In this book, Luce Irigaray - philosopher, linguist, psychologist and psychoanalyst - proposes nothing less than a new conception of being as well as a means to ensure its individual and relational development from birth. Unveiling the mystery of our origin is probably what most motivates our quests and plans. Now such a disclosure proves to be impossible. Indeed we were born of a union between two, and we are forever deprived of an origin of our own. Hence our (...) ceaseless search for roots: in our genealogy, in the place where we were born, in our culture, religion or language. But a human being cannot develop starting from roots as a tree does, it must take on responsibility for its own being and existence without continuity with its origin and background. How can we succeed in doing that? First by cultivating our breathing, which is not only the means thanks to which we come into the world, but which also allows us to transcend mere survival towards a spiritual becoming. Taking on our sexuate belonging is the second element which makes us able to assume our natural existence. Indeed this determination at once brings us energy and provides us with a structure which contributes to our individuation and our relations with other living beings and the world. Our sexuation can also compensate for our absence of roots by compelling us to unite with the other sex so that we freely approach the copulative conjunction from which we were born; that is, the mystery of our origin. This does not occur through a mere sexual instinct or drive, but requires us to cultivate desire and love with respect for our mutual difference(s). In this way we become able to give rise to a new human being, not only at a natural but also at an ontological level. (shrink)

Blossoming from a correspondence between Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being is an intense personal, philosophical, and political meditation on the significance of the vegetal for our lives, our ways of thinking, and our relations with human and nonhuman beings. Irigaray and Marder consider how the vegetal world contributes to human development by sustaining our breathing, nourishing our senses, and keeping our bodies alive. This generative discussion points toward a more universal way of becoming human that is (...) embedded in the vegetal world. (shrink)

In eleven acute and widely ranging essays, Irigaray reconsiders the question of female sexuality in a variety of contexts that are relevant to current discussion of feminist theory and practice.

A radically subversive critique brings to the fore the masculine ideology implicit in psychoanalytic theory and in Western discourse in general: woman is defined as a disadvantaged man, a male construct with no status of her own.

This chapter reviews the most prominent existing views on infinity. It argues that infinity must be understood as a simple, fully determined quantity, with a complicated relation to perfection, embodying total creative ontological priority. Spinoza takes the definition of God in terms of infinity to be superior to definitions in terms of perfection. In Spinoza's exchange with Blijenbergh, one question is whether evil or imperfection follow from divine perfection. The chapter shows that Spinoza's infinity cannot mean perfection, a negative quality, (...) a positive quality nor universal quantification. A perfection of perfections would be exactly the absence of negations and privations. In order to maintain the inherent clarity Spinoza supposes and avoid the problem outlined, ‘ens absolute infinitum’ must be taken to be a simple notion. Spinoza suggests an active, ongoing model of creation, where things depend on continuous divine action. (shrink)

This collection consists of lectures given at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. They were delivered under the provisions of the Jan Tin- bergen Chair, ...

The first communication between human beings, the one between the newborn and the mother, happens through touch. Strangely this first way of relating to each other has barely been considered by our education and our culture, which have favoured sight to the detriment of touch. And yet touching and being touched means experiencing ourselves as living beings. For lack of such a touch, we do not perceive the limits nor the sensitive potential of our bodies. Then we remain immersed in (...) a natural or a cultural universe, incapable of reaching our own individuation and of knowing our fundamental difference from the other(s). Desire, in particular sexuate desire, is a call for touching one another anew. But this touch requires us to have gained our autonomy and to be able to open up to and commune with the other as transcendent to ourselves while staying in ourselves. This book unveils and explores how touch can act as a basic living mediation in love and, more generally, in our comprehensive individual and collective human becoming. It also considers how touch can contribute to founding a culture respectful of difference instead of subjecting them to an ideal of sameness. We need touch as mediation to fulfil our humanity and to build a truly human thinking and world. (shrink)

Sexes and Genealogies also includes Irigaray's dazzling reading of the Oresteia, "Body Against Body: In Relation to the Mother," now acknowleged as a feminist classic.

