Hypatia, Inc.

Transforming Sacrifice: Irigaray and the Politics of Sexual Difference Author(s): Anne Caldwell Source: Hypatia, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 16-38 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810907 . Accessed: 17/05/2013 02:50
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Hypatia, Inc. and Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hypatia.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Sacrifice: and the Transforming Irigaray Politicsof SexualDifference

ANNE CALDWELL

and thepolitical Thisessayexamines analysis Irigaray's of politics implications of her I suggest orders thatrepress thatherdescripof sacrificial difference/matter. critique not dependent tions of a fluid "feminine" can be readas an alternativesymbolic This idea is politically in openinga possibility on repression. promising for justice I concludeby assessing concrete and a nonantagonistic Irigaray's intersubjectivity. for women. proposals for sexuaterightsand a civilidentity

INTRODUCTION

links the exclusion of women from philoIn her earliestworks,Luce Irigaray sophical discourseto the exclusion of women from the polis (Whitford 1991, of politics is necessaryif women 101).She claims a radicalreconceptualization are to be heard, and wonderswhat would happen to social orderwithout "the exploitation of the body-matterof women"(Irigaray1985b, 85, 127). Yet she herselfspeakslittle of politics until her laterwork.In I love to you she suggests in which the "exchange she has found a way to reach this reconceptualization, of women,wouldno longerbe the basisfor the of objects,and most particularly constitution of a culturalorder"(1996, 45). What this new orderentails, and how she reachesthis point remainsobscurein her own work,and has received little attention from her readers.l In some ways, such silence is not surprising.Throughout the 1980s and increasinglyin the 1990s, feminist theorists have been attentive to criticisms that feminist theory assumesa commonality to women, effectively making a particulargroupof women the standardbearerof feminism and excludingthe way differentwomen are situated within multiple economies of identity and
Hypatia vol. 17,no. 4 (Fall 2002) ? by Anne Caldwell

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

17

In such a context, Irigaray's insistence that sexual difference is oppression.2 the fundamentaldifferencehas become not the scandalto philosophythat she herself saw it as, but a scandal to feminism (1995, 12). In addition,as contemporarytheory developsa growingconsensus that orderand identity are neceseffortsto find a nonsacrificialorderand subjectivity sarilysacrificial,Irigaray's appearphilosophicallyand politically naive.3 Can these apparent weaknesses be reinterpreted?Irigaray'scritique of sacrificein particularmakes her recent work worth examining. Her analysis of the logic of sacrifice highlights the similarities between liberal theories foundational for modern Western politics and those discourses critical of liberalism, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis,and feminist critiques influenced by those theories. All assume that difference must be sacrificed for order and identity to function. If those assumptionsare correct, feminist efforts to politically recognize the specific needs of women citizens, as well as differencesamong women, seem blocked from the start. If a community is to acknowledgedifferenceratherthan identity as the fabricof its social tie. Such an acknowledgmentrequiresthe possibilityof concepts capableof expressing, ratherthan repressing,difference. It also requiresthe possibilityof a form of subjectivitynot anchored in the repressionof difference. The central question of this essay, then, is how Irigarayunderstandsthe dynamics of a sacrificialeconomy and its possible transformation.To that end, I will examine how sacrificeis understoodin her work and how she sees its effects in liberal politics. Precisely because others have insisted sacrifice is unavoidable,I then examine the ways deconstruction and psychoanalysis adhere to a sacrificial economy. Analyzing liberalism, psychoanalysis,and deconstructionrevealsthat they share the fundamentalpremisethat concepts must reducematerialityto function, a premisethat gives rise to a single subject and to a form of political orderthat cannot recognize difference.Contesting such an economy thus requiresquestioningits assumptionsaboutthe waysymbolic mediationfunctions by reducingmateriality. Irigaray's enigmaticremarks on fluiditypoint towarda symbolicorderin which materialityand concepts are not opposed,underminingthe axiom of sacrificialorders. Her descriptionof a fluideconomy therebylinks her philosophicalinterpretations to her recent discussionsof politics. A radicalpolitical promiseinheres in her effort to form a nonsacrificialand fluid economy. Irigaray's work on fluids offers a vision of politics as fecundity and shared creation rather than domination and antagonistic subjectivity.Because an orderstructuredby the principles of fluids need not repressmatter or difference to form mediating concepts, such an ordercould do justice to a collectivity of differentiatedciticoncreteproposals zens, includingdifferencesamongwomen. Indeed,Irigaray's to recognize a civil identity for women reopens the difficult question of the relation between a female identity and differencesamong women, and of the

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

18

Hypatia

relation between gender-based oppressionand other formsof oppression.As I will suggest,her general analysisof sacrificeas conditioned by the dominance of a single term can be used to weaken her insistence that sexual difference is the most fundamentaldifference experienced by women, and the primary form of oppression.
ANALYZING SACRIFICE

When Irigaray announces that societies such as our own are sacrificial(1993a, 75), how shouldwe readher?In introducingthe term she points to the workof Rene Girard.Girarddescribestwo importantaspectsof sacrifice:it establishes the space and boundariesof a community and the symbolicdistinctions regulating relations,and it frees the community of violence. According to Girard, the act of sacrificedelimits the space and identity of a communityby expelling something internal to the community in order to create the bordersof the community as well as its symbolicdistinctions (Girard1977,235). Girardalso suggeststhat sacrificesaves the community from an endless and all consuming cycle of violence by localizing violence in one figurewho is then expelled (1977,8). Irigaray argumentsfurther.While Girardlocates sacrifice developsGirard's as the origin of community and meaning, Irigaray specifiesthe content of this and illustrates the extent to which forms the basis not only sacrifice sacrifice, for a symbolic order,but also for individual subjectivity.Irigarayargues that Western social orderssacrificematerialityand difference,reducingthem to a static groundor constitutive outside on or againstwhich concepts and subjecthis processhas two moments.One term is elevated tivity emerge.ForIrigaray as a regulativeideal or standardfor order,and another is reducedto the constitutive but excludedgroundof this order."Plato's Hystera" exploresthis process. The emergenceof the intelligibleideasas a standardof truth dependsupon the reductionof feminine materialityto inert matter,whose constitutive exclusion an alternativestandardand serving as sustains the intelligible by suppressing to the intelligibleworldoccurs (1985a, the groundupon which the progression 243-364). refersto this understandingof significationas an economy of solids. Irigaray alwayssupposes, in some manner, a solid crust from which to "Metaphysics raise a construction.... The metaphysicalis written neither on/in water,nor on/in air, nor on/in fire. Its ek-sistence is founded on the solid" (1999, 2). Mediationfunctions through the reductionof generativematerialityto a solid and static surface,which servesas the groundfor the installationof intelligible funcconcepts. Who or what is sacrificed,from the standpointof the system's of men herself indicates that a "sacrifice" tioning, is largelyirrelevant.Irigaray would no more change this system than does the currentpower of men does (1985b, 129-30).

