Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

dern philosophy between rationality and masculinity and reflects on the two
concepts separately. As Rosi Braidotti has noted: “The sheer importance of the
ethical issue in the work of some male philosophers is an offshoot of the crisis
of the rational subject that has shaken the phallogocentric system to its very
foundation. The question of alterity, of otherness, is receiving renewed attention
precisely because of the problematisation of the structures of subjectivity
in modern thought.” 23
The challenge for Irigaray then is to reveal a symbolic order that differs
from the phallocentric. The work on the other will lead us to rethink the
position of the other in relation to what already exists in the symbolic order
and to de-centre the masculine subject, so that it will be possible to constitute
a relation between the two subjectivities on the ruins of the impossibility of
one subjectivity (Masculine). 24 “A world that must be created or re-created so
that man and woman may once again or at last live together, meet, and sometimes
inhabit the same place.” 25 The critical point of Irigaray’s theory is how
to know the difference or how to create representations of the other, who is
conventionally known through the masculine perspective.
The move beyond an antagonistic relationship
The Irigarayan position criticises above all the endeavours of western philosophy
to render a univocal meaning as its eminent enterprise. To understand the
impossibility of understanding the other fully, to accept that not everything
is within our reach, and to step back and let the other be other – all of these
can be a difficult exercise for the Western mind. It calls for philosophy’s first
motivation, namely to be curious and wonder and not to force what is not
me to take shape according to my will, and to understand it in a certain way.
To meet the other is to wonder (admirer), keeping Descartes’ first passion in
mind, and not only at our initial meeting but also in the meetings after the
first meeting. It keeps the relation to the other vivid and fecund and maintains
life and a sight of the divine. Based on Irigaray’s writing I can conclude that an
ambiguity in meanings is a creative place, it can never be locked – thus, seeking
for a univocal meaning of the other only disturbs and disrupts the self’s way of
23
Rosi Braidotti, NomadicSsubjects: -Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York:
Colombia University Press, 1994),125.
24
Cf. Ibid., 130
25
Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (London & New York: Continuum, 2004), 17, emphasis added.
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