Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference

Alison Stone offers a feminist defence of the idea that sexual difference is natural.

Alison Stone (Author)

9780521118101, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 August 2009

264 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

Alison Stone offers a feminist defence of the idea that sexual difference is natural, providing a novel interpretation of the later philosophy of Luce Irigaray. She defends Irigaray's unique form of essentialism and her rethinking of the relationship between nature and culture, showing how Irigaray's ideas can be reconciled with Judith Butler's performative conception of gender, through rethinking sexual difference in relation to German Romantic philosophies of nature. This is a sustained attempt to connect feminist conceptions of embodiment to German idealist and Romantic accounts of nature. Not merely an interpretation of Irigaray, this book also presents an original feminist perspective on nature and the body. It will encourage debate on the relations between sexual difference, essentialism, and embodiment.

Introduction: Luce Irigaray and the nature of sexual difference
1. Re-reading Irigaray: realism and sexual difference
2. Judith Butler's challenge to Irigaray
3. Nature, sexual duality, and bodily multiplicity
4. Irigaray and Hölderlin on the relation between nature and culture
5. Irigaray and Hegel on the relation between family and state
6. From sexual difference to self-differentiating nature
Conclusion: reconciling duality and multiplicity.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Social & political philosophy [HPS]