Article Author: Joanna Conings

From Aristotle to Freud and Lacan, Western thought has often defined women through the prism of absence and lack. Aristotle described women as governed by “cold and moist” humors, deprived of heat and therefore passive, incomplete beings. This notion of deficiency persisted across centuries, resurfacing in psychoanalytic theories that cast femininity as a “fundamental lack” — the absence of the phallus. In Western philosophy, absence is typically feared; it must be filled, explained, or given meaning. But what if, instead of resisting absence, we embraced it? What if the very void historically imposed on women could become a site of power and creation? This article explores these questions through an analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein, a novel saturated with silence, loss, and absence. I argue that Duras reclaims this absence, transforming it from a patriarchal marker of deficiency into a space of potentiality. By subverting narrative and linguistic norms, Duras destabilizes the symbolic order and opens a space for the “absent feminine” — a form of presence that resists representation yet disrupts patriarchal meaning itself.

Keywords: Absence; Deficiency; Silence; Emptiness; Potentiality

Article Review Status: Published

Pages: 13 - 21

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