Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Luce Irigaray seems to be mostly interested in the social class difference between men and women.

She starts off by pointing out how men have always appeared to control and be at the center of everything, a common practice among feminist thinkers.
“It is man who has been the subject of discourse, whether in the field of theory, morality or politics. And the gender of God, the guardian of every subject and discourse, is always paternal and masculine in the West.”
Women, on the other hand, she continues, have always been given a passive role, one that does not contribute very much in society. Helene Cixous touches upon this several times in her text:
“the boy and the girl are oriented toward a division of social roles so that women ‘inescapably’ have a lesser productivity, because they ‘sublimate’ less than men and because symbolic activity, hence the production of culture, is men’s doing.”

Luce then suggests a bit of a reversal between the two where as women are on top and men are given the subservient role:
“The gods or God first of all creates space. And time is there, more or less at the service of space… femininity is experienced as a space that often carries connotations of the depths of night (God being space and light), while masculinity is conceived of in terms of time”.
She takes it back though, stating that this would just lead us right back to the problem that started this discussion. What she wants to remove from the equation is the setback of one sex having dominance or claiming ownership over another. And this is what she brings us with her conclusion:
“One sex is never entirely consummated or consumed by another. There is always residue.”

1 comment:

MAXP said...

The main theme in Luce Irigaray, I agree is the social diffrence is based in discussing the difference in men and women. The whole theme that men are the superior sex, having the example of religion, of how God is portrayed as a masculine figure in the west. This explains the wole difference of power and social roles that men have a more important role than women, whereas women are given the minor works. Therefore, the whole theme is trying to show the difference of men and women, and ther roles played in society, the whole dominated sex over the other, although the sexes are never drained complitely," there is always a residue", meaning their is always one's own belief that stands out in the end.