Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, and theorist. Her work investigates language, psyche, and culture from a feminist perspective. Irigaray deeply examines how women are perceived and represented within patriarchal structures. Her innovative thinking challenges traditional binary oppositions, opening avenues for new ways of conceiving gender and identity.
Focusing on the concept of sexuate difference, this book envisions a more just and ecologically aware world. It features original texts from Luce Irigaray's students and collaborators, alongside an introduction by Irigaray herself, offering diverse perspectives on creating a society that values and thrives on gender diversity. The work encourages readers to rethink societal structures and foster a deeper connection to ecological principles through the lens of gender.
Luce Irigaray reflects on three critical concerns of our time: the cultivation
of energy in its many forms, the integration of Asian and Western traditions,
and the reenvisioning of religious figures for the contemporary world. A
philosopher as well as a psychoanalyst, Irigaray draws deeply on her personal
experience in addressing these questions.
A radically subversive critique brings to the fore the masculine ideology
implicit in psychoanalytic theory and in Western discourse in general: woman
is defined as a disadvantaged man, a male construct with no status of her own.
Whilst he broaches the theme of the difference between the sexes, Hegel does not go deep enough into the question of their mutual desire as a crucial stage in our becoming truly human. He ignores the dialectical process regarding sensitivity and sensuousness. And yet this is needed to make spiritual the relation between two human subjectivities differently determined by nature and to ensure the connection between body and spirit, nature and culture, private life and public life. This leads Hegel to fragment human subjectivity into yearnings for art, religion and philosophy thereby losing the unity attained through the cultivation of a longing for the absolute born of a desire for one another as different. Furthermore, our epoch of history is different from the Hegelian one and demands that we consider additional aspects of human subjectivity. This is essential if we are to overcome the nihilism inherent in our traditional metaphysics without falling into a worse nihilism due to a lack of rigorous thinking common today. The increasing power of technique and technologies as well as the task of building a world culture are two other challenges we face. Our sexuate belonging provides us with a universal living determination of our subjectivity – now a dual subjectivity - and also with a natural energy potential which allows us to use technical resources without becoming dependent on them.
The first communication between human beings, the one between the newborn and
the mother, happens through touch. And yet touching and being touched means
experiencing ourselves as living beings.
La sexualité féminine est restée le “ continent noir ” de la psychanalyse. Celle-ci, en effet, ne pouvait que méconnaître cette autre, femme, qui déborde le cadrage de son champ théorique, la science du sujet qu’elle définit n’ayant pas interrogé sa soumission à des impératifs logiques masculins. Il fallait donc retraverser les textes où cette logique de l’un, du même, se systématise comme telle. Relire, et réinterpréter, Platon, pour repérer comment s’y déterminent les métaphores qui véhiculeront désormais le sens. Suivre le développement de cette histoire, de la théorie, et re-marquer où et comment l’autre – femme – se trouve exclue de la production du discours, en assurant de sa plasticité silencieuse le sol, la relance, et la limite. Un spéculum a été introduit dans le volume pour en altérer l’économie. Ce praticable déjouant le montage de la représentation selon des paramètres masculins. Non pour quelque nouveau spectacle. Rien, alors, à voir en plus ? Mais que, d’un tact difficilement identifiable dans son fluide et inappropriable dans sa touche, “ Dieu ” rouvre des chemins dans un langage qui la connote comme châtrée, interdite de parole, et un certain sens – aussi de l’histoire – s’en trouvera soumis à une distorsion inouïe. La/une femme jamais ne se re(n)ferme en un volume. Luce Irigaray
"Per dare un futuro alla democrazia, si deve rifondarla fino in fondo e, perprima cosa, nella relazione fra l'uomo e la donna dove l'identità naturale nonha ancora raggiunto uno status civile. Cambiare le relazioni fra l'uomo e ladonna nella coppia, nella genealogia, in tutti gli incontri privati e pubblicisarebbe un cammino per rendere più democratiche le famiglie culturali,religiose, politiche. Tale via è d'altronde indispensabile per permettereall'Europa di diventare un'Unione fra cittadini e cittadine e non un granmercato dove ciascuno(a) gioca alla competizione con ciascuno(a).La democrazia che incomincia a due si propone di iniziare la strada, e discoprire un nuovo alfabeto e una nuova grammatica politici."
