Luce Irigaray's Phenomenology of Feminine Being , livre ebook

Luce Irigaray’s Phenomenology of Feminine Being
SUNY series in Gender Theory
_________
Tina Chanter, editor
Luce Irigaray’s Phenomenology of Feminine Being
VIRPI LEHTINEN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lehtinen, Virpi, 1970– Luce Irigaray s phenomenology of feminine being / Virpi Lehtinen. pages cm. — (SUNY series in gender theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5127-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Irigaray, Luce. I. Title. B2430.I74L44 2014 155.3 33—dc23
2013021966
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I dedicate this book to the memories of my grandmothers Aili Flinkman and Siiri Lehtinen; to my mother Terttu; and to my daughter Tuuli-Titania.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I Body
1 Feminine Existential Style: An Operative Concept
2 The Philosophical Discourse and Canon, and Femininity
3 Irigaray’s Activity of Productive Mimesis: Opening of the Possibility of Original Feminine Expressivity
4 Phenomenology of the Body: the Methodological and Conceptual Framework for Irigaray’s Investigations of Lived Embodiment and Expressivity
5 The Feminine Lived Body
Conclusions to Part I
Part II Desire
6 Irigaray’s Account of the Beloved Woman as a “Man’s Woman”
7 Opening up the Possibility of Woman’s Self-Love and Love among Women
8 Male Phenomenologists’ Promise of the Uniqueness of Woman in Carnal Love
9 The Continuum of Caressing Gestures in Accordance with the Holistic Conception of Sexuality
10 The Philosophical Discourses of Carnal Love: Obstacles and Openings for the Becoming of a Woman Lover
11 The Male Lover, the Feminine Beloved One: A Specific Way of Understanding (Carnal) Love
12 Irigaray Writing, Speaking, and Acting as a Woman Lover
Conclusions to Part II
Part III Wisdom
13 Original Aspects of Woman in Philosophy: Intermediating between Materiality and Spirituality, Nature and Gods
14 Irigaray as a Midwife for Diotima’s Daimonic Philosophy of Eros
15 Writing: An Intervention into the Neutrality and Absoluteness of the Subject and a Model of Sensible Ideality
Conclusions to Part III
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
At its most promising, Luce Irigaray’s work is an exemplification and catalyst of the dynamic forces of change and transformation. From the perspective of phenomenology of the body, persons and their works such as (philosophical) writings constitute a complex network of dynamic relations and are constituted by such relations. These include relations to oneself or to itself, to other persons or writings, and to the world, all formed in embodied, affective, and spiritual dimensions of subjectivity. In our written works these constitutive relations can be made explicit and elaborate or they can remain implicit, even hidden. Similarly, these constitutive processes, with their inherent dynamism and potentiality for truthfulness, can be recognized, cultivated, and developed to varying degrees in our individual and communal lives. On the basis of these ideas, this book maintains that change and transformation are inherently anchored in Irigaray’s philosophy in its focus on these constitutive relations and their inherent dynamism with regards to topics, themes, style, and potentiality for truthfulness. The aim is to provide means for perceiving Irigaray as a radical philosopher of change and transformation in the following six respects.
1. Irigaray’s work offers both the impulse and means for personal growth and flourishing . Irigaray’s work demonstrates that the perspectives of women have not been traditionally included to the philosophical investigations of the sense of being, and the lives of women have thus not gained elaborate and self-defined expression in the spiritual sphere of being. In response to this, Irigaray’s work is consciously written from the first-person perspective of a woman. In so doing, she invites the reader to more fully assume her/his own first-person perspective in reading, speaking, writing, and acting, i.e., to participate more fully in the process of the constitution of the sense of human existence. This process entails the observation of the continuities and discontinuities between one’s own experience, Irigaray’s first-person expressions with reference to feminine pre-discursive experience, and the relation of both to the “general” structures of experience. Moreover, Irigaray’s opaque way of writing invites us to continue completing, questioning, and offering alternative ways of manifesting and acknowledging feminine being, be it in thinking and writing or in acting and living. On the basis of these observations I suggest that Irigaray’s work exemplifies feminine being in its bodily and spiritual generative potentiality by opening up the possibility of an infinite process of differentiation.
2. This work presents Irigaray as a philosopher of love and desire par excellence. In Irigaray’s daimonic conception of eros, desire and love are understood as the most intense transformative forces in human life. Love and desire are oriented toward future, which is opened up in the way we inhabit the here-and-now of our becoming. In their intensity, love and desire reveal the affective element inherent in our perception and in our attitudes toward ourselves, others, and the world. Moreover, detached from the metaphysical presupposition of the hierarchical dichotomy of the soul and the body, love and desire appear as permeating all the dimensions of subject—embodiment, affectivity, and spirituality. Understood in these ways, love and desire are prone to open us not only more fully to the actual but also to the potential in our relations to ourselves, to others, and to the world.
3. Philosophical discourse and practice can become more truthful in its investigations of being and the sense of human existence if the first-person perspectives and expressive acts of women are included. At its best, philosophical thought that has culminated in speeches and writings can exemplify the generativity inherent in love and desire. Irigaray’s work shows how we, by returning to the daimonic origins of eros through sexual difference, can become conscious of and more fully realize the philosophical practice as thinking, speaking, and writing as gendered human beings who are both incarnate and spiritual. Irigaray’s own work, in its materiality, affectivity, and spirituality, is exemplary here, but she also detects such potentiality in the classical philosophical works. Her works address the reader as a woman and a philosopher with no contradiction between the two, in contrast to the philosophical culture in general. In this way, her work also establishes a model of a woman-woman relation (in philosophy). Irigaray’s philosophical work also demonstrates that any philosopher is necessarily connected to the other spheres of life, and all dimensions of subjectivity, even when these relations remain unrecognized.
4. Irigaray’s work provides means to become conscious of our habitual ways of living and thinking gendered being. As such her work contributes to renewing, developing, and cultivating these ways and becoming better aware of them with both their restrictions and potentialities. An example is Irigaray’s explanation of how the sense of woman and femininity has been traditionally male-defined, and she also shows that the effort of forming the self-defined feminine being, each doing her own part, is still needed and meaningful. This task of rethinking femininity and masculinity is in principle unaccomplishable, and is significant also in respect to reconceptualizing gender-blending identities. This is because gender-blending identities are more often than not articulated as a variety of relations to masculinity and femininity; also from this perspective, masculinity and femininity seem to constitute the sense-forming basis of gendered being in its variety. The sense of femininity and masculinity, however, can be conceptualized and lived as open to differences or with a tendency toward similarity, and herein lies the decisive point of the actualization of sexual difference/indifference or sameness, as Irigaray’s work urges us to recognize.
5. Irigaray’s work as a whole also opens up a possibility to perceive and transform the motivational, gendered basis of the destructive tendency of our way of living as culture . These destructive tendencies consist of the reduction of persons to instruments and nature and animals to resources at the risk of seriously damaging our living conditions. This is done in forgetfulness of our lived embodiment, which constitutes necessarily in relation to the elements and the environment (breath, movement, nourishment), but also in forgetfulness of the basic sense and perception of human beings as irreducible to any predetermined instrumental purposes. As Rachel Jones (2010) shows, Irigaray’s efforts for the recognition of our maternal origin, and coming to terms with it, is a task of the utmost importance in philosophy, and also in our culture more generally. Mapping out the implications of this recognition in thought and in cultural and social practices is also an urgent task in our era: human generativity is restricted to human beings, on the part of women, and to cult