Title: The Irigaray Reader
1The Irigaray Reader
2Introduction to Section I (by Margaret Whitford)
- Patriarchy (defined by Irigaray)an exclusive
respect for the genealogy of sons and fathers,
and the competition between brothers (Sexes et
parentes, p.202) - maternal genealogy absent in western thought and
institutions - coexistence of two genealogies (patriarchy and
matriarchy), not simply a reversal or a
replacement (p. 23)
3- Whereas de Beauvoir emphasizes access to the
world of men (equality), Irigaray is suggesting
the creation of difference (p.24). - develops de Beauvoirs idea of Woman as Other (I
the other of the same, the necessary negative
of the male subject, all that he has repressed
and disavowed.) -
- but a self-defined woman who would not be
satisfied with sameness, but whose otherness and
difference would be given social and symbolic
representation. Each sex would then be other
for the other sex (p. 24-25).
4- Equal or Different? (1986 1988 1990)
- The Bodily Encounter with the Mother
(conference on Women and Madness, Montreal,
1981) - western culture is founded not on parricide (as
Freud hypothesized in Totem and Taboo, but on
matricide (p.25). - Is reinterpretation of the mythology
(Clytemnestra) the installation of patriarchy,
built over the sacrifice of the mother and her
daughters. - The major cultural taboo is on the relationship
with the mother (p.25). - The stress on Oedipus, on castration, serves to
conceal another severance, the cutting of the
umbilical cord to the mother
5- hatred from men and archaic projection of male
imaginary (woman as devouring monster threatening
madness and death) has made women suffer
culturally - This relationship with the mother needs to be
brought out of silence and into representation - contraception and the legalization of abortion
control womens reproduction womens identity
as women not as mothers (role as reproducer of
children, as nurse, as reproducer of
labour-power) - warns the daughters against repeating the murder
of the mother. - To move out the role of guardians of the body
for men - To put into words and symbolic representations
the primitive relation with the mothers body. - Speaking about the relationships between women
create a new identity within the symbolic order
6- reiterated in Women-Mothers the Silent
Substratum of the Social Order (interview) - overlap the preoccupations of other
English-speaking feminists - 1. Women and madness
- 2. the inadequacy or failure of the sexual
revolution from womens point of view - 3. the importance of consciousness raising as a
practice - 4. the analysis of the family as a social device
for appropriating womens labour - 5. the mother-daughter relationship
- 6. the attack on psychoanalysis (a discourse
which normalize patriarchy) the re-evaluation of
hysteria (as the unheard voice of the woman who
can only speak through somatic symptoms) - 7. Second-wave (post 1968) women (both as
daughters and mothers) must liberate themselves
with their mothers (p.26)
7- the end of 1970Anglo-American feminism began
to theorize womens difference (as a source of
cultural possibility rather than simply as a
source of oppression). - I examining equality, mothers function (as the
infrastructure of Western civilisation), and the
obliteration of women as women. - Speculum, 1974
- Catholic countries (France and Italy) the
importance of attending to motherhood as an
institution, sanctioned by the divine - Volume with contours (extract from Speculum)
- male imaginary, philosophical logos and system
(of discourse and representation ) that
confine/define women
8- Dominant fantasy of the mother/Male
Representation of Women a closed volume a
receptacle for the (re)production of sameness
and the the support of (re)production - mens desire immobilize women (control and
possession), appropriate by masculinity - mens fear of the open container, the
incontournable volume, the fluid, the mobile,
not a solid ground/earth, or not mirror for
subject - contemporary theory in the feminine a fresh
attempt at terrorialization of the
maternal-feminine - I an other woman (exterior to all these
masculine metaphorizations) shake the
foundation of patriarchy
9- I oppose an other woman, a woman without
common measure (who cannot be reduced to the
qualifying measurements by which she is
domesticated in male systems, who exceeds
attempts to pin her down and confine her within a
theoretical system, whose volume is
incontournable against Lacanian image of
woman as a hole, oppose the image of contiguity
of two lips (mother-daughter, mother-father,
maternal-paternal genealogies) womans desire
could be represented for-itself (not in male
representation) (p.28)
10Simone de Beauvoirs modern feminism Luce Irigaray
Attitude towards psychoanalysis Attitude towards psychoanalysis
Resist psychoanalysis Not always negative not totally consistent One of our contradictions was that we denied the unconscious (p. 24). de Beauvoirs response to Irigaray in an interview (1984) anyone who wants to work on women has to break completely with Freud (p. 24). For de Beauvoir, Irigaray always began from Freuds postulates, adopted too readily the Freudian account of the inferiority of women. 1. as an analyst (psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist)important for thinking sexual identity (p.31) (Freudian theory), challenging 2. uses and challenges philosophical traditions (psychoanalysis for understanding the self-realization of consciousness)
concept of equal rights/sexual difference/Womens Liberation concept of equal rights/sexual difference/Womens Liberation
equal equal to men the imposition of a male norm genocide of woman. (Irigaray to de Beauvoirs response, p. 23) Demanding equality erroneous (presupposes a term of comparison) Q Equal to what? What do women want to be equal to? Men? A wage? A public position? Equal to what? Why not to themselves? (p. 32) Women need an identity as women womankind (p.24)
favoured social justice and supported feminists 1949, The Second Sex (her own life story with scientific data)subordinated feminism to socialism, helped women to be sexually freer by offering them a socio-cultural model Find value in being women, not simply mothers rethinking, transforming centuries of socio-cultural values.
