Irigaray, Luce

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Excellent critique of Freud
Worth the effort.
This Sex Which Is Not One

This Sex Which Is Not One
Luce Irigaray
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Speculum of the Other Woman
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Ethics of Sexual Difference (Continuum Impacts)
Undoing Gender

ASIN: 0801493315

Customer Reviews:

Excellent critique of Freud.......2007-03-29

This is Irigaray's best known book. Although at times her linguistic approach is difficult (namely when she discusses Lacan), I found these essays & interviews fascinating and meaningful. Essentially she presents a critique of Freud's conclusions on feminine sexuality; in his view, women exist only in relation to men- pretty much to provide pleasure and birth (hopefully male) babies. Irigaray describes how this notion came to be- not because women are intrinsically passive and masochistic, but because historical, linguistic, and social conditions construct this situation. She asks how women can be defined/seen/thought of just as women, not because of sexual capabilities. How can phallogocentric structures of language and commerce (basically our whole worldview) be revised or destroyed to allow women to exist without being objectified and commodified? It is unclear how optimisitc Irigaray is about this possibility, but her questioning has proved significant for many fields of study. In my opinion chapter 4, The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine, is the most succinct summary of her main ideas.

Worth the effort........2005-11-15

I disagree with the previous review, although I agree that this is an excellent book. Personally, I was glad to have studied Irigaray under the tutelage of an excellent professor, otherwise I would have, and I think many readers could, misread her drastically. Irigaray is simply not a clear and easy writer.

Simply put, Irigaray's writing falls under the category of "difference feminism", rather than egalitarian feminism, like most of the liberal feminists we, particularly in North America, are used to. Instead of trying to subsume male and female experience under the same account, Irigaray plays up the differences between the embodied experiences of men and women-- she is not an essentialist, it is more that she doesn't attempt to separate gender from sex in lived experience.

Her work is provocative-- some find it sexy, some off-putting. She attempts, for example, to redefine the ways males and females experience their sexuality, by challenging the central position of the phallus as an organ of domination. Her psychoanalytic language can be difficult to get through if you aren't, as I'm not, well-versed in that particular method.

This Sex Which Is Not One.......2000-05-19

A must read for those interested in Femenist Theory. Travelling across Freudian and Lacanian perspectives, this book seriously explains, with accesible language, the female sexuality. It simply expresses very difficult theories, and guides the reader with accesible terminology from the outset. In my opinion, after reading this text, one can be said to be fluent in femenist issues. I also think it is an extraordinary and seamless translation.

Average customer rating:

Oh My, Oh My
How often do we miss these?
Sight Presence
Nice feminist critique of Freud, Plato, and others

Speculum of the Other Woman
Luce Irigaray
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

This Sex Which Is Not One
Ethics of Sexual Difference (Continuum Impacts)
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
Undoing Gender

ASIN: 0801493307

Customer Reviews:

Oh My, Oh My.......2005-10-17

A lack of appreciation for these pensees will provoke snide (when not openly livid) dismissals of utter intellectual incompetence wedded to a crude, perfervid misogyny. So I'll be brief and, as is my wont, simplistic. If you want to make Freud look logical, compare him to Jung; if you want to make Jung look logical, compare him to Lacan; if you want to make Lacan look logical, compare him to Irigaray; if you want to make Irigaray look logical ... well ... there's always the Eleusinian Mysteries.

How often do we miss these?.......2005-03-15

In the analysis of Freud in the first instance, many of the great western philosophers in the second, and Plato noch einmal in the third, we have the opportunity to note the "place" of women in our traditions with a view to how innane it all was. How often in reading the tradition do we miss the speculum of the man for what it was? How much effort would it be to always be aware of this?

Sight Presence.......1999-10-01

Those unfamiliar with Plato, Descartes, Freud and Lacan will find great challenges in understanding this rather poetic book. Irigary examines these figures in light of the "symbolic order" to detail phallocentricism in the development of Western thought in general as well as psychoanalysis, revealing what is, according to the author, the nature of feminine sexuality and gender identity. Reading this text, written by a former student of Lacan's expelled over ideological differences, was transforming and has left a permanent perspective from which to percieve and critique philosophical arguments as well as science, medicine, and psychotherapy.

