Repository | Book | Chapter

In this text, I argue that the recognition of the space between the one and the other is a necessary condition of being and living together in peace. Departing from Luce Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference, I will address the issue of the recognition of irreducible difference in the relations between women. I will show that Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference goes hand in hand with an aesthetics of recognizing the irreducible difference of the other. This recognition and respect creates an in-between space/time in the intersubjective relation that will enable the subjects to flourish together and individually. Pivotal to these ideas is Irigaray's argument that the subject is disappropriated by the fact that it belongs to a "gender": a horizon of meaning or universal that is marked by (linguistic) gender; thus that "belonging to a gender" constitutes the limit to the I or her/his irreducible difference.However, "gender" cannot function in the relations between women as a marker of difference. I therefore suggest that irreducible difference between women might be thought through as a multiple belonging instead: as constituted through the intersection of different axes of differentiation—history, genealogy, resources—that function as limits to the subject. Although theories of intersectionality enable us to theorize the differences between women as irreducible difference, they do not address the issue of recognizing this difference. To answer this question, I argue for an ethics and aesthetics of the respect of the in-between space/time in intersubjective relations.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-6833-1_19

Full citation: