ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a theorizing which prioritizes the temporality of the subject allows for more inclusive interpretations of individualities as lived in their socio-historical and cultural specificity. It begins with a consideration of the contributions of some psychoanalysts who explicitly struggle with the question of the relation between the individual and the socio-historical and cultural contexts. J. Kristeva claims that the struggles of suffragists and existential feminists for equal rights with men signified the desire for a place in linear time. Across the channel from the London Women’s Therapy Centre founded by L. Eichenbaum and S. Orbach and other women, Kristeva, a Bulgarian born psychoanalyst living in Paris, explicitly addresses the question of time in relation to women’s subjectivity. Andre Green’s theorizing of time emphasizes the value of Sigmund Freud’s notion of the unconscious as “timeless” and of resurrecting Freud’s drive theory.