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

19

idealsis paralleledby the emergence the institutionof sacrificial ForIrigaray, Becausethis single subjectivityhas of male subjectivityas the only subjectivity. been male, her workis a critiqueof masculinesubjectivity.However,her rejection of a sacrificeof men in favorof a single feminine subjectivityindicatesshe targetsany single model of subjectivity.The subjectidentifieswith the universal by disavowingany relation to the materialor particular,and by projecting this rejecteddetritusonto others who become the limit markingthe subject's universal status (Deutscher 1994; Lacan 1998, 84). Because subjectivity is defined by this process of disavowaland transcendence, the developmentof subjectivitythat requiressomething be set up to be overcome in this way. Irithis processin her depictionof the excavatingmale subject. garaycharacterizes "He can sustain himself only by bouncing back off some objectiveness,some objective. If there is no more 'earth' to pressdown/repress,to work,to represent, but also and alwaysto desire (for one's own), no opaquematterwhich in theory does not know herself,then what pedestal remainsfor the existence of the 'subject'? For what would there be to rise up from and exercise his power over?"(Irigaray1985a, 133). Subjectivity itself becomes sacrificial.It denies the worldly conditions of existence such as embodiment, sexuation, and the relation to others, even as it depends upon them as the suppressedground of its development. Like FriedrichNietzsche and Martin Heidegger,she sees the origins of sacrificein the resentmentof an ambiguousworldand the effortto relieveourselves"from experiencing the limitations and contingencies that constitute Being-in-theworld"(Thiele 1995, 71).4In taking itself to be the only subject, Irigaray suggests the male genderdenies "itsown ambivalenceor involvesthe other gender therein,"claiming a "monopolyon simplicity and right"(1993a, 114).Just as a single ideal or universalis producedthrough a disavowalof materialityand multiplicity,a single model of subjectivitydenies the existence of others. "To want the absoluteis not to want those frustrations, privations,temperingsthat occur when we renounce the immediatefor the self so as to securethe workof the negative in the relationshipwith the other"(1993a, 110). "comesdangerously close Thus, while MargaretWhitford suggestsIrigaray to suggesting the possibility that there might be a culture without sacrifice" and that "it is easier to attributeviolence to an other (like patriarchy)than to consider the implications of the inevitable violence at the heart of idensocieties who live tity" (Whitford 1994, 29), Irigarayclaims it is "sacrificial or survive on persistentdeception"(Irigaray1993a, 77). For Irigarayit is the structureof sacrificethat denies and producesviolence when one groupor term seeks primacyand evades the conditions of its own existence. Even though her account of sacrificeis offered to explain women'sexclusion from philosophy and politics, her analysisof the conditions of producingthat exclusionpushes her towarda critiqueof sacrificein general.5

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

20

Hypatia

LIBERALISM AND SACRIFICE

How does Irigaraysee the logic of sacrificeworking out politically in liberal democraciessuch as ours?Both I love to you (1996) and the "The Question of the Other" (1995) suggest that liberal democracyalso participatesin a sacrificial matrix. "Even in the reversalconstituted by the privilege of the many over the one, a very currentreversaloften called democracy... we just wind up with a stand-in for the model of the one and the many"(1995, 11). That shouldmake such a claim is not surprising. Her critiqueof a philosophy Irigaray of neutralityimplicitlyextends to a critiqueof a political systemthat premises itself on neutrality.Modern liberalism insists difference must be suppressed for individualsto become citizens and for a common public life to be established. John Rawls,for example, whose A Theoryof Justice(1971) remainsthe mainstayof contemporaryliberal theory, has decisions about justice made by people who know nothing of their particularities reinforcingthe idea that what defines the subjectas a citizen is indifferentto everything material,particular and contextual (Young 1990, 101-102). The need to exclude a chaotic materiality in liberalism historically has taken the formof excludingwomen (Pateman 1989;Elshtain 1981).Although contemporarytheories of liberalism,such as Rawls's, formallyinclude women, that inclusion does not diminish liberalism's dependence upon the exclusion of materialityand difference.Thus, such theories do not change liberalism's inability to recognize the differentiatedidentities and needs of citizens. Irigaray'sanalysisof the exclusion of women from liberalismexamines the general assumptionsunderlyingthis specific exclusion. First,she suggeststhat liberalism'spostulate of a fundamentalequalityfor all is "anideal aimed at universality, totality, the absolute,and essence by reducingdistinctions and dissimilarities"(1996, 99). The paradoxof such an ideal is that in its very effortto reduce distinctions it must also producethem in orderto have a limit against which to measureitself. As Irigaray argues,the ideal of equality generatesa "second human nature"(1996, 41) that acquiresits coherence (abstractand unreal) only by measuringitself against a chaotic naturalor materialworld,or against particulargroupsassociatedwith the material,such as women. The formation of the ideal citizen parallelsthe formation of the abstract ideal of equality. Diversity is "thought of and experienced in a hierarchical manner, the many alwayssubjugatedby the one. Others were only copies of the idea of man, a potentiallyperfectidea, which all the more or less imperfect copies had to struggleto equal. These imperfectcopies were, moreover,were not defined in and of themselves, in other words, as a different subjectivity, but ratherwere defined in terms of an ideal subjectivityand as a function of their inadequacieswith respect to that ideal ... the model of the subjectthus remainedsingularand the 'others'represented less ideal examples,hierarchized

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

21

with respect to the singularsubject"(1995, 7). Irigaray's analysisof sacrificial we here in the liberal citizen. As saw,a subjectguidedby subjectivityreappears an abstractideal defines itself through the process of disavowingmateriality. Such a subject requiresthe existence of disavowedothers for its own coherence. So just as abstract equality can only appear when measured against nature, the equality of citizens requiresthe existence of other quasi subjects, against whom its equalityappears. Irigaraylinks this definition of citizenship to the longstanding Western associationof freedomwith mastery."Teleology, for man, amountsto keeping the sourceof the horizon in and for the self. It is not conversingwith the other but rathersuspendingthe interactionof the relationwith the other in orderto accomplishthe self'sown intention, even if it is divine in nature.The whole of Westernphilosophyis the masteryof the direction of will and thought by the subject,historicallyman" (1996, 45). Freedomas sovereigncontrol reinforces the generativeexclusionsof abstractequalityand abstractcitizenship.The subject defines, achieves, and recognizesits freedompreciselyby overcomingthe presenceof others in orderto guaranteethe freedomand autonomyof the self. The organizationof political life through abstractequalityand this formof freedompermeatesall political relations,giving them the characterof domination. Plurality,as the existence of differentcitizens with differentexperiences, needs, ard perspectives,is eroded.As Irigaray points out, the norm of abstract excludes of the idea equality very plurality.Thus, for example, she arguesthe notion of a collectivity "meansbeing at least two, autonomous,different.This we still has no place, neither between the human gendersor sexes, nor in the public realm where male citizens (women not yet being full citizens) form a social whole in the form of one plus one plus one, a sort of undifferentiated magma under the monarchical or oligarchic authority (even in supposedly democraticsystems)of a male kind of power"(1996, 48).6Such an ordercannot recognizemen'sspecificity,any more than it can women's.Unable to recognize control,"the form of powersuited for an plurality,politics can only be "crowd undifferentiated citizenry.
PSYCHOANALYSIS, DECONSTRUCTION, AND SACRIFICE

criticismof both the specific exclusion of women within liberalism, Irigaray's and the general logic of exclusion operative within liberalismis instructive. However,the diagnosisof Westernphilosophyand politics as sacrificialis not unique. JacquesLacan and JacquesDerrida,to name two thinkers influential in contemporarytheory and feminist theory, also identify Western culture as sacrificial(Lacan 1998;Derrida1995). Irigaray distinguishesherselfby refusing the necessityof sacrifice.To understandwhat permitsher to counterthose who insist sacrificeis necessary,a briefreviewof their argumentsis helpful.

