In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Of Being-Two: IntroductionPheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grosz (bio)The decade or so spanning the later 1970s to the mid-1980s witnessed the growing importance of “sexual difference” in Anglo-American academic discourse in the humanities and the “soft” social sciences. Both as an interpretive principle in textual criticism and literary theory and as a critical framework for the analysis of social and political structures and cultural formations, sexual difference provided a (...) fertile conceptual ground from which the disinterested universalism claimed by patriarchal and phallocentric knowledges could be put into question. However, in the past decade, the primacy of sexual difference as a critical principle has itself been called into question for eliding other collective forms of difference such as race, class, and sexuality.In a sense, this fracturing or fissuring of the conceptual ground of feminist theory can be seen as a logical outcome of the concept of “difference” itself, which endlessly proliferates into a multiplicity of sometimes conflictual forms. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the fissuring of “sexual difference” within academic discourse also reflects and expresses (albeit a little belatedly) broader sociological and political events: the rise in the 1970s of what the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has described as new antisystemic movements or “new social movements.”By the 1970s one began to speak in the plural of the “new social movements.” The shift from the grammatical singular to the plural provides a crucial clue to the nature of the process. For the “movement,” if it was ever organizationally singular, soon became multiple, if not necessarily fractionated. That is to say, there emerged a whole series of movements, each organized around a specific theme or focus—movements of “ethnic minorities” or “immigrants,” womens’ movements, ecology movements, antiwar movements, gay and lesbian movements, movements of the handicapped and of the aged (or pensioners).... The key theme of the new movements in the West was the forgotten people—the ethnic underclasses, the women, the gays, the aged, et cetera.[41–42]Due caution should, of course, be exercised concerning the many mediations between theory and practice. Nevertheless, this connection between the fissuring of sexual difference in academic theoretical critique and the pluralized nature of the new social movements that emerged in the 1970s necessarily raises the question of whether the contemporary political world has become too complex for sexual difference to serve as a primary critical-analytical and practical principle. Put another way, does sexual difference have continuing pertinence as an effective mechanism and/or ideal horizon for ethical and political transformation? What political future(s), if any, does sexual difference have?As editors of this special issue of diacritics, we have chosen to address these questions about the political future of sexual difference through a critical consideration of the work of one of the most intriguing and original of the present generation of European philosophers, Luce Irigaray. The theoretical question of sexual difference is [End Page 3] indissociable from Irigaray’s writing. The initial posing of the question of sexual difference in the Anglo-American academy coincided with, and was given added impetus by, the translation of Irigaray’s early works into English as part of the corpus of writings that became known as “French feminism.” 1 But what makes it especially apposite to center a special issue on the political future of sexual difference around Irigaray is her continuing insistence on the fundamental nature and, indeed, the infrastructural status of sexual difference to human existence as a whole. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, originally published in 1984, Irigaray suggests that sexual difference is the fundamental ethical question of the contemporary era:Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our “salvation” if we thought it through. But, whether I turn to philosophy, to science, or to religion, I find this underlying issue still cries out in vain for our attention.[ESD 5]In subsequent, more politically oriented texts, Irigaray has not only reaffirmed this initial suggestion. She has made the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell*Pheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grrosz (bio)EG:Luce Irigaray’s writings have always figured strongly in your works, probably more than in the work of other American feminist theorists. Out of all the feminist theorists you both interrogate, she seems to emerge as a kind of touchstone of the feminist ethical, political, and intellectual concerns to which you seem (...) to aspire. Could each of you briefly outline how she figures in your work, whether your relations to her have changed, and if so, how?JB:I think that probably early on, when I started working on French feminism as a graduate student in the early ‘80s, I was not interested in her at all because she seemed to me to be an essentialist and that was a term we used quite easily then, when we thought we knew what it meant. In the late ‘80s, I started to rethink my objections to her on that basis and found that she was, among the feminist theorists I had read, perhaps the most versed in philosophy and that her engagement with philosophy was a curious mixture of both loyalty and aggression. And it became very interesting to me when I started thinking about her whole practice of critical mimesis—what she was doing when she was reading Freud, what was she doing when she was reading Plato—and I read Speculum again and again, frightened by its anger, compelled by the closeness of the reading, confused by the mimetism of the text. Was she enslaved to these texts, was she displacing them radically, was she perhaps in the bind of being in both positions at the same time? And I realized that whatever the feminine was for her, it was not a substance, not a spiritual reality that might be isolated, but it had something to do with this strange practice of reading, one in which she was reading texts that she was not authorized to read, texts from which she was as a woman explicitly excluded or explicitly demeaned, and that she would read them anyway. And then the question is: what would it mean to read from a position of radical deauthorization in order to expose the contingent authority of the text? That struck me as a feminist critical practice, a critical reading practice that I could learn from, and from that point on, highly influenced by both Drucilla’s work and Naomi Schor’s work [see Schor], I started to read her quite thoroughly.PC:Is this kind of relationship that she has with the philosophers she reads a sexual relationship? I am thinking of some of the sexualized terms you just used: loyalty and aggression.JB:Yes, there is no doubt that there is an eros of a certain kind, usually the kind that frightens me, quite frankly. I think Carolyn Burke has made this argument that Irigaray [End Page 19] has a romance with the philosophers [see Burke]. I think she has a certain masochistic-sadistic erotic engagement with the philosophers.EG:Do you think it is sado-masochistic?JB:Well, I think it was much more aggressive in Speculum of the Other Woman than it became in An Ethics of Sexual Difference. There, I think there is an engagement that is still very difficult, but at least there is evidence of a more loving engagement.PC:I hope that we can return to the question of love at the end. Is this the kind of relationship that you have to her texts?JB:No, I’m probably too frightened. [Everybody laughs.] And I don’t engage them that closely, probably because I find it frightening to be in that particular knot. She doesn’t actually have a chapter in any of my books. I think I can’t quite devote a chapter to her....EG:No, but you devote large sections of chapters....JB:That’s true, but I can’t stay there for a prolonged period of time [laughs], whatever that’s worth.EG:I’d like to come back to this later, because I think it is a really interesting... (shrink)

