De Lauretis' account of subjectivity as a product of "being subject/ed to semiosis" (i.e., making meanings and being made by them) helps to theoretically resolve and overcome the tension between the human action (agency) and structure. She makes use of
Umberto Eco's reading of
C.S. Peirce in order to establish her notion of semiotics of experience. She brings corporeality back to the discourse on the constitution of subjectivity which has been conceived mainly in the linguistic terms. Her semiotics is not just the semiotics of language but also the semiotics of visual images and non-verbal practices. Her (
Peircean) "habit" or "habit-change" is often compared to
Bourdieu's notion of
habitus.
Michel Foucault’s analysis of body excludes the consideration of the specificity of the female body that many feminists have criticized. Supplementing the failure, gender should be one of the effects of technology which renders the basic intelligibility of body and that turns to de Lauretis’ "technology of gender".
de Lauretis coined the term "
queer theory" although the way in which it is used today differs from what she originally suggested by the term.[1]
Although she coined the term she abandoned it barely three years later, on the grounds that it had been taken over by those mainstream forces and institutions it was coined to resist.[2]
Honors, awards and grants
Guest of honour, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina (2014)[3]
Doctor honoris causa, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina (2014)[3]
Distinguished Career Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2010)[3]
Winner, Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award (2009)[4]
^Freud's drive : psychoanalysis, literature and film. Language, discourse, society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008.
ISBN9780230524781.
OCLC474185039.
^De Lauretis, Teresa, ed. (2007). Figures of resistance : essays in feminist theory. Patricia White (introduction). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
ISBN9780252031977.
OCLC174099974.
^Archives for Research on Women and Gender (1975). Alice Doesn't... Anywhere, Anymore! 1975 Women's Strike. Georgia State University Library.
OCLC927316153.
^Papers and discussions from a conference held Feb. 22-24, 1978 by the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee.De Lauretis, Teresa; Heath, Stephen, eds. (1980). The Cinematic apparatus. London: MacMillan.
OCLC988211947.
^De Lauretis, Teresa; Huyssen, Andreas; Woodward, Kathleen, eds. (1980). The Technological imagination : theories and fictions. Theories of contemporary culture. Vol. 3. Madison, Wisconsin: Coda Press.
ISBN9780930956110.
OCLC300392644.
^Pratica d'amore : percorsi del desiderio perverso [The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire] (in Italian). Milano: Tartaruga. 1997.
ISBN9788877382634.
OCLC895924134.