Irigaray's Body Symbolic

MARGARET WHITFORD
This
paper explores
the
symbolic implications of
Luce
Irigaray's images of
the
female body, particularly
the two
lips
and the mucous. It
suggests
that
Irigaray's
work
reveals some
of
the
problems
attendant on
"positive images of
women."
There is a
real,
and
probably
at the moment
irresolvable,
tension in feminist
thought
between the need to create
positive images
of
women,
and the
arguable impossibility
of
producing images
which are not
immediately recap-
tured,
or
recapturable, by
the dominant
imaginary
and
symbolic economy
in
which woman
figures
for-man. Roszika Parker
points
out that:
Frequently
efforts to
give
new
meanings
to women
[have]
been
viewed
through entirely
traditional
spectacles.
For
example,
feminist
photographs
and
paintings
of our
genitals
have often
been received not as the intended celebration of women's
autonomous
sexuality
but
simply
as
titillation,
or even as
obscenity. [Whereas] [m]en's bodies have never stood
simply
for
sex,
rather
they
have
represented
a wide
spectrum
of emotion
and
experience. (1985, 44-5)
The tension is
epitomized by Judy Chicago's
The Dinner
Party which,
on the
one
hand,
is a
spectacular representation
of women in
myth
and
history, yet
on the other hand disturbs
by
its
apparently quite
traditional
equation
of
women with their sexual
organs,
however
lovingly
and
gloriously
these are
presented.
In
Irigaray's work,
we find this
particular
tension
exemplified.
Her
critique
of Western
metaphysics argues
that women have been the substratum of
representation
and thus are not
representable
without
complete
transforma-
tion of the
symbolic
order as we know it. Yet
Irigaray
is also concerned with
the
possibility
of a female
imaginary,
which would necessitate
images
or
representations
of women in which women could
recognize themselves,
or
with which women could
identify.
The
imaginary
vehicles our most
powerful
Hypatia
vol.
6,
no. 3
(Fall 1991)
?
by Margaret
Whitford
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Hypatia
passions
and
emotions;
to leave it with no
images
in which these emotions
could be
embodied,
or with
images
of
women-for-men,
leaves intact the
power
of the dominant
system ofrepresentation.
Without
symbolization
of some
kind,
whether verbal or
iconographic,
women remain "homeless" in the
symbolic
order,
as
Irigaray puts it,
in a state of dereliction
(Whitford 1989).
But since it
seems to be
impossible, according
to
Irigaray,
to
produce images
of women's
difference in a
sexually
in-different
culture,
it is hard to know what
strategies
to
adopt. Irigaray
herself makes a number of concrete
suggestions
at various
points
in her
work,
for
example:
To whomever is concerned
today
with social
justice,
I
propose
putting up
in
every public place images representing
the
(nat-
ural and
spiritual) mother-daughter couple....
Such
represen-
tations are absent from
public
and
religious
sites.
(1987, 203-4,
my
trans.)
But
again
it is hard not to
feel, given
the
power
of her
analysis
of the
place
of woman in
patriarchy,
that such
representations
could make
very
little
difference to women's
position
in
society,
since
they
would not flow from an
infrastructural
reorganization.
As Elizabeth Grosz
puts
it
succinctly:
"it is not
possible
to
position
female-orientated
images
in
place
of male
ones,
where the
underlying
structure accords no
specificity
to the female"
(1986b, 6).
What is more
interesting
in
Irigaray's
work is her use of
images
of the
body.
I want to discuss two
images
in
particular,
the "two
lips"
'
and the mucous
(membrane).
The first is well-known and has
always
been controversial. The
second is less
well-known;
it does not
appear
in
Irigaray's
work until about
1982,
in an
essay
on
psychoanalysis
called "La Limite du
Transfert,"
and is then
developed
further in the still untranslated
Ethique
de la
difference
sexuelle
[The
Ethics of Sexual
Difference]
2. What I shall
argue
here is that these
images
have
infact
become a basis for
resymbolization despite
their
quite
insistent literalness
and
referentiality;
that what
Irigaray
has succeeded in
doing,
in her
enigmatic
and allusive
writing,
is to
provide images of
women's bodies which have become
material for
symbolic exchange among
women,
and which therefore have
already
in a limited domain and to a limited extent exceeded the
parameters
of
patriarchal representations
of women. I shall
argue, firstly,
that what is
important
about the two
lips
is not
only
their
literalness, but,
above
all,
the
fact
that no one can
agree
on
exactly
what
they
mean.
Although
I
accept
that a discursive
representation
can
support any
number
of
interpretations,
I am not
putting
forward a
postmodernist reading
of
Irigaray
here.
