This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray

First published:Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas un, 1979 (English translation, 1985)

Type of work: Essays

Form and Content

Based on Luce Irigaray’s work as a psychoanalyst, linguist, and philosopher, the eleven essays collected in This Sex Which Is Not One critically analyze Western culture’s descriptions of female identity and the many ways in which these representations influence women’s psychic, social, and economic development. Irigaray explores a number of related issues, including the restrictive nature of masculinist language systems and the subsequent limitations in male-defined images of female sexuality, women’s absence in Western philosophical tradition, and the importance of developing exclusively feminine modes of communication. The nonlinear, poetic writing styles she employs in many of these essays make it difficult to arrive at definitive statements concerning her theories of the feminine, yet this elusiveness is an important part of her undertaking. By unsettling readers’ expectations, she challenges them to rethink conventional definitions of masculinity and femininity.

Although many of the essays in This Sex Which Is Not One were previously published in various journals and can be read separately, the arguments presented in each chapter are interconnected and mutually dependent. The title essay offers a useful entry into Irigaray’s work, for it provides readers with an overview of her theory of the feminine. In addition to arguing that women’s pleasure and female sexuality cannot be adequately described in Western culture’s patriarchal language systems, Irigaray contrasts women’s autoeroticism with men’s and offers an alternative perspective on the feminine, which she describes as plural, nonunitary, and fluid.

Irigaray expands her analysis of Western culture’s restrictive notions of female sexuality in other chapters and includes more explicit analyses of how psychoanalytic theory’s unacknowledged masculine bias prevents the development of autonomous definitions of the feminine. In “Psychoanalytic Theory: Another Look,” she begins by summarizing Sigmund Freud’s theory of femininity and briefly examines how later psychoanalysts, including Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Ernest Jones, Helene Deutsch, and Marie Bonaparte, reject, revise, or support Freudian views. “The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine” and “Questions” are transcripts of interviews containing Irigaray’s comments on her groundbreaking 1974 text Speculum de l’autre femme (Speculum of the Other Woman, 1985) and her replies to commonly asked questions about her theories and methods. These chapters provide readers with accessible discussions of Irigaray’s views on conventional psychoanalytic theory, women’s liberation movements, mother/daughter relationships, “sexual indifference,” the existence of a feminine unconscious, women’s lack of agency, and the economic exploitation of women. In “Cosí Fan Tutte,” a witty, sophisticated essay critiquing Jacques Lacan, Freud’s major twentieth century proponent and Irigaray’s former teacher, Irigaray used Lacan’s own words to illustrate the hidden biases in his theory of femininity. In the following essay, “The ‘Mechanics’ of Fluids,” she again indirectly challenges Lacanian descriptions of the feminine and exposes the inadequacies in masculinist language systems. In later chapters, such as “Women on the Market,” “Commodities Among Themselves,” and “ ‘Frenchwomen,’ Stop Trying,” Irigaray explores how Western culture’s limited definitions of women and femininity reinforce hierarchical male/female social and economic relations.

Irigaray’s writing style is highly original. Although she draws on her own extensive knowledge of classic Western philosophy, she does so primarily to demonstrate that traditional knowledge systems have erased women’s presence. She rejects the linear reasoning and the conventional forms of argument found in canonical texts and employs a number of subversive strategies, including puns, paradoxical statements, rhetorical questions, parenthetical comments, and quotation marks around problematic terms. The volume’s title illustrates one form that Irigaray’s playful technique assumes, for the phrase “This Sex Which Is Not One” refers both to the absence of a specifically female sexuality and to the feminine’s plural, nonunitary nature. This ambiguous, subversive style—which Irigaray describes as “jamming the theoretical machinery”—serves two interrelated purposes. First, it enables her to critique patriarchal language systems; and second, it allows her to begin inventing an alternative discourse capable of representing and expressing the feminine. The opening and closing essays, “The Looking Glass, from the Other Side” and “When Our Lips Speak Together,” provide the most extensive demonstrations of Irigaray’s unique style.