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

22

Hypatia

Lacan'sinterest in the symbolicorderas the concepts that organizecollective discourseand subjectivityis motivatedby the question of how to establish peacefulsociality.He arguesa single answer:that a single mastersignifiermust emerge to submit material difference to its order.According to Lacan, this term is the symbolic, or the law of the father. That law enables intersubjectivity through castration:the sacrificeof the individual'srelation to material immediacy,figuredas the mother.The law'srepressionof materialimmediacy opens up a space in which significationcan occur, and offers a model of difference that stabilizesthe ego'snarcissisticbattles with imagesof itself (Lacan 1977,319, 22). The necessity of castrationassumesconcepts are necessaryfor communication, that an order of concepts must be regulatedby a single term, and that concepts and materialitycannot not coexist. ForLacan,concepts emergeonly once their field of operation has been cleared by the repressionof material immediacyfiguredas the repressionof the relation to the mother.7Yet that repressionalso undermines the effectiveness of the symbolic. It produces a symbolic organizedby one term and one subject.Castrationas the repression of the relation to the mother excludes what might have served as a model of differencein the symbolic.This differenceis instead turned into the material supportof the symbolic, signifying differencefrom the symbolic, ratherthan differencewithin the symbolic. Inevitably,as Lacan himself concluded, such a symboliccan only be hommosexual-formed of relations between men (1998, 84-85). In this way, the aim of the symbolicfails.Ratherthan offeringa model of difference,narcissism is simplyraisedto the whole social field.JulietMacCannellhas elaboratedthe sacrificial social consequences of this structure,which she calls "dangerously and death-oriented" (1991, 20). As she points out, "Oedipuswas intended to overcome primarynarcissismthrough a castration that is the price of full citizenship in group life. Instead, it has not prevented the triumphalreturn of Narcissus,the same who imagineshimself to be an other.... The pseudosymbolic, formed exclusively around the male signifier,the phallus, fails to ground the community or civilization it is supposed to: it founds instead a group of male egos-a fraternity.As Irigarayhas made painfully clear, the sexuallydifferentpartneris alwayslost. Her loss is not incidental but integral to the moderngroup"(1991,20). Lacan'ssymbolicresemblesIrigaray's portrait of liberalcitizens as an "undifferentiated magma." Deconstruction also participates in the sacrificial matrix it exposes. Although an ethical responsibilityto recognizedifference animates Derrida's work (Critchley 1992; Cornell 1992), he has never ceased to affirmthat the repressionof differenceinstitutes and preservesorder.Significationand intersubjectivityare necessarilyviolent for Derridabecause they can only exist in the space opened by writing as a general system in which concepts are the medium of communication. The price of this medium is "the irremediable

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

23

absence of the propername" (Derrida 1976, 106-107). Because an order of units, justiceas the recognitionof the concepts can only comparestandardized other'ssingularityis impossible(Derrida1992, 117). For Derrida, there is no way to escape the transition from a field of differences into an order of concepts that suppressesthis field. "(T)here is no philosophical logos which must not first let itself be expatriated into the structureinside-outside... One would attempt in vain ... to forgetthe words 'inside,' 'outside,''exterior,''interior,'and to banish them by decree; for one would never come acrossa languagewithout the ruptureof space, an aerialor aquatic language in which, moreover,alteritywould be lost more surelythan ever" (1981, 112-13).8In this sense, despite both Lacan and Derrida'sattention to difference,they share the fundamentalpremiseof liberalism.Whether difference is treated as privateby liberalism,as constitutive and disruptiveby deconstruction,as generativeof desireand significationby Lacan,the assumption remains that social order,public discourse,and subjectivitymust repress differenceto function. The premisethat orderas such requiresexclusionhas spreadbeyond Lacan and Derridato characterizemuch of feminist theory. Psychoanalyticfeminism agrees that castration, as loss of self and immediacy,is essential to identity formation and social cohesion (Rose 1982, 40). Similarly,Judith Butlerconand exclusion (1993,3, 53). cludes that identity occursonly throughrepression Deutscher (1998b) has recently argued that Derrida'seffort to acknowledge sacrificeand workwithin its limits is preferable to Irigaray's attemptsto move sacrifice. beyond How should Irigaraythen imagine an alternative to sacrifice?Her effort centers aroundthe two weaknessesher workreveals in liberaldemocracyand its postmetaphysicalcritics: the nature of the symbolic order or the way the emergence of concepts occurs, and the model of the subject. She thus seeks a symbolic governed by more than one term and capable of acknowledging ambiguity,difference, and interdependencerather than submitting them to a hierarchy.She also seeks a form of subjectivitythat would avoid projecting firstaddressesthe difference,ambiguity,and materialityonto others. Irigaray possibility of an alternative symbolic structure in her conception of a fluid economy.
A FLUIDECONOMY

referencesto what she variouslycalls a fluid economy, a feminine Irigaray's economy, a dual syntax (1985b), or a sensible transcendental (1993b) are among her most mysteriousand enigmatic innovations, and have given rise to diverse interpretations.Her depictions of fluidity have been read as the groundof a feminine subject,or as supportfor a more Derrideanor Deleuzian dance of multiplesexes that perpetuallysubvertsany particular sexed identity.9

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

24

Hypatia

Given that Irigaray herself thinks women need a symbolic identity, and that a feminine subject requiresa new symbolic structure,Irigaray's depictions of feminine fluidity can also be productivelyread as the general characterof a new economy. But where does Irigaray find the possibilityof such an economy, and what would it entail?Evidencefor a fluideconomy can be found in her own deconstructionof Plato'sallegoryof the cave. Beneath the separationof the material worldof the cave and the intelligibleworldof the pureforms,she finds a more fundamental relation or connection. That connection is suppressedas the the role of origin for itself, and conceals intelligible/masculineappropriates its interdependencewith materiality.Irigarayargues that Plato'sstory of the philosopher's progressionfrom the materialshadowsof the cave to the bright worldof the ideas effaces the interdependenceand interval that connects the two domains (Irigaray 1985a,246). She assertsthe path between the cave and the intelligible world is "neitheroutside nor inside."This passage is crucial even "whenit is neglected, for when the passageis forgotten,by the very fact of its being reenacted in the cave, it will found, subtend,sustain the hardening of all dichotomies, categoricaldifferences,clear-cutdistinctions, absolute discontinuities, all the confrontations of irreconcilablerepresentations.. . what has been forgotten in all these oppositions, and with good reason, is how to pass through the passage,how to negotiate it, the forgottentransition" (Irigaray1985a,246-47). The forgettingof passagethus shapes the understandingof the conditions for symbolicmediation that have remainedin effect since Plato and reappear in liberalism,deconstruction,and psychoanalysis. With the loss of the passage connecting the materialand the intelligible, the materialis seen as unrepresentable in the orderof the intelligible, and instead becomes the constitutive This sacrificialeconoutside againstwhich an intelligible identity is defined.10 of a those elements that do not have of solids omy depends upon "forgetting the same density"(1999, 2). If fluidelements are remembered, suggests, Irigaray matter appearsnot as inert but as porous and capable of materialization.1In such a fluideconomy of intervals,materialrelationshipswhose termscan never structureconcepts and subjectivity. be fully separated By recoveringthe forgotten passageconnecting the materialand the intelligible, Irigarayshows that concepts and subjectivityemerge within a dynamic interaction between the materialand the intelligible,neither of which can be reducedto the other. Irigarayarguesthat this possibility of materialmediation is the condition for a transformationof our current symbolic order.The "transitionto a new of forms,of the relationsof matterand form age requires... a transformation and of the interval between" often refersto the effect of (1993b, 8).12Irigaray this transformationas a sensible transcendental.A sensible transcendental, participating in both the material and the ideal, disarraysthe traditional oppositions between these domains (1993b, 33; 1996, 50). Nor does such a