By postmodemist,
I mean this: one of the features of
postmodernism
is
its
emphasis
on
multiplicity
and
plurality; Irigaray's
"feminine" is characterized
by multiplicity
and
plurality;
therefore
Irigaray
is
postmodernist
and the two
lips
therefore "stand for"
multiplicity
and
plurality.
It is not so much that I
reject
this
reading. Rather,
I want to
argue
that it is
only
one
among many
other
98
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Margaret
Whitford
possible readings, including
the most literal and
naturalizing one;
the two
lips
cannot be reduced to a
representation
of the
postmodernist
feminine
multiplic-
ity.
I am
arguing
that the
strength
of
Irigaray's image
lies in the extent to which
it exceeds and
goes beyond
the
possible intentionality
of a
single author, to
become
part
of our cultural and
symbolic "baggage."
3
First of
all,
there is the literal
reading.
The discussion of the two
lips
is often
taken as a naturalistic account of female
sexuality,
an essentialist
picture
of
what women's
sexuality
is
really,
or could
really,
be like.
Irigaray
is
thought
to
be
positing
a real
body,
unmediated
by
the
symbolic
order,
which women
might
recognize
as their own. This essentialist
picture
has been
sharply
criticized,
and
the
critique
has often focused on the
image
of the two
lips,
and the inference
that
language,
or women's
language,
should be a direct
expression
of the
non-symbolized body. Kaja Silverman,
for
example,
falls back on this literalist
reading
of
Irigaray,
and concludes:
What
Irigaray
advances here .. . is the notion of a
language
which would be
"adequate
for the
[female]
body",
a
language
capable
of
coexisting
with that
body
as
closely
as the two
lips
of the vulva coexist. This is the obverse of the
linguistic
model
proposed by
Lacan,
which stresses the
incommensurability
of
signifier
and
body,
the loss of the latter
constituting
the
price
which must be
paid
for access to the former. It is
also,
to
my way
of
thinking,
an
impossible paradigm,
one which
attempts
to
deny
the
fundamentally arbitrary
relation of
language
to the
referent.
(1988, 144)
This
reading depends
on the literal
extrapolation
of the two
lips
to female
language. Counter-readings
of the two
lips
can be found
elsewhere,
and I will
give
a
range
of
examples
to illustrate how the two
lips
can be read as a
representation
of whatever
interpretation
of
Irigaray
the
interpreter
wishes to
highlight.
There is an obvious flaw in the literalist
reading
(which
does not however
exclude the
power
of the
image
and its
"reality effect"); Jan
Montefiore
points
out that "this
metaphor
of the 'two
lips'
is not a definition of women's
identity
in
biological terms;
the statement that
they
are
'continually interchanging'
must make it clear that
Irigaray
is not
talking
about literal
biology" (1987,
149).
So several
interpreters
insist that the two
lips
should be seen as a
discursive
strategy. Carolyn
Burke
explains clearly
that: "The
lips
of 'When
Our
Lips Speak Together,'
for
example,
should not be reduced to a
literally
anatomical
specification,
for the
figure suggests
another
mode,
rather than
another model. It
implies plurality, multiplicity,
and a mode of
being
'in touch'
that differs from the
phallic
mode of discourse"
(1981, 303).
For
Jane
Gallop
and Elizabeth
Grosz,
it is a
question
of a
poetics
of the
body,
devices of
writing
and
representation,
"whose function is inter-discursive rather than
referential.
In
short,
Irigaray
is not
outlining
the truth of female
sexuality
or the
makeup
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Hypatia
of the world. She is
creating
a discourse to contest or combat
other,
prevailing
discourses"
(Grosz 1986b, 9).
Gallop points
out that
despite
the referential
illusion,
anatomical reference is never an unmediated
reflection,
even in
phallomorphic
discourse. She
quotes
Freud's remark
that,
"From all one hears
in
analysis,
one could not
guess
that the male
genitals
consist of
anything
more
than the
penis"
(1982, 67)
to illustrate that
images
of
anatomy
are
precisely
that:
images,
not unmediated
reproductions.
Thus the two
lips
for
Gallop
offer
the
possibility
of a
healing metaphor, loosening
the
rigidity
of
phallomorphic
logic
(1983, 81).
Other
interpreters
see the two
lips
as more of a
"struggle concept," produced
specifically
to combat Lacanian
theory.
Rosi Braidotti
suggests
that the
image
of the two
lips
is "chosen for its value of
metaphorical
subversion,
in
response
to the Lacanian
image
of the black hole"
(quoted
in Morris
1988, 49).
