Sexual Ethics Beyond Sexual Difference: Luce Irigaray and the Ethics of "Women's" Writing Público
Barker, Wesley Nan (2012)
Abstract
Abstract
Sexual Ethics Beyond Sexual Difference:
Luce Irigaray and the Ethics of "Women's" Writing
This dissertation suggests that the experience of non-subjectivity
presents an opportunity
for imagining an ethical personhood beyond the reductive economy of
a selfsame
subjectivity. I propose that an ethics of open-ended multiplicity
can emerge through the
indeterminacy afforded by deconstructing the binary of sexual
difference. To frame the
question of ethics as a problem of sameness to be overcome, I read
Luce Irigaray's work,
Éthique De La Différence Sexuelle, as a feminist
response to Emmanuel Levinas. By
dissimilating the feminine from masculine language, Irigaray's work
answers Levinas's
insistence on radical alterity through the question of the
feminine. I contend that Irigaray's mimetic writing
deconstructs the feminine such that the feminine becomes an
indeterminate space of
materiality, infinity, plurality, and relationality beyond the
discursive boundaries of a
concrete notion of "woman" that might otherwise be suggested by her
language of sexual
difference. This project therefore moves beyond Irigaray's specific
language of sexual
difference as the condition of alterity. I claim that Irigaray's
writing offers a space of
indeterminate beings where alterity is preserved through
relationship with the flesh of
one's irreducible others. I conclude by suggesting that writing
through the indeterminacy of an identity
like "woman," as Irigaray has done, embraces the uncertainty and
irreducibility of radical
alterity. When one writes through that uncertainty, one's writing
enacts an ethical
openness beyond the binary of male-female difference that disrupts
the totalizing and, as
Levinas would say, "allergic" way of relating to the differences of
this world.
Sexual Ethics Beyond Sexual Difference:
Luce Irigaray and the Ethics of "Women's" Writing
M.T.S., Duke Divinity School, 2003
B.A., Emory University, 2000
Advisor: Wendy Farley, Ph.D.
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Division of Religion
Comparative Literature and Religion
2012
Table of Contents
Introduction...1
Chapter 1: Ethics and Sexual Difference: The Problem of Sameness
from Irigaray to Levinas...18
Chapter 2: Secondarization of Woman: The Lack of Difference in
Sexual Difference...64
Chapter 3: Mimesis and Catachresis: Making Space for Oneself
Without Taking from the Other...105
Chapter 4: Rebirth: Irreducibly Sexed Bodies and Discursive
Possibilities for an Ethical
Future beyond the Self-same...141
Chapter 5: Rebirth: From Othered to Otherwise: "Woman" and the
Possibility of Ethical Writing...192
Conclusion...224
Bibliography...232
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