This collection of key writings, selected by Luce Irigaray herself, presents a complete picture of her work to date across the fields of Philosophy, Linguistics ...

One aspect of the utility of gambling may evidence itself in failures of idempotence, i.e., when all chance outcomes give rise to the same consequence the `gamble' may not be indifferent to its common consequence. Under the assumption of segregation, such gambles can be expressed as the joint receipt of the common consequence and what we call `an element of chance', namely, the same gamble with the common consequence replaced by the status quo. Generalizing, any gamble is indifferent to the (...) joint receipt of its element of chance and a certain consequence, which is called the `kernel equivalent' of the gamble. Under idempotence, the kernel equivalent equals the certainty equivalent. Conditions are reported (Theorem 4) that are sufficient for the kernel equivalents to have the kind of utility representation first discussed by Luce and Fishburn (1991), including being idempotent. This utility representation of the kernel equivalents together with the derived form of utility over joint receipts yields a utility representation of the original structure. Possible forms for the utility of an element of chance are developed. (shrink)

Published in France in 1980, Marine Lover is the first in a trilogy in which Luce Irigaray links the interrogation of the feminine in post-Hegelian philosophy with a pre-Socratic investigation of the elements.

French theorist Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphysics as a "forgetting of Being," Irigaray seeks in this work to begin to think out the Being of sexedness and the sexedness of Being. (...) This volume is the first English translation of L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger (1983). In this complex, lyrical, meditative engagement with the later work of the eminent German philosopher, Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air. With the other volumes (Elemental Passions and Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche) in Irigaray's "elemental" series, The Forgetting of Air offers a fundamental rereading of basic tenets in Western metaphysics. And with its emphasis on dwelling and human habitation, it will be important reading not only in the humanities but also in architecture and the environmental sciences. (shrink)

"The best book available for non-mathematicians." — Contemporary Psychology. Superb nontechnical introduction to game theory and related disciplines, primarily as applied to the social sciences. Clear, comprehensive coverage of utility theory, 2-person zero-sum games, 2-person non-zero-sum games, n-person games, individual and group decision-making, much more. Appendixes. Bibliography. Graphs and figures.

Irigaray offers the clearest available introduction to her own work. Focusing on power, women, gender and patriarchal mythologies, she lays out what for her has become the central problem for women in the modern world.

In I Love to You , Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object? Drawing upon Hegel, Irigaray proposes a dialectic appropriate to each (...) sex as well as a dialectic of their relation. She argues for what she calls "sexed rights" and a right of persons based on the right to life, not the right to property. Using the results of her research into the sexing of language, Irigaray analyzes how women seek communication in discourse with the other--an other, pre-occupied with his abstract or concrete object, who does not respond. She proposes another syntax for communication, one that does not incorporate the other as the object of the subject but allows for an indirect relation. Thus "I love to you" replaces "I love you." In Irigaray's vision of the happiness possible in sexual difference, the love between a man and a woman finds its "reason" not in property or children, but in its own place within the couple. Arguing passionately for a new language of personal relations, I Love to You looks toward a future where nihilism can be overcome by "love in sexual difference.". (shrink)

Simone Weil a-t-elle ete une intellectuelle uniquement preoccupee de nourrir les multiples facettes de son intelligence? S'il en etait ainsi, elle aurait evite de payer de sa personne. Pour elle, pas de theorie sans pratique. C'est par sa recherche inlassable dans tous les domaines et ses remises en question continuelles qu'elle reste -question vivante et exigence nouvelle-. Sa seduction s'exerce de bien des manieres. Les uns sont attires par l'etrangete de sa vie, les autres par son intelligence, d'autres encore par (...) son courage. Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur expose les idees de Simone Weil en matiere sociale, politique et religieuse et esquisse une theorie visant une nouvelle forme de civilisation, basee sur plus d'attention et de conscience.". (shrink)

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Democracy Begins Between Two, Luce Irigaray calls for a form of specific civil rights guaranteeing women a separate civil identity of their own equivalent to-though not simply the same as-that enjoyed by men.