Diana
Fuss makes a similar
point: "Irigaray's production
of an
apparently
essentializ-
ing
notion of female
sexuality
functions
strategically
as a reversal and
displace-
ment ofLacan's
phallomorphism"
(1989, 66);
the two
lips, by shifting
the focus
from
sight
to
touch,
challenge
Lacan's obsession with
veiling (1989, 67).
So
Fuss sees it as a
question
of the
symbolization
of the
imaginary,
rather than a
question
of
biology:
"The
symbolization
of the female
imaginary
is
precisely
what
Irigaray
seeks to elaborate
through
her
conceptualization
of the two
lips"
(1989, 67).
This
interpretation
is also made
by Maggie Berg: "Irigaray's lips
are,
I
think,
offered as an ironic alternative to Lacan's
phallus,
and her
'lips'
bear the same relation to the labia as does the
phallus
to the
penis"
(1988, 71).
In this
view,
the
lips
are an alternative
privileged signifier,
not an
organ, part
of the
body
or
object; they
exist
only
in the
symbolic
realm and disturb the
monopoly
of the
phallus.
Yet another
interpretative possibility
is to see the two
lips
as a deconstructive
concept, perhaps
as a kind of Derridean "undecidable." This move is made in
another article
by
Elizabeth Grosz:
The two
lips
can be seen as the third movement in the
process
of deconstruction-the creation of a third term
occupying
an
impossible
middle
ground
of
binary oppositions.
This third term
simultaneously participates
in both
categories
of the
opposi-
tion,
defying
the demand for one or the other. Such an
image
demonstrates that what had been conceived
oppositionally-
the distinction between clitoris and
vagina,
one and
two,
inside
and
outside,
visible and invisible-need not be
regarded
oppositionally.
Rather,
such
oppositions may
be seen
as,
for
example, poles
within a continuum.
(1986a, 76)
Anna Munster
appears
to take a similar line when she writes that the two
lips
are "a
strategic representation defying
the
logic
of definition and
identity"
(1986, 121).
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Margaret
Whitford
It is also
possible
to see the two
lips
in terms of feminist
politics
as well as
in terms of deconstruction. This is
Mary Jacobus's interpretation:
"The
lips
that
speak together
(the lips
of female
lovers)
are here
imagined
as
initiating
a
dialogue,
not of conflict or reunion ... but of
mutuality,
lack of
boundaries,
continuity"
(1986,78;
see also
281-282).
I also
put
forward a
political interpre-
tation in Luce
Irigaray: Philosophy
in the Feminine
(Whitford 1991),
based on
taking
the two
lips
as a
figure
for
metonymy
or
contiguity. Tracing
the
itinerary
of the idea of
contiguity
in
Irigaray's
work,
and its reference to
a)
the mother-
daughter relationship,
and
b)
the
parental
intercourse,
or the sexual relation
between male and
female,
I
argue
that the two
lips
stand for what has been left
out of the social contract:
namely
the maternal
genealogy,
and women's
relations between and
among
themselves. At the same
time, however,
Irigaray
points
out that
simple contiguity
is not
enough;
the
problem
is the transition
from
contiguity
to another
symbolic figure
which would enable the
contiguity
of the
unsymbolized mother-daughter relationship
to take a
mediated,
symbol-
ized and social form.
I think Iris Marion
Young
(1990)
probably
sums
up
the current
interpreta-
tive situation
very precisely
when she writes: "I am not sure what
Irigaray
means
by
our
lips speaking together,
but for me it means a
discovery, recovery,
and invention of women's culture"
(181). However,
I will
give
the final word
here to
Irigaray
herself. In a 1977 article she stressed that it is a
question
of
discourse and
representation,
not of nature:
To seek to discover-rediscover a
possible imaginary
for women
through
the movement of two
lips re-touching
. . . does not
mean a
regressive
recourse to
anatomy
or to a
concept
of
"nature,"
nor a recall to
genital
order-women have more than
one
pair
of two
lips!
Rather it means to
open up
the
autological
and
tautological
circle of
systems
of
representation
and their
discourse so that women
may speak (of)
their sex
[parler
leur
sexe]. (1985, 272,
my
trans.)
4
The
point
is,
I
think,
the
proliferation
of
readings.
In a
sense,
whatever
Irigaray may
have meant
originally
when she
put
the two
lips
into
circulation,
and whatever she
may
maintain
now,
she is not in control of this
image any
longer;
it has taken on a life of its own and this life is far more
significant
than
any single reading.
It is the autonomous
itinerary
of
multiple symbolic
inter-
pretation
which I want to stress
here,
the now
seemingly independent
life of
an
image
which started off
originally
as an
image
of a
(mostly unmentionable)
part
of women's
body,
but is now
thoroughly impregnated
with
layers
of
symbolic meaning.
