Exhausting Modernity is a bold and exciting new work on the exhaustion of our resources, both natural and human. Brennan marshalls the insights of Marx and Freud to provide a compelling analysis of the pervading modern capitalism: environmental collapse, rising poverty levels, and the increased global economic disparity. Linking the consumption of environmental resources to our own depleted psychic life, she shows that modernity must be rethought if we are to find a sustainable future for both the environment and our (...) own psychic life. (shrink)

In I Love to You , Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object? Drawing upon Hegel, Irigaray proposes a dialectic appropriate to each sex (...) as well as a dialectic of their relation. She argues for what she calls "sexed rights" and a right of persons based on the right to life, not the right to property. Using the results of her research into the sexing of language, Irigaray analyzes how women seek communication in discourse with the other--an other, pre-occupied with his abstract or concrete object, who does not respond. She proposes another syntax for communication, one that does not incorporate the other as the object of the subject but allows for an indirect relation. Thus "I love to you" replaces "I love you." In Irigaray's vision of the happiness possible in sexual difference, the love between a man and a woman finds its "reason" not in property or children, but in its own place within the couple. Arguing passionately for a new language of personal relations, I Love to You looks toward a future where nihilism can be overcome by "love in sexual difference.". (shrink)

This collection consists of lectures given at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. They were delivered under the provisions of the Jan Tin- bergen Chair, ...

This paper explores the compatibility of Luce Irigaray's recent insistence on the need to revalue nature, and to recognise culture's natural roots, with her earlier advocacy of social transformation towards a culture of sexual difference. Prima facie, there is tension between Irigaray's political imperatives, for if culture really is continuous with nature, this implies that our existing, non-sexuate, culture is naturally grounded and unchallengeable. To dissolve this tension, Irigaray must conceive culture as having self-transformative agency without positioning culture as active (...) vis-à-vis an inert and passive nature. I argue that Irigaray achieves this by conceiving culture to arise from a division internal to nature. She derives this idea from Hölderlin, who claims that nature originally divides itself into subjects and objects, and from Heidegger, who maintains that nature inflicts an originary violence upon itself. Critically reworking Hölderlin and Heidegger, Irigaray argues that male nature tends to turn against itself to generate an anti-natural, ecologically destructive, culture. She argues, however, that this tendency can be redirected and alleviated by the very cultural resources which male nature generates in dividing itself. Irigaray thus develops a unique way to advocate social change while recognising nature's profound impact and influence upon culture. (shrink)

Bringing together Luce Irigaray's early psychoanalytically orientated writings with her more recent and more explicitly political writings, Irigaray and Politics weaves together the ontological, political and ethical dimensions of Irigaray's philosophy of sexuate difference in imaginative ways.

Margaret Whitford's study provides the ideal introduction to Irigaray's thought, offering a sustained interpretation of her whole corpus, including previously untranslated French texts. Whitford suggests that Irigaray's work should be seen as "philosophy in the feminine," actively opposing the complicity of philosophy with other social practices which exclude or marginalize women.

: This article presents Irigaray as a philosopher committed to sociopolitical change by discussing her political thought and her engagement with the European Parliament. It traces her recent work with the ex-Communist Party in Italy back to her early critique of Marx and her subsequent attraction to Hegel's civil definition of the person. The failure of her European Parliament initiative suggests that her thinking is in advance of its possible realization.

This article presents Irigaray as a philosopher committed to sociopolitical change by discussing her political thought and her engagement with the European Parliament. It traces her recent work with the ex-Communist Party in Italy back to her early critique of Marx and her subsequent attraction to Hegel's civil definition of the person. The failure of her European Parliament initiative suggests that her thinking is in advance of its possible realization.

Our Western culture more and more moves away from life. It is so much so that speaking about nature is generally understood as alluding to some or other concept that would be more or less adequate, but not as referring to or questioning about life. This situation is all the stranger since we are facing a real danger regarding the survival of the earth and of all the living beings that populate it. It is as if all the discourses we (...) hear about this problem could remain abstract considerations and academic or scientific evaluations and discussions without practical concern about our own life and our living environment. This probably results from the status of our discourse in general and its current relation to the real. There is no doubt that questions are little by little arising about the present situation of the world, and also that some of the recent philosophers have begun to inquire about the truth and their way of approaching it. But it seems that, although they speak about the necessity of overcoming our past metaphysics, they succeed in doing that with difficulty. Could it be possible that the undertaking would be easier for a woman, because she did not actively contribute to the construction of our past metaphysics, and her identity and subjectivity have remained more in harmony with nature—which she is, furthermore, presumed to represent for the patriarchal tradition? Anyway, it seems that Luce Irigaray—in particular her last two books, Through Vegetal Being and To Be Born —offers elements that correspond to what is at stake in our epoch, both at an empirical and a theoretical level. Hence this conversation about her approach to and treatment of issues crucial today for our life, our world, and all living beings. (shrink)

The relation between Australia’s First Nations peoples and settler-colonial Australians may be characterised as having “miscarried” to the extent that colonial difference is unacknowledged,...

'a good introduction to Irigaray's oeuvre' The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryDiscusses how language, religion, law, art, science and technology have failed women and how concrete changes can be made to ensure that 'our' culture belongs to both men and women.

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.

_Exhausting Modernity_ is a bold new work on the exhaustion of our resources, both natural and human. Drawing on the insights of Marx and Freud, it provides a compelling analysis of the exhaustion pervading modern capitalism: environmental collapse, rising poverty levels and increasing global economic disparity. This is essential reading for political and social theorists, philosophers, economists, and all those interested in the environment.