The Colony Tour -- Docents' Talk
Femininity claims the territory of the girl, a space that is already occupied, by inhabiting and importing rules, charms, and diseases. Femininity reorganizes the capacities of girl to respond to her world. Is this performative one of struggle, one of adaptation, one of incorporation or loss? Luce Irigaray writes of this from the perspective of the colonized in Elemental Passions.
"Invisible clouds surround me in the night, when I am awake. Where am I? There and not there. In the space of your dreams. And how can I return from that landscape which I do not know. From those surroundings which I cannot see. Where I take place only in you. And you fallen into the depths of me, into that dark abyss which you imagine me to be. That great chasm which you imagine me to be and where you swallow me up in your visions of hell. But I am there and not there. And, seeking to join me there to rise again to your outside, you fall back ever further from the shore."