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

25

transcendentalexist outside of us; we are its mediators(1993b, 129). The term can function as a rubricfor a new symboliceconomy shapedby a logic of fluids rather than solids. A sensible transcendental indicates that matter and form retain an irreducible relationcharacterized by an interval.Conceptual mediation never loses its relation to matterand difference;it remainsmaterial.This insight permits Irigarayto develop a vision of a nonsacrificialpolitical order. Insofaras materialmediationdoes not requirethe exclusionof materialityand ambiguity,a fluid economy creates the possibilityof a community capable of recognizing,ratherthan excluding,difference.The effects of a fluideconomy extend as well to subjectivity.
SEXED SUBJECTIVITY

second innovation is the idea of two subjectsfiguredas a dual sexed Irigaray's universal.Irigaray herselfconsidersthis move decisive. She claims that a nonsacrificialeconomy would be possible if "the master,or masters,are doubled into two sexes, at least. What is sacrificedis henceforward the all-powerfulness of both one and the other. This new sacrificeopens things up whereasthe old immolation habituallyled to the creation of a closed world through periodic exclusion. This new sacrifice,if sacrificeit be ratherthan a discipline, means that the individual or the social body gives up narcissistic self-sufficiency" (1993a, 87). As Irigaray's language implies, this is not so much a sacrifice, which would require the subject to renounce part of itself or which would requirethe symbolic to exclude a particularfigure.It is, rather,discipline in the sense that each subjectmust acknowledgeitself as one part of the world, ratherthan its whole. How exactly does Irigaray understandthe structureof subjectivityin light of a sexed universal,and how does it differfrom a sacrificialstructurein which the subject repressesits relation to materialityand others? Irigaraysuggests subjectivitywould emergethrough a double relation:to one's own genderand to the other gender.She treatssexuateexistence or gender-she uses the terms interchangeably-as a negative,a limit that cannot be reducedor transcended (1993a, 11, 13). The relationto one'sown genderindicatesthe subjectis not all, and not its own foundation."Beinga man or a woman alreadymeans not being the whole of the subjector of the community or of spirit,as well as not being entirelyone's self.... I is never simplymine in that it belongs to a gender.... I am objectivelylimited by this belonging"(1996, 106). A gendereduniversal thus preventsthe subjectfrom taking itself to be unlimited or all; subjectivity is acknowledgedas limited or partial,ratherthan singularand absolute.Schor refersto this as a diminished subject(1994, 63). Nor is this universalityan abstractand distant ideal requiringthe subjectto detach itself from materiality.Instead,the universalityof gender is both constitutive of the subjectand constituted by the subject."Ibelong to a universal

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

26

Hypatia

in recognizingI am a woman ... belonging to a genderrepresentsa universal 1996, 39). Gender,as a universal priorto me. I have to accomplishit" (Irigaray to is not an or ahistorical,atemporal, transindiviualcategory(Schor prior me, or horizon is alwayspartiallyin flux, taken up anew by This universal 1995). each individual."The unity to which Irigaray refersis clearlynot the wholeness of a self-sufficient subjectwith coherence and nothing missing.It is rather the wholeness of an experience with no lack because there is no ideal form to which the experience is referred" (Lorraine1999, 73). The process of acknowledgingone's own limitedness is intensified by the "I belong to a gender, which means to a sexed existence of the other sex.13 universaland to a relation between two universals"(Irigaray1996, 106). The sexuateother is also a negative:a limit that cannot be negated.The negativeof sexual differenceas the resistanceeach sex poses for the other prohibitsfusion, insofaras one can have no direct access to the other sex. At the same time, the existence of two sexes as a kind of originarypairingalso prohibitssolipsismor narcissism.Neither sexed universalnor sexed subjectcan take itself as a stand in for all of humanity. In this way, the "individualor the social body gives up narcissistic self-sufficiencyonce sexual difference is acknowledged" (1993b, 87). Sexual differencehere ruins the liberal community Irigaray portraysas a the or one model of mass crowd, subject. endlesslyrefracting single The partial or limited subjectivity born of this new economy of sexual difference is supportedby two practices: an ethics of the negative and an intentionality of indirection. An ethics of the negative works to undermine the traditionalsubject'stransferof its disavowedmaterialityonto others, while an intentionality of indirection serves to prevent the reductionof others to a groundfor the subject'sown freedomand development.As we have seen, sacrificialordersestablish limits and boundariesby demarcatingsharplybetween inside and outside, the materialand the ideal. The subjectof such orderssimilarlyparcelsout its own ambiguity,keeping the ideal for itself, and projecting materialityonto others, especially women. A new ethics of sexual difference then requiresa practiceof self-limitation,of taking the negative or the limit of sexual differenceupon oneself ratherthan projectingit upon others. As Irigaraywrites,"Hehas to become man by himself,to growwithout her and without opposing himself to her in the process.He must be capableof sublimatinghis instincts and drives himself" (Irigaray1996, 27). Such an ethics facilitates a nonantagonistic intersubjectivityby acknowledgingour own partiality and limits, ratherthan shifting them to others. This ethics is complemented by an intentionality of indirection, which calls our attention to the other as an other subject,ratherthan the groundof our development.An ethics of indirection workswithin language and at the level of the individualsubjectto underminethe traditionalphilosophical and liberal subject'sreduction of the other to a mirrorof the same or the ground

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

27

of the subject'sfreedom. A reconstitutedsubjectivitywould be characterized by a "harmonybetween active and passive,"permitting intentionality to be "attunedto interactions" ratherthan an "exchangeof objects"(Irigaray1996, or "of"aftera verb 45). She arguesthe introductionof prepositionssuch as "to" marks an indirection, preventing the reduction of the other to the abstract equivalence of conceptual terms. As a result the singularityof the other and the relation of subjectand other remain preservedin language."I love to you a toi),"ratherthan "I love you (Je t'aime)" (j'aime emphasizesthat the other is not the object of the subjectwho speaks, but another subject.This intersubjectivity of indirection facilitates a community which is neither narcissistic nor sacrificial.14 The "to"guarantees "two intentionalities: mine and yours" 1996, 110), (Irigaray permittingthe encounter of a "we." Irigaray's rethinking of symbolicmediation and subjectivityoffersus a way to acknowledge difference, materiality, and relations within the symbolic, within each subject,and between subjects,ratherthan as the constitutive outside of the symbolicor as the subject's disavowedother. Irigaray's conception of a sensibletranscendentalpoints to a symbolicorderin which the "body-matter of women,"or any other,need no longerserveas the groundforthe installation of abstractconcepts, or as the rejected materialityof the dominant subject. An ethics of the negative and an intentionality of indirection transformthe featuresIrigaray identifiedin liberalism.In liberalism,the ideal citizen projects its materiality onto others, whereas an ethics of the negative leads citizens to acknowledgematerialityas the mark of their own partial being. Similarly, whereasin liberalism,freedomis definedby reducingthe relationof the other to the groundof one'sown autonomy,an intentionalityof indirectionmitigates against this reduction.Taken in combination, these innovations shift politics awayfrom masteryand domination towarda shared exchange with others: a politics of fecundity."An imaginaryof flowing mediation shifts the emphasis awayfrom the tragedyof desire and its impossiblesatisfactiononto the gratification of exchange itself" (Schwab 1994, 372).
POLITICALRIGHTS

