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Vagina dentata and the demonological body: Explorations of the feminine

demon in organization

Article · January 2009

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Sheena J. Vachhani
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 “Vagina Dentata and the Demonological Body – Explorations of the Feminine
Demon in Organisation”

Sheena J Vachhani

Introduction

“It’s not as if mother were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a little mad
sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”
Alfred Hitchcock – Psycho

“It’s smelly, it’s bottomless, it’s devouring; or it’s mystic, it’s divine, it’s nirvana.”
(Weir, 1997:50 cited in Braun and Wilkinson, 2001:17)

Building on interest in embodiment and the feminine subject (cf. Thapan, 1997) in
organisation studies, this chapter provides an exploration of the ambivalence with which the
feminine is understood in organisation. As such, the chapter addresses the power and dread
of the feminine by way of studying the vagina dentata, or toothed vagina, as a symbol of
desire and fear. Interest in the vagina dentata is here borne out of increasing intellectual
concern with embodiment and writing the body in organisation studies (Hassard et al, 2000;
Holliday and Hassard, 2001. See also Dale, 2001, on the notion of embodiment and
“anatomisation” in organisation) 1, thereby understanding the body as a key site of political,
social, cultural and economic significance (Hancock et al, 2000). This work, therefore feeds
into the rich seam of literature in organisation studies that tackles post-structuralist ideas
about gender in organisations including the suppression of femininity and the relationships
between writing and the body where gender binaries may be called into question (Brewis and
Sinclair, 2000; Dale, 2001; Höpfl, 2000, 2003, 2007; Linstead and Thomas, 2002; Metcalfe
and Linstead, 2003; Pullen, 2006; Pullen and Knights, 2007), something Linstead and Pullen
(2006:1288) draw on succinctly by saying that, “the binary heuristic, useful as it has been, is
no longer analytically or empirically helpful, relying as it did more on categories than bodies
for its warrant. Yet simply moving away from binary thinking is not enough…Moving away
from binaries must also progress to moving beyond what we term ‘multiplicities of the
same’. This ‘calls for a new ontology, an ontology of change as opposed to an ontology of
static hierarchies and objectified structures’ (Olkowski, 1999:14). The challenge presented
here is to think beyond the seductive structure of the binary, by “troubling” readings of the
vagina dentata that reify women’s lack and subordination under patriarchy and drawing on
gender binaries which are “disrupted and displaced by practices and performances which
switch position…working to evade the poles of the binary” (Linstead and Pullen,
2006:1292).

Closely associated with the body of work in organisation theory that explores the
subjugation and suppression of the feminine and femaleness (Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003) is
the ambivalence with which the feminine is also enrolled into masculine discourses in
organisation. The dentata myth allows us to explore this ambivalence and can be said to
disrupt and disturb the phallogocentric order (Höpfl, 2000). By also drawing on work
concerning the monstrous-feminine (Creed, 1993; Shildrick, 2002); fluidity (Linstead, 2000;

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Linstead and Brewis, 2004; Linstead and Pullen, 2006) and monstrous organisation theory
(Thanem, 2006), I shall attempt to unpack this ambivalence in the pursuit of “organ”-isation
(Dale and Burrell, 2000).

Often associated with the work of Freud (cf. Freud, 1919) but not explicitly discussed
therein, the construction of the vagina dentata can be considered a symbol of demonology,
one which renders the female body monstrous and thus, disavowed. The idea of the
feminine demon, I believe, has found little place in current organisation studies and it is,
therefore, time to bring her out of hiding. Feeding into the aims of this book, whether it be
for avant-garde organisation theory or fragments therein, the vagina dentata, and moreover
the objectives of this chapter, attempt to destabilise what is commonly upheld, reproduced
and legitimated both in the borderlands of organisation studies and in the very heart of what
it means to organise. As such, although there has been increased interest as of late given to
critical examination of the feminine, and especially the feminine body, in order to disrupt
conventional and “rational” critiques of organisation (see for example, Brewis and Sinclair,
2000; Höpfl and Kostera, 2002 on the maternal organisation; Linstead, 2000; and Zanetti,
2006), my aim here is to extend, or indeed fragment these debates, to include what is not
readily invited into the discussion: monstrous bodies (with some notable exceptions that I
will go on to explore).

“The vagina, is among other things, the toothed and dangerous vagina dentata; the
(symbolic) absence of a penis; the core of womanhood; and a symbol of reproduction. Such
meanings are found in a range of different contexts from academic texts to myths, film and
television to theatre, newspaper articles to fiction” (Braun and Wilkinson, 2001:17). For
reasons of focus and purpose, I shall delimit discussion here to a handful of issues. Firstly,
drawing on the work of Hélène Cixous, namely her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa”, we can
begin to explore the feminine demon as a suppression or deferral of the feminine, one that
does not allow an appreciation of female subjectivity (see Höpfl, 2003) and Cixous’ attempt
to recover this suppression, or deferral. I have chosen Cixous’ essay as it neatly echoes the
mythology of the vagina dentata. Building on the exegesis of Cixous’ essay, I then draw upon
socio-cultural representations of vagina dentata in order to demonstrate its relevance within
a variety of cultures and contexts. As part of this discussion the work of Elizabeth Grosz on
the corporeal subject and Barbara Creed on the monstrous-feminine, amongst others, are
discussed. Here, I focus on Grosz’s (1995) essay “Animal Sex – Libido as Desire and Death”
and Creed’s (1993) essay “Medusa’s Head: The Vagina Dentata and Freudian Theory”. The work
of Creed and Grosz in particular have been chosen for their focus on the vagina dentata. I
have also chosen Grosz as a departure point for this work as she further critiques aspects of
the non-human status of woman and the biological inferences made of femininity which I
believe is key to the deconstruction of dualisms inscribed in the myth of the vagina dentata.