The
image
of the mucous
presents
different
problems;
unlike the two
lips,
it is not
yet
well-known as an
Irigarayan image,
and
interpreters
have not
yet
explored
its connotations. In
many ways,
the mucous is the most intractable
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Hypatia
of
Irigaray's symbolic
terms;
it is a bit too close to the
"abject"
for
comfort,
on
the
dangerous boundary
between inside and outside.
Irigaray
has chosen
it,
I
think,
precisely
for its
intractibility,
since: "in the absence of valid
representa-
tions of female
sexuality,
[the]
womb
merges
with woman's
sex/sexual
organs
as a whole. There are no words to talk about
it, except filthy, mutilating
words"
(1987, 28).5
The mucous
represents
the most
"unthought"
and "unthinkable"
of Western
culture;
it is related to the
threshold,
but is never
theorized,
Irigaray
writes
(1985,302).
It
corresponds
to "what is to be
thought today"
(1984, 107),
or sexual difference itself: "the
question
to be
thought
in our era"
(1984, 13).
One of the most
explicit
statements about the mucous
explains:
For
women,
it is therefore a matter of
learning
to discover and
inhabit a different
magnetism
and the
morphology
of a sexuate
body, especially
in its
singularities
and mucous
qualities.
But
this flesh
(and
aren't the mucous membranes the
very
stuff of
flesh for
many?)
has remained
ignored,
often
imagined
as
chaos,
abyss,
or
dregs.
Raw
material,
or a cast-off from what has
already
been
born,
it has
yet
to find its
forms,
to flower in accordance
with its roots. It has still not been born into its own
growth,
its
subjectivity.
(1987, 194)6
Irigaray's startling
claim in
Ethique
de la
difference
sexuelle is that what is
unthought
and what we need to
think,
is the
relationship
of the mucous to the
divine,
for "this
mucous,
in its
touching,
in its
properties,
would hinder the
transcendence of a God of immutable and stable truth"
(1984, 107).
What I
suggest
here is that the mucous is a nodal
concept
which links
together every
part
of
Irigaray's
work,
from the earliest to the most recent. It
corresponds
to
the
attempt
to build a sensible
transcendental,
in which the most
corporeal
and the most transcendent are no
longer culturally split,
and in which women's
bodies and
sexuality
could be
representations
of the most transcendent or the
divine.7 It is not
just
a
question
of
theology.
What is
important
here is whether
we could
think,
conceive or
imagine
the divine in terms of what has
culturally
been,
for women
too,
the most
"abject,"
the most
unspeakable part
of the
body.
It is a
question
of the
possibilities
of what we can
permit
ourselves to think.
Let me
begin by explaining why
the
properties
of the mucous make it a
particularly
suitable
image
for the whole
range
of
Irigaray's preoccupations,
and
why
it lends itself to the
representation
of the
unthought:
1. It relates back
directly
to the
problematics
of the mirror in
Speculum
(1974).
The mucous is
interior,
it cannot be seen in the Lacanian flat
mirror which "reflects the
greater part
of women's sexual
organs only
as a hole"
(1974, 109,
note
122;
trans.
89, note).
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Whitford
2. It is more accessible to touch than to
sight,
thus
shifting
the
emphasis
away
from an excessive
preoccupation
with the
scopic
and the
visible,
in order to
privilege
a different sense.
3. It is
always partly open (entrouvert), whereas,
according
to
Irigaray,
the
male
imaginary
would like the woman to be a closed
container,
under
his control.
Irigaray
writes that woman
represents
a house for
men,
but
the threshold is closed.
Irigaray
calls it in one
place
a maison
close,
literally
a closed
house,
but also a brothel or house of ill fame
(1974,
178;
trans.
143),
and
argues
that the male
imaginary
needs to fantasize
the maternal
body
as his
property:
"For men to have the
possibility
of
thinking
themselves or
imagining
themselves causa sui
(self-caused),
they
have to think that the container
'belongs'
to them"
(1984, 86).
What
Irigaray
is
looking
for and
attempting
to
symbolize
is a
way
of
distinguishing symbolically
between mother and woman. The mucous
cannot be reduced to the
maternal-feminine body
and the
production
of
children;
it refers to the
possibility
of woman as a
desiring subject
too.
4. The mucous indicates a
body
that is not
easily incorporated
into the
male
imaginary.
It is not a
part-object
like the
penis
or
breast,
it cannot
be
separated
from the
body,
and so cannot be
easily grasped by
the male
imaginary
which is
perhaps "exclusively dependent
on
organs?" (1985,
270).
