Rethinking of Sexual Difference Beyond Binary: A Debate between Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray

Abstract

 Can we go beyond binary? By emphasizing this argument, it shall explore the notion of sexual difference that has not been recognized fully in the patriarchal society. It explicates the different sexuality of women and other sex to reconstruct their subjectivity from the psychoanalytic framework.  It also attempts to clarify the argument of sexual difference which is not based on gender difference. Gender difference does not construct the sexuality of the individual as one may have more than one sexuality. As we have seen that lesbian, gay, queer is socially and culturally considered as the problem of identity and gender. These different sexualities are recognized as the outsider in the patriarchal discourse. Their social identities and sexuality are always being blurred, redefined, and questioned. In response to these blurred identities, many sexualities must be accepted as the intelligible identity for the societal norms. It is a fact that some people may have multiple sexualities which are being blurred in our society. Because the inherent sexualities create the limitation among the individual. Thus, to go beyond the binary I shall explore the rest with the debate of both Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray.

(keywords: sexual difference women, body and sexuality, subjectivity, other gender, and sex)

References

Butler Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge Publications, New York, 1990.

Butler Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Routledge Publication,

New York, 1993.

Beauvoir, Simon De, The Second Sex, (trans., & ed., by H. M. Parshley), Lowe and Brydone Ltd., 1956 (Reprint).

Cameron, Deborah, Feminism & Linguistic Theory, The Macmillan Press, London, 1992 (Second Edition).

Gaten, Moira, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality, Routledge Publication, New York, 1996.

Irigaray Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman, (trans., by Gillian C. Gill), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1985.

Irigaray Luce, This Sex Which is Not One, (Eng., trans., by Cathrine Porter & Carolyn Burke), Cornell University Press, Ithica, New York, 1985.

Irigaray Luce, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, (Eng., trans., by Gillian C. Gill), Cornell University Press, Ithica, New York, 1993.

Irigaray, Luce, I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History, (Eng., trans., by Alison Martin), Routledge Publication, New York, 1996.

Salih, Sara, Judith Butler, Routledge Publication, New York, 2000.

Whitford, Margaret, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, Routledge Publication, New York, 1991.

Berg, Maggie, ‘‘Luce Irigaray’s Contradiction: Post structuralism and Feminism’’, Signs, Vol. 17, No. 1, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991, pp. 50-70.

Butler, Judith, ‘‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988, pp. 519-531.

Cheah, Pheng, Grosg, Elizaabeth, Butler, Judith and Cornell Drucilla. ‘‘The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview With Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell’’, Diacritics Journal of Irigaray and the Political Future of Sexual Diffidence, Vol. 28 .No. 1, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1998, pp. 19-42.

Colebrook, Claire, ‘‘Feminist Philosophy and the Philosophy of Feminism- Irigaray and the History of Western Metaphysics’’, Hypatia Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1, Wiley, New York, 1997, pp. 79-98.

Davidson, Joyce and Smith, Milk, Wittgenstein and Irigaray, ‘‘Gender and Philosophy in a Language game of Difference’’, Hypatia Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, Wiley, New York, 1999, pp.

-96.

Davies, Bronwyn, ‘‘The Concept of Agency: A Feminist Post Structuralist Analysis, Social Analysis’’, The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, No. 30, Postmodern Critical Theorising, Berghahn Books, New York, 1991, pp. 42-53.

Disprose, Rosalyn, ‘‘The Body and the Habit of Sexual Difference’’, Hypatia Journal of Feminism and the Body, Vol. 6, No. 3, Wiley, New York, 1991, pp. 156-171.

Hsieh, Lili, ‘‘A Queer Sex or Can Feminism and Psychoanalysis have sex without Phallus’’, Feminist Review, No. 102, Palgrave Mcmillan Publication, London, 2012, pp. 97-115.

Journals and Articles

Juncker, Clara, “ Writing (with) Cixous’’, College English, NCTE, 1988, PP.124-436.

Dr Stanizai, Ehsan Azari ‘‘Lacan and Feminist Debates: Irigaray and Cixous’’, Nida Lacan Study and Reading Group, 2019, P.215

Kruks, Sonia, ‘‘Gender and Subjectivity: Simon De Beauvoir and Contemporary Feminism’’, Signs, Vol. 18, No. 1, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992, pp. 89-110.

McLaughin, Janice, ‘‘Feminist relation with Postmodernism: Reflections on the positive aspects of involvement’’, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 6, Taylor & Francis Group, London, 1997, pp .5-15.

Schutte, Ofelia, ‘‘Irigaray on the Problem of Subjectivity’’, Hypatia Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, Wiley, New York, 1991, pp. 64-76.

Whitford, Marget, ‘‘Irigaray’s Body Symbolic’’, Hypatia Journal of Feminism and the Body, Vol. 6, No. 3, Wiley, New York, 1991, pp. 97-110.

Xu, Ping, ‘‘Irigaray’s Mimicry and the Problem of Essentialism’’, Hypatia Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4, Wiley, New York, 1995, pp. 76-89.

Webster Fiona, ‘‘Politics of Sex and Gender: Benhabib and Butler Debate Subjectivity’’, Hypatia, Vol. 15, No. 1, Wiley, New York, 2000, pp. 1-22.

Stephanie Clare, ‘Agency, Significance and Temporality, Hypatia, Wiley, 2009, pp.50-62

Nayak Anoop and Kehily Mary Jane, Gender Undone: Subversion, Regulation and Embodiment in the Work of Judith Butler, Routledge, 2006, pp.459-572

Margaret E. Toye, Donna Harway’s Cyborg Touching (UP/ON) Luce Irigaray’s Ethics and the Interval: Poetics as Embodied Writing, Hypatia, Wiley, 2012, pp. 182-200

Claire, Colebrook, Feminist Philosophy and the Philosophy of Feminism: Irigaray and the History of Western Metaphysics, Hypatia, Wiley, 1997, pp.79-98

Eluned, Summers-Bremner, Reading Irigaray, Dancing, Hypatia, Wiley, 2000, pp.90-124

Karen Green, Other as Another Other Hypatia, Wiley, 2002, pp.1-15

Anne, Caldwell, Transforming Sacrifice: Irigaray and the Politics of Sexual Difference, Hypatia, Wiley, 20002, pp.16-38