11Equal or Different? (1986 1988 1990)
- most claims to equality superficial critique of
culture, and utopian as a means to womens
liberation. - The exploitation of women is based upon sexual
difference, and can only be resolved through
sexual difference (p. 32). - neutralization of sex (contemporary feminists)
end of human race (divided into two genresensure
its production and reproduction) - Trying to suppress sexual difference is to
invite a genocide (destruction of women and all
values) more radical than any destruction that
has ever existed in History (p. 32). - define the value of a sex-specific genre genre
as sexuate (p. 33) and form a culture that
respects both genres
12- We are still in the childhood of culture People
constantly split into secondary but murderous
rivalries without realizing that their primary
and irreducible division is one between two
genres (p. 33). - We must give, or restore cultural values to
female subjectivity (not simply procreative) e.g.
The Second Sex
13 The Bodily Encounter with the Mother
(conference on Women and Madness, Montreal,
1981)
- Men-practitioners absence a sign of their
psychiatric practice (self-sufficient) madness
of women their words are not heard (p 35). - Scientific discourses, serious scientific
practices, therapeutic decisions and diagnoses
still the privilege of men (who define womens
function, social role, and the sexual identity) - Each sex relates to madness in its own way (p
35) - All desire is connected to madness (in the
relationship with the mothera mad desire (the
dark continent par excellence)) shadows of
our culture, it is its night and its hell -
14- the infrastructure of western culture women as
mothers, the unacknowledged foundation of the
social order - The maternal function underpins the social order
and the order of desire (satisfying the
individual and collective need) e.g. in the
religious dimension of need (women mothers) - womens/mothers own desire suppressed/forbidden
by the law of the father - Womens looking for their sexual identity and the
meaning of motherhood contraception, abortion - western culture is founded not on parricide (as
Freud hypothesized in Totem and Taboo, but on
matricide (p.25). - Freud forgot a more archaic murder of the
founding of a certain order in the polis (of the
primal horde)
15- Clytemnestra myth
- forgot the tragedy of Iphigenia
- Orestes (son) kills his mother for the
establishment of a new order (commanded by the
God-Father (Apollo)) - The Furies the ghosts of his mother women in
revolt, rising up like hysterics against the
patriarchal power in the process of being
established (p. 37). - the law of the primal horde and mythology
- men bury women beneath the sanctuary
- regulation Athenas (virgin-goddess, born of the
father and obedient to his law in forsaking the
mother) perfect models of femininity (always
veiled and dressed from head to toe)
16- The murder of the mother ?
- the non-punishment of the son (Orestes), but
punishment on daughter (Electra) - the burial of the madness of women (e.g.
Clytemnestra) - the burial of women in madness (e.g. Jocasta)
- In the process of the forming of the new order
(based on matricide), a symbolic murder of the
father is necessary for the coming of the sons
revenge (murder of ) on the mother
17- e.g. p. 38 1. Oedipus re-enacting of the
madness of Orestes (primal crimeIt was a sons
duty to kill his fathers murderers, a duty that
came before all others. But a son who killed his
mother was abhorrent to gods and to men. A most
sacred obligation was bound up with a most
atrocious crime (Hamilton 256)) - Oedipusviolates the law of the father (Oedipus
Complex) ambivalence (focused on the father,
but which is retroactively projected on to the
archaic relationship with the body of the
mother) towards his father
18- The mothers body as an object for cathecting (to
invest emotional energy in (a person, object or
idea)) and later decathecting (i.e., separate,
detach, give up, repress) - After the bodily encounter with the mother,
Oedipus grows up (to establish a new social
symbolic order) - mother already torn into pieces
- by Oedipuss hatred
- torn between the sons and the fathers, between
sons (p.27, 38)
19- the mothers body (the life of the drives)
- Partial drives the body (primal wombfirst
home, first love) which brought us whole (bound
together) into the world - Q The genital drive is said to be the drive
thanks to which the phallic penis takes back from
the mother the power to give birth, to nourish,
to dwell, to centre. The phallus erected where
once there was the umbilical cord (the first bond
with the mother)? (p.38) - the father and his law sever the over-intimate
bond with the primal womb (the danger of fusion,
of death, of the sleep of death) - a proper name/forename an extra-corporeal
identity card (language which privileges the
masculine genre) replaces the most irreducible
mark of birth the navel (the irreducible trace
of identity the scar left when the cord was cut)
20- Psychoanalysis
- take a dim view of the first moment (bond with
the womb and the imaginary and the symbolic of
intra-uterine life)a taboo is in the air - Psychoanalysis (the social order/our culture) ?
