Engaging the World

Thinking after Irigaray

Edited by Mary C. Rawlinson

Subjects: Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy, Women's Studies, Queer Studies, Gender Studies
Series: SUNY series in Gender Theory
Paperback : 9781438460284, 314 pages, January 2017
Hardcover : 9781438460277, 314 pages, May 2016

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Mary C. Rawlinson
I. TIME, SPACE, AND THE UNIVERSAL
In Search for the Mother Through the Looking Glass: On Time, Origins, and Beginnings in Plato and Irigaray
Fanny Söderbäck

Place, Interval: Irigaray and Ronell
Rebecca Hill

Further Speculations: Time and Difference in Speculum de l’autre femme
Anne van Leeuwen

Game Change: Philosophy after Irigaray
Mary C. Rawlinson
II. LANGUAGE, ART, AND WRITING
Irigaray and Kristeva on Anguish in Art
Elaine P. Miller

A Love Letter from Beyond the Grave: Irigaray, Nothingness and La femme n’existe pas
Claire Potter

Wonder and Écriture: Descartes and Irigaray, Writing at Intervals
Perry Zurn

Creating Inter-Sexuate Inter-Subjectivity in the Classroom? Luce Irigaray’s Linguistic Research in Its Latest Iteration
Gail Schwab
III. SCIENCE, CULTURE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Irigaray and Darwin on Sexual Difference: Some Reflections
Elizabeth Grosz

What Kind of Science? Reading Irigaray with Stengers
Margherita Long

Toward a Feminist Epistemology of Sound: Refiguring Waves in Audio-Technical Discourse
Tara Rodgers

Luce Irigaray and Anthropological Thought
Mary Beth Mader
IV. PSYCHOANALYSIS IN PRACTICE
Desire at the Threshold: “Vulvar Logic” and Intimacy between Two
Cheryl Lynch Lawler

Gendering Drives: Amae, Philotes, and the Forgotten Mystery of Female Ancestry
Britt-Marie Schiller

Psychoanalysis and Yoga: The Feminine and the Unconscious between East and West
Sara Beardsworth

List of Contributors
Index

Offers essays demonstrating the critical relevance of Irigaray’s thought of sexual difference for addressing contemporary ethical and social issues.

Description

Engaging the World explores Luce Irigaray's writings on sexual difference, deploying the resources of her work to rethink philosophical concepts and commitments and expose new possibilities of vitality in relationship to nature, others, and to one's self. The contributors present a range of perspectives from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, literature, education, evolutionary theory, sound technology, science and technology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. They place Irigaray in conversation with thinkers as diverse as Charles Darwin, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gilles Deleuze, René Decartes, and Avital Ronell. While every essay challenges Irigaray's thought in some way, each one also reveals the transformative effects of her thought across multiple domains of contemporary life.

Mary C. Rawlinson is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. She is the coeditor (with Ellen K. Feder and Emily Zakin) of Derrida and Feminism: Recasting the Question of Woman and (with Sabrina L. Hom and Serene J. Khader) of Thinking with Irigaray, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"The scholars' engagement with Irigaray's work, as described in this book, is a testament to her importance today, and in illustrating the continuing impact of Irigaray's work, this book makes a significant contribution to scholarship in contemporary feminist philosophy. " — hypatia