ABSTRACT
Angst, published in 1977, continues a number of the themes explored in La. In Angst, the newly born woman must negotiate a place for herself within a symbolic order designed to protect the masculine. In the following passage, language, as the representative of this order, is depicted as a “web of metaphors” spun by the masculine il (“he”) to entrap her. “He” talks “without hesitation in his own language,” spinning “fictions” that annihilate her reality. The extract shows how the masculine desire to subjugate the other also ensnares him: he too is a fly struggling in the web of his making.
