Teresa de Lauretis
Teresa de Lauretis
Teresa de Lauretisis an Italian-born author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures from Bocconi University in Milan before coming to the United States. She joined the History of Consciousness with Hayden White, Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson and Angela Davis. She has held Visiting Professorships at universities worldwide including ones in Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain, Hungary, Croatia,...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionAuthor
CountryItaly
Some women have 'always' been lesbians. Others, like myself, have 'become' one. As much a sociocultural construction as it is an effect of early childhood experiences, sexual identity is nether innate nor simply acquired, but dynamically (re)structured by forms of fantasy private and public, conscious and unconscious, which are culturally available and historically specific.
But one did not do feminist theory, as such, in those days, not only because male academic discourse did not recognize such a term, but especially because the womens movement did not either.
The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences.