Do women have a soul ? Philosophers have historically doubted this, refusing to accord women rationality. However, at the same time, they have been unable to imagine the soul without the help of feminine metaphors : the soul conceives, it is pregnant with knowledge, it gives birth in pain and distress but always with the help of someone. In reading classic texts such as Derrida, and deconstructing them while drawing comparisons with others and focusing on what may seem paradoxical, such as the many Freudian slips, Giulia Sissa leads us to interrogate ourselves on the exclusively feminine attributes of the Western soul. This suggestive and thorough work is a radical questioning of the difference between the sexes which leads us to the most profound aspects of our culture.

Giulia Sissa is a professor of literature and Greek civilisations at the John Hopkin’s University in Baltimore. She has published Pleasure and Evil with Odile Jacob.