The notions of monstrosity (Shildrick, 2002; Thanem, 2006) and fluidity (Linstead and
Pullen, 2006) allow us to gain analytical purchase on the issues of ambivalence and
femininity and the ethical implications of considering monstrous bodies in ways that do not
submit to a reinscription of dualistic thinking. The vagina dentata infers a mistrust of
femininity and archetypes of the man-eating seductress in mythology and organisational
archetypes such as the office bitch or the career bitch2. By exploring the dentata, a myth not
readily named in organisation theory, and using Cixous’ re-reading of Medusa it is possible to
disinter, disturb and even reclaim the power of the feminine. I do not wish to advocate a

2
utopian concept of reclamation here but my modest aim in this chapter and for the future
development of this work is that by concerning ourselves with the mythological antecedents
of the feminine and by beginning to disrupt and disturb these readings (as writers such as
Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous achieve), we might be able to further consider ways in which
power is denied to women through restrictions and controls (Höpfl, 2007) in a masculine
economy of sexuality and organisation.

The latter half of this chapter gives focus to Linstead’s (2000) notion of the “organisation-
without-organs”, borrowing from Deleuze and Guattari’s “body-without-organs”, and draws
on Thanem’s monstrous organisation theory, and Magrit Shildrick’s work on monstrous
bodies.3 I turn to research on monsters as the vagina dentata demonstrates the body-
monstrous and such research provides ways of re-imagining bodily otherness through the
notion of monstrosity. I believe these areas are underdeveloped in organisation theory and as
such I utilise these streams of literature and their connections with Grosz’s discussion of the
non-human status of woman in order to further explore the ambivalence of the vagina
dentata. The introduction of monstrosity also carries with it political and ethical implications
as Shildrick addresses. Shildrick (2002:45) employs the monstrous (which the vagina dentata
can be said to exemplify) and the vulnerable in order to “interrupt difference” commonly
found in the binary form between self and other.

More broadly, what I intend this chapter to achieve by drawing on Shildrick’s (2002:45) work
is further investigation into the “ontological unease” created by considering the monstrous-
feminine. It is important to also note that I utilise but depart from the work of these writers
in important ways. The feminine project I am concerned with here is not to “overcome” the
feminine but to disturb the myth of the vagina dentata. As Pullen and Knights (2007:506)
note, “in order to secure their identities, especially in work organizations, women often have
to endorse the very masculine norms and values that they might otherwise wish to discredit”.
The dentata helps us to draw on this ambivalence which is caught up in both desire and
dread, multiplicity and “conflicting desires, doubts and discourses in shifting spaces and
times that can indeed threaten the very concept of gender itself” as Pullen and Knights
(2007:506) note. As such, the ontological project I set up in this chapter seeks to undermine
the logic of the feminine as subordinate, as other or as the space between the solidity of the
masculine but to displace or indeed devour the metaphorical (and literal) phallus that
confirms this subordinated position. The vagina dentata is powerful and disturbing but
moreover, it is disrupting. The vagina dentata tells us not of women’s pleasures and desires
but of male fear and dread associated with the “body-monstrous” or the devouring body,
labelled feminine and rendered uncontrolled and uncontrollable within the economy of male
sexuality (Creed, 1993).

Imagining the Feminine Demon – The Laugh of the Medusa

“Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that
they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to
change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her.
And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing."
--Hélène Cixous (1975/1976:885)

3
By way of imagining the feminine demon, I turn to Cixous’ exploration and critique of
Medusa as a representation of the feminine demon. The image of Medusa has come to
represent the amoral, primeval, primordial mother - a woman transformed into a Gorgon by
Athena (and slain by Perseus). Cixous (1975/1976) explores the female body as an active site
for women’s writing in "The Laugh of the Medusa". Cixous discusses how women have been
repressed through their bodies throughout history and calls for woman to “write her self”
(Cixous, 1975/1976:880), therefore, seizing the occasion to speak. “By writing her self,
woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has
been turned into the uncanny stranger on display – the ailing or dead figure, which so often
turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions” (ibid:880).
Rather than remaining trapped inside one’s body, thereby perpetuating the passivity women
have been a part of throughout history, Cixous suggests (along with writers such as Irigaray
and Kristeva) that the female body is a medium of communication through which women
can speak: “women must write through their bodies” (ibid:886). By endowing Medusa with a
voice, Cixous allows Medusa to speak against falsehoods introduced by men keeping
women from exploring their own power. Cixous explains that “they riveted us between two
horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss. That would be enough to set half the
world laughing, except that it’s still going on” (Cixous, 1975/1976:885). The myth of the
abyss made women believe that the questions surrounding the male-created myths were “too
dark to be explorable...and we believed” (ibid:884-885). As such, Cixous writes, “they haven't
changed a thing: they've theorised their desire for reality” (ibid:885). In this essay, Cixous
considers the possibilities of questioning the validity of these myths: if women would
question these myths, if they would “look at the Medusa straight on,” they would see that
“she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.” (Cixous, 1975/1976:885).

