Irigaray Answers

AT: IRIGARAY
AT: Irigaray...............................................................................................................................................1
AT: Sexual Difference as Starting Point***..............................................................................................2
Permutation: Multiple Sites of Critique....................................................................................................3
PermutationSexual Difference Alone Not Enough...............................................................................3
PermutationMust Historicize Sexual Difference...................................................................................3
PermutationPlasticity.............................................................................................................................3

Irigaray Answers

AT: SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AS STARTING POINT***

THEIR

UNDERSTANDING OF FEMININITY AS PURE NEGATIVITY, THE ABSOLUTELY OTHERIZED IN

MASCULINE DISCOURSE, IS AN ILLEGITIMATE MONOPOLY THAT REPRODUCES MASCULINE
VIOLENCEOTHERIZATION FUNCTIONS PLURALLY, MAKING USE OF WOMEN, SLAVES,
CHILDREN, AND ANIMALS AMONG OTHERS

BUTLER, PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AT BERKELEY, 2004 [JUDITH, BODIES THAT MATTER, ENGAGING
WITH IRIGARAY, ED. BURKE, SCHOR, WHITFORD, P.P. 160-162]
So perhaps here is the return of essentialism, in the notion of a "feminine in language"? And yet, she continues by suggesting that miming is that very operation of the feminine in language. To mime
means to participate in precisely that which is mimed , and if the language mimed is the language of phallogocentrism, then this is only a specifically
feminine language to the extent that the feminine is radically implicated in the very terms of a phallogocentrism it seeks to rework. The quotation continues, "[to play with mimesis means] 'to unveil' the fact
that, if women are such good mimics, it is because they are not simply resorbed in this function. They also remain elsewhere: another case of the persistence of 'matter.' " They mime phallogocentrism, but
they also expose what is covered over by the mimetic self-replication of that discourse. For Irigaray what is broken with and covered over is the linguistic operation of metonymy, a closeness and proximity
that appears to be the linguistic residue of the initial proximity of mother and infant. It is this metonymic excess in every mime, indeed, in every metaphorical substitution, that is understood to disrupt the

To claim, though, as Irigaray does, that the logic of identity is potentially disruptible by
the insurgence of metonymy, and then to identify this metonymy with the repressed and insurgent
feminine, is to consolidate the place of the feminine in and as the irruptive chora, that which cannot be
figured, but which is necessary for any figuration. That is , of course, to figure this chora nevertheless, and in
such a way, that the feminine is "always" the outside and the outside is "always" the feminine . This is a
move that at once positions the feminine as the unthematizable, the nonfigurable, but that, in
identifying the feminine with that position, thematizes and figures, and so makes use of the
phallogocentric exercise to produce this identity that "is" the nonidentical . There are good reasons,
however, to reject the notion that the feminine monopolizes the sphere of the excluded here. Indeed, to
enforce such a monopoly redoubles the effect of foreclosure performed by the phallogocentric
discourse itself, one that "mimes" its founding violence in a way that works against the explicit
claim to have found a linguistic site in metonymy that works as disruption. After all, Plato's
scenography of intelligibility depends on the exclusion of women, slaves, children, and animals ,
where slaves are characterized as those who do not speak his language, and who, in not speaking his
language, are considered diminished in their capacity for reason. This xenophobic exclusion operates
through the production of racialized Others, and those whose "natures" are considered less rational by
virtue of their appointed task in the process of laboring to reproduce the conditions of private life . This
domain of the less than rational human bounds the figure of human reason , producing that "man"
as one who is without a childhood; is not a primate, and so relieved of the necessity of eating,
defecating, living and dying; one who is not a slave, but always a property holder; one whose language
remains originary and untranslatable. This is a figure of disembodiment, but one that is nevertheless a
figure of a body, a bodying forth of a masculinized rationality, the figure of a male body that is not a body, a figure in crisis, a figure that enacts a
crisis it cannot fully control. This figuration of masculine reason as disembodied body is one whose imaginary
morphology is crafted through the exclusion of other possible bodies . This is a materialization of reason that operates through the
seamless repetition of the phallogocentric norm.

