The 'symbolic," initially a Lacanian devise to bring together mathematical (formal) and anthropological uses of the term, has become, within feminist theory, a way to discuss culturally intelligible rule-governed speech and to explain how paternal law structures signification and thereby becomes the ordering principle of culture. In so doing, the 'symbolic" elucidates how and why Western culture persistently defines the female as the inferior counterpart of the male.¹ Although from another philosophical tradition, this description of culture and language poses a similar problem as that encountered by second-wave feminists: how can we transform cultural practices when the very tools to do so can only be found within the master's house? Attempts to revalue the feminine within the symbolic, to revalue the feminine with attendant concepts (matter, embodiment, nature), and even to think outside the symbolic have proved unsatisfactory.