Not only does Irigaray point to a shift in the symbolicorganizationof political she but also relations, suggests that this symbolic transformationshould be in explicitlyrecognized the formof a genderedcivil identityand sexuaterights. These are the most visible and practical consequences of her proposalfor a fluid economy and a dual sexed universal,and she is one of the few feminist philosophersto offer concrete proposalsfor change (Cheah 1998a, 5; Schwab 1998, 85). While these proposalshave been met with skepticism,their presentation contributes to feminist scholarshipand activism by compelling us to consider the aims of our theoretical and practicalstrategies.Irigaray states

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

28

Hypatia

her own approachto political rightsquite explicitly:"Afew partialchanges in rights for women have been won in recent times. But even these are subject to recall. They are won by partial and local pressures whereaswhat is needed is a full-scale rethinking of the law'sduty to offer justice to two gendersthat differin their needs, their desires, their properties"(1993a, 4). As a number of feminist theorists have emphasized,one of the main effects of neutral laws is to obscuretheir basis in a male norm, and renderlaws unable to recognize women'sspecificneeds (Minow 1990). Those concerns suggestthat specifically sexed political identities and rights merit considerationas one alternative to neutral laws. In Irigaray's words,women's"choicescannot remain individual or private but must be guaranteedby law: the freedom of choice in reproduction,work patterns,sexuality,the raising of minors in cases of divorce or separation... in my view, the lack of special rights for women does not allow them to move from a state of nature to a civilized state: the majorityremain nature-bodies, subservientto the State, to the Church,to fatherand husband,without access to the statusof civilians, responsiblefor themselvesand the community"(1995, 14). A civic identity for women and sexuate rights addressthe inadequacyof ostensibly neutral laws to protect women'sneeds. The law's inability to deal Abortion rights remain with pregnant women, for example, is notorious.15 precariousinsofaras they rest on the right to privacy,not on "awoman'sright to selfhood" (Eisenstein 1993, 239). In fact, the treatment of abortion rights within the right of privacy underscoresthe extent to which liberalism relegatesdifferenceto the privatesphere,while maintaining a public"neutrality" herselfnotes, "Todaythere are shapedby a male model of citizenship.Irigaray an increasingnumberof cases ... in both the law and languagethat cannot be resolvedby an appeal to a neutral individual"(1994, 41). In particular,she claims "the pretext of the neutral individual does not pass the reality test: women get pregnant, not men; women and little girls are raped, boys very rarely;the bodies of women and girls are used for involuntaryprostitutionand those of men infinitelyless; and so on" (1994, 59). pornography, of women'scivil identity would Sexuate rights and a legal acknowledgment not only recognize specificrights necessaryfor women, but could also operate as a counterpointto the practicesof the state or other institutionsthat regulate women. Forexample,the recent welfarereformof 1996 expresslyseeks to pressurewomen into marriageand penalizethem forhaving children (Mink 1998). If women had an explicitly defined civil identity, low-income women might have clearer legal groundsfor resisting the requirementsof the 1996 reform. (2000), the SupremeCourt ruledunconSimilarly,in UnitedStatesv. Morrison of civil suits stitutional the 1994 Violence Against Women Act's authorization victims of violence. had claimed in authority this matter by gender Congress on the basis of its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, not on the legal right of women to be protectedagainstviolence. The Court found

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

29

that the commerceclause was not expansive enough to encompassaspects of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. This decision suggeststhat women's rights indeed remain subject to recall so long as women are not explicitly acknowledgedas having a civil identity. of at least two civic identitiesalso respondsto the tenAn acknowledgment dency of liberal laws to treat the effects of relationshipsas discretecategories, obscuringthe way social relationshipsshape subjectivity.Liberallaws address themselves to a single ideal subject,even though, as we saw earlier,the dominant subjectwho correspondsmost to that ideal can only come into being on the basis of its relations with disavowedothers.16 Irigaraysuggestssexed civil identitieswouldofferan explicit recognitionof the relationalnatureof citizenship, modeling difference instead of producingthe hierarchygeneratedwhen difference is submittedto a single standard."Inorderto redefinea law that is just we necessarilyhave to redefine individual right relating to real persons, women and men of all ages. ... In protecting these dimensionsof the reality of the people who constitute it, society opens up conduits for attraction and distancing between all men and women instead of subjectingindividualsto a generallyabstractjuridicalmachinery"(1996, 54-55). Openly acknowledging rights and civil identities for women indicates a community formedof difference and relations,ratherthan identity. That recognition undermines the conditions under which groupswho do not easily fit existing laws and norms of identity look like exceptions to the community on the occasions where their interests are considered. Sexuate rights and civic identity can then also be seen as a political recognition of the has argued.Justas the negative indicates ethics of negativityfor which Irigaray that I am not everything, and that my own subjectivityis formed in relation to the other, a legal inscriptionof differentialgroupsand rights indicates that citizens do not exist as abstractand discrete entities, but as the ongoing and continuouslychanging resultof relationswith others. Such proposals are not without their problems. The creation of a civil identity for women clearly risks turning for protection to a state responsible for women'sharm (Brown 1992), and fixing masculineand feminine identities in law (Brown 1995; Cheah and Grosz 1998b). With respect to the dangerof utilizing and expanding the scope of the state, Irigaray, perhapsironically,is less skepticalof state powerthan others. While she criticizesthe currentstate and existing law, the laws and practicesof the state are themselves shaped by a sacrificialeconomy.ForIrigaray, neutrallawsare dangerouspreciselybecause they conceal the gender biases of state power-biases which are difficult to diagnoseand respondto as long as neutrallawsand abstractneutralindividuals define the termsof debate. Openly acknowledgingthat subjectivityis sexed and relational, and that laws shape subjectivityand intersubjectivity, offers the possibility that manifestationsof state powerwouldbe less covert and moreeasilycontested.As she

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

30

Hypatia

notes, those waryof civil rightsfor women "fearthe law as requiringservitude to the state. Yetcivil rightsfor individualpersonsrepresent,on the contrary,a guaranteethat citizens can oppose the powerof the State as such they maintain a tension between individuals and the State, and can even ensure the evolution of a state-controlled society into a civil society, whose democratic character would be supported by people's individual rights" (Irigaray1995, a civic identity for women does not simplysubmitwomen to 14). For Irigaray, the state; it providesa basis both for appealingto the state, and resistingthe state. Do such strategiesrisk fixing masculine and feminine identities in law, as some of Irigaray's readersfear?Drucilla Cornell has observed that Irigaray refuses to challenge the division of the human race into two sexes (Cheah and Grosz 1998b, 25), and characterizesthat refusal as conservative (1998, 21). Similarly,Wendy Brown argues that any political strategy appealing to the identity of women risks reproducingthe very identity that has been used to oppresswomen (1995, 27). The warinessof Irigaray's readerson this point should not be dismissed;civil identities for women and sexuate rights would inevitablyfix, in some way or another, sexed identities in law. This wariness, however,can usefullybe balanced by recalling Irigaray's analysisof the Western philosophicaland political tradition.As Irigaray argues,women have been oppressedbecause they have no autonomoussubjectivity,no representationin the symbolicorder,and no legal statusas women. Women have been the other of man, ratherthan having their own identity.Given this analysis,a civil identity for women does not fix in law the identity that oppresseswomen;rather,it remediesthe absenceof an explicit legal identity in orderto guaranteewomen's existence as autonomousindividuals. Irigaray's proposalswill never appeal to those who wish to move beyond gender.She does, however,supplystrategiesand startingpoints for those who do wish to retain some conception of a feminine identity, a desire that often persistsin the everydaylives of women. Gail Schwabhas recently emphasized the importance of this point. As she notes, while theorists may envisage a future world of multiple sexes or no sex at all, those forms of identity are not work clearly available, or desired, by many women (1998, 77, 80). Irigaray's addresses women who do not wish to overcomegender,but to enjoy their identity as women without being oppressedbecause of it.
SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND DIFFERENCE