dematerialization of other bodies, for the feminine, strictly speaking, has no morphe, no morphology, no contour, for it is that which contributes to the contouring of things but is itself undifferentiated,

The body that is reason dematerializes the bodies that may not properly stand for reason or its
replicas, and yet this is a figure in crisis, for this body of reason is itself the phantasmatic dematerialization of masculinity, one that requires that
women and slaves, children and animals be the body, perform the bodily functions, that it will not
perform.43 Irigaray does not always help matters here, for she fails to follow through the metonymic link between women
and these other Others, idealizing and appropriating the "elsewhere" as the feminine . But what is
the "elsewhere" of Irigaray's "elsewhere"? If the feminine is not the only or primary kind of being that
is excluded from the economy of masculinist reason, what and who is excluded in the course of
Irigaray's analysis? Improper Entry: Protocols of Sexual Difference The above analysis has considered not the materiality of sex but the sex of materiality. In other words, it has traced
materiality as the site at which a certain drama of sexual difference plays itself out. The point of such an exposition is not only to warn against an easy return
to the materiality of the body or the materiality of sex but to show that to invoke matter is to invoke a sedimented history of
without boundary.

Irigaray Answers
sexual hierarchy and sexual erasures, which should surely be an object of feminist inquiry but would
be quite problematic as a ground of feminist theory. To return to matter requires that we return to matter
as a sign that in its redoublings and contradictions enacts an inchoate drama of sexual difference.

Irigaray Answers

PERMUTATION: MULTIPLE SITES OF CRITIQUE

THE

PERMUTATION IS NET BENEFICIALONLY THE REOCCUPATION OF THE MASTERS DISCOURSE

FROM MULTIPLE SITES OF OPPRESSION CAN SOLVE

BUTLER, PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AT BERKELEY, 2004 [JUDITH, BODIES THAT MATTER, ENGAGING
WITH IRIGARAY, ED. BURKE, SCHOR, WHITFORD, P.P. 164-165]
Significantly, this prohibition emerges at the site where materiality is being installed as a double instance, as the copy of the Form, and as the
noncontributing materiality in which and through which that self- copying mechanism works. In this sense matter is either part of the specular

The very formulation of matter takes

place in the service of an organization and denial of sexual difference , so that we are confronted with an economy of
scenography of phallic inscription or that which cannot be rendered intelligible within its terms.
sexual difference as that which defines, instrumentalizes, and allocates matter in its own service.

sexual difference operates in the very

formulation of matter. But this is a matter that is defined not only against reason , where reason is understood as
that which acts on and through a countervailing materiality, and masculine and feminine occupy these oppositional positions . Sexual difference
also operates in the formulation , the staging, of what will occupy the site of inscriptional space, that is, as what must remain
outside these oppositional positions as their supporting condition . There is no singular outside, for
the Forms require a number of exclusions ; they are and replicate themselves through what they
exclude, through not being the animal, not being the woman, not being the slave; whose propriety is
purchased through property; national and racial boundary, masculinism, and compulsory
heterosexuality.
To the extent that a set of reverse mimes emerge from those quarters, they will not be the same as each
other; if there is an occupation and reversal of the master's discourse, it will come from many
quarters, and those resignifying practices will converge in ways that scramble the self- replicating
presumptions of reason's mastery. For if the copies speak, or if what is merely material begins to
signify, the scenography of reason is rocked by the crisis on which it was always built . And there
will be no way finally to delimit the elsewhere of Irigaray's elsewhere, for every oppositional discourse
will produce its outside, an outside that risks becoming installed as its nonsignifying inscriptional
space.
And whereas this can appear as the necessary and founding violence of any truth regime , it is important
to resist that theoretical gesture of pathos in which exclusions are simply affirmed as sad necessities of
signification. The task is to refigure this necessary "outside" as a future horizon, one in which the
violence of exclusion is perpetually in the process of being overcome . But of equal importance is the preservation of the
The regulation of sexuality at work in the articulation of the Forms suggests that

outside, the site where discourse meets its limits, where the opacity of what is not included in a given regime of truth acts as a disruptive site of linguistic
impropriety and unrepresentability, illuminating the violent and contingent boundaries of that normative regime precisely through the inability of the
regime to represent that which might pose a fundamental threat to its continuity. In this sense radical and inclusive representability is not precisely the
goal: to include, to speak as, to bring in every marginal and excluded position within a given discourse is to claim that a singular discourse meets its limits
nowhere, that it can and will domesticate all signs of difference. If there is a violence necessary to the language of politics, then the risk of that violation
might well be followed by another in which we begin, without ending, without mastering, to ownand yet never fully to ownthe exclusions by which
we proceed.

