In the Beginning, She Was

by Luce Irigaray

In this new book, crucial for understanding her journey, Luce Irigaray goes further than in Speculum and questions the work of the Pre-Socratics at the root of our culture. Reminding us of the story of Ulysses and Antigone, she demonstrates how, from the beginning, Western tradition represents an exile for humanity. Indeed, to emerge from the maternal origin, man elaborated a discourse of mastery and constructed a world of his own that grew away from life and prevented perceiving the real as it is. To recover our natural belonging and learn how to cultivate it humanly is imperative and needs turning back before the golden age of Greek culture. Another language is, then, to discover, capable of expressing living energy and transforming our instincts into shareable desires.

In the Beginning, She Was reworks themes that are central to Irigaray's the limits of Western logic, the sexuation of discourse, the existence of two different subjects, the necessity of art as mediation towards another culture. These themes are approached with a new level of maturity that reconfirms the place of Irigaray as one of the world's most important contemporary thinkers.

Genres: Philosophy, Feminism

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2012

About the author

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One. Presently, she is active in the Women's Movements in both France and Italy.

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

fan de como se pasea a Lacan y al psicoanálisis (en relación a Antigona) sin nombrar a Lacan jajaja
Un análisis interesante que a veces queda corto y repetitivo, pero que me gustó mucho.
Próximo paso: leer a Butler leyendo a Antigona.

[samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

feels liek kristeva does it first, keller does it better
• Introduction: The ecstasy of the between-us
o Necessary to return to Presocratics to understand something about the between-us today.
o Entrance to such a world takes place through a guide, a master
o The forgetting of her
 In the beginning it is she—nature, woman, goddess—who inspires a sage with the truth
 Generally the master conceals what he received from her, thanks to which, thanks to whom, he has elaborated his discourse
 He does not say very much about such a source because he lacks words or because he wants to keep it to himself. Cannot or will not talk about his relationship with her.
 This relation thus remains hidden or removed with respect to the teaching of the Presocratic master
 Masters allude to her, refer to something other than their discourse, a beyond for which they have no words, and above all no logic.
 A memory still exists of an unsaid. Magic, ecstasy, growth and poetry mingle
 She (Goddess) vanishes in a culture based on sameness, beyond which she extends, and to which the nostalgia of certain masters towards a beyond still bears witness. They allude to an ‘emptiness’ a ‘hole’ at best a “Being”
 She doubly vanishes. In order to definitively close the logos upon itself, in order for the logos to speak with itself, the traces of a relation with her are said in the neuter.
o A between-us on hold in the beyond
 After nature or Goddess have vanished into the neuter, the place is opened for the substitution of them by a God, a God in the masculine
 The house of language has become a kind of tomb to which it is necessary to give back a semblance of life. The closure of the logos, of the world, calls for contraries, oppositions, conflicts.
 pedagogical feint
 A God, thus, who is not only the Other – with a capital letter – who allows me to become absolutely the same as myself, because he stays beyond every present, every imperfect resemblance to myself.
 The God, who occupied the ecstasy left empty by the Presocratic master, has all the predicates appropriate to the suspension of the relation with her – or Her.
 This between-two takes place in the opening of the difference between the one and the other, but it is in no way proper to the one or to the other – it arises from the two.
o The closure of the same
 TLDR A certain God has thus enclosed within sameness what formerly corresponded to the ecstasy of a relation to the other.
 He retained through the immutability of his eternal self-sufficiency the frail, impermanent, inconstant existence of the relation between us
 And man has tried to seize and keep something of it (our relation) by submitting it to an alleged neutral sameness
 Our culture is based on a sharing of the same between those who have become same.
 There must no longer be master or slave, rich or poor, white or black, and finally no longer man or woman.
 Within such a world, the intervals between things and between persons are already planned and subjected to calculation. There is no longer any between-us that is free, available, still silent, still alive. The subjects move on the chessboard of a closed whole.
 The closure of the world and of individuals upon themselves is due to a fear of the opening, of that which remains without limits, boundless, and is assimilated to emptiness or chaos.
 Man, in fact, meets with an obstacle in his becoming: he is not capable of living completeness in an open horizon. The culture that he has elaborated thanks to the logos, thanks to a language obeying a certain logic, seeks to construct a closed world at his disposal: to shelter himself, to communicate with those who are the same as himself, to act as a basis or an instrument so that he can continue building a world of his own starting from pre-existing or living being(s).
o How to escape opening
 In order to control the opening, man will thus take the apeiron into his logical economy, in particular through trying to master the negative by coupling the opposites, which in part will occupy the place of the relation between him and her.
 Rather than opening it to a becoming that he is not capable of entirely bringing under control, man subjects his being to the rule of the logos
 The relation between living beings no longer exists, except within a same logic which is cut off from the living world.
 The opposition between Being and not-Being thus gets substituted for the difference between being and becoming
 necessarily still to simulate a becoming, otherwise death becomes too apparent. Likewise it is necessary to simulate difference(s)
• Accomplished (the simulation) through coupling of opposites
• Coupling of opposites hinders cultivation of the between-us
o Love hate
o Near distant
o A world both open and closed
 Encounter with other as other. The other is the one that can hold open the closure of the world, while providing it with limits. The other close to me but different from myself
 We are never completely appropriate to each other. Our worlds remain both open and closed
• Open bc the other, in their difference, remains inaccessible to me, represents a beyond in relation to my I, to me, to mine, a beyond here present beside or in front of me
• Closed bc through the respect for the inaccessibility, for the transcendence of the other, I subject myself and my own world to the negative in order to preserve the duality of the subjects and of the worlds in presence. There are limits.
o the negative undoes the one, the One, and restores the two.
o It also preserves the place of the ecstatic interval between the one and the other, a place which belongs neither to the one nor the other
 Ecstasy becomes a process in which each is safeguarded as the one who they are. Desire is preserved because neither of the two can appropriate the other
 In order for the between-two to subsist, transcendence must be kept between the two
o The human being as a being in relation
 The philosopher must henceforth put the accent on the subject as a being in relation.
 We must especially wonder whether technique – of which the logos is one of the first expressions – leads our humanity to its achievement or to its destruction
• 2. When Life still Was
o The impossible mastery of natural growth
 When feminine divinities even imperceptibly govern discourse, becoming still exists.
 Later life is put aside, death supplants it. With death, the grid of opposites becomes possible. Poetic language saying the plurality of the living is lost.
 Abandoning the mystery of life – never utterable by anyone, evoked only by the poet – grants power to the logician,
 A common meaning begins to predominate. And whoever fails to perceive it will be described as sleeping, as mad; which does not rule out that this very one in fact remains in contact with life.
 In the beginning, to perceive and to think are the same. And what man thinks is not dissociated from what is around him.
o Enveloped within his own language
 What is at stake, for man, is reconstituting a closed universe.
 This forgetting corresponds to a certain sleep.
o A world from which women, mystery, wonder withdraw
 The exchange between her and him would have better unveiled what the truth really is. But the master says nothing about that. Apparently, they never speak together. He listens to the message that she transmits to him, and he speaks to his disciple who must listen to him. They are never two listening to one another and speaking to one another with respect for their differences. And what was a difference of gender between her and him merges into a difference of generation when he becomes the master of the word. Gender then changes meaning: the negation at work in the alterity between her and him is concealed by the genealogical ascendance of/and the teaching of the master.
 The master forgets the relation of thought to love.
 In the mystery there still exists a flesh that cannot express itself in a distinct and reasoned way. Gestures, songs, poems try to approach it, suggest its existence, even give rise to its presence. It is sensed, perceived, sometimes indirectly exalted. But nothing about it can be said in the form of a ‘it is this’ or ‘it is that.’ Rather it is ceaselessly necessary to repeat: ‘it is not this,’ or ‘it is not that.’ Until one stops at an irreducible: ‘it is,’
o A logical dualism supplants a natural duality
 Mystery becomes ambiguity. It is no longer flesh but an effect of language
 Confrontation is displaced from the ability to handle weapons to that of handling words, sentences.
 Man constructs a new dwelling with language. But who will inhabit it? Have the flesh, the soul not disappeared in the construction: used in order to build and, then, forgotten in this new mode of existing? From which heart and breath withdraw. And, more generally, what lives and grows.
 Speech no longer expresses presence in the present. It repeats what he perceived and rendered into words of a past event, transmitted as teaching – by him, of him.
 Only her presence would give back life and truth to the saying, and not an infinite-indefinite substitution by common words, inspired by her flesh but forgetful of her.
• 3. A being created without regard for his being born
o Engendered by two who are different, he confronts opposites
 In this place, a void, a hole – for some, Being. A Being that the master appropriates in order to elaborate his logic.
 Speech wanders progressively away from the real in order to say the non-born, the true from time immemorial, being – or Being.
o The alternation between the limit and the unlimited
o Multiple, she is also one
 Her, he can neither seize nor grasp. He cannot transform her into a thing, or into a word. Too multiple, mobile, fluid, she escapes his control, exceeds his categories. And, when he believes he has reached her, penetrated her, she is no longer there, nothing anymore – vanished, elsewhere, otherwise.

