Sharing the Fire by Luce Irigaray

Author:Luce Irigaray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030283308
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

From Subordination to Conjunction

The fact that the absolute henceforth corresponds with the absolute of our ‘to be’ means that desire acts as a mediation not only between elements of our own being but between two natural and spiritual being(s) without us having to resort to any object—one could say to any having. As well as making our way towards the absolute as the nature of transcendence to accomplish our being as human is now quite another thing. It is no longer a matter of mastering anything, especially by consciousness, but of acknowledging and letting be the transcendence existing in nature itself as a result of the irreducible difference between our being(s) and of its cultivation towards the ec-stasis of our union. This calls for a transformation of the content and the form of our desire so that the desire of one could be in harmony with the desire of the other. In search of a possible and provisory union, one cannot dominate or subject the other to oneself. For example, one cannot intend to be merely an ‘I’ addressing a ‘you’; each must in turn, and even simultaneously, be both ‘I’ and ‘you’—which thwarts the reduction of anyone to an object and preserves the duality of subjectivities. This also protects the peculiarity of the desire of each, a desire which is never empty or abstractly universal but which aims at a union with respect for difference(s). In this union the most elusive of our origin is joined to the most elusive of our search for the absolute.

Such an absolute cannot be reached through using the copula—to be—at the most radical, and even intensive, stage of adequacy in the relation between a subject and an object. It is the relationship between two subjects which now aims at the absolute. And this presupposes another meaning of the word ‘to be’ and of its copulating use. If its function was in a way to assess the correctness of a link of subordination in the relation between a subject and an object, it is now to carry out a conjunction between two subjects—to be expressing the achievement of such a conjunction. This ‘to be’, at which we then aim, is both sensitive and transcendental, and it allows each to preserve its being from remaining in a sensitive immediacy and from being subjected to supra-sensitive ideals or processes in order to reach the absolute—a motion which henceforth borrows its dynamism from a natural energy which is cultivated towards uniting with one another.

Another important aspect in such a dialectics regarding sensitiveness is that it takes place, at least originally, between two beings differently determined by nature. Thus the question is no longer one of unifying a multiplicity of properties with their integration into a unity in mind, but of allowing different natural determinations to combine with one another towards a more accomplished unity without one ever becoming the other, because this would deprive them of a relation to the absolute of their union.

The necessity of such

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