Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-vt8vv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-08-19T05:51:02.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Irigaray's Mimicry and the Problem of Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Ping Xu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay deals with the essentialism controversy concerning Luce Irigaray through looking into her strategic use of mimicry, which has not been fully addressed by her critics. The author argues that what appear to be essentialist elements in Irigaray's writings are in fact the “sites” where she is mimicking the phallogocentric discourse in order to uncover its essentialist and “sexed” nature and at the same time to resist being reabsorbed into its reductive order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Fall 1995 , pp. 76 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berg, Maggie. 1991. Luce Irigaray's “contradictions”: Poststructuralism and feminism. Signs 17(1): 50–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 1989. The politics of ontological difference. In Between feminism and psychoanalysis, ed. Brennan, Teresa. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fuss, Diana. 1989. Essentially speaking: Feminism, nature, and difference. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1989. Sexual subversions: Three French feminists. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Hawkesworth, M. E. 1990. Beyond oppression: Feminist theory and political strategy. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. This sex which is not one. Trans. Porter, Catherine. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985b. Speculum of the other woman. Trans. Gill, Gillian. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1987. Is the subject of science sexed? Trans. Carol Mastrangelo Bové. Hypatia 2(3): 65–87.10.1111/j.1527-2001.1987.tb01342.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1990. Women's exile (interview). In The feminist critique of language: A reader, ed. Cameron, Deborah. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1991a. The Irigaray reader. Ed. Whitford, Margaret. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1991b. Marine lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Gill, Gillian C.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1992. Je, tu, nous: Toward a culture of difference. Trans. Martin, Alison. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1993a. An ethics of sexual difference. Trans. Burke, Carolyn and Gill, Gillian C.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1993b. Sexes and genealogies. Trans. Gill, Gillian C.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
King, Terrance. 1991. Mimesis, binary opposition, and Peirce's triadic realism. In Mimesis in contemporary theory: An interdisciplinary approach. Vol. 2 of Mimesis, semiosis, and power, ed. Bogue, Ronald. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kirby, Vicki. 1991. Corporeal habits: Addressing essentialism differently. Hypatia 6(3): 4–24.10.1111/j.1527-2001.1991.tb00253.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. [1977] 1986. The line and light. In The four fundamental concepts of psycho‐analysis. Trans. Miller, Jacques‐Alain. London: Hogarth; Harmondsworth: Penguine Press.Google Scholar
Lang, Candace D. 1988. Irony/humor: Critical paradigms. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1993. Outside in the teaching machine. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Whitford, Margaret. 1991. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the feminine. London: Routledge.Google Scholar