Why Different?

by Luce Irigaray

For Luce Irigaray, one of the most original French feminist theorists, deconstructing the patriarchal tradition is not enough. She admits that it is not an easy task, but she believes that it is necessary to also define new values directly or indirectly suitable to feminine subjectivity and to feminine identity. She begins this project by analyzing and interpreting the absence of the feminine subject in the definition of dominant cultural values. She then wonders how these new values can be constructed without simply reversing the roles. Far from implying a hierarchy, difference affirms the coexistence and fruitful encounter of two different identities. These two heterogeneous identities, masculine and feminine, are not socially but ontologically constructed and describing the feminine requires establishing methods other than those already used by the masculine subject."Why Different?" is a collection of interviews, conducted in both France and Italy, that deal explicitly with the relationship between daughter and mother, the sexuation of language, the symbolic order, and the importance of both history and philosophy for the liberation of the feminine subject. In "Why Different?" Irigaray elaborates on issues brought up in her other books, "Speaking is Never Neutral," "I Love to You," "Thinking the Difference," and "To Be Two" and brings them to fruition.

Genres: Philosophy

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 1999

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

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to start with. Lots of interviews with terrible questions that would never be asked of a man that can enlighten the reader of what to read next. One of the big differences between France and America being the equity thing. Luce defines difference in gender before a respect for equity. Women choose not to subject men to certain things that men would consider the procedural objectifying of equity. Luce elucidates how to see the difference within similarity. Seeing sameness in that which is already the same shouldn’t be subjected to the objective rigor of difference for the sake of difference.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone better start cultivating their differences fast (in all seriousness, this is a great place to start with Irigaray’s thought, the interviews lay out some of the core ideas about communicating across sexual difference and so on)

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

if I could have read this in the French, then maybe I would have given it 5 stars. There's something about Irigaray that just doesn't translate into English (but can't that be said of all authors who write in their native tongue?). Also, I wasn't quite as advanced in my thinking at the time that I read this... maybe I should put this on my to-read shelf instead, to remind myself to pick it up after I've ready the 50 or so other books that I want to read....