More
importantly, perhaps,
it cannot be swallowed
(incorpo-
rated, devoured),
nor can it be
spat
out. It is neither
object
nor
subject.
It does not
correspond
to
binary oppositions (men
also have one
pair
of
lips,
mucous membranes
etc.).
It is neither
simply
solid nor is it fluid.
It is not stable in a fixed
form;
it
expands,
but not in a
shape;
its form
cannot
readily
be visualized.8
5. It
corresponds
both to women's
sexuality
and to women's
speech (the
"more than one
pair
of two
lips"
mentioned in Parler
n'estjamais
neutre
[1985, 272]).
The
purpose
of the mucous is to initiate extensive
resymbolization
of
Western culture. Possible areas of
resymbolization
which
Irigaray singles
out
in
particular
are:
1)
The
symbolization
of a maternal
genealogy,
which would
allow women to situate themselves in relation to the
mother,
and
symbolize
this relation
otherwise; 2)
The
categories
of
space
and
time;9
(I shall mention
this theme further
below); 3)
The
symbolization
of
birth, loss,
separation
and
death in terms which do not revolve around the
centrality
of the
phallus
and
the notion of castration.
I shall take death as
my example here,
since this is an
Irigarayan
theme which
has so far remained more or less
unexplored.
To understand the connection
between the
symbolization
of death and the
representations
of the
body,
we
need to return to
Irigaray's critique
of
psychoanalytic theory,
particularly
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Hypatia
Lacan.
Very briefly,
she
argues
that
symbolic systems
are subtended
by
a male
imaginary
which,
despite
the denials of Lacanian theorists
("the
phallus
is not
the
penis"),
is
intimately
connected with the
phenomenology
of the male
body
and its
self-representation
as
phallic.
The
specificity
of the female
body
is
missing
from these
systems
of
representation,
and as a
result,
women are
seen-and forced to see themselves-as defective and "castrated" men. It is a
regime
of sexual
"indifference,"
in which
representation
accords no
specificity
to the female. In
Speculum, Irigaray argues
that the death drives
(whether
these
are
interpreted
as
aggressiveness, [self-]destructiveness,
return to stasis and
immobility,
or
primary
masochism)
are mediated
by
this
phallic economy,
to
a certain extent
protecting
men at the
expense
of women. I will
spend
a few
paragraphs explaining Irigaray's
account of woman as mediator of the death
drives of
men,
before
coming
back to the mucous. The
importance
of the
mucous as a
symbolic
term is that it offers a
way
of
representing
the
imaginary
body
as
non-phallic,
without
having
recourse to the
concept
of
castration,
and
therefore
proposes
a different
symbolic economy,
in which women would no
longer
be used for men's self-affection and
self-protection,
and in which
women's own self-affection and
self-protection against
the death drives could
find a mediation.10
In
Speculum, Irigaray
links castration with the death
drives,
presenting
the
castration
complex
in men as a
way
of
dealing
with the death
drives,
but a
way
that continues to leave women without
adequate symbolization,
while women
continue to
represent
for men the
specter
of total dissolution and
disintegra-
tion. Death is a kind of "hole" in
being.
That hole or
nothingness
cannot be
mastered;
it is
literally
unthinkable. But if women can stand for that hole in
representation
(1974, 85;
trans.
71),
a kind of "dark
continent,"
then there is
at least the
fantasy
or illusion of
mastery-for
men at
any
rate. The unthinkable
has been
represented;
woman
represents
death or the unthinkable
for/by
men.
Irigaray
links the differential
development
of the little
girl
and the little
boy
to the structure of the castration
complex.
The
aggression
which both
boy
and
girl
are said to exhibit at the anal
stage
is
turned,
in the case of
girls,
into
masochism;
that
is,
their
aggression
is turned
against
themselves,
while men
protect
themselves
against self-aggression through
the castration
complex
and
the "normal" structure of
masculinity. Quoting Freud,
Irigaray
writes:
You will have realized also that the "sexual function"
requires
aggressiveness
from the
male,
and that this authorizes an econ-
omy of
death drives
disengaging
and
protecting
the
"subject"
by
exercising
itself on the
"object."
And
by continuing
to be the
"object" pole
in the sexual
act,
the woman will
provide
man with
an outlet
for
his
"primary
masochism,"
dangerous
not
only for
the
"psychical,
" but also
for
the
"organic," threatening
to
"life.". Now,
Freud states that this
primary
or
"erogenous"
masochism will be
104
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Margaret
Whitford
reserved to
woman,
and that both her "constitution" and "social
conventions" will forbid her
any
sadistic
way
to work out these
masochistic death drives. She can
only
"turn them round" or
"turn them inward."
