A Politics of Impossible Difference

WONDER BETWEEN TWO: AN IRIGARAYAN READING OF GENESIS 2:231

“…In achieving equality, Irigaray suggests, women merely exchange their role as not-men (which is how they have historically been defined) for that of like-men. 31 As she has rather famously put it: "To demand equality as women is, it seems to me, a 32 Rather than accepting the limited goal of equality, Irigaray argues for the necessity of establishing a culture of difference in which women achieve subjectivity and in which they are no longer merely the space, container, background, or screen against which man distinguishes himself and establishes his own identity. Indeed, Irigaray's account of wonder, as it has been outlined, confirms this view that woman and man must each be defined in terms of their respective becoming-and each must be free to become.…”

Donna Haraway's Cyborg Touching (Up/On) Luce Irigaray's Ethics and the Interval Between: Poethics as Embodied Writing

“…Critics struggle to make sense of this duality. Deutscher suggests that generally, the first stage of Irigaray's career is considered to be focused on “an ideal of being submerged in the other in a loss of boundaries between us” (Deutscher 2002, 81), whereas the second stage on the ethics of mediation stresses distance. However, Deutscher points out that a careful reading of Irigaray's earlier work reveals the presence of this “politics of mediation” as well, especially in terms of the mother/daughter relationship.…”

“… 6. Irigaray's concept of “the interval between ” is sometimes refered to just as “ between ” by some critics (for example, Whitford 1991, 163), while others render it merely as “the interval” (for example, Penelope Deutscher, cites Pheng Cheah, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Dorothea Olkowski as theorists who engage in the latter practice (Deutscher 2002, 74, 177, 120)). …”

“…An Ethics of Sexual Difference is the key to reading Irigaray's oeuvre , and most of her critics concur, although they differ in terms of how it functions. Gail Schwab indicates (Schwab 2007, 30‐31) that she (Schwab 1991), Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell (Cheah and Grosz 1998) and Carolyn Burke (Burke 1994) all situate the break in the direction of Irigaray's work at the moment when the Ethics was published in 1993 Elaine Miller and Maria Cimitile see it more as a turning point, or “bridge” (Miller and Cimitile 2007, 2) between two parts of her work, whereas Morny Joy (2006) and Deutscher (Deutscher 2002, 74), who references Irigaray's interview with Elizabeth Hirsh and Gary Olson (1995), both claim that while Irigaray indicates there is no break between the earlier and later texts, her work could be divided into three phases, the third of which begins with Ethics . My argument supports considering the Ethics in terms of a “bridge.”…”

“… 9. In fact, in “The Future of Sexual Difference” (2002), Penelope Deutscher cites Cheung's argument that after Ethics , “Irigaray's idea of sexual difference changes dramatically, and it is formulated as a generative interval that exists between the two sexes” (Deutscher 2002, 74), such that “sexual difference” becomes one more figure to represent the “interval between.” …”