Irigaray

The work of French Philosopher Luce Irigaray has exerted a profound influence on feminist thinking of recent decades and provides a far–reaching challenge to western philosophy´s entrenched patriarchal norms. This book guides the reader through Irigaray´s critical and creative transformation of western thought. Through detailed analysis of her most important text, Speculum of the Other Woman, Rachel Jones carefully examines Irigaray´s transformative readings of such icons of the western tradition as Plato, Descartes, Kant and Hegel. She shows that these readings underpin Irigaray´s claim that western philosophy has been dependent on the forgetting of both sexual difference and of our singular beginnings in birth. In response, Irigaray seeks to recover a positive account of sexual difference which would release woman from her traditional position as the ´other´ of the subject and allow her to speak as a subject in her own right.