(1974, 62;
trans.
54;
trans.
adapted; my
italics)
In this
scenario,
so
long
as it functions
effectively,
the
"subject"
(male)
is
then
protected
from his own self-destructive masochism at the
expense
of the
woman who cannot sublimate her own death drive.
(These
violent
unsymbolized
drives can then be turned
against
herself;
they
become,
for
example,
the traditional self-sacrifice of the
woman,
or women's
deadly rivalry
with each
other.)
By connecting
the
trajectory
of the death drives with the
castration
complex, Irigaray
makes a link between the naturalization of castra-
tion
(the
absence of the
penis)
and the naturalization of female masochism
(it
is her
"constitution"),
and can therefore claim that castration
apotropaically
functions to ward off death.
By making
death
(instead
of
woman)
the absolute
other,
and
by making
women into the
representatives
of
death,
men
attempt
to master and contain the unthinkable:
In this
proliferating
desire of the
same,
death will be the
only
representative
of an
outside,
of a
heterogeneity,
of an
other;
woman will assume the function of
representing
death
(of
sex/organ), castration,
and man will be sure as far as
possible
of
achieving mastery, subjugation....
(1974, 27;
trans.
27)
In this
economy,
no
system
of
representation
is
provided
for women to deal
with their death
drives,
their "castration"
(i.e.,
their
entry
into the
symbolic
order),
and this has an effect on their
possibilities
for
sublimation,
for
becoming
"subjects,"
whether
subjects
of
representation
or
subjects
in the social world.
And this
especially
affects their
possibilities
for constructive
relationships
with
other women.
But in this
equation
of castration and
death,
the
possible emergence
of the
woman
subject
is
extremely threatening:
"the other ... threatens
only
with
the reminder of that with which she has been
surreptitiously
entrusted: death"
(Irigaray
1980, 85-6).
For the male
subject,
the woman threatens the "horror
of the
abyss,
attributed to woman
...
loss of
identity,
death"
(1980, 97).
For
women to assert their
co-subjectivity,
then,
means that the
specter
of death
and dissolution returns to haunt the male
imaginary.
That which the
patriar-
chal
symbolic
has
attempted
to master
by repression
and
splitting
can
only
re-appear
in an
unbearably threatening
form. It is clear from
Speculum
that
Irigaray
sees the
symbolic
order as a
way
of
binding
the death drives of men at
the
expense
of women
(1974, 62, 126;
trans.
54, 102).
To
challenge
this
economy
of the death
drives,
she
writes,
what we have to
challenge
is the
representation
of women
by
men.
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Hypatia
The constitution of the male
subject, then,
involves the structure described
with such
apparent finality by
Lacan,
in which castration structures the death
drives
and,
at the same
time,
relegates
woman to her traditional
position
in
the
Oedipus complex.
The whole edifice
depends
on the
phallus. However,
the mucous resists
recapture by
the male
imaginary,
as I indicated above. It is
invisible in the flat
mirror;
it is not
immediately
accessible to
sight;
it indicates
that which is not
entirely
"owned"
by
men;
it cannot be
detached, split
off
from the
body, manipulated
and handled
by
the male
imaginary,
as can other
parts
of the
body;
it does not slot
easily
into the available dichotomies. Its
function,
and its
potential strength,
lies in this elusiveness and
ungraspability
which
might
orient us towards a different
way
of
symbolizing
the sexuate
body.
The
mucous, then,
is a term which is offered as an
approach
to the
problem
of
rethinking
the
phallic economy, breaking
down the traditional
metaphysical
oppositions,
and
fundamentally undermining
the whole tradition based on the
imaginary
male
body.
(It
slides
away
from the
dichotomy
of
castrated/not
castrated.)
Its
provocation
lies in its insistent
referentiality,
the
attempt
to
re-place
the female
body
in the
symbolic
order,
its
wager
that the female
body
could be as
adequate
for
symbolization
as the male
body
and the
phallic
referent,
and not
only
that,
but that its
symbolization
could overcome the
split
on which all of Wester culture is based: celestial and
terrestrial,
transcendent
and
sensible,
life and
death,
Eros and Thanatos. "Women are
dispossessed
of
access to life and to death as affirmative
responsibilities" (Irigaray
1985, 294);
to
symbolize
the mucous would allow access to life and to death to both
sexes,
"without eternal strife and without a lethal fusion"
(1985, 303).
The
implications
of these
fragmentary
hints could be
extraordinarily
far-
reaching.
