A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray

by Penelope Deutscher

The influential philosopher and theorist Luce Irigaray has been faulted for giving more importance to sexual difference than to race and multiculturalism. Penelope Deutscher's eagerly awaited book, the first to focus on the scholar's controversial later works, addresses this charge. Through a learned critique of these lesser-known writings, the book examines Irigaray's claim that the politics of feminism and multiculturalism are intrinsically linked. The volume also serves as a clear and comprehensive introduction to her entire corpus. In her recent works, Irigaray promotes sexual difference as the philosophical basis for legal, political, and linguistic reform. Deutscher explores this approach and in particular Irigaray's view that the very notion of difference is culturally "impossible." Taking this concept of impossibility into consideration, Deutscher evaluates Irigaray's contributions to contemporary debates about the politics of identity, recognition, diversity, and multiculturalism. In a balanced discussion, she considers the philosopher's work from the perspective of fellow critics including Michéle Le Doeuff, Drucilla Cornell, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Charles Taylor.

Paperback

First published June 13, 2002

About the author

Penelope Deutscher specializes in twentieth-century and contemporary French philosophy, and in gender and sexuality studies. Current projects are focused on the intersections of biopolitics, reproductive futurism, and the genealogy of gendered rights claims . Her most recent publications are Foucault’s Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason and two co-edited collections, Foucault/Derrida: Fifty Years On (co-edited with Olivia Custer and Samir Haddad) and Critical Theory in Critical Times (co-edited with Cristina Lafont), with Columbia University Press.

She is also the author of Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction and the History of Philosophy (Routledge 1997); A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray (Cornell University Press, 2002), How to Read Derrida (Granta/Norton 2006), and The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2008)...