Turning to Freud, in “Medusa’s Head: The Vagina Dentata and Freudian Theory”, Creed (1993)
explores the implications of the vagina dentata in Freud’s work arguing that in his writing
there is a repression of the vagina dentata. Freud puts forward a number of theories in which
women’s genitals appear castrated rather than castrating. However, viewed from a different
perspective, Creed notes that each of these theories support, with increasing validity, the
argument that woman’s genitals appear castrating. She writes, “two explanations have been
given for the vagina dentata – both stress the incorporative rather than castrating aspect of this
figure. One approach interprets the vagina dentata as a symbolic expression of the oral sadistic
mother. This is the mother feared both by female and male infants who imagine that, just as
they derive pleasure from feeding/eating at the mother’s breast, the mother might in turn
desire to feed on them. The ‘Hansel and Gretel’ fairy story illustrates this infantile fear
through the figure of the cannibalistic witch. The other explanation interprets the vagina
dentata as an expression of the dyadic mother; the all-encompassing maternal figure of the
pre-Oedipal period who threatens symbolically to engulf the infant, thus posing a threat of
psychic obliteration” (Creed, 1993:109, emphases in original). Freud chose the myth of Perseus
and Medusa (subsequently reclaimed by Cixous) to metaphorise the castration complex and
to demonstrate that the phallic snakes/hair of Medusa become a replacement for the
mother’s penis. Thus, the Medusa’s head serves as a classic fetish object; it confirms both the
absence and presence of the mother’s penis (Creed, 1993:111). As Creed astutely notes,
however, Freud ignores a crucial aspect of the Medusa myth: Medusa is often regarded by
historians as a version of the vagina dentata. Freud ignores the symbolic meaning of the
snake’s open mouth and pointed fangs in their castrating aspects.

4
This discussion may be linked with Höpfl’s work in organisation theory (see especially Höpfl
2000, 2007) which I further discuss later in this chapter. Discussion in organisation theory
focuses on the power that is denied to women in organisations. The vagina dentata departs
from this notion by exemplifying the feminine as castrating and therefore powerful but this
comes at a price. As Höpfl (2007:625, emphasis in original) writes, “to become accepted as a
member of an organization, a woman must either conform to the male projection offered to
her or else acquire a metaphorical phallus as the price of entry into membership (Höpfl, 2003).
Women who do conform acquire the status of ‘honorary man’ but in order to do so they
must accept impotence”. The ambivalence of the vagina dentata is deftly highlighted through
this notion - the power of the feminine in the male sexual economy is only realised through
emasculation. The woman who conforms to the male projection offered to her is turned into
an impotent man which must not be a threat to male reality definitions (Höpfl, 2007).

Represented as the feminine demon, the vagina dentata has long since rendered the feminine
associated with death. As Shildrick and Price (1994:176, cited in Braun and Wilkinson, 2001)
argue, and Cixous echoes, within the discourse of psychoanalysis, “the material, and by now
representational, absence of the penis has been taken as the defining factor of femininity.
Women are castrated men, their bodies marked by lack, and what is hidden is just a hole.
Where for men the phallus, real and symbolic, has become the signifier of presence and of
wholeness, women, having no thing, are in consequence nothing”. Women, through this
lens, come to represent space itself; or more possibly represent abyssal space. The vagina
dentata extends this fear of darkness, of the unknown, of the caution or indeed fear with
which man enters the abyss or as Höpfl (2007) explores, the conditions by which women
can enter organisational membership.

Socio-Cultural Representations of Vagina Dentata

“The vagina dentata is the mouth of hell – a terrifying symbol of woman as the
‘devil’s gateway’…The vagina dentata also points to the duplicitous nature of
woman, who promises paradise in order to ensnare her victims” (Creed, 1993:106).

The toothed vagina is the classic symbol of men’s fear of castration, expressing the
unconscious belief that a woman may eat or castrate her partner during intercourse. The
vagina dentata is most often associated with Freud’s writings on castration anxiety linking
most obviously to Freud’s third stage, the phallic or oedipal period4. As Creed (1993:87)
notes, “Freud argued that woman terrifies because she is castrated…woman also terrifies
because man endows her with imaginary powers of castration”. Most notably, as Creed
attests, it is the very physical reality of the penis (Badcock, 1988) that defines woman’s lack.
Freud uses the term “penis envy”, woman’s desire for a penis, in order to pathologise this
“lack” (see also Shawyer, 1998, for a discussion of “vagina envy”). The myth of vagina
dentata derives from primitive masculine dreads of the “mysteries” of woman and sexual
union, it evokes castration anxiety, whereby the man fears loss of the penis during
intercourse, and more generally it relates to fears of weakness, impotence or annihilation by
incorporation (connected to unconscious notions of woman as monstrous womb or
returning to the womb). Sublimated expressions of this dread underlie stories of post-coital
loss of strength and reify notions of woman as a “dark continent”, one that evokes fear and

5
signals danger as man is incapable of thinking outside of his specular, or mirroring structure:
the reflection (Irigaray, 1985; Moi, 1985/2002). As Cixous notes however, “The Dark
Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable – It is still unexplored only because we’ve been made
to believe that it was too dark to be explorable” (Cixous, 1975/1976:880-881, emphases in
original).

Some literal representations of the myth of the vagina dentata include dermoid cysts that
may be formed from embryonic skin cells that can mature into teeth, bones or hair.
However, the vagina is unable to physically bite as the pubococcygeus muscles are not as
strong as the human jaw. Recently, there has been controversy concerning an anti-rape
device named Rapex developed by a South-African woman, Sonnette Ehlers – this device (to
be sold over the counter) is shaped like a female condom and is inserted into the vagina.
Upon penetration microscopic barbs fasten on to the attacker’s penis and may only be
removed surgically.5 A variety of historically-based myths exist concerning the vagina
dentata: urban legend has it that during the Vietnam War, prostitutes working with the Viet
Cong had glass knives and razors implanted into their vaginas in order to injure the enlisted
soldiers (Gulzow and Mitchell, 1980). Dentata myths are also said to appear in Aboriginal,
Egyptian and Indo-European myths and legends where fears of women’s sexuality have also
resulted in a set of widely performed cultural surgical practices such as clitoridectomies and
female genital mutilation. These practices physically inscribe assertions of masculine
domination onto the female body and demonstrate the dread of feminine powers (Spivak,
1987. See also Raitt, 1980). As Raitt (1980:420) claims, drawing on Mary Daly, “female
circumcision is indeed the killing and remaking of the woman, depriving her of sexual
pleasure and reducing her to a reproductive instrument of her husband’s pleasure”.