In
particular, Irigaray suggests
in
Ethique
that the
symbolization
of
the mucous could
put
into
question
Kant's transcendental
aesthetic, i.e.,
space
and time defined as the conditions of
possibility
of
experience:
l
The transition to a new
age
necessitates a new
perception
and
a new
conception
of time and
space,
our
occupation of place,
and
the
envelopes of identity. (1984,15;
trans. in Moi
(ed.) 1987,120;
trans.
adapted)
We need both
space
and time. And
perhaps
we are
living
in an
age
when time must
redeploy space.
The
dawning
of a new world?
The
re-casting
of immanence and
transcendence,
notably by
that threshold which has never been examined as such: the
female sex. A threshold unto
mucosity. Beyond
the classic
oppositions
of love and
hate,
absolute
fluidity
and ice-a
per-
petually half-open
threshold. A threshold of
lips strangers
to
dichotomies.
(1984, 24;
trans. in Moi
1987, 128;
trans.
adapted)
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Margaret
Whitford
Irigaray
is here
suggesting
that our
conceptions
of
space
and time
may
be
based
entirely
on the
imaginary representation
of the male
body
and the
body
ofwoman-for-man.
Irigaray
on her own cannot rewrite the whole cultural
map,
but in the
mucous,
she is
beginning
to
attempt
a different
conceptualization
of
space-time,
whose
imaginary
would be
provided
instead
by
the
morphology
of the female
body.
It will be of
great
interest to see what
emerges
from women's
interpretative imaginations
when the mucous starts to receive the same kind of
attention as the two
lips.
It is not clear
yet,
for
example,
whether the mucous will
be able to bear the
weight
of
symbolic meaning
that
Irigaray
attaches to it.
If,
as
Irigaray suggests,
men's
way
of
dealing
with
death/loss/absence
is to
project
the
fantasy
of
disintegration
onto women
(so
that the female
imaginary
is in bits and
pieces,
their bodies often
fragmented),
this
prevents
women from
acceding
to a collective
symbolic identity,
and could in
part explain
the
disintegrative
forces that seem to
operate
when
adequate socio-symbolic
mediation between women is
lacking.
I would further
hypothesize (while
insisting
that this is
only speculative)
that one could
provide
a
reading
of the
situation of
contemporary
Western feminism in
Irigarayan
terms such as I have
outlined above. One
might
well
argue
that the crisis of confidence
being
displayed by
some
Anglo-American
feminists in the notion of
identity-under
the dual
pressure
of
a)
what is
loosely
called
postmodernism,
and
b)
the women
who are
marginalized by
feminism itself-is an indication of the
disintegrative
force of the
patriarchal
order,
in which women's death drives are turned
upon
themselves. Women need to
symbolize
their own death drives for
themselves,
and not
merely
remain the
passive
victims of a
patriarchal economy
of the
death drives.
But since the death drives of
men,
according
to
Irigaray, depend
for their
mediation on women's role as the condition and substratum of
representation,
any challenge
to this is both
disturbing
and
destabilizing,
not to
say dangerous.
So that the
question
of women's
representation
for
Irigaray
has
very
wide
implications.
The
attempt
to create
positive images
of women does involve a
fundamental
wager;
it can neither be
speedily
nor
easily accomplished, simply
because the will to do it is now
there,
nor is it without
perils.
In these brief
reflections,
I
hope
to have
provided
a
glimpse
of the horizons
that this
apparently
rather
"abject" image
of the mucous
opens
on to. And
again,
what I would like to stress is that woman's
body
is once more in
Irigaray's
work the source for
extremely far-reaching
cultural
meanings
which cannot be
easily
reduced to the traditional
meanings
of woman-for-man.
NOTES
1. See
Irigaray (1977a,
trans.
1985),
particularly
the sections entitled "This Sex
Which is Not One" and "When Our
Lips Speak Together";
see also
Irigaray (1977b).
107
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Hypatia
2. "La Limite du transfert" is in
Irigaray (1985, 293-305);
a translation
by
David
Macey
with
Margaret
Whitford will
appear
in The
Irigaray
Reader
(Whitford 1991).
Three
sections of
Ethique
de la
difference
sexuelle have been translated into
English
to date. See:
"The
Fecundity
of the
Caress,"
trans.
Carolyn Burke,
in Face to Face with
Levinas,
ed.
Richard A.
Cohen, Albany:
SUNY Press
1985, 231-256;
"Sexual
Difference,"
trans. Sean
Hand,
in French Feminist
Thought,
ed. Toril
Moi,
Oxford: Blackwell
1987, 118-130;
"Sorcerer Love: A
Reading
of Plato's
Symposium,
Diotima's
Speech,"
trans. Eleanor
Kuykendall,
in
Hypatia:
A
Journal
of
Feminist
Philosophy 3(3):
32-44.
