“The Wedding Between the Body and Language”
Luce Irigaray, Key Writings.
Male philosophers, specifically Satre, see the body as ‘facticity’, that is as a present objective reality. It is tangible and one can point to it. Irigaray evokes her logic that we have discussed in class, that the other, including the body of the other, is not solid fact/facticity but rather consciousness of-itself, for-itself and of the world. In the logic of the body as facticity there is a need to own, possess or appropriate the other body that exclusively pertains to subject/object relationships. Contrarily, in the new world of inter-subjectivity it is imperative to understand the other in the language of transcendence.
Realizing inter-subjectivity demands that we understand the relationship, bodily or otherwise, between I-me and I-you in privileged space time. There is the “you who are not and will never be me or mine,” (p.14) interacting with “the love that I share with you, my body is animated by the wanting to be with you or to you,” (p.22) and the transcendence, the understanding that there is the I-you that lies beyond what I can understand in terms of knowing. In other words, transcendence means that I-me can never appropriate, possess or “have” the other, you. (See p. 14) In language, adding ‘to’ in the phrase “I love to you” creates a space of alliance, a common ground of mutually understood transcendence. It allows the other to not be an object, irreducible to a factual thing; the object of my love.
In critiquing Merleau-Ponty who considers sexuality as ambiguity and indeterminacy, Irigaray raises a crucial omission to his theory, perception. The metaphor of Buddha looking at the flower illustrates that we can learn to perceive and understanding perception is the path to realizing inter-subjectivity. I can see myself as I-me and you as I-you and the link between exterior and interior of interactions in the world and with the other.
Irigaray’s critique on the culture of dichotomous logic leads into the new philosophy of the caress. In seeing sensation was divided between pleasure/pain, hot/cold, active/passive we exile the body from its organization as a whole. This starts the tradition of marking the feminine as passive and the masculine as active. Jetting from this, sensibility is lost in the culture lacking both subjectivity and objectivity. Irigaray’s caress is an awakening to intersubjectivity, to a touching between us which is neither passive nor active, it is an awakening of gestures. The caress is a type of touch experiencing other based in specific mutual understandings and motivations of I-me and I-you and “I love to you.” On a last note, caress allows us to re-imagine virginity as the state of being grounded and whole within oneself verses after the act of being sexed by a phallus the feminine is forever incomplete as herself without the phallus.
Referring to page 14, Irigaray states that, “in so far as you are an incarnation that cannot be appropriates by me, lest I should suffer the alienation of my freedom,” is she implying that if I-me fives up my freedom it can know the I-you?
What is the expanded meaning, in masculine/feminine Irigaray terms behind the quick mention that violence is specifically a subject/object relationship? (p. 20 it’s a short little line, but very interesting.)
4 comments:
On the short section on page 20 where Irigaray mentions violence, she also mentions commerce and (lack of) repsect in relation to the caress. I think that quite literally, she might be referring to the ways in which prostitution/porn/trafficking constitute the "violence of an everyday life" -in other words, the (sexual) violence done to women on daily levels. The gaze she refers to alludes to the "male gaze", which is a form of men possessing women, for example cat-calling or other forms of objectification. This whole idea of course relates back to the phrase "I love you" (subject verb object) where "you" is literally the object of the subject in a grammatical sense. In this passage, then, Irigaray ties together the abstract/linguistical meaning of "I love you" to the ways in which male possess females in "everyday life".
Irigaray’s ideas oppose those of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas in that she deals with relationships of reciprocity, thus indicating a form of equality. By stating, “in so far as you are an incarnation that cannot be appropriated by me, lest I should suffer the alienation of my freedom” (p. 14), Irigaray seeks to employ methods of sensible perception. By this, I mean to say that Irigaray uses the I-me’s experience as subject to envision a possible world for the I-you. “Perception represents a possible path for sensing the other, respecting this other as subject, and it also allows me to remain a subject while perceiving the other” (p. 17). Thus, if you cannot be appropriated by me, then I must not be able to be appropriated by you. However, if this were not the case, it is possible that I be stripped of my freedom by you; and since I-me does not long for an alienation or isolation from its own freedom, the I-me would not wish for such a fate for the I-you. The forfeiting of one’s own freedom is not in keeping with Irigaray’s conception of a fluid economy. If a human body and thus a human consciousness are in a constant state of flux then one cannot fully grasp the whole of the I-you.
Utilitarianism proposes the greatest good for the greatest amount, yet there remains the fraction to which this Utilitarianism does not seek to sustain. It is this marginal fraction of society that then becomes the used, the instrument as a means to a subject’s ulterior end. To do violence is to impose authority over, to reduce the status of the other to an object. This ‘violence of utilitarian use’ is in its very essence violent because it supposes the consciousness of a solitary party over the mutual flow of discourse through intersubjectivity of two conscious beings.
I think that Irigaray's statement that “you are an incarnation that cannot be appropriated by me, lest I should suffer the alienation of my freedom” (p. 14) refers to her view that man is not man (and thus not free) until woman is articulated. According to her argument, even the subject in subject-object relations is imprisoned by this order or relationships. Therefore, if man appropriates woman, he enters into that imprisoning structure of relations.
Also, it may be possible that the move away from grammatical subject-object relations in the sentence "I love to you" also refers to the fact that the I-you subject is not wholly knowable to the I-me subject. Thus, in saying "I love you", the I-me subject might not love the I-you subject directly, but only the aspects of the I-you subject that translate to the I-me subject.
Irigiray accuses male thinkers of dodging the "irreducable, invisible" part of the other. By acknowledging that there is a part of someone else to which we do not have access, we preserve even our own trancendance. I agree with Andy that by limiting another to a facticity, we also limit and trap ourselves there. The line on page 14 deffiantely seems to suggest that we cannot reduce another without reducing ourselves.
The idea of leaving space for trancendance allows for the space between two , the reciprocity between them- it allows both to be subjects.
The idea of saying "I love TO you" and not just "I love you" made me think about the use of the pet-name "baby", especially the variety of relationship where both parties are "baby" and neither ever utters the others real name. To call someone "baby" only recognizes the part of them that is yours, the part of them that is YOUR "baby", and leaves no room for a part of them that is invisible, that is irreducable to your interaction with them.
I especially like the idea at the end of the piece on p 22, "in this double willing, I and you remain both active and passive"
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