Raitt (1980:415) examines two primordial images that underlie the caricatures of women that
dominate in Christian theology: the vagina dentata and the “immaculate womb of the divine
font”. In her analysis, she notes that “the vagina dentata visualises, for males, the fear of
entry into the unknown, of the dark dangers that must be controlled in the ambivalent
mystery that is woman…From this primal fear emerge stories and figurines that have been
repeated from earliest times to the present from New Zealand to North America to India”
(Raitt, 1980:416). The vagina dentata is represented distinctly in the mythology of native
Americans, “a meat eating fish inhabits that vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the
man who overcomes the Terrible Mother, breaks the teeth out of her vagina and so makes
her into a woman” (ibid:419). Vagina dentata, in this instance, is not simply to be feared, or
revered, but also to be conquered by the heroic male. Drawing on the work of Wolfgang
Lederer, “A hero must break out the teeth to make women safe for intercourse. In fact, in
many societies virgins were deflowered by someone other than their husbands” (ibid:420)6.
Creed (1993:106) also draws on Lederer’s work going on to say that “the hero is the one that
overpowers her”. As Creed quotes, “the breaking of the vaginal teeth by the hero,
accomplished in the dark and hidden depths of the vagina, is the exact equivalent of the
heroic journey into the underworld and the taming of the toothy hell-hound Cerberus by
Herakles. Darkness, depth, death and woman – they belong together” (Lederer, 1968:49
cited in Creed, 1993:106).

Visually, there are numerous symbolic reconstructions and media portrayals of the vagina
dentata. Images of the vagina dentata show a perfectly hairless, flat-stomached woman (the
seductress) with a set of “gnashers” based around a set of incisors7. The visceral and

6
animalistic imagery is particularly vampiric and is juxtaposed with a rather threatening
aesthetic and seductive beauty, that of a slim and hairless woman8. Ostensibly, the visual
power of the vagina dentata has meant that it has garnered significant attention in film, and
subsequently, in the domain of feminist film theory especially in horror films. It is
particularly relevant to the iconography of the horror film, which abounds with images that
play on the fear of castration and dismemberment (Creed, 1993:107; see also Rehn in this
volume). I shall limit the discussion here due to constraints of space, however, the most
obvious connection one could make here is to HR Giger’s drawings of the titular creature in
the Alien films where “woman” is portrayed as archaic mother or mother-as-monstrous-
womb (Creed, 1993). As Creed (1993:107, emphases in original) notes, “in films such as Jaws,
Tremors, Alien and Aliens, where the monster is a devouring creature, victims are ripped apart
and eaten alive…Close-up shots of gaping jaws, sharp teeth and bloodied lips play on the
spectator’s fears of bloody incorporation – occasionally with humour. Sometimes the lips are
only slightly parted and either a trace of blood trickles over the bottom lip or both lips are
smeared with blood. Often the teeth are threateningly visible. This image is a central motif in
the vampire film, particularly those which deal with the lesbian vampire. In these films…we
are given close-up shots of woman’s open mouth, pointed fangs and bloodied lips – a
graphic image of the vagina dentata”.9 Creed notes that another visual motif associated with
the vagina dentata is that of the barred and dangerous entrance. Drawing on Lederer, the
“Briar Rose” or “Sleeping Beauty” story and its variants provide illustration of this theme.
The suitors who wish to win Briar Rose must first penetrate the hedge of thorns that bars
their way. Only the prince who inspires true love is able to pass through unharmed (Creed,
1993:107-8).

The most recent example of cinematic representation of the vagina dentata, was celebrated
at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Teeth (written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein10),
depicts all-American Dawn, a golden-blonde high school student who leads her high
school’s sexual abstinence programme and is determined to wait for true love. Still a stranger
to her own body, she discovers that her vagina hides potentially lethal teeth, with a will of
their own, when faced with an impatient boyfriend who forces himself on her. Notably, the
film separates the idea of the “all-American girl” from the actions of her vagina in an
attempt to separate the monstrous body from feminine subjectivity, a shining example of the
Cartesian division between mind and body. Vagina dentata here serves both as a signifier of
what is to be feared in women as well as an object with which to identify, namely the all-
American girl. This ambivalence is played with in a variety of visual depictions of the vagina
dentata that oscillate between showing vaginal teeth as a visible threat connected to the outer
labia of the vagina or teeth as a hidden danger within the vagina, and these reflect the fears
(visible and hidden) men have of women. What these images portray is the image of
monstrosity and women’s biology by inscribing the non-human status of womanhood.
These myths consume, categorise and caricature womanhood to the extent that women are
almost rendered unthreatening, paradoxically, through such “convenient” violent myth and
iconographic imagery. This “convenience” is mirrored in organisation where women are
given permission to participate as members, as Höpfl (2003, 2007) notes, as a compromise
or as an “acceptable” paralysis of their femininity (the femininity inscribed by organisation).
Höpfl (2007:625) also notes that there is “a lot of ‘bad faith’ (Sartre, 1989[1943]) amongst
women about the extent of their permission to participate”.

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The Non-Human Status of Woman

“The fantasy of the vagina dentata, of the non-human status of woman as android,
vampire or animal, the identification of female sexuality as voracious, insatiable,
enigmatic, invisible and unknowable, cold, calculating, instrumental,
castrator/decapitator of the male, dissimulatress or fake, predatory, engulfing
mother, preying on male weakness, are all consequences of the ways in which male
orgasm has functioned as the measure and representative of all sexualities and all
modes of erotic encounter” (Grosz, 1995:293 - “Animal Sex: Libido as Desire and
Death”).

