Table Of ContentALICE DOESN'T
LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY
Editors: Stephen Heath and Colin MacCabe
Published
VISION AND PAINTING: TheLogicoftheGaze
Norman Bryson
ALICE DOESN'T: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema
Teresa de Lauretis
CONDITIONS OF MUSIC
Alan Durant
FEMINISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: The Daughter's Seduction
Jane Gallop
ON LAW AND IDEOLOGY
Paul Hirst
JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD
Colin MacCabe
THE TALKING CURE: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language
Colin MacCabe (editor)
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: The Imaginary Signifier
Christian Metz
LANGUAGE, SEMANTICS AND IDEOLOGY
Michel Pecheux
LANGUAGE, SEXUALITY AND IDEOLOGY IN EZRA POUND'S CANTOS
Jean-Miche!Rabate
THE CASE OF PETER PAN OR THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CHILDREN'S
FICTION
Jacqueline Rose
THE MAKING OF THE READER: Language and Subjectivity in Modern
American, English and Irish Poetry
David Trotter
Forthcoming
STATE OF NATURE: Ethnography and Origins
Beverley Brown andJudith Ennew
TO REPRESENT WOMAN? The Representation ofSexual Differences in the Visual
Media
Elizabeth Cowie
UNDERSTANDING BECKETT
PeterGidal
THREE ESSAYS ON SUBJECTIVITY
Stephen Heath
EPOS: Word, Narrative and the Iliad
Michael Lynn-George
THE GENEALOGY OF MORAL FORMS: Foucault,Nietzsche, Donzelot
Jeffrey Minson
FEMINISMS: A Conceptual History
Denise Riley
POLITICAL CRITICISM
Michael Ryan
ALICE
DOESN.,T
FEMINISM~
SEMIOTICS~
CINEMA
Teresa de Lauretis
M
MACMILLAN
Chapters 3 and 4 are revised versions ofa rticles published originally in Screen 22, no. 3
(1981) and Discourse, no. 5 (1983). Portions ofc hapters I and 2 have appeared in
somewhatdifferentform in Yale Italian Studies, no. 2 (1980) and Cine-Tracts, no. II (1980).
The title and a few paragraphs ofc hapter I were also used for the concluding essay of
Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath, eds., The Cinematic Apparatus (Macmillan, 1980).
©Teresa de Lauretis 1984
All rights reserved. No part oft his publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without permission.
First published in the USA by
Indiana University Press 1984
First published in the UK 1984 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Auckland, Delhi, Dublin, Gaborone, Hamburg, Harare, Hong Kong,
Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, Manzini, Melbourne, Mexico Ciry, Nairobi, New York,
Singapore, Tokyo
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
De Lauretis, Teresa
Alice doesn't
I. Women in moving-pictures
I. Title
791.43'09'09352042 PNI995.9.W6
ISBN 978-0-333-38288-2 ISBN 978-1-349-17495-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17495-9
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
lX
Introduction
1
l
Through the Looking-Glass
12
..
i)
Imaging
37
:J
Snow on the Oedipal Stage
70
4
Now and Nowh ere
84
vi I Contents
Desire in Narrative
103
6
Semiotics and Experience
158
NOTES
187
INDEX
216
PREFACE
The essays collected in this book have been conceived and written
over the past four years. On or very near my writing desk, in whatever
city I happened to be during that time, there was always this sign:
lllite doesn't!
I'd picked it up at a demonstration or a meeting-! don't remember
exactly-and have kept it with me ever since. It seems appropriate to
name the book after it, for not only is the book intended in the same
sense as the placard, but both are signs of the same struggle, both are
texts of the women's movement. The images or references suggested
by the name "Alice" are many and will probably vary with each
reader. Whether you think of Alice in Wonderland or Radio Alice in
Bologna; of Alice B. Toklas, who "wrote" an autobiography as well as
other things; or of Alice james, who produced an illness while her
brothers did the writing; of Alice Sheldon, who writes science fiction,
but with a male pseudonym; or of any other Alice, is entirely up to
you, reader. For me it is important to acknowledge, in this title, the
unqualified opposition of feminism to existing social relations, its re
fusal of given definitions and cultural values; and at the same time to
affirm the political and personal ties of shared experience that join
women in the movement and are the condition of feminist work,
theory and practice.
March 1983
Vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My first thanks go to those women from and with whom I have
learned what feminist practice is, what feminist theory should be, and,
more rarely but far more delightfully, what the two can be together. I
thank Tania Modleski, Catherine McClenahan, and Mary Russo for
reading portions of the manuscript in draft form and rejoicing in my
small victories. I thank all those who offered me their know ledges and
skills, friendship or love during the writing of the essays, the hard
times, and the difficulties; in particular, Elizabeth Elkins, Andreas
Huyssen, Stephanie Jed, Patricia Mellencamp, Franco Mollia, Sondra
O'Neale, Kaja Silverman, Michael Silverman, William Tay, Patrizia
Violi. And Paul Loeffler. I thank the colleagues who welcomed me as
Visiting Professor in the Literature Department of the University of
California, San Diego, where I began to put the book together; and all
my students, past and present, for the encouragement they gave by
their seldom less than excited response.
Last but not least I thank the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Center for Twentieth Century Studies, its Director, Kathleen Wood
ward, its staff, Jean Lile and Carol Tennessen, for their magnificent
hospitality during my tenure as a Fellow of the Center, where over a
third of this book was w1itten; and Ginny Schauble for her patience
and virtuosity in typing it. I also want to acknowledge a special debt of
gratitude to Dean William Halloran and former Associate Dean G.
Micheal Riley of the College of Letters and Science for their continu
ous and generous support of my work.
IX
DOESN'T
AI~ICE
