Citations:castratrix

English citations of castratrix

1. (chiefly philosophy or psychoanalysis) A female who castrates (either literally or metaphorically).
   • 1963, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (U.S.), The Psychoanalytic Review, page 126:

     Jessica, the Jewess, turns out to be the most immediate castratrix of Shylock; she is the one who deprives him of the “two sealed bags of ducats, of double ducats”, of the “two stones, two rich and precious stones (II. viii)”, whose loss provokes in him such deep despair.

   • 1977: Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve, p67 (the four citations marked with obeli all appear to quote this original work)

     [QUOTATION UNAVAILABLE]

   • 1985: Guo li Taiwan da xue Wai guo yu wen xue xi, Studies in Language and Literature, p50^†

     She further proclaims, “I am the Castratrix of the Phallocentric Universe. I am Mama, Mama, Mama” (67). In his first encounter with her Evelyn describes…

   • 1995: Judith Halberstam & Ira Livingston, Posthuman Bodies, p124^†

     The protagonist, a British man named Evelyn, is kidnapped and brought to the desert center of America by Mama, “the Great Parricide, … Castratrix of the Phallocentric Universe”, in order to be made into a surgically created woman, “the new Eve”. As the plan is explained to him:
     

     Myth is more instructive than history, Evelyn; Mother proposes to reactivate the parthenogenesis archetype, using a new formula. She’s going to castrate you, Evelyn, and then excavate what we call the “fructifying female space” inside you and make you a perfect specimen of womanhood. Then, as soon as you’re ready, she’s going to impregnate you with your own sperm, which I collected from you after you copulated with her and took away to store in the deep freeze. (Carter 68)

   • 1996: Kathy Mezei, Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers, p239^†

     Beulah (in Hebrew, marriage), the underground technological womb from which Eve is born, is a city of single-breasted women in the service of Mother, “the Great Parricide … the Castratrix of the Phallocentric Universe” (67). Her plan to make New Eve the virgin mother of the “Messiah of the Antithesis” (67) by impregnating Eve with Evelyn’s sperm has the larger goal of the “feminisation of Father Time” (67). To this end, Mother seeks to help Evelyn into his womanhood through a program of rudimentary “psycho-surgery” (68).

   • 1996: T. A. Shippey, Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, p722^†

     Mother sets Evelyn on her knee and announces that she is “the Castratrix of the Phallocentric Universe”. Her female world is that which Evelyn had long denied, for he had used his sex as an abusive weapon. Mother explains that the male principle exists in time and brings with it mortality.

   • 1998, Albert Russo, Vincent Guatroche, Zapinette Video, page 135:

     She must have been what sigh-kayaks call a castratrix.

   • 2000, James McCourt, Delancey’s Way, page 51:

     “Judith was a righteous woman,” Barb declared, “if a symbolic castrator … castratrix … whatever.”