Irigaray Answers

PERMUTATIONSEXUAL DIFFERENCE ALONE NOT

ENOUGH
THE

CRITIQUE ALONE REMAINS LOCKED IN A LOGIC OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE THAT ULTIMATE

REIFIES DOMINATION AND SERVES THE LOGIC OF CAPITALDETERRITORIALIZING SEXUAL
DIFFERENCE AS A MULTIPLICITY OF FORCES MUST ALSO OCCUR

BRAIDOTTI, SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR OF THE NETHERLANDS RESEARCH SCHOOL OF WOMENS STUDIES,

2003 [ROSI, BECOMING WOMAN: OR SEXUAL DIFFERENCE REVISITED, THEORY, CULTURE
& SOCIETY 20.3, SAGE, P. 56-59]
Alternative Patterns of Desire

In opposition to Irigarays sexual preference for a radical redefinition of heterosexuality in a non-hierarchical manner, Deleuze and
Guattaris work on sexuality offers a more diverse and internally differentiated set of options . This
multi-sexual orientation clearly clashes with the metaphysics of the sexual dichotomy
masculine/feminine, which Irigaray ends up upholding , albeit in a radical, renewed fashion. Irigarays Lacanian side remains
paradoxically dominant in her thinking about human sexuality.

sexual difference, sexuality and desire is set against Lacan. It rests on what they
consider his semireligious attachment to a concept of desire and lack. This capitalizes on and
incorporates, on the one hand, the centuries-old tradition of Christian guilt and, on the other, the Hegelian tendency to define
desire as the fulfilment of structural needs which are experienced as omissions and lacks. Both are related to the emphasis
psychoanalysis places on interiority as the location of the subjects true self.
If I read this in Spinozist terms, that is to say i n terms of affectivity, intensity and speed, psychoanalysis expresses a
very negative set of forces: it is the morality of the confession, the priestly or pastoral guidance so dear
to Foucault, but distasteful to Deleuzes post-humanist secular mind-set. It smacks of the boudoir, the brothel and the bourgeois
drama of the last century. For Deleuze, the same assessment applies to Lacanian psychoanalysis as to the French novel, which is
Essentially, Deleuze and Guattaris case on

claustrophobic, closeted, closedin upon itself to the point of a onanistic jubilation and neurotic self-obsession. Flauberts much-celebrated Emma Bovary,

The woman-identified
sensibility of this classical writer conveys a sexuality that is simultaneously titillating and denied,
exposed and disavowed. It is exemplified by the agony and the ecstasy of Berninis rendition of Saint Theresa, modelled on the passion of
cest moi!, and Sartres commentary on it, would be perfect examples of what Deleuze has in mind in his criticism.

Christ. It infuses the erotic imaginary of the 19th century, where the Dame aux camlias (and the cinema version of the same Camille played by Greta
Garbo) embodies the excesses and the virtues of this kind of sexual passion. A passion which, as feminists from Germaine Greer (1999) to Naomi Wolf
(1991) have pointed out, is predicated on the ill and decaying body of the femme fatale whose sinfulness and delights turn into the living symbol of the
fleurs du mal and the perverse jouissance they engender. This vision of the feminine as a sexualized imaginary is decadent, and as such it is quite
mainstream in European culture.

