Background
Irigaray, Luce was born in 1930 in Either or 1^32, Blaton, Belgi um.
Irigaray, Luce was born in 1930 in Either or 1^32, Blaton, Belgi um.
University of Louvain, the University of Paris and the Paris Institute of.sychology. Trained as a psychoanalyst with the hcole Freudienne de Paris. Infis: Freud. Lacan, tJcrrida, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger.
'aught sixth-formers in Belgium, 1956-1959. Attached to the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques in Paris since 1964. Lecturer, University of Paris VIII 1969-1974.
Lecturer. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, since 1985. Attached to the International College of Philosophy in Paris since 1987.
Main publications:
(1973) Le Langage des déments, Paris: Mouton.
(1974) Speculum of the Other Woman: Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
(1977) This Sex Which Is Not One: Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
(1980) Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche: Columbia University Press, 1991.
( 1981 ) Le Corps-à-corps avec ¡a mère, Éditions de la pleine lune.
(1982) Elemental Passions, Athlone.
(1983) U Oubli de l'air. Chez Martin Heidegger, Minuit.
(1984) An Ethics of Sexual Difference: Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
(1985) Parler nest jamais neutre. Minuit.
(1987) Sexes and Genealogies: Columbia University Press, 1993.
(1989) Thinming the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution: Athlone, 1994.
(1990) Je. Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference: Routledge, 1993.
(1991) The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford, Oxford: Blackwell (provides a selection of extracts).
(1992) J'aime à toi. Grasset.
(1994) Essere due, Editore Bollati Boringhieri.
( 1994) La Democrazia eomincia a due, Editore Bollati Boringhieri.
Secondary literature:
Burke, Carolyn, Schor. Naomi and Whitford, Margaret (eds) (1994) Engaging with Irigaray, Columbia University Press (includes a wide range of critical accounts).
Grosz, Elizabeth (1989) Sexual Subversions, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, chapters 4 and 5.
Whitford, Margaret (1991) Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, Routledge (includes an ample bibliography of primary and secondary texts).
Irigaray was initially attracted to literature, writing her master’s thesis on the poet Paul Valéry, whose work privileges consciousness and reflexivity. It was not until she left Belgium for Paris, where she undertook a diploma in psychopathology and began training as a psychoanalyst, that she turned her attention to the unconscious, and in particular to the notion of a cultural unconscious. She was analysed by Serge Leclaire, one of the original members of Lacan's École Freudienne, and until the publication of Speculum in 1974 seems to have been uncontroversially Lacanian. Speculum fused a psychoanalytic attention to what is repressed by culture with a Derrideaninspired account of the repressions required by metaphysics. In both cases, Irigaray argues, the feminine is excluded. She concludes that ‘woman’ does not yet exist in the cultural imaginary of the West; that Western culture is founded on an originary matricide more ancient than the parricide of Freud's Totem and Taboo. The feminist critique contained in Speculum led to Irigaray's expulsion from the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes and launched her on her public career as feminist and philosopher of sexual difference. Her subsequent work has explored the question of sexual difference in three areas in particular. First, she has looked for the forgotten woman in the history of philosophy; second, she has examined the sexual bias in language; third, she has considered the issues of women’s civil status and rights. Along with Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, Irigaray is probably one of the bestknown representatives of French feminism in Europe, the USA and Australasia. Her international reputation, however, is often based on a misapprehension of her thought. She has been well understood and influential in countries like Holland and Italy which have a strong tradition in continental philosophy, but has so far had no significant effect on philosophy in Britain, where her work has been appreciated predominantly by literary critics.