Context

Like traditional psychoanalysts, Irigaray explores the ways in which language constructs gendered identities; however, by using her psychoanalytic training to analyze psychoanalysis itself, she exposes its unacknowledged masculine bias. As in Speculum of the Other Woman and her later writings, she attempts in This Sex Which Is Not One to develop a theory and practice of sexual difference that demonstrates the secularized nature of all Western philosophical and representational systems. This undertaking has important political implications, for Irigaray maintains that the pseudo-neutrality of rational thought and objective knowledge has led to the development of patriarchal social systems that oppress women economically, socially, and psychically. She suggests that the creation of specifically feminine ways of writing and speaking offers the possibility of developing alternate epistemologies and new forms of society.

Irigaray’s theory of sexual difference makes a significant contribution to feminist analyses of twentieth century knowledge systems. With the rise in gender studies in the 1980’s, increasing attention has been paid to her analysis of the sexualized nature of all linguistic systems and social structures. By exposing the phallocentric foundations of Western culture’s reliance on logical rational thought and the subsequent bias in all supposedly neutral accounts of objective knowledge, Irigaray provides theorists with important tools in their attempts to develop alternatives to analytical forms of thinking.

Yet Irigaray’s elusive, ambiguous style; her many references to an extensive body of male-authored texts; her descriptions of the feminine as fluid, nonunitary, and plural; and her poetic allusions to women’s anatomical parts have led to many debates concerning her work, especially among European American feminists. A number of theorists argue that Irigaray’s attempt to develop sexually specific forms of writing and speaking inadvertently supports stereotypical views of the feminine. They maintain that her Lacanian-influenced belief in an all-encompassing phallocentric representational system denies women’s agency, thus reinforcing their subordinate status in Western knowledge systems. Others, however, argue that Irigaray’s emphasis on an irreducible difference between the masculine and the feminine and her attempts to establish openly sexualized bodies of knowledge indicate radical breaks from the relational masculine/feminine binary oppositions structuring Western thought systems. The confusion concerning Irigaray’s theories is made even more problematic by the inaccurate assumptions that Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Irigaray represent a single school of “French feminist” thought. There are, however, significant theoretical, stylistic, and political differences between them. Moreover, all three theorists distance themselves in various degrees from twentieth century feminist movements.

Bibliography

Burke, Carolyn. “Irigaray Through the Looking Glass.” Feminist Studies 7 (Summer, 1981): 288-306. This essay provides a useful overview of Irigaray’s career, including her break with Lacan, the role that Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy plays in her theory of feminine writing, and her impact on feminist studies. It offers a highly sympathetic reading of Irigaray’s elusive style and insightful summaries of several essays in This Sex Which Is Not One, including “The Looking Glass, from the Other Side” and “When Our Lips Speak Together.”

Fuss Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989. Chapter 4, “Luce Irigaray’s Language of Essence,” summarizes European American debates concerning Irigaray’s use of female anatomy to describe feminine writing. In addition to exploring how literal readings of Irigaray’s references to lips lead to misinterpretations, this chapter briefly discusses her theory of sexual difference.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989. This examination of recent theories of sexual difference situates Irigaray’s work in the context of Kristeva’s and Michele Montreley’s theories of the feminine. In addition to exploring Irigaray’s use of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction, the two chapters on Irigaray summarize key concepts, including her analysis of phallocentric language systems, her attempt to develop autonomous representations of the feminine, and her call for alternative descriptions of mother/daughter relationships.

Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Routledge, 1983. A comparative analysis of European American feminism and French theories of the feminine developed by Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva. The chapter on Irigaray discusses Speculum of the Other Woman, This Sex Which Is Not One, and Irigaray’s reception in the United States.

Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. New York: Routledge, 1991. This book provides an extremely comprehensive account of Irigaray’s theories and an analysis of her contributions to twentieth century psychoanalytic and philosophic traditions. It includes extensive primary and secondary bibliographies of French and English texts.