Nice feminist critique of Freud, Plato, and others.......1999-09-30

The first section is especially wonderful: a complete analysis of Freud's construction of women's sexuality and development. She has a great style with many a qwirk to keep you entertained. The second section includes free-form essays on Aristotle, Kant, Plato, Descartes and other representatives of the Western male philosophical canon. The last section is a complete analysis of Plato's Hystera. This is a good text for those of us who need to read the foundations of feminist thought . . . though some American feminists (such as myself) may find themselves annoyed with her "essentialism". Enjoy!

Divine Love: Luce Irigaray, Women, Gender, and Religion (Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender)

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Divine Love: Luce Irigaray, Women, Gender, and Religion (Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender)
Morny Joy
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0719055237
Release Date: 2007-03-06

Book Description

Divine Love explores the work of Luce Irigaray for the first time from the perspective of Religious Studies. The book examines the development of religious themes in Irigaray’s work from ‘Speculum of the Other Woman’, in which she rejects traditional forms of western religion, to her more recent explorations of eastern religions.

Ethics of Sexual Difference (Continuum Impacts)

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The Tyranny of the Model of Two
A classic of continental thinking.

Ethics of Sexual Difference (Continuum Impacts)

Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Sex | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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This Sex Which Is Not One
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ASIN: 0826477127

Customer Reviews:

The Tyranny of the Model of Two.......2001-06-02

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

A classic of continental thinking........1999-12-02

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!

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To Be Two
Luce Irigaray
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415918154

Book Description

In this major new work, French philosopher Luce Irigaray continues to explore the issue central to her thought: the feminist redefinition of Being and Identity. For Irigaray, the notion of the individual is twinned with a reconceived notion of difference, or alterity. What does it mean to be someone? How can identity be created, or discovered, in relation to others? In To Be Two Irigaray gives new clarity to her project, grounding it in relation to such major figures as Sartre, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty. Yet at the same time, she enriches her discussion with an attempt to bring the elements--earth, fire, water--into philosophical discourse. Even the polarities of heaven and earth come to play in this ambitious and provocative text.

At once political, philosophical, and poetic, To Be Two will become one of Irigarary's central works.

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Query- Regarding Books

The Irigaray Reader (Blackwell Readers)
Luce Irigaray
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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The Helene Cixous Reader
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The Kristeva Reader
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ASIN: 063117043X

Book Description

Luce Irigaray is one of the leading French feminist philosophers and psychoanalysts. Her work is concerned primarily with the construction of femininity and sexual differences in Western philosophy and with the exploration of new psychoanalytical and feminist perspectives on sexual differences. She has written a number of influential books, notably Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One, both translated into English.

The Irigaray Reader is a collection of Luce Irigaray's most important papers to date. They range across feminism, philosophy, psychoanalysis and linguistics, and are grouped here into three broad sections: The Critique of Patriarchy, Psychoanalysis and Language, and Ethics and Subjectivity. Each section begins with an introduction by Margaret Whitford, and the book also includes bibliographies of works by and about Irigaray.

A number of pieces in The Irigaray Reader appear for the first time in English. This is the most comprehensive collection available of Irigaray's work, work that has profoundly influenced contemporary debates across a range of disciplines.

Customer Reviews:

Query- Regarding Books.......2000-06-01

Dear Sir,

I wish to know the addresses of following writers email/residential addresses with phone number 1. Luce Irigaray 2. Julia Kristeva 3. Helene Cixous

You are requested to mail it to me at the earliest my email address is rkpanja@sansad.nic.in.

Submitted for an early response from your side.

Book Description

French theorist Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphysics as a "forgetting of Being," Irigaray seeks in this work to begin to think out the Being of sexedness and the sexedness of Being. This volume is the first English translation of L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (1983). In this complex, lyrical, meditative engagement with the later work of the eminent German philosopher, Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air. With the other volumes (Elemental Passions and Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche) in Irigaray's "elemental" series, The Forgetting of Air offers a fundamental rereading of basic tenets in Western metaphysics. And with its emphasis on dwelling and human habitation, it will be important reading not only in the humanities but also in architecture and the environmental sciences.

