300 Years & Counting 1H KILLS - On The Issues Magazine

was followed by her most famous bookSpeculum (1974). Speculum and ThisSex Which Is Not One were translatedand published in English in 1985.Irigaray sets a task for herself: Tochange the nature of discourse itself inorder for the social and historical relationsbetween the sexes, which are embeddedin the structure of language, tobe revealed. This, then, creates the possibilityfor women to speak outside thepatriarchy. She writes very much in theFrench mode in which the text itself isused to embody as well as explicate thepoint. English-speaking readers whoare unfamiliar with this style will beenormously helped by the editor, MargaretWhitford. Whitford's introductionsto the Reader and to each sectionare scholarly and lucid. She has alsoincluded a sampling of Irigaray's workfrom the most accessible to the mostarcane.In the feminist papers, Irigaray revealsherself as an activist as well as atheoretician,but many American feministsmay find her attack on the notionof equality disturbing. Her point is thatequality always includes the problem ofcomparision: Equal to whom or to what?Irigaray has been attacked as an essentialist,meaning that she fixes women(a la Freud) into their biological destiny.This seems to be a misreading ofher vision of a two-genre culture. Insuch a world it would be possible forwomen to become subjects of their ownexperience and of their own discourse.Then they finally escape the orbit ofbeing "people of men" eternally definedby the other.In the psychoanalysis section, Irigarayestablishes herself in relationship toFreud and Jacques Lacan. Irigarayshows us that Freud revealed the indifferenceof scientific discourse to sexualRESEARCH1-800-241-0325Cindy Brown, M.D.difference, and when describing the conditionof women he created a methodsubversive to the patriarchy, yet at thesame time he stayed fully entrenched init. He never understood the cost towomen of scientificsex blindness. Irigaryseeks to reformulate a psychoanalyticdiscourse rooted in sexual difference.Nevertheless, when necessary, Irigarayis no slouch at patriarchal polemic herself.In The Poverty of Psychoanalysis,Irigaray bitterly dissects thephallocentrism of the Lacanian Schoolin which she herself had been trainedand by whom in turn she had beenpersecuted. A practicing psychoanalyst,Irigaray can attack as only an "insider"can: "Now it so happens that you enjoyprestige, power, love and transferencebecause desire's yet-to-come-into beingis projected onto you. If you are not thereto listen to that...if all that matters toyou is the unvarying reduction of allspeech to the already-said or written,and its reinsertion into economy of repetition,your economy of death, then sayso..."But Irigaray's unique and profoundcontribution lies in the more evocative,dense work where she attempts toachieve her own women's voice; a dauntingproblem since she too must use thelanguage of the father. In The Power ofDiscourse and the Subordination of theFeminine she put the problem as follows:"The architectonics of thetext...confounds the linearity of an outline,the teleology of discourse, withinwhich there is no possible place for thefeminine...."There is a childhood ritual/game wherewe repeat the same multi-syllable wordover and over again until its culturalreferents dissolve and we are left to fallthrough meaninglessness to the understandingthat the phoneme is arbitrary.16816 5TH AVE. S.E. • MILL CREEK, WA 98012Write or call for FREEinformation packet.Cascadia Health Research is a newservice designed to help you become anactive, informed participant in your ownhealth care. Detailed reports availableon any medical or psychologicaldisorder. The reports are prepared byan M.D. and include information aboutthe most current conventional andalternative treatments.This is what happens when we giveourselves over to the texts of a madwoman. She demands that we yield toher if we are to discern her meaning, wemust tolerate the anxiety of fallingthrough the patriarchal order to herdiscourse. In this mad, hysterical demandlies a profound protest as well asthe beginning of an answer.Some hold that the construct of genderis for our time and for the nextcentury what class and race have beenin the 19th and 20th centuries. If that isso, surely the smart money will followthe intellectual fortunes of LuceIrigaray.—Leslye RussellLeslye Russell is a psychotherapist inBerkeley, California.HOFFMAN from pg 4as autonomous individuals, they areexempt from real moral responsibility.All decisions must be made for the goodof the "state"—the good of the husbandand the family — often to their owndetriment. The harshness of the 1988campaign and the barriers to her owncareer came as a surprise to MarilynQuayle. She says she prefers to callthem "yield signs here and there — youdo keep hitting those yield signs." Theyield signs can also turn into brick wallswhen the compromises demand loyaltyto one's husband before honor and couragefor oneself.It has long been rumored that BarbaraBush is prochoice — a politicalstand that obviously has no effect on herhusband and one that Barbara keepsquiet for fear of compromising his politicalagenda. This level of personal andpolitical sacrifice is writ large in thecase of political wives, but is mirrored inthe lives of millions of women who donot hold positions of power and authority.It is merely the extension of the54 ON THE ISSUES SUMMER 1992