I find in nomadic philosophy the inspiration for an altogether different erotic imaginary , perhaps slightly more
cruel, but thankfully more unsentimental as well. It is less sacrificial and more upbeat because it is turned outwards, not inwards. A more secular approach
to intensity and passion, free of the constraints of the confessional and the brothel, and more attuned to the technologically mediated forms of desire that
are experienced and experimented with nowadays. This eroticism is cosmic and hints at transcendence, but always through and not away from the flesh.
Desire is for me a material and socially enacted arrangement of conditions that allow for the actualization (that is, the immanent realization) of the

Desire is active in that it has to do with encounters between multiple forces and
the creation of new possibilities of empowerment. It is outward-directed and forward-looking, not
indexed upon the past of a memory dominated by phallocentric selfreferentiality . Unconscious processes are
affirmative mode of becoming.

central to the discontinuous temporality of this non-unitary subject. The emphasis falls on the noncoincidence of the subject with his/her conscious self.

Deleuze proposes instead a multi-layered, dynamic subject that is embodied, but dynamic, corporeal
and in-process. It has to be built up over and over again and its expression is therefore concomitant
with the constitution of the social field.
A body is, spatially speaking, a slice of forces that have specific qualities , relations, speed and rates of
change. Their common denominator is that they are intelligent matter, that is: endowed with the
capacity to affect and be affected, to interrelate . Temporally speaking, a body is a portion of living memory that endures by
undergoing constant internal modifications following the encounter with other bodies and forces. In both cases, the key point is the embodied subjects

Irigaray Answers
As such, desire and yearning for interconnections with others lie at the
heart of Deleuzes vision of subjectivity.
This ontological vision of the primacy of desire, however, is expressed also as a critique of the psychoanalytic reduction
of desire to (hetero) sexuality and of both to (preferably reproductive) genital activity . On this point the authors
of the Anti-Oedipus are quite ruthless: they nomadize desire because they want to free it from the normative cage
within which
capacity for encounters and interrelation.

(card continues)

Irigaray Answers

AT: LINK OF OMISSION/HIERARCHY OF OPPRESSION

(card continues)

psychoanalysis has enclosed it. Thus, a nomadic or Deleuzian Spinozist approach stresses that the affectivity (conatus) is indeed the
heart of the subject, but that it is equally the case that this desire is not internalized, but external. It happens in the encounter between different embodied
and embedded subjects who are joined in the sameness of the forces that propel them. Intensive, affective, external resonances make desire into a force
that propels forward, but also always remains in front of us, as a dynamic, shifting horizon of multiple other encounters, of territorial- and bordercrossings
of all kinds.

the idea of desire as lack reflects the specific

historicity and the socio-economic conditions of a moment of capitalist domination. It is historically
located and consequently dated. The 19th-century phase of capitalist appropriation through binary
opposition having been replaced with the informatics of domination (Haraway, 1990) and boundary-free
flows of capital, a different notion of desire is being enacted today . Deleuze and Guattari want to think
and act within the boundaries of the here and now and try both to reflect the new historical
conditions and to subvert them by disengaging desire from capitalist accumulation . Resting on Nietzsche
and Spinoza, Deleuze proclaims a notion of desire that no longer rests on the dualistically split subject of
modernity, but rather on the intensive entity that is activated by eternal returns, constant becomings and
flows of transformations in response to external promptings, that is to say sets of encounters with
multiple others.
In their appeal to a more positive theory of desire, Deleuze and Guattari argue that