'a good introduction to Irigaray's oeuvre' The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryDiscusses how language, religion, law, art, science and technology have failed women and how concrete changes can be made to ensure that 'our' culture belongs to both men and women.

Luce Irigaray is widely recognised as one of the leading figures in the study of women, language and culture. She is arguably the most original and provocative feminist theorist in contemporary French thought. Over recent years her ideas have become massively influential, not least in feminist literary theory, where they have opened up possibilities for reading women's writing and theorizing language. In _Je, Tu, Nous_ Luce Irigaray offers the clearest introduction available to her own work. In a series (...) of brief and direct pieces on gender, language, power and patriarchal mythologies, she lays out what for her is the central problem for women in the modern world. The essays span Irigaray's thought on the importance of difference in culture, in a style that is remarkably informal, open and engaging. This is a remarkable book which will introduce Irigaray's philosophy, with her vision of necessary cultural change, to the widest audience so far. (shrink)

This article reviews three recent books that enhance our understanding of the work of French feminist Luce Irigaray: Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche and The Irigaray Reader, and Philosophy in the Feminine, a commentary on Irigaray's work by Margaret Whitford. The author emphasizes a dynamic reading of Irigaray's philosophy and integrates theoretical concepts with poetic/utopian passages from the works.

A passionate celebrator of "sexual difference," Luce Irigaray was never simply after the social equality that her generation so publicly demanded. She was seeking more fundamentally a society that celebrated the differences between the genders and their coming together in a union without hierarchy. As she formulates it in this compellingly readable introduction to her own thought, Irigaray is writing about how "I" and "You" become "We." Exploring along the way women’s experiences of motherhood, abortion, the AIDS crisis and (...) the beauty industry, this book presents one of the most important thinkers of our day in her own words. (shrink)

With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early career researchers and established academic figures in response to To Be Born, my most recent book. The contributors approach key issues of this book from their own scientific fields and perspectives – through calls for a different way of bringing up and educating children, the constitution of a new environmental and sociocultural milieu or the criticism of past metaphysics and the introduction of new themes (...) into the philosophical horizon. However, all the essays which compose the volume correspond to proposals for the advent of a new human being – so answering the subtitle of To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being. To Be Born thus acts as a background from which each author had the opportunity to develop and think in their own way. As such Towards a New Human Being is part of a longer-term undertaking in which I engaged together and in dialogue with more or less confirmed thinkers with a view to giving birth to a new human being and building a new world. –Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

A history of mystical Islamic poetry, not only in Arabic and Persian, but also in the popular folk traditions of regional vernacular languages, including a chapter on Rumi and Sufi poetry.

A passionate celebrator of "sexual difference," Luce Irigaray was never simply after the social equality that her generation so publicly demanded. She was seeking more fundamentally a society that celebrated the differences between the genders and their coming together in a union without hierarchy. As she formulates it in this compellingly readable introduction to her own thought, Irigaray is writing about how "I" and "You" become "We." Exploring along the way women’s experiences of motherhood, abortion, the AIDS crisis and (...) the beauty industry, this book presents one of the most important thinkers of our day in her own words. (shrink)

The concept of attractors is considered critical in the study of dynamical systems as they represent the set of states that a system gravitates toward. However, it is generally difficult to analyze attractors in complex systems due to multiple reasons including chaos, high-dimensionality, and stochasticity. This paper explores a novel approach to analyzing attractors in complex systems by utilizing networks to represent phase spaces. We accomplish this by discretizing phase space and defining node associations with attractors by finding sink strongly (...) connected components within these networks. Moreover, the network representation of phase space facilitates the use of well-established techniques of network analysis to study the phase space of a complex system. We show the latter by introducing a new node-based metric called attractivity which can be used in conjunction with the SSCC as they are highly correlated. We demonstrate the proposed method by applying it to several chaotic dynamical systems and a large-scale agent-based social simulation model. (shrink)