The Way Of Love (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

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The Way Of Love (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)
Luce Irigaray
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Epistemology | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 082647327X

Book Description

The Way of Love asks the question: How can we love each other? Here Luce Irigaray, one of the world's foremost philosophers, presents an extraordinary exploration of desire and the human heart.

If Western philosophy has claimed to be a love of wisdom, it has forgotten to become a wisdom of love. We still lack words, gestures, ways of doing or thinking to approach one another as humans, to enter into dialogue, to build a world where we can live together.

Book Description

In I Love to You, Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object?

Drawing upon Hegel, Irigaray proposes a dialectic appropriate to each sex as well as a dialectic of their relation. She argues for what she calls "sexed rights" and a right of persons based on the right to life, not the right to property. Using the results of her research into the sexing of language, Irigaray analyzes how women seek communication in discourse with the other--an other, pre-occupied with his abstract or concrete object, who does not respond. She proposes another syntax for communication, one that does not incorporate the other as the object of the subject but allows for an indirect relation. Thus "I love to you" replaces "I love you."

In Irigaray's vision of the happiness possible in sexual difference, the love between a man and a woman finds its "reason" not in property or children, but in its own place within the couple. Arguing passionately for a new language of personal relations, I Love to You looks toward a future where nihilism can be overcome by "love in sexual difference."

Irigaray & Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy

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Superb
Post-phenomenological, post-body, post-representation

Irigaray & Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy
Tamsin Lorraine
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 080148586X

Book Description

For Tamsin Lorraine, the works of Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze open up new ways of thinking about subjectivity. Focusing on the affinities between the theorists' views--while addressing weaknesses of each--she offers both a cogent analysis of their often challenging writings on this topic and an accessible introduction to their philosophical projects. Through her readings she articulates an approach to subjectivity as an embodied, dynamic process, one that speaks to beliefs about personal identity as well as to the practical problems people face in their relations with one another. Lorraine begins by distinguishing between "conceptual" and "corporeal" considerations of subjectivity and by reviewing recent interdisciplinary efforts to theorize the body. She then turns to Irigaray and Deleuze, finding in the former's notion of the "feminine other" and in the latter's, unique conceptions of nomadic thinking inspiration for a model designed to overcome mind/body dualisms. Her analysis of Irigaray and Deleuze suggests a conception of humanity which amounts to a visceral philosophy--a way of thinking that is receptive to the fluxes of dynamic life forces.

Customer Reviews:

Superb.......2004-02-15

As a philosopher with particular interest in the body and the Earth, I found this an utterly splendid book. It is an utterly lucid presentation of the work of Irigaray and Deleuze -- especially compelling for the clarity of thought that it displays, and the real beauty and sensitivity of Lorraine's writing. One of the finest works of philosophical commentary that I've read in years, written by a thinker whose intelligence gleams with warmth and ethical intensity.

Post-phenomenological, post-body, post-representation.......2000-05-11

There is a hole left by Western philosophy in its (absent) discourse of the body. Recent fascinations with Merleau-Ponty and a phenomenological approach only really go so far to rectify this, but require a reaffirmation of the subject and of subjectivity.

Deleuze (the first half of the book) and Irigaray (the second) are good antidotes to this. There is much there to investigate in terms of something more 'visceral', but this does not mean simply a 'philosophy of the body'. It discusses and develops ideas going around this set of problematics, looking at metaphors of fluidity and bodily experience, as well as theorisations of overcoming and transforming the bodily.

I am well-read in Deleuze, so Lorraine's treatment was a little basic, but would serve as a good introduction to some of the most important ideas, including the famous 'body without organs'. But I didn't know Irigaray well, and this book was a useful platform from which to jump into much of the relevant material. Lorraine quotes often and well, right from across the respective oeuvres, and so would be useful for someone who is not widely-read in this area to launch right in. It helps, too, that Lorraine writes clearly and understandably, and is able to convey some of the most complex of ideas in a comprehensible manner.

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