Grosz (1995) in Grosz and Probyn’s (1995) edited book on the strange carnalities of
feminism I think encapsulates the essence of the dentata. The “non-human status of
woman” as “invisible and unknowable” is both a threat and a fascination. However, as
Höpfl (2003:28, emphases in original) notes, “whereas to e-masculate is to castrate, enfeeble,
weaken by excision, to make powerless and useless, to render effeminate, there is no equivalent
term to refer to the removal of those things which belong to the feminine”. Feeding into the
notion that the vagina is dangerous, Braun and Wilkinson (2001) affirm that the vagina is
emasculating to men because their erect penises, once inserted, subsequently emerge flaccid.
Women’s sexuality is represented as insatiable, devouring or voracious. Such models of
sexuality reduce female sexuality to the economy of the male and it is these accounts of
female desire that writers like Grosz attempt to dispel, those that “bind women too closely
to representations of men’s or animals’ sexuality” (Grosz, 1995:279). In the essay “Animal
Sex: Libido as Desire and Death”, Grosz (1995:280) turns to the work of Roger Caillois and
Alphonso Lingis who provide coverage of some of the “most primitive and ancient of
insects to the most developed and enculturated of human sexual practices – a veritable
panorama of sexual pleasures and practices which may help to specify what is masculine
about representations of human, and non-human sexualities”.

The threat and pleasure derived from female sexual organs is exposited by way of exploring
the praying mantis distinctively coded female: a femme fatale writ small according to Grosz.
“Caillois does not hesitate to suggest that the mantis may serve as an apt representation of
the predatory and devouring female lover, who ingests and incorporates her mate, castrating
and killing him in the process…The small insect is heir to, and comes to embody, a whole
series of fundamentally paranoid projections, whereby it is not the male subject or phallus
which threatens the female lover but, rather, the female lover who threatens the phallus”
(Grosz, 1995:282). The vagina dentata echoes the voracious appetite of the praying mantis
rendering female desire, in a sense, non-human. She goes on to write, “He (Caillois) has the
insight to suggest, that this is not somehow a natural or innate set of connections, but largely
a function of a constellation of concepts that have become inextricably linked,
overdetermined in their mutual relations: by linking sexual pleasure to the concept of death
and dying, by making sex something to die for, something that in itself is a kind of
anticipation of death (the ‘little death’)11, woman is thereby cast into the category of the non-
human, the non-living, or a living threat of death” (Grosz, 1995:284).

Grosz eloquently expresses the dread and desire with which female desire has been
packaged, or indeed dispersed, rendered powerless but one which through its otherness may
be recovered:

8
 “If libidinal impulses are fundamentally decomposing, de-solidifying, liquefying the coherent
organisation of the body as it performs functional tasks, unhinging a certain intentionality, they
are more dependent on the sphere of influence of otherness, on an other which, incidentally,
need not be human but which cannot simply be classified as a passive object awaiting the
impressions of an active desiring subject. The other, this otherness, solicits, beckons, implores,
provokes and demands. The other lures, oscillates, presenting everything it has to offer,
disclosing the whole body without in fact giving up anything, without providing ‘information’ as
such” (Grosz, 1995:285-6).

If we take another perspective, the vagina dentata serves as a marker of the animalistic and
female sexual predator which is modified, or indeed re-humanised, in discourses which
attempt to reclaim the active rather than the passive female body (in heterosexual relations).
Germaine Greer, for example, writes “in The Female Eunuch I attempted to provide a
different version of female receptivity by speaking of the vagina as if it were active, as if it
sucked on the penis and emptied it out rather than simply receiving the ejaculate” (Greer,
1999:39 cited in Braun and Wilkinson, 2001:26) 12. As Kitzinger (1994:250) writes of the
vagina, “it can actively open up, like the great, fleshy petals of a peony, to give birth”.
However, the reclamation of the vagina in this way carries with it problems and
consequences not least because it inverts the binary relation on which it relies. This, I believe
is a key concern here, that in order to understand the ambivalence of the vagina dentata, it is
necessary to resist the urge to rely on the binary juxtaposition of genders that define it but to
turn to a different relation to femininity. In organisation studies this has been taken up by
several theorists (Borgerson and Rehn, 2004; Knights and Kerfoot, 2004; Linstead, 2000;
Linstead and Brewis, 2004; Linstead and Pullen, 2006) who provide critiques of binary
thinking.

If we consider that “organisations are often characterised as scenes of constraint as well as

opportunity, sites of incessant activity where gender often passes unnoticed, denied or
disavowed partly because it is ‘done’ so routinely and repeatedly unknowingly and with a
degree of automaticity that conceals its precariousness and performativity” (Pullen and
Knight, 2007:505), then turning to the notion of fluidity, for example, may provide a more
fruitful interpretation of the vagina dentata. It may then be possible to demonstrate the
vagina dentata not as a monolithic essence of femininity but in ways that allow us to
“appreciate the living concept ‘woman’ as a site of complex, multiple, contested experiences”
(Linstead and Pullen, 2006). The pursuit and objective here, as I have stated, is to disturb the
commonly maintained reading of the vagina dentata as a symbol of demonology and imbue
in it a reading that may be seen as more complex and one that does not simply submit to or
reify the notion of women’s lack through innate seduction and fear. Therefore, it is necessary
to turn to work on fluidity in organisation studies in order to accomplish a more complex
reading of the dentata myth, as Cixous achieves with Medusa.

