7/28/2019 Irigaray literary course

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Luce Irigaray holds that the subject of knowledge and reason is always defined in the

western tradition as masculine. In The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of

the Feminine, she suggests how women can disrupt the way in which the feminine is

defined in discourse as lack, deficiency, or as imitation and negative image of the

subject (LTA 796). What are the strategies Irigaray proposes for disrupting the power

of male discourse?

Irigaray's aim is to create two equally positive and autonomous terms, and to acknowledge

two sexes, not one. Irigaray states that there is subordination when it comes to the issue of

masculinity and femininity, and that feminine role is often functioning as a mirror to the

narcissism of masculinity.

Irigaray claims that we have to look back and find out what accounts for the power behind

this systematical inferiority to the female role. She wants to investigate the force behind the

cohesion of this systematical inferiority, and the resourcefulness of its strategies.

Irigarays strategy is to look through the historically assigned path to the feminine role. One

must assume that this role was created deliberately, and change this subordination, or at least

thwart it in order to achieve more of an equal role. Irigaray argues that women should try to

recover the place of their exploitation by discourse, without allowing themselves to be simply

reduced to it.

In short, Irigarays strategy has nothing to do with creating a new theory of which woman

would be the subject or the object. Irigarays strategy is simply about jamming the theoretical

machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning

that are excessively univocal. Which presupposes that women do not aspire simply to be

mens equals in knowledge. That they do not claim to be rivaling men in constructing a logic

of the feminine that would still take onto-theo-logic as its model, but that they are rather

attempting to wrest this question away from the economy of the logos. They should not put it

then in the form what is a woman? but rather, repeating and interpreting the way in which

within discourse, the feminine finds itself defined as lack, deficiency, or as imitation and

negative image of the subject, they should signify that with respect to this logic, that adisruptive excess is possible on the feminine side.

7/28/2019 Irigaray literary course

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Develop the suggestion for a feminist reading of The Bluest Eye as suggested by

Ryan (on Fronter).

The stereotyping of women is obvious in the Bluest Eye. On the one hand, one could clearly

see the rules of a patriarchal society that idealizes someone who looks like Shirley Temple,

with all the things that comes with the territory. In the Bluest Eye, Claudia represents this

image of superiority, While Frieda and Pecola represents a different image, an image that is

somewhat inferior to the ideal societys image of the norm. A society that has a majority of

white people decides that white is the norm and it is beautiful, and that everything else is

below the standards. It seems that Claudia who represents the image of the norm rejects the

idea that she is more superior just because of her skin color.

The prostitutes in the Bluest Eye seem to be of a position of inferiority as well. However, if

one examines them a little deeper, one may find that they are actually empowered. They

managed to break free from norms, and decided to do what they want with their bodies.

Actually, one may gets the sense that Morrison is actually taunting the men who gives their

hard earned money to the prostitutes. One could feel from the novel that the prostitutes are

more superior to the men who pay them for sex.