Irigaray, Luce - Christine Holmlund (essay date summer 1991)
Christine Holmlund (essay date summer 1991)
SOURCE: Holmlund, Christine. “The Lesbian, the Mother, the Heterosexual Lover: Irigaray's Recodings of Difference.” Feminist Studies 17, no. 2 (summer 1991): 283-308.
[In the following essay, Holmlund surveys Irigaray's oeuvre and its critical reception, identifying three central tropes that inform her criticism and the political/literary implications of these devices in the evolution of her thought.]
To North American feminists encountering Luce Irigaray for the first time, several of the themes underlying her wide-ranging theoretical and empirical investigations will seem familiar: (1) her overt, uncompromising challenge to male systems of thought; (2) her continual recognition that theoretical choices carry with them practical implications; and (3) her ongoing insistence that language usage both constitutes and perpetuates sexual inequality. Other stances may well seem alien: (1) her...
[The entire page is 11597 words long]
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