the mother must remain forbidden, excluded. The
father forbids the bodily encounter with the
mother (p. 38) - placenta (the first house surround us- childs
security blanket) - men tend to go back to the primal womb the
devouring mouth (p.41) , seeking refuge in any
open body (of other women as well) danger,
threat of contagion, contamination, engulfment in
illness, madness and death but are NOT allowed.
21- No Jacobs ladder for a return to the mother.
Jacobs ladder always climbs up to heaven, to the
Father and his kingdom. p. 40 - men need to feed their libido (sexual urge or
drive) p. 39 and distanced/removed from their
bodies/corporeal in (sexual) production p. 49
need wife-mother/ a woman-wife (p. 43) need
womens guardianship of their corporeal unity (p.
49) - Fantasy of Mother as a devouring monster and her
womb as the devouring mouth
22- able to give birth and life (power of procreation
and creation/generative power) - steal the creating power or life essence from
men? - womb/the silent and threatening belly capture
net of maternal power, the phallic mother ?
phallic threat, anxiety, phobia of castration
fear (p. 41) from man-fathers perspective - Q Fantasy based on Oedipuss hatred (still
uninterrupted)
23- makes a hole in the bellies of women/identity
a stake driven into the earth (p. 41) - Torn between the sons and the fathers, the stake
or sacrifice in disputes between men (disputes
for the ownership of the mothers body), she is
fragmented into bits and pieces, and therefore
unable to articulate her difference (p. 27) - The (male) subject prefers to see her as the
maternal-feminine rather than as a woman
(castration and death, the unimaginable
heterogamous other) (p. 27) ? A hole in the
texture of language corresponds to the forgetting
of the scar of the navel (p. 41).
24- Q 1. phallic erection the only sexual value?
(in the patriarchal tradition) - 2. castration anxiety the unconscious memory
of such sacrifice? - The murder of the father a desire for one who
artificially cut the link with the mother in
order to take over the creative power of all
worlds, especially the female world (Wrong) ? - signifies a desire to take his the
fathers place, a rival and competitive desire
(p. 42)
25Mens Rebirth (phallic erection masculine version of the umbilical bond) Womens Rebirth
Should respect the life of the mother, reproduce the living bond with her by recreating the intra-uterine life (the cord? the breast? the penis) Free from mans archaic projection onto her, the establishment of her own sexual identity 1. No envy for mens penis (the distorted/biased male representation of an instrument of power to dominate maternal power) 2. our auto-erotism, narcissism, heterosexuality and homosexuality.
26- Have fathers ever been asked to renounce being
men? We do not have to renounce being women in
order to be women - We are always mothers once we are women (p.
43) bring children love, desire, language, art,
the social, the political, the religious - We should give our mothers a new life instead of
killing her/sacrificing her to the law of the
father. We must invent a new language that does
not replace the bodily encounter (paternal
language), but which speaks corporeal while we
seek a new relationship with the body of our
mother.
27- Women should speak up rather than remain silent!!
outlet of their emotion - We should assert the genealogy/history of women
identity, subjectivity - do not try to deny our mother (and her body) as
our love object - assert love for other women women-sisters
- 2 modes of womens jouissance (enjoyment)
- programmed in a male libidinal economy
- with their own sexual identity (against the norms
of phallocratic economy)
28Women-Mothers the Silent Substratum of the
Social Order (published as an interview. )
- The substratum is the woman who reproduces the
social order, who is made this orders
infrastructure the whole of our western culture
is based upon the murder of the mother. The
man-god-father killed the mother in order to take
power (p.47). - the hystericrevolt and refusal, a desire for/of
the living mother who would be more than a
reproductive body in the pay of the polis, a
living, loving woman (p. 47-8)
29- the only path that remains open to us is
madness (p. 48) - We need language to define madness.
- Women suffer in their bodies (inaudible)
- Patriarchy discourse discourse of men about
women (objects/silence) - Being guardians of their corporeal unity, we
cannot be beings of desire desire is movement. - the so-called sexual liberation lay trap
- (Greek) relationship to mother relationship to
women
30- Mother function no personal language and
identity -
- mother/daughter, daughter/mother relationship
- ? say goodbye to maternal omnipotence and
establish a woman-to-woman relationship of
reciprocity mothers daughters - Liberate ourselves along with our mothers (p.
50) - We women lack speech