Feminine Desire in Claudia Llosa’s "The Milk of Sorrow" and Shirin Neshat’s "Women Without Men" in Dialogue with Irigaray’s Philosophy of the Caress

Abstract

An exploration of feminine desire through the lens of Luce Irigaray’s caress is afforded here through the feminist film-philosophical analysis of Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada, 2009) and Women Without Men (Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 2009), by Shirin Neshat. Drawing on key scholarship (Watkins 2000; Bainbridge 2008; Bolton [2011] 2015; Quinlivan [2012] 2014), this article offers a novel contribution through its emphasis on the Irigarayan caress. Despite important limitations and silences in Irigaray’s work (Rifeser 2020; Ingram 2008; Bloodsworth-Lugo 2007; Deutscher 2003; Jones, 1981), here the usefulness of Irigaray’s caress is discussed. An exploration of the narrative, formal and aesthetic strategies of Llosa’s and Neshat’s feature films attune the viewer to the embodied, lived experiences of the main women characters, so
that we can envision the Irigarayan caress and the lived experience of feminine desire as woman with oneself, as well as the desire for the other.