Placental Economy: Octavia Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Speculative Subjectivity

Bollinger, Laurel

doi:10.1080/10436920701708044

Cited by 18 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…4 Irigaray's first and second phases articulate a de(con)struction of a universal Western way of life and thought and the advent of another, a speculative trope of imagined possibility for the subjectivity of others outside the One. In this specular move, her interests align with people proposing the existence and flourishing of humans and more than humans outside the house of White supremacy (Bollinger 2007). 5 For example, Immanuel Kant associates the concentration of visual hue with nonbeing (Jackson 2018, 626).…”

Section: Creolization and Sexual Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Creolizing Place, Origin, and Difference: The Opaque Waters between Glissant and Irigaray

Kim

2022

Hypatia

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This article brings Édouard Glissant's theory of creolization into critical conversation with Luce Irigaray's sexuate difference theory and suggests creolization as a process capable of reconfiguring place and origin. Such a creolized conception, the article suggests, fissures narratives of legitimacy, possession, and lawful order, pseudo-claims utilized to dismiss antiracist protests. The article traces Irigaray's critique of woman as place and origin with her conception of the interval. It examines how Glissant's analysis of the womb-abyss clarifies and strategically obscures racialization as an ongoing lacuna in Western thought. By deploying a rhizomatic network of relayed traces, the essay examines Glissantian notions of chaos, trembling, and detour to articulate sociopolitical movements that reveal and undermine the sexual economy of the neo-Plantation. Both thinkers, the author suggests, bring together place, origin, and movement to construct two radically different but strategically valuable theories that have yet to be put in a sustained, critical conversation. By positioning each theorist within their own framework, discourse, and socio-ethical concerns, the author offers ways that creolization and sexuate difference theory clarify issues contemporary American feminism tends to gesture toward as “intersectional” issues of gender, sex, and race.

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Section: Creolization and Sexual Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Creolizing Place, Origin, and Difference: The Opaque Waters between Glissant and Irigaray

Kim

2022

Hypatia

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“…Feminist scholars have drawn on Irigaray's exploration of the placental economy with Rouch to suggest the placenta is a metaphor for imagining and articulating an alternative model for self-other relations (see Bollinger, 2007). However, an alternative reading of Irigaray's dialogue with Rouch would emphasise that Irigaray is not solely interested in the metaphorical function of the placental economy.…”

Section: Placental Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Placental relations

Fannin

2014

Feminist Theory

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The placenta's role as a mediating passage between bodies has been a conceptual resource for feminist theorists and philosophers interested in developing more nuanced explanations of the maternal-fetal relation, a relation that has tended to be identified with maternal and fetal bodies rather than with the placenta between them. I draw on efforts by philosopher Luce Irigaray and her readers to theorise placental relations as a model for the negotiation of differences. In her more recent work, Irigaray figures the placenta as an enveloping space of metaphorical enclosure. The placental relation in Irigaray's work thus offers insights into the temporal structure of her theory of becoming and can inform a more 'materialist' account of pregnancy. I then consider how placental relations are conceptual resources for re-imagining relations of self-other in pregnancy, and for addressing emergent ethical concerns over the transformation of the placenta into a scientific object.

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Blood Ties and the Immunitary Bioeconomy

Brown

2018

Immunitary Life

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Placental Economy: Octavia Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Speculative Subjectivity

Cited by 18 publications

References 4 publications

Creolizing Place, Origin, and Difference: The Opaque Waters between Glissant and Irigaray

Creolizing Place, Origin, and Difference: The Opaque Waters between Glissant and Irigaray

Placental relations

Blood Ties and the Immunitary Bioeconomy

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