How like a (Fig) Leaf

Supplanting Shame, Growing Differences

Abstract

In light of work by Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, this paper weaves a poetic response to the Western ethnocentric mode of thought as that which cuts a once and forever line dividing nature from culture. That line elevates Man over all other creatures, indeed all other living things, and does so by means of a phallic imaginary deeply tied to Judaeo-Christian ontotheology – to shame, nudity and original sin. Through the figure of the fig leaf, the essay affirms the earthly and earthy field of the sexual as that which links rather than divides categories, disciplines and forms of life.