Luce Irigaray

Sarah Falcus (Hamamatsu University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 1932
Activity 1973-ongoing

Places

Born in Belgium
Active in France; Italy

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Activities

Primary

Cultural Theorist/ Critic

Resources

Irigaray's Works

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Luce Irigaray is a continental feminist thinker – though her relationship with feminism is complicated – whose work engages with philosophy, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Born in Belgium in 1932, she is one of the theorists who emerged from the French intellectual scene of the 1960s. Originally a student of Jacques Lacan, she broke decisively from Lacanian strictures with the publication of her doctoral thesis,

Speculum de l’autre femme

(translated as

Speculum of the Other Woman

), in 1974. Putting Western philosophy and psychoanalysis under the microscope and finding its positioning of women wanting, Irigaray launched her interest in sexual difference, philosophy and the feminine in the most controversial way, leading to her marginalisation by French psychoanalytic circles and her…

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2436 words

Citation: Falcus, Sarah. "Luce Irigaray". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 March 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2311, accessed 23 November 2024.]