Organisation-without-Organs

Through an organisational prism, the feminine demon, that is the vagina dentata, and fear of
the feminine more generally is often associated with, using a binary heuristic: fluidity over
stasis; emotion over detachment; and body over mind. The demon mother-in-law is one of

9
the perhaps most celebrated symbols of the feminine demon. The feminine demon in
organisation is presented in a variety of guises: the office bitch, the career bitch striving to
get to the top and masked by masculinity (inferred by Höpfl, 2007; Pullen and Knights,
2007) or the office seductress. These are often available options for women in organisation
even when they are negatively acknowledged or as Pullen and Knights (2007) note, even
when women may want to discredit them. These divisions are insightful, however,
unnecessarily limiting for understanding the vagina dentata.

The vagina dentata, understood through psychoanalysis, provides a reading of the feminine
body that is in the register of the masculine, as I have intimated. The vagina dentata if read in
a more “productive” way can be used to confront or “de-form” the fear of the feminine that
is negatively associated with fluidity, emotion and monstrous bodies. However, I acknowledge
that this is also associated with the dangers of reifying the binaries on which it is structured.
As Linstead (2000:31) writes, “organisational body images – those embodied in structures,
systems, power relations, decision-making, reasoning processes, artefacts and architecture –
are not gender-neutral. They are inescapably male.” He goes on to say, “from the time of the
Greeks, men have been associated with dryness, solidity, firmness and containment – the
male body was a body of parts, of organs that were self-contained and connected in a
machinic way, a body to be mastered and controlled” (Linstead, 2000:31). So, what
implications are there for understanding organisations which have historically been based on
a variety of arguably masculine assumptions? Could the vagina dentata be said to drown
phallic organisation? Those dealing with the feminine in organisation studies deal with these
issues in a variety of ways. What is evident is that it is necessary to destabilise the text, or
indeed the readings of the socio-cultural representations of the vagina dentata. If we return
to Cixous, Medusa for Cixous rather than representing fear, represents its antithesis but in
order to re-envision Medusa Cixous has to write the body.

Höpfl (2007:622), although by different means and with different purposes, raises a similar
point: destabilising a reading of a text, incident or story for example, “by bringing a
displaced, dissenting self into a position where it might raise the possibility of the political
might introduce a feminised notion of the political”. Höpfl (2007:625, emphasis in original,
along with Dale, 2001) echoes much of the literature in this field by writing,

“Women bring disorder. Men are sane. Women are mad. These are not the words that are used,
of course, but these assumptions are as current today as they were at the time of Plato. Plato
thought that it was women and madness that brought disorder to the republic. Men think.
Women feel. Men’s task is to convert women to the rule of logic. If only women could be
converted to logic, all would be well. In virtually all of these binary distinctions women are de-
fined by lack, by a deficiency, by the absent phallus”.

Turning to vagina dentata more closely, it exemplifies the very threat to order that Höpfl
acknowledges. What constitutes the strongest association between the monstrosity of the
vagina dentata and female corporeality (Grosz, 1994; Shildrick, 2002) exemplified by the
dentata, one could argue, is the notion of a fluid transgression of the boundaries between
inside/outside and self/other (Bujdei, 2006), for example. It is a relation that constitutes a
relationship with what Kristeva (1982) calls the abject: the reaction to a threatened
breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or
between self and other. Dale (2001) similarly writes of the pre-occupation with dissection or

10
what she terms the “anatomising urge” in Western society, namely the practices of anatomy
that have constructed the human body through dissection. Drawing on this further, there is a
significant fear of “leakage” (Linstead, 2000; Zanetti, 2006) within the rational and bounded
“organ” (Dale and Burrell, 2000) of organisation (see also Sinclair and Brewis, 2000) and this
can be connected with how the body is treated. As Dale (2001:5) writes, “…in so many
ways, women’s bodies are the subject of stringent discipline from ‘inside’ and ‘outside’”, of
control and self-control which is a condition of organisational membership.

We can link Dale’s work here to that of Shildrick who considers how women’s bodies are
constructed as unknown, fallible and inefficient and this “monstrous” body lacks discipline,
represents leakage and transgressions of boundaries (Shildrick, 1997). Shildrick writes that
women are the non-subject other, the excluded, the embodied, the monstrous, and “the
anxiety provoked by the female body with its putative power to disrupt must alert us to the
inadequacy of the more familiar parameters of both feminine passivity and the transcendent
male denial of the body” (Shildrick, 1996:3). As Höpfl (2003:27) also writes in her exegesis
of the film GI Jane, “she must submit to the logic of the phallus and the imposition of the
symbolic order which requires the suppression of difference”. The monstrous-feminine in
the form of the vagina dentata poses a threat to, or disturbs, the bounded “organ” of
organisation by “de-anatomising” (Dale, 2001) or not conforming to its pre-conceived
boundaries. This bounded “organ” can be said to be displaced, worse invaded, unsealed and
broken. The pursuit of organisation attempts to maintain control of the body as self-
contained, disciplined, bounded and detached all of which can be considered the antithesis
of the vagina dentata.

Building on this further, Linstead (2000; see also Linstead and Pullen, 2006), drawing on the
work of Deleuze and Guattari, begins to conceptualise what he terms, organisation-without-
organs in order to disrupt the order and solidity with which organisation is most basically
conceived and by destabilising the “organ” with which organ-isation is practised. As Linstead
(2000:31-3) asserts, “women’s bodies were historically associated with wetness and fluidity,
with flux and change, with fecundity and uncontrollable cycles of nature, with mood swings
and passion. Women through their changeability and association with fluidity, were a threat
to the order and stability which men struggled to achieve and maintain…Bodily fluids are
reminders of the permeability of the body and the presence of the unspecifiable within,
which occasionally leaks out.” Grosz (1994) echoes this sentiment noting that body fluids
flow, seep and infiltrate and that their control is a matter of vigilance, never guaranteed. The
vagina dentata feeds into this distrust and fear. However, as Grosz warns, “the melting of
corporeal boundaries, the merging of body parts, the dripping apart of all the categories and
forms that bind a subject to its body and provide it with a bodily integrity – so fascinating
for the surrealists, not to mention the current android and cyborg fantasies that sell movies
and feminist science fiction – are at once imperilled in a way that alarms and horrifies, and,
at the same time, entices to the highest possible degree.” (Grosz, 1995:292). The bounded
“organ”, rationalised, fetishised and reproduced as self-contained, or as Höpfl (2000; 2007)
writes, enacted through the re-production of sons, can be said to be disrupted by the
possibilities of writing the feminine body or indeed the vagina dentata, to disinter, or as
Butler would argue “undo” the gendered connotations that are traditionally invoked by the
dentata.