Aside from fearing that Irigaray's concrete political proposalsfix masculine and feminine identities in law, Irigaray's critics have long worried that her treatment of women and sexual difference has two weaknesses. A focus on sexual differencerisksdenyingother aspectsof women'sidentity,thus ignoring

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

31

differencesamong women. And, a focus on sexual difference as the primary formof oppressionignoresthe multipleeconomies of oppressionwithin which differentwomen are situated.Can Irigaray's work respondto these concerns? her on these issues to the is, say least, difficult. Reading to differences Irigaray's approach amongwomen over the courseof her work easily appearsparadoxicalor even contradictory.While in This Sex WhichIs Not One she refusesany theory of women (1985b, 122, 156), her development of a feminine universaland sexed rights appearsto offerjust such a theory.As PenelopeDeutschersuggests,she placesherselfin a propheticposition of defining women'sneeds and identities (1998a). Similarly,Ellen Armourarguesthat as soon as Irigaray turns to a feminine god or universal,she forgetsher earlier warningthat a feminine standardcould itselfbe phallocraticor basedon sameness (Armour 1999, 132). What preventsa feminine universalfrom becoming another sacrificialideal, requiringwomen to represstheir own differencesto identify with it, or elevating a particularunderstandingof women to an ideal? Such concerns arewell taken, yet they understateIrigaray's persistentattention to differencesamong women and overestimatethe extent to which a feminine universaldefines one specificfeminine identity. Rather than forgettinga concern with women'sdifferences,Irigaray reemphasizesthis concern when she turns to a feminine universal.She criticizesthe way some women "confusetheir unmediatedwill with a model of law or the way to happiness for all women"(1996, 3), as well as women who base their ratherthan on the needs of all women (1996, 2). Her "politicson themselves," concern is, to be sure, not entirely reassuring.For she also implies there are some identities or commonalities among women, and that she herself knows what they are since she offers a list of sexuate rights and the aims of a civil identity for women. On the other hand, nothing in Irigaray suggeststhe rights she names are not open to revision. Her critique of women'sown reenactment of the dynamics of masculine subjectivity's practice of projectingits contradictionsonto women and others again suggeststhat she does not collapse differencesamong women. She thus acknowledgesit is "necessaryfor a gender to learn to oppose itself,"while onto other women... lamentingthe wayswomen projecttheir "contradictions uses side-step(ping)the laborof the negativeamongstthem"(1996, 4). Irigaray the negative to referto a limit that cannot be transcended,and in responseto which one recognizesone'sown partialidentity as well as one'sdifferencefrom others. Her attention to a negative among women would-or should-reject any one woman'sefforts to present her particularexperiences as a universal experience or identity for women. It is also importantto recall her definition of the feminine universal as a sensible transcendental that simultaneously precedes me and is constituted by me. Given these parameters,a feminine universalcannot referto one set of characteristics. If it did, it wouldconflatean

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

32

Hypatia

individualwoman with a sexed universal,or a sexed universalwith a particular woman. Rather than starting with one vision of woman and adding differences, differencesare integral to the very formation of a feminine universal that can never be emancipatedfrom the differentmaterialitiesof the women who both shape the universaland are shapedby it. If a feminine universal can preserve an openness to difference among treatment of sexual difference respond to the accomwomen, can Irigaray's that concern she ignores other forms of oppression?For example, panying Armour argues Irigaray's "multiplewoman/women"ends with her failure on race (1999, 106). PatriciaHuntington notes that Irigaray"givesin one hand (what) she takes away with the other" in making gender "the dialectic that restores 'all singularity"'(1998, 252). Butler summarizesthis position most forcefully,arguingthat Irigaray monopolizesthe zone of exclusion in reading the outside as feminine, thereby "excluding" other bases of oppression(1993, 42). Certainly other exclusions are not a consistent focus of Irigaray's inquiry, which defines itself as an investigationof sexual difference.However,she does acknowledgeother formsof domination.While she focuseson the waywomen have served as the other of man, she also notes that other groupshave served the same purpose:children, the exotic (1985b, 124; 1995, 7). is neverthelesswoeA considerationof other formsof oppressionin Irigaray fully underexamined.ElizabethGroszgenerouslynotes that it is not Irigaray's task to list everyformof fundamentaldifference(Cheah and Grosz1998b,34). own critique of sacrificeopens the possibility of reading Moreover,Irigaray's her concern with the sacrificeof multipledifferencesin favorof a single term against her tendency to focus on sexual differenceas the one primaryform of oppression.As Whitford and Tina Chanter point out, she aims at a nonexclusionaryrationality (Whitford 1991,58; Chanter 1995, 42). If this aspect of Irigaray's thinking is followed,her treatmentof other formsof differenceand oppressionas secondary to sex can itself be seen as sacrificial,subject to her own critique of any single standardthat purportsto be decisive. Moreover, even if Irigarayremains committed to sexual difference as the most decisive dualistic thinking" is difference,we need not. As bell hooks argues,"either/or "the central ideological component of all systemsof domination in Western society,"and "allformsof oppressionare linked in our society becausethey are (hooks 1984, 29, 35). supportedby similarinstitutional and social structures" effort to transforma sacrificialsociety that uses the materialityof Irigaray's some to sustain ideals of discourseand subjectivitythus addressesthe logic of other forms of oppression,although not their individualspecificity.Her work offersa counterpointnot only to the assumptionthat orderand identityrequire the repressionof difference, but also to the claim that there is less danger involved in acceptingconstitutiveexclusionsthan in questioningthem. Those influencedby deconstructionin particularsuggestthat accepting constitutive