Les propos de cet essai constituent une tentative de questionnement et de désamorcement de ce qui travaille souterrainement la mise en place des présupposés propres aux discours féministes. Cette entreprise aura au passage convoqué, interpellé — au moins — trois protagonistes principaux : Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray et Jacques Derrida. L'étonnement qui peut surgir face à cette rencontre inattendue ne saurait égaler celui qui survient devant la possibilité d'une nouvelle lecture de la question de la femme, autre que celle (...) qui alimente, nourrit les discours des deux auteures précédemment mentionnées. Possibilité qu'ouvre le texte derridien et qui ici tente de se dire.This essay aims at revealing and examining elements which, beneath the surface, create the organization of presuppositions which are characreristic of feminist discourses. In the process, this work will have called forth — at least — three principal protagonists: Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Derrida. The surprise which this unexpected grouping might provoke can not equal the astonishment which springs from the possibility of a new reading of the "féminine" question, — a reading which differs from that which nourishes the discourses of the first two authors mentionned. It is Derrida's text which creates this possibility and which attemps to express itself here. (shrink)

This collection, first published in 1993, presents some of Spivak’s most engaging essays on works of literature such as Salman Rushdie's controversial Satanic Verses, and twentieth century thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Karl Marx.

A radically subversive critique brings to the fore the masculine ideology implicit in psychoanalytic theory and in Western discourse in general: woman is defined as a disadvantaged man, a male construct with no status of her own.

In eleven acute and widely ranging essays, Irigaray reconsiders the question of female sexuality in a variety of contexts that are relevant to current discussion of feminist theory and practice.

It surely would lighten the tasks of feminism tremendously if we could cut to the quick of women's lives by focusing on some essential "woman- ness." However, though all women are women, no woman is only a woman. Those of us who have  ...

