An Ethics of Sexual Difference

Luce Irigaray (1932-) is the foremost thinker on sexual difference of our times. She trained as an analyst with the Lacanian Freudian School of Paris and is a prolific and influential author, whose work ranges over philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics and social critique. Since the publication of This Sex Which is Not One she has developed her theory that there are significant differences between the language spoken by men and that spoken by women. In `An Ethics of Sexual Difference’ Irigaray speaks out against many feminists by pursuing questions of sexual difference, arguing that all thought and language is gendered and that there can therefore be no neutral thought. Examining major philosophers, such as Plato, Spinoza and Levinas, with a series of meditations on the female experience, she advocates new philosophies through which women can develop a distinctly female space and a “love of self”. It is an essential feminist text and a major contribution to our thinking about language.