Mutant Ninja Barbies: Lesbian Feminist Deleuzians

Feminist theorists have been most receptive to Deleuzes notion of desire and to his critique of psychoanalysis. For instance, in her vehement rejection of
sexual difference, Wittig was among the first to call upon Deleuze to defend her politico-epistemological hypothesis of a multiple, lesbian, non- Phallic
sexuality. In this perspective, Deleuze and Guattaris notion of polysexuality is taken as an apology not only for gay and lesbian politics, but also for the
seemingly anti-psychoanalytic hypothesis of there being as many sexes as there are individuals.
In her most Deleuzian text, though it singularly lacks all reference to
Deleuzes work, Wittig (1982: 111) reiterates her rejection of anything specifically feminine, dismissing it as biologically deterministic and naturalistic.
Wittig proposes instead Deleuzes category of minoritarian subject. As we know by now, in order to gain access to this minoritarian position, one has to be
a member of a minority, but that alone does not suffice. For instance, a writer like Djuna Barnes is literarily and politically subversive in that, starting from
her lesbian existence, she formulates views of general value for all, non-lesbians included. This kind of consciousness is what Wittig wants to defend,
against the emphasis on and over-investment of the
feminine proposed by the sexual difference theorists.
It seems to me that, although she quotes extensively Deleuzes defence of polysexuality and multiple sexualities, Wittigs line of argumentation is deeply
alien to the insights of post-structuralism. What makes it alien is her relationship to language, figurations, affectivity and the unconscious. Judith Butler
points out, quite rightly in my opinion, that Deleuzes post- Lacanian reading of the subject as a libidinal entity, situates desire not only as a positive force,
but also as the point of vanishing of the wilful conscious self. This is the main reason why Butler disagrees with Deleuze. Butler differs radically, however,
from Wittigs pre-psychoanalytic definition of sexuality as self-determined articulations of the individual subject (Butler, 1990: 167), and of desire as the
ideological transcription of social codes. Wittig is a humanist who is still caught in the metaphysics of substance. In being so simplistic about the locus of
social power and so relentlessly dismissive of women as female sex, Wittig ends up with a paradoxically idealist notion of both women, or the female
sex, and of sexed identities.
The legacy of Wittigs flirt with a thousand little sexes, or the intersection of a trans-sexual imaginary with Deleuzes theory of desire, proved to be quite a
success. It also spelled the end of interest in heterosexuality as a possible field of transformation or becoming. Classified and filed under the somewhat
hasty label of hetero-normativity, the idea of heterosexual desire declined within feminist theory, in favour of either polysexual becomings or different
variations around the theme of homosexual or queer desire. Irigarays growing dogmatism on this issue did not help to foster a climate of productive
dialogue among the different constituencies. The result has been a paradoxical marginalization, in feminist theory, of that very sexual preference which
constitutes the majority for the vast majority of women. A re-essentialization of heterosexuality has been one of the worst effects of this new division of
labour. Which explains why I never tire of asking the de-bunking question: Thats all very well, but whatever happened to sexual difference understood as
the dissymmetrical power relations between the sexed subjects?

more
creative border-crossings. For instance, Elizabeth Grosz attempts to combine the empowering aspects of
psychoanalytically inspired sexual difference theory (Irigaray) with an interest in lesbian desire as a brand
of nomadology or becoming-minoritarian of women . A sensualist thinker with a great deal of interest in sexuality, Grosz
emphasizes the Deleuzian vision of subjectivity as multiplicity, poly-centredness, collectivity,
dynamism and transformation, one that is disengaged from the dialectics of hierarchical ordering and
negation. Grosz reads heterosexuality as a compulsory and dominant instance of power as well as
forces like misogyny and homophobia in terms of molar or majority formations that deny,
diminish and humiliate a bodys potential to express its intensity, or level and degree of desire. Grosz points
to gay and lesbian sexualities as expressions of becoming-minoritarian, which show great promise for
the project of dislocating humanistic subjects. What matters is how one lives and renders ones
straightness as queer, ones lesbianism as queer. It is the processual becoming that matters here.
This question has also been asked in other quarters, where the dialogue between Deleuze, Irigaray and feminism has produced, in my opinion,

Irigaray Answers

Irigaray Answers

AT: LINK OF OMISSION/HIERARCHY OF OPPRESSION

THEIR

LINK OF OMISSION ARGUMENTS SHOULD BE REJECTED IN FAVOR OF THE PERMUTATION

BECAUSE THEY CREATE HIERARCHIES OF OPPRESSIONEVEN IF THEIR THEORETICAL
MODEL IS CORRECT, YOU SHOULD REJECT IT IN FAVOR OF THE PERMUTATION SO AS TO
CREATE POLITICAL CHANGE THAT CAN SOLVE

MCDONALD & COLEMAN, 1999, CO-FOUNDERS OF UMBRELLA EQUALITY SERVICES & SENIOR
SOCIAL WORK LECTURER [PETER & MIKKI,
DECONSTRUCTING HIERARCHIES OF
OPPRESSION AND ADOPTING A 'MULTIPLE MODEL' APPROACH TO ANTI-OPPRESSIVE PRACTICE,
SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION 18.1, INFORMA, 24-26]
A hierarchy of oppressive experiences