11
Linstead (2000:45) argues that conceiving the organisation-without-organs gives texture to
the silenced areas of organisational processes which entail some reversals in the relationships
between rationality and passion; fluidity and power and are therefore transgressive or
subversive of patriarchy. For the vagina dentata this means refiguring our understandings of
bodily control and deflating the organisational phallus in the process. However, by using the
term “reversal” Linstead points to the threat of simply upturning existing gender binaries.
Therefore, in order to build on this discussion further, I turn to an alternative field of
enquiry that of “monstrous organisation theory” (Thanem, 2006). Thus far I have
concentrated on areas of feminist enquiry and feminist organisation theory as a way of
exploring the ambivalence of the vagina dentata as a representation of femininity understood
through the vagina. By way of proceeding it is necessary to connect more broadly with the
subject matter through recent interest in monsters amongst organisation theorists and to
focus on the notion of the monstrous that also defines the vagina dentata. What this
achieves is a different discussion of alterity and of the monstrous body that brings together
the discussions presented here and addresses some of the gaps that are of concern in
organisation theory and feminine theorising.

Monstrous Organisation Theory

“An organization theory that directs attention to the study of monsters in social life
may give important insights into the status of formal organizations and to the
processes that seek to organize social life outside such entities” (Thanem, 2006:166).

Primarily feeding into the work of Torkild Thanem in organisation theory and Magrit
Shildrick in feminist ethics, this section draws on the recent curiosity for monsters in social
and organisational research. This discussion achieves a number of things: firstly, by turning
to research done on monsters we are able to situate the vagina dentata within the
organisational research landscape more fruitfully and; secondly, we are able to consider the
question that Thanem (2006:164) draws on: what constitutes a ‘natural’ degree of
monstrosity? Thirdly, and feeding into the first two concerns, one can explore how this field
intersects with research on the politics of feminine sexual difference, something which I see
as a future development of this work. Vagina dentata, as I have intimated, is an example of
the monstrous-feminine, the feminine demon ascribed through myth but with significant
implications for organisation and culture more generally. I invoke Shildrick and Thanem’s
work on monsters as a way of connecting and bringing together the focus here on bodily
otherness and the problematisation of bodily boundaries discussed in Cixous’ re-reading of
Medusa, socio-cultural representations of the vagina dentata and the organisation-without-
organs.

Broadly, Shildrick is concerned with congenital abnormality in the form of conjoined twins,
for example. Shildrick uses the argument that the monstrous other stirs recognition inside us
as “an effective way to humanize the monstrous and question the stability and homogeneity
of human subjectivity” (Thanem, 2003:258). Shildrick (2002:45) argues that the monstrous
invokes “ontological unease” or “normative anxiety” because it threatens to “interrupt
difference” conceived within a binary form. Monsters remind us of our own vulnerability,
inciting the conflicting response of “denial and recognition, disgust and empathy, exclusion
and identification” (Shildrick, 2002:17; Clough, 2003). Building on this, Thanem

12
problematises organisation theory’s implicit disassociation of monsters from organisation
and encourages organisational researchers to critically reflect upon their own monstrosity
(Thanem, 2006:163; see also Linstead and Thanem, 2007; Thanem, 2004). The vagina
dentata has significant socio-cultural implications where it serves not simply as an aberrant
notion of the Other but, in a typically Derridean move, as necessarily part of us. Shildrick
(1996:2) provides a particularly broad definition of monsters acknowledging that “given that
dictionary definitions are necessarily normative and prescriptive, the designation of
monstrous as anything out of the usual course of nature, and its proximate derivation from
the Latin monstrare: to show, is rich in implications”. Shildrick (2002) demonstrates that by
“embodying the monster” and thereby rethinking monstrous embodiment we are able to re-
imagine bodily otherness. As Thanem notes,

“While the monstrous keeps provoking fascination as well as dread, attempts to exclude it from
discourses of normality and realize an invulnerable, autonomous and stable human self are futile,
according to Shildrick. The human self is vulnerable in itself, and it is vulnerable to the
monstrous through the monsters surrounding us and the monsters that live inside of us. Since
monsters are uncontainable and unknowable, their exclusion beyond the necessarily precarious
boundaries of the self is also impossible” (Thanem, 2003:256).

Shildrick (1996:2), along with Donna Haraway celebrate the “promise(s) of monsters”
providing a positive post-humanist attitude to the monster. Moreover, Shildrick (2002; see
also Shildrick, 1999; 2005) sets herself the task of seeing monsters not as wholly other or
alien beings, but rather as liminal figures that confound the demarcation between the binary
of self and other (Clough, 2003). The vagina dentata constructs such a monstrous body, one
that invokes conflicting responses but one that confines the feminine to the non-human but
ever-present abject linking somewhat neatly with Thanem, above and Cixous’ re-reading of
Medusa. If we draw further from Höpfl’s (2007) work, the dentata myth can be considered
“convenient” for continuing to secure the phallogocentric order by categorising, consuming
and thereby diminishing women through an appropriation of their bodies. In short,
monstrous bodies reflect the fact that what we take to be the ‘normal’ body is, in fact, the
‘normative’ body, whose privilege is maintained through the exclusion and devaluation of
others (Clough, 2003:111) and arguably this body is ostensibly male (Dale, 2001). However,
monsters are not oppositional others but part of us. Thus, we cannot simply hold up
representations of the vagina dentata as simply monstrous aspects of the feminine but
appreciate what it may mean to read monstrosity productively, a monstrosity that entails an
appreciation of the other not simply as oppositional. In this sense, a productive reading of
the vagina dentata allows us to disturb the order of generally accepted gender divisions, thus
seeing beyond the office or career bitch and going towards understanding the living concept
‘woman’ as a site of complex, multiple, contested experiences as Linstead and Pullen (2006)
affirm.