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Irigaray demonstrates that metaphysics depends upon the specific negation and exclusion of the female body. Readings of Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman tend to highlight the status of this excluded materiality: is there an essential female body which precedes negation or is the feminine only an effect of exclusion? I approach Irigaray's work by way of another question: is it possible to move beyond a feminist critique of metaphysics and towards a feminist philosophy?

This article reconsiders the issue of Luce Irigaray's proximity to Jacques Derrida on the question of woman. I use Derrida's reading of Nietzsche in Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (1979) and Irigaray's reading of Heidegger in L'Oubli de l'air (1983) to argue that reading them as supplements to one another is more accurate and more productive for feminism than separating one from the other. I conclude by laying out the benefits for feminism that such a reading would offer.

Though the Revised Edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawlsıs view, so much of the extensive literature on ...

For Tamsin Lorraine, the works of Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze open up new ways of thinking about subjectivity. Focusing on the affinities between the theorists' views—while addressing weaknesses of each—she offers both a cogent analysis of their often challenging writings on this topic and an accessible introduction to their philosophical projects. Through her readings she articulates an approach to subjectivity as an embodied, dynamic process, one that speaks to beliefs about personal identity as well as to the practical problems (...) people face in their relations with one another.Lorraine begins by distinguishing between "conceptual" and "corporeal" considerations of subjectivity and by reviewing recent interdisciplinary efforts to theorize the body. She then turns to Irigaray and Deleuze, finding in the former's notion of the "feminine other" and in the latter's, unique conceptions of nomadic thinking inspiration for a model designed to overcome mind/body dualisms. Her analysis of Irigaray and Deleuze suggests a conception of humanity which amounts to a visceral philosophy—a way of thinking that is receptive to the fluxes of dynamic life forces. (shrink)

French theorist Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphysics as a "forgetting of Being," Irigaray seeks in this work to begin to think out the Being of sexedness and the sexedness of Being. This (...) volume is the first English translation of L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (1983). In this complex, lyrical, meditative engagement with the later work of the eminent German philosopher, Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air. With the other volumes (Elemental Passions and Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche) in Irigaray's "elemental" series, The Forgetting of Air offers a fundamental rereading of basic tenets in Western metaphysics. And with its emphasis on dwelling and human habitation, it will be important reading not only in the humanities but also in architecture and the environmental sciences. (shrink)

"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years (...) later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

Contemporary feminist theory is at an impasse: the project of reformulating concepts of self and social identity is thwarted by an association between identity and oppression and victimhood. In Sacrificial Logics, Allison Weir proposes a way out of this impasse through a concept of identity which depends on accepting difference. Weir argues that the equation of identity with repression and domination links "relational" feminists like Nancy Chodorow, who equate self-identity with the repression of connection to others, and poststructuralist feminists like (...) Judith Butler, who view any identity as a repression of nonidentity and difference. Through readings of Chodorow, Butler, Jessica Benjamin, Luce Irigaray, Jacqueline Rose and Julia Kristeva, Weir analyzes the relation of theories of self-identity to theories of women's identity, social identity, the identity of meaning in language and feminist solidarity. Drawing particularly on the work of Julia Kristeva, she argues for a reformulation of self-identity as a capacity to participate in a social world, and sketches a model of a self-identity which depends on a capacity to accept nonidentity, difference and connections to others. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of twenty-three interviews given over the last two decades. It illustrates the extraordinary breadth of Derrida's concerns, touching upon such subjects as the teaching of philosophy, sexual difference and feminine identity, the media, AIDS, language and translation, nationalism, politics, and Derrida's early life and the history of his writings. Often, as in the interviews on Heidegger, on drugs, or on the nature of poetry, these interviews offer something available nowhere else in his work. The informality (...) of the interview process frequently leads to the most succinct and lucid explications of many of the most important and influential aspects of Derrida's thought. Sixteen of the interviews appear in English for the first time, including an interview conducted especially for this volume, concerning the recent exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books. (shrink)