The competition between the members of oppressed groups for what they might perceive as a strictly limited supply of
essential resources has some particularly unpleasant and dangerous side-effects . Groups which have suffered long
histories of oppression can in turn use whatever power or influence they may have to discriminate against members
of other oppressed social groups, believing their own concerns to be most important . Alternatively, people who
have been oppressed might, consciously or unconsciously, absorb the values and beliefs of their
oppressors. This may lead to 'internalised oppression', whereby members of oppressed groups may come to
believe that the stereotypes , misinformation or propaganda being spread about their group are true (or partly true),
so that they may develop low self-esteem, or they may behave in ways that are essentially consistent with their social stereotypes. Members of
oppressed groups might even compete with other oppressed groups over which of them is most
oppressed and which of them is least oppressed, creating yet another hierarchy while fighting for the moral high ground. Members of one oppressed
group may have attitudes or behave in ways which oppress members of other groups:

When you're on the bottom of a pile of oppressed peoples, a community will look for a scapegoat,
usually a minority to oppress; this somehow makes the oppressed feel better, boosting the ego . That community will also
join with other communities to oppress with more force. This will cross race, gender, class and ability .
...

Black will join with white, able-bodied with disabled, men with women to oppress those who they feel are different or feel threatened by. (Quartey, 1994)
Lorde cites Freire's The Pedagogy of the Oppressed on this theme:
... the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors' tactics, the oppressors' relationships ... (Lorde, 1984, p. 123)

Hierarchies of oppression therefore have many negative effects. They encourage the notion that it is both
possible and desirable to create hierarchies of humanity, and to measure human beings accordingly.
These hierarchies are ultimately inconsistent, creating social divisions and stimulating social conflict between
oppressed groups. It is time that the acceptability of all notions of social hierarchy is challenged and rejected, to be replaced by a
'multiple model' of oppression.
Towards adopting a multiple model approach to anti-oppressive practice

'hierarchies of oppression' and established that any credence given to their acceptability can
only be a destructive force, it follows therefore that their inverse, 'hierarchies of oppressive experiences', i.e. 'my
oppression is worse/more important than your oppression', can only be similarly counter-productive to
anti-oppressive practices and goals, and that therefore:
... there should be no perceived hierarchy of oppressive experiences but a recognition of the cumulative effect of racism,
sexism and disablist practices ... (Stuart, 1992).
as
different forms of oppression are not lived out separately or in a hierarchical structure . (Begum, 1994, pp. 17Having deconstructed

18)
Richie suggests that giving

credence to a 'hierarchy of oppressions' can only 'lead people to dangerous places'

(Richie, 1996a). If it can be argued that all forms of oppression are dehumanising and therefore unacceptable, it then
becomes as meaningless to speculate who is either more oppressed or less oppressed , as it would be to give
consideration to concepts of being 'a bit pregnant' or 'very dead'. Any speculation of 'how much?', in relation to another individual or group,
9

Irigaray Answers
becomes a fatuous notion in all instances . People are either pregnant or not, dead or not dead, oppressed or not oppressed, and it is
oppression itself in all its forms that must be challenged.
Thus, ultimately,

any theoretical framework which reifies the acceptability of a hierarchy , whereby one

form of
(card continues)

10

Irigaray Answers

AT: LINK OF OMISSION/HIERARCHY OF OPPRESSION

(card continues)

oppression is deemed more acceptable, or less unacceptable, than another form , can be said to collude
with supremacist thinking which seeks to rationalise dominance and marginalisation of one
oppressed group in relation to another. While Stuart suggests that 'a narrowly simplistic focus of single-issue
oppressions is dangerous in ignoring vital contributory factors' (1992), it nevertheless remains necessary first to
understand different forms of oppression:
In order to understand how different oppressions are mediated and explore the nature of simultaneous
oppression, it is necessary to examine the individual components which interconnect to create the
reality of (black disabled) people's lives (although) this division is an artificial one, and appears to be
contradictory. (Begum, 1994, p. 19)
Being black and female, for instance, does not equate to being white and female. Both experiences (being black and being female)
warrant understanding in their own right for at least two reasons : firstly, in order to engage meaningfully with
issues of difference that impact powerfully on individuals within these particular groups , as asserted by Lorde,
a Black American lesbian feminist:
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our
children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying. (Lorde, 1984, p. 119)

