Rewriting Difference

S.Boopathi

Description

In this definitive reader, prominent scholars reflect on how Luce Irigaray reads the classic discourse of Western metaphysics and also how she is read within and against this discourse. Her return to "the Greeks," through strategies of deconstructing, demythifying, reconstructing, and remythifying, is not a nostalgic return to the ideality of Hellenocentric antiquity, but rather an affirmatively critical revisiting of this ideality. Her persistent return and affective bond to ancient Greek logos, mythos, and tragedy sheds light on some of the most complex epistemological issues in contemporary theory, such as the workings of criticism, the language of politics and the politics of language, the possibility of social and symbolic transformation, the multiple mediations between metropolitan and postcolonial contexts of theory and practice, the question of the other, and the function of the feminine in Western metaphysics. With a foreword by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and a chapter by Irigaray responding to her commentators, this book is an essential text for those in social theory, comparative literature, or classics.
Acknowledgments

Foreword
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

1. Thinking Difference as Different Thinking in Luce Irigaray’s Deconstructive Genealogies
Athena Athanasiou and Elena Tzelepis

2. The Question of Reading Irigaray
Elizabeth Weed

3. Kore: Philosophy, Sensibility, and the Diffraction of Light
Dorothea Olkowski

4. In the Underworld with Irigaray: Kathy Acker’s Eurydice
Dianne Chisholm

5. Textiles that Matter: Irigaray and Veils
Anne-Emmanuelle Berger

6. Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters: Luce Irigaray and the Female Genealogical Line in the Stories of the Greeks
Gail Schwab

7. Antigone and the Ethics of Kinship
Mary Beth Mader

8. Mourning (as) Woman: Event, Catachresis, and “That Other Face of Discourse”
Athena Athanasiou and Elena Tzelepis

9. Weird Greek Sex: Rethinking Ethics in Irigaray and Foucault
Lynne Huffer

10. Autonomy, Self-Alteration, Sexual Difference
Stathis Gourgouris

11. Hospitality and Sexual Difference: Remembering Homer with Luce Irigaray
Judith Still

12. “Raising Love up to the Word”: Rewriting God as “Other” through Irigarayan Style
Laine M. Harrington

13. Dynamic Potentiality: The Body that Stands Alone
Claire Colebrook

14. Sameness, Alterity, Flesh: Luce Irigaray and the Place of Sexual Undecidability
Gayle Salamon

15. “Women on the Market”: On Sex, Race, and Commodification
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek

16. Irigaray’s Challenge to the Fetishistic Hegemony of the Platonic One and Many
Tina Chanter

17. Who Cares about the Greeks? Uses and Misuses of Tradition in the Articulation of Difference and Plurality
Eleni Varikas

18. Conditionalities, Exclusions, Occlusions
Penelope Deutscher

19. The Return
Luce Irigaray

Contributors

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Gender studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438431017
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

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r e w r i t i n g d i f f e r e n c e

l u c e i r i g a r a y a n d “ t h e g r e e k s ”

edited byelena tzelepis and athena athanasiou foreword by gayatri chakravorty spivak

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REWRITING DIFFERENCE

SUNY series in Gender Theory ____________ Tina Chanter, editor

REWRITING DIFFERENCE Luce Irigaray and “the Greeks”

Edited by Elena Tzelepis and Athena Athanasiou

Cover art, Mira Schor, Postcard: August 29, 1976, front side, ink and media on rice paper, 6 3/4" x 5", 1976, courtesy of the artist.

“The Return” © 2008 Luce Irigaray.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2010 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Kelli W. LeRoux Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Rewriting difference : Luce Irigaray and “the Greeks”/edited by Elena Tzelepis and Athena Athanasiou. p. cm. — (SUNY series in gender theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-3099-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)— ISBN 978-1-4384-3100-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Irigaray, Luce. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 3. Feminist theory. I. Tzelepis, Elena. II. Athanasiou, Athena. B2430.I744R49 2010 194—dc22

2009033326

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgments

Contents

Foreword Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Chapter 1: Thinking Difference as Different Thinking in Luce Irigaray’s Deconstructive Genealogies Athena Athanasiou and Elena Tzelepis

Chapter 2: The Question of Reading Irigaray Elizabeth Weed

vii

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1

15

Chapter 3: Kore: Philosophy, Sensibility, and the Diffraction of Light 33 Dorothea Olkowski

