ABSTRACT
At the beginning of Chapter 3, I asked the question, `And what is a woman, and what is a man, anyway?' We have been exploring how the `what is?' question in relation to women and the feminine can be approached through the notions of projection and the possibility of a feminine-feminine symbolic/imaginary. Each of these ideas is intertwined with the recursive ¯ow of the Master/Slave Dialectic. But I now want to turn to another way that this question has been interpreted in and by philosophical literature. My reasons for turning to philosophy are the same as those I invoked in my Introduction: philosophy has been the source, and inspiration behind the analysis of, many ideas about power, sex/gender relations and psychology. Indeed, we all make philosophical assumptions even though we may not be aware that we do.