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

Deconstruction both by its friends and enemies has come to be associated with a set of cliches that completely misunderstands its ethical aspiration. It is particularly within the field of law that we can see the ethical force of deconstruction, and also illuminate its concrete and practical importance. In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines the relationship of deconstruction to questions of ethics, justice and legal interpretation. She argues that renaming deconstruction "the philosophy of the limit" will allow (...) us to be more precise about what deconstruction actually is philosophically and hence to articulate more clearly its significance for law. Cornell explores the ethical and juridical significance of the so-called postmodern rebellion against metaphysics. A shared ethical rebellion links philosophers as different as Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Emmanuel Levinas. Together they present a new ethical configuration, new in its difference from both the critical social theory of J$u$urgen Habermas and the analytic jurisprudence of Nagel and Rawls. A key aspect of this newness is the centrality given to the relationship between questions of ethics and sexual difference. Cornell argues that the appeal of Lacan's analysis to feminists is that it helps to explain the profound hold the gender hierarchy has over Western culture, including its theories of political transformation. Under a Lacanian analysis the law of gender identity will be replicated in the laws of an existing legal system. This means that we cannot hope to sustain legal reforms unless the gender hierarchy is challenged. Cornell examines Derrida's position on the significance of the gender hierarchy in philosophy and explores its ethical and political importance. Derrida's intervention against legal positivism has important implications for the legal reforms necessary to protect marginalized groups. His emphasis on the limit, she argues, is crucial to thosewhose well-being and very lives may depend on legal transformation, women and homosexuals, for example. In an important contribution to legal philosophy, Cornell explores the affinities of Derrida's writings with recent liberal analytic jurisprudence. She also explores the differences. Comparing Rawls's and Derrida's accounts of justice, she argues that Derrida gives greater attention to the necessary utopian moment in his insistence on maintaining the divide between law, established norms, and justice. Cornell's focus on the importance of the limit and the centrality of the gender hierarchy allows her to offer a view of jurisprudence different from both critical social theory and analytic jurisprudence. As we watch the long-fought-for civil rights of women systematically overturned, we have reason to think about how the connections she makes shed light on an underlying truth of our social, political, and legal reality. (shrink)

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.

Simon Critchley's first book, The Ethics of Deconstruction, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. This edition contains three new appendices and a new preface where Critchley reflects upon the origins, motivation and reception of The Ethics of Deconstruction.

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray's argument that women need a feminine divine is placed in the context of her analyses of the interconnection between man's appropriation of woman as his “negative alter ego” and his identification with the impossible ego ideal represented by the figure of God. As an alternative, the “feminine divine” is conceived as a realm with which women would be continuous. It would allow mediation between humans, and interrupt cannibalizing appropriations of the other.

In ____Womanizing Nietzsche,__ Kelly Oliver uses an analysis of the position of woman in Nietzsche's texts to open onto the larger question of philosophy's relation to the feminine and the maternal. Offering readings from Nietzsche, Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Freud and Lacan, Oliver builds an innovative foundation for an ontology of intersubjective relationships that suggests a new approach to ethics.

'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.

Carole Pateman is one of the leading political theorists writing today. This wide-ranging volume brings together for the first time a selection of her work on democratic theory and feminist criticism of mainstream political theory. The volume includes substantial discussions of problems of democracy, citizenship and the welfare state, including the largely unrecognized difficulties surrounding women's participation. The inclusion of essays from both a mainstream and feminist perspective provides concrete examples of the differences between these two approaches to democracy, to (...) questions of consent and political obligation, and to the relationship between the private and public spheres. This scholarly and highly challenging work will be of interest to students and researchers in political theory, political science, women's studies and sociology. (shrink)

Writing about changes in the notion of womanhood, Denise Riley examines, in the manner of Foucault, shifting historical constructions of the category of "women" in relation to other categories central to concepts of personhood: the soul, the mind, the body, nature, the social. Feminist movements, Riley argues, have had no choice but to play out this indeterminacy of women. This is made plain in their oscillations, since the 1790s, between concepts of equality and of difference. To fully recognize the ambiguity (...) of the category of "women" is, she contends, a necessary condition for an effective feminist political philosophy. (shrink)

