Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 23:10:44 -0600 (CST)
From: dralfonso-AT-msuvx1.memphis.edu
Subject: Re: J'aime a toi


Today turned into tomorrow, turned into today.  C, Sorry for the lapse.  
What follows is a reply of sorts -- although long, imprecise, rambling.  
Maybe one of you can help me along with these garbled thoughts.

On Wed, 24 Jul 1996 CPeebles-AT-aol.com wrote:

> An ethical encounter between men and women, she writes, would be
> characterized by the importance of an absolute silence in order to listen,
> and by the reversal of the negative -- into the possibility of love and of
> creation -- as the limit of one gender with respect to another gender. 

Irigaray writes "... the negative can mean access to the other of sexual 
difference and thereby become happiness without annihilating in the 
process. Hegel knew nothing of a negative like that. ... The negative of 
sexual difference means an acceptance of  the limits of my gender and a 
recognition of the irreducibility of ther other."  Are we on he same page?

[snip]
> Irigaray is, of course, always concerned with this TWO -- see also her more
> recent *Essere due*, written in Italian and not yet, as far as I know,
> translated into French. 

I don't suppose you would have a cite?  I can read Italian, albeit with 
some difficulty, and would like to give it a try.  

> But how are there two genders in this schema, two
> limited genders? As Irigaray frames this question, the limit takes place,
> becomes limit, by means of the reversal of the negative:  i.e., the negative,
> through a listening-towards-possibility, becomes a new creation between two.
> Neither one nor the other contains the limit, is as limited. Rather, the
> limit is rethought, or reimagined, as a potentially fluctuating space which
> is mutually (re-)created through a love which listens, through a listening
> which loves.
> --Catherine

Beautifully put. I am straining to hear, and maybe it is my Hegel which 
is lacking ;), but I just cannot understand by any means what this 
negative could *be*, and what taking up the negative would mean.  

Women are to take up the negative position which they are accorded in 
phallogocentric schemas -- as if there were a choice implied. As a mean 
of accessing sexual difference, the feminine?  How to put my question... 

What can this possibly do? I mean, we are conceived as negatives already, 
as lacking, as dissimulations.  If I stand here, at this very moment, and 
say "I am nothing (in relation to you)" what is this supposed to reveal?  
That I am something?  But then the nothingness seems inescapable, as I 
re-affirm it.  

I would rather stand here and say "I am creativity; I am 
the possibility of change through time,"  because then I am in a position 
to engender another relation to you (whatever your 'sex') from the one 
you might wish, imagine, endeavor to contrive.    

I am suspect of this one gender be-coming the limit for the other.  Why 
not bond instead of boundary, why not set them together into a creative 
and dynamic interchange, one which surpasses the imaginations of either, 
one without limits, which gives them both, spends them both, into 
infinity, into excess, in recklessness.  Has Irigaray lost her mind, her 
body, or must we re-write/re-read Beavoir once again?


When I encounter You, the immediacy between Us is not one which reserves 
itself or excercises limits.  The immediacy between Us demands to be 
spoken, acted, engendered -- or it is lost.  Or it will have been nothing.

When the immediacy which is presented with anOTher is before me, I do
not think at all of my limits, of renegotiating it.  I desire my limit
away, my boundaries to be 'violated.'  Because I can.

All of us, the two of us, have our limits, which we wish to outstrip,
overcome, push, indulge in.  Because we can. 

Not that Irigaray would disagree, but I hear her saying something
different from this, from before.  What am I missing?  


A fluctuating limit?  Can he stand it, or any of us?  A limit 
nonetheless!  Is she trying to preserve the sanctity of space, 
of distance between.  What for, is she saving it for herself?

Taking up the negative position in a way which leads to hapiness and not 
to annihilation?  But I want myself to end up with the other -- not 
annihilation, but no longer myself either, certainly a happy ending.

I have probably said enough and gotten no further.  I am truly bothered 
by this piece of work, and I just cannot phantom why.  Anything here 
strike a cord with any of you?

rita