Customer Reviews

Speculum of the Other Woman

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The first section is especially wonderful: a complete analysis of Freud's construction of women's sexuality and development. She has a great style with many a qwirk to keep you entertained. The second section includes free-form essays on Aristotle, Kant, Plato, Descartes and other representatives of the Western male philosophical canon. The last section is a complete analysis of Plato's Hystera. This is a good text for those of us who need to read the foundations of feminist thought . . . though some American feminists (such as myself) may find themselves annoyed with her "essentialism". Enjoy!

Those unfamiliar with Plato, Descartes, Freud and Lacan will find great challenges in understanding this rather poetic book. Irigary examines these figures in light of the "symbolic order" to detail phallocentricism in the development of Western thought in general as well as psychoanalysis, revealing what is, according to the author, the nature of feminine sexuality and gender identity. Reading this text, written by a former student of Lacan's expelled over ideological differences, was transforming and has left a permanent perspective from which to percieve and critique philosophical arguments as well as science, medicine, and psychotherapy.

In the analysis of Freud in the first instance, many of the great western philosophers in the second, and Plato noch einmal in the third, we have the opportunity to note the "place" of women in our traditions with a view to how innane it all was. How often in reading the tradition do we miss the speculum of the man for what it was? How much effort would it be to always be aware of this?

A lack of appreciation for these pensees will provoke snide (when not openly livid) dismissals of utter intellectual incompetence wedded to a crude, perfervid misogyny. So I'll be brief and, as is my wont, simplistic. If you want to make Freud look logical, compare him to Jung; if you want to make Jung look logical, compare him to Lacan; if you want to make Lacan look logical, compare him to Irigaray; if you want to make Irigaray look logical ... well ... there's always the Eleusinian Mysteries.