The "Cartesian Meditations" translation is based primarily on the printed text, edited by Professor S. Strasser and published in the first volume of Husserliana: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ISBN 90-247-0214-3. Most of Husserl's emendations, as given in the Appendix to that volume, have been treated as if they were part of the text. The others have been translated in footnotes. Secondary consideration has been given to a typescript (cited as "Typescript C") on which Husserl wrote in 1933: "Cartes. Meditationen (...) / Originaltext 1929 / E. Husserl / für Dorion Cairns". Its use of emphasis and quotation marks conforms more closely to Husserl’s practice, as exemplified in works published during his lifetime. In this respect the translation usually follows Typescript C. Moreover, some of the variant readings n this typescript are preferable and have been used as the basis for the translation. Where that is the case, the published text is given or translated in a foornote. The published text and Typescript C have been compared with the French translation by Gabrielle Pfeiffer and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris, Armand Collin, 1931). The use of emphasis and quotation marks in the French translation corresponds more closely to that in Typescript C than to that in the published text. Often, where the wording of the published text and that of Typescript C differ, the French translation indicates that it was based on a text that corresponded more closely to one or the other – usually to Typescript C. In such cases the French translation has been quoted or cited in a foornote. (shrink)

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the "permanent things" seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the theoretical. (...) For it is Elshtain the citizen - the creatively engaged and contributing citizen - whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings - civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war - are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic. (shrink)

Focusing on the concept of freedom, Leslie Paul Thiele makes Heidegger's philosophical works speak directly to politics in a postmodern world. Neither excusing Heidegger for his political sins nor ignoring their lesson, Thiele nonetheless refrains from polemic in order creatively to engage one of the greatest philosophers of our time. The product of this engagement is a vindication of a democratic and ecological politics firmly grounded in philosophic inquiry. Using Heidegger's understanding of freedom as a point of departure, Timely Meditations (...) lays out the philosophic and political nature and potential of freedom in thought, speech, and deed. This disclosive freedom is contrasted to both modern (positive and negative) and postmodern (Nietzschean and Foucaultian) variations. The result is an original and provocative study that challenges our present understanding of liberty while underlining dangerous collusion with the contemporary forces of technology. Timely Meditations marks an increasingly rare achievement today. For unlike many theorists who attempt to steer a course into the world of postmodern politics, Thiele does so without forsaking philosophic foundations and without abandoning practical hopes and tasks for rhetorical diversions. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one (...) is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules." True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection.Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries' most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault. (shrink)

In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice.

The Regime of the Brother is one of the first attempts to challenge modernity on its own terms. Using the work of Lacan, Kristeva and Freud, Juliet MacCannell confronts the failure of modernity to bring about the social equality promised by the Enlightenment. On the verge of its destruction, the Patriarchy has reshaped itself into a new, and often more oppressive regime: that of the Brother. Examining a range of literary and social texts - from Rousseau's Confessions to Richardson's Clarissa (...) and from Stendhal's De L'Amour to James's What Maisie Knew and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea - MacCannell illustrates a history of the suppression of women, revealing the potential for a specifically feminine alternative. (shrink)

