Perhaps woman is not some thing which announces itself from a distance, at a distance from some other thing. In that case it would not be a matter of retreat and approach. Perhaps woman—a non-identity, a non-figure, a simulacrum—is distance's very chasm, the outdistancing of distance, the interval's cadence, distance itself, if we could still say such a thing, distance itself. Distance out-distances itself. The far is furthered.

There is no such thing as the essence of woman because woman averts, she is averted of herself. Out of the depths, endless and unfathomable, she engulfs and distorts all vestige of essentiality, of identity, of property.