as the source of life, the center of regeneration, and cosmic balance. Women are also identified as the Tao itself, which is the gateways (玄牝之门) and root of heaven and earth, while in This Sex Which Is Not One, Irigaray asserts that women's bodies possess a regenerative agency that men cannot naturally surpass. Both texts offer resistance to patriarchy, Irigaray with an explicit critique of the repression of women in Western culture, while the Tao Te Ching has historically been a masculine non-oppositional response to patriarchal Confucianism. This research offers a new perspective in cross-cultural feminist studies by connecting Eastern religious teachings with Western feminist psychoanalytic perspectives that share a common intention on aspects of human consciousness.
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