Interweaves elements of Kristevan and Heideggerian thought in order to reconstruct a linguistically embedded, existentially and affectively rich, dialectical model of willed self-regulation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Of Being-Two: IntroductionPheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grosz (bio)The decade or so spanning the later 1970s to the mid-1980s witnessed the growing importance of “sexual difference” in Anglo-American academic discourse in the humanities and the “soft” social sciences. Both as an interpretive principle in textual criticism and literary theory and as a critical framework for the analysis of social and political structures and cultural formations, sexual difference provided a (...) fertile conceptual ground from which the disinterested universalism claimed by patriarchal and phallocentric knowledges could be put into question. However, in the past decade, the primacy of sexual difference as a critical principle has itself been called into question for eliding other collective forms of difference such as race, class, and sexuality.In a sense, this fracturing or fissuring of the conceptual ground of feminist theory can be seen as a logical outcome of the concept of “difference” itself, which endlessly proliferates into a multiplicity of sometimes conflictual forms. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the fissuring of “sexual difference” within academic discourse also reflects and expresses (albeit a little belatedly) broader sociological and political events: the rise in the 1970s of what the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has described as new antisystemic movements or “new social movements.”By the 1970s one began to speak in the plural of the “new social movements.” The shift from the grammatical singular to the plural provides a crucial clue to the nature of the process. For the “movement,” if it was ever organizationally singular, soon became multiple, if not necessarily fractionated. That is to say, there emerged a whole series of movements, each organized around a specific theme or focus—movements of “ethnic minorities” or “immigrants,” womens’ movements, ecology movements, antiwar movements, gay and lesbian movements, movements of the handicapped and of the aged (or pensioners).... The key theme of the new movements in the West was the forgotten people—the ethnic underclasses, the women, the gays, the aged, et cetera.[41–42]Due caution should, of course, be exercised concerning the many mediations between theory and practice. Nevertheless, this connection between the fissuring of sexual difference in academic theoretical critique and the pluralized nature of the new social movements that emerged in the 1970s necessarily raises the question of whether the contemporary political world has become too complex for sexual difference to serve as a primary critical-analytical and practical principle. Put another way, does sexual difference have continuing pertinence as an effective mechanism and/or ideal horizon for ethical and political transformation? What political future(s), if any, does sexual difference have?As editors of this special issue of diacritics, we have chosen to address these questions about the political future of sexual difference through a critical consideration of the work of one of the most intriguing and original of the present generation of European philosophers, Luce Irigaray. The theoretical question of sexual difference is [End Page 3] indissociable from Irigaray’s writing. The initial posing of the question of sexual difference in the Anglo-American academy coincided with, and was given added impetus by, the translation of Irigaray’s early works into English as part of the corpus of writings that became known as “French feminism.” 1 But what makes it especially apposite to center a special issue on the political future of sexual difference around Irigaray is her continuing insistence on the fundamental nature and, indeed, the infrastructural status of sexual difference to human existence as a whole. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, originally published in 1984, Irigaray suggests that sexual difference is the fundamental ethical question of the contemporary era:Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our “salvation” if we thought it through. But, whether I turn to philosophy, to science, or to religion, I find this underlying issue still cries out in vain for our attention.[ESD 5]In subsequent, more politically oriented texts, Irigaray has not only reaffirmed this initial suggestion. She has made the... (shrink)

____Ethics of Eros__ sheds light on contemporary feminist discourse by questioning the basic distinctions and categories in feminist theory. Tina Chanter uses the work of Luce Irigaray as the focus for a critique of French and Anglo-American feminism as it is articulated in the debate over essentialism. While these two branches of feminism represent opposing views, Chanter advocates a productive exchange between the two.

In the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray is one of France's most versatile feminist critics. _Sexes and Genealogies, _a collection of lectures delivered throughout Canada and Europe, introduces her writing to a wider American audience. Irigaray's most famous work, _Speculum of the Other Woman, _prompted her expulsion from the Lacanin Ecole Freudienne because of its searing depiction of Platonic and Freudian representations of women. Now _Sexes and Genealogies _analyzes sexual difference according to what she terms (...) the double dimension of gender and ideology. Irigaray covers major issues in religion, the law, psychoanalysis, and literature, such as: the continued neglect by psychoanalysts of the sexual and gender dimensions of therapy, the urgency of female divinity for contemporary feminist movements, and a reconsideration of women's relation to the market economy. _Sexes and Genealogies _also includes Irigaray's dazzling reading of the _Oresteia, "Body Against Body: In Relation to the Mother," _now acknowleged as a feminist classic. (shrink)