An Ethics of Sexual Difference

This is one of Irigaray's best works, I think. It is well-expressed, and her responses to and uses of Descartes, Spinoza and Aristotle all provide a new and useful angle on what is going on in key passages from their works.

great book, nice delivery

Whereas her 1974 'Speculum of the Other Woman' seems to be the theoretical masterpiece of that early period, this 1984 work seems to add three rare traits to her oeuvre which combined heighten this work's value for scholarly analysis as well as for a popular introduction (not just to her work but also to feminism & the concerns surrounding continental philosophy & psychoanalytic theory).1. Readability: due to its format this book is highly readable to the general public because its chapters are based on original scholarship prepared for public lecture presentation at a university in contrast to the usual method of writing directly for academic publication which makes it less accessible to others besides specialists.2. Historicism: few other works of the period of Lacanian structuralism (to discourse analysis to genealogy) include analysis spanning considerable historical time, (n.b. the earlier but longer duration history in de Beauvoir’s Second Sex) not only is there a genesis of subjectivity or structuring of consciousness in transition between forms, from object-consciousness to self-consciousness to other-consciousness, but also in parallel a genesis of social structure in the genealogy of foundational Western thought, from Plato-Aristotle to Descartes-Spinoza, to Merleau-Ponty-Levinas, showing in each age the one-sidedness of both sides of the dominant oppositions.3. Sexual difference: as the book’s verso reads, this work attends to the experience of eros in a plurality of modes “between fetus and mother, between heterosexual lovers, between women, between women and their own bodies”, this happens in an expanding matrix of relationships that span sex, gender, friendship, procreation, embodiment, solidarity, pleasure, work, eroticism, care, etc. that goes far beyond explaining or critiquing 'women as second sex' & its narrowing identity; rather than fixating on the modes of oppression (sexual repression, exploitation, representation) & trying to negate them in theory, this work subverts their possibility by rereading the master texts, whose concepts provided each age with its logic & paradigm, while reworking concepts in a positive contribution to self-made social orders, unforeseen futures for LGBTQI persons, & new frontiers of ethical experimentation for embodied agents.

Irigaray's `rewriting' of philosophy and philosophers is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy these days. It is also a refreshing breath of thought on `Feminism'. The concept of `Place'is presented as Woman, a return to the primordial feminine via `deconstruction' (in the best possible way) of western patriarchial hegemony. Besides the radical content, it is is beautifully written - clear and profound. Read this book!

good in book, price and delievery,thanks

Delighted