ABSTRACT
The use of the word 'woman' in this chapter is singular by intention. As will become clear, my interest in the question of woman has to do with her representational status in film; such a status is not independent of women's empirical social existence, but it cannot be reduced to it either. By 'woman', what I seek to describe is a kind of representational positioning characteristic of modern and contemporary cultural politics - one may call it a sign, a placeholder or a form of particularism - a positioning that may, at certain historical junctures, be associated with actual women but which can also be claimed by other identities, other occupants.
