In the beginning, she was

171 Pages·2013·0.874 MB·English

by  Irigaray, Luce

In the
Beginning,
She Was
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In the
Beginning,
She Was
Luce Irigaray
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© Luce Irigaray, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
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Luce Irigaray has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
pp.197–211 ‘Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone’ by Luce
Irigaray from ‘Interrogating Antigone’ edited by Wilmer, S. E. & Zukauskaite, A
(2010). By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-9840-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Irigaray, Luce.
In the beginning, she was / Luce Irigaray.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-3507-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-0637-7 (pbk. :
alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-8186-2 (ebook epub : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-
4411-9840-2 (ebook pdf : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, French--20th century. I. Title.
B2430.I73I5 2012
194--dc23
2012012875
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: The ecstasy of the between-us 1
The forgetting of her 2
A between-us on hold in the beyond 5
The closure of the same 8
How to escape opening 12
A world both open and closed 16
The human being as a being in relation 19
2 When life still was 23
The impossible mastery of natural growth 23
Enveloped within his own language 30
A world from which women, mystery, wonder withdraw 37
A logical dualism supplants a natural duality 43
vi Contents
3 A being created without regard for his being
born 51
Engendered by two who are different, he confronts
opposites 51
The alternation between the limit and the unlimited 59
Multiple, she is also one 66
Neither animal nor god, but not yet man 74
4 The wandering of man 83
A becoming cut off from its carnal source 83
Torn apart, man projects himself onto the beyond 90
The sacred character of the master-disciple relation 98
The forgetting of an elusive origin 105
5 Between myth and history: The tragedy of
Antigone 113
Sharing Antigone’s tragic fate 114
Respect for life and cosmic order 119
Respect for generational order 126
Respect for sexuate differentiation 131
An insurmountable tragedy 135
6 The return 139
For what does Western man feel nostalgic? 142
Self-affection in the masculine 148
Self-affection in the feminine 154
Self-affection needs to be two 158
Acknowledgements
I began this book a long time ago, before the end of the
twentieth century. For various reasons, I finished other
books before it. However, some chapters have already been given,
in earlier versions, as talks during conferences and appeared in
the publication of the conferences’ proceedings: ‘The Ecstasy
of the Between-Us’ during the conference Intermedialities at
the Erasmus University in Rotterdam in 2002 (published
by Rowman and Littlefield, edited by Henk Oosterling and
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, in the series Textures, 2011); ‘The
Return’ during the conference ‘Luce Irigaray and “the Greeks”:
Genealogies of Re-reading’ at Columbia University in New York
in 2004 (published in Luce Irigaray: Teaching, Continuum 2008,
and in the conference’s proceedings Rewriting Difference, Luce
Irigaray and “the Greeks”, edited by Elena Tzelepis and Athena
Athanasiou, Suny Press, series Gender Theory, 2010); ‘Between
Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone’ during the
conference Interrogating Antigone at Trinity College in Dublin
in 2006 (published by Oxford University Press, series Classical
Presences, edited by S. E. Wilmer and Audroné Žukauskaité,
viii Acknowledgements
2010). These chapters were written directly in English by me
and reread by Mary Green and Stephen Pluháček. The three
other chapters are published for the first time. They have been
translated from the French jointly by Stephen Pluháček and me.
I deeply thank all the people who contributed to the reali-
zation of this volume through their help to establish the English
version of the text or the confidence they showed in my work by
inviting me to give a talk, by publishing it and by allowing me
to reprint it again in this book. Many thanks also to Angelika
Dickmann for helping me to collect the final electronic material
of the book and prepare it for publication.
1
Introduction:
The ecstasy of the
between-us
It is probably necessary to return to the world of the Presocratic
philosophers in order to understand something about the
between-us today.
Entrance to such a world takes place through a guide, a
master. He initiates the disciple, a kind of son, to the truth, to
the logic of Western truth.
This master often begins his teaching with the words: I say.
That is to say, he considers that the truth is guaranteed by his
own speech, and the disciple has to repeat the same discourse,
arguing: he says, or he said. The truth is thus passed on from
the master to the disciple, like from a father to a son. The truth
is passed on between men, in a genealogical or hierarchical
way.