Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference
- Introduction
- 1 Rereading Irigaray: Realism and Sexual Difference
- 2 Judith Butler's Challenge to Irigaray
- 3 Nature, Sexual Duality, and Bodily Multiplicity
- 4 Irigaray and Hölderlin on the Relation Between Nature and Culture
- 5 Irigaray and Hegel on the Relation Between Family and State
- 6 From Sexual Difference to Self-Differentiating Nature
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference
- Introduction
- 1 Rereading Irigaray: Realism and Sexual Difference
- 2 Judith Butler's Challenge to Irigaray
- 3 Nature, Sexual Duality, and Bodily Multiplicity
- 4 Irigaray and Hölderlin on the Relation Between Nature and Culture
- 5 Irigaray and Hegel on the Relation Between Family and State
- 6 From Sexual Difference to Self-Differentiating Nature
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Reconciling Duality and Multiplicity
Drawing on Schelling, I have proposed a rethinking of Irigaray's philosophy according to which nature's process of self-differentiation becomes restricted by a culture which denies sexual difference, and would be released by a culture which recognises that difference. In conclusion, I want to bring together the strands of my argument in this book and show how my rethinking of Irigaray combines the strengths of her philosophy with those of Butler's – at least when Butler's philosophy is revised to recognise the natural multiplicity of bodies. By reviewing the respective strengths of these philosophies as a whole, and showing how the theory of self-differentiating nature can reconcile them, I aim also to provide a more integrated statement of this theory as a contribution to feminist thinking about nature, bodies, and culture.
I introduced Irigaray's philosophy of natural sexual duality by reassessing feminist debates surrounding her essentialism. I argued that her later writings affirm a form of realist essentialism according to which human bodies naturally have inherent characters, which they actively strive to express culturally. Opposing the widely held view that realist essentialism is untenable, I suggested that Irigaray's later position is appealing because it revalues bodies, and nature more generally, as active and self-expressive, intertwining the project of creating a sexuate culture with that of learning to ‘respect the realities that compose the pre-given world: that of the macrocosm and that of living beings’ (BEW, 16/27–8).
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- Information
- Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference , pp. 224 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006