Certainly there are very real differences between us ... But it is not those differences between us that
are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences ... Too often we pour the energy needed for
recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in
voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using
human difference as a springboard for creative change within our lives. (p. 115)
Secondly, different forms of oppression need to be understood as component parts of a whole system
of domination. What is important is that enquiry does not end at single-issue understanding, but instead
progresses to 'radically reform our intervention paradigm', to 'analyse experience in a way that looks at
the interaction of oppressions' (Richie, 1996a). Begum similarly asserts:
Those of us who experience multiple oppression cannot compartmentalise our experiences into neat discrete categories. In reality most people are
conscious of different aspects of their identity and experiences at different points in their lives. People's awareness and concern around particular issues
can change according to the circumstances and situations they are confronted with.
and
simply counting the different types of oppression will not tell us anything. Notions of 'double disadvantage' or 'triple jeopardy' do nothing to facilitate
understanding of multiple and simultaneous oppression. (Begum, 1994, pp. 17-18)

What then impedes an en-masse march forward of theorists into a unified future? It is arguable that what is
needed is a coherent theoretical 'multiple oppression model'. It is the authors' contention, however, that it is rather resistance to adopting a
multiple model that prevents progress. Such a model is already available in essence, to be found among the combined works of Freire
(1996), Derman-Sparks (1994), hooks (1981), Lorde (1984), Stuart (1992), McDonald (1994), Keating (1996) and Richie (1996a, b, c). Black disability
writers such as those featured in Reflections: Views of Black Disabled People on their Lives and Community Care, published by CCETSW in 1994,
among others, have blazed a trail in 'multiple model' thinking for several years. The lack of recognition given to these ideas is arguably symptomatic of the
marginalisation of black disabled people in western culture. In extracting such a model, key concepts can be identified.
Multiple identities

The model is rooted in the notion that human beings are not mono-dimensional entities. We all have
'multiple identities' in that not only are we black or white, but simultaneously also male or female,
disabled or non-disabled, lesbian/gay or heterosexual etc. (Derman-Sparks, 1994). Each of us is thus
potentially both oppressor and oppressed, in that we may have both attributes that carry power and privilege, as well as attributes
which render us oppressed.

11

Irigaray Answers

PERMUTATIONMUST HISTORICIZE SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

THE

CRITIQUES APPROACH TO SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IS TOTALIZINGONLY BY HISTORICIZING

THE ARTICULATION OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AMONG OTHER VECTORS OF DOMINATION
SUCH AS RACE AND CLASS CAN WE PRECLUDE THE CRITIQUE FROM BECOMING
ESSENTIALIST

WINNUBST, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT SOUTHWESTERN, 1999 [SHANNON,

EXCEEDING HEGEL AND LACAN: DIFFERENT FIELDS OF PLEASURE WITHIN FOUCAULT AND
IRIGARAY, HYPATIA 14.1, MUSE]
Simultaneously, bringing Foucault's rich sense of historical discourse, genealogical change, and discursive
power into contact with Irigaray's analysis of the phallogocentric economy of the Same might further historicize
Irigaray's sense of sexual difference. That is, it might bring Irigaray's insistence on sexual [End Page 29] difference as
the primary axis of subjectivity into a historical field where other differences affect how sexual
difference gets articulated. For example, the roles of racism, of economics, of nationality, of ethnicity,
of various historical discourses might begin, through a Foucauldian interpolation, to articulate sexual
difference as it changes across different symbolic registers. In so doing, it might further dispel the
insidious possibility of Irigaray's reinscribing the economy of the Same in her articulations of sexual
difference.
Casting this in terms of contemporary debates within poststructuralist feminism, bringing Foucault and Irigaray together
dismantles, yet again, the essentialist/constructionist frame . 37 Subsequently, this hybrid of Foucault and Irigaray might
begin to unleash some styles of thinking that are not bound to either essentialist or social constructionist models of subjectivity. For example, in
merging Irigaray's recuperation of the sexuate body, of materiality as sexed morphology, with
Foucault's diagnoses of the dynamics of power, we might begin to articulate bodies that are
simultaneously materially and socially constructed without placing those vectors into a suspiciously
competitive ontological hierarchy. That is, we might begin to articulate bodies that are different both
materially (e.g., as sexed, as raced) and historically (e.g., as gendered, as classed, as ethnic, as national,
as temporal): we might begin to articulate these differences simultaneously, rather than
oppositionally.
In engaging Foucault and Irigaray, we may thus learn how to articulate bodies that are both historicized and sexed in their subjective differences. We
may learn how to articulate differences across their multiplicities of historical and sexed embodiments,
exceeding the reign of phallic, oppositional difference. Foucault and Irigaray play within similar
discursive fields; however, they accentuate different dynamics within these matrices. Learning to
invoke, rather than to silence, these differences may give us richer tools with which to approach
and articulate the differences within our different lives.

