ABSTRACT
My fourth factor emphasized the profound links between 'being a woman' and fleshiness. I suggested that in our culture 'femaleness' is linked to modes of embodiment in ways that make it not simply the converse of maleness. As such, it is hard to think of a female self in terms of the dominant models of selfhood and personhood that have come down to us from history. The category 'female' troubles the notion of a free or autonomous and individualized 'soul' or 'mind' that merely inhabits the flesh, as well as the notion of a 'synthesis' of temporal moments that is imposed by the thinking 'I'. To talk of a woman remaining the same self from birth to death involves an emphasis on fleshy continuity, rather than structures maintained by - or provided by - the cogito. As such, female identity is non-hylomorphic: it erupts from flesh, and is not a form (morphe) imposed on matter (hyle) by the mind in a top-down way.