3. This is a
slightly
different
argument
from the one I
put
forward in
my
Luce
Irigaray:
Philosophy
in the Feminine
(1991).
4. This
quotation
comes from a still untranslated
essay,
"Misere de la
psychanalyse,"
which contains
Irigaray's
most direct
critique
of the Lacanian
School;
a translation will
appear
in The
Irigaray
Reader
(Whitford 1991),
under the title "The
Poverty
of
Psycho-
analysis."
5. Translation in "The
Bodily
Encounter with the
Mother,"
in The
Irigaray
Reader
(Whitford 1991).
One thinks for
example
of the "viscous" as an
image
in Sartre's work.
The mucous or
mucosity (le muqueux)
or the mucous membrane
(la muqueuse)
is a
scientific term in
French,
with a
fairly precise
medical reference
(see
for
example Irigaray
[1990],
where the
biologist
Helene Rouch refers to "la
muqueuse
uterine": the
lining
of
the
womb).
An earlier draft of the
present paper
was
given
at the Women
Teaching
French
conference at
Ilkley,
November
1990;
I should like to thank the
audience,
particularly
Felicia Gordon and Gabrielle
Parker,
for their informative interventions on the conno-
tations of the mucous.
6. Trans. in "The Three Genres" in The
Irigaray
Reader
(Whitford 1991).
7. That is to
say,
a
symbolic
order in which the
corporeal
is no
longer split
off from
the
spiritual
and ideal. The sensible transcendental is not
easy
to define
precisely,
as
Irigaray
uses it in a number of different contexts. The
simplest way
of
describing
it is to
say
that
it refers to the conditions for women's collective access as
subjects
to culture and
society.
I discuss the sensible transcendental much more
fully
in Whitford
(1991).
8. Iris Marion
Young (1990,193)
has some useful comments to make on the
symbolic
implications
of the
image
of the fluid which could be extended to the mucous:
"Irigaray's
idea that women are
specially
linked to the
aqueous
is the
subject
of much
ridicule,
which
sometimes makes me wonder whether there is a fear
going
on even
among feminists,
a
fear of the loss of
'something
to hold on to.' As far as I am
concerned,
it is not at all a
matter of
making
a claim about women's
biologies
or
bodies,
for
conceptualized
in a
radically
different
way,
men's bodies are at least as fluid as women's. The
point
is that a
metaphysics
of self-identical
objects
has clear ties to the domination of nature in which
the domination of women has been
implicated
because culture has
projected
onto us
identification with the
abject body.
It makes a difference how we think about
beings
in
the
world,
and we can make choices about it that seem to have
political implications.
A
process metaphysics,
a
metaphysics
of
fluids,
where the
being
of
any
location
depends
on
its
surrounding
and where we cannot delineate
clearly
what is inside and
outside,
is a
better
way
to think about the world from an
ecological point
of view. Inasmuch as women's
oppression
derives to a
significant
extent from literal and
figurative objectification,
I am
suggesting, subverting
the
metaphysics
of
objects
can also be
liberating
for women."
9. The link between the
mucous,
the death drive and
space
and
time,
has to be
constructed,
because
Irigaray
does not write in such a
systematic way.
On the mucous and
space-time,
see
Ethique
de la
difference sexuele, passim.
See also "The Gesture in
Psychoanalysis" (Irigaray
1989)
on the
fort-da;
the
fort-da
is the
game
which Freud
108
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Margaret
Whitford
describes in
"Beyond
the Pleasure
Principle,"
in which the little
boy attempts
to master
absence and
loss,
and
symbolize
his own death
drive; Irigaray argues
that it is not
accidental that Freud's
example figures
a little
boy,
and that the
fort-da
is
inadequate
for
the little
girl,
who has a different
relationship
with her mother. The little
girl
therefore
needs different
symbolization,
or a
becoming
without
breaks,
and so her relation to
space
and time is-or
potentially
could be-different
(the
question
of whether
Irigaray
is
talking
about the actual or the
possible is,
as usual in her
work, unclear).
This issue is also
discussed in "La
Croyance
meme" (in
Irigaray
1987).
10. A fuller account of this
complex argument
can be found in Whitford
(1991).
See
Whitford
(1989)
for a
description
of
Irigaray's
account of the death drive turned
against
other women.
11. See Kant's
Critique of
Pure Reason. On
Kant,
see
Irigaray (1974, 253-265,
trans.
203-213),
and
Irigaray (1984 passim).
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