LUCE IRIGARAY

When Our
Lips Speak
Together
THIS SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE (1985)
THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK
Luce Irigaray (1930 - )
French/Belgian philosopher, linguist, psychoanalist, feminist(?).
Language and female/women

Speculum of the Other Woman (1974)

Phallocentrism of Western philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes,
Kant, Hegel, Freud

This Sex Which Is Not One (1977)

Critique to Lacan, highlighting of sexual difference
(Deconstruction influence) as something valuable
A NEW LINGUISTIC
PROPOSITION
MULTIPLICITY AS IT'S BASE

• "I love you: body shared, undivides. Neither

you nor I severed" (p. 206)
• "Why only one song, one speech, one text
at a time? To seduce, to satisfy, to fill one
of my "holes"? (P. 209)
• "I'm touching you, that´s quite enough to
let me know that you are my body" (p. 208)
• "The sky isn´t up there: it's between us" (p.
213)
When our lips speak together

LANGUAGE Prove her own theories. Title: Which lips is she

talking about? Word games, indirect reader (who
is it?), metaphors and symbols (red/white)

DIFFERENCE Is not correctly addressed by the language,

relational, trap of alikeness (norm), separation
which allows creation (deleuzian influence)

WOMANHOOD Neither one nor two, threatening, feeling (vs

male "seein"), loses touch "with herself" by male
penetration, plurality of subjetcs

WOMEN'S Break with heteronormativity/androcentrism

(use of the "you"), complexity, recover
SEXUALITY/EROTICISM
autoeroticism, sorority and communitary sense
COMMENTS/ QUESTIONS
Poetry vs Complexity of the language and contents
Why is poetry such a fertile and promising space for (re)writing
womanhood (or is supposed to be)?

Enhacing difference: slippery slope for binarism/ essentialism

Focus on the linguistic reality - affective turn

Is language the limit for expressing and knowing? Should
everything be "known"?