The work of French Philosopher Luce Irigaray has exerted a profound
influence on feminist thinking of recent decades and provides a
far-reaching challenge to western philosophy's entrenched patriarchal
norms.
This book guides the reader through Irigaray's critical and creative
transformation of western thought. Through detailed analysis of her most
important text, Speculum of the Other Woman, Rachel Jones carefully
examines Irigaray's transformative readings of such icons of the western
tradition as Plato, Descartes, Kant and Hegel. She shows that these
readings underpin Irigaray's claim that western philosophy has been
dependent on the forgetting of both sexual difference and of our
singular beginnings in birth. In response, Irigaray seeks to recover a
positive account of sexual difference which would release woman from her
traditional position as the 'other' of the subject and allow her to
speak as a subject in her own right.
In a sensitive reading of Irigaray's work, Jones shows why this
distinctively feminist project necessarily involves the transformation
of the fundamental terms of western metaphysics. By foregrounding
Irigaray's approach to questions of otherness and alterity, she
concludes that, for Irigaray, cultivating an ethics of sexuate
difference is the condition of ethical relations in general. Lucidly and
persuasively written, this book will be an invaluable resource for
students and scholars seeking to understand Irigaray's original
contribution to philosophical and feminist thought.
