The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger

by Luce Irigaray, Mary Beth Mader (Translator)

French philosopher Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphysics as a "forgetting of Being," Irigaray seeks in this work to begin to think out the Being of sexedness and the sexedness of Being. This volume is the first English translation of L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (1983). In this complex, lyrical, meditative engagement with the later work of the eminent German philosopher, Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air. With the other volumes ( Elemental Passions and Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, published elsewhere) in Irigaray's "elemental" series, The Forgetting of Air offers a fundamental rereading of basic tenets in Western metaphysics. And with its emphasis on dwelling and human habitation, it will be important reading not only in the humanities but also in architecture and the environmental sciences.

Genres: Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1970

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

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely do I waste time with shitty philosophy texts. My decision to give this book my time and effort was no different. Irigaray is considered one of, if not THE most important feminist philosopher in the Continental Tradition in the 20th century. Her work has spawned countless 'mock' versions of herself throughout academia, but nobody can truly replicate her blend of philosophical wit and poetic aestheticism. If I were to describe this book in two words they would be - stunningly beautiful.

This book represents my ideal sort of philosophical endeavor - not as interested in the 'verification' of truths, or of a philosophy conducted as a thousand year old argument with Plato - but something creative, something expressive, and something ultimately leaving me wanting to hear more. While I cannot say for certain that I 'grasped' all of this text - I'm not sure if that's even the point, what I did get was her attempt to connect with what she called in this text the "Sublime aspects of being lost in deep contemplation"... that to me is ultimately the best type of philosophical experience. She draws inspiration from several sources, but I cannot help but think that this book is an attempt to one-up the Heideggerian gauntlet laid out by the H-Man in Time and Being (Not Being and Time) where the point is not to 'grasp' the truth, but to 'meditate' on it - and discover an inner truth that moves you.

My favorite line in the entire book, and there were literally dozens of 'greatest' lines to choose from - it comes towards the end where she says -

"Love has become mere material subjected to the objective of production, whether production of a limited or unconditional sort. With man losing within it that dim desire that makes him man. Becoming swallowed up in an infinite difference between the draw that deeply animates him and willing himself into self-assertion. Between these two choices there is no transition: the abyss of a reduction to nothingness that nothing saves. That opens into nothing."

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the beginning was air. Or such was declaration of Anaximenes at the origin/s of Western philosophy, a millennia and more ago. To return to air, against the primacy of the ground - against even the ‘groundless ground’, of Martin Heidegger - this is the project undertaken in Luce Irigaray’s little poetic meditation on the old German thinker. Little, but not light. Dense to capacity, Irigaray proceeds steeped in the Heideggarian idiom, working it inside-out, dough-like, kneading it into shapes distinctly feminine, and distinctly French. For ‘air’ here is nothing other than the unacknowledged element from with the project of ‘Being’ sets itself up and off against - drawn on, but never with; the atmosphere into which the Heideggarian ‘clearing’ gains its contour, but without reciprocation. Must I spell it out? Woman. The air - is woman.

If we’re speaking here in abstraction already though, that’s because that’s the tenor of this book the whole way through: concept by Heideggarian concept does Irigaray make her (exhaustingly repetitive) point - presence, ek-stasis, logos, anticipation, gift - to pick a few at random. Each reappraised and reappropriated according to the (non)measure of air, and each found wanting, their solidity rendered feminine vapour in Irigaray’s incessant interrogation. For all the force of its critique however - and it is all critique - it’s not clear that Irigaray wants to be done with Heidegger. If anything, she wants a better Heidegger, a Heidegger - why not? - more in touch with his feminine side, more appreciative of the airy space in which his concepts, uh, dwell (another Hedeggrainism for those not in the loop). To the remember the air that was forgotten. To fix him?