The Irigaray Reader: Luce Irigaray

Luce Irigaray is a practising psychoanalyst, and formerly a member of the Ecole freudienne de Paris. She has also held a research post at the Centre National de Research Scientifiques since 1964, where she is now a Director of Research in Philosophy. Irigaray is one of the most well know and controversial of radical thinkers, who has contributed to the feminist challenge to western thought in the areas of linguistics, psychoanalysis, philosophy and theories of representation. Yet most of her major work remains still untranslated. Most of the essays in The Irigaray reader appear for the first time in English, spanning Irigaray′s output from the publication of Speculum in 1974 to some of her most recent interventions. The introduction provides an overview of Irgaray′s work, while each of the three sections is prefaced by contextualising comments, enabling the reder t osituate the extracts both within Iragara′s thoght and also within feminist theory. For those who know Irigaray only from her work in the seventies (Speculum and This Sex Which is not One) The Reader will provide an invaluable initial approach to her evolution is a thinker throughout the eighties.

Acknowledgements. Introduction. Glossary. . Section I: The critique of Patriarchy. Introduction to Section I. 1. Equal or different. 2. The bodily encounter wit the mother. 3. Women–mothers, the silent substratum of the social order. 4. Volume without contours. . Section II: Psychoanalysis and language. Introduction to section II. 5. The poverty of psychoanalysis. 6. the limit of the transference. 7. The power of discourse and the subordination of the feminine. 8. Questions. 9. The three genres. . Section III: Ethics and subjectivity: towards the future. Introduction to Section III. 10. Sexual difference. 11. Questions to Emmanuel Levinas. 12. Women–amongst–themselves: creating a woman–woman sociality. 13. The necessity for sexuate rights. 14. How to define sexuate rights?. 15. He risks who risks life itself. Bibliography. Index.

Margaret Whitford is also the editor of Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (1991).

"A magnificent sample of the best and the boldest of Irigaray′s writings and the projects she calls for and calls forth. An excellent text for both introductory and advanced work on Irigaray." Choice "Essential reading for those who seek a genuine understanding of the breadth and radicalism of her oeuvre. " The Modern Language Review