I’ve recently been reading about the poststructural feminists, like Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous, for my backwards history of philosophy, and I think I agree with them.

If the current phallocentric logos is to be deconstructed, and it must for us to exit this cycle of fear that characterizes the modern response to differences, it needs to be through the positive create of a new logos on the part of women. We can’t build a new world when the very act of producing meaning is infected.

There are lots of differences between people, and so lots of potential different origins for making a new logos. But the shear obviousness and pervasiveness of the male-female differences cannot be ignored.

It could be argued that perhaps the fear of difference is something essential to humankind. But given the power our paradigms have over us– that we appear to interact with our models of the world and our minds far more than the things themselves– it seems silly not to hope.