An Ethics of Sexual Difference

Rating:
Summary: You'll read this with a smirk on your face
Review: I *personally* didn't like this book, but I think it has some utility, so before I criticize, let me tell you what to look for:

In the past couple of decades, we've seen Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, Judith Butler, and others advance a conception of feminism based on radical existentialist and poststructuralist critiques of truth, meaning, representation, and subjectivity. These feminists have come to be known as French Feminists, and what's exciting about them is their ability to link struggles over gender with struggles over sexuality, and their way of thinking heterosexism and sexism as part of a larger problem with Western industrial culture. French Feminism has done a great deal of good by bringing feminist perspectives into debates over issues ranging from psychoanalysis to science to architecture. To put it (over)simply, the French Feminist project is that of uncovering the way in which not just sexism, but the notion of gender itself, is involved in every corner of Western culture. So you want to learn about French Feminism? Luce Irigaray is a great place to start, as she's probably the most unique feminist thinker in the world. While THE SEX THAT IS NOT ONE is clearly Irigaray's magnum opus, this is a great introduction to Irigaray's thought. Irigaray essentially criticizes the way in which Western philosophy excludes and does violence to femininity, and seeks 'an ethics of sexual difference' that would help us to establish a better relationship between the genders in the Western imaginary. She accomplishes this via a wide review of the history of Western philosophy in which she makes a lot of connections that have never been thought of before. In that respect, this book is very novel and its originality is really refreshing.

That said, I'll say that Irigaray is crazy. The basis of Irigaray's philosophy could best be described as a hodgepodge of Heidegger, Freud, and Lacan. Irigaray begins with what are essentially phenomenological concepts concerning Western theories of space, time, difference, dialectics, etc., and then relates these concepts to what she sees as being the corresponding psychological concept. Space becomes the uterus, difference becomes heterosexuality, etc. I was getting a little iffy when I got this far. Then things got worse. She started relating space-time and motion to mucous membranes. That's right. Mucous. As in the mucous that lubricates sexual contact.

Essentially, Irigaray imagines that every time we make a statement about space, we're expressing our unconscious relationship to the uterus; whenever we conceive of motion, we're expression an unconscious association with lubrication.

Wow, what nonsense! Irigaray's bad habit of assuming that the psychological and the phenomenological form a lateral continuum leads to disaster, for example, in her discussion of Descartes. Descartes advances a vaguely Heideggerian analysis of "wonder," which occurs upon encountering unprecedented difference. This is a purely phenomenological concept that is based on Descartes' subject-object formulation. Irigaray, however, thinks that this phenomenological state is now encroached upon by psychological states of lust, etc... as though there are both phenomenological and psychological moods... not one or the other.

This may or may not be valid, but what it represents is Irigaray's carelessness. She's content to string together Spinoza, Hegel, and Freud simply by associating them, without paying attention to the legitimacy of their connections. This allows her to pull [stuff] like talking about how space is conceived of as the uterus, which leaves women without a "place." Um, OK. The solution apparently is some kind of revolution in our understanding of philosophy that we're too assume is going to trickle down to our psyche and make us not lustful little bastards. Again, um, OK.

Irigaray is crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. This book is interesting but there's not a trace of academic rigor anywhere in it. It's totally extravagant, verging on totally ridiculous. I'll be sure to fantasize about the vagina next time I read my physics textbook on two-dimensional motion.

Rating:
Summary: The Tyranny of the Model of Two
Review: I applaud Luce Irigaray for her work to decenter the mono subjective, mono sexualized, patriarchal and phallocratic ontology "suspending the authority of the one" - man. In this courageous work "An Ethics of Sexual Difference" Ms. Irigaray engages with Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Merlau-Ponty and Levinas. Taking apart the core duality of inside/outside and subject/object. Her aim is clearly the dislodging the "model of the one" by dislodging "man" as the center of discourse and the recognition of "woman" as the "other", equal in the discursive process. She does not reduce the two to one, the "other" as the "same" - two separate and distinct. However, by doing so, is she reducing the discourse of ontology down to just two? Can her dream of intersubjectivity include more players? Is she reducing the discourse to the tyranny of the model of two? Her deconstruction is through the "suspending of the authority of one" begins, in her own words in a separate article "The Question of the Other":

"The principal focus of my work on feminine subjectivity is, in a way, the inverse of de Beauvoir's as far as the question of the other is concerned. Instead of saying, "I do not want to be the other of the masculine subject and, in order to avoid being that other, I claim to be his equal," I say, "The question of the other has been poorly formulated in the western tradition, for the other is always seen as the other of the same, the other of the subject itself, rather than an other subject, irreducible to the masculine subject and sharing equivalent dignity. It all comes down to the same thing: In our tradition there has never really been an other of the philosophical subject, or, more generally, of the cultural and political subject."

The problematic for Irigaray then is the starting point is the masculine. Not to reduce her thesis but to jump to a broader thesis - can the problem of "intersubjectivity" be reduced to the masculine contra the feminine? In a truly intertextual and intersubjective world, where we find concentric discourses and discourses within discourses, the duality of the model of two - despite their own space - seems limiting.

In "Place, Interval" her reading of Aristotle, she outlines:

"If I may return to the parallel I have been drawing between the issue of place and issue of sexual difference, I shall affirm that the masculine is attracted to the maternal-feminine as place. But what place does the masculine offer to attract the feminine? His soul? His relation to the divine? Can the feminine be inscribed or situated there? Is this not the only place where he can live, contrary to what has always been assumed? For the masculine has to constitute itself as a vessel to receive and welcome. And the masculine's morphology, existence, and essence do not really fit it for such an architecture of place." p. 39.

As much as she finds de Beauvoir's and Aristotle's Otherness problematic, I too find her "model of two" problematic. However, discussion of these and related issues via books like "The Ethics of Sexual Difference" is a step in the right direction. Caution, lest we limit ourselves to the model of two.

Miguel Llora

Rating:
Summary: A classic of continental thinking.
Review: Irigaray's `rewriting' of philosophy and philosophers is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy these days. It is also a refreshing breath of thought on `Feminism'. The concept of `Place'is presented as Woman, a return to the primordial feminine via `deconstruction' (in the best possible way) of western patriarchial hegemony. Besides the radical content, it is is beautifully written - clear and profound. Read this book!

Rating:
Summary: A classic of continental thinking.
Review: Irigaray's `rewriting' of philosophy and philosophers is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy these days. It is also a refreshing breath of thought on `Feminism'. The concept of `Place'is presented as Woman, a return to the primordial feminine via `deconstruction' (in the best possible way) of western patriarchial hegemony. Besides the radical content, it is is beautifully written - clear and profound. Read this book!