Conversations
with…Luce Irigaray
Dr
Katharina Karcher (University of Warwick)
Luce Irigaray is
the Director of Research in Philosophy at the
Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique de Paris. A doctor in linguistics and
philosophy, a leading cultural theorist, an experienced therapist and
author of
more than 30 books on a range of subjects, Luce Irigaray truly is an
interdisciplinary thinker. Thanks to support
from the French Embassy in London, the Institute of Advanced Study, the Centre
for the Study of Women and Gender, the Society
for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), and the Departments
of English and History,
she
visited the University of Warwick on 7 June 2013. A
lecture and roundtable discussion was attended by students and
academics from many
different departments, forming questions and ideas across and beyond
disciplines. The day concluded with a reception and animated
conversations that
carried on until late in the evening.
Before leaving Warwick, Luce Irigaray
kindly agreed to give an exclusive interview to
‘Exchanges’, some of which is
included in this discussion of her ideas.
KK: What inspires you?
LI: My taste for truth and justice,
my longing for sharing desire and love, and my consideration for an
ethics of
intersubjectivity respectful of mutual differences, beginning with
those rooted
in our natural belonging.
Most people know Luce Irigaray for her early
work, which offers “a criticism of the Western tradition as
constructed by a
single subjectivity” (Irigaray 2008:124). While Speculum
of the Other Woman, This
Sex Which Is not One and other writings from this period are
discussed in
undergraduate and graduate courses in the humanities and in social
science,
many students and scholars in these fields have yet to discover her
recent
work.
KK: What led you to the
particular historical focus in your new book In the
Beginning, She Was, in particular, Greek culture?
LI: I wanted to go further than in Speculum
and question the work of the Pre-Socratics
but also some aspects of epic or of tragedy – especially of the Illiad and the Odyssey by Homer and of Antigone
by Sophocles –which tell of the origin of our culture. This is
crucial to
understand what happens in our epoch with the loss of values on which
our
tradition was based and also to envisage how to build a culture on new
values
that have to be shareable by all at a world level.
In the eyes of many feminists, Irigaray’s
position seems “strangely reminiscent of the position of
defenders of
patriarchy: both stress women’s differences from men”
(Grosz 1994:90). Yet I
think that Irigaray’s argument is a fundamentally different one.
She highlights
that the prevailing symbolic and political order is based on a subject
who is:
“one, singular, solitary, historically masculine, the
paradigmatic Western
adult male, rational, capable” (Irigaray & Guynn 1995:7). In
this order,
there has – argues Irigaray – “never really been an
other” (ibid p.8), since
every difference is merely understood as a deviation from the masculine
model.
KK: Your work has influenced
scholars in a broad range of fields, such as philosophy, literature,
theology,
law, the natural sciences and linguistics. Where would you situate
yourself
now, and is your position today different to the past?
LI: It is quite natural that the
work of a philosopher takes into account and acts upon the other fields
of
thought. Only recently the sciences pretend to be autonomous with
respect to
philosophy, but it is partly an illusion because the orientation of
their
research obeys basic patterns that are neither defined nor thought by
scientists. However the scientific methods, and above all the
scientific
techniques, more and more escape the philosophers who often become
subjected to
scientific viewpoints because they are incapable of interpreting them.
For my
part I try to think about a possible becoming and blossoming of
humanity in our
epoch as is and in the future. A thing that remains to be cultivated is
our
relational being, especially as sexuate. This aspect of ourselves has
been
neglected by culture; now it ought to be its conscious foundation in
order to
develop our humanity. This requires us to construct a culture in which
two
different subjects are recognized and coexist in the world with mutual
respect
for their difference(s). I have not changed my mind from Speculum,
but I must cross various stages to realize my project,
and of course the discourse is not the same at each stage.
Luce Irigaray’s recent work has focused on the
question of how a feminine subjectivity could emerge from the Western
tradition
and explores ways in which masculine and feminine subjectivity
“could coexist,
enter into relation without submitting or subjecting the one or the
other, and
construct a world shareable by the two with respect for their own
worlds”
(Irigaray & Guynn 1995: 8). According to Irigaray, a new relation
between
masculine and feminine subjects opens up the possibility to rethink a
range of
other differences that divide humanity including ethnic, cultural and
religious
differences.
KK: The book examines art as
mediation towards another culture. Do you find any particular attitudes
or
ideas emerge when working or discussing ideas with those in arts
disciplines
compared to the sciences?
LI: Generally those who practise
art more express themselves from their embodiment and maintain a
connection
with sensitivity, also through their use of matters that differ from
that of
scientists. Thus their way of behaving and their speech are also
different. For
example, they wonder about the privilege of sight, form and
representation as
the best manner of interacting with others, a concern that inspires
them in a
really different way from scientists. The artistic mediation is
particularly
essential today in order to rebuild culture on bases that correspond to
a
cultivation of our living nature and its sharing instead of its
domination and
substitution by a constructed culture that divide us between nature and
culture, does not fit all the living beings, and prevents them to
coexist
together.
Grosz, E. (1994) ‘Sexual Difference and the
Problem of Essentialism’, in The
essential difference, N. Schor and E. Weed (eds) Bloomington ;
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 82-97
Irigaray, L. (2008) Conversations, London: Continuum
Irigaray,
L. and Guynn, (1995) ‘The Question of the Other’, Yale
French Studies, 87, pp.
7-19
Schor, N. (1994) “This
Essentialism Which Is Not One: Coming to
Grips with Irigaray.” In Engaging with Irigaray: Feminist
Philosophy and
Modern European Thought, C. Burke, N. Schor, and M. Whitford (eds),
New
York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 57-78.