Being as Relation in Luce Irigaray

Description

Many scholars have struggled with Irigaray’s focus on sexuate difference, in particular with her claim that it is “ontological,” wondering if this implies a problematically naïve or essentialist account of sexuate difference. As a result, the ethical vision which Irigaray elaborates has not been taken up in a robust way in the fields of philosophy, feminism, or psychoanalysis. By tracing the notion of relation throughout Irigaray’s work, this book identifies a rigorous philosophical continuity between the three self-identified “phases” in Irigaray’s thought (despite some critics’ concerns that there is a discontinuity between these phases) and clarifies the relational ontology that underlies Irigaray’s conceptualization of sexuate difference – one that always already implies an ethical project. The text demonstrates that an understanding of Irigaray’s Heideggerian inheritance – especially prominent in her later texts – is essential to grasping the sense of the idea that sexuate difference is ontological – it concerns Being, rather than beings. This book further develops potential applications of this ontological notion of a “relational limit” for the fields of philosophy, feminism, and psychotherapy. Acknowledgments Contents About the Author Abbreviations 1: Introduction: Being as Relation in Luce Irigaray Reading Irigaray, Listening Terminology: Ontology, Subjectivity, Ethics Relational Limit Chapter Summaries References 2: Muted Receptions: Identity and Sexuate Difference The Philosopher Who is Not One Irigaray’s Three Phases Femininity and The Transformation of “the Subject” Identity Vs. Relation References 3: Relation and Refusal: Irigaray with Lacan Lacan on Language, Subjectivity, and Sex God or the Jouissance of the Woman: Irigaray and Lacan on Sexual Difference The Psychosis of the Masculine References 4: Hearing Silence, Speaking Language: Irigaray with Heidegger Note on Terminology Living Within Language as a Call to Respond: A Reading of Heidegger’s “Language” On the Way to the Other References 5: The Enunciation of Place: Irigaray on Subjectivity Aristotle’s Impasse of Place Relational Limit: A “Double Loop” of Places Speaking at the Limit: The Sharing of Speech References 6: Toward a Relationally Limited Future “Woman’s” Lack of Place: An Act of Violence Identity (and) Politics Encountering the World as a Sexuate Subject Conclusion References Index