Abstract
A recent criticism of the philosophy of sexuate difference contends that this philosophy is unable to accommodate lived differences between women. I suggest that rather than being indifferent or hostile to differences between women, Luce Irigaray’s philosophy is actually offering a more radical proposal.
Sexual difference is an immediate natural given and it is a real and irreducible component of the universal. The whole of human kind is composed of women and men and nothing else. The problem of race is, in fact, a secondary problem — except from a geographical point of view? — which means we cannot see the wood for the trees, and the same goes for other cultural diversities — religious, economic and political ones.
(Luce Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 47)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Boulous Walker, Michelle, ‘An Ethics of Reading: Adorno, Levinas, and Irigaray’ Philosophy Today, 50 (2006), p. 223.
Cheah, Pheng and Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Of Being-Two: Introduction’, Diacritics 28 (1998).
-, ‘The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell’, Diacritics, 28 (1998), pp. 19–42.
Cimitile, Maria and Elaine Miller (eds) Returning to Irigaray: Feminist Philosophy, Politics, and the Question of Unity (Albany: New York City Press, 2007).
Deutscher, Penelope, A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002).
-, ‘Between East and West and the Politics of “Cultural Ingenuite”: Irigaray on Cultural Difference’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20 (2003), pp. 65–75.
Feurstein, Georg, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy (Boston: Shambala Publications, 1998).
Grosz, Elizabeth, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004).
Irigaray, Luce, Speculum: Of the Other Woman, tr. Gillian. C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).
-, This Sex Which is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).
-, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, tr. Carolyn Burke and Gillian. C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
-, I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, tr. Alison Martin (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
-, Democracy Begins Between Two, tr. Kristeen Anderson (London: The Athlone Press, 2000).
-, Between East and West: From Singularity to Community, tr. Stephen Pluhàcĕk (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
-, The Way of Love, tr. Heidic Bostic and Stephen Pluhàcĕk (London and New York: Continuum, 2002).
-, Conversations (London and New York: Continuum, 2008).
Narayan, Uma, ‘Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism’, Hypatia Border Crossings: Multicultural and Postcolonial Feminist Challenges to Philosophy (Part 1), 13 (1998), pp. 86–106.
Schwab, Gail, ‘Reading Irigaray (and Her Readers) in the Twenty-First Century’, in M.C. Cimitile and E.P. Miller (eds), Returning to Irigaray: Feminist Philosophy, Politics, and the Question of Unity (Albany: New York Press, 2007).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Laura Roberts
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roberts, L. (2015). Cultivating Difference with Luce Irigaray’s Between East and West . In: Irigaray, L., Marder, M. (eds) Building a New World. Palgrave Studies in Postmetaphysical Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453020_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453020_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49759-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-45302-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)