ABSTRACT
C.G. Jung represents the feminine in at least two related ways: as anima feminine and as maternal feminine. In this chapter, I argue that Jung's conception of the anima is closely related to Plato's conception of the irrational ± or soul disorder ± as feminine. I maintain that Plato's idea of mimesis or imitation is important in Jung's construction of the psyche. Just as Plato argues in The Republic that it is morally undesirable to mirror properties of women through imitation, so in Jung's work, it is undesirable for the moral imagination to be inspired by the anima feminine. The anima feminine has a functional role to play, however, as a source of moral caution, very like the irrational or womanly in The Republic: look at women and you will see what you should not be like. Luce Irigaray de®es Plato's recommendation to avoid miming the irrational and her writing expresses this de®ance. According to Irigaray, mimicry has been historically assigned to the feminine in the male symbolic. By strategically using mimesis ± especially `mimesis as production which would lie more in the realm of music' (1985b: 131)1 ± women may be able to develop their own symbolic. In that symbolic `the possibility of a woman's writing may come about' based on the use of productive mimesis. She argues that `one must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a form of subordination into an af®rmation, and thus to begin to thwart it' (ibid.: 76). For Irigaray, women are `the mute outside that sustains all systematicity [and is the] still silent ground that nourishes all foundations [so they do not] have to conform to the codes theory has set up for itself' (1985a: 365). I claim that in Irigaray's de®ance we ®nd the seeds for a potential revolution of the individuation process for women, which takes a very different turn from that conceived and valorized by Jung. Thus, at the end of the chapter I respond to Jung's idea that it is sometimes appropriate for a devoted and selfsacri®cing, unconscious woman to attack her insigni®cant husband.