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

33

exclusionsprotectsus froma totalizingorderthat recognizesno outside (Butler 1993,53; Deutscher 1998b;Derrida1995). Yet this logic not only askssome to beara high price for its wisdom,but also assumesthat we mustchoose between the dangerof a totalizing inclusion or that of a necessaryexclusion. Irigaraychallenges the terms in which this dilemma has been posed. Her work suggeststhat the necessity of exclusion is itself a contingent necessity whose certainty is securedonly so long as we accept the sacrificial premisethat concepts and identity achieve their coherence by negation and repression.As her analysis of liberalismshows, this assumptioncondemns us to a political space where the appearanceof differenceis limited to an exception or a hierarchy.Her own work on a fluid economy and a sensible transcendentaloffers us a way to move beyond a choice between the necessity of exclusion and the dangerof an orderso inclusive that it recognizesno limits to itself. Because a sensibletranscendentalacknowledges the conceptualand the materialwithout collapsing them, it indicates both that difference is integral to our concepts and subjectivity,and that no concept or ordercan fully capturematerialdifference. Irigaray's philosophical work on a fluid economy is therefore ultimately of political significance. Any political community requiresa common set of concepts to structurecollective interactions.If concepts can only operate by and identical repressingdifferenceand treatingtheir referentsas standardized a will be to the different needs of its unable units, community acknowledge citizens. By recalling the interdependenceof the conceptual and materialsevered since Plato, Irigaray radicallytransformsthe limits constrainingpolitical since the organization origins of Western philosophy,constraintswhich have even with discourses critical of the Western tradition. persisted The significanceof a fluideconomy also extends to the nature of subjectivity. In ordersstructuredby a single abstractuniversal,relationsbetween subjects are either narcissistic(everyone is just like everyoneelse) or antagonistic (the other is associatedwith the materialityand differencethe subjectseeks to shed). Citizens shaped by such idealshave little incentive to acknowledgethe differentexperiencesand needs of other citizens. Irigaray's own interpretation of a fluideconomy as giving rise to a dual sexed universalthus offersan intriguing alternativeto sacrificialforms of subjectivity.A sexed and partial subject maybe more likelyto acknowledgethat no one individualcan model the needs of everyone, and to accept the differentneeds of others as legitimate.And for those who do not wish to renouncesome sense of a feminine identity,Irigaray's vision of political subjectivityfacilitateswomen'sentry into the public sphere as women, ratherthan as reflectionsof men. At the same time, while Irigarayinsists a fluid economy and a sensible transcendentalshould be expressedas sexual difference,we can develop her resourcesin other directionsthan she herselfdoes. Her recent workprovidesa

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

34

Hypatia

number of such resources, suggesting multiple techniques women might engage in to transform a symbolic order and concrete practices that constrain them. A language of indirection and an ethics of the negative are two such techniques that individuals could practice in their everyday lives, and that could offer useful ways for women to form coalitions without ignoring women's differences from one another. Sexuate rights and a civil identity for women are a broader type of transformation, enlisting the power of the state-or the power of citizens to affect the state-in transforming laws that deny women's specificity. At the very least, these approaches, or variations of them, seem more likely to enable coalitions of women and a transformation of relations of domination than the sacrificial thesis that announces from the outset that identity and order must repress difference.

NOTES

The author would like to thank Hypatia'sanonymous refereesfor their careful comments and suggestionson earlierdraftsof this paper. 1. Examples of such skepticism can be found in Penelope Deutscher (1998b) and Tasmin Lorraine (1999), two of the few to explicitly refer to Irigaray's political proposals.More positive brief remarkscan be found in Pheng Cheah (1998) and Gail Schwab (1998). 2. See, for example, bell hooks 1984; Denise Riley 1990; Elizabeth Spelman 1988; Gloria Anzaldua 1983; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 1993; and Judith Butler 1993. 3. See Butler 1993; Jacques Derrida 1995; Jacqueline Rose 1982; and Jacques Lacan 1977.I discuss this in detail on p. XX. Allison Weir (1996) is one of the few to have identified and critiqued a logic of sacrifice.She argues,however, that Irigaray's own worktreats identity as necessarilysacrificial,and that her turn towardsdifference offers little solution because Irigarayrejects all forms of distinction and mediation (1996 97-106). 4. The quote refersto FriedrichNietzsche and Martin Heidegger.The compariis mine. son to Irigaray 5. Irigaray'sproject bears some resemblance to Georges Bataille's. Bataille critiquedsocial ordersfor excluding heterogeneousforces, and for reducing all differences to a single homogeneous standard(1985, 197-99). In contrast to this reduction, Bataille sawsacrificeas a way of liberatingdifference.The Acephale Society he formed in the 1930s was to be established by an act of sacrifice excluding sovereignty (or a single ground), and thus exclusion itself by eliminating the sovereign foundation on which exclusion rests (Blanchot 1988, 16). At the same time, Bataille continued to treat women as objects who help to establish relationsamong men (1991, 42). 6. Irigaray's description is intriguing. The formula she uses here with respect to men, "one plus one plus one," is that used by Lacan to characterizethe appearance of women in the symbolic order (1998, 10). Irigarayappearsto imply that a lack of symbolic specificityis no longer limited to men.

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

35

the natureof sacrifice as defined 7. On this point,Lacan's symbolic by parallels of the whoargues that"theoriginof symbolic Girard, thoughtlies in the mechanism andimposes victim... [which] itselfasthe first object surrogate givesbirthto language of language" (1977, 235). the oppositions he 8. As KellyOliverpoints out, Derrida ends up recreating (1995,67). soughtto putintoquestion a specifically 9. At times,arguments forthe positionthat the femininegrounds femininesubject de Lauretis Whitford havebeen madeby Theresa (1994),Margaret feminine The that the and Drucilla Cornell second (1991), (1991,1992). position, subversion is takenby Butler(1993,45, 48), is-or shouldbe-a forceof perpetual EllenMortenson (1994),EllenArmour(1997),and to someextent also by Cornell (1991,142). is rarely on. The 10. The significance of Irigaray's of passage commented analysis is Linda Godard Claire Colebrook also that 161). (1985, exception emphasizes forIrithe forgetting rather thanthe forgetting of Being,is funof material garay contiguity, andthatphilosophy in whichit represents itself(1997, the medium damental, forgets 87-88). 11.Judith a similar of matter as materialization, as Butler discusses understanding that whichcontainswithinitselfa principle of generation andtransformation (1993, 31-36). 12. In focusing on an interval andform,Irigaray betweenmatter mightbe saidto than the symbolic. as aim at a formof mediation closerto the allegorical Allegory, usedby Walter offersa signthat doesnot fusewith or negateits referent, Benjamin, butindicates referent andrepresentation 1977,159-67). (Benjamin simultaneously 13. Here,Irigaray Edmund Husserl's account of intersubjectivity asanalogifollows cal appresentation, the otheris likethe self,without meaning beingconstituted bythe selforfullypresent to it (Husserl 1960,sec. 50, 52). of indirection wouldseemto develop an ideabriefly men14. This intentionality tionedbyLacan(1998,104). 15. The Court's decisions in Geduldig wererendered v. Adiello (1974)andGeneral Electric Co. v. Martha Gilbert Fora usefulanalysis etal. (1976). of thesecases,see Williams1991. 16. See Mary of the sameproblem thatfocuses more (1992)fora discussion Poovey on deinstitionalizing gender.