[Heather]

brilliant

Not for Irigaray novices, but if you're familiar with her work in general you will love this. She definitely goes farther into the Goddess as a necessary force in female self-affection. She also elaborates and clarifies her earlier views on Antigone. Overall difficult but enjoyable.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Irigaray, by considering the processes that people go through in both historical, evolutionary and linguistic terms, I can say that he has taken a tomography of the patriarchal mentality that dominates the world today. I should also mention that it is a great pleasure to read Irigaray. I have the chance to visit your books from time to time and gather what I understand from what I have read thanks to its complementary nature of knowledge. Dec.Dec. This works very well, especially in the psycho-philosophical sense.

Irigaray is one of the thinkers who clearly states that there is a definite dominance of masculine language over social thought in the current world order. He also considered the book in the light of this determination and revealed the parallelism between the development and change processes of man and the phenomenon of language, which is Deciphered according to the dominant discourse. Of course, when Irigaray writes this, you are inevitably immersed in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Irigaray, both in his general views and in his efforts in this book, has struggled to open the way for a feminine discourse in order to eliminate the masculine language, which also manifests itself in the scientific and psycho-philosophical fields by overflowing from the social field. In fact, although he is called a cultural theorist in the field of feminine language, what he has done is to free people from the perception of *men*. It's not feminizing*. I think this is the point that patriarchal cultural theorists cannot read. If I return to the book, our author was able to read the negations of the masculine language and revealed the masculine language that postpones birth. Because the phenomenon of birth is a feminine issue in itself and has not been much cared for by this masculine discourse, death has been blessed instead. Based on the readings of the ancient Greek period, he has revealed this in the areas where modern western civilization is rising. In this book, Irigaray has examined how the patriarchal thought that blesses death by alienating birth to a person, makes him think about death, focuses on death, spreads to all other social issues based on this topic. Starting his psychoanalytic studies from this point on, the famous example ‘every living person will taste death one day.’ as in his word, he has revealed more what is not said than what is said, what is pushed into the subconscious. Irigaray states that in such words, it is made to forget that the first person to breathe into a living species called a human being is a woman. Since birth is denied, it is only the thought of death that creates a feeling that a person came into this world not as a woman, but as a self-existing, existing, and this feeling caused the emergence of male gods/gods (Father, son, and holy spirit). Turning from this point to western metaphysics, Irigaray states that the goddess was forgotten by keeping God in the foreground, and he put the goddess who blesses birth opposite the god who blesses death. A man who first broke off his connection with a woman and then with nature, taking on a language centered on God and death, broke off his connection with everyone, and the last time this break took place with himself. With this break, the concept of divinity has now begun to enter into life, and man has come out of nature and turned to the supernatural, consecrated himself, and even deified.

‘No more, Irigaray!" You can say, but the situation is exactly as he said. Because then all the pressures, obstacles and prohibitions will be directed against women at the point of religion. Because, says Irigaray, the cultural act created continues to exist and undergoes its evolution by passing from father to son (from instructor to student) through education.

It is possible to say that an educator was behind Irigaray's tremendous criticism, but the main thing was that his student was on a completely different level. :)
He says that the only thing that a person who enters the system, which Lacan, his educator, calls the symbolic order, takes its essence from language and is structured like a completely unconscious space (similar to language), will see and live, is death. In fact, Lacan unwittingly paved the way for a truth while analyzing life. Seeing this fact, Irigaray completed the symbolic order that life, which began with birth, is shaped by the attacks of masculine language.

In essence, Irigaray explains that the male-dominated language- divinity has its origins purely cultural, and is completely historically constructed.

[Kaplumbağa Felsefecisi · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Bir ilişki her kim tarafından uyarlanırsa uyarlansın, asla sadece birinin kendine ait değildir. İlişki bir ve öteki arasında gerçekleşir, iki aracılığıyla üretilir ve sürdürülür. Bu iki arasındaki, bir ve öteki arasındaki farklılığın açılımında yer alır ancak, ikiden doğduğu için ne birine ne de ötekine özgü değildir. Belki de bu ilişki, herhangi muhtemel bir uygunluğun dışında, onu yok etmeden uygunlaştırmanın mümkün olmadığı, varoluşun başka bir tarzda cevhere dönüştüğü biricik yerdir."


Kitap çevirmenlerin de önsözde belirttiği gibi ilk bölümde hep karşılaştığımız feminist psikanalist Luce Irigaray'ı ikinci yarıda inanılmaz retorik bir metne çeviriyor. Bunun şaşkınlığını atana dek kitap bitiyor. Yine de çok güzeldi.

[Rebekka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Appart from skimming books and articles to add to my paper presentation (which I would then present to Madam Irigaray herself), this is the first book of hers that I've read in full. The only philosophy class that I took was an intro course that I was asleep for half of because it was at 8am and I was a design student. Nonetheless, this book is a wonderful introduction to her philosophy. Depending on how much philosophy lingo you know or don't know may impact your understanding of some parts, but I think anyone would get the general gist. I certainly look forward to reading more/all of her writings in the upcoming year +D