Abstract
In this text, I argue that the recognition of the space between the one and the other is a necessary condition of being and living together in peace. Departing from Luce Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference, I will address the issue of the recognition of irreducible difference in the relations between women. I will show that Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference goes hand in hand with an aesthetics of recognizing the irreducible difference of the other. This recognition and respect creates an in-between space/time in the intersubjective relation that will enable the subjects to flourish together and individually. Pivotal to these ideas is Irigaray’s argument that the subject is disappropriated by the fact that it belongs to a “gender”: a horizon of meaning or universal that is marked by (linguistic) gender; thus that “belonging to a gender” constitutes the limit to the I or her/his irreducible difference.
However, “gender” cannot function in the relations between women as a marker of difference. I therefore suggest that irreducible difference between women might be thought through as a multiple belonging instead: as constituted through the intersection of different axes of differentiation—history, genealogy, resources—that function as limits to the subject. Although theories of intersectionality enable us to theorize the differences between women as irreducible difference, they do not address the issue of recognizing this difference. To answer this question, I argue for an ethics and aesthetics of the respect of the in-between space/time in intersubjective relations.
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Notes
- 1.
Rachel Adler writes: “Ultimately our problem stems from the fact that we are viewed in Jewish law and practice as peripheral Jews. The category in which we are generally placed includes women, children, and Canaanite slaves. Members of this category are exempt from all positive commandments, which occur within time limits. These commandments would include hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah [...] and saying Shema. In other words, members of this category have been ‘excused’ from most of the positive symbols, which for the male Jew, hallow time, hallow his physical being, and inform both his myth and philosophy” (Adler 1983, p. 13). Adler points here to the androcentric foundation of Jewish tradition and the difficulties to change such a tradition; demanding equality means tacitly acknowledging this status of honorary men. Affirming difference implies either complying with the traditional images, or a radical change within the tradition. See also the studies of Plaskow (1991) and Adler (1999).
- 2.
The concept of intersectionality was introduced by Kimberley Crenshaw (Crenshaw 1989). It has subsequently been developed in many directions. In the Netherlands the most outspoken theoreticians of intersectionality are Helma Lutz and Gloria Wekker (Lutz 2002; Wekker 1996; Wekker and Lutz 2001).
- 3.
I have modified the translation of two sentences in this quotation, notably the translations of “je ne peux te connaître ni par la pensée ni par la chair” and “je ne serais jamais toi, ni en corps ni en pensée” (Irigaray 1992, pp. 161, 162). Alison Martin has translated these sentences as follows: “I cannot know you either in thought or flesh” and “I will never be you, either in body or in thought.” In both cases I have made the negation stronger by translating it as “neither by thought nor by the flesh” and as “neither in body nor in thought” to highlight the limitations of the subject in knowing the other. Neither thought nor flesh renders full knowledge of the other. I want to thank Agnes Vincenot for pointing this out to me.
- 4.
When writing about the generic subject I will henceforth alternate between his/her. This means that it is possible that in one sentence the subject is referred to as both “herself” and “himself.”
- 5.
I refer here to her book To Speak is Never Neutral (Irigaray 2002a). Most of the texts in this collection of essays were first published between 1966 and 1971, i.e. before the publication of Speculum of the Other Woman. For a description of the trajectory of these linguistic theories in her work, especially on the relation between these theories and her views that women need a horizon to become a subject, see: Mulder (2001, pp. 49–73).
- 6.
On the meanings of the word “dereliction” see Whitford (1990, p. 205, n. 2), and Mulder (2006, pp. 75, 183–185).
- 7.
Implicit in this exposition is Luce Irigaray’s idea that there ought to be two universals, two gendered horizons of meaning in relation to which a subject makes meaning out of life. This idea sets off the notion of the transcendence of the other. It also raises questions with respect to the relations between these two irreducibly different subjects. In her work these relations are thought through in terms of love-relations, hence the figure of the nuptials, and symbolized by the divine couple.
- 8.
The idea of becoming as flourishing has been thoroughly developed and discussed by Grace Jantzen. See Jantzen (1998).
- 9.
The difficulties of the mother-daughter relation, the absence of a female genealogy and the possibilities to change these difficult relations are a recurrent theme in Luce Irigaray’s work. It would carry us too far afield to mention all the texts in which she addresses them. For commentaries upon and references to her work on these issues see among others Vincenot (1990, pp. 47–88), Whitford (1990, pp. 75–97); Muraro (1994, pp. 317–335); Mulder (2006, pp. 68–94, 142–149).
- 10.
To name but two of the narratives on this subject referred to or quoted by Luce Irigaray are the film Maternale and its script by Giovanna Gagliardo (Irigaray 1981, pp. 60–67) and the stories of Mélusine (Irigaray 1993c, pp. 57–59). In her interpretation of Freud’s text Femininity, she unravels the basis of the rivalry between mothers and daughters within Freud’s Oedipal structure (Irigaray 1985a).
- 11.
Any positive argument for a God in the feminine by Irigaray must be read against the background of her critique of a theistic interpretation of “God” in the order of representation. She takes up Derrida’s critique of metaphysical philosophy that there will be a final presence or being which functions as the ultimate Ground of Being: God, foundation of the chain of representations. She adds to Derrida’s critique that this God is a substitution of the presence of the mother, thus that belief in such a transcendent God presupposes a matricide. This background means that when Irigaray argues for a God in the feminine, she uses the word “God” in a post-theistic sense, as a linguistic sign, an existence in the symbolic, a site in the structure of discourse, notably the site of the absolute or the ultimate (Mulder 2006, pp. 346–348).
- 12.
The sign “f” in subscript indicates the gender of the speaking subject.
- 13.
In feminist theory, this effect has often been labelled—and severely criticized—as “essentialism.” The issue, however, is not that speaking of a horizon of meaning in the feminine posits an essence of woman, but that it can exert hegemonic power and thus contribute to the (political) power of one group of women over others. See also Schor (1998, especially p. 42). This critique has led to a preference for the particular over the universal and to a disinclination to claim the universal by naming, oneself, the world—and God. However, the gesture of claiming the universal can also be seen as a strategic gesture with immense political value. Accepting this view of the political power of universals in the feminine implies that women disempower themselves when they keep undermining the idea of a collective subject in the name of defending particularity and/or the plurality of female subjectivity.
- 14.
In one of her (Dutch) texts Helma Lutz distinguishes fourteen categories of differentiation notably gender, sexuality, race/color, ethnicity, nationality, class, culture, religion/ religiosity, health, age, residence/origin, North-South/East-West, state of societal development. She lists moreover the basic dualism operative within each category: thus the basic dualism operating within the category “gender” is male-female, within “sexuality”, it is hetero-homo and within “race” it is black and white (Lutz 2002, p. 14).
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Mulder, AC. (2009). An Ethics of the In-Between: A Condition of Possibility of Being and Living Together. In: Anderson, P. (eds) New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6833-1_19
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