Concluding Remarks

Drawing on the work of Cixous, Creed, Grosz and Shildrick in feminist theory; those writing
on fluidity and the feminine in organisation studies such as Linstead, Pullen and Höpfl; and
Thanem on monstrous organisation theory, this chapter has explored the vagina dentata
beyond its status as a fixed graphical icon of male fear and rather traced how representations

13
of the vagina dentata, and therefore female sexualities, desires and subjectivities are
represented resulting in how the feminine demon may be read in a variety of, possibly
productive, ways through theories of monsters and “otherness” (Shildrick, 1999, 2002;
Thanem, 2006). As such, the vagina dentata tells us not of women’s pleasures and desires but
of male fear and dread associated with the “body-monstrous” or the devouring body,
labelled feminine and rendered uncontrolled and uncontrollable within the economy of male
sexuality (Creed, 1993). We can see that in a variety of cultural mythologies the vagina
dentata’s mythical qualities are translated into heroic narratives but also serve to cast away
femininity. Discussion of the monstrous body is extended here in order to begin to
appreciate the implications of the vagina dentata for organisation studies. The vagina dentata
represents a kind of grotesque monstrosity13, a relationship between normality and
aberration. The feminine demon as it is conceived in organisation can be considered a
displacement of women’s bodies for not respecting borders, positions, rules and can be said
to represent that which disturbs (organisational) identity, system and order (aligned with
Kristeva’s abject). The vagina dentata provides a haunting demonological reading that
highlights the disavowal of the feminine body and organisation’s fear of the leaking and
undisciplined body in which the lived body in process or in becoming (Linstead, 2000) is unable
to be appreciated. As such, what may be explored in the future development of this work are
ways in which these transgressions and displacements of anxiety attributed to women’s
bodies, and more generally difference, may be re-cast, re-formed and re-articulated.

14
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Endnotes

1 Here, I also build on work by various academics working in the field of feminist enquiry in critical
organisation studies, especially work by Janet Borgerson, Joanna Brewis, Heather Höpfl, Beverly
Metcalfe, Alison Pullen, Ann Rippin, Robyn Thomas and Melissa Tyler, for example.
2 In an interview with Fiona Bruce in the Observer Woman supplement of The Observer entitled “I’m

no carreer bitch”, she states, 'I do consider myself a feminist. Very much so. And I find it very sad
that 75 per cent of women don't, according to Company magazine. The contradictions are still there
which is why I think feminism is still very relevant for me and it's just such a shame that it's become a
byword for mustachioed, man-hating women from Lebanon.' (6/8/06).
3 It is important to note that there are lines of confluence, inconsistency and contradiction in the

academic work I consult throughout the chapter. Although there is little space to discuss this fully
here, I would argue that the different feminist and non-feminist projects tackled here have
significantly different concerns. Thanem (2003:258), for example, notes some of the “deeply
problematic” aspects of Shildrick’s (2002) work on monsters especially concerning her use of
postmodernism and a Lévinasian ethics of responsibility. Shildrick is concerned with the medical
practices of normalisation of the “already unstable corpus” and congenital monstrosity (Shildrick,
1999:77) whilst Thanem, in part, explores monstrous bodies in freak shows and performance art.
Dale’s work on anatomisation may also be fruitfully linked with Höpfl’s project (drawing on
Kristeva) of re-writing the body by troubling or “breaking” the body of the text.
4 Creed (1993), however, suggests that the vagina dentata also links to the pre-Oedipal period as a

symbol of the all-devouring woman.

5 It has been argued that this device does not so much prevent rape so much as interrupt it, however,

this is a discussion for another day.

6 See also Freud on “The Taboo of Virginity” a treatment of which may be found in Creed (1993).
7 See http://www.goddesscafe.com/yoni/dentata.html
8 See http://www.chateaubizarre.com/ballroom/article-images/BellaFreudVaginaDentata.jpg and

http://moca.virtual.museum/donnie2006/imagesonline/image096.jpg for representations of the

vagina dentata in fashion and art. See also the artwork of Andres Serrano especially “The

18
 Interpretation of Dreams (Vagina Dentata - Vagina with teeth)” - Cibachrome, silicone, plexiglass,
wood (2001).
9 See also Eadie’s (2001) exposition of the David Cronenberg film Shivers in which she explores how

sexuality presents an object of loathing and violent desire.

10 See www.teethmovie.com
11 Orgasm is commonly referred to as a “little death”.
12 The vagina as a source of pleasure has been problematic for some feminists. The vagina plays a

subsidiary role to the clitoris as a source of female pleasure (Braun and Wilkinson, 2001).
13 This can be linked to a project being explored by myself and Professor Alf Rehn namely,

mutations and embodied difference in the economy of the freak show, drawing on the body not only
as an inscriptive surface or an atomic aggregate but rather as a lived experience (Shilling, 1993;
Williams and Bendelow, 1998). This project draws on, akin to Shildrick and Thanem, the monstrous
and the relationship between normality and aberration.

19

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