Chapter 4: In the Underworld with Irigaray: Kathy Acker’sEurydice Dianne Chisholm

Chapter 5: Textiles that Matter: Irigaray and Veils Anne-Emmanuelle Berger

Chapter 6: Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters: Luce Irigaray and the Female Genealogical Line in the Stories of the Greeks Gail Schwab

Chapter 7: Antigone and the Ethics of Kinship Mary Beth Mader

Chapter 8: Mourning (as) Woman: Event, Catachresis, and “That Other Face of Discourse” Athena Athanasiou andElena Tzelepis

51

63

79

9

3

105

vi

Contents

Chapter 9: Weird Greek Sex: Rethinking Ethics in Irigaray and Foucault Lynne Huffer

Chapter 10: Autonomy, Self-Alteration, Sexual Difference Stathis Gourgouris

Chapter 11: Hospitality and Sexual Difference: Remembering Homer with Luce Irigaray Judith Still

Chapter 12: “Raising Love up to the Word”: Rewriting God as “Other” through Irigarayan Style Laine M. Harrington

Chapter 13: Dynamic Potentiality: The Body that Stands Alone Claire Colebrook

Chapter 14: Sameness, Alterity, Flesh: Luce Irigaray and the Place of Sexual Undecidability Gayle Salamon

Chapter 15: “Women on the Market”: On Sex, Race, and Commodification Ewa Plonowska Ziarek

Chapter 16: Irigaray’s Challenge to the Fetishistic Hegemony of the Platonic One and Many Tina Chanter

Chapter 17: Who Cares about the Greeks? Uses and Misuses of Tradition in the Articulation of Difference and Plurality Eleni Varikas

Chapter 18: Conditionalities, Exclusions, Occlusions Penelope Deutscher

Chapter 19: The Return Luce Irigaray

Contributors

Index

119

135

149

165

177

191

203

217

231

247

259

273

279

Acknowledgments

We wish to express our appreciation to the authors who entrusted their work to this volume. Special thanks go to Luce Irigaray for her vital contribution. We express our deepest gratitude to Jane Bunker, our editor at SUNY Press, and Tina Chanter, the editor of the Gender Theory series, for their generous incentive and enthusiastic support. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for SUNY Press for their helpful comments, which have improved significantly the final version of the manuscript. Elizabeth Weed helped us imagine this project and offered critical insight. Penelope Deutscher and Ewa Ziarek contributed greatly to the development of this volume. Dianne Chisholm has been an incisive reader of our introductory text. Our heartfelt thanks go to Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero for their delicate reading of the manuscript. Elizabeth Grosz added to the book’s thematic breadth with her invaluable suggestions. We are indebted to Mira Schor for kindly allowing us to use her artwork for the cover of the book. We would like to thank Lila Abu-Lughod, Claudia Baracchi, Drucilla Cornell, Vangelis Calotychos, Madeleine Dobie, Nicole Fermon, Stathis Gourgouris, Marianne Hirsch, Janet Jakobsen, Sylvère Lotringer, Rosalind Morris, Neni Panourgiá, Elizabeth Povinelli, Suzanne Saïd, Elizabeth Scharffenberger, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Liana Theodoratou, Karen Van Dyck, and Gareth Williams, who helped in numerous important ways. Colleagues and administrative staff at the Hellenic Studies Program, the Classics Department, Maison Française, the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women have been supportive in various significant ways. Emma Kaufman has our appreciation for her impeccable assistance with the preparation of the manuscript during the initial stages. The Stanwood Cockey Lodge Foundation of Columbia University provided support for the final preparation of the manuscript. We are grateful for the assiduous efforts of Kelli Williams and Andrew Kenyon during the production process. Sherrow Pinder deserves a special note of fervent thanks for her gracious contribution and longstanding friendship.

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Acknowledgments

Luce Irigaray’s chapter, “The Return,” was originally written for and presented at the conference “Luce Irigaray and ‘the Greeks’: Genealogies of Re-writing,” which took place at Columbia University in New York in 2004, and which was the precursor to this volume. This piece thereafter appeared inLuce Irigaray: Teaching, edited by Luce Irigaray with Mary Green (Continuum, 2008), pp. 219–30.