12

Irigaray Answers

PERMUTATIONPLASTICITY
THE

PERMUTATION ALLOWS YOU TO READ THE AFFIRMATIVE AND NEGATIVE TEXTS AS PLASTIC
AND MUTABLETHIS OVERCOMES THE POTENTIAL TO ESSENTIALIZE SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
AND ERASE OTHER VECTORS OF OPPRESSION

JAARSMA, DOCTORAL STUDENT IN THE PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE PROGRAM AT PURDUE, 2003
[ADA S., IRIGARAY'S TO BE TWO: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PLASTICITY OF
INCARNATION, HYPATIA 18.1, MUSE]
How do we read Irigaray's words, which themselves invoke a continual process of relationality and becoming? As Margaret Whitford has written, " The
important thing is to engage with Irigaray in order to go beyond her" (1991, 6).How we understand this "going beyond"
might allow us to respond to critics such as Ellen Armour, whose insightful reading of Irigaray forces us to acknowledge the stakes
involved with proclaiming sexual difference as the central problem of philosophy. Armour writes, "If one thinks
that only men are likely to confuse neutrality with sameness, then one might not view this leaning as
problematic. If, however, one remembers that feminism has shown itself to be as vulnerable to an
economy of sameness as any other aspect of western culture, one is disturbed by this slippage" (1999, 107).
Armour goes on to point out the erasure of race from sexual difference in Irigaray's writings, referring
for example to the fact that "all women are not legitimate objects of exchange to all men" (1999, 128). She
concludes, then, that the "power of her [Irigaray's] insistence that women resist the form of oppression that most
affects them is undercut by her own failure to attend to any salient difference in oppression " (1999,
133). According to this critique , the analysis of sexual difference can become complicit with the
problem of evil, enacting blindnesses toward other systemic forms of oppression that it excludes
as equally fundamental. However, responding to a similar critique by Judith Butler in a published conversation between Butler and Rosi
Braidotti, Braidotti argues, "You must not confuse the diagnostic function of sexual difference with its strategic or programmatic aims" (1994, 39).
Braidotti urges us to understand "sexual difference" as a critically rigorous project that starts with "the political will to assert the specificity of the lived,

we can perhaps turn back to Malabou's

strategy of reading in order to think through the need to both take up Irigaray's project, and in turn,
discern its own limitations.
Describing the histological property of plasticity as regenerative and healing, Malabou opens up the
possibility that reading plastically reconstitutes a text on the basis of its very defect (2000, 139). According
to Malabou, this regeneration carries a text beyond its deconstruction to a new configuration . [End Page
female bodily experience" (1994, 40). In responding to both Armour and Braidotti's concerns,

59] Through Braidotti's reading of sexual difference as diagnostic, a plastic reading will take up Irigaray's philosophy as a critical theory for rereading and
reconfiguring the Western tradition. Following Armour, we will need to apply this regenerative strategy back to the Irigarayan text itself, identifying the
limits of Irigaray's texts for theorizing race in relation to sexual difference. Armour's critique points to the need for the Irigarayan texts themselves to be
healed through careful and critical readings.

13