Not woman enough: Irigaray's culture of difference

Bray, A. (2001) Not woman enough: Irigaray's culture of difference. Feminist Theory, 2 (3). pp. 311-327.

Abstract

This article examines the limitations associated with Irigaray’s concept of a culture of difference. I suggest that her concept of sexual difference depends upon a conservative fiction of sameness. I argue that a fiction of phallic sameness underpins her evangelical championing of difference, and that such a fiction retains a conservative blindness to the complexities of contemporary social relations and erases the positive effects oppositional discourses have had on the culture of modernity. I question the debt Irigaray disavows to other non-difference feminism, her insistence that woman are radically marginalized and suggest that her culture of difference is prescriptive and normative. Egalitarian feminism, understood as a postmodern project, is far more strategic, insofar as it offers a multiply-situated analysis of the relationship between women and power within modernity. I replace Irigaray’s negative image of the egalitarian feminist as an unnatural woman with the figure of the cyborg who embraces ontological impurity and strategically works within culture.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Copyright:	© 2001 by SAGE Publications
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/34516

Item Control Page