Immanent Transcendence by Haynes Patrice;

Author:Haynes, Patrice;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The metaphysics of sexuate nature

Irigaray’s metaphysics is immanentist in the sense that she refuses, at least as I read her, the possibility of a supersensible, divine reality. For Irigaray, whatever is, is part of nature. The key point is of course that Irigaray insists nature is not one. Nor is it a heaving multiplicity. Whereas Deleuze is the thinker of the multiple, Irigaray is the thinker of the two. She argues that the multiple is simply the multiplication of the one and the (male) same: one + one + one.39 Instead of immediately affirming the multiple she argues that it is only by beginning with sexual difference (WD, 146) – which inscribes an insuperable limit or ‘negative’ within immanent nature – that concrete (i.e. embodied) differences can be recognized.

We have seen how Irigaray criticizes Kant for conceiving the transcendental conditions of experience as formal, a priori principles impervious to the materiality of experience. (Kant thinks this is necessary because transcendental conditions are what must be logically presupposed to explain the possibility of experience). In what follows, we look at how Irigaray attempts to think the conditions of experience as sexual difference, which, she argues, is the primary (indeed, only) ontological distinction upon which all other material differentiations are premised. For Irigaray, then, the transcendental is sensible, corporeal and living. The discussion of Irigaray’s metaphysics will begin by outlining her re-interpretation of Hegel’s concept of the negative, thus enabling us to gain an insight into the dialectical logic structuring her theory of immanence. We then explore her philosophy of nature which allows us to consider the unique way she rethinks the relation between form and matter, thus developing the basis for a non-reductive materialism. Having clarified Irigaray’s key features of Irigaray metaphysics of sexual difference, I then raise questions about her prioritization of sexual difference. The primacy of sexual difference is crucial for Irigaray because it is what allows her to assert the transcendence of the other of sexual difference. But I shall argue that by treating sexual difference as a transcendental condition, Irigaray turns this embodied reality into a strangely formal, even de-materialized principle.

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