REFERENCES

1983.Thisbridge called Anzaldua, Gloria,and CherrieMoraga. my back.New York: of ColorPress. Women Ellen.1997. of proximity: "Woman's in Derrida andIrigaray. Armour, Questions place" (12) 1:63-78. Hypatia .1999.Deconstruction, andtheproblem feminist theology, ofdifference: Subverting therace/gender divide. of Chicago Press. Chicago: University 1985. Visions Selected Ed.AllanStoekl. 1927-1939. Bataille, Georges. ofexcess: writings, of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis: University

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

36

Hypatia

. 1991.The accursed share:An essayon generaleconomy,V. II-III, trans. Robert Hurley.New York:Zone Books. Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The origin of German tragic drama, trans. Joan Osborne. London:Verso. trans. PierreJoris. New York: Blanchot, Maurice. 1988. The unavowablecommunity, Station Hill Press. Studies(18) 1: 7-12. Brown,Wendy. 1992. Finding the man in the state. Feminist .1995. Statesof injury: Powerandfreedom in latemodernity. Princeton:Princeton University Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursivelimits of "sex."New York: Routledge. New York: Chanter, Tina. 1995. Ethicsof eros: Irigaray's rewriting of the philosophers. Routledge. Cheah, Pheng, and ElizabethGrosz. 1998a.Of being-two: Introduction.Diacritics(28) 1: 3-18. .1998b. The future of sexual difference:An interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell. Diacritics(28) 1: 19-42. Colebrook,Claire. 1997.Feministphilosophyand the philosophyof feminism:Irigaray and the history of western metaphysics.Hypatia(12) 1: 79-99. Ethical and the Cornell, Drucilla. 1991.Beyondaccomodation: feminism,deconstruction, law. New York:Routledge. .1992. The philosophy of the limit.New York:Routledge. Derrida and Levinas. Oxford: Critchley, Simon. 1992. The ethics of deconstruction: Blackwell. De Lauretis,Theresa. 1994. The essence of the triangle, or, taking the riskof essentialism seriously:Feminist theory in Italy,the U.S., and Britain. In The Essential Difference,ed. Naomi Schor and ElizabethWeed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. BaltiDerrida, Jacques. 1976. Of grammatology, more:Johns Hopkins Press. . 1981.Violence and metaphysics.In Writingand difference, trans. Allan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In Deconstruction .1992. Force of law: The "mysticalfoundation of authority." ed. David Drucilla and Michael and thepossibility Carlson, Cornell, Gray ofjustice, Rosenfield.New York:Routledge. . 1995. "EatingWell,"Or the calculation of the subject. In Points:Interviews 1974-1994,trans. PeggyKamufand Others, ed. ElisabethWeber.Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press. Deutscher,Penelope. 1994. "The only diabolicalthing aboutwomen.. .":Luce Irigaray on divinity. Hypatia(9) 4: 88-111. .1998a. Book Review: I love to you. Hypatia(13) 2: 10-15. . 1998b. Mourning the other, cultural cannibalism, and the politics of friend(10) 3: 159-84. differences ship (JacquesDerridaand Luce Irigaray). Eisenstein, Zillah R. 1993. The radical feminism.Boston: Northeastern futureof liberal University Press.

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anne Caldwell

37

Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1981. Publicman, privatewoman:Womenin social and political Princeton:Princeton University Press. thought. Girard,Rene. 1977.Violenceand the sacred,trans. PatrickGregory.Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press. Essai a Godard, Linda. 1985. Pourune nouvelle lecture de la question de la "femme": (12) 1: 147-64. partirde la pensee de JacquesDerrida.Philosophiques hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist theory:Frommarginto center.Boston: South End Press. Kristeva,HeiHuntington, PatriciaJ. 1998. Ecstaticsubjects,utopia and recognition: of New York Press. State Albany: University degger, Irigaray. An introduction to Husserl, Edmund. 1960. Fifth mediation. In Cartesianmediations: trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: MartinusNijhoff. phenomenology, Luce. 1985a.Speculum of theotherwoman,trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca:CorIrigaray, nell University Press. 1985b.This sex whichis not one, trans. Catherine Porterwith Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. . 1993a.Sexesand genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York: Routledge. trans. Carolyn Burkeand Gillian C. Gill. . 1993b.An ethicsof sexualdifference, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. the difference: For a peacefulrevolution,trans. Karin Montin. 1994. Thinking New York:Routledge. . 1995. The question of the Other. YaleFrenchStudies:AnotherLook, Another Woman8: 7-19. 1996. I love to you: Sketchof a possible felicityin history,trans. Alison Martin. New York:Routledge. . 1999.Theforgetting trans. MaryBeth Mader.Austin: of airin MartinHeidegger, University of Texas Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1977. Ecrits: A selection, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York:W. W. Norton & Co. . 1998. The seminarof JacquesLacanBookXX: On femininesexuality:The limits W. W. Norton and 1972-1973,trans. Bruce Fink.New York: of loveand knowledge Co. in visceral and Deleuze:Experiments Ithaca: Lorraine,Tasmin. 1999.Irigaray philosophy. Cornell University Press. London: MacCannell,JulietFlower.1991.The regime of thebrother: Afterthepatriarchy. Routledge. end. Ithaca:Cornell University Press. Mink, Gwendolyn. 1998. Welfare's Minow, Martha. 1990. Makingall thedifference: Inclusion,exclusion,and Americanlaw. Ithaca:Cornell University Press. with Mortenson, Ellen. 1994. Woman'suntruth and le feminin:Reading Luce Irigaray Nietzsche and Heidegger.In Engagingwith Irigaray, ed. Carolyn Burke, Naomi Schor, and MargaretWhitford.New York:Routledge. relationto the "feminine." New Nietzsche:Philosophy's Oliver, Kelly. 1995. Womanizing York:Routledge. andpoliticaltheory. Pateman,Carol. 1989.The disorder of women:Democracy, feminism Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press.

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

38

Hypatia

theorize Poovey,Mary. 1992. The abortionquestion and the death of man. In Feminists thepolitical,ed. JudithButlerand Joan W. Scott. New York:Routledge. Rawls,John. 1971.A theoryofjustice.Cambridge:Belknap Pressof HarvardUniversity Press. and the Categoryof "Women" in HisRiley, Denise. 1990. "AmI thatName?":Feminism tory. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. Rose, Jacqueline. 1982. Introduction-II. In Femininesexuality:JacquesLacan and the ecolefreudienne, ed. JacquelineRose and JulietMitchell. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Schor,Naomi. 1989.This essentialismwhich is not one: Coming to gripswith Irigaray. (1) 2: 38-58. differences . 1994. This essentialism which is not one: Coming to grips with Irigaray. In with ed. Naomi and Whitford. Burke, Schor, Engaging Irigaray, Carolyn Margaret New York:Routledge. . 1995. Frenchfeminism is a universalism.differences (7) 1: 15-47. Schwab, Gail M. 1994. Mother'sbody, father'stongue: Mediation and the symbolic order.In Engaging with Irigaray, ed. Carolyn Burke,Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford. New York:Routledge. . 1998. Sexual difference as model: An ethics for the global future. Diacritics (28) 1: 76-92. woman:Problems in feministthought. Spelman, ElizabethV. 1988. Inessential of exclusion Boston: Beacon Press. Spivak, GayatriChakravorty.1993. Frenchfeminism revisited.In Outsidein the teaching machine.Routledge:NewYork. MartinHeidegger and postmodern Thiele, Leslie Paul. 1995. Timelymeditations: politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Weir, Allison. 1996. Sacrificiallogics:Feministtheoryand the critiqueof identity.New York:Routledge. in the feminine.London: RoutWhitford, Margaret. 1991. Luce Irigaray:Philosophy ledge. . 1994. Reading Irigarayin the nineties. In Engaging with Irigaray, ed. Carolyn Burke,Naomi Schor, and MargaretWhitford. New York:Columbia University Press. Williams, Wendy. 1991. The equality crisis: Some reflectionson culture, courts, and feminism. In Feministlegal theory:Readingsin law and gender,ed. Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy.Boulder:Westview Press. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politicsof difference.Princeton: Princeton University Press.

This content downloaded from 159.149.103.9 on Fri, 17 May 2013 02:50:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions